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.