“Of course I mean to have Aubrey,” said Mrs. Bellingham. She had been carefully measuring on her finger and marking the lengths of the lace, which was the reason Miss Leslie had been allowed to deliver herself of so long a speech. “He will perhaps join us somewhere after this sad time is over. It is not to be supposed that we will be able for much company at first,” she said, with a sigh. “There are three yards of the Flanders—too much for a bodice and too little for anything else, and it would be wicked to cut it. After all we have gone through, of course there will be a time when we will have no spirits for company; but Aubrey is not like a stranger. Being my nephew, he will be a kind of cousin to Margaret. Dear me, I wish I could think there was a good chance that he would be something more; for the responsibility on you and me of a young girl—”
“Oh, he will be very willing to be something more,” cried Miss Grace, with alacrity; “a pretty young creature like Margaret, and a good income.”
“Her income is but a small one to tempt a Bellingham; but I suppose because he is my nephew you must have a fling at him. I have often noticed that inclination in you, Grace. I am sure my family, by marriage, have never but shown you the greatest attention, and Aubrey never makes any difference between us. He calls you Aunt Grace, though you are no more his Aunt Grace— Here is a very nice piece, I don’t know what it is. It is English, or perhaps it might be Argentan, or one of the less known kinds. Would you like to have it? It is very pretty. So here are three pieces to commence with: the Venice point for Margaret, if it really was her mother’s—but I don’t believe it—and the Flanders for me.”
Grace lifted the piece allotted to her now with but scant satisfaction. It was Jean who had always the lion’s share; it was she who took the management of everything, and put herself forward. Though Miss Leslie was very willing to sacrifice herself when occasion offered, she did not like to be sacrificed calmly by others, without deriving any glory from it. But she said nothing. There was a great deal more still to be looked over, and Jean could not always have so good an excuse for appropriating the best, as she had when she secured Aunt Jean’s old piece of Flanders lace.
While these very different scenes were going on within the walls of Earl’s-hall, the old gray house in which so soon the last act of a life was to be accomplished was the centre of many thoughts and discussions outside. At the breakfast-table at the Manse Mrs. Burnside read aloud a letter from Mrs. Ludovic in Edinburgh, asking whether the Minister’s wife could receive her husband, who was uneasy about his father, and anxious “to be on the spot,” whatever happened.
“I thought of sending my Effie with Ludovic, if you would take her in,” Mrs. Leslie wrote. “Of course, Earl’s-hall, so little bedroom accommodation as they have, is quite full with Jean and Grace and their maid. It is very provoking that it should be such a fine old house, and one that we would be very unwilling to let go out of the family, and yet so little use. Ludovic has always such confidence in your kindness, dear Mrs. Burnside, that I thought I might ask you. Of course, you will say Noat once, if it is not convenient. Effie is not very strong, and I would like her to have a change; and we thought it might be something for poor little Margaret, if anything happens, to have some one near her of her own age. She is the one to be pitied; and yet she has been sadly neglected, poor child—and I don’t doubt but in this, as in other matters, all things will work together for good.”
“I thought of sending my Effie with Ludovic, if you would take her in,” Mrs. Leslie wrote. “Of course, Earl’s-hall, so little bedroom accommodation as they have, is quite full with Jean and Grace and their maid. It is very provoking that it should be such a fine old house, and one that we would be very unwilling to let go out of the family, and yet so little use. Ludovic has always such confidence in your kindness, dear Mrs. Burnside, that I thought I might ask you. Of course, you will say Noat once, if it is not convenient. Effie is not very strong, and I would like her to have a change; and we thought it might be something for poor little Margaret, if anything happens, to have some one near her of her own age. She is the one to be pitied; and yet she has been sadly neglected, poor child—and I don’t doubt but in this, as in other matters, all things will work together for good.”
“That’s a sorely misused text,” said the Minister, shaking his head.
“Is this better?” said Randal: “‘Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.’ They seem all rushing upon their prey.”
“No, no, you must not say that. Their own father—who should come to his death-bed but his children? I’ll write and say, ‘Certainly, let Ludovic come;’ and if you can do without that green room for your old portmanteaux, Randal, I’ll find a place for them among the other boxes; and we might take little Effie too. I am always glad to give a town-child the advantage of good country air.”
“She cannot be such a child if she is the same age as Margaret—”
“And what is Margaret but a child? Poor thing, poor thing! Yes, she has been neglected; she has not had the up-bringing a lady of her family should have; but, dear me,” said Mrs. Burnside, who was of the old school, “I’ve seen such things before, and what harm did it do them? She cannot play the piano, or speak French, or draw, or even dance, so far as I can tell; but she cannot but be a lady—it was born with her—and the questions she asks are just extraordinary. I would not make a stipulation for the piano myself everywhere; but still there’s no doubt she has been neglected. Jean and Grace are far from being ill women; but I don’t think I would like to change old Sir Ludovic, that never said a harsh word to her, for the like of them.”
“Yes, mother, Margaret can draw. The young fellow who put Sir Ludovic into his carriage last Sunday, whom you were so impatient of—”
“Me impatient! Randal, you take the very strangest ideas. Why should I be disturbed, one way or other, by Rob Glen? What about Rob Glen?”
“Not much, except that he is giving her—lessons. It seems he is an artist—”
“An artist—Rob Glen! But oh, did I not say Mrs. Ludovic was right? She has been sorely neglected! Not that old Sir Ludovic meant any harm. He was an old man and she a child; and he forgot she was growing up, and that a girl is not a child so long as a boy. After all, perhaps, she will be better in the hands of Grace and Jean.”
“And so the text is not misused, after all,” said the Minister, once more shaking his head.
Ludoviccame accordingly, with his little daughter Effie—a sentimental little maiden, with a likeness to her aunt Grace, and very anxious to be “of use” to Margaret, who, though only six months older than herself, was her aunt also. Ludovic himself was a serious, silent man—not like the Leslies, everybody said, taking after his mother, who had been a Montgomery, and of a more steady-going race. While Mrs. Bellingham sat by her father’s side and talked to him about what was to be done when he was better, saying, “Oh yes, you are mending—slowly, making a little progress every day, though you will not believe it;” and Grace stood, eager, too, to “be of use,” touching his cheek—most generally, poor lady, with her nose, which was cold, and not agreeable to the patient—and saying, “Dearest papa!” Ludovic, for his part, would come and sit at the foot of the bed for an hour at a time, not saying anything, but keeping his serious eyes upon the old man, who was more glad than ever to doze, and keep his eyes shut, now that so many affectionate watchers were round him. Now and then Sir Ludovic would rouse up when they were all taking a rest from their anxious duties, as Grace expressed it, and “was just his ain man again,” Bell would say.
“Oh, if my children would but neglect me!” he said, when one of these blessed intervals came.
“There is nobody but me here now, papa,” said Margaret, like a little shadow in the corner, with her red eyes.
“And that is just as it ought to be, my little Peggy; but who,” he said, with that faint little laugh, which scarcely sounded now at all, but abode in his eyes with all its old humor—“who will look after your pronouns when I am away, my little girl?” But sometimes he moaned a little, and complained that it was long. “Could you not give me a jog, John?” he would say; “I’m keeping everybody waiting. Jean and Grace will lose their usual holiday, and Ludovic has his business to think of.”
“They’re paying you every respect, Sir Ludovic,” said John, not feeling that his master was fully alive to the domestic virtue exhibited by his children. Perhaps John, too, felt that to keep up all the forms of anxious solicitude was hard for such a lengthened period, which made the “respect” of the group around Sir Ludovic’s death-bed more striking still. Sir Ludovic smiled, and repeated the sentiment with which he began the conversation—“I wish my children would but neglect me.” But he was always patient and grateful and polite. He never said anything to Grace about her cold nose; he did not tell Ludovic that his steady stare fretted him beyond measure; he let Jean prattle on as she would, though he knew that what she said was all a fiction. Sir Ludovic was never a more high-bred gentleman than in this last chapter of his life. He was bored beyond measure, but he never showed it. Only when he was alone with his little daughter, with the old servants who loved him, who always understood him more or less, and always amused him, which was, perhaps, as important, he would rouse up by moments and be his old self.
As for Margaret, she led the strangest double life—a life which no one suspected, which she did not herself realize. They made her go to bed every night, though she came and went, a white apparition, all the night through, to her father’s door to listen, lest anything should happen while she was away from him; and in the evenings after dinner, when the family were all about Sir Ludovic’s bed, she would steal out, half reluctant, half eager, half guilty, half happy; guilty because of the strange flutter of sick and troubled happiness that would come upon her.
“Yes, my bonnie lamb, ye’ll get a moment to yoursel’; gang your ways and get a breath of air,” Bell would say, all unwitting that something else was waiting for Margaret besides the fresh air and soft soothing of the night.
“I will be in the wood, Bell, where you can cry upon me. You will be sure to cry upon me if there’s any need.”
“My bonnie doo! I’ll cry soon enough; but there will be no need,” said the old woman, patting her shoulder as she dismissed her.
And Margaret would flit along the broken ground where the potatoes had been, where her feet had made a path, and disappear into the sighing of the firs, which swept round and hid her amidst the perplexing crowd of their straight columns. There was one tree, beneath the sweeping branches of which some one was always waiting for her. It was a silver-fir, with great angular limbs, the biggest in the wood, and the little mossy knoll between its great roots was soft and green as velvet. There Rob Glen was always waiting, looking out anxiously through the clear evenings, and with a great gray plaid ready to wrap her in when it was cold or wet. They did not feel the rain under the great horizontal branches of the firs, and the soft pattering it made was more soothing than the wild sweep of the wind coming strong from the sea. There the two would sit sheltered, and look out upon the gray mass of Earl’s-hall, with that one ruddy lighted window.
Margaret leaned upon her lover, whom, in her trouble, she did not think of as her lover, and cried and was comforted. He was the only one, she felt, except, perhaps, Bell, who was really good to her, who understood her, and did not want her to be composed and calm. He never said she should not cry, but kissed her hands and her cheek, and said soft caressing words: “My darling! my Margaret!” His heart was beating much more loudly than she could understand; but Rob, if he was not all good, had a certain tenderness of nature in him, and poetry of feeling which kept him from anything which could shock or startle her. At these moments, as the long summer day darkened and the soft gloaming spread over them, he was as nearly her true and innocent and generous lover as a man could be who was not always generous and true. He was betraying her, but to what?—only to accept his love, the best thing a man had to give; a gift, if you come to that, to give to a queen. He was not feigning nor deceiving, but loved her as warmly as if he had never loved any one before, nor meant to love any other again. And then he would go toward the house with her, not so far as he went that first night in over-boldness, when they were caught—an accident he always remembered with shame and self-reproach,yet a certain pride, as having proved to Randal Burnside, once for all, his own inferiority, and that he, Rob Glen, had hopelessly distanced all competitors, however they might build upon being gentlemen. He led her along the edge of the wood always under cover, and stole with her, under shadow of the garden-wall, to the corner, beyond which he did not venture. Then he would take her into his arms unresisted, and they would linger for a moment, while he lavished upon Margaret every tender name he could think of—
“Remember that I am always thinking of you, always longing to be by you, to support you, to comfort you, my darling.”
“Yes, I will remember,” Margaret said, meekly, and there fluttered a little forlorn warmth and sweetness about her heart; and then he would release her, and, more like a shadow than ever, would stand and watch while she flitted along the wall to the great door.
And what thoughts were in Rob’s mind when she was gone! That almost innocence, and nobleness and truth, which had existed in the emotion of their meeting, disappeared with Margaret, leaving him in a tumult of other and less noble thoughts. He knew very well that he had beguiled her, though he meant nothing but love and devotion to her. He had betrayed her, in the moment of her sorrow, into a tacit acceptance of him, and committal of herself from which there was no escape. Rob knew very well—no one better—that there were girls who took such love passages lightly enough; but to a delicate little maiden, “a lady,” like Margaret, he knew there could be but one meaning in this. Though she had scarcely responded at all, she had accepted his tenderness, and committed herself forever. And he knew he had betrayed her into this, and was glad with a bounding sense of delight and triumph such as made him almost spurn the earth. This occurrence gave him, not only Margaret, whom he was in love with, and whose society was for the time sweeter to him than anything in the world, but with her such a dazzling flood of advantages as might well have turned any young man’s head: a position such as he might toil all his life for, and never be able to reach: money, such as would make him admired and looked up to by everybody he knew: a life of intoxicating happiness and advancement, with no need to do anything he did not care to do, or take any further trouble about his living, one way or another. Rob’s organization was not so fine as to make him unwilling to accept all these advantages from his wife; in practical life there are indeed very few men who are thus delicately organized; neither were his principles so high or so honorable as to give him very much trouble about the manner in which he had won all this, by surprise. He just felt it, just had a sense that there was something here to be slurred over as much as possible—but it did not spoil his pleasure. It was, however, terribly difficult to know what it would be best to do in the circumstances, what step he should next take: whether he should boldly face the family, on the chance that Sir Ludovic would be glad before he died to see his daughter with a protector and companion of her own, or whether it was wise to keep in the background, and watch the progress of events, keeping that sure hold upon Margaret herself, which he felt he could now trust to. He had done her good; he had been more to her than any one else, and had helped her to bear her burden; and he had thus woven himself in with every association of her life, at its, as yet, most important period, and made himself inseparable from her.
He had no fear of losing his hold of Margaret. But from the family, the brother and sisters who were like uncle and aunts to the young creature, Rob knew very well he should find little mercy. They would all want to make their own out of her, he felt sure; for it is hard, even when escaping from all sensation of vulgarity in one’s person, to get rid of that deeply-rooted principle of vulgarity which shows itself in attributing mean motives to other people. This birth-stain of the meaner sort, not always confined to the lower classes, was strong in him. He did not feel that it was her fortune and her importance which made Margaret valuable in his own eyes (for was he not in love?), but he had no hesitation in deciding that her family and all about her must look at her in this mercenary light. They certainly would not let her fortune slip through their fingers if they could help it. There might be some hope of a legitimate sanction from Sir Ludovic, who was beyond the reach of any advantage from his daughter’s money, and might like to feel that she was “settled” and safe; but there could be no hope from the others. They would have plans of their own for her. The Leslies were known not to be rich, and an heiress was not a thing to be lightly parted with. They would keep her to themselves; of that he was sure. And at such a moment as this, what chance was there of reaching Sir Ludovic’s bedside, and gaining his consent? It would be impossible to do so without running the gauntlet of all the family; it would make a scene, and probably hurt the old man or kill him.
Thus he was musing, as after an interval he followed Margaret’s course under the shadow of the garden-wall, meaning to make his way out by what was called the avenue, though it was merely a path opened through the belt of wood, which was thin on that side, to the gate in the high-road. But this spot was evidently unlucky to Rob. When he was about to pass the door of Earl’s-hall, he met Mr. Leslie coming out. Mr. Leslie was one of the men who are always more or less suspicious, and he had just seen Margaret, with her hat in her hand and the fresh night air still about her, going up the winding stair. Ludovic looked at the man walking along under the wall with instinctive mistrust.
“Did you want anything?” he asked, hastily. “This path is private, I think.”
“I think not,” said Rob; “at least everybody has been free to pass as long as I can remember; but I was on my way,” he added, thinking it good to try any means of conciliation, “to ask for Sir Ludovic.”
“There is no change,” said Mr. Leslie, stiffly. He was himself, to tell the truth, very weary of this invariable answer, but there was nothing else to be said; and he tried to see who the inquirer was, but was unable to make him out in the late dusk. He had never seen him before, for one thing. “You are from—”
“I am from nowhere,” said Rob. “I don’t suppose you know me at all, Mr. Leslie, or evenmy name. I am Robert Glen; but Sir Ludovic has been very kind to me. He has allowed me to come and sketch the house, and latterly I have seen a great deal of him. His illness has grieved me as much—as if I had a right to be grieved. He was very kind. Latterly I saw a great deal of him.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Leslie. He had heard the people at the Manse talking of Rob Glen, and he had seen Margaret’s return a minute before. What connection there might be between these two things he did not very clearly perceive; but there seemed to be something, and he was suspicious, as indeed he had a right to be.
“Is he too ill—to ask to see him?” said Rob, with a sense that a refusal would take all the responsibility off his shoulders. If he could see Sir Ludovic it might be honorable to explain everything; but if not—
“See him!” said Mr. Leslie; “I don’t know what your acquaintance may be with my father, Mr. Glen, but he is much too ill to see anybody—scarcely even his own children. I am leaving early, as you perceive, because I feel that it is too much for him to have even all of ourselves there.”
“I am very sorry to hear it,” said Rob, with the proper expression in his voice; but in reality he was relieved; no need now to say anything to the family. He had Margaret only to deal with, and in her he could fully trust, he thought. “I began a sketch of Sir Ludovic,” he said, “for which he had promised me a second sitting; will you kindly ask Miss Margaret Leslie to send it back to me, that I may finish it for her as well as I can? Poor though my drawing was, it will have its value now.”
“I will tell my sister,” said Mr. Leslie, and he swung open the gate and waited till Rob passed through. “Good-night,” said the young man. It was better in any case to be courteous and friendly, if they would permit it, with “the family.” But Mr. Leslie only made an indistinct murmur in the darkness. He gave no articulate response; there was no cordiality on his side; and why, indeed, should he be cordial to the farmer’s son? Rob went quickly homeward, forcing a smile of contempt, though there was nobody to see. This haughty and distant personage would yet learn to respond to any salutation his sister’s husband might make; he would have to be civil, if nothing more, Rob said within himself. What was he that he should be so high and mighty? An Edinburgh advocate working for his living, a poor laird at the best, with a ramshackle old house for all his inheritance. Thus the vulgar came uppermost again in Rob’s heart; he scorned for his poverty the man with whom he was indignant for scorning him, because he was unknown and poor. He hurried home with this little fillip of additional energy given to all his schemes. His mother was standing at the door as he approached, looking out for him, or perhaps only looking to see the last of the cows looming through the dusk coming in from the fields. He was absent every night, and Mrs. Glen wanted to know where he went. She was getting impatient on all points, and had determined to wait no longer for any information he might have to give.
“Where have you been?” she asked, as he came in sight.
“To Earl’s-hall.”
“To Earl’s-hall! And what have you been doing at Earl’s-hall? No drawing and fiddling while the poor auld man lies dying? Ye’re ill enough, but surely you have not the heart for that?”
“I have neither been drawing nor fiddling—indeed I did not know that I could fiddle; but, all the same, I have come from Earl’s-hall,” he said. “Let me in, mother; I’ve been sitting in the wood, and the night has got cold.”
“What have you been doing—sitting in the wood? There’s no light to take your views—tell me,” said Mrs. Glen, with determination, “what have you been doing, once for all.”
“I may as well tell you,” he said; “I have been sitting in the wood with Margaret.”
“With—Margaret? you’re no blate to speak o’ a young lady like that. Rob, my bonnie man, I aye thought you were to be the lucky bairn of my family. Have ye naething mair to tell me about—Margaret? I would like weel, real weel, to hear.”
“Can you keep a secret, mother?” he said. “I will tell you something if you will swear to me never to repeat it, never to hint at it, never to brag of what is coming, or to give the slightest ground for suspicion: if you will promise me this—”
“I was never a tale-pyet,” said Mrs. Glen, offended, “nobody ever laid tittle-tattle, or bragging of ony kind, to my door. But if you canna trust your mother without promises, I see not why you should trust her at all.”
“It is not that I doubt you, mother; but you know how difficult it is not to mention a thing that is much in your mind. Margaret Leslie is my own; it is all settled and fixed between us. She came out to me in her trouble when she found her father was dying, and what could I do but comfort her, and support her, and show my feeling—”
“Oh, ay, Rob,” his mother interpolated, “you were aye grand at that!”
“What could a man do else?—a sweet young creature like Margaret Leslie crying by his side! I told her, what I suppose she knew very well before, for I never hide my feelings, mother, as you say. And the issue is, she’s mine. However it was done, you will not say but what it was well done. I have been fond of her since ever I can remember.”
“And of twa-three mair,” said Mrs. Glen, “but no a word o’ that, Rob my man. Eh, but I’m weel pleased! That’s what I’ve been thinking of since the very week you came hame. ‘Now if Rob, with all his cleverness, could get that bonnie Miss Margret,’ I said to mysel’. The Lord bless ye, my man! I aye thought you were born to be the lucky one of my family. Is it a’ in her ain disposition, or have the family ony power over it, Rob? Eh, my bonnie man, what a down-sitting! and the bonniest leddy in Fife of her years. You’re a lucky lad, if ever there was one.”
“Let me in, mother; I don’t want to tell this to any ears but yours.”
“Ay, ay, my man, I’ll let you in,” said his mother, standing aside from the door. “Come in and welcome, my lucky lad. Is there anything you would like for your supper? Naething in a’ the house is ower good for such goodnews. We’ll take a bottle o’ wine out of the press, or maybe ye would like a drap toddy just as well, which is mair wholesome. Come in, come in, my bonnie man. A bonnie lass, and plenty wi’ her; and a real auld family an honor to anybody to be connected with. My word, Rob Glen, you’re a lucky lad! Wha will look down upon you now? Wha will say a word about your opinions? I’ve never upbraided you mysel’; I saw your talents, and felt ye could bide your time. Eh,” cried Mrs. Glen, exultant, “wha will say now but that marriages are made in heaven? And Rob, my bonnie man, when is it to be?”
“We are not so far as that, mother,” he said; “do you think she has the heart to think of marrying, and poor old Sir Ludovic lying on his death-bed? We must wait for all that. I’m too happy in the mean time to think of more. She’s mine; and that is more than I could have hoped.”
“That’s very true, my man: but still something settled would have been a grand stand-by,” said Mrs. Glen, slightly disappointed; “I would have thought now it would have been a great comfort to Sir Ludovic to see his daughter married and settled before he slips away. But the gentry’s ways are not as our ways. I’m doubting you’ll have some trouble with the family, if nothing’s settled afore the auld gentleman dies.”
“I doubt I will, mother,” said Rob; “but whatever trouble I may have, Margaret’s mine, and she will never go back from her word.”
Atlast the time came when old Sir Ludovic’s dozing and drowsiness, his speculations, and the gleam of humor with which they were all accompanied, and which most of those around him thought so inappropriate to his circumstances, came to an end. All his affairs were in order, his will made, though he had not much to leave, and Dr. Burnside (which was a great satisfaction to the family) paid him a daily visit for the last week of his life; so that everything was done decently and in order. Dr. Burnside had not so very much to say to the old man. He had no answer to give to his questions. He bade Sir Ludovic believe. “And so I do,” he said; he could not be got to be frightened; and now that he had got over the shock of it, and into that dreamy slumbrous valley of the shadow, he did not even wish to avoid what was coming. “It is not so bad as one thinks,” he said to old John, his faithful servant, and to the good minister, who was approaching old age too, though not so near as either of these old men. Dr. Burnside was a little disturbed by the smile on his patient’s face, and hoped it did not show any inclination toward levity; but he was glad to hear, having that journey in view, that it was not so bad as one thought. “He is a man of a very steady faith,” the Minister said, and he himself was wise enough to let Sir Ludovic glide away out of the world with that smile upon his face.
As for Jean and Grace, they did their best to disturb their father and to unsettle him, and insinuated that Dr. Burnside’s instructions were of an unsatisfactory kind. Even Bell held it unorthodox that, except in cases of religious triumph and ecstasy, which no doubt were on record, a human creature should leave this earth smiling, to appear in the presence of his Maker, as she said. Mrs. Bellingham did all she could to question her father on the subject, but was not successful. “Leave him in peace,” his son said; but neither was Mr. Leslie satisfied. It was very strange to them all. The old man did not even seem to feel that anxiety for Margaret’s future which they expected, and never made that solemn appeal to them to take care of her, to which both the sisters were prepared to respond, and which even Ludovic expected, though he felt that, with such a large family of his own, nothing much could be looked for from him. But Sir Ludovic made no appeal. He said “My little Peggy,” when all other words had failed him; and on the very last day of his life a gleam as of laughter crossed his face, and he shook his head faintly at her when she said “me” instead of “I,” and thus faded quite gently and pleasantly away.
There was silence in Earl’s-hall that night, silence and quiet, scarcely a whisper even between the sisters, who generally had a meeting in Mrs. Bellingham’s room for a last discussion of everything that had passed, notwithstanding that they were all the day together. But on this evening nobody talked. Ludovic went away with the Minister and ate a solemn late meal, having, as everybody said, eaten nothing all day (but that was a mistake, for he had not been called to the last ceremonial till after luncheon). And in Earl’s-hall everybody went to bed. They had been keeping irregular hours, had sometimes sat late, and sometimes been called early; and John and Bell, in particular, had not for a week past kept any count which was night and which was day. A few broken phrases about “him yonder,” a groan from John, a few tears rubbed off, till her eyes were red, by Bell’s apron, and the sound of “greeting” from Jeanie’s little turret-room, was almost all that could be heard in the silent house. Margaret, for her part, could not “greet” as Jeanie did. She was stunned, and did not know what had happened to her. For the moment it was over; the worst had come, and a blank of utter exhaustion came over the girl. She allowed herself to be put to bed, and did nothing but sigh, long sighs which went to Bell’s heart, sighs which seemed almost a physical necessity to the young bosom oppressed with such an unknown burden. Mrs. Bellingham (though she was not quite satisfied in her mind) said a few words to her maid that it was a most peaceful end, that it was beautiful to see him lying there at rest just as if he were asleep; and Miss Leslie cried copiously, and said “Dearest papa!” They were all in bed by ten o’clock, and the old gray house shut up and silent. A dark night, the wind sweeping through the firs, everything silent and hushed in earth and heaven, and all dark except the one window in which a faint watch-light burned palely, but no longer the warm, inconstant glimmer of any cheerful fire.
But with the morning, what a flood of pent-up energy and activity was let loose. They were all anxious to keep quiet in Margaret’s part of the house, that she might sleep as long as possible and be kept out of every one’s way. The arrangements into which everybody else plungedwere not for her. The first thing to be thought of, of course, Mrs. Bellingham said, was the mourning, and there was not a moment’s time to lose. Telegraphs were not universally prevalent in those days, and one of the men from the farm had to be sent on horseback to Fifeton to send a message to Edinburgh about the bombazine and the crape.
As Sir Ludovic had anticipated, his daughter Jean did not stint him of a single fold; she meant to show “every respect.” Fortunately Steward, their maid, was quite equal to the occasion, both the ladies congratulated themselves. “Of course, we shall want no evening dresses, nothing beyond the mere necessary here,” Mrs. Bellingham said. “One for the morning and another to go out with, a little more trimmed, that will be all.” But even for this little outfit a good deal of trouble had to be taken. That very evening a man arrived from Edinburgh with mountains of crape and boxes full of hemstitched cambric for the collars and cuffs. There was crape all over the house—even Bell and Jeanie had their share—no stint. When a man has been so much thought of as Sir Ludovic, and has a respectable family whose credit is involved in showing him every respect, a good deal of quiet bustle becomes inevitable; the house was full of whispers, of consultations, of measurements, and a great hurry and pressure to get done in time for the funeral; though the funeral was delayed long, according to use and wont in the country.
Mr. Leslie, on his part, went over all the house, and walked diligently about the farm and inspected everything, though, being a silent man, he said little about it. It was too early to say anything. When his sisters put questions to him about what he was going to do, he said he had not made up his mind; and it was only when the funeral was over, and the shutters opened, and old Sir Ludovic’s chair put against the wall, that he at all opened his mind. Nearly a week passed in this melancholy interval; he had become Sir Ludovic himself, but nobody in Earl’s-hall could give him the familiar title; old John ground his teeth together (though he had not many left) and tried to get it out, but the conclusion was a hurried exclamation,
“I canna do it! Pit me away, sir. Bell and me, we’re ready to gang whenever ye please; but I canna ca’ ye your right name.”
The new Sir Ludovic, though he said little, had a kind heart. He said, “Never mind, John; tell Bell never to mind;” but Mrs. Bellingham had no such feeling. She said it was ridiculous in servants, when the family themselves had to do it. “I hope I know what is due to the living as well as to the dead,” she cried; “and if I can say it, why should not John?”
But at first, no doubt, it was difficult enough. After the funeral, however, the new Sir Ludovic went “home” to Earl’s-hall, where his wife came and joined him. The eldest boy, too, arrived for the ceremony itself, and walked with his father to the church-yard as one of the chief mourners. The house was filled to overflowing with the family as soon as the last act of old Sir Ludovic’s earthly history was accomplished. Beds were put in the high room to accommodate the boys. It was all novelty to them, who had not known very much of their grandfather, and their mother liked being my lady. It was natural. She had not known much of the old man any more than her children had, and he was only her father-in-law—not a very tender relationship. Thus the new tide rose at once, and new life came in. Had there been only the elders in the house, no doubt they would have kept up a drowsy appearance of gravity; but that was not to be done with young people in the house.
As for Margaret, this period passed over her like a dream. While the house was shut up, and everything went on in a pale twilight, she wandered about like a ghost, not knowing what to do or say, unable to take up any of her occupations. It seemed years to her, centuries since the careless time when she went and came so lightly, fearing no evil; trying to draw straight lines with an ineffectual pencil; flitting out and in of her father’s room; getting out books for him; searching for something she might read herself; taking up for half an hour Lady Jean’s old work; knitting a bit of Bell’s stocking; roaming everywhere about as light as the wind. All that, Margaret thought, was over forever; but she did not “break her heart” altogether, as she supposed she would. Sometimes, indeed, an aching sense of loss, a horrible void about her would make her heart sick, and her whole being giddy with pain; but in the intervals life went on, and she found that it was possible to sit at table, to talk to the others, to have her dresses fitted on. And when the children came, there were moments when she felt inclined to smile at their curious little ways, even (was that possible?) to laugh at little Loodie, who was the youngest of the boys, and never, Heaven forbid! would be Sir Ludovic. Bell, too, found little Loodie “a real diverting bairn.” “Eh, if his grandpapaw had but been here to see him!” she said, with tears and smiles.
But Margaret, naturally, was more unwilling to be “diverted” than Bell was. When she was beguiled into a smile at little Loodie, it was very unwillingly, and she would recover herself with a sense of guilt; for it was a terrible revelation to Margaret, a most painful discovery to feel that a smile was possible even within a week of her father’s death, and that her heart was not altogether broken. She wept for her own heartlessness as well as for her dear father, of whom she had thought beforehand that all she wished for would be to be buried in his grave.
But she went out of the house only once between the death and the funeral. Rob, for his part, roamed round about it, and stayed for hours in the woods, looking for her; but it seemed to Margaret that for the moment she shrank from Rob. Oh, how could she have thought of Rob, or any one, while he lay dying? How could she have gone out and spent those hours in the wood with him, which might have been spent with Sir Ludovic? What would she give now, she said to herself, to be able to steal up-stairs to him, to sit by his bedside, to hold his hand, to hear him say “My little Peggy” again. Now that this was no longer possible, she felt a kind of resentment against Rob, who had occupied her at times when it was still possible. And the state of his mind during this interval was not pleasant to contemplate. When he had asked once or twice for the ladies, he had no further excuse for returning openly, and he was afraid to be seen lest he should again meet some one—perhaps the newSir Ludovic himself—who had not been delighted by his previous appearance, or some jealous spectator like Randal Burnside.
Rob stood for hours behind the big fir-tree looking toward the house in which there were more lights now, but no glimmer in that window which had been his beacon for so long, and more voices audible—never Margaret’s soft notes, like a bird. He was very fond of Margaret. Those dreary evenings when she was kept from him, or kept herself from him, Rob was wild with love, and fear, and disappointment. Couldtheyhave found it out? couldtheybe keeping her away? He stood under the fir-tree scarcely daring to move, and watched with his heart beating in his ears. Sometimes John would loom heavily across the vacant space, coming out again, according to his old habit, to “take a look at the potatoes.” Sometimes Bell would appear at the opening of the little court-yard to “cry upon” her husband when something was wanted. “There’s aye something wanting now,” John would say, as he turned back. Or Rob would see some one at the wall, drawing water, under the shade of the thorn-tree, without knowing who it was, or that there were any thoughts of himself, except those which might be in Margaret’s bosom, within the gray shadow of those old walls. How breathlessly he watched John’s lumbering steps about the potatoes, and the whiteness of Bell’s aprons, and the clang of the water-pails!
But no one came. Had she accepted his consolations only because there was no one else to comfort her, without caring for him who breathed them in her ear? Were all his lofty hopes to end in nothing, and his love to be rejected? Terror and anxiety thrilled through Rob as he stood and watched, tantalized by all those sounds and half-seen sights. Once only she came, and then she would say little or nothing to him: she had never said much; but she shrank from his outstretched arms now, crying, “Don’t, don’t!” in tones half of terror. That one meeting was a greater disappointment than when she did not come at all. Had she but been taking advantage of him, as great people, Rob knew, were so ready to take advantage of small people? And now that she needed him no longer, was she about to cast him off? In that case, all his fine anticipations, all his triumph, would be like Alnascher’s hopes in the story. His very heart quailed in terror. The disappointment, the downfall, the decay of hopes and prospects would be more than he could bear.
The truth was that Margaret, left all alone suddenly in the midst of what to her was a crowd of people, all more or less strangers, seemed to have lost the power of doing so much for herself as to go anywhere. Though they amused her sometimes in spite of herself, they kept her in a kind of subjugation which was very confusing and very novel.
“Where are you going, Margaret?” Mrs. Bellingham would say, if she went across the room.
“Darling Margaret, don’t leave us,” Grace would add, next time she moved. Even Effie, who was so anxious to be “of use,” would interfere, throwing her arms about her youthful aunt, whispering, “You are not to go to your own room and cry. Oh, come with me to the tower, and look at the sunset.”
“Yes, my dear Margaret, go with Effie; it will take off your thoughts a little,” said the new Lady Leslie.
Thus Margaret had weights of kindness hung round her on every side, and was changed in every particular of her life from the light-hearted creature who flitted about like the wind, in and out a hundred times a day. Even Bell approved of this thraldom.
“Ah, my bonnie dear, keep wi’ Miss Effie. She’s your ain flesh and blood. What would you do out your lane when you have sic company?”
“I always went out alone before,” Margaret said, mechanically turning up-stairs again.
“Yes, my bonnie doo; but you hadna a bonnie young Miss, a cousin of your ain (for niece is but a jest), to keep ye company.”
Thus Margaret was held fast. And by-and-by her habit of wandering out would probably have been broken, and she might have been carried away by her sisters safe out of all contact or reach of her lover. For the lover, as will be seen, was not violently in Margaret’s mind. If she missed him, there were so many other things that she missed more! He was but part of the general privation, impoverishment of her life. She had lost everything, she thought—her father, her careless sweetness of living, her light heart, the sunshine of her morning. All these other happinesses being gone, how could Margaret make an effort for Rob only? She was not strong enough to do this. She was not even unwilling to let him go with all the rest. Perhaps there was ingratitude in the feeling. He had been very “kind” to her, had given her a little comfort of sweet sympathy in her trouble. It was ungrateful to forget that now; and she did not forget it, but was too languid, too weary, and had lost too much already to be able to make any effort for this. Meanwhile, while she sat in a kind of lethargy within, and followed the directions of all about her, and let him drop from her, Rob roamed about outside, gnashing his teeth, sometimes almost cursing her, sometimes almost praying for her, watching every door and window, holding the post of a most impatient sentinel under the great fir-tree.
It happened to Margaret, however, one evening to find herself alone. Mrs. Bellingham had a headache, a thing which was not generally regarded as a great calamity in places where Mrs. Bellingham paid visits. It confined her to her room, and it was, on the whole, not a disagreeable change for her friends. Her sister, who in weal and woe was inseparable from her, though she would have been glad enough to escape too, was, under Jean’s orders, writing letters for her in her room. And the new proprietors of Earl’s-hall were glad enough for once to be by themselves. They took a conjugal walk about the place, examining into everything—the ruined part to see if anything could be done to it; the stables, which had been made out of part of the ruin; even the pigsty, which was John’s favorite spot in the demesne. The subject of consideration in the mind of the pair was whether the old place, with all its associations, should be sold, or whether anything could be done with it, cheaply, to adapt it for the country residence of the family. In its present state, certainly, it did not take much to “keep up;” but, on the other hand, the rental of the little scraps of estate which old Sir Ludovic had left scarcely justified the new Sir Ludovic, with his large family, in “keeping up” any country place at all. To decide upon this subject was the reason of Lady Leslie’s presence here.
And Effie, whose mourning was less deep, and her mind less affected by “the family loss” than Margaret, had gone to visit Mrs. Burnside. Even little Loodie was being put to bed. Margaret, for the first time since her father’s death, was alone. She had found that day, among a collection of papers into which it had been shuffled heedlessly amidst the confusion of the moment, the drawing of her father which Rob Glen had begun on his first appearance at Earl’s-hall; and this had plunged her back into all that fresh agitation of loss and loneliness which is, in its way, a kind of pleasure to the mind, instead of the dull stupor of habitual grief which follows upon the immediate passion of an event. She had wept till her eyes and her strength were exhausted, but her heart relieved a little; and then that heart yearned momentarily for some one to comfort her. Where washe? She had not thought of him in this aspect before—perhaps looking for her, perhaps waiting for her, he who had been so “kind.” She put on her hat with the heavy gauze veil which Jean had thought necessary. She was all hung and garlanded with crape, the hat itself wrapped in a cloud of it, her dress covered with it, so that Margaret’s very movements were hampered. The grass always damp, more or less, the mossy underground beneath the firs, the moist brown earth of the potato-ground, were all alike unsuitable for this heavy and elaborate robe of mourning. Margaret gathered it about her and put on her hat, with its thick black gauze veil—she did not know herself in all this panoply of woe—and went out. There was nobody about. John was showing the new Baronet his pigsty, and Bell, more comforted and cheerful than she had yet felt, stood in the door of the byre and talked to Lady Leslie about her favorite, her bonnie brown cow. The old people were amused and pleased; they were more near “getting over it” than they had felt yet; and even John began to feel that it might be possible, after a while, to say Sir Ludovic again.
Margaret went out, hearing their voices, though she did not see them. She had no feeling of bitterness toward her brother, though he was assuming possession of her old home. He had not much to say, but he was kind; and good Lady Leslie was a good mother, and could not but speak softly and think gently of everybody. They were, perhaps, a humdrum and somewhat care-worn couple, but no unkindness was in them. It gave Margaret no pang to hear them talking about Bell’s beloved Brownie or what they were to do with the stables, neither did it occur to her to take any pains not to be seen by them. It was still light, but the evening was waning, the sky glowing in the west, the shadows gathering under the fir-trees in the woods which lay to eastward of the house. She made her way to her usual haunt, her feet making no sound on the soft path. Would he be there, waiting for her as in that dreadful time? or would he have gone away? Margaret had not enough animation left to feel that she would be disappointed if he were not there, but yet her heart was a little lighter, for the first time relieved from the dull burden of sorrow which is so intolerable to youth. And who can say with what transport Rob Glen saw this slim black-clad figure detach itself from the shadow of the house? He had come here, as he said to himself, half indignantly, half sullenly, for the last time, to wait for her—the last time he would come and wait—but not on that account would he give up the pursuit of her. She was his—that he would maintain with all his force. He would write to her next day, and ask why she did not come. He would let her feel that he had a claim upon her, that she could not cast him off when she pleased. But in his very vehemence there was a tremor of fear, and it is impossible to describe with what feelings of anxiety he had come, putting his fortune to the touch, meaning that this vigil should be final before he proceeded to “other steps.” And how had fortune, nay, providence, rewarded him! Not John this time, not Bell smoothing down her apron, not Jeanie with her pitcher at the well; but slim and fair as a lily in her envelope of gloom, pale with grief and exhaustion, with wet eyes and a pitiful lip, that quivered as she tried to smile at him, at last Margaret was here.
“At last!” He came out from the shadow of the firs and took her hands, and drew her toward him. “At last! my Margaret, my own Margaret! Such a weary time it has been waiting, but this repays all. Say that it is not your doing, darling. You have been kept back; you have not forgotten me, or that I was waiting here?”
“No,” she said; “but I did not know you were waiting here. I did not know, even, if I would find you to-night.”
“It would have been strange, indeed, if you had not found me. Every evening, as sure as the gloaming came, I have been here waiting for you, Margaret. I did not think you would have kept me so long. But it is not as it used to be between us, when I thought, perhaps, you might cast me off at any moment. I a poor farmer’s son, you the young lady of Earl’s-hall; but that could not be now; for you are mine, and I am yours.”
“It would not have been at any time—for that reason,” said Margaret. She was uneasy about the very close proximity he wished for, and avoided his arm. In her great trouble she had not thought of this, but now it troubled and partially shocked her, though she could scarcely tell why. She was roused, however, by the idea that she could have slighted him for any ignoble reason. “It is you that have always been kind to me,” she said. “I, who am only a country-girl, and know nothing at all.”
“You are a princess,” said Rob; “you are a queen to me.Myqueen and my Margaret: but you will not keep me so long hungering and thirsting out here, far from the light of your sweet countenance? you will not leave me so long again?”
“Oh, Mr. Glen!” said Margaret, “I ought to let you know at once, we are going away.”
“Do not, for Heaven’s sake, call me Mr. Glen! Do you want to make me very unhappy, to take away all pleasures from me? Surely the time is over in which you should call me Mr. Glen. You cannot want to play with me and make me wretched, Margaret?”
“No,” she said, with a tremor in her voice; “I will call you by your name, as I used to do when I was little. But it is quite true that I said—we are going away.”
“Going away? Where are you going, and who are we? Oh yes, I knew it was not likely they would stay here,” cried Rob, with mingled irritation and despair. “Where are they going to take you, my Margaret?—nowhere that I cannot come and see you, nowhere that I will not follow you, my darling. I would go after you to the world’s-end.”
“I am going with my sisters, Jean and Grace. They are my guardians now. I am to live with them till—for three years at least, till I am twenty-one; then they say I can do what I like. What does it matter now about doing what I like? I do not think I care what becomes of me, now that I have no one, no one that has a right to me! and they will not even let me cry.”
She began to weep, and he did not stop her, though his mind was full of impatience. He drew her to him close, and this time she did not resist him.
“Cry there,” he said, “Margaret—my Margaret! I will never try to keep you from crying. Oh! he deserved it well. He loved you better than all the earth. You were the light of his eyes, as you are of mine. They! what does it matter to them? They will bother you; they will make you do what they like; they will not worship you as he did, and as I do. But, Margaret, there is still one that has a right to you. Had he known, had I but had the courage to go and tell him everything, he would have given you to me; I am certain he would. He would have thought, like you, that it was better, far better for you, to have some one of your very own. The others! what are you to them? But to him you were everything, and to me you are everything. Margaret! say this, darling! Say, Rob, I am yours; I will always be yours, as you are mine!”
Margaret looked in his face with her wet eyes. But she did not say the words he dictated to her. Her heart was full of emotion of another kind. She was thankful to Rob for his kindness, and he was not like—any one else; he had a special standing-ground of his own with her. To nobody else could she talk as she was talking, on nobody else would she lean; but still it did not occur to her to obey him, to say what he asked her to say.
“I found that picture you made,” she said, “only to-day. It is him, just himself. I took it away to my own room that nobody might see it. It must have been some angel that put it into your mind to do that.”
“Yes, Margaret,” he said, “it was an angel, for it was you. And it was not I that did it, but love that did it; but if you will give it to me, I will make it still more like him. I will never forget how he looked, and how you looked—and my heart all full, and running over with love, which I dared not say.”
Alas! there was this peculiarity in the conversation, that while Rob was eager to speak of himself and his love, Margaret, in the most innocent and unwitting way, made it apparent that this was not the subject that interested her most. She was too polite not to listen to him, too grateful and sensitively affected by the curious link between them to show any opposition; but when she could, she turned aside from this subject, which to him was the most interesting subject in heaven or earth; and it is impossible to say how this fact moved Rob, who had never met with anything of the kind before. It piqued him, and it made him more eager. He watched her with an anxiety and impatience which he could scarcely keep in check, while she, with downcast eyes full of tears, pursued that part of the subject which interested her most.
“I should not like it touched,” she said; “I would not give it for all the pictures in the world! If I gave it to you, it would be only that it might be put into some case that would preserve it. I have folded it in paper, but that is not enough. I would not give it for all the pictures in the world!”
“Thank you, my darling,” he said. “It is something to have done a thing that so pleases you. If you will bring it to me, I will get it put in a case for you. Indeed, it was an angel that put that scene before me; for now when you look at that, and think ofhim, you will think of me too.”
“Oh no, Mr. Glen,” said Margaret—then she stopped, confused: “I mean, Rob— I am very, very thankful to you. But when I look at that, all the world goes away, and there is only papa leaning back, sleeping. I am glad he was sleeping. He slept a great deal, do you know, before he died. But it was better to see him in his chair, as he used always to be, than in his bed. I don’t want any one to see it but myself—other people do not understand it. They would hand it about from one to another, and say, ‘Is it not like?’ and talk. I could not bear that; I prefer to keep it to myself.”
“But you don’t mind me seeing it?” he said. “I should not be so unfeeling. Many a time when we are together—when we are married, darling—we will look at it together; and I will make a picture from it, a real picture, with you at my elbow, and it shall be hung in the best place in our house.”
At this Margaret winced slightly, but made no remark. She had not the courage to contradict him, to say anything against this strange view; but it disturbed her all the same. Probably it would have to be some time. There seemed a necessity for it, though she could not quite tell why: but as it could not be now, nor for a long time, why should it be spoken of, or brought in to disturb everything? She said, not knowing how to put aside this subject gently, yet to say something all the same: “Jean and Grace are going to take me to the Grange—to my house.”
“Toyourhouse!” Rob felt the blood flush to his face with the excitement of this thought. “I did not know you had a house of your own, Margaret.”
“Oh yes; it was my mother’s. It is away in England, where I never was. I have seen a picture of it. They say it is very English, with creepers hanging about the walls, roses andhoneysuckle, and beautiful great trees. Jean thinks everything in England is better than anything in Scotland. However pretty it may be, it will never, never be like old gray Earl’s-hall.”
Rob dropped his arm from her, and hung his head. “What am I thinking of?” he said; “you a great lady, with beautiful houses and lands, and I a poor man, with nothing. I must be mad to think that you could care for me—that you would even think of me at all.”
“Mr.—Rob! oh, what must you think of me that you say so? Do I care for money or for a house? Are you going away? Are you going to—leave me? oh!” cried Margaret, penitent, clasping her hands; “did you not know I had a fortune? But what does that matter? You have been kind, very kind to me, thinking I was poor—Rob! are you going to cry, you!—no, don’t, don’t; you will break my heart! I am calling you by your name now,” she said, anxiously, with one hand upon his arm, and with the other pulling down the hand which covered his face. She put her own face close to his in her generous, foolish earnestness—“I am calling you by your name now, Rob; don’t hide your face from me, don’t go away and leave me. If I am rich, is it not all the better? There will be plenty for us both.”
“It makes a difference,” he said; and indeed he was able to play his part very well, for never before in his life had Rob been so entirely ashamed of himself. Her very earnestness, she who had been so cool and calm before, her generous trouble and importunity humbled him to the very depths. A man may do a great many things that will not bear examination before he finds himself out; but to act such a falsehood as this—to pretend that he did not know what he knew so much more definitely than she did—to pretend to resist her generous anxiety—to avert his face, and let her woo him, she who had taken his hot wooing with such shy coldness! This made Rob feel himself the most wretched creature, the most despicable, miserable, mercenary wretch. He could not endure himself. Well might he hide his face for a poor swindler and cheat, worse, far worse than he had ever known himself before! To breathe deceitful vows, to say more than he meant, to promise more than he intended to perform, all this was not a thousandth part so bad; for indeed he had always been “in love,” when he made love; and a promise more or less, what is that? The common coin of young deceivers. Hitherto Rob had not been bad, only fickle and false. But what was he now? A cheat, a liar, a traitor, unfit to breathe where such innocent creatures were. Thus he played his part very well; his misery was not dissembled; and when he allowed himself to yield to her entreaties, to be moved by the eager eloquence of that soft lip which was so ready to quiver, what vows he made in his heart to be to Margaret something more than ever man had been before!
After this their intercourse was more easy, and by-and-by Rob came to feel that perhaps the momentary fear of losing him (which was how, in his native vulgarity and self-importance, he put it, after a while, to himself) had been a good thing. More than ever now she had committed herself. They wandered about among the trees and talked. They talked of her departure, and of how he could write to her—which Margaret was half shy again to think of, yet half happy too, a novelty as it was. But she could not tell him how this was to be managed, or how he could come to see her; all was strange, and Jean and Grace were very different from anything she had known in all her previous life.
“They tell me to sit down when I am standing, and to stand up when I am sitting down; they will always have me doing something different,” she avowed, though gently, and with a faint sense of humor. But this made it very evident that the life before her would be quite unlike the past. And it did not occur to Margaret that Jean and Grace ought perhaps to be informed of Rob, and the understanding between him and herself. Rob naturally said nothing about this, and to Margaret the thought did not occur. She had no idea of concealment, but simply did not think of her sisters in connection with this “secret,” which was something too strange and confusing to herself to be capable of explanation to others, who could not know how it had come about.
“Will you come up to the tower?” said Effie Leslie to Randal Burnside, who had walked home with her from the Manse. Randal had been much about Earl’s-hall since Sir Ludovic’s death. He had been ready to do anything for the family, and the family had been very willing to employ him. It was a kindness to give him something to do, his mother said, who was glad to throw him in Margaret’s way; and the decorousness of the grief which made Mrs. Bellingham and Miss Leslie quite unable to see anybody was put aside on his behalf as well as on his father’s. And Margaret and he had grown friends, though she was almost the only one in the house who never gave him any commissions in that moment of bustle. She had never ceased to be grateful to him for calling the doctor when her father’s illness began, but she was too independent to have any personal wants to which he could minister, and too shy to have asked his aid if she had. Effie was much more disposed to make use of the young man. She was not unhappy—why should she be, having seen so little of grandpapa? She was a little elated, indeed, to think that mamma was now my lady, and she herself entitled to precedence as a baronet’s daughter, and she was very glad to have some one to speak to who did not melt into tears in the middle of the conversation, or say, “Hush, child! remember that this is a house of mourning.” The Manse was not a house of mourning, and she liked to go there, and she liked Randal to walk home with her and talk. Lady Leslie was still looking at the brown cow and John’s pigsty, and Mrs. Bellingham, as has been said, had a headache. Effie peeped into the West Chamber and the long room, and saw nobody. And then she said, “Have you ever been on the tower, Mr. Burnside? Oh, do come up to the tower.”
Randal had climbed the tower a hundred times in former days. He went up the winding stair very willingly, thinking he would have all the better chance of seeing “the others,” when the falling night drove them in from their walks. Perhaps “the others” meant only the new Sir Ludovic; perhaps it had another significance. He was interested about Margaret, he allowed tohimself—more interested than he dared let any one know; for had he not almost seen a lover’s parting between her and Rob Glen?—a secret knowledge which made him very uneasy. Randal felt that he could not betray them; it would be a base thing in their contemporary—or so, at least, he thought; but he was uneasy. Many thoughts had gone through his mind on this subject. He did not know what to do. The only thing that seemed to him possible was to speak to Rob Glen himself, to represent to him that it was not manly or honorable to engage a girl in Margaret’s position, without the knowledge and consent of her friends. But to make such a statement to a young man of your own age, with whom you have not the warrant of friendship for your interference, nor even the warrant of equality, is a difficult thing to do. If Rob, resenting it, could have called him out, there would have been less harm; but that was ridiculous, and what could be done to expiate such an affront? There was nothing to be done, unless he permitted Rob to knock him down, and he did not feel that his forbearance was equal to that. So that Randal remained very uneasy on this subject, and did not know what to do. To let Margaret fall into the hands of a—of Rob Glen, seemed desolation and sacrilege; but what could Randal—who had known them both from his cradle—what could he do between them. Was it his part totell—most despicable of all offices in the opinion of youth? This train of uneasy thought was brought back when Effie looked into the little white-panelled sitting-room, the West Chamber, where Margaret, he knew, spent most of her time. She liked it better than the long room, every nook of which was so full of her father’s memory; and the ladies humored her, and, small as it was, made the West Chamber their centre. Where was she, if she was not there? Possibly out-of-doors in the soft evening, confiding all her griefs to Rob Glen. Possibly it was the thought that Randal himself would have liked to have those griefs confided to him, and to act the part of comforter, that made his blood burn at this imagination. So soon after her father’s death! He felt disposed to despise Margaret too.
“Go softly just here,” said Effie, whispering; “for there is Aunt Jean’s room, and we must not do anything to disturb her headache. It is a very good thing, you know, that she has a headache sometimes: even Aunt Grace says so—for otherwise she would wear herself out. Perhaps it is a little too late for the view, but the sky was still full of glow when we came in. Ah! it is very dark up here; but now there is only another flight. Oh no, it is not too late for the view,” Effie cried, her young voice coming out soft yet ringing, as they emerged into the open air. “Nobody can hear us here,” she said, with a laugh; for at seventeen it is not easy to be serious all day, especially when it is only a grandfather, nothing more, who is dead.
It was not too late for the view, and the view was not a view to be despised. There does not seem much beauty to spare in the east of Fife. Low hills, great breadths of level fields: the sea a great expanse of blue or leaden gray, fringed with low reefs of dark rocks, like the teeth of some hungry monster, dangerous and grim without being picturesque, without a ship to break its monotony. But yet, with those limitless breadths of sky and cloud, the wistful clearness and golden after-glow, and all the varying blueness of the hills, it would have been difficult to surpass the effect of the great amphitheatre of sea and land of which this solitary gray old house formed the centre. The hill, behind which the sun had set, is scarcely considerable enough to have a name; but it threw up its outline against the wonderful greenness, blueness, goldenness of the sky with a grandeur which would not have misbecome an Alp. Underneath its shelter, gray and sweet, lay the soft levels of Stratheden in all their varying hues of color—green corn, and brown earth, and red fields of clover, and dark belts of wood. Behind were the two paps of the Lomonds, rising green against the clear serene, and on the other side entwining lines of hills, with gleams of golden light breaking through the mists, clearing here and there as far as the mysterious Grampians, far off under Highland skies.
This was one side of the circle; and the other was the sea, a sea still blue under the faint evening skies, in which the young moon was rising; the yellow sands of Forfarshire on one hand, stretching downward from the mouth of the Tay—the low brown cliffs and green headlands bending away on the other toward Fifeness—and the great bow of water reaching to the horizon between. Nearer the eye, showing half against the slope of the coast and half against the water, rose St. Andrews on its cliff, the fine dark tower of the College Church poised over the little city, the jagged ruins of the Castle marking the outline, the Cathedral rising majestic in naked pathos; and old St. Rule, homely and weather-beaten, oldest venerable pilgrim of all, standing strong and steady, at watch upon the younger centuries. This was the view at that time from Earl’s-hall. It is a little less noble now, because of the fine, vulgar, comfortable gray stone houses which have got themselves built everywhere since, and spoiled one part of the picture; but all the rest will remain forever, Heaven be praised. The little wood of Earls-hall, pinched and ragged with the wind, lay immediately below, and the flat Eden, with its homely green lines of bank on either side, lighted up by here and there a sand-bank; but the tide was out, and the Eden meandered in a desert of wet brown sand, and was not lovely. The two young people did not speak for a moment. They were moved, in spite of themselves, by all this perfect vault of sky, and perfect round of earth and sea. It is not often that you can see the great world in little, field and mountain, sunset and moonrise, land and sea, at one glance. They were silenced for sixty seconds; and then Effie Leslie drew a long breath and began to chatter again.
“Well!” she said, with as much expression as the simple word was capable of bearing, “I don’t think I should like to sell this old house where the family has been so long, if I were papa!”
“I would not sell it, if it were mine, for anything that could be offered me!” cried Randal, in the enthusiasm of the moment. Effie shook her head.
“Perhaps not, Mr. Burnside; but then you would not have ten children—or nine at least; for now Gracie is married she does not count.But oh, I wish we could keep Earl’s-hall! It must be very pleasant to live where everybody knows you, and knows exactly what you are—that is, if you are anybody. Poor Margaret will not like leaving, but then she is a lucky girl; she is an heiress; she has a house of her own; and I dare say she will get very fond of that when she knows it. Do you think I ought to call herAuntMargaret, Mr. Burnside?”
Effie’s laugh rang out so merrily as she said this, that she checked herself with a little alarm.
“Suppose Aunt Jean should hear me!” she said; and then, after a pause, “Oh! look straight down, straight down under the fir-trees, Mr. Burnside. Oh, this is more interesting than the view! A pair of—”
“Do you think it is quite honorable to look at them?” said Randal. He had a presentiment who it must be.
“Oh, it can’t be anybody we know,” said light-hearted Effie.
Far down in the wood, under the firs, no doubt the lovers felt themselves perfectly safe; but there were treacherous groups of trees, whose branches had been swept in one direction by the wind, laying bare the two who stood beneath. They were standing close together, holding each other’s hands.
“The girl is crying, I think,” said Effie, “and leaning against the man. What can be the matter? can they have quarrelled? and she is all in black, with a thick veil—”
“Come to this side,” said Randal, hastily, “there is a break in the mist. I think I can show you Schehallion.”
“I like this better than Schehallion,” said Effie; and then she started and cried, “O-oh!” with a long breath; and suddenly blushing all over, looked Randal in the face.
“I think Schehallion is much the most interesting to look at,” he said, and, touching her elbow with his hand, endeavored to lead her away. But Effie was too much startled to conceal her wonder and alarm.
“Oh, Mr. Burnside! you are not thinking of Schehallion, you only want to get me away. I believe you know whoheis.”
“I don’t know who either is, and I don’t want to know,” cried Randal; “and I think, Miss Leslie, I must bid you good-night.”
That was easy enough; but Effie did not budge, though Randal went away.