It was a Lover and his Lass

"Maids-of-honour are of course the foremost," said Miss Margaret. "I don't see, for my part, why Lilias should not stand as good a chance as any. Her father was a distinguished soldier, and her grandfather, though he has not behaved well to us, was a man that was very well-known, and had a great deal of influence. And the Queen is very feeling. Why she might not be a maid-of-honour, as well as any other young lady, I am at a loss to see."

Lilias jumped to her feet again, this time in a glow of pride and ambitious hope.

"Me!" she said (once more not for want of grammar, but for stress of Scotch). Miss Jean, scarcely less excited, put down her knitting and softly clapped her thin hands.

"That is a good idea; there is no one like Margaret for ideas," she said.

"I see no reason why it should not be. She has the birth, and she would have good interest. She has just got to let herself be trained in the manners and the ways that are conformable. Silly lassie! but she would rather go to a little tea-party in the country."

"No, no, no!" cried the girl, making a spring towards her, and throwing her arms round the speaker's neck. "You don't know me yet, for I am ambitious; I should like to raise the house out of the dust, as you say – I, the last one, the end of all. That would be worth living for!" she cried, with a glow of generous ardour in her eyes.

But when Lilias watched her sisters walking away, with their maid behind them carrying their shoes across the park to the little gate and green lane which led by a back-way to the manse, it was scarcely possible that her heart should not sink within her. Another of those lingering, endless evenings, hour after hour of silvery lightness after the day was over, like a strange, unhopeful morning, yet so cool and sweet, lingered out moment by moment over this young creature alone. She had "her book" which, meaning literature in the abstract, was constantly recommended to her by the other ladies; and she had her sketch-book, and her needlework. Miss Margaret was wont to express absolute consternation that, with so many things to amuse her, a girl should ever feel dull. But this poor little girl, though surrounded by all these, did feel dull and very lonely. To go to Drawing-rooms, which Lilias innocently took to mean the inner circle of the court, and to be a maid-of-honour was a prospect which took away her breath. With that before her it would indeed be wonderful if she could not bear up and submit to being dull and lonely as every girl, her sisters told her, had to do before she came out; but, after she had repeated this to herself half a dozen times, the impression on her mind grew faint, the possible maid-of-honour, the gorgeous imagination of a Drawing-room floated away; they were so far away at the best, so uncertain, while it was very certain that she was lonely to-night, and that other people of her age were enjoying themselves very much. Lilias' thoughts ended, as was very natural, in a fit of crying, after which she rose up a little better, and, the new box from the library happening by good fortune to arrive at that moment, got out a new novel, which it was a small excitement to be able to begin at her own will before her sisters had decided which was and which was not good for her, and in that happiness forgot her trouble, as she had so often done before.

"Did you really mean yon, Margaret?" Miss Jean said to her sister, as she walked along towards the manse.

"Do you think I ever say out like that anything I don't mean, Jean? I might humour the child's fancies, and let her think the drawing-rooms were real society, like what she reads; but the other, to be sure I meant it – wherefore not? – the lust of our family, her father's daughter, and a girl with beauty. We must always recollect that. You and I were good-looking enough in our day; you are sometimes very good-looking yet – "

"That's your kind heart, Margaret."

"What has my kind heart to do with it? But Lilias has more than we ever had – she has beauty, you know. Something should be made of that. It should not just run away into the dust like our good looks, and be of profit or pleasure to nobody. I struck out the idea," said Miss Margaret, with a little pride, "on the spot, it is true; it came to me, and I did not shut my mind to it; but it's full of reason, when you come to think of it. I see a great many reasons for it, but none against it. They have a sort of a little income – just something for their clothes. They need not be extravagant in clothes, for Her Majesty takes little pleasure in vanity and dressing; and then they have honourable to their name. The Honourable Lilias Murray – it would sound very well; and then in the service of the Queen. Don't go too far forward, Jean; but it is a thing to think of, to keep her heart up with. The little thing is very high-spirited when you take her the right way."

"My heart smote me to come away and leave her, Margaret."

"Why should your heart smite you? Would you like her to be talked about as the belle of a manse parlour, and perhaps worse than that – who can tell, at her age? She might see some long-legged fellow that would take her fancy – a factor's son, or an assistant minister, or even Philip Stormont, who is not a match for a Murray."

"Say no more, Margaret. I am quite of your opinion."

"And that is a great comfort to me, Jean. We can do things together that we could never do separate. Please God she shall have her day; she shall shine, at the Queen's court, and marry nobly, and, if the family must be extinguished as seems likely, we'll be extinguished with éclat, my dear, not just wither out solitary like you and me."

It was an ambition, after its sort, of a not unworthy kind. The two sisters, with scarfs thrown over their caps, and their maid following at a few paces' distance, on their way to their tea-party, stepped out with a certain elation in their tread, like two figures in a procession, holding their heads high. They had each had experiences, no doubt, of their own, and neither of them had expected that their family should wither out solitary in their persons. But here they had a new life in their hands, a new hope. Many fathers and mothers have had the same thought – to secure that in the persons of their children which they had never been able to attain themselves, to raise the new generation on their shoulders, making themselves a pedestal for the future greatness. Is it selfishness disguised, the rapacity of disappointment? or is it love the purest, love unconquerable? Miss Margaret and Miss Jean never asked themselves this question. They were not in the habit of examining themselves except as to their religious duty. But they reached the manse with a little thrill of excitement about them, and a sort of exultation in their minds. The windows were all open, and a hum of many voices reached them as they crossed the smooth-shaven lawn. Margaret gave Jean a look.

"Was it not a good thing we left her at home?" they both cried.

CHAPTER VI

Lewis came away from the manse on the Sunday afternoon with a great many new thoughts stirring in his mind. His heart was made sore by the perpetual condemnation of himself which he heard on every hand; from Duncan of the dog-cart to the company at the manse, no one could believe that old Sir Patrick's adopted son was anything but a villain, a designing, mercenary adventurer, who had flattered and beguiled the old man into making provision for him at the expense of his family. It had never entered into the thoughts of these good people that they might be wrong, that their verdict might be unjust; they were as sure of it as if they had come to this decision upon the plainest and most conclusive evidence. Lewis knew very well that it was not so, but still he was a little cowed by the reiteration. It is terrible to appear in this light to so many, even when you have the strongest internal conviction that you are right and they wrong; after a while it comes to have a certain effect upon a man's own spirit; the right which he was so unhesitatingly sure of becomes confused and dim to him. He begins even to wonder whether it is possible that he might have had an evil scheme in his head without knowing it. Lewis had not got so far as this, but he was troubled and depressed. He could not sit still in the parlour overlooking the village. It was so quiet. He longed to see somebody moving about. If there had been a band playing somewhere, and the people walking about, even in that promenade up and down which gets so dreary when it is an imperious habit, at all events that would have been more cheerful for a looker-on. But the dead stillness oppressed him. And there were no resources inside – no books, even if he had cared much for books, no piano, nothing to do but think, which is generally a troublesome and so often an unprofitable occupation. After a while he ceased to be able to put up with it at all, and strolled out to the water-side, where he so often sat and watched Adam fishing.

The trout had a peaceful time on Sunday. The river lay as still as if it had flowed through a land unexplored. Now and then a fish would flash from the water at its ease, and sink to its pool again without anxiety. Did they know it was Sunday, Lewis wondered? It went a long way to reconcile him to the unbroken quiet which, after all, had something wonderful and beautiful in it. The cows were lying down in the meadows, their great red-brown sides rising out in the green grass and daisies with a peaceful warmth. Neither up nor down the water did he see a single living soul. The stillness moved him as he had sometimes been moved in a cathedral when all the worshippers had gone away. It was the sort of moment and the sort of place, Lewis felt, to say your prayers. He had not felt so in the morning at church. There he had gone for the sake of society. Here all was sacred and still, with something unseen giving meaning to all that was visible. He was like a child in the readiness of his emotions. He took off his hat and even said a prayer or two such as he could remember, and afterwards was silent, thinking, with a little awe upon him, in which the idea of God, a majestic old man like the Padre Eterno of many a picture, blended somehow with the idea of his personal benefactor, his friend who had been so good to him, and who also was old and majestic, a vision full of tenderness to his grateful heart.

After a while the ferryman came out from his cottage up the water with his two little children, and there was a far-away babble of their little voices in the air which, though very sweet and innocent, broke the spell. And then Lewis put on his hat, and began to think of his more particular affairs. This moment of solemn calm had soothed the painfulness of his sense of being unjustly treated. He began to comfort himself with the thought of being by-and-by better understood. When they knew that this adventurer, this schemer, was no other than himself, they would change their minds, he thought. He had never been misconstrued, but always liked and made much of wherever he had gone, and he saw no reason why now, without any cause for it, all at once his luck should change.

There were other questions, however, which had been called up by his sudden introduction to society in Murkley. He thought of the little party round the manse dinner-table with pleasure, thinking on the whole that perhaps that was better than the more limited hospitality of a curé who had nobody to sit at the head of his table, and only himself to provide all the entertainment. Lewis was not sure of himself whether he was a Catholic or a Protestant: he was very latitudinarian. He thought, if the truth must be told, that both were best, for he liked the curé too, and was more familiar with that form of clerical development than with the comfortable minister surrounded by his children. He did not know the English clergyman at all, which made a sad vacancy in his experiences. But no curé ever spoke of the necessity of being a gentleman, or ignored all other classes, as the minister's wife did. Was there no other class in England? To be sure gentilhomme meant something different; but there certainly were a great number of people "abroad" who were not gentilhommes, and yet were not nobody. This idea puzzled Lewis much. He asked himself was he a gentleman, with a smile, yet a half-doubt. His old home, when he cast his mind back so far, was a very homely one; his father had been the Vice-Consul's clerk, he himself had been now and then employed about the office. His mother had performed a great many of the domestic operations with her own hands; he had seen her making the coffee in the morning, sometimes even cooking the dinner, doing up the linen in a way, he fondly thought, that he never saw it now. They were much respected, but they were poor. To bury them even required a subscription from the community. The uncle who had written to him, and who had been willing to receive him, wrote like a shopkeeper. He remembered the aspect and superscription of his letter as if he had received it yesterday.

If he got such a letter now, he would unhesitatingly conclude it to be a bill.

Was he then a gentleman at all? Of course Sir Patrick was so – but then Sir Patrick could not confer this nobility, or whatever it was, upon him. This thought puzzled Lewis greatly. It did not distress, but rather amused him; for, with all the associations and friends of the last eight or nine years, by far the most important of his life, it was impossible for him to imagine that he was not good enough to associate with the good people at Murkley. He considered the question altogether as an abstract one, a matter of curiosity; but it was a question to consider. Then as to education, Lewis was aware that in this point, too, he failed. He had gleaned enough from the conversation of English visitors to know that a good education meant an education at an English university. No other kind of training counted. He had heard this from Sir Patrick himself satirically; for neither had Sir Patrick been "a university man." So once more Lewis felt himself out of the field altogether. Neither by birth nor education: there remained one thing, money. This he had; but was this enough to claim the position of a gentleman upon? and then they all thought the money was ill-gotten, as good as stolen from the giver's descendants. Altogether Lewis felt that, if it should be necessary for him to give up, metaphorically, "ses papiers" to enter into the question of his own birth, education, and fortune, things would go very hard with him in this little place. When he came to this conclusion he laughed; for it seemed very amusing that he, who had lived with ambassadors and knew his way about many a palace, should be found not good enough for the society of the minister and the minister's wife in Murkley. It did not even occur to him that, amusing as it was, it might come some time to a serious question enough. In the mean time it tickled his imagination greatly. Perhaps no one ever sees the ludicrous side of a privilege so completely as the man who is wanting in the qualifications to possess it. Lewis, with his non-experience, amused himself a good deal with that question about gentlemen. Gentilhomme was far more easy to understand; but this mysterious word which the English used so constantly, which they tried to build upon one foundation after another, but which sometimes did not seem to require any foundation at all, what was the meaning of it? and how was it to be defined? Young Mr. Stormont of the Tower which pushed out that angle of old masonry on the cliff opposite, had every qualification necessary, "But not I," Lewis said, and laughed to himself. The son of a poor clerk and a nursery governess, the nephew of a linendraper – but this he was not aware of – with no education to speak of, no belongings, no settled place or position, or friends to answer for him! Decidedly, if Mrs. Seton had known all this she would have closed her door most rigidly upon him. All this amused him very much to think of as he got up from the grass, and took his way back to the 'Murkley Arms.'

By this time the world had begun to wake a little. The Sabbath seriousness had relaxed. A few groups were standing about the road in Sunday attire. The women had come out to the doors; the children were playing discreetly, but now and then rising into louder riot, which the nearest bystander rebuked with a "Whisht, bairns! mind it's the Sabbath day." Notwithstanding this apparent severity, there was a good deal of quiet pleasure diffused in the air. The softness of this pause in the working-day tenor of existence pervaded everything, and at the same time the duration of the unusual stillness and sense of monotony it brought, made the good people think with pleasure of the toil to be resumed to-morrow. Adam was standing in an attitude very unusual to him, leaning against his doorpost, when Lewis came up, and Janet, in her best gown, smoothing down a fresh white muslin apron, with many frills and decorations, stood by his side. They were not an uncomely couple. He, though he concealed under the veil of his beard all but his blue-grey eyes and well-formed nose, had a head of great rustic dignity and force surmounting his six feet of somewhat languid length; for Adam had "nae pith," as his wife said, and, but for his great gift at "the fushin'," would have been a somewhat useless personage. She was not, to all appearance, of so elevated a type. Her face was round, and her nose turned up, and she was forty-five. The roundness natural to that mature age had taken all the charm from her trim figure, but still it was trim: a little vibration of activity, as if the machinery was all in such thorough order that the slightest touch would set it in motion, was in her: and Janet's smiling countenance was all alive, ready to hear and see everything, and give forth opinions, as many as might be desired.

"It's been another bonnie day," she said. "Ye'll no tell us now, sir, that we've nae fine weather on Tayside."

"I hope I never could have been so unmannerly," Lewis said.

"Na, you never said it, but I saw it in your eye – folk from the south are a' of that opinion, but it's just lees. I hear there is mair fog and mist in London town in a single winter than will come our way in a dizzen years."

"You must be very glad Sunday is over," said Lewis, with a boldness that took away Janet's breath.

"Sir!" she cried, scandalised; then after a pause of consideration: "ye're taking your fun out of us. Them that are tired of the Sabbath day, Mr. Murray, how are they to bide Heaven, if they win to it at the hinder end?"

"Hold your tongue, Janet. We ken little enough about heaven," said Adam, who was in the humour to talk. "Whiles an unconsidered question like this young gentleman's will just let loose a thocht. I've been thinking lang that ae use o' the Sabbath is just maybe to make us feel that wark is the most entertaining in the lang run. There is nae time," he continued, with dignity, "that I think o' my occupation with mair pleasure than just about this hour on the Sabbath night."

"I wouldna say but you're a grand authority," said his wife, satirically, "such hard work as yours is! Sunday or Saturday a woman's work is never done. I havena the time to weary, for my part. There's Mr. Murray's dinner to be seen to this very blessed minute: but you that makes your day's darg out o' what the gentlemen do for pleesure – "

"Who are the gentlemen, Mrs. Janet?" asked Lewis, with all his late speculations in his mind.

"She's speaking o' gentlemen in the abstract," said Adam, "and no a high view of them; them that have plenty of siller and nothing to do."

"Well," said Janet, "what would ye have mair? That's just about your ain description, Adam, my man; but I was not meaning them that leave a woman at hame to work for them. There's different sorts, sir, ye'll understand; there's the real gentlemen that have the land: and such as have their fortunes ready-made for them are no far behind: and then there is them that can take their leisure when they please and have a' they wish for: but the grand, grand thing of a' is just what every fool kens – them that have no occasion to work for their living; ye can never deceive yourself in that," Janet said.

"So," said Lewis, "for it is information I want; one who works for his living is not a gentleman."

Janet looked up somewhat startled.

"I'm far from saying that, sir," she said.

"Keep her to it, Mr. Murray; ye'll get her to maintain just the opposite before you've done with her. That's women's way. There's naething they're so fond o' as a grand, broad assumption, and then, when they see a' it involves, they will just shift and shuffle and abandon their poscetion. I'm well acquaint with a' that. The true gentleman ye'll bring her to say is him that works the hardest and brings in the most siller, and is never free of his business from morning till night."

"And well might I say it," cried Janet, "and guid reason I would have after a' that's come and gone. It's just that, sir. The man that does the best work, him that leaves naething but what is in her share to his wife, and lays up something for his bairns, and pays his debt of every kind baith to them that are obliged to him, and them that he's obliged to, and can haud up his head before ony man on earth, and no feared even for his Maker but in the way of reverence and his duty. Weel! that's an honest man at heart, if he's no a gentleman, and a better thing than a gentleman, if it was my last word. But, losh me! if I stand havering here," cried Janet, abandoning her peroration and her excitement together, "you'll get no dinner, sir, the day."

"What do you ca' that thing the auld heathens fired as they fled, sir?" said Adam, as Janet disappeared. "A Parthian arrow? Yon's just it. It's naething to the argument, but it has its effect. It doesna convince your mind, but it makes a kind of end of your debating. It's just a curious question enough what makes a gentleman. I canna tell ye, for my part. I'm maybe mair worth in many ways than a lad like you, not meaning any offence. I've come through mair, I have pondered mair – but pit me in your claes and you in mine, and it would be you that would be the gentleman still. I canna faddom it: but that's no remarkable, for there are few things I can faddom on this earth. The mair I ponder, the less I come to ony end."

"All the philosophers are the same," said Lewis. "You are not singular, my friend Adam. But how do you know I am a gentleman, come? I might be nothing of the sort. You never saw me till ten days ago. It is not the clothes, you admit, and you feel that you are a better man than I. Then, why do you take it for granted that I am a gentleman? You have no evidence."

"Maister Murray," said Adam, somewhat grimly, "evidence has little, awfu' little to do with it. Maybe you're one of them that thinks with Locke there are nae innate ideas? But I'm of the Scotch school, sir; I'm no demanding daata daata for ever, like your Baconian lads. Let us be, and we'll come down to your facks, and fit them a' in to a miracle. It's just a brutal method, in my opinion, to demand the facks first, and syne account for them and explain them a' away."

"You are abandoning the point more than your wife did," cried Lewis. "Come! how do you know?"

"I know naething about it," said Adam, turning away. "I'll argue my ain gait or I'll no argue at all. Your personal questions are naething to a true philosopher. This I'll tell ye, if a man canna be kent for a gentleman without proving it, it's my opinion he's nae gentleman ava. And I'm for a turn before the night closes in," said Adam suddenly.

Lewis was left in the lurch, standing alone by the open door. He went in after a little pause. He was pleased by what Adam said, though he had not been at all distressed before by the doubts which he had set forth before himself as to his own right to this title. He had laughed at his own argument then, and he laughed now, but nevertheless he was pleased. It was flattering, though it was so gruffly said.

Next morning rose still fair and bright, though Adam declared it would be the last day of the fine weather. Lewis was delighted to think of his two engagements. He did not care for his own exclusive society. He set out for Stormont when the sun was high, at an hour which all the experience of his previous life proved to him to be an impossible one to walk in, and found it only bright and genial with all the breadth and hush of noon, but without any of its oppressive qualities. He went across the river in the big ferry-boat, along with a farmer's shandry-dan. He recollected to have crossed a river so near Paestum in the wildest wastes of Italy, with brigands about, and dangers. The contrast was so strange that he laughed in spite of himself.

"It's perhaps not very well-bred," said the farmer's wife, who sat in state in her vehicle, holding her horse warily in hand though he was used to it, "but no doubt it's very funny to see me up here."

"Not funny at all, madam," said Lewis, taking off his hat; "but it reminded me of a ferry abroad, where we were afraid of the brigands, and every man you met carried a gun."

"Bless me! I suppose, sir, you have been a great traveller?" Mrs. Glen said; and they talked all the way over, and she thought him "just delightful." French! No, not a bit like French – nor English either. The English, they are always condescending, and ready to explain your own countryside to you. I would say of a good race, but brought up abroad.