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[Illustration: "He pressed the handsome chalked hand in his own and
then to his lips in a very un-English way."]
FAIR MARGARET
_A PORTRAIT_
By
F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "SANT' ILARIO," "WHOSOEVER
SHALL OFFEND," ETC., ETC.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HORACE T. CARPENTER_
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1905. Reprinted
November, December, 1905; April, 1906; July, September, 1908;
July, 1909; February, twice, 1910.
_Thirty-seventh Thousand_
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
FAIR MARGARET
CHAPTER I
'I am a realist,' said Mr. Edmund Lushington, as if that explained
everything. 'We could hardly expect to agree,' he added.
It sounded very much as if he had said: 'As you are not a realist, my
poor young lady, I can of course hardly expect you to know anything.'
Margaret Donne looked at him quietly and smiled. She was not very
sensitive to other people's opinions; few idealists are, for they
generally think more of their ideas than of themselves. Mr. Lushington
had said that he could not agree with her, that was all, and she was
quite indifferent. She had known that he would not share her opinion,
when the discussion had begun, for he never did, and she was glad of
it. She also knew that her smile irritated him, for he did not resemble
her in the very least. He was slightly aggressive, as shy persons often
are: and yet, like a good many men who profess 'realism,' brutal
frankness and a sweeping disbelief of everything not 'scientifically'
true, Mr. Lushington was almost morbidly sensitive to the opinion of
others. Criticism hurt him; indifference wounded him to the quick;
ridicule made him writhe.
He was a fair man with a healthy skin, and his eyes were blue; but they
had a particularly disagreeable trick of looking at one suddenly for an
instant, with a little pinching of the lids, and a slight glitter,
turning away again in a displeased way, as if he had expected to be
insulted, and was sure that the speaker was slighting him, at the very
least. He often blushed when he said something sharp. He wished he were
dark, because dark men could say biting things without blushing, and
pale, because he felt that it was not interesting to be pink and white.
His hair, too, was smoother and softer than he could have wished it. He
had tried experiments with his beard and moustache, and had finally
made up his mind to let both grow, but he still looked hopelessly neat.
When he pushed his hair back from his forehead with a devastating
gesture it simply became untidy, as if he had forgotten to brush it. At
last he had accepted his fate, and he resigned himself to what he
considered his physical disadvantages, but no one would ever know how
he had studied the photographs of the big men in the front of things,
trying to detect in them some single feature to which his own bore a
faint resemblance. Hitherto he had failed.
Yet he was 'somebody,' and perhaps it means more to be somebody
nowadays, in the howling fight for place and acknowledgment, than it
meant in the latter part of the nineteenth century. How easy life was
in the early eighties, compared with this, how mild were the ways of
nations, how primitive, pure and upright the dealings of financiers in
that day of pristine virtue and pastoral simplicity! It was all very
well to be an idealist then, Mr. Lushington sometimes said to Margaret;
the world was young, then; there was time for everything, then; there
was room for everybody, then; even the seasons were different, then! At
least, all old people say so, and it can hardly be supposed that all
persons over fifty years of age belong to a secret and powerful
association of liars, organised and banded together to deceive the
young.
Mr. Lushington was somebody, even at the beginning of this truthful
little tale, and that was some time ago; and if anything about him
could have really irritated Margaret Donne, it was that she could not
understand the reason of his undeniable importance. The people who
succeed in life, and in the arts and professions, are not always the
pleasantest people, nor even the nicest. Miss Donne had found this out
before she was twenty, and she was two years older now. She had learned
a good many other things more or less connected with human nature, and
more or less useful to a young woman in her position.
She remembered two or three of those comparatively recent discoveries
as she smiled at Mr. Lushington and observed that her smile annoyed
him. Not that Margaret was cruel or fond of giving pain for the sake of
seeing suffering; but she could be both when she was roused to defend
her beliefs, her ideals, or even her tastes. The cool ferocity of some
young women is awful. Judith, Jael, Delilah, and Athaliah were not
mythical. Is there a man who has not wakened from dreams, to find that
the woman he trusted has stolen his strength or is just about to hammer
the great nail home through his temples?
Margaret Donne was not actually cruel to her fellow-creatures. She was
not one of those modern persons who feel sick at the sight of a
half-starved horse dragging a heavy load, but will turn a man's life
into a temporary hell without changing colour. Such as these give women
a bad name among men. Margaret was merely defending herself, for Mr.
Lushington sometimes drove her to extremities; his very shyness was so
aggressive, that she could not pity him, even when she saw him blush
painfully, and noticed the slight dew which an attack of social
timidity brought to his smooth forehead.
She had excellent nerves, and was not at all timid; if anything, she
thought herself a little too self-possessed, and was slightly ashamed
of it, fancying it unwomanly. She had a great fear of ever being that,
and with Mr. Lushington, who seemed to take it for granted that she
ought to think as men do, and was to be blamed for thinking otherwise,
she took especial pains to claim a woman's privileges at every turn.
'I cannot imagine,' he said presently, 'how any intelligent person can
really believe in such arrant mythology.'
'But I make no pretension of "intelligence",' murmured Margaret Donne.
'That is absurd,' retorted Mr. Lushington, with a half-furtive,
half-angry glance. 'You know you are clever.'
Margaret knew it, of course, and she smiled again. The young man did
not need to see her to be sure how she looked at that moment, for he
knew her face well. It had fixed itself in the front of his memories
some time ago, and he had not succeeded in bringing any other image
there to drive it away. Perhaps he had not tried as hard as he
supposed.
It was not such a very striking face either, at first sight. The
features were not perfect, by any means, and they were certainly not
Greek. Anacreon would not have compared Margaret's complexion to roses
mixed with milk, but he might have thought of cream tinged with
peach-bloom, and it would have been called a beautiful skin anywhere.
Margaret had rather light brown eyes, but when she was interested in
anything the pupils widened so much as to make them look very dark.
Then the lids would stay quite motionless for a long time, and the
colour would fade a little from her whole face; but sometimes, just
then, she would bite her lower lip, and that spoiled what some people
would have called the intenseness of her expression. It is true that
her teeth were beyond criticism and her lips were fresh and creamy
red--but Mr. Lushington wished she would not do it. The muses are never
represented 'biting their lips'; and in his moments of enthusiasm he
liked to think that Margaret was his muse. She had thick brown hair
that waved naturally, but made no little curls and baby ringlets, such
as some young women have, or make. The line of her hair along her
forehead and temples, though curved, was rather severe. She had been
fair when a little girl, but had grown darker after she was fifteen.
When she thought of it, she rather liked her own face, for she was not
everlastingly trying to be some one else. It was a satisfactory face,
on the whole, she thought, perfectly natural and frank, and healthy. No
doubt it would have been nice to be as beautiful as a Madame de
Villeneuve, or a Comtesse de Castiglione, but as that was quite
impossible, it was easy to be satisfied with what she had in the way of
looks and not to envy the insolent radiance of the fair beauties, or
the tragic splendour of the dark ones. Besides, great beauty has
disadvantages; it attracts attention at the wrong moment, it makes
travelling troublesome, it is obtrusive and hinders a woman from doing
exactly what she pleases. It is celebrity, and therefore a target for
every photographing tourist and newspaper man.
And then, to lose it, as one must, is a kind of suffering which no male
can quite understand. Every great beauty feels that she is to be
unjustly condemned to death between forty and fifty, and that every day
of her life brings her nearer to ignominious public execution; and
though beauties manage to last longer, yet is their strength but sorrow
and weakness, depending largely on the hairdresser, the dentist, the
dressmaker and other functions of the unknown quantities _x_ and _y_,
as the mathematicians say.
The Emperor Tiberius is reported to have said that if a man does not
know what is good for him when he is forty years old, he must be either
a fool or a physician. Similarly, a woman who does not know her own
good points at twenty is either very foolish, or a raving beauty--or a
saint. Perhaps women can be all three; it is not safe to assert
anything positively about them. Margaret Donne was clever, she was a
good girl but not a saint, and she was a little more than fairly
good-looking. That was all, and she knew her good points. If she was
not perpetually showing them to advantage, she at least realised what
they were and that she might some day have to make the most of them.
They were her complexion, her mouth and her figure; and she was clever,
if cleverness be a 'point' in a human being, which is doubtful. It is
not considered one in a puppy.
Mr. Lushington discouraged the familiarity of men who called him plain
'Lushington.' When they were older than he, he felt that they were
patronising him; if they were younger, he thought them distinctly
cheeky. Occasionally he fell in with a relation, or an old
schoolfellow, who addressed him as 'Ned,' or even as 'Eddie,' This made
him utterly miserable; in the language of Johnson, when Mr. Lushington
was called 'Eddie,' he was convolved with agony--especially if a third
person chanced to be present. Margaret sometimes wondered whether she
should ever be in a position to use that weapon.
There was a possibility of it, depending on her own choice. In fact,
there were two possibilities, for she could marry him if she pleased,
or she could make an intimate friend of him, and they might then call
each other by their Christian names. At the present time she knew him
so well that she avoided using his name altogether, and he called her
'Miss Margaret' when he was pleased, and 'Miss Donne' when he was not.
'It is a pity you think me clever,' she said demurely, after a little
pause.
'Why?' he inquired severely.
'The idea makes you so uncomfortable,' Margaret answered. 'If I were
just a nice dull girl, you would only have to lay down the law, and I
should have to accept it. Or else you would not feel obliged to talk to
me at all, which would be simpler.'
'Much,' said Lushington, with some acerbity.
'So much simpler, that I wonder why you do not follow the line of least
resistance!'
A short silence came after this suggestion, and Margaret turned over
the pages of her book as if making up her mind where to begin reading.
This was not quite a pretence, for Lushington had told her that it was
a book she ought to read, which it was her intellectual duty to read,
and which would develop her reasoning faculties. By way of
encouragement he had added that she would probably not like it. On that
point she agreed with him readily. To people who read much, every new
book has a personality, features and an expression, attractive, dull,
or repulsive, like most human beings one meets for the first time. This
particular book had a particularly priggish expression, like
Lushington's yellow shoes, which were too good and too new, and which
he was examining with apparent earnestness. To tell the truth he did
not see them, for he was wondering whether the blush of annoyance he
felt was unusually visible. The result of thinking about it was that it
deepened to scarlet at once.
'You look hot,' observed Margaret, with an exasperating smile.
'Not at all,' answered Lushington, feeling as if she had rubbed his
cheeks with red pepper. 'I suppose I am sunburnt.'
Tiny beads of perspiration were gathering on his forehead, and he knew
by her smile that she saw them. It would have been delightful to walk
into the pond just then, yellow shoes and all.
He told himself that he was Edmund Lushington, the distinguished critic
and reviewer, before whom authors trembled and were afraid. It was
absurd that he should feel too hot because a mere girl had said
something smart and disagreeable. In fact, what she had said was little
short of an impertinence, in his opinion.
The fool who does not know that he looks a fool is happy. The fool who
is conscious of looking one undergoes real pain. But of all the
miserable victims of shyness, the one most to be pitied is the
sensitive, gifted man who is perfectly aware that he looks silly while
rightly conscious that he is not. Margaret Donne watched Lushington,
and knew that she was amply revenged. He would call her 'Miss Donne'
presently, and say something about the weather, as if they had never
met before. She paid no more attention to him for some time, and began
to read bits of the new book, here and there, where one page looked a
little less dull than the rest.
Meanwhile Lushington smoked thoughtfully, and the unwelcome blush
subsided. He glanced sideways at Margaret's face two or three times, as
if he were going to speak, but said nothing, and sent a small cloud
straight out before him, with a rather vicious blowing, as if he were
trying to make the smoke express his feelings. Margaret knew that trick
of his very well. Lushington was an aggressive smoker, and with every
puff he seemed to say: 'There! Take that! I told you so!'
Margaret did not look up from her book, for she knew that he would
speak before long; and so it happened.
'Miss Donne,' he began, with unnecessary coldness, and then stopped
short.
'Yes?' Margaret answered, with mild interrogation.
'Oh!' ejaculated Mr. Lushington, as if surprised that she should reply
at all. 'I thought you were reading.'
'I was.' She let the new book shut itself, as she lifted her hand from
the open pages.
'I did not mean to interrupt you,' said the young man stiffly.
No answer occurred to Margaret at once, so she waited, gently drumming
on the closed book with her loosely gloved fingers.
'I suppose you think I'm an awful idiot,' observed Mr. Lushington, with
unexpected and quite unnecessary energy.
'Dear me! This is so very sudden! Awful--idiot? Let me see.'
Her absurd gravity was even more exasperating than her smile.
Lushington threw away his cigarette angrily.
'You know what I mean,' he cried, getting red again. 'Don't be horrid!'
'Then don't be silly,' retorted Margaret.
'There! I knew you thought so!'
'Perhaps I do, sometimes,' the girl answered, more seriously. 'But I
don't mind it at all. If you care to know, I think you are often much
more human when you are--well--"silly," than when you are being clever.
'And I suppose you would like me better if I were always silly?'
Margaret shook her head and laughed softly, but said nothing. She was
thinking that it was good to be alive, and that it was the spring, and
that the life was stirring in her, as it stirred amongst the young
leaves overhead and in the shooting grasses and budding flowers, and in
the hearts of the nesting birds in the oaks and elms. Just then it
mattered very little to Margaret whether the man who was talking to her
made himself out to be silly or clever. She felt herself much nearer to
the simple breathing and growing of all nature than to the silliness or
cleverness of any fellow-creature.
Her lips parted a little and she drew in the air again and again,
slowly and quietly, as if she could drink it, and live on its sweet
taste, and never want food or other drink again, though she was not an
ethereal young person, but only a perfectly healthy and natural girl.
She was not tired, yet somehow she felt that she was resting body, soul
and heart, for a little while, after growing up and before beginning
what was to be her life.
Lushington was perfectly healthy, too, but he was not simple, and was
often not quite natural. He had real troubles and artificial ways of
treating them. He had also been in the thick of the big fight for
several years, he had tasted the wine of success and the vinegar of
failure, the sticky honey of flattery and some nasty little pills
prepared with malignant art by brother critics. With his faults and
weaknesses and absurd sensitiveness, he had in him the stuff that wins
battles with glory, or loses them with honour, promising to fight
again. He was complex. He was rarely quite sure what he felt, though he
could express with precision whatever he thought he was feeling at any
moment.
'How complicated you are!' he exclaimed, when Margaret laughed.
'I was just thinking how simple I am compared with you,' she answered
serenely; 'I mean, when you talk,' she added.
'Thank you for the distinction! "Oliver Goldsmith, for shortness called
Noll, Who writes like an angel but talks like poor Poll." That sort of
thing, I suppose?'
'I did not say that you write like an angel,' answered Margaret, in a
tone of reflection.
'You do not talk like one,' observed Mr. Lushington bitterly. 'Are you
going to Paris to-day?' he inquired after a pause; and he looked at his
watch.
'No. I had my lesson yesterday. But I am going in to-morrow.'
Lushington knew that she had only two lessons a week, and wondered why
she was going to Paris on the following day. But he was offended and
would not ask questions; moreover he did not at all approve of her
studying singing as a profession, and she knew that he did not.
His disapproval did not disturb her, though she should have liked him
to admire her voice because he was really a good judge, and praise from
him would be worth having. He often said sharp things that he did not
mean, but on the other hand, when he said that anything was good, he
always meant that it was first-rate. She wondered where he had learned
so much about music.
After all, she knew very little of his life, and as he never said
anything about his family she was inclined to think that he had no
relations and that he came of people anything but aristocratic. He had
worked his way to the front by sheer talent and energy, and she had the
good sense to think better of him for that, and not less well of him
for his reticence.
Mrs. Rushmore knew no more about Lushington's family than Margaret. The
latter was spending the spring in Versailles with the elderly American
widow, and the successful young writer had been asked to stop a week
with them. Mrs. Rushmore did not care a straw about the family
connections of celebrities, and she knew by experience that it was
generally better not to ask questions about them, as the answers might
place one in an awkward position. She had always acted on the principle
that a real lion needs no pedigree, and belongs by right to the higher
animals. Lushington was a real lion, though he was a young one. His
roar was a passport, and his bite was dangerous. Why make unnecessary
inquiries about his parents? They were probably dead, and, socially,
they had never been alive, since Society had never heard of them. It
was quite possible, Mrs. Rushmore said, that his name was not his own,
for she had met two or three celebrities who had deliberately taken
names to which they did not pretend any legal claim, but which sounded
better than their own.
He had been at Versailles to stay a few days during the previous
spring, and Margaret had seen him several times in the interval, and
they had occasionally exchanged letters. She was quite well aware that
he was in love with her, and she liked him enough not to discourage
him. To marry him would be quite another question, though she did not
look upon it as impossible. Before all, she intended to wait until her
own position was clearly defined.
For the present she did not know whether she had inherited a large
fortune, or was practically a penniless orphan living on the charity of
her friend Mrs. Rushmore; and several months might pass before this
vital question was solved. Mrs. Rushmore believed that Margaret would
get the money, or a large part of it; Margaret did not, and in the
meantime she was doing her best to cultivate her voice in order to
support herself by singing.
Her father had been English, a distinguished student and critical
scholar, holding a professorship of which the income, together with
what he received from writing learned articles in the serious reviews,
had sufficed for himself, his wife and his only child. At his death he
had left little except his books, his highly honourable reputation and
a small life insurance.
He had married an American whose father had been rich at the time, but
had subsequently lost all he possessed by an unfortunate investment,
depending upon an invention, which had afterwards become enormously
valuable. Finding himself driven to extremities and on the verge of
failure, he had been glad to make over his whole interest to a distant
relative, who assumed his liabilities as well as his chances of
success. Utterly ruined, save in reputation, he had bravely accepted a
salaried post, had worked himself to death in eighteen months and had
died universally respected by his friends and as poor as Job.
His daughter, Mrs. Donne, had felt her position keenly. She was a
sensitive woman, she had married a poor man for love, expecting to make
him rich; and instead, she was now far poorer than he. He, on his part,
never bestowed a thought on the matter. He was simple and unselfish and
he loved her simply and unselfishly. She died of a fever at forty-two
and her death killed him. Two years later, Margaret Donne was alone in
the world.
Mrs. Rushmore had known Margaret's American grandmother and had been
Mrs. Donne's best friend. She had grave doubts as to the conditions on
which the whole interest in the invention had been ceded to old Alvah
Moon, the Californian millionaire, and, after consulting her own
lawyers in New York, she had insisted upon bringing suit against him,
in Margaret Donne's name, but at her own risk, for the recovery of an
equitable share of the fortune. A tenth part of it would have made the
girl rich, but there were great difficulties in the way of obtaining
evidence as to an implied agreement, and Alvah Moon was as hard as
bedrock.
While the suit was going on, Mrs. Rushmore insisted that Margaret
should live with her, and Margaret was glad to accept her protection
and hospitality, for she felt that the obligation was not all on her
own side. Mrs. Rushmore was childless, a widow and very dependent on
companionship for such enjoyment as she could get out of her existence.
She had few resources as she grew older, for she did not read much and
had no especial tastes. The presence of such a girl as Margaret was a
godsend in many ways, and she looked forward with something like terror
to the not distant time when she should be left alone again, unless she
could induce one of her nieces to live with her. But that would not be
easy; they did not want her money, nor anything she could give them,
and they thought her dull. Her life would be very empty and sad, then.
She had never been vain, and she was well aware that such people as Mr.
Edmund Lushington could not be easily induced to come and spend a
fortnight with her if Margaret were not in the house. Besides, she
loved the girl for her own sake. It was very pleasant to delude herself
with the idea that Margaret was almost her daughter, and she wished she
could adopt her; but Margaret was far too independent to accept such an
arrangement, and Mrs. Rushmore had the common-sense to guess that if
the girl were bound to her in any way a sort of restraint would follow
which would be disagreeable to both in the end. If there could be a
bond, it must be one which Margaret should not feel, nor even guess,
and such a relation as that seemed to be an impossibility. Margaret was
not the sort of girl to accept anything from an unknown giver, and if
the suit failed it would be out of the question to make her believe
that she had inherited property from an unsuspected source. Mrs.
Rushmore, in her generosity, would have liked to practise some such
affectionate deception, and she would try almost anything, however
hopeless, rather than let Margaret be a professional singer.
The American woman was not puritanical; she had lived too much in
Europe for that and had met many clever people, not to say men of much
more than mere talent, who had made big marks on their times. But she
had been brought up in the narrow life of old New York, when old New
York still survived, as a tradition if not as a fact, in a score or two
of families; and one of the prejudices she had inherited early was that
there is a mysterious immorality in the practice of the fine arts,
whereas an equally mysterious morality is inherent in business.
Painters and sculptors, great actors and great singers without end had
sat at her table and she was always interested in their talk and often
attracted by their personalities; yet in her heart she knew that she
connected them all vaguely with undefined wickedness, just as she
associated the idea of virtuous uprightness with all American and
English business men. Next to a clergyman, she unconsciously looked
upon an American banker as the most strictly moral type of man; and
though her hair was grey and she knew a vast deal about this wicked
world, she still felt a painful little shock when her favourite
newspaper informed her that a banker or a clergyman had turned aside
out of the paths of righteousness, as they occasionally do, just like
human beings. She felt a similar disagreeable thrill when she thought
of Margaret singing in public to earn a living. Prejudices are moral
corns; anything that touches one makes it ache more or less, but the
pain is always of the same kind. You cannot get a pleasurable sensation
out of a corn.
Yet Margaret was working at her music, with persevering regularity,
quite convinced that she must soon support herself unhelped and quite
sure that her voice was her only means to that end. Singing was her
only accomplishment, and she therefore supposed that the gift, such as
it was, must be her only talent.
She was modest about it, for the very reason that she believed it was
what she did best, and she was patient because she knew that she must
do it well before she could hope to live by it. Most successful singers
had appeared in public before reaching her age, yet she was only two
and twenty, and a year or two could make no great difference.
Nevertheless, she was more anxious than she would have admitted, and
she had persuaded her teacher to let her sing to Madame Bonanni, the
celebrated lyric soprano, whose opinion would be worth having, and
perhaps final. The great singer had the reputation of being very
good-natured in such cases and was on friendly terms with Margaret's
teacher, the latter being a retired prima donna. Margaret felt sure of
a fair hearing, therefore, and it was for this trial that she was going
to the city on the following morning.
Neither she nor Lushington spoke for a long time after she had given
him the information. She took up her book again, but she read without
paying any attention to the words, for the recollection of what was
coming had brought back all her anxiety about her future life. It would
be a dreadful thing if Madame Bonanni should tell her frankly that she
had no real talent and had better give it up. The great artist would
say what she thought, without wasting time or sympathy; that was why
Margaret was going to her. Women do not flatter women unless they have
something to gain, whereas men often flatter them for the mere pleasure
of seeing them smile, which is an innocent pastime in itself, though
the consequences are sometimes disastrous.
Edmund Lushington had at first been wondering why Margaret was going to
Paris the next day, then he had inwardly framed several ingenious
questions which he might ask her; and then, as he thought of her, he
had forgotten himself at last, and had momentarily escaped from the
terrible and morbid obligation of putting his thoughts into unspoken
words, which is one of the torments that pursue men of letters when
they are tired, or annoyed, or distressed. He had forgotten his
troubles, too, whatever they were, and could listen to the music spring
was making in the trees, without feeling that he might be forced to
describe it.
Just then Margaret raised her eyes from her book and saw his face, and
he did not know that she was looking at him. For the first time since
she had met him she understood a little of his real nature, and guessed
the reason why he could write so well. He was a man of heart. She knew
it now, in spite of his faults, his shyness, his ridiculous
over-sensitiveness, his detestable way of blurting out cutting
speeches, his icy criticism of things he did not like. It was a
revelation. She wondered what he would say if he spoke just then.
But at that moment Mrs. Rushmore appeared on the lawn, an imposing and
rather formal figure in black and violet, against the curtain of
honeysuckle that hung down over the verandah.