"And was it all very grand, Lilias? and did the ladies wear their diamonds every day? and did you see the Queen? and what did she say to you? I've come to hear everything—everything!" cried Katie. She had taken off her hat and established herself in that corner of the book-room where so many talks had taken place, where Lilias had painted all the anticipatory scenes of grandeur which she intended to go through, and where she had listened to Katie's plans, and not refused her aid. It was a year since they had met, and Lilias, seated there, with a little mist of suspense about her, waiting for the next chapter in her life, had an air of dreamy development and maturity which made a great impression upon her friend. In other days Katie, though the youngest, had been the one that knew most of the world. She had been full of dances, of partners, of what this one and that had said, while Lilias had still no souvenirs. But all this had changed. It was Lilias now who knew the world. She had gone away, she had been in the secrets of society. She knew how duchesses looked, and what they put on. She had seen princes walking familiarly about as if they were but men. Was it this lofty experience which gave her that soft air as of a dream enveloping her, as if, to put it in Katie's way, she was thinking of something else, listening for somebody coming. Katie did not understand the change; but she saw it now, and it overawed her. Her eyes sought those of Lilias wistfully. There were other questions more important which she had to ask; but, to begin with, the general ones seemed necessary. She kept in her personal anxieties with an effort. For Katie had many personal anxieties too, and was rather woebegone and pale, not like the sprightly little girl of old.
"It was not nearly so grand as I thought—nothing is ever so grand as you think," said Lilias. "London town is just big—big—not grand at all, and men just look like men, and women like women. They are silly just like ourselves. It is not another world, as I once thought. It is quite the same. It was an awful disappointment," said Lilias, with a Scottish force of adjective which had not come to be slang in those days; "but it was just nice enough all the same," she added, condescendingly, after a momentary pause. "I thought I would just look at it all, and admire it; but you could not do that, you had just to take your part, as if you had been at home."
"Oh, I should not have cared to look at it," said Katie. "I would have liked to have my share."
"Except at the Countess's," said Lilias, with an involuntary laugh. "We stood there, and looked on. Lady Ida came and talked to us, and the Countess herself. And then we stood and stared at all the people. It makes me laugh now, but then it was like to make me cry. We were only country neighbours there."
"And what were you in the other houses?" Katie asked.
"I don't know. It was different——" Lilias paused a little, musing, with eyes full of a smile of recollection; then she said, suddenly, glad to have an outlet, "Guess whom we met in London—a gentleman—one that you know. And he knew everybody—and——" Lilias made another pause of grateful thought, then added, softly, "he was a great man there."
Katie clasped her hands together. To her Philip Stormont was a great man anywhere. Her little countenance flushed, then grew pale, and it could be seen how thin her cheeks had grown, and her eyes big and eager, as the colour melted out of her face. She did not say anything, but looked at Lilias with a wide-eyed, deeply meaning, reproachful look. Her poor little bosom heaved with a painful, long-drawn breath. Oh, how can you speak to me of him, her eyes seemed to say; and yet how anxious she was to hear!
"Can't you guess?" said Lilias, with a smile of content.
"I suppose—it could be but one person. But oh, Lilias, everything is so changed, so changed!" cried poor little Katie; and those caves, once soft circles in which her pretty eyes were set, seemed to contract, and fill with deep lakes of tears. She kept them back with a great effort, and produced a little pitiful smile, the best she could muster. "I am sure it isn't your fault," she said, magnanimously. "Tell me—all about it, Lilias."
"All about what?" Lilias paused too, to look at her in amazement, and a sort of cold breath came into her heart, chilling her in spite of herself. "I did not know," she said, with sudden spirit, waking out of her dream, "that Mr. Murray was of any consequence, Katie, to you."
Katie's countenance changed again in a moment from misery to gladness.
"Oh, Mr. Murray!" she cried. In the relief of the moment, the tears came dropping down her cheeks like rain, and she laughed in the sudden ease of her mind. "No, no consequence, no consequence at all," she cried. "I thought—I thought it must be——"
The eyes of the girls met, the one inquiring, almost with a gleam of contempt; the other shyly drawing back, denying the answer.
"I see," said Lilias, nodding her head. "No, I had not forgotten. I knew very well——But, dear Katie," she cried, with the unrestrained laugh of youth, "you could not think Philip—for it was Philip you thought of—could be a great man in London. Philip!" The idea brought with it a peal of laughter. "He may be very nice at home, but among all the fashionable folk there——!"
Katie did not laugh with her friend; on the contrary, she grew red and angry. Her tears dried, high indignation lighted up her face, but along with it a little consolation too.
"They say," said Katie, "that you were not always of that mind, Lilias, and that he was with you—oh, every day. They say he went with you to all the parties, and danced with you every dance. They say——I would like you to tell me true," cried the little girl. "Oh, you need not think I will break my heart! Whatever has happened, if you think I will make a work about it, and a fuss, and all that, you are just mistaken, Lilias! I hope I have more pride than that. If he likes you better than me, he is welcome, oh, he is welcome! And if you that were my own friend, that was like a sister—that was——"
Poor little Katie was choked with tears and excitement. She could not say any more. Her voice failed her altogether, everything swam and wavered in her eyes. Her own familiar friend had deceived her, her love had forsaken her. The bitterness of abandonment was in her heart. She had struggled hard to show what her mother called "a proper pride," and though it had hollowed out the sockets of her eyes, and taken the colour from her cheeks, she thought she had succeeded. But to hear Lilias, who had stolen him away, speak disdainfully of Philip, to hear him scoffed at, whom Katie thought the first and most desirable of human beings; it is impossible to say how hard this was. All the faculties of her soul rose up against it: and yet—and yet——She would not have let herself go, and suspend her proper pride so entirely, if there had not been beyond, as it were the sense of her despair, a rising gleam of hope.
"Who said that?" cried Lilias, in great astonishment and dismay. And then she drew Katie's unwilling form towards her. "Do you think so much about Philip still? Oh, Katie, he is not half good enough for you."
Katie flung herself out of her friend's grasp.
"I can put up with your treachery," she cried. "Oh! I can stand that; but to hear you insult Philip is what I will not, I will not bear!"
Upon which Lilias sprang to her feet also.
"I will say just what I please of Philip," she cried; "and who is to stop me? What am I caring about Philip? I just endured him because of you. He neither went with me to parties, nor danced with me, nor was with us every day. He is just a long-leggit lad, as Margaret says. If he was rich or great, or if he was clever and wise, or even if he was just kind—kind and true like some——But he is none of these, none of these, Katie, not half good enough for you; and me, what is Philip to me?" Lilias cried, with a grand disdain.
"Perhaps he has forsaken you—too," said Katie, looking at her with mingled wrath and relief and indignation. She was very wroth and wounded for Philip, but her heart, which had been so sore, felt cooled and eased as by the dropping of some heavenly dew. Her anger with Lilias was boundless. She could not refrain from that little blow at her, and yet she could have embraced her for every careless word she said.
Lilias looked at her for a moment, uncertain whether to be angry too. But then the absurdity of the idea that Philip might have forsaken her, suddenly seized her. She laughed out with a gaiety that could not be mistaken, and took her seat again.
"When you are done questioning me about Philip—" she said. "I would not have remembered Philip but for you. We forgot he was to have come home with us, and never let him know; and nobody remembered, not even Jean. But we have heard enough of Philip since we came home. His mother has been here, demanding, 'What have you done with my Philip?'" Lilias here fell into Mrs. Stormont's tone, and Katie, though still in tears, had hard ado not to laugh. "Just demanding him from Margaret and from me: and you next, Katie. As if we were Philip's keepers! He is big enough, I hope, to take care of himself."
Here Katie came stealing up to her friend, winding a timid arm about her neck.
"Oh! Lilias, was it all stories? and are you true, are you true?"
"Is that what has made you just a little ghost? And why did you never write and tell me, when I could have put it all right with a word?"
"Oh, what could I say?" cried Katie. "A girl must have a proper pride. Would I let you see and let him see that I was minding! Oh! no, no! and his mother every time we met her, and every time mamma met her, always, always on about Philip and you. She told us all the places he went with you—every place, even to the Queen's Court: and there was his name in the Times—for she got it on purpose, and sent it over the water to papa: and she said he always contrived to get an invitation wherever you went."
Lilias smiled with high disdain.
"Many people would have liked to do that," she said, "for we went to the grandest houses, where Philip Stormont, or even the Murrays of Murkley, who are very different, would never set a foot. Oh! it was no credit of ours—we just had—a friend——"
"A friend! And that was the gentleman you meant, not him; and it was a person I knew? I cannot guess it, for I don't know any person who could be a friend to you. But just it was not—him? That is so wonderful, I cannot think of anything else; for all this time I have been thinking and thinking, and trying not to think, and then just thinking the more."
Lilias smiled upon her, a gracious, but half-disdainful, half-disappointed smile. Katie could think of nothing but this. She had no sympathy, no interest, in what had happened to her friend. It hurt Lilias a little: for there was no one else whom she could speak to of that other who was so much more important than Philip. She was wounded a little, and retired into herself in lofty, but gentle superiority. She could have told things that would have made her little companion admire and wonder. But what did Katie care except about Philip, a country youth who was nobody, a rustic gentleman that gaped and was helpless in the brilliant world? Lilias felt a great superiority, but yet a little check and disappointment too. It seemed to her that her little companion had fallen far behind her in the march of life, that Katie was only a child, crying, sobbing, unable to think of anything but one thing—and a little nobody, too. She herself had gone a long way beyond her little rural companion, which was quite just—for was not Lilias a whole year older, besides her season in town? So she allowed herself to be tolerant and indulgent. Was it not natural? So young and little, and only one thing in her head—Philip, and no more. Lilias put away her own interrupted history with a proud self-denial. She would not betray it to any one who was not worthy of that confidence, although her heart ached a little with the solitude of it and the need of speech. But surely it was but for a day or two that it could be allowed to continue, this solitude of the heart? She went out in the afternoon with Katie for a walk, and went to New Murkley with many a thought. But New Murkley was overflowing to Katie with images of Philip, and Lilias moved along abstracted, always with a little sense of disdainful wonder and toleration for one who could think of nothing but Philip, though on the verge, had she chosen, of far greater things.
When she returned to her sisters afterwards, she found these ladies in a state of great perturbation and distress. Jean was sitting, with her bonnet still on, too much agitated to think of her work. Margaret was walking up and down the drawing-room, also in her outdoor dress, and carrying on an indignant monologue. The entrance of Lilias discomposed them both. They had not expected her, and, as Margaret did not perceive her at first, Jean gave a little exclamation of warning.
"Margaret, it is Lilias!" she cried.
And Margaret, in her walk up and down, turned round and faced her, with a look of annoyance which it was impossible to conceal. She was heated and angry, and the interruption aggravated her discontent. She said,
"Well, what about Lilias? It's all Lilias so far as I can see, and we seem just fated to have no more peace in our lives."
"Is it I that am taking away your peace, Margaret?" Lilias said. She had come in with a kind of lofty sadness and longing, her heart full, and no relief to it possible; her life waiting, as it seemed, for a touch from without—a something which could not come of her own initiative. It was not enough to trouble her as with a sense of dependence, but only to make her sensible of an incompleteness, an impotence, which yet was sweet.
"There are several persons, it appears, from whom ye have taken away the peace," said Margaret. "The countryside is just ringing with it from all I hear. When was it that you gave so much encouragement to that long-leggit fellow, Philip Stormont? I have heard of little else all the time I have been out, and Jean will tell you the same thing. They say he went to every place with us in London (I told you not to take him to the theatre, Jean), and that it's all settled between him and you."
"Margaret, I would not speak like that to Lilias that knows nothing about such things."
"Just hold your peace, Jean; if she does not know about them, she'll have to learn. When a man wants her to marry him, she'll have to hear about it, and make her own decision." Margaret's conscience, perhaps, upbraided her at this moment, for she made a perceptible pause, then resumed, with increased impatience: "It may be true, for anything we can tell. You gave him great encouragement, they say, before we went from here—was that true? for I've many a thing to think of, and I cannot call all these bits of nothings to mind."
"Oh, Margaret, how can ye upbraid our Lilias, that is as innocent as an infant? Encouragement, as they call it, was what she never gave any lad. Encouragement, say they?—that just means a forward person that knows what a gentleman is meaning, and helps him on. Lilias, my dear," said Jean, "you'll just run away. Even to hear the like of that is not for you."
"Is it Philip Stormont again?" cried Lilias. "I think you are very unkind, Margaret; you ought to take my part, instead of scolding me. What am I caring about Philip Stormont? I wish he was—no, I don't wish him any harm—I don't care enough about him," cried the girl angrily. "What is it now?"
"She knows there is something, Jean."
"And how could she help knowing, Margaret, when his mother was at her this morning with that very word in her mouth? Encouragement!—it's just his mother's doing, everything about it; he would never raise that cry himself."
"Himself!—he has not enough in him," said Margaret. "But, Lilias, whatever you have done, you will have to bear the blame, and it must just be a lesson to us all. In the first place, they were all for congratulating us, every person we met. Bonnie congratulations! I think the world is out of its wits. To wish us joy of wedding the heiress of Murkley upon a bonnet-laird like Philip Stormont! The old Murrays would just turn in their graves, but all this senseless canailye wishes us joy."
"Oh, whisht, Margaret! the people just meant very well; no doubt they had many a private thought in their mind, but they would think it was well to put the best face upon it."
"And, when they saw we knew nothing of it, what does the minister's wife do but reads me a lecture on the sin of crossing young folk in their affections! I am the kind of person, you will say, to be lectured by Mrs. Seton and Mrs. Stormont, and all the rest," said Margaret, with a laugh of scorn; but it was not indifferent to her. There was a slight nervous tremor about her person, which betrayed a vexation almost more serious than her words conveyed. "I am not finding fault with you, Lilias. I well believe you meant no harm, and never thought you could be misconceived; but I would mind upon this in the future if I were you. Meet with nobody and walk with nobody but those that belong to you, or that are like yourself. If you do that, you will give no handle to any ill-disposed person. My dear, I am not finding fault."
"It sounds worse than finding fault," said Lilias. "It sounds as if you thought I had been——Oh!" she cried, with a little stamp of her foot, "unwomanly!—you will not say the word, but I know that is what you mean. And it is not so—it never was so. It was not for me, it was for——"
Here Lilias stopped in her impetuous self-defence, stopped, and blushed crimson, and said, more impetuously still, but with a tone of humility and self-reproach—
"I am just a traitor! It is true—I am a false friend."
"That was what I said, Margaret," cried Jean, "you will mind what I said."
Of this Margaret took no notice, neither of the interrupted speech of Lilias, but continued to pace about the room with a clouded brow. She asked no further explanations; but she had many thoughts to oppress her mind. The Countess had been one of those who had wished her joy. That great lady had stopped her carriage, in which Lady Ida sat smiling, and, with a certain air of triumph, had offered her congratulations.
"I always thought there was something between them," she had said, "and two such charming young people, and in every way so suitable—"
"Your ladyship seems to forget," Margaret had said, trembling with wrath, "that the Murrays of Murkley have been in the county before any other name that's worth counting was heard of, and were never evened with the small gentry, so far as I know, till this day."
"Oh! my dear Miss Murray, that is quite an antediluvian view to take," the Countess had said, and had driven off in great glee, accepting none of the angry sister's denials. There was something underneath that made this very galling to Margaret. Young Lord Bellendean had been one of those that had been at the feet of Lilias, and this was the reason of his mother's triumph. It had its effect upon Margaret, too, in a way which was not very flattering to young Bellendean. She had not been insensible to the pleasure of seeing the best match in the countryside refused by her little sister. Lord Bellendean, too, was one of the class which she described as long-leggit lads; but a peerage and great estates make a difference. Lilias had never shown any inclination towards their noble young neighbour; but the refusal of him would have been gratifying. And now his mother, with this story of Philip, would turn Bellendean effectually away. This was the chief sting of the discovery she had made. But even to Jean she had not betrayed herself. She was aware that perhaps it was not a very elevated hope, and that her mortification would have but little sympathy had the cause of it been revealed. This was in the foreground of her mind, and held the chief place among her disturbed thoughts. But it was not all. She could not flatter herself she had got rid of Lewis Murray by turning her back upon him. Thus she stood as in the midst of a circle of masked batteries. She did not know from which side the next broadside would come. It was indispensable for her to be prepared on every hand.