“Dear Margaret,— If I may call my old playfellow so, I got your message, and thank you most cordially for it. I understood it, though I did not know what you wanted me to do. But I will tell you what I did. I saw him: he was anxious and complaining. I advised him to have patience, not to attempt to write, which would probably put you in a false position, and offered him a place in my uncle’s office. He has accepted, and he will take my advice. If this is not what you meant, let me know by one word. I thought it was for the best; but if silence is disagreeable to you, it is I that am to be blamed, not any one else. Thank you, with all my heart, for understanding that I would serve you, if there was any need, with my life. Yours ever,“Randal Burnside.”
“Dear Margaret,— If I may call my old playfellow so, I got your message, and thank you most cordially for it. I understood it, though I did not know what you wanted me to do. But I will tell you what I did. I saw him: he was anxious and complaining. I advised him to have patience, not to attempt to write, which would probably put you in a false position, and offered him a place in my uncle’s office. He has accepted, and he will take my advice. If this is not what you meant, let me know by one word. I thought it was for the best; but if silence is disagreeable to you, it is I that am to be blamed, not any one else. Thank you, with all my heart, for understanding that I would serve you, if there was any need, with my life. Yours ever,
“Randal Burnside.”
How her heart bounded! She seemed to have found some one who would set things right, who would manage those disturbed affairs for her. It did not occur to her that she had no right to put such a charge upon Randal, or make him her agent. That idea never entered her mind. How well he had divined what she wanted! The way in which he told her of it was very curt and brief, it is true, and she felt disposed to wonder why he had put it in such few words; but it relieved her of all her fears. It was in Randal’s hands now. Randal would not lethimcome to worry her. Randal would save her from all this trouble. Jean heard her laugh, as she was coming up-stairs—heard her laugh, the little monkey! and Mrs. Bellingham was so glad that she could not be angry, though had this outburst happened twenty-four hours sooner, she probably would not have taken her away.
And she was quite equal to the journey when the day came, though she was still weak and white. One incident occurred, however, before they started, which very much surprised Margaret. She was in the wainscot parlor, alone, reclining among her cushions, when Mr. St. John came in. The elder ladies were out, and Margaret had been left alone. Perhaps it was Miss Grace who had suggested this to the gentle Anglican. He came in and sat down beside her, with eyes enlarged by emotion and anxiety; and after he had told her how much sympathy her illness had brought out, and how many people had asked for her, and how fervently they had all thought of her when the prayer for sick persons came in the Litany, Mr. St. John startled Margaret beyond measure by suddenly telling her that he loved her, and asking if she would be his wife. “Me?” she cried, with wondering,questioning eyes, in profoundest bewilderment and surprise, and with her usual Scotch indifference to her pronouns. She grew paler than ever with horror. “Oh, it cannot be me!” she said, shaking her head. But this gave her a shock of surprise and pain. She did not want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Could it be anything in her that made this painful thing happen over again?
Aubreyjoined the travellers in London. It was very self-denying of him, very kind, to give up all the festivities at the Court, and all his many Christmas invitations, in order to accompany and take care of a party of ladies on a journey to Mentone, his aunt said; “I will not say that it is not a sacrifice to myself to give up Christmas at the Court. I don’t grudge the sacrifice, my dear, for your sake, and for the sake of your health; but I will not say it is nothing and does not matter, as Grace does. Don’t you believe, either, that it does not matter to Grace. She likes her amusement just as well as the rest of us, though, to be sure, our mourning would make a difference. But Aubrey is a young man, and has as many engagements as he can set his face to; and we are nothing but a couple of old aunts, and you a bit of a little girl. Yet when he can be of use he never hesitates. You ought to be very grateful, Margaret, for all he is doing for you.”
“And so I am,” said Margaret: it was very kind. And though Aubrey, when he arrived, scouted the notion, and declared that he would go anywhere to get rid of the festivities of the Court, this did not make any impression upon the ladies, who praised his self-denial to the echo. As for Margaret, there could be no doubt that his presence made the expedition very much more agreeable to her. Jean and Grace were very kind; but Jean was a little overpowering in her manifold arrangements, and Grace’s tenderness did not always fall in with the girl’s humor, who was apt to be impatient now and then. Margaret got better day by day; and there was so great a load lifted from her mind that she was able to enjoy everything as she had never done before. No chance now that she should be followed and pursued by any attendant of whom she would be afraid. Every step they took made that more impossible. She seemed to get out of the range of Rob Glen altogether when she crossed the Channel, not to say that Randal had already made her deliverance certain.
She dwelt upon this action of Randal in many a musing, with mingled admiration and gratitude. How clever it was of him to divine what she wanted to be done! The confusion of the moment had been partly to blame for the incoherent message she had sent; but it was not altogether the confusion of the moment. There had been, besides, a reluctance to mention the name of Rob Glen to Randal, a desire to imply, rather than to state distinctly, what she wanted him to do. The vagueness was at least partly voluntary, and partly she did not know what she wanted to be done. She wanted something, some one to interpose who should know better than herself, who should be able to see what was most expedient. What claim had she on Randal that he should have done so much for her? And what inspiration could it be that made him divine so exactly what she wanted—exactly what she wanted!—not to hurt Rob’s feelings? Oh no, very far from that. If she had not been unwilling to hurt Rob’s feelings, it would never have been in his power to give her so much alarm as he had done.
Margaret sat and thought over all this as they crossed the bit of sea between Dover and Calais. Jean and Grace had betaken themselves to a deck cabin, where they lay each on a sofa, scarcely venturing to congratulate each other that the sea was not quite so bad as usual, but prepared for every emergency, and Aubrey had gone to the other end to smoke a cigar. Margaret, in her excitement, had scorned the deck cabin, which both her sisters protested had been secured entirely for her. She was, though she did not as yet know it, one of those happy people who are excited, not prostrated, by the sea. She felt that she would like to walk about the decks with Aubrey; but all that had been permitted to her was to sit in the most sheltered corner, done up in shawls and wraps, so as to lessen all chances of taking cold. And after a while, when the first thrill of excitement calmed down, and she began to get accustomed to her own emotion, and the fact that she had left England, and the extraordinary certainty that these were the shores of France to which she was going, the extreme isolation of the moment drove Margaret back, as is so often the case, upon her most private thoughts. The exhilaration of her being, which was partly convalescence and partly change, she attributed entirely to the fact that, for the moment, she was free—delivered from the danger that had seemed about to overwhelm her.
This consciousness seemed to triumph over everything—her grief which was still so recent, her illness, all the ills her flesh was heir to. And as Margaret’s mind was growing amidst all this agitation, it was now, at this moment, in the middle of the Channel, that the thought suddenly occurred to her: if she had been a sensible girl—if she had not been a very foolish girl, how much better it would have been to pay no heed to Rob Glen’s feelings—to cut at once this bond which was all his making, which had been woven between them without any wish of hers—which she had always rebelled against, except those first nights when she had scarcely been aware what he was saying, or what doing—when she had received his declarations of love almost without hearing them, and allowed his kisses on her cheek with no more perception of their meaning than that he wanted to be “kind” and comfort her. There had been no lover’s interview between them in which Margaret had not—a little—shrank from him. She had held herself away as far as she could from his embracing arm. She had averted her cheek as much as possible; but it had been impossible for her to fling away from him, to deliver herself altogether at the cost of Rob’s feelings. This she had not strength of mind to do. But now she perceived that it would have been better had she done it—had she said plain No, when he declared his love with all the hyperbole of passion.
Margaret knew she did not love him, certainly not in that way; but how she had shrunk fromsaying it—from letting him feel that she did not care for him as he cared for her! How it would have hurt his feelings! Rather put up with some little excess of affection for herself, she thought, than humiliate him in this way! And now was the first time when she really asked herself, Would it not have been better to say the truth? The question flushed Margaret’s cheek with crimson, then sent back all her blood in a sudden flood upon her heart. She did not venture to contemplate the possibility of having done this—of having actually said to him, “It is a mistake; you are very—very kind, but I am not in love with you.”
The mere idea of it appalled her. How cruel it would have been! How he would have “thought shame!” How his feelings would have been hurt! But still—but still—perhaps it would have been better. She had just become pale and chill all over with the horrible possibility of having given such pain as this, when Aubrey’s voice startled her. He was saying, anxiously,
“I am afraid you are ill. I am afraid you are feeling cold. Won’t you go into the cabin and lie down? We shall be there in half an hour.”
“Oh no!” said Margaret, her paleness disappearing in another sudden blush. The days of her blushing—her changes of countenance, which were like the coming and going of the shadows—had come back. “Oh no! I am not cold; and I am not ill. I like it. But I—was thinking—”
“I wonder if I might offer you a penny for your thoughts? I dare say they are worth a great deal more than that. Would you like to have mine? They are not worth the half of a penny. I was thinking what poor creatures we all are—how unamiable we are on board of a steamboat (the most of us). Look what pictures of misery these people are! It is not rough, but they cannot believe that it may not be rough any moment: when there is a pitch—there—like that!” said Aubrey, himself looking a little queer. “They think, now it is coming! All their strength of mind, all their philosophy, if they have any, cannot resist one heave of that green water. Ugh—here’s another!” he cried, relapsing out of his fine moral tone into abject sensationalism. Margaret laughed as merrily, with her eyes dancing, as if there was no Rob Glen in the world.
“But I don’t care,” she cried. “I like it: when it seems to go from under your feet, and then bounds like a greyhound.”
“Don’t speak of it,” he said, faintly. “And why is it you are so superior to the rest of us? Not because you are so much brighter, and purer, and better—”
“Oh no!” cried Margaret, interrupting him, shaking her head and smiling. “Oh no! for I am not that—”
“You should not contradict people who are older than yourself—it is not good manners,” he said, solemnly. “You are all that, I allow; but that is not the reason. It is simply because of some little physical peculiarity, some excellence of digestion, or so forth, if one may venture to use such a word: not because it isyou—which I should think quite a natural and proper reason. No, for I have seen a creature as fair and as good almost as you are, Margaret (our travellers’ names are Margaret and Aubrey, you know—that’s understood), I have seen a beautiful young girl, everything that was sweet and charming, lying dishevelled, speechless, a prey to nameless horrors. Ah! that was a bad one!” said the young man, unable to conceal that he himself had become extremely pale.
“Oh! I am very sorry for her,” said Margaret, forgetting the compliment in the interest of the story. “Who was she, Mr. Aubrey?” and she turned her sympathetic eyes full upon him, which was almost more than, in his present state of sensation, he could bear; but, happily, Calais was within a stone’s-throw; and that is a circumstance which steels the suffering to endurance. He got up, saying, “I think I must look after the aunts.”
Margaret looked after him with a warm gush of sympathy. Who was this beautiful young girl who had been so ill? Was poor Aubrey, too, “in love?” She felt disposed to laugh a little, as is natural in the circumstances; for does not every one laugh when a love-story is suddenly produced? But she was deeply interested, and at once felt a kindred sympathy and affectionate interest opening up in her bosom. Poor Aubrey! Had anything happened, she wondered, to the beautiful young girl who was everything that was sweet and charming? Was not that enough to make everybody take an interest in her at once?
Margaret got no immediate satisfaction, however, about that beautiful young girl, but she often thought of her; and when she saw any shadow come over Aubrey’s face, she immediately set it down to the credit of this anonymous young lady. For the moment, however, she was herself carried away by the excitement of being “abroad.” But, alas! is not the very first of all sensations “abroad” a bewildering sense that it is just the same world as at home, and that “foreigners” are nothing else than men and women very much like the rest of us? For the first hour Margaret was in a kind of wonderland. The new, unusual sound of the language, the different looks of the people, delighted her, and she could understand what they were saying; though both Jean and Grace declared it to be such bad French that they never attempted to understand. “Is it very bad French?” she whispered to Aubrey; “perhaps that is why I know what they mean.” And he gave her a comical look which made Margaret inarticulate with suppressed laughter. Thus the two young people became sworn allies, and understood each other. But, after the first hour, the old familiar lines of the world she had been previously acquainted with came back to Margaret. The people, though they were dressed differently and spoke French, were the same kind of men and women as she had always known. Indeed, the old women in their white caps looked as if they had just come from Fife.
“That is just what they were at home,” she said again to Aubrey; “the old wives—those that never mind the fashions—even Bell!” There were some of the old women on the French roads, and at the stations, so like Bell that the sight of them brought tears to Margaret’s eyes.
“Who is Bell? I have so often heard of Bell. Bell has been put forward again and again, till I am afraid of her. I am sure you are afraidof her; and Aunt Jean, too, though she will not say so.”
“Oh, not me!” cried Margaret, uncertain as ever about her pronouns; “Bell is—she is justBell. She was our house-keeper; she was everything to me; she brought me up. I never recollect any one else. Afraid of Bell—oh! no, no. But I would not like Bell to know,” said Margaret, slowly, “if I did anything that was bad—anything that wasrealwrong—”
“You never will,” said Aubrey, “so it doesn’t matter; but I should call that being afraid of her. Now there are some people whom you only go to when youhavedone something that isreal wrong.”
“Are there? I don’t know. It was Bell that brought me up, more than any one else. She is living now near—on the way to the Kirkton. But you will not take any interest in that.”
“I take the greatest interest,” said Aubrey; and it so chanced that this conversation, broken off in the railway, was renewed again when they were settled at Mentone, where again old women were to be found like Bell. They passed rapidly through Paris, and settled at once in the place that was supposed to be good for Margaret. But by the time they reached the sunny Riviera Margaret had thrown off all trace of indisposition, and evidently wanted nothing but air and sunshine, and a little petting, like other flowers. They had a little villa on the edge of that brightest sea; and there along a path bordered by a hedge of aloes, and with a great stone-pine at the end, its solemn dome of foliage and its great column of trunk relieved against the Mediterranean blue, the two young people took a great many walks together.
One of these evenings specially stamped itself on their memories; the sky was flushed rose-red with the sunset, and all the sounds in the air were soft, as summer only makes them in England: there was a tinkle going on close at hand from a convent-bell, and there was a soft sound of voices from the beach—voices, of which the inflections, the accents, were all dramatic, though they could not tell a word that was said. It was the enchanted hour, the time of natural magic and poetry; and Aubrey, though he was not at all poetical, felt it a little more than he could have believed possible. He had found out how pretty Margaret was—how much prettier, day by day. It was not that there was any striking beauty in her that conquered with a glance; but every morning when she appeared down-stairs, with her color coming and going, with her brown eyes full of such eagerness and lovely wonder, “she grew upon you,” Aubrey said. He had thought her very tolerable even at first—no particular drawback to her income and her estate. But by this time he took a great deal of interest in her. She was never the same; always changing from serious to gay, from red to white, from quiet to eagerness. He was interested, never wearied. He had not really found it much of a sacrifice to accompany the ladies, after all. The place was a bore; but then, fortunately, Margaret no longer required to be kept at this place; there was a reasonable hope of moving on to places in which there was more amusement; and Margaret was really amusing, very amusing, as girls go. There was a variety about her which kept your interest alive.
“Did you ever do anything that was real wrong?” said Margaret, dreamily, looking out toward the horizon where the rose of the sky met the blue of the sea. She was rather thinking aloud, than realizing the scope of what she said; and it is doubtful whether the girl ever realized the difference between a girl and a man—the very different sense thatreal wrongmight have to him, or the equivocal meaning which such words might bear to a listener of so much more experience in the world.
He laughed, startling Margaret from her dreamy musing. “Alas!” he said, “a great many times, I am afraid. Did you? But I don’t suppose you know what wrong means.”
“Yes,” she said, drawing a deep breath, “I am not in fun; once: and it seems as if you never can get better of it. I don’t know if it is any excuse that I did it because I did not like to hurt a person’s feelings.”
“What was it?” he said, lightly; “a little fib—a statement that was not quite justified by fact? These are the angelical errors that count for wrong among creatures like you.”
“Then what do you call wrong, if that is not wrong? Aubrey, it was more wicked than that: but I am not going to tell you what it was. I have been dreadfully sorry ever since I did it. But I feel a little easier, a little happier now.”
“Perhaps you broke a bit of old Dresden?” he said, “or lost that Venice point Aunt Jean showed me. I should never forgive you for such sins, Margaret. No wonder you are reluctant to confess them. You are happier because nobody could be unhappy in this delicious evening, walking as we are. It is only in such a scene that I could look with complacency upon the heartless destroyer of china, the careless guardian of lace—”
“You are only laughing at me,” she said; “I think you are always laughing. Don’t you think there is anything in the world more serious than china and lace?”
“Very few things, Margaret. Few things so dear, which you will allow is very serious, and few things so easily injured.”
“But oh, Aubrey! I think that is almost wicked, to love a thing that cannot love you again, as much as—more than things that have life.”
“I don’t do that, Margaret.” He looked at her so earnestly that she was almost abashed, yet, fearing nothing, went on, moved by the flowing of her own newly awakened thoughts. “You and Jean, you talk as if a little bit of a cup or a plate—what we call pigs in Fife—was of more importance— What are you laughing at, Aubrey?—because I said pigs? But it is the common word.”
“My dear little Margaret,” he said, “don’t make me laugh, with your pigs. Lecture me. Let us go and sit under the pine and look out upon the sea, and do you preach me a little sermon about real right and real wrong. I am just in the mood to profit by it now.”
“You are doing what papa used to do,” said Margaret, half laughing, half crying; “he would always make a fool of me. And how should I lecture you? You must know much better than I do.”
“I ought, I suppose,” he said. The pine stood on a little point, one of those innumerablefairy headlands that line that lovely coast, the sea lapping softly, three parts round, the foot of the cliff on which it holds its place. The air was more fresh there than anywhere else. The pine held high its clump of big branches and sharp evergreen needles high over their heads: behind them was a bosquet of shrubs which almost hid them as they sat together. The blue sea thus softly whispering below upon the beach, the delicate rose that tinted the sky, the great pine isolated and splendid, how could they recall to Margaret the dark wood, all worn with the winds, the mossy knoll, the big elbows of the silver fir, the moan of the Northern sea with which she had been so familiar? The one scene, though made up of almost the same details, bore no more resemblance to the other than Aubrey Bellingham did to Rob Glen: and where could a greater difference be?
“Yes,” he said; “so far as wrong is concerned, I should suppose so. I must be better up in that than you are; but, all the same, I should like you to teach me. Let it be about the right; there you are strong. What must I do to cease to be a useless dilettante—as you say I am?”
“Me? I never said so, Aubrey—not such a word. I never said such a word.”
“But you meant it. Tell me, Margaret: if I can cease to be a dilettante and a trifling person, what would you have me be?”
He bent toward her, looking into her eyes, and half put out his hand to take hers; and Margaret, startled, saw once more what it had so much bewildered her to see in Mr. St. John, the same look which she knew in the eyes of Rob Glen. What an amount of experience she was acquiring, ever renewed and extended! This frightened her greatly. She drew away from him upon the garden-seat, and kept her hands clasped firmly together, and beyond the reach of any other hand.
“I do not want you to be anything,” she said, “you are very well as you are. You might think upon—perhaps you might think upon—the common folk a little more. When you came to Earl’s-hall we did not know what you meant; and sometimes even now Jean and you— I know most about the common folk, they are just as interesting as the others.”
“Ah,” he said, laughing, but a little discomfited, “you mean the poor. Must I take to visiting the poor?”
“I suppose you call them the poor, in England,” said Margaret, doubtfully, “but you know a great deal better than I do, Aubrey; for one thing, you are older. I think perhaps Jean will think I ought to go in now.”
“Certainly, I am a great deal older; but not so very much, either. I am twenty-five—just about the right age to go with eighteen. Yes, tell me a little more. I shall recollect about—what do you call them? the common people—not the poor. Go on, my moralist; I am ready to be taught.”
“I think I hear Grace calling,” she said, rising to her feet. “I am sure Jean will think the wind is getting cold, and that I should have gone in before.”
“The wind is as soft as summer,” he said, with a little excitement, “and the evening as sweet as—yourself. Wait a little, only a few minutes; there is something I wish so much to say to you.”
“Oh, Mr. Aubrey!” she said, frightened. “Do not say it! I would rather you did not say it. Once I did very wrong, not wishing to hurt a person’s feelings; but that is what I must never do any more.”
“Are you sure,” he said, rising too, with a sudden flush of anger, “that you know what I was going to say?”
Margaret paused, with an alarmed look at him, the color wavering in her cheeks, her eyes very anxious, her lips a little apart.
“What I was going to say,” he continued, pointedly, “was, that I fear I must soon leave the villa, and the fine weather, and your delightful society. This kind of holiday life cannot endure forever.”
“Oh!” She uttered her favorite exclamation with a look of distress and, he thought, disappointment. This was balm to Aubrey’s heart.
“Yes, I am sorry, too. But what can be done when duty calls? My office is getting clamorous, and there is nothing for a man to do here. Now, perhaps, we had better carry out your intention, and go back to Aunt Jean.”
And they walked through the garden back to the house, with scarcely a word spoken between them. One way or the other way, both were equally uncomfortable modes of managing such a crisis. She had hurt his feelings! It was better than all that followed the episode of Rob Glen; but still it was not a pleasant way.
Andit was true that the very next morning Aubrey declared his intention of going away. “My chief finds that the office cannot get on without me,” he said, pretending to have had letters by the morning mail; while Margaret sat, not daring to look up, feeling more guilty than she could say. Her consciousness that she was to blame even carried the day over her determined belief in the sincerity and absolute truthfulness of every one about her. Twenty-four hours since she would have accepted Aubrey’s statement as a matter-of-fact which left no room for doubt or comment. But now she could not but feel that she had something to do with it, that she had hurt his feelings, which made Margaret feel very guilty and wretched. He had been so kind to them, to her and her sisters, and sacrificed a great many pleasant things to come with them: and this was all her gratitude! She did not like to lift her eyes. When Jean and Grace both rushed into wailing and lamentations, she said nothing. She tried to swallow her tea, though it nearly choked her, but she could not speak.
As for Mrs. Bellingham, she said not half so much to her nephew then as she did after breakfast, when she had him to herself.
“You can’t be going to do anything so foolish, Aubrey, my dear Aubrey!” she said; “why, you are making progress day by day! If ever a girl was delighted with a young man, and pleased to be with him, and happy in his society, Margaret is that girl. And you know how anxious Iam, and how it would please everybody at the Court to see you provided for.”
“You are very kind, Aunt Jean,” he said, with a flush of angry color. “I know you mean nothing that is not amiable and kind; but I think, all the same, I might be provided for in some other way.”
Jean, though she was so strong-minded, felt very much disposed to cry at this failure of all her wishes.
“I don’t understand you at all,” she said; “I am sure there was nothing meant that was the least disagreeable to your feelings. Margaret, though I say it that perhaps shouldn’t, is as nice a girl as you will find anywhere; and though her education has been neglected, nobody need be ashamed of her. And you seemed to be quite pleased; and I am sure she is really fond of you.”
“Yes, that is one of your Scotticisms,” he said; “you mean that as long as I am serviceable, and don’t ask too much, Margaret likes me well enough. I don’t say anything against that—”
This time Mrs. Bellingham really did put up her handkerchief to her eyes. “I never expected to hear of my Scotticisms from you, Aubrey,” she said. “Of course I am Scotch—there is no doubt about it—and I would never be one to deny my country. But I did think that, after spending by far the greater part of my life in England, I might have been free of any such abuse as that.”
“My dear Aunt Jean, do you think I meant abuse? I mean that Margaret likes me well enough as a friend—which you call being fond of me. I shouldn’t wonder if she would herself say, with all the innocence in the world, that she was fond of me, knowing perfectly what she means; but then I should put a different meaning on such words. She will never be fond of me in my sense; and so, as I have still a little pride left (though you might not think so), it is clear that I cannot be provided for, as you say, in that way.”
“What is the matter with you, Aubrey? Has anything happened between Margaret and you. Have you said anything, or has she said anything?”
Aubrey saw he had gone too far, and had almost committed himself; and he did not want any one to think that a mereingénue, a bread-and-butter girl like Margaret, had repulsed or discouraged so accomplished a gentleman as himself. He said, with a little laugh, “My dear aunt, what are you thinking of? That has not been at all necessary. Margaret and I are the best friends in the world. I am ‘very fond of her,’ as you say. She is a charming little girl. But your scheme will not do; that is all. Was not I quite willing to be provided for? But it will never come to anything. Oh yes, I suppose the chief might be smoothed down; there is nothing so very important going on at the office: but what is the good of it? Margaret and I will stroll up and down the beach, and listen to the band, and all that, and be very fond of each other; but we will never get a step farther than we are now.”
“I know what it is,” said Mrs. Bellingham—“you are bored; that is the whole business; and I don’t wonder. To see all the poor things about, with their sick faces, is enough to make anybody ill. And Margaret, the little monkey, after giving us such a fright, is just as well as I am. Some one was speaking to me the other day about the villa. I dare say we could get it off our hands quite easily; and in that case, if we go on to some place which is more amusing, will you change your mind—or, let us say, reconsider your decision?”
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, and then he remembered his interests like a young man of sense. “Well, perhaps I will reconsider my decision,” he said.
After this the party went on into Italy, and saw a great many things that filled Margaret with delight and wonder. She expanded like a flower, as the spring came on—that Italian spring which is as youth to whosoever can receive it with an unburdened soul. And to Margaret, who already possessed youth, it was not only delight, but mental growth and expansion of the whole being. Aubrey left them for a time, but returned again to escort them home in that month of May which is the climax of all the splendors of spring. The interval between his going and his coming back did a great deal more for Aubrey than any attentions of his could have done. They were in Florence when he left them, where Mrs. Bellingham and Miss Leslie had already found a number of acquaintances, and where soon they were deep in afternoon teas and social evenings, as if they had been at home.
Margaret had no education which fitted her for the delights of this life, and she could not run about alone in the solemn Italian city as she had done at home; and she missed her companion, who, though he was not clever nor particularly well-informed, understood how to set afloat those half-thoughtful, half-bantering conversations which youth loves, and in which young talkers can soar to heights of wise or foolish speculation, or drop into nonsense, at their pleasure: an art in which, it is needless to say, neither Mrs. Jean nor Miss Grace was skilled; and now and then he had anaccèsof enthusiasm equally beyond the range of the ladies, who walked about, guide-book in hand, and insisted that nothing should be omitted. “Margaret, Margaret! you are running away without seeing half of the pictures. I am only at No. 310,” Mrs. Bellingham would say. But when Aubrey was there, the girl was emancipated, and allowed to gaze her soul away upon what she liked and what he liked. How she missed him! She was quite ready, as he said, to declare with fervor that she was “very fond” of Aubrey, and welcomed him when he came back with genuine pleasure. “Oh, how glad I am you are to be with us now till we get home!” she said.
Aubrey looked at her with a glance which was half angry and half affectionate. “You are a little deceiver,” he said; “you like me to be with you only so long as I am useful. I am a kind of courier; that is all the good of me.”
“Oh no,” cried Margaret, “I cannot tell you how much I missed you. It is because you are so kind.”
“It is because of me, not because of you,” he said, with a frown and a laugh; “and so it always will be, women are so”—he was going to say selfish; but when he caught Margaret’s eyes puckered with emotion and wistfulness, looking anxiously at him, he stopped short and changedthe word—“ridiculous,” he added, not knowing what she meant, and feeling a little, just a very little, prick in his heart that it was so, and that Margaret only found him agreeable for his good qualities, and not from any inclination toward him within her own being. Her eager reception of him, however, woke a sentiment in him which was not unlike love; he was pleased by the brightness of her welcome: and to be unable to make a girl fall in love with you, a simple girl of eighteen who has never seen anybody, after months of companionship—a girl, too, whom to marry would be to provide for yourself for life—this, there can be no doubt, is humbling to a man of accomplishment and experience. So Aubrey made up his mind to another effort, with more determination, if with less lively hope. He would not quarrel with her if in the long-run she still refused to fall in love with him, but he began to hope that a different result might be attained. He liked Margaret, and Margaret liked him, without any disguise; and, after all, there was no telling: perhaps perseverance on his part, and the habit of referring to him perpetually, and getting a great deal of her pleasure through him, might bring about a satisfactory state of things at the last.
They reached London in the beginning of June, when everything looked at its brightest. What a change Margaret felt in herself! She was no longer the little girl who had been allowed to grow up in all the simplicity of a country maiden, untaught and unsophisticated, at Earl’s-hall. She had seen a great many things and places, though that mere fact does not make very much difference. She had learned to think; and there had grown about her that little subtle atmosphere of personal experience which can rarely be acquired in the little world of home. It was not possible for her to identify herself with her old sisters as she might have done with her mother. From the first they had been separate existences, detached from her, though in close incidental conjunction, and so kind to her. She was grateful to them, and loved them as she could, but she was very conscious of the isolations of her existence; and how could she help the little criticisms, the little laughters, the amusement which their “ways” could afford only to one whose life was not involved in theirs, and whose duty to them was less than the most sacred? Such detachedness has much to do with the energy of personal existence. Margaret had begun to feel herself, and to know what her life was, during the hours of solitude that were inevitable; and through the long period of partial companionship in which she went and came, docile and quiet in the train of Jean and Grace, without feeling herself ever identified with them, her own being was slowly developing within her. She had begun to see what the position was that she was born to occupy, and to foresee dimly duties which she had no natural guide to instruct her in, no natural representative to do for her, but which would have to be done otherwise than as Jean and Grace would bid.
These grave foreshadowings of the future came, however, but by glimpses upon Margaret. She had no desire to think of the future: over it there was a shadow which she did not know how to meet. She held it as much as she could at arm’s-length, still with a dumb faith in circumstances, in something which might still happen to deliver her. So entirely had she succeeded in this, that the alarming image of Rob Glen, which every time she thought of him had more and more terrors for her, had not even troubled her in any vision for weeks before the party recrossed the Channel on their way home. But on that passage, as they came back, Margaret suddenly remembered the thought that had occurred to her there as she went away. It was a breezy day, and the sea was not smooth: Jean and Grace lay on sofas in the deck cabin, indifferent to Margaret, and everything else in earth and heaven. Aubrey, not much more strong in this particular, had taken himself and his miseries out of the way. Margaret, in happy exemption, sat alone. But this was not a happy exemption, as it happened; for suddenly there leaped into her mind a recollection of the question she had asked herself first, in this very steamboat, on this very ocean, five months ago— Would it not have been better to disregard Rob Glen’s feelings and tell him the truth? “Yes,” she said now to herself, firmly, though with pale lips, and a shadow immediately fell over the brightness: the time was coming when her fortitude would be put to the test, when she must meet him and decide what was to be the course of her life—and every tick of her watch, every throb of her pulse, every bound of the boat, was bringing her nearer—nearer to this terrible moment, and to Rob Glen.
They stopped in London for a few days to “do some shopping”—perennial necessity which haunts every mortal—and “to see the exhibitions.” This was a thing which Mrs. Bellingham considered absolutely necessary. She had not failed to go through the Royal Academy, with her catalogue in her hand, marking the pictures she liked, once in the last twenty years. Nobody in society could avoid doing this. Whether you cared for them or not, it was indispensable that you should see them—they are always a topic of conversation afterward; and Mrs. Bellingham had seen a dull party redeemed, quite redeemed, by a little knowledge of the exhibitions.
“Oh yes, dearest Margaret, we must stay; dear Jean never misses the pictures, and you and dear Aubrey must see them. Dearest Jean says that all young people should see them; certainly they are very beautiful and humanizing, and will do us all a great deal of good. We are to start as soon as we have had our luncheon. I should have liked to go in the morning, but dear Jean likes to see the people as well as the pictures; and, darling Margaret, you that have never seen anything, that will be so good for you too.”
“Not your hat, Margaret, yourbonnet!” said Mrs. Bellingham; “we are in town: it is not like Florence or Paris, or any of those foreign places where we were visitors. Here you must understand that we are intown. Next year we will come up for the season, when we are out of mourning (or almost out of mourning), and you must be presented and all that; but there is nothing to be done in crape; it would be altogether out of the question, and a disrespect to papa. But, such as it is, put on your bonnet, my dear Margaret. We shall see nobody—but we may see a good many people; and you must never forget that you are intownnow.”
The bonnet was put on accordingly, and the ladies went to the Academy, with Aubrey in attendance as usual. Perhaps he did not like it so well as in foreign places, for they were a little travel-worn, and their crape not so fresh as it ought to be; but still the faithful Aubrey was faithful, and went. He knew that if anybody saw him (and of course somebody would see him), it would be supposed that he had expectations from the old aunt in her imperfect crape; or the truth would creep out about Margaret, and he would be forgiven everything when it was known that it was an heiress upon whom he was in attendance. Such facts as these change the external aspect of affairs.
It was a bright day, warm and cheerful, and the Academy, of course, was crowded. Aubrey did not consider that it was his duty to follow Mrs. Bellingham while she made her conscientious round; but he kept close by Margaret, who was half frightened by the jostling and crowd, and could not see anything, and had a vague sense of dread she could not tell why. “I am afraid you have a headache,” Aubrey said; but Margaret did not feel that it would be honest to take refuge in that common safeguard of a headache. It was something more like a heartache that she had, though she could not tell why. She was standing looking round her vaguely enough, tired and waiting for a seat, in the great room, in a corner not so crowded as the rest, and Aubrey was coming up hurriedly to tell her of a sudden vacancy on one of the benches, when he was arrested by the sudden change in her countenance. Her eyes, which had been wandering vaguely over a prospect which afforded her but little interest, suddenly cleared and kindled; her face, which had been so pale, was suddenly lighted by one of those flushes of color which changed Margaret’s aspect so completely; her lips, which had been so serious, parted with the brightest of smiles. She made a step forward, all lighted up with pleasure, and held out her hand. Aubrey stopped suddenly short in his advance, and looked suspiciously, keenly at the new-comer who produced this change on her. He was not a man who was addicted even to the most innocent of oaths; but this time his feelings were too much for him. “By Jove! the man of Killin,” he said; and he was so much startled that the words were uttered half aloud.
“Randal!” Margaret said, all smiling, holding out her hand. “Oh! I did not think I should see any one I knew—much less you. How little one can tell! I had been wanting to go away.”
The simplicity of pleasure with which she said this took Randal by surprise. He clasped her hand and held it in his own for a moment with a corresponding self-betrayal. “It seemed too good to be true,” he said; and they stood together for a moment so completely absorbed in this sudden delight of seeing each other, that Aubrey gave way to another vulgarism quite unlike his good-breeding: he made as though he would have whistled that long note of wonder and discovery which is one of the primeval signs invented before language. “When did this come about?” Aubrey said to himself; and his surprise was so genuine that he could do nothing but stand half petrified, and watch the course of this singular interview going on in all simplicity before his eyes.
“Jean and Grace are both here,” said Margaret, “and Aubrey—Aubrey, whom you saw with us last summer. Oh, Randal, have you just come from home? Are they all quite well? Is it long since you saw Bell? Is Earl’s-hall very dreary, standing empty? Oh! I would like to hear about everything. Will you come and see us? But tell me, now, are you staying in London, and what was it that brought you here, just this very afternoon, when I was coming too?”
“My good angel, I think,” said Randal, fervently; and again the color rushed over her face, and she smiled—as Aubrey thought he had never seen her smile before.
“Let us say a kind fairy,” said Margaret; “but will you come and see us where we are living? For here there is no quiet place to talk. Don’t go away though, Randal: Jean and Grace would like to see you—and I too.”
“Is it likely that I should want to go away?” he said; and then his face paled a little, and he added: “There is some one else you want to ask me about, Margaret. You will not need to trust to me for information at second-hand.” Then he lowered his voice, and said, bending toward her, “Glen is here.”
“Oh!” Aubrey could see the usual little exclamation prolonged almost into a cry. She grew quite pale with a dead pallor of fright. “Oh, Randal, take him away; or take me away. What shall I do?” she cried.
“Do you not wish to see him, Margaret?”
“Oh no, no, Randal! Turn round; pretend to be looking at the pictures. What shall I do? Oh, do not let him know I am here! It was that made me ill before. It was—all a mistake, Randal. Oh, I felt sure when I came out to-day something was going to happen; and then when I saw you I thought how silly I had been—that it was something good that had happened: now here is the right reading of it. Oh, Randal, you helped me before; can you not help me again now?”
“I will do anything, whatever you wish,” he said; “but, Margaret, if this is your feeling, it is scarcely fair to Glen; I think he ought to know.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, but in too great a panic to know what she was saying; “which will be the best? Should I stay here while you take him away, Randal? I could stand close to the pictures and put down my veil; or will you take me away? Oh, think, please, for I do not seem able to think! But he would be sure to know me if he saw me with you. Aubrey—oh, here is Aubrey,” she said, seizing his arm as he approached; “he will take me; and, Randal, come—will you come to-night?”
“Where?” said Randal, putting out his hand to detain her. Aubrey, with a somewhat surly nod of recognition which the other was scarcely aware of, gave him the address; and almost dragged through the crowd by Margaret’s eagerness, went away with her, not ill-pleased, notwithstanding this disagreeable evidence of some mystery he did not understand, to carry her off from the man she had smiled upon so brightly. She had dropped her veil, which was half crape, over her face, and, holding her head down and clinging to his arm, drew him through the crowd.
“Are you ill?” he said; “what is the matter, Margaret?” But she made no reply; andit was only when he had found Mrs. Bellingham’s hired carriage, which was waiting outside, and put her into it, that she seemed to be able to speak. Even then she would not let him go.
“Will you come home with me?” she said, with a sweetness of appeal and a wistful look which Aubrey, with some indignation, felt to be false, after the reception she had given to “that Scotch fellow,” yet could not resist.
“I am afraid you must be ill,” he said, half sullenly—“yes, if you wish it, I will go with you; but Aunt Jean, I am afraid, will think this very strange.”
“There was some one that I did not want to see. Ah!” she cried, putting up her hands to her face and sinking back into a corner of the carriage. Aubrey, looking out where her terrified glance had fallen, saw a man turn round and stare after them as they drove away; but he could not see who or what kind of man this was.
WhenRob Glen accepted the offer that Randal made him and agreed to the conditions, it was done partly in despite, partly in impatience, partly because the novelty tempted him, in the state of discouragement and irritation which Margaret’s troubled response had thrown him into. He had not ceased to be “in love” with her, nor was the impassioned letter he had addressed to her really false, notwithstanding his constant confidential interviews with Jeanie, which would have been the direst offence to Margaret had they been known, or had she really cared for him as he supposed and hoped her to do. Had she been within reach, Rob would have been really as much in love with Margaret as ever; but he was angry and hurt by her indifference, and humiliated, he who had won so much love in his day, that she did not receive his letter with pleasure. Even if she had seen the inexpediency or impossibility of continuing the correspondence, he could not forgive her that she had no word of thanks to send him for the letter, which might have made a girl happy, no breathing of soft response to its impassioned strain. He was pleased to punish her, to revenge himself by the hasty pledge not to write again. Yes, he would punish her. Next time she received one of these letters it should be after months of weary waiting, when she would thank him as she ought.
It was absolutely impossible for Rob to realize that it would be a relief to Margaret not to hear from him at all. The idea was incredible. Never before in all his experience had he met with a girl who was quite insensible to his wooing, and Margaret, who was so young, so artless! She might be afraid to snatch that painful joy; the perils of a clandestine correspondence might alarm instead of exciting her; but that she should notlikeit, was beyond all Rob’s acquaintance with human nature, and altogether incredible to him. And thus he would punish her. Edinburgh too would no doubt be more cheerful than the farm in the depth of winter, when his mother’s ill-humor and the absence of all amusement would aggravate the short days and long, cold nights, in which even a stroll with Jeanie was no longer practicable. Mrs. Glen, too, looked favorably on the idea. It would “pass the time.” “And you’ll be in the way of seeing a good kind of folk,” his mother said; “plenty of gentry is aye about thae lawyers’ offices. They’re in want o’ siller, or they’re wanting to get rid o’ their siller; and I wouldna lose a chance of a good acquaintance. Then, when the time comes, and when you set up in your ain house with your lady-wife, you’ll no be without friends.”
“Friends made in an Edinburgh writer’s office, of what use will they be in the heart of England?” said Rob, with lofty superiority; but he was not displeased by the suggestion. He no more thought it possible that, with his talents, he could fail to “win forward,” as his mother said, than he thought it possible that Margaret could really be indifferent to such a glowing composition as the love-letter he had sent her. The only thing in the whole matter that he felt any reluctance about was, how he was to break it to Jeanie, whose sweetness, as his confidential friend and adviser, had been very soothing and consolatory to him. As the decision had to be made at once, there was not even much time in which to break it to Jeanie. He strolled past her father’s cottage in the high toun on one of the nights when Margaret lay at her worst in a haze of fever, with her life apparently hanging on a thread. But none of all the little knot of people at the Kirkton, whose lives were tangled with hers, were as yet aware of anything that had occurred to her. Rob went slowly past the little window, all glowing with fire-light, where John Robertson sat tired with his work, while Jeanie put away the cups and saucers after their tea. By-and-by it would be necessary to light “the candle,” for he had still a job to finish before bedtime; but what did they want with the candle when they were at their tea? Fire-light was quite enough for the scanty meal and the conversation which went on, not without a divided attention on Jeanie’s part; for she could not but think that she heard a step outside which she knew.
“I think I will run out for two or three minutes and see Katie Dewar, when you are settled to your work, faither,” Jeanie said; “she is always complaining, and it’s a fine night,” she added, with a little compunction, looking out through the uncurtained window. The sense of deceiving, however, was not at all strong or urgent in her, for such little deceits about a lover’s meeting are leniently dealt with in Jeanie’s sphere.
“You’ll no be very long, Jeanie.” Her father had a sufficiently good notion of what was going on, and, as he was quite unconscious of any complication in Rob Glen’s affections, and quite confident in his daughter’s purity and goodness, it did not disturb him much. “Mind that it’s a cold night, and dinna loiter about.”
“I’ll no be very long, faither.” Jeanie threw a shawl round her, but left her pretty head, with its golden-brown curling hair, uncovered. If it was very cold it was always easy to throw a fold of the shawl over her head. She went out, with her heart beating—not altogether with pleasure. To be withhimwas still a kind of happiness, and it was better even to be the confidant of his engagement with another—which Rob had so cunningly implied would never have existed hadJeanie’s presence hereabouts been known—than to have nothing at all to do with him. She stole along, half flying, in the shadow of the houses, and finally came out into the cold moonlight, at the corner beyond the little square, where she could see some one waiting. Poor Jeanie! her pleasure and her sadness, and the mixture of the sweet with the bitter which was in these interviews, had become a kind of essential elixir to her life.
“Jeanie,” he said, after their first greetings were over, “I am going away.”
“Going away!” She had to grasp at his arm to support herself. “Ay,” she said, drearily, after a pause, “nae doubt; I aye kent that was how it would have to be.”
“I only knew it myself yesterday,” he said; “I have not lost a moment in telling you. How did you know that this was how it would be?”
“Oh, I kent it,” she said, holding her hands clasped to support herself; “it was easy to divine—it was no such a mystery. Weel, Maister Glen, ye’ll go to her ye’ve chosen, and ye’ll be—real happy with her. She’s bonnie, and she’s good, and she’ll give ye more, far more, than the like of us could give you. I wish ye luck with a’ my heart. Ay, a’ my heart! baith her and you.”
Jeanie withdrew a step from his side as she spoke, and her voice took something of the soft wail of the dove in the inflections and modulations which mark the native tongue of Fife. It was in a kind of soft cadence that she spoke—too soft to be tragic, but pitiful and wailing, the most pathetic of utterances. Jeanie did not rebel—it was natural, it was right; but the blow went to her heart.
“My foolish Jeanie,” he said; “what are you thinking of? Do you think it is Margaret that has sent for me? Do you think she is going to acknowledge me all at once, and that all our troubles are over? No, my dear; you are too simple and too good, my bonnie Jeanie. It is not that. Margaret takes no notice of me. I am going to Edinburgh—to a situation, not for ease, not very far away—and not to her, Jeanie. You must not give me up so soon.”
He put his arm round her, and drew her close to him; and Jeanie, though full of better resolutions, was weak with the shock she had just received. She was thankful to lean against him for a moment.
“No that—not to her? when she could settle a’ if she pleased. Eh, Rob, ladies are no like—they’re no like—”
“You, Jeanie? No; who is like you? Always kind—whatever happens, always ready to forgive. What is that in the Bible, ‘Suffereth long, and is kind.’ I think that must have been made for you.”
“Oh!” said Jeanie—like Margaret, in the soft long breath of that ejaculation—“we shouldna quote Scripture, you and me! for what we are doing is a’ wrang. Oh, Rob, it’s a’wrang! You that are troth-plighted to another lass—though she is a lady—and me, that—”
“Yes, you that—what of you, Jeanie? not pledged, you must not say so, to another man.”
“And if I was,” she cried, “what would you have to do with it? it would be but justice. Na, na, that’s no what I’m meaning, as weel ye ken. My heart has never had room but for ane. No—me that should ken better. Oh, dinna, dinna, I canna have it! Me that should have kent better was what I meant to say.”
“Why should you know better? How can we tell what will happen in three years? And till three years are over nothing is settled,” he said, with a secret thrill of anxiety and pain in his heart to remember that this, unlike much that he said, was altogether true.
“It’s true,” she said, shaking her head. “My heart’s that heavy I can think of nothing but harm; we may a’ be dead in three years; and oh, I wish it might be over with me!”
“I cannot have you speak like this,” he said. “I am going to Edinburgh—you don’t seem to care to hear—to a situation Randal Burnside has offered me. I don’t know that I will stay in it long. Very likely it will only be a stepping-stone to something better. I will see you when I come back, which will be often, Jeanie; and indeed I think you might come over to see your friends in Edinburgh—you must have friends in Edinburgh—and see me.”
“I’ll not do that,” said Jeanie, decidedly.
“You’ll not do that? I don’t think that is quite kind. But never mind, I will come home—often—on Saturday, like Randal Burnside.”
“Will you be in the same line as Maister Randal, Rob?”
“I think not just the same line. He pleads, you know, Jeanie, in the Parliament House, before the judges, and I will have to manage cases before they get there. It is a very important business. Failing what I was brought up to—the pulpit, and all that I was trained for— I think my people will be more pleased with the law than anything else. It is always respectable; it is one of the learned professions. I will not deny that it is a very good opening, Jeanie.”
“And when do you go away?”
“This week,” he said. “I don’t want to lose any more time; I have lost all my summer. It would have been better for me if I had never come home. I would have missed you, Jeanie; but then I might have avoided other things that can never be got rid of now.”
“Oh!” she said, her heart wrung with the suggestion, pleased with the regret, wounded with the comparison; “I wonder if you would say just the same of me to her as of her to me?”
“How could I, when you are so little like each other?” he said. “But, Jeanie, let us think of ourselves; let us not bring inher, or any one. My bonnie Jeanie, when I come back I shall always find you here?”
“I canna tell—the cobbling’s no just a grand trade, and what will feed ane does not aye serve two. I think I will maybe take a new place—at the New-Year.”
“But not to take you from the Kirkton, Jeanie—not to take you away from me?”
“If it was to take me far, far away—to London, or to America, or New Zealand, where so many are going—and I wish my faither would think of it,” she said, softly. “Oh! I’ve great reason to pray, ‘Lead me not into temptation,’ for I would be far, far better away.”
“You are not like yourself to-night, Jeanie. Why should you lecture me to-night, just when you have to say good-bye to me—good-bye for a little while?”
“It would be far, far better if it was good-byeforever,” she said; “but eh, Rob, I canna understand mysel’. I would be glad if it was me that was to go—ay would I. I would go to New Zealand, if my faither would but come, the morn; but when it’s you, a’ my strength fails me, my heart goes sinking away from me, my head begins to turn round. I know it’s right, but I canna bide it, Rob!”
“My poor little Jeanie,” he said, caressingly. “And I cannot bide it, if you speak of what a man likes; but it is better for me that I should not be wasting my time. I should be doing some work that will be worth a man’s while. What is money, Jeanie? I shall have plenty of money. But I ought to be known, I ought to think of my name.”
“Oh, that’s true,” she said. “I know well you’re no a lad to spend your life in a quiet country place. And that just shows me more and more the difference between you and me, Rob. I shouldna call you Rob— I should say Maister Glen.”
“Will you write to me, Jeanie? That was why we lost sight of each other. I did not know where you were; but now I will often send you a letter, and then, on the Saturdays, I will probably come over with Randal Burnside.”
“Rob, Mr. Randal is a gentleman, and so will you be a gentleman. No, oh no; you and me should say farewell. I’ll aye think upon you. I’ll pray for you night and morning; but dinna speak about you and me. We’re like the twa roads at Earl’s-ha’ that creep thegither under the trees, and then pairt, ane west, the ither east. Oh, Rob!” said Jeanie, with streaming eyes, “no good will ever come of this. Let us summon up a good courage and pairt. Here we should pairt. No, I’ll no grudge you a kiss, for it will be the last. It’s a’ been meesery and confusion, but if we pairt the warst will be past. Say Farewell, and God bless you, Jeanie!—and ah! with all my heart, I’ll say the same to you.”
“You are trembling so that you can scarcely stand,” he said. “Do you think I will let you leave me like this? I cannot part from you, Jeanie, and why should I? It would break my heart.”
“It has broken mine,” said Jeanie, fervently; “but rather a broken heart as a false life. Rob, Rob, hand me nae longer, but let me gang to my faither. I’m safe when I’m with him.”
But it was not for a long hour after this that Jeanie returned to her father, conducted as near as he could venture to go by her lover, who grew more and more earnest the more he was resisted. She went in very softly, with a flushed and glowing cheek, stealing into the cottage not to disturb the solitary inmate who sat working on by the light of his dim candle.
“Is that you, Jeanie?” he said, placidly; “and how is Katie Dewar, poor body?” This question went to the bottom of her guilty heart.
“I’ll no tell you a lie, faither; I wasna near Katie Dewar. It’s a fine night, and the moon shining; I gaed down the road, and then a little up the road, and then—”
“Oh, ay, my lass, I ken weel what that means,” he said; “but I can trust my Jeanie, the Lord be praised for it. I’m just done with my job, and it’s been a lang job. When the supper’s ready I’ll blow out the candle, and then if you’ve onything to tell me—”
“I have naething to tell you,” she cried. But as they sat together over their supper, which was of “stoved” potatoes, a savory dish unknown to richer tables, Jeanie pressed upon her father once more with incomprehensible energy and earnestness the idea of New Zealand, which had already two or three times been talked of between them before.
Rob, however, left her with little alarm as to New Zealand. He was deeply gratified by that attachment to himself which made her ready to put up with everything, even the bond which bound him to another; and the struggle in Jeanie’s mind between what she wished and what she thought right, which ended in the triumph of himself, Rob, over all other powers and arguments, was very sweet and consolatory to him. It healed the wounds of hisamour propre. If Margaret did not give him the devotion he deserved, Jeanie gave him a devotion which he did not hesitate to confess he had not deserved, and this reconciled him to himself. The maid made up for the short-comings of the mistress, and perhaps Jeanie’s simple worship even gave a little license to Margaret as to the great lady, from whom, in her ladyhood and greatness, the same kind of love was not to be expected. She had things in her power to bestow more substantial than Jeanie’s tenderness, and with these she had vowed in due time to crown this favorite of fortune. Rob was a sort of Sultan in his way, and liked the idea of getting from these two women the best they had. He went away from Stratheden a few days after, with his heart quite soft and tender to his Jeanie. He would not forget her this time. He would write to her and say to her what he could not say to Margaret. He would keep a refuge for himself in her soft heart, whatever happened. And, indeed, who could tell what might happen in three years?
While he thus made a settlement which quite pleased him in his affairs of the heart, the other part of his life was not quite so satisfactory. The position which he took in the office of Randal’s uncle in Edinburgh was naturally that of a beginner, and he did not “win forward” as he had hoped. When clients came, they preferred to see the principal of the office, and instead of making acquaintance among the gentry, Rob found that all he had to do with them was opening the door to them when they came in, or showing them the way out when they left the office.
He did not say much about this, nor did he reveal his discontent to Randal, having sufficient good-sense to learn by experience, and perceiving that this was indeed quite natural and the only thing to be expected, as soon as circumstances had impressed it upon him. But struggles with reason and circumstances of this kind, if they invariably end in an increase of hardly acquired knowledge, and are thus, perhaps, instructive in the highest degree, are not pleasant. And Rob having made no advance in “position,” and having no important work confided to him, but only, as was natural, the most elementary and routine business, soon became heartily sick of the office and of himself. He returned more hotly to his former hopes, as he felt the folly of this, and soon began to be conscious of the utter incongruity between his prospects and his present position. He tried to console himself like any child, by imagining to himself scenes of delightful revenge for all those “spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes.” When he was Margaret’s husband, and the possessor of her fortune, he planned to himself how he too would become a client of the employers who now treated him so coolly. What piece of business would he intrust to them? He would make them buy in Earl’s-hall if it ever came to be sold. He would consult them about the investment of the long accumulations of Margaret’s minority. But in the mean time, while these grandeurs were not his, the office became more and more irksome to him.
He had lost the habit of work during those idle months at home, where love-making had been his only serious occupation, and indeed he had never had the habits of work necessary here, the routine of certain hours and clearly defined duties, which the more free and less regular work of education is in general so little akin to. He had not been what is called idle in his studies; but then these are always vague, and a young man may make up the defective work of the day at night or at odd moments, which a clerk in an office never can do. After a while, Rob had become so entirely disgusted with the humbleness of his position and the character of his work—so deeply impressed by the incongruity of his present with the future he looked forward to—and so indignantly conscious of powers within him which were capable of something better than this, that he threw up the situation which it had taken Randal no small trouble to get for him, and, without warning, suddenly set out for London, carrying with him his sketches and some slight and frothy literary essays which he had written, with the full intention of becoming a painter and an author, and taking the world by storm. The payment of three months’ salary had given him the means for this; and he felt that it was the only way, and that he had known all along it was the only way, to acquire for himself fame and fortune. He had by this time heard of Margaret’s illness, and of her absence; but even had he thought of doing so, he had no means of following her into the expense and mystery of that unknown world which the ignorant know as “abroad.” Indeed, to do him justice, he went to London with no intention of molesting Margaret, but only with a very fixed determination of making himself known—of coming to some personal glory or profit which should make up to him for the personal failure of the past. Rob had been in London for about a month on that eventful day when Randal Burnside, who was in town upon business, had met him in the Exhibition. They had met not without a certain friendliness; and Randal, curious to know what he was doing, and still more curious to ascertain how much he knew about Margaret, and if he was keeping his promise in respect to her, had engaged Rob to dine with him, and had parted from him only a few minutes before he met Margaret herself.
Meantime Rob, having finished his inspection of the pictures, and convinced himself that there were many there much inferior to his own, though he could find no purchasers for them, was issuing somewhat moodily forth, when a slight figure in black hurrying down the steps before him, and clinging closely to the arm of a man whom he thought he had seen before, yet did not recognize, caught his eye. He stood and looked after them while the carriage was called, his curiosity awakened he could scarcely tell why. He had followed them down to the pavement, and had just reached it when Aubrey put Margaret into the carriage; and all at once a vision of that well-known face, all tremulous and eager, avoiding, as he thought, his suddenly excited gaze, rose before him. In another moment the carriage was dashing along more quickly than is usual in the streets of London. Rob stood with a gasp gazing after it, and did not come to himself till it was too late to attempt the frantic expedient of jumping into a hansom and rushing after it. He did so when he realized what it was that had happened; but by this time it was too late, and he had not remarked the appearance of the carriage, but only the face in it. Margaret! The sight put sudden fire into his veins. He must see her; he must claim her. It was irrational and monstrous that a girl who was his promised wife should be entirely separated from him. Whether it was her own will or that of her friends, he would not submit to it any more.