Wild Margaret. Garvice Charles
Hale, I'm in one of my unlucky months! Everything I've touched this June has gone wrong! My horse – but I don't want to trouble you about that – and to put the finishing touch to the catalogue, I had the bad luck to have you looking on while I'm having a set-to with a country yokel. Of course, you think the worst of me, and yet – " He stopped. "Well, I'm bad enough, I dare say," he said, with a sort of groan; "but I haven't had much chance; I haven't, indeed. They don't make many saints out of the kind of life that has fallen to me. What can you expect of a fellow who is thrown upon the world at nineteen without a friend to keep him straight or say a word of warning? And that was just the way of it with me; my father died when I was nineteen and I was let loose with plenty of money, and not a soul to show me the right road."
"Your mother?" said Margaret, and the next instant regretted it, for across his handsome face came a spasm, as if she had touched a wound across his heart.
"My mother died two years before my father; her death killed him. I wish that it had killed me. Don't let's speak of her."
"I am very sorry, my lord," murmured Margaret.
"All right," he said cheerfully. "If she had been living – but then! Well, I had no one. My uncle – the earl, here – would have nothing to say to me; I reminded him too much that he had lost his own boy and that I must come into the property. As if I wouldn't rather have died instead of the lad! He was as nice a boy as ever you saw – poor little chap! Well, where was I? Oh, on the road to ruin as my uncle said this afternoon, and, by George, he was right!" and he laughed. "But there – once you make the first false step, the rest is easy; it's all down hill, you see, and nobody to put the skid on – nobody! But never mind any more about me; I can see you've passed sentence. Are you living here altogether, Miss Hale?"
"No," said Margaret with a little start, and very quietly. She was thinking of the wasted life, the friendless, guardless youth which his wild, incoherent statement revealed, and something like pity for him was creeping into her heart.
Pity! It is a dangerous sentiment for one like Margaret to harbor for one like Blair Leyton!
"No; I am here on a visit, my lord."
"How jolly!" he said. "I hope you are enjoying yourself. But, perhaps you always live in the country?"
"I am enjoying myself very much. No, I live in London, my lord."
"In London!" he said, quickly. "But I say – " he broke off appealingly, "I wish you wouldn't 'my lord' me, you know."
Margaret laughed.
"My circle of acquaintances does not include any noblemen, Lord Leyton, and I am not quite sure of the way to address one of your rank," she said, faltering a little.
"How well she said that!" he thought. "Most girls would have giggled and blushed, but she took it as quietly as a duchess would have done!"
Then aloud he said:
"Well, it's usual to address us by our surname; I wish you would call me Leyton."
Margaret was silent a moment, while he scanned her face with suppressed eagerness.
"If it is quite usual," she said in her blissful ignorance. "It sounds rather abrupt."
"Why, of course!" he said. "Abrupt, not a bit. And you live in London! Now, shall I guess what part? Let me see. You are an artist. Yes. Well, Chelsea – "
"Wrong; but Kensington is not so far away," she said, with a smile.
"Kensington," he said. "The Art School, of course. How jolly! I've got rooms not very far from there. Perhaps we shall – " he hesitated and watched her rather fearfully – "we might meet, you know."
"I should say that there was nothing more improbable, my – Lord Leyton. We don't know the same people, and never shall, and – " she stopped, her own words had recalled Mrs. Hale's warning. "I must go now," she said, rising suddenly.
"Oh, it's not ten," he pleaded. "You feel chilly? Let me put your shawl on. It has slipped down. Why, what a funny shawl it is!"
"It's an antimacassar," she said laughing.
"So it is!" he said. "And look here, it has got entangled in my watch-chain; but they are built to get entangled in things, aren't they?" he added, fumbling with all a man's awkwardness at the tangled threads.
"Oh, you'll never get it off like that," said Margaret impatiently, and innocently enough her small supple fingers flew at it.
His own hand and hers touched, and with a feeling of surprise he felt the blood tingling at her touch. He looked at the lovely face so close to his own, so gravely, unconsciously beautiful, and a wild desire to lift the hand to his lips seized him, but with a mighty effort he forced it down.
"There it is!" he said. "And now to reward me for – not getting it undone, will you let me give you this flower?" and he stooped and picked a red rose.
Margaret started slightly and looked at him; but the handsome face wore its frankest, "goodest" look, and with a laugh she held out her hand. He drew it back with an answering laugh.
"Before I give it to you, will you tell me one thing, Miss Hale?"
"That depends," she said, "upon what the thing is."
"It's not much," he said. "Only this: will you tell me that you don't think I am quite the savage you accused me of being yesterday?"
She looked up at him with a faint color in her face.
"Yes, I will do that," she said. "But I think you should keep the rose, Lord Leyton."
"No," he said, laughingly, but with an intent look in his eyes, fixed upon her. "No, I've got a fancy for leaving something behind me that you may remember me by. I'm going to-morrow, you know."
"I did not know," said Margaret.
"Yes," with a sigh. "My welcome to the Court is soon outworn, and I'm back to London and the old road," with a laugh.
Margaret stood with averted face.
"Is – is it so inevitable, that same road? Is there no other, my lord?" she said.
"No, I'm afraid not, my lady," he said, smiling, but rather gravely.
"I think there must be, that there might be if you cared to take it," she said, gravely.
"If you cared that I should take it – I mean" – he broke off quickly, for she had looked alarmed at his words and their tone – "I mean that it's very good of you to care what becomes of a useless fellow like me, and – "
"Margaret!" called Mrs. Hale's voice from the open window.
Margaret started.
"Good-night, my lord," she said, hurriedly, and yet with simple dignity.
"Stop," he said, in a low voice; "you have forgotten your rose," and, following her a step or two, he touched her arm. "It is not a very grand one; there was a bowl of beauties in my room: some good soul had pick – " he stopped, for the color rose to Margaret's face. "You put them there!" he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. "You!"
"I – I did not know – " she said, faltering, and trying to speak proudly.
"Oh, don't destroy my pleasure by explaining that you did not mean them for me!" he pleaded. "You put them there at any rate. Will you let me, in return, fix this rose in your shawl? We shall be more than quits then on my side!"
Oh, Margaret, put back the proffered flower! Red stands in the language of magic for all that is evil, for a passion that will burn into ashes of pain; put back the hand that offers it to you!
But he was too quick. Gently, reverently he fixed the rose in the meshes of the antimacassar, and, as he put it straight with a caressing touch, he murmured:
"Good-night! Try and remember me, Miss – Margaret, at any rate as long as the rose lives!"
Red as the flower itself, trembling with a feeling that was painfully like the stab of conscience, Margaret glanced up at him, and without a word, sped from his side.
Lord Leyton stood looking after her, as strange an expression in his face as her own had worn.
Then