WHEN Margaret stole into the long room, where the family were assembled that evening, she heard a little discussion going on about herself. Ludovic had risen up, and was standing with an uneasy look upon his face, preparing to go in search of her, while Jean was asking who had seen Margaret last. Randal Burnside had come in only a few minutes before, and was still standing with his hat in his hand; and he it was who was explaining when Margaret entered.
“I saw her with Bell as I came in,” he said (which was so far true that he lingered till Bell had met her). “I fear she has been making some sad pilgrimages about the house. Has she ever left Earl’s-hall before?”
“Never—not for a single day,” said kind Lady Leslie; and there, was a little pause of commiseration. “Poor Margaret!” they all said, in their various tones.
They were seated at one end of the long room, two lamps making a partial illumination about them, while the surrounding space lay in gloom. The books on the walls shone dimly in the ineffectual light, the dim sky glimmered darkly through the windows, opening this little in-door world to the world without. Mrs. Bellingham had got her feet up on a second chair, for there were no sofas in the long room. Sunday was a tiring day, and Lady Leslie had yawned several times, and would have liked had it been bedtime. She was a woman of very good principles, and she did not like to think of worldly affairs on Sundays; but it was very hard, at the same time, to get them out of her head. As for Miss Leslie, she had got a volume of sacred poetry, which had many beautiful pieces. She remembered to have said some of them to her dear papa on the Sunday evenings of old, between thirty and forty years ago, and though it was a long time since, she had been crying a little to herself over the thought. Effie was, perhaps, the only thoroughly awake member of the family; for it had just been intimated to her that her aunt Jean, after all, had invited her to go to the Highlands to be Margaret’s companion, and her heart was beating high with pleasure. Aubrey had whispered to her his satisfaction too. “Thank Heaven you are coming,” he said; “we shall not be so very funereal after all.” It was while she was still full of smiles from this whisper, and while Randal stood with his hat in his hand, giving that little explanation about Margaret, that Margaret herself stole in, with a little involuntary swing of the door of the West Chamber, through which she came, which made them all start. Margaret was very pale and worn out, with dark lines under her eyes; and she came at an opportune time, when they were all sorry for her. Instead of scolding, Lady Leslie came up and kissed her.
“My dear,” she said, “we all know how hard it must be for you to-night;” and when the ready tears brimmed up to the girl’s heavy eyes, the good woman nearly cried too. Her heart yearned over the motherless creature thus going away from all she had ever known.
This kiss, and the little murmur of sympathy, and the kind looks they all cast upon her, had the strangest effect upon Margaret. She gave a little startled cry, and looked round upon them with a momentary impulse of desperation. It had never occurred to her that she was deceiving any one before. But now, coming in worn with excitement and trouble of so different a kind, all at once there burst upon Margaret a sense of the wickedness, the guiltiness, the falsehood she was practising. She had never thought of it before. But now when she gave that startled look round, crying “Oh!” with a pang of compunction and wondering self-accusation, the whole enormity of it rushed on her mind. She felt that she ought to have stood up in the midst of the group in the centre of the room, even “before the gentlemen,” and have owned the truth. “I am not innocent as you think me, it is not poor papa I am crying for. I was not so much as thinking of papa,” was what she ought to have said. But there was only one individual present who had the least understanding of her, or even guessed what the start and the exclamation could mean. When she opened those great eyes wide in her sudden horror of what she was doing, Lady Leslie, a little frightened lest grief should be taking the wilder form of passion, unknown to the placid mind, in this poor little uneducated, undisciplined girl, did all she could to soothe her with gentle words. “We are all a little dull to-night,” she said. “My dear, I am sure the best thing you can do is to go to bed.”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Bellingham, “we are all going to bed. Though it is not a day when one is supposed to do very much, yet there is no day in the week more tiring than Sunday. We always keep early hours on Sunday. By all means, Margaret, go to your room and get a good rest before to-morrow. You have been making a figure of yourself, crying, and you are not fit to be seen; though, indeed, we might all have been crying if we had not felt that it would never do to give way. When you think,” said Jean, sitting back majestically, with her feet upon the second chair, “of all that has happened since we came here, and that nobody can tell whether we will ever meet under this old roof again!”
“Let us hope that Margaret will come back often; and I am sure she will always find her brother’s house a home,” said Lady Leslie, still holding her hand and patting her shoulder kindly. All these words came into her mind in a confusion which prevented her from realizing what they meant. She saw Jean shake her head, and demand sadly how that could be, if Ludovic were to sell the house, as he had just been saying? But even this extraordinary suggestion did not wake Margaret’s preoccupied mind. They all said “Hush!” looking at her. It was supposed among them that the only one who would really suffer by the sale of Earl’s-hall was Margaret, and that to hear of the idea would be more than she could bear. But in her confused condition she took no notice of anything. She did not seem to care for Earl’s-hall, or for the family trouble, or for anything in the world except this strange thing which absorbed her, and which none of them knew. The lamps and the circle of faces were like a phantasmagoria before her eyes, a wreath of white sparks in the darkness, all pale, all indistinct against the dim background. Randal only became a little more real to her by dint of what seemed to her the reproachful look he gave her. She thought it was a reproachful look. He had seen her out-of-doors, though he had not taken any notice of her. She remembered now that he had not even showed her the civility of taking off his hat.
“He has no respect for me any more,” Margaret said to herself; and this thought went deep, with a pang, to her very heart.
Bell was waiting for her in her room, where already her boxes were packed, and most of her preparations made; and poor Margaret, her mind all confused with a sense that what was supposed to occupy and engross her was scarcely in her thoughts at all, gave herself up into the old woman’s hard yet tender hands, as passive as a child, with all the ease that perfect confidence gives. She was not afraid of Bell, nor did she feel the guilt of keeping from her that uncomfortable secret which was no happiness to her, poor child, and which she would so gladly have pushed aside from her own mind had it been possible. “Eh, I wonder if onybody will over take the pride in it that I have done,” Bell said, taking down her young mistress’s hair, and letting it fall in long, soft undulation of silky brown over her hands. She turned her head away while she brushed, that no tear might drop upon it. “Na, naebody will take the same pride in it as me: for I’ve been a’ ye’ve had to bring ye up from a bairn, my bonnie, bonnie darlin’: and nae ither woman can ever be that. It’s like taking the heart out o’ my breast to see you turn your back on Earl’s-hall.”
The same words had been said to her not very long before, and in a way which ought to have touched her more deeply. Margaret trembled a little with the recollection. “But I will come back again, Bell, and see you,” she said, with a far more ready response. She pulled down the old woman’s arms about her neck, and clung to her. “Oh, I will come back!” she cried; “Bell, there will never be anybody in the world like you.”
“You maunna say that, my bonnie lamb. Many, many there are in the world better worth thinking upon than the like o’ me. I am no sae selfish a creature as that; but you’ll keep a corner for your old Bell, Miss Margret, ay, and auld John too. He’s just speechless with greetin’: but he canna yield to shed a tear—and a temper like the auld enemy himsel’. But it’s no temper, it’s his heart that’s breaking. You’ll no forget the auld man? and whiles ye’ll write us a word to say you’re well and happy, and getting up your heart?”
“How will I ever get up my heart,” cried Margaret, “in a strange place, with nobody, nobody—not one that cares for me?”
“Whisht, whisht, my darling! You’ll find plenty that will care for you—maybe ower many, my bonnie doo—for you’ll be a rich lady and have a grand house, far finer than puir Earl’s-ha’. And oh, Miss Margret, above a’ take you great care wha you set your heart on. There’s some that are fair to see and little good at the heart, and a young creature is easy deceived. You mustna go by looks, and you mustna let your heart be tangled with the first that comes. Eh, if Sir Ludovic had but lived a little longer, and gotten you a good man afore he slippit away!”
Margaret was silenced, and could not say a word. If he had known this, what would he have thought of it? Would he have handed his little Peggy over to the first that came? Would he have chosen for her, and made this confusing harassing bondage into something legitimate and holy? Margaret received the thought of that possibility with a gasp, not of wishing, but of terror. It seemed to her as if she had escaped something from which there could have been no escape.
“But that’s far from your thoughts as yet,” said Bell, “and it’s no me that will trouble your bonnie head with the like o’ that before the time; and the ladies will take great care— I’m no feared but what they will take great care. They will keep poor lads away, and poor lads are aye the maist danger. Here I’m just doing what I said I wouldna do! But eh, we’re silly folk; we canna see how the bairns are to be guided that gang from us: as if God would bide in Fife as well as the like o’ me: as if he wasna aye there to hand my darlin’ by the hand!”
Bell paused to dry her eyes, and to twist in a knot for the night the long locks of the pretty hair in which nobody again would ever take so much pride.
“And, Miss Margret,” she said, “you’ll no let some light-headed thing of a maid tear thae bonnie locks out o’ your head with her curlings and frizzings? Sir Ludovic couldna endure them. He would aye have it like silk, shining in the sun. He never could bide to see it neglected. The ladies even, though they’re no so young as they once were, did you ever see such heads? But yours is as God made it, and as bonnie as a flower. And you’ll aye mind your duty, my bonnie darlin’, and your prayers, and remember your Creator in the days o’ your youth. And dinna think ower muckle about your dresses, nor about lads. That will come in its time. I’m just beginning again, though I said I wouldna do it! But oh, to think it’s the last night, and I’ll never put you to your bed again, nor gie you good advice, nor keep you from the cauld, nor take it upon me to find fault with my bonnie young lady! I canna tell what will be the use of me mair when my bonnie bird flies away.”
“Oh, Bell, I will come back; I will come back!”
“Ay, you’ll come back, my darlin’ bairn; but if you come a hundred times, and a hundred to that, you’ll never be the same, Miss Margret. The Lord bless you, my bonnie lamb—but you’ll never be the same.”
Whether this was a very good preparation for the long night’s rest which Mrs. Bellingham thought necessary for travellers, may perhaps be doubted. But Margaret soon cried herself to sleep when Bell withdrew. She was too much exhausted with excitement to be further excited, and this gentle chapter of domestic life, the return of the faces and voices, and looks and feelings familiar to her, gave some comfort to the girl’s overworn brain. They interfered between her and that strange scene in the farm-house. They formed a new event, a something which had happened since, to soften to her the trouble and commotion of that strange interruption of her life. She slept, and woke in the morning with a sense of relief which at first she could scarcely account for. What was it of comfort and amelioration that had happened to her? Was it all a dream that her father was dead, that her youthful existence was closed? No, it was that she was going away. Margaret shuddered and trembled with wonder to think that it was possible this could be a relief to her. But yet it was so. She could not doubt it, she could not deny it to herself. When she ought to have been broken-hearted, she was glad. To go away, to escape from all that was so secret and so strange was so much a comfort to her, that she had almost forgotten that she was leaving home at the same time, going out upon a strange and unrealized existence, leaving the friends of her infancy, the house she was born in, all the familiar circumstances of her life, and her father’s grave, where he had been laid so lately.
Margaret felt vaguely with her mind that all these farewells ought to have broken her heart, and she shed a few tears because Bell did so, because old John, speechless and lowering like a thunder-cloud, turned his back upon her and could not say good-bye. John had tossed her trunks on to the cart with the rest with absolute violence, as if he would have liked to break them to pieces; his face was dark with woe which wore the semblance of wrath. He turned his back upon her when she went to shake hands with him, and Margaret turned from the door of the old gray house with tears dropping like rain, but oh! for her hard heart! with an unreasonable, unfeeling sensation of relief, glad to get away from Earl’s-hall and Rob Glen, and all that might follow. They thought it was perhaps the society of Effie which had “made it so much easier” for her; and Mrs. Bellingham congratulated herself on her own discrimination in having thus pleased Ludovic and consoled Margaret.
Dr. Burnside and his wife, who came to the railway to see the party off, applauded her tenderly, and bade God bless her for a brave girl who was bearing her burden as a Christian ought. Did Randal know better what it was that supported her, and made even the sight of the grave, high up upon the mound, a possible thing to bear? Did he know why it was that she went away almost eagerly, glad to be free? She gave him a wistful, inquiring look, as he stood by himself a little apart, looking at the group with serious eyes. Randal was the last to divine what her real feelings were, but how could Margaret tell this? He thought she was calmed and stilled by the consciousness of a new bond formed, and a new love that was her own, and was grieved for her, feeling all the vexations she must encounter before this love could be acknowledged, and doubting in his heart whether Rob Glen, he who could press his suit at such a moment and keep his secret, was a lover worth acknowledging. But Randal had no right to interfere. He looked at her with pity in his eyes, and thought he understood, and was very sorry, while she, looking at him wistfully, wondered, did not he know?
Thus Margaret went away from her home and her childhood, and from those bonds which she had bound upon herself without understanding them, and which still, without understanding, she was afraid of and uneasy under. Sir Ludovic and his wife left Earl’s-hall at the same time to join their children in Edinburgh, and there to make other calculations of all they could, and all they could not, do. Perhaps when they were at a distance, the problem would seem less difficult. Earl’s-hall was left silent and solitary, standing up gray against the light, the old windows wide open, the chambers all empty, nobody stirring but Jeanie, who was putting all things into the order and rigidness of death. Bell, for her part, sat down-stairs in her vaulted room, with her apron thrown over her head; and John had gone out, though it was still morning, “to look at the pitawties,” with a lowering brow, but eyes that saw nothing through the mist of unwilling tears.
That very night Rob Glen came back to his seat under the silver fir, and gazed at the vacant house with eager and restless eyes. He was not serene, like his mother, but unhappy and dissatisfied, and with a great doubt as to the efficacy of all that had been done. Margaret had mortified him to the heart, even in giving him her promise. He was a man who had been loved; and to be thus accepted with reluctance gave a stab to his pride which it was hard to bear. And perhaps it was this sentiment which brought him, angry and impatient and mortified, back to the neighborhood of the house from which his new love had just gone away, but where, he could not but recollect, his old love still was. Jeanie had gone about her work all day with that arrow in her heart. She had known very well what was coming, had watched it even as it came, and sadly contemplated the transference to her young mistress of all that had been so dear to herself. She had followed the course of the story almost as distinctly as if she had been present at all their interviews; seeing something, for her turret had glimpses of the wood, and guessing more, for did not Jeanie know? But yet to see them together had been for the moment more than Jeanie could bear. It had seemed an insult to her that Rob should come, leading her successor, to the very house in which she was; and her more charitable certainty that he did not know of her presence there had gone out of her mind in the sharpness of the shock. And when her work was over, Jeanie too went out, with a natural impulse of misery, to the same spot where she had seen them together. “No fear that he’ll come here the night,” Jeanie said to herself, bitterly; and lo! before the thought had been more than formed in her mind, Rob was by her side. She gave a cry, and sprang from him in anger; but Rob was not the man to let a girl fly from him over whom he had ancient rights of wooing. His countenance was downcast enough before. He put into it a look of contrition and melancholy patience now.
“Jeanie,” he said, “will you say nothing, not a word of forgiveness, to an old friend?”
“What can the like of me say that could be pleasant?” said Jeanie; “you’re far ower grand a gentleman, Maister Glen, to have anything to say to the like of me.”
“You know very well that you are doing me a great deal of injustice,” he said, sadly; “but I will not defend myself. If I had but known that you were here—but I did not know.”
“I never heard that you took much trouble to ask,” said Jeanie; “and wherefore should you? You were aye far above me. There was a time when I was silly, and thought little of that; but I ken better now.”
“I don’t know that I am above anybody; there are many people that are above me,” he said, with a sigh, and a look of dreary vacancy beyond her, which deeply provoked yet interested the girl in spite of herself.
“Ay,” she said, “you will feel for other folk now; you will ken what it means now. But I’ve naething to say to you, Maister Glen, and I’m wishing ye nae harm. A’s lang ended that ever was between you and me.”
“Are you sure of that, Jeanie?” he said.
It was not in Rob’s nature to let any one escape from him upon whom he had ever had a hold.
“Ay, I’m sure of it,” she cried; “and you are but a leer and a deceiver if you dare speak to me in that voice, after what I’ve seen with my ain een—after the way I’ve seen ye with Miss Margret! Oh, she’s ower good for you, ower innocent for one that hasna a true heart! Last night, no further gane, I saw you here with my bonnie young lady; and now, if I would let you, that’s how you would speak to me.”
“Jeanie,” he said, “it’s all just that you are saying; but how do you know how I was led to it? You could not see that. She came out, in her trouble, to cry here, and I was here when she came. Could I see her cry and not try to comfort her? I don’t pretend to be strong, to be able to resist temptation. I should have thought of you, but you were not here; I did not know where you were. And she, poor child, was in great need of some one to rest upon, some one to console her. That was how it came about. You know me. I did not forget you; but she was there, and in want of some one to be a comfort to her. I am confessing to you like a Catholic to his priest; for all that you say there is nothing between us now.”
“Oh!” she cried, “speak to me no more, Rob Glen. I canna tell what’s ill and what’s well, when you talk and talk, with that voice that would wile a bird from the tree.”
“Why do you find such fault with my voice?” he said, coming a little nearer. “It may be as you say, Jeanie, that all is ended; but, at least, your good heart will do me justice. You were away, and here was a poor young creature in sore trouble. Say I’ve been foolish, say my life has gone away from me into another’s hands; but do not say that I forgot my Jeanie; that I never did—that I will never do.”
“Oh, dinna speak to me!” cried the girl—“dinna speak to me! I’m neither your Jeanie, nor I will not give an ear to anything you can say.”
“Then I will wait till you change your mind,” he said; and as she turned hastily toward the house, Rob went with her, gentle as a woman, respectful, with a sort of deprecation and melancholy softness. Perhaps she was right, he would allow, with a soft tone of sorrow. Life might be changed, the die was cast; but still it was not in Rob’s nature to let any one drop. He talked to her with a tone of studious gentleness and quiet. “At least we may be friends,” he said.