Miss Jean returned to her work after tea. It was her time for taking
her walk, either with her sister, if Margaret had any inclination that
way, or by herself, in the contemplative stillness of the Ghost's Walk.
But this afternoon she sat still over that carnation which was never
ending, with its many little leaves and gradations of colour; the
carnation in the glass which she was copying had twice been removed,
and perhaps it was the little apology with which she thought it
necessary to account for her departure from her usual habit of taking a
little relaxation at this time of the day, that aroused Miss Margaret's
suspicion.
"I think I must just finish this flower. I have been a terrible time at
it," Miss Jean said.
"Ye may well say that," said her sister; "it will never be done. You
will come back and work at it to frighten Lilias' grandchildren after
we are all in our graves."
"I will never do that," said Miss Jean firmly, "whatever I may do."
"There is no telling," said Miss Margaret. "I have often thought, if
there were any ghosts, that a poor thing in that condition might just
wander back to its old dwelling and hover about its old ways, without a
thought that it might be a terror to those that behold it. It would not
be easy to conceive that kindly folk in your house would be frightened
at you."
"But, Margaret, how would a blessed existence that had passed into the
heavens themselves come back to hover about earthly howffs and haunts?
Oh, no, I cannot think that. To do a service or to give a warning,
you could well understand; but just to wander about and frighten the
innocent----"
"It is not a subject I have studied," said Miss Margaret, "though
there's Lady Jean out there in the walk has had a weary time of it,
summer and winter, if all tales be true. The music this afternoon must
have been very moving, and you and your musician, you have grown great
friends. I would have said you had both been greeting, if there could
be any possible reason for it."
Jean's head was bent over her work, but Margaret kept her keen eyes
fixed upon her. It was not a look which it was easy to ignore.
"It was Handel," said Miss Jean, softly; "there are some parts that
would just wile your heart out of your breast, and some that are like
the thunder rolling and the great winds. Friends, did you say? Oh, yes,
we are great friends; and we were greeting together, though you may
wonder, Margaret. He was telling me of his own affairs: and somehow,
before ever I knew, I found that I was telling him about mine: and we
both shed tears, I will not deny, he for my trouble, I am thinking, and
me partly for his."
"And what was his, if one might ask?" Miss Margaret said.
"Mostly the troubles of a young spirit that has not learned to measure
the world like you and me, Margaret, and that has little sense of what
is out of his reach and what is in. And me, I was such an old haverel
that I could not keep myself to myself, but just comforted him with
telling him. He is a fine lad, Margaret; I never saw one that was more
ready to feel."
"More ready, perhaps, than was wanted," cried Margaret, who could not
divest herself of a little indignation and alarm.
"It's not easy to be too ready with your sympathy," said her sister,
mildly. "Few folk are that."
Margaret was silent, wondering much what had passed. She stood at
the window pretending to look out. She was perhaps a little jealous
of the love of her life's companion. Had she known nothing of Lewis'
intentions, there was indeed no indication to warn her that Jean's calm
had been thus disturbed. She had expected some flutter in her sister's
gentle spirit. She had expected perhaps a little anger, a few tears,
or, what would have been worse, an exaggerated pity for the young
man, and a flattered sense of power on Jean's part. Not one of these
sentiments was visible in her. An anxious eye could see some traces of
emotion: and that she had been much moved was certain, or she would
not have "comforted him by telling him," as she had said. Margaret,
who was excited and uneasy, was almost jealous that, even by way of
crushing this young man's presumptuous hopes, Jean should so far have
admitted him into her confidence as to tell him her own story; even
that was a great deal too much.
"I would like to know," she said, "what right a strange lad could have,
that is not a drop's blood to us, to come with his stories to you?"
"Poor callant!" said Miss Jean, "he has no mother. It was perhaps that,
Margaret."
"Was he looking for a mother in you?" cried Margaret, sharply. If she
had detected a blush, a smile, a movement of womanly vanity still
lingering, there is no telling what Miss Margaret would have been
capable of. But Jean worked on at her carnation in her tremulous calm,
and made no sign. Perhaps it was the last sublimated essence of that
womanly vanity which made her so tender of the young intruder. She
would not hand him over to ridicule any more than to indignation. It
was perhaps the first secret she had ever kept from Margaret; but then
it was his secret, and not hers.
"He did not just say that, or perhaps think it," said Miss Jean; "he
may have thought I would be affronted, being a single person: but that
was what he meant."
"I hope you will never encourage such folly," said Margaret. "It is a
thing that always ends in trouble. You are not old enough to be a man's
mother, and it is very unbecoming; it is even not--delicate. You, that
have been all your life like the very snowdrift, Jean!"
Jean raised her mild eyes to her sister. They were more luminous than
usual with the tears that had been in them. There was a look of gentle
wonder in their depths. The accusation took her entirely by surprise,
but she did not say anything in her own defence. If there was any
reproach in the look, it was of the gentlest kind. It was perhaps the
first time in her life that Jean felt herself Margaret's superior. But
she did not take any pleasure in her triumph. As for Margaret, her
suspicion or temper could not bear that look. She stamped her foot
suddenly on the floor with a quick cry.
"I am just a fool!" she said, turning all her weapons against herself
in a moment--"just a fool! There's not another word to say."
"You were never that, Margaret."
"I have just been _that_ all my life, and I will be so to my dying
day!" cried Margaret, vehemently; and then she laughed, but not at her
own want of grammar, of which she was unconscious. "And you are just a
gowk too," she added, in her more usual tone.
"That may very well be, Margaret," said Miss Jean, returning to her
carnation; and not a word more was said between the sisters of this
curious incident.
But it was a long time before Margaret dismissed it from her mind. She
watched Jean and all her movements, with many attempts to discover
what effect had been produced upon her. But Jean went about her gentle
occupations just as usual. The one departure from her customary
routine was the omission of that evening walk. No doubt such a thing
had happened before without attracting any notice; and if she were
more still and silent than usual during the evening, where could there
be a more natural explanation of that than in the fact which she had
confessed that she had told her own story to her visitor? Not for
nothing are those doors of the past opened. However entirely the sorrow
that is long over may dwell in the mind, there is an agitation, a
renewal of the first acuteness of the pain in the retelling of it. Miss
Margaret said all this to herself, and fully accounted for any little
change which her keen inspection found out in the demeanour of her
sister; but, indeed, had it not been for that close watch, there was no
change. She had not been disturbed in the calm of her spirit--perhaps
she had not quite realised what Lewis meant. Afterwards it was certain,
when she thought it over, she rejected altogether the hypothesis which
had been forced upon her by his words, and said to herself that she
must have taken him up altogether wrong. What motive could he have
in speaking so to her? She was old, she was without money or any
recommendation, and it was not as if he had known her long, to grow
fond of her, as will happen sometimes without thought or premeditation
on either side. She thought to herself that it was very fortunate she
had not been betrayed into any expression that could have shown her
mistake, for it must have been a mistake. And how fortunate that it had
blown over so easily, for they were better friends than ever, and the
sweet-hearted lad had wept actual tears for her trouble. The Lord bless
him for it! Miss Jean said, with gratitude and tender pleasure. And
then she fell to thinking how wonderful it was that you will sometimes
unbar your secret heart to a stranger when you could not do it to those
you see every day. How strange that was, with a confusing sort of sense
in it, that in the dimness of this world, where you can only see the
outside, those that were made to be the dearest of friends might never
find each other out. But that was too deep a thought for Miss Jean,
who returned to her carnation, and worked away a bit of musing into it
in little broken half-suggestions, which never made themselves into
words, but which made her life far more full and sweet, as she sat
there and patiently worked the silken flowers into a piece of stuff not
half worth the trouble--than anyone knew or suspected. Margaret would
be a little impatient of its long duration sometimes, and even of the
stooping of Jean's head, as she sat against the light in the window,
with her basket of silks and the carnation in the glass.
This episode, however, was lost in the stir of the preparations for
Lilias' first appearance in the world. Needless to say that no idea
of the possibility of any incident in which she herself was not the
central figure ever crossed the mind of Lilias. Her sisters were
her guardians, the chief upholders of the little world of which she
herself was the interest and living centre. That anything apart from
herself should happen to them was as impossible as that everything
should not happen to her, standing as she did upon the threshold of
life. A natural conviction so undoubting would have closed her eyes
even if there had been anything to see; and there was nothing, save in
Miss Margaret's anxious fancy. She was the one of the party who was
disturbed by the visit of Lewis. When he came back, as he did very
soon, it is impossible to describe the restless anxiety of Margaret.
She would have liked to see from some coign of vantage what they were
doing; she would have liked to overhear their talk. Her impatience was
almost irrestrainable while she sat and listened to Lilias reading.
What was Queen Elizabeth to her? It was right, no doubt, that the child
should be brought up in right views. But what if in the mean time all
that mysterious scene which had passed downstairs out of her knowledge
should be gone over again, and Jean, always too gentle, be this time
over-persuaded? So restless did she become that Lilias at last paused
in her reading.
"You are tired, Margaret; you are anxious about something. What is it?"
the girl said.
"Me--anxious--what should I be anxious about? I am thinking of your
dress, if it was right to have it silk--muslin would have been better
at your age; and then there is Jean no doubt just taigled with that
young lad, and not able to get him off her hands."
"Oh, as for Jean, do you not hear the piano, Margaret? You may be sure
she is perfectly happy: for, you know, Mr. Murray is a great performer.
Mrs. Seton says so, and she knows about music."
"I am sick of Mrs. Seton and her great performers. Murray! who knows
even if he is a Murray? He cannot tell who he belongs to. If he was
come of any Murray that has ever been heard tell of, he would know
that----"
"I daresay," said Lilias, boldly, "there are a great many Murrays, very
nice people, that have never been heard tell of----"
"Lilias!" said her sister, in dismay. "It is a great deal you can know
about it," she added, with a somewhat angry laugh. Her mind was more
easy when she heard the piano. Nothing of importance could be talked
about while it went on in full force.
"I don't know very much, Margaret; but everybody is allowed to think,"
said the girl; "and old families, like old clothes, most surely wear
out. I am not sure that it is such an advantage to be old. If I were a
new man, I think I would be proud of it. It would be all my own doing;
or, if I were a new man's daughter, it would be grand to think that it
was all from my father, him and nobody else. That would be something to
be proud about."
"Money," Margaret said, laconically, and with an accent of disdain.
"Money! Oh, but I did not mean money."
"Do you know what you meant?" said Miss Margaret, scornfully. "What
does a new man, as you call it, make but money? For honours, you must
have time and opportunity. In these days it is a quack medicine, or a
new invention for taking work out of poor men's hands, or the grand
art of selling water for milk, and carrion for meat, and the sweepings
of the house for honest cloth. It's that that makes a new man; and it
would be a great credit and honour, no doubt, to be his daughter."
"Margaret, you know that is not what I meant," cried Lilias,
indignant. "I was not thinking of the people that are only rich. I was
thinking----"
"I well understand that you know nothing about it; and how should you?
But one thing of this age is that the babes and sucklings just think
themselves as wise as Solomon in all his glory. I cannot hear if that
piano is aye bumming. Bless me, what a waste for a young man that might
be on the hill-side--or he might be in the colonies making corn grow
for the good of man--or taming down the savages in Africa."
"He could not be on the hill-side, if you mean shooting, Margaret, for
you forget it's only July----"
"He might be doing many better things than sitting at a piano at his
age, deluding an old maid."
"Margaret!" cried Lilias, springing up with flashing eyes. "Is it my
Jean you are calling _that_?"
"Well! and what else is she? or me, either, for that matter. Just two
old maids: and, for anything we know, you may be a third yourself, more
likely than not, unless you take the first that offers--which was what
neither her nor me were allowed to do."
"I will never take the first that offers," cried Lilias, indignantly.
"What is the matter with you, Margaret? Music is always called such a
fine thing in books. If we do not care for it, perhaps it is our fault;
and Jean is so fond of it, which shows it must be good."
There had been a lull in the sound of the piano which had called forth
Margaret's outburst. She was more charitable as it went on.
"If you are going to read your book, Lilias," she said, "go on with it:
but, if you are going to argue, just put the other away first. For my
part, I think it is about time for the tea."
And when she went downstairs everything was re-assuring. The music was
tranquil, and Miss Jean quite calm, not even excited and ecstatic,
as she had been on previous occasions. The perfect composure of the
atmosphere smoothed Miss Margaret down in a moment, and, as so often
happens after a false alarm, she was more gracious, more gay than usual
in the relief of her mind.
"Jean," she said, "you must mind that Mr. Murray is a young man, and
wants diversion--not to be kept close to a piano on a bonnie summer
afternoon, when everybody that can be out, is out, and enjoying this
grand weather. I would not say but what music was a great diversion
too--but we are old, and he is young."
"I have had my fill of sunshine," said Lewis, "and sketched everything
there is to sketch within a mile or two. And I have no piano. I hope
you are not going now to turn me away."
"So you sketch too? Yes, I heard it before no doubt, but I had
forgotten. You are a very accomplished young man. In our day, it was
the young ladies that learned all that; the boys were packed away into
the Army, or the Navy, or to India, and never had any time. It was the
girls of a family----"
"But oh, Margaret! if you will think what kind of music and drawing
it was! 'Rousseau's Dream' upon the piano, and a painted flower upon
cardboard. I think shame when you speak of it. A real musician, and a
true artist, is very different----"
"I don't merit those fine titles," said Lewis, with a laugh. "I
understand what Miss Margaret means. The thing to do for me is to turn
me loose upon New Murkley, and let me decorate those great rooms. I
have a little turn that way. I have seen the great palaces of that
architecture, and I have studied. I should be no more idle, if you
would permit me to do that."
"Decorate the rooms! But that would be worse still than being idle,"
said Margaret. "For it would be work for no use. If no miracle happens
to the family, so far as I can see, Lilias will just have to pull down
that fool's palace, or sell it, one or the other. You need not cry out.
What would you do with it, you silly thing, with no money to keep it
up?"
"I will never sell it," cried Lilias, with flashing eyes.
"That would be the best; for we might get some new rich person, one
of the men you admire, Lilias, to give a sum of money for it. And you
might build a wall between it and us, and we would be none the worse.
Pulling it down would be a waste, though it would be more comfortable
to one's feelings; for you would get nothing but the price of old
materials for that big castle that we have looked at all our lives.
But, any way, to decorate a house that is doomed, and not a window in
it to keep out the weather----"
"It might be made into a hospital," said Miss Jean. "That has always
been my notion, Margaret. We can make no use of it ourselves, and it
would be a heartbreak to sell it, and Lilias would never like to pull
down such solid bonnie walls. I doubt even if it would be right."
"Why should it not be right, you veesionary? It is her own at least,
to do as she pleases--if once she were of full age, and nothing can be
done before that."
"But, Margaret, there's more in it--solid bonnie walls that took a long
time to build, and a good warm steady roof, and all the grand, big
rooms, though there's nothing in them--and when you consider the poor
sick folk and the helpless bairns that have no shelter! I'm not clear
in my mind that it would be a lawful thing," Miss Jean said.
"Did I not say she was a veesionary?" said Margaret. "We would have had
no shelter to our own heads, let alone help for the poor folk, if I
had not been here to look over the house. We are just an impracticable
race. One has one whimsey, and one another. The thing has been built
for a fancy, and our fancies will keep us from getting rid of it. I
am not sure that I am heartwhole myself. I would not like to see a
pickaxe laid upon it. We will have to make up our minds before Lilias
comes of age. But, one way or another, Mr. Murray, you will see that
decorations are not just our affair. We are meaning to be--in town for
the next season," she added, with the solemnity which such a statement
demanded. "And afterwards our movements may be a little uncertain, not
knowing what that may lead to. It is just possible that we may come no
more to Murkley till Lilias is of age."
Lewis made no reply. He had to receive the intelligence with a bow;
it was not his part to criticise, or even to regret. He had come
fortuitously across their path, and had not even standing ground
enough with them to venture to say that he hoped the friendship might
not end there. To Miss Jean, had he been alone with her, he could
have said this, but not under Margaret's keen, all-inspecting eye. It
was with a mixture of pain and pleasure that he felt himself in the
background, listening to what they said. The very termination of his
plans in respect to Miss Jean detached him, and made him feel himself
a stranger in the midst of this little company of women, to which he
had attached himself so completely in his own thoughts. So long as
that question was unresolved, Lewis had felt, even with a sort of
despairing acquiescence, that he was one of them, though they did not
know it, with a certain concern in all their family arrangements, and
hold upon them. Now this visionary right had gone altogether, and he
knew that he was of no importance, nothing to them one way or another.
It chilled him to feel it, and yet there was no doubt that it was so,
and that he could expect or look for nothing else. He sat by for a
while in silence, with a sort of smile, while they proceeded to talk of
other things. Now and then Miss Jean would make an effort of kindness
to bring him into the current, but he felt that he had nothing to do
with that current. He was outside; he felt even that he ought to go
away, and that it was rude not to do so; but at the same time it was
difficult for him to issue forth from the charmed circle. Once gone, it
seemed to Lewis that he could scarcely have a pretence for coming again.
At last he got up to go away.
"You will come again soon?" said Miss Jean.
"Bless me, Jean," said Margaret, "you must think Mr. Murray has little
to do that he will come day after day at your bidding; though we are
always glad to see him, I need not say," she added, with some ghost of
cordiality.
He felt himself standing before her as if she had been his judge, and
looked at her somewhat wistfully; but there was no encouragement in
Margaret's face. Lewis felt that the hand she gave him made a gesture
of dismissal. He walked to the door sadly enough. It seemed to him
that, his first attempt having ended in failure, there was no further
opportunity left him by which to approach the family which he had so
unwittingly wronged. He felt abashed and humbled by his failure. To
have been accepted by Miss Jean, although that would have been to
separate him from all brighter hopes, would have been far better than
this. Then at least he would have had some means of reparation. Now
it seemed, as he turned his back upon them, as if he were turning his
back also upon the honest wish which had brought him here, the generous
desire that had been his leading principle ever since he had heard of
old Sir Patrick's rightful heirs. Lewis was exceedingly cast down and
troubled. He thought, as he went slowly across the old hall, that in
all probability he would never be admitted to it again.
There was no servant to open the door to him, none of the usual urgency
of politeness by which one of the ladies themselves, if Simon were out
of the way, would accompany a visitor to the threshold. It was one sign
of their dismissal of him, he thought, that he was to let himself out
without a word from anyone. As he put his hand, however, reluctantly
upon the door, Lewis was suddenly aware of a skim and flutter across
the oak floor and the old Turkey carpet in the centre of the hall, and,
looking up, perceived with a start and flush Lilias herself, and no
other, who had darted after him from the open door of the drawing-room.
It lasted only a moment, but he saw it like a picture. The girl in
her light dress, dazzling, with her fair head and smiling countenance
bent towards him: and beyond her, in the room within that open door,
Margaret standing in an attitude of watchfulness, keenly listening,
intent upon what passed. Lilias had flown after him, indifferent to all
remonstrance. Her sweet voice, with its little trick of accent, and
the faint cadence in it of the lingering vowels, had a touch of gay
defiance in its sound.
"You are not going away," she said--"you are to be at the ball--you are
not to forget. And perhaps we shall dance together," she said, with a
smile, offering him her hand.
What was he to do with her hand when he got it? Not shake it and let it
drop, like an ordinary Englishman. He had not been bred in that way. He
bowed over it and kissed it before Lilias knew. He would have kissed
her slipper had he dared, but that would have been an unusual homage,
whereas this was the most natural, the most simple salutation in the
world.
It took Lilias altogether by surprise. No lip of man had ever touched
her hand before. Her fair face turned crimson. She could not have
been more astonished had he kissed her cheek, though the astonishment
would have been of a different kind. She stood bewildered when this
wonderful thing had happened, looking at her hand almost with alarm, as
if the mark would show. She was ready to say, "It was not my fault," in
instinctive self-defence. And yet she was not offended or displeased,
but only startled. What would Margaret say? what would Jean say? or
should she tell them? To end this self-discussion, she fled upstairs
suddenly to her own room, and there considered the question, and the
incident which was the strangest that ever had happened to her in all
her life.