“But, Bell,” said Margaret, calmed by this sense of lawful protection and the shadow of home, “it is not the last night for you?”
“Ay, my bonnie pet, it’s that or little else. When you’re gane, Miss Margret, a’ will be gane. And my lady’s a good woman; but I couldna put up with her, and she couldna put up with me. We’re no fit for ither service, neither me nor John—na, no even in your house, my bonnie lamb, for I know that’s what you’re gaun to say. Nae new house nor new ways for John and me. We’re to flit into a bit cot o’ our ain, and there we’ll bide till the Lord calls, and we gang east to the kirk-yard. God bless ye, my bonnie bairn. Run up the stairs; nobody kens you were away; for weel I divined,” said Bell, with an earnestness that filled Margaret’s soul with the sense of guilt—“weel I divined that ye would have little heart for company this sorrowful night.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
When Margaret stole into the long room, where the family were assembled that evening, she heard a little discussion going on about herself. Ludovic had risen up, and was standing with an uneasy look upon his face, preparing to go in search of her, while Jean was asking who had seen Margaret last. Randal Burnside had come in only a few minutes before, and was still standing with his hat in his hand; and he it was who was explaining when Margaret entered.
“I saw her with Bell as I came in,” he said (which was so far true that he lingered till Bell had met her). “I fear she has been making some sad pilgrimages about the house. Has she ever left Earl’s-hall before?”
“Never—not for a single day,” said kind Lady Leslie; and there, was a little pause of commiseration. “Poor Margaret!” they all said, in their various tones.
They were seated at one end of the long room, two lamps making a partial illumination about them, while the surrounding space lay in gloom. The books on the walls shone dimly in the ineffectual light, the dim sky glimmered darkly through the windows, opening this little in-door world to the world without. Mrs. Bellingham had got her feet up on a second chair, for there were no sofas in the long room. Sunday was a tiring day, and Lady Leslie had yawned several times, and would have liked had it been bedtime. She was a woman of very good principles, and she did not like to think of worldly affairs on Sundays; but it was very hard, at the same time, to get them out of her head. As for Miss Leslie, she had got a volume of sacred poetry, which had many beautiful pieces. She remembered to have said some of them to her dear papa on the Sunday evenings of old, between thirty and forty years ago, and though it was a long time since, she had been crying a little to herself over the thought. Effie was, perhaps, the only thoroughly awake member of the family; for it had just been intimated to her that her aunt Jean, after all, had invited her to go to the Highlands to be Margaret’s companion, and her heart was beating high with pleasure. Aubrey had whispered to her his satisfaction too. “Thank Heaven you are coming,” he said; “we shall not be so very funereal after all.” It was while she was still full of smiles from this whisper, and while Randal stood with his hat in his hand, giving that little explanation about Margaret, that Margaret herself stole in, with a little involuntary swing of the door of the West Chamber, through which she came, which made them all start. Margaret was very pale and worn out, with dark lines under her eyes; and she came at an opportune time, when they were all sorry for her. Instead of scolding, Lady Leslie came up and kissed her.
“My dear,” she said, “we all know how hard it must be for you to-night;” and when the ready tears brimmed up to the girl’s heavy eyes, the good woman nearly cried too. Her heart yearned over the motherless creature thus going away from all she had ever known.
This kiss, and the little murmur of sympathy, and the kind looks they all cast upon her, had the strangest effect upon Margaret. She gave a little startled cry, and looked round upon them with a momentary impulse of desperation. It had never occurred to her that she was deceiving any one before. But now, coming in worn with excitement and trouble of so different a kind, all at once there burst upon Margaret a sense of the wickedness, the guiltiness, the falsehood she was practising. She had never thought of it before. But now when she gave that startled look round, crying “Oh!” with a pang of compunction and wondering self-accusation, the whole enormity of it rushed on her mind. She felt that she ought to have stood up in the midst of the group in the centre of the room, even “before the gentlemen,” and have owned the truth. “I am not innocent as you think me, it is not poor papa I am crying for. I was not so much as thinking of papa,” was what she ought to have said. But there was only one individual present who had the least understanding of her, or even guessed what the start and the exclamation could mean. When she opened those great eyes wide in her sudden horror of what she was doing, Lady Leslie, a little frightened lest grief should be taking the wilder form of passion, unknown to the placid mind, in this poor little uneducated, undisciplined girl, did all she could to soothe her with gentle words. “We are all a little dull to-night,” she said. “My dear, I am sure the best thing you can do is to go to bed.”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Bellingham, “we are all going to bed. Though it is not a day when one is supposed to do very much, yet there is no day in the week more tiring than Sunday. We always keep early hours on Sunday. By all means, Margaret, go to your room and get a good rest before to-morrow. You have been making a figure of yourself, crying, and you are not fit to be seen; though, indeed, we might all have been crying if we had not felt that it would never do to give way. When you think,” said Jean, sitting back majestically, with her feet upon the second chair, “of all that has happened since we came here, and that nobody can tell whether we will ever meet under this old roof again!”