Then Margaret, who was always mistress, sank into humility.
"My darling, I don't know that anything has just—happened; but you are not strong, and you are worried. I would like to get you home."
"I am going home," said Lilias, with dignity.
There was so much noise in her head still, as if all the wheels of her being were working and turning, that she had not much power of speech. But she walked with a certain stateliness, rejecting all aid. And Margaret, who had been sovereign all her life and directed everybody, accompanied little Lilias in the height and greatness of her passion, without saying a word, with a pathetic humility, wondering at her as the people of Camelot wondered at Elaine.
[CHAPTER XLV.]
The following winter was very dreary and long. It began early; the 12th itself, the beginning of the season, the day of days in the North, rained from morning to night. It never ceased raining through all the shooting season. The rain ran into every crevice, into the holes in the rocks, which were usually as dry as the sun could make them, and the heather grew out of a bog, and the foot sank in the treacherous greenness all over the moors. There was little encouragement to tourists, and not much to sportsmen, and women were kept indoors and exhausted all their resources, and quarrelled, and were miserable. If there had been perpetual bickering in the old Castle of Murkley, there would have been nothing surprising in it. The ladies were not happy; they were in a state of painful suspense and uncertainty. They neither knew what the future was, nor when it should cease to be the future, and become an astonishing present, changing all their life. In the strange and dreary days which had succeeded their discovery of Lewis' departure, there had been a kind of pause in existence altogether. The unaccustomed contrariety of events, the impossibility of doing anything but waiting, the inclination to upbraid each other, the uneasy desire at heart to blame somebody, was like a stimulating poison in all their veins. They stood, as it were, at bay against fate, and in the silence, and with the keen perception they had that nothing could be done, were tempted to turn their arms against each other, and make themselves thoroughly miserable. There was a moment indeed when this seemed inevitable. Margaret had only the impatience of unhappiness to warrant her in assailing Jean, but there was a certain reason in the instinctive impulse with which the others turned upon Margaret, murmuring in their hearts that it was she who was in fault. She it was (though neither of them knew how entirely it was she) who had sent the hero of their thoughts away. But for her, the dilemma might have been met with natural ease, and the problem solved. It was she who had stood in every one's way. Her pride, her hard-heartedness, her ambition for Lilias, even the temporary obtuseness and self-conceit (that such epithets should ever have been applied to Margaret!) which prevented her from seeing as the others did what Lewis had done for them, had brought matters to this crisis. It was her doing from first to last. She was herself fully aware of this, and the consciousness was as irritating as it was terrible. She alone had ordained her child's unhappiness, had taken the responsibility upon herself. When Lilias was seen wandering about her old haunts, trying to accomplish her old duties with a pale and abstracted countenance, retiring within herself, she who had been so simple and child-like, and crushed under the weight of an uncertainty which made her heart sick, Margaret was nearly beside herself. She irritated the suffering girl by her anxious solicitude. She would scarcely allow her the solace of quiet, the last right which a spirit in trouble has, of at least reconciling itself to its trouble unobserved, and without interruption. Margaret pursued Lilias with anxious questions what ailed her? though she knew so well, to the bottom of her heart, what the ailment was. Had she a headache? What was the matter that she could not eat her dinner? Why did it weary her to walk?
"I must get the doctor to you," Margaret said, devoured by alarm lest the delicate spirit should affect her slight body, and harm come of it before their eyes.
"Oh, if you would but let her alone! Can you not see that it's the heart that ails her, and nothing else?" Miss Jean would say.
"Hold your peace about hearts. Do you think I am not as unhappy about what has happened as any person; but I am not going to stand by and see her digestion a wreck as well as——" And Margaret would almost weep in misery, in impatience, in impotence, till poor Jean's heart was almost broken with the impossibility of binding up her sister's, and making her believe that all would be well. For to this, after a while, her desire to upbraid Margaret turned—a desire to console and soothe her. It was her fault, poor Margaret! that was the issue at last to which Jean's sympathetic passion came.