They walked together very quietly towards the old house. The sound of
the voices of Philip and Katie behind them seemed to save them from the
embarrassment of saying nothing, and it seemed to Lilias that it was
a very friendly silence in which they moved along. The fierceness of
her anger died away from her, though she was still annoyed that Katie
should have betrayed her, and Lilias felt a sort of repose and ease in
the quietness of the young man by her side, who seemed, she thought,
instinctively to respect her sentiment. She gave him credit for a sort
of divination. She said to herself that she had known he would be
kind, that he had such a friendly face, just like a brother. When they
reached the door, she turned round to the others, saying good-bye, to
the discomfiture of both; for Katie had promised her mother to have no
meetings with Philip, and Philip knew that were he seen with Katie his
reception at home would not be cordial. But Lilias confined herself to
this little demonstration of displeasure, and allowed her little friend
to follow her into the coolness of the old hall, which was so strange
a contrast to the blaze of afternoon sunshine out of which they had
come. Lilias led Lewis across to the drawing-room door. She gave him a
smiling look to bid him follow her.
"I think Jean is here," she said; then added, softly, "I would come,
too, to hear the music, but I must speak to Katie; and two of us would
disturb Jean. It will make her more happy if she has it to herself."
Lewis did not make any reply. All the smiling had gone out of his face.
He was glad to be allowed to go alone. He said to himself that he would
have no more trifling, that it was unworthy of the lady whom he was
approaching that he should go to her with regrets. He had no right to
have any regrets, and their existence was a wrong to her. It might be
that the vocabulary of passion was unnecessary at her calm and serious
age, but the most tender respect and devotion she was well worthy of.
It would be a wickedness to go to her with any other feeling. Lewis
rose superior to himself as he went across the hall by the side of
that wonderful creature, who had for the moment transported him out of
himself. Let all that be over for ever. He did not even look at her,
but composed his mind to what was before him, feeling a sudden calm and
strength in the determination to postpone it no longer. Lilias even,
all unsuspicious as she was, felt somehow the gravity that had come
over him, which awakened again a little laughing mischief in her mind.
Was it the music, or was it Jean that made him so serious? but she
restrained the jibe that came to her lips.
Miss Jean was seated, as usual, in one corner of the large room, within
the niche of a deeply recessed window, with her table, her silks, her
piece of work. It was not yet the hour when Margaret retired from
the manifold businesses that employed her. Margaret was not only
housekeeper and instructress. She was the factor, the manager of the
small estate, the farm, everything in one; and the universal occupation
of Margaret had left the more passive sister time to grow ripe in the
patience and sweetness of her less important _rôle_.
"Jean, here is Mr. Murray," said Lilias at the door.
She held it open for him, and stood smiling by as he passed in,
watching the eagerness with which Jean rose to her feet, her little
entanglement in her work, and startled anxiety to welcome her visitor.
"Oh, but I am glad to see you," Miss Jean said, holding out her hand.
"I was afraid you had gone away--and left all that grand music. I was
saying to-day where should I send it after you--but Margaret said you
would never go without saying good-bye."
"I hope you did not think I could," said Lewis.
She smiled upon him with an indulgent look of kindness.
"I am aware," she said, "that young men will sometimes put off
things--and sometimes forget. But I am very glad to see you, Mr.
Murray. And have you had success in your fishing? But, now I remember,
it was not for the fishing you were here--and, dear me, now it comes
back upon me--you were thinking of settling near Murkley?"
Was it mere imagination that her voice was a little hurried and her
manner confused? He thought so, and that she had felt the difference
between the fervour of what he had said to her on his last visit and
the interval he had allowed to elapse before repeating it. As a matter
of fact, Miss Jean had never remarked the fervour, or had not taken it
as having any connection with herself.
"I said then that it would much depend on you," he said.
"On the neighbours, and a friendly welcome--but you are sure of that,"
said Miss Jean. "Nobody but will be glad to see you. I give great
weight myself to the opinion of a whole neighbourhood. It is not easy
to deceive--and there is nobody but what is pleased to hear that you
will stay among us."
"That was not what I meant," Lewis said; and then he made a pause of
_recueillement_ of serious preparation, that it might be made apparent
how much in earnest he was.
But Miss Jean did not understand this: and though she was far too
polite to suggest that, as music was his chief standing ground, he
might as well proceed to that without further preliminary, yet she
could not prevent her eyes from straying towards the piano, with a
look which she was afterwards shocked to think was too significant. He
caught it and answered it with a grave smile.
"After," he said, "as much as you please, as long as you will listen to
me; but there is now something else, which I would say first, if I may."
"Indeed," cried Miss Jean, anxiously, "you must not think me so
ill-bred and unkind. If you are not in the mood for it, I would not
have you think of the music. I am very glad to see you," she added,
lifting her soft eyes to him, "if you should never touch a note. You
must not think I am a person like that, always trying what I can
get--no, no, you must not think that."
"I think you," said Lewis, with a subdued and grave enthusiasm, "one of
the most beautiful spirits in the world."
Miss Jean looked up with a little start of amazement. She looked at
him, and in her surprise blushed, rather with pleasure than with
shamefacedness. Nothing could be further from her mind than any notion
that this was the speech of a lover. She shook her head.
"It is very kind and very bonnie of you to say that. I am fond that
young folk should like my company. It is just one of my weaknesses.
You would not think _that_, perhaps, if you knew me better; but I'm
pleased--pleased to be so well thought of, not because I think it is
true, but because--well, just because it is pleasant, I suppose; and
then it is fine of a young lad like you to be so kind," said Miss Jean,
smiling upon him with a tender approval.
Lewis had heart enough to understand this most delicate of all the
pleasures of being beloved, this approbation and sense of moral beauty
in an affection so disinterested, which filled Miss Jean's virginal
soul with sweetness. Her eyes caressed him as his mother's eyes might
have done, for a mother, too, is doubly happy in the love bestowed upon
her because it is so good, so fine, so seemly in her children. Lewis
understood it, but not at this moment. There was in him something of
the feeling of a desperate adventurer and something of a martyr, and
the curious excitement in his veins gradually rendered him incapable of
perceiving anything but his own purpose, and such response to it as he
might obtain.
"That is not what I mean," he said, clearing his throat, for his voice
had become husky. "It is not anything good in me. It is that I think
you the best, the most good and sweet. I have known no one like you,"
he added, with fervour. Of all things that he had encountered in the
world, it seemed the most difficult to Lewis to make this proposal,
and to speak of something that could be called love to this soft-eyed
woman, looking at him with tender confidence, as if she had been his
mother. How was he to make her understand? It was he who was red and
embarrassed, not she, who suspected nothing, who had no idea in her
mind of any such possibility. Her smile turned into a gentle laugh as
she listened quite attentively and seriously to what he said. She shook
her head, and put up her hand in gentle deprecation.
"No, no," she said, "you must not go too far. I will take a little
flattering from you on the ground that it's friendship and your good
heart, but you must not give me too much, for that would be nonsense.
But since you like me (which gives me so much pleasure), I will be bold
with you, and bid you just play me something," said Miss Jean, "for I
think you are a little put about, and there is nothing like music to
set the heart right; and afterwards you will tell me what the trouble
is."
"It is no trouble," he said. "You look at me so sweetly--will you not
understand me? I am quite lonely--I have nobody to care for me--and
when I came here and saw you, it seemed to me that I was getting into
a haven. But you will not understand! I am of far too little account,
not worth your thinking of," cried Lewis--"too trifling, too young,
if I must say it; but if you could care a little for me, and give me
a right to love you and serve you, it would make me too happy," he
said, his voice faltering, his susceptible soul fully entering into
and feeling the emotion he expressed; "and if it would give you any
pleasure to be the cause of that, and to have somebody near you who
loved you truly, who would do anything in the world to please you----"
Miss Jean sat gazing at him with a bewildered face. Sudden lights
seemed to break over it from time to time, then disappeared in the
blank of wonder and incredulity. She was giving her mind to it with
amazement, with interest, with a kind of consternation, trying to
make out what he meant. One moment there was a panic in her face,
which, however, gave place to the faint wavering of a smile, as if she
represented to herself the impossibility of any meaning that could
alarm her. Her attention was so absorbed in trying to find out what it
was that, when his voice ceased, she made no effort to reply. She drew
a long breath, as people who have been listening to an orator do when
he comes to a pause; but she was so unable to comprehend what he could
be aiming at that she was incapable of speech.
"I would live where you pleased," said Lewis; "I should do what you
pleased. I know enough to fulfil all your wishes, there could be no
failure in that. There is no worthiness in me, and perhaps you will
think me unsuitable, a nobody, too young, too unimportant, that is all
true; but, if devotion could make up for it, the service of my life----"
"Mr. Murray," said Miss Jean at last, interrupting him, putting out her
hand to stop him, "wherefore would you do all this for me? What is it
you are wanting? It must be just my fancy, though I am sure my fancy
was never in that way--but you seem to be making me an offer, to me
that might be your mother. It cannot be that, it is not possible; but
that is what it seems."
"It is so," said poor Lewis, overwhelmed with such a sense of his own
youngness, triflingness, insignificance, as he had never been conscious
of before. "It is so! I want nothing better in this world than that you
should let me love you, and take care of you; and if you would overlook
my deficiencies, and be my----"
"Oh, hush, hush!" cried Miss Jean, her face growing very pale. She
sat for a moment with her hands clasped together, the lines of her
countenance tremulous with emotion, "you must not say that word--oh!
no, you must not say that word. There was a time when it was said to me
by one--that would be gone almost before you were born."
If Lewis had been suddenly struck by a thunderbolt he could not have
been more startled, his whole being seemed arrested; he was silent,
put a stop to, words and thoughts alike. He could do nothing but gaze
at her, astonished, incapable even of thought.
Now whether it was simple instinct, or whether it was a gleam of genius
unknown in her before (and the two things are not much different), Miss
Jean, as soon as she perceived what it meant, which it was so difficult
to do, perceived the way out of it in a moment. Her first words closed
the whole matter as effectually, as completely, as if it had never been.
"You would never hear of that," she said. "How should you? I was but
very young myself; at an age when that is natural. He was a sailor and
a poor man. My father would never hear of it, and perhaps it could not
have been; it is not for me to say. But the Lord had settled that in
His great way, that puts us all to shame. It is my delight and pride,"
said Miss Jean, her soft eyes filling with something that looked like
light rather than tears, "that it was permitted to him to end his days
saving life, and not destroying it. There were seven of them that he
saved. It is a long time ago. You know grief cannot last; it is just
like a weed, it is not a seed of God; but love lasts long, long, just
for ever. There are few people that mind, or ever take thought about
him and me. But just now and then to a kind heart like you, and one
that understands, it comes into my head to tell that old story. You
would scarcely be born," Miss Jean added, with a smile that seemed
to Lewis ineffable, full of the tenderest sweetness. He was entirely
overcome. He had not been used to the restraints which Englishmen make
for themselves. His eyes were full and running over. He leaned forward
to her, listening, with a kind of worship in his face. He had forgotten
all the incongruous folly of his suit as if it had never been, without
being ashamed or wounded, or feeling any obstacle rise up because of
it, between him and her. She had opened her tender heart to him in the
very act of showing that it was closed and sacred for ever and ever.
How long that moment lasted they neither of them knew. But presently
he came to himself, feeling her soft, caressing hand upon his arm and
hearing her say, "You will go and play me something, my bonnie man, and
that will put us all right."
"My bonnie man!"--he had heard the women calling their children so. It
seemed to him the most exquisite expression of motherhood, of tender
meaning and unspeakable distance, that he had ever heard in his life.
He went away like a child to the piano, and sat down there, hushed
and yet happy, his heart quivering with sympathy, and affection, and
ease, and peace; and Miss Jean folded her soft hands in her lap, and
gave herself up to listening, with that look of entire absorption and
content which he thought he had never seen in any other face. The
music wafted her away out of everything troublous and painful, wafted
her feelings to a higher presence, into some ante-chamber where chosen
souls can hear some notes of the songs of the angels. He had played
Beethoven to her and Mozart on the other occasions, now he chose
Handel, filling the silent room with anthems and symphonies of heaven.
He watched her lean back, her eyes growing dim with a silent rapture,
till it became apparent that all the circumstances of common life had
gone from her, and that her soul had lost itself in that world of
exquisite sensation and perfect peace.
This was the end of Lewis's first attempt at wooing. Before he had
done, Miss Margaret came in, who made him a sign to go on, and listened
very respectfully, with great attention and stillness, making not a
movement that could disturb her sister, or the performance. When it was
over, she said it was beautiful, and that he must stay and take a cup
of tea; and presently Lilias and Katie joined the party, two fair young
creatures full of what is considered the poetry of life. Miss Jean had
resumed her table-cover by this time, and sat among her silks, puzzling
a little which to choose, very undecided and vacillating, between a
yellow-brown and an orange red for one of the shades of her carnation.
Lilias and Katie both gave advice which was authoritative, wondering
how there could be any question as to which was the best.
"It is your eyes that are going," Lilias said, in thoughtless
impatience.
"My dear, I suppose it must just be that," said Miss Jean. She was
exactly as she always was, returned into all the little details of her
gentle life, and not one of them was aware into what lofty regions she
had been wandering. She spoke without the slightest embarrassment to
Lewis, and looked up with all her usual kindness, quite matter-of-fact
and ordinary, into his face. "You will not be long of coming back," she
said, with a smile.
He felt too much bewildered to make any reply; the change from that
wonderful interview in which he had been raised from earth to heaven,
in which his heart had beat so high, and his life had hung in the
balance, into the calm scene of the drawing-room with its tea-table,
the lady who said that last thing was just beautiful, and the airy talk
of the girls, was so bewildering that he could not realise it. He had
been obliged to rouse himself up, to act like an ordinary denizen of
the daylight, to laugh and listen even to Katie, as if that strange
episode had never been; but when he went away he went back into it,
and could not think even of Lilias. With what a strange gravity as of
despair he had gone away from the side of Lilias to make this attempt
which he thought honour and good faith made necessary, feeling all
the while that in doing so he was giving up the brighter happiness,
the more natural life, that had been revealed to him. But, after that
interview with Miss Jean, Lilias herself had seemed tame. He did not
wish to stay in her presence, to behold her beauty; he wanted to get
away to think over the strange scene that had passed. He made his
way through the park, not thinking where he was going, as far as New
Murkley, then through the woods to the old quarry and the waterside,
and during all this round he thought of nothing but Miss Jean and her
story, and the way in which she had put him from her without a word
of refusal, without a harsh tone, putting him away, yet bringing him
closer to her very feet. He was refused, and that by a woman who, in
comparison with himself, was an old woman, who permitted him to see
that his suit was as folly to her; that she did not and would not give
it a moment's consideration; and yet he was not affronted nor offended,
nor did he feel the smallest shade of bitterness.
It all seemed astonishing to Lewis. Was it the difference of English
ways and manners, or was it individual? But he could not make it clear
to himself which it was. He walked round by the water-side and into the
village that way, not to distract himself, but to have more time to
think it over. His heart had been so deeply touched that he was still
quivering with its effect. Everything seemed to have changed to him.
He had believed last time he went by this way that his life was to be
spent henceforward in a state of voluntary renunciation. He had meant
to give up all that was warmest and sweetest in it, to content himself
with a subdued and self-restrained well-being. Now all that was over,
the situation changed, and he might hope like any other man to have
what all men coveted. And yet he was not exhilarated. His mind had not
leapt back to the thought of Lilias, as would have been so natural.
Lilias seemed to have faded into the background; he scarcely thought of
her at all. Happiness seemed to have become a thing secondary, almost
an inferior item in the history even of the heart.
The landscape was very still in the afternoon quiet. The children
were all at school, except the funny little parti-coloured group
which belonged to the ferryman, little creatures like chickens, with
lint-white heads and round, red cheeks, who were always on the very
edge of the river, in risk, as it seemed, of their lives, but to whom
nothing ever happened, except an occasional shrill cry of the mother
from the cottage, or deep bass objurgation of the ferryman himself.
They should all have been drowned a dozen times over, but were not. The
big boat was making its way across with a farmer's shandry-dan upon
it, reflected in the clear brown of the rushing water. Just within the
shadow of the high cliff above which was crowned by the tower of the
Stormonts, Lewis saw a fish leap half out of the water, with a gleam
and splash. This sufficed to do what even Lilias had not done, to turn
the current of his thoughts. He had not been able to get back to any
consideration of his changed prospects and regained freedom, but the
flash of the trout struck some accidental chord. With a half-laugh
at the curious importance of this new subject, he crossed the broad
opening of the village street, and went along the bank to Adam's usual
nook opposite the cliff. There Adam was posted, as usual, one foot
advanced to give him a firmer standing ground, his arms thrown high,
a fine athletic image, against the brown water and the green leaves.
Lewis went and stood by him for a time without saying anything. He
felt a certain ease and sense of deliverance in the quiet scene, where
there was enough to occupy the eye and a certain superficial mind,
which occasionally takes the place of the real one, and to make thought
unnecessary. His deeper cogitations dropped like a falling wind, and he
watched with an amused interest the movements so wary, and skilful, the
deep silence, and absorbed excitement of the fisher. It was only when
the trout was landed and Adam took breath, that Lewis ventured to speak.
"That is a fine fellow," he said.
"Nothing to speak of," said Adam, throwing the silvery creature on the
grass, with a certain contempt. "Lord, to think of a' that time wared
upon a brute that will scarce make a mouthful a-piece for twa-three
hungry men!"
"The brute, as you call it, would willingly have let you off."
"Oh, ay, sir, that's true enough. It's just as little sensible o' the
end o' its being as you and me. The creatures o' God are a' alike, so
far as that goes."
"Do you think, then, that the end of its being is that mouthful
a-piece? I would rather think of the river, where no doubt poor Mrs.
Trout and the little ones are expecting your victim home."
Adam shook his head with a short laugh.
"Ceevilization," he said, "stops on the land, Mr. Murray. Thae kind of
regulations gi'e little trouble in the breast of Tay. That's just an
ordinance of Providence, I would say; for, if there was any natural
feeling among the brute creation, every river, and every moor, and a'
the wild places of the earth, would be naething but just a moanin' and
a mournin'."
"That is not a pleasant thought for you slaughterers of your
fellow-creatures. I have my conscience clear," Lewis said with a smile.
Adam looked at him with a mild contempt, but made no remark. Then he
said,
"Did you ever hear the sheep on the hill-sides when their lambs are
ta'en from them? Oh, but yon's heart-breakin'. They're nothing but the
inferior creation, and if they've hearts or no, I canna tell; but it's
certain they have nae souls. For a' that, when I hear thae puir beasts,
nothing will come into my head but just the Scripture itsel', which nae
doubt was made for higher uses. Rachel weepin' for her children, and
would not be comforted. It makes a man silly to hear them--when he has
ony thought."
"There was once a saint in Italy," said Lewis, "that was not of your
opinion about the animals. When he was tired of preaching to men, he
preached to the birds or the fishes. The birds made a great noise one
day in the middle of his sermon to the men, and he stopped and rebuked
them, bidding them be silent till their turn came."
"And what came of that?" said Adam, quickly, looking up with a glance
of interest. He was ashamed of it apparently, for he followed it up
with a low laugh. "He would be one of thae craturs in the Middle Ages,"
he added, in a lower tone.
"The story says that the swallows, and the sparrows, and all the rest
settled upon the roof and among the pinnacles of the cathedral, and
everything was still till the sermon was over."
"And syne they had their turn?" Adam said, with the same low laugh.
He was a little moved by the story. "It's a very bonnie fancy. Burns
might have made a poem about it, if he had ever heard it. He was one
that had a real pitiful heart for dumb creatures too. Do ye mind that,
when he's lying in his bed warm and safe, and hearing the wind brattle
at the windows, and like to take off the roof, 'I think upon the oorie
cattle,' he says. Man, that's come into my head mony's the night! but
the kye and the yowes, they're a kind o' human beasts, and the birds
are like bairns, mair or less; but I canna get ony sentiment about the
trout. There's nae feeling in them. They'll fight for their lives, but
no for one another; and nae sort of sense in them that ever I heard."
"There was another saint that preached to the fishes--but I don't know
the result," said Lewis. "No doubt it was meant to show the people that
these were their fellow-creatures too."
"I like none of your explanations," said Adam, with a half-angry
glance. "If the man that preached to them didna believe in them, he
was just a dreamer, and the swallows would never have bud still for
him, ye may take my word. Na," said Adam, "I'll say nothing about
miracles--but, when there's a real true feeling, that has an awfu'
grand effeck. Just a man that looks in your face, and believes in ye.
That's a kind of inspiration. Bird, or beast, or, waur than ony, a
contradictious human creature--ye'll no escape the power o' that."
Lewis said nothing. His eyes flooded silently with tears. They did not
fall, not because he was ashamed of them, like an ordinary Briton,
but because the emotion in his brain seemed too still for that
demonstration. His heart filled, like his eyes, with a sacred flood of
tenderness. He had not escaped the power of that. It made him sad with
exquisite sympathy, and happy with such a sense of the beauty of truth
and faithfulness, and a constant heart, as in all his life he had had
no comprehension of before.