Mrs. Dorriman Volume I Part 16

She was so often with Mrs. Dorriman he seldom saw her alone; it was with a throb of pleasure that he saw her come into the drawing-room alone one afternoon, some snowdrops and ivy-leaves in her hand. She had been walking, and she had thrown back her cloak and pushed her hat off her head a little, and she came forward to fill some gla.s.ses with her flowers, unconscious of his emotion, full of some thought which had suggested itself to her whilst she was out, and a smile breaking the gentle gravity which was her habitual expression.

"There are still many gla.s.ses to fill," he said, as, lying a prisoner upon the sofa, he watched her accustomed fingers arranging and re-arranging the pure, white blossoms with the glossy background of leaves.

She looked up with a little smile and a heightened colour.

"Those are to stand empty till to-morrow; Grace wishes it. I thought you would like a few to look at, but to-morrow Grace is going to arrange all the flowers."

"What is that for? Is to-morrow a great festivity? Miss Grace does not generally give herself any trouble for nothing," he said laughing.

"My sister takes trouble when she thinks it necessary," said Margaret, with a pretty, dignified reproach, quick to resent the slightest implied disapprobation of her beloved Grace; "to-morrow will be my birthday. I shall be seventeen," she said, with full consciousness of her advanced years.

"Seventeen," he murmured, "only seventeen!"

"Did you think I looked more or less than that?" she asked gaily.

"I hoped you were more than that," he said in a confused tone; "I knew you were very young, your uncle told me that. He told me something else about you," he went on trying to gain courage, and trying to read her countenance, which without a shadow of suspicion was turned towards him in all its sweetness and candour.

"I hope he gave me a good character."

"Your character needs no giving; it is written in your face."

He spoke in a lower and more hurried tone, and she once again raised her eyes to his in surprise.

"Is it true? what does he mean when he says your future is arranged for?

Is there any one?" he brought out in quick agitated tones. Margaret was startled; if her uncle had said this, he meant it, and she knew enough of his will to dread having to submit to any thing he chose for her.

Her whole being rose in protest:

"My life is not arranged for, though I do not know what those words mean, and there is no one," she added very vehemently.

He saw how true her words were, and he hurried on afraid of losing courage, of not being able to say what he wanted to say, if he paused.

"Margaret," he said in a tone that compelled her attention, and trying to raise himself as he read her face. "If you have no one, if there is no one, if you are free to be won, may I not try and win you?"

Poor Margaret shrank back.

"No!" she said, breathlessly, "oh! no!"

"May I not try?" he pleaded. "I am more than double your age, but need that matter? I never have loved any one, and I think I could make you happy. I should not expect you to love me in the same way, and I could give you much, I could surround you with luxuries, and grudge you nothing for your happiness, you should not be dependent."

"If I loved you for these things I should be unworthy, do you not see that?"

He did not heed her.

"You know you do not care for this narrow life, you would like being in the South, in London, you should have a house where you liked, you should do what you liked."

"I cannot," said Margaret, red and pale alternately, "I am sure you mean to be kind, but your words are hateful to me. They are bribing me. No!

better to live anywhere, better to be as we are, and as you say dependent, than to be false to ourselves. I cannot say anything else, and oh! pray, pray, say nothing about this to any one, do forget it. It is quite, quite impossible."

His voice was broken by disappointment and a sense of helplessness.

"I cannot forget it," he said, and, hearing Mrs. Dorriman's voice, Margaret left the room hurriedly.

He dwelt upon her words in the way that people have of hugging a painful remembrance. There _must_ be some one else he thought, and he tried so to comfort himself, but in vain. His vanity was wounded, but he was too thoroughly in love with her to heed that so much, he was cruelly hurt.

What was the use of the flattering a.s.sertions of his people? he had always been a.s.sured of success if he wanted success, and now he had failed.

He was very silent, subdued, and unhappy. He longed now for recovery; the place was hateful to him. He dreaded seeing Margaret again; he was afraid Mr. Sandford might read his story; he was irritable and restless, and very very miserable.

On the top of this came the answer from his cautious manager strongly advising him against Mr. Sandford's scheme, and giving very excellent reasons with which he could not but be content.

He was so fully aware of his own incompetency, that he never for a moment disputed his conclusion; but he was too much upset, too much unlike himself, that night, to go into anything in the shape of business, and he was wheeled into his own room early, pleading headache, and happy to escape from the family party that evening, and be alone with his unhappiness.

His absence created no surprise. Mr. Sandford was indifferent; he was a little annoyed by some checks he had met with in his business things, and a little more irritable than usual, a little harder about Grace's shortcomings, and very violent and disagreeable to her all dinner-time.

Margaret was still unhinged. Mr. Drayton's words had agitated her, and she was sorry for him, more sorry than she could express, when she saw how really he suffered. She could not understand how it was that he could see any merit in her, while Grace was by; only to be sure, Grace had been so persistently antagonistic. But for that she, Margaret, would have escaped, and Grace would have known what to say so much better.

Thinking it over she was afraid she had been unkind, but she had been so taken by surprise.

It was not till the sisters were in their own room, and the house was hushed for the night, that Margaret told Grace what had happened.

Their favourite way of talking when the weather made it possible, was standing at their open window--a window that looked a little away from the town; the clear air predominated over the smoke of the busy town then, and what remained was hardly perceptible. The great deep blue sky of night with its "thousand eyes" made up to them for the dull darkness of the days. When it was chilly, one plaid covered them both as the two young faces looked out into the stillness, and whispered their thoughts to each other there.

"Grace," said Margaret, in a low tone, feeling shy even with her sister, her other self, about the great event of the day, "I have something to tell you, something we never dreamed of, that you will be as much surprised to hear as I was."

She clung a little closer to her sister, putting her arm round her waist.

"Have you?" asked Grace, wonderingly, but not roused to much curiosity as yet: "it is wonderful that anything can happen in this place. Every day is like the day that has gone before; each day is as dull and as empty of anything we can care about."

"You will be surprised, Grace; but I want you to promise not to laugh at him."

"Laugh at him!" re-echoed Grace. "Is it Mr. Sandford?"

"No, he knows nothing, and of course we must not tell him."

"Him--you said I was not to laugh at _him_," said Grace, suddenly startled into consciousness. "Is it anything connected with Mr.

Drayton?"

"Yes," murmured Margaret, in a low voice, "he spoke to me this evening.

He told me, Grace, that he--loved me. I was so sorry about it."

"Why should you be sorry? It must not be thought of in a hurry; but we must try and be sensible about it," answered Grace.

"It does not require much thought," said Margaret, surprised, almost bewildered, by her sister's quiet tone, as if the question could be weighed. "I told him at once it was quite impossible of course."

"But you need not have done it in such a hurry, why not think it over?"

Grace spoke as though she was disappointed.

Margaret was conscious of the keenest pain she had ever known in all her life. She paused for a moment, almost breathless. Her sister, then, saw a possible conclusion widely different from hers: that she did so seemed to set them further apart in feeling than they had ever been. "You yourself have done nothing but laugh at him, we have laughed together,"

she said in a pained voice; "he was to be the prince, and he came, and you yourself said how middle-aged and uninteresting he was--do you forget, Grace?"