“To a far more redoubtable person than either: to the editor of some one of those green and blue periodicals that he devours, as if they were poetry. And I have been copying music.”
“How tired you look!”
“Well, then, good-night!”
Margaret might well look tired; but she did not go to rest for long. How should she rest, while her soul was sick with dismay, her heart weighed down with disappointment, her sister’s sobs still sounding in her ear, her sister’s agonised countenance rising up from moment to moment, as often as she closed her eyes? And all this within the sacred enclosure of home, in the very sanctuary of peace! All this where love had guided the suffering one to marriage—where there was present neither sickness, nor calamity, nor guilt, but the very opposites of all these! Could it then be true, that the only sanctuary of peace is in the heart? that while love is the master passion of humanity, the main-spring of human action, the crowning interest of human life—while it is ordained, natural, inevitable, it should issue as if it were discountenanced by Providence, unnatural, and to be repelled? Could it be so? Was Hester’s warning against love, against marriage, reasonable, and to be regarded? That warning Margaret thought she could never put aside, so heavily had it sunk upon her heart, crushing—she knew not what there. If it was not a reasonable warning, whither should she turn for consolation for Hester? If this misery arose out of an incapacity in Hester herself for happiness in domestic life, then farewell sisterly comfort—farewell all the bright visions she had ever indulged on behalf of the one who had always been her nearest and dearest? Instead of these, there must be struggle and grief, far deeper than in the anxious years that were gone; struggle with an evil which must grow if it does not diminish, and grief for an added sufferer—for one who deserved blessing where he was destined to receive torture. This was not the first time by a hundred that Hester had kept Margaret from her pillow, and then driven rest from it; but never had the trial been so great as now. There had been anxiety formerly; now there was something like despair, after an interval of hope and comparative ease.
Mankind are ignorant enough, Heaven knows, both in the mass, about general interests, and individually, about the things which belong to their peace: but of all mortals, none perhaps are so awfully self-deluded as the unamiable. They do not, any more than others, sin for the sake of sinning; but the amount of woe caused by their selfish unconsciousness is such as may well make their weakness an equivalent for other men’s gravest crimes. There is a great diversity of hiding-places for their consciences—many mansions in the dim prison of discontent: but it may be doubted whether, in the hour when all shall be uncovered to the eternal day, there will be revealed a lower deep than the hell which they have made. They, perhaps, are the only order of evil ones who suffer hell without seeing and knowing that it is hell. But they are under a heavier curse even than this; they inflict torments, second only to their own, with an unconsciousness almost worthy of spirits of light. While they complacently conclude themselves the victims of others, or pronounce, inwardly or aloud, that they are too singular, or too refined, for common appreciation, they are putting in motion an enginery of torture whose aspect will one day blast their minds’ sight. The dumb groans of their victims will sooner or later return upon their ears from the depths of the heaven to which the sorrows of men daily ascend. The spirit sinks under the prospect of the retribution of the unamiable, if all that happens be indeed for eternity, if there be indeed a record—an impress on some one or other human spirit—of every chilling frown, of every querulous tone, of every bitter jest, of every insulting word—of all abuses of that tremendous power which mind has over mind. The throbbing pulses, the quivering nerves, the wrung hearts, that surround the unamiable—what a cloud of witnesses is here! and what plea shall avail against them? The terror of innocents who should know no fear—the vindictive emotions of dependants who dare not complain—the faintness of heart of life-long companions—the anguish of those who love—the unholy exultation of those who hate,—what an array of judges is here! and where can appeal be lodged against their sentence? Is pride of singularity a rational plea? Is super-refinement, or circumstance of God, or uncongeniality in man, a sufficient ground of appeal, when the refinement of one is a grace granted for the luxury of all, when circumstance is given to be conquered, and uncongeniality is appointed for discipline? The sensualist has brutified the seraphic nature with which he was endowed. The depredator has intercepted the rewards of toil, and marred the image of justice, and dimmed the lustre of faith in men’s minds. The imperial tyrant has invoked a whirlwind, to lay waste, for an hour of God’s eternal year, some region of society. But the unamiable—the domestic torturer—has heaped wrong upon wrong, and woe upon woe, through the whole portion of time which was given into his power, till it would be rash to say that any others are more guilty than he. If there be hope or solace for such, it is that there may have been tempers about him the opposite of his own. It is matter of humiliating gratitude that there were some which he could not ruin; and that he was the medium of discipline by which they were exercised in forbearance, in divine forgiveness and love. If there be solace in such an occasional result, let it be made the most of by those who need it; for it is the only possible alleviation to their remorse. Let them accept it as the free gift of a mercy which they have insulted, and a long-suffering which they have defied.
Not thus, however, did Margaret regard the case of her sister. She had but of late ceased to suppose herself in the wrong when Hester was unhappy: and though she was now relieved from the responsibility of her sister’s peace, she was slow to blame—reluctant to class the case lower than as one of infirmity. Her last waking thoughts (and they were very late) were of pity and of prayer.
As the door closed behind Margaret, Hope had flung down his pen. In one moment she had returned for a book; and she found him by the fireside, leaning his head upon his arms against the wall. There was something in his attitude which startled her out of her wish for her book, and she quietly withdrew without it. He turned, and spoke, but she was gone.
“So this is home!” thought he, as he surveyed the room, filled as it was with tokens of occupation, and appliances of domestic life. “It is home to be more lonely than ever before—and yet never to be alone with my secret! At my own table, by my own hearth, I cannot look up into the faces around me, nor say what I am thinking. In every act and every word I am in danger of disturbing the innocent—even of sullying the pure, and of breaking the bruised reed. Would to God I had never seen them! How have I abhorred bondage all my life! and I am in bondage every hour that I spend at home. I have always insisted that there was no bondage but in guilt. Is it so? If it be so, then I am either guilty, or in reality free. I have settled this before. I am guilty; or rather, I have been guilty; and this is my retribution. Not guilty towards Margaret. Thank God, I have done her no wrong! Thank God, I have never been in her eyes—what I must not think of! Nor could I ever have been, if... She loves Enderby, I am certain, though she does not know it herself. It is a blessing that she loves him, if I could but always feel it so. I am not guilty towards her, nor towards Hester, except in the weakness of declining to inflict that suffering upon her which, fearful as it must have been, might perhaps have proved less than, with all my care, she must undergo now. There was my fault. I did not, I declare, seek to attach her. I did nothing wrong so far. But I dared to measure suffering—to calculate consequences presumptuously and vainly: and this is my retribution. How would it have been, if I had allowed them to go back to Birmingham, and had been haunted with the image of her there? But why go over this again, when my very soul is weary of it all? It lies behind, and let it be forgotten. The present is what I have to do with, and it is quite enough. I have injured, cruelly injured myself; and I must bear with myself. Here I am, charged with the duty of not casting my shadow over the innocent, and of strengthening the infirm. I have a clear duty before me—that is one blessing. The innocent will soon be taken from under my shadow—I trust so—for my duty there is almost too hard. How she would confide in me, and I must not let her, and must continually disappoint her, and suffer in her affection. I cannot even be to her what our relation warrants. And all the while her thoughts are my thoughts; her... But this will never do. It is enough that she trusts me, and that I deserve that she should. This is all that I can ever have or hope for; but I have won thus much; and I shall keep it. Not a doubt or fear, not a moment’s ruffle of spirits, shall she ever experience from me. As for my own poor sufferer—what months and years are before us both! What a discipline before she can be at peace! If she were to look forward as I do, her heart would sink as mine does, and perhaps she would try... But we must not look forward: her heart must not sink. I must keep it up. She has strength under her weakness, and I must help her to bring it out and use it. There ought to be, there must be, peace in store for such generosity of spirit as lies under the jealousy, for such devotedness, for such power. Margaret says, ‘When it comes to acting, see how she will act.’ Oh, that it might please Heaven to send such adversity as would prove to herself how nobly she can act! If some strong call on her power would come in aid of what I would fain do for her, I care not what it is. If I can only witness my own wrong repaired—if I can but see her blessed from within, let all other things be as they may! The very thought frees me, and I breathe again!”