FOR "AULD LANG SYNE."
Although Meg could not explain to herself the right of authority Sir Malcolm had over her, she felt it and acknowledged his control. The temptation often came to enjoy the society of the friend of her childhood, but her honest nature shrank from meeting him secretly; and yet the attacks on the old baronet that had appeared in the local paper precluded the possibility of mentioning to him its editor's name.
Still she longed to see Mr. Standish. One day she thought she would venture to ask Sir Malcolm's permission. She began, blundering a little about the debt of gratitude which she owed to him, and which it was her pleasure to acknowledge; his wishes, she said, would ever influence her in her acts and her conduct. Then, with a blush, she admitted there was something she wished to do, for which she wished to get his permission. Meg was amazed at the manner in which the old gentleman met her advances. He distinctly disclaimed any shadow of authority over her.
"But you have been so good to me, sir," she replied. "But for you, when I ran away from school——"
"When you ran away from school," he interrupted with unexpected coldness. "I was almost inclined, when you refused to enter the carriage, to leave you on the road. If I have given you protection it is for reasons I do not care to explain. I have told you, I do not want gratitude. The tie between us is a voluntary one. You are free as air, young lady, but always with a risk. Your acts will not be disobediences, though they may be imprudences. Distinctly remember you are your own mistress. Keep your secrets if you have any. I do not demand your confidence."
"Free as air!" rang through Meg's heart. "I am my own mistress; free to meet my friend again."
After this extraordinary ebullition of candor from Sir Malcolm, the old gentleman's kindness seemed to regain its late level. Meg even fancied that he was kinder, as if he endeavored thus to salve any wound to her feelings which his temporary harshness might have occasioned.
Still he had said she was free as air, and Meg now felt justified in acting as her heart impelled her. The winter came and went, but it brought no sense of dreariness or bleakness to Meg. She had found the friend of her childhood, and the reflection of her childhood's days shone over everything. It was no wonder that she felt some of the charm of the old companionship with him who had been good to her when all the world had neglected her; and the memory of whose kindness had set a halo about the memory of her forlorn life.
She asked herself no questions concerning the nature of this new interest; she knew only that until it came back to her she was as one walled in, and without daylight. The real Meg had lived captive in a state of repression; to no one had she ventured to tell her impressions; but to this friend she could speak of the most trivial event, and confide the most intimate thought. He drew her out with a frank tenderness that won her simple trust. There grew a fascination to walk and to talk with him; to tell him all that had happened to her since the day of their parting. She had never forgotten him; the thought of him had ever dwelt in her mind, ready to start up and welcome him at his coming. And although it was still her pleasure and her duty to minister to her benefactor's need, yet by his own injunction she felt herself free to yield to the refreshment and delight of those meetings.
They met at sunset, after the journalist's work was done, in the wood behind the house; and their trysting-place was an elm.
"It looks like an old wizard," said Mr. Standish, pointing to the leafless tree standing gaunt against the dying light.
"Old Merlin!" said Meg; "and there is the eerie brightness about him. He is going to throw a spell over us."
The prediction proved true; a spell was cast about Meg's life, and she loved no spot on earth as she loved the place by that tree.
No young girl ever set forth to her first ball with more expectation and longing than did Meg feel in anticipation of some new chat with the lost friend whom she had found again. Endless, endless appeared to her the sources of interesting conversation and of sentiment that he had at his command, and each time they met and talked it seemed to her that he opened a new world of thought and imagination for her spirit to dwell in.
They had a thousand subjects to speak about. Every topic came at random. They cared not which it was, for each seemed ever new. Meg was like a child who has never seen the sea, now picking up rainbow shells by the shore; every shell different in the heap lying beside her in a glorious chance medley.
Sometimes he entertained her with scenes of travel, of striving and success. Sometimes they interchanged memories, mutually reminding each other of incidents in the past. With grave humor, followed by hearty laughter, he would describe the part she had played in some scene where she had behaved with great motherliness and dignity toward him. He would tell her how she had never despaired of him, although the bailiffs were after him.
"But I was a sad trouble to you, Meg," he vowed. "You were a little tyrant then. Where is all that tyranny gone?"
"You give me no excuse to exercise it," she replied one day. "The instinct may be there still; but you are so good, so absorbed in work now."
"Ah, if you only knew it!" he exclaimed. "Little Meg would have been more quick-sighted. She would have sternly reproved me, and preached to me about wasting my time when I should be furnishing copy."
"Copy! What is copy?" she asked.
"Blessed ignorance! Copy is that which goes to fill those columns of print. It is what the hungry printer clamors for, and looks very black when he does not get."
Meg laughed.
"You speak as if printers were wild beasts fed with leaders on schemes for extending the franchise or removing some dowdy old tax."
"Well, well, I am a humbug. All the time that I am writing these leaders I am thinking of coming to see you; I hurry through my work in order to be in time to meet you, Meg," he answered.
"Then I will meet you no more if I spoil your work," she said gravely.
"There spoke the child. All the severity of the little monitor of yore is in those accents," he replied with a laugh. "No, Meg, I work all the better to earn my play."
"Your play?" she said slowly, with a slight emphasis on the word; and she was silent awhile. The expression remained with her, casting its little shadow of doubt, and she would harp back upon it.
"Is this your play?" she would question gravely, when he said anything complimentary.
They had their merry wrangles, their desperate fallings-out, their pretty makings-up. Meg, with characteristic repartees, parried his thrusts, and their intercourse was sweet with wholesome laughter. With a blunt playfulness she met anything approaching to sentiment.
"While I was waiting," he said one day, "there was a little bird up there—you'll hear it—which continually says, 'She'll come! she'll come!'"
"And I heard a cuckoo in the wood as I came along," she replied; "he cried nothing but 'Copy! copy! copy!'"
"It must have been the printer's devil," he said, "when I was taking a holiday."
An innocent coquetry, which was the simple outcome of delight in her ever-growing happiness, would tinge her manner with a little salt of aggressiveness. She sometimes played at making him jealous.
She was late one day; she had been detained, she explained, by a fascinating being.
"Who was he?"
She would not tell his name, but vowed he had splendid lustrous eyes, and a mustache an officer in the guards might envy.
Mr. Standish laughed, and seemed inclined to turn the conversation to another topic.
"You do not ask his name," she said; "yet this fascinating creature made me late, and with difficulty I tore myself from his spell."
"But you came," he replied, falling into her mood.
"My sense of duty. I am naturally punctual. I push it to a weakness."
"I wish to forget him," he said; "he has robbed me enough. What is the name of the country bumpkin?"
"Country bumpkin, indeed! He wears a coat the fit of which the most fashionable tailor might well envy the secret of its cut—a coat black and glossy, with just a touch of white at the throat."
"The rector. I knew it. Confess it is the rector," Mr. Standish said with finger uplifted.
"No white-haired rector, indeed," said Meg.
"Then the curate? All the ladies are fascinated by the curate."
"Not the curate. My charmer is an inmate of the house."
"An inmate?" repeated Mr. Standish, perplexed.
"On the day of my arrival he was so pleasant and cordial his greeting almost made me feel at home."
"I wonder who he is!" said Mr. Standish.
"As you look troubled, I will be generous and tell you," said Meg, and paused.
"Well," said Mr. Standish, "who is he?"
"My charmer of the admirable coat, the impressive mustache, and the splendid eyes is—well—my black cat. He it was who received me cordially, sat by my fire, purred a welcome, and followed me about with a tail straight as that;" and she lifted her parasol to a perpendicular.
Sometimes the talk drifted to Sir Malcolm's son, who had been the editor's friend, and whose portrait, turned to the wall, appealed with a piteous interest to Meg, and was always recurring to her mind.
"He had many faults," Mr. Standish admitted one day. "He was reckless, but there was a winsomeness about him that won hearts; and the fault he committed which rankled deepest in the old baronet's mind was an action that came nearer to a virtue."
"What was that fault?" she asked.
"He married the woman he loved. She was the prettiest, sweetest woman I ever saw. Absurd as it may seem, Meg, the first time I saw you grown up you reminded me of her. It was simply fancy, of course the likeness is lost now. It seems to have gone out."
"Do you think it was because of this marriage that his portrait was turned to the wall?" persisted Meg.
"I think so. At least this I know: Sir Malcolm never forgave that marriage."
"But why?" asked Meg.
"Because she was poor and brave enough to work for her living. I believe she was a governess; but her trials came after their marriage. His debts accumulated, his father was unforgiving; he sometimes had to hide."
"What became of her?" still questioned Meg.
"She died when her child was born. After her death he certainly grew more reckless. He was unhappy, and I think he had some remorse. The marriage took place on the continent."
"Did the child live?"
"I don't know. He certainly had no home for it. He never alluded to it. I believe he was not with his wife when she died."
"Poor wife!" said Meg, thinking of that unhappy wife who had suffered so much, who had died so neglected and uncared for. "Is it not strange," she continued after a pause, "that it should have been my guardian's son who was the friend for whom you almost beggared yourself?"
"And for having done which, do you remember, you stroked my head?" he replied smilingly.
She answered him with a blush only.
Sometimes he spoke to her as to a comrade out of the fund of his large experience and knowledge. His interest in the working classes appealed to her, and life seemed to grow wider from the solicitude that he brought into it for others. There grew every day in her heart a reliance, a sort of wide faith in him, as if all he said and thought must be right.
The winter passed and the spring came round; the sap rose in the earth and the pulses of nature quickened.
They met oftener. Sometimes they wandered forth to meet each other in the dewy mornings, when the fields shone like gossamer. There, in the woods, where the birds wearied themselves for listeners, they came on the scene. Meg would bid him forget his politics, his ink-bottle, in honor of all the loveliness around.
"Look at this clump of daffodils," she said one morning when a mood of mirthful raillery was upon her, pointing to the silly flowers. "Don't they look like Hebes drooping their gold cups? Ah! everything is young and merry, sir, but your old politics—your dull old politics."
Then he vowed he would never talk politics to her again, upon which she coaxed and played the little siren until he relented, complaining that she honeycombed his will by her cajoleries.
An exaltation stirred Meg's spirit—the girl who had been silent and reserved was full of innocent gayety; and still that companionship with one who had brought happiness to her childhood continued simple, familiar, and charming, as it might be between dearest friends.
Sir Malcolm had an attack of illness, and as Meg devoted herself to him for some time there were no meetings at the elm. Then she became conscious of the value of the enchantment this new-found relationship brought into her life; and when they met again she was aware of a subtle change in the sentiment with which she regarded the relations between Mr. Standish and herself.
While compelling herself to greet him with the same equable friendliness, she was often chilled by the awkwardness of self-restraint. The facile word lagged when she tried to assume an attitude of bantering reserve, and her sincere nature oftener hid itself behind that of shy formality. She would then gravely inquire of his work, awkwardly plunge into politics or surface topics, but after awhile in his reassuring presence the pain of her embarrassed spirit would vanish, and she would feel comforted. In the sweetness of restored harmony between them, after the jar of repression, her heart would expand, and again she would weave around him a web of delicate sympathy and winsome pleasantry. She would be a child again, and would display her old quickness of mood to suit his disposition—gay when he wished to be gay, serious when he was serious, silent when he was inclined for silence. In this childlike docility and wistful eagerness to please him dwelt the old wakeful and sensitive pride, quick to take alarm, easily perplexed. The happy confidence would take flight like a frightened bird, the laughter of her heart would be quenched, the trustful approaches of her spirit checked as quickly as had been those of the susceptible child, so coy and yet so devoted.
One day he did not come. In the evening she received a note of explanation. He had been detained by business; he had come too late, and he had waited, hoping some kindly inspiration would lead her to see if he had kept tryst after the appointed hour. But she had not come. Would she be gracious and come the next day?
After a debate with herself Meg sallied forth. Again he was not there, and a dull, unhappy anger took possession of her. She was returning at once, but a shower came. She stood under a tree waiting for it to pass, but the trailing cloud seemed never to empty. She was angry, and she felt about to cry for being imprisoned there. The raindrops began to saturate the tree. She would not forgive him; twice to have failed her! She had her upbraiding of him so perfect by going over it, she wished he might come in time to deliver it. She heard steps approaching, and she kept her eyes sternly before her. It was only a countrywoman with sloppy shoes. Her heart went down, and tears rushed to her eyes; and so full was she of her grievance that when he joined her with the rain streaming from his hat she started, not having heard him come, and all her prepared reproaches left her memory. She did not give him her hand, however, and tried to flick away the telltale tears.
"I am late again. I am so sorry. I could not help it," he said earnestly.
"But I can help coming in future," said Meg in a severe tone.
"No, you could not punish me like this," he said. "It was a telegram from London upon which I was obliged to write a short article which kept me. That article was written in such desperation that I shall be afraid to read it in print. Won't you give me your hand?"
"The shower is over. I think I shall go back," she said.
"Do you see that black cloud shaped like an Inverness cape? It is coming right up with its deluge."
"All the more reason that I should hurry home," she said.
"But consider, Meg," he replied, smiling down upon her; "what an undignified retreat. Before you have gone a hundred yards you will be obliged to break into a run, and finally make another stage under yonder elm tree, where I will rejoin you; and then we will begin all over again. Nothing like a good rainstorm for a reconciliation. But all the grace of it is gone. Come now, I have felt the first menacing drop upon my nose. Make friends, it says."
She looked at him with scrutinizing gravity, then a smile broke.
"I cannot resist the drop's appeal," she replied with a laugh, and she put out her hand. "Still, for all the rain in the world," she continued, "I must air my grievance. I had a good right to be angry. I waited nearly twenty minutes yesterday."
"I waited two hours," he replied.
"But you came at a wrong hour," she said. "I came at the hour you appointed. Look at this—just look at this, and you will be silent."
She took out his note, opened it, and held it under his eyes.
"I know—I know," he said; "that perjured note. But all is forgiven now."
The cape of cloud passed away, and the sun came out.
There was a good-humored strength about Mr. Standish that puzzled Meg, and she often longed to pierce the mystery—at least the mystery to her—of his nature. But after a time his manner changed; a melancholy grew upon him. One day he turned and said: "You call me your friend, Meg. You keep dwelling on the memories of those fond silly days of your childhood. But you are a child no longer. Perhaps we had better think of one another, and cease those happy walks."
"Cease those walks!" she exclaimed with a gasp in her voice. He remained silent. Then she said proudly: "If you think so, really—" but her voice failed, and with a sudden cry she exclaimed, "I knew it could not last—that you must tire of me."
"Tire of you, Meg!" he cried, facing round upon her. "It is because I love you that I say this. But it is not as the friend of your childhood that I love you. We must make no mistake. I love you as the man loves the one woman in all the world he wants for his wife. If you cannot accept that love from me I would prefer not to see you again."
She did not reply, and she averted her face. When she looked slowly up, even in the tension of waiting for her answer, he felt something of the thrill he might have experienced if a spirit had answered to his call. The child he had known was looking back at him. A something he had missed—a mystery of spiritual identity with the Meg of long ago, glimmerings of which he had caught—had waked up. It was the child grown to be a woman—endowed with a woman's soul, gifted with a thousandfold powers of feeling. She did not speak; her silence, her quivering features, her kindling countenance answered him.
"Meg!" he said in a low voice, and bending forward he drew her to him.