“My dear Aunt Jean, do you think I meant abuse? I mean that Margaret likes me well enough as a friend—which you call being fond of me. I shouldn’t wonder if she would herself say, with all the innocence in the world, that she was fond of me, knowing perfectly what she means; but then I should put a different meaning on such words. She will never be fond of me in my sense; and so, as I have still a little pride left (though you might not think so), it is clear that I cannot be provided for, as you say, in that way.”
“What is the matter with you, Aubrey? Has anything happened between Margaret and you. Have you said anything, or has she said anything?”
Aubrey saw he had gone too far, and had almost committed himself; and he did not want any one to think that a mere ingénue, a bread-and-butter girl like Margaret, had repulsed or discouraged so accomplished a gentleman as himself. He said, with a little laugh, “My dear aunt, what are you thinking of? That has not been at all necessary. Margaret and I are the best friends in the world. I am ‘very fond of her,’ as you say. She is a charming little girl. But your scheme will not do; that is all. Was not I quite willing to be provided for? But it will never come to anything. Oh yes, I suppose the chief might be smoothed down; there is nothing so very important going on at the office: but what is the good of it? Margaret and I will stroll up and down the beach, and listen to the band, and all that, and be very fond of each other; but we will never get a step farther than we are now.”
“I know what it is,” said Mrs. Bellingham—“you are bored; that is the whole business; and I don’t wonder. To see all the poor things about, with their sick faces, is enough to make anybody ill. And Margaret, the little monkey, after giving us such a fright, is just as well as I am. Some one was speaking to me the other day about the villa. I dare say we could get it off our hands quite easily; and in that case, if we go on to some place which is more amusing, will you change your mind—or, let us say, reconsider your decision?”
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, and then he remembered his interests like a young man of sense. “Well, perhaps I will reconsider my decision,” he said.
After this the party went on into Italy, and saw a great many things that filled Margaret with delight and wonder. She expanded like a flower, as the spring came on—that Italian spring which is as youth to whosoever can receive it with an unburdened soul. And to Margaret, who already possessed youth, it was not only delight, but mental growth and expansion of the whole being. Aubrey left them for a time, but returned again to escort them home in that month of May which is the climax of all the splendors of spring. The interval between his going and his coming back did a great deal more for Aubrey than any attentions of his could have done. They were in Florence when he left them, where Mrs. Bellingham and Miss Leslie had already found a number of acquaintances, and where soon they were deep in afternoon teas and social evenings, as if they had been at home.
Margaret had no education which fitted her for the delights of this life, and she could not run about alone in the solemn Italian city as she had done at home; and she missed her companion, who, though he was not clever nor particularly well-informed, understood how to set afloat those half-thoughtful, half-bantering conversations which youth loves, and in which young talkers can soar to heights of wise or foolish speculation, or drop into nonsense, at their pleasure: an art in which, it is needless to say, neither Mrs. Jean nor Miss Grace was skilled; and now and then he had an accès of enthusiasm equally beyond the range of the ladies, who walked about, guide-book in hand, and insisted that nothing should be omitted. “Margaret, Margaret! you are running away without seeing half of the pictures. I am only at No. 310,” Mrs. Bellingham would say. But when Aubrey was there, the girl was emancipated, and allowed to gaze her soul away upon what she liked and what he liked. How she missed him! She was quite ready, as he said, to declare with fervor that she was “very fond” of Aubrey, and welcomed him when he came back with genuine pleasure. “Oh, how glad I am you are to be with us now till we get home!” she said.
Aubrey looked at her with a glance which was half angry and half affectionate. “You are a little deceiver,” he said; “you like me to be with you only so long as I am useful. I am a kind of courier; that is all the good of me.”
“Oh no,” cried Margaret, “I cannot tell you how much I missed you. It is because you are so kind.”
“It is because of me, not because of you,” he said, with a frown and a laugh; “and so it always will be, women are so”—he was going to say selfish; but when he caught Margaret’s eyes puckered with emotion and wistfulness, looking anxiously at him, he stopped short and changed the word—“ridiculous,” he added, not knowing what she meant, and feeling a little, just a very little, prick in his heart that it was so, and that Margaret only found him agreeable for his good qualities, and not from any inclination toward him within her own being. Her eager reception of him, however, woke a sentiment in him which was not unlike love; he was pleased by the brightness of her welcome: and to be unable to make a girl fall in love with you, a simple girl of eighteen who has never seen anybody, after months of companionship—a girl, too, whom to marry would be to provide for yourself for life—this, there can be no doubt, is humbling to a man of accomplishment and experience. So Aubrey made up his mind to another effort, with more determination, if with less lively hope. He would not quarrel with her if in the long-run she still refused to fall in love with him, but he began to hope that a different result might be attained. He liked Margaret, and Margaret liked him, without any disguise; and, after all, there was no telling: perhaps perseverance on his part, and the habit of referring to him perpetually, and getting a great deal of her pleasure through him, might bring about a satisfactory state of things at the last.