CHAPTER VI.
In spite of a good deal of open opposition on the part of Grace, Margaret, full of the enthusiasm of a girl whose intelligence after being long cramped suddenly finds an outlet, threw herself heartily into a systematic course of real study, and the mornings flew on pleasantly. Mrs. Dorriman, who had read a great deal during the lonely hours she had spent, had theorized after the fashion of solitary readers. Her views of life were not unnaturally entirely pessimist, she rejected many high and great ideas from a dislike to what she conceived to be exaggeration. Her character was very far from firm, and she was conscious of this and other shortcomings, but her sweetness of temper saved her from being soured. She had a craving for happiness, without believing in its being possible for her. Her spirits were always low, and the effect of the harshness of her brother, and of the neglect she had suffered from in her youth, would probably pursue her all her life, and affected her now.
She carried this negation of hope even into her religious exercises, finding comfort chiefly in passages about resignation; and, though she had a vague belief that in the future she might have some share of bliss, she never expected it on this side of the grave.
Then another and a most terrible question troubled her greatly. She did not look forward with any profound rejoicing, to the prospect of once more meeting with her husband whom she had forgiven, but whom she had never loved.
That hope that spans the chasm between us and the future, is not always the comfort it is supposed to be, and indeed much may be said about her want of wisdom in dwelling upon problems which must remain unsolved.
She was too timid to take her fears and show her anxieties to any one capable of helping her at all. She was conscious of feeling disloyal to her husband in this matter, which was often a trial to her, and she indulged sometimes in speculations which unsettled her and did not tend to comfort her.
Poor woman! When Margaret put those pointed questions to her common to girls who have begun to think out things and want help, she read and re-read various authors only to come to the unsatisfactory previous conclusions. In this respect the association was not productive of much good on either side, but, excepting in this, the results were to make both happier.
Mrs. Dorriman, married so young as to be barely out of childhood, had the tenacity of opinion and the strong bias in favour of her own conclusions always to be found where the mind has dwelt upon itself, and has not been enlarged by friction with other minds, a bias which no amount of reading tends to modify, since each book is read and digested, almost one might say distorted, by the views brought to bear upon it, a mode of reading which may be compared to looking at a bright and a rainy day through the same smoky glass which gives everything its own hue. But the very exception she took at times, served to arouse Margaret's own powers of thought, and to make her reflect upon her reasons for liking and disliking opinions, and the language in which those opinions were put before her. Many fine sounding phrases fell to pieces when treated this way, and many lovely poems became to her so much more when she followed out a thought therein shadowed forth.
Grace could in reality do nothing to stop this reading, and, though at first she made many bitter observations, she had not the heart to destroy her sister's comfort in these mornings; and indeed, at certain times, when her own idleness became oppressive, she went and sat with them, preserving her independence by making no remarks, standing, as it were, aside and taking no part in any discussion, as though her own mind had been long made up and that these questions had been grappled with and settled by her long ago.
Mrs. Dorriman, who was always more timid when Grace was present, was always relieved when she did not appear, and then took herself to task for the relief. There was no doubt that Mrs. Dorriman brought a great increase of comfort to the place, everything was well looked after, and Mr. Sandford recognised that it was so, without exactly knowing in which way a change had been made.