It was a Lover and his Lass

"You are tired, Margaret; you are anxious about something. What is it?" the girl said.

"Me – anxious – what should I be anxious about? I am thinking of your dress, if it was right to have it silk – muslin would have been better at your age; and then there is Jean no doubt just taigled with that young lad, and not able to get him off her hands."

"Oh, as for Jean, do you not hear the piano, Margaret? You may be sure she is perfectly happy: for, you know, Mr. Murray is a great performer. Mrs. Seton says so, and she knows about music."

"I am sick of Mrs. Seton and her great performers. Murray! who knows even if he is a Murray? He cannot tell who he belongs to. If he was come of any Murray that has ever been heard tell of, he would know that – "

"I daresay," said Lilias, boldly, "there are a great many Murrays, very nice people, that have never been heard tell of – "

"Lilias!" said her sister, in dismay. "It is a great deal you can know about it," she added, with a somewhat angry laugh. Her mind was more easy when she heard the piano. Nothing of importance could be talked about while it went on in full force.

"I don't know very much, Margaret; but everybody is allowed to think," said the girl; "and old families, like old clothes, most surely wear out. I am not sure that it is such an advantage to be old. If I were a new man, I think I would be proud of it. It would be all my own doing; or, if I were a new man's daughter, it would be grand to think that it was all from my father, him and nobody else. That would be something to be proud about."

"Money," Margaret said, laconically, and with an accent of disdain.

"Money! Oh, but I did not mean money."

"Do you know what you meant?" said Miss Margaret, scornfully. "What does a new man, as you call it, make but money? For honours, you must have time and opportunity. In these days it is a quack medicine, or a new invention for taking work out of poor men's hands, or the grand art of selling water for milk, and carrion for meat, and the sweepings of the house for honest cloth. It's that that makes a new man; and it would be a great credit and honour, no doubt, to be his daughter."

"Margaret, you know that is not what I meant," cried Lilias, indignant. "I was not thinking of the people that are only rich. I was thinking – "

"I well understand that you know nothing about it; and how should you? But one thing of this age is that the babes and sucklings just think themselves as wise as Solomon in all his glory. I cannot hear if that piano is aye bumming. Bless me, what a waste for a young man that might be on the hill-side – or he might be in the colonies making corn grow for the good of man – or taming down the savages in Africa."

"He could not be on the hill-side, if you mean shooting, Margaret, for you forget it's only July – "

"He might be doing many better things than sitting at a piano at his age, deluding an old maid."

"Margaret!" cried Lilias, springing up with flashing eyes. "Is it my Jean you are calling that?"

"Well! and what else is she? or me, either, for that matter. Just two old maids: and, for anything we know, you may be a third yourself, more likely than not, unless you take the first that offers – which was what neither her nor me were allowed to do."

"I will never take the first that offers," cried Lilias, indignantly. "What is the matter with you, Margaret? Music is always called such a fine thing in books. If we do not care for it, perhaps it is our fault; and Jean is so fond of it, which shows it must be good."

There had been a lull in the sound of the piano which had called forth Margaret's outburst. She was more charitable as it went on.

"If you are going to read your book, Lilias," she said, "go on with it: but, if you are going to argue, just put the other away first. For my part, I think it is about time for the tea."

And when she went downstairs everything was re-assuring. The music was tranquil, and Miss Jean quite calm, not even excited and ecstatic, as she had been on previous occasions. The perfect composure of the atmosphere smoothed Miss Margaret down in a moment, and, as so often happens after a false alarm, she was more gracious, more gay than usual in the relief of her mind.

"Jean," she said, "you must mind that Mr. Murray is a young man, and wants diversion – not to be kept close to a piano on a bonnie summer afternoon, when everybody that can be out, is out, and enjoying this grand weather. I would not say but what music was a great diversion too – but we are old, and he is young."

"I have had my fill of sunshine," said Lewis, "and sketched everything there is to sketch within a mile or two. And I have no piano. I hope you are not going now to turn me away."

"So you sketch too? Yes, I heard it before no doubt, but I had forgotten. You are a very accomplished young man. In our day, it was the young ladies that learned all that; the boys were packed away into the Army, or the Navy, or to India, and never had any time. It was the girls of a family – "

"But oh, Margaret! if you will think what kind of music and drawing it was! 'Rousseau's Dream' upon the piano, and a painted flower upon cardboard. I think shame when you speak of it. A real musician, and a true artist, is very different – "

"I don't merit those fine titles," said Lewis, with a laugh. "I understand what Miss Margaret means. The thing to do for me is to turn me loose upon New Murkley, and let me decorate those great rooms. I have a little turn that way. I have seen the great palaces of that architecture, and I have studied. I should be no more idle, if you would permit me to do that."

"Decorate the rooms! But that would be worse still than being idle," said Margaret. "For it would be work for no use. If no miracle happens to the family, so far as I can see, Lilias will just have to pull down that fool's palace, or sell it, one or the other. You need not cry out. What would you do with it, you silly thing, with no money to keep it up?"

"I will never sell it," cried Lilias, with flashing eyes.

"That would be the best; for we might get some new rich person, one of the men you admire, Lilias, to give a sum of money for it. And you might build a wall between it and us, and we would be none the worse. Pulling it down would be a waste, though it would be more comfortable to one's feelings; for you would get nothing but the price of old materials for that big castle that we have looked at all our lives. But, any way, to decorate a house that is doomed, and not a window in it to keep out the weather – "

"It might be made into a hospital," said Miss Jean. "That has always been my notion, Margaret. We can make no use of it ourselves, and it would be a heartbreak to sell it, and Lilias would never like to pull down such solid bonnie walls. I doubt even if it would be right."

"Why should it not be right, you veesionary? It is her own at least, to do as she pleases – if once she were of full age, and nothing can be done before that."

"But, Margaret, there's more in it – solid bonnie walls that took a long time to build, and a good warm steady roof, and all the grand, big rooms, though there's nothing in them – and when you consider the poor sick folk and the helpless bairns that have no shelter! I'm not clear in my mind that it would be a lawful thing," Miss Jean said.

"Did I not say she was a veesionary?" said Margaret. "We would have had no shelter to our own heads, let alone help for the poor folk, if I had not been here to look over the house. We are just an impracticable race. One has one whimsey, and one another. The thing has been built for a fancy, and our fancies will keep us from getting rid of it. I am not sure that I am heartwhole myself. I would not like to see a pickaxe laid upon it. We will have to make up our minds before Lilias comes of age. But, one way or another, Mr. Murray, you will see that decorations are not just our affair. We are meaning to be – in town for the next season," she added, with the solemnity which such a statement demanded. "And afterwards our movements may be a little uncertain, not knowing what that may lead to. It is just possible that we may come no more to Murkley till Lilias is of age."

Lewis made no reply. He had to receive the intelligence with a bow; it was not his part to criticise, or even to regret. He had come fortuitously across their path, and had not even standing ground enough with them to venture to say that he hoped the friendship might not end there. To Miss Jean, had he been alone with her, he could have said this, but not under Margaret's keen, all-inspecting eye. It was with a mixture of pain and pleasure that he felt himself in the background, listening to what they said. The very termination of his plans in respect to Miss Jean detached him, and made him feel himself a stranger in the midst of this little company of women, to which he had attached himself so completely in his own thoughts. So long as that question was unresolved, Lewis had felt, even with a sort of despairing acquiescence, that he was one of them, though they did not know it, with a certain concern in all their family arrangements, and hold upon them. Now this visionary right had gone altogether, and he knew that he was of no importance, nothing to them one way or another. It chilled him to feel it, and yet there was no doubt that it was so, and that he could expect or look for nothing else. He sat by for a while in silence, with a sort of smile, while they proceeded to talk of other things. Now and then Miss Jean would make an effort of kindness to bring him into the current, but he felt that he had nothing to do with that current. He was outside; he felt even that he ought to go away, and that it was rude not to do so; but at the same time it was difficult for him to issue forth from the charmed circle. Once gone, it seemed to Lewis that he could scarcely have a pretence for coming again.

At last he got up to go away.

"You will come again soon?" said Miss Jean.

"Bless me, Jean," said Margaret, "you must think Mr. Murray has little to do that he will come day after day at your bidding; though we are always glad to see him, I need not say," she added, with some ghost of cordiality.

He felt himself standing before her as if she had been his judge, and looked at her somewhat wistfully; but there was no encouragement in Margaret's face. Lewis felt that the hand she gave him made a gesture of dismissal. He walked to the door sadly enough. It seemed to him that, his first attempt having ended in failure, there was no further opportunity left him by which to approach the family which he had so unwittingly wronged. He felt abashed and humbled by his failure. To have been accepted by Miss Jean, although that would have been to separate him from all brighter hopes, would have been far better than this. Then at least he would have had some means of reparation. Now it seemed, as he turned his back upon them, as if he were turning his back also upon the honest wish which had brought him here, the generous desire that had been his leading principle ever since he had heard of old Sir Patrick's rightful heirs. Lewis was exceedingly cast down and troubled. He thought, as he went slowly across the old hall, that in all probability he would never be admitted to it again.

There was no servant to open the door to him, none of the usual urgency of politeness by which one of the ladies themselves, if Simon were out of the way, would accompany a visitor to the threshold. It was one sign of their dismissal of him, he thought, that he was to let himself out without a word from anyone. As he put his hand, however, reluctantly upon the door, Lewis was suddenly aware of a skim and flutter across the oak floor and the old Turkey carpet in the centre of the hall, and, looking up, perceived with a start and flush Lilias herself, and no other, who had darted after him from the open door of the drawing-room. It lasted only a moment, but he saw it like a picture. The girl in her light dress, dazzling, with her fair head and smiling countenance bent towards him: and beyond her, in the room within that open door, Margaret standing in an attitude of watchfulness, keenly listening, intent upon what passed. Lilias had flown after him, indifferent to all remonstrance. Her sweet voice, with its little trick of accent, and the faint cadence in it of the lingering vowels, had a touch of gay defiance in its sound.

"You are not going away," she said – "you are to be at the ball – you are not to forget. And perhaps we shall dance together," she said, with a smile, offering him her hand.

What was he to do with her hand when he got it? Not shake it and let it drop, like an ordinary Englishman. He had not been bred in that way. He bowed over it and kissed it before Lilias knew. He would have kissed her slipper had he dared, but that would have been an unusual homage, whereas this was the most natural, the most simple salutation in the world.

It took Lilias altogether by surprise. No lip of man had ever touched her hand before. Her fair face turned crimson. She could not have been more astonished had he kissed her cheek, though the astonishment would have been of a different kind. She stood bewildered when this wonderful thing had happened, looking at her hand almost with alarm, as if the mark would show. She was ready to say, "It was not my fault," in instinctive self-defence. And yet she was not offended or displeased, but only startled. What would Margaret say? what would Jean say? or should she tell them? To end this self-discussion, she fled upstairs suddenly to her own room, and there considered the question, and the incident which was the strangest that ever had happened to her in all her life.

CHAPTER XXVI

The night of the Stormont ball was as lovely and warm as a July night could be so far north. It was, it is scarcely necessary to say, full moon, country entertainers taking care to secure that great luminary to light their guests home, though in this case it was scarcely necessary, for no one intended that anything less than daylight should see them leave the scene of the festivities. The commotion was great in the old house, where every servant felt like one of the hosts, and the house was turned upside down from top to bottom with an enjoyment of the topsy-turvy which only a simple household unused to such incidents can know. Mrs. Stormont had spared no expense; there were lanterns hung among the trees, along the whole length of the avenue; there were lights in every window; even on the top of the old tower there was a blaze which threw a red reflection on the water, and was the admiration of the village. To see the ladies of Murkley cross in the great ferry-boat in their old-fashioned brougham, which was scarcely big enough to hold the three, and the Setons after them, wrapped up in cloaks and "clouds," was a sight that filled all Murkley with pleasure. "And they'll come back like that at three or four in the morning. Eh, bless me! but they maun be keen of pleasure to gang through a' that for't," the elderly sceptics said; but they were pleased to see the ladies in their fine dresses all the same. Miss Jean had a silver-grey satin, a soft, poetical dress that suited her; but Miss Margaret, notwithstanding the season, was in velvet, with point-lace that a queen might have envied. As for Lilias, it was universally acknowledged that the ball-dress which had come for her from London "just beat a'." Nothing like it had ever been imagined in Murkley. We have read in an American novel – where such glories abound – an account of a lovely confection by Mr. Worth, called the "Blush of Dawn," or some other such ethereal title, by which an awed spectator might see what a fine thing a ball-dress could be; but English narrative is not equal to the occasion, and the dress of Lilias was white and virginal, as became the wearer, and afforded no such opportunities to the historian. These two parties were the only ones that crossed the ferry. Peter the ferryman was aware that their coming back might abridge his rest, and was not over-gracious.

"It'll be fower in the mornin' or sae, or ye come back?" he said to old Simon on the box of the brougham.

"Me! I'm coming back to my supper and my bed," said the other; "but fower is late for the leddies. I would say atween twa and three," which made Peter grave.

"One man's meat is another's man's poison," he said to himself. The manse party would certainly not return till four at the earliest, so that he had the comfortable prospect of being up all night, "and none o' the fun," not even a dram to keep him warm: for even a July morning, between two and four, is a chilly moment so far north. The high-road was in a cloud of dust with the carriages that came rolling along from all quarters in the soft twilight; for, though in July the days have shortened a little, the skies were still shining clear at nine o'clock, and the lingering reflections of the sunset scarcely passed away.

Mrs. Stormont and her son were both dressed and ready, standing in the handsome old gallery, where the dancing was to be. She was in her widow's dress, which so many ladies in Scotland never abandon, and which, notwithstanding all the abuse that has been levelled at it, is like a conventual garb, very becoming to a person with any natural claim to admiration. Her rich black silk gown, her perfectly plain, spotless cap with the long white, misty pendants like a veil behind, made Mrs. Stormont, who might have been buxom in gay colours, into a dignified, queen-dowager personage of imposing appearance. She was giving a final lecture to Philip, who was nervous in the prospect, and felt the dignity of the position too much for him.

"You will mind," she said, "my dear, that, when you give us a grand party like this, it is not altogether just for pleasure like those silly bits of dances you go to at the manse."

"You may be sure, mother," said Philip, ironically, "that there is no chance of forgetting that."

"I hope not, Philip. It's a return for favours received, and also it's a claim for your proper position in the county, a claim you must never let down; and Philip, my man, you will mind, will you not, to pay a great deal of attention to Lilias Murray? I consider her the queen of the ball. There will be a great curiosity about her, because she is so young, poor thing, and because nobody knows much about her, and her position is so very peculiar. As often as you can spare from duty to other people you will dance with Lilias, Philip. You have very little occasion, I can tell you, to make a face at that. Better men than you would be glad of the chance."

"That may very well be, and I hope they will take it," said Philip. "I am not going to make a fool of myself, I can tell you, dancing every dance with any girl – if she were Cleopatra!" Philip cried. Why he should have chosen Cleopatra as his type of womanhood nobody could have guessed, and himself least of all.

"That is right, my man, that is just what I desired to hear," cried his mother. "Of course, you must ask all the principal ladies, and mind you begin with the countess, and make no mistake. The quadrilles are for that. If I see you sitting out, as you call it, with Katie Seton or any other cutty, when you should be doing your duty – "

"I wish you would not be violent, mother," Philip said.

His mother had to pause, to gulp down the excitement which such an apprehension raised in her, and which just the moment before the arrival of the guests was doubly inappropriate, before she spoke. She had not time to be angry. She laid her hand on his arm, just as the bell clanged into the echoes announcing the first arrival.

"My dear boy," she said, almost with tears in her eyes, "mind that the Murkley lands march with Stormont, and, though they're not very rich, it's a grand old family, and two littles would make a muckle in such a case."

She put her hand upon his shoulder, but Philip twisted himself away from her touch. He had heard all this before, and he was not at all disposed to listen now.

"I think I had better go down to the hall and receive them as they arrive," he said.

His mother looked at him divided between admiration and suspicion.

"Well, that is a very good idea," she said. "It will have a nice effect if you lead the countess up the stairs yourself instead of leaving it to the servants, and you may do the same to Margaret Murray, or any important person, but don't you waste your time upon the common crowd: and, above all, Philip – " He gave his shoulders an impatient shrug, and was gone before she could say more. Poor Mrs. Stormont shook her head. "It will be to get a word with that little cutty out of my sight," the poor lady said, "and that scheming woman, her mother!" she added to herself, with a movement of passion. She could have been charitable to Katie – but a manœuvring mother, a woman that would stick at nothing to get a good marriage for her girl! that was what Mrs. Stormont could not away with, she said in her heart.

It is needless to say that she had divined Philip's meaning with the utmost exactitude. To get a word with Katie was indispensable: for, if he was rather more in subjection to his mother than was for his comfort, Philip was in subjection to Katie too, and just as much afraid of her. By good luck he fell into the midst of the group newly arrived from Murkley, which was followed almost immediately by the Setons. They were almost the first, and the young master of the house was at liberty to stand among them, and talk while the elder ladies took tea.

"The light on the Tower has a great effect, and so have the lamps in the avenue. Do you call it an avenue?" Miss Margaret said, graciously, yet with a betrayal of her sense of the inferiority which perhaps was not so well-bred as Margaret usually was.

"It's just like fairyland," cried Mrs. Seton, much more enthusiastic. "Yes, yes, just like the decorations you read of in the newspapers when some grand person comes of age. The lamps among the green are just beautiful, and an avenue is far more picturesque, if it's not so imposing, when it mounts a hill-side."

While they were talking, and Miss Jean was giving a last tender touch to the roses on Lilias' bodice, Philip ventured to Katie's side.

"If I seem to neglect you, Katie, will you understand?" he said.

"Oh, yes, I will understand," said the little cutty, with a toss of her pretty head, "that you are just frightened to speak to me; but I'll get plenty of others that will speak to me."

Philip in his despair was so wanting in politeness as to turn his back upon the elders and more important people.

"If you go flirting about with Murray and Alec Bannerman you will just drive me desperate," he said.

"What would your lordship like me to do?" said Katie. "Sit in a corner and look as if I were going to cry? I will not do that, to please anybody. I have come to enjoy myself, and, if I cannot do it in one way, I will in another."

"Oh, Katie, have a little pity upon me, when you know I cannot help myself," the unfortunate lover said.

"I will make everybody believe that there's nothing in it," said Katie, "your mother and all. And is not that the best thing I can do for you?"

She was radiant in mischief and contradiction, inexorable, holding her little head high, ready to defy Mrs. Stormont and every authority. Poor Philip knew she would flirt to distraction with every man that crossed her path while he was dancing quadrilles with the dowagers, and doing what his mother thought his duty. But at that moment among a crowd of new arrivals came the countess herself, and Katie had to be swept away by the current. Amuse herself! She might do it, or anyone else might do it: but as for the hero of the occasion, poor fellow, that was the last possibility that was likely to come to him. He walked through the quadrille with the countess, looking like a mute at a funeral, and as, fortunately, she was a woman of discretion, she gave him her sincerest sympathy.

"I think you might have dispensed with this ceremony," she said. "But don't look so miserable, it will soon be over."

"I miserable! Oh, no; though I confess I don't care for square dances," Philip said.

"Nobody does," said the lady, "but still you should show a little philosophy. Who is that little espiègle that is laughing at us?"

She laughed in sympathy, being a very good-natured woman, but Philip did not laugh; for of course it was Katie, radiant with mischievous smiles, upon the arm of Mr. Alec Bannerman, with whom she was to "take the floor" at once, as soon as this solemnity was over. By the glance she gave him, touching the card which swung from her fan, he divined that she had filled up that document, and had not a dance left: and for the rest of the melancholy performance the countess could not extract a word from him. Of his two tyrants, Katie was the worst. There was no telling the torture to which she subjected him as the evening went on. She was an admirable dancer; as airy as a feather, adapting herself to everybody's step, or in the intervals of the dances, during the other quadrille, which absolutely put Philip's sanity in danger, teaching her own in a corner to an intending partner. And her flirtations were endless.