Margaret Capel Volume I Part 2

When Mr. Grey came down to breakfast the next morning, he found Margaret sitting close by the fire reading from a large book. She advanced to greet him, half shy, half smiling, and looked more fresh and softly beautiful from a long and undisturbed night's rest. As soon as Mr. Grey had inquired, with scrupulous care, how she had slept, and whether she had found everything comfortable in her room, he begged to know what book it was she had been reading. It was Josephus. He laughed a little, and stroked her hair, and told her not to read too much for fear of spoiling her good looks; but he was glad, he said, that she liked reading, because he lived very much alone. He was a great invalid, and unable to pay visits, or receive company. As he spoke he led her to the window, and remarked that there was but a dreary prospect for her at present; but that in summer she would find the grounds very pretty.

Immediately under the windows the men were sweeping the snow from a broad terrace. Beyond that, lay a wide lawn, dotted with clumps of shrubs, and skirted by magnificent cedars, whose boughs lay darkly upon the whitened gra.s.s.

Margaret was sure the garden must be beautiful in summer. She wished to know if there were many flower-beds, and whereabouts the violets grew, and the lilies of the valley.

Mr. Grey was very much amused by her questions, though he hardly knew how to answer them; but as he had some curiosity in his turn, he asked her, as they sat at breakfast, what made her wish to read Josephus, and whether she had not learned Sacred History at school?

"Yes," she said, "but that consisted of Bible stories, which she had rather read from the Bible itself. She had heard of Josephus, and she thought she should find there what she wanted to know of the Jews between the Old and New Testaments."

"And had she not read," Mr. Grey asked, "about the Greeks and Romans?"

"Yes; but she wished to know something of the States which had existed before the foundation of Rome, and particularly the Etruscans. And she had read nothing upon Grecian art or poetry. She felt," she said, "that she knew very little."

Mr. Grey could not forbear a smile as he thought of Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt's prophecy about his niece. He imagined that he should not be compelled to call in the aid of the red-coats to amuse her, if her researches fell upon Etruscan relics, or the dythyrambics of the early Greek bards. He puzzled a short time in silence, and then said he had forgotten all those things; but he would introduce her to the Vicar, who was his only visitor except Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt; and the Vicar was a very good-natured man, and would, he was sure, explain to her every thing she wished to know.

He only hoped she would not find herself very dull. There was a piano in the drawing-room, and he had a fine organ in the gallery up stairs.

"An organ!" cried Margaret, her eyes sparkling with delight. "Oh, Sir!

may I try to play on it?"

"Yes," Mr. Grey said, "she might if the gallery was warm enough. He would ring and ask Land if it was safe for her."

Land's answer was satisfactory, and he was directed to wait on Miss Capel in the gallery; and then Mr. Grey said that he was going to be busy all the morning, and that she might walk with Land whenever she pleased; and that Land would be very glad and proud to take care of her.

So Margaret was left, with the beauty of a Juliet, and an old butler for her nurse, to do as she liked with herself from ten in the morning till seven at night. But what a luxury was this compared to the irksome restraint of a school. She was her own mistress. She might learn what she pleased, walk out when she liked, go to sleep if she had a mind--and play the organ!

She was as impatient "as a child before some festival" till she had tried this organ. The grey-haired servant smiled to see her stand chafing her hands with eagerness, her parted lips disclosing her glittering teeth, as he pulled out the stops, and prepared the n.o.ble instrument.

"And who ever plays on it here, Land?" asked Margaret, as she took her place before the keys.

"n.o.body but Mr. Warde, our Vicar, Miss Capel," said the butler, "sometimes he comes here and runs over a few psalm tunes."

"Is he an old man?"

"Yes, Miss Capel, older than Mr. Grey."

"Perhaps he will tell me how to use these pedals. Do you know what that note is?"

"No, Ma'am, I do not."

"Well, I will leave alone the pedals, give me Judas Maccabaeus, that thin book; and let me have the trumpet stop. Oh, dear, it is all trumpet!

What shall I do for a ba.s.s?"

"Take the choir-organ, Miss Capel."

"So I will, you do know something about it. What is this thing? A swell?

Oh! this is what we should call a pedal. I see I shall make nothing of it by myself. I'll try if I can play Luther's hymn."

"Very well--very well; a little too staccato, young lady. Keep your left hand down."

Margaret sprang from the organ in a panic. Mr. Grey had brought Mr.

Warde to see her. But he was such a delightful looking old man, with long white hair falling over his collar, and such a benevolent expression of face, that Margaret felt acquainted with him directly. He gave her a good lesson on the organ to her great delight. Let her into the secret of stops, and pedals and swell, and told her she was the quickest scholar he had ever had; and yet he had taught quick pupils too. "That young man, Mr. Haveloc," he said, turning to Mr. Grey, "who had such a fancy for the organ; it was surprising how he improved in those few months he spent with you. What has become of him lately?"

Mr. Grey said he believed he was on his road to England.

Mr. Warde, who was seated at the organ, began to play the Kyrie of one of Mozart's Ma.s.ses. Talking of Mr. Haveloc, he said, had put him in mind of it--it had been one of his favourite movements. He had a taste for the highest order of musical composition, that seemed to be very rare among Englishmen, indeed, Mr. Warde said, he had thought him full of fine qualities.

"A mingled yarn," said Mr. Grey.

"So we are all," said Mr. Warde, "so we are all." He glanced at Margaret as he spoke, and seeing her seated in one of the deep window seats, looking eagerly through a volume of Ma.s.ses, he took it for granted that she was out of hearing, while she listened in breathless silence to every word of the conversation that followed.

"And now that he has left Florence," said Mr. Warde, "I trust we may conclude that the influence of that designing woman has ceased."

"No doubt," replied Mr. Grey, uneasily. He did not seem as if he liked referring to the subject, and he began to pull out the stops and put them in again, as if his thoughts were occupied by one engrossing topic.

"How greatly the world fails in its measurement of a character like his," said Mr. Warde.

"True--true," returned Mr. Grey.

"Proud, susceptible, extreme in every thing, and easily deceived from the very integrity of his own nature. I can scarcely picture to myself a character more likely to become the dupe of an unprincipled woman; for while her vanity prompted her to make him her slave, he firmly believed that her heart was devoted to him, and a mistaken sense of justice impelled him to return her supposed regard."

"You know that he did not elope with her," said Mr. Grey.

"So I heard," replied Mr. Warde; "but it was said that the husband intercepted them."

"Her tame husband," remarked Mr. Grey, "there was no duel."

"Thank G.o.d for that!" said Mr. Warde, "matters were quite bad enough."

All this pa.s.sed in a very low voice, but Margaret listened with all her might, and caught nearly the whole of the discourse. The iniquitous conversation of a boarding-school had rendered her no stranger to histories like the present; but she had rather considered them in the light of improper fictions, which it was very naughty in the girls to talk about, than as some of the actual occurrences of life, such as might be discussed by two grave old men like those before her. She looked at the music-book which she held in her hand, and seeing the name of Claude Haveloc on the t.i.tle-page, she laid it aside, and resolved to play from her own music in future. She was in many respects a remarkable little creature.

It might be reckoned one of the greatest advantages of her earlier life, that she had not been sent to school until the death of her mother, which took place when she was fourteen years old. Until that time she had been well and delicately brought up. Her father, a Colonel in the Company's service, had sent her to a highly respectable school, intending at the end of three years to return to England, and place her at the head of his house; but not long afterwards, he was killed in an engagement under circ.u.mstances that in Europe would have exalted his name to the stars, but which never transpired beyond the confines of the distant province in which it took place; if we except a brief and inaccurate statement in the papers, coupled with a hasty regret that the Company should have lost an efficient servant.

The school he had chosen for his daughter was a religious and remarkably select academy; but there were plenty of spare minutes during the day, when the young ladies could tell each other who had looked at them at church, and who they could not help smiling at when they took their daily walk. While the girls were discussing the eyes and waistcoats of the young men they knew by sight, Saint Margaret, as she was called, would steal away to her books, and endeavour by study to drive from her head the trifling conversations that went on around her.

Still, histories like the one hinted at, possessed to her imagination a fearful interest. She regarded Love as a mysterious agency which swept into its vortex all those who suffered themselves to approach its enchanted confines. She imagined that the first steps to this delusion might be avoided; but that once entranced, the helpless victim followed the steps of the blind leader through danger, or neglect, or guilt, without the will or the power to shake off its deadly influence. She had much to learn and to unlearn.

"But what was that affair in Calabria? Not another entanglement, I hope," said Mr. Warde, content in seeing Margaret still at the window arranging her books.

"Oh! that was a harmless affair enough," said Mr. Grey; "if you mean that encounter with the brigands?"

"I heard something of brigands," said Mr. Warde, "and something about a lady and her daughter."

"Aye--aye! the lady and daughter had taken shelter in a hut, having received intelligence that there were brigands on the road. It was a lonely spot, and you may suppose that Haveloc and his servant, chancing to come up at the time, were pressed into their service. The brigands were as good as their word, and did come; but found the hut so well lined that they marched off again. Still, in the scramble, Haveloc was hurt by a shot from one of their carbines, which I dare say rendered him very interesting in the eyes of the ladies. I think he mentioned in one of his letters to me, that he fell in again with them at Sorrento; but I imagine that they were nothing more than a pa.s.sing acquaintance. That was before his stay at Florence."

"Oh, yes! a very satisfactory version of the business," said Mr. Warde; "but I must now be going. I have a sick person to visit. Good bye, Miss Capel. I expect you to be wonderfully improved by the time I come again."

Margaret rose, bade the old gentleman good bye, and offered him her best thanks for his kind instructions.