"Unwatch"d the garden bough shall sway,The tender blossom flutter down,Unloved that beech will gather brown,The maple burn itself away;Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,Ray round with flames her disk of seed,And many a rose-carnation feedWith summer spice the humming air;Till from the garden and the wildA fresh association blow, And year by year the landscape growFamiliar to the stranger"s childAs year by year the labourer tillsHis wonted glebe, or lops the glades;And year by year our memory fadesFrom all the circle of the hills."
TENNYSON.
The last day came; the house was full of packing-cases, which werebeing carted off at the front door, to the nearest railway station. Eventhe pretty lawn at the side of the house was made unsightly and untidyby the straw that had been wafted upon it through the open door andwindows. The rooms had a strange echoing sound in them,--and thelight came harshly and strongly in through the uncurtained windows,-seemingalready unfamiliar and strange. Mrs. Hale"s dressing-room wasleft untouched to the last; and there she and Dixon were packing upclothes, and interrupting each other every now and then to exclaim at,and turn over with fond regard, some forgotten treasure, in the shape ofsome relic of the children while they were yet little. They did not makemuch progress with their work. Down-stairs, Margaret stood calm andcollected, ready to counsel or advise the men who had been called in tohelp the cook and Charlotte. These two last, crying between whiles,wondered how the young lady could keep up so this last day, and settledit between them that she was not likely to care much for Helstone,having been so long in London. There she stood, very pale and quiet,with her large grave eyes observing everything,--up to every presentcircumstance, however small. They could not understand how her heartwas aching all the time, with a heavy pressure that no sighs could liftoff or relieve, and how constant exertion for her perceptive facultieswas the only way to keep herself from crying out with pain. Moreover,if she gave way, who was to act? Her father was examining papers,books, registers, what not, in the vestry with the clerk; and when hecame in, there were his own books to pack up, which no one but himselfcould do to his satisfaction. Besides, was Margaret one to give waybefore strange men, or even household friends like the cook andCharlotte! Not she. But at last the four packers went into the kitchen totheir tea; and Margaret moved stiffly and slowly away from the place inthe hall where she had been standing so long, out through the bareechoing drawing-room, into the twilight of an early November evening.
There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, allobjects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robinwas singing,--perhaps, Margaret thought, the very robin that her fatherhad so often talked of as his winter pet, and for which he had made,with his own hands, a kind of robin-house by his study-window. Theleaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would laythem all low on the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floatingdown, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.
Margaret went along the walk under the pear-tree wall. She had neverbeen along it since she paced it at Henry Lennox"s side. Here, at this bedof thyme, he began to speak of what she must not think of now. Hereyes were on that late-blowing rose as she was trying to answer; andshe had caught the idea of the vivid beauty of the feathery leaves of thecarrots in the very middle of his last sentence. Only a fortnight ago Andall so changed! Where was he now? In London,--going through the oldround; dining with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer youngfriends of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through thatdamp and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling and fading,and turning to decay around her, he might be gladly putting away hislaw-books after a day of satisfactory toil, and freshening himself up, ashe had told her he often did, by a run in the Temple Gardens, taking inthe while the grand inarticulate mighty roar of tens of thousands of busymen, nigh at hand, but not seen, and catching ever, at his quick turns,glimpses of the lights of the city coming up out of the depths of theriver. He had often spoken to Margaret of these hasty walks, snatched inthe intervals between study and dinner. At his best times and in his bestmoods had he spoken of them; and the thought of them had struck uponher fancy. Here there was no sound. The robin had gone away into thevast stillness of night. Now and then, a cottage door in the distance wasopened and shut, as if to admit the tired labourer to his home; but thatsounded very far away. A stealthy, creeping, cranching sound amongthe crisp fallen leaves of the forest, beyond the garden, seemed almostclose at hand. Margaret knew it was some poacher. Sitting up in her bedroomthis past autumn, with the light of her candle extinguished, andpurely revelling in the solemn beauty of the heavens and the earth, shehad many a time seen the light noiseless leap of the poachers over thegarden-fence, their quick tramp across the dewy moonlit lawn, theirdisappearance in the black still shadow beyond. The wild adventurousfreedom of their life had taken her fancy; she felt inclined to wish themsuccess; she had no fear of them. But to-night she was afraid, she knewnot why. She heard Charlotte shutting the windows, and fastening upfor the night, unconscious that any one had gone out into the garden. Asmall branch--it might be of rotten wood, or it might be broken by force -came heavily down in the nearest part of the forest, Margaret ran, swiftas Camilla, down to the window, and rapped at it with a hurriedtremulousness which startled Charlotte within.
