And Mr. Hale thought of Margaret, that April evening, just as strangely and as persistently as she was thinking of him. He had been fatigued by going about among his old friends and old familiar places. He had had exaggerated ideas of the change which his altered opinions might make in his friends’ reception of him; but although some of them might have felt shocked or grieved, or indignant at his falling off in the abstract, as soon as they saw the face of the man whom they had once loved, they forgot his opinions in himself; or only remembered them enough to give an additional tender gravity to their manner. For Mr. Hale had not been known to many; he had belonged to one of the smaller colleges, and had always been shy and reserved; but those who in youth had cared to penetrate to the delicacy of thought and feeling that lay below his silence and indecision, took him to their hearts, with something of the protecting kindness which they would have shown to a woman. And the renewal of this kindliness, after the lapse of years, and an interval of so much change, overpowered him more than any roughness or expression of disapproval could have done.
“I’m afraid we’ve done too much,” said Mr. Bell. “You’re suffering now from having lived so long in that Milton air.”
“I am tired,” said Mr. Hale. “But it is not Milton air. I’m fifty-five years of age, and that little fact of itself accounts for any loss of strength.”
“Nonsense! I’m upwards of sixty, and feel no loss of strength, either bodily or mental. Don’t let me hear you talking so. Fifty-five! why, you’re quite a young man.”
Mr. Hale shook his head. “These last few years!” said he. But after a minute’s pause, he raised himself from his half recumbent position, in one of Mr. Bell’s luxurious easy-chairs, and said with a kind of trembling earnestness:
“Bell! you’re not to think, that if I could have foreseen all that would come of my change of opinion, and my resignation of my living—no! not even if I could have known how she would have suffered—that I would undo it—the act of open acknowledgment that I no longer held the same faith as the church in which I was a priest. As I think now, even if I could have foreseen that cruellest martyrdom of suffering, through the sufferings of one whom I loved, I would have done just the same as far as that step of openly leaving the church went. I might have done differently, and acted more wisely, in all that I subsequently did for my family. But I don’t think God endued me with overmuch wisdom or strength,” he added, falling back into his old position.
Mr. Bell blew his nose ostentatiously before answering. Then he said:
“He gave you strength to do what your conscience told you was right; and I don’t see that we need any higher or holier strength than that; or wisdom either. I know I have not that much; and yet men set me down in their fool’s books as a wise man; an independent character; strong-minded, and all that cant. The veriest idiot who obeys his own simple law of right, if it be but in wiping his shoes on a doormat, is wiser and stronger than I. But what gulls men are!”
There was a pause. Mr. Hale spoke first, in continuation of his thought:
“About Margaret.”
“Well! about Margaret. What then?”
“If I die—”
“Nonsense!”
“What will become of her—I often think? I suppose the Lennoxes will ask her to live with them. I try to think they will. Her Aunt Shaw loved her very well in her own quiet way; but she forgets to love the absent.”
“A very common fault. What sort of people are the Lennoxes?”
“He, handsome, fluent, and agreeable. Edith, a sweet spoiled beauty. Margaret loves her with all her heart, and Edith with as much of her heart as she can spare.”
“Now, Hale; you know that girl of yours has got pretty nearly all my heart. I told you that before. Of course, as your daughter, as my goddaughter, I took great interest in her before I saw her the last time. But this visit that I paid to you at Milton made me her slave. I went, a willing old victim, following the car of the conqueror. For, indeed, she looks as grand and serene as one who has struggled, and may be struggling, and yet has the victory secure in sight. Yes, in spite of all her present anxieties, that was the look on her face. And so, all I have is at her service, if she needs it; and will be hers, whether she will or no, when I die. Moreover, I myself, will be her preux chevalier, sixty and gouty though I be. Seriously, old friend, your daughter shall be my principal charge in life, and all the help that either my wit or my wisdom or my willing heart can give, shall be hers. I don’t choose her out as a subject for fretting. Something, I know of old, you must have to worry yourself
