He left the room, and, in a few minutes, the house, and I saw him go down the water whistling a merry tune, and pausing now and then to look round upon those peaceful home scenes, which his presence now desecrated to me. Murrayshaugh was in the opposite direction. I hurried along towards it under the trees, with an instinctive desire to see Lucy, and, unseen myself, to carry at least one sympathetic heart to her vicinity. It was a superstition of its kind. I had no thought of that—it was an instinct with me.
And there she certainly was upon the terrace, with her soft light plaid about her head, and her figure gliding strangely through shadows of the trees, and of the quaint, fantastic gables of the house, which the light of a young moon threw faintly on the ground at her feet. I saw her threading the maze of these, as she moved like a spirit upon the mossy garden path, and I began to fancy in the bitterness of my heart that it was thus with us all; that those shadowy unreal forms of ours were but wandering blindly through a shadowy world of pains and sorrows, which if it were not all false, was yet involved in a miserable twilight, where one knew not what was false and what was true.
The old decaying house, with its marks of gradual downfal and lingering sorrowful pride, and the one faint light in the window of the library where sat its aged possessor struggling with a young man’s strength of haughty resistance against the slow ruin that was gliding upon him like a thundercloud. The low cadence of those rustling willows, wooing the answering murmur of the water—the silence of the waning evening, made sadder and more spirit-like by the wan young moon, which gave to its dimness a spectral light and shadow—and Lucy Murray in her early youth, with not one heart that could or dared stand by her in her need, wandering among those shades, with the dark sky above, in the dim world, alone! I hurried away again. I could not look upon her.
CHAPTER VI.
Alas!
I do confess I thought all hearts were true,
As I did see the whole bright world—how fair!
For linked in happy fancies were the twain—
This beautiful—that pure—
And like the mountains of this noble land
Did Love and Faith and Honour stedfastly
Lift their high heads to the bright sun that crowned them,
As I thought, in my sight.
I do confess me—if it was a sin,
Behold these tears—for bitterly awaking,
I found I had but dreamed.
The parlour of Greenshaw was exceedingly bright when I entered it that night—brighter in reality, for they were rejoicing over Walter’s return—and brighter still in contrast with the scene I had left.
“Here he is at last,” cried Walter Johnstone, starting up to shake hands with me as I entered. “Why, have you been seeing ghosts, Adam? One would think that we were the rustics and he the townsman, Charlie.”
“You were always a contemplative man, Mossgray,” said Edward Maxwell, greeting me warmly; “but take care—if you do not tremble for the consequences of a prescription from me, I do, I can tell you.”
Edward’s manner was more manly than usual. In my yearning for something to make up for the fatal loss I had sustained, I caught at this eagerly. Perhaps I had neglected him hitherto. I resolved to do so no longer.
I tried to seat myself so as to shut out Charlie from the light of that countenance, which made me forget even his unworthiness. I grudged him the slightest word from Lilias—I fancied how the pure soul within her would withdraw itself in lofty indignation, did she know him as I did.