It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

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 ashet[¹] 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.

[1.] A dish, from the French assiette.

"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."