“Yes,” said Margaret, “more than once. But I don’t believe it would do any good. And, you know, we have not the money to bring any great London surgeon down, and I am sure Dr. Donaldson is only second in skill to the very best—if, indeed, he is to them.”
Frederick began to walk up and down the room impatiently.
“I have credit in Cadiz,” said he, “but none here, owing to this wretched change of name. Why did my father leave Helstone? That was the blunder.”
“It was no blunder,” said Margaret gloomily. “And above all possible chances, avoid letting papa hear anything like what you have just been saying. I can see that he is tormenting himself already with the idea that mamma would never have been ill if we had stayed at Helstone, and you don’t know papa’s agonising power of self-reproach!”
Frederick walked away as if he were on the quarterdeck. At last he stopped right opposite to Margaret, and looked at her drooping and desponding attitude for an instant.
“My little Margaret!” said he, caressing her. “Let us hope as long as we can. Poor little woman! what! is this face all wet with tears? I will hope. I will, in spite of a thousand doctors. Bear up, Margaret, and be brave enough to hope!”
Margaret choked in trying to speak, and when she did it was very low.
“I must try to be meek enough to trust. Oh, Frederick! mamma was getting to love me so! And I was getting to understand her. And now comes death to snap us asunder!”
“Come, come, come! Let us go upstairs, and do something, rather than waste time that may be so precious. Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life. My theory is a sort of parody on the maxim of ‘Get money, my son, honestly if you can; but get money.’ My precept is, ‘Do something my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something.’ ”
“Not excluding mischief,” said Margaret, smiling faintly through her tears.
“By no means. What I do exclude is the remorse afterwards. Blot your misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a good deed, as soon as you can; just as we did a correct sum at school on the slate, where an incorrect one was only half rubbed out. It was better than wetting our sponge with our tears; both less loss of time where tears had to be waited for, and a better effect at last.”
If Margaret thought Frederick’s theory rather a rough one at first, she saw how he worked it out into continual production of kindness in fact. After a bad night with his mother (for he insisted on taking his turn as a sitter-up) he was busy next morning before breakfast, contriving a leg-rest for Dixon, who was beginning to feel the fatigues of watching. At breakfast-time, he interested Mr. Hale with vivid, graphic, rattling accounts of the wild life he had led in Mexico, South America, and elsewhere. Margaret would have given up the effort in despair to rouse Mr. Hale out of his dejection; it would even have affected herself and rendered her incapable of talking at all. But Fred, true to his theory, did something perpetually; and talking was the only thing to be done, besides eating, at breakfast.
Before the night of that day, Dr. Donaldson’s opinion was proved to be too well founded. Convulsions came on; and when they ceased, Mrs. Hale was unconscious. Her husband might lie by her shaking the bed with his sobs; her son’s strong arms might lift her tenderly up into a comfortable position; her daughter’s hands might bathe her face; but she knew them not. She would never recognise them again, till they met in Heaven.
Before the morning came all was over.
Then Margaret rose from her trembling and despondency, and became as a strong angel of comfort to her father and brother. For Frederick had broken down now, and all his theories were of no use to him. He cried so violently when shut up in his little room at night, that Margaret and Dixon came down in affright to warn him to be quiet: for the house partitions were but thin, and the next door neighbours might easily hear his youthful passionate sobs, so different from the slower trembling agony of afterlife, when we become inured to grief, and dare not be rebellious against the inexorable doom, knowing who it is that decrees.
Margaret sat with her father in the room of the dead. If he had cried, she would have been thankful. But he sat by the bed quite quietly; only, from time to time, he uncovered the face, and stroked it gently, making a kind of soft inarticulate noise, like that of some mother-animal caressing her young. He took no notice of Margaret’s presence. Once or twice she came up to kiss him; and he submitted to it, giving her a little push away when she had done, as if her affection disturbed him from his absorption in the dead. He started when he heard Frederick’s cries, and shook his head:—“Poor boy! poor boy!” he said, and then took no more notice. Margaret’s heart ached within her. She could not think of her own loss in thinking of her father’s case. The night was wearing away, and the day was at hand, when, without a word of preparation, Margaret’s voice broke upon the stillness of the room, with a clearness of sound that startled even herself: “Let not your heart be troubled,” it said; and she went steadily on through all that chapter of unspeakable consolation.
XXXI
“Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot”
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