As soon as she was left alone, she began to think over all she had heard. She felt as if she had been transplanted into the regions of romance--so strange was it to think that Mr. Grey actually knew somebody who had defended two ladies against an attack of brigands, and been wounded in the contest. This somebody, it was true, was very wicked; but still so very brave, that she could not but admit she should like to see him of all things. She thought he must resemble one of Byron"s heroes, and she detected herself wondering whether he had blue eyes or brown.
She was interrupted in her reverie by Land, who begged to know whether she would like to walk; and advised her to wrap up very warm, for it was a bitter frost.
Her heart beat with delight as she hurried on her furs, and ran down the great staircase to meet her old escort. She felt free as air, she could walk exactly which way she liked, with only a servant behind her, instead of being linked arm-in-arm during the whole promenade with some young lady, who was uninteresting if not disagreeable as a companion. It was as Land had predicted, a bitter frost; her breath whitened her veil, and the ground felt like granite under her feet. Every thing around had been transformed, as Ariel says, "into something rich and strange." The trees stood like coral groves; every branch thickly crusted with sparkling crystals; every brook was ice-bound; every roof pendant with icicles. The sharp air seemed filled with a visible brightness. The pale blue sky appeared to have receded into a farther distance, and the silent fields and hill-side deserted by the grazing flocks, presented an unbroken extent of dazzling snow. Margaret bounded forward with an elasticity of spirit that seemed as if it could never tire. She could not sympathise with old Land when he begged her to walk a little slower; but she wrapped her furs more closely round her, and complied. She had a thousand questions to ask as they proceeded. She must know who lived in every house they pa.s.sed, and the direction of every road and narrow lane that crossed the highway.
Mr. Land pa.s.sed over the village dwellings very slightly; but when they came in view of a large white house standing on the river-side with broad lawns and cl.u.s.tering elms, he pointed it out to her with an air of great dignity.
"That seat, Chirke Weston, belongs to Captain Gage. Quite the gentleman, Miss Capel."
The father of the young Gages who disliked Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt. Margaret looked with much interest at the white walls of the house.
"They are expecting home, Mr. Hubert," said Land, "such a fine young gentleman. A sailor like his father--they are a fine family. Miss Gage is the handsomest young lady in the county."
Margaret felt interested in the Gage family, she begged Land to point out to her where they sat at church, that she might know them by sight.
They came to some fields which took them another way to Ashdale.
"Is this field, my uncle Grey"s?" asked Margaret, "what a large pond! I say, Land, when I was a little girl I could skate very well. Could you get me a pair of skates? I will give you the money."
Land looked very grave; but Margaret coaxed and begged so much, that he said he would see about it; and the next morning a small pair of skates was laid beside her shoes outside her bed-room door.
The frost continued: she hurried over her organ practice; and went down to the pond with Land. Her skates were on in a moment; and had there been any spectators, they might have enjoyed the sight of an old man holding a young lady"s m.u.f.f and boa, while she amused herself by skimming over the ice. She was never weary. Poor old Land walked up and down the side of the pond with his hands in her m.u.f.f, wishing every minute that she would bring her sport to a conclusion, until he was forced to tell her that his time was up, for he had to go in and see to the cleaning of the plate. The next day she managed to go out earlier, for the frost was still hard, and she determined to make the most of it while it lasted.
She excited the unqualified approbation of Land by her performance, for, as she bade him observe, she was fairly getting into practice.
She flew round the pond, and across, and back, until he was almost tired of watching her.
"Miss Capel--Miss Capel! quick! here comes Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt," cried Land, but Margaret was careering round the pond and did not hear him.
"Miss Capel! Bless the child, he will go and say all sorts of things to Mr. Grey. Oh, dear me! Miss Margaret--"
"Well, Land, what is the matter? You look in such a bustle. You don"t mean to say the ice is giving way?"
"Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt is coming across the field, that"s all, Miss Capel."
"Oh! I don"t care for him--horrid old man! Just look how nicely I can turn this corner."
Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt pa.s.sed through the field on his way to the house, and Margaret continued her skating with great eagerness.
Presently a footman was seen running towards the pond followed by the gardener"s boy at a little distance; then appeared the fat coachman, and, in the farthest distance, Mr. Grey himself.
The footman, quite out of breath, brought his master"s compliments, and he begged Miss Capel to come off the ice: then up came the boy, grinning, but saying nothing, then the coachman toiled up, and said that master was in a mortal fright lest the young lady had come to any harm; and informed Mr. Land, aside, "as how that cankered old toad, Cas.e.m.e.nt, had been telling master a pack of lies about a thaw;" and by the time Margaret had disengaged the straps of her skates from her little feet, Mr. Grey had reached her all in a tremble, and taking her in his arms had begun a gentle remonstrance on her imprudence in venturing upon thin ice. Land came forward, and vowed that the ice was as firm as the rock of Gibraltar, and recommended, in proof thereof, that the fat coachman and the gardener"s boy should cross the pond arm-in-arm. But Mr. Grey"s fears once excited, could not so easily be set at rest; if the ice was not thin, it would probably be slippery--not an uncommon attribute--people had broken their limbs before now by a fall on the ice; indeed, he was not sure that there was not a case of the kind at present in the village, which he hoped would be a warning to Margaret never to skate again. And seeing that she was half crying as she resigned her skates to Land, he promised her a plum-cake for tea as the only means that came into his head of softening the bitterness of her disappointment.
CHAPTER III.
The red rose medled with the white yfere, In either cheek depeinten lively chear; Her modest eye, Her majesty, Where have you seen the like but there?
SPENSER.
Mr. Grey did not go to church on the Sunday after Margaret"s arrival. He very seldom ventured during the winter to encounter the cold and damp common to most village churches at that season; from which some persons augured that he had a bad heart, while others contented themselves by supposing that he had a delicate chest.
Having seen his little niece warmly packed up in the carriage, he returned to his library to read the service to himself, and she proceeded, with some little elevation of feeling, on her way. It was new to her to have a carriage all to herself, to recline alone in the corner with her feet in a carriage-mat; and to have Land to hand her out, and carry her prayer-books to the pew-door. Having deposited Margaret and her books, and having whispered to her that the Gages" seat was next to hers, Land withdrew to his own part of the church.
Presently, a tall, elderly man of imposing appearance, with an empty sleeve, and hair touched with grey, opened the door of the Gages" seat, and stepped back that the young lady by his side might pa.s.s in. These, Margaret was sure, were Captain Gage and his daughter. Captain Gage cast one quick glance from his clear blue eyes at Margaret, and then took his seat. Miss Gage lingered a second longer, without any apparent rudeness of manner, from a genuine reluctance to remove her eyes from so lovely a face. Although Miss Gage was all fur and black velvet, yet her regal figure and magnificent stature could not be mistaken.
She was strikingly like her father, with straight features, light brown hair, and calm, clear, full-opened blue eyes; but although it was impossible to deny to her face the regularity of an antique statue, and the sweetness of expression that almost always accompanies regularity, she possessed one drawback in the eyes of Margaret; she must have been two or three and twenty, at least, an age that to a girl of seventeen seems to approach very near to the confines of the grave.
Margaret possessed too correct a sense of her religious duties to spend her time in watching her neighbours, but as they sat just in front of her, she could not raise her eyes without seeing them; and before church was over, she had become perfectly acquainted with Miss Gage"s appearance, from the large ruby that flashed on her white hand, to the purple prayer-book inlaid with silver in which she looked out all the places for her father.
Mr. Grey was very much amused by her account of what she had seen when she came home. He was very careful that she should have plenty of sandwiches, and hot wine and water for luncheon to counteract the cold of the church, and sat listening and smiling to hear her describe Miss Gage"s velvet pelisse and little ermine m.u.f.f. He saw plainly, he told her, that she would like a black velvet gown herself. Margaret coloured and laughed, but could not deny the fact, and the next morning after breakfast, he told Land to go over to the next town and get one.
"Ready made, Sir?" asked Land, endeavouring to impress upon his mind the exact height of his young lady.
"No, no, Land; black velvet enough to make a gown for a lady. That is the way, is it not, my darling?"
Margaret was profuse in her thanks, and was beginning to imagine what a grand appearance she should make, in it; when Mr. Grey told her, after looking at her attentively with a smile, that it would make her look like a little old woman. Her unfortunate height was one great obstacle to her enjoyment.
Once when she was out walking with Land, she met the Gages. Captain Gage was pacing leisurely up and down before a cottage, sometimes looking sharply up into the sky as if watching the weather; and just before Margaret came up, Miss Gage joined her father from the inside of the cottage, and said, "I have kept you waiting unmercifully, to-day, my dear father, but she was so very ill."
"Ill, was she, poor old soul!" said Captain Gage, "take care that she has all she wants. Give me your basket, Bessy."
But Bessy would not give her father her basket, and they walked out of hearing.
Margaret grew to be interested in the Gages; she liked to hear all Land had to tell her in their daily walks about them; and as Captain Gage divided with Mr. Grey the honour of being the greatest person in that neighbourhood, he paid the usual penalty of greatness, and could not stir abroad, or stay at home without having his doings registered. Land knew to an hour when the ship in which Mr. Hubert was second Lieutenant arrived at Plymouth, and when Captain Gage set out to meet his son, and accompany him home. He was likewise well informed as to whether Miss Gage drove out in the chariot or the britschka, and how many people were staying at Chirke Weston.
This sort of gossip was certainly not the best thing for Margaret, and it was contrary to her habits to seek for such amus.e.m.e.nt; but she felt a kind of interest in the family, particularly in Miss Gage, that she could hardly explain to herself.
With regard to her own occupations, she played the organ, she read history, particularly the books that Mr. Warde either recommended or lent; as she could not skate, she walked with Land every morning, and after luncheon Mr. Grey"s carriage was at her service if she chose to drive out. She was quite a little Queen in the house; she had only to express a wish, and it was fulfilled. She had a very skillful maid entirely for herself, her dressing-room was fitted up in a style of elegance that might have served a d.u.c.h.ess; in short, her uncle did not quite know, as Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt told him, how to spoil her enough. It may be supposed that she became exceedingly attached to him, in the evening she sang to him, or sat on a low stool by his side, telling him all the little pieces of news she might have heard during the day, or relating with equal interest the historic tales that she was reading, or exciting his sympathy, by a detail of the uncomfortable period she had pa.s.sed at school.
It happened one morning that Margaret walked down to the Vicarage with Land to exchange a volume of history she had borrowed, and when she was shown into Mr. Warde"s morning room, she found him talking earnestly with Miss Gage.
"I beg your pardon," said Margaret, drawing back, "I did not know you were busy."
"Oh! come in, come in, little one," said Mr. Warde, "we were talking no secrets. Ah! you want the second volume. Why, what a reader you are!"
"And will you not come nearer the fire, while our good friend is finding your book?" said Miss Gage to Margaret.
"Thank you," returned Margaret, drawing towards the fire, and ungloving her beautiful hands.
"Do you like this cold weather?" asked Miss Gage, kindly.
"Yes, when it is a hard frost," returned Margaret; "but I am looking forward very much to summer time."
"You will find the neighbourhood beautiful in spring," said Miss Gage, "and I think Mr. Grey has the prettiest place in the county."