The Leslies had been settled at Earl’s-hall since before the memory of
man. Now they were related to other Leslies in Fife; and out of it, I
do not pretend to say. But this family itself was old enough to have
carried any amount of honors, much less the poor baronetcy which was
all it had got out of the sometimes lavish hand of fame. The family
was old enough to have supported a dukedom, but not rich enough. Sir
Ludovic had got but a moderate fortune from his father, and that which
he would transmit to his son would be considerably less than moderate.
Indeed, it was not worth calling a fortune at all. When the Baronet
began his life, the policy was a real policy, a pretty small park
enough, with its girdle of hardy trees. No turnip-field then thrust its
plebeian presence and odor between the house and its own woods; the
garden was kept up with care, the other part of the house was still
habitable and inhabited, and the greatest people in the country did
not scorn to dine and dance in the rooms so well adapted for either
purpose. But of all these good things, the rooms and old Sir Ludovic
were all that remained. He had not done any particular harm at any
time, nor had he wasted his means in lavish living, and nobody was
so much surprised as he when his money was found to have been spent.
“What have I done with it?” he had asked all his life. But nobody
could tell; he had no expensive tastes--indeed, he had no tastes at
all, except for books, and his own library was a very good one. It was
true, he had indulged in three wives and three families, which was
inconsiderate, but each of the wives had, greatly to the comfort of
her respective children, possessed something of her own. Time went and
came, however, taking these ladies away in succession, but leaving Sir
Ludovic still in his great high-backed chair, older, but otherwise not
much different from what he had ever been. The eldest son, also called
Ludovic, was the only one now surviving of the first marriage. He was
a man of forty-five, with a family of his own; a hard-working lawyer
in Edinburgh, with no great income to keep up his position, and little
disposed to welcome the burden of his father’s little title when it
should come. A baronetcy, and an old house altogether uninhabitable by
a family, and entirely out of modern fashion--what should he make of
these additions when his father died? He had made his own way as much
as if he had been a poor school-master’s son, instead of the heir of an
ancient and important family. He could not even take his children home
to the old place, or give them any associations with it, for there was
no room at Earl’s-hall. “Your father might as well be in Russia,” his
wife sometimes said when she wanted a change for a little boy who was
delicate. And privately, Mr. Leslie had made up his mind to sell the
place, though it had been so long in the family, when Sir Ludovic died.
Of the second family there were two remaining, two daughters, one of
whom had been married and had settled in England; the other, who had
not married, living with her. They were twins, and some five years
younger than their elder brother. And neither did they come often to
Earl’s-hall. The same objection was in everybody’s way--there was no
room for them. And Sir Ludovic disliked letter-writing. They came
occasionally to see their father, and to hold up their hands and shake
their heads at the way in which little Margaret was being brought up.
But what could these ladies do? To live at Earl’s-hall was impossible,
and to go and stay in a little cottage in the Kirkton, all for the
sake of a small step-sister, and without even any security that they
could really be of any use to her, was something more of a test than
their lukewarm family affection could bear. And they hesitated about
recommending a governess; for with an old gentleman so much addicted to
marriage, who could tell what might happen? Though he was seventy-five,
he was the same man as ever, and very fascinating when he chose to
exert himself; and to have a new Lady Leslie would be a still greater
horror than to have a young rustic for a step-sister. And then the
child would be rich. It does not require much learning, as Mrs.
Hardcastle says, to spend fifteen hundred a year.
So that Margaret was left alone. Her mother had been the richest of
all Sir Ludovic’s wives. She had been--more wonderful still--a young
beauty, courted and flattered, and how it was that she passed over all
her younger admirers and fixed upon a man of fifty-five, a poor old
Scotch baronet, nobody could divine. But she did so, and came home with
him to Earl’s-hall, and brightened it a while with her youth and her
wealth, and would have done wonders for the old house. Nothing less
had been intended than to rebuild the ruin, though Sir Ludovic himself
discouraged this, as the house, he reminded her, must pass into other
hands. But poor Lady Leslie’s fine projects came to a premature end,
by means of a bad cold which she caught just after her little girl was
born. She died, and the last gleam of prosperity died away with her.
Margaret, it was true, was rich, and the allowance her trustees made
her was no small help even now to the impoverished household; though,
indeed, the trouble these trustees gave, her father thought, was more
than the money was worth. They wrote to Sir Ludovic about her education
till he was roused to swear at, though not to profit by, the perpetual
remonstrance.
“Education! what would they have at her age? A mere child,” he said.
“Eh, Sir Ludovic! but she’s sixteen,” Bell said, who was the only one
in the house who ever ventured to keep up an argument with her old
master.
“Pshaw!” the old man said; for what is sixteen to seventy-five? And
besides, did he not see her before him a slim stripling of a girl,
flitting about in perpetual motion, a singing voice, a dancing step,
a creature never in the same place, as Bell said, for “twa minutes by
the clock?” What does that kind of small thing want with education? Sir
Ludovic liked her better without it, and so perhaps would most people;
for are not the fresh wonder, curiosity, and intelligent ignorance of
a child its most captivating qualities? If we could but venture to
take the good of them with a clear conscience and no thought of what
the child will say to us when it ceases to be a child! Sir Ludovic had
this courage. He did not think much of his duties to Margaret. She
had duties to him--to be always pretty and cheerful, not to speak too
broad Scotch, to get his books down for him when he wanted them, to put
everything ready on his table, pens, pencils, and note-book, in case
he should want to write something (which he never did), and to be neat
and in order at meal-times. In this one particular he certainly did his
duty. Margaret had not the privilege of being untidy, which is allowed
to most neglected heroines. Sir Ludovic required scrupulous neatness,
hair that shone, and garments that were spotless, and ribbons as fresh
as the day. Should not we all like just such a creature about us, fair
as a new-blown rose, with a voice so toned and harmonious, a step
with rhythm in it, a pair of eyes running over with understanding and
interest, and no education to speak of? If only the creature would not
arise upon us after and upbraid us for its want of knowledge! But of
this risk Sir Ludovic never dreamed. She could read, he supposed, for
he saw her reading; and she could write, he knew, for he had seen her
do it. What could they want more?
Thus they lived, not uncontented, from year to year. No one told
Margaret to read, but she did so, perhaps with all the more pleasure
because nobody told her. She read all the best poetry that is written
in English, and a great deal that was not the best. She was so great
in history that she had been a Lancastrian and taken an active, even
violent, part on the side of her namesake, Margaret of Anjou, as long
as she could remember--a more violent part even than she took for Queen
Mary, though to that also she was bound as a true Scot. She had read
Clarendon and Sir Thomas Brown, and Burton on “Melancholy” (not caring
much for that) and an old translation of Froissart, and “Paul and
Virginia,” and Madame Cottin’s “Elizabeth,” and “Don Quixote,” all in
translations; so that her range was tolerably wide; and everything came
natural to Margaret, the great and the small. Needless to say that all
Sir Walter was hers by nature, as what well-conditioned Scots person
of seventeen has not possessed our homelier Shakspeare from his or her
cradle? Whether she loved best the Spanish Don, or Lord Falkland, or
Sir Kenneth in the “Talisman,” was not to her mind perfectly clear.
In this respect she was not so sure about Shakspeare. His lovers and
heroes did not satisfy her youthful requirements; she loved Henry the
Fifth, and Faulcon-bridge, and Benedick, but was not at all satisfied
about the relations between Hamlet and Ophelia, naturally standing
by her own side, and thinking that poor maiden badly used: which is
as much as to say that the spell of story was still strong upon her,
though the poetry went to her head all the same. These were the books
Sir Ludovic saw her reading--but he took no notice and no oversight. He
did not think of her at all as a responsible creature to be affected
one way or other by what she read, or as undergoing any process of
training for the future. The future! what is that at seventy-five?
especially to a man who amiably and without evil intention has always
found himself the centre of the world! It is like the future of a
child--to-morrow. He did not want to pry any further. What was to
come, would come without any intervention of his. Had his child been
penniless, probably he would have thought it necessary to remember that
in all probability (as he expressed it) she would survive him. But
she was rich, and where was the need of thinking? The great thing was
that there was no room. The bedrooms in the house were so few. Where
could they put a governess, he asked Bell; and even Bell, though full
of resources, could not reply. There was one good-sized room which Sir
Ludovic himself occupied, and another quaint small panelled chamber in
which Margaret was very snug and cosy, but beyond these scarcely any
bedchamber in the house was in a proper state of repair. What could any
one say against so evident a fact? “We could dine fifty folk,” Bell
said, half proudly, half sadly, “and we could gie a grand ball after
that up the stair; but pit up one single gentleman that is no very
particular, that’s all we could do beside.” It was a curious state of
affairs. The two long rooms, one above the other, were the whole house.
Of the wealth which Margaret was to inherit, she knew absolutely
nothing. There was a house “in England,” a vague description which the
girl had never much inquired into, seeing that till her twenty-first
birthday it was very unlikely that she would have anything whatever to
do with it. In the mean time it served a very pleasant purpose in her
life. It was the scene of so many dreams and visions of that future
which was everything to Margaret, that it could not be said to be an
unknown place. She built it and furnished it, and planted trees and
invented glades about the unrevealed place, such as in reality it could
not boast of. Everything that she thought most beautiful in her small
experience of things, or which she found in her considerable experience
of books, she placed in this distant mansion, where all manner of
pleasant verdure was, which was not to be found in Scotland, flowers
and fruits, and green lawns, and abundant foliage, and sunshine such as
never shone in Fife. She made pictures of it, and dreamed dreams, but
no troublesome dash of reality disturbed the vision. She was the lady
of the manor, a title which pleased her fancy hugely, and which she
wove into many a fancy; but it was all as visionary as if she had found
the Grange in a novel and appropriated it.
If anything could have been more unlike an English manor-house than
the quaint old dwelling in which her childhood had been passed, it was
the dreams Margaret wove of her future home. Claude Melnotte’s palace
was more like that sunshiny fancy. No castle in Spain or in the air
was ever more unreal. There wants no education to teach a girl how to
dream, and the less she knows, so much the more gorgeous and delightful
becomes the imagination. But naturally this was a branch of her
training totally unknown to everybody connected with her. Sir Ludovic
knew a great deal, but had not a notion of that branch of human effort;
neither, it may well be supposed, did Bell, though her instincts were
clearer. When she saw her young mistress sit abstracted, her eyes far
away, a half smile on her lips, Bell knew that there must be something
going on within the small head. What was it? There were no young men,
or, as Bell called them, “lauds,” about that could have caught her
youthful eye. Bell knew that the romance of life begins early, and
had some glimmering of recollection that before any “lauds” appear on
the horizon in reality, there are flutters of anticipation in maiden
souls, dreams of being wooed like the rest, “respectit like the lave.”
But Margaret had seen none of the rural wooings which are a recognized
institution in Scotland, those knocks at the window and whispers at the
door, which add the charm of mystery to the never-ending romance. Bell
had taken care even that Jeanie’s “laud” and his evening visits should
be kept out of the young lady’s notice. But then, if it was not the
glimmer of poetic love that flickered on the horizon, what was it? And
except Bell, and perhaps Jeanie, no one had noticed the soft abstracted
look that sometimes stole into Margaret’s eyes, or knew her capacity
for dreams. Mr. Leslie, when he came, took but little notice of his
step-sister. He had a daughter who was older than she, indeed Margaret
had become a great-aunt, to the amusement of everybody, during the
previous winter. Her brother took very little notice of her. When he
looked at her, he breathed a private thanksgiving that she was provided
for, and would not be an additional burden upon him when his father
died. It was only when Sir Ludovic was ill or in difficulty, that Mr.
Leslie came, and the reflection, “Thank Heaven I have not the lassie to
think of,” was the foremost sentiment in his breast. He had plenty of
his own to exhaust all the fund of interest in his heart. She had no
business ever to have been, this young creature whose presence in the
old house made a certain difference naturally in all the arrangements;
but, being there, the chief fact was this fortunate one that she was
provided for. So far as Margaret was concerned, this was the only thing
in his thoughts.
As for Mrs. Bellingham and her sister, Miss Leslie, they lived a long
way from Fife. They were ladies who travelled a great deal, and spent
all they had to spend in making their life pleasant. Mrs. Bellingham
was childless, and a widow, so that her married life did not count
for much, though she herself regarded the elevation it gave her with
much contentment. Now and then, instead of going to Switzerland or the
Italian lakes, they would come to Scotland, making expeditions into
the Highlands, and preserving everywhere their character as British
tourists. Once there had been some question between them of inviting
Margaret to accompany them on one of these expeditions, which it was
thought might do her good and improve her manners, and give her a
little acquaintance with the world. But on more mature reflection,
it became apparent that the maid whom the two ladies shared between
them, when on their travels, was by no means disposed to undertake the
packing and toilet of a third.
“Many a girl would be glad to give a little assistance herself rather
than trouble, for the chance of such a treat,” Miss Leslie said, who
was the weak-minded sister; “and in that way I really think we might
manage--if dear Margaret was a sensible girl.”
“Margaret is not a sensible girl, and we could not manage at all, and
I won’t have Forrester put about,” Mrs. Bellingham said, who took the
management of everything upon her. “Besides, a girl--she would be an
endless trouble to you and me. We should have to change our route to
let her see this thing and that thing, and you would be afraid she did
not enjoy herself, and the Lord knows what besides. There are many
things in conversation even that have to be stopped before a girl. No,
no; it would never do.”
And thus one hope for Margaret’s improvement came to an end. A similar
failure happened about the same time in Edinburgh. When Mrs. Ludovic
got that German governess, who was at once her pride and her dread,
she was so much affected by the grandeur and superiority as to suggest
an arrangement to her husband by which his little sister might be
benefited.
“It appears to me that we, who have such advantages, ought, perhaps,
to share them a little with others that are not so well off. There is
little Margaret at the Hall. What do you think? Sir Ludovic might send
her to us to share the children’s lessons. Fräulein is an expensive
luxury, and a little help with her salary would be no harm. And if
Margaret had six months with our girls, it would do her a great deal of
good; if it was only to learn German--”
“What does she want with German? What good would it do her to learn
German?” said Ludovic, testily.
“Well, I’m sure, Ludovic, that’s not an easy question. I never thought
you were one to ask for an immediate result. I am sure you all say
learning anything is an advantage, whether the thing they learn is any
use or not. I do not always see it myself,” said Mrs. Leslie; “but many
is the time I’ve heard you all say so. And if we could do Margaret a
good turn, and at the same time save something on our own expenses--”
“Do Margaret a good turn! I do not see what claim she has on me. She
has plenty of people to look after her if they would do their duty.
Trustees of her money, and her mother’s relations, not to speak of
my father himself, who has plenty of energy left when you cross him.
Indeed, if you come to that, Jane and Grace are nearer to her than I.”
“Because the second is nearer the third than the first is,” Mrs.
Ludovic said, who had some sense of humor. But she added, “Well! I
never made any attempt to fathom you Leslies but I was baffled. I think
there was never a set of people like you. I hope I’ll never be so left
to myself as to try again.”
“We Leslies! The most of the Leslies nowadays are your own bairns.”
“That’s true, and more’s the pity,” said the lady, discharging an arrow
as she went away.
And thus another attempt to do something for Margaret came to nothing.
Everything failed. It was nobody’s business, perhaps. The trustees were
strangers who did not know. Her father was old, and did not care to be
troubled, and liked her best as she was. Her brothers and sisters, what
had they to do with it? They were not their little sister’s keeper. So
between them all she was left to grow as she pleased, like a flower
or a weed, nobody responsible for her, whatever might happen. Even a
School Board, had there been one in the parish, what right would it
have had to interfere?