Wild Margaret
"Yes," he responded, turning back very promptly.
"Will you give me my anti – my shawl, please?"
"Eh? Oh, of course, I beg your pardon," he said, "I took it up intending to ask you to put it on – nights are chilly sometimes. Here you are. Let me put it on for you."
"No, no, thank you," said Margaret, taking it from him.
"Well, it is warm," he said, looking up at the sky, and then quickly returning his gaze to her face. "It's a pity you can't paint this; but you artists get rather handicapped on these night scenes, don't you? Want a big moon and a waterfall, and all that kind of thing?"
Margaret smiled. Certainly, in matters pertaining to art he was a perfect savage.
"To-night could be painted, my lord," she said, just stopping to say it, then moving away again.
"You think so?" he said, displaying, with boyish ingenuousness, his desire to engage her in conversation. "Well, I don't know much about it; rather out of my line, you know. But I like seeing pictures, and I think you must be awfully clever – "
"Thanks, my lord!" said Margaret, with admirable gravity. "But your avowed ignorance rather detracts on the value of your expressed approval, does it not?"
He looked at her.
"That's rather hot and peppery, isn't it?" he said, ruefully. "Look here, you know, if I'm not up in painting, I know a little of other things. There are three things you might put me through a regular exam. in, and I shouldn't come out badly."
"For instance, my lord?" said Margaret, dangerously interested, and slowly stopping.
"For instance. Well, I know a horse when I see it."
"Very few people take it for a cow," retorted Margaret.
He laughed.
"Oh, you know what I mean. Many flats take a screw for a horse, though. Well, I know what a horse is worth pretty well, and I know a good dog when I see him, and I can tell you the proper kind of fly for most of the rivers in England and Scotland; and I know the quickest and surest way of stalking a stag; and – I can play a decent hand at ecarte – that is, if it's not too late in the evening; and – and – " he paused and looked rather at a loss.
"Is that all, my lord?"
"That's – that's all. It seemed rather a long lot, too, while I was running it over," he responded.
"And what use is your knowledge to you, my lord, unless you intend turning horse-dealer or gamekeeper? – but perhaps you do."
He laughed.
"By George, you're hard upon me! Won't you sit down?" Insensibly, Margaret sank into the seat, and he dropped carelessly on to the arm. "Well, I might do worse!"
"Much worse!" assented Margaret, severely.
He looked at her rather curiously.
"How strangely you said that," he remarked. "Meant for me from the shoulder, I expect; now wasn't it?"
Margaret was silent. She had meant it as a rebuke, but she would not have admitted it for the world.
He regarded her silently for a second, then he said:
"Miss Hale, they have been telling you something about me. They have, haven't they?"
A faint flush rose to her face.
"Would that matter in the slightest, my lord?"
"By George, yes!" he said. "Look here! there is an old proverb that says: 'Don't believe more than half you see, and less than half you hear.' I should like to know what they have been telling you about me!"
"What should 'they' say, my lord?" said Margaret. "Except that you are a very high-principled and serious-minded gentleman, doing all the good you could find to do, and setting a high example to your friends and companions?"
He leaned forward so that he might see her face, then broke into the musical and contagious laugh.
"It's too bad!" he said. "Miss Hale, I give you my word that the dev – , that nobody is quite as bad as he is painted – "
"It is to be hoped not, or, judging from the portraits one sees at the Academy, there must be a great many ugly people in the world," she said, quietly.
Lord Blair stared at her with unconcealed delight.
Pretty women he had met by the hundred, but a girl who was lovely as a flower, and witty as well, was a rarity that set his heart throbbing.
"All right!" he said. "I see you have made up your mind about me, and that you won't let me say a word in my own defense. But every poor beggar of a convict is allowed to say something before they pass sentence, don't you know, and you'll let me say my word before you send me away, painted black right through. Miss Hale, I'm in one of my unlucky months! Everything I've touched this June has gone wrong! My horse – but I don't want to trouble you about that – and to put the finishing touch to the catalogue, I had the bad luck to have you looking on while I'm having a set-to with a country yokel. Of course, you think the worst of me, and yet – " He stopped. "Well, I'm bad enough, I dare say," he said, with a sort of groan; "but I haven't had much chance; I haven't, indeed. They don't make many saints out of the kind of life that has fallen to me. What can you expect of a fellow who is thrown upon the world at nineteen without a friend to keep him straight or say a word of warning? And that was just the way of it with me; my father died when I was nineteen and I was let loose with plenty of money, and not a soul to show me the right road."
"Your mother?" said Margaret, and the next instant regretted it, for across his handsome face came a spasm, as if she had touched a wound across his heart.
"My mother died two years before my father; her death killed him. I wish that it had killed me. Don't let's speak of her."
"I am very sorry, my lord," murmured Margaret.
"All right," he said cheerfully. "If she had been living – but then! Well, I had no one. My uncle – the earl, here – would have nothing to say to me; I reminded him too much that he had lost his own boy and that I must come into the property. As if I wouldn't rather have died instead of the lad! He was as nice a boy as ever you saw – poor little chap! Well, where was I? Oh, on the road to ruin as my uncle said this afternoon, and, by George, he was right!" and he laughed. "But there – once you make the first false step, the rest is easy; it's all down hill, you see, and nobody to put the skid on – nobody! But never mind any more about me; I can see you've passed sentence. Are you living here altogether, Miss Hale?"
"No," said Margaret with a little start, and very quietly. She was thinking of the wasted life, the friendless, guardless youth which his wild, incoherent statement revealed, and something like pity for him was creeping into her heart.
Pity! It is a dangerous sentiment for one like Margaret to harbor for one like Blair Leyton!
"No; I am here on a visit, my lord."
"How jolly!" he said. "I hope you are enjoying yourself. But, perhaps you always live in the country?"
"I am enjoying myself very much. No, I live in London, my lord."
"In London!" he said, quickly. "But I say – " he broke off appealingly, "I wish you wouldn't 'my lord' me, you know."
Margaret laughed.
"My circle of acquaintances does not include any noblemen, Lord Leyton, and I am not quite sure of the way to address one of your rank," she said, faltering a little.
"How well she said that!" he thought. "Most girls would have giggled and blushed, but she took it as quietly as a duchess would have done!"
Then aloud he said:
"Well, it's usual to address us by our surname; I wish you would call me Leyton."
Margaret was silent a moment, while he scanned her face with suppressed eagerness.
"If it is quite usual," she said in her blissful ignorance. "It sounds rather abrupt."
"Why, of course!" he said. "Abrupt, not a bit. And you live in London! Now, shall I guess what part? Let me see. You are an artist. Yes. Well, Chelsea – "
"Wrong; but Kensington is not so far away," she said, with a smile.
"Kensington," he said. "The Art School, of course. How jolly! I've got rooms not very far from there. Perhaps we shall – " he hesitated and watched her rather fearfully – "we might meet, you know."
"I should say that there was nothing more improbable, my – Lord Leyton. We don't know the same people, and never shall, and – " she stopped, her own words had recalled Mrs. Hale's warning. "I must go now," she said, rising suddenly.
"Oh, it's not ten," he pleaded. "You feel chilly? Let me put your shawl on. It has slipped down. Why, what a funny shawl it is!"
"It's an antimacassar," she said laughing.
"So it is!" he said. "And look here, it has got entangled in my watch-chain; but they are built to get entangled in things, aren't they?" he added, fumbling with all a man's awkwardness at the tangled threads.
"Oh, you'll never get it off like that," said Margaret impatiently, and innocently enough her small supple fingers flew at it.
His own hand and hers touched, and with a feeling of surprise he felt the blood tingling at her touch. He looked at the lovely face so close to his own, so gravely, unconsciously beautiful, and a wild desire to lift the hand to his lips seized him, but with a mighty effort he forced it down.
"There it is!" he said. "And now to reward me for – not getting it undone, will you let me give you this flower?" and he stooped and picked a red rose.
Margaret started slightly and looked at him; but the handsome face wore its frankest, "goodest" look, and with a laugh she held out her hand. He drew it back with an answering laugh.
"Before I give it to you, will you tell me one thing, Miss Hale?"
"That depends," she said, "upon what the thing is."
"It's not much," he said. "Only this: will you tell me that you don't think I am quite the savage you accused me of being yesterday?"
She looked up at him with a faint color in her face.
"Yes, I will do that," she said. "But I think you should keep the rose, Lord Leyton."
"No," he said, laughingly, but with an intent look in his eyes, fixed upon her. "No, I've got a fancy for leaving something behind me that you may remember me by. I'm going to-morrow, you know."
"I did not know," said Margaret.
"Yes," with a sigh. "My welcome to the Court is soon outworn, and I'm back to London and the old road," with a laugh.
Margaret stood with averted face.
"Is – is it so inevitable, that same road? Is there no other, my lord?" she said.
"No, I'm afraid not, my lady," he said, smiling, but rather gravely.
"I think there must be, that there might be if you cared to take it," she said, gravely.
"If you cared that I should take it – I mean" – he broke off quickly, for she had looked alarmed at his words and their tone – "I mean that it's very good of you to care what becomes of a useless fellow like me, and – "
"Margaret!" called Mrs. Hale's voice from the open window.
Margaret started.
"Good-night, my lord," she said, hurriedly, and yet with simple dignity.
"Stop," he said, in a low voice; "you have forgotten your rose," and, following her a step or two, he touched her arm. "It is not a very grand one; there was a bowl of beauties in my room: some good soul had pick – " he stopped, for the color rose to Margaret's face. "You put them there!" he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. "You!"
"I – I did not know – " she said, faltering, and trying to speak proudly.
"Oh, don't destroy my pleasure by explaining that you did not mean them for me!" he pleaded. "You put them there at any rate. Will you let me, in return, fix this rose in your shawl? We shall be more than quits then on my side!"
Oh, Margaret, put back the proffered flower! Red stands in the language of magic for all that is evil, for a passion that will burn into ashes of pain; put back the hand that offers it to you!
But he was too quick. Gently, reverently he fixed the rose in the meshes of the antimacassar, and, as he put it straight with a caressing touch, he murmured:
"Good-night! Try and remember me, Miss – Margaret, at any rate as long as the rose lives!"
Red as the flower itself, trembling with a feeling that was painfully like the stab of conscience, Margaret glanced up at him, and without a word, sped from his side.
Lord Leyton stood looking after her, as strange an expression in his face as her own had worn.
Then with a long sigh he went back to the seat and threw himself down into it, in the place where she had sat.
Half an hour passed; the nightingale for which Margaret had been waiting came out and sang for him; but the song gave him no delight, for in his whirling brain its notes seemed to take the shape of words: words of such sad, strange import! "Spare her! – spare her!" the bird seemed to sing; and as if he could not endure the appeal any longer, he rose impatiently and walked toward the terrace.
As he did so, a tall, skulking figure moved snake-like after him.
Lord Blair stopped at the bottom of the steps, and the shadow pursuing him stopped also, and raised a heavy stick.
For a moment it hovered evilly over Lord Blair's head, then, as if smitten by a sudden remorse or a desire for a still deeper revenge, Pyke let the stick fall, and, slinking back, disappeared amongst the shrubs.
CHAPTER VI
Margaret ran into the house, her heart beating fast, the color coming and going in her cheeks. To her amazement and annoyance, she felt that she was actually trembling! Well, if not trembling, quivering, as a leaf quivers when the summer wind passes over its bosom.
What was this that she had done? Notwithstanding her grandmother's warning and her own good resolutions, she had spent – how long! – nearly an hour talking alone with Lord Blair Leyton. And he had given her a rose! Not only given it to her, but fastened it in the antimacassar.
She could feel his fingers touching her still, as it seemed to her! She looked down at the rose, gleaming like a spot of blood on the white cotton of the antimacassar, then, with a sudden gesture, she went to pull it out and fling it through the window; but she averted her hand even as it touched the velvet leaves. Yes, she had done wrong; she ought not to have spoken to him, ought not to have remained with him, and most certainly ought not to have taken the rose from him.
She saw now how wrong she had been. They used to call her "Wild Margaret," "Mad Madge," when she was a child, but she had been trying to become quiet, and dignified, and discreet, and, as it seemed to her, had succeeded, until this wicked young man had tempted her into flirting – was it flirting? – in the starlight.
"You look flushed, my dear," said Mrs. Hale. "Are you tired?"
"I think I am a little," said Margaret, longing to get to the solitude of her own room.
"It's the country air," said the old lady, nodding. "It always makes people from London sleepy. Was it pleasant in the garden?" she added, innocently.
Margaret's face flushed.
"Y – es, very," she replied; then she was going on to tell the old lady of her meeting with Lord Blair, but stopped short.
"I think I will go up to bed now," she said, and giving the old lady a kiss, she went up-stairs to her own room. There she thought over every word that the young lord said, and that she herself had spoken. There had been no harm in any of it, surely! He had spoken respectfully, almost reverentially, and even when he had given her the rose he had done it with as much diffidence and high bred courtesy as if she had been a countess. Surely there had been no harm in it.
It was a lovely morning when she woke, and dressing herself she went straight to the picture gallery. As she left the room Lord Blair's red rose seemed to smile at her from the dressing table, and she took it up and carried it in her hand. It was just possible that she might meet him; if so, it would be as well to have the rose with her, for give it back she meant to, if a chance afforded. The light in the gallery could not have been better, and she set to work at first languidly, but presently with more spirit, and was becoming perfectly absorbed, when she heard a voice singing the refrain of the last popular London song.
It was a man's voice, it could be no other than Lord Blair's, and in a minute or two afterward she heard him enter the gallery.
She heard him coming toward her with a quick step, and looking up with his eyes fixed upon her with eager pleasure. He was dressed in the suit of tweeds in which he had looked so picturesque on the morning of the fight, and in his buttonhole he wore a white rose. It drew her eyes toward it, and she knew it at once – it was the finest of the roses she had placed in his room.
"Miss Hale!" he exclaimed, holding out his hand, while his eyes beamed with the frank, glad light of youth when it is pleased. "This is luck! I only strolled in here by mere chance – and – and to think of my finding you here! How early you are! And what a lot you have done!" staring admiringly at the canvas. "I hope you didn't catch cold last night?"
"No, my lord," said Margaret, as coldly as if her voice were frozen.
He looked at her with a quick questioning.
"I'm off almost directly," he said, with something like a sigh. "It's a bore having to go back to London and leave this place a morning like this. I had no idea it was so – so jolly, until – " he stopped; he was going to add: "until last night."
Margaret remained silent, dabbing on little spots of color delicately.
"I quite envy you your stay here," he went on, looking in her grave face, which had become somewhat pale since his arrival. "That jolly little garden, and – and this grand gallery. I hope you will be happy, and – and enjoy yourself."
"Thank you my lord," coldly as before.
He looked at her with a slightly puzzled frown.
"Yes, I should like to stay; but I can't – for the best of all reasons, I haven't been invited, don't you know."
Margaret said nothing, but carefully mixed some colors on her palette.
"And so – and so I'm off," he said, with a sudden sigh. "Perhaps we shall meet in London, Miss Hale."
"It is not likely," said Margaret gravely.
"So you said last night," he responded; "but I shall live in hopes. Yes. London's only a little place, after all, you know, and – and we may meet. Well, I'll say good-bye!"
"Good-bye, my lord," she said, affecting not to see his outstretched hand.
"Won't you shake hands?" he said with a laugh, which died away as she took up the rose and placed it in his extended palm.
"Will you take back this flower, my lord?" she said quietly, but with a trembling quiver on her lips.
"Take back?" he stammered. "Take back the rose I gave you last night!" he went on with astonishment. "Why? what have I done to offend you?" and he stared from the rose to her face.
"You have done nothing to offend me, my lord," said Margaret quickly, and with a vivid blush, which angered her beyond expression. "Nothing whatever, but – "
"But – well?" he said as she paused.
"But," she went on, lifting her eyes to his bravely – "but I do not think I ought to take a flower from you, my lord."
"Good lord, why not?" he demanded, with not unreasonable astonishment.
Margaret looked down. But she was no coward.
"I will say more than that," she said in a low but steady voice. "I ought not to have remained in the garden with you last night, Lord Leyton. I thought so last night, I am sure of it now. And if I ought not to have stayed talking with you, I certainly ought not to have accepted a flower from you! I beg your pardon, and – there is your rose!"
A look of pain crossed his handsome face.
"You haven't told me why yet," he said, after a pause.
Margaret bit her lip, and was silent for a second or two, then she said:
"Lord Leyton, there should be, can be, no acquaintance between you and me – "
"Now stop!" he said. "I know what you are going to say; you are going to talk some nonsense about my being a viscount and you being something different, and all that! As if you were not a lady, and as if any one could be better than that! Yes, they can, by George! and you are better, for you are an artist! A difference between us – yes, yes, I should think there was, between a useless fellow like myself and a clever, beautiful – "
"My lord!" said Margaret, flushing, then looking at him with her brows drawn together.
"I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon; I do indeed! But, all the same," he said, defiantly, "it's true! You are beautiful, but I don't rely on that. I say an artist and a lady is the equal of any man or woman alive, and if that's the reason you fling my flower back to me – "
"I didn't fling it, my lord," said Margaret, gravely.
"I'm a brute!" he said, penitently. "The difference between a brute and – and an angel! That's it. No, you didn't fling it, but it's just as if you had, isn't it now?"
"You will take back the flower, Lord Leyton, please?" she almost pleaded. "I don't want to fling it, as you say, out of the window."
He stood looking at her.
"How – how you must hate and despise me, by Jove!" he said.
Margaret flushed.
"You have no right to say that, my lord, because I see that I acted unwisely last night. How can I hate or despise one who is a stranger to me?"
"Yes, that's it; I'm a stranger, and you mean to keep me one!" he said, half bitterly, half sorrowfully. "Well, I can't complain; I'm not fit for you to know. Why, even my own flesh and blood are anxious to see the back of me! Yes, you are right, Miss Margaret."
He dwelt on the name sadly, using it unconsciously.
"Oh, no, no!" she said, wrung to the heart at the thought of wounding him so mercilessly. "It's not that! It's not of you I thought, but of myself."
"Of yourself yes," he said. "Communication with me is a kind of pollution; you cannot touch tar, you know! Oh, I understand! Well" – he hung his head – "I'll do as you tell me; I can't do less. I'll take my poor rose – " He stopped short, and something seemed to strike him. "But if I do, I must return you this," and he gently unfastened the white one from his coat, and held it out to her.
Margaret put out her hand irresolutely.
"Oh, take it!" he said recklessly. "It is one out of the bowl you gave me."
"I gave you?" she said.
"Yes," he said; "you picked them yourself, the girl told me so. I asked her. And you put them in my room. If I take your rose back you must take mine."
"Well," she said, and she took it slowly, and laid it on the table beside her.
He drew a long breath, then the color came into his face and the wild, daring Ferrers' spirit shone in his eyes.
"That's an exchange," he said. "It's a challenge and an acceptance. Don't you see what you have done in cutting me off and flinging me aside, Miss Margaret?"
"What have I done?" said Margaret.
"Yes! You have given me back my rose, but you forget that you have worn it, that it has been in your dress, that you have touched it, that it's like a part of yourself. And you have taken my rose, which has been in my room all night, while I dreamt of you – "
"Lord Leyton!" she panted, half rising.
"Yes!" he said, confronting her with the sudden passion which lay dormant in him and always, like a tiger, ready to spring to the surface. "You can throw my offer of friendship in my face, you can put me coldly aside, and – and wipe out last night as if it had never been, as if you had done some great wrong in talking to such a man as I am; but you can't rob me of the rose you have touched, ah! and worn."
"Give – give it me back!" she exclaimed, with a trepidation which was not altogether anger or fear. "Give it me back, my lord. You have no right – "
"To keep it! Haven't I?" he retorted. "What! when you forced it back on me! No, I will not give it you back! You may do what you like with the white one. You will fling it on the fire, I've no doubt. I can't help it. But this one, yours, I keep! It is mine. I will never part with it. And whenever I look at it I will remember how – until you discovered that I was not fit to associate with you, such a bad lot that you couldn't even keep a flower I gave you! – I'll remember that you have worn it near your heart."
White as herself, with a passion which had carried him beyond all bounds, he raised the red rose to his lips and kissed it, not once only but thrice.
Then, as he saw her face change, her lips tremble, his passion melted away, and all penitent and remorseful, he bent toward her.