It was a Lover and his Lass

"I don't know what is dear and what is not dear," she said.

"Ah," said Margaret, shaking her head, "but if you were to marry a poor man, or into a struggling family that have more pretensions than they have money, you would soon have to change your mind about that. You would have to study what was dear and not dear then. You would have just to spend your life in thinking what he would like, and what they would put up with, and the price of butter, and how many eggs your hens were laying. I'm not averse to such things myself, but how the like of you would win through it – "

"I suppose," said Lilias, "when there is need for it, there is nobody who cannot do that?"

"Oh, Lilias, that is far from being the case, my dear," said Miss Jean. "It takes a great deal of thought, just like other things. Margaret there has just a genius – "

"It was not me we were speaking of," said Margaret. "I don't wish you to be exposed to that. It is a hard life for any young girl; and you have been bred with – other thoughts. I don't wish you, Lilias, to be exposed to that."

"You speak as if I wished it," said the girl. "Do I want to be poor? What I want is to be rich, rich! to have a great fortune, and finish the house, and fill it with people, and live like a lady – "

"You might do that without being rich," said Miss Jean, softly, which was a sentiment quite inappropriate to the occasion, and at which Margaret frowned.

"Well, that is a digression," the elder sister said. "We cannot tell whether you are to be rich or poor – we must just leave that in the hands of Providence; but in the mean time, not just to be ruined and over-run with those tourist cattle, I was thinking, and Jean was thinking, that if we were to retire a little and economize, and save two or three pounds before we go to London – to Gowanbrae."

"To Gowanbrae!" said Lilias, wondering, scarcely comprehending.

"My dear," they both said, together, "it will be far better for you. You will never be free of engagements here," Margaret went on, "after that unfortunate weakness of mine about letting you go to Mrs. Stormont's; and then, you know, we can face the winter quietly, and get all our things together for the season. And – what is it, Lilias? What is it, my pet? What is it, my dear? Oh, Jean, you said true. It is breaking her heart."

"Margaret! you will never be hard upon our darling – even if you cannot approve – "

Here Lilias, who had flung herself upon her elder sister, with her arms round her neck, sprang apart from her again, clasping her hands together with the impatience of a child.

"What is it you are saying about me?" she said. "Breaking my heart! when I am just like to dance with joy? Gowanbrae! that is what I want, that is exactly what I want. Oh, yes, yes, let us go, let us go to-morrow, Margaret. That will put everything right."

They sat in their high-backed chairs, looking at her like two judges, yet not calm enough for judges, full of grave anxiety yet tremulous hope. Margaret put up her hand to check Jean, who showed an inclination to speak.

"Not a word," she said, "not a word. Lilias, this is more serious perhaps than you think. All our plans and all our thoughts are for you. It's your good we are thinking of. But don't you trifle with us. When you say that, is it out of some bit quarrel or coolness? or is it to cheat your own heart? or is it a real conviction that it is for your safety and your good to go away?"

Lilias stamped her foot upon the floor. She clenched her hands in a little outburst of passion.

"Oh! you are just two – Oh! what are you making such a fuss about? It is neither for a quarrel nor for safety (safety! Am I in any danger?) nor for any other silly thing. It is just because I want to go. Oh, Gowanbrae! We have not been there for two years. I like it better than any place in the world. That was what I was pining for all the time, only I could not remember what it was!"

"It was just a little change she was wanting, Margaret," Miss Jean said.

Margaret did not make any immediate reply. She kept her eyes upon Lilias as a physician keeps his finger upon a pulse.

"You will get your wish then," she said. "This takes away the only doubt I had; and now we're all of one mind, which is a wonderful blessing in a house. As soon as the washing is done, and the things ready, we'll start; for that will just give them time to put up the curtains, and put everything right."

This was a somewhat dry ending to so emotional a discussion, but Miss Margaret, who was not fond of scenes, considered it best to restore everything to its matter-of-fact basis as quickly as possible.

"Go away, and play some of your music," she said to her sister, in an undertone, "and don't just carry this on, and put nonsense into people's heads." She took up her stocking, which she had dropped. "Bless me," she said, "how much shorter the days are growing, though we are only in July. Gowanbrae is just beautiful in the autumn, and warm for the winter. Your old castle, Lilias, is grander, but there is more sun in the south country."

"Margaret, if you will make comparisons, I shall have to stand up for Murkley," cried Lilias. "But I like the one just as well as the other, winter and summer."

"Which is all that is necessary," said Miss Margaret, nodding her head. "Now take your book or something in your hands to do, for I cannot bide to see a young person sitting idle. It's not becoming either in young folk or old; and work is best, in my opinion; for doing nothing but reading books just bewilders the brain," Miss Margaret said.

Nevertheless, it was with a book in her arms that Lilias stole into the window, where Miss Jean usually sat with her work. She took the book, but she did not read. It was now dark enough to conceal from the quick eyes of Margaret how far she was carrying out her injunction, and Lilias was in so considerable a commotion of mind that she was glad to retire into her own thoughts. Jean's music made no very strong appeal to either of her listeners. She sat in the further part of the room in the dimness, scarcely perceptible, and filled the silence with soft strains which formed a sort of accompaniment to thought, and did not interrupt it. Miss Margaret in the middle of the room, with such light as remained centering in her face and the hose upon her hand, sat motionless in her high chair. She had allowed her stocking to drop upon her lap; though she had made that protestation against idleness, she was herself doing nothing. Perhaps she was listening to the music, for now and then she would say, "That is a very bonnie thing you have just been playing," or, "What was that? for I liked it, Jean." She said this, however, night after night, at the same place, so that it is to be feared she did it purely out of sympathy, and not from any appreciation of the "bonnie thing" of which she desired so often to know the name.

The soft shadows gathered over the group thus composed. Lilias in the window, her profile showing against the light, sat in a hush of relief and calm, never stirring, half conscious only of the dim background, of Margaret in the chair, and Jean at the piano; other pictures were before her eyes. Katie all in tears, hearing with consternation the news of this unlooked-for change; Philip sucking his cane; Lewis – Ah! she could not but wonder a little what Mr. Murray would think of it. He would be glad, no doubt; he would approve; he would think it a good thing that she should go away, and no longer be a screen to the lovers. Then Lilias wondered a little, with a faint sense of mingled amusement and – no, not regret. Why should she regret or care at all about it? He was Jean's friend, not hers. But it was not possible not to be moved by a question or two in respect to him. Would he go to New Murkley as often, would he stand with his sketch-book in his hand never drawing a line, would he take as much interest in it all when she was no longer there? A faint smile woke about the corners of her mouth. Nobody could see it to ask what she was smiling at. To such a question she would have answered, "Nothing;" and it was nothing, only a vague, amused wonder in her own mind. He would be glad she was going away, but – The road through the park and the grass-grown spaces round the great empty house, would no one at all linger about them now? Not Katie, who could no longer have the excuse of coming to her friend; nor Philip, whom no doubt his mother, much disappointed, would keep a closer hold upon than ever. But Lilias did not care so much about them. What would the other do, who was a stranger, who took such an interest in the vacant palace? The smile continued upon her face; perhaps, though she said "No, no!" vehemently to herself, there was a slight sensation of regret, a little blank in her heart. She wondered whether it would all come to an end? whether, when the fishing was over (but he did not care for the fishing), he would disappear and be seen no more? or whether he would turn out to be somebody, and to have a real interest in Murkley? He might be, not the Australian cousin, but perhaps a son of that superseded benefactor, secretly inspecting his cousins before he disclosed the link of kindred; he might be – But here Lilias turned back again, quite illogically, breaking her self-argument off in the middle, to repeat all these wonderings from the beginning. Would he drop out of their knowledge when they left Murkley? would they ever see him again? what would happen? But why should anything happen? No doubt he would just go away when it began to grow dull in Murkley, and be seen no more. Lilias had a consciousness that it would grow very dull in Murkley when she herself went away, and perhaps it was this that made her, after the first moment of pleasure with which she had heard of the proposed change, feel something that it would be wrong to call sadness – a little blank, a subdued sensation of regret, not for herself, as if she were leaving anything, but for the others. And of course it would be the stranger, he who had no other thing to amuse him, who would feel it most.

The news of the revolution and radical change of all the conditions of life which had thus been decided upon reached the stranger with the utmost promptitude and distinctness. Miss Margaret herself was not aware of having revealed it to anyone but her confidential maid when it came like a thunderbolt upon Lewis, something which it had not entered into his mind to fear. He had been engaged all the morning in finishing a sketch of New Murkley which he meant to offer – to Lilias, if permitted – if not, to her sisters, and which he had hoped would bring about some new rapprochement, some further step in the intercourse which had as yet so little sanction from the heads of the house, and which he was almost nervously anxious to reveal; for even his own chance meetings with Lilias, which had followed in the train of the other imprudent business to which she had given her protection, troubled the young man's conscience and aroused his prejudices, although against himself. He was as anxious to get the sanction of authority for these meetings, and even to betray himself, as Philip was to shelter in the slender shadow of Lilias and keep his real wooing secret. This had kept him from his usual morning saunter by the river-side, and, when Adam arrived late for his dinner with a basket of trout, Lewis, who had heard Janet's not very amiable greeting of her husband from the open window, went down to see the results of the fisherman's morning work. It was not very great, and Janet stood with a disproportionately large ashet1 in her hand, which she seemed to have chosen from the biggest in her possession, while Adam took from his basket deliberately one by one a few small fish. She greeted each as it appeared with a little snort.

"Well, that was worth the trouble! Eh, but that's just grand for a day's work! It shows the valley o' a man to see that."

"Ye talk about the valley o' a man that ken nothing about it," said Adam, "the smawller they are they gi'e the mair trouble whiles. But here is ane that was a dour ane," he added, after a pause, producing at last a fish of reasonable size. "He's taken me maist of my mornin'. Up the water and down the water he's tried a' the ways o't. A fish is a queer beast: it has nae sense o' what's possible. Would you or me, Mr. Murray, think life worth leevin' with a hook through our jaws? though I will not say but there are human creatures that gang through it little better off."

"Some would be a' the better for a hook through their jaws; it would keep them from havering," said Janet, tartly.

"Deil a bit. No if it was a woman, at least, wha will haver till her last breath, if she had all the lines in Tay grippit to that souple jaw o' hers. But you would think," said Adam, dropping into his usual tranquil strain after this outburst, "that a trout, gey high up as I have heard in the awquatic organizations, would have the sense to ken that a glancing, darting thing like a fishing-line with a far cleverer cratur at the other end o't – "

"Eh, but the troutie would be sair deceived! ye mean a blind, blundering cratur that a bit thing like this can lead a bonnie dance up the water and down the water, as you say yoursel'. Fishes maun ha'e their ain thochts like the rest o' us, and ye mightna be flattered if ye heard them, for a' you think so little o' their opinion."

"The inferior creation," said Adam, calmly, "have a' their bits o' blasphemies against man, who is their lord and master; but nobody could think little o' the opinion, if ye could get at it, of a cratur that had such a warstle for its life. Think o' a' the cunning and the cleverness, and what you would ca' calculation, and its wiles and its feints to draw aff your attention. Na, I canna have a gallant beast like that put into a frying-pan in my house."

"Then, Mrs. Janet," said Lewis, always courteous, "you will put it in a basket and send it to the castle, and I will tell the ladies that it is a hero, or a great general, to be eaten tenderly."

"My poor young gentleman," said Janet, with a sort of compassionate contempt, "whatever you have to send to the Misses, you must send it soon, soon! for a' is settled and packit, and they're starting for the south country."

"The south country!" said Lewis, in dismay. The announcement was so sudden that it bewildered him, and, once more deceived, he thought of Italy. "But why – what is the matter? What has happened?" he cried; "they are not poitrinaires. Ah, I forgot, it is something else you mean by the south."

"I mean just their ain house, that is near Moffat, a bonnie enough place, but no like Murkley. I thought, sir, you would have heard," said Janet, fixing her eyes upon him. She had become greatly devoted to her lodger, but human curiosity is stronger even than affection, and she was anxious to know how he would take this blow which, she felt sure, would crush all his hopes.

And, indeed, Lewis grew a little pale; his surprise was great, a sickening disappointment came over him; but yet, along with it, a certain relief. His mind had been greatly disturbed by the existing position of affairs. He had a passing sense that he was glad in the midst of his downfall. Janet could not comprehend how this was.

"It must be very sudden," he said, moistening his lips, which the sudden shock had made dry: and he grew pale, and his face lengthened; but nevertheless he had a smile which contradicted these signs, so that the keen observer at his side was at a loss.

"The mair need to lose no time with the trout," said Adam; "and, besides, it's always best caller from the water. Janet, have ye a basket? I'll take it up mysel'."

"Oh, ay, onything that means stravaighin'," said Janet, bitterly. "Just gi'e a glance round ye, my man, and see if ye canna capture a basket for yersel'."

But these passages of arms amused Lewis no more. He walked upstairs very gravely into his parlour, where his sketch stood upon a small easel. Would there not be time even to finish it? His face had grown a great deal longer. This was an end upon which he had not at all calculated: and somehow an end of any kind did not seem so desirable as it had done an hour ago, when none seemed likely. The reign of Philip and Katie, after all, was not, perhaps, so much harm.

CHAPTER XXX

It was curious how the aspect of everything had changed to Lewis when he walked up the now familiar way to the old Castle of Murkley through the sunshine of the July afternoon. It was still full summer, but there seemed to him a cloud in the air – a cloud too subtle to show upon the brightness of the unsympathetic blue, but which indicated storm and change. The trees were almost black in the fulness of their leafage, dark green, no tender tints of spring lingering among them, as there had still been when he first came to the little village on the river-side, and first saw those turrets sheltered among the trees. What a difference since then! The unknown, with all its suggestions, had disappeared; he was aware what he was likely to meet round every corner. But the excitement of a life in suspense had only been intensified. When he came to Murkley, with the virtuous intention of bestowing himself and his fortune upon one of old Sir Patrick's disinherited granddaughters, there had been no very entrancing expectations in his mind. He had not thought of falling in love, but of accomplishing his duty. That duty he would have been happy to accomplish under the gentle auspices of Miss Jean. He would never have grumbled at the twilight life he should have spent with her; no such radiant vision as Lilias had ever flitted across his imagination, nor had he expected, in case his suit should be rejected (a possibility which at first, indeed, he had not taken into account), to return with anything less agreeable than that calm sense of having done his duty which consoles a man for most small disappointments. But now all this was changed. In the case he had supposed beforehand, a refusal would have been an emancipation. He would have felt that he had done all he could, and was now free to enjoy unfettered what he had felt the justice of sharing, should they please, with one of the natural heirs. But Lewis felt now that the whole question had been opened, and did not know where he might find himself, or what he might feel to be his duty if he failed now. It had been easy to put all that aside when he knew that Lilias was near him, that he had the same chance as all her countrymen, and was free to speak to her, to exercise what charms he might possess. Every decision was stopped naturally, every calculation, even, until it appeared whether in this supreme quest he might have good fortune. But when she should be gone, what would happen? When she should be gone, the glory would be gone out of everything. Murkley would turn into a dull little village, full of limited rural people, and his own life would appear as it was, a mere exotic, without meaning or rule. There was a meaning in it now, but then there would be none.

He walked up the village-street with that suddenly elongated countenance, feeling that everything was crumbling about him. The children with their lintwhite locks, the fowls sheltering beneath the old cart turned up on the roadside, the slow, lumbering figures moving about across the fields and dusty roads, struck him for the first time with a sense of remoteness. What had he to do among them? It was impossible to imagine anything more entirely unlike the previous tenor of his life, and if he failed – if he did not succeed in the suit which, as soon as he thought of it, seemed to him preposterous, what would his life become? Whatever it was, it would be very different from Murkley, and any existence that was possible there. Accordingly it was not only his love that might be disappointed, but his life, which probably would entirely change. Very few men have this to contemplate when they think of putting their fortune to the touch, unless it is those men who take up marriage as a profession, a class fortunately very few.

The ladies were all in, Simon said. He had made an alteration in his appearance which revealed a high sense of the appropriate. He had an apron upon his person, and several straws at his feet, which he stooped to pick up.

"You'll excuse us, sir, if we're not just in our ordinary," Simon said. "You see we're packing." A hope that he would be the first to tell it, and that explanations might be demanded from him, gave vivacity to Simon's looks. But he relapsed into gravity when Lewis, with that long face, gravely replied that he was very sorry, and that it must have been a sudden resolution. "Things is mostly sudden, sir," said Simon, with a dignified sense of superiority, "in a lady's house. Miss Jean is in the drawing-room, but Miss Margaret is up the stair."

Lewis stood, with his heart beating, under the old man's calm inspection.

"I am going to see Miss Jean," he said, "but afterwards will you ask, Simon, if Miss Murray will grant me an interview. There is something – I wish to ask her."

"Lord bless us!" said Simon, "you'll no be meaning – "

And then he stopped short, eyeing Lewis, who stood half angry, half amused under this inspection. The old servant's eyes had a twinkle in them, and meant much, but he recollected himself in time.

"You'll be meaning Miss Margaret," he said. "I'll allow it's ridiculous, with the two leddies here; but the one that is Miss Murray according to all rights is Miss Lilias – for she is Miss Murray of Murkley, and the other two leddies, they're just the Miss Murrays of Gowanbrae. That was, maybe, the General's fault: or, maybe, just his wisdom and far-seeingness; for he was a clever man, though few saw it. Old Sir Patrick, the old man, he was just the very devil for cleverness," Simon said.

This did not sound like a servant's indiscretion, but the somewhat free opinion of a member of the family, which was how Simon considered himself. He made a little pause, contemplating Lewis with a humorous eye, and then he said,

"I'll take ye to Miss Jean, sir, and then I'll give your message to Miss Margaret. I will say in half an hour or three-quarters of an hour, that they may be sure not to clash."

"That will do very well," said Lewis, not knowing why it was that Simon twinkled at him with so admiring an eye.

The old servant smote upon his thigh when he had introduced the visitor into the drawing-room.

"If one will not do, he'll try the other. But, Lord save us, to tackle Miss Margaret! Eh, but yon's a lad of spirit," Simon said. For the little episode of the devotion of Lewis for Miss Jean had not passed unobserved by the keen eyes of the domestic critics. They understood what had happened as well as Lewis, and considerably better than Jean did, though with consternation, not knowing what the young man's object could be. No doubt he had thought that she was the one that had the siller, they concluded, but his desire to have an interview with Miss Margaret convulsed the house with wonder.

"Miss Margaret will soon give him his answer," said the cook, indignant. "I would have turned him about his business, if it had been me, and tellt him our ladies werena in."

"Would you have had me file my conscience with a lee?" said Simon; and then he added, with a chuckle, "I wish the keyhole was an honest method, or I could get below the table. I would sooner see them than ony play."

"She will send him away with a flea in his lug," said the angry cook.

Meanwhile Lewis, unsuspecting that his designs were so evident, went into the drawing-room, where Miss Jean sat as usual. She gave him her usual gentle smile.

"Come away," she said, "Mr. Murray. I am very glad to see you. I should have sent for you, if you had not come. For it will not be much longer I will have the pleasure – We are going away from Murkley for a time. It is sudden, you will think, but that is just because we have kept it to ourselves. Murkley is just a terrible place for gossip," Miss Jean said.

There was a little pause. It was one of those crises in which there is much to say, but no legitimate means of saying it. "I am very sorry," said Lewis. Miss Jean, on her side, was much embarrassed, for somehow it seemed to her that she had acted unkindly, and forgotten the claims of this young man who threw himself in so strange, yet so trusting, a way on her consideration. The events of the former interview, in which there had been so much agitation, she had never formally explained to herself. The shyness of her sweet old-maidenhood had eluded the question. She had never asked herself what he meant, or why it was that she had taken the extreme step of narrating to him the history of her own love. She had done it by instinct at the moment, and the doing of it had agitated and occupied her mind so much that she scarcely thought of Lewis. But she had retained a warmer kindness for him, a sense of having more to do with him than the others had, and she felt now as if she had deserted him, almost betrayed his trust in her.