It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

"There is little occasion for being humbled—if you never do anything less wise——"

"Hold your tongue, sir," she cried; "oh! hold your tongue. It has been a scheme, a plot, a conspiracy from the beginning. I see through it all now. Mr. Allenerly, I beg your pardon. If I am ill-bred to you, it is just that there is more than I can bear!"

"Be as ill-bred as you please, if that is any ease to you; but, Miss Margaret, be just. You are a just woman. Oh! think what you are doing. You are not one to give way to a sudden passion."

"I am just one to give way to passion! What else should I do? Would you have me to take it like a matter of business, or, maybe, thank your friend for his good intentions," she cried, with a laugh of anger. They both belonged to a race and class which forbids such demonstrations of feeling; but righteous wrath is always exempted from the range of those sentiments which are to be kept under control.

While this interview was going on, Lewis was passing through a strange revolution, a sort of volcanic crisis such as had never happened in his life before. He had not been trained to thought, nor was that his tendency. He had all his life taken things as they came: au jour le jour had been his simple philosophy, a maxim which may be the most sublime Christianity or the most reckless folly. In his case it was neither, but rather the easy temperament of a simple nature, always able to reconcile itself to the circumstances of the moment, finding more or less enjoyment in everything that happened, and very little pre-occupied with its own personality at all. A prudent young man would have been concerned as to what was to happen to him after Sir Patrick's death, when his luxurious home would be broken up, and he himself, without profession or property, thrown upon the world; but Lewis had given the matter no thought at all, with an easy confidence of always finding bread and kindness, which both the circumstances of his life and the disposition of his friends had fostered. Afterwards, when he found himself Sir Patrick's heir and a man of fortune, he accepted that too with surprise, but an easy reconciliation of all confused matters, which, had he contemplated the subject in all its lights, would have been impossible. It was only by degrees that he woke to the other side of the question, the position of the despoiled heirs. Then, the reader of this history is aware, his resolution had been uncompromising. He had not thought of his own satisfaction at all. Having come to the decision that Sir Patrick's heiress, or at least one of Sir Patrick's heiresses, should have back the inheritance in the only way that occurred to him as practicable, he had set about it at once in the most straightforward manner possible. He had been ready to subordinate his own feelings, to consider only the question of duty. In every way that had seemed possible to him he had pursued this object. When it happened, in pursuit of this duty, that love stepped in, dazzling and bewildering, yet intensifying to the highest degree his previous purpose, it had been a boon from heaven, a blessing upon that purpose rather than a new object. It seemed to him another proof that he was born under a happy star, that the one woman in the world whom he desired to marry should also be the one in the world with whom it was his duty to share everything that was his. It was this that made all methods seem lawful to him, and had stirred him to the intention, which was contrary to all his prejudices, of obtaining, if possible, her assent to his suit, without the previous knowledge or even against the wish of her family—the English way—the way that Philip Stormont and Katie Seton, and indeed everybody about, thought legitimate. But now for the first time Lewis had been driven out of his easy philosophy. Mr. Allenerly's stern conception of honour, the new light upon the whole subject that had been thrown by the lawyer's lantern, had found those openings in the young man's mind which a new and deeper sentiment than any he had ever known had opened in him. The natural affections may be ever so warm and lovely without startling the soul into any new awakening. Full of friendship, full of kindness, he had been all his life more prone to serve and help than even to enjoy: but when a great primary passion, one of the elementary principles of life, goes down into the depths of innocent nature the effect is different. It is like the Divine life, when that enters into a soul, bringing not peace but a sword.

The year which had elapsed since he left Murkley had been a period of chaos and doubt. He had been without any ray of distinct guidance, looking vaguely to the chances of the future. Since he came to town and had seen Lilias again, his whole mind had been occupied in her service, in devising means for her entertainment and success, but also in securing opportunities for himself, and in conspiring with everybody who knew him, and would help him, for the glorification of his heroine. And in fact, during the most of this period, simple love had carried him away on its current. He had thought of no rational obstacles or difficulties, but only of herself. Her looks, her words, the way in which she took his arm, a glance surprised in the course of an evening, had occupied him to the complete exclusion of everything else. The approach of the critical moment when all must be decided had raised the whole being of Lewis into an atmosphere of passion. The crisis affected his mind as well as his feelings, and quickened his intelligence as it developed his heart. When that clear, cold lantern of good sense in Mr. Allenerly's hand flashed upon the confused scene, the light effected in an instant what previous months had not effected. He began to see that his own easy way was impossible. It would have been so much happier, so much less complicated! but it was impossible. He could not even, as has been seen, when the moment came, attempt to solve everything in that easy way. Sailing over the surface would do no longer. He had to go down into the heart of things, to question the depths, and see what answer was in them. He began to ask himself what was the question which he had skimmed over from the beginning, which he had so often attempted to settle by natural compromises, by pleasant expedients, as was his nature? When self is imperious in such a nature, necessity brings forth treachery and guile. But to Lewis self was never in the foreground, even in love, where self-will has a kind of justification, and indulgence has an air of duty; it was not his nature to put it forward, and truth was dear to him wherever he saw it. He began to think, almost for the first time in his life.

And the first result of this process is seldom a pleasant one. When he had put the ladies into their carriage on that last night, or rather morning—for the dawn was blue in the streets, and London was coming slowly into sight out of the darkness, with lamps burning unearthly in a light far more potent than theirs—Lewis put his hat on his head, and set out on a wonderful walk, which he remembered all his life. The market carts, all fresh and alive, and somewhat chilly with their start before the day; the carriages, with a jaded air, horses and people alike, white bundles of drapery huddled up within them, and their lamps flickering like impish eyes; the houses all asleep in long blank lines, closed to every influence; the Park lying dewy and still, without a speck of life upon it, gave a kind of unnatural background, familiar yet strange to his thoughts. It might have been the extraordinary character of these thoughts that had thus altered the aspect of the visible world, in itself so well known. He assisted at the spectacle of the great city's awaking, as he walked on and on; the parks always lying in the midst of the scene, shut up, and silent, and inaccessible, the early sun sweeping over them unbroken by any human shadow, in the midst of the growing life and motion, like a haven which was not to be attained, the always possible Eden, open to the longing vision, but guarded from the eager step, which tantalizes most existences. His mind got only more confused, a greater whirl of imperfect thinking was about him as he hurried along, receiving all these external objects distractedly into the ferment of his brain. It was full day, nearly six o'clock, when he got home, and threw himself on his bed unnaturally in the sunshine. But it was not to sleep. Thinking was so new a process to Lewis that he felt as if some new jarring machinery had been set up in his brain, and the whirl of the unaccustomed wheels made him giddy, and took away all consciousness of mental progress. He seemed to be in the same place, beating a painful round, with the whirl and the movement and confusion, but nothing else, in his bewildered brain. He must have slept, though he was scarcely aware of it, late into the morning. But when he was disturbed by the entrance of his servant, and sprang up suddenly into full consciousness and life, the first flash of self-recollection revealed to him a resolution formed and perfect. Where had it come from? Had the wheels been working while he slept, and ground it out? had something above earth whispered it to him out of the unseen? He was almost afraid, when he saw it looking him, as it were, in the face, a something separate from himself, a definite thing, resolved and certain. It was not there when he had come in; where had it come from? He sprang up into the consciousness of a new world, a new life, a changed order of things, as well as a new day.

When Mr. Allenerly came in about an hour after, Lewis met him with a pale and somewhat jaded aspect not inappropriate to a man who had been up all night, the lawyer thought, but also subdued and grave as of one whose reflections had not been of a happy kind. The lawyer came in, himself very serious, with the painful sense that his mission was to quash all the hopes and make an end of all the plans which the other had been making himself happy in forming. He sat down at the table on which Lewis' breakfast stood untouched, without a word. The sight of this partly reduced his sympathy for Lewis, for there was an air of dissipation about it which displeased his orderly mind. Perhaps, notwithstanding all the advantages of the arrangement, a young man who had not breakfasted at twelve o'clock was scarcely a fit husband for Lilias Murray, or one in whose hands her happiness would be sure. He sat down and looked at Lewis with a disapproving eye.

"You are very late," he said. "I will soon be thinking of my lunch; but I suppose you were up till all the hours of the night."

"I don't think I have slept at all," said Lewis, "I have been thinking. Stop and hear me first. I know by your face what you are going to say. But that has nothing to do with what I have made up my mind to. One way or other, it could have nothing to do with it. Our talk yesterday turned me all outside in. I never had thought it over from the beginning to the end before."