“I wish I could! I wish I could! But it is impossible. My duty lies here, Isaac. I wish you could see that fact as strongly as I see it. My poor father always enjoined me to do my duty, no matter at what personal cost.”
“It is your brother’s duty to be here, Margaret; not yours. Where is he?”
“In London, I believe,” she replied, and a faint colour flew into her pale face. She put up her handkerchief to hide it.
It had come to Margaret’s knowledge that during the past few months her mother had occasionally written to Benjamin. But Mrs. Rymer would not allow Margaret to write or give her his address. It chanced, however, that about a fortnight ago Mrs. Rymer incautiously left a letter on the table addressed to him, and her daughter saw it. When, some days subsequently, Mr. Sale received the offer of the chaplaincy, and laid it and himself before Margaret, urging her to accompany him, saying that he could not go without her, she took courage to write to Benjamin. She did not ask him to return and release her; she only asked him whether he had any intention of returning, and if so, when; and she gave him in simple words the history of her acquaintanceship with Mr. Sale, and said that he wanted her to go out with him to the Bahamas. To this letter Margaret had not received any answer. She therefore concluded that it had either not reached her brother, or else that he did not mean to return at all to Timberdale; and so she gave up all hopes of it.
“Life is not very long, Margaret, and God has placed us in it to do the best we can in all ways; for Him first, for social obligations afterwards. But He has not meant it to be all trial, all self-denial. If you and I part now, the probability is that we part for ever. Amidst the world’s chances and changes we may never meet again, howsoever our wills might prompt it.”
“True,” she faintly answered.
“And I say that you ought not to enforce this weighty penance upon me and yourself. It is for your brother’s sake, as I look upon it, that you are making the sacrifice, and it is he, not you, who ought to be here. Why did he go away?”
“I never knew,” said Margaret, lifting her eyes to her lover’s, and speaking so confidingly and earnestly that, had he needed proof to convince him she was ignorant of the story he had that day been regaled with, it would have amply afforded it. “Benjamin was at home, and so steady and good as to be a comfort to papa; when quite suddenly he left without giving a reason. Papa seemed to be in trouble about it—it was only a few days before he died—and I have thought that perhaps poor Benjamin was unexpectedly called upon to pay some debt or other, and could not find the money to do it. He had not always been quite so steady.”
“Well, Margaret, I think——”
A loud bang of the entrance-door, and a noisy burst into the room, proclaimed the return of Mrs. Rymer. Her mass of scarlet curls garnished her face on either side, and looked particularly incongruous with her widow’s cap and bonnet. Mr. Sale, rising to hand her a chair, broke off what he had been about to say to Margaret, and addressed Mrs. Rymer instead; simply saying that the decision, as to her going out with him, or not going, could no longer be put off, but must be made.