Thus it was settled that Rob Glen should have access to Earl’s-hall. Bell shook her head, but she did not interfere. “It will divert the bairn,” she said to herself, “and I can aye keep my eye upon him.” What was the need of disturbing Sir Ludovic, honest man? The Leslies had their faults, Bell reflected, but falling in love beneath them was not their weakness. They were very friendly, but very proud. “As sweet and as kind to the poorest body as if they were their own kith and kin; but it’s hitherto mayst thou come, and no a step furder,” said Bell; “that’s the way o’ them all. Even our Miss Margret, I would advise nobody to go too far with her. She’s very young. She disna understand herself; but as for the canailye, I would not counsel them to come near by our young leddy, simple as she is; there’s just an instinck; it’s in the Leslie blood.”
Thus all went smoothly in this first essay of wilfulness. Father and old duenna both consented that the risk should be run. But in Margaret’s own mind there was one pause of hesitation. Had there been any opposition to her will she would have upheld Rob Glen to the utmost, and insisted upon her drawing-lessons; but as it was, there came a check to her eagerness which she did not understand, a subtle sort of hinderance in her path, a hesitation—because no one else hesitated. Was that all?
From this it will be seen that the ladies Jean and Grace were not so wrong as was supposed at Earl’s-hall, when they shook their heads over their father’s proceedings, and declared that he was not capable of being trusted with the charge of a young girl. Any young girl would have been rather unsafe in such hands, but a girl with money, a girl who was an heiress! As for Sir Ludovic, he went on serenely with his reading, or dozed over his book in the long room, and took no notice, or thought no more of the new teacher Margaret had got for herself. He was very glad she should do anything that pleased her. Now and then he was anxious, and his mind was occupied, by the drowsiness which came over him. He did not like this, it was not a good sign. It made his mind uneasy, for he was an old man, and knew he could not go on forever, and the idea of death was far from pleasant to him. This he was anxious about, but about his child he was not anxious. She was not going to die, or anything to happen to her. She had a long time before her, in which, no doubt, many things would happen; and why should her father begin so early to make himself uncomfortable about her? He did not see the use.
CHAPTER IX.
While these events were going on in the long room, and up the spiral stairs, thoughts not less important to her than those that moved her young mistress were going on in the head of Jeanie, the young maid-servant at Earl’s-hall. Jeanie had been chosen as her assistant by Bell on account of her excellent character and antecedents, and the credit and respectability of all belonging to her. “An honest man’s daughter,” Bell said, “a man just by-ordinary;” and the girl herself was so well spoken of, so pretty spoken in her own person, with such an artless modesty in the soft chant of her voice, true Fife and of the East Neuk, that there had been nothing to say against the wisdom of the choice. Jeanie was always smiling, always good-humored, fresh as a rose and as clean, singing softly about her work, with the natural freedom yet sweet respectfulness which makes a Scotch lass so ingratiating an attendant. Jeanie could not have waited even upon a stranger without a certain tender anxiety and affectionate interest—a desire not only to please, but to “pleasure” the object of her cares, i. e., to give them pleasure with sympathetic divining of all they wanted. Whether it was her “place” or not to do one thing or another, what did it matter? Her own genuine pleasure in the cleanness and neatness she spread round her, and in the comfort of those she served, reached the length of an emotion. It did her heart good to bring order out of chaos, to make dimness bright, and to clear away stain and spot out of her way. She had been two years at Earl’s-hall, and before that had been away as far as the west country, where her mother’s friends were. Jeanie was her father’s only daughter, and great was his comfort and rejoicing when she came back to be so near him; for John Robertson was not well enough off to keep her with him at home, nor could he have thought it good for Jeanie to keep her in his little cottage “learning naething,” as he said. Perhaps there had risen upon Jeanie’s bright countenance some cloud of uneasiness during these recent days; at least it had occurred to Bell, she could scarcely tell how, that something more than usual was in the girl’s mind. “It’ll do you good to go and have a crack with your father,” she had said, the day after Margaret’s second meeting with Rob Glen. Perhaps Bell wanted to have her young lady all to herself—perhaps it was only consideration for Jeanie.
“You can go as soon as the dinner is up,” she said, “and take the old man a print o’ our sweet butter and twa-three eggs. It’ll please him to see you mind upon him.”
“No me, but you,” said Jeanie; “and I’m real obliged to you, Bell.”
Perhaps a rigid moralist would have said it was not Bell, but Sir Ludovic, who had the right to send these twa-three eggs; but such a critic would have met with little charity at Earl’s-hall, where, indeed, Bell’s thrift and care, and notable management, as constant and diligent as if the house-keeping had been her own, kept plenty as well as order in the house; nor did it ever occur to the good woman that she was not free to give as well as to increase this simple kind of household wealth. Jeanie set out in the summer evening, after six o’clock, when she had delivered the last dish into John’s hands. She went along the country road with neither so light a step nor so light a heart as those which had carried Margaret in dreamy pleasantness between the same hedges, all blossomed with the sweet flaunting of the wild rose.
Jeanie, as was natural, being three-and-twenty and a hard-working woman, was more solid and substantial than the Laird’s daughter at seventeen; but it would have been difficult to imagine a more pleasant object, or one more entirely suiting and giving expression to the rural road along which she moved, than was Jeanie, a true daughter of the soil. She was not tall or slim, but of middle height, round and neat and well proportioned, with a beautiful complexion, impaired by nothing but a few freckles, and golden-brown hair, much more “in the fashion,” with its crisp undulations and luxuriant growth, than the brown silky locks of her young mistress. Dark eyes and eyelashes gave a touch of higher beauty to the fair, fresh face, which had no particular features, but an air of modesty, honesty, sweet good temper, and kindness very delightful to behold. She was “a bonnie lass,” no more, not the beauty or reigning princess of the neighborhood, or playing any fatal rôle in the country-side. Jeanie was too good, too simple and kind, for any such position; but she was a bonnie lass, and “weel respectit,” and had her suitors like another.
As she went along by herself in that perfect ease of solitude, unseen by any eye, which subdues all instincts of pride and self-command, a vague cloud became visible on her face. The smile with which she met her little world, true always, yet true sometimes rather in the sense of self-denial than of fact, faded away; her simple countenance grew serious, a curve of anxiety came into her forehead, not deadly anxiety, such as wrings the heart, but a wistfulness and longing for something unattained; for something, perhaps, which ought to be attained, and which might end in being a wrong if withheld from her. Nothing so abstruse as this could be read in Jeanie’s face, which would besides have cleared up and awoke into the soft sunshine of friendly response, had any one met her; but as she went on alone, with nobody to see, there was a gravity in her eyes, a wistfulness in the look which she cast along the field-path which Margaret had followed so pleasantly, which was not like Jeanie. Was she looking for some one who ought to be coming along that green and flowery path? She breathed out a soft little sigh as she went on. “My faither will ken,” Jeanie said to herself; and though there was this anxiety in her face, a certain languor was in her step, as of one by no means confident that the news she is going to seek will be comforting to hear.