“Not much, except that he is giving her—lessons. It seems he is an artist—”
“An artist—Rob Glen! But oh, did I not say Mrs. Ludovic was right? She has been sorely neglected! Not that old Sir Ludovic meant any harm. He was an old man and she a child; and he forgot she was growing up, and that a girl is not a child so long as a boy. After all, perhaps, she will be better in the hands of Grace and Jean.”
“And so the text is not misused, after all,” said the Minister, once more shaking his head.
CHAPTER XXI.
Ludovic came accordingly, with his little daughter Effie—a sentimental little maiden, with a likeness to her aunt Grace, and very anxious to be “of use” to Margaret, who, though only six months older than herself, was her aunt also. Ludovic himself was a serious, silent man—not like the Leslies, everybody said, taking after his mother, who had been a Montgomery, and of a more steady-going race. While Mrs. Bellingham sat by her father’s side and talked to him about what was to be done when he was better, saying, “Oh yes, you are mending—slowly, making a little progress every day, though you will not believe it;” and Grace stood, eager, too, to “be of use,” touching his cheek—most generally, poor lady, with her nose, which was cold, and not agreeable to the patient—and saying, “Dearest papa!” Ludovic, for his part, would come and sit at the foot of the bed for an hour at a time, not saying anything, but keeping his serious eyes upon the old man, who was more glad than ever to doze, and keep his eyes shut, now that so many affectionate watchers were round him. Now and then Sir Ludovic would rouse up when they were all taking a rest from their anxious duties, as Grace expressed it, and “was just his ain man again,” Bell would say.
“Oh, if my children would but neglect me!” he said, when one of these blessed intervals came.
“There is nobody but me here now, papa,” said Margaret, like a little shadow in the corner, with her red eyes.
“And that is just as it ought to be, my little Peggy; but who,” he said, with that faint little laugh, which scarcely sounded now at all, but abode in his eyes with all its old humor—“who will look after your pronouns when I am away, my little girl?” But sometimes he moaned a little, and complained that it was long. “Could you not give me a jog, John?” he would say; “I’m keeping everybody waiting. Jean and Grace will lose their usual holiday, and Ludovic has his business to think of.”
“They’re paying you every respect, Sir Ludovic,” said John, not feeling that his master was fully alive to the domestic virtue exhibited by his children. Perhaps John, too, felt that to keep up all the forms of anxious solicitude was hard for such a lengthened period, which made the “respect” of the group around Sir Ludovic’s death-bed more striking still. Sir Ludovic smiled, and repeated the sentiment with which he began the conversation—“I wish my children would but neglect me.” But he was always patient and grateful and polite. He never said anything to Grace about her cold nose; he did not tell Ludovic that his steady stare fretted him beyond measure; he let Jean prattle on as she would, though he knew that what she said was all a fiction. Sir Ludovic was never a more high-bred gentleman than in this last chapter of his life. He was bored beyond measure, but he never showed it. Only when he was alone with his little daughter, with the old servants who loved him, who always understood him more or less, and always amused him, which was, perhaps, as important, he would rouse up by moments and be his old self.
As for Margaret, she led the strangest double life—a life which no one suspected, which she did not herself realize. They made her go to bed every night, though she came and went, a white apparition, all the night through, to her father’s door to listen, lest anything should happen while she was away from him; and in the evenings after dinner, when the family were all about Sir Ludovic’s bed, she would steal out, half reluctant, half eager, half guilty, half happy; guilty because of the strange flutter of sick and troubled happiness that would come upon her.