“Trust me for that!” he said. “Do you really use such an antediluvian cosmetic as Kalydor, Aunt Jean—you whom I always believed to be in advance of the age? Crême de thé is a great deal better. Without it I could never have made up my mind to face the rude winds of the North. Have a little of mine and try; I am sure you will never use the other again.”
“Oh, thank you, Aubrey; but I am very well satisfied with my own,” said Mrs. Bellingham, who did not choose that anything belonging to her should be called antediluvian. “It is more refreshing than anything when one has been a long time in the air. Then that is settled, and I shall not have to speak of it again, I hope. But if I were you—a university man and a club man— I would show that I was more than a match for Randal Burnside, who never was at anything but a Scotch college, and can’t belong to anything better than one of those places in Princes Street. I would not allow myself to be put out of my way by a provincial. I should be ashamed to give in like that, if I was such a young man as you.”
Aubrey shrugged his shoulders, and offered no further defence; and the remaining two days were passed happily enough, Margaret and Randal remaining upon terms of confidential intimacy, without any word on either side to make the situation more plain. She felt that she had committed her secret to his trust, and was partially supported in consequence in the bearing of it—and encouraged to forget it, which she did accordingly with a secret ease and relief beyond all words—while he, too, felt that something had been confided to him, something far more serious than she seemed to be aware of; and yet did not know what it was. Thus, while she was perfectly at her ease with him, Randal was not so happy. He could not ask her a question, could not even let her see that he remembered the half-involuntary confidence, yet felt the most eager desire to know fully what it was which had been confided to him. How could he help her, how could he be of use to her if he did not know? This pleasant fiction of being “of use,” and the eager prayer he had made to her to call him whenever and wherever she wanted him, was it not the natural protest of honest affection against the premature bond which had forestalled itself, which had no right to have come in the way of the real hero? He did not himself know that this was the origin of his anxiety about Margaret, his strong wish “to be of use.” How could he be of use? how interfere between the girl and her lover—he whose only possible standing-ground by Margaret’s side would be that of a lover too?
But Randal, though he was very clear-sighted in general, had but a confused vision of things relating to himself, and deluded himself with the idea that he might “be of use,” might help her, and do a great deal for her—if he only knew! And he did know that some kind of tie existed between her and Rob Glen, but no more. Whether it was wholly clandestine, as it appeared, whether “the fellow” had secured her to himself under any vow of secrecy, whether anybody belonging to her knew, or suspected, Randal could not tell. And the frankness with which she had admitted himself to some sort of participation in the mystery made it more confusing and bewildering still. He could not put any question to her on the subject, but shrank from the very thought of such an interrogation with a mixture of pain and shame, feeling his own delicacy wounded. That Margaret should have a secret at all was intolerable. He could not bear to be her confidant, to hear her acknowledge anything that marred the simple ideal of her maidenhood; and yet how was he “to be of use,” if he did not know?
She, for her part, was greatly relieved by the little snatch of conversation which had conveyed so much. He had not lost his respect for her. He did not “think shame” of her. This was very comforting to Margaret. She had made it all quite clear, she thought, how things had gone wrong, and how it was a relief more than a sorrow to leave her home; and now she could be quite at her ease with Randal, who knew. Having thus spoken of it, too, made the burden of it very much lighter. The thing itself was over for the present; and it must be a long time, a very long time, before she would be forced to return to that matter. Perhaps, some time or other, she might be forced to return to it; but not for such a long, long time.
Thus all seemed easy for the moment, and Margaret thrust her foolishness behind her, and managed to forget. They had two more cheerful days. They took long walks into Glen Dochart, and went out on the loch in the evenings; and Effie sang, who had a pretty voice and had been taught; whereas Margaret had a pretty voice, but had not been taught, and was fired with great ambition. And Aubrey took upon him to make researches into the crockery-ware in the cottages, by way of looking for old china, of which, he assured them, he often “picked up” interesting “bits,” at next to no price at all, in the neighborhood of Bellingham Court. It did not answer, however, in Perthshire, and Randal and the two girls being Scotch, had to interfere to rescue him from Janet Campbell, at the post-office, who thought nothing less than that the man was mad, and intended to break her “pigs,” which is the genuine name of crockery in Scotland.
All these things amused them mightily, and filled up the days, which were not invariably fine, but checkered by showers and even storms—which latter amused the party as much as anything, since there was a perpetual necessity for consultations of all kinds, and for pilgrimages in twos and threes to the window, and to the door, to see if it was going to be fine. During all this time Mrs. Bellingham persistently labored to control fate, and to pair her young people according to her previous determination. That Randal and Effie should have taken to each other would have been a perfectly reasonable and suitable arrangement, and Jean felt that she could meet her brother and his wife with a pleasant sense of triumph, had she been the means under Providence of arranging so very suitable a match. He was a very pleasant young man, well educated, sufficiently well-born, with a little money and a good profession—what could a girl’s parents ask for more? But it is inconceivable how blind such creatures are, how little disposed to see what is best for them. With all the pains that she took to prevent it, the wrong two were always finding themselves in each other’s way.
And perhaps it helped this result that Miss Leslie, all unconsciously, and in the finest spirit of self-sacrifice, did everything she could to thwart her sister, and to throw the wrong person in the way. It went so to her heart to see Margaret smiling, as she talked to Randal, that she walked all the way home from the bridge by herself, though it was getting dark, and she was nervous to leave the two to themselves. “They will like their own company better than mine,” Miss Leslie said to herself. And when Jean asked sharply what had become of Aubrey, Grace quaked, but did not reply that she had seen him taking Effie down the river in the gleam of compunctious brightness, after the afternoon’s rain.
“Dear Jean,” she said, “you must not be anxious. I am sure he will be back directly, almost directly.”
“Anxious!” cried Mrs. Bellingham. It was hard upon so sensible a woman to have to deal with persons so entirely unreasonable. Then Randal let fall various intimations that he had a great fancy for seeing Loch Katrine again.