It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

"Gone! Why, I was to go with them. Are you sure they are gone?" he said, with a dismay that was almost ludicrous. When he perceived Lewis a little way off, he hurried up to him. "Do you understand anything about this?" he said, with a sense of injured antagonism to everybody who could be supposed to be in the ladies' confidence. There had always been a jealous feeling in his mind in respect to Lewis, whose constant presence at all the fine places of which Lilias spoke, to which he himself had no way of procuring admittance, had given him a feasible ground of complaint. But a common grievance is a great bond. When Lewis had declared his ignorance, in a tone from which even his insensibility to further pain could not take a certain pathos, Philip, in the excitement of his feelings, obliged to talk to some one, seized upon his arm, and poured out his heart.

"They just play with a man," he cried, "these women! They don't care a bit what they do to you, so long as it doesn't touch themselves. I was to go with them. It was all settled. Our way was the same, as far as the railway goes—as far as the water-side, for that matter; for you remember how near we are. And here they are, off without a word, without a single word! not so much as to say, 'We are going sooner than we thought,' or anything like that—but no, not a word! I was coming to ask where I was to meet them, and if I should take the tickets, and so forth."

Lewis did his best to dissipate the victim's dilemma. He suggested a sudden change in their plans, a lost message, a mistake of one kind or another, till Philip was somewhat mollified. But in his heart he was not displeased to see another man suffer. That the ladies had been agitated by the revelation made to them, and had changed their plans, and forgotten their secondary engagements in consequence, soothed him and gave him a faint sensation of pleasure. Besides, it is never disagreeable to one man, whose heart is devoted to a certain woman, to see another man left in the lurch. So far as he was able to enjoy at all, Lewis enjoyed it, and this made him very amiable to the other, who was certainly not a successful rival, or likely to be so. He who had affected their minds so much as to make them alter all their arrangements at the last moment had no reason to be uncharitable to the man whose very existence they had evidently forgotten. And Philip, in his ignorance, took refuge in the sympathy of Lewis. He had not seen him much in the company of Lilias; they had revolved in different spheres, and had rarely come in contact, and, so far as Philip knew, Lewis was little more than an acquaintance of the ladies, who never invited him, and seldom talked of him. He had forgotten by this time the position of companion to Lilias which Katie and he had thrust upon the stranger at Murkley. All that stage of existence had faded away from Philip's thoughts.

"You see," he said, thrusting his arm through that of his sympathetic friend, "I came here at first with no will of mine. A man should be left free one way or other. If the mother is to have so much say as my mother has, the son should be free to go where he likes, and make his own way; but, as it is, I am neither laird nor loon, if you understand what that means. I have the name of being independent; but, if my mother were to take away her share and leave me with that house to keep up, where would I be? So I have to be guided by her in many ways, whether I will or not."

"I do not suppose that she is very hard to please," said Lewis, politely.

"Oh, I don't know about that! She has always had her own way, and she likes it. So do I, for that matter. But, you see, for years past there has never been but a craik about Lilias Murray. She was the only girl my mother would ever hear of: our lands march; and then the Murrays are a great family, and then——"

"Do you think it is right to talk of things so private to me?"

"Oh, you!—you are just the person to talk to them about. You are a stranger, you are an outsider; it cannot be any concern of yours. And then you know what an ass I made of myself last year," Philip said, reddening, and with an embarrassed laugh.

"I do not know about the ass," said Lewis, gravely; "I know—what was happening last year."

"Well, it comes to the same thing, you know. My mother would not hear of that——It is all very well for a fellow like you, that are independent, that never needs to think of pleasing anybody but yourself. But I can do nothing without my mother. As for marrying or that sort of thing, it would be out of the question. If she gave me up, I should be as poor as a church-mouse: so I am obliged to mind what she says. And then, if truth must be told, I got just a little tired of the affair itself."