Aubrey joined the travellers in London. It was very self-denying of
him, very kind, to give up all the festivities at the Court, and all
his many Christmas invitations, in order to accompany and take care
of a party of ladies on a journey to Mentone, his aunt said; “I will
not say that it is not a sacrifice to myself to give up Christmas at
the Court. I don’t grudge the sacrifice, my dear, for your sake, and
for the sake of your health; but I will not say it is nothing and does
not matter, as Grace does. Don’t you believe, either, that it does
not matter to Grace. She likes her amusement just as well as the rest
of us, though, to be sure, our mourning would make a difference. But
Aubrey is a young man, and has as many engagements as he can set his
face to; and we are nothing but a couple of old aunts, and you a bit of
a little girl. Yet when he can be of use he never hesitates. You ought
to be very grateful, Margaret, for all he is doing for you.”
“And so I am,” said Margaret: it was very kind. And though Aubrey, when
he arrived, scouted the notion, and declared that he would go anywhere
to get rid of the festivities of the Court, this did not make any
impression upon the ladies, who praised his self-denial to the echo.
As for Margaret, there could be no doubt that his presence made the
expedition very much more agreeable to her. Jean and Grace were very
kind; but Jean was a little overpowering in her manifold arrangements,
and Grace’s tenderness did not always fall in with the girl’s humor,
who was apt to be impatient now and then. Margaret got better day by
day; and there was so great a load lifted from her mind that she was
able to enjoy everything as she had never done before. No chance now
that she should be followed and pursued by any attendant of whom she
would be afraid. Every step they took made that more impossible. She
seemed to get out of the range of Rob Glen altogether when she crossed
the Channel, not to say that Randal had already made her deliverance
certain.
She dwelt upon this action of Randal in many a musing, with mingled
admiration and gratitude. How clever it was of him to divine what she
wanted to be done! The confusion of the moment had been partly to blame
for the incoherent message she had sent; but it was not altogether
the confusion of the moment. There had been, besides, a reluctance to
mention the name of Rob Glen to Randal, a desire to imply, rather than
to state distinctly, what she wanted him to do. The vagueness was at
least partly voluntary, and partly she did not know what she wanted to
be done. She wanted something, some one to interpose who should know
better than herself, who should be able to see what was most expedient.
What claim had she on Randal that he should have done so much for her?
And what inspiration could it be that made him divine so exactly what
she wanted--exactly what she wanted!--not to hurt Rob’s feelings? Oh
no, very far from that. If she had not been unwilling to hurt Rob’s
feelings, it would never have been in his power to give her so much
alarm as he had done.
Margaret sat and thought over all this as they crossed the bit of sea
between Dover and Calais. Jean and Grace had betaken themselves to
a deck cabin, where they lay each on a sofa, scarcely venturing to
congratulate each other that the sea was not quite so bad as usual, but
prepared for every emergency, and Aubrey had gone to the other end to
smoke a cigar. Margaret, in her excitement, had scorned the deck cabin,
which both her sisters protested had been secured entirely for her. She
was, though she did not as yet know it, one of those happy people who
are excited, not prostrated, by the sea. She felt that she would like
to walk about the decks with Aubrey; but all that had been permitted
to her was to sit in the most sheltered corner, done up in shawls and
wraps, so as to lessen all chances of taking cold. And after a while,
when the first thrill of excitement calmed down, and she began to get
accustomed to her own emotion, and the fact that she had left England,
and the extraordinary certainty that these were the shores of France to
which she was going, the extreme isolation of the moment drove Margaret
back, as is so often the case, upon her most private thoughts. The
exhilaration of her being, which was partly convalescence and partly
change, she attributed entirely to the fact that, for the moment, she
was free--delivered from the danger that had seemed about to overwhelm
her.
This consciousness seemed to triumph over everything--her grief which
was still so recent, her illness, all the ills her flesh was heir to.
And as Margaret’s mind was growing amidst all this agitation, it was
now, at this moment, in the middle of the Channel, that the thought
suddenly occurred to her: if she had been a sensible girl--if she had
not been a very foolish girl, how much better it would have been to
pay no heed to Rob Glen’s feelings--to cut at once this bond which
was all his making, which had been woven between them without any
wish of hers--which she had always rebelled against, except those
first nights when she had scarcely been aware what he was saying, or
what doing--when she had received his declarations of love almost
without hearing them, and allowed his kisses on her cheek with no
more perception of their meaning than that he wanted to be “kind” and
comfort her. There had been no lover’s interview between them in which
Margaret had not--a little--shrank from him. She had held herself away
as far as she could from his embracing arm. She had averted her cheek
as much as possible; but it had been impossible for her to fling away
from him, to deliver herself altogether at the cost of Rob’s feelings.
This she had not strength of mind to do. But now she perceived that it
would have been better had she done it--had she said plain No, when he
declared his love with all the hyperbole of passion.
Margaret knew she did not love him, certainly not in that way; but how
she had shrunk from saying it--from letting him feel that she did not
care for him as he cared for her! How it would have hurt his feelings!
Rather put up with some little excess of affection for herself, she
thought, than humiliate him in this way! And now was the first time
when she really asked herself, Would it not have been better to say
the truth? The question flushed Margaret’s cheek with crimson, then
sent back all her blood in a sudden flood upon her heart. She did not
venture to contemplate the possibility of having done this--of having
actually said to him, “It is a mistake; you are very--very kind, but I
am not in love with you.”
The mere idea of it appalled her. How cruel it would have been! How
he would have “thought shame!” How his feelings would have been hurt!
But still--but still--perhaps it would have been better. She had just
become pale and chill all over with the horrible possibility of having
given such pain as this, when Aubrey’s voice startled her. He was
saying, anxiously,
“I am afraid you are ill. I am afraid you are feeling cold. Won’t you
go into the cabin and lie down? We shall be there in half an hour.”
“Oh no!” said Margaret, her paleness disappearing in another sudden
blush. The days of her blushing--her changes of countenance, which were
like the coming and going of the shadows--had come back. “Oh no! I am
not cold; and I am not ill. I like it. But I--was thinking--”
“I wonder if I might offer you a penny for your thoughts? I dare say
they are worth a great deal more than that. Would you like to have
mine? They are not worth the half of a penny. I was thinking what poor
creatures we all are--how unamiable we are on board of a steamboat (the
most of us). Look what pictures of misery these people are! It is not
rough, but they cannot believe that it may not be rough any moment:
when there is a pitch--there--like that!” said Aubrey, himself looking
a little queer. “They think, now it is coming! All their strength of
mind, all their philosophy, if they have any, cannot resist one heave
of that green water. Ugh--here’s another!” he cried, relapsing out of
his fine moral tone into abject sensationalism. Margaret laughed as
merrily, with her eyes dancing, as if there was no Rob Glen in the
world.
“But I don’t care,” she cried. “I like it: when it seems to go from
under your feet, and then bounds like a greyhound.”
“Don’t speak of it,” he said, faintly. “And why is it you are so
superior to the rest of us? Not because you are so much brighter, and
purer, and better--”
“Oh no!” cried Margaret, interrupting him, shaking her head and
smiling. “Oh no! for I am not that--”
“You should not contradict people who are older than yourself--it is
not good manners,” he said, solemnly. “You are all that, I allow; but
that is not the reason. It is simply because of some little physical
peculiarity, some excellence of digestion, or so forth, if one may
venture to use such a word: not because it is _you_--which
I should think quite a natural and proper reason. No, for I have
seen a creature as fair and as good almost as you are, Margaret
(our travellers’ names are Margaret and Aubrey, you know--that’s
understood), I have seen a beautiful young girl, everything that was
sweet and charming, lying dishevelled, speechless, a prey to nameless
horrors. Ah! that was a bad one!” said the young man, unable to conceal
that he himself had become extremely pale.
“Oh! I am very sorry for her,” said Margaret, forgetting the compliment
in the interest of the story. “Who was she, Mr. Aubrey?” and she turned
her sympathetic eyes full upon him, which was almost more than, in his
present state of sensation, he could bear; but, happily, Calais was
within a stone’s-throw; and that is a circumstance which steels the
suffering to endurance. He got up, saying, “I think I must look after
the aunts.”
Margaret looked after him with a warm gush of sympathy. Who was this
beautiful young girl who had been so ill? Was poor Aubrey, too, “in
love?” She felt disposed to laugh a little, as is natural in the
circumstances; for does not every one laugh when a love-story is
suddenly produced? But she was deeply interested, and at once felt a
kindred sympathy and affectionate interest opening up in her bosom.
Poor Aubrey! Had anything happened, she wondered, to the beautiful
young girl who was everything that was sweet and charming? Was not that
enough to make everybody take an interest in her at once?
Margaret got no immediate satisfaction, however, about that beautiful
young girl, but she often thought of her; and when she saw any shadow
come over Aubrey’s face, she immediately set it down to the credit of
this anonymous young lady. For the moment, however, she was herself
carried away by the excitement of being “abroad.” But, alas! is not
the very first of all sensations “abroad” a bewildering sense that it
is just the same world as at home, and that “foreigners” are nothing
else than men and women very much like the rest of us? For the first
hour Margaret was in a kind of wonderland. The new, unusual sound
of the language, the different looks of the people, delighted her,
and she could understand what they were saying; though both Jean and
Grace declared it to be such bad French that they never attempted to
understand. “Is it very bad French?” she whispered to Aubrey; “perhaps
that is why I know what they mean.” And he gave her a comical look
which made Margaret inarticulate with suppressed laughter. Thus the
two young people became sworn allies, and understood each other. But,
after the first hour, the old familiar lines of the world she had been
previously acquainted with came back to Margaret. The people, though
they were dressed differently and spoke French, were the same kind of
men and women as she had always known. Indeed, the old women in their
white caps looked as if they had just come from Fife.
“That is just what they were at home,” she said again to Aubrey; “the
old wives--those that never mind the fashions--even Bell!” There were
some of the old women on the French roads, and at the stations, so like
Bell that the sight of them brought tears to Margaret’s eyes.
“Who is Bell? I have so often heard of Bell. Bell has been put forward
again and again, till I am afraid of her. I am sure you are afraid of
her; and Aunt Jean, too, though she will not say so.”
“Oh, not me!” cried Margaret, uncertain as ever about her pronouns;
“Bell is--she is just _Bell_. She was our house-keeper; she was
everything to me; she brought me up. I never recollect any one else.
Afraid of Bell--oh! no, no. But I would not like Bell to know,” said
Margaret, slowly, “if I did anything that was bad--anything that was
_real_ wrong--”
“You never will,” said Aubrey, “so it doesn’t matter; but I should call
that being afraid of her. Now there are some people whom you only go to
when you _have_ done something that is _real wrong_.”
“Are there? I don’t know. It was Bell that brought me up, more than any
one else. She is living now near--on the way to the Kirkton. But you
will not take any interest in that.”
“I take the greatest interest,” said Aubrey; and it so chanced that
this conversation, broken off in the railway, was renewed again when
they were settled at Mentone, where again old women were to be found
like Bell. They passed rapidly through Paris, and settled at once in
the place that was supposed to be good for Margaret. But by the time
they reached the sunny Riviera Margaret had thrown off all trace of
indisposition, and evidently wanted nothing but air and sunshine,
and a little petting, like other flowers. They had a little villa on
the edge of that brightest sea; and there along a path bordered by a
hedge of aloes, and with a great stone-pine at the end, its solemn
dome of foliage and its great column of trunk relieved against the
Mediterranean blue, the two young people took a great many walks
together.
One of these evenings specially stamped itself on their memories;
the sky was flushed rose-red with the sunset, and all the sounds in
the air were soft, as summer only makes them in England: there was a
tinkle going on close at hand from a convent-bell, and there was a soft
sound of voices from the beach--voices, of which the inflections, the
accents, were all dramatic, though they could not tell a word that was
said. It was the enchanted hour, the time of natural magic and poetry;
and Aubrey, though he was not at all poetical, felt it a little more
than he could have believed possible. He had found out how pretty
Margaret was--how much prettier, day by day. It was not that there was
any striking beauty in her that conquered with a glance; but every
morning when she appeared down-stairs, with her color coming and going,
with her brown eyes full of such eagerness and lovely wonder, “she
grew upon you,” Aubrey said. He had thought her very tolerable even at
first--no particular drawback to her income and her estate. But by this
time he took a great deal of interest in her. She was never the same;
always changing from serious to gay, from red to white, from quiet to
eagerness. He was interested, never wearied. He had not really found it
much of a sacrifice to accompany the ladies, after all. The place was
a bore; but then, fortunately, Margaret no longer required to be kept
at this place; there was a reasonable hope of moving on to places in
which there was more amusement; and Margaret was really amusing, very
amusing, as girls go. There was a variety about her which kept your
interest alive.
“Did you ever do anything that was real wrong?” said Margaret,
dreamily, looking out toward the horizon where the rose of the sky met
the blue of the sea. She was rather thinking aloud, than realizing
the scope of what she said; and it is doubtful whether the girl ever
realized the difference between a girl and a man--the very different
sense that _real wrong_ might have to him, or the equivocal
meaning which such words might bear to a listener of so much more
experience in the world.
He laughed, startling Margaret from her dreamy musing. “Alas!” he said,
“a great many times, I am afraid. Did you? But I don’t suppose you know
what wrong means.”
“Yes,” she said, drawing a deep breath, “I am not in fun; once: and
it seems as if you never can get better of it. I don’t know if it is
any excuse that I did it because I did not like to hurt a person’s
feelings.”
“What was it?” he said, lightly; “a little fib--a statement that was
not quite justified by fact? These are the angelical errors that count
for wrong among creatures like you.”
“Then what do you call wrong, if that is not wrong? Aubrey, it was more
wicked than that: but I am not going to tell you what it was. I have
been dreadfully sorry ever since I did it. But I feel a little easier,
a little happier now.”
“Perhaps you broke a bit of old Dresden?” he said, “or lost that Venice
point Aunt Jean showed me. I should never forgive you for such sins,
Margaret. No wonder you are reluctant to confess them. You are happier
because nobody could be unhappy in this delicious evening, walking as
we are. It is only in such a scene that I could look with complacency
upon the heartless destroyer of china, the careless guardian of lace--”
“You are only laughing at me,” she said; “I think you are always
laughing. Don’t you think there is anything in the world more serious
than china and lace?”
“Very few things, Margaret. Few things so dear, which you will allow is
very serious, and few things so easily injured.”
“But oh, Aubrey! I think that is almost wicked, to love a thing that
cannot love you again, as much as--more than things that have life.”
“I don’t do that, Margaret.” He looked at her so earnestly that she was
almost abashed, yet, fearing nothing, went on, moved by the flowing
of her own newly awakened thoughts. “You and Jean, you talk as if a
little bit of a cup or a plate--what we call pigs in Fife--was of more
importance-- What are you laughing at, Aubrey?--because I said pigs? But
it is the common word.”
“My dear little Margaret,” he said, “don’t make me laugh, with your
pigs. Lecture me. Let us go and sit under the pine and look out upon
the sea, and do you preach me a little sermon about real right and real
wrong. I am just in the mood to profit by it now.”
“You are doing what papa used to do,” said Margaret, half laughing,
half crying; “he would always make a fool of me. And how should I
lecture you? You must know much better than I do.”
“I ought, I suppose,” he said. The pine stood on a little point, one of
those innumerable fairy headlands that line that lovely coast, the sea
lapping softly, three parts round, the foot of the cliff on which it
holds its place. The air was more fresh there than anywhere else. The
pine held high its clump of big branches and sharp evergreen needles
high over their heads: behind them was a bosquet of shrubs which almost
hid them as they sat together. The blue sea thus softly whispering
below upon the beach, the delicate rose that tinted the sky, the great
pine isolated and splendid, how could they recall to Margaret the dark
wood, all worn with the winds, the mossy knoll, the big elbows of the
silver fir, the moan of the Northern sea with which she had been so
familiar? The one scene, though made up of almost the same details,
bore no more resemblance to the other than Aubrey Bellingham did to Rob
Glen: and where could a greater difference be?
“Yes,” he said; “so far as wrong is concerned, I should suppose so. I
must be better up in that than you are; but, all the same, I should
like you to teach me. Let it be about the right; there you are strong.
What must I do to cease to be a useless dilettante--as you say I am?”
“Me? I never said so, Aubrey--not such a word. I never said such a
word.”
“But you meant it. Tell me, Margaret: if I can cease to be a dilettante
and a trifling person, what would you have me be?”
He bent toward her, looking into her eyes, and half put out his hand to
take hers; and Margaret, startled, saw once more what it had so much
bewildered her to see in Mr. St. John, the same look which she knew in
the eyes of Rob Glen. What an amount of experience she was acquiring,
ever renewed and extended! This frightened her greatly. She drew away
from him upon the garden-seat, and kept her hands clasped firmly
together, and beyond the reach of any other hand.
“I do not want you to be anything,” she said, “you are very well as you
are. You might think upon--perhaps you might think upon--the common
folk a little more. When you came to Earl’s-hall we did not know what
you meant; and sometimes even now Jean and you-- I know most about the
common folk, they are just as interesting as the others.”
“Ah,” he said, laughing, but a little discomfited, “you mean the poor.
Must I take to visiting the poor?”
“I suppose you call them the poor, in England,” said Margaret,
doubtfully, “but you know a great deal better than I do, Aubrey; for
one thing, you are older. I think perhaps Jean will think I ought to go
in now.”
“Certainly, I am a great deal older; but not so very much, either. I
am twenty-five--just about the right age to go with eighteen. Yes,
tell me a little more. I shall recollect about--what do you call them?
the common people--not the poor. Go on, my moralist; I am ready to be
taught.”
“I think I hear Grace calling,” she said, rising to her feet. “I am
sure Jean will think the wind is getting cold, and that I should have
gone in before.”
“The wind is as soft as summer,” he said, with a little excitement,
“and the evening as sweet as--yourself. Wait a little, only a few
minutes; there is something I wish so much to say to you.”
“Oh, Mr. Aubrey!” she said, frightened. “Do not say it! I would rather
you did not say it. Once I did very wrong, not wishing to hurt a
person’s feelings; but that is what I must never do any more.”
“Are you sure,” he said, rising too, with a sudden flush of anger,
“that you know what I was going to say?”
Margaret paused, with an alarmed look at him, the color wavering in her
cheeks, her eyes very anxious, her lips a little apart.
“What I was going to say,” he continued, pointedly, “was, that I fear
I must soon leave the villa, and the fine weather, and your delightful
society. This kind of holiday life cannot endure forever.”
“Oh!” She uttered her favorite exclamation with a look of distress and,
he thought, disappointment. This was balm to Aubrey’s heart.
“Yes, I am sorry, too. But what can be done when duty calls? My office
is getting clamorous, and there is nothing for a man to do here. Now,
perhaps, we had better carry out your intention, and go back to Aunt
Jean.”
And they walked through the garden back to the house, with scarcely a
word spoken between them. One way or the other way, both were equally
uncomfortable modes of managing such a crisis. She had hurt his
feelings! It was better than all that followed the episode of Rob Glen;
but still it was not a pleasant way.