“What a shame that we were not at home to receive you,” said Edith. “You, too, Henry! though I don’t know that we should have stayed at home for you. And for Mr. Bell! for Margaret’s Mr. Bell—”
“There is no knowing what sacrifices you would not have made,” said her brother-in-law. “Even a dinner-party! and the delight of wearing this very becoming dress.”
Edith did not know whether to frown or to smile, but it did not suit Mr. Lennox to drive her to the first of these alternatives; so he went on.
“Will you show your readiness to make sacrifices tomorrow morning, first by asking me to breakfast, to meet Mr. Bell, and secondly, by being so kind as to order it at half-past nine, instead of at ten o’clock? I have some letters and papers that I want to show to Miss Hale and Mr. Bell.”
“I hope Mr. Bell will make our house his own during his stay in London,” said Captain Lennox. “I am only so sorry we cannot offer him a bedroom.”
“Thank you. I am much obliged to you. You would only think me a churl if you had, for I should decline it, I believe, in spite of all the temptations of such agreeable company,” said Mr. Bell, bowing all round, and secretly congratulating himself on the neat turn he had given to his sentence, which, if put into plain language, would have been more to this effect: “I couldn’t stand the restraints of such a proper-behaved and civil-spoken people as these are: it would be like meat without salt. I’m thankful they haven’t a bed. And how well I rounded my sentence! I’m absolutely catching the trick of good manners.”
His self-satisfaction lasted him till he was fairly out in the streets, walking side by side with Henry Lennox. Here he suddenly remembered Margaret’s little look of entreaty as she urged him to stay longer, and he also recollected a few hints given him long ago by an acquaintance of Mr. Lennox’s, as to his admiration of Margaret. It gave a new direction to his thoughts. “You have known Miss Hale for a long time, I believe. How do you think her looking? She strikes me as pale and ill.”
“I thought her looking remarkably well. Perhaps not when I first came—now I think of. But certainly, when she grew animated, she looked as well as ever I saw her do.”
“She has had a great deal to go through,” said Mr. Bell.
“Yes! I have been sorry to hear of all she has had to bear; not merely the common and universal sorrow arising from death, but all the annoyance which her father’s conduct must have caused her, and then—”
“Her father’s conduct!” said Mr. Bell, in an accent of surprise. “You must have heard some wrong statement. He behaved in the most conscientious manner. He showed more resolute strength than I should ever have given him credit for formerly.”
“Perhaps I have been wrongly informed. But I have been told, by his successor in the living—a clever sensible man, and a thoroughly active clergyman—that there was no call upon Mr. Hale to do what he did, relinquish the living, and throw himself and his family on the tender mercies of private teaching in a manufacturing town; the bishop had offered him another living, it is true, but if he had come to entertain certain doubts, he could have remained where he was, and so had no occasion to resign. But the truth is, these country clergymen live such isolated lives—isolated, I mean, from all intercourse with men of equal cultivation with themselves, by whose minds they might regulate their own, and discover when they were going either too fast or too slow—that they are very apt to disturb themselves with imaginary doubts as to the articles of faith, and throw up certain opportunities of doing good for very uncertain fancies of their own.”
“I differ from you. I do not think they are very apt to do as my poor friend Hale did.” Mr. Bell was inwardly chafing.
“Perhaps I used too general an expression in saying ‘very apt.’ But certainly, their lives are such as very often to produce either inordinate self-sufficiency, or a morbid state of conscience,” replied Mr. Lennox with perfect coolness.
“You don’t meet with any self-sufficiency among the lawyers, for instance?” asked Mr. Bell. “And seldom, I imagine, any cases of morbid conscience.” He was becoming more and more vexed, and forgetting his lately-caught trick of good manners. Mr. Lennox saw now that he had annoyed his companion; and as he had talked pretty much for the sake of saying something, and so passing the time away while their road lay together, he was very indifferent as to the exact side he took upon the question, and quietly came round by saying: “To be sure, there is something fine in a man of Mr. Hale’s age leaving his home of twenty years, and giving up all settled habits, for an idea which was probably erroneous—but that does not matter—an untangible thought. One cannot help admiring him, with a mixture of pity in one’s admiration, something like what one feels for Don Quixote. Such a gentleman as he was too! I shall never forget the refined and simple hospitality he showed to me that last day at Helstone.”
Only half-mollified, and yet anxious, in order to lull certain qualms of his own conscience, to believe that Mr. Hale’s conduct had a tinge of Quixotism in it, Mr. Bell growled out—“Aye! And you don’t know Milton. Such a change from Helstone! It is years since I have been at Helstone—but I’ll answer for it, it is standing there yet—every stick and every stone as it has done for the
