Wild Margaret. Garvice Charles
of the year, but he lives at the Court during most of the summer. You see, my dear, great folks like the Earl of Ferrers keep to themselves more than humble people. The earl has his own apartments – you can see them from the drive; they run along the terrace – and his own particular servants. Excepting Mr. Stibbings, the butler, and Mr. Larkhall, his valet, and the footmen, none of us see anything of his lordship."
"He is quite like a king, then?" said the girl musingly.
"Quite," assented the old lady approvingly; "quite like a king, as you say; and everybody in Leyton Ferrers regards him as one. Why, the queen herself couldn't be more looked up to or feared!"
The girl pondered over this. You don't meet many earls and dukes in the National Art Schools, and this one possessed an atmosphere of novelty for Margaret.
"And does he live here all alone?" she asked.
"All alone; yes."
"In this great place? How lonely he must be!"
"No, my dear," said the old lady. "Great people are never lonely; they are quite – quite different to us humble folks."
Margaret smiled to herself at the naive assertion.
"I thought he would have had some relations to live with him. Hasn't he any sons – children?"
Mrs. Hale shook her head.
"No, no children! There was a son, but he died. There is a nephew, Lord Blair Leyton, but he and the earl don't agree, and he has never been here, though, of course, he will come into the property when the earl dies, which won't be for many a long year, I hope."
"Blair Leyton! and he's a lord too – "
"A viscount," said the old lady. "I don't like to speak ill of a gentleman, especially one I don't know, but I am afraid his young lordship is – is" – she looked round for a word – "is a very wicked young man, my dear."
"How do you know?" asked Margaret, nestling into the comfortable chair to listen at her ease.
"Well, Mr. Stibbings has spoken of him. Mr. Stibbings – a perfect gentleman, my dear – is good enough to drop in and take a cup of tea sometimes, and he has told me about young Lord Blair! You see, he has been in the family a great many years, and knows all its history. He says that the earl and the young nephew never did get on together, and that the young man is, oh, very wild indeed, my dear! The earl and he have only met two or three times, and then they quarreled – quarreled dreadfully. I daresay the earl feels the loss of his son, and that makes it hard for him to get on with Lord Blair. But he is really a very wicked young man, I am sorry to say."
"What does he do?" asked Margaret.
The old lady looked rather puzzled how to describe a young man's wickedness to an innocent girl.
"Well, my dear, it would be easier, perhaps, to say what he doesn't do!" she said at last.
Margaret laughed softly.
"Poor young man," she said gently. "It must be bad to be so wicked!"
The old lady shook her head severely.
"I don't know why you pity him, my dear," she said.
"Oh, I don't know," said the girl, slowly. "Perhaps some people can't help being bad, you know, grandma! Oh, here are my things coming! now I can show you one of my pictures!" and she jumped up gleefully, and commenced unfastening the brown-paper parcel. "I did think of carrying it, but I am glad I didn't, for it was warm, and I met with an unpleasant adventure on the road, when the parcel might have been in the way. Oh, I didn't tell you, grandma! I saw such a terrible fight – a fight! think of it – as I came here."
"A fight, my dear?" exclaimed the old lady.
"Yes," nodded Margaret; "between two men; and what made it worse, one was a gentleman."
"A gentleman, Margaret! Gentlemen don't fight, my dear."
"So I thought," she said, naively; "but this one does anyway, and fights very well," she added. "At least, he knocked the other one down – a great tall fellow – as if he had been shot."
"Bless my heart! where was this?"
"Oh, just in the village here. The man – he was an ill-tempered fellow, I'm sure, with such a dreadful face – kicked a poor dog, and the gentleman, who was near, fought him for it."
"Good gracious me! And, of course, you ran away?"
The girl laughed rather strangely.
"No, I didn't, grandma. I ought to have done so, I meant to do so, but – well, I didn't. I wish I had, for the creature had the impudence to speak to me!"
"What – the man?" aghast.
"The gentleman. He came across the road and begged my pardon. I'd got the poor dog in my arms, you see, and I suppose – well I don't know why he spoke, but perhaps it was because, being a gentleman, he felt ashamed of himself. If he didn't at first, I think he did when he went away," she added, with a laugh and a blush, as she remembered the words that had flown like darts of fire from her lips. "Oh, it was shameful! His face was cut, and there was blood" – she shuddered – "on his collar! He was a very handsome young man, too. I wonder who he was. Did I tell you he came down by the same train as I did?"
Mrs. Hale shook her head.
"No one I know, my dear," she said. "None of the gentry hereabouts would fight with any one, least of all a common man. A tall man, with an ugly face – "
"Oh, very ugly and evil-looking – I think they called him Pyke."
"Pyke – Jem Pyke!" said Mrs. Hale. "Oh, I know him; a dreadful bad character, my dear. I'm not surprised at his kicking a dog, or fighting either. He's one of our worst men – a poacher and a thief, so they say. I wonder he didn't get the best of it!"
"He got the very possible worst of it," said Margaret, with an unconscious tone of satisfaction. "There's the picture, grandma! And where will you hang it?"
It was a clever little picture; a bit of a London street, faithfully and carefully painted, and instinct with grace and feeling.
The old lady of course did not see all the good points, but she was none the less proud and delighted, and stood regarding it with admiring awe that rendered her speechless.
"You dear, clever girl," she said, kissing her, "and it is for me, really for me? Oh, Margaret, if your poor father – "
Margaret sighed.
"Get me a hammer and a nail, grandma," she said, after a moment, "and I'll put it in a good light; the light is everything, you know."
A hammer and nail were brought, and the picture hung, and the two went out into the garden, and presently the girl was singing like a nightingale from her over-brimming heart. But suddenly she stopped and looked in at the window of the room where the old lady had returned to see the unpacking and uncreasing of the clothes which had traveled in the unpretending Gladstone bag.
"Oh, grandma, I beg your pardon! I forgot! Perhaps the earl won't like my singing?"
Mrs. Hale laughed.
"The earl! My dear, he is right at the other end of the building and could scarcely hear a brass band from here! But come in now, Margaret, and have some supper. You must go to bed early after your long journey, or you won't sow the seed for those roses I want to see in your cheeks!"
When she woke in the morning with the scent of the honeysuckle wafting across her face, Margaret could almost have persuaded herself that Leyton Court was a vision of a dream, and that she should find herself presently on her way to the art school at Kensington amidst all the London noise and smoke. To most Londoners the country in June is a dream of Paradise; what must it have been to this young girl, with the soul of an artist, with every nerve throbbing in sympathy with the sky, the flowers, the songs of the birds?
Like a vision herself, her plainly made morning dress of a soft, dove color and fitting her slim young shape with the grace of a well-made garment that can afford to be plain, she ran down the oak stairs into the parlor. But Mrs. Hale was not there, and Mary, who glanced with shy admiration at the lovely