"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.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
It was curious how the aspect of everything had changed to Lewis when he walked up the now familiar way to the old Castle of Murkley through the sunshine of the July afternoon. It was still full summer, but there seemed to him a cloud in the air—a cloud too subtle to show upon the brightness of the unsympathetic blue, but which indicated storm and change. The trees were almost black in the fulness of their leafage, dark green, no tender tints of spring lingering among them, as there had still been when he first came to the little village on the river-side, and first saw those turrets sheltered among the trees. What a difference since then! The unknown, with all its suggestions, had disappeared; he was aware what he was likely to meet round every corner. But the excitement of a life in suspense had only been intensified. When he came to Murkley, with the virtuous intention of bestowing himself and his fortune upon one of old Sir Patrick's disinherited granddaughters, there had been no very entrancing expectations in his mind. He had not thought of falling in love, but of accomplishing his duty. That duty he would have been happy to accomplish under the gentle auspices of Miss Jean. He would never have grumbled at the twilight life he should have spent with her; no such radiant vision as Lilias had ever flitted across his imagination, nor had he expected, in case his suit should be rejected (a possibility which at first, indeed, he had not taken into account), to return with anything less agreeable than that calm sense of having done his duty which consoles a man for most small disappointments. But now all this was changed. In the case he had supposed beforehand, a refusal would have been an emancipation. He would have felt that he had done all he could, and was now free to enjoy unfettered what he had felt the justice of sharing, should they please, with one of the natural heirs. But Lewis felt now that the whole question had been opened, and did not know where he might find himself, or what he might feel to be his duty if he failed now. It had been easy to put all that aside when he knew that Lilias was near him, that he had the same chance as all her countrymen, and was free to speak to her, to exercise what charms he might possess. Every decision was stopped naturally, every calculation, even, until it appeared whether in this supreme quest he might have good fortune. But when she should be gone, what would happen? When she should be gone, the glory would be gone out of everything. Murkley would turn into a dull little village, full of limited rural people, and his own life would appear as it was, a mere exotic, without meaning or rule. There was a meaning in it now, but then there would be none.
He walked up the village-street with that suddenly elongated countenance, feeling that everything was crumbling about him. The children with their lintwhite locks, the fowls sheltering beneath the old cart turned up on the roadside, the slow, lumbering figures moving about across the fields and dusty roads, struck him for the first time with a sense of remoteness. What had he to do among them? It was impossible to imagine anything more entirely unlike the previous tenor of his life, and if he failed—if he did not succeed in the suit which, as soon as he thought of it, seemed to him preposterous, what would his life become? Whatever it was, it would be very different from Murkley, and any existence that was possible there. Accordingly it was not only his love that might be disappointed, but his life, which probably would entirely change. Very few men have this to contemplate when they think of putting their fortune to the touch, unless it is those men who take up marriage as a profession, a class fortunately very few.
The ladies were all in, Simon said. He had made an alteration in his appearance which revealed a high sense of the appropriate. He had an apron upon his person, and several straws at his feet, which he stooped to pick up.
"You'll excuse us, sir, if we're not just in our ordinary," Simon said. "You see we're packing." A hope that he would be the first to tell it, and that explanations might be demanded from him, gave vivacity to Simon's looks. But he relapsed into gravity when Lewis, with that long face, gravely replied that he was very sorry, and that it must have been a sudden resolution. "Things is mostly sudden, sir," said Simon, with a dignified sense of superiority, "in a lady's house. Miss Jean is in the drawing-room, but Miss Margaret is up the stair."
Lewis stood, with his heart beating, under the old man's calm inspection.