A True Friend Part 34

Lady Caroline, always mindful of her daughter's moods, could not quite understand Margaret's demeanor when she returned home that afternoon.

She fancied that some news about Sir Philip might have reached the girl's ear and distressed her mind. But when she skilfully led the conversation in that direction, Margaret said at once, with a complete absence of finesse that rather disconcerted her mother--

"No, mamma, I heard nothing about the Ashleys--mother or son."

"Dear Margaret," thought Lady Caroline, "is surely not learning _brusquerie_ and bad manners from that tiresome Miss Colwyn. What a very unlucky friends.h.i.+p that has been!"

She did not seize the clue which Margaret unconsciously held out to her in the course of the same evening. The girl was sitting in a shady corner of the drawing-room holding a feather fan before her face, when she introduced what had hitherto been, at Helmsley Court, a forbidden topic--the history of the Brands.

"Papa," she said, quietly, "did you never know anything of the Red House people?"

Lady Caroline glanced at her husband. Mr. Adair seemed to find it difficult to reply.

"Yes, of course, I did--in the old days," he answered, less suavely than usual. "When the father was alive, I used to go to the house, but, of course, I was a mere lad then."

"You do not know the sons, then?" said Margaret.

"My dear child, I do not hunt. Mr. Brand's only appearance in society is on the hunting field."

"But there is another brother--one who paints, I believe."

"He teaches drawing in some of the schools of the neighborhood," Lady Caroline interposed, rather dryly. "I suppose you do not want drawing lessons, dear?"

"Oh, no," said Margaret, indifferently. "I only thought it seemed odd that we never met them anywhere."

"Not very suitable acquaintances," murmured Lady Caroline, almost below her breath. Mr. Adair was looking at an ill.u.s.trated magazine and did not seem to hear, but, after a moment's pause, Margaret said,

"Why, mamma?"

Lady Caroline hesitated for a moment. Mr. Adair shrugged his shoulders.

Then she said slowly:

"His father married beneath him, my love. Mrs. Brand is a quite impossible person. If the young men would pension her off and send her away, the County would very likely take them up. But we cannot receive the mother."

"That is another of what Sir Philip Ashley would call cla.s.s-distinctions, is it not?" said Margaret, placidly. "The sort of thing which made Miss Polehampton so anxious to separate me from poor Janetta."

"Cla.s.s-distinctions are generally founded on some inherent law of character or education, dear," said Lady Caroline, softly. "They are not so arbitrary as young people imagine. I hope the day will never come when the distinction of cla.s.s will be done away with. I"--piously--"hope that I may be in my grave before that day comes."

"Oh, of course they are very necessary," said Margaret, comfortably.

"And, if old Mrs. Brand were to go away, I suppose her sons would be received everywhere?"

"Oh, I suppose so. The property is fairly good, is it not, Reginald?"

"Not very," said Mr. Adair. "The father squandered a good deal, and I fancy the present owner is economizing for the sake of his boy."

"His boy?" A faint color stole into Margaret's cheeks. "Is he married, papa?"

"Oh, the wife's dead," said Mr. Adair, hastily. It was part of Lady Caroline's system that Margaret should not hear more than was absolutely necessary of what she termed "disagreeable" subjects. Elopements, separation and divorce cases all came under that head. So that when Mr.

Adair, who knew more of Mr. Brand's domestic history than he chose to say, added immediately--"At least I heard so: I believe so," he did not think that he was actually departing from fact, but only that he was coloring the matter suitably for Margaret's infant understanding. He really believed that Mrs. Wyvis Brand was divorced from her husband, and it was "the same thing as being dead, you know," he would have replied if interrogated on the subject.

Margaret did not respond, and Lady Caroline never once suspected that she had any real interest in the matter. But the very fact that Wyvis Brand was represented to her as a widower threw a halo of romance around his head in Margaret's eyes. A man who has "loved and lost" is often invested with a peculiar kind of sanct.i.ty in the eyes of a young girl.

Wyvis Brand's handsome face and evident admiration of herself did not prepossess Margaret in his favor half so much as the fact that he had known loss and sorrow, and was temporarily ostracized by County society because his mother was "an impossible person." This last deprivation appealed to Margaret's imagination more than the first. It seemed to her a terrible thing to remain unvisited by the "County." What a good thing it would be, she reflected, if Mr. Brand could marry some nice girl, who would persuade him to send his mother back to France, and for whose sake the County magnates would extend to him the right hand of fellows.h.i.+p. To reinstate him in his proper position--the position which Margaret told herself he deserved and would adorn--seemed to her an ambition worthy of any woman in the world. For Margaret's nature was curiously mixed. From her father she had inherited a great love of the beautiful and the romantic--there was a thoroughly unworldly strain in him which had descended to her; but, then, it was counteracted by the influences which she had imbibed from Lady Caroline. Margaret used sometimes to rebel against her mother's maxims of worldly wisdom, but they gradually permeated her mind, and the gold was so mingled with alloy that it was difficult to separate one from the other. She thought herself a very unworldly person. We all have ideals of ourselves; and Margaret's ideal of herself was of a rather saint-like creature, with high aspirations and pure motives. Where her weakness really lay she had not the faintest notion.

It was strange even to herself to note the impression that Wyvis Brand had produced on her. He was certainly of the type that tends to attract impressionable girls, for he was dark and handsome, with the indefinable touch of melancholy in his eyes which lends a subtler interest to the face than mere beauty. The little that she knew of his history had touched her. She constructed a great deal from the few facts or fancies that had been given to her, and the result was sufficiently unlike the real man to be recognizable by n.o.body but Margaret herself.

It has already been said that the Adair property and that of Wyvis Brand lay side by side. The Adair estate was a large one: that of the Brands'

comparatively small; but at one point the two properties were separated for some little distance only by a narrow fis.h.i.+ng stream, on one side of which stretched an outlying portion of Mr. Adair's park; while on the other side lay a plantation, approached through the Beaminster woods, and not very far from the Red House itself. It was in this plantation--which was divided from the woods only by a wire fence--that Janetta had found little Julian and had afterwards encountered Wyvis Brand.

In spring the plantation was a particularly pleasant place. It was starred with primroses and anemones in the earlier months of the year, and blue with hyacinths at a later date. At a little distance the flowers looked like a veil of color spread between the trees. The brook between the park and the plantation was a merry little stream, dancing gaily over golden pebbles, and brightly responsive to the suns.h.i.+ne that flickered between the lightly-clothed branches of the trees bordering it on either side. It was famous in the neighborhood for the big blue forget-me-nots that grew there; but it could hardly have been in search of forget-me-nots that Margaret Adair wandered along its side one morning, for they were scarcely in season, and her dreamy eyes did not seem to be looking for them on the bank.

From amongst the trees of the plantation there appeared suddenly a man, who doffed his cap to Miss Adair with a look of mingled pleasure and surprise.

"Oh, good-morning, Mr. Brand."

"Good-morning, Miss Adair." No greeting could have been more conventional. "May I ask if you are looking for forget-me nots? There are some already out lower down the stream. I will show you where they are if you will turn to the left."

"Thank you," said Margaret.

They moved down the slight slope together, but on different sides of the stream. At last they reached the spot where a gleam of blue was visible at the water's edge.

"It is on your side," Margaret said, with a little smile.

"I will get them for you," he replied. And she stood waiting while he gathered the faintly-tinted blossoms.

"And now," she said, as he rose to his feet again, "how will you give them to me? I am afraid I cannot reach across."

"I could come over to you," said Wyvis, his dark eyes resting upon her eagerly. "Will you ask me to come?"

She paused. "Why should I ask you?" she said, with a smile, as if between jest and earnest.

"You are standing on your ground, and I on mine. I have never in my life been asked to cross the boundary."

"I ask you then," said Margaret coloring prettily. She was half-frightened at the significance of her own words, when she had spoken them. But it was too late to retract. It took Wyvis Brand a moment only to leap the brook, and to find himself at her side. Then, taking off his hat and bowing low, he presented her with the flowers that he had gathered. She thanked him with a blush.

"Will you give me one?" he asked, his eyes fixed upon her lovely face.

"Just one!----"

"Why did you not keep one?" she said, bending over her nosegay as if absorbed in its arrangement. "They are so rare that I hardly know how to spare any." Which was a bit of innocent coquetry on Margaret's part.

"Just one," he pleaded. "As a reward. As a memento."

"A memento of what?" she asked, separating one or two flowers from the bunch as she spoke.

"Of this occasion."

"It is such an important occasion, is it not?" she said, with a sweet, mocking little laugh.

"A very important occasion to me. Have I not met you?"