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.