“Dear Rob,— I could not write, and I cannot now, because I promised to Ludovic. You must not come; oh don’t come, if you have any pity for me! My life would be made miserable. How is it possible I could forget you? You don’t forget anything in such a short time—and how could Ieverforget? Oh, it has cost me too much! Please, please do not come. I am quite well, and you must not—indeed you must not—mind my not writing, for I promised Ludovic. Good-bye, dear Rob; I do not want to hurt you. I always knew that you were very kind; but you must not—indeed, indeed, you must not—think of coming to me here.”
“Dear Rob,— I could not write, and I cannot now, because I promised to Ludovic. You must not come; oh don’t come, if you have any pity for me! My life would be made miserable. How is it possible I could forget you? You don’t forget anything in such a short time—and how could Ieverforget? Oh, it has cost me too much! Please, please do not come. I am quite well, and you must not—indeed you must not—mind my not writing, for I promised Ludovic. Good-bye, dear Rob; I do not want to hurt you. I always knew that you were very kind; but you must not—indeed, indeed, you must not—think of coming to me here.”
Her wet dress, her spoiled crape, clung about her limbs; her wet shoes were like two pools, in which her cold little feet were soaked. As is usual at such moments of excitement, her head was burning but her feet cold. Nevertheless, she wrote another little note to Bell, telling her that she was quite right not to send any letters, and begging that if she saw Mr. Randal Burnside she would ask him to speak to Mr. Glen. Bell was to say that Margaret had told her to make this extraordinary request—and Mr. Randal Burnside would understand. Nothing could be more incoherent than this last letter, for Margaret did not half know what she meant Randal to do or say; but he had promised to help her; he had told her to call him whenever she wanted him. Was her poor little head getting feverish and light? She went out again, stealing, in her wet garments, once more down-stairs, leaving a dimness upon the polished wood, and walked all the way through the gradually increasing rain to the post-office in the village, where she put inher two letters. She was aching all over, her head hot and light, her feet cold and heavy, her crape all soaked and ruined, her hands too feeble to hold up her dress, which clung about her ankles, and made her stumble at every step, before she got home.
Thetime that had passed so peacefully over Margaret, bringing so many new experiences, new scenes, and enlarged acquaintance with her own circumstances and advantages, had not gone with equal satisfaction over Rob Glen. Margaret’s pledge to him—that pledge which she had given so easily, and which his mother prized so deeply—had been nothing but painful and shameful to him. Conscience has curious varieties in different persons, even in persons so nearly related as mother and son. Rob felt no sting in his moral consciousness from the fact that he had led Margaret to commit herself in her moment of trouble, and had taken advantage of the very abandonment of her grief to assume the position of a lover, the mere fact of which gave him a hold over her which nothing else could have given. To do him justice, he would have taken the same position with any comely poor girl whom he had encountered in equal distress; but the poor lass would probably have thought little of it, whereas to Margaret’s more delicate nature there was all the reality of an unbreakable bond in the embrace and kiss with which he had taken possession of her, before she was aware. But Rob felt no trouble in his conscience in this respect. It did not occur to him that he had surprised her, and taken advantage of her sorrow and loneliness and bewilderment; but in respect to the pledge which his mother had with so little trouble got from her, his conscience did speak. Margaret, it was true, had thought nothing of it; she had felt that all was done already, that her fate was fixed and irrevocable, that she could not go back—and what did her name on a piece of paper signify? But here was where Rob’s honor, such as it was, came in; he hated that piece of paper. He was deeply mortified by Margaret’s readiness to consent to everything so long as she could get free from his mother and himself. The written bond seemed to put him in a false position, to lessen him in his own eyes. He would have nothing to say to it.
“Keep it yourself, if you like it, now that you have got it—it is none of my doing,” he had said, throwing it from him. Mrs. Glen secured it with a cry of dismay, as it was fluttering toward the fire.
“Ay, I’ll keep it,” she said; “and ye’ll be fain some day to come questing to me for your bit o’ paper, as ye call it, that you never would have had if your mother had been as thoughtless as yoursel’.”
“Mother!” he said, furious, “do you think I would hold a girl to her written promise, if she did not want to keep her word?”
“I canna say what you would do,” said Mrs. Glen; “you’re just a great gomerel, that’s what you are. Ye have mair confidence in her being in love with ye, a lang leggit ne’er-do-weel, than in onything that’s reasonable: but, Robbie, my man, love comes and love goes. You’re no bad-looking, and you have the gift of the gab, which goes a lang way—and maybe she’ll stick to ye, as you think, against a’ her friends can say; but for me, I’ve aye a great confidence in what’s put down in black and white, and I wouldna say but you would be fain to come to me for my bit o’ paper, for a’ so muckle as you despise it now.”
“Never will I build my faith on such a foundation—never will I hold Margaret to her bond!” cried Rob; but his mother locked the precious bit of paper in the old secretary which stood in the parlor, with a cynical disregard to his protestations.
“It’s there in the left-hand drawer, if anything should happen to me; if you should ever want it, you’ll ken where to find it,” she said.
And several weeks went on without any impatience on the part of either in respect to Margaret; even the conversation which Rob had with the new Sir Ludovic, who summoned him curtly to give up all idea of his sister, had rather encouraged than depressed him; for it was evident that Margaret had showed no signs of yielding, and her brother was not even her guardian, and had no power whatever over her. When he thus ascertained from Sir Ludovic’s inadvertent admission that Margaret had remained steadfast, Rob had metaphorically snapped his fingers at the Baronet. He had been perfectly civil, but he had given Sir Ludovic to understand that he cared little enough for his disapprobation. “If I was in your position I should no doubt feel the same,” he had said with fierce candor; “I should think that Margaret was about to throw herself away; but she does not think so, which is the great matter.”
“She will think so when she comes to her senses—when she is fit to form an opinion,” Sir Ludovic cried; and Rob had smilingly assured him that he was contented to wait and put this to the proof. But after that interview, when Earl’s-hall was dismantled and left vacant, and everything belonging to the Leslies seemed about to disappear, and not a word came out of the distance in which Margaret was, both Rob and his mother began to be uneasy. Rob had not calculated upon any correspondence; but yet he had felt that somehow or other she would manage to communicate with him, and to find some means by which he could communicate with her. Girls of Margaret’s condition do not submit to entire separation as those of Jeanie’s do; and when day after day passed, and week after week, it was natural that he should become uneasy. Nor was the anxiety which he felt as a lover unshared by the cooler spectator. Mrs. Glen began to ply him with questions, anxious, fretful, scornful, derisive.
“Ony word to-day, Rob?” she would say; “I saw you gang out to meet the lassie with the post.” “Dear, dear, Rob, I hope our bonnie young lady may be well!” would be the burden of the next inquiry—and then came sharper utterances: “Lord! if I was a lad like you, I wouldna stick there waiting and waiting, but I would ken the reason.” “Do you think that’s the way to court a lass, even if she be a lady? I would give her no peace if it were me; I would let her see that I wasna the one to play fast and loose with.” These repeated assaults were followed by practical consequences quite as disagreeable. Instead of the indulgence with which he had been for some time treated, the tacit consent given to his do-nothingness, the patience of his mother, though it went sorely against the grain, with an existence which produced no profit and was of no use—he began to be once more the object of those bitter criticisms and flying insults which she knew so well how to make use of, to the exasperation of the compelled listener. “What it is to be a man and a good scholar!” she would say. “I couldna sit hand-idle, looking at other folk working—no! if it were to save my life. Eh, ay, there’s a wonderful difference atween them that are born to earn their living, and them that are content to live on their friends. I hope the time will never come when that will be my lot. But no one of a’ my friends would help me, that’s one thing, certain, though there are some that have aye the luck to get somebody to toil and moil, while they live pleasantly and gang lightly. It is the way of the world.”
Another time she would burst out with all the fervor of roused temper. “Lord, man, how can ye sit there and see every creature in the house working but yoursel’? I would sooner weed the turnips or frichten the craws—but you’re of less use than a bairn of three years auld.”
Rob steeled himself as best he could against these blighting words. He would stroll forth whistling by way of defiance and be absent the whole day, absent at meal-times when his mother exacted punctuality, and late of returning at night. It was a struggle of constant exasperation between them. He had no money and no means of getting any, or he would gladly have left the farm, where there was no longer even anything to amuse him, anything to give him the semblance of a pursuit. To be sure, he worked languidly at his drawings still, and resumed the interrupted sketch of Earl’s-hall which had occupied so important a place in his recent history.
To have before you the hope of being rich in three years, of being able to enter another sphere and cast away from you all those vulgar necessities of work which fill the lives of most people—to have ease before you, happiness, social elevation, but only on the other side of that long chasm of time, which for the moment you can see no way of getting through—it is impossible to imagine a more tantalizing position. Say that it is utterly mean and miserable of any man to fix his entire hopes upon an elevation procured in such a way; but Rob was not conscious of this. A rich wife, who was also pretty and young, seemed to him a most satisfactory way of making a fortune. Had she been old and ugly the case would have been different; but he had no more hesitation about enriching himself by means of Margaret, than he had felt in securing Margaret to himself in the incaution and prostration of her grief. His conscience and his honor had in these particulars nothing to say. But as day after day went on and he received nothing from Margaret to prove his power over her, no stolen letter, no secret assurance of her love and faithfulness, Rob’s mind became more and more uneasy, and his thoughts more and more anxious. She was the sheet-anchor of his safety, without which he must return into a chaos all the more dark that it had been irradiated by such a hope.
And this suspense, while it made his position at home more and more uncomfortable every day, did not improve his mental condition, as may be easily supposed. He had entertained plans, before he had perceived how easily he might step upward by aid of Margaret’s hand, of seeking his fortune in London, and either by means of pen or pencil, or both together, making out some kind of future for himself. But why should he take this trouble, and expose himself to the rich man’s contumely, etc., when, by-and-by, he might himself appear among the best (as his ignorant fancy suggested), a patron of art instead of a feeble professor of it—a fine amateur, with all the condescension toward artists which it is in the power of the wealthy to show? This was an ignoble thought, and he was partially conscious that it was so; but there was a latent love of indolence in him which is always fostered by such prospects of undeserved and unearned aggrandizement as now flaunted before his eyes. Why should he work laboriously to gain a little advancement for himself, when by mere patience and waiting he might reach to such advancement as the most Herculean work of his could not bring him to? And the suspense in which he was worked upon his mind and led him on in this evil path. He could do nothing till he had heard from her; and she would write, she must write, any day.
These motives altogether, and the want of money to do anything for himself, and even the reproaches of his mother, who denounced him for eating the bread of idleness without affording him any means to attempt a better existence—which latter acted by hardening his heart and making him feel a defiant satisfaction in thwarting her—all drove him deeper and deeper into the slipshod habits of an unoccupied life. He got up late, happy to escape atête-à-têtebreakfast with his mother, and her sneers and reproaches, at the cost of Jenny’s integrity, who smuggled him in a much better breakfast than his mother’s while the mistress was busy about her dairy or in her poultry-yard; he dawdled over his sketches, doing a little dilettante work as pleased him; then he would stroll out and perhaps walk across the country to some other farm-house, where he was sure of a hospitable invitation to share the family dinner, and an excellent reception from the mother and daughters, to whom it was no trouble to make himself agreeable; or he would go to the Manse, and resume the often interrupted discussion about his “difficulties” with Dr. Burnside, who was anxious to be “of use” to Rob, and to be instrumental, as he said, in bringing him back to the right way.
These discussions amused both parties greatly—the Minister, as affording him a means of bringing forth from their ancient armory those polemical weapons in which every man who has ever attempted to wield them, takes a secret pride—and the young sceptic, by reason of the delightful sense of superiority with which he felt able to see through his adversary’s weakness, and sense of power in being able to crush him when he wished to do so. Often these controversies, too, which were continually renewed and never-ending, got Rob a dinner, and saved him from the domestic horrors of the farm. And by-and-by there happened another accident whichthrew him still more into the way of mischief, as happens so often to those who dally with temptation. He had made his peace with Jeanie on that melancholy night after Margaret’s departure. She had been angry; but she had been persuaded to hear his story—to understand him, to see how it was that he had been “drawn into” the present circumstances of his life—and finally to be sorry for him who had gone astray because unaware that she was near, and because of poor little Margaret’s need of comfort and solace.
Did not Jeanie know how he could console a poor girl in trouble with that tongue of his, that would wile a bird from a tree? She had forgiven him, and they had parted in melancholy kindness, recognizing that fate, not any fault of theirs, had separated them. When the household at Earl’s-hall was broken up, Jeanie had returned to her father; and not long after she had, as was most natural, encountered Rob in a lonely lane, where she was taking a melancholy evening walk. What could be more natural? She could not sit and talk with the wives at their doors, when the soft autumn twilight, so full of wistful suggestion, dropped softly over the “laigh toun.” Jeanie was too much in the midst of her own life, too much absorbed by the dramatic uncertainties of fate, to be capable of that tranquil amusement. There were not many people in the Kirkton who cared for the exercise of a walk. The men might stray out a hundred yards beyond the village, on one side or the other, with their evening pipe, but the women kept at “the doors;” they had enough of exercise in the care of their families and in “redding up the hoose.”
Thus Jeanie, even if she had wanted a companion, would have been unlikely to find one; and indeed it was much more to her mind to stray forth alone, very melancholy, with her head full of Rob, and all her old anger and indignation softened into indulgence and pity. He was made like that, could he help it? He could not see trouble anywhere without doing what he could to console the sufferer. Jeanie knew this well—and how tender a comforter he was. And poor Miss Margaret was so young and so bonnie, and in such sore trouble; and oh, it was easy to see, Jeanie thought to herself, how soft her heart was tohim! No wonder; he would wile a bird from the tree. They met while she was in this softened mood; and Rob was one who never neglected the good the gods provided of this sort. He in his turn had recourse to Jeanie for consolation, throwing himself upon that feminine mercy and sympathy which never had yet failed him. And Jeanie cried, and was dismally flattered by his confidence in the midst of her suffering, and told him all she had heard from Bell about Margaret’s movements, and forgot herself, poor girl, in the intensity of fellow-feeling and understanding.
Next time they met it was not by accident; and Rob, while growing more and more anxious about the new love, which meant more than happiness to him, which meant likewise fortune and an altogether elevated and loftier life, took the comfort of the old love which was thus thrown in his way, and found life much more tolerable from the fact that he could talk over his distresses with Jeanie. He could confide to her his mother’s taunts, and the hardness of his life at home, till Jeanie almost felt that to see him married to Margaret would be an advantage to herself, though she cried over it bitterly enough when she was alone. But what didshematter, after all, a poor lass? Jeanie thought she could put up with anything to see him happy.
“A bonnie end your drawing and your painting and a’ your idleness is coming to,” said Mrs. Glen, one November morning, while Rob obscured all the light in the little parlor window, putting the last touches to that drawing of Earl’s-hall. “A bonnie way of spending your life. Eh, man! I would sooner sweep the house, or clean the rooms! What is the good o’ a’ this fyking and splairging? and what is to be the end of your bonnie miss that a’ this idle work was to win? I’ll warrant she thinks she’s gotten clear off, and got a’ she wanted, and no need to do a hand’s turn for you, in recompense of a’ that you have thrown away upon her.”
“You have a very poor opinion of Margaret,” he said, “if you think so little of her. You can scarcely want her for a daughter-in-law.”
“Me!” said Mrs. Glen; “am I wanting her? I hope I have mair sense than to put my trust in daughters-in-law. ‘A gude green turf’s a fine gude mither,’ that’s a’ the most of them are thinking. Na! she might gang to—Jerusalem for me, if it wasna that her siller is the only way I can think of to get you bread, ye weirdless lad. When you have no mother to keep a roof over your head, what is to become of you? The Lord be thanked there’s no a weirdless one in my family but yoursel’. Do I want the lass or her siller—no me! But I’m real glad I’ve gotyonbond over her, for you and no for me.”
He frowned as he always did at the mention of this. “I am going to pack up this drawing and send it to Miss Leslie,” he said.
“The picter! in a present!” Mrs. Glen stood for a moment taken by surprise, and a little bewildered by the suddenness of the suggestion. “I’m no that sure but what it’s a good notion,” she said, slowly; “them that dinna ken might say it was throwing good money after bad; but I’m no that sure. In a present? What might you get for that now if you were to sell it? for there’s plenty folk, I hear, that are fuilish enough to give good solid siller for a wheen scarts upon paper.” She had the most exalted idea of her son’s skill, and secretly admired his work with enthusiasm—with all the naïve appreciation of a “picture” which is natural to the uninstructed but not dull understanding—though she would not have betrayed her admiration for the world.
“What might I get for it?” said Rob, looking critically yet complacently, with his head a little upon one side, at the finished drawing. “Well—if I were known, if I had got a connection among the picture-dealers, perhaps—let us say twenty pounds.”
“Twenty pound!” (she drew a long breath of awe and wonder); “and you’ll go and give that light-headed lassie, in a present, a thing that might bring you in twenty pound!”
Rob did not explain that the bringing in of twenty pounds was an extremely problematical event. He got up with a little thrill of excitement and easy superficial feeling. “I would give her,” he said, “just to hear from her—just to have her back again—just to have her handin mine— I would give her everything I have in the world!”
“Ay, ay, my bonnie man,” said his mother, impressed for the moment by this little flourish of trumpets. But she added, “And it would not be that hard to do it, if she’ll only return you back your compliment, Rob, and do as muckle for you!”
This was how the sending of the picture “in a present” was decided upon, as a touching, if dumb appeal, to Margaret’s recollection—not to say as “laying her under an obligation,” which it would be necessary to take some notice of; for both mother and son fully appreciated this side of the question, which also forced itself at once upon Mrs. Bellingham’s practical and sensible eyes. Mrs. Glen, for her part, entertained a secret hope that Margaret would have sense enough to see the necessity of giving not only thanks and renewed affection, but perhaps something else “in a present,” which would make a not inadequate balance to Rob’s gift. This was how things were managed by all reasonable people, that neither side might be “under an obligation” of too serious a character. But she was wise enough to say nothing of this to her son, though it is just possible that the thought may have glanced across his mind too. And about the letter which he sent immediately afterward, through Bell, and which produced such results for Margaret, Rob, on his side, said nothing at all.
Bellhad left Earl’s-hall when the house was dismantled, a melancholy operation, which was proceeded with soon after the departure of the ladies. Old Sir Ludovic’s library was sent over to Edinburgh, where the greater part had been sold and dispersed. It was, in its way, a valuable library, containing many rare editions and old works of price, a costly taste, which the present Sir Ludovic did not share. Whatever was done with the old house, his wife and he agreed that to get rid of the books would be always an advantage. If they kept it, the long room must be either divided into two, or at least arranged, for the comfort of the family, in a manner impossible at present while it was blocked up with shelves in every corner, and a succession of heavy bookcases.
In these innocent regions it was not necessary to keep servants in charge of an empty house out of alarm for the safety of its contents. Is it not the simple custom, even of householders in Edinburgh, secure in the honesty of their population, to lock their doors for all precaution, and leave emptiness to take care of itself? There was not much fear for Earl’s-hall. If Aubrey Bellingham had known, indeed, that the various “bits” of china that he admired, and the old dresses in the “aumie” in the high room, and the bits of forlorn old tapestry that wantoned in the wind, were thus left without any protection, it is very possible that he might have organized a gang of æsthetic cracksmen to seize upon those treasures; but they were not in danger from any one in Fife.
Bell and John, or rather, to speak correctly, John and Bell, taking with them their brown cow and all the chickens, removed into a cottage which they had acquired some years before, on the road to the Kirkton, with one or two fields attached to it, and a neat little barn, byre, and poultry-yard. This had been for a long time past the object of their hopes, their Land of Promise, to which they looked forward as their recompense for years of long labor; and it was pleasant, there could be no doubt, to establish the brown cow in the byre and see her “like my leddy in her drawin’-room,” Bell said, making herself comfortable in her new habitation. But it is a very different thing to have only “a but and a ben,” when you have been virtual mistress of a fine old house like Earl’s-hall; and although Bell had always prided herself upon her willingness “to turn her hand to anything,” it did not quite please her to do all the little sweepings and dustings, and fulfil every duty of her littleménage, after having Jeanie under her, to whom she could refer all the rougher work which did not please herself. But above all, it was hard upon Bell that she had no longer “the family” to occupy her thoughts, to call forth her criticisms, and rouse her temper now and then, and give her a never-failing subject of interest and animadversion. Bell had a daughter of her own, who had been married as long as she could remember, it appeared to the old woman, and who had no children to give her mother a new hold upon life; and when she had finished her work and sat down in the evening “outside the door,” but with a totally different prospect from that she had been familiar with so long, Bell would talk to any neighbor that chanced to pass that way, and paused to cheer her up—about “my family” and even about “my ladies,” though they were the same whom she had talked of a little while ago with nothing but the definite article to distinguish them, and of whom she had never been fond, though they had risen so much in her estimation now, and she generally concluded the audience by a sudden relapse into crying on the subject of “my Miss Margaret” which filled the Kirkton half with pity for “the poor old body that had been so long in one place, and couldna bide to be parted from them,” and half with indignation that she should “think mair o’ a young lady that wasna a drap’s blood to her, than of her ain.” Mrs. Dreghorn, Bell’s daughter, who kept the “grocery shop” in the “laigh toun,” was strongly of this opinion. “My mother thinks nothing o’ me in comparison with her Miss Margret—aye her Miss Margret!” said this good woman; but as Mrs. Dreghorn was forty, it may perhaps be allowed to be a different sentiment which Margaret called forth, from that steady-going affection on equal, or nearly equal terms, which subsisted between herself and her mother. Bell could not speak of her child without a moistening of the eyes. “My bonnie bairn!” she was never tired of talking of her, and of the letters Margaret wrote to her; Bell was perhaps the only one of Margaret’s correspondents of whom she was not at all afraid.
Bell, however, was very much bewildered by the hasty, incoherent little epistle which she received in reply to hers, which had contained the letter of Rob Glen. “If you see Mr. Randal Burnside, will you ask him to speak to Mr. Glen? Say I told you to ask him, dear Bell; oh, be sure I said you were to ask him! and Mr. Randal willunderstand.” What did this mean? Bell grew frightened, and for her part could not understand. The first step in the matter had been strange enough: that Rob Glen should have ventured to forward a letter to Miss Margaret, was of itself a strange and inexplicable fact. But it might be, as he said, about his picture; it might be about some price which old Sir Ludovic had offered. In such circumstances writing might be necessary, and he might not like, perhaps, to write to “the ladies themselves.” But Margaret’s message made the mystery more mysterious still. It confounded Bell so much that she said nothing about it to John, but wrote with much trouble and pain another letter, begging her young lady “not to trouble her bonnie head about young men; but to leave them to themselves, as being another kind of God’s creatures, innocent enough in their way, but not the best of company for bonnie young ladies like her darling.”
When, however, Bell had entered this protest, she immediately bent her mind to the due carrying out of Margaret’s request. Randal had adopted the habit of coming over from Edinburgh in the end of the week and staying till Monday, a praiseworthy habit which his mother much encouraged, and of which she too spoke with tears in her eyes (so weak are women!) as proving her son to be the very best son in the world, and the very prop and staff of old age to “the doctor and me.” It was true enough that he was the delight and support of the old couple in the Manse, of whom one was as yet not particularly old. And if Randal was fond of golf, and arranged “a foursome” for all the Saturdays of his visits, upon the Links which were within reach, in what respect did that affect the matter? A man may be a “keen golfer,” let us hope, and a very good son as well.
“Is there ony news at the Kirkton?” Bell said, when John came in, throwing off an old furred coat that had been old Sir Ludovic’s; for John’s bones were getting cranky with rheumatism, and his blood thin, as happens to every man. The fur glistened as he came into the warm room with his breath, which the cold without had fixed like beads upon every little hair. John put it away carefully on its peg, and came “into” the fire, and put himself into his big wooden arm-chair before he replied—
“Naething of consequence; there’s a change o’ the ministry looked for afore lang, but that’s been maistly aye the case as lang as I can mind. Either they’re gaun out, or they’re coming in; they’re a’ much alike as far as I can see.”
“I wouldna say that,” said Bell, who was more of a partisan than her husband. “There’s our ain side—and there’s the tither side, and our ain’s muckle the best. It’s them I would stand by through thick and thin— I’m nane o’ your indifferent masses,” said the old woman; “but it wasna politics I was thinking of. Did you see naebody that you and me kens?”
“Naebody that you and me kens? I sawa’body that you and me kens,” said John, taking a very large mouthful of the vowel, which he pronounced aw—“first Katie and her man, just in their ordinar; and syne John Robertson at his door, complaining that he never could find Jeanie; and syne John Armstrong at the smiddy, very strang, shoeing ane of Sir Claude’s horses that’s to hunt the morn; and syne—”
“Touts, I dinna want a dictionary,” said Bell, probably meaning directory; “naebody mair particular than John here and John there? as if I was wanting a list o’ a’ the Johns! Weel I wat there’s plenty o’ ye, young and auld, and great and sma’.”
“Is’t the wives you’re so keen about? I can tell ye naething o’ the women; there were few about the doors at this time o’ the night, and them just taupies, that would have been mair in their place, getting ready their man’s supper, or putting their bairns to their beds.”
“Eh, man John, but ye’ve awfu’ little invention,” said Bell. “If it had been me that had been to the Kirkton, I would have heard some story or other to divert you with that were biding at hame. But ye canna get mair out of a man than Providence has put intill him,” she said, with a sigh of resignation; then added, as by a sudden thought, “You wouldna see ony of the Manse family about?”
“Ay did I,” said John, provoked to hear any doubt thrown upon his capacity of seeing the Manse family. “I saw the gig trundling up the bit little avenue with Mr. Randal and his little portmanteau that I could have carried in ae hand. But Robert’s just a useless creature that will have out a horse for naething, sooner than up with a bit small affair upon his shoulder and carry ’t. It’s bad for the horse and it’s worse for the man, to let him go on in such weirdless ways.”
“So Randal Burnside’s back again?” said Bell. She did not pay much attention to John’s further animadversions upon Robert, who was the man-of-all-work at the Manse. Having at last got at the scrap of information she wanted, she got up and bestirred herself about the supper, and listened to just as much as interested her and no more. In this way at his own fireside, without even Jeanie to disturb him, and no bell to break the thread of his discourse, John loved to talk.
The next day was Saturday, which Bell allowed to pass without any attempt to execute her commission; but when Sunday came, after the service was over, the sermon ended, and the kirk “skailing,” in all decency and good order, she seized her opportunity. “Will you speak a word, Mr. Randal?” she said, lingering behind the rest. “Na, no afore a’ the folk; but if you’ll come round to me at poor Sir Ludovic’s tomb yonder, where I’m gaun to see if ony weeding’s wanted.”
Randal gave a hasty assent. His heart began to beat, in sympathy, perhaps, with Margaret’s heart, which had beat so wildly when she gave the commission now about to be communicated to him. He got free of the people, doubly tiresome at this moment, who insisted on shaking hands with the Minister’s son as part of the performance, “Eh, what a sermon the Doctor’s given us!” the kind women said. Perhaps Randal had not been so much impressed by his father’s eloquence; but he was very eager to make an end of these weekly salutations and congratulations. He hurried back to Bell, with such an increase and quickening of all the currents of his blood, that the old woman looked with surprise upon his glorified countenance. “I never thought he was such a bonnie lad,” Bell said to herself. As for Randal, he tried very hard, but with no success, to persuade himself that whatshe wanted with him must be some trifling business of her own. But his heart travelled on to Margaret, and to some chance message from her, with a determination which he could not resist.
“Well, Bell, what is it?” he said.
“I am real obliged to you, Mr. Randal. It’s no my business, and it’s a thing I canna approve of, that maun be said to begin with. Mr. Randal, I was writing to my young lady, to Miss Margret—”
“Yes?” said Randal, a little breathless, and impatient of the suspense.
“Ay, just that—and ye’ll no guess what happened. Rob Glen, that’s him that is Mrs. Glen’s son at Earl’s-lee farm, a lad that was to be a minister—you’ll ken him by name at least—Rob Glen?”
“Yes, I know him;” Randal felt as if she had thrown a deluge of cold water upon him; his very heart was chilled. “Oh yes,” he said, coldly, “I know Rob Glen.”
“Well, sir, what does that lad do but come to me with a bit letter in his hand. ‘When ye’re writing to Miss Margret, will ye send her that for me?’ he said. You may think how I glowered at him. ‘For Miss Margret!’ I said. He gave me a kind of fierce look, and ‘Just for Miss Margret,’ he says. You might have laid me on the floor with a puff o’ your breath. Miss Margret! so young as she is, far ower young to get letters from ony man, far less a lad like Rob Glen.”
“But why are you telling me this?” said Randal, half angry, half miserable. “I hope you will not tell it to any one else.”
“I will tell it to no one else, Mr. Randal; I’m no one to talk. I have to tell you because I’m bidden to tell you. When I looked like that at the lad, he said it was about a picture that he had drawn of auld Earl’s-ha’. And weel I minded the drawing of that picture, and the work my bonnie lady made about it. Well, I sent the letter, and yesterday morning, nae farther gane, I got twa-three lines from her, a’ blotted and blurred, poor lamb. I’m thinking the ladies maun have been at her—her that never had a hard word from man or woman! ‘Bell,’ she says, ‘if you see Mr. Randal Burnside, will you tell him to speak to Mr. Glen? Say it was me that bade ye, and then he’ll ken fine what I mean.’ I hope ye do ken what she means, Mr. Randal, far it’s mair than I do; and I canna approve for a young lady, and such a young thing as Miss Margret, ony such troke with young men.”
Randal’s face had been almost as changeable as Margaret’s while these words floated on. He reddened, and paled, and brightened, and was overshadowed, one change following another like the clouds on the sky. Finally, the last result was a mixture of confusion and bewilderment, with eager interest, which it is difficult to describe. “I fear I don’t understand at all, Bell,” he cried. “Was that all? Was there no more than that?”
“No another word; but a’ blurred and blotted, as if she had been in an awfu’ hurry. And ye canna understand? She said you would ken fine.”
“I think I understand a little,” Randal said, ruefully. He had asked her to call upon him whenever there was anything in which she wanted help, and here it was evident she wanted help; but of what kind? Was he to help her lover, or to discourage him? But of this Margaret gave no intimation. The office in itself was embarrassing enough, and what man ever received a more mysterious commission? She had appealed to him for aid, and who so willing to give it? But what kind of aid it was she wanted he could not tell. “I know in a way,” he said, “I know she wants me to do something, but what? Never mind, I will do my best to find out; and when you write to her, Bell, my good woman, will you tell her—”
“Na, na,” said Bell, briskly, “no a word. I’ve had enough to do with that kind of thing. I’ll carry no message, nor I’ll take charge o’ no letters; na, na, lads are a destruction to everything. And no a lad even that might be evened to the like of her. Na, na, Mr. Randal, it might be the maist innocent message in the world; I’m no blaming you, but I canna undertake no more.”
“And I think you are quite right,” he said, confusedly; “but—what did she want him to do?” He went away in great perplexity and excitement, which it was very difficult to shut up within his own bosom. To speak to Glen—that was his commission; but with what object? To help Margaret, poor little Margaret caught in the toils, and who had no one to help her; but what did she want him to do?
Randal went out after afternoon church was over, the “second diet of worship,” as his father called it. It was not a promising evening for a walk. The short November day was closing in; the foggy atmosphere was heavy and chill—the clouds so low that they seemed within the reach of his hand. Hedge-rows and trees were all coated with a chill dew which soon would whiten with the night’s frost; everything was wet underfoot. Even in the “laigh toun” few of the people were “about the doors.” Gleams of ruddy fire-light showed through the cottage windows, often over a moving mass of heads, of different sizes, the children sitting about “reading their books” as became a Sabbath evening, and the elders on either side of the fire carrying on solemn “cracks,” each individual furnishing a remark in slow succession. In-doors there was something drowsy and Sabbatical in the air; but there was nothing drowsy or comfortable out-of-doors. Randal walked toward the farm in the grim gray winterly twilight, wondering whether he could make any plausible errand to the house, or how he was to make sure of seeing Rob. But Fortune favored him in this respect, as indeed Fortune could scarcely help favoring any one who, wanting Rob Glen, walked in the twilight toward Earl’s-lee. When he was within a field or two of the farm-house. Randal became aware of two figures in the shadow of a hedge-row, and of a murmur of voices. He divined that it was a “lad and lass.” Lads and lasses are nowhere more common spectacles, “courting” nowhere a more clearly recognized fact than in Fife. Randal took care not to look at them or disturb them; and by-and-by he saw a little figure detach itself out of the shadows and run across the field. Who could it be? Their fervor of love-making must be warm indeed to enable them to bear the miseries of this “drear-nighted November.” He went on with a certain sympathy and a little sigh. Randaldid not feel as if there could ever be any occasion for “courting” on his part. He was vaguely excited; but sadness, more than any other feeling, filled his mind; if he saw Rob before him, what was he to say to him? “Ah, Glen!” he exclaimed, “is that you?” while yet this question was fresh in his mind.
Rob came forward from the shadow with evident discomfiture. He recognized the new-comer sooner than Randal knew him. Was he, then, the man who had been whispering behind the hedge, from whose side that little female figure, not, he thought, unknown to Randal either, had flitted so hurriedly away? Hot indignation rose in Randal’s veins.
“Can it be you?” he said, with a sudden mingling of displeasure and contempt with the surprise in his voice.
“Not a pleasant evening for a walk,” said Rob. He was uneasy too, but he did not see what he could do better than talk, and forestall if possible any objection the other might seem disposed to make. “I dropped something in the ditch,” he said, accusing as he excused himself, “but it is evidently too dark to hope to find it now.”
“You are still staying here?” said Randal, still more contemptuous of the lie, and feeling a secret desire, which almost mastered him, to push his companion into the chill ooze under the hedge-row. “Though the country,” he added, “has not the same attraction as when we met last.”
“No,” said Rob, with a slight falter, “that is true; but necessity has no law. I am here because— I have nothing to do elsewhere. I am not so lucky as you, to be able to hold by and follow out the trade to which I have been bred.”
“That is a misfortune, certainly.”
“Yes, it is a misfortune—and such a misfortune in my case as you can scarcely realize. I have disappointed my friends and put them out of temper. There could be no harm in abandoning the law, but there is great harm in abandoning the Church.”
“There is always harm, I suppose,” said Randal, “in throwing up the career in which our training can tell. Church or law, it does not so much matter; there is always disappointment in such a drawing back.”
“Perhaps that is true; but most in the first, and most of all in my class. Yes,” said Rob, suddenly, “you may say there is less attraction now. The last night we met, it was just before the Leslies left Earl’s-hall.”
“I remember the night,” said Randal, with some irrestrainable bitterness in his tone.
“I am sure you do. I felt it in your tone to-night. You disapproved of me then; and now,” said Rob, with an air almost of derision, and he laughed a little nervous, self-conscious laugh.
“I don’t pretend to any right either of approval or disapproval,” said Randal. Anger was rising hotter and hotter within him; but what was it she wanted him to do?
“No right; but people don’t wait for that,” said Rob. He was not comfortable nor happy about his good-fortune. He had got Margaret’s note, and it had stung him deeply. And here was one who could communicate with her, though he could not—who belonged to her sphere, which he did not. “We all approve or disapprove by instinct, whatever right we may have. If you had felt more sympathy with me, I might have found a friend in you,” Rob went on, after a pause. “When two people, so different in external circumstances as Margaret and myself, love each other, a mutual friend is of the greatest advantage to both.”
The blood rushed to Randal’s face in the darkness. He felt the veins fill and throb upon his forehead, and fury took possession of his heart. He could have seized the fellow by the throat who thus wantonly and without necessity had introduced Margaret’s name. But then—who could tell?—this office of mutual friend might be the very thing she had intended him to take.
“I cannot see what use I could be—”
“You could be of the greatest use. You could find out for me, without suspicion, a hundred things I want to know; or, if you fell under the suspicion of being after Margaret yourself,” said Rob, with the unconscious vulgarity which he had never been able to get over, “there would be no harm done. They would not turnyouto the door for it. You see our correspondence has to be of a very limited character till she is of age.”
“Do you think,” said Randal, hotly, “that to carry on such a correspondence at all is right or honorable without the sanction of the friends? No creature so young” (he kept to words as impersonal as possible, not feeling able to use a pronoun to indicate Margaret, whose sacred name ought never to have been breathed) “can understand what such a correspondence is. Glen, since you ask me, as a man of honor you ought not to do it. I am sure you ought not to do it.”
“It is all very well talking,” said Rob, “but what am I to do? Lose sight of her altogether—for three long years?”
“Is that the time fixed?” said Randal, with dismay.
“When she comes of age. Then, whatever happens, I have sufficient faith that all will go merry as a marriage-bell. But in the mean time—” Rob said, half-bragging, half-mournfully: he was in reality in the lowest depths of discouragement; but the last person to whom he would have confided this was Randal Burnside.
Randal was struck with a sudden thought. “Look here,” he said, somewhat hoarsely, “I have given you my opinion, which I have no right to do; but you may make some use of me in return, if you like. Look here, Glen; I’ll get you something to do in my uncle’s office in Edinburgh, which will be better than hanging on here, if you’ll have patience and wait till the time you mention, and take my advice.”
Was this what she wanted him to do? The effort was a great one; for Randal felt a loathing grow over him for the under-bred fellow to whom such celestial good-fortune and unexampled happiness had fallen. To annoy and harass himself with the constant sight of him in order to leave her free and unmolested, it was a sacrifice of which Margaret would never know the full difficulty. Was this what she wanted him to do?
Aubrey Bellinghamwas in the hall at the Grange when Margaret, all wet and weary, came in from that journey to the post-office. She was very anxious to get to the shelter of her own room, not only because she was feeling ill and wretched, but for the more immediately important reason that she was feverishly anxious to get rid of her wet dress before Jean should see her; for Margaret knew that Jean would more easily forgive a slight moral backsliding than her dishevelled appearance, blown about by the wind and soaked by the rain, and not without traces of the mud. She was ashamed of her own plight, though she had been too tired and had felt too miserable the latter half of the road, to keep up the struggle with the elements. Her feet made a splashing noise upon the tiles as she came in, and were cold as two pieces of lead; so were the hands, with one of which she had tried to keep up her umbrella, till it was blown inside out, when she gave up the struggle. A faint glimmer of anger rose in her when she saw Aubrey, all trim and dry andpoint deviseas he always was, evidently waiting for her with the intention of speaking to her in the hall.
“How wet you are!” he said; “I could not believe my eyes when I saw you out in this rain. Could nobody have gone to the village instead of you? Why did you not send me?”
“Oh,you, Mr. Aubrey? It would have been worse for you than me,” said Margaret. “Inever thought much of the weather; but I cannot wait now to talk. I must run and change my dress. Jean,” she added, ruefully looking at her spoiled trimmings, “will be angry about the crape.”
“I hope I managed rightly,” he said, following her to the stair. “I hope I did what you wanted?”
Margaret gazed at him with blank, wide-open eyes. What had he done? She had forgotten the silent appeal she had made to him in her pain. Aubrey was a man of sense, and he perceived that to insist upon this good office which he had in reality done out of pure good-nature, without any thought of interest, was more likely to hurt than to help him now; so he added hurriedly, “I did not see how wet you are; I cannot detain you an instant longer. Why didn’t you send me? You will be ill after this.”
“Oh! I never take cold,” said Margaret; but how glad she was to struggle up-stairs, holding up the clinging skirts of her wet dress. Fortunately, Mrs. Bellingham, who had a thorough instinct of comfort, kept fires in all the bedrooms, so that Margaret had the glimmer of a little brightness to console her in the bodily misery which for the moment prevailed over all the distresses of her mind. She took off her wet clothing with great haste, and with an impulse to hide it, to keep it from Jean’s keen eyes; and when she “was fit to be seen,” she sat down to think how she could explain that hurried errand to Jean. The post-bag went from the Grange twice a day, in a regular and orderly manner, as it ought. What need had she to rush through the rain with her letters? But this problem proved too much for poor Margaret’s brain: her head kept getting hotter and hotter; her feet, notwithstanding the fire, would not get warm; her bosom seemed bound as by an iron chain; she could not get her breath. What could be the matter with her? Jean had said she had a cold on the previous night; she supposed it must be that—a bad cold; how stupid and how wretched she felt! She sank back into the corner of the sofa which was opposite the fire; it was very lazy of her to do so, she knew, in broad daylight, when there was all the day’s work to do. Margaret planned to herself that she would do it to-morrow—her practising and her French exercises, and all the little studies with which, under Mrs. Bellingham’s energetic guidance, she was making up for her neglected education. She would do them to-morrow—yes, to-morrow; but was not to-morrow Sunday, when you cannot work? Was not night coming, in which you could do no work? Was not— Here Margaret seemed to break off with a start, and found that she had been dozing, dozing in the middle of the day, in broad daylight! It seemed impossible. She woke wretched, as young and healthy creatures do after such a feverish sleep. How could anybody sleep in the day? and how, of all wonders, was it that Margaret herself had slept in the day? It seemed something incredible; but before she knew what was coming, in those troubled wanderings, she had dropped again into another snatch of uncanny sleep. She did not hear the luncheon bell, nor if she had heard it would she have had energy enough to go down-stairs, or, indeed, to get up from her seat; and when Miss Leslie, coming up, hurried into the room, in wonder and alarm, to call her, Margaret was found propped up in the corner of the sofa, all flushed and confused, her pretty hair falling out of its fastenings, her hands hot and feverish. She woke with a start when her sister opened the door. “Oh! where am I? where am I?” she cried.
After this there was nothing but alarm in the house. The doctor was sent for, and Miss Grace, who had cried herself almost into hysterics, and could do nothing but kiss her little sister, and ask, in a melancholy voice, “Are you better—do you think you are a little better, darling Margaret?” was turned out and sent away, while Jean hastily took the place of nurse. If Jean had a fault as a nurse, it was that she required so many preparations. She assured Margaret it was nothing at all but a feverish cold, and that it would be better to-morrow; but she provisioned the room, as John had provisioned old Sir Ludovic’s, as for a siege of six weeks at least, and took her place in a dressing-gown and large cap by the bedside, like a woman who had made up her mind to hold out to the end. Margaret, however, was too ill to be alarmed by these precautions; she was too ill to mind anything except the pain which had her by the throat, and checked her breathing and filled her veins with fire. It was not a bad cold only, but that sublimation and intensification of cold which carries death and destruction under the name of congestion of the lungs. She was very ill for a week, during which time Mrs. Bellingham kept heroically by her bedside, resolute to keep out Grace and to fight the malady in the correct and enlightened way. Aubrey had to search through all the adjoining town, from shop to shop, for a thermometer good enough to satisfy his aunt, which she received from his hands in all the mingled solemnity and familiarity of her nursing-dress.
“I am sure the Red Cross has nothing half so imposing,” he said, in his flippant way; “you would strike an army with awe.” He himself had but a dull time of it down-stairs. He remained till Margaret was out of danger—very kindly solicitous—but when the crisis was over he withdrew. “You see I can make no progress now,” he said, on the occasion of an interview which Mrs. Bellingham awarded him, when the good news was proclaimed; “but perhaps a week or two hence I may come in with the chicken and champagne, and help to amuse the convalescent. One may make a great deal of running with a convalescent, Aunt Jean.”
“I wonder how you can talk so lightly, when we have just escaped such a danger,” said Mrs. Bellingham. “Not only Margaret, poor dear, but the property would have gone to quite a distant branch of the family, and even the savings of the minority. I can’t bear to think what might have happened. But you can do nothing now, it is true; you may as well go and return when you will be of use. But mind and go to the very best shop you can find in town, and get me a really good thermometer. I put no faith in anything that is bought in the country.” And that night, for the first time, Mrs. Bellingham permitted herself to go to bed.
It would be needless to follow Margaret through all the feverish thoughts that assailed her, or even those more coherent ones that came after the first stupor of illness. She recovered the power of thought now and then by intervals, as the fever abated, and then, no doubt, soft, dreamy musings, half dismal, half pleasant, of a pretty grave somewhere which would cut all the knots that bound her, and make all things clear, came into her mind. If she were to die, how little would it matter whether Jean was angry, whether Ludovic scolded! They would all forgive her, even if she had been silly. And though poor Rob, to whom her heart melted, as the one person whom she felt sure (besides Bell) to be very fond of her, would, no doubt, “break his heart” over that grave of hers, it would, she thought, be less hard for him, than to find out how little pleasure she took in the bond between them, and to bear the brunt of that struggle which she had so little heart to encounter—the struggle with Ludovic and Jean. And then another thing: what would it matter if Aubrey were right after all, and it was really Effie,Effiethat Randal Burnside cared about? They would be happy, no doubt; and they would sometimes give a sigh to poor little Margaret, and tell each other that they never thought she would live long.
This wrung Margaret’s heart with an exquisite pity for her poor young tender self, cut down like a flower. And as the fever recurred, she would lose herself in wonderings where they would bury her; if they would take her down to the Kirkton, and lay her with her father in the breezy mound where she would be able to see her own hills, and hear, on stormy nights, the moaning of the sea? And then it would seem to Margaret that she was being rolled and jolted through a vast darkness going toward that last home of the Leslies—dead at eighteen, but yet feeling and seeing everything, and half pleased with the universal pity. Over all these wanderings of sick and feverish fancy Jean presided in her big cap, the shadow of which against the wall—sometimes rigidly steady, with a steadiness that only Jean could possess, sometimes nodding so that Margaret trembled, feeling that nothing could survive so great a downfall—ran through them all. Jean, in her big cap, was very tender to the girl. She was very quiet in her movements, and, notwithstanding the nodding of the cap, very vigilant, never forgetting an hour or dose.
The strangest week it was!—the time sometimes looking not an hour, since she had begun to doze in the corner of the sofa, sometimes looking like a year, during which she had been wandering through dreariest wilds of confusion and pain. When she came to herself at last, without any choking, without any suffering, but utterly weak and passive, Margaret did not quite know whether she was glad that she was better, or disappointed to feel that everything outside her was just of as much consequence as ever; that she would have to marry Rob Glen, and submit to Jean’s scolding, and wonder if it was true about Randal and Effie—just the same.
But she did not recover in the speedy and satisfactory way which was desired. When she got what her anxious attendants called almost well, and got up and with an effort got herself dressed, it was astonishing to find how few wishes she had. She did not want anything. She did not care about going down-stairs, did not want to get out, and was quite content to be let alone in her corner of the sofa, reading sometimes, still oftener doing nothing at all. At this point of her convalescence it was that Jean had retired, leaving the remainder of the nursing to Grace, who, with a great grievance at her heart on the score of being shut out of the sick-room, took the place now offered her with enthusiasm, and did her best to administer the wines and jellies, the beef-tea, the concentrated nourishment of all kinds which were wanted to make her charge strong again. One day, however, Jean, returning from some outside occupation, found the sick-room in a grievous state of agitation. Margaret had fainted, for no particular cause that any one knew; and Grace and Miss Parker stood weeping over her, scarcely capable of doing anything but weep.
“Her mother, bless her, was just like that,” Miss Parker was saying. “I often thought afterward if we had taken her abroad for the winter it might have been the saving of her. The doctor said so, but no one would believe it. Oh, if we had only taken her abroad!”
This was said in the intervals of fanning Margaret, who lay extended on the sofa as pale as marble, while Grace held salts to her nose. Margaret came to herself as her sister came into the room, with a shiver and long sigh, and Jean, rushing in, cleared away the two incapable persons and resumed the charge of affairs. But, like a wise woman, she took a hint even from her inferiors. When she had restored poor Margaret and made all quiet and comfortable round her, and ordained that she was not to talk or be talked to, Jean’s heart throbbed with terror. Not only did Margaret herself seem in renewed danger, but there was the estate to be considered, which would go away to a distant cousin, and do no one (as Mrs. Bellingham said) any good. When the doctor came, she consulted him with great anxiety on the subject. “Yes,” the doctor said; “no doubt it would be very good for her to go to Mentone for the winter.” He would not say she was in any particular danger now, but delicate, very delicate; all the Sedleys had been delicate, and it must not be forgotten that her mother died young. All this made Jean tremble. The girl herself, though she had been almost a stranger to her a little while ago, had got hold of her fussy but kind nature. She had nursed Margaret successfully through a serious illness; was she to submit to have her snatched out of her hands now for no reason at all, with no disease to justify the catastrophe? Jean said No stoutly. She would not submit.
“My dear, I am going to take you to Mentone,” she said. “I hope you will like it. It is very pretty, you know, and all that. There are a great many invalids; but, poor things, they can’t help being invalids. I am very sorry we sha’n’t enjoy Christmas at the Court; that is a thing that would have done you good. But, to be sure, as we are still wearing deep mourning, we could only have gone to the family parties, which are not very amusing. Grace, you may as well begin your packing; you always take such a time. I am going to take Margaret to Mentone.”
“Oh!” cried Grace, ready to cry, “dearest Jean! then the doctor thought that dear Margaret—”
“The doctor thought nothing about Margaret,” cried Mrs. Bellingham. “The doctor thought what I told him. I said Mentone would do the child good after her illness, and all that has happened, and he agreed, of course. That is all they can do. They tell you to go if they think you will like it. If they think you will not like it, they recommend you to stay at home. I’ll take Aubrey with me: he will always amuse Margaret.”
“And, dearest Margaret, how good it is of dear Jean to settle it all! Do you think you will like—”
“Like! of course she will like it,” said Jean. “We shall start in a week; so you had better speak to Steward about your packing. A day will do for Margaret and me.”
“Mentone? that is Italy!” said pale Margaret, with a little glow rising upon her face; and then she put her pale little hands together, which were as small as a child’s, and said to herself, inaudibly, “That isaway!”
She got a little better from that hour. All the circumstances of her bondage, all the risk of discovery, the chance of agitating letters, such as those which had been the cause of the exposure that had ended in her illness, had come rushing back upon her memory. And it was a sudden intimation of some letters that had been put aside for her that had caused her faint, overpowering her, in her weakness, with sudden agitation. Letters! What might they be? She dared not ask for them. She dared not say anything about them in case of questions which she could not answer. He might be coming, for aught she knew, to haunt the neighborhood of the house, to watch for her, to waylay her, to claim and take possession of her, whether she liked or not. It is not to be described what a soft gush of ease and relief and quiet came over her, when she realized that she was now to be takenaway. Away! out of reach of all painful visitors, where it would be too far for him to come after her, where she would be safe. Margaret mended from that hour. And when, by means of Miss Parker, of whom she was not afraid, she managed that evening, while Jean and Grace were at dinner, to get possession of the letters, and found one from Bell giving an account of the execution of her commission, and another from Randal, her heart threw off its burden, although Randal’s letter filled her with strange yet pleasant excitement. She was not frightened by it as she had been by Rob’s letter, but felt, on the contrary, a great thrill of eagerness and wonder. Would he say anything about Effie? This, however, was all Randal said: