The old gentleman bowed hastily; the expression of his cold glance seemed to grow colder as he replied: "I a.s.sure you, Miss Beecham, you need feel yourself under no obligation to me for what I have done. It is very little."
"Little! It was everything to me!" said Meg hurriedly, her voice trembling with restrained emotion. "You twice saved me from a wretched fate. But for you, sir, as you told me on that evening you took me back to school, I would have been as uncared for as a workhouse child."
"I wish, if you will allow me distinctly to state my wishes, that allusion to the past be dropped between us. I can repeat only that you are under no obligation," replied her host, his thin lips remaining tense 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 what I did."
"I do not understand; I only know that if you had not been good to me I should have been ignorant and homeless," answered Meg with reckless iteration.
There was a pause, Sir Malcolm frowned, then he said with the same impa.s.sible frigidity:
"If you choose, Miss Beecham, to consider that you are under a debt of grat.i.tude to me, allow me to say that you will express it in the manner most agreeable to me by never referring to the subject."
Bowing once more with that impa.s.sible fineness of mien, the old gentleman opened the door and disappeared.
Meg felt crushed as by some physical blow. The grat.i.tude that she had harbored in her heart till it was filled to bursting all those years was thrown back upon it, and the pain stifled her. She realized her loneliness as she never had realized it before. She wandered blindly out into the park, and for the first time, in the heart of nature, she felt like an outcast. She rebelled against the isolation to which her benefactor would condemn her. It felt like an insult.
To be grateful to those who are good to us is a sacred right. He had no authority to take from her this G.o.d-given privilege. After awhile she grew calmer, but a melancholy fell over her such as she had never known.
Day succeeded day, and the intercourse between Meg and her host remained but little changed. She watched him curiously whenever she had the opportunity. She came to know his habits. A young man was closeted with him for some hours every morning. Mrs. Jarvis told Meg he was Sir Malcolm"s secretary, and read the papers to him, as the baronet"s eyesight was beginning to fail. He had lodgings in the village.
Sir Malcolm rode out alone, walked alone, took his meals alone, spent his evenings alone. Occasionally some elderly country squires called at the house; but there was apparently no intimacy between the baronet and his neighbors. Meg often watched her host wandering about the park; there was an alley he haunted. As he paced backward and forward, his hands behind his back, his tall figure, slender almost to gauntness, clothed in the somewhat old-fashioned costume he affected, his white hair shining like spun gla.s.s about his pale, high-featured face, she thought he looked like a ghost which had stepped down out of one of the pictures. Little by little she grew to feel an intense interest in that stately specter.
Whenever they met Sir Malcolm was courteous and cold. Sometimes he pa.s.sed her by with that old-world salute; oftener he stopped to inquire after her comfort, to offer with distant interest suggestions for her amus.e.m.e.nt. He recommended her books to read; he once pointed out to her the parts of the house to which historical interest was attached.
He attracted and repelled Meg. She was always in a fright when she was near him. His glance withered every impulse to pa.s.s the distance he imposed between them. A chill air seemed around him, as might be round an iceberg. The look of power on his face, the suggestion his appearance gave of a strong, self-contained personality, possessed for her the same sort of fascination as the flash and iridescence of an iceberg that will not melt. The interest Meg felt for her host kept pace with her fear.
She always connected that picture turned to the wall with his history and his character. There it was always in presence, and yet under apparently some black disgrace.
Away from Sir Malcolm, she would indulge a zeal to win his regard, to conquer it. Watching his solitary pacings to and fro, a pity would fill her heart for the lonely man who had been so good to her. In his presence came the chill, checking every expression of emotion. Sometimes when she met his glance she fancied her benefactor disliked her.
The sadness deepened upon Meg--the sadness of a sensitive nature condemned to isolation. The inaction of her days wearied her. She looked back with a touch of nostalgia on the busy schooldays, and mourned anew for Elsie, who had allowed her to give love. Meg"s pride also rebelled against eating the bread of idleness under her benefactor"s roof: that gentle 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 away suddenly to London on important family business, and that the master was left with his papers alone.
Meg received the information in silence. For a few moments after the housekeeper left she stood still, thinking. Once or twice she walked to the room and came back irresolute. She at last went determinedly out of the room and made her way to the library, where Sir Malcolm spent the greater 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 Sir Malcolm"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 you would let me take his place."
"That would be impossible. I would not lay such a tax upon any lady," he said 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 did not yet take from its distance and firmness, "young ladies do not care for politics, and politics alone interest me."
"They would interest me if I read them for you," said Meg with timid persistence.
"Allow me to beg you to put into the balance against this plea the argument that it would be disagreeable to me," Sir Malcolm replied, with a directness the brutality of which was veiled by the stately tone of dismissal in his voice and manner. "And the spirit that impelled you to undertake 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 the offer."
He glanced toward the door, and as she moved away he advanced to open it for her; but Meg paused on her way. Her spirit was up; the fear that hitherto had quelled her before him fell from her. She had grown suddenly irritated at his invincible coldness. She would expose herself to no more rebuffs.
"May I ask you, sir, to be so kind as to spare me a moment? I have a request to make."
"Certainly," he replied, turning back; he sat down and pointed to a chair near his. But Meg remained standing.
Embarra.s.sment, resolution kept her motionless with a touch of angular rigidity in her pose. Her voice, unsteady at first, grew more controlled as she went on:
"Before leaving school I had an offer of a situation as governess to three young children. You were kind enough, sir, to ask me on a visit. I thank you for the hospitality you have shown me. I think my visit must now come to an end. With your permission I shall inquire if the place is still vacant, and take it if it be."
"Why do you want to go, Miss Beecham?" said Sir Malcolm. "Are you not comfortable here?"
"Comfortable, yes," said Meg. She paused as if hesitating, then she added brusquely, "I do not think I care much for comfort."
There was something primitive, almost childish, in Meg"s manner; but it gave the impression of the strength rather than of the weakness of childhood. It came with a freshness that was as the scent of the flower rather than that of the toilet perfume.
Meg"s mood seemed to pique the old gentleman; he looked curiously at her, almost as if for the first time he recognized in her an individuality.
"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 under evident 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 hard lips.
"I could give proofs of what I feel--grat.i.tude," she said.
"I have explained I do not want grat.i.tude," he replied with chill distinctness. "I do not either wish to receive it or to inspire it."