It was a Lover and his Lass

The whole house was a little out of joint. They had come to Gowanbrae when they had not intended to do so, for one thing. All their previous plans had been formed for Murkley, and various things were wanting to their comfort, which, under other circumstances, would have been supplied. For instance, there were new curtains and carpets wanted, which Miss Margaret must have seen to had they intended from the first to winter there, but which, with the prospect of a season in London before them, could not be thought of. The garden was to have been re-modelled under the eye of a new gardener, and a new greenhouse was to have been built during their absence; but they had returned while these improvements were in course of carrying out.

Gowanbrae, in fact, was better adapted for summer than for winter. When the hills were covered with snow, the prospect was melancholy, and down by the burn, though it was lovely, it was damp in the autumn rains. The broad drive in the park between old Murkley and new, had always supplied a dry and cheerful walk, and even the well-gravelled road by the Tay was sumptuous in comparison with the muddy roads wending by farmsteadings over boggy soil towards the moors. Indoors, to be sure, all was cheerful, but even there disturbing imaginations would enter. Miss Jean would spend hours playing the music which Lewis had left with her, and which was a little above her powers. Her pretty "pieces," the gentle "reveries" and compositions that were quite within her range, the Scotch airs which she played so sweetly, were given up, with a little contempt and a great deal of ambition, for Mozart and Beethoven; and the result was not exhilarating. When Margaret said, "I would far rather hear your Scotch tunes," Jean would smile and sigh, with a little conscious pride in her own preference of the best, and play the "Flowers of the Forest" or "Tweedside" with an air of gentle condescension, which made her sister laugh, and took the charm out of the pretty performance, which once had been the pride of the house. As for Lilias, she was more indulgent to these reminiscences of the past. It did not trouble her, as it might have done had her ear been finer, to hear the stumbling and faltering of Jean's fingers in her attempt to render what the practised hands of the other had done so easily. On the contrary, in the long winter evenings, when the house was shut up by four o'clock, Lilias, with her book of poetry, whatever it might be – and her appetite was so large that she was not so fastidious as perhaps she ought to have been – half-buried in a deep easy-chair by the fire, would catch, as it were, an echo of the finer strain as her sister laboured at it, and liked it as it linked itself, broken yet full of association, with the other kind of music she was reading. Sometimes, when Margaret was absent, there would be a little colloquy between the pair.

"That is bonnie, Jean. Play just that little bit again."

"Which bit, my darling? – the beginning of the andante?"

Miss Jean had learned from Lewis to speak more learnedly than was natural.

"Oh, what do I know about your andantes? Play that– just that little flowery bit – it's like the meadows in the spring."

"I wish Mr. Murray, poor lad, could have heard you call it that."

"Why is he a poor lad? I thought he was very well off. You always speak of him in that little sighing tone."

"Do I, my dear? Oh, he is well enough in fortune – but there are more things needed than fortune to make a young man happy."

Upon which Lilias laughed, yet blushed as well – not for consciousness, but because she was at the stage when the very name of love brings the colour to a girl's cheek.

"He must have a story, or you would not speak of him so. He must be in love – "

"He is just that: and little hope. I think of him many a day, poor lad, and with a sore heart."

"Did he tell you? did he say who it was? Is it anybody we know? Tell me, tell me the story, Jean!"

"Not for the world. Do you think I would break his trust and tell his secret? And whisht, whisht; Margaret is not fond of the name of him," Jean would say; while Lilias dropped back into her book, and the "Andante" was slowly beaten out of the old piano again.

This was all Miss Jean dared to do on behalf of Lewis; but she had a great many thoughts of him, as she said. She had imagined many situations in which they might meet again, but as the time drew nearer it occurred to her often to wonder whether he would find it so easy as she had once thought to find the Miss Murrays of Murkley in town. Margaret had been receiving circulars from house-agents, communications from letters of lodgings, counsels from friends without number – from all which it began to become apparent to Miss Jean that, big place as Edinburgh was, it was nothing to London. Would they be so sure to meet as he had thought? He did not know London any more than they did, and there rose before Miss Jean's eyes a melancholy picture of two people vainly searching after each other, and meeting never. Naturally as the year went on, they talked a great deal on this subject. Margaret decided at last that to take lodgings would be the best, as the transportation of servants to London would be an extensive matter, besides their inacquaintance with the ways of town: while, on the other hand, she herself shrank from the unknown danger of temporary London servants, if all was true that was said of them.

"Though half of it at least will be nonsense," Miss Margaret remarked. "You would think they were not human creatures to hear what is said in the papers; in my experience, men and women are very like other men and women wherever you go."

"And do you think it will be so very big a place that without an address – if such a thing were to happen," said Miss Jean – in her own opinion, with great astuteness – "you would not be able to find out a friend?"

"Your friend would be a silly one indeed if she went about the world without an address," said Miss Margaret; but after a moment she added – "It would depend, I should say, whether she was in what is called society or not. When you are in society you meet every kind of person. You cannot be long without coming across everybody."

"And shall we be in society, Margaret?" said Lilias, unexpectedly interposing.

"My dear," said Miss Margaret, "what do you suppose we are going to London for? – to see the pictures, which are no such great things to see when all's done; or to hear the concerts, which Jean may go to, but not me for one? Or perhaps you think to the May-meetings, as they call them, to hear all the missionary men giving an account of the way to save souls. I would like to be sure first how to take care of my own."

"We must see all the pictures and go to the concerts; and the play and whatever is going on, of course?" said Lilias. "Yes, I know society means something more. We are going into the world, we are going to Court. Of course that must be the very best society," the girl said, with her serious face.

"Well, then, there is no need for me to answer your question," said Miss Margaret, composedly. "Society is just the great object in London. It is a big place, the biggest in the world; but society is no bigger than a person with her wits about her can easily, easily learn by headmark. I understand that you will meet the same people at all the places, as you do in a far smaller town."

"Then in that way," said Miss Jean, with a little eagerness, "you could just be sure to foregather with your friend, even though he had no address?"

"And who may this friend be," said Miss Margaret, "that you are so anxious to meet?"

"Oh, nobody!" said Miss Jean, confused. "I mean," she added, "I was just thinking of a chance that might happen. You and me, Margaret, we have both old friends that have disappeared from us in London – "

"And that is true," Miss Margaret said. The words seemed to awaken old associations in her mind. She sighed and shook her head. "Plenty have done that," she said. "It is just like a great sea where the shipwrecks are many, and some sail away into the dark, and are never heard of more."

Under cover of this natural sentiment, Miss Jean sailed off too out of her sister's observation. She had given a sudden quick look at Lilias, and it had occurred to her with a curious sensation that Lilias knew what she meant. It was a momentary glance, the twinkling of an eye, and no more; but that is enough to set up a private intelligence between two souls. Jean felt a little guilty afterwards, as if she had been teaching her young sister the elements of conspiracy. But this was not at all the case. She had done nothing, or so very little, to bring Lewis to her mind that it was not worth thinking of. Nevertheless, it was a great revelation to her, and startled her much, that Lilias understood. No, no, there was no conspiracy! Margaret herself could not object to meet him in society; and, if they did not succeed in this, Jean had no notion where the young stranger, in whom she took so great an interest, was to be found.

Thus, with many a consultation and many an arrangement, often modified and changed as time went on, the winter stole away. It seemed very long as it passed, but it was short to look back upon, and, after the new year, a gradually-growing excitement took possession of the quiet household. From Simon, who, the other servants thought, gave himself great airs, and could scarcely open his mouth without making some reference to the memorable time when he was body-servant to the General, and had been in London, and seen the clubs and all the sights, or uttering some doubt as to the changes which might have passed since that time; to Miss Margaret, upon whose shoulders was the charge of everything, there was no one who did not feel the thrill of the coming change. The maids who were not going were loud in their declarations that they did not care, and would not have liked it, if Miss Margaret had asked them – but they were all bitterly derisive of Simon, as an old fool who thought he knew London, and was just as proud of it as if it were a strange language.

"You could not make much more fuss if it was to France you were going," the women said.

"To France! As if there was onything in France that was equal to London, the biggest ceety in the world, the place where you could get the best of everything; where there were folk enough to people Scotland, if onything went amiss."

"And what should go amiss? Does the man think the world will stand still when he's no here," the maids said.

"Aweel, I do not know what ye will do without me. But to let the ladies depart from here, alone in the world, and me not with them, is what I could not do," Simon said.

Miss Margaret was almost as deeply moved by the sense of her responsibilities. Many of them she kept to herself, not desiring to overwhelm the gentle mind of Jean, or to frighten Lilias with the numberless difficulties that seemed to arise in the way. The choice of the lodgings alone was enough to have put a feebler woman distraught altogether, and Margaret, who had never been in London, found it no easy task to choose a neighbourhood which should be unexceptionable, and from whence it would be a right thing to produce a lovely débutante. When we say that there were unprincipled persons who recommended Russell Square to her as a proper place of residence, the perils with which Margaret was surrounded may be imagined. It was almost by chance that she selected Cadogan Place, which is a place no lady need be ashamed of living in. It was Margaret's opinion ever after, pronounced whenever her advice was asked as to the ways and means of settling in town, of which her experience was so great, that this was a matter in which advice did more harm than good.

"There is just one thing," she would say, with the conscious superiority of one who had bought her information dearly, and understood the subject au fond, "and everything else is of little importance in comparison. Never you consult your friends. Just hear what the business persons have to say, and form your own opinion. You know what you want yourself, and they have to give – but friends know neither the one nor the other."

This was severe, but no doubt she knew what she was saying. For two months beforehand her mind was occupied with little else, and every post brought shoals of letters on the subject. You would have thought the half of London was stirred with expectation. To Miss Jean it seemed only natural. She was pleased that the advent of Margaret should cause so much emotion, and that the way would be thus prepared for Lilias.

"Of course it will be a treat for them to see Margaret; there are not many people like Margaret: and then, my darling, you, under her wing, will be just like the bonnie star that trembles near the moon."

"I hope you don't mean that Margaret is like the moon," said Lilias, recovering something of her saucy ways since this excitement had got into the air.

She laughed, but she, too, felt it very natural. There was no extravagance of pride about these gentlewomen. They were aware indeed of their own position, but they were not proud. It was all so simple: even Lilias could not divest herself of the idea that it would be something for the London people to see Margaret in her velvet with all her point lace, and the diamonds which had been her mother's. There was, however, another great question to be decided, which the head of the house herself opened in full family conclave as one upon which it was only right that the humbler members of the family should have their say.

"The question is, who is to present us?" Miss Margaret said. "Her aunt, my Lady Dalgainly, would be the right person for Lilias. But I'm not anxious to be indebted to that side of the house."

"Would it not be a right thing to ask the countess?" said Miss Jean.

It had already been decided that one Court dress was as much as each property could afford, and that Jean was not to go; a decision which distressed Lilias, who wanted her sister to see her in all her glory, and could scarcely resign herself to any necessity which should make Jean miss that sight.

"The countess would be the proper person," said Margaret; "but blood is thicker than water, and suppose she had not you and me to care for her, Jean, where could she turn to but her mother's family?"

Here Lilias made a little spring into the centre of the group, as was her way.

"I have read in the papers," she said, "all about it. Margaret, this is what you will do: the countess will present you – for who else could do it? – and then you will present me. I will have no other," cried Lilias, with a little imperative clap of her hands.

"Was there ever such a creature? She just knows everything," Miss Jean cried.

CHAPTER XXXII

The spring was very early that year. It had been a severe winter, and even on the moors the leap of the fresh life of the grass out of the snows was sudden; but when the ladies found themselves transported to the fresh green in Cadogan Place, it is impossible to say what an exhilarating effect this revelation had upon them. The elder sisters, indeed, had visited London in their youth, but that was long ago, and they had forgotten everything but the streets, and the crowd, and the dust, an impression which was reproduced by the effect of the long drive from Euston Square, which seemed endless, through lines of houses and shops and flaring gaslights. That continuity of dreary inhabitation, those long lines of featureless buildings, of which it is so difficult to distinguish one from another, is the worse aspect of London, and even Lilias, looking breathless from the window, ready to be astonished at everything, was chilled a little when she found nothing to be astonished at – for the great shops were closed which furnish brightness to an evening drive, and it seemed to the tired women as if they must have travelled half as far through those dreary, half-lighted streets as they had done before over the open country. But with a bright morning, and the sight of the opening leaves between them and the houses opposite, a different mood came. Miss Jean in particular hailed the vegetation as she might have greeted an old friend whose face she had not hoped to see again.

"Just as green as our own trees, and far more forward," she said, with delight, as she called Lilias next morning.

With the cheering revelation of this green, their minds were fully tuned to see everything in the best light; but it is not necessary to enter into the sight-seeing of the group of rural ladies, all so fresh and unhackneyed, and ready to enjoy. Margaret preserved a dignified composure in all circumstances. She had the feeling that a great deal was expected from her as the head of the family. The excitement which was quite becoming to the others would to her have seemed unbecoming, and, as a matter of fact, she made out to herself either that she "remembered perfectly," or, at least, was "quite well aware from all she had heard" of the things which impressed her sisters most profoundly. The work she had in hand was far more important than sight-seeing, which, however, she encouraged in her sisters, being anxious that Lilias should get all that over before she was "seen," and had become an actual inhabitant of the great world. Margaret had made every arrangement in what she hoped and believed was the most perfectly good style. She spared no expense on this one episode of grandeur and gaiety. All the little savings of Gowanbrae went to swell the purse which she had made up for the occasion. Old Simon, the old family servant, who had seen them all born, gave respectability to the little open carriage which they had for fine days alternatively with the brougham, by condescending to place himself on the box. He was not very nimble, perhaps, in getting up and down, but he was highly respectable, and indeed, in his best "blacks," was sometimes mistaken by ignorant people for the head of the party. Simon, though he liked his ladies to know that he was aware it was a condescension, in his heart enjoyed his position, and laid up chapters of experience with which to keep respectful audiences in rapt attention both at Murkley and Gowanbrae. He made common cause with Lilias in her eagerness to see everything. When Miss Jean held back, afraid that so much curiosity might seem vulgar, Simon would take it upon himself to interpose.

"You'll excuse me, mem," he said, "but Miss Lilias is young, and it's my opinion a young creature can never see too much. We are never seventeen but wance in our lives."

"Dear me! that is very true, Simon," Miss Jean would say, and with a little air of reserve, as if she herself knew all about it, would accompany the eager girl, who sometimes called Simon forward to enjoy a warmer sympathy.

"Look, Simon; that armour has been in battle. Knights have fought in it," Lilias would say, her eyes dancing with excitement, while Miss Jean stood a little apart with that benevolent smile.

Simon examined everything very minutely, and then he said,

"I'm saying naething against the knights, Miss Lilias, for I'm not one that believes in mere stature without sense to guide it; but they must have been awfu' little men. I would like to see one of those fine fellows on the horses, with half a dozen of them round him," Simon remarked. Lilias was somewhat indignant at this depreciation of the heroes of the past, yet still was able to smile, for Simon's devotion to the sentries at the Horse Guards was known. He thought at first they were not real, and, when their movements undeceived him, was for a long time disposed to think they were ingenious pieces of mechanism. "Thae men!" he had said. "I canna believe it! That's what ye call an occupation for a rational being! Na, na; I canna believe it." But he would walk all the way from Cadogan Place in the morning before breakfast to see these wonders of the world. And he acknowledged that St. Paul's was grander than St. George's in Edinburgh, which showed he had an impartial mind. "But, if ye test them by the congregation that worships in them, it is we that will gain the day – and is that not the best beauty of a kirk?" Simon said. These were days when popular sermons and services were unthought of. But this history has no space for the humours of this new exploration of London sights. It would be difficult to say which of the party enjoyed them most: Lilias, all eagerness and frank curiosity, or Miss Jean, holding back with that protesting smile, asking no question lest she should show an ignorance which did not become her position as the head of the party, or Simon, who never forgot his rôle of critic and moralist. But, while they all enjoyed themselves, Miss Margaret sat in her parlour much more seriously engaged. She had everything to contrive and to decide, and Lilias' dress and all the preliminaries of her introduction to settle. For herself, what could be more imposing than her velvet and all that beautiful lace? The only thing that was wanted was a longer train. The countess had been very ready to undertake the presentation, and had asked the party to dinner, and sent them cards for a great reception. She was very amiable, and delighted to see the Miss Murrays in town.

"And as for your little sister, she ought to make a sensation. She ought to be one of the beauties of the season," the countess said.

"No, no; that is not to be desired for so young a thing. She is just a country girl," said Miss Margaret, half-hoping that the great lady would protest and declare it impossible that a Murray of Murkley should be so described; but the countess, who was but slightly occupied with Lilias, only smiled graciously and shook hands warmly, as she dismissed her visitors. When they had left her noble mansion, Miss Jean, mild as she was, on this occasion, took upon her to remonstrate.

"You must not speak of Lilias so," she said. "If you will think for a moment, she has just a great deal of presence for so young a person, and Lady Lilias' daughter. People are too civil to contradict you. I would not call her just a country girl."

Margaret gazed at her sister with something of the astonishment which Balaam must have felt on a certain remarkable occasion. "I would not say but you are right," the candid woman said.

The Drawing-room was in the beginning of May. Lilias was greatly interested in all the preparations for it. She was put into the hands of a nice old lady who had been a great dancer in her day to be taught her curtseys, which was a proceeding that amused the girl greatly. She persuaded her instructress to talk, and learned with astonished soul a great many things of which she had no idea, but fortunately no harm: which was the merest chance, the sisters having given her over in the utmost confidence to her teacher, not suspicious of anything injurious that youth could hear from a nice old woman. These lessons were as good as a play to the girl, and sometimes also to the spectators as she practised her trois obeisances. To see her sink into the furbelows of her fashionable dress, and recover herself with elastic grace and without a sign of faltering, filled even Margaret with admiring wonder. The elder lady's majestic curtsey was a far more difficult proceeding, but even she condescended to practise it, to the delight of Lilias and the admiration of Miss Jean, throned all the time in the biggest chair, and representing Her Majesty.

"I would just bid you kneel down and make you Lady Margaret on the spot, if it was me," Jean said.

"My dear, you are just a haverel: for it is men that have to kneel down and be made knights of – and you would not have me made a Sir, I hope?" said Margaret, with a laugh.

"I must say," said Miss Jean, "that there is injustice in that. Your forefathers have been Sirs far longer than Her Majesty's family has been upon the throne, and why should there be no trace of it left to give pleasure, just because you and me – and Lilias too, more is the pity – were born women?"

"I have yet to learn," said Miss Margaret, drawing herself up, "that a title would make any difference to a Murray of Murkley; we are well enough known without that."

"Oh! but, Margaret, you should be my lady," cried Lilias, springing up and making curtseys in pure wantonness all round the room. "Miss is not suitable for you. Mistress would be better, or Madam, but my lady best of all. I think Jean is a wise woman; and if the queen – "