“I should m’appen ha’ cleaned mysel’, first.”
It certainly would have been desirable, but Margaret assured him he should be allowed to go into the yard, and have soap and towel provided; she would not let him slip out of her hands just then.
While he followed the house-servant along the passage, and through the kitchen, stepping cautiously on every dark mark in the pattern of the oilcloth, in order to conceal his dirty footprints, Margaret ran upstairs. She met Dixon on the landing.
“How is mamma?—where is papa?”
Missus was tired, and gone into her own room. She had wanted to go to bed, but Dixon had persuaded her to lie down on the sofa, and have her tea brought to her there; it would be better than getting restless by being too long in bed.
So far, so good. But where was Mr. Hale? In the drawing-room. Margaret went in half breathless with the hurried story she had to tell. Of course, she told it incompletely; and her father was rather “taken aback” by the idea of the drunken weaver awaiting him in his quiet study, with whom he was expected to drink tea, and on whose behalf Margaret was anxiously pleading. The meek, kindhearted Mr. Hale would have readily tried to console him in his grief, but, unluckily, the point Margaret dwelt upon most forcibly was the fact of his having been drinking, and her having brought him home with her as a last expedient to keep him from the gin-shop. One little event had come out of another so naturally that Margaret was hardly conscious of what she had done, till she saw the slight look of repugnance on her father’s face.
“Oh, papa! he really is a man you will not dislike—if you won’t be shocked to begin with.”
“But, Margaret, to bring a drunken man home—and your mother so ill!”
Margaret’s countenance fell. “I am sorry, papa. He is very quiet—he is not tipsy at all. He was only rather strange at first, but that might be the shock of poor Bessy’s death.” Margaret’s eyes filled with tears. Mr. Hale took hold of her sweet pleading face in both his hands, and kissed her forehead.
“It is all right, dear. I’ll go and make him as comfortable as I can, and do you attend to your mother. Only, if you can come in and make a third in the study, I shall be glad.”
“Oh, yes—thank you.” But as Mr. Hale was leaving the room, she ran after him.
“Papa—you must not wonder at what he says: he’s an—, I mean he does not believe much in what we do.”
“Oh dear! a drunken infidel weaver!” said Mr. Hale to himself, in dismay. But to Margaret he only said, “If your mother goes to sleep, be sure you come directly.”
Margaret went into her mother’s room. Mrs. Hale lifted herself up from a doze.
“When did you write to Frederick, Margaret? Yesterday, or the day before?”
“Yesterday, mamma.”
“Yesterday, and the letter went?”
“Yes. I took it myself.”
“Oh, Margaret, I’m so afraid of his coming! If he should be recognized! If he should be taken! If he should be executed, after all these years that he has kept away and lived in safety! I keep falling asleep and dreaming that he is caught and being tried.”
“Oh, mamma, don’t be afraid. There will be some risk, no doubt; but we will lessen it as much as ever we can. And it is so little! Now, if we were at Helstone, there would be twenty—a hundred times as much. There, everybody would remember him; and if there was a stranger known to be in the house, they would be sure to guess it was Frederick; while here, nobody knows or cares for us enough to notice what we do. Dixon will keep the door like a dragon—won’t you, Dixon—while he is here?”
“They’ll be clever if they come in past me!” said Dixon, showing her teeth at the bare idea.
“And he need not go out, except in the dusk, poor fellow!”
“Poor fellow!” echoed Mrs. Hale. “But I almost wish you had not written. Would it be too late to stop him if you wrote again, Margaret?”
“I’m afraid it would, mamma,” said Margaret, remembering the urgency with which she had entreated him to come directly, if he wished to see his mother alive.
“I always dislike that doing things in such a hurry,” said Mrs. Hale.
Margaret was silent.
“Come now, ma’am,” said Dixon, with a kind of cheerful authority, “you know seeing Master Frederick is just the very thing of all others you’re longing for. And I’m glad Miss Margaret wrote off straight, without shilly-shallying. I’ve had a great mind to do it myself. And we’ll keep him snug, depend upon it. There’s only Martha in the house that would not do a good deal to save him on a pinch; and I’ve been thinking she might go and see her mother just at that very time. She’s been saying once or twice she should like to go, for her mother has had a stroke since she came here; only she didn’t like to ask. But I’ll see about her being safe off, as soon as we know when he comes, God bless him! So take your tea, ma’am, in comfort, and trust to me.”
Mrs. Hale did trust in Dixon more than in Margaret. Dixon’s words quieted her for the time. Margaret poured out the tea in silence, trying to think of something agreeable to say; but her thoughts made answer something like Daniel O’Rourke, when the man-in-the moon asked him to get off his reaping-hook. “The more you ax us, the more we won’t stir.” The more she tried to think of something—anything besides the danger to which Frederick would be exposed—the more closely her imagination clung to the unfortunate idea presented to her. Her mother prattled with Dixon, and seemed to have utterly forgotten the possibility of Frederick
