The framework of society at Murkley was of a simple description. There were no great gatherings in that corner of the countryside. A dinner-party happened now and then, but these were very rare, for most of the best families dined in the middle of the day in a primitive manner, and a great dinner meant an overthrow of all the habits of the house. Usually friends came to tea, and remained, as in the manse, when the majority was young, to dance: or in other houses, when the majority were older people, to play a friendly rubber, with a round game for such youth as might be of the party. The routine was completely stereotyped; for human nature is very uninventive, especially in the country. Sometimes there was an attempt to vary this procedure by "a little music;" but in those days music was less cultivated than now, and a few pieces of the "Battle of Prague" kind, were usually all that were to be found in a young lady's repertoire, varied perhaps by "Sweet Spirit, hear my Prayer," and other elegant morceaux of that description. And it is much to be feared that, had the music been of a higher order, it would have been relished still less; for however little the art of conversation may be cultivated as an art, and however little entertainment there may be in it, everybody resents the stoppage of talk, and the gloomy countenance of even the most æsthetic of parties, when compelled to silent listening, continues to prove how much more attractive are our own sweet voices than anything that supersedes them. Society in Murkley would willingly put up with a few songs. It is true that it knew them by heart, but the good people were always charitable on this point, and liked, "Oh, no, we never mention her!" just as well the hundredth time as the first. And there was another thing which many of the elder ladies could do without any vanity on the subject, or even any idea that the gift was more than a convenience. They played dance music with the greatest spirit and accuracy. Mrs. Seton possessed this talent, and so to some extent did Mrs. Stormont, though she put it to less frequent use, and had not the real enjoyment which the minister's wife had in the exercise of her talent. These ladies were surprised to be complimented on the subject. It was no credit to them. It was "just a necessity where there are young people," Mrs. Seton said; a sort of maternal accomplishment which everybody took for granted. But though the entertainments and social constitution were so simple, the same schemes and hopes underlay them as were to be found on the highest levels. It was, as has been said, the dearest object of Miss Margaret's heart to keep her little sister safe, and preserve her from all youthful entanglements of sentiment. But Mrs. Stormont of the Tower had a dearest object which was entirely in opposition to Margaret's. Her dream was to secure for her own Philip this very lily of Murkley which was kept so persistently in the shade. Mrs. Stormont had been an old friend of the General; they had called themselves old friends for years with a twinkle in the eye of one and a conscious smile upon the corners of the other's mouth, which would have betrayed their little secret had not the countryside in general known it as well as they did. They had been, in fact, lovers in their youth, and all the skill of their respective families had been exercised once upon a time to keep them apart. The attempt had been quite successful, and neither Mrs. Stormont nor the General had been sorry in after-life. They had talked it over with a laugh when they met again, more than twenty years after, each with a little mental comment. It was shortly after the General's second marriage, when, in the pride and triumph of having won for himself so young and delightful a bride, he too felt himself delightful and young as in his best days.
"Good Lord! to think I might have been tied to that old woman!" he said to himself. She was some years younger than he was, and a handsome woman, but she was not like Lady Lilias at eighteen.
Mrs. Stormont's reflections were of a different order. She went about all day after, saying, "Tchich-tchich," to herself at intervals, or rather making that little sound with the tongue upon the palate which is the language of mild astonishment mingled with dismay. "He promised to be a man of sense when I knew him," Mrs. Stormont said, and the thought of what "a handful" she would have found him gave her a sense of exhilaration in her escape: thus they were mutually contented that they had not become one; but yet there was a little consciousness between them. They would laugh and look at each other when certain things were said. They had a good-humoured contempt each for the other, and yet a certain charity. And, when the pretty young wife was cut off, Mrs. Stormont was very sorry. "Poor thing, she is no doubt taken from the evil to come," she said, devoutly, with a sense that Lady Lilias too, when she grew older, might have found her handsome General "a handful."
But this was partially a mistake on Mrs. Stormont's part, for the General never did very much harm short of quarrelling with his father. She was so far justified, however, that secretly, at the bottom of her heart, it is not to be denied, Miss Margaret agreed with her. It was long before the General's death, however, that Mrs. Stormont had formed her plans. Philip was the only child left to her after the loss of many. She did not adore him in the ordinary way; she formed to herself no delusions as to his excellence, but knew him as what he was, an honest fellow, who would never set the Tay, let alone the Thames, on fire. It was a disappointment to his mother that he was not clever, but she had made up her mind to that. But she felt that he could not help more or less making a figure in the county if it could be secured for him that he should have Lilias Murray to be his wife.
Everything is relative in human society. Lilias was poor in the estimation of the people whom her sisters would have considered her equals: and they know her to be poor, they who were supplementing her importance by their own, maintaining the little state they thought necessary out of their own means, and allowing the income of Murkley, such as it was, to accumulate for their child: and all the parents of the wealthy young gentlemen whom Miss Margaret might have smiled upon as suitors for Lilias would have considered her poor. But to Mrs. Stormont she was an heiress and a person of importance. The revenues of Lilias, added to his own, would make Philip, if not a great man, at least one who had to be taken into account, who would be reckoned upon at an election, who might even stand for the county. He was of a good family, and Lilias was of a better. They would supplement each other, and increase each other's consequence. In no other way was it likely that he could do half as well. He might get more money, Mrs. Stormont said to herself, but money was not everything. The last Stormont of the Tower married to the last Murray of Murkley would have a position which the duke himself must pay respect to. She had thought of this for years. When Lilias was a child she had been regaled with the finest gooseberries in the garden; little parties had been assembled for her, the first and the last strawberries reserved for her, with cream in which the spoon would "stand alone." Mrs. Stormont had never intermitted these delicate attentions. She stroked the girl's fair locks every time they met, and said, "I might have been your mother," with a laugh and a sigh. It had distressed Miss Margaret to see that these soft seductions had a great deal of effect upon the girl, and she had indeed been injudicious enough to do everything she could to push Philip's claims by a continual depreciation of them.
"That long-leggit lad," she had been in the habit of calling him, until Lilias had been roused to ask,
"Do you object to long legs, Margaret?"
"Me! object to long legs! No; but I like a head along with them," Margaret said.
"Oh! Philip has a nice curly head," cried Lilias.
This had happened when the girl was fifteen, when the General was still living to lead her into folly. After that she forgot and outgrew Philip Stormont. Her mourning and retirement made it easy for her sister to regain the reins which had slipped out of her hands, and establish her own more rigorous system. And then the young people had arrived at an age when it is no longer possible to make arrangements for them, when they begin to settle for themselves. Philip grown-up had showed no inclination to carry out his mother's wishes. He had gone away for some years. He had come home quite independent, making his own engagements. He had grown into an habitué of the manse, not of the castle. And Margaret had shut her little sister up, letting her go nowhere. This made at last a crisis in the history of the parish.
Mrs. Stormont lived a somewhat lonely life in her Tower. In winter especially it was a long walk for people who did not keep carriages. The remoter county people paid ceremonious calls, just as many as were due to her, and Mrs. Seton, never to be discouraged in the discharge of her duty, bravely climbed the cliff about once a fortnight. But these visits Mrs. Stormont did not esteem. As anxious as she was to find her son a fitting mate in Lilias, so anxious, she could not but allow, other people might be to advance the interests of their children. Philip would be but a bad match for Lilias, but he was an excellent one for Katie Seton. The one mother comprehended the tactics of the other. Therefore, when the minister's wife came to call, there was a sort of duel between the ladies—an encounter from which cordiality did not ensue. The only ground on which they were unanimous was in denouncing the pride of Margaret Murray in withdrawing her young sister from the society of her neighbours, and that ambitious project she had for taking her to London. Mrs. Seton had been powerless in all her attempts to have the embargo removed.
"You know what my little bits of parties are," she said, "just a few friends to tea—and, if the young people like to have a little dance after, I would not stop them; but no preparations—just the table drawn away into a corner——"
"Oh! you do yourself injustice," said Mrs. Stormont; "I consider those little parties very dangerous. I can understand very well why Margaret will not let Lilias go."
"Dangerous!" cried Mrs. Seton. "Dear me, what could put such a word into your head? My visitors are all very young, that is the worst of them. No, no, I should say it was the best. They are so young, they have nothing in their heads but just the dancing. Oh! perhaps you will be meaning Philip? Well, you should know best. I don't pretend to fathom what's in a young man's mind; but I see no signs of anything else but just a little natural pleasure. I was wild about dancing in my own day. And so is Katie after me. I cannot say a word to her. It's just like myself in my time."
"Oh! I think I have heard that," Mrs. Stormont said.
Now it was very well known that the minister's wife in her day had been a little person full of flirtations and naughtiness; and there was a good deal of significance in the tone in which the other lady spoke. But Mrs. Seton was clothed in armour of proof, and knew no harm of herself.
"I will never deny it," she said. "I was at every dance I could hear of. And Katie would be just the same, only that there are no dances—except the bit little things, which are not to be called dances, which we give ourselves. I will take her to the Hunt Ball when she is old enough; but it is not the like of that a young creature wants. She wants just her fun and a little movement; and to have something to talk about among her friends. Oh! the chatter they will keep up when two or three of them get together. You would think my little tea-parties were grand balls, nothing less."
"I consider them far more dangerous than your grand balls," said Mrs. Stormont. "The young men, when they go to the Hunt Ball, are on their guard; but he must be a very suspicious person who would take such precautions for a tea-party at the manse."
"It would be quite out of the question: precautions!" Mrs. Seton cried. "Two or three boys and girls thinking of nothing but what a bonnie waltz that is, or whose steps go best together."
She laughed, but Mrs. Stormont did not laugh. She sat very upright in her chair, and went on with her knitting without the relaxation of a feature.
"I am thinking," she said, after a pause, "if I keep well, of seeing a little company myself."
"Dear me! that will be a great pleasure to the young people to hear of."
"Oh, I'll not enter into competition with you," said Mrs. Stormont, coldly. "But Philip is not just in the boy and girl category. It's for his sake that I think it's necessary to see a few of my old county friends."
Mrs. Seton, though she was piqued, was equal to the occasion.
"That's quite a different thing, to be sure," she said, "from the parish. I may not be very quick in the uptake, but of course I can see that."
"On the contrary, I would say you were very quick in the uptake," said Mrs. Stormont; "there is nobody but knows it. It is not the same as just the neighbours in the parish; but I need not say that the clergyman, especially when he's respected like Mr. Seton, and his family are always included."
"That's very kind," said Mrs. Seton. "If it is to be soon, however, I'm afraid we will not have the pleasure; we are going to pay some summer visits, my husband and me, and I think we'll take Katie with us. It's time she were seeing a little of the world."
"Bless me! at sixteen, what does a girl want with seeing the world?" Mrs. Stormont cried.
"There is never any telling," said the minister's wife. "It's sometimes a great advantage to be made to see that a parish or even a county is not all the world. But," she added, rising with great suavity, "if we do not see it, we'll hear about it, and I'm sure I hope it will be a great success."
"She hopes nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Stormont, when her visitor was gone. She lived so much alone that she would sometimes say out in very plain language, confident that nobody could hear her, the sentiments of her mind. "She hopes nothing of the sort; she would like to hear that my cakes would not rise nor my bread bake, and that everybody was engaged."
When, however, a little time had elapsed, and Philip's mother had recovered her temper, she modified this expression. For Mrs. Seton was not an ill-natured woman. She liked to be first—who does not? She liked to feel herself a social personage sought by everybody. When she was neglected or threatened with neglect, she knew how to show "a proper pride;" but she wished no harm to her neighbours or their entertainments. And at the present moment the Stormonts were very important to her. She thought she saw a proposal in Philip's eyes. Poor lady! she was not wiser than another, she was not aware it had been made and accepted. She did not know that her little Katie, whose flirtations she considered of so little consequence, was holding a secret of such importance from her. She was very quick-witted in such matters, and would have found out any other girl in a moment; but to think that Katie was deceiving her was impossible to her. She thought she had it all in her own hands; sometimes she confided her feelings to her husband, who was very helpless, and did not know anything about it.
"Things have gone just far enough," she said to him, "with that lad Philip Stormont—just far enough. Unless he is going to speak, he has no business to hang about our house morning, noon, and night. He must see that we are not people to be trifled with, Robert. I am not going to put up with it if it goes too far."
"I hope, my dear," said the minister, with an air of distress, "that you don't want me to interfere; I understand nothing about it. I never spoke to a man upon such a subject in my life. I really could not do it. You must not ask me to interfere."
Mrs. Seton looked at him with a contemplative air of wondering contempt.
"Of all the frightened creatures in this world, there is nothing like a man," she said; "a hare is nothing to you. Interfere!—do I ever interfere with your sermons? I was silly to say a word, but there are times when a person cannot help herself, when there is just a necessity to speak to somebody. And I have not Katie to fall back upon. No, no—don't you be frightened. I hope I have more sense than to ask you to interfere."
The minister was relieved, but still not quite easy in his mind.
"I hope nobody will do it," he said. "I'd like to horsewhip the fellow that behaved ill to my Katie; but I would not say a word to him, I would——"
"Just you hold your tongue, Robert," Mrs. Seton said. "Am I likely to compromise Katie? Just you write your sermons, and leave the bairns to me. We are both best in our own departments."
To which sentiment the minister yielded a silent assent. He was altogether overwhelmed with alarm at the thought of having any negotiation to manage of such a delicate kind. And Katie, after all, was a child; and women have a way of giving such exaggerated importance to everything. But he watched his wife with a little anxiety for some time after. He found her, however, when he saw them together, on the best possible terms with Philip Stormont, and he congratulated himself that the cloud had blown over, and that there would need to be no interference at all.
"Your mother tells me she's meditating some parties," said Mrs. Seton, when she saw the young man. "Oh, no, no, not our kind. I hope I know better than to think of that. Me, I never venture on more than a tea-party, and, though you do us the honour to come, and the ladies from the Castle, the rest are just parish neighbours. But, so far as I understand from Mrs. Stormont, it is the whole county that is coming. Is it to be a ball? I said to your mother we would probably be away, Mr. Seton and myself, and that I thought of taking Katie; but I am not sure that I will keep to that, if it is going to be a ball."
"I don't know anything about it," said Philip. "My mother thinks we should do something, as people have been so kind to me; but nobody has been so kind as you have been, and, if you are away, it must be put off till you come back—unless you send Katie——"
"My dear Mr. Philip," said Mrs. Seton, "it is not that I'm a punctilious person: and you have known Katie all her life: but, you see, she is now grown up, and at the first opportunity I am going to bring her out. Yes, I allow it is very early—sixteen and a half—but the eldest daughter, that always counts for something. And, in the family, it would be ridiculous if you called her anything but by her name; but I must ask you, before strangers, to say Miss Seton, or even Miss Katie. It's more suitable when a girl grows up."
Philip stared with his mouth open, as well as his eyes. Nobody could say this was interfering. It was different from the brutal method which asks a man what are his intentions: but all the same he felt himself pulled suddenly up, when he was fearing nothing. He answered, faltering, that in that respect and every other he would of course do what Mrs. Seton thought right, but——
"Oh, yes," she said, with perfect good-humour, "of course you will do just what I please, but—I am acquainted with your buts, you young folk—you forget that I was once young myself. No, Philip, Katie is very well for the house, but it does not do for the world. What would you think in the middle of your grand party, with all the county there, as your mother says—that is, if we are asked, which I am not taking for granted——"
"There shall be no party in any house I belong to, where you are not asked the very first," Philip said.
"Well, that is a very nice thing to say. It is just what it is becoming and nice for you to say, having been so much about our house. But what would people think, if you were to be heard with your Katie here and Katie there in the middle of all the fine county ladies? What would they say? You see, I am obliged to think of all that."
"I don't know what they would think," said Philip, with what Mrs. Seton called afterwards, "a very red face." "I don't know what they might say—but I know what I should tell them, if any one of them ventured——"
Mrs. Seton put up her hand to stop him. She would indeed have liked very much to hear what he would have told them, if any one had ventured—But, after all, she had no mind to betray him into a hasty statement. She put up her hand, and said,
"Whisht, whisht! You may be sure nobody would venture. I will tell you what they would say. They would say that Mrs. Seton's a silly woman not to notice that her daughter is grown up, and to make other people take notice of it too. So you see, after all, it is myself I am thinking of," she concluded, with a laugh.
Philip retired, feeling much discomforted, after this conversation. His secret had not weighed upon him before. He meant no harm. There was a certain enjoyment in the mystery, in the stolen meetings, and secret understanding. He did not mean anything dishonourable. But as he listened to this unexpected address, and found himself placed on the standing-ground of one who had known Katie from a child, but henceforward must learn to respect her as a young lady, a curious shame and sense of falsehood came over him. As if he were a stranger! as if he had nothing to do with her! while all the while Katie was——All the interference in the world could not have convinced the young man like this. Was it possible that he would have to make believe; to call his betrothed by the formal name of Miss Seton? His imagination was not lively, but yet he was capable of figuring to himself his mother's party at the Tower, with Katie present amid the crowd of guests, and he, the master of the house, obliged to reserve his attentions for those who were entitled to them, and incapable of distinguishing her. Mrs. Seton had overlooked this, clear-sighted as she was. She had spoken as if the risk were that he would distinguish Katie over-much, and rouse the surprise of all the fine people by too familiar use of her name. Alas, if that had been all! But Philip knew better what his fate would be. He would be occupied with very different duties; his work would be all laid out for him—whom he was to dance with, to whom he was to devote his attentions. He would not be able to approach Katie, perhaps, till the end of the evening after he had paid his devoirs to all the greater people present.
Poor Philip's heart grew sick as he thus realized his position. If he could but prevail upon his mother to give up her plans!—failing that, he was obliged to confess with bitterness that it would be far better if Katie would go away visiting with her parents. He would not care for the ball were she absent, that was true; but, Heaven help him! what was he to do were she present?—how explain to her that he must abandon her?—and, still more, how explain to her mother, who expected something so different? Katie might pardon for love's sake, and because of his protestations and explanations, his apparent neglect—though Katie, too, was very high-spirited, and would ill be able to brook the slight. But her mother, how could she be mollified, how brought to understand it?—she who was so confident of her own great kindness to him and his indebtedness to her, and only afraid lest his extreme intimacy should appear too much. Poor Philip! his very soul sank within him as he anticipated his mother's party. Was it, perhaps, with some consciousness of all these promising elements of a quarrel that Mrs. Stormont's plans had been laid?