“You must go to her, Edward,” said Margaret, “or she will be frightened. You can do me no good. Sydney will go home with me, or any one here, I am sure.” Twenty people stepped forward at the word. Margaret parted with her heavy fur tippet, accepted a long cloth cloak from a poor woman, to throw over her wet clothes, selected Mr Jones, the butcher, for her escort, sent Sydney forward with directions to Morris to warm her bed, and then she set forth homeward. Mr Hope and half a dozen more would see her across the ice; and by the time she had reached the other bank, she was able to walk very much as if nothing had happened.
Mr Hope had perfectly recovered his composure before he reached the somewhat distant pond where Hester and the Greys were watching sliding as good as could be seen within twenty miles. It had reached perfection, like everything else, in Deerbrook.
“What! tired already?” said Hester to her husband. “What have you done with your skates?”
“Oh, I have left them somewhere there, I suppose.” He drew her arm within his own. “Come, my dear, let us go home. Margaret is gone.”
“Gone! Why? Is not she well? It is not so very cold.”
“She has got wet, and she has gone home to warm herself.” Hester did not wait to speak again to the Greys when she comprehended that her sister had been in the river. Her husband was obliged to forbid her walking so fast, and assured her all the way that there was nothing to fear. Hester reproached him for his coolness.
“You need not reproach me,” said he. “I shall never cease to reproach myself for letting her go where she did.” And yet his heart told him that he had only acted according to his deliberate design of keeping aloof from all Margaret’s pursuits and amusements that were not shared with her sister. And as for the risk, he had seen fifty people walking across the ice this very morning. Judging by the event, however, he very sincerely declared that he should never forgive himself for having left her.
When they reached home, Margaret was quite warm and comfortable, and her hair drying rapidly under Morris’s hands. Hester was convinced that everybody might dine as usual. Margaret herself came down-stairs to tea; and the only consequence of the accident seemed to be, that Charles was kept very busy opening the door to inquirers how Miss Ibbotson was this evening.
It made Hope uneasy to perceive how much Margaret remembered of what had passed around her in the midst of the bustle of the morning. If she was still aware of some circumstances that she mentioned, might she not retain others—the words extorted from him, the frantic action which he now blushed to remember?
“Brother,” said she, “what was the meaning of something that I heard some one say, just as I sat up on the bank? ‘There’s a baulk for the doctor! He is baulked of a body in his own house.’”