It was a Lover and his Lass

CHAPTER XVI

General Murray, the only son of Sir Patrick, had, like his father before him, married at a very early age, so that his eldest daughter was not more than twenty-two years younger than himself, and he was, when he married for the second time a wife younger than Margaret, a man but little over forty, in the prime of his life and strength, as handsome as he had ever been, and attractive enough to take any girl's fancy. The second wife had been poor, but she had been noble, and the entail of the old hereditary estate, upon which stood at once the old Castle and the new unfinished palace, was broken in order that it might be secured to the children of Lady Lilias, whether sons or daughters. Who could doubt that so young and blooming a bride, out of a well-conditioned family, would bring both in abundant measure to the old house? Margaret and Jean, the two daughters of the first marriage, were left in the south country in possession of their mother's little estate when their father began life for the second time. They felt themselves a little injured, shut out of their natural rights, as was natural, and held themselves aloof from the new ménage, which was established joyously in the old Castle with every augury of happiness. But when, no more than a year after, the blooming young wife was carried to the church-yard, and a second poor little Lilias left in her stead, the two sisters flew, with many a compunction and self-reproach, to the infant's cradle. Margaret especially, who, though she was young, was already disposed to believe that everything went wrong when she was absent, reproached herself bitterly for not being on the spot to watch over her father's wife. It would not have happened had she been there, she felt convinced, and this perfectly visionary self-blame no doubt helped to give a certain bias to her already peculiar character. "I must do my best for the daughter. I did not do it for the mother," she acquired a habit of saying when any other career was suggested to her. She did not feel quite sure that she was not her father's elder sister, so confusing were their relations. He was broken down with grief and disappointment, and she took charge of him at once, and of his home. It would perhaps be going too far to say that this was the reason why she did not marry. Had any great love arisen in her heart, no doubt Margaret would, like other people, have considered it her duty to obey its dictates; but, when suitors to whom she was indifferent came, Miss Murray metaphorically pushed them aside out of her path, with a curt intimation that she had no time to think of such nonsense. Miss Jean, who was of a sentimental turn, had not so easily escaped the common dangers of youth, but she did so in a more romantic way, poor lady, by loving, unfortunately, a young hero who had not a penny, and who died in an obscure Indian battle when she was a little more than twenty. This was shortly after the time when the infant Lilias was thrown upon her sisters' hands, and it was enough to determine the celibacy of the gentle young woman, who was indeed an old maid born: an old maid more tender and indulgent than any mother, an old maid who is still young, and can enter into the troubles of childhood and youth not only by recollection of her own, but in the sense of actual understanding and fellowship as one who had herself never thrown quite behind her the state of youth or even childhood. The more perfectly developed are apt to smile at this arrested being, but there is nothing in the world more delightful, tender, and sweet.

Between these two, Lilias' childhood had been passed. Her father was less at home than ever after this destruction of his hopes. He held some military appointments, and saw a good deal of service. In the intervals, when he returned to Scotland, his young daughter adored and made a playmate of him, his elder daughter kept him in order. Never was a man taken better care of; when the breach with Sir Patrick happened, the ladies stood by him with all the determined partisanship of women. He was living with them then on their little estate of the south, in the little feminine house called Gowanbrae, which had been their mother's, and where they had taken the baby after her mother's death. So long as they had that independent house, which they preferred, what was the Castle of Murkley to them? When Sir Patrick died, they "came north," as they expressed it, with the general, to show Lilias her home, and to acquaint her at first hand with those glories of the family which they pretended to scorn, but were in reality very proud of.

"All that money might have been in your pocket if your grandfather had been a man of sense," Miss Margaret said, pointing to the bleached walls of the unfinished palace.

But Jean and Lilias had both a wondering awe and admiration for folly which was so magnificent. Lilias was sixteen when she saw it first. She uttered a great cry of admiration and delight.

"I should like to save up every penny and finish it and live in it," she cried.

Her father shook his handsome white head: but Miss Margaret "had no patience with such nonsense," as she said.

"Live in it! – what income do you think you would require to live in it? The Queen has not so grand a house," said the elder sister, with the pride that aped indignation, "except perhaps Windsor Castle and the palace in London. Taymouth is not much bigger. You would want fifty thousand a year at the very least penny. All we have for the whole family on both sides would not so much as furnish it."

"Unless," said the general, with a laugh, "you make a great match, my little Lily, and get your duke to do it for you – or perhaps a Glasgow man would do?"

"A child of our bringing up would not be likely to demean herself so far, I hope," said Miss Margaret, with emphasis.

"A Glasgow man!" cried Miss Jean with a quaver of horror. "No, no, Lilias will never come down to that."

The general liked to gibe at his daughters; perhaps, though they were his daughters, he was not without some of that contempt for them which men of all ages feel towards unmarried women.

"I have seen some fine fellows at Glasgow," he said, "and rolling in money. I will look out for one, and bring him for your inspection, Lilias. But, Meg and Jean, you must not prejudice my candidate – you must let the child choose."

"Do, papa – it will be fun!" cried Lilias.

Miss Margaret had a high idea of her father's rights. She would not make any direct protest, as Jean was anxious to do, but she took her little sister aside when they returned home.

"My dear," she said, "gentlemen say many things that women-folk do not agree in, and papa is fond of his joke. You must not suppose that is all in earnest, that way he has of talking."

Lilias was "as quick as a needle," her sisters said. She made a momentary pause, and then said, with a laugh,

"About the Glasgow man?"

"About any man," cried Miss Margaret. "My darling, gentlemen will be gentlemen, even when they are your father. They think those sort of pleasantries just innocent, but they are not pretty for a girl; you must remember that. Jean and I have never let you hear anything of the kind. A girl, above all things, Lilias, must be unspotted from the world."

"Unspotted from the world!" the girl repeated, with a half-startled look at her sister; and then she added, with a little emotion, "Oh, what bonnie words, Margaret!"

"Yes, they are bonnie words; and they are better than bonnie, for you know where they come from. Look at Jean, if you want to know the meaning of them. You are just our child – we would like you to be like that. Papa says nothing that is not worth your attention, but he likes his joke, and when all's said he's a gentleman, Lilias, not like you and me."

Lilias gave her sister a kiss, throwing her arms round her neck. Margaret would say, "Hoot!" or "Toot!" when thus embraced, but yet she liked it. "I understand," the girl said. But when she was by herself she laughed a little at her old sister's delicacy. She did not think there was any particular harm in the general's joke. It seemed to her in her childish self-sufficiency that she understood papa (who certainly was a man, there could be no doubt of it) better than Margaret and Jean did. She was not herself a bit shocked. She thought, on the whole, she would like to have the Glasgow man up to be looked at; it would be fun. And then the girl asked herself, with a blush, whether fun of this sort was incompatible with keeping yourself "unspotted from the world." She repeated these words over and over to herself for some time after. Yes, Margaret was right; when you looked at Jean, you could understand what that meant. Margaret herself was of much more consequence than Jean, but she was not so unspotted from the world. Lilias had in her mind a sense of the pure and perfect thing which it was her sister's ideal she herself should be, mingled oddly with a little soft derision of those sisters of which she was ashamed. They were old maids. She felt as if there might be a larger life which would not be afraid of any touch from without, and yet would be stainless: and then she grew red with indignation at herself for presuming to smile at Margaret and Jean. A lily, like her name, all sweetness and fragrance and purity, holding itself high, aloof from every soil – she understood that: that was what they wanted her to be. Her heart swelled with a touching humility, yet visionary emotion, desiring to attain, yet wondering how she could be supposed capable of so sweet a perfection; and then she laughed a little gentle laugh, which, it is to be feared, was at some little peculiarities of theirs. Was it quite impossible that the fun should be had in addition? She did justice to the ideal, but —

The general thought his lily perfect, whatever she pleased to do, and the girl knew this very well, and had a little disdain for his judgment, though she adored himself. She had thus grown already into an independent creature, with a judgment of her own, bringing them all secretly to the bar, and forming her opinion in a way which bewildered these elder people who had brought her up. She was not an echo of any one of them, as at her age she might have been expected to be. She was all herself, and took nothing now for granted. To be sure, it was chiefly Margaret who noticed this. The general was not given to analysis of character, and thought his child the perfection of everything a girl ought to be, and Miss Jean was much of the same frame of mind, though a breath of anxiety would ruffle her soul from time to time. The household on the whole was unanimous enough in the worship of Lilias. As for their father, he was something of a trouble to the ladies. The sense that he was a gentleman, a being she understood but imperfectly, gave Miss Jean a certain embarrassment in his presence. She played all her music to him with a wondering doubt, which she never solved, as to whether he liked it, or if it was a bore to him, and felt that papa was far younger than herself, and that there was no telling with so handsome a man what was the next step he might take. Margaret felt him with still more force to be her junior, and kept his house much as she might have done for a widowed nephew – that was the kind of relationship which would have been natural between them. They sometimes speculated between themselves whether there was any chance that he might marry again. He was only sixty, very young-looking, in reality very young; as active as he had ever been, a man who could ride all day, and, if need were, dance all night as if he had been twenty. "I never see the like of him wherever I go," Miss Margaret said. But then he had nothing to settle, he was himself but a life-renter in Murkley, and the fortune that had always been expected from old Sir Patrick had gone to the dogs – or, at least, to a stranger.

The subject of these questions solved them all very summarily one winter evening by dying. He had not been ill. He had a slight cold – that, and nothing more. He had taken a hot drink to please Margaret, and had put his feet in hot water when he went to rest. But the next morning he was found dead in his bed. It was a very great shock to his children; but perhaps, when the shock was over, Margaret and Jean felt, though they would have thought it dreadful to say so, that an embarrassing charge was removed from them, and that perhaps it was for the best. For Lilias, who was the chief object of their thoughts, it was scarcely to be doubted that it was for the best. There would be no longer any contention, any struggle in her life. Not that there had ever been a struggle. Margaret was too judicious and the general too good-natured for that; but still, an element so out of accord with all the principles of her education as her father, with his free and easy ways, his experiences of the camp and the world, was perhaps – better away. Margaret put it in the right way, in the only permissible way, when she said, "Providence is inscrutable. A young man, comparatively speaking, and younger in his ways than any of us. And oh, so like to live! Nobody would have thought but that he would see us all out. It is a terrible loss to us, especially to Lilias. She was bound up in him, poor thing – perhaps more bound up in him than was good for her – and a gentleman is always an interruption to education. Poor thing! we must just put her back to her work as soon as she is able. It will be the best thing to take off her thoughts."

As for Lilias, she did not want anything to take off her thoughts. For three months nearly she cultivated everything that could make her think of him, and keep up the sombre current. She retired to her own room, and would stay there for hours, weeping, and keeping herself in the atmosphere of affliction. At the end of that time the monotony of sorrow began to press severely upon her young mind, and she was glad to take to her lessons for a change; and thus gradually it came about that she grew light-hearted again by unnoticed stages. When she thought of dear papa now, it was sometimes with a little guilty sense that she had forgotten him, partly with a half-fictitious representation to herself that it was "far better" for him. Perhaps, indeed, it was so: but few of us are fully able to believe that death is an advantage. And it was very hard to realize that it would be an advantage to the general. He had liked his life in Murkley so much; everything (except the want of the money) had suited him so well. He liked his newspaper, his fishing when the weather permitted, his old friends, his native place. To think of him as denuded of all these things, and living under such different conditions, was dreadfully difficult. And it seemed hard upon him to be shut out of the house of his fathers so long, and to have so short a time to enjoy it in – to be Sir George only for a year, just to be permitted to take possession, to settle down: and then in a moment to have to resign it all for a condition in which he would no longer be Sir George, or derive any gratification from the possession of Murkley. But such thoughts as these were not the sort of thoughts that she ought to entertain, Lilias knew.

And so time went on, and the summer came back again, and happiness returned to the girl's heart. The bonds of subjection to her sisters was drawn a little closer, but it was so tender a tyranny that she never resented it. It was a little hard, indeed, to be shut out from all the innocent little parties at which Katie Seton figured, who was younger than she; but then there was that reserved for her which would never be in Katie Seton's power. And when the clouds of grief had blown away from her sky, and she began to realize herself as the lady of Murkley, it cannot be denied that there was many a flutter in the heart of Lilias. Had Murkley been the great estate it ought to have been, and had she been a rich heiress, she probably would not have been half so much in love with her own position. There was a romance in it that charmed the imagination. An heiress of poverty, with her little old house, which was half as old as the Murrays – and what a thing that was to say! – her tiny little estate, which, though there was so little of it, was the original estate, land that had been in the hands of the Murrays since the Jameses reigned in Scotland; her great name and her small possessions delighted the girl. It did not occur to her to think that Margaret and Jean came before herself in the honours of the family. They were no competitors of hers – they were aunts rather than sisters – they were their mother's children, the Miss Murrays of Gowanbrae, in Dumfriesshire; whereas she was Lilias Murray of Murkley. It was a curious position. She was like a young princess whose youth had been confided to the care of two old ladies of honour closely connected with the royal house, yet not altogether belonging to it. Naturally Miss Margaret at forty looked an old lady to the little princess of seventeen. They had done their best all their lives to impress upon her the greatness of her position, and she took it in most innocently, most sincerely. It is so natural for a young creature to feel herself the central point, the most interesting figure, especially when this has been impressed upon her all her life. She recognized it fully, yet with a naturalness and sweet submission to the powers, which were over her, yet all subservient to her interests, which took every undesirable element out of this faith. It gave Lilias unbounded material for dreams, and it gave her a youthful visionary dignity, which, perhaps, had it been analyzed, would have been found to be a little absurd by close critics, but which was very pretty in the girl, who was so perfectly sincere in her fancy. She formed endless plans as to what she was to do with that romantic palace, which was hers, yet which was nobody's. Of course the first thing was to fit it up as it was meant to be fitted up, and live in it with graceful magnificence, holding a maiden court. And Lilias would dream of vast sums coming into her hands, of treasures found in some old chest or secret nook in the old house, of far-off, unknown cousins, who would send fabulous sums from afar to restore Murkley to its greatness. It is so easy to imagine benefactors of this kind – a novel-writer can invent them without giving himself or herself the least trouble, much more the imagination of a girl. Lilias was as indifferent to wealth as it was possible to be. A single gold piece all her own, to do what she pleased with, especially if she might spend it without putting down the items of her expenditure in a note-book, was wealth to the young creature: but she knew just so much as to know that it would require what she vaguely called, following the phraseology of her sister, "thousands" to complete the great house which her grandfather had left unfinished. If it ever should happen that she could do that! In the long summer evenings, especially when her sisters had gone out, and she was left alone, she would dream out whole histories of how the money might be supplied. What romances these would have made had she written them down! She would figure forth to herself a stranger arriving suddenly some evening in the gloaming – it was always in the gloaming, in the uncertainty of light which suits women – not a handsome or interesting stranger, not the tall hero, with dark eyes and curling hair, who, Lilias felt assured, was the only man she would ever "care for," but a shabby stranger, a man one would never look twice at, with all the appearance of a nobody. Margaret and Jean were never rude to any one: they would receive him very politely, and request him to come in to the fire, if it was winter – and somehow it was always winter in these imaginations. Then he would open his story to them, how he was a man who had been much indebted to "the late Murkley," or to old Sir Patrick; or who was a cousin-german of the old baronet, though perhaps the ladies had never heard of him; how he had hoped and struggled to pay his debt, but had never been able (this was to try them, and Lilias felt sure all along that she for one would know better). But Margaret and Jean would believe the story fully. They would be very sorry for him; they would try immediately to think what they could do for him. If he professed to be a relation, they would trace out his claim and satisfy themselves, and then they would put all their resources at his disposal.

Lilias delighted in making up the dialogues which would be appropriate to the occasion. She would picture to herself how Jean would clasp her hands and cry, "Bless me!" as the stranger piled up his agony; and how Margaret would say,

"Of course you will stay here till you hear of something better. We are not rich, unfortunately because of divisions in the family, which you shall hear about further on, but for the moment that's neither here nor there. And we have little influence; for we have lived out of the world, having our young sister to bring up, and being fond of the country; but what can be done, we will do."

Lilias pictured herself as sitting silent, seeing the dessous des cartes, and convinced in her own mind that all the time this shabby old fellow was a millionnaire, like so many people who have figured in old plays and novels, and, after a few scenes of this description, there would come a crisis, and he would throw off his disguise, and produce a pocket-book with "thousands" in it, and tell them that for all his life it had been his ambition to see New Murkley finished, and the family raised to its old grandeur. "I have neither kith nor kin but yourselves," the old gentleman always said, "and all I have shall be yours; only be as kind to me now I am rich as you were when I was poor."