Chapter 44

CHAPTER XLIV - EASE NOT PEACE

'A dull rotation, never at a stay,

Yesterday's face twin image of to-day.'

COWPER.

'Of what each one should be, he sees the form and rule,

And till he reach to that, his joy can ne'er be full.'

RUCKERT.

It was very well for Margaret that the extreme quiet of the
Harley Street house, during Edith's recovery from her
confinement, gave her the natural rest which she needed. It gave
her time to comprehend the sudden change which had taken place in
her circumstances within the last two months. She found herself
at once an inmate of a luxurious house, where the bare knowledge
of the existence of every trouble or care seemed scarcely to have
penetrated. The wheels of the machinery of daily life were well
oiled, and went along with delicious smoothness. Mrs. Shaw and
Edith could hardly make enough of Margaret, on her return to what
they persisted in calling her home. And she felt that it was
almost ungrateful in her to have a secret feeling that the
Helstone vicarage--nay, even the poor little house at Milton,
with her anxious father and her invalid mother, and all the small
household cares of comparative poverty, composed her idea of
home. Edith was impatient to get well, in order to fill
Margaret's bed-room with all the soft comforts, and pretty
nick-knacks, with which her own abounded. Mrs. Shaw and her maid
found plenty of occupation in restoring Margaret's wardrobe to a
state of elegant variety. Captain Lennox was easy, kind, and
gentlemanly; sate with his wife in her dressing-room an hour or
two every day; played with his little boy for another hour, and
lounged away the rest of his time at his club, when he was not
engaged out to dinner. Just before Margaret had recovered from
her necessity for quiet and repose--before she had begun to feel
her life wanting and dull--Edith came down-stairs and resumed her
usual part in the household; and Margaret fell into the old habit
of watching, and admiring, and ministering to her cousin. She
gladly took all charge of the semblances of duties off Edith's
hands; answered notes, reminded her of engagements, tended her
when no gaiety was in prospect, and she was consequently rather
inclined to fancy herself ill. But all the rest of the family
were in the full business of the London season, and Margaret was
often left alone. Then her thoughts went back to Milton, with a
strange sense of the contrast between the life there, and here.
She was getting surfeited of the eventless ease in which no
struggle or endeavour was required. She was afraid lest she
should even become sleepily deadened into forgetfulness of
anything beyond the life which was lapping her round with luxury.