Hope's spirit was for one instant wrapped in storm. He recoiled from the future, and at the moment of recoil came this offer of release. One moment's thought of freedom, one moment's thought of Margaret convulsed his soul; but before he could speak the tempest had pa.s.sed away.

Hester's face, frightfully agitated, was upraised: his countenance seemed heavenly to her when he smiled upon her, and replied--

"I will not. You are mine; and, as I said before, all our failures, all our heart-sickness, must bind us the more to each other."

"Then you must sustain me--you must cure me--you must do what no one has ever yet been able to do. But above all, Edward, you must never, happen what may, cast me off."

"That is, as you say, what no one has ever been able to do," said he, smiling. "Your father's tenderness was greatest at the last; and Margaret loves you, you know, as her own soul. Let us avoid promises, but let us rest upon these truths. And now," continued he, as he drew nearer to her, and made his shoulder a resting-place for her throbbing head, "I have heard your thoughts for the future. Will you hear mine?"

Hester made an effort to still her weeping.

"I said just now, that I believe half the misery in our lives is owing to straining after happiness; and I think, too, that much of our sin is owing to our disturbing ourselves too much about our duty. Instead of yielding a glad obedience from hour to hour, it is the weakness of many of us to stretch far forward into the future, which is beyond our present reach, and torment ourselves with apprehensions of sin, which we should be ashamed of if they related to pain and danger."

"Oh, if you could prove to me that such is my weakness!" cried Hester.

"I believe that it is yours, and I know that it is my own, my Hester.

We must watch over one another. Tell me, is it not faithless to let our hearts be troubled about _any_ possible evil which we cannot, at the moment of the trouble, prevent? And are we not sacrificing, what is, at the time, of the most importance--our repose of mind, the holiness, the religion of the hour?"

"I know I have defiled the holiness of this hour," said Hester, humbly.

"But as my thoughts were troubled, was it not better to speak them? I could not but speak them."

"You cannot but do and speak what is most honourable, and true, and generous, Hester; and that is the very reason why I would fain have you trust, for the future as well as the present, to the impulse of the hour. Surely, love, the probation of the hour is enough for the strength of every one of us."

"Far, far too much for me."

"At times, too much for all. Well, then, what have we to do? To rest the care of each other's happiness upon Him whose care it is: to be ready to do without it, as we would hold ourselves ready to do without this, or that, or the other comfort, or supposed means of happiness.

Depend upon it, this happiness is too subtle and too divine a thing for our management. We have nothing to do with it but to enjoy it when it comes. Men say of it--'Lo! it is here!'--'Lo! there!'--but never has man laid hold of it with a voluntary grasp."

"But we can banish it," said Hester.

"Alas! yes: and what else do we do at the very moment when we afflict ourselves about the future? Surely our business is to keep our hearts open for it--holy and at peace, from moment to moment, from day to day."

"And yet, is it not our privilege--said at least to be so--to look before and after? I am not sure, however, that I always think this a privilege. I long sometimes to be any bird of the air, that I might live for the present moment alone."

"Let us be so far birds of the air--free as they, neither toiling nor spinning out anxious thoughts for the future: but why, with all this, should we not use our human privilege of looking before and after, to enrich and sanctify the present? Should we enjoy the wheat-fields in June as we do if we knew nothing of seed-time, and had never heard of harvest? And how should you and I feel at this moment, sitting here, if we had no recollection of walks in shrubberies, and no prospect of a home, and a lifetime to spend in it, to make this moment sacred? Look at those red-b.r.e.a.s.t.s: shall we change lots with them?"

"No, no: let us look forward; but how? We cannot persuade ourselves that we are better than we are, for the sake of making the future bright."

"True: and therefore it must be G.o.d's future, and not our own, that we must look forward to."

"That is for confessors and martyrs," said Hester. "They can look peacefully before and after, when there is a bright life and a world of hopes lying behind; and nothing around and before them but ignominy and poverty, or prison, or torture, or death. They can do this: but not such as I. G.o.d's future is enough for them--the triumph of truth and holiness; but--."

"And I believe it would be enough for you in their situation, Hester. I believe you could be a martyr for opinion. Why cannot you and I brave the suffering of our own faults as we would meet sickness or bereavement from Heaven, and torture and death from men?"

"Is this the prospect in view of which you marry me?"

"It is the prospect in view of which all of us are ever living, since we are all faulty, and must all suffer. But marriage justifies a holier and happier antic.i.p.ation. The faults of human beings are temporary features of their prospect: their virtues are the firm ground under their feet, and the bright arch over their heads. Is it not so?"

"If so, how selfish, how ungrateful have I been in making myself and you so miserable! But I do so fear myself!"

"Let us fear nothing, but give all our care to the day and the hour. I am confident that this is the true obedience, and the true wisdom. If the temper of the hour is right, nothing is wrong."

"And I am sure, if the temper of the hour is wrong, nothing is right.

If one could always remember this--."

"If we could always remember this, we should perhaps find ourselves a little above the angels, instead of being, like the serene, the Fenelons of our race, a little below them. We shall not always remember it, love; but we must remind each other as faithfully as may be."

"You must bring me here, when I forget," said Hester. "This spring will always murmur the truth to me--'If the temper of the hour is right nothing is wrong.' How wrong has my temper been within this hour!"

"Let it pa.s.s, my Hester. We are all faithless at times, and without the excuse of meek and anxious love. Is it possible that the moon casts that shadow?"

"The dark, dark hour is gone," said Hester, smiling as she looked up, and the moon shone on her face. "Nothing is wrong. Who would have believed, an hour ago, that I should now say so?"

"When you would have given me up," said Hope, smiling. "Oh, let us forget it all! Let us go somewhere else. Who will say this is winter?

Is it October, or 'the first mild day of March?' It might be either."

"There is not a breath to chill us; and these leaves--what a soft autumn carpet they make! They have no wintry crispness yet."

There was one inexhaustible subject to which they now recurred--Mr Hope's family. He told over again, what Hester was never weary of hearing, how his sisters would cherish her, whenever circ.u.mstances should allow them to meet--how Emily and she would suit best, but how Anne would look up to her. As for Frank--. But this representation of what Frank would say, and think, and do, was somewhat checked and impaired by the recollection that Frank was just about this time receiving the letter, in which Margaret's superiority to Hester was pretty plainly set forth. The answer to that letter would arrive, some time or other, and the antic.i.p.ated awkwardness of that circ.u.mstance caused some unpleasant feelings at this moment, as it had often done before, during the last few weeks. Nothing could be easier than to set the matter right with Frank, as was already done with Emily and Anne; the first letter might occasion some difficulty. Frank was pa.s.sed over lightly, and the foreground of the picture of family welcome was occupied by Emily and Anne.

It was almost an hour from their leaving the Spring before the lovers reached home. They were neither cold nor tired; they were neither merry nor sad. The traces of tears were on Hester's face; but even Margaret was satisfied when she saw her leaning on Edward's arm, receiving the presents of the children where alone the children would present them--in the new house. There was no fancy about the arrangements, no ceremony about the cake and the ring, to which Hester did not submit with perfect grace. Notwithstanding the traces of her tears, she had never looked so beautiful.

The same opinion was repeated the next morning by all the many who saw her in church, or who caught a glimpse of her, in her way to and from it. No wedding was ever kept a secret in Deerbrook; and Mr Hope's was the one in which concealment was least of all possible. The church was half full, and the path to the church-door was lined with gazers. Those who were obliged to remain at home looked abroad from their doors; so that all were gratified more or less. Every one on Mr Grey's premises had a holiday--including Miss Young, though Mrs Rowland did not see why her children should lose a day's instruction, because a distant cousin of Mr Grey's was married. The marriage was made far too much a fuss of for her taste; and she vowed that whenever she parted with her own Matilda, there should be a much greater refinement in the mode. Every one else appeared satisfied. The sun shone; the bells rang; and the servants drank the health of the bride and bridegroom. Margaret succeeded in swallowing her tears, and was, in her inmost soul, thankful for Hester and herself. The letters to Mr Hope's sisters and brother, left open for the signatures of Edward and Hester Hope, were closed and despatched; and the news was communicated to two or three of the Ibbotsons' nearest friends at Birmingham. Mr and Mrs Grey agreed, at the end of the day, that a wedding was, to be sure, a most fatiguing affair for quiet people like themselves; but that nothing could have gone off better.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

MARIA AND MARGARET.

Mr Hope's professional duties would not permit him to be long absent, even on such an occasion as his wedding journey. The young couple went only to Oxford, and were to return in a week. Margaret thought that this week never would be over. It was not only that she longed for rest in a home once more, and was eager to repose upon her new privilege of having a brother: she was also anxious about Hester,--anxious to be convinced, by the observation of the eye and the hearing of the ear, that her sister was enjoying that peace of spirit which reason seemed to declare must be hers. It would be difficult to determine how much Margaret's attachment to her sister was deepened and strengthened by the incessant solicitude she had felt for her, ever since this attachment had grown out of the companionship of their childhood. She could scarcely remember the time when she had not been in a state of either hope or fear for Hester;--hope that, in some new circ.u.mstances, she would be happy at last; or dread lest these new circ.u.mstances should fail, as all preceding influences had failed. If Hester had been less candid and less generous than she was, her sister's affection might have given way under the repeated trials and disappointments it had had to sustain; and there were times when Margaret's patience _had_ given way, and she had for a brief while wished, and almost resolved, that she could and would regard with indifference the state of mind of one who was not reasonable, and who seemed incapable of being contented. But such resolutions of indifference dissolved before her sister's next manifestations of generosity, or appeals to the forgiveness of those about her. Margaret always ended by supposing herself the cause of the evil; that she had been inconsiderate; that she could not allow sufficiently for a sensitiveness greater than her own; and above all, that she was not fully worthy of such affection as Hester's--not sufficient for such a mind and heart. She had looked forward, with ardent expectation when she was happiest, and with sickly dread when she was depressed, to the event of Hester's marriage, as that which must decide whether she could be happy, or whether her life was to be throughout the scene of conflict that its opening years had been.

Hester's connexion was all that she could have desired, and far beyond her utmost hopes. This brother-in-law was one of a thousand--one whom she was ready to consider a good angel sent to shed peace over her sister's life: and during the months of her engagement, she had kept anxiety at bay, and resigned herself to the delights of grat.i.tude and of sweet antic.i.p.ations, and to the satisfaction of feeling that her own responsibilities might be considered at an end. She had delivered Hester's happiness over into the charge of one who would cherish it better and more successfully than she had done; and she could not but feel the relief of the freedom she had gained: but neither could she repress her anxiety to know, at the outset, whether all was indeed as well as she had till now undoubtingly supposed that it would be.

Margaret's attachment to her sister would have been in greater danger of being worn out but for the existence of a closer sympathy between them than any one but themselves, and perhaps Morris, was aware of. Margaret had a strong suspicion that in Hester's place her temper would have been exactly what Hester's was in its least happy characteristics. She had tendencies to jealousy; and if not to morbid self-study, and to dissatisfaction with present circ.u.mstances, she was indebted for this, she knew, to her being occupied with her sister, and yet more to the perpetual warning held up before her eyes. This conviction generated no sense of superiority in Margaret--interfered in no degree with the reverence she entertained for Hester, a reverence rather enhanced than impaired by the tender compa.s.sion, with which she regarded her mental conflicts and sufferings. Every movement of irritability in herself (and she was conscious of many) alarmed and humbled her, but, at the same time, enabled her better to make allowance for her sister; and every harsh word and unreasonable mood of Hester's, by restoring her to her self-command and stimulating her magnanimity, made her sensible that she owed much of her power over herself to that circ.u.mstance which kept the necessity of it perpetually before her mind. For the same reason that men hate those whom they have injured, Margaret loved with unusual fervour the sister with whom she had to forbear. For the same reason that the children, even the affectionate children, of tyrannical or lax parents, love liberty and conscientiousness above all else, Margaret was in practice gentle, long-suffering, and forgetful of self. For the same reason that the afflicted are looked upon by the pure-minded as sacred, Margaret regarded her sister with a reverence which preserved her patience from being spent, and her attachment from wasting away.

The first letter from her brother and sister had been opened in great internal agitation. All was well, however. It was certain that all was well; for, while Hester said not one word about being happy, she was full of thought for others. She knew that Margaret meant to take possession of the corner-house, to "go home," a few days before the arrival of the travellers, in order to make all comfortable for them.

Hester begged that she would take care to be well amused during these few days. Perhaps she might induce Maria Young to waive the ceremony of being first invited by the real housekeepers, and to spend as much time as she could with her friend. "Give my kind regards to Maria," said the letter, "and tell her I like to fancy you two pa.s.sing a long evening by that fireside where we all hope we shall often have the pleasure of seeing her." Six months ago Hester would not have spoken so freely and so kindly of Maria: she would not have so sanctioned Margaret's intimacy with her. All was right, and Margaret was happy.

Maria came, and, thanks to the holiday spirit of a wedding week, for a long day. Delicious are the pleasures of those whose appet.i.te for them is whetted by abstinence. Charming, wholly charming, was this day to Maria, spent in quiet, free from the children, free from the observation of other guests, pa.s.sed in all external luxury, and in sister-like confidence with the friend to whom she had owed some of the best pleasures of the last year. Margaret was no less happy in indulging her, and in opening much more of her heart to her than she could to any one else since Hester married--which now, at the end of six days, seemed a long time ago.

Miss Young came early, that she might see the house, and everything in it, before dark; and the days were now at their shortest. She did not mind the fatigue of mounting to the very top of the house. She must see the view from the window of Morris's attic. Yesterday's fall of snow had made the meadows one sheet of white; and the river looked black, and the woods somewhat frowning and dismal; but those who knew the place so well could imagine what all this must be in summer; and Morris was a.s.sured that her room was the pleasantest in the house. Morris curtseyed and smiled, and did not say how cold and dreary a wide landscape appeared to her, and how much better she should have liked to look out upon a street, if only Mr Hope had happened to have been settled in Birmingham. She pointed out to Maria how good Miss Hester had been, in thinking about the furnishing of this attic. She had taken the trouble to have the pictures of Morris's father and mother, which had always hung opposite her bed at Birmingham, brought hither, and fixed up in the same place. The bed-hangings had come, too; so that, except for its being so much lighter, and the prospect from the window so different, it was almost like the same room she had slept in for three-and-twenty years before. When Maria looked at "the pictures"-- silhouettes taken from shadows on the wall, with numerous little deformities and disproportions incident to that method of taking likenesses--she appreciated Hester's thoughtfulness; though she fully agreed in what Margaret said, that if Morris was willing to leave a place where she had lived so many years, for the sake of remaining with Hester and her, it was the least they could do to make her feel as much at home as possible in her new abode.

Margaret's own chamber was one of the prettiest rooms in the house, with its light green paper, its French bed and toilet at one end, and the book-case, table and writing-desk, footstool and armchair, at the other.

"I shall spend many hours alone here in the bright summer mornings,"

said Margaret. "Here I shall write my letters, and study, and think."

"And nod over your books, perhaps," said Maria. "These seem comfortable arrangements for an old or infirm person; but I should be afraid they would send you to sleep. You have had little experience of being alone: do you know the strong tendency that solitary people have to napping?"