"Did you ever hear that a turquoise was lucky and an opal an ill stone?"
Lilias was seated beside her sisters in the drawing-room in the soft
darkness of the summer night. But that there were two lamps lighted,
shining like two dim earth-stars in the large dim room, with its dark
wainscot and faded velvet curtains, you would scarcely have known it
was night. The windows were not closed, and the pale day had not
altogether died. There was still light enough to read by; but Simon
brought in the lamps at a certain hour, without much respect to the
state of the daylight. They lighted up each the circle of the table
on which it stood, but made the rest of the room darker than before.
The three ladies were seated about one of these tables. Jean was
knitting--a piece of work better adapted for this light than her famous
table-cover; Margaret was reading the newspaper. The _Times_ (for
they indulged in the luxury of the _Times_, considered to be rather
an extravagance in these parts) arrived at night, which was a wonder
they were never tired of expatiating upon. "Published in London this
morning, and here in my hands within the twelve hours; it is just a
miracle," Miss Margaret was fond of saying. The large broad-sheet
caught the glow of the lamp, and made a large white space in the
dimness, in the midst of which Margaret's countenance was set. It made
a rustling as she turned it over, and from time to time she read out
a paragraph. The others were not much given to the newspaper. They
heard enough of it from the bits that Miss Margaret read out. Being a
person of very decided and consistent political views, she despised and
detested the politics of her favourite newspaper, and would sometimes
read out a leading article with a string of satirical comments, which,
had Miss Jean known a little more about it, or Lilias taken a greater
degree of interest, would have been amusing. But in neither case did it
tell as it ought. Miss Margaret was used to a want of sympathy in this
respect; but it is to be supposed that in the mere utterance aloud of
her sentiments there was some pleasure, for she continued to express
them without much reference to her audience. Miss Jean threw in a word
now and then, mostly in deprecation.
"No, no, Margaret, I can't think that; the man will just be mistaken,"
she would say, or, "No, no--it's just a matter of opinion."
"Opinion!" Miss Margaret would say. "An idiot might hold the opinion
that white is black--but it takes a dishonest person to say white is
white one day, and black the next."
"Whisht, whisht, Margaret; how can you tell it is the same person?"
Miss Jean would say.
Lilias scarcely took any notice at all. She was at the age when a
young creature can carry on two mental processes at once. She was
thinking all the time, dreaming her dreams, holding all sorts of
dialogues within herself, but at the same time she heard every word and
remembered, and could strike in when it pleased her. All her faculties
were as vivid as youth and life could make them. She missed nothing and
forgot nothing, yet never paid the least attention. To do this is what
we all are capable of in our day.
Lilias sat on the other side of the round table with a box before her
filled with trinkets. There was nothing of any great value in the
little velvet-lined shelves and drawers; they were her mother's girlish
ornaments, and the presents that had been made to herself from time to
time, and the little nothings that gather in an old house, brooches
and bracelets that had belonged to former generations, and which,
found from time to time lying in a drawer, had been handed over with a
"Would you like to have it?" from Margaret, or a pleased exclamation,
"This will just do for Lilias," from Jean. Her mother's diamonds,
which, though they were not very rich or rare, were still diamonds,
were locked up securely for her against the time when she should be old
enough to wear them; but the contents of the box which was now upon the
table had given Lilias far more pleasure than she would ever get from
diamonds. The cornelians and old-fashioned topazes and amethysts, the
twisted chains and necklets and filigree brooches, had been her delight
for years. She had put them upon her dolls when she was a child.
Afterwards it had been one of her great pleasures to arrange and polish
them, and seduce Jean into telling her over and over again the story
of this one and the other. That was old Sir Claude's hair set round
with a mourning border of black and a row of small lustrous pearls: the
topazes? "Oh! I remember them very well; old Aunt Barbara used to wear
them. She was grandpapa's aunt, and she lived to be nearly a hundred. I
remember how I used to wonder--" and so on, and so on.
Lilias had heard all the stories a hundred times, but she liked them
still; they were associated to her with many a cheerful, feverish hour,
and many a delightful, childish convalescence. While Jean knitted her
white fleecy wool and Margaret read her paper, Lilias took out and put
in again the shining little ornaments, caressing them with her slim
fingers. They were her earliest childish property; many of them were
hideous, but she did not like them the worse for that. She had just
taken out a little bracelet set with little turquoises, some of which
had grown green instead of blue with age and neglect. Then it was that
she made the little speech above recorded. "Did you ever hear that a
turquoise was lucky and an opal an ill stone?"
"Not an ill stone," said Miss Jean, who could not bear to hear the
character even of a stone taken away, "it is just beautiful; but it is
a common saying that it brings ill-luck. I do not believe in any such
nonsense. Long ago it had a different character. Dear me, what was the
property it had? Margaret will mind."
"What are you saying about Margaret? What will I mind? You think I have
room for all the trash that can be collected in my poor head, like
Lilias' trinket-box. Opals! they were said to change colour when they
were near poison. But we are in no risk of poison, and I'm not fond of
them. Where did you hear anything about opals, or turquoise either?"
Miss Margaret said.
The question confused Lilias slightly, for it brought vividly before
her the great communication Katie had made to her, and the necessity
for keeping it secret.
"Oh, I did not hear much about them," she said.
"It would be in some story-book," said Miss Jean. "It is just the thing
to be in a story-book. But there is no luckiness or unluckiness in
stones. That is just superstition."
"It is a thing you know nothing about," said Miss Margaret, "nor me
either. We'll wait till we know before we pronounce judgment."
She put down her paper in one hand, so that the light and shade of the
group was a little altered, and she looked keenly at Lilias through her
spectacles. For she had already taken to spectacles, though all her
contemporaries declared it to be affectation. She would have seen her
little sister better without them, but Miss Margaret was of opinion
that they increased the dignity of her appearance, and conveyed an
impression of more penetrating insight. She always put them on when she
had some reproof to make.
"What set Katie talking of jewels?" she said. "She has none, that I
know of."
"Oh, for nothing at all," said Lilias; and then she added, "We were
speaking of rings, and she said what she liked best."
"Which was turquoise? The little cutty, what does she know about such
things? It will be some love-business. I hope her mother knows, or that
good Christian, her father, that they just turn round their little
fingers. But I'll have no talk about lovers here."
"Margaret!" said Miss Jean, with a look of distress. "Oh, I hope you
are not hardening your heart, and judging your neighbours. Little Katie
is a harmless thing. She is no more than a child. I suppose Lilias was
showing her the things in the box. I would give her that bit bracelet,
if I were you, Lily. You will never miss it, and what she wants is just
a little ornament or two. Mrs. Seton takes a great deal of trouble with
her dress. It does her mother great credit, Katie's dress, for they are
far from rich. Since she is fond of turquoises, I would give her the
bracelet: and I think I could find a locket to go with it."
"How kind you are, Jean--even though you don't approve of Katie."
"There is nobody that Jean does not approve of," said Miss Margaret,
"if she thinks she has anything that they would like. As for that
little thing, the best thing they can do with her is to marry her.
She should marry the helper at the Braehead, who, they tell me, will
be assistant and successor, for Mr. Morrison is an old man, and
very frail. It would be a very suitable marriage, just in their own
condition of life, and really a very presentable person."
"Katie does not think he is in their own condition of life."
"Katie is just a--cutty. I have always disliked that in a minister's
family. They look down upon their own kind. Well, there is the young
man that plays the piano. I am not fond of men that give themselves up
to music. The piano is a fine thing for girls that have little to do.
And that's well thought upon--I have not heard you practise, Lilias,
for a whole month."
"I played all my pieces over the day before yesterday," said Lilias,
with a little indignation.
"Oh, Lilias!" cried Miss Jean, putting up her hands, "as if it were
just mechanical, to hear you speak like that."
"I see no harm in what she says," said Miss Margaret. "But when a thing
has been learnt, and cost a good deal of trouble, it should not just
be let down. I was saying that young man who plays the piano. He's a
stranger here. If he has a good profession, or anything to live on,
they might get him for Katie. I would marry her early, if she belonged
to me, which, the Lord be thanked, she does not, nor any of her kind."
"There is no harm in her that I can see," said the gentler sister.
Miss Margaret answered with that monosyllabic sound which it is common
to spell, "Humph," and went back to her newspaper; and then the little
group fell again into soft silence, full of thinkings and dreamings.
Miss Jean, indeed, did not do much beyond counting the stitches of her
knitting. She was capable of refraining even from thought. She had no
harsh conclusions in her mind, nor anything to disturb her. The hours
slid on softly. She was happy to see the others occupied, to have no
jar in the air, nothing to derange the harmony of the gentle silence.
The little oppositions between her sister and herself never came to
any discord. And, as for Lilias, she had begun to occupy herself, with
the pleasure of a child, in stringing some pretty blue Venetian beads,
which it was quite a pleasure to find loose. The girl was delighted
with the task--she threaded them one by one, letting each drop upon the
other with a little tinkle. This made a sort of merry accompaniment
to her thoughts, and, after the foregoing interruption, she took up
those thoughts--if thoughts they can be called--just where she had
left them, and resumed the dialogue she had been carrying on. It was
a dialogue between herself and--the other. He had just saved her life
(for the hundredth time), and she was thanking him, and he, with words
which meant far more than they sounded, was giving her to understand
that for him to save her life was mere selfishness, for what would the
world be without her? It was Katie's communication which had emboldened
Lilias to carry on a conversation like this in the very presence of
her sisters. She indulged generally in it only in snatches, in the
uttermost retirement. Now at the very table sitting with them she
ventured upon it. What would they think if they knew? This gave her
a quiver of laughter and pain and pleasure all together--laughter to
think how little they knew, pain to contemplate the possibility that
they might find out. But in fact that did not come into the bounds of
possibility. Thus the three sisters sat together, and knew just as much
and as little of each other as is common with human folk.
It was about this time that Lewis first came to the house to play to
Miss Jean; but of this Lilias was not supposed to know anything. She
had seen him to be a stranger when they had first met on the road, and
she had perceived, with a mixture of amusement and pique that whereas
he looked with a good deal of curiosity at her sister, her own blue
veil had been a sort of sanctuary for herself. Lilias could not but
think he must be a stupid young man not to have divined. It tickled
her to think that he had passed her quite over and gazed at Margaret
and Jean. But he did not interest her much. Nothing could be more
unlike the fine specimen of manhood over six feet high, with dark eyes
that went to your very soul, who was in the habit most evenings of
saving Lilias' life, than this commonplace young man who never looked
at her. Lewis was not tall; there was not much colour about him. He
did not seem at all like a person who could stop a runaway horse, or
burst through a flaming door, or leap a wall to render instant and
efficient help as that hero had now done so often that Lilias felt a
little variety would be desirable. When she met him again at the new
castle, she was still more amused by his startled look at her, and
by the way in which he permitted Miss Margaret to swoop upon him and
carry him off. There was something amiable, something _nice_ about him,
she thought. He was like a brother. Sometimes in novels the heroine
will have a brother who is completely under her control, who takes his
opinions and views from her, and is useful at last in marrying her
confidant, as well as in backing herself up generally, whatever she
may have to do. It seemed to Lilias that he would do very well for
that _rôle_. She was seized with sudden kindness for him after that
second encounter. And then it amused her much that Margaret thought it
necessary to carry off this mild, colourless, smiling youth out of her
way. From the moment this happened she made up her mind to make his
acquaintance, and it was not in such utter innocence as Jean supposed
that Lilias made that sudden appearance in the drawing-room, cutting
short a proposal upon the very lips of Lewis, and interrupting the high
tension of the situation. The dinner that followed, the startled look
which he had cast upon herself, his silence and bewildered absorption
when he sat opposite to her, and the discomfiture of Margaret, had
all been exceedingly amusing to the young plotter. She meant no harm,
neither to Lewis nor to her sisters. She neither meant to make a
conquest of the stranger, nor to alarm her anxious guardians. She
wanted a little fun. She was a girl full of imagination, full of
poetical attributes: but by times an imperious desire for a little fun
will overwhelm the sagest bosom of eighteen. She could not resist the
impulse. To see the agitation she had caused was delightful. She could
scarcely contain her laugh as she sat down opposite to him and saw his
wondering looks, and perceived the efforts of Miss Margaret to keep his
attention engaged. Lilias had been very demure. She had sat at table
like an innocent little school-girl who thought of nothing but her
lessons. She became conscious after a while that he had once or twice
met her eye when she was off her guard, and probably had caught the
sparkle of malice in it; and then Lilias began to feel guilty, but this
was not till the meal was nearly over, and she had got her amusement
out of it. She disappeared the moment they rose from table, determined
to show Margaret that she meant no harm. And indeed Miss Margaret was
too anxious to put "nothing in her head," to suggest no ideas to the
young mind which she believed so innocent, to say a word as to this
incident. It was quite natural that the child in her guilelessness
should ask the stranger to come to dinner.
"I feel it a reproach on myself," Margaret said. "It's not the habit in
any house of ours to let a visitor go without breaking bread. I did not
do it myself because of a feeling, that is perhaps an unworthy feeling,
that he came of none of the Murrays we know of, and that I'm not fond
of sitting down with a person that might not be just a----"
"Oh, don't say not a gentleman, Margaret," cried Jean. "He might be an
angel to hear him play."
"Ah! well, that might be: an angel is not necessarily----" Miss
Margaret said, with a curious dryness. "But you were quite right,
Lilias. It's what I desire that a creature like you should just do what
is right without thinking of any reason against it."
Margaret's brow had a pucker of care in it even when she said this,
and Lilias felt so guilty that she had nearly fallen on her knees and
confessed her little trick. But to what good? Had she confessed, they
would have thought her far more to blame than she really was; they
would have thought she wanted to make the stranger's acquaintance, or
had some secret inclination towards him, whereas all that she wanted
was fun, a thing as different as night from day.
"This young man was probably saying something to you about himself,"
Miss Margaret said. "Lilias, you may go to your books, and I will
come to you in half-an-hour or so. You have the air of being a little
put about, Jean. I would be glad of your confidence, if you have no
objection. I hope there is nothing that can occur that will come
between you and me."
"Come between you and me!" cried Miss Jean, in astonishment. "I know
nothing that could do that, Margaret; but, dear me! you must mean
something. You would not say a thing like that just merely without any
cause. Confidence!--I have no confidence to give. You know me just as
well as I know myself."
"Is that so?" said the elder sister, looking at her with penetrating
eyes.
"Why should it not be so? There must be something on your mind,
Margaret."
"There is nothing on my mind. No doubt this young man was saying
something to you--about himself."
"I cannot remember what he said," said Miss Jean; and then she uttered
an exclamation of annoyance. "How selfish I am!" she said--"just like
all the rest. We listen to what concerns us, and not a bit to what
concerns another person. Yes, he did tell me something, poor lad, about
settling down here. I was surprised, for what should a young man do
here? and yet you do not like to say a word against it, when it's your
own place. It is like saying you will take no notice of him, or that
there's some reason why he shouldn't come. I was very glad when Lilias
came in; it saved me from making any answer, and I did not know what to
say."
"Dear me!" said Miss Margaret, still suspicious. "It must have been
something out of the common if you were so much at a loss as that."
Jean looked at her for a moment with doubtful eyes.
"If it had been only me, it would have been easy enough," she said. "I
would have said, 'If you settle here, Mr. Murray, we will be very glad
from time to time to see you at the Castle, and if you should be going
to marry, as would be natural, my sisters and me will do what we can to
make the place agreeable to your young lady.' That is what I would have
said if it had been only me; for to play such music as you is given to
few, and my opinion is that nobody but a well-educated person, and one
that was gentle by nature, could ever do it. But when I remembered that
you had not that way of knowing, and were a little suspicious of the
lad that he might be a common person, I was just silenced, and could
not find a word to say."
Margaret had turned away to conceal a certain constraint that was in
her countenance. She waited for a few minutes with her back to her
sister, looking out of the window, before she ventured to speak.
"I am glad he was so modest," she said; "but what would he do settling
here in this quiet little place?"
"That is just what I said," said Jean, all unconscious. "I told him he
would repent. And he really is a most innocent, single-minded youth,
for he said something quite plain about looking to us for society,
which made it more hard for me to give him no encouragement. But I did
not like to take it upon me as you were not there."
Upon this Margaret turned round upon her placid sister with a little
excitement.
"You are old enough to judge for yourself, Jean. You have a good right
to choose for yourself. I'm a woman of strong opinions, I cannot help
it. But you're a gentle creature, and you have a heart as young as
Lilias. Just do what you think best, and don't let anything depend on
me."
Jean looked up with a little surprise at this speech. "I have no
desire," she said, "my dear Margaret, to set up my judgment in that
way. We're one, we're not two, we have always been of the same mind.
Perhaps we will hear something more satisfactory about his family; for
I have a real hope you will take the young man up. He has very nice
manners, and his touch is just extraordinary. It would be such a good
thing for Lilias, too. To see him at the piano is better than many a
lesson. So I hope you will take the best view you can of him. To bring
him to dinner was very startling to me, but it is fine that Lilias has
such a sense of hospitality."
All this Jean said with a manner so entirely undisturbed that
Margaret could not tell what to think. It was she who was abashed and
confused--she who had supposed it possible that her sister could be
moved by the young man's nonsense. Indeed, when she came to think
it over, she felt almost a conviction that it was she herself who
was mistaken. Jean evidently was totally unenlightened in respect to
any intentions he might have. It must have been she who had made the
mistake. She was not fond of acknowledging herself in the wrong, even
to herself, but it was fortunate at least that no one else knew the
delusion she had been under, and still more fortunate that now that
delusion was past.