MARGARET went up-stairs with her heart and her feet equally light. She was full of excitement and pleasure. It was true that she had not many excitements in her life, especially of a pleasurable kind; but those she had encountered had not been straightway communicated to some one, as the happy privilege of her age in most cases. Out of sheer inability to contain her sentiments and sensations in one small bosom, she had indeed often poured forth innocent disclosures into the ear of Bell. And when these concerned anything that troubled her, specially the remarks and criticisms of her sisters, Bell had been the best of confidants, backing her up steadfastly, and increasing her indignation by the sympathy of warm and strong resentment. But of other troubles and pleasures, Bell had not been equally understanding. And she was the last person, Margaret felt, to whom she could tell the story of this evening’s encounter. Bell would not have been amused and interested like Margaret. She would have opened great eyes of astonishment and exclaimed upon the audacity of Rob Glen in venturing to approach Miss Margaret. “Rob Glen! who was he to proffer his acquaintance to the young lady of Earl’s-ha’?” Margaret knew as well how Bell would have said this, as if she had actually delivered the tirade. Therefore the girl made no mention of her new friend. She ran up-stairs, where she found Jeanie lighting a pair of candles on the table in the East Chamber.
“I’ve lighted Sir Ludovic’s lights, and will you want anything more the nicht, Miss Margaret?” said Jeanie, her fair fresh face giving out more light than did the candles.
“Oh, Jeanie!”—the girl began, but then she checked herself. No, she would not tell any one, why should she? Better to keep it in her own mind, and then there would be no harm. Margaret was not often scolded, but she had a misgiving that she might come in the way of that unusual discipline were she too communicative on the subject of her long conversation with Rob Glen.
She sat down in the East Chamber alone, her face and her eyes glowing. How pleasant it was to have an adventure! The little white-panelled room was but poorly lighted by the two candles. The window still full of twilight, clouds of gray here and there, with a lingering tinge upon them of the sun or its reflections, hung like a great picture on the wall. There were one or two actual pictures, but they were small, and dark, and old, not very decipherable at any time, and entirely invisible now. On the table, in the speck of light which formed the centre of the room, of itself a picture had there been any one to see, lay Lady Jean’s old work, with its faded colors, in pretty harmony with all the scene around; and centre of the centre, Margaret’s face, not faded, but so soft in its freshness, so delicate in girlish bloom. She sat with her elbows on the table, her face set in the palms of her hands, her eyes looking into the light, making the two little flames of the candles into stars reflected in their clearness. A half-formed smile played about the soft curve of her lips. How pleasant it was to have an adventure at all! And how agreeable the kind of the adventure! Rob Glen! yes, she remembered him quite well when she was seven years old. He had been twelve, a big boy, and very kind to little Miss Peggy.
The farm, which was a small farm, not equal to the large farms of wealthy Fife, a little bit of a place, which his mother had kept up when she became a widow, was close to Earl’s-hall; and Margaret recollected how “fond” she had been of her playfellow in these old days, very fond of him! before he went into St. Andrews to school, and then away to his uncle in Glasgow (it all came back upon her) to college. She remembered even, now she came to think of it, the scoffs she had heard directed by Bell and John at the Glens in general, who had not thought St. Andrews good enough for their son, but had to send him to Glasgow, to set him up! And here he was again. Margaret remembered how he had carried her across the ditches and muddy places, and how she had kissed him when he went away; she blushed at the thought, and laughed a little. And now he had come back! and he could draw! That was the most interesting of all. He could make beautiful pictures of everything he saw.
The Kirkton, poor little place, had never looked so attractive before. It had been only a little village of no interest, which sisters Jean and Grace held in the utmost contempt, driving Margaret wild with suppressed rage by the comparison they made between the Scotch hamlet and their English villages; and now it was a picture! She wondered what they would think of it now. Margaret gazed into the flame of the candles and seemed to see it hanging upon a visionary background. A beautiful picture: the gray old church with its rustic tombs, and all the houses clustered below, where people were living, waiting their advance and preferment into the grassy graves above. Here was the real mission of art accomplished by the humblest artist—to make of the common and well-known a dazzling undiscovered glory. Only the Kirkton, yet a picture! and all the doing of the old friend equally glorified and changed—Rob Glen. Margaret was more pleasantly excited, more amused, more roused in mind and imagination than perhaps she had ever been in her life.
A stirring in the long room close by roused her to a sense of her duties. That windowful of sky had darkened; it was almost night: as much as it ever is night in Scotland in June—a silvery night, with no blackness in it but a vague whiteness, a soft celestial reflection of the departed day. Evidently it was late, time to go to bed. Margaret pushed the door open which led into the long room. Sir Ludovic was closing his book. He kept early hours; for it was his habit to wake very early in the morning, as is so usual to old people. He turned to her with a smile upon his face.
“My Peggy, you are late; what has kept you amused so long to-night? It is you generally who let me know when it is time for bed. What have you been doing?”
“Nothing, papa;” but Margaret blushed. However, as she blushed so often this was nothing to remark.
“Put it up upon the shelf,” he said; “I have done with that one. It is heavy for you to lift, my dear. It is a sign that I am an old man, a very old man, my little Peggy, that I allow you to do everything for me; but at the same time there is a suitability in it. The young should learn to serve. When you are a full-blown lady, it is then that all the men you meet will serve you.”
“I want no men to serve me, papa. When I am middle-aged, as you say, I will have no servants but women. Is not Jeanie better to hand you your plate and fill you your wine than old John?”
“Old John and I have grown old together, my Peggy; but I think your taste is very natural. A young woman is a pleasanter object than an old man.”
“I did not mean that,” she cried, with compunction; “you, papa, you are the handsomest of us all. There is no one to match you; but the like of Jeanie looks so clean and fresh, and John in his black clothes—”
“Looks like an old Cameronian minister, that is true; but, my Peggy, you must not judge by appearances. Before you are—middle-aged, as you say, you will learn that appearances are not to be trusted to. And, by-the-way, what is it to be middle-aged? For my instruction I would like to know.”
Margaret paused to think. She stood looking at him with the big book in her hand, leaning it against the table, embracing it with one arm; then, naturally, as she moved, her eyes sought the uncovered window, and went afar out into the silvery clouds to find her answer. As for her father, he sat with his ivory hands spread out on the arms of his chair, looking at her with a smile. Her slimness and gracefulness and soft-breathing youth were a refreshment to him. It was like the dew falling, like the morning breaking to the old man; and, besides the sense of freshness and new life, it was a perpetual amusement to him to watch the workings of her unaccustomed mind, and the thoughts that welled up in the creature’s face. He had perhaps never watched the growth of a young soul before, and he had never got over his first surprise and amusement at the idea that such a little being, only the other day a baby, only the other day running after a ball like a kitten, should think or have opinions at all.
“Middle-aged,” said Margaret, with her pretty head upon one side, and great gravity in her face. “Perhaps, papa, you will not have the same idea as I have. Would it be twenty-five? That is not old, of course; but then it is not young either. If you were going to have any sense, I think you would have it by that age.”
“Do you think so, my Peggy? That is but a little way to travel to get sense. Where is sense to be found, and can you tell me the place of understanding? It would be easily learned if it could be got at twenty-five.”
“Oh, but twenty-five is a very good age, papa. Me— I am only seventeen.”
“And you think you have a good deal of sense already, and have found out whereabouts wisdom dwells?” said Sir Ludovic; “then, to be sure, in eight years more you will have gone a long way toward perfection.”
“Papa, you are making a fool of me again.”
“No, my dear, only admiring and wondering. It is such a long time since I was twenty-five; and I am not half so sure about a great many things as I was then. Perhaps you are right, my little Peggy; one changes one’s opinions often after—but it may be that just then you are at the crown of the brae. Far be it from me to pronounce a judgment. Dante puts it ten years later.”
“But what Dante means,” said Margaret, boldly—for, ignorant as she was, she had read translations of many things, even of the Divine Comedy, not having, perhaps, anything more amusing to read, which was the origin of most of the better knowledge she possessed—“what Dante means was the half of life, when it was half done.”
“Ay, ay, that was it,” said the old man, “half done! yet you see here I am, at seventy-five, still in everybody’s way.”
“Oh, papa,” she said, fixing upon him reproachful eyes which two tears flooded, brimming the crystal vessels over—“oh, papa!”
“Well, my Peggy; I wonder if it is the better for you that your old father should live on? Well, my dear, it’s better for some things. The old nest is gray, but it’s warm. Though Jean and Grace, you know—Jean and Grace, and even Mrs. Ludovic, my dear, all of them think it’s very bad for you. You would be better, they tell me, in a fine boarding-school in London.”
“Papa!”
“Oh, I’m not going to send you away, my little Peggy, not till the old man’s gone—a selfish old man. You must be a good girl, and prove me right to everybody concerned. Now, good-night, and run away to your bed; and you can tell John.”
“Good-night, papa. I will be a good girl,” she said, half laughing, with the tears in her eyes, as she had done when she was a child; and she made a little pause when she kissed him, and asked herself whether she should speak to him about Rob Glen, and ask if he would like to see the pictures? Surely to see such pictures would be a pleasure to anybody. But something kept Margaret silent. She could not tell what it was; and in the end she went away to tell John, without a word about her old acquaintance. Down-stairs she could hear Bell already fastening the shutters, and Jeanie passed her on the stair, fresh and smiling, though sleepy, with a “Gude-nicht, Miss Margret.”
“Good-night, Jeanie; and you’ll call me early?” she said; upon which Jeanie shook her head with a soft smile.
“If you were aye as ready to rise as me to cry upon you!”
“I will rise to-morrow,” said Margaret. How good she was going to be to-morrow! Light as a bird she ran down to the old couple down-stairs. “John, papa is ready. You are to go to him this very minute. I stopped on the stair to speak to Jeanie, and papa will be waiting.”
John answered with a grunt and groan. “And me, I’m to pay for it because little miss tarries!”
Bell pushed him out of the kitchen with a laugh. “Gae away with you,” she said. “Miss Margret, my man John would stand steady and be cut in sma’ pieces with a pair o’ scissors sooner than that any harm should come to you. But his bark is aye waur than his bite. And what have you been doing all this night, my bonnie bird? I’ve neither seen your face nor heard your fit upon the stair.”
“Oh, I was thinking,” said Margaret, after a pause; “thinking—”
“Lord bless us and save us, when the like of you begin thinking! And what were you thinking upon, my bonnie dear?”
“Nothing,” said Margaret, musing. She had fallen back into the strain of her usual fanciful thoughts.
“Naething? That’s just the maist dangerous subject you can think upon,” said Bell, shaking her head; “that’s just what I dinna like. Think upon whatever you please, but never upon naething, Miss Margret. Will I come with you and see you to your bed? It’s lang since I’ve put a brush upon your bonnie hair.”
“Oh, my hair is quite right, Bell. I brush it myself every night.”
“And think about naething all the time. Na, Miss Margret, you maunna do that. I’ve gathered the fire, and shut the shutters, and put a’ thing ready for Sir Ludovic’s tea in the morning. Is there onything mair? No, not a thing, not a thing. Now come, my lamb, and I’ll put you to your bed.”
Margaret made no objection. She could follow her own fancies just as easily while Bell was talking as when all was silent round her. They went together up the winding stair, Bell toiling along with a candle in her hand, which flickered picturesquely, now here, now there, upon the spiral steps. Margaret’s room was on the upper story, and to reach it you had to traverse another long hall, running the whole length of the building, like the long room below. This room was scarcely furnished at all. It had some old tapestry hanging on the walls, an old harpsichord in a corner, and bits of invalided furniture which were beyond use.
“Eh, the bonnie dances and the grand ladies I’ve seen in this room!” Bell said, shaking her head, as she paused for breath. The light of the one little candle scarcely showed the long line of the wall, but displayed a quivering of the wind in the tapestry, as if the figures on it had been set in motion. “Lord bless us!” said Bell. “Oh, ay, I ken very well it’s naething but the wind; but I’ve never got the better o’ my first fright. The first time I was in this grand banqueting-hall—and oh, but it was a grand hall then! never onything so grand had the like of me a chance to see. I thought the Queen’s Grace herself could not possess a mair beautiful place.”
“If it was any use,” said Margaret, with a sigh.
“Oh, whisht, my bonnie bird. It’s use to show what great folk the Leslies were wance upon a time, and that’s what makes us a’ proud. There’s none in the county that should go out o’ the room or into the room afore you, Miss Margret. You’ve the auldest blood.”
“But what good does that do if I am the youngest girl?” said Margaret, half piqued, half laughing.
She was proud of her race, but the empty halls were chill. She did not wait for any more remarks on Bell’s part, but led the way into her room, which opened off this banqueting-hall, a turret room of a kind of octagon shape, panelled like all the rest. It looked out through its deepest window on entirely a different scene, on the moonlight rising pale on the eastern side, and the whitening of the sea, the tremolar della marina, was in the distance, the silvery glimmer and movement of the great broad line of unpeopled water.
The girl stood and looked out while the old woman lighted the candles on the table. How wide the world was, all full of infinite sky and sea, not to speak of the steady ground under foot, which was so much less great. Margaret looked out, her eyes straying far off to the horizon, the limit beyond which there was more and more water, more and more widening firmament. She was very reluctant to have it shut out. To draw down a blind, and retire within the little round of those walls, what a shrinking and lessening of everything ensued! “But it’s more sheltered like; it’s no so cold and so far,” said Bell, with a little shiver. She was not so fond of the horizon. The thick walls that kept out the cold, the blind that shut out that blue opening into infinity, were prospect enough for Bell. She made her young lady sit down, and undid the loops of her silken hair. This hair was Bell’s pride; so fine, so soft, so delicate in texture, not like the gold wire, all knotted and curly, on Jeanie’s good-looking head, who was the other representative of youth in the house. “Eh, it is a pleasure to get my hands among it,” said Bell, letting the long soft tresses ripple over her old fingers. How proud she was of its length and thickness! She stood and brushed and talked over Margaret’s head, telling her a hundred stories, which the girl, half hearing, half replying, yet wholly absorbed in her own fancies, had yet a certain vague pleasure in as they floated over her.
It was good to have Bell there, to feel the touch of homely love about her, and the sound of the voice which was as familiar as her own soft breath. Bell was pleased too. She was not offended when she perceived that her nursling answered somewhat at random. “What is she but a bairn? and bairns’ ways are wonderful when their bit noddles begin working,” Bell said, with the heavenly tolerance of wise affection. She went out of the room afterward, with her Scotch delicacy, to give Margaret time to say her prayers, then came back and covered her carefully with her hard-working hand, softened miraculously by love. “And the Lord bless my white doo,” the old woman said. There were no kisses or caresses exchanged, which was not the habit of the reserved Scotchwoman; but her hand lingered on the coverlet, “happing” her darling. Summer nights are sweet in Fife, but not overwarm. And thus ended the long midsummer day.