The following winter was very dreary and long. It began early; the 12th
itself, the beginning of the season, the day of days in the North,
rained from morning to night. It never ceased raining through all the
shooting season. The rain ran into every crevice, into the holes in
the rocks, which were usually as dry as the sun could make them, and
the heather grew out of a bog, and the foot sank in the treacherous
greenness all over the moors. There was little encouragement to
tourists, and not much to sportsmen, and women were kept indoors and
exhausted all their resources, and quarrelled, and were miserable. If
there had been perpetual bickering in the old Castle of Murkley, there
would have been nothing surprising in it. The ladies were not happy;
they were in a state of painful suspense and uncertainty. They neither
knew what the future was, nor when it should cease to be the future,
and become an astonishing present, changing all their life. In the
strange and dreary days which had succeeded their discovery of Lewis'
departure, there had been a kind of pause in existence altogether.
The unaccustomed contrariety of events, the impossibility of doing
anything but waiting, the inclination to upbraid each other, the uneasy
desire at heart to blame somebody, was like a stimulating poison in
all their veins. They stood, as it were, at bay against fate, and in
the silence, and with the keen perception they had that nothing could
be done, were tempted to turn their arms against each other, and make
themselves thoroughly miserable. There was a moment indeed when this
seemed inevitable. Margaret had only the impatience of unhappiness
to warrant her in assailing Jean, but there was a certain reason in
the instinctive impulse with which the others turned upon Margaret,
murmuring in their hearts that it was she who was in fault. She it was
(though neither of them knew how entirely it was she) who had sent
the hero of their thoughts away. But for her, the dilemma might have
been met with natural ease, and the problem solved. It was she who
had stood in every one's way. Her pride, her hard-heartedness, her
ambition for Lilias, even the temporary obtuseness and self-conceit
(that such epithets should ever have been applied to Margaret!) which
prevented her from seeing as the others did what Lewis had done for
them, had brought matters to this crisis. It was her doing from first
to last. She was herself fully aware of this, and the consciousness was
as irritating as it was terrible. She alone had ordained her child's
unhappiness, had taken the responsibility upon herself. When Lilias
was seen wandering about her old haunts, trying to accomplish her old
duties with a pale and abstracted countenance, retiring within herself,
she who had been so simple and child-like, and crushed under the weight
of an uncertainty which made her heart sick, Margaret was nearly beside
herself. She irritated the suffering girl by her anxious solicitude.
She would scarcely allow her the solace of quiet, the last right which
a spirit in trouble has, of at least reconciling itself to its trouble
unobserved, and without interruption. Margaret pursued Lilias with
anxious questions what ailed her? though she knew so well, to the
bottom of her heart, what the ailment was. Had she a headache? What was
the matter that she could not eat her dinner? Why did it weary her to
walk?
"I must get the doctor to you," Margaret said, devoured by alarm lest
the delicate spirit should affect her slight body, and harm come of it
before their eyes.
"Oh, if you would but let her alone! Can you not see that it's the
heart that ails her, and nothing else?" Miss Jean would say.
"Hold your peace about hearts. Do you think I am not as unhappy about
what has happened as any person; but I am not going to stand by and see
her digestion a wreck as well as----" And Margaret would almost weep in
misery, in impatience, in impotence, till poor Jean's heart was almost
broken with the impossibility of binding up her sister's, and making
her believe that all would be well. For to this, after a while, her
desire to upbraid Margaret turned--a desire to console and soothe her.
It was her fault, poor Margaret! that was the issue at last to which
Jean's sympathetic passion came.
Lilias, who was the most deeply involved, went through an alarming
crisis; for some days she said nothing, averted her looks, shut herself
up as much as possible, would accept no comfort, nor open her heart
to any one. And in this moment, when the girl suddenly found herself
before the impossible and understood that nothing--nothing which any
one could do could change the fact, could break the silence, could
make it possible for her to have any communication with him to whom
she had so much to say--that even a hundred chances might arise to
keep her from any communication with him for ever, a cloud of utter
darkness, and of that sickness of the heart which accompanies the blank
of disappointment, took possession of her being. It was against all the
habits of her life. Hitherto she had but appealed to Margaret, and all
had gone right. Even in the present case there had been an end of all
opposition, as soon as it had been made apparent to Margaret what was
in her heart: and for a moment it had appeared as if everything was
to be well. But not Margaret nor any one could pierce the silence of
the seas, and bring back a reply. No one could stop the ship swiftly
speeding to the other side of the world. No one could shorten the
inevitable time, blank and dark and eventless, which must pass before
any word could be heard across those silent seas. And who was to speak
the word? And how could any one answer for it, that Lewis, repulsed and
sent away, would listen, or that he would undo all his plans, and come?
or that he had not changed his mind? He had never said those final
words which cast down all walls between two hearts. Lilias had been
sure he meant to say them; but he had not done so. And who could tell
now if they ever would be said? and who could invite him to say them?
To write to him would be to do so. In the retirement of her own room
she had written to him again and again to tell him how she had treated
his paper, and what she thought of it, her admiration, her pain, and
her impatience of his "justice." But not one of those letters ever
found its way to the post. What were they, when she looked at them
again, but invitations, every one? She tore them to pieces, as she had
torn the deed, and at last recognized with such a schooling of her
heart as is inconceivable at first to the young disciple of life, the
unaccustomed sufferer and unwilling learner, that she could do nothing,
that there was nothing to be done but to wait, the hardest expedient of
all.
Thus it was Lilias, the youngest, the softest, the one whom the others
would have died to save, who had to bear the worst, and to bear it in
most loneliness of spirit. After a while the others consulted over
it, and in their anxious watch over her, and mutual discussion of
every aspect of her face and mind, found a sort of occupation in their
distress. And both of them secretly sent out a messenger, a letter--an
effort to confront the impossible, and overcome it, which brought
them immediate consolation. Lilias could neither write, nor could
she, in her shy and delicate youth, unveil her heart to her sisters,
or communicate the absorbed and endless preoccupation with which her
thoughts were centered on this one subject. She "thought shame,"--which
is different from being ashamed--which is the reverence, the respect
which a pure nature has for the new and wonderful passion that is in
her veins, as well as her shrinking from a subject which she had never
learned to discuss, and which, till it had been made into reality by
communication with the person beloved, is beyond disclosure. They
talked to each other about her, but Lilias could not talk to them or to
any one, any more than she could write to him. She was dumb. She could
do nothing, say nothing. Sooner or later, in one way or another, almost
every woman has to go through this ordeal. Poor little Lilias met it
unprepared.
It is wrong to say, however, that the letters which were sent were sent
secretly. Margaret, when she recovered from her abasement as the cause
of all this trouble, and began to recollect again that she was the head
of the family, made no mystery of her proceedings. It is possible that
even Lilias knew, though she had no positive information. Margaret
wrote, inclosing to Lewis his torn deed, and commentary on the facts of
the case.
"You would have done well to see us before you put the ocean between
us, with such a grand question as this to settle," she wrote. "I know
not for how long you are to be absent, or what may be your mind as to
other matters, but I would press, as far as it may be allowable, the
necessity of personal explanations before any other steps are taken."
It was thought by Margaret's audience, now consisting of Jean alone,
that this letter was very dignified, very moving, and certain to effect
its purpose.
"He will be back by the next ship after he gets that," she said.
"How can we tell," said Margaret, "what his engagements may be? He may
not be able to leave his post. He has now gotten himself a master; and
who can tell if he will be able at any inducement, to set himself free?"
"There is nobody that could resist that," Miss Jean said; but,
notwithstanding her confidence in Margaret's letter, she herself, all
secretly and trembling at her own boldness, trembling too with a sense
of guilt at the falsity of it, the treachery to her sister, the idea
of taking any step which she could not disclose, "took up her pen," as
she described it, and wrote a long letter too, a letter which was full
of details, and far more touching than Margaret's. But it was not so
dignified, perhaps, nor was it at all ambiguous in its phrases, but
said, "come home" in so many words, and promised all that heart of
lover could desire.
And then a great pause fell upon the agitated household. It was to a
distant, newly-established colony that Lewis had gone, and in those
days there were not steamboat services to all the world, to shorten
time and distance; nothing but a sailing ship was likely to carry
his letter all the way, and not for a long time could any answer be
expected. It has almost gone out of our habitudes now to wait weeks or
months for an answer, and even then this old penalty of separation had
been much modified; but still there was a long time to wait before they
could hope for any response, and the autumn days closed down darkly
over the house which had been interrupted in all its innocent habits
by the invasion of this new life. Margaret made a speech to her little
sister upon the expediency of resuming all the occupations of old.
"You are but a young thing yet," she said, "and history is just an
endless subject. How are you to get through life, when you come to be
our age, if you know nothing about the thirty years' war, or the French
Revolution? You will just look out all your books, Lilias, and we will
begin on Monday. There is little use in starting anything at the end of
the week."
To this Lilias assented without objection; but that Monday was very
slow in coming. Who could settle down to read history with a girl
to whom a message would come in the middle of a lesson that Lord
Bellendean in the library was "Fain, fain to see her, and would not
take an answer from me," a commission which Miss Jean brought upstairs,
breathless, one of the first mornings on which this duty was attempted.
"What is Lord Bellendean wanting?--it will be me he is wishful to see,"
Margaret said, rising up at once.
"Oh, Margaret, you know very well what the lad is wanting; but he will
not take his answer from us. I was just greatly flustered, and I said I
would let you know, but nothing will serve him but to see Lilias," Miss
Jean said.
And, after the interview was over, is it to be supposed that a young
creature who had just refused a prospective coronet could settle down
again to the thirty years' war? Lilias took Lord Bellendean with great
composure, but it was not to be expected that she could go so far as
that. This was a very great event, as may be supposed. It crept out
somehow, as such events do, all the village being aware that the young
lord had driven to Murkley all alone that August morning, abandoning
even the grouse, and that he had not even stayed to luncheon, but drove
back again in an hour, looking very woebegone.
"She will have refused him, the wilful monkey; that is what comes of
training up a girl to think so much of herself," Mrs. Seton said, with
a countenance of awe. It took away her breath to think of such a wilful
waste of the gifts of Providence. "If I thought any child of mine would
show such conceit, it would break my heart--yes, yes, I am sure it
would just break my heart. Conceit!--what could it be but conceit, and
thinking far more of herself than she has any right to think? Would she
like the Prince of Wales, I wonder?" cried the minister's wife.
"Let us hope she'll not be one of those that go through the wood and
through the wood and take up with a crooked stick at the end," said
Mrs. Stormont, grimly.
It was somewhat comforting to the latter lady to know of Lord
Bellendean's discomfiture, too. But she, like Mrs. Seton, felt that the
self-importance of the Murrays was almost beyond bearing. Who did they
want for Lilias?--the Prince of Wales, as Mrs. Seton said; but he was a
married man.
Thus Lilias lost the sympathy of her neighbour. Philip Stormont had
shown symptoms of a desire to return to the position of hanger-on which
he had occupied in town, but his mother, once so eager, no longer
encouraged this wish.
"You will get nothing but slights and scorns from these Murrays," she
said to her son. "Let them be; they are too grand for the like of us."
"It was all your doing, mother," said Philip, "that I ever went near
them at all."
"It might be all my doing," said Mrs. Stormont, "but it was not my
doing that you let yourself be left in the lurch and made a fool of by
a parcel of women. If you have no proper pride, I have some for you.
There's Lady Ida, that is a far finer girl than Lilias Murray, there's
no comparison between them; the one is but a country girl, and the
other is a titled lady: and young Bellendean has not behaved as he
ought. If I were you, Philip, a strapping, personable young man----"
Philip did not stop to ask what his mother's inference meant. He went
down in the rain to the river, and pondered the whole business among
the boulders in the bed of Tay, up to his knees in the brown rushing
water. Here Philip reflected that women were no judges, that he would
have none of Lady Ida, who would expect a man to be always on his knees
to her, and that, though Lilias was a pretty creature, there was still
as good fish in the sea as ever came to the net. He reflected, too,
with some warmth of satisfaction, that he was a personable man, as his
mother had said, and need not be afraid of showing himself anywhere,
and that there was no hurry; for though girls must make their hay
while the sun shines, poor things, as for a man, he could wait. This
course of reflection made him respond with careless good-humour to the
greeting of the minister, who called to him from the river-side to ask
what sport he was having.
"Not bad," Philip replied. "I thought I had lost the knack of it, but
it's coming back."
"Little doubt but it would come back," Mr. Seton said, and they had a
talk about the habits of the fish, and the bait they preferred, and
all their wily ways, which was refreshing to Philip, and in which Adam
Bennet, who was in his usual place, took part.
"They're just as cunning as the auld gentleman himsel'," Adam said.
"They would make grand lawyers, they're that full of tricks and
devices; but tak' them when they're no thinking, and they'll just bite
at onything."
"My wife would like some of your trout, Adam, for to-morrow," the
minister said; "and talking of that, Stormont, there's some nonsense
going on in the evening among the young folk; no doubt they will be
glad to see you."
"I'm afraid," cried Philip across the rush of the river and amid the
patter of the rain, "that I have an engagement."
"Well, well," said the minister, good-humouredly nodding at him from
under his umbrella as he went on, "just as you please--just as you
please."
This was all that passed; and it was not a thing that could be
called an invitation, as Mrs. Seton said afterwards. "No, no; not an
invitation: just one gentleman to another, which is as different as
possible. We'll be glad to see you, or my wife will be glad to see you;
just the kind of thing that Robert says to everybody, for he's far too
free."
But it disturbed Philip in his fishing more than he could have
imagined possible. It came into his mind in the morning as soon as he
woke, it accompanied him in his thoughts all day.
"There is some dancing or nonsense going on at the manse, I hear--or
was it last night?" said Mrs. Stormont at dinner, secure in the
confidence that no invitation had come for her son. "I am very thankful
that they have seen the uselessness of it, and given up asking you,
Philip."
"Oh! I can go if I like," Philip said.
"But you have too much sense to mix yourself up with their village
parties," said his mother.
To this Philip made no reply. His pride was touched at once by the
suggestion that he was not asked, and by the idea that his good sense
had to be appealed to. This is always an offensive idea. He did not go
up to the drawing-room after dinner. In spite of himself, the contrast
between the dull warmth of the fireside, where his mother sat with her
book and her knitting, and the lively scene on the other side of the
water, struck him more and more forcibly. Mothers are all very well
in their way, but they pall upon the sense of young men. He went out
to the door, and the fresh, damp night air, as it flew in his face,
seemed to carry upon it a far-off sound of the music. To be sure,
this was impossible, but it mattered little to Philip; he heard it
all the same, he knew the very waltz which at that moment Mrs. Seton
would be playing. What need to follow all the steps of the short and
half-hearted straggle? They were in full career of gaiety in the manse
drawing-room, when Philip strayed in, half-afraid of the reception he
might receive.
"Oh! Mr. Philip, is this you? You are just a great stranger," cried
Mrs. Seton. "But there is Alice Bairnsfaither not dancing; you are just
come in time."