The ladies were very tired when they got home. It is a long journey from London to the north. They were late next morning, and still languid with the fatigue, and with the curious sense of having dropped out of another sphere which came after their strange London experiences. To come into the old house, and see everything unchanged, was very wonderful. It made the past look like a dream. To Lilias, above all, for whom life had sustained an entire revolution, there was something extraordinary, weird, and uncanny about the old existence, which seemed to wait for her here like a distinct and separate thing, receiving her once more into its bosom, going on with her as if the other had never been. As she lingered with Jean over the late breakfast from which Margaret had risen an hour before, she looked round upon the wainscot, with all those gleams of reflection in it which she remembered all her life, and the old pictures, and the furniture all in its place, with a sort of dismay.
"Do you think we have ever been away?" she said, with a scared look in her eyes. She was afraid of the stillness, which seemed to close over her, making all the colour and commotion of the past season, and all the new thoughts with which it had filled her mind, die away like things that had never been.
"That is just the feeling every time you make a change," said Jean, "for life is a very strange thing. I've sometimes thought it was never more than half-real at the best of times: and whiles you would like to put forth your hand and grip to feel if it is true."
This was beyond the experience of little Lilias; but there was a sensation of suspense and uncertainty in her mind which made her old sister's contemplative thoughts very congenial to her.
"It will turn out," she said, with a laugh, the sound of which half-frightened her, "that we have all been sleeping and dreaming. But no!—for now I remember. I am not so silly now as when I went away. London was very bonnie, but not grand like what I thought, and, oh, do you remember, Jean, about the Queen in the Court, what a fool—what a fool I was!" Lilias clapped her hands together in shame and self-impatience. "You should have told me," she cried.
"But, my dear," said Miss Jean, "I cannot affirm that I know any better, even now: for it was not me but Margaret that went with you to see Her Majesty. You are more experienced than I am. You have had a grand setting-out in the world, Lilias; none of our house for many a day has done what you have done. Even your bonnie young mother, though she was an earl's daughter—you have had, you may say, the world at your feet, my bonnie dear. And it has not turned her head either," said Miss Jean, smiling upon her with pride and happiness, "you are just our little Lilias all the same."
"The world at my feet! I wonder what that means?" cried Lilias, with a little scoff; but, after all, the suggestion was pleasant to her. She was silent a little, thinking, with a smile, of two or three acts of homage that had been done her, that had made the little girl aware that she was a woman in her moment of power. It pleased and flattered, and at the same time it amused her to recall those scenes in the brief and bright drama which seemed, as she looked back upon it, like something she had seen in the theatre, a curious, vivid, all-interesting performance, in which the chief character was herself: and yet not herself, a visionary creature, whose proceedings she, Lilias Murray, at home in Murkley, could gaze at from afar with wonder and amusement. She put her hands softly together, and said, "But if this is what it all comes to in the end!" But even as she said these words there came a delightful sense of expectation to her heart, and she laughed, knowing that this was not all it was coming to. Jean, for her part, gave a soft little sigh.
"When you are older, my darling," she said, "you will find a great soothing is always coming back. Home is just like an old friend holding its arms open to you, always waiting for you, aye ready, whatever troubles you may be in."
Lilias listened, smiling. It was not the aspect of home which pleased her fancy at the moment. Of all unrealities in the world nothing seemed so unreal to her as the idea that a refuge from trouble would ever be needful for the long young life that was in her heart and her thoughts. She looked at her sister with a loving pity, tinged with amusement too. It was natural that Jean should look upon it so. Dear Jean! with all her pretty, old-fashioned ways, the tranquillity of her gentle soul. She was in her element at Murkley, not in London. Lilias knew that the old table-cover, with all its silken flowers half done, would come out in another half-hour, and the basket of silks be set forth upon the little table: and that Jean, with her fine head relieved against the window, would look as if she had never moved from that spot. She laughed at the thought, which was sweet, comical, pleasant. For her own part she would sit down with a book in the other window and look back, and behold the performances of that other Lilias who had the world at her feet, and wonder—wonder and dream what was going to come of it all! as if in her heart she did not know very well what was going to come.
But, as they were preparing to go to the drawing-room to carry out this performance, a voice reached their ears from the hall with a somewhat excited, anxious tone in it.
"I could not have been more surprised if they had told me the Queen had come: for I expected you all to-morrow. And what have you done with my Philip?" Mrs. Stormont said. She came into the dining-room, followed by Margaret, and came forward to the table, holding out her hands with an air of joyous welcome under which there was a certain restlessness of anxiety. "Oh, fie! this is your London hours, still at breakfast when other people are thinking of their luncheon. But we must forgive you this time on account of your journey; and what have you done with my Philip?" she said again.
"Bless me!" said Margaret, "to think I should have been so far left to myself as to forget all about that. It is true Philip was to have travelled with us to-morrow; but circumstances made it more convenient for me to come away sooner, and I never let him know. But I dare to say," she added, "that he will not be ill-pleased; for to attend upon three women and their boxes is a trial for any man."
Mrs. Stormont shot a keen look at the speaker over the shoulder of Lilias, whom she was just then embracing with great fervour.
"Margaret is always severe upon men, as is perhaps natural enough," she said; "but I would have thought my bonnie Lily would have had more feeling. And so my poor lad is left to kick his heels at the railway station waiting for them that never come? I cannot thank you for that, Margaret. I think you might have had a little more consideration. There was perhaps something due to me—if Philip, poor man, was not grand enough to merit a thought——"
"Indeed I can assure you," cried Miss Jean, anxiously, "there was no want of thought. But, you see, we had serious business to attend to, and Margaret was very much taken up at the end, and we were just hurried away——"
Mrs. Stormont did not make any reply. It was evident that she was anxious underneath the offence, and full of uneasy thoughts. She drew Lilias into a chair by her side, and held her hand, and stroked it tenderly.
"And you have just had a great success, by all I hear. The Lily of Murkley has been blooming in the King's gardens. But I hope it has not turned your little head. For whatever strangers may say, there are no hearts so leal as those are at home."
"You must think me a very silly little thing," said Lilias, "if you suppose that would turn my head. It was never for us; it was just because of——" Here she caught Margaret's eye, and divined by something in it, and perhaps also by a rising something in her own breast which brought the colour to her cheeks, that her intended attribution of honour where honour was due was for the moment unnecessary. "Because of friends," she said, with hesitation and a blush. "Because of him, because of him!" she added to herself in her heart, with an indignant glance at Margaret.
If she were prevented from saying it out, all the more would she maintain it to herself.
"Good introductions," said Margaret, significantly, "are, as everybody knows, the half of the battle; and it would be strange if the Murrays of Murkley could not get that advantage. It is all very well over, I am glad to say. And Lilias has enjoyed herself, and we have all seen a great deal of company; but for my part I enjoy nothing so much as getting home."
"And what did you make of my Philip?" said Mrs. Stormont. "That is a crow I have to pick with you, Lilias; for he would have been home long ago, but for somebody that kept him hanging-on in town. 'I have put off for another day; for I'm going to a ball at Lady So-and-so's, where the Miss Murrays will be——' And then, 'I've put off a week; for I'm going to travel with the Murrays.' That is what his letters have been, poor fellow—and then to be left in the lurch at the end. Ye little fairy! If your head's not turned, I am afraid you have turned other people's heads," said Philip's mother, with a laughing flattery, which concealed much graver feelings.
Lilias was somewhat alarmed by this personal attack. She looked at her sisters for help, and it was Jean who came first into the breach.
"You need not be in any way uneasy about that; for Philip has plenty of friends," said Miss Jean. "We met him no doubt from time to time, and he was extremely kind in coming to see us; but he had always a number of friends—he was not depending upon us. I assure you it could not make that difference to him," she said, anxiously.
Mrs. Stormont confronted her with a superior smile.
"My dear Jean," she said, "do you think I was supposing my son had no friends, or was just depending upon his country neighbours for a little society? No, no, I am not such an ignoramus as that, though I have myself been little in London, and never was at the expense of a season: but I am not just so ignorant as that. There are other reasons that influence a young man, and one that has had every encouragement——"
"Encouragement!" Margaret said, whose eyes were full of the light of battle.
"Encouragement!" said Miss Jean, deprecating. "We were just kind, as was natural."
The mother returned the look of defiance, and took no notice of Jean.
"Indeed, my dear Margaret," she said, "I was not addressing myself to you. It is well known in the countryside what your ambition is, and that nothing less than a duke or a prince would please you, if you had any chance of getting them. I am speaking to Lilias, not to you, and I am not a person to stand by and see a young thing's heart crushed, especially one that might, had matters taken another turn, have been my own. Yes, my bonnie pet, it is you that I am speaking to; and you know you have given my boy a great deal of encouragement. You will not be persuaded by thoughts of a grand match, or by worldly inducements, or by the fear of man—or woman either—to turn against one——"
Here she stopped, perhaps with a sense of the rashness of this appeal. She was very tremulous and anxious, and as she looked round upon the three sisters, who had all been instrumental, as she thought, in disappointing her and scorning her son and leaving him behind, it was all the mother could do to restrain the flood of bitter words that came pouring to her lips. She stopped, however, hastily, and with a little agitated laugh.
"I am just taking the disappointment a great deal too seriously, you will say; but I am disappointed, you see. I looked for my Philip coming home happy and well pleased; and then to hear you were back before your time, and not a word from him!—But no doubt he'll be home to-morrow, and nothing changed. I am just going too fast; you will think nothing of it. I'm of an anxious nature, and it's my way."
The elder ladies accepted the apology, according to their different characters, Miss Jean eagerly agreeing that it was very disappointing when you were looking for your only son, and found nothing but strangers, and Miss Margaret receiving it stiffly with a dignity beyond words.
"For," she said, "though we might be glad of the company of any friend on a long journey, yet I never think it a good thing for women to put their fashes about luggage and so forth upon a man, unless he belongs to them. He is apt," she added, "to think more of it than it deserves—as if the women could have done nothing without him, which is not my way."
"No," said Mrs. Stormont, with a laugh which was in itself a confession of excitement; "you're one of those that like to be independent. But don't you copy your sister in that, Lilias, for it is a thing the men cannot bide. They would rather you were silly, and always clinging to them, than going your own gait in that bold manner. And though it may suit Margaret, who is done with everything of the kind, it is not the same for you."
Lilias had been watching the scene with anxious, half-amused eyes. There had always been little passages of arms between Margaret and Mrs. Stormont.
"Philip is not very clever about the luggage," she said. "He lost all his own things, you know. I told him I could do it better myself."
"And what did he say?" said the mother, beaming upon her. "Oh, nothing to say over again, I am sure, for he is not one for phrases, my Philip. And so you had your fill of dancing and every pleasure? Well, well! it is a grand thing to have your day: and now you've come back, Lilias, just as you went, you must not scorn your old friends. 'Sneer na British lads awa',' as Burns says."
"I hope she will sneer at nobody," said Miss Jean; "and two or three months in London is not such a terrible time. There are few changes in the parish, so far as I can hear. Old Mrs. Johnston at The Hillhead is gone, poor lady; but that was to be looked for at her age; and young Lauder married upon his housekeeper, which is a great pity, and must vex all his friends; and——"
"No," said Mrs. Stormont, still looking at Lilias; "there's little sneering in that bonnie face; but still hearing just one thing round you may give a warp to your mind, and you must remember, Lilias, that the grand folk in London, though they may be very smiling for a time, they just go their own gait, and think no more of a country girl, however she might be admired for the moment; but old friends are always safe—they never change."
"Old friends or new friends, I would not advise her to be dependent either upon one or the other," said Margaret. "It's best to stand on your own ground. Lilias, will you go and tell Simon about getting out the carriage, and bid him ask if we can have the horses, for there are some visits that we ought to pay. You will forgive me," she said, when the girl left the room, "for sending her away: for we must respect her simplicity at her age. She is thinking nothing, neither of British lads nor of any other. I am not one that likes to put such things in a girl's head."
Mrs. Stormont blushed with anger and annoyance.
"It is the first time," she said, "that I have been blamed with putting things that should not be there into a girl's head. But we all know about maidens' bairns—and since Lilias is to be the immaculate one that never thinks upon a lover—But, if that was your meaning, I wonder you ever took her to London, which is just the grand marriage market, if what everybody says is true."
"It was no marriage market, you may be sure," cried Margaret, growing red in her turn, "for any child of mine."
"Well, that is proved, no doubt," said the other, with the composure of successful malice, "since Lilias ye took her away, and Lilias ye have brought her back."
"Oh, what is the use," cried Miss Jean, breaking in anxiously, "of the like of us old friends casting out with each other about nothing? If Lilias were to be married, it would be a terrible day for Margaret and me."
"Oh, nobody will doubt that," cried Philip's mother. "After being mistress and more at Murkley, and keeping that little thing that she dare not say her soul's her own, it would be a terrible down-coming for Margaret——"
"Mrs. Stormont!" Jean exclaimed, in terror and dismay.
As for Margaret, who had been moving about setting various things in order, she came back at this to where the visitor was sitting, pale and red by turns, in great nervous excitement. Margaret was very composed, and smiled, though she was pale.
"I can make every allowance," she said, "for a disappointed mother."
She had the best of it, after all. She was able to regard with perfect calmness the heat and passion of the other, whose long-leggit lad had come so little speed.
"I am not the one to call disappointed," said Mrs. Stormont. "I am not a woman with ambitions, like you. It is not me that has made a great campaign, and nothing to show for it. But I would warn you just to mind what you are about, for to play fast and loose with a high-spirited lad——"
"Bless me!" said Margaret, in a tone which Jean herself could not but allow to be very irritating, "who may that be? There were two or three, I will allow, but they got their answer. Though I say it that should not say it, having brought her up myself, Lilias is very clear in her notions; she will never say no when she means yes, of that we may be sure."
"Well," cried Mrs. Stormont, rising hurriedly, "I can only hope you'll find things answer to your anticipations. It would be a terrible thing to go through the wood and through the wood, and take up with a crooked stick at the end."
"Or perhaps without a stick at all," said Margaret, with sarcastic gravity, "which has happened with both Jean and me, you were going to say."
"And so I was," said the angry woman—"you have just divined it; but that beats all, Margaret Murray. If you are going to doom that bonnie little thing to be an old maid like yourself, just that you may keep the management and power in your hands——"
"It is such a grand scope for management, and so much power——"
"It's just as much as you ever had the chance of. Oh, I can see through you. You just flatter her and stop the mouths of her friends with giving her every opportunity, that you know will come to nothing—I see through you like glass—and so keep her property in your hands, and make her an old maid like yourself. And to keep up the farce," cried Mrs. Stormont, "you'll keep one or two just hanging on, and give them every encouragement. But just see if she does not turn upon you one of these days, and choose for herself."
She hurried out, sending this shot after her from the door, and leaving, it cannot be disputed, a great deal of the smoke and confusion of a cannonade behind her. Even Margaret was confused, disturbed by that sudden perception of how her proceedings might appear in the eyes of others, which is so disenchanting. It is not a happy, though it may be an improving process, to see ourselves as others see us. Though she was so angry, she looked at her sister with a little dismay.
"The woman is daft," she said. "Who was it that encouraged that long-leggit lad of hers? Never me, I'll answer for that. I hope it was not you, Jean, that out of superabundant charity——"
"He came here more than you liked in the afternoons, Margaret, last year."
"And what of that?" cried the mistress of Murkley. "If it had been Donald Birnie, could I have turned him away from the door?"
"Donald Birnie knows his place," said Miss Jean, doubtfully; "but Philip is just very suitable; and his mother might think——"
"I cannot tell what you mean with your 'very suitable.' Would you like our Lilias to take up with the first long-leggit lad that comes to hand? I thought we were agreed upon that point, you and me."
"Oh, Margaret, I am saying nothing else! I was only thinking that it would not be so strange if his mother——And then there was always that little Katie here."
"Now that is what I would call very suitable," said Margaret, regaining her composure. This recollection freed her at once from a little fear that was beginning to creep upon her. "Katie! that would just be the best thing in the world for him; for the Setons are very well connected; and it would settle Philip Stormont, and make him steady, and be company to his mother. There could be nothing better," Margaret said.
But, unfortunately, this was not how the matter presented itself to those who were more immediately concerned. Mrs. Stormont went forth in haste and heat, which old Simon, as he opened the door, perceived with a chuckle, divining, with tolerable justice, the state of affairs; for Simon, an old family retainer, was just as determined as Miss Margaret that no long-leggit lad should carry off the young lady of Murkley. Mrs. Stormont went away very hurriedly, and in so doing encountered little Katie Seton hurrying towards the house. The very sight of the girl added to the soreness and sense of downfall which was in the mind of Philip's mother. She seemed to see Fate lowering upon her over Katie's head. What if she were destined to accept the minister's daughter for her son's wife after all!
"You are losing no time," she said. "Katie! you mean to hear all the grand news and see the grand dresses the first moment that it's possible. It is the best way."
"I am not so early as you, Mrs. Stormont," said Katie, who was pert, and not inclined to yield her own cause.
"You will allow there is a difference," the angry woman said. "My son was to have travelled with them; but he had a number of engagements, having so many friends in London, and he left them in the lurch, which gentlemen are too apt to do, even at the last moment. It is not pretty of them, but it's just their nature," said Mrs. Stormont. This was an arrow into Katie's heart as well as a forestalling of any report in respect to Philip's unsuccess which she might hear. Katie replied with a smile only, and went on to the house; but she had received the arrow. And Philip's mother felt that she had in some degree redeemed the fallen fortunes of the day.