Mr Hope meant to drive Morris to Buckley himself, and to see her into the coach for Birmingham; and he had borrowed Mr Grey's gig for the purpose. He had been urged by Mr Grey not to think of returning that night, had desired his wife and sister not to expect him, and had engaged a neighbour to sleep in the house. The sisters might well look forward to a sad evening; and their hearts were heavy when the gig came to the door, when they were fortifying Morris with a parting gla.s.s of wine, and wrapping her up with warm things which were to come back with her master, and expressing their heart-sorrow by the tenderness with which they melted the very soul of poor Morris. She could not speak; she could resist nothing. She took all they offered her to comfort herself with, from having neither heart nor voice to refuse. Morris never gave way to tears; but she was as solemn as if she were going to execution. The baby alone was insensible to her gravity; he laughed in her face when she took him into her arms for the last time;--a seasonable laugh it was, for it relieved his mother of some slight superst.i.tious dread which was stealing upon her, as she witnessed the solemnity of Morris's farewell to him. They all spoke of her return to them; but no one felt that there was any comfort in so vague a hope, amidst the sadness of the present certainty.

As Hester and Margaret stood out on the steps to watch the gig till the last moment, a few flakes of snow were driven against their faces. They feared Morris would have a dreary journey; and this was not the pleasantest thought to carry with them into the house.

While Hester nursed her infant by the fire, Margaret went round the house, to see what there was for her to do to-night. It moved her to find how thoughtfully everything was done. Busy as Morris had been with a thousand little affairs and preparations, every part of the house was left in the completest order. The very blinds of the chambers were drawn down, and a fire was laid in every grate, in case of its being wanted. The tea-tray was set in the pantry, and not a plate left from dinner unwashed. Margaret felt and said how badly she should supply the place of Morris's hands, to say nothing of their loss of her head and heart. She sighed her thankfulness to her old friend, that she was already at liberty to sit down beside her sister, with actually nothing on her hands to be done before tea-time.

It was always a holiday to Margaret when she could sit by at leisure, as the morning and evening dressing and undressing of the baby went on.

Hester would never entrust the business to her or to any one: but it was the next best thing to watch the pranks of the little fellow, and the play between him and his mother; and then to see the fun subside into drowsiness, and be lost in that exquisite spectacle, the quiet sleep of an infant. When he was this evening laid in his basket, and all was unusually still, from there being no one but themselves in the house, and the snow having by this time fallen thickly outside, Margaret said to her sister--"If I remember rightly, it is just a twelvemonth since you warned me how wretched marriage was. Just a year, is it not?"

"Is it possible?" said Hester, withdrawing her eyes from her infant.

"I wish I could have foreseen then how soon I might remind you of this."

"Is it possible that I said so?--and of all marriage?"

"Of all love, and all marriage. I remember it distinctly."

"You have but too much reason to remember it, love. But how thankless, how wicked of me ever to say so."

"We all, perhaps, say some wretched things which dwell on other people's minds, long after we have forgotten them ourselves. It is one of the acts we shall waken up to as sins--perhaps every one of us--whenever we become qualified to review our lives dispa.s.sionately;--as sins, no doubt, for the pain does not die with the utterance; and to give pain needlessly, and to give lasting pain, is surely a sin. We are none of us guiltless; but I am glad you said this particular thing--dreadful as it was to hear it. It has caused me a great deal of thought within the year; and it now makes us both aware how much happier we are than we were then."

"We!"

"Yes; all of us. I rather shrink from measuring states of fortune and of mind, as they are at one time against those of another; but it is impossible to recall that warning of yours, and be unaware how differently we have cause to think and speak now. I felt at the time that it was too late for us to complain of love and of marriage. The die was then cast for us all. It is much better to feel now that those complaints were the expression of pa.s.sing pain, long since over."

"I rejoice to hear you say this for yourself, Margaret; though I own I should scarcely have expected it. And yet no one is more aware than I that it is a blessing to love--a blessing still, whatever may be the woe that must come with the love. It is a blessing to live for another, to feel far more deeply than the most selfish being on earth ever felt for himself. I know that it is better to have felt this disinterested attachment to another, even in the midst of storms of pa.s.sion hidden in the heart, and of pangs from disappointment, than to live on in the very best peace of those who have never loved. Yet, knowing this, I have been cowardly for you, Margaret, and at one time sank under my own troubles. Any one who loved as I did should have been braver. I should have been more willing, both for you and for myself, to meet the suffering which belongs to the exercise of all the highest and best part of our nature: but I was unworthy then of the benignant discipline appointed to me: and at the moment, I doubt not I should have preferred, if the choice had been offered to me, the safety and quiet of a pa.s.sionless existence to the glorious exercise which has been graciously appointed me against my will. I do try now, Margaret, to be thankful that you have had some of this exercise and discipline; but I have not faith enough. My thanks are all up in grief before I have done--grief that you have the struggle and the sorrow, without the support and the full return which have been granted to me."

"You need not grieve much for me. I have not only had the full return you speak of, but I have it still. It cannot be spoken, or written, or even indulged; but I know it exists; and therefore am I happier than I was last year. How foolish it is," she continued, as if thinking aloud, "how perfectly childish to set our hearts on what we call happiness,--on any arrangement of circ.u.mstances, either in our minds or our fortunes-- so little as we know! How you and I should have dreaded this night and to-morrow, if they could have been foreshown to us a while ago! How we should have shrunk from sitting down under the cloud of sorrow which appears to have settled upon this house! And now this evening has come--"

"The evening of Morris's going away, and everything else so dreary! No servant, no money, no prospect! Careful economy at home, ill-will abroad; the times bad, the future all blank--we two sitting here alone, with the snow falling without!"

"And our hearts aching with parting with Morris (we must come back to that princ.i.p.al grief). How dismal all this would have looked, if we could have seen it in a fairy-gla.s.s at Birmingham long ago!--and yet I would not change this very evening for any we ever spent in Birmingham, when we were exceedingly proud of being very happy."

"Nor I. This is life: and to live--to live with the whole soul, and mind, and strength, is enough. It is not often that I have strength to feel this, and courage to say it; but to-night I have both."

"And in time we may be strong enough to pray that this child may truly and wholly live--may live in every capacity of his being, whatever suffering may be the condition of such life: but it requires some courage to pray so for him, he looks so unfit for anything but ease at present!"

"For anything but feeding and sleeping, and laughing in our faces. Did you ever see an infant sleep so softly? Are not those wheels pa.s.sing?

Yes; surely I heard wheels rolling over the snow."

She was right. In five minutes more, Margaret had to open the door to her brother.

Hope had arrived at Blickley only just in time to drive Morris up to the door of the Birmingham coach, and put her in as the guard was blowing his horn. Mr Grey's horse had gone badly, and they had been full late in setting off. He had not liked the prospect of staying where he was till morning, and had resolved to bid defiance to footpads, and return: so he stepped into the coffee-room, and read the papers while the horse was feeding, and came home as quickly after as he could. As he was safe, all the three were glad he had done so; and the more that, for once, Edward seemed sad. They made a bright fire, and gave him tea; but their household offices did not seem to cheer him as usual. Hester asked, at length, whether he had heard any bad news.

"Only public news. The papers are full of everything that is dismal.

The epidemic is spreading frightfully. It is a most serious affair.

The people you meet in the streets at Blickley look as if they had the plague raging in the town. They say the funerals have never ceased pa.s.sing through the streets, all this week; and really the churchyard I saw seemed full of new graves. I believe the case is little better in any town in the kingdom."

"And in the villages?"

"The villages follow, of course, with differences according to their circ.u.mstances. None will be worse than this place, when once the fever appears among us. I would not say so anywhere but by our own fireside, because everything should be done to encourage the people instead of frightening them; but indeed it is difficult to imagine a place better prepared for destruction than our pretty village is just now, from the extreme poverty of most of the people, and their ignorance, which renders them unfit to take any rational care of themselves."

"You say, 'whenever the fever comes.' Do you think it must certainly come?"

"Yes: and I have had some suspicions, within a day or two, that it is here already. I must see Walcot to-morrow; and learn what he has discovered in his practice."

"Mr Walcot! Will not Dr Levitt do as well?"

"I must see Dr Levitt too, to consult about some means of cleansing and drying the worst of the houses in the village. But it is quite necessary that I should have some conversation with Walcot about the methods of treatment of this dreadful disease. If he is not glad of an opportunity of consulting with a brother in the profession, he ought to be--and I have no doubt he will be; for he will very soon have as much upon him as any head and hands in the world could manage."

"Cannot you let him come to you for advice and a.s.sistance when he wants it?"

"I must not wait for that. He is young, and, as we all imagine, not over wise: and a dozen of our poor neighbours might die before he became aware of as much as I know to-night about this epidemic. No, love; my dignity must give way to the safety of our neighbours. Depend upon it, Walcot will be glad enough to hear what I have to say--if not to-morrow, by next week at furthest."

"So soon? What makes you say next week?"

"I judge partly from the rate of progress of the fever elsewhere, and partly from the present state of health in Deerbrook. There are other reasons too. I have seen some birds of ill omen on the wing hitherward this evening."

"What can you mean?"

"I mean fortune-tellers. Are you not aware that in seasons of plague-- of the epidemics of our times, as well as the plagues of former days-- conjurors, and fortune-tellers, and quacks appear, as a sort of heralds of the disease? They are not really so, for the disease in fact precedes them; but they show themselves so immediately on its arrival, and usually before its presence is acknowledged, that they have often been thought to bring it. They have early information of its existence in any place; and they come to take advantage of the first panic of the inhabitants, where there are enough who are ignorant to make the speculation a good one. I saw two parties of these people trooping hither; and we shall have heard something of their prophecies, and of a fever case or two, before this time to-morrow, I have little doubt."

"It is this prospect which has made you sad," said Hester.

"No, my dear--not that alone. But do not let us talk about being sad.

What does it matter?"

"Yes; do let us talk about it," said Margaret, "if, as I suspect, you are sad for us. It is about Morris's going away, is it not?"

"About many things. It is impossible to be at all times unaffected by such changes as have come upon us; I cannot always forget what my profession once was to me, for honour, for occupation, and for income.

I confidently reckoned on bringing you both to a home full of comfort.

Never were women so cherished as I meant that you should be. And now it has ended in your little incomes being almost our only resource, and in your being deprived of your old friend Morris, some years before her time. I can hardly endure to think of to-morrow."

"And do you really call this the end?" asked Margaret. "Do you consider our destiny fixed for evermore?"

"As far as you and I are concerned, love," said Hester to him, "I could almost wish that this were the end. I feel as if almost any change would be for the worse; I mean supposing you not to look as you do now, but as you have always been till now. Oh, Edward, I am so happy!"

Her husband could not speak for astonishment and delight. "You remember that evening in Verdon woods, Edward--the evening before we were married?"

"Remember it!"

"Well. How infinitely happier are we now than then! Oh! that fear-- that mistrust of myself! You reproved me for my fear and mistrust then; and I must beg leave to remind you of what you then said. It is not often that I can have the honour of preaching to you, my dear husband, as it is rather difficult to find an occasion; but now I have caught you tripping. What is there for you to be uneasy about now, that can at all be compared with what I troubled myself about then?--Since that time I have caused you much misery, I know--misery which I partly foresaw I should cause you: but that is over, I trust. It is over at least for the time that we are poor and persecuted. I dare not and do not wish for anything otherwise than as we have it flow. Persecution seems to have made us wiser, and poverty happier; and how, if only Margaret were altogether as we would see her, how could we be better than we are?"

"You are right, my dear wife." These few tender words, and her husband's brightened looks, sufficed--Hester had no cares. She forgot even the fever, in seeing Edward look as gay as usual again, and in feeling that she was everything to that feeling, that conviction, for which she had sighed in vain, for long after her marriage. She had then fancied that his profession, his family, his own thoughts, were as important to him as herself. She now knew that she was supreme; and this was supreme satisfaction.

When Margaret sprang up to her new labours in the chill dusk of the next morning, she flattered herself that she was the first awake; but it was not so. When she went down, she found her brother busy shovelling the snow away, and making a clear path from the kitchen door to the coal-house. He declared it delightfully warm work, by the time he had brought in coals enough for the day, and wanted more employment of the same sort. He went round to the front of the house, and cleared the steps and pavement there; caring nothing for the fact, that two or three neighbours gazed from their doors, and that some children stood blowing upon their fingers, and stamping with their feet, enduring the cold, for the sake of seeing the gentleman clearing his own steps.

"What would the Greys say?" asked Margaret, laughing; as, duster in hand, she looked from the open window, and spoke to her brother outside.

"I am sure they ought to say I have done my work well."