AND IT WAS true that the very next morning Aubrey declared his intention of going away. “My chief finds that the office cannot get on without me,” he said, pretending to have had letters by the morning mail; while Margaret sat, not daring to look up, feeling more guilty than she could say. Her consciousness that she was to blame even carried the day over her determined belief in the sincerity and absolute truthfulness of every one about her. Twenty-four hours since she would have accepted Aubrey’s statement as a matter-of-fact which left no room for doubt or comment. But now she could not but feel that she had something to do with it, that she had hurt his feelings, which made Margaret feel very guilty and wretched. He had been so kind to them, to her and her sisters, and sacrificed a great many pleasant things to come with them: and this was all her gratitude! She did not like to lift her eyes. When Jean and Grace both rushed into wailing and lamentations, she said nothing. She tried to swallow her tea, though it nearly choked her, but she could not speak.
As for Mrs. Bellingham, she said not half so much to her nephew then as she did after breakfast, when she had him to herself.
“You can’t be going to do anything so foolish, Aubrey, my dear Aubrey!” she said; “why, you are making progress day by day! If ever a girl was delighted with a young man, and pleased to be with him, and happy in his society, Margaret is that girl. And you know how anxious I am, and how it would please everybody at the Court to see you provided for.”
“You are very kind, Aunt Jean,” he said, with a flush of angry color. “I know you mean nothing that is not amiable and kind; but I think, all the same, I might be provided for in some other way.”
Jean, though she was so strong-minded, felt very much disposed to cry at this failure of all her wishes.
“I don’t understand you at all,” she said; “I am sure there was nothing meant that was the least disagreeable to your feelings. Margaret, though I say it that perhaps shouldn’t, is as nice a girl as you will find anywhere; and though her education has been neglected, nobody need be ashamed of her. And you seemed to be quite pleased; and I am sure she is really fond of you.”
“Yes, that is one of your Scotticisms,” he said; “you mean that as long as I am serviceable, and don’t ask too much, Margaret likes me well enough. I don’t say anything against that—”
This time Mrs. Bellingham really did put up her handkerchief to her eyes. “I never expected to hear of my Scotticisms from you, Aubrey,” she said. “Of course I am Scotch — there is no doubt about it — and I would never be one to deny my country. But I did think that, after spending by far the greater part of my life in England, I might have been free of any such abuse as that.”
“My dear Aunt Jean, do you think I meant abuse? I mean that Margaret likes me well enough as a friend — which you call being fond of me. I shouldn’t wonder if she would herself say, with all the innocence in the world, that she was fond of me, knowing perfectly what she means; but then I should put a different meaning on such words. She will never be fond of me in my sense; and so, as I have still a little pride left (though you might not think so), it is clear that I cannot be provided for, as you say, in that way.”
“What is the matter with you, Aubrey? Has anything happened between Margaret and you. Have you said anything, or has she said anything?”
Aubrey saw he had gone too far, and had almost committed himself; and he did not want any one to think that a mere ingénue, a bread-and-butter girl like Margaret, had repulsed or discouraged so accomplished a gentleman as himself. He said, with a little laugh, “My dear aunt, what are you thinking of? That has not been at all necessary. Margaret and I are the best friends in the world. I am ‘very fond of her,’ as you say. She is a charming little girl. But your scheme will not do; that is all. Was not I quite willing to be provided for? But it will never come to anything. Oh yes, I suppose the chief might be smoothed down; there is nothing so very important going on at the office: but what is the good of it? Margaret and I will stroll up and down the beach, and listen to the band, and all that, and be very fond of each other; but we will never get a step farther than we are now.”
“I know what it is,” said Mrs. Bellingham— “you are bored; that is the whole business; and I don’t wonder. To see all the poor things about, with their sick faces, is enough to make anybody ill. And Margaret, the little monkey, after giving us such a fright, is just as well as I am. Some one was speaking to me the other day about the villa. I dare say we could get it off our hands quite easily; and in that case, if we go on to some place which is more amusing, will you change your mind — or, let us say, reconsider your decision?”
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, and then he remembered his interests like a young man of sense. “Well, perhaps I will reconsider my decision,” he said.
After this the party went on into Italy, and saw a great many things that filled Margaret with delight and wonder. She expanded like a flower, as the spring came on — that Italian spring which is as youth to whosoever can receive it with an unburdened soul. And to Margaret, who already possessed youth, it was not only delight, but mental growth and expansion of the whole being. Aubrey left them for a time, but returned again to escort them home in that month of May which is the climax of all the splendors of spring. The interval between his going and his coming back did a great deal more for Aubrey than any attentions of his could have done. They were in Florence when he left them, where Mrs. Bellingham and Miss Leslie had already found a number of acquaintances, and where soon they were deep in afternoon teas and social evenings, as if they had been at home.
Margaret had no education which fitted her for the delights of this life, and she could not run about alone in the solemn Italian city as she had done at home; and she missed her companion, who, though he was not clever nor particularly well-informed, understood how to set afloat those half-thoughtful, half-bantering conversations which youth loves, and in which young talkers can soar to heights of wise or foolish speculation, or drop into nonsense, at their pleasure: an art in which, it is needless to say, neither Mrs. Jean nor Miss Grace was skilled; and now and then he had an accès of enthusiasm equally beyond the range of the ladies, who walked about, guide-book in hand, and insisted that nothing should be omitted. “Margaret, Margaret! you are running away without seeing half of the pictures. I am only at No. 310,” Mrs. Bellingham would say. But when Aubrey was there, the girl was emancipated, and allowed to gaze her soul away upon what she liked and what he liked. How she missed him! She was quite ready, as he said, to declare with fervor that she was “very fond” of Aubrey, and welcomed him when he came back with genuine pleasure. “Oh, how glad I am you are to be with us now till we get home!” she said.
Aubrey looked at her with a glance which was half angry and half affectionate. “You are a little deceiver,” he said; “you like me to be with you only so long as I am useful. I am a kind of courier; that is all the good of me.”
“Oh no,” cried Margaret, “I cannot tell you how much I missed you. It is because you are so kind.”
“It is because of me, not because of you,” he said, with a frown and a laugh; “and so it always will be, women are so” — he was going to say selfish; but when he caught Margaret’s eyes puckered with emotion and wistfulness, looking anxiously at him, he stopped short and changed the word— “ridiculous,” he added, not knowing what she meant, and feeling a little, just a very little, prick in his heart that it was so, and that Margaret only found him agreeable for his good qualities, and not from any inclination toward him within her own being. Her eager reception of him, however, woke a sentiment in him which was not unlike love; he was pleased by the brightness of her welcome: and to be unable to make a girl fall in love with you, a simple girl of eighteen who has never seen anybody, after months of companionship — a girl, too, whom to marry would be to provide for yourself for life — this, there can be no doubt, is humbling to a man of accomplishment and experience. So Aubrey made up his mind to another effort, with more determination, if with less lively hope. He would not quarrel with her if in the long-run she still refused to fall in love with him, but he began to hope that a different result might be attained. He liked Margaret, and Margaret liked him, without any disguise; and, after all, there was no telling: perhaps perseverance on his part, and the habit of referring to him perpetually, and getting a great deal of her pleasure through him, might bring about a satisfactory state of things at the last.
They reached London in the beginning of June, when everything looked at its brightest. What a change Margaret felt in herself! She was no longer the little girl who had been allowed to grow up in all the simplicity of a country maiden, untaught and unsophisticated, at Earl’s-hall. She had seen a great many things and places, though that mere fact does not make very much difference. She had learned to think; and there had grown about her that little subtle atmosphere of personal experience which can rarely be acquired in the little world of home. It was not possible for her to identify herself with her old sisters as she might have done with her mother. From the first they had been separate existences, detached from her, though in close incidental conjunction, and so kind to her. She was grateful to them, and loved them as she could, but she was very conscious of the isolations of her existence; and how could she help the little criticisms, the little laughters, the amusement which their “ways” could afford only to one whose life was not involved in theirs, and whose duty to them was less than the most sacred? Such detachedness has much to do with the energy of personal existence. Margaret had begun to feel herself, and to know what her life was, during the hours of solitude that were inevitable; and through the long period of partial companionship in which she went and came, docile and quiet in the train of Jean and Grace, without feeling herself ever identified with them, her own being was slowly developing within her. She had begun to see what the position was that she was born to occupy, and to foresee dimly duties which she had no natural guide to instruct her in, no natural representative to do for her, but which would have to be done otherwise than as Jean and Grace would bid.
These grave foreshadowings of the future came, however, but by glimpses upon Margaret. She had no desire to think of the future: over it there was a shadow which she did not know how to meet. She held it as much as she could at arm’s-length, still with a dumb faith in circumstances, in something which might still happen to deliver her. So entirely had she succeeded in this, that the alarming image of Rob Glen, which every time she thought of him had more and more terrors for her, had not even troubled her in any vision for weeks before the party recrossed the Channel on their way home. But on that passage, as they came back, Margaret suddenly remembered the thought that had occurred to her there as she went away. It was a breezy day, and the sea was not smooth: Jean and Grace lay on sofas in the deck cabin, indifferent to Margaret, and everything else in earth and heaven. Aubrey, not much more strong in this particular, had taken himself and his miseries out of the way. Margaret, in happy exemption, sat alone. But this was not a happy exemption, as it happened; for suddenly there leaped into her mind a recollection of the question she had asked herself first, in this very steamboat, on this very ocean, five months ago — Would it not have been better to disregard Rob Glen’s feelings and tell him the truth? “Yes,” she said now to herself, firmly, though with pale lips, and a shadow immediately fell over the brightness: the time was coming when her fortitude would be put to the test, when she must meet him and decide what was to be the course of her life — and every tick of her watch, every throb of her pulse, every bound of the boat, was bringing her nearer — nearer to this terrible moment, and to Rob Glen.
They stopped in London for a few days to “do some shopping” — perennial necessity which haunts every mortal — and “to see the exhibitions.” This was a thing which Mrs. Bellingham considered absolutely necessary. She had not failed to go through the Royal Academy, with her catalogue in her hand, marking the pictures she liked, once in the last twenty years. Nobody in society could avoid doing this. Whether you cared for them or not, it was indispensable that you should see them — they are always a topic of conversation afterward; and Mrs. Bellingham had seen a dull party redeemed, quite redeemed, by a little knowledge of the exhibitions.
“Oh yes, dearest Margaret, we must stay; dear Jean never misses the pictures, and you and dear Aubrey must see them. Dearest Jean says that all young people should see them; certainly they are very beautiful and humanizing, and will do us all a great deal of good. We are to start as soon as we have had our luncheon. I should have liked to go in the morning, but dear Jean likes to see the people as well as the pictures; and, darling Margaret, you that have never seen anything, that will be so good for you too.”
“Not your hat, Margaret, your bonnet!” said Mrs. Bellingham; “we are in town: it is not like Florence or Paris, or any of those foreign places where we were visitors. Here you must understand that we are in town. Next year we will come up for the season, when we are out of mourning (or almost out of mourning), and you must be presented and all that; but there is nothing to be done in crape; it would be altogether out of the question, and a disrespect to papa. But, such as it is, put on your bonnet, my dear Margaret. We shall see nobody — but we may see a good many people; and you must never forget that you are in town now.”
The bonnet was put on accordingly, and the ladies went to the Academy, with Aubrey in attendance as usual. Perhaps he did not like it so well as in foreign places, for they were a little travel-worn, and their crape not so fresh as it ought to be; but still the faithful Aubrey was faithful, and went. He knew that if anybody saw him (and of course somebody would see him), it would be supposed that he had expectations from the old aunt in her imperfect crape; or the truth would creep out about Margaret, and he would be forgiven everything when it was known that it was an heiress upon whom he was in attendance. Such facts as these change the external aspect of affairs.
It was a bright day, warm and cheerful, and the Academy, of course, was crowded. Aubrey did not consider that it was his duty to follow Mrs. Bellingham while she made her conscientious round; but he kept close by Margaret, who was half frightened by the jostling and crowd, and could not see anything, and had a vague sense of dread she could not tell why. “I am afraid you have a headache,” Aubrey said; but Margaret did not feel that it would be honest to take refuge in that common safeguard of a headache. It was something more like a heartache that she had, though she could not tell why. She was standing looking round her vaguely enough, tired and waiting for a seat, in the great room, in a corner not so crowded as the rest, and Aubrey was coming up hurriedly to tell her of a sudden vacancy on one of the benches, when he was arrested by the sudden change in her countenance. Her eyes, which had been wandering vaguely over a prospect which afforded her but little interest, suddenly cleared and kindled; her face, which had been so pale, was suddenly lighted by one of those flushes of color which changed Margaret’s aspect so completely; her lips, which had been so serious, parted with the brightest of smiles. She made a step forward, all lighted up with pleasure, and held out her hand. Aubrey stopped suddenly short in his advance, and looked suspiciously, keenly at the new-comer who produced this change on her. He was not a man who was addicted even to the most innocent of oaths; but this time his feelings were too much for him. “By Jove! the man of Killin,” he said; and he was so much startled that the words were uttered half aloud.
“Randal!” Margaret said, all smiling, holding out her hand. “Oh! I did not think I should see any one I knew — much less you. How little one can tell! I had been wanting to go away.”
The simplicity of pleasure with which she said this took Randal by surprise. He clasped her hand and held it in his own for a moment with a corresponding self-betrayal. “It seemed too good to be true,” he said; and they stood together for a moment so completely absorbed in this sudden delight of seeing each other, that Aubrey gave way to another vulgarism quite unlike his good-breeding: he made as though he would have whistled that long note of wonder and discovery which is one of the primeval signs invented before language. “When did this come about?” Aubrey said to himself; and his surprise was so genuine that he could do nothing but stand half petrified, and watch the course of this singular interview going on in all simplicity before his eyes.
“Jean and Grace are both here,” said Margaret, “and Aubrey — Aubrey, whom you saw with us last summer. Oh, Randal, have you just come from home? Are they all quite well? Is it long since you saw Bell? Is Earl’s-hall very dreary, standing empty? Oh! I would like to hear about everything. Will you come and see us? But tell me, now, are you staying in London, and what was it that brought you here, just this very afternoon, when I was coming too?”
“My good angel, I think,” said Randal, fervently; and again the color rushed over her face, and she smiled — as Aubrey thought he had never seen her smile before.
“Let us say a kind fairy,” said Margaret; “but will you come and see us where we are living? For here there is no quiet place to talk. Don’t go away though, Randal: Jean and Grace would like to see you — and I too.”
“Is it likely that I should want to go away?” he said; and then his face paled a little, and he added: “There is some one else you want to ask me about, Margaret. You will not need to trust to me for information at second-hand.” Then he lowered his voice, and said, bending toward her, “Glen is here.”
“Oh!” Aubrey could see the usual little exclamation prolonged almost into a cry. She grew quite pale with a dead pallor of fright. “Oh, Randal, take him away; or take me away. What shall I do?” she cried.
“Do you not wish to see him, Margaret?”
“Oh no, no, Randal! Turn round; pretend to be looking at the pictures. What shall I do? Oh, do not let him know I am here! It was that made me ill before. It was — all a mistake, Randal. Oh, I felt sure when I came out to-day something was going to happen; and then when I saw you I thought how silly I had been — that it was something good that had happened: now here is the right reading of it. Oh, Randal, you helped me before; can you not help me again now?”
“I will do anything, whatever you wish,” he said; “but, Margaret, if this is your feeling, it is scarcely fair to Glen; I think he ought to know.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, but in too great a panic to know what she was saying; “which will be the best? Should I stay here while you take him away, Randal? I could stand close to the pictures and put down my veil; or will you take me away? Oh, think, please, for I do not seem able to think! But he would be sure to know me if he saw me with you. Aubrey — oh, here is Aubrey,” she said, seizing his arm as he approached; “he will take me; and, Randal, come — will you come to-night?”
“Where?” said Randal, putting out his hand to detain her. Aubrey, with a somewhat surly nod of recognition which the other was scarcely aware of, gave him the address; and almost dragged through the crowd by Margaret’s eagerness, went away with her, not ill-pleased, notwithstanding this disagreeable evidence of some mystery he did not understand, to carry her off from the man she had smiled upon so brightly. She had dropped her veil, which was half crape, over her face, and, holding her head down and clinging to his arm, drew him through the crowd.
“Are you ill?” he said; “what is the matter, Margaret?” But she made no reply; and it was only when he had found Mrs. Bellingham’s hired carriage, which was waiting outside, and put her into it, that she seemed to be able to speak. Even then she would not let him go.
“Will you come home with me?” she said, with a sweetness of appeal and a wistful look which Aubrey, with some indignation, felt to be false, after the reception she had given to “that Scotch fellow,” yet could not resist.
“I am afraid you must be ill,” he said, half sullenly— “yes, if you wish it, I will go with you; but Aunt Jean, I am afraid, will think this very strange.”
“There was some one that I did not want to see. Ah!” she cried, putting up her hands to her face and sinking back into a corner of the carriage. Aubrey, looking out where her terrified glance had fallen, saw a man turn round and stare after them as they drove away; but he could not see who or what kind of man this was.