MRS. BELLINGHAM did not stay long at Killin. How it came about could never be discovered; but wherever the party went, in whatsoever admirable order they set out, it was discovered on their return that Aubrey was somehow at the side, not of Margaret, but of Effie Leslie. His aunt took him severely to task when this dereliction from all the rules of duty had been made evident by the experience of several successive days. Aubrey did not deny or defy his aunt’s lawful authority. “It is all that fellow,” he said, “continually poking in before me, wherever we go, with his Margaret, Margaret! as if she belonged to him. I hate these men who have known a nice girl from the time she was that high. They are always in the way.”
“And do you really allow yourself to be put off your plans so easily—you, Aubrey, a man of the world? If I were you, I would soon let Mr. Randal Burnside find his proper place. Let him take care of Effie. Effie would do for him very well. She is the second daughter, and they are not very rich, and her sister has made but a poorish sort of marriage. Effie might do worse than put up with Randal Burnside. It would be doing them all a good turn if you would be firm, Aubrey, and insist on doing what we all wish.”
“Surely,” said Aubrey, “nothing can be more easy. I hope I know as well as anybody how to keep a presuming fellow in his right place.” But, comforting as this assurance was, the very same thing happened the next day, and Mrs. Bellingham was not only angry, but disturbed by it. She called Aubrey into her room at quite a late hour, when she was sitting in all the sanctity of her dressing-gown. Perhaps their tempers were a little disturbed by the fact that they were both chilly—he with his walk by the side of the loch to finish a cigar, she in the before-mentioned dressing-gown, which, being but muslin, was a little too light for the latitude of Killin.
“The same thing over again, Aubrey,” she said; “always that little flirt of an Effie. I declare I never see you pay the slightest attention to Margaret; and when you know how much all your friends wish you to settle—”
“All right, Aunt Jean,” said Aubrey, with a tone of injury. “It is all those girls that will derange the most careful calculations. They are both of a height, they are both all black; it is only when you hear their voices that you can tell which is which: and if one will go off in one direction while you have settled all your plans for the other—”
“Ah, Aubrey, I am afraid it is just the old story,” said Mrs. Bellingham, shaking her head; “you like the wrong one the best.”
“That is a trifle,” said the dutiful nephew; “we were not born to follow our inclinations. The wrong always suits the best, that goes without saying; but I hope I am not quite a fool, and I was not born yesterday. Your Effie may be all very well to chatter with, but what should I do with her? I should not choose to starve for her sake, nor I don’t suppose she would for mine. It is Margaret for my money; or perhaps the other way would be more like the fact: it is her money for me. But what can a fellow do with the best intentions, if the other three make a point of thwarting him? The only thing to be done is this: send the little one home, and turn that other man about his business: when there are only two of us, we are bound to be civil to each other,” Aubrey said, with fine ease, turning over the bottles on his aunt’s toilet-table. Mrs. Bellingham was struck by the thorough-going honesty of this suggestion.
“Well, that sounds very fair, Aubrey,” she said. “I would not expect you to say more. And, to be sure, when a girl makes a dead set at you, it is very difficult for a young man to keep quite clear. We must not do anything violent, you know, and it makes me much more comfortable to hear you speak so sensibly. Randal Burnside, of course, will be left behind here, and Effie can go home from Stirling or Glasgow. And as we leave in two days, there will be no great harm done. But after that, my dear boy, I do hope you will not lose your time.”
“Trust me for that!” he said. “Do you really use such an antediluvian cosmetic as Kalydor, Aunt Jean—you whom I always believed to be in advance of the age? Crême de thé is a great deal better. Without it I could never have made up my mind to face the rude winds of the North. Have a little of mine and try; I am sure you will never use the other again.”
“Oh, thank you, Aubrey; but I am very well satisfied with my own,” said Mrs. Bellingham, who did not choose that anything belonging to her should be called antediluvian. “It is more refreshing than anything when one has been a long time in the air. Then that is settled, and I shall not have to speak of it again, I hope. But if I were you—a university man and a club man— I would show that I was more than a match for Randal Burnside, who never was at anything but a Scotch college, and can’t belong to anything better than one of those places in Princes Street. I would not allow myself to be put out of my way by a provincial. I should be ashamed to give in like that, if I was such a young man as you.”
Aubrey shrugged his shoulders, and offered no further defence; and the remaining two days were passed happily enough, Margaret and Randal remaining upon terms of confidential intimacy, without any word on either side to make the situation more plain. She felt that she had committed her secret to his trust, and was partially supported in consequence in the bearing of it—and encouraged to forget it, which she did accordingly with a secret ease and relief beyond all words—while he, too, felt that something had been confided to him, something far more serious than she seemed to be aware of; and yet did not know what it was. Thus, while she was perfectly at her ease with him, Randal was not so happy. He could not ask her a question, could not even let her see that he remembered the half-involuntary confidence, yet felt the most eager desire to know fully what it was which had been confided to him. How could he help her, how could he be of use to her if he did not know? This pleasant fiction of being “of use,” and the eager prayer he had made to her to call him whenever and wherever she wanted him, was it not the natural protest of honest affection against the premature bond which had forestalled itself, which had no right to have come in the way of the real hero? He did not himself know that this was the origin of his anxiety about Margaret, his strong wish “to be of use.” How could he be of use? how interfere between the girl and her lover—he whose only possible standing-ground by Margaret’s side would be that of a lover too?
But Randal, though he was very clear-sighted in general, had but a confused vision of things relating to himself, and deluded himself with the idea that he might “be of use,” might help her, and do a great deal for her—if he only knew! And he did know that some kind of tie existed between her and Rob Glen, but no more. Whether it was wholly clandestine, as it appeared, whether “the fellow” had secured her to himself under any vow of secrecy, whether anybody belonging to her knew, or suspected, Randal could not tell. And the frankness with which she had admitted himself to some sort of participation in the mystery made it more confusing and bewildering still. He could not put any question to her on the subject, but shrank from the very thought of such an interrogation with a mixture of pain and shame, feeling his own delicacy wounded. That Margaret should have a secret at all was intolerable. He could not bear to be her confidant, to hear her acknowledge anything that marred the simple ideal of her maidenhood; and yet how was he “to be of use,” if he did not know?
She, for her part, was greatly relieved by the little snatch of conversation which had conveyed so much. He had not lost his respect for her. He did not “think shame” of her. This was very comforting to Margaret. She had made it all quite clear, she thought, how things had gone wrong, and how it was a relief more than a sorrow to leave her home; and now she could be quite at her ease with Randal, who knew. Having thus spoken of it, too, made the burden of it very much lighter. The thing itself was over for the present; and it must be a long time, a very long time, before she would be forced to return to that matter. Perhaps, some time or other, she might be forced to return to it; but not for such a long, long time.
Thus all seemed easy for the moment, and Margaret thrust her foolishness behind her, and managed to forget. They had two more cheerful days. They took long walks into Glen Dochart, and went out on the loch in the evenings; and Effie sang, who had a pretty voice and had been taught; whereas Margaret had a pretty voice, but had not been taught, and was fired with great ambition. And Aubrey took upon him to make researches into the crockery-ware in the cottages, by way of looking for old china, of which, he assured them, he often “picked up” interesting “bits,” at next to no price at all, in the neighborhood of Bellingham Court. It did not answer, however, in Perthshire, and Randal and the two girls being Scotch, had to interfere to rescue him from Janet Campbell, at the post-office, who thought nothing less than that the man was mad, and intended to break her “pigs,” which is the genuine name of crockery in Scotland.
All these things amused them mightily, and filled up the days, which were not invariably fine, but checkered by showers and even storms—which latter amused the party as much as anything, since there was a perpetual necessity for consultations of all kinds, and for pilgrimages in twos and threes to the window, and to the door, to see if it was going to be fine. During all this time Mrs. Bellingham persistently labored to control fate, and to pair her young people according to her previous determination. That Randal and Effie should have taken to each other would have been a perfectly reasonable and suitable arrangement, and Jean felt that she could meet her brother and his wife with a pleasant sense of triumph, had she been the means under Providence of arranging so very suitable a match. He was a very pleasant young man, well educated, sufficiently well-born, with a little money and a good profession—what could a girl’s parents ask for more? But it is inconceivable how blind such creatures are, how little disposed to see what is best for them. With all the pains that she took to prevent it, the wrong two were always finding themselves in each other’s way.
And perhaps it helped this result that Miss Leslie, all unconsciously, and in the finest spirit of self-sacrifice, did everything she could to thwart her sister, and to throw the wrong person in the way. It went so to her heart to see Margaret smiling, as she talked to Randal, that she walked all the way home from the bridge by herself, though it was getting dark, and she was nervous to leave the two to themselves. “They will like their own company better than mine,” Miss Leslie said to herself. And when Jean asked sharply what had become of Aubrey, Grace quaked, but did not reply that she had seen him taking Effie down the river in the gleam of compunctious brightness, after the afternoon’s rain.
“Dear Jean,” she said, “you must not be anxious. I am sure he will be back directly, almost directly.”
“Anxious!” cried Mrs. Bellingham. It was hard upon so sensible a woman to have to deal with persons so entirely unreasonable. Then Randal let fall various intimations that he had a great fancy for seeing Loch Katrine again.
“The fishing here is not so good as I expected,” he said. “I think I shall go further west.”
“I would not do that if I were you,” Mrs. Bellingham said, with a very serious face. “I would not be so long away from your good father and mother. Of course you will be going somewhere to shoot after the 12th. So is Aubrey. Ladies have not much chance in comparison with the grouse. And, do you know, I thought them very much failed, both of them. They are getting old people, Randal. I am sure you are a good son, and would do anything you can to please them; and I could see that your good mother did not like you to come away for the fishing, though she would not say anything. As for Loch Katrine, I don’t think it all likely that we shall be able to make it out.”
Randal was at no loss to understand what this meant. He smiled to himself to think how mistaken she was, and how little it really mattered who went or stayed, so far as Margaret was concerned; but, after all, why should he follow Margaret? why should he run the risk of making himself hate Rob Glen, and wonder at his “luck” more than he did now? However, he said to himself, there ought not to be any danger of that. He did not think there was any danger. What danger could there be when there was a clear understanding that some one else was master of the field? But still, he could not suppose that the moment of fate, the tragical moment at which he could be of use to Margaret, was coming now. And why should he insist upon going where he was not wanted? So he yielded and sighed, and took his dismissal, though both the girls protested.
“Oh, why will you go and spoil the party?” cried Effie.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Bellingham, “I am afraid there will not be much more of the party, for your papa is going to meet us in Glasgow to take you home.”
This threw a cloud over poor little Effie, who went to her own room in tears. Was it over, then, this beautiful holiday? Margaret said good-bye to Randal with a cloudy look between smiles and tears.
“You will never pass me by again as if I was not good enough to be spoken to?” she said, with a little broken laugh; and he once more hurriedly adjured her “if she should ever want anything,” “if she should want a friend to stand by her.” Margaret smiled, and gave him her hand like a young princess. “But how can I ever want anybody,” she said, “when there is Jean?” which was not so satisfactory. He felt more lonely, more dismal, more altogether out of place than there was any reason for, when, finally, Mrs. Bellingham packed her little comforts into the carriage, and Miss Grace entreated everybody to take her place, and the travellers rolled away, waving their hands to him as he stood at the inn door.
It is always a dismal thing to stand at the door of an inn and see the greater part of the party who have been rambling, walking, talking, laughing, and crying together, drive away. Randal felt his heart sink in his breast. To be sure, Margaret Leslie was nothing to him, except a child whom he had known all his life. He stood there and fell a thinking, while the landlord nodded and winked to the waiter, and the maids behind pitied the poor young gentleman. How well he remembered the little motherless baby in her black ribbons, whom his mother had once placed in his astonished arms! He had told Margaret of it only yesterday; but he did not tell her what Mrs. Burnside said. “It will be time enough for you to marry, Randal, when she is old enough to be your wife,” the prudent mother had said. She would never be his wife now, nor anybody’s who could understand her who was worthy of her. To think of that creature falling to the lot of Rob Glen! The blood rushed to Randal’s face, and he clenched his hands unawares; then, coming to himself, seized his fishing-tackle, which had been of so little use, and hurried away.
And Margaret was very quiet all the day after, leaving Effie to respond to Aubrey’s witticisms from the box. It had come to be the habit that Effie should reply. Mrs. Bellingham was just as comfortably placed as usual, and had her eau-de-cologne, and her paper-knife, and plenty of shillings in her purse for the Highland tolls, and everything as she liked it; but she was not so amiable as in the earlier part of the journey. For one thing, there was not at all a satisfactory place for luncheon, and the wind was cold, and she had not the kind of large pin she liked to fasten her shawl.
“We are going to have a wet August,” she said. “When August is wet, the best thing to do is to get out of Scotland. It is bad enough anywhere, but it is abominable in the Highlands. There are the same sort of looking tourists you find in Chamouni, only poorer, and it is cold, which it is not in Switzerland; at least, it is not always cold in Switzerland. Your papa, Effie, is to meet us in Glasgow on Tuesday, and then I think we shall go South.”
Nobody said anything against this sentence. There are days when the wind is more keen than usual, when the rain is wetter, and the mud muddier. This was one of these days. It came down in torrents in the middle of the journey; and before the hood of the carriage could be got up a large piece of Mrs. Bellingham’s crape on the side next the wind had been soaked and ruined forever. This, her sister thought, was her own fault, in that she had incautiously thrown aside her water-proof; but she herself held it to be Effie’s, who had thrown a shawl over that water-proof, “carefully concealing it,” the aggrieved lady said. To have your crape ruined when you have just gone into mourning is a grievance enough to upset any lady’s temper, and it cannot be said that any of the party enjoyed the drive on this ill-fated day.
After this the pleasure of the expedition grew less and less. Sir Ludovic, who met the party in Glasgow, took an opportunity to take Margaret aside, and talked to her with a grave face.
“I hope you will see how wrong you are, Margaret,” he said, “about that lad. I have seen him, and he is as firm as a rock because of your encouragement. Do you think it is a right thing for a young girl like you to give such a man encouragement, and dispose of yourself without the knowledge of one of your friends? I told him I would never give my consent; but he as good as said he did not care a pin for my consent; that he had got yours, and that was all he wanted. But there is one thing I must insist upon, Margaret, and that is that you will hold no clandestine intercourse with him. It would not be—delicate, and it would not be honorable. It is only to save you that I don’t tell Jean. Jean would be neither to hold nor to bind. I don’t know what Jean might not do; but unless you will promise me that there shall be no correspondence, it is my duty to tell Jean.”
“I don’t wish to have any correspondence,” said Margaret, drooping her head, with a burning blush. Oh, if they would but let her forget it all! But this was what they would not do.
“If you will give me your promise to that”—he said; and in his pleasure at what seemed to him his little sister’s dutifulness, Sir Ludovic took her hand into his and gave a fatherly kiss on her forehead; all which his sisters contemplated with wondering eyes.
“Dear Ludovic, how kind you are to darling Margaret!” cried Miss Grace, running to him and bestowing a kiss of her own by way of thanks.
“I see no need for all this kissing,” said Mrs. Bellingham; “what is the meaning of it? I hope, Ludovic, you are not encouraging Margaret to make you her confessor, and to have secrets and mysteries from Grace and me, who are her natural guardians and her best friends!”