It was curious how the aspect of everything had changed to Lewis when he walked up the now familiar way to the old Castle of Murkley through the sunshine of the July afternoon. It was still full summer, but there seemed to him a cloud in the air—a cloud too subtle to show upon the brightness of the unsympathetic blue, but which indicated storm and change. The trees were almost black in the fulness of their leafage, dark green, no tender tints of spring lingering among them, as there had still been when he first came to the little village on the river-side, and first saw those turrets sheltered among the trees. What a difference since then! The unknown, with all its suggestions, had disappeared; he was aware what he was likely to meet round every corner. But the excitement of a life in suspense had only been intensified. When he came to Murkley, with the virtuous intention of bestowing himself and his fortune upon one of old Sir Patrick's disinherited granddaughters, there had been no very entrancing expectations in his mind. He had not thought of falling in love, but of accomplishing his duty. That duty he would have been happy to accomplish under the gentle auspices of Miss Jean. He would never have grumbled at the twilight life he should have spent with her; no such radiant vision as Lilias had ever flitted across his imagination, nor had he expected, in case his suit should be rejected (a possibility which at first, indeed, he had not taken into account), to return with anything less agreeable than that calm sense of having done his duty which consoles a man for most small disappointments. But now all this was changed. In the case he had supposed beforehand, a refusal would have been an emancipation. He would have felt that he had done all he could, and was now free to enjoy unfettered what he had felt the justice of sharing, should they please, with one of the natural heirs. But Lewis felt now that the whole question had been opened, and did not know where he might find himself, or what he might feel to be his duty if he failed now. It had been easy to put all that aside when he knew that Lilias was near him, that he had the same chance as all her countrymen, and was free to speak to her, to exercise what charms he might possess. Every decision was stopped naturally, every calculation, even, until it appeared whether in this supreme quest he might have good fortune. But when she should be gone, what would happen? When she should be gone, the glory would be gone out of everything. Murkley would turn into a dull little village, full of limited rural people, and his own life would appear as it was, a mere exotic, without meaning or rule. There was a meaning in it now, but then there would be none.
He walked up the village-street with that suddenly elongated countenance, feeling that everything was crumbling about him. The children with their lintwhite locks, the fowls sheltering beneath the old cart turned up on the roadside, the slow, lumbering figures moving about across the fields and dusty roads, struck him for the first time with a sense of remoteness. What had he to do among them? It was impossible to imagine anything more entirely unlike the previous tenor of his life, and if he failed—if he did not succeed in the suit which, as soon as he thought of it, seemed to him preposterous, what would his life become? Whatever it was, it would be very different from Murkley, and any existence that was possible there. Accordingly it was not only his love that might be disappointed, but his life, which probably would entirely change. Very few men have this to contemplate when they think of putting their fortune to the touch, unless it is those men who take up marriage as a profession, a class fortunately very few.
The ladies were all in, Simon said. He had made an alteration in his appearance which revealed a high sense of the appropriate. He had an apron upon his person, and several straws at his feet, which he stooped to pick up.
"You'll excuse us, sir, if we're not just in our ordinary," Simon said. "You see we're packing." A hope that he would be the first to tell it, and that explanations might be demanded from him, gave vivacity to Simon's looks. But he relapsed into gravity when Lewis, with that long face, gravely replied that he was very sorry, and that it must have been a sudden resolution. "Things is mostly sudden, sir," said Simon, with a dignified sense of superiority, "in a lady's house. Miss Jean is in the drawing-room, but Miss Margaret is up the stair."
Lewis stood, with his heart beating, under the old man's calm inspection.
"I am going to see Miss Jean," he said, "but afterwards will you ask, Simon, if Miss Murray will grant me an interview. There is something—I wish to ask her."
"Lord bless us!" said Simon, "you'll no be meaning——"
And then he stopped short, eyeing Lewis, who stood half angry, half amused under this inspection. The old servant's eyes had a twinkle in them, and meant much, but he recollected himself in time.
"You'll be meaning Miss Margaret," he said. "I'll allow it's ridiculous, with the two leddies here; but the one that is Miss Murray according to all rights is Miss Lilias—for she is Miss Murray of Murkley, and the other two leddies, they're just the Miss Murrays of Gowanbrae. That was, maybe, the General's fault: or, maybe, just his wisdom and far-seeingness; for he was a clever man, though few saw it. Old Sir Patrick, the old man, he was just the very devil for cleverness," Simon said.
This did not sound like a servant's indiscretion, but the somewhat free opinion of a member of the family, which was how Simon considered himself. He made a little pause, contemplating Lewis with a humorous eye, and then he said,
"I'll take ye to Miss Jean, sir, and then I'll give your message to Miss Margaret. I will say in half an hour or three-quarters of an hour, that they may be sure not to clash."
"That will do very well," said Lewis, not knowing why it was that Simon twinkled at him with so admiring an eye.
The old servant smote upon his thigh when he had introduced the visitor into the drawing-room.
"If one will not do, he'll try the other. But, Lord save us, to tackle Miss Margaret! Eh, but yon's a lad of spirit," Simon said. For the little episode of the devotion of Lewis for Miss Jean had not passed unobserved by the keen eyes of the domestic critics. They understood what had happened as well as Lewis, and considerably better than Jean did, though with consternation, not knowing what the young man's object could be. No doubt he had thought that she was the one that had the siller, they concluded, but his desire to have an interview with Miss Margaret convulsed the house with wonder.
"Miss Margaret will soon give him his answer," said the cook, indignant. "I would have turned him about his business, if it had been me, and tellt him our ladies werena in."
"Would you have had me file my conscience with a lee?" said Simon; and then he added, with a chuckle, "I wish the keyhole was an honest method, or I could get below the table. I would sooner see them than ony play."
"She will send him away with a flea in his lug," said the angry cook.
Meanwhile Lewis, unsuspecting that his designs were so evident, went into the drawing-room, where Miss Jean sat as usual. She gave him her usual gentle smile.
"Come away," she said, "Mr. Murray. I am very glad to see you. I should have sent for you, if you had not come. For it will not be much longer I will have the pleasure——We are going away from Murkley for a time. It is sudden, you will think, but that is just because we have kept it to ourselves. Murkley is just a terrible place for gossip," Miss Jean said.
There was a little pause. It was one of those crises in which there is much to say, but no legitimate means of saying it. "I am very sorry," said Lewis. Miss Jean, on her side, was much embarrassed, for somehow it seemed to her that she had acted unkindly, and forgotten the claims of this young man who threw himself in so strange, yet so trusting, a way on her consideration. The events of the former interview, in which there had been so much agitation, she had never formally explained to herself. The shyness of her sweet old-maidenhood had eluded the question. She had never asked herself what he meant, or why it was that she had taken the extreme step of narrating to him the history of her own love. She had done it by instinct at the moment, and the doing of it had agitated and occupied her mind so much that she scarcely thought of Lewis. But she had retained a warmer kindness for him, a sense of having more to do with him than the others had, and she felt now as if she had deserted him, almost betrayed his trust in her.
"You see," she said, a little anxiously, "we are not just free agents, Margaret and me. There is always Lilias to think of. What is good for her is the thing we are most guided by: and we think a change will be good for her."
"And I am sure you are quite right in thinking so," said Lewis, hastily. It was a thing he had no right to say. He reddened with embarrassment and alarm when he had thus committed himself, and said, hurriedly, "Everything, of course, must give way to that."
"You have thought her looking—pale? That is just what we have been thinking, Margaret and me. And what is a very good thing is, that she's fain, fain to go to Gowanbrae herself. That is our little place in the south country, Mr. Murray. I am sure that if you were—passing that way at any time, Margaret would be very glad to see you." Jean said this, however, with but a half-assured air, and continued, hurriedly, "It would be taking much upon ourselves to say you would perhaps miss us: for you have many friends already in this country-side, and this house is a very quiet house for you to find pleasure in; but it vexes me just to cease to see you when we were beginning to know you."
"I will come to—the south country—with pleasure," said Lewis; then he added, seeing her hesitation, "We shall meet, perhaps, in town."
"That will be the surest," said Miss Jean, brightening; "we will be there by March, from all Margaret says. So far as she can hear, that is the time when the drawing-rooms begin. If you are in London, that will just be a great pleasure to look forward to, Mr. Murray. Dear me! to think of meeting you among strangers, and hearing you play, and all as if we were still at Murkley, in a great, vast, terrible place like yon London! And where shall we hear of you? You will have a club, or something. But, after all, what can that matter?" Miss Jean added, with gentle dignity; "you will always be able to hear of the Miss Murrays of Murkley; and you will tell me where I can hear good music, that is one thing I am looking forward to."
"Are you too busy? or may I play to you now?" he said.
"Oh, no, I could never be too busy," said Miss Jean, "and, as a matter of fact, I have nothing to take me up. Margaret is just a woman in a thousand. She thinks nobody can do a thing right but herself. I would be sitting with my hands before me but for this work that they all laugh at. And never, never could I be too busy for music," she said, with a little sigh of satisfaction, turning her face towards the piano. Lewis was in that condition of suspense in which a man, with his mind all directed to the near future, is scarcely conscious what he is doing in the present. There had been a moment before in which his heart had beat very anxiously in this same room, but with a very different kind of anxiety from this. There lay before him then no dazzling possibility of happiness, but now the hurry and tumult in all his veins was moved by the knowledge that everything which was most beautiful in life was before him. He did not expect that he was to get it. He had no hope that Miss Margaret would open the doors of the house or the arms of the family to him. But the mere idea of declaring himself, of making the attempt, made his heart beat. It was almost certain, indeed, that he would be rejected, but he had learned now to know that no such injustice could be final. After Margaret, there was another tribunal. Parents might frown, yet it was always possible in England that the maiden herself would smile. He felt that, be the answer what it might, when he opened his lips this day he would open up the supreme question of his life. And yet, with this ferment in his being, he went to the piano to play to the gentle listener who was never too busy for music. He himself, though he was an enthusiast in his way, was too busy for it now; he could not hear the sounds that came out from under his fingers for the strong pulsations that beat in his heart and made every other sound indifferent to him. In consequence of this, it happened to Lewis to do what all artists have to do sometimes, whether man or woman, seeing that life is more urgent than art. He played with his hands not less skilfully, not less smoothly than usual, but he did not play with his soul, and of all people in the world Miss Jean was the most sensitive to the difference. She loved music not for its technicalities, or for its execution, or for the grammar and correctness of its construction. She loved it for the soul of it, by instinct and not by purpose, and the fine dissatisfaction that arose in her when she felt it came to her from his fingers only is more than can be said. A veil of bewilderment came over her face. Was it her own fault? was her mind taken up with the excitement of the journey, the cares which she shared with her sister respecting Lilias? Miss Jean placed herself at the bar with a sort of consternation. But it was not she who was to blame. Had she received it as usual with serene satisfaction and delight, he would have continued for some time at least, anxious and excited though he was; but when the support of her faith was withdrawn, this became impossible. He stopped abruptly when he came to the end of the movement he was playing, broke into a wild fantasia, and finally jumped up from his seat after a great jar and shriek of outraged chords, holding out his hands in an appeal.
"Pardon!" he cried, "pardon! I cannot play a note—it is too strong for me, and you have found me out."
"You are not well," she said, with ready sympathy, "or there is something wrong."
"There is this wrong," he said, "that I think all my life is going to be settled to-day. You, whom I have always revered and loved since I first saw you, let me tell it to you. Oh! not the same as what happened the other day when you stopped my mouth. I do not know what you will think of me, but it was not falsehood one way or another. I had scarcely seen her then. I have asked Miss Margaret for an interview, and this time it is for life or for—no, I will not be fictitious, I will not say death: for that is not how one dies."
"An interview with Margaret?" Jean repeated after him. She grew a little pale in sympathy with his excitement. "My poor lad, my poor lad! and what is that for?"
But she divined what it was for. For a moment it startled her indeed. That gentle sense of property, of a sort of possession in him, which was involuntary, which was the merest shadow of personal consciousness, disturbed and bewildered her for a moment. Was this what he had meant all along? It gave her a little shock of humiliation, not that he should have changed his mind, but that she should have mistaken him. How glad she was that she had stopped him at once, that she had prevented all compromising words; but yet the possibility that she had been so ridiculous as to mistake as addressed to herself what was meant for Lilias, did touch Miss Jean's mind for a moment with a thrill of pain; the next she was herself again.
"It is Lilias you mean?" she said, in a low and tremulous voice.
He made no reply except with his eyes, in which there was an appeal to her for pardon and for help. He was too deeply moved and anxious, fortunately, to realize the ludicrous element in the situation, and, in his confusion and sense of guilt yet innocence, had no ridiculous admixture of the comic in his thoughts. Perhaps people are slow to see the humour in their own case: and Lewis had absolute trust in the patroness whom he addressed. Even had he supposed her to have a feeling of wrong in this quick transference of his suit, he would have opened his heart to her all the same. But he had no reason to suppose that Miss Jean could have any sense of wrong. She shook her head in reply to his look of confusion and appeal.
"She is just the apple of Margaret's eye," she said.
"And I am—no one," said Lewis.
"You must not say that; but you are not a great man. And Margaret thinks there is nobody good enough for her. I would not mind so much myself; you are young, and have a kind, kind heart. But you have said nothing to her?"
"What do you take me for?" said Lewis, with gentle indignation. Only a few words had been said, and his former attitude towards Miss Jean had not been one that would have seemed to make his present confidences natural: but the fact was that he had utter confidence in her, and she a soft, half-maternal compassion and sympathy for him which had ranged her on his side in a moment. They were born to understand each other. All that was confusing and embarrassing had blown away from the thoughts of both. They sat together and talked for some minutes longer, forgetting everything else in this entrancing subject; then she sent him away, bidding God bless him, to the more important interview which awaited him. Miss Jean dried her eyes, in which tears of sympathy and emotion were standing, as she closed the door upon him. It was a thing to stir the heart in her bosom. The first lover of Lilias! To think that little thing newly out of the nursery, who had been a baby but the other day, should have entered already upon this other stage of existence! Miss Jean sat down in her window again and mused over it with a tremor of profound sympathetic feeling in her heart. Bless the darling! that she should have come to this already. But then, what would Margaret say? He was not an earl nor a duke, but a simple gentleman. Even when you came to that, nobody knew what Murrays he was of; was there any hope that Margaret would yield her child to such a one? Miss Jean shook her head all alone as she sat and mused; her heart was sore for him, poor young man! but she did not think there was any hope.
As for Lewis, he walked to the library, in which Miss Margaret awaited him, with a sort of solemnity as men march to hear their sentence from the court-martial that has been sitting upon them. He had not much more hope than Miss Jean had, but he had less submission. He found Margaret seated in a high-backed chair of the same order as that which she used in the drawing-room—a commanding figure. She had no knitting nor other familiar occupation to take off the edge of her dignity, but sat expecting him, her hands folded upon her lap. She did not rise when he came in, but gave him her hand with friendly stateliness.
"Simon tells me you were wanting to speak to me, Mr. Murray. It is most likely our old man has made a mistake, and you were only coming to say good-bye."
"He has made no mistake," Lewis said; "there is something I wanted to say to you, to ask you. It is of the greatest importance to me, and, if I could hope that you would give me a favourable answer, it would be of importance to you too."
"Indeed!" she said, with a smile, in which there was some haughtiness and a shade of derision. "I cannot think of any question in which our interests could meet."
"But there is one," cried Lewis, anxiously. "And you will hear me—you will hear me, at least? Miss Murray, I once said something to you—I was confused and did not know—but I said something——"
"Not confused at all," said Miss Margaret. "You made your meaning very clear, though it was a very strange meaning to me. It was in relation to my sister Jean."
The young man bowed his head. He was confused now, if he had not been so then. All that Miss Jean's gentle courtesy had smoothed over for him he saw now in Margaret's smile.
"I hope," she said, pointedly, and with the derision more apparent than ever, "that the answer you got then was of a satisfying kind."
"I got no answer," said Lewis, with a little agitation. "Your sister is as kind as heaven; she would not let me put myself in the wrong. The feeling I had was not fictitious; I would explain it to you if I dared. She forgave me my presumption, and she stopped me. Miss Murray, it is a different thing I have come to speak to you of to-day."
"I am glad of that," said Miss Margaret—"very glad of that; for I may say, since you have thought better of it, that it was not a subject that was pleasing to me."
Lewis rose up in his excitement; the little taunt in her tone, the sternness behind her smile, the watchful way in which her eyes held him, all made him feel the desperate character of the attempt he was making, and desperation took away every restraint.
"It is very different," he said—"it is love. I did not intend it—I had never thought of it—my mind was turned another way—but I saw her by chance, and what else—what else was possible? Oh! it is very different. Love is not like anything else. It forces to speak, it makes you bold, it is more strong than I——"
"You are eloquent," said Miss Margaret. "Mr. Murray, that was very well put. And who are you in love with that can concern us of the house of Murkley, if I may ask the question? I will hope," she said, with a laugh, "that it's not me you have chosen as the object of your affection this time."
He looked at her with a pained look, reproachful and wistful. It did him more good than if he had spoken volumes. A little quick colour, like a reflection of some passing light, gleamed over Miss Margaret's face.
"Mr. Murray," she said, "if that is your name, which you say yourself is not your name—who are you, a stranger, to come like this to ladies of a well-known family? I am not asking who is your object now. If I seemed to jeer at you, I ask your pardon. I will say all I can—I will say that I believe you mean no harm, but rather to be honourable, according to what you think right. But I must tell you, you are not, so far as I know, in the position of one with whom we could make alliances. It is kindest to speak it plain out. It is just chance that has thrown us in your way, and you take impressions far too seriously," she added, not without kindness. "There was my sister Jean, you know; and now it is another. This will blow over too, if you will just wait a little, and consider what is befitting."
She rose up from her high chair. She was more imposing seated in it than standing, for her stature was not great. Lewis knew that this was intended to give him his dismissal, but he was too much in earnest to take it so easily.
"Let me speak one word," he said. "If I am not great, there is at least one thing—I am rich. What she wishes to do, I could do it. It should all be as if there had been no disinheriting. To me the family would be as great an interest, as great a desire, as to her. Her palace of dreams, it should be real. I would devote myself to it—it should be a dream no longer. Listen to me, I could do it——"
"What you say is without meaning to me, Mr. Murray," Miss Margaret said, with stern paleness. "It is better that no more should be said."
"Without any reference, without any appeal? how do you know," he said, "that she might not herself think otherwise—that she might not, if only for the sake of her dream——"
"A gentleman," said Miss Margaret, "will never force his plea upon ladies when he sees it is not welcome. I will just bid you farewell, Mr. Murray. We shall very likely not meet again."
She held out her hand, but he did not take it. He looked anxiously in her face.
"Can I say nothing that will move you?" he said.
"I am thinking not, Mr. Murray. When two persons disagree so much as we do upon a business so important, it is best to wish one another good-bye. And it is lucky, as you will have heard, that we are going away. I am offering you my hand, though you do not seem to see it. I would not do that if I thought ill of you. Fare-you-well, and I wish you every prosperity," Miss Margaret said.
He took her hand, and gave it one angry pressure. It was what he had expected, but it hurt him more than he thought. The disappointment, the sadness of leaving, the blank wall that seemed to rise before him, made Lewis sad, and made him wroth. It did not seem to him that he deserved so badly of Fate. He said "good-bye" almost in a sullen tone. But when he reached the door he turned round and looked at her, standing where he had left her, watching his departure.
"I must warn you. I do not accept this as final," he said.