It was a Lover and his Lass

"You are a grand judge of wisdom," said her sister. "Jean and you, you might just go in a show together, the female Solomon and the person that explains the oracle; but you will just go to your bed, and take a good rest, for it will be a fatiguing day to-morrow. You will have plenty to do looking after your dress, and remembering your manners, without taking it upon you to give your advice to Her Majesty, who has been longer at the trade than you."

"To-morrow! – is it really to-morrow? Oh!" cried Lilias, "when I come before her I will forget everything: and what will she say to me?" This made the elder sister look a little confused, but she had herself but little idea what the royal lady would do in the circumstances; and the safest plan was to send Lilias to bed.

Next morning it was a sight to see the two débutantes. Miss Margaret had a train of velvet sweeping from her shoulders that made her look, Lilias declared, like Margaret of Anjou, though why this special resemblance was hit upon, the young lady declined to say. As for herself, in clouds of virgin white, it seemed to her sisters that nothing had ever been seen so lovely as this little lily, who would, however, have been more aptly termed a rose, with the colour of excitement coming and going upon her cheeks, her eyes like dew with the sun on it, her dazzling sweetness of complexion. Perhaps her features were not irreproachable, perhaps her little figure wanted filling out; but at seventeen these are faults that lean to virtue's side. She was dazzling to behold in that first exquisite youthful bloom, which is like nothing else in the world. When she came into the room where they were awaiting her, she made them a curtsey to show her perfection, her face running over with smiles. And then Lilias grew grave, a flutter came to her child's heart. Her eyes grew serious with the awe of a neophyte on the edge of the mysteries of life.

"When I come back I will be a woman," she said, with a little catch of her breath.

"No, no, not till you are one-and-twenty, my darling," cried Jean, who did not always know when to hold her peace.

"I shall be a woman," Lilias repeated. "I shall be introduced to the world – I shall be able to go where I please – "

"There may be two words about that," said Margaret, interfering; "but this is not a time for discoursing. So just you gather up your train, Lilias, and let us go away."

Miss Jean went downstairs after them; she watched them drive away, waving her hand. She thought Margaret was just beautiful notwithstanding her age. "But, after all, forty is not such an extraordinary age," Jean said to herself; and, as for Lilias, words could not express what her sister felt. The Court must be splendid indeed, and a great deal of beauty in it, if two ladies like that were not observed. She took out her table-cover, which had been much neglected, and sat down at the window and arranged her silks as of old. There was no carnation now for a pattern, but indeed she was done with that flower. When a woman has seen her best-beloved go forth in full panoply to conquer, and feels the domestic silence close down upon herself, there is, if she is the kind of woman, an exquisite repose and pleasure in it. The mother who comes out to the door to watch her gay party go away, and, closing it again with all their pleasure in her mind, goes back to the quiet, either to work for them or to wait for them, has her share both real and vicarious, and doubles the pleasure. She goes with them along the way, she broods over their happiness at home. Miss Jean, who was this kind of woman, had thus a double share, and worked into her flowers the serene and delicious calm, the soft expectation, the flutter of an excitement out of which everything harsh was gone. She could not help thinking that it would be a real pleasure to Her Majesty, who had girls of her own and a kind heart, to see such a creature as Lilias just in the opening of her flower. The Queen would be glad to know that General Murray had left such representatives, though, no doubt, she would be sorry there was no son. Jean felt too, modestly, that it was always possible, seeing Margaret and Lilias, and admiring them as she must, that Her Majesty might graciously ask whether there was no more of a family, and command that "next time" the other sister should be brought to see her. "But, oh, she would be disappointed in me!" Miss Jean said to herself. All these thoughts kept her amused and happy, so that she wanted no other entertainment. She even forgot Lewis and the confidence which had so touched her heart. She thought it so likely that some young duke, some glorious lord in waiting, would clasp his hands together and say, in the very presence chamber, "Here, by God's word, is the one maid for me." Lewis had floated from her mind, which was beguiled by higher things.

When the carriage drove up to the door, she rushed downstairs to meet the victorious pair. Lilias was the first to appear, a little crushed and faded, like a rose that has been bound into a bouquet and suffered from the pressure: but that did not matter, for everybody knows there is a great crowd. But the face was not radiant as it had been, Miss Jean could not but perceive. There was a great deal of gravity in it. The corners of the mouth were slightly, very slightly turned the wrong way. She came in quite seriously, calmed out of all her excitement. Margaret followed with the same serious air.

"Well, my darling!" Jean cried, running forward to meet the girl.

"Oh, it has all passed very well," Margaret said over Lilias' head.

Jean drew them into the little dining-room, which was on the ground floor, to hear everything.

"And were the dresses beautiful, and the jewels? and was Her Majesty looking well? and what did she say to you?" cried the eager spectator.

"You will just make Lilias take some wine, for the child is like to drop with tiredness; and as for me, before I say a syllable, I must get rid of this train, for it weighs me to the earth," said Margaret.

"My darling," cried Jean, throwing her arms about Lilias, "something has happened!"

Upon which Lilias burst into a laugh, which, compared with the extreme gravity of her face, had a somewhat rueful effect. It was a laugh which was not mirthful and spontaneous as the laughter of Lilias generally was, but produced itself of a sudden as by some quick impulse of ridicule.

"No," she said, "Jean, that is just the thing, nothing has happened;" and then the rueful look melted away, and a gleam of real fun came back.

"Dear me! dear me! something has gone wrong. You never got to the drawing-room at all?"

"Oh yes," cried the girl, "and all went off very well, didn't you hear Margaret say?"

"Well, then, my dear, I don't understand," Jean said, puzzled.

"It is just that that was all," said Lilias, with her laugh. "It all went off very well. Everything was quite right, I suppose. Me that thought it was the great, beautiful court itself, and that we would see everybody, and that it would be known who you were, and everything! I said to Margaret, 'Is that all?' And I think she was quite as astonished as me, for she said, 'I suppose so.' And then we waited, and at last we got the carriage, and we came away! Now that I think of it, it was awfully funny," said Lilias, with tears, which were no doubt tears of merriment, but which were also tears of vexation, in her eyes. "To think we should have thought of it for months and months, and got such dresses, and played such pranks with Madame Ballerina – all for that!"

"But, my dear," said Miss Jean, always consolatory, "it is not only for that, it is for everything. It is just the beginning, you know. You will see better society, and you will be asked to more places, and, if ever you go abroad, they say it is such an advantage, and – Besides, my darling, it is your duty to your sovereign," Miss Jean added, with a little solemnity.

Upon this Lilias laughed more and more.

"Oh," she cried, "that is just the thing, Jean! I saw my sovereign yawn. I am sure she did. I was so astonished. I noticed everything, but the queen saw nothing to be surprised at, she has gone over it so often. I am sure I saw her yawn, though she concealed it. Could there nothing be invented," cried Lilias, with a liveliness in which there was a sparkle of annoyance and passion, "that would be better than that? And this was what we came to town for," she said, sitting down upon her pretty train and her flowers, which were all tumbled. The laugh went out of her face. "It is so funny," Lilias said, as grave as a judge, "when you think upon it; so little, and yet so much."

"And did Her Majesty say nothing then about papa? She would not know it was you, that must have been how it was. There are many Murrays, you know. You will see the name even over shops. And never asked where you were staying, or said that she would see you again – ?"

"Jean," said Miss Margaret, appearing suddenly in a dressing-gown, "what nonsense is that you are talking? Did anybody ever suppose that the queen was to make remarks, and ask questions, with crowds of women in their best gowns just ready to eat you to get past? It all went off very well," she said, seating herself on the sofa. "Lilias, I just cannot bide to see you at this hour of the day in that ridiculous dress. I've taken off mine, and thankful to get rid of it. A girl of your age can stand a great deal, but you are far nicer, to my opinion, in your natural clothes. As I was saying, it went off just extremely well. We got through really without so much crushing as I expected, and the dresses were beautiful, and diamonds enough to make the sun think shame of himself. No doubt it is just a little ridiculous, as Lilias says, to see the ladies in all their finery in the daylight; but then it is the custom. You can put up with anything when you know it is the custom. People like us that just go once in a way, we never get into the way of it; but for those that go often, you know, they just never mind. And of course it was a beautiful sight."

"It must have been that," cried Jean, seizing hold upon this certainty; "you will call it to mind, Lilias, when it's long past, and it will always be a pleasure to think of. It must have been a wonderful sight."

"As for expecting," continued Margaret, "that it would be an occasion for rational intercourse, or anything like making acquaintance either with the Court or Her Majesty, I could have told you from the beginning that was nonsense. Just think of such crowds of women, one at the back of another, like birds in a net. It would be out of the question to think of it. Now, Lilias, go and get your things off, and, if you are tired, you can lie down a little – "

"Yes, my dear, you must just lie down a little – it will do you good."

"Jean and Margaret," cried Lilias, jumping up, "do you think I am old, like you? What am I to lie down for? – and besides, you never lie down, that are old. It is only me you say that to. I will go and take my things off, and then I will take Susan and go out, and look in at all the vulgar shops, and see the common folk, for I think I like them best."

"I am afraid, Margaret, the poor child is disappointed," said Jean, when Lilias had gone away.

"It will be because you have been putting things into her head, then," said Margaret; "everything went off just as well as possible. You are surely later than usual with the tea? My back is just broken with that train. It is really as warm as a summer day, and to go dragging about miles of velvet after you is something terrible. She made her reverence as well as you could have desired, and looked just as bonnie. I cannot say as much for Lady Ida, though she is nice enough; and oh, but that dress is dreadful for women that have lost their figures, and are just mountains of flesh, like so many of these English ladies. When I see them, I am just thankful I never married. Husband and bairns are dear bought at that cost. Where are you going? Now, Jean, just sit and listen to me, and give me my cup of tea. There is Susan to take care of Lilias."

"But if the poor thing is disappointed, Margaret? I am sure, for my part, I expected – "

"And if you expected nonsense, will that do Lilias any good to let her see it?" cried Margaret, testily. "When she comes to herself, she will see that we have all been fools, and those that have the most sense will say nothing about it. That is the part I am intending to take. When you think of it, there could be nothing more ridiculous. When you speak to Lilias, you must just laugh at her. You must say that a drawing-room means nothing – it is just a formality. It means that you have come into the world, and that you are of the class of people that are beholden to pay their duty to the queen. That is all it means. I cannot tell," said Margaret, with irritation, "what other ridiculous idea the child has got into her head, or who put it there. Will you give me my cup of tea?"

Lilias came down after awhile in her ordinary dress, and with a countenance divided between mirth and melancholy.

"I thought I should feel a different person," she said, "but I am just the same. I thought the world was going to be changed, but there is no difference. All the same, I am a woman. I never can be sent back to the school-room, and made to refuse parties, and stay at home, and give up all the fun, now."

"All the fun is a vulgar expression," said Margaret. "It is just to take you to parties and give you pleasure that we have come here."

"Ah, but there is more than that. I am not going to be taken, but to go. I am grown-up now. It is curious," said Lilias, with a reflective air, "how you understand things just by doing them. I was thinking of something else; I was not thinking of this; and, of course, it turns out to be the most important. All this time I have been your child, yours and Jean's – now I am just me."

"So long as you do not carry it too far, my dear."

"I will carry it just as far as I can go," cried Lilias, with a laugh. She rejected the tea, out of which Margaret was getting much comfort, and ran upstairs again, where they could hear her at the piano, playing over everything she knew, which was not very much. The sound and measure were a little ease to her excitement. By-and-by Miss Jean was allowed by Margaret to get free, and, going upstairs, found Lilias standing with her forehead pressed against the window, looking out. There was not very much to see – the upper windows opposite across the light green foliage, a few carriages passing under the windows. When she heard some one coming into the room behind her, the girl broke forth suddenly.

"What are we here for in this strange place? I don't want to go to parties; they will just be like seeing the Queen. What has that to do with us? We may fancy we are great people, but we are only little small people, and nobody ever heard of us before."

"Lilias, my love," said Jean, with her arms round her little sister, "you must not say that."

"Why shouldn't I say it when it is true? To see all these grand ladies, and none of them knew us. Oh yes, Margaret had known them – two or three – but they had forgotten her and she only remembered them when she heard their names. But when we are at home everybody knows us. What is the use of pretending that we are great people like these? When we are at home we are great enough – as great as I want to be."

"Your nerves are just a little upset, my darling, and you are disappointed (and little wonder)."

"I am not disappointed – that is, I can see it was foolish all through; and I have no nerves; but I have made a fool of myself, and I could kill myself," cried Lilias; "and everybody – "

"Whisht! whisht! my bonnie dear. Put on your hat, and we will go out. Margaret is resting, and I have got some little things to do."

After a while this simple project delivered Lilias out of her trouble; to walk about in the air and sunshine, to see the other people, so many of them, going about their business, to watch the movement of the living world, even to go into the shops and buy "little things" here and there, a bit of ribbon in one, some gloves in another, a pretty bit of china Miss Jean had set her heart on, was enough to restore her to her usual light-heartedness. Nothing very tragical had happened, after all.

CHAPTER XXXIII

It was after this that the experiences in society began. The countess gave them a dinner, which was very kind and friendly, and at which they met various country friends. Indeed it was an entertainment which had a whiff of the country about it altogether, a sort of rural air; some of the gentlemen who were posted here and there about the table to talk the talk of the clubs and give the other convives a sense of being in London, got together after the meal was over and talked in the doorway between the two drawing-rooms with mutual commiseration.

"I suppose all this is on account of Bellendean," they said. Bellendean was her ladyship's son, and was intended to stand for the county on the next opportunity. "It is like the Georgies," these gentlemen said. "It is like running down into the country."

"The country!" said another, "where could you find any country like that? Not within five hundred miles."

The countess smiled upon this pair as she passed among her guests, and said, very low, "Talk to them – you are not doing your duty." The gentlemen from the clubs followed her with mute looks of despair. In this way a great lady does her devoir to her county without much hardship. At least, three of the more important guests believed the party to be made for them, and were surprised, and even a little more than surprised, to find themselves among their country neighbours. "Who would have thought of seeing you?" they said to each other. To Lilias it was delightful to find these old friends. She sympathized in the countess's very effusive regret at Bellendean's absence. "How sorry he will be," his mother said. Bellendean was believed to be engaged to Lady Ida, his plain relation. He was very good about it, and did his duty manfully; but to have put a pretty little creature like that in his way would have been madness, his mother felt. So that she entertained her rural neighbours alone, with the aid of the gentlemen from the clubs, who were all quite safe from bread-and-butter beauties, though they admired her complexion and said to each other, "Jove! where does the girl get her bloom from?"

"It does not come out of Bond Street," said the countess.

Miss Margaret was very stately in this party. She saw through it, and was indignant with Jean and Lilias for enjoying themselves. Two or three engagements sprang out of it, very pleasant, but somewhat humiliating to the head of the family, who had come to London in order to be beyond the country, and give Lilias experience of the great world. There were two or three little dinners, one in a hotel, and the others in other lodgings of similar character to those in Cadogan Place, and many proposals that they should go to the play together, and to the Royal Academy to see the pictures, proposals which it was all Margaret could do to prevent the others from accepting. She gave a couple of little parties herself to the rural notables. But all these did not count, they only kept her out of society, in the true sense of the word. Margaret was as proud a woman as ever bore a Scottish name, which is saying much; but it seemed to her that she would almost have stooped to a meanness to get an entry into the upper world which she felt to be circling just out of her reach, and from which now and then she heard echoes dropping into the lower spheres. It was not for herself she desired that entry. And almost wrathful contempt grew upon her as she heard the chatter of society, the evil tales, the coterie gossip, the inane vulgarities which, to a visionary from the country expecting great things, made the first impression of town in many cases the most distressful of disappointments. For herself, she longed for the serene quiet which, if it was sometimes dull, was at least always innocent, and where the routine of every day contented the harmless mind. Here an uneasy discontent, an ambition which she felt humiliating, a constant strain of anxiety which was mean and contemptible, filled her being. She wanted to know people who had no claim upon human approbation but that of knowing a great many other people and giving parties. She was unhappy because she was not acquainted with ladies in the fashionable world, and men who went everywhere. When Jean and Lilias, seated upon chairs by her side looking on at the passing crowds of Vanity Fair in Rotten Row with all the delight of people from the country, saw and hailed and exchanged joyous greetings with other people from the country passing by, Margaret's soul was filled with irritation and annoyance. These were not the acquaintances she desired. It vexed her to be exposed to their cordiality, their pleasure at sight of anybody they knew. Jean too was delighted to perceive in the crowd what she called "a kent face;" but Margaret's heart was wrung with envy, with unsatisfied wishes, and with a profound contempt for herself which underlay all these. She took the greatest trouble, however, to find out people of any pretensions to fashion whom she had ever known, to recall herself to their recollection, she who at home considered it her due to be courted and sought out by others. While she sat in the crowd and listened to the strangers about her talking over their amusements, her heart burned within her. "I saw you at Lady Dynevor's last night. Did you ever see such a crowd! As for dancing, it was out of the question: " or, "Are you going to the duchess's concert to-morrow? Mamma has promised to go if we can get away soon enough from the Esmonds', where we dine: " or, "We have promised just to look in at the French Ambassador's after the opera." She felt the muscles of her face elongate, and a watering in her mouth. She looked at these favoured ones with wistful eyes. She did not form any illusive vision to herself of the charm of society, or suppose it to be eloquent and brilliant and delightful, but she wanted to be in it, in the swing, as the slang expression was, not merely making little parties with friends from the country, fraternizing with known faces, going to the theatres and the sights. These were not Margaret's object; her heart sank as she saw the weeks passing, and felt herself to make no advance.

The countess's dinner had been a disappointment – almost, in the excited state of Margaret's feelings, had seemed an insult; but there was the greater gathering in prospect, the reception, at which all society was expected to be present, and to which she looked forward with a half-hope that this might realize some of her expectations, yet a half-certainty of further disappointment and offence. Lilias had got a new dress for the occasion, to her own surprise and almost dissatisfaction, for she was somewhat alarmed by Margaret's bounties; and Jean, though not without a little tremor lest the countess should recollect that she had worn it at Mrs. Stormont's ball, and indeed on several other occasions, put on her grey satin. Margaret was in black silk, very imposing and stately, with her beautiful lace. The three sisters were a fine sight as their hostess came forward to greet them at the door of the beautiful rooms, one within another, which, what with mirrors and a profusion of lights, seemed to prolong themselves into indefinite distance. The rooms were not very full as yet, for the ladies had come somewhat early, and the countess was very gracious to them. She admired Lilias, and kissed her on the cheek, and told Jean, who beamed, and Margaret, who was not quite sure that she was not offended, that their little sister was a credit to the North.

"If you keep in this room, you will hear who the people are as they come in," she said, with an easy assumption of the fact that they knew nobody.

They took their places accordingly at a little distance, the two elder ladies seating themselves until they were almost buried by the crowds that streamed in and stood all about them in lively groups, standing over them, talking across their shoulders as if they were objects in still life, till Miss Margaret rose indignantly and formed a little group of her own with Jean, who was a little bewildered, and Lilias, who eyed the talkers round her, half frightened, half wistful, with a great longing to have some one to talk with too.