Margaret was in the act of adding up her bills, and counting the expenses of the season, next morning, when Mr. Allenerly was shown into the room. She rose from her chair, and gave him a warm welcome; for he was not only their "man of business," but an old friend of the family. She asked after his belongings, and if Scotland stood where it did, as is the use of compatriots when they meet in a strange country, and then she said, though not without a certain keen glance of curiosity,—for the visit of your man of business may always have something important lying under it, however innocent it appears,—
"You will just have come to this great big Vanity Fair of a place to divert yourself, like the rest of us?"
"A little of that—and a little thought of business too. Lawyers have such an ill name that it is difficult to make the world believe we take sometimes a great interest in our clients, and like to look after them. But my diversion would never be like yours. I hear there has been nothing but triumph in your career."
"Triumph! That is another question. You must have a great deal of money, and not much sentiment, I should say, to make a triumph in London—but we were not thinking of anything of that kind. We have had some very pleasant society, and that is as much as we wanted."
"I know what that means," said Mr. Allenerly. "I have heard of Miss Lilias; that there is nothing talked about but the young Scots' beauty, and all the conquests she has made."
"Toot!" said Margaret; and then she melted a little. "Everybody has been very kind. And we have seen a great deal—more than I ever expected, such quiet people as we are. But as for triumph, that is a large word. Whatever it has been, it has not turned her head."
"There is too much sense in it for that," said the lawyer.
"The sense in a young person's head of her age is never much to be trusted to. But she just takes everything, the monkey, as if she had a right to it, and that is a greater preservation than sense itself."
"I am thinking," said Mr. Allenerly, "that, after having all those grandees at her feet, it will be ill to please her with a plain Scots lad."
Miss Margaret gave him another keen look, but, though she had a great deal of curiosity herself as to his meaning, she did not intend to satisfy his curiosity. She laughed, accepting the inference, though turning over in her mind at the same time the question what Scots lad the lawyer could be thinking of. Not long-leggit Philip, it was to be hoped!
"There is no hurry," she said, "for any decision of that kind."
"There is no hurry on her side," said Mr. Allenerly, "but on the other there is generally a wish for an answer. So that I was thinking—But you will stop me, if there is any absolute bar in the way of what I was going to take upon me to say."
He looked at her with much keenness of inspection too, and their eyes met like two rival knights, without much advantage on either hand.
"I can scarcely do that," said Miss Margaret, "till I know what it is you are going to say."
Mr. Allenerly was tolerably satisfied by these preliminaries. Had there been any approaching brilliant marriage for Lilias, it must have been somehow revealed to him. He said,
"I am going to refer to events in the past that were painful at the time. Things have come to my knowledge that have made me wishful to interfere. There is a person who was once, without any will of his, an instrument of wrong to this family."
"Dear me, that is a very serious beginning," Miss Margaret said.
"And it will be more serious before the end. I am not going to beat about the bush with you. You are too well-informed and have too much judgment to take up a thing hastily. You will remember, Miss Margaret, all the vexation and trouble there was about your grandfather's will."
"Remember it! I would have a short memory or an easy mind if I did not remember all about it. It is not three years since."
"That is true; and there was a great deal of vexation. Such a thing, when it arises in a family, just spreads trouble."
"I don't know what you call vexation—that's an easy word. It was just burning wrong, and injustice, and injury. There was nothing in it that was not hateful to think upon and bitter to bear. I wonder that any one who wishes well to the family should be able to speak of it in that way."
"And yet I have been one that has wished well to the family—for more years than I care to reckon," the lawyer said.
"Grant me your pardon, Mr. Allenerly! I try to put it out of my mind as a Christian woman should; but, when I think of it, I just lose my patience. Vexation! it was just a bitter wrong and shame all the ways of it, both to him that gifted it and us that lost it."
"That is all true—it is all true: and nobody would suspect me of making little of it. At the same time, Miss Margaret, I will own that there was one part of the story that I was deceived in. The young man that wrongously got this inheritance——"
"The favourite, the foreign swindler."
"That is just where we were deceived," cried the lawyer, hastily throwing up his hand as if to stop the invective. "The young man——Miss Margaret, if you will have a little patience! Am I one to be easily convinced, or without chapter and verse? You have called me a bundle of prejudice before now. I am fond of nothing foreign; an intriguer is just what I cannot abide. Well, but this young man was neither foreign nor a swindler. He was not to blame. I declare it to you, if it was my dying word—he was not to blame."
Miss Margaret got up, and began to pace the little room in great excitement. It was the little back room attached to the dining-room, and was very small. She was like a lion in a cage. She put up her hand, and turned away from him with an expression of resentment and scorn.
"That is a likely thing to say to me!"
"It is not an easy thing to say to you—you will grant that; but it is true. He was young, and had been taken by Sir Patrick from a child; he was an orphan and friendless. He knew nothing about the Murrays. He did not even know that his benefactor had any children. He gave up the best of his life to nursing and tending the old man. A woman could not have been kinder. He expected nothing; when he heard what had happened, that he was the heir, he thought it would at most be to all the nicknacks and the gimcracks. He was thunderstruck when he knew what it was. I was on the look-out for deceptions, and I thought this was one. I will not deny it, I was of your opinion. You are not taking any notice of what I say."
"On the contrary," said Miss Margaret, with a laugh of disdain, "I am taking the greatest notice of it. And how did you come to change your opinion? He must be a clever fellow, this person, to get over a Scotch writer too."
"It is not so easy to get over a Scotch writer, as you say," said Mr. Allenerly, wiping his forehead. "What got over me was just experience of the lad. I have had a great deal to do with him. What with letters and what with observation, I've come to know him. It is not that he's difficult to know. It was all in him at the first glance, but I could not believe it. I thought it was certain he must be a deceiver. But he is no deceiver. He is more simple than the generality. You will believe me or you will not believe me, as you please; but what I am saying is true."
"It would be impossible for me not to believe—that you are speaking what you think the truth—just as impossible," said Miss Margaret, "as it is to believe that this is the truth. Was the old man doited then? was he mad? had he lost every sense of what was due to those that came after him? Then why did not you, a man of the law like you, prove him so? This was what I never understood, for my part."
"He was neither mad nor doited, but knew what he was doing well, or, you may be sure, if there had been any proof——There was no undue influence; the young man did not so much as know what there was to leave, or if there was a will at all."
"This is a very likely story," said Margaret, with a grim smile, "and I acknowledge, at all events, that there is a kind of genius in making you believe it all."
The lawyer gave her a look of indignation and anger, but restrained himself with professional power.
"The General," he said—"you will forgive me, Miss Margaret: far be it from me to say a word to his disadvantage—but he was not what you would call a dutiful son. There was no question of that, you will say, at his age—which is true enough. And Sir Patrick had been long abroad, and none of you had ever gone near him, or showed any interest in him."
"How could we?" cried Margaret, roused to instant self-defence. "Was it our part? We were women, never stirring from home. If he had held up a finger—if he had given us the least invitation——"
"And, on the other hand, why should he?" said the lawyer. "He had a kind of son of his old age that had no thought but his comfort. Why should he put himself out of the way to invite his grandchildren, that cared nothing about him? If he had known you and your sister, or if he had seen that bonnie creature, Miss Lilias——"
"I am glad," cried Margaret, vehemently, "that we were never beguiled to travel all that long way and put ourselves and Lilias into competition with the wriggling creature you call the son of his old age—I am thankful for that with all my heart."
"Then you will pardon me for saying you are thankful for small mercies," the lawyer said, in an indignant tone. They paused, both eyeing each other for the moment with equal displeasure and breathing quick with excitement. "There seems but small encouragement," said Mr. Allenerly, with that air of compassionate resignation which is so irritating to an antagonist, "for the rest that I had to say; for, if you will not listen to the first part of my story, it is very unlikely that you will put up with the second."
"Oh, say on, say on!" said Miss Margaret, with an affectation of calm. She went into the next room through the folding doors, and brought back her knitting, and seated herself with a serene air of resignation in the one easy-chair which the room contained. "I would like to hear the whole," she said with a smile, "now that we are on the subject. It is a pity to miss anything. If I were what they call a student of human nature, it would be just a grand amusement. A clever man, and an Edinburgh writer, and a person of judgment, telling me what's neither more nor less than a fairy tale."
"It is God's truth," said Mr. Allenerly, sternly, "and I dare any man to prove me mistaken; but the rest, you are right, it is like a fairy tale. This young man, finding, after his first astonishment at being a rich man (he was astonished to be rich, but not that his old friend, his protector, his godfather, as he called him, had made a will in his favour, which was the most natural thing——)"
"His—what did he call him?" Margaret said, with a start, looking up.
"His godfather—that was the name of kindness between them."
A gleam of fierce light came over Margaret's face. She threw down her knitting and clasped her hands forcibly together.
"Ah!" she cried, in the tone of one upon whom a sudden light had been thrown; then she said, "Go on! go on!" with an angry smile.
"I say he was sorely astonished, overcome at first, and it took him a long time to accustom himself to it. He knew nothing about any relations, and, when he was told of their existence, you'll excuse me for saying that he would not believe in them—saying, as was quite natural, that nobody ever came near the old man, that he was quite alone in the world. But we have already discussed that question. I let him know, however, that it was true, and it made a great impression on him. For one thing, it wounded him in his love for old Sir Patrick: for, after hearing that, he could not regard him as just the perfect being he had supposed."
"That was a very delicate distress, Mr. Allenerly," Margaret said, with fine sarcasm.
"He had a very delicate mind, as you shall see," said the lawyer, equally caustic. "The second thing was that he conceived a grand idea of setting the wrong right. He heard that the heirs were all ladies, and his determination was taken in a moment—it was without any thought of pleasing himself, or question whether they were old or young—just to come to Scotland and offer himself to one of them."
Margaret rose from her seat with a start of energy. She flung her knitting from her in the fervour of her feelings.
"There is no need to say any more," she cried, vehemently, "not another word. I know who your friend is now. I know who he is. Lord in heaven! that I should have been one of the credulous too!"
"If you know who he is, there is the less need——"
"Not another word," she cried, putting up her hand, "not another word. To think that I should have been taken-in too! Oh! I see it all now. I might have thought what was the motive that made him so keen after one of us. Jean first, and, when that would not do, Lilias. Lilias! as if I would give my child, my darling, the apple of my eye, to a man of straw, a man of nothing, a man that has just her money and nothing more. And so that was what it was! and me trying to find out what Murrays he was come of. Man!" she cried, turning upon the lawyer with a movement which resembled the stamping of her foot in passion. "Oh, man! why did you let me be humbled so?"
"Miss Margaret!—is that all you will say?"
"What more is there to say? I am humbled to the dust—I am just proved a fool, which is a bitter thing for a woman to put up with. I have had him in my house. I have let him come and go. I have accepted favours at his hands. Lord!" cried Miss Margaret again, in passionate excitement, clasping her hands together, "it is all his doing. I see it now. It is just all his doing. It is he that brought these fine folk here. He got the invitations for us that he might meet her. He has been at the bottom of everything. And I—I have been a fool—a fool! and would never have seen through it till doomsday, and was getting to be fond of—Oh!" she cried, stamping her foot on the ground, unable to contain herself, "is this me, Margaret, that have always had such an opinion of myself? and now I am just humbled to the ground!"
"There is little occasion for being humbled—if you never do anything less wise——"
"Hold your tongue, sir," she cried; "oh! hold your tongue. It has been a scheme, a plot, a conspiracy from the beginning. I see through it all now. Mr. Allenerly, I beg your pardon. If I am ill-bred to you, it is just that there is more than I can bear!"
"Be as ill-bred as you please, if that is any ease to you; but, Miss Margaret, be just. You are a just woman. Oh! think what you are doing. You are not one to give way to a sudden passion."
"I am just one to give way to passion! What else should I do? Would you have me to take it like a matter of business, or, maybe, thank your friend for his good intentions," she cried, with a laugh of anger. They both belonged to a race and class which forbids such demonstrations of feeling; but righteous wrath is always exempted from the range of those sentiments which are to be kept under control.
While this interview was going on, Lewis was passing through a strange revolution, a sort of volcanic crisis such as had never happened in his life before. He had not been trained to thought, nor was that his tendency. He had all his life taken things as they came: au jour le jour had been his simple philosophy, a maxim which may be the most sublime Christianity or the most reckless folly. In his case it was neither, but rather the easy temperament of a simple nature, always able to reconcile itself to the circumstances of the moment, finding more or less enjoyment in everything that happened, and very little pre-occupied with its own personality at all. A prudent young man would have been concerned as to what was to happen to him after Sir Patrick's death, when his luxurious home would be broken up, and he himself, without profession or property, thrown upon the world; but Lewis had given the matter no thought at all, with an easy confidence of always finding bread and kindness, which both the circumstances of his life and the disposition of his friends had fostered. Afterwards, when he found himself Sir Patrick's heir and a man of fortune, he accepted that too with surprise, but an easy reconciliation of all confused matters, which, had he contemplated the subject in all its lights, would have been impossible. It was only by degrees that he woke to the other side of the question, the position of the despoiled heirs. Then, the reader of this history is aware, his resolution had been uncompromising. He had not thought of his own satisfaction at all. Having come to the decision that Sir Patrick's heiress, or at least one of Sir Patrick's heiresses, should have back the inheritance in the only way that occurred to him as practicable, he had set about it at once in the most straightforward manner possible. He had been ready to subordinate his own feelings, to consider only the question of duty. In every way that had seemed possible to him he had pursued this object. When it happened, in pursuit of this duty, that love stepped in, dazzling and bewildering, yet intensifying to the highest degree his previous purpose, it had been a boon from heaven, a blessing upon that purpose rather than a new object. It seemed to him another proof that he was born under a happy star, that the one woman in the world whom he desired to marry should also be the one in the world with whom it was his duty to share everything that was his. It was this that made all methods seem lawful to him, and had stirred him to the intention, which was contrary to all his prejudices, of obtaining, if possible, her assent to his suit, without the previous knowledge or even against the wish of her family—the English way—the way that Philip Stormont and Katie Seton, and indeed everybody about, thought legitimate. But now for the first time Lewis had been driven out of his easy philosophy. Mr. Allenerly's stern conception of honour, the new light upon the whole subject that had been thrown by the lawyer's lantern, had found those openings in the young man's mind which a new and deeper sentiment than any he had ever known had opened in him. The natural affections may be ever so warm and lovely without startling the soul into any new awakening. Full of friendship, full of kindness, he had been all his life more prone to serve and help than even to enjoy: but when a great primary passion, one of the elementary principles of life, goes down into the depths of innocent nature the effect is different. It is like the Divine life, when that enters into a soul, bringing not peace but a sword.
The year which had elapsed since he left Murkley had been a period of chaos and doubt. He had been without any ray of distinct guidance, looking vaguely to the chances of the future. Since he came to town and had seen Lilias again, his whole mind had been occupied in her service, in devising means for her entertainment and success, but also in securing opportunities for himself, and in conspiring with everybody who knew him, and would help him, for the glorification of his heroine. And in fact, during the most of this period, simple love had carried him away on its current. He had thought of no rational obstacles or difficulties, but only of herself. Her looks, her words, the way in which she took his arm, a glance surprised in the course of an evening, had occupied him to the complete exclusion of everything else. The approach of the critical moment when all must be decided had raised the whole being of Lewis into an atmosphere of passion. The crisis affected his mind as well as his feelings, and quickened his intelligence as it developed his heart. When that clear, cold lantern of good sense in Mr. Allenerly's hand flashed upon the confused scene, the light effected in an instant what previous months had not effected. He began to see that his own easy way was impossible. It would have been so much happier, so much less complicated! but it was impossible. He could not even, as has been seen, when the moment came, attempt to solve everything in that easy way. Sailing over the surface would do no longer. He had to go down into the heart of things, to question the depths, and see what answer was in them. He began to ask himself what was the question which he had skimmed over from the beginning, which he had so often attempted to settle by natural compromises, by pleasant expedients, as was his nature? When self is imperious in such a nature, necessity brings forth treachery and guile. But to Lewis self was never in the foreground, even in love, where self-will has a kind of justification, and indulgence has an air of duty; it was not his nature to put it forward, and truth was dear to him wherever he saw it. He began to think, almost for the first time in his life.
And the first result of this process is seldom a pleasant one. When he had put the ladies into their carriage on that last night, or rather morning—for the dawn was blue in the streets, and London was coming slowly into sight out of the darkness, with lamps burning unearthly in a light far more potent than theirs—Lewis put his hat on his head, and set out on a wonderful walk, which he remembered all his life. The market carts, all fresh and alive, and somewhat chilly with their start before the day; the carriages, with a jaded air, horses and people alike, white bundles of drapery huddled up within them, and their lamps flickering like impish eyes; the houses all asleep in long blank lines, closed to every influence; the Park lying dewy and still, without a speck of life upon it, gave a kind of unnatural background, familiar yet strange to his thoughts. It might have been the extraordinary character of these thoughts that had thus altered the aspect of the visible world, in itself so well known. He assisted at the spectacle of the great city's awaking, as he walked on and on; the parks always lying in the midst of the scene, shut up, and silent, and inaccessible, the early sun sweeping over them unbroken by any human shadow, in the midst of the growing life and motion, like a haven which was not to be attained, the always possible Eden, open to the longing vision, but guarded from the eager step, which tantalizes most existences. His mind got only more confused, a greater whirl of imperfect thinking was about him as he hurried along, receiving all these external objects distractedly into the ferment of his brain. It was full day, nearly six o'clock, when he got home, and threw himself on his bed unnaturally in the sunshine. But it was not to sleep. Thinking was so new a process to Lewis that he felt as if some new jarring machinery had been set up in his brain, and the whirl of the unaccustomed wheels made him giddy, and took away all consciousness of mental progress. He seemed to be in the same place, beating a painful round, with the whirl and the movement and confusion, but nothing else, in his bewildered brain. He must have slept, though he was scarcely aware of it, late into the morning. But when he was disturbed by the entrance of his servant, and sprang up suddenly into full consciousness and life, the first flash of self-recollection revealed to him a resolution formed and perfect. Where had it come from? Had the wheels been working while he slept, and ground it out? had something above earth whispered it to him out of the unseen? He was almost afraid, when he saw it looking him, as it were, in the face, a something separate from himself, a definite thing, resolved and certain. It was not there when he had come in; where had it come from? He sprang up into the consciousness of a new world, a new life, a changed order of things, as well as a new day.
When Mr. Allenerly came in about an hour after, Lewis met him with a pale and somewhat jaded aspect not inappropriate to a man who had been up all night, the lawyer thought, but also subdued and grave as of one whose reflections had not been of a happy kind. The lawyer came in, himself very serious, with the painful sense that his mission was to quash all the hopes and make an end of all the plans which the other had been making himself happy in forming. He sat down at the table on which Lewis' breakfast stood untouched, without a word. The sight of this partly reduced his sympathy for Lewis, for there was an air of dissipation about it which displeased his orderly mind. Perhaps, notwithstanding all the advantages of the arrangement, a young man who had not breakfasted at twelve o'clock was scarcely a fit husband for Lilias Murray, or one in whose hands her happiness would be sure. He sat down and looked at Lewis with a disapproving eye.
"You are very late," he said. "I will soon be thinking of my lunch; but I suppose you were up till all the hours of the night."
"I don't think I have slept at all," said Lewis, "I have been thinking. Stop and hear me first. I know by your face what you are going to say. But that has nothing to do with what I have made up my mind to. One way or other, it could have nothing to do with it. Our talk yesterday turned me all outside in. I never had thought it over from the beginning to the end before."
"You must form no rash resolution," Mr. Allenerly said.
"It is the least rash I have ever formed. I suppose I am not given to thinking. And, if it is wrong, it is you who have set me on this way," Lewis said, with a wistful sort of fatigued smile. "Now, before you say anything, have patience and hear me out."