It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

As for Lilias, she escaped to her room as soon as she had come to herself and realized what had happened. The girl was two or three different creatures in these days. She was a child ready to cry, ready to commit herself on a sudden provocation, and a woman able to stand upon the edge of the new world which she contemplated with an astonished comprehension of its loftiness and greatness, and to meet its higher requirements with a spirit as high. She felt able to judge in her own small person, with an ideal sense of youthful detachment from all sophistications, the greater question, and at the same time unable to bear the smallest contrarieties without a burst of superficial emotion, anger, or despair. Her development was but half accomplished. Nobody understood this, neither did she herself understand it. She escaped from the observation of her sisters with a sense of impatience, which did not for some time deepen into the sense of having betrayed herself. That indeed scarcely came at all. There was so much else to think of. She went to her own room, and threw herself down upon the sofa, with her heart beating and her head throbbing, every pulse sounding, she thought, in her ears in the excitement that possessed her. So that was what he had been doing! Not lingering, as disappointment had begun to picture him, in London among his fine friends, dancing, talking, as if Lilias had never been; but employing his time, his thoughts, in transferring to her his fortune, all he had in the world. Lilias tingled with impatience, with a desire to clench her small fist in his face, as she had done to Margaret, and ask him how dared he, how dared he! While underneath, in her growing soul, there diffused itself that ennobling satisfaction in the consciousness of a nobleness in him, which enables women to bear all the strokes of fate, the loss of their heroes, of their sons, joyful that their beloved have done well. By degrees this higher sentiment swallowed up everything else in her. She sat up, and put back her ravelled hair, and held her head high. There had been an injustice, and, at the cost of everything he had, he had set it right. He had gone beyond all duty, all necessity, and despoiled himself of everything, not, the letter said, "for love, but for justice." She was a girl in love, and it may be supposed would rather have believed that her lover had done something partially wrong for love than altogether right for justice; but those who think so have no knowledge of the ideal of youth. Her heart swelled and rose with this thought. She felt that happiness, that glory of approval which is the very crown of love. The colour came to her cheeks. She jumped up with that elastic bound which was natural to her, and stood in the middle of the room with her head high, smiling at him through the distance and the unknown, approving him. At that moment she felt with pride that the tie between them was not a mere empty liking, a natural attraction towards youth and pleasant qualities, or that still less profound but more enthralling charm of beauty, which so often draws two young creatures together. Lewis had no beauty. There were hundreds of others more gifted than he; but which of them all could have done this, "not for love, but for justice!" She began to go deep into it, this great action, and to set it forth and enhance it to herself in every way. He had but to have come to her, to have spoken to her as he had meant to do (she knew) that evening, when those two nobodies, those two fools, had taken possession of the corner under the palm-trees, and she would have accepted him, and this justice would have been done in a roundabout way, not for justice, but for love. But when it came to the point (oh! yes, oh! yes, it was something more than the foolish couple under the palms) his mind had felt that this was inadequate, he had shut his mouth in spite of himself and given over his hopes, and determined that it must be justice and not love. The other would have been the happier way: all this waiting, and suspense, and the separation, and those lingering days without him would have been spared; but this was the better! Lilias felt herself grow taller, grander, in her approval of everything; he had done what was right, not what was pleasant. The growing weariness, the gathering doubt, the film which had seemed to be rising between them, were all made desirable, noble by this issue. He would not have made her suffer, oh, not a day's suspense, if he could have helped it; but it was inevitable, it was better thus——

And now—Lilias caught her breath a little, and laughed for pleasure, and blushed for shy shamefacedness. She would have liked to write herself, and send him the torn up deed, and say, "What folly! is not thine mine, and mine thine?" but she remembered with a blush that she could not, that it would be "unwomanly," that word with which Margaret had scared her all her life, that she must wait now till he came to set everything right. The waiting brought a little pang with it not altogether to be chased away. "Of course he will come at once," she said to herself. But when there is distance, and separation, and all the chances of the unknown between you and the person whom you love, the "of course" has always a quaver in it. This was all. Her happy excitement, her satisfaction, her triumph in his excellence, would have made her perhaps too confident of every blessedness, but for this one faint note of uncertainty which just trembled through it, and made it perhaps more exquisite, though Lilias did not think so. The waiting, which she thought the only pain in the matter, was the perfume, the flavour of the whole.

Next day, Margaret wrote to Mr. Allenerly the letter above recorded; by the time she did so, her mind had worked out the subject. She had grudged the great match which it had always been on the cards that Lilias might make; but, at all events, it was not a long-leggit lad who had taken her eye, to be a disappointment and vexation to all her future life.

"He is not a fool," she said, "that is a great thing, for a fool is the most unmanageable of all the creatures on this earth; and he has plenty of resources, he will not be on her hands for ever: and he must have a kind nature, or he would never have taken such care of yon old man. And he cannot be much heeding about money for its own sake; and he must have a strong sense of justice. And on the whole, though I have set my face against him, I have always liked him," Margaret said, with a sigh.

"He has just the tenderest heart and the best disposition that ever was," cried Jean.

"Oh! yes, no doubt you will speak well of him: for he is in love with you too," said Margaret.

"Oh! Margaret, that is what I like in him—he has no jealousy, as small creatures have. He is just as fond as he can be of those that like her best. He is in love with us all three."

Upon this Margaret shook her head.

"Not with me—that would be beyond nature—for I have scorned him and denied him."

"Nevertheless," said Miss Jean, with the firmness that necessity had developed in her, "he is in love with us all three."