Chapter 45

CHAPTER XLV - NOT ALL A DREAM

'Where are the sounds that swam along

The buoyant air when I was young?

The last vibration now is o'er,

And they who listened are no more;

Ah! let me close my eyes and dream.'

W. S. LANDOR.

The idea of Helstone had been suggested to Mr. Bell's waking mind
by his conversation with Mr. Lennox, and all night long it ran
riot through his dreams. He was again the tutor in the college
where he now held the rank of Fellow; it was again a long
vacation, and he was staying with his newly married friend, the
proud husband, and happy Vicar of Helstone. Over babbling brooks
they took impossible leaps, which seemed to keep them whole days
suspended in the air. Time and space were not, though all other
things seemed real. Every event was measured by the emotions of
the mind, not by its actual existence, for existence it had none.
But the trees were gorgeous in their autumnal leafiness--the warm
odours of flower and herb came sweet upon the sense--the young
wife moved about her house with just that mixture of annoyance at
her position, as regarded wealth, with pride in her handsome and
devoted husband, which Mr. Bell had noticed in real life a
quarter of a century ago. The dream was so like life that, when
he awoke, his present life seemed like a dream. Where was he? In
the close, handsomely furnished room of a London hotel! Where
were those who spoke to him, moved around him, touched him, not
an instant ago? Dead! buried! lost for evermore, as far as
earth's for evermore would extend. He was an old man, so lately
exultant in the full strength of manhood. The utter loneliness of
his life was insupportable to think about. He got up hastily, and
tried to forget what never more might be, in a hurried dressing
for the breakfast in Harley Street.

He could not attend to all the lawyer's details, which, as he
saw, made Margaret's eyes dilate, and her lips grow pale, as one
by one fate decreed, or so it seemed, every morsel of evidence
which would exonerate Frederick, should fall from beneath her
feet and disappear. Even Mr. Lennox's well-regulated professional
voice took a softer, tenderer tone, as he drew near to the
extinction of the last hope. It was not that Margaret had not
been perfectly aware of the result before. It was only that the
details of each successive disappointment came with such
relentless minuteness to quench all hope, that she at last fairly
gave way to tears. Mr. Lennox stopped reading.

'I had better not go on,' said he, in a concerned voice. 'It was
a foolish proposal of mine. Lieutenant Hale,' and even this
giving him the title of the service from which he had so harshly
been expelled, was soothing