MISS LESLIE was hospitality itself. This national virtue belonged to all the Leslies, even when they had little means of exercising it; and it was intensified in Grace’s case by the fact that she had so seldom any power of independent action. She was like a school-girl suddenly placed at the head of a household, and made absolute mistress in a place where hitherto even her personal freedom had been limited. And the pleasure of making a new acquaintance was doubled by the consciousness that there was no brisk ruler behind her to limit her kindness to the stranger. She insisted that he should come to dinner that evening, since she heard that he was staying in the village. “Of course dear Margaret will like to be able to talk to you about home,” she said. It was not often that she had the opportunity of entertaining any one; and though Rob, to do him justice, hesitated for a moment, feeling that his acceptance of the unlooked-for opportunity should depend upon Margaret, still it was scarcely to be expected that he could refuse an invitation so manifestly advantageous to him. Margaret said nothing. She would not reply to his look. She gave Grace a glance of mingled horror and entreaty; but Grace scarcely noticed this, and did not understand it. Margaret walked silently by their side to the house, as if in a dream. She heard them talk, the voices coming to her as through a mist of excitement and pain; but what could she do? When Grace suggested that she should show Mr. Glen the house, she shrank away and declared that she was tired, and was going to her room to rest; but the only result of her defection was, that Grace herself took the part of cicerone, and that Margaret, shutting herself up in her room, heard them going up and down stairs, Grace’s voice leading the way, as Mrs. Bellingham’s had done on the first night of their arrival.
“Dearest Margaret, do you know you are almost rude to Mr. Glen?” her sister said, before dinner; “and such a pleasant young man, and so clever and so agreeable. I am sure dear Jean will think him quite an acquisition.”
“I hate him!” cried Margaret, with the fervor of despair. When she heard the words which she had uttered in her impatience, a chill of horror came over her. Was it true that she hated him, to whom she was bound by her promise, who loved her and expected her to love him? She went away to the other end of the room, pretending to look for something, and shed a few hot and bitter tears. It was horrible, but in the passion of the moment it seemed true. What was she to do to deliver herself?
“I don’t want to see him,” she said, coming back, “and Jean would not like to have him here: I know she would not like to have him here.”
“You will forgive me, darling Margaret,” said Miss Leslie, “but I think I know what dear Jean would like: she would not neglect a stranger. She is always very kind to strangers. How do you do again, Mr. Glen?”
And the evening that followed was dreadful to Margaret. Grace, who liked to study what her companions would like, made a great many little efforts to bring these two together. “They will like to have a little talk,” she said, running up-stairs to consult Miss Parker about something imaginary. “They are old friends, and they will like to have a little talk.”
Margaret, thus left alone with Rob, grew desperate. She turned to him with a pale face and flashing eyes, taking the initiative for the first time.
“Oh, why did you come?” she cried; “do you think it is like a man to drive a poor girl wild—when I told you that I wanted you to go away? that it was all a mistake—all a mistake!”
“It was no mistake so far as I am concerned,” he said. “Margaret, you have given me your hand and your promise; how can you be so cruel as to deny me your heart now?”
“I did not give you anything; I was distracted. I did not know what you were saying,” she said; “I did not give you anything. Whatever there was, you took. It was not I—it was not I!”
“Margaret, my darling!” he said, coming close to her, “you cannot mean to be so unkind. Do not let us spend all these precious moments in quarrelling. Will you let me tell her when she comes back?”
Margaret’s voice seemed to fail in her throat, and a wild panic came into her eyes. She was afraid of his vicinity; she could not bear any appearance of intimacy, any betrayal of their previous relations. And just then Miss Grace came back, profuse in apologies.
“I had something to say to the house-keeper, Mr. Glen. I thought that dear Margaret, as an old friend, would be able to entertain you for a little while, for I heard you were old friends.”
“From our cradles, I think,” said Rob, significantly. “Miss Margaret used to go fishing with me when I was a boy, and she a tiny little fairy, whom I thought the most wonderful creature on earth. There are traditions of childhood to which one holds all one’s life.”
“Ah!” said Grace, “childish friendships are very sweet. At dear Margaret’s age they are sometimes not so much appreciated; but as one grows older, one understands the value of them. Are you going to stay for some time in our village, Mr. Glen? And are you making some pretty sketches? That was beautiful, that one of Earl’s-hall, that you sent to dear Margaret, Dearest Jean was so much struck by it. I am sure it is a great gift to be able to give so much pleasure.”
“I will make a companion sketch of the Grange for you, if you would like it,” said Rob; “nothing would give me more pleasure. It is a beautiful old house.”
“Oh, Mr. Glen! But you are a great deal too good—much too good! And how could I ever repay—how could I ever thank you!”
Margaret rushed from the room while these compliments were being exchanged. It seemed to her like a scene from some old play which she had seen played before, save that the interest was too sharp and intense, too close to herself, for any play. She felt herself insulted and defied, provoked and wounded. What did he care for her or her feelings? Had he felt the least real consideration for her, he could not have done it. She rushed up the half-lighted stairs to her room, with passion throbbing in her heart. Oh, that Jean were here to send him away! though there was, in reality, nobody whom Margaret was more alarmed for than Jean. Oh, that there was some one whom she could trust in—whom she might dare to speak to! But to whom could she speak? If she did betray this secret, would not she be thought badly of, as of a girl who was not a good girl? How well she remembered the sense of humiliation which had come over her when Randal Burnside took no notice of her presence, and did not even take off his hat! Randal Burnside! The name seemed to go through and through her, tingling in every vein. Ah! was it because of this that he had looked at her so wistfully, when he put her into the railway-carriage, to warn her perhaps of what was coming? Could it be for this that he had told Grace where he was to be found?
The breath seemed to stop on Margaret’s lips when this idea occurred to her. She had appealed to Randal before, in her despair, and Randal had helped her; should she appeal to him again? There was a moment’s confusion in her brain, everything going round with her, a sound of ringing in her ears. What right had she to call upon Randal? But yet she knew that Randal would reply to her appeal; he would do what he could for her; he would not betray, and, above all, he would not blame her. That was a great deal to say, but it was true. Perhaps (she thought) he would be more sorry than any one else in the world; but he would not blame her. The only other person who knew was Ludovic; but to Ludovic she dared not appeal. He would think it was all her own fault; but Randal would not think it was her fault. He would understand. She stood for a moment undecided, feeling that she must do something at once, that there was no time to lose; and then she made a sudden dash at her writing-table, scattering the papers on it, in her confusion. She must not think any longer; she must do something, whatever it might be. And how could she write an ordinary letter in such a crisis, with an ordinary beginning and ending, as if there was nothing in it out of the common? She plunged at it, putting nothing but what she was obliged to say.
“He has come here, and I don’t know what to do. Oh, could you get him to leave me in peace, as you did before? I have no right to trouble you; but if you have any power over him, oh, will you help me? will you get him to go away? I know I ought not to write to you about this; but I am very unhappy, and who can I go to Oh, Randal, if you have any power over him, get him to go away!”
At first she did not sign this at all; then she reflected that he might not know her handwriting, though she knew his. And then she signed it timidly with an M. L. But perhaps he might not know who M. L. was; other names began with the same letters. At last she wrote, very tremulously, her whole name, the Leslie dying into illegibility. She did not, however, think it necessary to carry this herself to the post-office, as she had done the letter to Bell. Grace was not so alarming as Jean, and the post-bag was safe enough, she felt. When she had thus stretched out her hand for help, Margaret was guilty of the first act of positive rebellion she had ever ventured upon. She refused to go down-stairs. The maid who took her message said, apologetically, that she had a headache; but Margaret herself made no such pretence. She could not keep up any fiction of gentle disability when the crisis was coming so near. And though she so shrank from confiding her griefs to any one, the girl, in her desperation, felt that the moment was coming in which, if need were, she would have strength to defy all the world.
All was dark in Margaret’s room, when Grace, having parted from her visitor, who had done his very best to be amusing, notwithstanding the unsatisfactory circumstances, came softly into her little sister’s room and bent over the bed.
“Poor darling!” Miss Leslie said, “how provoking, just when your old friend was here. But he is coming again, dearest Margaret, to-morrow, to begin his sketch. How nice of him to offer to make a sketch—and for me! I never knew anything so kind; for he scarcely knows me.”
Thus fate made another coil round her helpless feet.
As for Rob, he went back to the inn in the village scarcely less disturbed than Margaret. He had come to a new chapter in his history. Her coldness, her manifest terror of him, her flight from the room in which he was, provoked him to the utmost. He was less cast down than exasperated by her desire to avoid him. He was not a man, he said to himself, from whom girls generally desired to escape, nor was he one with whom they could play fast and loose. He had not been used to failure. Jeanie, who had a hundred times more reason to be dissatisfied with him than Margaret could have, had been won over by his pleading even at the last moment, and was waiting now in London for the last interview, which he had insisted upon. And did Margaret think herself so much better than everybody else that she was to continue to fly from him? He was determined to subdue her. She should not cast him off when she pleased, or escape from her word. In the fervor of his feelings he forgot even his own horror at the vulgar expedient his mother had contrived, to bind the girl more effectually. Even that he had made up his mind to use, if need were, to hold as a whip over her. It was no fault of his, but entirely her own fault, if he was thus driven to use every weapon in his armory. He had written to his mother to send it to him before he came to the village, and now expected it every day. Perhaps to-morrow, before he set out for the Grange, it would arrive, and Margaret would see he was not to be trifled with. All this did not make him cease to be “in love with” her. He was prepared to be as fond, nay, more fond than ever, if she would but respond as she ought. No one had ever so used him before, and he would not be beaten by a slip of a girl. If he could not win her back as he had won Jeanie, then he would force her back. She should not beat him. Thus the struggle between them, which had been existing passive and unacknowledged for some time back, had to his consciousness, as well as Margaret’s, come to a crisis now.
Next morning she kept out of the way, remaining in her own room, though without any pretence of illness. Margaret was too highly strung, too sensible of the greatness of the emergency, to take refuge in that headache which is always so convenient an excuse; she would not set up such a feeble plea. She kept up-stairs in her room in so great a fever of mental excitement that she seemed to hear and see and feel everything that happened, notwithstanding her withdrawal. She heard him arrive, and she heard Grace’s twitterings of welcome; and then she heard the voices outside again, moving about, and divined that they were in search of the best point of view. They found it at last, in sight of Margaret’s window, where Rob established himself and all his paraphernalia fully in her view. It was for this reason, indeed, that he had chosen the spot, meaning, with one of his curious failures of perception, to touch her heart by the familiar sight, and call her back to him by the recollection of those early days at Earl’s-hall.
The attempt exasperated her; it was like the repetition of a familiar trick—the sort of thing he did everywhere. She looked out from behind the curtain with dislike and annoyance which increased every moment. It seemed incredible to her, as she looked out upon him, how she could ever have regarded him as she knew she had once done. All that was commonplace in him, lightly veiled by his cleverness, his skill, his desire to please, appeared now to her disenchanted eyes. The thought that he should ever have addressed her in the tenderest words that one human creature, can use to another; that he should ever have held her close to him and kissed her, made her cheek burn, and her very veins fill and swell with shame. But, notwithstanding all her reluctance, she had to go down to luncheon, partly compelled by circumstances, partly by the strange attraction of hostility, and partly by the distress of Grace at the possibility of having to take her lunch “alone with a gentleman!” Margaret went down; but she kept herself aloof, sitting up stately and silent, all unlike her girlish self, at the table, where Miss Leslie did the honors with anxious hospitality, pressing her guest to eat, and, happily, leaving no room for any words but her own. Grace, however, was too anxious that the young people should enjoy themselves, not to perceive how very little intercourse there was between them, and, after vain attempts to induce Margaret to show Mr. Glen the wainscot parlor, she adopted the old expedient of running out of the room and leaving them together as soon as their meal was over.
“I must just speak to Bland,” she said, hurriedly, “I shall not be a moment. Margaret, you will take care of Mr. Glen till I come back.”
Margaret, who was herself in the very act of flight, was obliged to stay. She rose from her chair and stood stiffly by it, while Grace ran along the passage. Her heart had begun to beat so loudly that she could scarcely speak, but speak she must; and before the sound of her sister’s footsteps had died out of hearing, she turned upon the companion she had accepted so reluctantly, with breathless excitement.
“Mr. Glen,” she said, trembling, “I must speak to you. We cannot go on like this. Oh, why will you not go away? If you will not go away, I must. I will not see you again; I cannot, I cannot do it. For God’s sake go away!”
“Why should you be so urgent, Margaret?” he said. “What harm am I doing? It is hard enough to consent to see so little of you; but even a little is better than nothing at all.”
“Oh!” she cried, in her desperation, “do not stop to argue about it. Don’t you see—but you must see—that you are making me miserable? If there is anything you want, tell me; but oh, do not stay here!”
“What I want is easily enough divined. I want you, Margaret,” he said; “and why should you turn me away? Let us not spend the little time we have together in quarrelling. You are offended about something. Somebody has been speaking ill of me—”
“No one has been speaking ill of you,” she cried, indignantly. “Oh, Mr. Glen, even if I liked you to be here, it would be dishonorable to come when my sister Jean was away, and to impose upon poor Grace, who knows nothing, who does not understand—”
“Let me tell her,” he said, eagerly; “she will be a friend to us; she is kind-hearted. Let me tell her. It is not I that wish for concealment; I should like the whole world to know. I will go and tell her—”
“No!” Margaret cried, almost with a scream of terror. She stopped him as he made a step toward the door. “What would you tell her, or any one?—that I—care for you, Mr. Glen? Oh, listen to me! It is not that I have deceived you, for I never said anything; I only let you speak— But if I have done wrong, I am very sorry; if you told her that, it would not be true!”
“Margaret,” he said, with forced calmness, “take care what you are saying. Do you forget that you are my promised wife? Is that nothing to tell her? Do you think that I will let you break your vow without a word. There is more than love concerned, more than caring for each other, as you call it—there is our whole life!”
“Yes,” she said. Her voice sank to a whisper, in her extreme emotion; her face grew pallid, as if she were going to faint. She clasped her hands together and looked at him piteously, with wide-open eyes. “Yes,” she said, “I know; I promised, and I am false to it. Oh, will you forgive me, and let me go free? Oh, Mr. Glen, let me go free!”
“Is this all I have for my love?” he said, with not unnatural exasperation. “Let you go free! that is all you care for. What I feel is nothing to you; my hopes, and my prospects, and my happiness—”
Margaret could not speak. She made a supplicating gesture with her clasped hands, and kept her eyes fixed upon him. Rob did not know what to do. He paced up and down the room in unfeigned agitation; outraged pride and disappointed feeling, and an impulse which was half generosity and half mortification tempting him on one side, while the rage of failure and the force of self-interest held him fast on the other. He could not give up so much without another struggle. He made a hasty step toward her and caught her hands in his.
“Margaret!” he cried, “how can I give you up? This hand is mine, and I will not let it go. Is there nothing in your promise—nothing in the love that has been between us? Let you go free? Is that all the question that remains between you and me?”
They stood thus, making a mutual appeal to each other, he holding her hand, she endeavoring to draw it away, when the sound of a steady and solemn step startled them suddenly.
“If you please, miss,” said Bland, at the door, “there is a gentleman in the hall asking for Mr. Glen; and there is a person as says she’s just come off a journey, and wants Mr. Glen too. Shall I show them into the library, or shall I bring them here?”
Rob had dropped her hand hastily at the first sound of Bland’s appearance; and Margaret, scarcely knowing what she did, her head swimming, her heart throbbing, struggled back into a kind of artificial consciousness by means of this sudden return of the commonplace and ordinary, though she was scarcely aware what the man said.
“I am coming,” she answered, faintly; the singing in her ears sounded like an echo of voices calling her. All the world seemed calling her, assembling to the crisis of her fate. She did not so much as look at Rob, from whom she was thus liberated all at once, but turned and followed Bland with all the speed and quiet of great excitement, feeling herself carried along almost without any will of hers.
The hall at the Grange was a sight to see, that brilliant summer day. The door was wide open, framing a picture of blue sky and flowering shrubs at one end; and the sunshine, which poured in through the south window, caught the wainscot panels and the bits of old armor, converting them into dull yet magical mirrors full of confused reflections. There were two strangers standing here, as far apart as the space would allow, both full of excitement to find themselves there, and each full of wonder to find the other. They both turned toward Margaret as she came in, pale as a ghost in her black dress. Her eye was first caught by him who had come at her call, her only confidant, the friend in whom she had most perfect trust. The sight of him woke her out of her abstraction of terror and helplessness.
“Randal!” she cried, with a gleam of hope and pleasure lighting up her face.
Then she stopped short and paled again, with a horrible relapse into her former panic. Her voice changed into that pitiful “oh!” of wonder and consternation, which the sight of a mortal passenger called forth, as Dante tells us, from the spirits in purgatory. The second stranger was a woman; no other than Mrs. Glen, from Earl’s-lee, in her best clothes, with a warm Paisley shawl enveloping her substantial person, who stood fanning herself with a large white handkerchief in the only shady corner. These were the two seconds whom, half consciously, half willingly, yet in one case not consciously or willingly at all, the two chief belligerents in this strange duel had summoned to their aid.