SIR LUDOVIC was “none the worse” of his stumble, and next day all things went on as before. Rob Glen was one of the first who came to inquire, and he was asked to go up-stairs, and was thanked for his aid with all ceremony, yet kindness, Margaret standing by, beaming upon him, beaming with pleasure and gratitude. Rob, she felt, was her friend much more than her father’s, and she was grateful to him for his succor of her father, and grateful to Sir Ludovic for accepting the service. She stood by and smiled upon the young man. “I am very thankful too,” she said, “Mr. Glen,” and the look in Rob’s eyes made her blush. She had always been given to blushing; but Margaret blushed more than ever now, in the vague excitement of thought and feeling which these last weeks had revived in her. They had been spent almost in Rob’s constant companionship, so long had the sketching lasted; and the two had been for hours together, alone, in close proximity, with unlimited opportunities of conversation. He had told her a great deal about himself, and she had revealed to him all the corners of her innocent memory. They had become again as closely united as when little Margaret sat by the big boy, with her little feet dabbling in the water, spoiling his fishing, but filling him with vague delight.
He had indulged in various other loves since then; but, after all, when you came to look back upon it, was not little Margaret his first love? He got her to go with him one day to the burn, which they had haunted as children, and told her he meant to make a picture of it. This was just the spot, he said. It was nothing but a bit of grassy bank, a ragged willow dipping into the brook, a great old hawthorn-bush upon the slope. “You used to be so fond of the white hawthorn” (“And so I am still,” Margaret said), “and here was where you sat with the clear water running over your little feet. I think I can see them now.” Margaret grew crimson, but that was an effect so easily produced; and she too thought she could remember sitting on these summer afternoons, with the soft ripple, like warm silk, playing over her feet, and the scent of the hawthorn (we do not call it May in Fife) filling the air, and flies and little fishes dimpling the surface of the pool. “I will paint a picture of it,” said Rob; and the idea pleased her. Thus the days went on; they were shorter than any days had ever been before to Margaret, full of interest, full of pleasure. An atmosphere of soft flattery, praise, too delicate to be put into words, a kind of unspoken worship, surrounded her. She was amused, she was occupied, she was made happy. And it did not occur to her to ask herself the reason of this vague but delightful exhilaration. She felt it like an atmosphere all round her, but did not ask herself, and did not know what it was.
And perhaps with this round of pleasant occupation going on outside, she was not quite so much with her father, or so ready to note his ways as she had been. On the Monday evening, Rob, by special invitation, dined with them, and exerted himself to his utmost to amuse Sir Ludovic; and after this beginning he came often. He did amuse Sir Ludovic, sometimes by his knowledge, sometimes by his ignorance; by the clever things he would say, and the foolish things he would say—the one as much as the other.
“Let your friend come to dinner,” the old man would say, with a smile. “John, you will put a plate for Mr. Glen.” And so it came about that for a whole week Rob shared their meal every evening. When Sir Ludovic got drowsy (as it is so natural to do after dinner, for every one, not only for old men), the two young people would steal away into the West Chamber and watch the sun setting, which also was a dangerous amusement. Thus it will be seen poor little unprotected Margaret was in a bad way.
During all this time, the old servants of the house watched their master very closely. Even Bell had to give up the consideration of Margaret and devote herself to Sir Ludovic. And they saw many signs and tokens that they did not like, and had many consultations whether Mr. Leslie or “the ladies” should be sent for. The ladies seemed the most natural, for the young master was known to have his business to attend to, and his family; but Bell “could not bide” calling for the ladies before their time. And Sir Ludovic was just in his ordinar; there was nothing more to be said; failing, but that was natural: nothing that anybody could take notice of. It was well to have Rob Glen at night, for that amused him; and when the Minister called, bringing his son to be re-presented to his old friend, they were glad, for Sir Ludovic was interested. When Dr. Burnside went away, he stopped at the door expressly to tell Bell how glad he was to see the old gentleman look so well.
“He’s taking out a new lease,” said the Doctor.
“Eh me.” Bell said, looking after him, “how little sense it takes to make a minister!” But this was an utterance of hasty temper, for she had in reality an exalted respect for Dr. Burnside, both as minister and as man.
But it fell upon the house like a bomb-shell, when suddenly one morning, after being unusually well the night before, Sir Ludovic declined to get out of bed. No, he said, he was not ill, he was quite comfortable; but he did not feel disposed to get up. Old John, upon whose imagination this had an effect quite out of proportion to its apparent importance as an incident, begged and entreated almost with tears, and, finding his own remonstrances ineffectual, went to get Bell.
“I canna stand it,” the old man said. “Get you him out of his bed, Bell. Pit it to me ony other way, and I’ll bear it; but to see him lie yonder smiling, and think of a’ that’s to come!”
Bell put on a clean apron and went up-stairs.
“Sir Ludovic,” she said, “you’re no going to bide there as if you were ill, and frighten my auld man out of his wits. Ye ken, John, he’s a dour body on the outside, but within there’s no a baby has a softer heart; and he canna bide to see you in your bed—nor me either!” cried the old woman, suddenly, putting up her hands to her face.
Sir Ludovic lay quite placid, with his white head upon the white pillows, his fine dark eyes full of light, and smiling. It was enough, Bell thought, to break the heart of a stone.
“And why should I get up when I am comfortable here?” said Sir Ludovic, “my good Bell. You’ve ruled over me so long that you think I am never to have a will of my own; and, indeed, if I do not show a spark of resolution now, when am I to show it?” he said, with a soft laugh. “There is but little time.”
On this John made an inarticulate outburst, something between a sob and a groan—a roar of grief and impatience such as an animal in extremity might have uttered. He had stolen up behind his wife, not able to keep away from his old master. Bell had long been her husband’s interpreter when words failed him. She dried her eyes with her apron, and turned again to the bedside.
“Sir Ludovic,” she said, solemnly, “he says you’ll break his heart.”
“My good friend,” said the old man, with a humorous twitch about his mouth, “let us be honest. It must come some time, why shouldn’t it come now? I’ve been trying, like the rest of you, to push it off, and pretend I did not know. Come, you are not so young yourself, to be frightened. It must come, sooner or later. What is the use of being uncomfortable, trying to keep it at arm’s-length? I’m very well here. I am quite at my ease. Let us go through with it,” said Sir Ludovic, with a sparkle in his eye.
“You’re speaking Hebrew-Greek to me, Sir Ludovic. I canna tell no more than the babe unborn what you’re going through with,” cried Bell; and when she had said this she threw her apron over her head and sobbed aloud.
“Well, this is a cheerful beginning,” said Sir Ludovic. “Call ye this backing of your friends? Go away, you two old fools, and send me my little Peggy; and none of your wailing to her, Bell. Leave the little thing at peace as long as that may be.”
“I hope I ken my duty to Miss Margret,” said Bell, with an air of offence, which was the easiest to put on in the circumstances. She hurried out of the room with hasty steps, keeping up this little fiction, and met Margaret coming down-stairs, fresh as the morning, in her light dress, with her shining hair. “You’re to go to your papa, Miss Margret,” said Bell, “in his ain room: where you’ll find him in his bed—”
“He’s not ill, Bell?” cried Margaret, with quick anxiety.
“Ill! He’s just as obstinate and as ill-willy as the mule in the Scriptures,” cried Bell, darting down the winding stair. She could not bear it any more than John. Margaret, standing on the spiral steps, an apparition of brightness, everything about her
“Drawn
From morning and the cheerful dawn;”
her countenance all smiling, her eyes as soft and as happy as the morning light— Bell could not see her for tears. She seemed to see the crape and blackness which so soon would envelop them all, and the deeper darkness of the world, in which this young creature would soon have no natural home. “No another moment to think upon it,” Bell said to herself; “no a moment. The ladies maun come now.”
Margaret, surprised, went through the long room in which, by this hour, her father’s chair was always occupied, but felt no superstitious presentiment at seeing it desolate. Sir Ludovic’s rooms—there were two of them, a larger and a smaller—opened off from the long room. He had taken, quite lately, as his bedchamber, the smaller room of the two, an octagon-shaped and panelled room, as being the warmest and most bright; and there he was lying, smiling as when Bell saw him first, with the morning light upon his face.
“You sent for me, papa,” said Margaret. “Are you ill that you are in bed? I have never seen you in bed before.”
“Remember that, then, my Peggy, as a proof of the comfortable life I have had, though I am so old. No, not ill, but very comfortable. Why should I get up and give myself a great deal of trouble, when I am so comfortable here?”
“Indeed, if you are so very comfortable—” said Margaret, a little bewildered: “it must be only laziness, papa;” and she laughed, but stopped in the middle of her laugh, and grew serious, she could not tell why. “But it is very lazy of you,” she said. “I never heard of any one who was quite well staying in bed because it was comfortable.”
“No? But then there are things in heaven and earth, my Peggy, and I want you to do something for me. I want you to write a letter for me. Bring your writing things here, and I will tell you what to say.”
She met John in the long room, coming in with various articles, as if to provision a place which was about to be besieged. He had some wood under his arm to light a fire, and a tray with cups and glasses, and a hot-water bottle (called in Scotland a “pig”); and there was an air of excitement about him, suppressed and sombre, which struck Margaret with vague alarm. “Why are you taking in all these things?” she said; “he did not say he was cold.”
“If he doesn’t want them the day, he may want them the morn,” said John.
“The morn! he is not going to lie in bed always because it is comfortable; that would be too absurd,” said Margaret. “What is it? There is not going to be—anything done to papa?—any—operation? What is it? You look as if there was—something coming—”
“I have my work to do,” said John, hastily turning away. “I’ve nae time to say ay and no to little misses that canna understand.”
“Oh, John, what an old bear you are!” said Margaret. He made her uneasy. It seemed as if something must have happened during the night. Was her father, perhaps, going to have a leg off, or an arm? She knew this was nonsense; but John’s paraphernalia and his face both looked so. She went to the West Chamber, where all her special possessions were, and got her little writing-case, which one of her sisters had given her. Last night before she went to bed she had set up a little drawing she had done, and which she thought was more successful than any hitherto attempted. She had set it up so that she might see it the first thing in the morning, to judge how it bore the light of day. And on the table was Rob’s block with the sketch he had made of Sir Ludovic in his chair. He was to come again that very day, with her father’s consent, to go on with it. All this looked somehow, she could not tell how, a long way off to Margaret, as if something had happened to set these simple plans aside. She felt, in the jargon of her new art, as if the foreground had suddenly grown into such importance that all that was behind it was thrown miles back. It was very strange; and yet nothing had happened, only her father was lazy, and had not got out of bed.
“Who is it for? And am I to write from myself, papa, or am I to write for you?” she said, sitting down at the bedside and opening her writing-case. He paused, and looked at her for a moment before he spoke.
“It is to your sisters, to Jean and Grace, my little Peggy.”
“To Jean and Grace!”
“To ask them, if it is quite convenient, to come here now, instead of waiting till September, according to their general custom—”
“Oh, papa!” cried Margaret, suddenly realizing the change that was coming in her life; the sketches and the drawing-lessons, and the talks, and the confidences, and Rob Glen himself— What would Jean and Grace say to Rob? She felt as if in a moment all her little structure of amusement and pleasure was falling to pieces. She closed her writing-case again with a gesture of despair. “Oh, papa, is not September soon enough? I don’t want them here now. In—the summer,” said Margaret, hastily, blushing for herself at the little subtle subterfuge to which she was resorting to conceal her real terror—“in the summer there is always something— I mean so many things to do.”
“Yes,” her father said, with a smile; “and for some of us, my little girl, things we shall never do again.”
She did not realize the meaning of this, and perhaps Margaret may be pardoned if, not knowing the sadder circumstances involved, her mind was for the moment absorbed in her own disappointment and confusion; the sudden sense of arrest and stoppage in all her pleasant ways which overwhelmed her. “Why do you want them, papa?” she went on; “am I not enough? You used to say you liked me best. You used to say, just you and me, you and me, got on best in the old house.”
“And so I would say still,” said the old man, “my little Peggy, my bonnie Peggy! Yes, it is enough to have you and me. (I forgive you the grammar.) But however selfish I might be were there only myself to think of, I must think now of you, my little girl.”
“And what is about me?” cried Margaret; “if you think I want Jean and Grace, papa, what will they do but find fault? They are never satisfied with anything we do. They find fault with everybody. They say John is stupid—”
“And so he is, a doited old body—and, my Peggy, sometimes very far from civil to you.”
“Old John, papa? To me? He is as fond of me as if I were his own. When he scolds, I don’t pay any attention, any more than when you scold.”
Sir Ludovic laughed.
“That is a pretty way of telling me how little authority I have,” he said.
“Papa!” cried Margaret, impatiently, “you know very well that is not what I mean. I would not vex you, not for the world—never you—and not even John. I cannot bear him to be called names, and everything found fault with. There’s not this and there’s not that; no drawing-room; and the bedrooms are not big enough, and me not well enough dressed.”
“Perhaps they are right there, my Peggy. I fear you are dressed anyhow, though I see nobody that looks so well.”
“Then why must they come before September?” said Margaret. “Let them come, papa, at their own time.”
He laughed a little, lying there upon the white pillow, with a delicate hue of life in his old cheek, and all the vigor of twenty in his dark eyes. He did not look as if there was anything the matter with him. He only looked comfortable, luxuriously comfortable, that was all. She laughed, too, as she looked at him. “How lazy you are, papa!” she said; “do you think it is right? What would Bell say to me if I did not get up? You look so comfortable—and so happy.”
“Yes, very comfortable,” he said; but the laugh went off his face. “My Peggy,” he went on, with sudden gravity, “don’t ask any questions, but write to your sisters. Say I wish them to come, and to come now. No more, my dear, no more. I am not joking. Say I will look for them as soon as they can get here.”
She opened her writing-book again, and got her paper, and began to write. When he took this tone, there was nothing to be done but to obey. But when she had written a few lines, Margaret stopped suddenly with a little start, as if all at once overtaken by a sense of the meaning of what she was doing. “Papa,” she cried, the color leaving her face, two big tears starting into her eyes, “you are hiding something from me: you are ill!”
“No, no,” he said—“no, I am not at all ill; but, my Peggy, one never knows what may be going to happen, and I want to have your sisters here.”
“Oh,” cried Margaret, throwing away her book, “let them stay away—let them stay away! I want you all to myself. I can take care of you better than they can. Papa, I know you are ill, though you will not own it.”
“No, no,” he said, more feebly. “Run away and play, my little girl. I am—tired, just a trifle tired: and come back in half an hour, in half an hour, before post-time.”
“Here’s a cordial to ye, Sir Ludovic,” said John, and he made an imperative sign to his young mistress. “Let him be—let him be! he’s no weel enough to be teased about anything,” he whispered in her ear.
Margaret stood gazing at her father for a moment thunderstruck. Then she snatched up the letter she had begun, and rushed rapidly, yet on noiseless feet, out of the room. Oh, old John was cruel! Would she do anything to tease her father? And, oh! he was cruel not to tell her—to wish for Jean and Grace, and to hide it from her. She went down-stairs like the wind, her feet scarcely touching the steps, making a brightness in the dim light of the stair, and a movement in the stillness, to go to Bell, her referee in everything, and to ask what it meant. “Oh, Bell, what does it mean?” was on her lips; when suddenly, through the open door, Margaret saw two figures approaching, and stopped short. They were young men both, both pleasant to behold; but even at that agitated moment, and in the suddenness of the apparition, the girl observed the difference between them without knowing that she observed it. The difference was to the disadvantage of Rob, on whose behalf all her prepossessions were engaged; and this gave her a faint pang, the cause of which she was at the moment quite unconscious of. “Oh!” she cried, not able to restrain her little outcry of trouble, as she met their surprised and questioning looks—“oh, papa is ill; I think he is very ill; and I don’t know what to do.”
The second of the visitors was Randal Burnside, who had met Rob Glen at the door; and it was he who answered first, eagerly, “I passed Dr. Hume’s carriage on the road, at a cottage door. Shall I go back and tell him to come here?”
“Oh, will you?” cried Margaret, two big tears trembling out with a great plash, like big rain-drops, from her anxious eyes. “Oh, will you? That is what I want most.”
He did not stop to tell his errand, or to receive any greeting or acknowledgment, but turned, with his hat in his hand, and sped away. Rob had said nothing; he only stood gazing at her wistfully, and took her hand when the other was gone. “I see what is the matter,” he said, tenderly; “is there anything new? is there any cause for fear?”
In her excitement, Margaret was not like herself. The touch and the tone of tenderness seemed to go through her with a strange, almost guilty, sense of consolation; and yet she was angry that it was not he who had gone to serve her practically. She drew her hand away, frightened, angry, yet not displeased. “Why did you let him go?” she cried, with a reproach that said more than confession.
Rob’s face brightened and glowed all over. “I wanted to stay with you and comfort you,” he said; “I can think of no one else when you are in trouble. Come in and rest, and tell me what it is. You must not overdo yourself. You must not suffer. I want to take care of you!”
“Oh, what is about me?” said Margaret. But she suffered herself to be persuaded, and went with him up to the West Chamber to tell him how it all was.