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