Sir Ludovic was “none the worse” of his stumble, and next day all
things went on as before. Rob Glen was one of the first who came to
inquire, and he was asked to go up-stairs, and was thanked for his aid
with all ceremony, yet kindness, Margaret standing by, beaming upon
him, beaming with pleasure and gratitude. Rob, she felt, was her friend
much more than her father’s, and she was grateful to him for his succor
of her father, and grateful to Sir Ludovic for accepting the service.
She stood by and smiled upon the young man. “I am very thankful too,”
she said, “Mr. Glen,” and the look in Rob’s eyes made her blush. She
had always been given to blushing; but Margaret blushed more than
ever now, in the vague excitement of thought and feeling which these
last weeks had revived in her. They had been spent almost in Rob’s
constant companionship, so long had the sketching lasted; and the two
had been for hours together, alone, in close proximity, with unlimited
opportunities of conversation. He had told her a great deal about
himself, and she had revealed to him all the corners of her innocent
memory. They had become again as closely united as when little Margaret
sat by the big boy, with her little feet dabbling in the water,
spoiling his fishing, but filling him with vague delight.
He had indulged in various other loves since then; but, after all,
when you came to look back upon it, was not little Margaret his first
love? He got her to go with him one day to the burn, which they had
haunted as children, and told her he meant to make a picture of it.
This was just the spot, he said. It was nothing but a bit of grassy
bank, a ragged willow dipping into the brook, a great old hawthorn-bush
upon the slope. “You used to be so fond of the white hawthorn” (“And
so I am still,” Margaret said), “and here was where you sat with the
clear water running over your little feet. I think I can see them now.”
Margaret grew crimson, but that was an effect so easily produced; and
she too thought she could remember sitting on these summer afternoons,
with the soft ripple, like warm silk, playing over her feet, and the
scent of the hawthorn (we do not call it May in Fife) filling the air,
and flies and little fishes dimpling the surface of the pool. “I will
paint a picture of it,” said Rob; and the idea pleased her. Thus the
days went on; they were shorter than any days had ever been before to
Margaret, full of interest, full of pleasure. An atmosphere of soft
flattery, praise, too delicate to be put into words, a kind of unspoken
worship, surrounded her. She was amused, she was occupied, she was made
happy. And it did not occur to her to ask herself the reason of this
vague but delightful exhilaration. She felt it like an atmosphere all
round her, but did not ask herself, and did not know what it was.
And perhaps with this round of pleasant occupation going on outside,
she was not quite so much with her father, or so ready to note his ways
as she had been. On the Monday evening, Rob, by special invitation,
dined with them, and exerted himself to his utmost to amuse Sir
Ludovic; and after this beginning he came often. He did amuse Sir
Ludovic, sometimes by his knowledge, sometimes by his ignorance; by the
clever things he would say, and the foolish things he would say--the
one as much as the other.
“Let your friend come to dinner,” the old man would say, with a smile.
“John, you will put a plate for Mr. Glen.” And so it came about that
for a whole week Rob shared their meal every evening. When Sir Ludovic
got drowsy (as it is so natural to do after dinner, for every one,
not only for old men), the two young people would steal away into the
West Chamber and watch the sun setting, which also was a dangerous
amusement. Thus it will be seen poor little unprotected Margaret was in
a bad way.
During all this time, the old servants of the house watched their
master very closely. Even Bell had to give up the consideration of
Margaret and devote herself to Sir Ludovic. And they saw many signs and
tokens that they did not like, and had many consultations whether Mr.
Leslie or “the ladies” should be sent for. The ladies seemed the most
natural, for the young master was known to have his business to attend
to, and his family; but Bell “could not bide” calling for the ladies
before their time. And Sir Ludovic was just in his ordinar; there was
nothing more to be said; failing, but that was natural: nothing that
anybody could take notice of. It was well to have Rob Glen at night,
for that amused him; and when the Minister called, bringing his son
to be re-presented to his old friend, they were glad, for Sir Ludovic
was interested. When Dr. Burnside went away, he stopped at the door
expressly to tell Bell how glad he was to see the old gentleman look so
well.
“He’s taking out a new lease,” said the Doctor.
“Eh me.” Bell said, looking after him, “how little sense it takes to
make a minister!” But this was an utterance of hasty temper, for she
had in reality an exalted respect for Dr. Burnside, both as minister
and as man.
But it fell upon the house like a bomb-shell, when suddenly one
morning, after being unusually well the night before, Sir Ludovic
declined to get out of bed. No, he said, he was not ill, he was quite
comfortable; but he did not feel disposed to get up. Old John, upon
whose imagination this had an effect quite out of proportion to its
apparent importance as an incident, begged and entreated almost with
tears, and, finding his own remonstrances ineffectual, went to get Bell.
“I canna stand it,” the old man said. “Get you him out of his bed,
Bell. Pit it to me ony other way, and I’ll bear it; but to see him lie
yonder smiling, and think of a’ that’s to come!”
Bell put on a clean apron and went up-stairs.
“Sir Ludovic,” she said, “you’re no going to bide there as if you were
ill, and frighten my auld man out of his wits. Ye ken, John, he’s a
dour body on the outside, but within there’s no a baby has a softer
heart; and he canna bide to see you in your bed--nor me either!” cried
the old woman, suddenly, putting up her hands to her face.
Sir Ludovic lay quite placid, with his white head upon the white
pillows, his fine dark eyes full of light, and smiling. It was enough,
Bell thought, to break the heart of a stone.
“And why should I get up when I am comfortable here?” said Sir Ludovic,
“my good Bell. You’ve ruled over me so long that you think I am never
to have a will of my own; and, indeed, if I do not show a spark of
resolution now, when am I to show it?” he said, with a soft laugh.
“There is but little time.”
On this John made an inarticulate outburst, something between a sob and
a groan--a roar of grief and impatience such as an animal in extremity
might have uttered. He had stolen up behind his wife, not able to keep
away from his old master. Bell had long been her husband’s interpreter
when words failed him. She dried her eyes with her apron, and turned
again to the bedside.
“Sir Ludovic,” she said, solemnly, “he says you’ll break his heart.”
“My good friend,” said the old man, with a humorous twitch about his
mouth, “let us be honest. It must come some time, why shouldn’t it
come now? I’ve been trying, like the rest of you, to push it off, and
pretend I did not know. Come, you are not so young yourself, to be
frightened. It must come, sooner or later. What is the use of being
uncomfortable, trying to keep it at arm’s-length? I’m very well here. I
am quite at my ease. Let us go through with it,” said Sir Ludovic, with
a sparkle in his eye.
“You’re speaking Hebrew-Greek to me, Sir Ludovic. I canna tell no more
than the babe unborn what you’re going through with,” cried Bell; and
when she had said this she threw her apron over her head and sobbed
aloud.
“Well, this is a cheerful beginning,” said Sir Ludovic. “Call ye this
backing of your friends? Go away, you two old fools, and send me my
little Peggy; and none of your wailing to her, Bell. Leave the little
thing at peace as long as that may be.”
“I hope I ken my duty to Miss Margret,” said Bell, with an air of
offence, which was the easiest to put on in the circumstances. She
hurried out of the room with hasty steps, keeping up this little
fiction, and met Margaret coming down-stairs, fresh as the morning, in
her light dress, with her shining hair. “You’re to go to your papa,
Miss Margret,” said Bell, “in his ain room: where you’ll find him in
his bed--”
“He’s not ill, Bell?” cried Margaret, with quick anxiety.
“Ill! He’s just as obstinate and as ill-willy as the mule in the
Scriptures,” cried Bell, darting down the winding stair. She could not
bear it any more than John. Margaret, standing on the spiral steps, an
apparition of brightness, everything about her
“Drawn
From morning and the cheerful dawn;”
her countenance all smiling, her eyes as soft and as happy as the
morning light-- Bell could not see her for tears. She seemed to see
the crape and blackness which so soon would envelop them all, and the
deeper darkness of the world, in which this young creature would soon
have no natural home. “No another moment to think upon it,” Bell said
to herself; “no a moment. The ladies maun come now.”
Margaret, surprised, went through the long room in which, by this hour,
her father’s chair was always occupied, but felt no superstitious
presentiment at seeing it desolate. Sir Ludovic’s rooms--there were two
of them, a larger and a smaller--opened off from the long room. He had
taken, quite lately, as his bedchamber, the smaller room of the two, an
octagon-shaped and panelled room, as being the warmest and most bright;
and there he was lying, smiling as when Bell saw him first, with the
morning light upon his face.
“You sent for me, papa,” said Margaret. “Are you ill that you are in
bed? I have never seen you in bed before.”
“Remember that, then, my Peggy, as a proof of the comfortable life I
have had, though I am so old. No, not ill, but very comfortable. Why
should I get up and give myself a great deal of trouble, when I am so
comfortable here?”
“Indeed, if you are so very comfortable--” said Margaret, a little
bewildered: “it must be only laziness, papa;” and she laughed, but
stopped in the middle of her laugh, and grew serious, she could not
tell why. “But it is very lazy of you,” she said. “I never heard of any
one who was quite well staying in bed because it was comfortable.”
“No? But then there are things in heaven and earth, my Peggy, and I
want you to do something for me. I want you to write a letter for me.
Bring your writing things here, and I will tell you what to say.”
She met John in the long room, coming in with various articles, as if
to provision a place which was about to be besieged. He had some wood
under his arm to light a fire, and a tray with cups and glasses, and a
hot-water bottle (called in Scotland a “pig”); and there was an air of
excitement about him, suppressed and sombre, which struck Margaret with
vague alarm. “Why are you taking in all these things?” she said; “he
did not say he was cold.”
“If he doesn’t want them the day, he may want them the morn,” said John.
“The morn! he is not going to lie in bed always because it is
comfortable; that would be too absurd,” said Margaret. “What is it?
There is not going to be--anything done to papa?--any--operation? What
is it? You look as if there was--something coming--”
“I have my work to do,” said John, hastily turning away. “I’ve nae time
to say ay and no to little misses that canna understand.”
“Oh, John, what an old bear you are!” said Margaret. He made her
uneasy. It seemed as if something must have happened during the night.
Was her father, perhaps, going to have a leg off, or an arm? She knew
this was nonsense; but John’s paraphernalia and his face both looked
so. She went to the West Chamber, where all her special possessions
were, and got her little writing-case, which one of her sisters had
given her. Last night before she went to bed she had set up a little
drawing she had done, and which she thought was more successful than
any hitherto attempted. She had set it up so that she might see it the
first thing in the morning, to judge how it bore the light of day. And
on the table was Rob’s block with the sketch he had made of Sir Ludovic
in his chair. He was to come again that very day, with her father’s
consent, to go on with it. All this looked somehow, she could not tell
how, a long way off to Margaret, as if something had happened to set
these simple plans aside. She felt, in the jargon of her new art, as
if the foreground had suddenly grown into such importance that all
that was behind it was thrown miles back. It was very strange; and yet
nothing had happened, only her father was lazy, and had not got out of
bed.
“Who is it for? And am I to write from myself, papa, or am I to write
for you?” she said, sitting down at the bedside and opening her
writing-case. He paused, and looked at her for a moment before he spoke.
“It is to your sisters, to Jean and Grace, my little Peggy.”
“To Jean and Grace!”
“To ask them, if it is quite convenient, to come here now, instead of
waiting till September, according to their general custom--”
“Oh, papa!” cried Margaret, suddenly realizing the change that was
coming in her life; the sketches and the drawing-lessons, and the
talks, and the confidences, and Rob Glen himself-- What would Jean
and Grace say to Rob? She felt as if in a moment all her little
structure of amusement and pleasure was falling to pieces. She closed
her writing-case again with a gesture of despair. “Oh, papa, is not
September soon enough? I don’t want them here now. In--the summer,”
said Margaret, hastily, blushing for herself at the little subtle
subterfuge to which she was resorting to conceal her real terror--“in
the summer there is always something-- I mean so many things to do.”
“Yes,” her father said, with a smile; “and for some of us, my little
girl, things we shall never do again.”
She did not realize the meaning of this, and perhaps Margaret may be
pardoned if, not knowing the sadder circumstances involved, her mind
was for the moment absorbed in her own disappointment and confusion;
the sudden sense of arrest and stoppage in all her pleasant ways which
overwhelmed her. “Why do you want them, papa?” she went on; “am I not
enough? You used to say you liked me best. You used to say, just you
and me, you and me, got on best in the old house.”
“And so I would say still,” said the old man, “my little Peggy, my
bonnie Peggy! Yes, it is enough to have you and me. (I forgive you the
grammar.) But however selfish I might be were there only myself to
think of, I must think now of you, my little girl.”
“And what is about me?” cried Margaret; “if you think I want Jean and
Grace, papa, what will they do but find fault? They are never satisfied
with anything we do. They find fault with everybody. They say John is
stupid--”
“And so he is, a doited old body--and, my Peggy, sometimes very far
from civil to you.”
“Old John, papa? To me? He is as fond of me as if I were his own. When
he scolds, I don’t pay any attention, any more than when _you_
scold.”
Sir Ludovic laughed.
“That is a pretty way of telling me how little authority I have,” he
said.
“Papa!” cried Margaret, impatiently, “you know very well that is not
what I mean. I would not vex you, not for the world--never you--and not
even John. I cannot bear him to be called names, and everything found
fault with. There’s not this and there’s not that; no drawing-room; and
the bedrooms are not big enough, and me not well enough dressed.”
“Perhaps they are right there, my Peggy. I fear you are dressed anyhow,
though I see nobody that looks so well.”
“Then why must they come before September?” said Margaret. “Let them
come, papa, at their own time.”
He laughed a little, lying there upon the white pillow, with a delicate
hue of life in his old cheek, and all the vigor of twenty in his dark
eyes. He did not look as if there was anything the matter with him. He
only looked comfortable, luxuriously comfortable, that was all. She
laughed, too, as she looked at him. “How lazy you are, papa!” she said;
“do you think it is right? What would Bell say to me if I did not get
up? You look so comfortable--and so happy.”
“Yes, very comfortable,” he said; but the laugh went off his face. “My
Peggy,” he went on, with sudden gravity, “don’t ask any questions, but
write to your sisters. Say I wish them to come, and to come now. No
more, my dear, no more. I am not joking. Say I will look for them as
soon as they can get here.”
She opened her writing-book again, and got her paper, and began to
write. When he took this tone, there was nothing to be done but to
obey. But when she had written a few lines, Margaret stopped suddenly
with a little start, as if all at once overtaken by a sense of the
meaning of what she was doing. “Papa,” she cried, the color leaving her
face, two big tears starting into her eyes, “you are hiding something
from me: you are ill!”
“No, no,” he said--“no, I am not at all ill; but, my Peggy, one never
knows what may be going to happen, and I want to have your sisters
here.”
“Oh,” cried Margaret, throwing away her book, “let them stay away--let
them stay away! I want you all to myself. I can take care of you better
than they can. Papa, I know you are ill, though you will not own it.”
“No, no,” he said, more feebly. “Run away and play, my little girl. I
am--tired, just a trifle tired: and come back in half an hour, in half
an hour, before post-time.”
“Here’s a cordial to ye, Sir Ludovic,” said John, and he made an
imperative sign to his young mistress. “Let him be--let him be! he’s no
weel enough to be teased about anything,” he whispered in her ear.
Margaret stood gazing at her father for a moment thunderstruck. Then
she snatched up the letter she had begun, and rushed rapidly, yet on
noiseless feet, out of the room. Oh, old John was cruel! Would she do
anything to tease her father? And, oh! _he_ was cruel not to tell
her--to wish for Jean and Grace, and to hide it from her. She went
down-stairs like the wind, her feet scarcely touching the steps, making
a brightness in the dim light of the stair, and a movement in the
stillness, to go to Bell, her referee in everything, and to ask what it
meant. “Oh, Bell, what does it mean?” was on her lips; when suddenly,
through the open door, Margaret saw two figures approaching, and
stopped short. They were young men both, both pleasant to behold; but
even at that agitated moment, and in the suddenness of the apparition,
the girl observed the difference between them without knowing that she
observed it. The difference was to the disadvantage of Rob, on whose
behalf all her prepossessions were engaged; and this gave her a faint
pang, the cause of which she was at the moment quite unconscious of.
“Oh!” she cried, not able to restrain her little outcry of trouble,
as she met their surprised and questioning looks--“oh, papa is ill; I
think he is very ill; and I don’t know what to do.”
The second of the visitors was Randal Burnside, who had met Rob Glen
at the door; and it was he who answered first, eagerly, “I passed Dr.
Hume’s carriage on the road, at a cottage door. Shall I go back and
tell him to come here?”
“Oh, will you?” cried Margaret, two big tears trembling out with a
great plash, like big rain-drops, from her anxious eyes. “Oh, will you?
That is what I want most.”
He did not stop to tell his errand, or to receive any greeting or
acknowledgment, but turned, with his hat in his hand, and sped away.
Rob had said nothing; he only stood gazing at her wistfully, and took
her hand when the other was gone. “I see what is the matter,” he said,
tenderly; “is there anything new? is there any cause for fear?”
In her excitement, Margaret was not like herself. The touch and the
tone of tenderness seemed to go through her with a strange, almost
guilty, sense of consolation; and yet she was angry that it was not
he who had gone to serve her practically. She drew her hand away,
frightened, angry, yet not displeased. “Why did you let him go?” she
cried, with a reproach that said more than confession.
Rob’s face brightened and glowed all over. “I wanted to stay with you
and comfort you,” he said; “I can think of no one else when you are in
trouble. Come in and rest, and tell me what it is. You must not overdo
yourself. You must not suffer. I want to take care of _you_!”
“Oh, what is about me?” said Margaret. But she suffered herself to be
persuaded, and went with him up to the West Chamber to tell him how it
all was.