CHAPTER XXI.
SIR MALCOLM LOFTDALE.
Meg had more than once explored the house and the grounds. She hadperformed the pilgrimage under the expansive wing of Mrs. Jarvis; shehad wandered alone over the mansion and rambled through the park,feeling delight in the old-world charm of the place. The touch of tragicmystery brought into the atmosphere by the picture on which a ban hadbeen laid now added to the spell of its fascination. The lofty rooms,with somber gilt or painted ceilings; the faded tapestries and brocadedhangings; the dusky tones of the furniture, upon which the sunbeams fellwith an antique glow, appeared to her steeped in the mystery ofassociations. Every room seemed a chapter in an unknown story, thethought of which kindled her fancy. The park, with its lengtheningvistas, its sylvan retreats, and patriarchal trees, a branch of thesilver river sweeping through its stately alleys; the stretches oflawns, the flower-gardens, the glass structures in which bloomed atropical vegetation, enchanted her.
It was like living in a picture, she thought, to live amid suchpeaceful, beautiful, finely ordered surroundings, whose past hauntedthem like a presence. After the crude and noisy bustle of immaturepossibilities to which she was accustomed, the wearied splendors of thisdomain came to her as a revelation of novel possibilities in the settingof life.
A week had elapsed, Meg had almost grown accustomed to the place, andyet she had not seen its owner. She had at first begun every morning byasking Mrs. Jarvis if there was a probability of her seeing Sir MalcolmLoftdale during the course of the day, but the housekeeper on eachoccasion had given an evasive answer, and Meg now asked no more. Shemight have felt wounded at this breach of hospitality had not thebehavior of the servants precluded all idea of a slight being offered toher. They paid her obsequious attention, they obeyed her slightestexpressed wish. She might have imagined herself the queen of the domain.The solitude, the homage paid to her, the regard for her comfort,reminded her of a fairy tale where the host remains unseen and theheroine lives in splendor and isolation. She wondered often why herbenefactor kept himself thus sternly secluded. She began to think itcould not be the old gentleman she had seen in her childhood; why shouldhe avoid her? If it were a stranger was it because of some unsightlyphysical affliction, some form of mental derangement? was it a broodingmelancholy that caused him morbidly to shrink from contact withoutsiders? A longing to be of comfort mingled with the curiosity shefelt concerning her mysterious host.
One late afternoon as she rambled in the park she saw, framed in bytrees as in a picture, the figure of a tall, slender, white-hairedgentleman walking toward her. She recognized him at once. It was themysterious stranger, twice met in her childhood. He held his head high.What a head it was! There was an eagle cast of physiognomy, a chillexpression in the eyes, a hardness on the lips. He wore a country suitand carried a heavy gold-headed stick; a diamond stud on a jeweled sealcaught the light and shone. These little details curiously impressedthemselves upon Meg. She stopped, asking herself if this was the masterof the house?
The stranger glanced toward her, lifted his hat, and with an old-worldsalute passed on. Meg determined not to look after him; but she couldnot resist the temptation, and turning round she saw him ascending thesteps of the house. On questioning the housekeeper, Meg found that thepicturesque old gentleman was Sir Malcolm Loftdale.
Next morning Meg was standing arranging some flowers in the window ofthe little room she had chosen for her morning retreat--it looked out ona pleasant side alley of the grounds in the center of which stood a sundial--when the door suddenly opened, and the gentleman she had seen inthe park on the previous evening entered unannounced. He did not advancebeyond the threshold, but he closed the door after him and kept one handon the handle. He did not extend the other in greeting.
At sight of him Meg's heart fluttered, and she acknowledged by aflurried inclination of her head his stately bow.
He was handsomer than she had imagined him to be; but the light of hisstern blue eye remained cold, and there was a remoteness in the steadyglance that he fixed upon her.
"I beg you, Miss Beecham, to excuse me for not having welcomed youbefore," he said in a voice of cold courtesy. "I trust you will forgiveme for exercising a privilege age is apt freely to indulge nearyouth--that of following the usual routine of life. I am a solitary, mylife is organized for loneliness."
"You have been most kind, sir," muttered Meg, in a tumult of timidity.
"My servants have received strict orders to attend to your comfort. Ihope they have been attentive?"
"They have been very attentive," replied Meg.
"I fear the days may seem to drag heavily for you, Miss Beecham," theold gentleman resumed, without a shadow of softening in the coldness ofhis voice or the scrutiny of his glance. "I have thought--to relievetheir tedium--that you might like a horse. I will have one broken foryour use. There are pretty rides about."
"I do not know how to ride, sir," said Meg, touched and bewildered bythe thoughtfulness and repellent manner of her host.
"My old groom would teach you; he is a most trustworthy and respectableman," said Sir Malcolm.
"Thank you sir," said Meg. Then with desperate courage, as herbenefactor seemed about to retire, she added breathlessly: "I should notfeel lonely, sir--not--if you would let me be with you a little--if youwould let me read for you, or do something for you. You have been sogood to me all those years."
The old gentleman bowed hastily; the expression of his cold glanceseemed to grow colder as he replied: "I assure you, Miss Beecham, youneed feel yourself under no obligation to me for what I have done. It isvery little."
"Little! It was everything to me!" said Meg hurriedly, her voicetrembling with restrained emotion. "You twice saved me from a wretchedfate. But for you, sir, as you told me on that evening you took me backto school, I would have been as uncared for as a workhouse child."
"I wish, if you will allow me distinctly to state my wishes, thatallusion to the past be dropped between us. I can repeat only that youare under no obligation," replied her host, his thin lips remainingtense in their cruel firmness of line, his glance courteously repellent."When the case was pointed out to me it became my plain duty to do whatI did."
"I do not understand; I only know that if you had not been good to me Ishould have been ignorant and homeless," answered Meg with recklessiteration.
There was a pause, Sir Malcolm frowned, then he said with the sameimpassible frigidity:
"If you choose, Miss Beecham, to consider that you are under a debt ofgratitude to me, allow me to say that you will express it in the mannermost agreeable to me by never referring to the subject."
Bowing once more with that impassible fineness of mien, the oldgentleman opened the door and disappeared.
Meg felt crushed as by some physical blow. The gratitude that she hadharbored in her heart till it was filled to bursting all those years wasthrown back upon it, and the pain stifled her. She realized herloneliness as she never had realized it before. She wandered blindly outinto the park, and for the first time, in the heart of nature, she feltlike an outcast. She rebelled against the isolation to which herbenefactor would condemn her. It felt like an insult.
To be grateful to those who are good to us is a sacred right. He had noauthority to take from her this God-given privilege. After awhile shegrew calmer, but a melancholy fell over her such as she had never known.
Day succeeded day, and the intercourse between Meg and her host remainedbut little changed. She watched him curiously whenever she had theopportunity. She came to know his habits. A young man was closeted withhim for some hours every morning. Mrs. Jarvis told Meg he was SirMalcolm's secretary, and read the papers to him, as the baronet'seyesight was beginning to fail. He had lodgings in the village.
Sir Malcolm rode out alone, walked alone, took his meals alone, spenthis evenings alone. Occasionally some elderly country squires called atthe house; but there was apparently no intimacy between the baronet andhis neighbors. Meg often watched her host wa
ndering about the park;there was an alley he haunted. As he paced backward and forward, hishands behind his back, his tall figure, slender almost to gauntness,clothed in the somewhat old-fashioned costume he affected, his whitehair shining like spun glass about his pale, high-featured face, shethought he looked like a ghost which had stepped down out of one of thepictures. Little by little she grew to feel an intense interest in thatstately specter.
Whenever they met Sir Malcolm was courteous and cold. Sometimes hepassed her by with that old-world salute; oftener he stopped to inquireafter her comfort, to offer with distant interest suggestions for heramusement. He recommended her books to read; he once pointed out to herthe parts of the house to which historical interest was attached.
He attracted and repelled Meg. She was always in a fright when she wasnear him. His glance withered every impulse to pass the distance heimposed between them. A chill air seemed around him, as might be roundan iceberg. The look of power on his face, the suggestion his appearancegave of a strong, self-contained personality, possessed for her the samesort of fascination as the flash and iridescence of an iceberg that willnot melt. The interest Meg felt for her host kept pace with her fear.She always connected that picture turned to the wall with his historyand his character. There it was always in presence, and yet underapparently some black disgrace.
Away from Sir Malcolm, she would indulge a zeal to win his regard, toconquer it. Watching his solitary pacings to and fro, a pity would fillher heart for the lonely man who had been so good to her. In hispresence came the chill, checking every expression of emotion. Sometimeswhen she met his glance she fancied her benefactor disliked her.
The sadness deepened upon Meg--the sadness of a sensitive naturecondemned to isolation. The inaction of her days wearied her. She lookedback with a touch of nostalgia on the busy schooldays, and mourned anewfor Elsie, who had allowed her to give love. Meg's pride also rebelledagainst eating the bread of idleness under her benefactor's roof: thatgentle independence had grown a sort of second nature with her.
One morning she was aware of a certain flurry through the house. Mrs.Jarvis told her that Sir Malcolm's secretary had been called awaysuddenly to London on important family business, and that the master wasleft with his papers alone.
Meg received the information in silence. For a few moments after thehousekeeper left she stood still, thinking. Once or twice she walked tothe room and came back irresolute. She at last went determinedly out ofthe room and made her way to the library, where Sir Malcolm spent thegreater part of his time indoors.
She knocked, but scarcely waited for permission to open the door.Walking swiftly in before he could recognize her, she stood by SirMalcolm's chair.
"I have come to ask if I may read to you, sir, in the absence of Mr.Robinson?" she said in the smooth, quick voice of mastered timidity.
He looked up surprised, and rose.
"I could not accept it of you," he said with a bow.
"Why not?" she asked with breathless gentleness.
"Did Mrs. Jarvis suggest to you to come?" he said with a quick frown,an evidence of irritation he suppressed at once.
"No," said Meg. "I heard Mr. Robinson had left, and I hoped that youwould let me take his place."
"That would be impossible. I would not lay such a tax upon any lady," hesaid with courteous definiteness of accent and manner.
"Why will you not let me read to you?" asked Meg pleadingly.
"Because," he answered, with an attempt at lightness of tone that didnot yet take from its distance and firmness, "young ladies do not carefor politics, and politics alone interest me."
"They would interest me if I read them for you," said Meg with timidpersistence.
"Allow me to beg you to put into the balance against this plea theargument that it would be disagreeable to me," Sir Malcolm replied, witha directness the brutality of which was veiled by the stately tone ofdismissal in his voice and manner. "And the spirit that impelled you toundertake the task would make it all the more painful."
As Meg did not answer he continued:
"Excuse the frankness of my refusal. I thank you, nevertheless, for theoffer."
He glanced toward the door, and as she moved away he advanced to openit for her; but Meg paused on her way. Her spirit was up; the fear thathitherto had quelled her before him fell from her. She had grownsuddenly irritated at his invincible coldness. She would expose herselfto no more rebuffs.
"May I ask you, sir, to be so kind as to spare me a moment? I have arequest to make."
"Certainly," he replied, turning back; he sat down and pointed to achair near his. But Meg remained standing.
Embarrassment, resolution kept her motionless with a touch of angularrigidity in her pose. Her voice, unsteady at first, grew more controlledas she went on:
"Before leaving school I had an offer of a situation as governess tothree young children. You were kind enough, sir, to ask me on a visit. Ithank you for the hospitality you have shown me. I think my visit mustnow come to an end. With your permission I shall inquire if the place isstill vacant, and take it if it be."
"Why do you want to go, Miss Beecham?" said Sir Malcolm. "Are you notcomfortable here?"
"Comfortable, yes," said Meg. She paused as if hesitating, then sheadded brusquely, "I do not think I care much for comfort."
There was something primitive, almost childish, in Meg's manner; but itgave the impression of the strength rather than of the weakness ofchildhood. It came with a freshness that was as the scent of the flowerrather than that of the toilet perfume.
Meg's mood seemed to pique the old gentleman; he looked curiously ather, almost as if for the first time he recognized in her anindividuality.
"You do not care for comfort. That is a great source of independence,"he observed.
"I wish to be independent," said Meg with gentle spirit.
"You are proud. It is a spirit that should be repressed," he answered.
"I do not know if I am proud," replied Meg, her low, feeling voice underevident restraint. "I know it pains me to be here receiving everything,giving nothing in return."
"What could you give?" he asked with a slight contraction of his hardlips.
"I could give proofs of what I feel--gratitude," she said.
"I have explained I do not want gratitude," he replied with chilldistinctness. "I do not either wish to receive it or to inspire it."
"You cannot help my feeling it," Meg broke out with spirit and with avivid glance; "that is beyond your control. You may condemn me tosilence and to apparent apathy, but the gratitude is here all the same;and because I cannot express it, it becomes a burden and hurts me."
There was a pause, during which Sir Malcolm continued to look at Megwith that new look of curiosity, as if for the first time he recognizedher as a personality.
"Am I to understand," he said slowly, "that you wish to leave my housebecause I do not care for any allusion to be made between us of the partI have taken in defraying the cost of your education?"
Meg made a quick gesture. "Because you will let me do nothing for you,and also because I want to be independent. I would never wish to leaveyou if I could be of service to you--never; but as you will not let me,I ask you to let me go and earn my own living."
Sir Malcolm bowed his head. "I understand; you do not wish to bedependent upon me for your maintenance."
"No, sir."
"Suppose," resumed her host after a pause, "I were to feel disposed toaccept the offer you just now made to me, to replace Mr. Robinson duringhis absence, would you allow me to do so?"
Meg gave an exclamation of acceptance.
MEG READS THE MORNING PAPERS TO SIR MALCOLM.--Page 255.]
"Understand me," said the old man with deliberate distinctness,looking full at Meg. "It is a business proposal. I still maintain mypoint. I do not want gratitude. If I accept your services, it is on thecondition that you will accept a remuneration."
Meg colored. For a moment she knit her brows, then she
said with effort,"I shall accept the chance of being of service to you under anycondition, sir, that you may name."
"So be it, then," said the baronet.
At a sign from him Meg sat down and took up the _Times_. "Where shall Ibegin, sir?" she asked.
"With the first leader, if you please," he replied with an inclinationof the head, crossing his knees, and composing himself to listen.
Meg read, mastering her nervousness with a strong effort of will. Onceor twice she looked up and caught his eyes fixed upon her, with that newcuriosity in their glance that seemed to humanize their expression.
After she had read the _Times_, the political leaders of the _Standard_,and selections from its foreign correspondence under Sir Malcolm'sdirections, a third paper remained--the local organ apparently--the_Greywolds Mercury_. At the murmured injunction of her auditor, "Theleader, if you please," Meg once more set upon her task.
The article handled a book upon the rights of property which had latelyappeared and was making a stir. As Meg read the opening paragraph hervoice faltered and hesitated. She was reading a fierce attack upon SirMalcolm Loftdale.
She looked up distressed and flurried. The old man set his jaw. "Go on,"he said, and Meg continued. She could scarcely follow the drift of whatshe read for sympathy with the pain she was inflicting upon herbenefactor. She confusedly gathered that Sir Malcolm had raised rents inorder to get rid of certain tenants on his estate; that the compensationhe gave his ejected cottagers might appear to justify the proceeding,which nevertheless remained in the eyes of the writer of the article aninfamous cruelty.
"I think this will suffice for to-day, Miss Beecham," said the baronet,when she had read to the end.
She rose as he spoke. She noticed he looked paler. "Is there no letter,sir, that I can write for you?" asked Meg.
"None this morning, I thank you," he replied with that fine air ofdismissal which awed Meg. He preceded her to the door, and held it openfor her to pass out.