It was a Lover and his Lass

"Lilias," cried Katie, "you must talk to him about Murkley. He is always here. I think he comes both night and day. You ought to find out what he means, if he has seen a ghost, or what it is. And you are fond of it too."

Lilias looked with a little surprise at the stranger. Why should he care for Murkley?

"You think it is strange to see such a great big desolate house in such a place."

"I think – a great many things that I do not know how to put into words: for my English, perhaps, is not so good – "

"Are you a German, Mr. Murray?" asked Lilias, shyly.

The end of the other two was attained; they had turned aside into the woods, by that path which led down to the old quarry and the river-side, the scene of so many meetings. Lilias had no resource but to follow, though with a sense of adventure and possible wrong-doing. She was relieved that Katie and Philip were at last free to talk as they pleased, and she was not at all alarmed by her own companion; still the thought of what Margaret might say gave her a little thrill, half painful, half pleasant.

"I am English," said Lewis; "yes, true English, though no one will believe me – otherwise I am of no country, for I have lived in one as much as another. I have a great interest in Murkley. If it were ever completed, it would be very noble; it would be a house to entertain princes in."

"That is what I think sometimes," said Lilias; "but, then, it will never be completed. All the country knows our story. We are poor, far too poor. And, even if it were finished, it would need, Margaret says, an army of servants, and to furnish it would take a fortune. So it would be long, long before we arrived at the princes." She ended with a laugh, which, in its turn, ended with a sigh.

"But you – would like to do it? – that would amuse you – "

"Oh! amuse me! It would not be amusement. It would be grand to do it! They say it would be finer than Taymouth. Did you ever hear that?"

"It is like the Louvre," said Lewis, "and that was built for a great king's palace. It is like the ghost, not of a person, but of an age. I think your ancestors must come and walk about and inspect it all, and hold solemn councils."

"But my ancestors knew nothing about it," said Lilias. "Oh! not that; if they come it will be to make remarks, and say how silly grandpapa was. If ghosts are like people, that is what they will be saying, and that they knew what it would end in all along, but he never would pay any attention. I hope he never comes himself, or he would hear – he would hear," cried Lilias, laughing, "what Margaret calls a few truths."

"Do you think he was – silly?" Lewis asked. What right had he to be so émotionné, to feel the moisture in his eyes and his voice tremble? What could she think of him if she perceived this? She would think it was affectation, and that he was making believe.

"I think I am silly too," Lilias said. She would not commit herself. She had heard a great deal about the old Sir Patrick, and she was aware that he had disinherited her; but he, too, was in her imagination a shadowy, great figure, of whom something mysterious might yet be heard, for all Lilias knew. Strange stories had been told about him. He had dabbled in black-arts. He had done a great many strange things in his life. Perhaps even now a mysterious packet might arrive some day, a new will be found, or some late movement of repentance. He might even step out from behind a tree in the Ghost's Walk, or out of a dark corner in the library, and explain with a dead voice, sounding far off, what he had done and why. This suppressed imagination made Lilias always charitable to him. Or perhaps she was moved by a kind of fascination and sympathy for one who had made his imagination into something palpable, and built castles in stone as she had done in dreams.

Lewis looked at her very wistfully.

"The princes you entertained would be noble ones," he said, "not only princes for show."

"Oh, how do you know, Mr. Murray? Do you think I am such a – fool? Well! it would be like a fool to dream of that, when there is next to no money at all; you might forgive a child for being so silly, but a woman grown-up, a person that ought to know better – "

He kept looking at her, with a little moisture in his eyes.

"I wish I were a magician," he said; and then, with one of his outbursts of confidence, which, having no previous clue to guide them, nobody understood – "What it would have been," he said, clasping his hands together, "if I had come here two years ago!"

Lilias looked at him with extreme surprise. She thought he had suddenly grown tired, as people so often do, of discussing the desires of others, and had plunged back thus abruptly into his own.

"If you had come here?" she said, with a little wonder. "Has Murkley, then, something to do with you too?"

He did not make her any reply; but, after a while, said, faltering slightly,

"I hope that – Miss Jean – is well. I hope it is not presumption, too much familiarity, to call her so."

"Oh, everybody calls her Miss Jean," said Lilias. "There is no over-familiarity. She is so happy with your music; she plays it half the day, and then she says she is not worthy to play it, that she is not fit to be listened to after you."

"I think," said Lewis, "that there can be no music that she is not worthy to play, not if it were the angel-music straight out of heaven."

"And did you see that, so little as you have known of her?" cried Lilias, gratefully. "Ah, then I can see what she finds in you, for you must be one that can understand. Do you know what Margaret says of Jean? – that she is unspotted from the world."

"And it is true."

The countenance of Lewis grew very serious as he spoke; all its lines settled down into a fixed gravity, yet tenderness. Lilias was altogether bewildered by this expression. He took Jean's praises far too much to heart for a stranger, yet as if they gave him more sadness than pleasure. Why should he be sad because Jean was good? An inclination to laugh came over her, and yet it was cruel to laugh at anything so serious as his face.

"And she has had her patience so tried – oh! dear Jean, how she has had her patience tried, her and Margaret, with me – me to bring-up! I have been such a handful."

Lewis was taken entirely by surprise by this leap from grave to gay. He was taken, as it were, with the tear in his eye, his own mind bent on the solemnest of matters, and she knowing nothing, amused by that too serious aspect, made fun of him openly, turning his pensiveness into laughter! He looked at her almost with alarm, and then he smiled, but went no further.

"It is that he will not laugh at Jean – no, nor anything about her; and what a thing am I to do it!" Lilias cried out within herself, with a revulsion as sudden into self-disgust. And then they both became very grave, and walked along by each other's side in tremendous solemnity, neither saying a word.

"Are you, too, so fond of music?" Lewis asked at length.

Lilias gave him a half-comic look, and put her hands together with a little petition for tolerance.

"It is not my fault," she said, softly. "I have not had time to understand."

Her penitence, her appeal, her odd whisper of excuse disarmed Lewis. His solemnity fled away; he forgot that he was to his own thinking the grave and faithful partner of Miss Jean, assuring himself that he had got in her the noblest woman, and pushing all lighter thoughts aside; and became once more a light-hearted youth by the side of a light-hearted girl in a world all full of love, and mirth, and joyfulness. He laughed and she laughed in the sudden pleasure of this new-found harmony.

"You do not care for it," he said; "you like it to make you dance, not otherwise."

In cold blood this state of mind would have horrified Lewis – in his present condition it seemed a grace the more, a delightful foolishness and ignorance, a defect which was beautiful and sweet.

"I think I should care if I knew better," said Lilias, trying on her part to approach him a little from her side, partly in sympathy, partly in shame of her own imperfection. "And as for dancing," she said, quickly seizing the first means of escape, "I know nothing about it. I have never been at one – I am going to one in a fortnight."

"And so am I," Lewis said.

"I am very glad; but you are different, no doubt. You have lived abroad, where they are always dancing. They have different customs, perhaps, there. It was not intended that I should go to any in the country. We are to spend the next season in London. But I was so silly (I told you I was silly) that I insisted to go, thinking it would be delightful. I don't at all wish to go now," said Lilias, drawing herself up with great dignity.

Lewis had been following all she said with so much devotion that he felt himself suddenly arrested too by this stop in the current of her feelings.

"Is it permitted to ask why?" he said. "I hope not because I am to be there?"

Lilias paused for a moment uncertain; then, "I am glad you are to be there, and I hope that we shall dance together," she said, making him a beautiful, gracious little bow like that of a princess, in her grace and favour according him the boon which he had not yet ventured to ask.

Lewis' hat was off in a moment, and his acknowledgments made with enthusiasm. He thought it the most beautiful and charming departure from the conventional, while she on her side thought it the most natural thing in the world. But at this moment the others turned back upon them in a tempest of laughter. Katie had recounted their recent conversation to Philip, and Philip had received it with all the amusement which became the occasion.

"Lilias," Katie cried, "Philip says he will be frightened to go to his own ball. If you say no to him, he will just sink down through the floor."

"You will never be so hard upon us as all that," said Philip, not quite so bold when he looked at her, but yet with another laugh.

Lilias blushed scarlet; the idea of ridicule was terrible to her as to all young creatures. She looked at them with mingled shame and pride and disdain and fear. Could there be anything more terrible than to be absurd, to be laughed at? She could not speak for a choking in her throat. And Lewis, who had not yet had time to replace his hat upon his head, or to come down to an ordinary level out of his enthusiasm of admiration and pleasure, felt Katie's quick eye upon him, and was discomfited too. But love (if it was love, alas!) sharpened his wits.

"It is a pity," he said, "that I do not understand the pleasantry, that I might laugh too. A stranger is what you call left out in the cold when you make allusions which are local. Pardon me if I do not understand. You are going to the river and the high-road?"

"Oh, not me!" cried Lilias. "Katie, you know I must not go this way; I meant to say so at once, but I did not like to disturb you. Good-bye. I can run home by myself."

"We are all coming," Katie said, somewhat sullenly. She had not meant any harm. A joke against Lilias was no more than a joke against any one else. One must have one's fun, was Katie's principle. But she was not aware of having done anything to call forth that violent and painful blush. Her own confidences were scarcely intended to be sacred, and she did not know the difference between her own easy-going readiness to take and give and the sensitive withdrawal of the other girl, who knew nothing about the noisy criticism of a family. She had intended to make use of the protection afforded by the presence of Lilias, to wander about all the summer afternoon in the woods, and be happy. Why Lewis should have interfered she could not tell. Could he not be happy too without meddling with other folk? Katie turned unwillingly and accompanied her friend along the unsheltered carriage road through the park towards the old castle.

"He had his hat off," she whispered to Philip. "Does he think she's a grand duchess, and that he must speak to her that way? They are just alike with their old-fashioned ways – or, at least, she is high-flown and he is foreign. But don't you tell anybody that, for you see she is angry. She did not mean me to tell it. She will be awfully angry if it goes further. I never thought of that; but, if you tell, I will never speak to you again."

"Toot! it is too good to keep," cried Philip. "There are just two or three fellows – "

"If you tell one of them," cried Katie, exasperated, "I will never, never – and you know I keep my word – speak to you again!"

While she thus made up for her inadvertent fault, Lewis walked slowly, and with a certain solemnity, by Lilias' side towards Murkley. He was suddenly stilled and calmed out of his excitement by the mere act of turning towards the old castle. He said, in a subdued voice, "I will go, if you will permit me, and pay my respects to Miss Jean. It is possible that she might wish for a little music: " which he said with a sigh, feeling in his heart that it was necessary to crush this dangerous sentiment in his heart, to flee from the dangerous bliss and elation that had filled his soul, and to establish himself steadily beyond any doubt in his more sober fate.