The girl, without looking behind her or vouchsafing even a glance of
farewell, walked on until she reached the great iron gates. There she
rang the bell which hung like a huge iron tear, within reach of her
hand, and on the lodge-keeper coming out, inquired if Mrs. Hale were in.
"Mrs. Hale? Yes, miss; she is up at the house," said the woman. "You
are Miss Margaret, I expect?"
"Yes," said the girl; "my name is Margaret. I am Mrs. Hale's
granddaughter."
"She has been expecting you, miss. Keep along the avenue and you'll
come to the small gates and see the Court. There are sure to be some of
the servants about, and they'll tell you whereabouts Mrs. Hale's rooms
are."
The great gate swung heavily back, and Margaret passed through. The
avenue wound in and about for nearly half a mile, and she was thinking
that she should never get to the end of it, when at a sudden turn a
sight broke upon her which caused her to stop with astonishment.
As if it had sprung from the ground, raised by a magician's wand, rose
Leyton Court. You can buy any number of photographs of it, and are no
doubt quite familiar with its long stretching pile of red bricks and
white facings; but Margaret had seen neither the place nor any views of
it, and the vision of grandeur and beauty took her breath away.
Far down the line of sight the facade stretched, wing upon wing, all
glowing a dusky red veiled by ivy and Virginian creeper, and sparkling
here and there as the sunset rays shone on the diamond-latticed
windows. The most intense silence reigned over the whole; not a human
being was in sight, and the girl was quite startled when a peacock,
which had been strutting across a lawn that looked like velvet, spread
its tail and uttered a shrill shriek.
The size and grandeur of the place awed her, and she stood uncertain
which direction to take, when a maid-servant, with a pleasant face and
a shy smile, came hurriedly through a wicket set in the closely-cut box
hedge, and said:
"Are you Miss Margaret, please?"
"Yes," she replied.
"Mrs. Hale sent me to meet you, miss. This way please." And with a
smile of welcome, the girl led her through a narrow alley of greenery
into a near courtyard which seemed to belong to a wing of the great
house. An old fountain plashed in the center of the court and all
around were beds of bright flowers, which filled the air with color and
perfume. Up the old red walls also climbed blue starred clematis and
honeysuckle, through which the windows glistened like diamonds.
Margaret looked round and drew her breath with that excess of pleasure
which is almost pain.
"Oh what a lovely place!" she murmured involuntarily.
The servant looked pleased.
"It is pretty, isn't it, miss?" she assented. "Of course it isn't the
grand part of the Court, but _I_ think that it's as beautiful as any
part of the terrace or the Italian gardens."
"Nothing could be more lovely than this!" said Margaret.
Then she uttered a low cry of loving greeting, and, running forward,
threw her arms round an old lady, who, hearing her voice, had come to
the open doorway.
"Why Margaret--Madge!" said the old lady tremulously, as she pressed
the girl to her bosom, and then held her at arm's length that she might
look into her face. "Why my dear--my dear! Why, how you've grown! Is
this my little Margaret?--my little pale-faced Madge, who was no taller
than the table, and all legs and wings?" and leading the girl into a
bright little parlor, she sank into a chair, and holding her by the
hands, looked her over with that loving admiration of which only a
mother or a grandmother can be capable; and the old lady was justified,
for the girl, as she stood, slightly leaning forward with a flush on
her face and her eyes glowing with affection and emotion, presented a
picture beautiful enough to melt the heart of an anchorite.
"Yes, it's I, grandma," she said, half laughing, half crying. "And you
think I've grown?"
"Grown! My dear, when I saw you last you were a child; you are a
woman now, and a very"--"beautiful" she was going to say, but stopped
short--"a very passable young woman, too! I can scarcely believe my
eyes! My little madcap Madge!"
"Oh, not madcap any longer, grandma dear," said the girl, sinking
on her knees and taking off her hat, that she might lean her head
comfortably on the old lady's bosom, "not wild madcap now, you know. I
am Miss Margaret Hale, of the School of Art, and a silver medalist,"
and she laughed with sparkling eyes, which rather indicated that there
was something of the wildness left notwithstanding her dignity.
"Dear, dear me!" murmured the old lady. "Such a grand young lady! You
must tell me all about it. But there, what am I thinking of? You must
be tired--how did you come from the station, dear?"
"I walked," said the girl.
"Walked! Why didn't you take a fly, child?"
The girl colored slightly.
"Oh, it was a lovely evening and I was tired of sitting so long,
and--and--flys are for rich people, you know grandmamma," laughingly,
"and although I am a silver medalist, I am not a millionaire yet! But
indeed--" she added quickly--"I enjoyed the walk amazingly, it is such
a lovely country, and my things are coming on by the carrier. And now
I'll go and wash some of the dust and smuts away, and come back and
tell you--oh, everything."
The old lady called the maid, and the girl, still shyly, led Margaret
to a dainty little room which overlooked the flowered court, which
filled it with the odors of the clematis and honeysuckle and sweetbrier.
Margaret went to the window, and leaning over, drew in a long breath of
the perfumed air.
"Oh, beautiful! beautiful!" she murmured. "Ah! you should have lived in
London for five years to appreciate this lovely place. Mary--is your
name Mary?"
The maid blushed.
"Why, yes, miss! Did you guess it?" she replied, almost awed by the
cleverness of this tall, lovely young creature from London.
Margaret laughed.
"Most nice girls are called Mary," she said; "and I am sure you are
nice."
The girl blushed again, but, rendered speechless with pleasure, could
only stare at her shyly, and run from the room.
When Margaret came down it seemed to the old lady that she was more
beautiful than before, with her bright soft hair brushed down from her
oval face, and her slim, undulating figure revealed by the absence of
the traveling jacket. Tea was on the table and a huge bowl of Gloire
roses, and the whole room looked the picture of comfort and elegance.
"Now tell me all about it," said Mrs. Hale, when the girl had got
seated in a low chair beside the window, with her teacup and bread and
butter. "And you are quite a famous personage, Margaret, are you?"
The girl laughed, a soft, low laugh of innocent happiness.
"Not famous, dear," she said, "a very long way from the top of the
tree; but I've been lucky in getting one of my pictures into the
Academy and gaining the silver medal, and what is better than all, my
picture is sold."
This seemed to surprise the unsophisticated old lady more than all the
rest.
"Dear, dear me!" she mused. "Who ever would have thought that little
wild Madge would become an artist and paint pictures----"
"And sell them, too," laughed the girl.
"How proud your poor father would have been if he had lived," added
Mrs. Hale, with a sigh.
A swift shadow crossed the girl's lovely face, and there was silence
for a moment.
"And you are quite happy, Madge? The life suits you?"
"Yes, quite, dear; oh, quite. Of course it is hard work. I paint all
day while there is light enough, and I read books on art--I was going
to say all night," and she smiled. "Then there are the schools and
lectures--oh! it is a very pleasant life when one is so fond of art as
I am."
"And you don't feel lonely with no kith nor kin near you?"
"No," she said. "Three of us girls lodge together a little way from
the schools, and so it is not lonely, and the lady who looks after the
house--and us, of course--is pleasant and lady-like. Oh, no, it is not
lonely, but--" her eyes softened--"but I am glad to come down and see
you, grandma--I can't tell you how glad!" and she stretched out her
long, white, shapely hand--the artist's hand--so that the old lady
could take it and fondle it.
"Yes, my dear," she said. "And I can't tell you how glad I am to have
you. It seems ages instead of five years since we parted in London and
I came down here as housekeeper to the earl--ages! And the change will
do you good; I think you want a little country air; you're looking a
trifle pale, now that you have settled down a bit."
"It's only the London color," said the girl, smiling. "Nobody carries
many roses on his cheeks in London. What lovely ones those are on the
table, grandma, and what cream! How the girls would stare if they saw
and tasted it. You know we drink chalk and water in London, grandma!"
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the old lady.
"They carry it round in cans and call it milk, but it is chalk and
water all the same," she said, laughingly. "And now, dear, you must
tell me all about yourself--why, we have done nothing but talk about
foolish me since I came! Are _you_ quite happy, grandma, and do you
like being housekeeper to a grand earl?"
"Very much, my dear," said the old lady, with a touch of dignity. "It
is a most important and responsible post," and she stroked the smooth
white hand she still held.
"I should think so," said Margaret, with quick sympathy. "Keeping any
kind of house must be a tremendous affair, but keeping such an enormous
place as this--why, grandma, it is like a town, there seems no end to
it!"
The old lady nodded proudly.
"Yes. Leyton Court is a very grand place, my dear," she assented.
"I suppose it's one of the grandest, if not _the_ grandest, in the
country. You shall go over it some day when the earl is away."
"The earl, yes," said Margaret. "It was very kind of him to let me
come."
Mrs. Hale tossed her head.
"Oh, my dear, he knows nothing about it!" she said. "Bless me, the
earl is too great a person to know anything about the goings on of
such humble individuals as you and me. I am my own mistress in my
own apartments, my dear, and am quite at liberty to have my own
granddaughter stay with me."
"Of course," said the girl quickly. "And is he nice?--the earl, I mean."
"Nice!" repeated the old lady, as if there were something disrespectful
in the word. "Well, 'nice' is scarcely the word--I've only seen him
half a dozen times since I came, so I can't say what he's like; but he
was very pleasant then--in his way, my dear."
Margaret opened her eyes.
"Not half-a-dozen times in five years? Then he doesn't live here
always?"
"Not always. He is in Spain or Ireland some parts of the year, but he
lives at the Court during most of the summer. You see, my dear, great
folks like the Earl of Ferrers keep to themselves more than humble
people. The earl has his own apartments--you can see them from the
drive; they run along the terrace--and his own particular servants.
Excepting Mr. Stibbings, the butler, and Mr. Larkhall, his valet, and
the footmen, none of us see anything of his lordship."
"He is quite like a king, then?" said the girl musingly.
"Quite," assented the old lady approvingly; "quite like a king, as you
say; and everybody in Leyton Ferrers regards him as one. Why, the queen
herself couldn't be more looked up to or feared!"
The girl pondered over this. You don't meet many earls and dukes in the
National Art Schools, and this one possessed an atmosphere of novelty
for Margaret.
"And does he live here all alone?" she asked.
"All alone; yes."
"In this great place? How lonely he must be!"
"No, my dear," said the old lady. "Great people are never lonely; they
are quite--quite different to us humble folks."
Margaret smiled to herself at the naive assertion.
"I thought he would have had some relations to live with him. Hasn't he
any sons--children?"
Mrs. Hale shook her head.
"No, no children! There was a son, but he died. There is a nephew, Lord
Blair Leyton, but he and the earl don't agree, and he has never been
here, though, of course, he will come into the property when the earl
dies, which won't be for many a long year, I hope."
"Blair Leyton! and he's a lord too----"
"A viscount," said the old lady. "I don't like to speak ill of a
gentleman, especially one I don't know, but I am afraid his young
lordship is--is"--she looked round for a word--"is a very wicked young
man, my dear."
"How do you know?" asked Margaret, nestling into the comfortable chair
to listen at her ease.
"Well, Mr. Stibbings has spoken of him. Mr. Stibbings--a perfect
gentleman, my dear--is good enough to drop in and take a cup of tea
sometimes, and he has told me about young Lord Blair! You see, he has
been in the family a great many years, and knows all its history. He
says that the earl and the young nephew never did get on together, and
that the young man is, oh, very wild indeed, my dear! The earl and he
have only met two or three times, and then they quarreled--quarreled
dreadfully. I daresay the earl feels the loss of his son, and that
makes it hard for him to get on with Lord Blair. But he is really a
very wicked young man, I am sorry to say."
"What does he do?" asked Margaret.
The old lady looked rather puzzled how to describe a young man's
wickedness to an innocent girl.
"Well, my dear, it would be easier, perhaps, to say what he _doesn't_
do!" she said at last.
Margaret laughed softly.
"Poor young man," she said gently. "It must be bad to be so wicked!"
The old lady shook her head severely.
"I don't know why you pity him, my dear," she said.
"Oh, I don't know," said the girl, slowly. "Perhaps some people can't
help being bad, you know, grandma! Oh, here are my things coming!
now I can show you one of my pictures!" and she jumped up gleefully,
and commenced unfastening the brown-paper parcel. "I did think of
carrying it, but I am glad I didn't, for it was warm, and I met with an
unpleasant adventure on the road, when the parcel might have been in
the way. Oh, I didn't tell you, grandma! I saw such a terrible fight--a
_fight_! think of it--as I came here."
"A fight, my dear?" exclaimed the old lady.
"Yes," nodded Margaret; "between two men; and what made it worse, one
was a gentleman."
"A gentleman, Margaret! Gentlemen don't fight, my dear."
"So I thought," she said, naively; "but this one does anyway, and
fights very well," she added. "At least, he knocked the other one
down--a great tall fellow--as if he had been shot."
"Bless my heart! where was this?"
"Oh, just in the village here. The man--he was an ill-tempered fellow,
I'm sure, with such a dreadful face--kicked a poor dog, and the
gentleman, who was near, fought him for it."
"Good gracious me! And, of course, you ran away?"
The girl laughed rather strangely.
"No, I didn't, grandma. I ought to have done so, I meant to do so,
but--well, I didn't. I wish I had, for the creature had the impudence
to speak to me!"
"What--the man?" aghast.
"The gentleman. He came across the road and begged my pardon. I'd got
the poor dog in my arms, you see, and I suppose--well I don't know
why he spoke, but perhaps it was because, being a gentleman, he felt
ashamed of himself. If he didn't at first, I think he did when he went
away," she added, with a laugh and a blush, as she remembered the words
that had flown like darts of fire from her lips. "Oh, it was shameful!
His face was cut, and there was blood"--she shuddered--"on his collar!
He was a very handsome young man, too. I wonder who he was. Did I tell
you he came down by the same train as I did?"
Mrs. Hale shook her head.
"No one I know, my dear," she said. "None of the gentry hereabouts
would fight with any one, least of all a common man. A tall man, with
an ugly face----"
"Oh, very ugly and evil-looking--I think they called him Pyke."
"Pyke--Jem Pyke!" said Mrs. Hale. "Oh, I know him; a dreadful bad
character, my dear. I'm not surprised at his kicking a dog, or fighting
either. He's one of our worst men--a poacher and a thief, so they say.
I wonder he didn't get the best of it!"
"He got the very possible worst of it," said Margaret, with an
unconscious tone of satisfaction. "There's the picture, grandma! And
where will you hang it?"
It was a clever little picture; a bit of a London street, faithfully
and carefully painted, and instinct with grace and feeling.
The old lady of course did not see all the good points, but she was
none the less proud and delighted, and stood regarding it with admiring
awe that rendered her speechless.
"You dear, clever girl," she said, kissing her, "and it is for me,
really for me? Oh, Margaret, if your poor father----"
Margaret sighed.
"Get me a hammer and a nail, grandma," she said, after a moment, "and
I'll put it in a good light; the light is everything, you know."
A hammer and nail were brought, and the picture hung, and the two
went out into the garden, and presently the girl was singing like a
nightingale from her over-brimming heart. But suddenly she stopped and
looked in at the window of the room where the old lady had returned to
see the unpacking and uncreasing of the clothes which had traveled in
the unpretending Gladstone bag.
"Oh, grandma, I beg your pardon! I forgot! Perhaps the earl won't like
my singing?"
Mrs. Hale laughed.
"The earl! My dear, he is right at the other end of the building and
could scarcely hear a brass band from here! But come in now, Margaret,
and have some supper. You must go to bed early after your long journey,
or you won't sow the seed for those roses I want to see in your cheeks!"
When she woke in the morning with the scent of the honeysuckle wafting
across her face, Margaret could almost have persuaded herself that
Leyton Court was a vision of a dream, and that she should find herself
presently on her way to the art school at Kensington amidst all the
London noise and smoke. To most Londoners the country in June is a
dream of Paradise; what must it have been to this young girl, with the
soul of an artist, with every nerve throbbing in sympathy with the sky,
the flowers, the songs of the birds?
Like a vision herself, her plainly made morning dress of a soft, dove
color and fitting her slim young shape with the grace of a well-made
garment that can afford to be plain, she ran down the oak stairs into
the parlor. But Mrs. Hale was not there, and Mary, who glanced with shy
admiration at the lovely face and pretty dress, said that she had gone
to see the butler.
"You will find her in the pantry, miss, if you like. It is at the end
of this passage, to the right. You can't miss it, miss."
But Margaret did miss it, for her idea of a pantry was a small place in
the nature of a cupboard, whereas the pantry at the Court was a large
and spacious room, and Margaret, seeing nothing to answer to her idea,
opened a door, entered, found herself before another door, opened that,
discovered that she was in a round kind of a lobby surrounded, like
Blue Beard's chamber, with other doors, and all at once learned that
she had lost herself.
It was a ridiculous position to be placed in, and an annoying one, for
she felt that her grandmother would be vexed by Margaret's venturing
out of their own apartments.
But she did not know what to do; it was impossible, having turned
round in the circular lobby and lost count of the door, to regain it
again, and in a semi-comic despair, she opened the door opposite her,
intending to walk on until she met a servant of whom she could ask her
way back to Mrs. Hale's wing.
She found herself presently and quite suddenly in a short corridor, at
the end of which a stream of varicolored light poured from a stained
window; there was the reflection also of gilt carving and velvet
hangings, and rather awed, Margaret was for turning back, when she
saw a footman pass with noiseless footsteps across the thick Oriental
carpet at the end of the corridor.
She called to him, and hurried after him, but before she could reach
him he had disappeared as if by magic, evidently without hearing her
suppressed voice, and she found herself standing at the entrance to a
magnificent picture gallery, which seemed to run an interminable length
and lose itself in a distant vista of ferns and statuary.
Margaret literally held her breath as she peered in through the velvet
curtains.
There, line upon line, hung what was no doubt one of the collections of
the kingdom--and she within the threshold of it.
Her mouth, metaphorically, began to water; her large dark eyes grew
humid with wistfulness.
What cream is to a cat, water to a duck, _pate de foie gras_ to a
gourmet, an Elziver to a bookworm, that is a picture gallery to an
artist.
She could resist the temptation no longer. The place was crowned, as it
were, with silence and solitude: no one would see her or know that she
had been there, and she would only stay five--ten minutes.
Eve could not resist temptation--being doubtless fond of apples;
Margaret could not resist, being fond of pictures. And yet, if she had
known what was to follow upon this visit to Leyton Court, if there had
only been some kind guardian angel to whisper:
"Fly, Margaret, my child! Fly this spot, where peril and destruction
await thee!"
But, alas! our guardian angels always seem to be taking bank holiday
just on the days when we most need them, and Margaret's angel was
silent as the tomb.
Pushing the heavily-bullioned curtain aside she entered the gallery,
and an exclamation of surprise and delight broke from her lips.
It was a priceless collection: Rubens, Vandyke, Titians, Raphael,
Michael Angelo, Cuyp, Jan Steen; all the masters were here, and at
their best.
The soul of the girl went into her eyes, her face grew pale, and her
breath came in long-drawn sighs, as she moved noiselessly on the thick
Turkey carpet, which stretched itself like a glittering snake over the
marble floor before the pictures.
What jewels were to some women, and dress to others, pictures were to
Margaret.
She was standing rapt in an ecstasy before a head by Guido, her hands
clasped and hanging loosely in front of her, her lovely face upturned,
a picture as beautiful as the one upon which she gazed, when she
suddenly became aware, without either seeing or hearing, but with that
sense, which is indescribable and nameless, that she was not alone, but
that some one else had entered the gallery.
The consciousness affected her strangely, and for a moment she did not
move eye or limb; then, with an effort, she turned her head and saw a
tall figure standing a few paces from the doorway.
It was that of an old man, with white hair and dark--piercing
dark--eyes. He was clad in a velvet dressing-gown, whose folds fell
round the thin form and gave it an antique expression, which harmonized
with the magnificence and silence of the gallery.
The eyes were bent on her, not sternly, not curiously, but with a calm,
steadfast regard, which affected her more than any expression of anger
could have done.
She stood quite still, her heart beating wildly, for she knew, though
she had never seen him, that it must be the earl himself.