Charles Garvice - Wild Margaret

Margaret ran into the house, her heart beating fast, the color coming and going in her cheeks. To her amazement and annoyance, she felt that she was actually trembling! Well, if not trembling, quivering, as a leaf quivers when the summer wind passes over its bosom.

What was this that she had done? Notwithstanding her grandmother's warning and her own good resolutions, she had spent – how long! – nearly an hour talking alone with Lord Blair Leyton. And he had given her a rose! Not only given it to her, but fastened it in the antimacassar.

She could feel his fingers touching her still, as it seemed to her! She looked down at the rose, gleaming like a spot of blood on the white cotton of the antimacassar, then, with a sudden gesture, she went to pull it out and fling it through the window; but she averted her hand even as it touched the velvet leaves. Yes, she had done wrong; she ought not to have spoken to him, ought not to have remained with him, and most certainly ought not to have taken the rose from him.

She saw now how wrong she had been. They used to call her "Wild Margaret," "Mad Madge," when she was a child, but she had been trying to become quiet, and dignified, and discreet, and, as it seemed to her, had succeeded, until this wicked young man had tempted her into flirting – was it flirting? – in the starlight.

"You look flushed, my dear," said Mrs. Hale. "Are you tired?"

"I think I am a little," said Margaret, longing to get to the solitude of her own room.

"It's the country air," said the old lady, nodding. "It always makes people from London sleepy. Was it pleasant in the garden?" she added, innocently.

Margaret's face flushed.

"Y – es, very," she replied; then she was going on to tell the old lady of her meeting with Lord Blair, but stopped short.

"I think I will go up to bed now," she said, and giving the old lady a kiss, she went up-stairs to her own room. There she thought over every word that the young lord said, and that she herself had spoken. There had been no harm in any of it, surely! He had spoken respectfully, almost reverentially, and even when he had given her the rose he had done it with as much diffidence and high bred courtesy as if she had been a countess. Surely there had been no harm in it.

It was a lovely morning when she woke, and dressing herself she went straight to the picture gallery. As she left the room Lord Blair's red rose seemed to smile at her from the dressing table, and she took it up and carried it in her hand. It was just possible that she might meet him; if so, it would be as well to have the rose with her, for give it back she meant to, if a chance afforded. The light in the gallery could not have been better, and she set to work at first languidly, but presently with more spirit, and was becoming perfectly absorbed, when she heard a voice singing the refrain of the last popular London song.

It was a man's voice, it could be no other than Lord Blair's, and in a minute or two afterward she heard him enter the gallery.

She heard him coming toward her with a quick step, and looking up with his eyes fixed upon her with eager pleasure. He was dressed in the suit of tweeds in which he had looked so picturesque on the morning of the fight, and in his buttonhole he wore a white rose. It drew her eyes toward it, and she knew it at once – it was the finest of the roses she had placed in his room.

"Miss Hale!" he exclaimed, holding out his hand, while his eyes beamed with the frank, glad light of youth when it is pleased. "This is luck! I only strolled in here by mere chance – and – and to think of my finding you here! How early you are! And what a lot you have done!" staring admiringly at the canvas. "I hope you didn't catch cold last night?"

"No, my lord," said Margaret, as coldly as if her voice were frozen.

He looked at her with a quick questioning.

"I'm off almost directly," he said, with something like a sigh. "It's a bore having to go back to London and leave this place a morning like this. I had no idea it was so – so jolly, until – " he stopped; he was going to add: "until last night."

Margaret remained silent, dabbing on little spots of color delicately.

"I quite envy you your stay here," he went on, looking in her grave face, which had become somewhat pale since his arrival. "That jolly little garden, and – and this grand gallery. I hope you will be happy, and – and enjoy yourself."

"Thank you my lord," coldly as before.

He looked at her with a slightly puzzled frown.

"Yes, I should like to stay; but I can't – for the best of all reasons, I haven't been invited, don't you know."

Margaret said nothing, but carefully mixed some colors on her palette.

"And so – and so I'm off," he said, with a sudden sigh. "Perhaps we shall meet in London, Miss Hale."

"It is not likely," said Margaret gravely.

"So you said last night," he responded; "but I shall live in hopes. Yes. London's only a little place, after all, you know, and – and we may meet. Well, I'll say good-bye!"

"Good-bye, my lord," she said, affecting not to see his outstretched hand.

"Won't you shake hands?" he said with a laugh, which died away as she took up the rose and placed it in his extended palm.

"Will you take back this flower, my lord?" she said quietly, but with a trembling quiver on her lips.

"Take back?" he stammered. "Take back the rose I gave you last night!" he went on with astonishment. "Why? what have I done to offend you?" and he stared from the rose to her face.

"You have done nothing to offend me, my lord," said Margaret quickly, and with a vivid blush, which angered her beyond expression. "Nothing whatever, but – "

"But – well?" he said as she paused.

"But," she went on, lifting her eyes to his bravely – "but I do not think I ought to take a flower from you, my lord."

"Good lord, why not?" he demanded, with not unreasonable astonishment.

Margaret looked down. But she was no coward.

"I will say more than that," she said in a low but steady voice. "I ought not to have remained in the garden with you last night, Lord Leyton. I thought so last night, I am sure of it now. And if I ought not to have stayed talking with you, I certainly ought not to have accepted a flower from you! I beg your pardon, and – there is your rose!"

A look of pain crossed his handsome face.

"You haven't told me why yet," he said, after a pause.

Margaret bit her lip, and was silent for a second or two, then she said:

"Lord Leyton, there should be, can be, no acquaintance between you and me – "

"Now stop!" he said. "I know what you are going to say; you are going to talk some nonsense about my being a viscount and you being something different, and all that! As if you were not a lady, and as if any one could be better than that! Yes, they can, by George! and you are better, for you are an artist! A difference between us – yes, yes, I should think there was, between a useless fellow like myself and a clever, beautiful – "

"My lord!" said Margaret, flushing, then looking at him with her brows drawn together.

"I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon; I do indeed! But, all the same," he said, defiantly, "it's true! You are beautiful, but I don't rely on that. I say an artist and a lady is the equal of any man or woman alive, and if that's the reason you fling my flower back to me – "

"I didn't fling it, my lord," said Margaret, gravely.

"I'm a brute!" he said, penitently. "The difference between a brute and – and an angel! That's it. No, you didn't fling it, but it's just as if you had, isn't it now?"

"You will take back the flower, Lord Leyton, please?" she almost pleaded. "I don't want to fling it, as you say, out of the window."