“DrawnFrom morning and the cheerful dawn;”
“DrawnFrom morning and the cheerful dawn;”
“DrawnFrom morning and the cheerful dawn;”
her countenance all smiling, her eyes as soft and as happy as the morning light— Bell could not see her for tears. She seemed to see the crape and blackness which so soon would envelop them all, and the deeper darkness of the world, in which this young creature would soon have no natural home. “No another moment to think upon it,” Bell said to herself; “no a moment. The ladies maun come now.”
Margaret, surprised, went through the long room in which, by this hour, her father’s chair was always occupied, but felt no superstitious presentiment at seeing it desolate. Sir Ludovic’s rooms—there were two of them, a larger and a smaller—opened off from the long room. He had taken, quite lately, as his bedchamber, the smaller room of the two, an octagon-shaped and panelled room, as being the warmest and most bright; and there he was lying, smiling as when Bell saw him first, with the morning light upon his face.
“You sent for me, papa,” said Margaret. “Are you ill that you are in bed? I have never seen you in bed before.”
“Remember that, then, my Peggy, as a proof of the comfortable life I have had, though I am so old. No, not ill, but very comfortable. Why should I get up and give myself a great deal of trouble, when I am so comfortable here?”
“Indeed, if you are so very comfortable—” said Margaret, a little bewildered: “it must be only laziness, papa;” and she laughed, but stopped in the middle of her laugh, and grew serious,she could not tell why. “But it is very lazy of you,” she said. “I never heard of any one who was quite well staying in bed because it was comfortable.”
“No? But then there are things in heaven and earth, my Peggy, and I want you to do something for me. I want you to write a letter for me. Bring your writing things here, and I will tell you what to say.”
She met John in the long room, coming in with various articles, as if to provision a place which was about to be besieged. He had some wood under his arm to light a fire, and a tray with cups and glasses, and a hot-water bottle (called in Scotland a “pig”); and there was an air of excitement about him, suppressed and sombre, which struck Margaret with vague alarm. “Why are you taking in all these things?” she said; “he did not say he was cold.”
“If he doesn’t want them the day, he may want them the morn,” said John.
“The morn! he is not going to lie in bed always because it is comfortable; that would be too absurd,” said Margaret. “What is it? There is not going to be—anything done to papa?—any—operation? What is it? You look as if there was—something coming—”
“I have my work to do,” said John, hastily turning away. “I’ve nae time to say ay and no to little misses that canna understand.”
“Oh, John, what an old bear you are!” said Margaret. He made her uneasy. It seemed as if something must have happened during the night. Was her father, perhaps, going to have a leg off, or an arm? She knew this was nonsense; but John’s paraphernalia and his face both looked so. She went to the West Chamber, where all her special possessions were, and got her little writing-case, which one of her sisters had given her. Last night before she went to bed she had set up a little drawing she had done, and which she thought was more successful than any hitherto attempted. She had set it up so that she might see it the first thing in the morning, to judge how it bore the light of day. And on the table was Rob’s block with the sketch he had made of Sir Ludovic in his chair. He was to come again that very day, with her father’s consent, to go on with it. All this looked somehow, she could not tell how, a long way off to Margaret, as if something had happened to set these simple plans aside. She felt, in the jargon of her new art, as if the foreground had suddenly grown into such importance that all that was behind it was thrown miles back. It was very strange; and yet nothing had happened, only her father was lazy, and had not got out of bed.
“Who is it for? And am I to write from myself, papa, or am I to write for you?” she said, sitting down at the bedside and opening her writing-case. He paused, and looked at her for a moment before he spoke.
“It is to your sisters, to Jean and Grace, my little Peggy.”
“To Jean and Grace!”
“To ask them, if it is quite convenient, to come here now, instead of waiting till September, according to their general custom—”
“Oh, papa!” cried Margaret, suddenly realizing the change that was coming in her life; the sketches and the drawing-lessons, and the talks, and the confidences, and Rob Glen himself— What would Jean and Grace say to Rob? She felt as if in a moment all her little structure of amusement and pleasure was falling to pieces. She closed her writing-case again with a gesture of despair. “Oh, papa, is not September soon enough? I don’t want them here now. In—the summer,” said Margaret, hastily, blushing for herself at the little subtle subterfuge to which she was resorting to conceal her real terror—“in the summer there is always something— I mean so many things to do.”
“Yes,” her father said, with a smile; “and for some of us, my little girl, things we shall never do again.”
She did not realize the meaning of this, and perhaps Margaret may be pardoned if, not knowing the sadder circumstances involved, her mind was for the moment absorbed in her own disappointment and confusion; the sudden sense of arrest and stoppage in all her pleasant ways which overwhelmed her. “Why do you want them, papa?” she went on; “am I not enough? You used to say you liked me best. You used to say, just you and me, you and me, got on best in the old house.”
“And so I would say still,” said the old man, “my little Peggy, my bonnie Peggy! Yes, it is enough to have you and me. (I forgive you the grammar.) But however selfish I might be were there only myself to think of, I must think now of you, my little girl.”
“And what is about me?” cried Margaret; “if you think I want Jean and Grace, papa, what will they do but find fault? They are never satisfied with anything we do. They find fault with everybody. They say John is stupid—”
“And so he is, a doited old body—and, my Peggy, sometimes very far from civil to you.”
“Old John, papa? To me? He is as fond of me as if I were his own. When he scolds, I don’t pay any attention, any more than whenyouscold.”
Sir Ludovic laughed.
“That is a pretty way of telling me how little authority I have,” he said.
“Papa!” cried Margaret, impatiently, “you know very well that is not what I mean. I would not vex you, not for the world—never you—and not even John. I cannot bear him to be called names, and everything found fault with. There’s not this and there’s not that; no drawing-room; and the bedrooms are not big enough, and me not well enough dressed.”
“Perhaps they are right there, my Peggy. I fear you are dressed anyhow, though I see nobody that looks so well.”
“Then why must they come before September?” said Margaret. “Let them come, papa, at their own time.”
He laughed a little, lying there upon the white pillow, with a delicate hue of life in his old cheek, and all the vigor of twenty in his dark eyes. He did not look as if there was anything the matter with him. He only looked comfortable, luxuriously comfortable, that was all. She laughed, too, as she looked at him. “How lazy you are, papa!” she said; “do you think it is right? What would Bell say to me if I did not get up? You look so comfortable—and so happy.”
“Yes, very comfortable,” he said; but the laugh went off his face. “My Peggy,” he wenton, with sudden gravity, “don’t ask any questions, but write to your sisters. Say I wish them to come, and to come now. No more, my dear, no more. I am not joking. Say I will look for them as soon as they can get here.”
She opened her writing-book again, and got her paper, and began to write. When he took this tone, there was nothing to be done but to obey. But when she had written a few lines, Margaret stopped suddenly with a little start, as if all at once overtaken by a sense of the meaning of what she was doing. “Papa,” she cried, the color leaving her face, two big tears starting into her eyes, “you are hiding something from me: you are ill!”
“No, no,” he said—“no, I am not at all ill; but, my Peggy, one never knows what may be going to happen, and I want to have your sisters here.”
“Oh,” cried Margaret, throwing away her book, “let them stay away—let them stay away! I want you all to myself. I can take care of you better than they can. Papa, I know you are ill, though you will not own it.”
“No, no,” he said, more feebly. “Run away and play, my little girl. I am—tired, just a trifle tired: and come back in half an hour, in half an hour, before post-time.”
“Here’s a cordial to ye, Sir Ludovic,” said John, and he made an imperative sign to his young mistress. “Let him be—let him be! he’s no weel enough to be teased about anything,” he whispered in her ear.
Margaret stood gazing at her father for a moment thunderstruck. Then she snatched up the letter she had begun, and rushed rapidly, yet on noiseless feet, out of the room. Oh, old John was cruel! Would she do anything to tease her father? And, oh!hewas cruel not to tell her—to wish for Jean and Grace, and to hide it from her. She went down-stairs like the wind, her feet scarcely touching the steps, making a brightness in the dim light of the stair, and a movement in the stillness, to go to Bell, her referee in everything, and to ask what it meant. “Oh, Bell, what does it mean?” was on her lips; when suddenly, through the open door, Margaret saw two figures approaching, and stopped short. They were young men both, both pleasant to behold; but even at that agitated moment, and in the suddenness of the apparition, the girl observed the difference between them without knowing that she observed it. The difference was to the disadvantage of Rob, on whose behalf all her prepossessions were engaged; and this gave her a faint pang, the cause of which she was at the moment quite unconscious of. “Oh!” she cried, not able to restrain her little outcry of trouble, as she met their surprised and questioning looks—“oh, papa is ill; I think he is very ill; and I don’t know what to do.”
The second of the visitors was Randal Burnside, who had met Rob Glen at the door; and it was he who answered first, eagerly, “I passed Dr. Hume’s carriage on the road, at a cottage door. Shall I go back and tell him to come here?”
“Oh, will you?” cried Margaret, two big tears trembling out with a great plash, like big rain-drops, from her anxious eyes. “Oh, will you? That is what I want most.”
He did not stop to tell his errand, or to receive any greeting or acknowledgment, but turned, with his hat in his hand, and sped away. Rob had said nothing; he only stood gazing at her wistfully, and took her hand when the other was gone. “I see what is the matter,” he said, tenderly; “is there anything new? is there any cause for fear?”
In her excitement, Margaret was not like herself. The touch and the tone of tenderness seemed to go through her with a strange, almost guilty, sense of consolation; and yet she was angry that it was not he who had gone to serve her practically. She drew her hand away, frightened, angry, yet not displeased. “Why did you let him go?” she cried, with a reproach that said more than confession.
Rob’s face brightened and glowed all over. “I wanted to stay with you and comfort you,” he said; “I can think of no one else when you are in trouble. Come in and rest, and tell me what it is. You must not overdo yourself. You must not suffer. I want to take care ofyou!”
“Oh, what is about me?” said Margaret. But she suffered herself to be persuaded, and went with him up to the West Chamber to tell him how it all was.
Mrs. Bellinghamand Miss Leslie arrived as soon as convenient trains could bring them. The summons which Margaret wrote later that day, taking down her father’s message from his lips, was not instant, though as decided as he could make it without too much alarming the girl, whose nerves were shaken, and who sat and gazed at him with a wistful countenance, large-eyed and dismal, watching every look. When he spoke to her, her eyes filled, and she did not seem able to keep that anxious gaze from his face. But the doctor, when he came, was more consoling than alarming. There was nothing to be frightened about, he said, scolding Margaret, paternally. And by degrees the household calmed down and accepted the new state of affairs, and began to think it natural that Sir Ludovic should have taken to his bed. His son came and paid him a visit from Edinburgh, staying a single night, and sitting for a solemn hour or two by his father’s bedside, though he did not say much. “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” he asked, and begged that he might be written to daily with news of his father’s state, though he could find so little to say to him. But the visit of Mr. Leslie was not nearly so important as that of “the ladies,” to which everybody looked forward with excitement. They arrived in the afternoon, having slept in Edinburgh the previous night. Just at the right moment they arrived, at the hour which is most proper for the arrival of a visitor at a country house, leaving just time enough to dress for dinner. And they came in with a rustle of silk into Sir Ludovic’s octagon room, where there was scarcely room for them, and gave him each a delicate kiss, filling the place with delicate odors.
“I hope you are a little better, dear papa,” Grace said; and Mrs. Jean, who was large andround, and scarcely could pass between the bed and the wall, cried out cheerily that it was a relief to her mind to see him looking so well.
“I never should have found out he was ill at all, if I had not been told,” Mrs. Bellingham said, whose voice was pitched higher than that of the others. Sir Ludovic greeted them kindly, and allowed them to put their faces against his for a moment without disturbing himself.
“Yes, I told you— I am very comfortable,” he said to Margaret, who stood behind, very eager to see what impression her father’s appearance would make on her sisters. She was very happy, poor child, to hear those cheerful words from Mrs. Bellingham’s high-pitched voice.
“Well, papa, now we have seen you, and I feel quite happy about you, we will go and make ourselves comfortable too,” said Mrs. Bellingham. “I hope you have a cup of tea for us, Margaret, after our journey? and you must come and pour it out, for I want to look at you. Papa will spare you a little. John is waiting in the next room, I see.”
“John will do very well,” said Sir Ludovic; “don’t derange yourselves, my dears, from your usual habits for me.”
“I assure you, dear papa,” said Grace, “I do not care at all for being put out of my usual habits. I will stay with you. What is there in comparison with a dear father’s wishes? You go, dearest Jean; I am sure you want some tea, and I will stay with dear papa. I can see in his eyes,” she added, in an audible undertone, pushing her sister gently toward the door, “that he wishes me to stay.”
“My dear,” said Sir Ludovic, “you must not begin your self-sacrifices as soon as you enter the house. I am looking quite well, as you both say. There is no reason why you shouldn’t have your tea in peace. My eyes are very deceitful if they say anything about it except what I have said. Go, and make yourselves quite comfortable.”
“Come, come,” said Mrs. Bellingham. “This is just your usual nonsense; of course papa likes his old John, whom he can order about as he pleases, better than you in that old silk that makes such a noise. We shall come and sit with papa after dinner; good-bye for the moment,” she said, kissing the tips of her fingers. Sir Ludovic laughed to himself softly as they disappeared. They came back every year with all their little peculiarities unchanged, all their little vanities andminauderies—Grace self-sacrificing, Jean sensible. They were so little like his children that he could laugh at their foibles without any harshness, but without any pain. The constant reappearance of these two ladies, always falling into their little genteel comedy as they entered the room, exactly at the point where, on the previous year, they left it off, made the interval of time appear as if it had never been. John, who was coming in with one of the many additional adjuncts to comfort which he was always bringing, caught the sound of the laugh. John did not know if he approved of a laugh from a dying man, but he could not help joining in with a faint chuckle.
“The ladies, Sir Ludovic, are aye just the same, a’ their little ways,” he said.
Meanwhile Margaret followed them in a little flutter of excitement. She had not wanted them to come; but now that they were here, the novelty was always agreeable, and she had been grateful to them for thinking so well of Sir Ludovic’s looks, which by dint of anxiety and watching she had ceased to be satisfied with. Bell, who knew the ways and the wants of the ladies, had sent up tea to the West Chamber, whither they went, giving a sensation of company and fulness to the quiet old house. The other voices in Earl’s-hall had a different sound; they were lower, softer, with a little of the chant and modulation which belongs to Fife, and did not make the air tingle as Mrs. Bellingham did. Even down-stairs the women-servants could trace the movements of the new-comers by the flow of what was chiefly a monologue on the part of the elder lady. Miss Leslie had no objection to take her share; but Mrs. Bellingham had most boldness and most perseverance, and left little room for any one else. “Hear to her lang tongue,” Bell said; “high English, and as sharp as the clipping of a pair of shears.” It ran on from Sir Ludovic’s dressing-room, through the long room, which was so vacant, and which Margaret could scarcely go through without tears.
“I wish papa would have been advised about this room, it might have been made so much more comfortable. A partition where that screen is would have given a real dining-room and library, instead of this ridiculous long wilderness. Oh, Margaret, why do you leave that huge old chair standing out there, to break one’s legs against? It should be put back out of the way,” said Mrs. Bellingham, advancing her hand to put aside the chair.
“Oh, stop, stop! It is papa’s chair; it must not be moved!”
“Ah, to be sure, it is papa’s chair,” said Mrs. Bellingham. She stood and looked at it for a moment, with her head on one side. “Well, do you know itistouching, this? Poor papa! I remember he always sat here. It is affecting, like a soldier’s sword and his horse. But, my dear little Margaret, my poor child, you cannot leave it always here blocking up the way.”
“Dear papa’s chair!” said Miss Grace, putting her hand caressingly upon it; and then she touched the back with her cheek, as she had touched Sir Ludovic’s face. “Poor dear old chair! never again to be what it has been, never again—”
“Yes, poor old thing, I should not like to see it sent away to a lumber-room,” said Mrs. Bellingham. “But there will be so many changes, that it is sad to contemplate! Now, Margaret, tell me all about it: how was he seized? You did not say anything about a fit, and he does not look as if there had been any fit. No sugar for me, dear. Were you with him when it happened? or how did it come on? We must know all this, you know, before we see the doctor. I shall make it a point of going fully over the case with the doctor. One knows then what we have to expect, and how long a course it is likely to run.”
“Jean!” cried Margaret, aghast with grief and horror; “I thought you thought he was looking well! You said you would not have known there was anything the matter. You said—”
“My dear child, did you expect me to tellhimthat I saw death in his face? Is that thesort of thing, do you think, to let the patient know? Do you expect me to say to him— Good gracious, child! what is the matter? What are you going to do?”
“You must pour out your tea for yourselves,” said Margaret; “I am going to papa. Oh, if you think he is so ill, how can you sit and take your tea? How can you sit down and talk, and tell him you will come after dinner, as if it was nothing? You cannot mean it!” said the poor girl, “you cannot mean it! Oh! how canyoutell, that have seen him only once? The doctor thinks he will soon be well again; and Ludovic— Ludovic is as old as you are—he never said a word to me.”
“Ludovic thought you were too young to be told; he thought it was best for us to come first; and there are some doctors that will never tell you the truth. I don’t hold with that. I would not blurt it out to the patient to affect his spirits, but I would tell the family always. Now, Margaret, you must not go to papa with that crying face. Sit down and compose yourself. He is very well; he has got old John. You don’t suppose that I am looking for anything immediate—”
“Take this; it will do you good,” said Miss Leslie, forcing upon Margaret her own cup of tea. “I will pour out another for myself.”
Margaret put it away from her with outstretched hands. She turned from them with an anguish of disgust and impatience which Jean and Grace had done nothing to deserve, feeling only the justice of that one advice not to go to her father with her countenance convulsed with weeping. But where could she go? She had been frightened, and had recovered from her fright; had taken comfort from what the doctor said, and joyful consolation from the comments of her sisters on the old man’s appearance: but where was she to seek any comfort now? With her heart sick, and fluttering, tingling, with the stroke she had received so unexpectedly, the girl turned to the window, where at least she could conceal her “crying face,” and stood there gazing out, seeing nothing, stunned with sudden misery, and not knowing what to do. But the intolerable pain into which she had been plunged all at once did not deaden her faculties. Though her mind was in such commotion, she could not help hearing all that went on behind her. Jean and Grace were quite free from any bewilderment of pain. They were glad to have their tea after their journey, and they discussed everything with a little excitement and expectation, just touched by solemnity. To be thus summoned to their father’s death-bed, to be placed in the foremost places at this tragic act which was about to be accomplished, themselves sharing in the importance of it, and with a claim upon the sympathy and respect of the world in consequence, gave Jean and Grace a sense of solemn dignity. When the heart is not deeply affected, and when, indeed, your connection with the dying is, as it were, an official one, it is difficult not to feel thus advanced in moral importance by attendance on a death-bed. It was Miss Leslie who felt this most.
“How sad to think of poor dearest papa on that bed from which he will never rise!” she said, shaking her head; “and when one remembers how active he used to be! But we have nothing to murmur at. He has been spared to us for so many years—”
“What are you thinking of, Grace?” said Mrs. Bellingham. “I am older than you are, but I never can remember a time when papa was active; and, to be sure, he is an old man, but not half so old as grandpapa, whom I recollect quite distinctly.Hewas active, if you like.”
“At such a time, dearest Jean, why should we dispute about words? Of course, you are right; I am always making mistakes,” said Miss Grace; “but all the same, we have no right to complain. Many, many years we have had him longer than numbers of people I could mention. Indeed, to have a father living is rare at our time of life.”
“That’s true, at least,” said Mrs. Bellingham. “I hope you are not going to keep on that dress. I told you in Edinburgh that a silk gown with a train was preposterous to travel in, and it is quite impossible for a sick-room. I shall put on a soft merino, that does not make any noise. Merino is never too warm, even in the height of summer, at Earl’s-hall.”
“I have nothing but black, and I could not put on black to hurt poor papa’s feelings,” said Grace. “He would think we were getting our mourning already. Indeed, when you think how long we will have to wear it without putting it on a day too soon—”
“As if he would remark what you are wearing! But I must go and see that Steward has unpacked. It is true there will be black enough before we are done with it, and once in mourning, I always say you never can tell when you may take it off,” said Mrs. Bellingham; “but I will not let you come into the sick-room in that rustling dress. He was always fidgety at the best of times. He would not put up with it. There’s your muslins, if you are not afraid of taking cold; but I won’t have silk,” said the elder sister, peremptory and decided.
Miss Leslie came to Margaret, and put an arm round her where she stood at the window, as the other went away.
“Dearest child, you must not cry so,” she said. “He is not suffering, you know. What a blessing that there is no pain, that he is comfortable, as he says. Dear Jean seems to be a little hard, but she means it very well; and now that we are here, you will be able to rest; you will not have so much responsibility.”
“Oh, do you think I want to rest? am I thinking of myself? It is because you are all wrong—you are mistaken. The doctor did not say so. It is not true!”
Miss Leslie shook her head, and gave a little moan.
“Dearest child!” she said, putting her cheek against Margaret’s wet and tear-stained cheek. “But I must go and see about my things too,” she said. “Steward never thinks of me till she has done everything for Jean. I am very glad of that, of course; it is just what I like; but it gives me a little more to do. Come with me, dear, and tell me what to put on. It will amuse you a little to see my things, though I haven’t got anything new—not a thing all this year. You see, dear Ludie told us of dearest papa’s uncertain state of health, and what was the good? There is nothing more provoking than having got a supply of colored things just beforea long mourning. Alas! it is bad enough without that,” said Grace, with a deep sigh.
After they had made their toilet, the ladies dined, and not without appetite, while Margaret sat unable to swallow a morsel, unable to escape to her father’s room for the tears which she could not suppress. In the mean time it was Bell that had taken the place of watcher. Bell’s heart was heavy too; but she exerted herself to amuse her patient, to tell him all the circumstances of his daughters’ arrival.
“They’ve but a box apiece,” said Bell, “and that’s wonderful for our ladies. But they’ve minded this time that it’s not that easy to get trunks up our stairs. They’ve minded and they’ve no minded, Sir Ludovic: for Mrs. Bellin’am’s is that big that no mortal, let alone John, could get it up the stair. Her woman has had a’ the things to carry up in armfu’s. And oh, the heap o’ things a leddy wants when she gangs about! It’s just a bondage—gowns for the mornin’ and gowns for the evenin’, and gowns to put on when she’s dressing hersel’, and as mony fykes of laces and collars, and caps for her head—if they ca’ thae vanities caps.”
Sir Ludovic laughed.
“Poor Jean and poor Grace!” he said. “I hope they think mourning is becoming to them, Bell, for they will not stint me of a ribbon; I know my daughters too well for that. They will give me everything that is due to me, to the very last scrap of crape.”
“They’ll do that, Sir Ludovic,” said Bell, divided between her desire to humor him and her wish to keep off painful subjects; “the ladies have never shown any want o’ respect. But Miss Grace was aye fond of bright colors. They’re no so young as I mind them, but they’re weel-fa’ured women still. The Leslies were aye a handsome family. They take it from yourself, Sir Ludovic, if I may make so bold.”
“Not entirely from me,” said Sir Ludovic, with a smile. He did not dislike the allusion to his good looks, even though he was dying. “Their mother, whom you scarcely remember, was a handsome woman. We were not a bad-looking couple, people said. Ah! that’s a long time ago, Bell.”
“Deed and it’s a long time, Sir Ludovic;” but Bell did not know what to say on this subject, for the interpolation of a third Lady Leslie no doubt made the matter somewhat more difficult. Probably this struck Sir Ludovic too, and he was in the condition when human nature is glad to seek a little help from another, or sympathy at least, no help being possible. This time he sighed—which was a thing much more befitting than laughter on a dying bed.
“That’s a strange subject altogether,” he said; “any meeting after so long a time would be strange. If she had been at one end of the world and I at the other, there would be many changes even then. Would we understand each other?” Sir Ludovic had ceased to speak to Bell. He was musing alone, talking with himself. “And the difference must be greater than any mortal separation. Know each other? Of course we must know each other, she and I; but the question is, will we understand each other?”
“Eh, Sir Ludovic,” said Bell, “it was God’s will that parted you, not your ain. There would be fault on one side or the other, if my lady had been in, say America, a’ this time, and you at hame; but she’s been in—heaven; that makes a’ the difference.”
“Does it?” he said; “that’s just what I want to be sure of, Bell. Time has made great changes on me. If I find her just where she was when she left me, I have gone long beyond that; and if she has gone on too, where is she? and how shall we meet, each with our new experiences which the other does not know?”
Bell was very much perplexed by this inquiry. It had not occurred to her own mind. “Eh, Sir Ludovic,” she said, “I am no the one, the like o’ me, to clear up sic mysteries. But what new things can the lady meet with in heaven, but the praise o’ God and the love o’ God? and that doesna distract the mind.”
“Ah, Bell! but I’ve met with a great many more things since I parted with her; and then,” he said, with a gleam in his eyes which might have been half comic in its embarrassment had the circumstances been different, “there is—my little Peggy’s mother, poor thing.”
Bell sat down, in her confusion and bewilderment, by the bedside, and pondered. “I’m thinking,” she said, “that my late leddy, Miss Margret’s mother, will be the one that will maist cling to ye when a’s done.”
“Poor little thing!” he said, softly, with a smile on his face—“poor little thing! She should have seen me safe out of the world, and then had a life of her own. That would have made a balance; but how are we to know what my wife thinks? You see, we know nothing—we know nothing. And it is very hard to tell, when people have been parted so long, and things have happened, how they are to get on when they meet again.”
(Sir Ludovic, perhaps, was a little confused in his mind as to which of the Ladies Leslie he meant when he said “my wife;” but at all events it was not the last one, the “poor little thing,” Margaret’s mother, who was to him as a child.)
“Sir Ludovic, there’s neither marrying nor giving in marriage there,” said Bell, solemnly. It had never occurred to herself certainly that old John would not form part of her paradise; but then there was no complication in their relations. “And you maunna think of things like that,” she added, reverently, “eh, Sir Ludovic? There’s One we should a’ think of. And if He’s pleased, what does it matter for anything else in the wide world?”
“Ay, Bell; that’s very true, Bell,” he said, acquiescing, though scarcely remarking what she said. But the dying will rarely see things with the solemnity which the living feel to be appropriate to their circumstances, neither does the approach of death concentrate our thoughts on our most important concerns, as we all fondly hope it may, without difficulty or struggle. “I would like to know—what my wife thinks,” he said.
“What are you talking so much about?” said Mrs. Bellingham, coming in. “I heard your tongues going all the time of dinner. Is that you, Bell? How are you, Bell? I was wondering not to have seen you before; but I don’t think you should let papa talk so much when he is so weak. Indeed, I don’t think you should talk, papa. It is always exhausting yourstrength. Just lie quiet and keep quite still, till you get your strength back.”
Sir Ludovic turned round and looked at Bell with a glimmer of fun, about which this time there could be no mistake, in his eyes. Bell did not know what it meant. She did not see any fun in Mrs. Bellingham’s orders, nor in the way in which she herself was speedily, noiselessly displaced from the position she had taken. But so it was. Bell was put out of the way very innocently and naturally, and, with a soft flood of unrustling merino about her, Mrs. Bellingham took possession. She made no sound; she was quite fresh in dress, in looks, in spirits.
“I have made Margaret tell me all about how it came on, and cheered her up, the silly little thing. She has never seen any illness; she is like to cry if you only look at her. But we must make her more practical,” said the elder sister. Grace was in a blue gown with rose-colored ribbons. She came in, stealing with noiseless feet, a much slimmer shadow than her sister, and bent over the bed, and put her cheek to Sir Ludovic’s again, and kissed his hand and murmured, “Dearest papa!” If he had been in the article of death Sir Ludovic must have laughed.
But Margaret did not appear. She could not present herself with her swollen eyes and pale cheeks. Oh! if Jean and Grace had but stayed away—had they but left him to herself, to Bell, and John, who loved him! But she could not creep into her corner in her father’s room, while the ladies were there, filling it up, taking possession of him. Her heart was as heavy as lead in her bosom; it lay there like a stone. People will sometimes speak of the heart as if it were a figure of speech. Margaret felt hers lying, broken, bleeding, heavy—a weight that bent her to the ground.
Margaretroamed about the house, unable to take any comfort or find any. Jeanie found her crying in the long room when she went to remove the remains of the dinner; for John had a hundred things to do, and showed his excitement by an inability to keep to his ordinary work.
“Oh, Miss Margret, dinna be so cast down!” Jeanie said, with tender sympathy, brushing the tears from her own eyes.
“What can I be but cast down,” she cried, “when papa is— Oh, Jeanie, what does Bell say? Does Bell think he is—” Dying, the girl meant to say, but to pronounce the word was impossible to her.
“Oh, Miss Margret,” said Jeanie; “what does it matter what Bell says; how can she ken? and the doctor he says quite different—”
This was a betrayal of all that Margaret had feared; Bell, too, was then of the same opinion. The poor girl stole to the door of her father’s room, and stood there for a moment listening to the easy flow of Mrs. Bellingham’s dogmas, and Grace’s sigh of “Dearest papa!” and she heard him laugh, and say something in his own natural tone. Would he laugh if he were—dying?
“Come in, Miss Margret,” said John, coming through the dressing-room, this time with some extra pillows (for he might want to have his head higher, John thought).
“Oh, I cannot— I cannot bear it!” cried Margaret, turning away. He put his large old hand softly upon her arm.
“My bonnie leddy!” he said. He would not have said it, Margaret felt, if there had been any hope. Then she went out in her despair, restless, not knowing where to seek relief from the pain in her heart, which was so sore, and which could not be shaken off. She said to herself that she could not bear it. It was her first experience of the intolerable. The fine weather had broken which had so favored the drawing, and the wind was moaning about the old house, prophesying rain. With another pang in her heart—not that she was thinking of Rob, but only of the contrast between that light-heartedness and her present despair, she stumbled through the potato furrows, past the place where she had spent so many pleasant hours, thinking no evil—though the evil she remembered must have been in existence all the same—and made her way into the wood. There was shelter there, and no one would see her. The trees were all vocal with those sighings of melancholy cadence that are never long absent from the Scotch fir-woods. The wind came sweeping over them, with one great sigh after another, like the waves of the sea: and she sighed, too, in heaviness. Oh, if she could but sigh deep enough, like the wind, to get that burden off her breast! Margaret sat down on a damp knoll, with all the firs rising up round her like a congregation of shadows, and the wind sweeping with long complaint, sadder and sadder over their melancholy branches: and gazed at the gray old house through her tears. How different it had looked in the morning sunshine, with her father sitting among his books, and no evil near! All the color and light had gone out of it now; it was gray as death, pale, solemn—the old tower and gables rising against a sky scarcely less gray than they were, the trees swaying wildly about, the clouds rolling together in masses across the colorless sky.
It was not a time or a place to cheer any one. All the severity of aspect, which melts so completely out of a Scotch landscape with the shining of the sun, had come out in fullest force. The trees looked darker in their leafage, the house paler in its grayness, than houses and trees are anywhere else. But Margaret did not make any comparisons. She knew no landscape half so well. She was not disposed to find fault with it, or wish it more lovely. And for this moment she was not thinking of the landscape, but of what was going on in that room, where she could see a little glimmer of fire-light at the window. Both John and Bell thought it natural and seemly, when there was illness in the house, that there should be a fire. Dying! oh, the chill and mysterious terror of the word; lying there smiling, but soon, perhaps at any moment, Margaret thought, in her inexperience, to be gone out of reach, out of sight! he who had always been at hand to be appealed to in every difficulty, to be greeted morning and evening! he who was always smiling at her, “making a fool of her,” as she had so often complained. Perhaps there is no desolation so complete as the shrinking and gasp of the young soul when it first comes thuswithin sight, within realization, of death. If it had been she who had to die, Margaret would not have found it so hard. She would have been ineffably, childishly, consoled by the thought of the flowers with which she would be covered, and the weeping of “all the house,” and the broken hearts of those whom she would leave behind; but nothing of this comforted her now. For the first time in her life, misery took hold upon her—a thing that would not be shaken off, could not be staved aside. She sat at the foot of the big fir-tree, gazing with wide eyes at the gray old house which was like her father, who was dying. The tears gathered and fell, minute by minute, from her eyes, blinding her, then showing clearer than ever, as they fell, the old pale outline, the ruddy glimmer in that window where he was lying. Why did she not rush to him, to be with him every moment that remained? But she could not bear it. She could not go and watch forthatcoming. To have it over, to get through the unimaginable anguish anyhow, at any cost, seemed the best thing, the only thing that remained for her. She had not heard any one coming, being too much rapt in her own thoughts to pay attention to what was going on around her; and indeed the moaning of the trees and the sweep of the wind were enough to silence all other sounds.
Thus Margaret was taken entirety by surprise, when a well-known voice over her head suddenly addressed her.
“Miss Margaret!” Rob Glen said. He was greatly surprised and very glad, having heard of the arrival, which he feared would put a stop to the possibility of his visits. But then he added, in anxious tones, “What is the matter? you are crying. What has happened?” He thought, so miserable were her looks, that Sir Ludovic was dead, and it was with a natural impulse of tenderness and pity that the young man suddenly knelt down beside her and took her hand quietly between his own.
“Oh no,” said Margaret, with a sob; “not that, not yet! but they tell me—they tell me—” She could not go any farther for tears.
Rob did not say anything, but he put his lips to her hand, and looked anxiously in her face. Margaret could not look at him again—could not speak. She was blind and inarticulate with tears. She only knew that he wept too, and that seemed to make them one.
“Didyouhearthat?” she said; “is that what everybody says? I think it will kill me too!”
Rob Glen had no premeditated plan. His heart ached for her, so desolate, so young, under the moaning firs. He put his arm round her unconsciously, holding her fast.
“Oh, my poor darling!” he said, “my love! I would die to keep any trouble fromyou!”
Margaret was entirely overpowered with the sorrow and the sympathy. She leaned her head upon him unawares; she felt his arm support her, and that there was a vague comfort in it. She cried and sobbed without any attempt to restrain herself. No criticism was here, no formal consolations, nothing to make her remember that now she was a woman, and must not abandon herself like a child to her misery. He only wept with her, and after a while began to kiss her hair and her pale cheeks, murmuring over her, “My Margaret, my poor darling!” She did not hear or heed what he said. She was conscious of nothing but anguish, with a vague, faint relief in it, a lessening of the burden, a giving way of the iron band that had seemed to be about her heart.
When this passion of weeping was spent, the evening had fallen into dusk. The house had become grayer, paler than ever; the glimmer of the window more red; the trees about were like ghosts, looming indistinctly through the gloom; and Rob was kneeling by her with his arms round her, her head pillowed against him, his face close to hers. There did not seem anything strange in it to poor Margaret. He was very, very kind; he had wept, too, breaking his heart like her; it seemed all so natural, so simple. And she was a little relieved, a little consoled.
“Darling,” he was saying, “I don’t think it can be quite true. The doctor would not deceive me, and he did not say so. Who should know best—they who have just come, or we who have been here all the time? Oh, my sweet, don’t break your dear heart!—that would break mine too. I don’t think it can be so bad as they say.”
“Oh, do you think so? do you think there is any hope?” said Margaret.
This gave her strength to stir a little, to move from the warm shelter in which she found herself. But he kept her close to him with a gentle pressure of his arm.
“Yes, let us hope,” he said; “he is not so old, and he is not very ill. You told me he was not suffering—”
“No—he ought to know better than they do; he said he was not ill. Oh, I do not think it can be so bad,” said Margaret, raising herself up, “and you—don’t think so, Mr. Glen?”
“Do you call me Mr. Glenstill?” he said, with his lips close to her ear. “Oh, my darling, don’t tempt me to wish harm to Sir Ludovic. If I may only comfort you when you are in trouble—if I am to be nothing to you when you are happy—”
“Oh!” said Margaret, with a deep sigh, “do you think I am happy yet? I am not quite so wretched, perhaps; but I shall never be happy till papa is out of danger, till he is well again, sitting in his chair with his books. Oh, you do not say anything now! You think that will never be—”
“And I working at my drawing,” he said. He did not want to deceive her, and his voice was husky; but he could not do other than humor her, whatever shape her fancy might take. “I finishing my drawing, and making it more like him; and my sweet Margaret sitting by me, not trying to escape from me: and her kind father giving us his blessing—”
“Oh,” Margaret cried, starting away from him, “it is quite dark, it is quite late, Mr. Glen.”
“Yes, darling,” he said, rising reluctantly, “I must take you in now; it is too cold and too late for you, though it has been better than the brightest day to me.”
“I thought you were sorry for me,” said Margaret. “I thought you were unhappy too. Oh, were you only glad because I was in trouble, Mr. Glen?”
There was a poignant tone of pain in the question which encouraged Rob. He caughther hand in his, and drew it through his arm and held her fast.
“You don’t know,” he said, “because you are so young, and love is new to you. You don’t know that a man can be happy in his worst misery if it brings him close, close to the girl he loves.”
Margaret did not say a word. She did not understand: but yet did not she feel, too, a vague bliss that overwhelmed her in the midst of her sorrow? The relief that had stolen over her, was it real hope, or only a vague sense that all must be well because something had come into her life which made her happy? She was willing to go with Rob, when he led her, the long way round, through the wood, and by the other side of the house. He did not want to be circumscribed in his good-night by the possible inspection of old John or Bell. “This is the best way for you,” he said, leading her very tenderly along the margin of the wood. All the way he talked to her in a whisper, saying, Margaret could not tell what, caressing words that were sweet, though she did not realize the meaning of them; nor did she in the least resist his “kindness.” She suffered him to hold her hand and kiss it, and call her all the tender names he could think of. It seemed all quite natural. She was half stunned by her sorrow, half intoxicated by this strange sweet opiate of tender reassurances and impassioned love. It did not occur to her to make any response, but neither did she repulse him. She trembled with the strangeness and the naturalness, the consolation, the tremor; but her mind was so much confused between pain and relief that she could not realize what this new thing was.
They had come round to the door in the court-yard wall, which was the chief entrance to the house, and here Rob reluctantly parted with her, saying a hundred good-byes, and venturing again, ere he let her go, to kiss her cheek. Margaret was much more startled now than she had been before, and made haste to draw her hands from his. Then she heard him utter a little sharp, short exclamation, and he tried to hold her back. But she was not thinking of spectators. She stepped on through the door-way, which was open, and came straight upon some one who was coming out. It did not occur to her to think that he had seen this parting, or what he had seen. She did not look at the stranger at all, but went on hurriedly into the court-yard. Rob had dropped her hand as if it had been a stone. This surprised her a little, but nothing else. Any necessity for concealment, any fear of being seen, had not entered into Margaret’s confused and troubled mind, troubled with more than grief now, with a kind of bewilderment, caused by this something new which had come upon her unawares, and which she did not understand.
The two young men stood together outside. There was no possibility of mistake, or chance that they might be unable to recognize each other. There had been a moment’s intense suspense, and then Randal Burnside, coming out from his evening inquiries after Sir Ludovic, had discovered, in spite of himself, the discomfited and abashed lover. Randal’s surprise was mingled with a momentary pang of disappointment and pain to think so young a creature as Margaret, and so sweet a creature, should have thus been found returning from a walk with, evidently, her lover, and capable of dalliance at such a moment, when her father was dying. It hurt his ideal sense of what was fit. He had scarcely renewed his childish acquaintance with her, and had no right to be disappointed. What did it matter to him whom she walked with, or what was the fashion of her wooing? But it wounded him to class this delicate Margaret with the village lasses and their “lads.” He tried not to look at the fellow, not to surprise her secret. Heaven knows, he had no desire to surprise anybody’s secret, much less such a vulgar one as this. But his eyes were quicker than his will, and he had seen Rob Glen before he was aware. This gave him a greater shock still. He stared with a kind of consternation, then gave his old acquaintance a hasty nod, and went on much disturbed, though why he should be disturbed he could not tell. She was nothing to him—why should he mind? Poor girl, she had been neglected; there had been no one to train her, to tell what a lady should do. But Randal felt vexed as if she had been his sister, that Margaret had not known by instinct how a lady should behave. He went on more quickly than usual to drive it out of his mind.
But Rob had the consciousness of guilt in him, and could not take it so lightly. He thought Randal would betray him; no doubt Randal had it in his power to betray him; and, on the whole, it might be better to guard the discovered secret by a confidence. He went hastily after the other, making his way among the trees; but he had called him two or three times before Randal could be got to stop. When at last he did so, he turned round with a half-angry “Well!” Randal did not want the confidence; he did not care to play the part of convenient friend to such a hero; he was angry to find himself in circumstances which obliged him to listen to an explanation. Rob came panting after him through the gathering dark.
“Mr. Burnside,” he said, breathless, “I must speak to you. I am sure you could not help seeing who it was that went in as you came out, or what was between her and me.” Rob could not help a movement of pride, a little dilation and expansion of his breast.
“I had no wish to notice anything, or any one,” Randal said; “pray believe me that I never pry into things which are no business of mine.”
“I am sure you are the soul of honor,” said Rob, “but it is better you should know the circumstances. Don’t think she had come out to meet me. She had been driven out by despair about her father, and I was in the wood by chance— I declare to you, by chance. I might have gone there to see the light in her window, that was all. But she did not come with any idea of meeting me.”
“This is quite unnecessary,” said Randal; “I expressed no opinion, and have no right to form one. I didn’t want to see, and I don’t want to know—”
“I perceive, however,” said Rob, “that you do not approve of me, and won’t approve of me; that you think I had no right to do what I have done, to speak to Mar—”
“Hold your tongue,” said Randal, savagely;“what do you mean by bringing in a lady’s name?”
Rob blushed to his very shoes; that he should have done a thing which evidently some private rule in that troublesome unwritten code of a gentleman, which it was so difficult to master in all its details, forbade, was worse to him than a crime. The annoyance with which he felt this took away his resentment at Randal’s tone.
“Of course you are right,” he said; “I made a mistake; but, Mr. Burnside, you must not judge us too harshly. We have been thrown in each other’s way all day long, and almost every day. They have allowed us to be together so much, that we were encouraged to go a little farther. And she was very unhappy,” he added, with a little tremor in his voice; “not to console her was beyond the strength of man.”
How Randal would have liked to pitch him over the hedge-row into a flourishing bed of nettles which he knew to be thereabout! But he restrained himself, and made a stiff bow instead.
“This is very interesting,” he said, “no doubt; but I fail to see what I have to do with it. It was not my fault that my coming was at so indiscreet a moment.”
“Then I may ask you not to betray us,” said Rob; “the circumstances are peculiar, as you will easily perceive. I should not wish—”
“Really this is doubly unnecessary,” said Randal, angrily; “I am not a gossip, nor would it occur to me to betray any one. Is not this enough?”
“I should have liked to take you into my confidence,” said Rob, “to ask your advice—”
“My advice? It could not be of much use.” But why should he be angry? Other love affairs had been confided to him, and he had not rejected the confidence; but this fellow was not his friend, and it was a dastardly thing to take advantage of a poor little girl in her trouble. “I am no more a judge than I am a gossip,” he said; “take my assurance that what I saw shall be precisely as if I had not seen it. Good-night,” he added, abruptly, turning on his heel. Rob found himself alone in the middle of the road, feeling somehow shrunken and small, he could not tell why. But presently there burst upon him the recollection, the realization of all that had happened, and Randal Burnside’s implied contempt (if it was not rather envy) ceased to affect him. He turned down the path across the fields where he had first met Margaret, in a kind of half-delirious triumph. He was “in love” too, and had that delight quite honestly, if also superficially, to fill up the measure of his happiness. To be in love with the girl who can make your fortune, who can set you above all slights and scorns, and give you all the good things the world contains—is not that the most astounding piece of good-fortune to a poor man? A mercenary courtship is always despicable; but to woo the girl whom you love, notwithstanding that she has the advantage of you in worldly goods, is permissible, nay, laudable, since it shows you to have a mind far above prejudice. Rob felt, too, that he had got this crowning gift of fortune in the most innocent and disinterested way. Had it been Jeanie whom he had met in trouble— Jeanie, who was but a poor servant-lass, and no heiress, and with whom he had been once in love, as he was now in love with Margaret—his tenderness would all have come back to him, and he would have exerted himself to console her in the self-same way. He would have done it by instinct, by nature, out of pure pity and affectionateness, and warm desire to make her happy, if he had not done so out of love. The weeping girl would have been irresistible to him. “And thus I won my Genevieve,” he said to himself, as he turned homeward in an intoxication of happiness. His success went to his head like wine. He could have danced, he could have sung, as he went along the darkling path through the fields. He had won his Margaret, the prettiest, the sweetest of all his loves. His heart was all aglow with the thought of her, and melting with tenderness over her tears and her grief. His beautiful little lady, Margaret! The others had been but essays in love. He did not forget them; not one of them but Rob had a kind thought for, and would have been kind to had occasion served, Jeanie among the rest. He did not suppose for a moment that it had ever occurred to him to marry Jeanie. She would have been as unsuitable a wife for a minister as for a prince. He had not meant very much one way or other; but he had been very fond of Jeanie, and she of him. He was very fond of her still; and if he had seen her cry would have been as ready to comfort her as if Margaret did not exist. But Margaret! Margaret was the queen of all. That white, soft, lady’s hand! Never any like it had lingered in Rob’s before. He was as happy as kings very seldom are, if all tales be true, and was no more ashamed of himself than if he had been a young monarch giving a throne to his chosen, as soon as he had got clear of Randal Burnside.
Randalreturned to the Manse preoccupied and abstracted, his mother could not tell why. He brought her word that Sir Ludovic was in the same condition as before, neither better nor worse, and that the ladies had arrived; but he told no more.
“Did you see nobody?” Mrs. Burnside asked. Perhaps in her heart she had hoped that her son might occupy some such post of comforter as Rob Glen had assumed, if not quite in the same way.
“I saw old John,” said Randal; “the ladies were with their father, and John was so gruff that I fear things must be looking badly. He grumbled behind his hand, ‘What change could they expect in a day?’ as if your inquiries irritated him. I don’t wonder if they do. I think I should be worried too by constant questions, if any one was ill who belonged to me.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Randal,” said Mrs. Burnside; “we must always pay proper respect. You may depend upon it, Jean and Grace are capable of saying that we paid no attention at all if we did not send twice a day. One must be upon one’s p’s and q’s with such people. And Margaret—you saw nothing of poor little Margaret? It is for her my heart bleeds. It is more a ploy than anything else for Jean and Grace.”
The same remark had been made by Bell inthe vaulted kitchen the very same night. “It’s just a ploy for the leddies,” Bell said; “I heard them say they were going to look out all the old things in the high room. You’ll see they’ll have a’ out, and make their regulations, wha’s to have this, and wha’s to have that; but I say it should all go to Miss Margret. She’ll have little enough else on the Leslie side of the house. I’ll speak to Mr. Leslie about it. He has not muckle to say, but he’s a just man.”
“A wheen auld duds and rubbitsh,” said John, who was busy preparing still another trayful of provisions for his beleaguered city up-stairs.
“Ay; but leddies think muckle o’ them,” said Bell. They had not surmounted their sorrow, but already it had ceased to affect them as a novelty, and all the inevitable arrangements had been brought nearer by the arrival of the visitors. These arrangements, are they not the saving of humanity, which without them must have suffered so much more from the perpetual falling out of one after another familiar figure on the way? Even now it occupied Bell a little, and the ladies a great deal, to think of these stores, which must be arranged and disposed of somehow, in the high room. Margaret’s wild grief and terror were not within the range of any such consolation; but those who felt less keenly found in them a great relief.
The day after their arrival, Mrs. Bellingham and her sister went up-stairs with much solemnity of aspect, but great internal satisfaction, to do their duty. Sir Ludovic was still “very comfortable,” he said; but dozed a great deal, and even when he was not dozing kept his eyes shut, while they were with him. They had remained by his bedside all the previous evening with the most conscientious discharge of duty, and Jean had done everything a woman could do to keep up his spirits, assuring him that he would soon feel himself again, and planning a hundred things which were to be done “as soon as you are about.” To say that this never deceived Sir Ludovic, is little. He listened to it all with a smile, knowing that she was as little deceived as he was. If he had not been in bed and so feeble, he would have shrugged his shoulders and said it was Jean’s way. Miss Grace had not the opportunity to talk, had she wished it; but she did not take the same line in any case. She stood by him on the other side, and from time to time put down her face to touch his, and said, “Dearest papa!” When he wanted anything, she was so anxious to be of use that she would almost choke him by putting his drink to his lips as if he had been a baby.
Poor Sir Ludovic was very patient; they amused him as if they had been a scene in a comedy; but he was very tired when night came, and this was one of the reasons why he kept his eyes closed next morning. He woke up, however, when Margaret stole in—a pale little ghost, large-eyed and trembling. She looked at him so piteously, scarcely able to speak, that the old man was moved to the very heart, notwithstanding the all-absorbing languor of his condition. “Are you better to-day, papa?” she said, in a scarcely audible whisper. When he put out his hand to her, she took it in both hers, and laid down her pretty head upon it, and cried silently, her shoulders heaving with suppressed sobs, though she tried her best, poor child, not to betray them.
“My little Peggy!” said her father, “why is this? Have I not told you I am very comfortable? And by-and-by I shall be more than comfortable—happy; so everybody says; and so I believe, too, though it troubles me not to know a little better. And you will be—like all of us who have lost our parents. It is a loss that must come, my little girl.”
“Oh no, no, papa!” her voice was muffled and hoarse with crying. She could not consent to her own desolation.
“Ah yes, my little girl, it must come; and so we go on to have children of our own, and then to leave themà la grace de Dieu. My Peggy, listen! If you were old like Jean and Grace, you would not care; and then think this wonder to yourself: I am glad that my little girl is so young and breaks her heart. Glad! think of that, my little Peggy. It is good to see that your little heart is broken. It will mend, but it warms my old one.”
“Oh, papa!” she cried, kissing his pale hand, “oh, papa!” but could not lift her head or look him in the face.
“So now, my little girl,” he said, “we will not make believe, you and I, but acknowledge that we are going to part for a long, long time, my Peggy. I hope for a very long time; but probably,” he said, with a smile, “if all is true that we fancy and believe, it will not be so long for me as for you. I shall have the best of it. You would like your old father to have the best of it, my little girl?”
At this she lifted her face and gave him a look which said Yes, yes, a hundred times! but could not speak.
“I knew you would,” he said. “I, you see, will find myself among old friends; and we will have our talks about what’s come and gone since we parted, and there will be a great many people to make acquaintance with that I have known only—in the spirit, as the Bible says;—and there will be the One, you know, that you say your prayers to, my Peggy. When you say your prayers, you can fancy (the best of life is fancy,” said Sir Ludovic, with a faint smile,) “that I’m there somewhere, about what the Bible calls His footstool, and that He, perhaps, being so tender-hearted, may call to me and say, ‘Ludovic! here is your little girl.’”
“Oh, papa! will you say something more, something more?”
“I would if I could, my Peggy; but I am tired again. I’ll have a little doze now; but sit still and stay by me, my own little girl.”
And there Margaret sat almost all the day. Excessive weeping brought its own cure, and she could not weep any more, but sat like a snow statue, except that her eyes were swollen; and by-and-by fell into a kind of torpor, a doze of the spirit, sitting in the warm stillness, with no sound but the soft stir of the fire, and sometimes the appearance of old John, who would open the door stealthily, and look in with his long, grave, serious face to see if anything was wanted. Margaret sat holding her father’s hand, stilled by exhaustion and warmth, and quiet and grief: and Sir Ludovic dozed, opening his eyes now and then, smiling, dozing again. So the long, still morning went by.
A very different scene was going on in the high room, which was over the long room, and as long and large, running the whole width of the house. It had a vaulted roof, curiously painted with old coats of arms, and was hung with old tapestry, gradually falling to pieces by process of time. Several of the windows, which had originally lighted it, had been built up in the days of the window-tax, and stretching across the place where two of them had been was a great oak “aumory” or press, full of those riches which John called “old rubbitsh,” but which were prized by ladies, Bell knew. There were old clothes enough to have set up several theatres, costumes of all kinds, sacques and pelisses, brocade and velvets, feathers and lace. Mrs. Bellingham remembered specially that there was a drawer full of lace; but Sir Ludovic had never permitted these treasures to be ransacked when his elder daughters were at Earl’s-hall. He would not tolerate any commotion over his head, and accordingly they had been shut out from these delightful hoards. It was with corresponding excitement now that they opened the doors, their fingers trembling with eagerness. Mrs. Bellingham had interpreted something he said into a desire that they should make this investigation, and had immediately declared that his wish was a law to her.
“Certainly, Grace,” she had said; “we will do it at whatever cost, since papa wishes it.”
“Oh yes, if dearest papa wishes it,” said Grace. And Sir Ludovic smiled, as usual, seeing the whole, with an amused toleration of their weakness. Jean got out the drawer of lace with nervous anxiety. “It may be nothing, it may be nothing,” she said, meaning to save herself from disappointment. She took out the drawer altogether, and carried it to the window where there was a good light, with her heart beating.
“Don’t be excited, Grace,” she said, “perhaps it is only modern; most likely mere babies’ caps, Valenciennes and common stuff.” Then she made a little pause, gave one hurried glance, and produced the one word “Point!” with an almost shriek.
“Point?” said Miss Grace, pressing forward with the point of her nose; she was short-sighted, and only thus could she inspect the treasure. Mrs. Bellingham held her off with one hand, while with the other she dived among the delicate yellow rags; the excitement grew to a height when she brought out her hand garlanded with wreaths as of a fairy web. There was a moment of silent adoration while the two ladies gazed at it. Some sea-fairy, with curious knowledge of all the starry fishes and twisted shells, and filmy fronds of weed at the bottom of the ocean, must have woven this. “Venice! and I never saw finer; and not a thread broken!” cried the finder, almost faint with delight.
“And enough to trim you from top to toe,” said Grace, solemnly. Bell coming in jealously on some pretence, saw them, with their hands uplifted and eyes gleaming, and approached to see what the cause of so much emotion might be.
“Eh!” said Bell, “the heap o’ things that us poor folk miss for want o’ kennin’. Is that something awfu’ grand now, leddies, that makes you look so fain?”
“It is a most lovely piece of lace,” cried Mrs. Jean. “Venice point; though I fear, Bell, you will not know what that means. Every little bit done by the needle—you will understand that. Look at all those little sprays.”
“Eh, leddies,” said Bell. “Ye ken what the fishwife says in ane o’ Sir Walter’s novels—‘It’s no fish you’re buyin’, but men’s lives.’ Eh, what heaps o’ poor women’s een must be workit into that auld rag. But it was my late lady’s a’ the same. I’ve seen her wear it, and many a time she’s told me the same story. So it will be Miss Margret’s part o’ her fortune,” said the old house-keeper, with malicious demureness. This discouraged the investigators considerably.
“I never saw it before,” said Mrs. Bellingham; “but then I knew but little of the late Lady Leslie; of course, if it was her mother’s it must be Margaret’s. Fold it up and put it aside, Grace. Was this Lady Leslie’s too?”
“Na, I canna say; I never saw that before,” said Bell, overwhelmed. “Eh, that was never made by woman’s fingers. It must be shaped out o’ the gossamer in the autumn mornings, or the foam of the sea.”
But Bell’s presence disturbed the inquiry; it was not until she was called away to see to Sir Ludovic’s beef-tea that they fully rallied to their work.
“I don’t believe a word of what that old woman says. Lady Leslie, indeed! Lady Leslie was not five-and-twenty when she died, poor thing. Stand out of the way, Grace, don’t come so close. You may be sure you shall see it all—and no girl understands lace. It might be her mother’s? Dear me, what a memory you have got, Grace! She had no mother. She would never have married poor papa if there had been a mother to look after her. Thank Providence, Margaret will be better off. This affliction,” said Mrs. Bellingham, with solemnity, “which is so sad for all of us, will not be without its good side for poor little neglected Margaret. Though whether it is not too late to make any change in her—”
“She is very nice-looking,” said Miss Grace, “and being pretty covers a great deal—at least as long as you are young.”
“Pretty! None of the Leslies were ever ugly,” said her sister; “but it breaks my heart to look at her. Neither education nor manners. She might be a country lass at the meanest farm; she might be a fisher-girl mending nets— Grace, I wish you would sometimes let me get in a word! It’s melancholy to see her running about in those cotton frocks, and think that she is my father’s daughter. We will have our hands full with chat girl. Now this is old Flanders—there is not very much of it. I remember it as well as if I had seen it yesterday, on old Aunt Jean.”
“Then that should be yours, for you were her name-daughter—”
“Grace, how can you be so Scotch! Say godchild—you can always say godchild—it sounds a great deal better!”
“But we were not English Church people when we were born, and there’s no godmo—”
“I think there never was such a clatter in this world!” cried Mrs. Bellingham. “Talk—talk—one cannot get in a word! I know papa’s old-fashioned ways as well as you do, but why should we publish them? What would anybody think at the Court if it was known that we were Presbyterians—not that I ever was a Presbyterian after I was old enough to think for myself.”
“It was being at school,” said Grace; “and a great trouble it was to have to drive all the way to Fifetown on Sundays, instead of going to Dr. Burnside. You were married, it didn’t matter for you; but—do you mean to have Aubrey down, Jean, after all?”