'By no means. What I do exclude is the remorse afterwards. Blot
your misdeeds out (if you are particularly conscientious), by a
good deed, as soon as you can; just as we did a correct sum at
school on the slate, where an incorrect one was only half rubbed
out. It was better than wetting our sponge with our tears; both
less loss of time where tears had to be waited for, and a better
effect at last.' If Margaret thought Frederick's theory rather a rough one at
first, she saw how he worked it out into continual production of
kindness in fact. After a bad night with his mother (for he
insisted on taking his turn as a sitter-up) he was busy next
morning before breakfast, contriving a leg-rest for Dixon, who
was beginning to feel the fatigues of watching. At
breakfast-time, he interested Mr. Hale with vivid, graphic,
rattling accounts of the wild life he had led in Mexico, South
America, and elsewhere. Margaret would have given up the effort
in despair to rouse Mr. Hale out of his dejection; it would even
have affected herself and rendered her incapable of talking at
all. But Fred, true to his theory, did something perpetually; and
talking was the only thing to be done, besides eating, at
breakfast.
Before the night of that day, Dr. Donaldson's opinion was proved
to be too well founded. Convulsions came on; and when they
ceased, Mrs. Hale was unconscious. Her husband might lie by her
shaking the bed with his sobs; her son's strong arms might lift
her tenderly up into a comfortable position; her daughter's hands
might bathe her face; but she knew them not. She would never
recognise them again, till they met in Heaven.
Before the morning came all was over.
Then Margaret rose from her trembling and despondency, and became
as a strong angel of comfort to her father and brother. For
Frederick had broken down now, and all his theories were of no
use to him. He cried so violently when shut up alone in his
little room at night, that Margaret and Dixon came down in
affright to warn him to be quiet: for the house partitions were
but thin, and the next-door neighbours might easily hear his
youthful passionate sobs, so different from the slower trembling
agony of after-life, when we become inured to grief, and dare not
be rebellious against the inexorable doom, knowing who it is that
decrees.
Margaret sate with her father in the room with the dead. If he
had cried, she would have been thankful. But he sate by the bed
quite quietly; only, from time to time, he uncovered the face,
and stroked it gently, making a kind of soft inarticulate noise,
like that of some mother-animal caressing her young. He took no
notice of Margaret's presence. Once or twice she came up to kiss
him; and he submitted to it, giving her a little push away when
she had done, as if her affection disturbed him from his
absorption in the dead. He started when he heard Frederick's
cries, and shook his head:--'Poor boy! poor boy!' he said, and
took no more notice. Margaret's heart ached within her. She could
not think of her own loss in thinking of her father's case. The
night was wearing away, and the day was at hand, when, without a
word of preparation, Margaret's voice broke upon the stillness of
the room, with a clearness of sound that startled even herself:
'Let not your heart be troubled,' it said; and she went steadily
on through all that chapter of unspeakable consolation.