"We must ask just whoever there is to ask," said Mrs. Seton. "You see, there will be no difficulty in entertaining them, with that young man. He will play his music as long as anybody will listen to him, or I'm mistaken. Philip Stormont is coming; I had to ask him, as he was there; and you can send Johnnie over with a note to the Borrodailes, Katie, and I'll write up to the Castle myself. Then there's young Mr. Dunlop, the assistant at Braehead. He is of a better class than most of the young men: and the factor—but there's three girls there, which is a terrible band of women. If you were very good, and all things went well, and there were two or three couples, without disturbing other folk, and papa had no objection——"
"We might end off with a dance—that was what I expected," cried Katie, clapping her hands. "I'll put on my hat and run up to the Castle to save you writing."
"Stop, stop, you hasty thing!—on a Sabbath afternoon to give an invitation! No, no, I cannot allow that. Sit down and write the notes, and you can date them the 15th" (which was next morning), "and see that Johnnie is ready to ride by seven o'clock at the latest. But I would not let you go to the Castle in any case, even if it had not been Sunday, for most likely they would not bring Lilias. I will just ask Miss Margaret and Miss Jean to their tea. If there was a word of dancing, there would be no chance; they would just say, 'She's not out'."
"And neither am I out," cried Katie, with impatience.
"You—you're just nobody, my dear; there will be no grand ceremony, no Court train and feathers, for you, a simple minister's daughter. Not but what I might be presented, and you too, if I liked, and it was worth the expense," said Mrs. Seton. "Lady Lorraine would do it in a moment; but you are not an heiress, Katie. Still I think they're over-particular—oh, yes, certainly they are over-particular; the poor thing will miss all the little amusement that's going. But perhaps they'll bring her, if they think they are only asked to their tea."
"The only thing I don't like in them," cried Katie, "is tying Lilias up in that blue veil, and not letting her go to parties—that's odious! But for all the rest, that Mr. Murray—that person you are so fond of——"
"Me! fond of him! I think he will be an acquisition," said Mrs. Seton calmly; "and now that I've been driven into asking him for the evening we may as well make the best of it. Yes, my dear, I was driven into it. You wouldn't have me be impolite? And you know, if the piano had been heard going at three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, where would your character have been, Robert? I would not say but they would have had you up before the presbytery. I have to think of you as well as of myself. Oh, well, I don't just say that I would have liked it much myself. Opera music on a Sunday is a step further than I would like to go, though I hope I'm not narrow-minded; so I was just obliged to ask him for a week night. And if you will make allowance for the difference of foreign manners I cannot but think that he looks a gentleman. Yes—yes, he looks a gentleman—and it is not as if he was going to settle here, when, of course, we would need to know a great deal more about him; but you must take something on trust in the way of society, and if he can play so well, and all that——"
"My dear, you are always blaming me for going too far, but yet you are the one that goes the farthest," the minister said.
"Toots," replied his wife, good-humouredly, "you're just an old croaker. Did any harm ever come of it? Did I ever go farther than was justified? I think, though I don't wish to seem vain, that I have just an instinct for things of that sort."
This was, indeed, the conviction of the neighbourhood in general, which profited by the impromptu parties which the minister's wife was so clever in getting up. They were frequent enough to be reckoned upon by the people within reach; her own explanation of them was quite true and scarcely flattered.
"We cannot do anything great," she said, "we have no room for it. I couldn't give a regular dance like you. In the first place it would put Mr. Seton out, for, though you would not think so, there is nobody more nervous or that wants more care taken of him, not to disturb his studies: and in the second place we have no room for it. No, no, you're all very kind making allowances, but we've no room for it. And then Katie's but a child; she is not out. Oh, I don't make a fuss of her not being out like Miss Jean and Miss Margaret, they have some reason, you know, to be particular; but to make such a phrase about a minister's daughter would be perfectly ridiculous. Yes, yes, when she's eighteen I'll take her to the Hunt Ball, and there will be an end of it. But at present she is just in the school-room, you know. A little turn of a waltz just by accident, when I have asked a few friends to tea, that counts for nothing, and that is all I ever pretend to give." All this was so well known that there was no longer any need for saying it, though Mrs. Seton from habit continued to say it pretty often, as was her way.
But the preparations made were almost as careful as if it had not been impromptu. The furniture was deftly pushed, and edged, and sided off to be as little in the way as possible. The piano was drawn into the corner which, after much experiment, had been settled to be the best; there was unusual sweeping oft-repeated to clear the room of dust. Flowers were gathered in the most prodigal profusion. The manse garden was old-fashioned, and well sheltered, nestling under a high and sunny wall. The June fulness of roses had begun, and all sorts of sweet smelling, old-fashioned flowers filled the borders.
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Seton said, "we must just be content with what we can get. My poverty, but not my will, consents, as Shakspere says. No doubt but I would have a fine show of pelargoniums, or Tom Thumbs, and a border of lobelias, and the centre calceolaria, if I could. That is all the fashion now. No, no, I don't make any grievance of it. I just content myself with what I've got—old larkspurs and rockets, and so forth, that have been there since my mother-in-law's time; but they're just good enough, when you can't get better," this true philosopher said. She had her other preparations made in the same spirit. "A cold ham at the bottom of the table, and two or three chickens at the top, and as much salad as they can set their faces to, and curds and cream, which the young ones are all very fond of, and stewed gooseberries, and anything else that may be in the garden, that is all the phrase I make," said Mrs. Seton, who was sufficiently Scotch to employ a French word now and then without knowing it; but would have resented the imputation. Katie had her little white frock, which was as simple as a child's, but very dainty and neat for all that, laid out upon her little white bed, with a rose for her belt and a rose for her hair, fresh gathered from the bushes, and smelling sweet as summer. Tea was set out in the dining-room, where afterwards the cold ham and chickens were to take the place now occupied by scones of kinds innumerable, cookies, and jams, and shortbread, interspersed with pretty bouquets of flowers. It was much prettier than dinner, without the heavy fumes which spoil that meal for a summer and daylight performance. But we must not jump at once into the heart of an entertainment which cost so much pains and care.
Mrs. Seton's note was delivered early at the Castle next morning. Truth compels us to admit that it was written on Sunday night; but it was dated Monday morning, for why should anyone's feelings be hurt even by an appearance of disrespect for the Sabbath day. ("There is none meant," the minister's wife said, who had done all her duties thoroughly, taught her Sabbath class, and heard her children their lessons, and listened devoutly to two sermons before she turned to this less sacred duty.)
"I am asking one or two friends to tea," she wrote, "and I hope you will come. A gentleman will be with us who is a great performer on the piano." It was in this way that the more frivolous intention was veiled. But, unfortunately, as is the case with well-known persons in general, Mrs. Seton's friends judged the past by the present, and were aware of the risks they would run.
"It will be one of her usual affairs," said Miss Margaret, with a glance of intelligence and warning to her sister.
"Just that, Margaret, I should suppose," said Miss Jean.
"Then it will not be worth while for Lilias to take the trouble of dressing herself, Jean—a few old ladies invited to their tea."
"That was what I was going to say, Margaret. I would not fash to go, if I was Lilias. She can have Katie here to-morrow."
"Sisters!" cried Lilias, springing up before them, "you said that last time, and there was a dance. It is very hard upon me, if I am never to have a dance—never till I am as old as you."
The two ladies were seated in two chairs, both large, with high backs and capacious arms, covered with faded velvet, and with each a footstool almost as large as the chair. They were on either side of the window, as they might have been, in winter, on either side of a fire. They wore black dresses, old and dim, but made of rich silk, which was still good, though they had got ever so many years' wear out of it, and small lace caps upon their heads. Miss Jean was fair, and Miss Margaret's brown locks had come to resemble her sister's by dint of growing grey. They had blue eyes, large and clear, so clear as almost to be cold; and good, if somewhat large, features, and resembled each other in the delicacy of their complexions in which there was the tone of health, with scarcely any colour. Between them, on a small, very low seat, not sitting with any dignity, but plumped down like a child, was the third, the heroine of the veil, whose envelope had disguised her so completely that even the lively mind of Lewis had not been roused to any curiosity about her. She had jumped up when she made that observation, and now flung herself down again with a kind of despairing abandon. She looked eighteen at the utmost, a small, slight creature, not like the other ladies in a single feature, at any time; and now, with her brow puckered, the corners of her mouth drooping, her eyes wet, more unlike them, in her young excitement and distress, than ever.
"Now, Lilias, don't be unreasonable, my dear. If it's a dance, it stands to reason you cannot go; but what reason have you to suppose it is a dance? none whatever. 'I am asking one or two friends to tea.' Is that like dancing? She would not ask Jean and me, I suppose, if that was what she meant. We are going to hear a gentleman who is a great performer on the piano. It appears to me that will be rather a dreary style of entertainment, Jean; and I am by no means certain that I will go."
"Well, Margaret," said Jean, "having always been the musical one of the family, it's an inducement to me; but Lilias, poor thing, would not care for it. Besides, I have always been of the opinion that we must not make her cheap, taking her to all the little tea-parties."
"Oh, how can you talk such nonsense, when you never take me to one, never to one! and me close upon eighteen," the girl cried. "Katie goes to them all, and knows everybody, and sees whatever is going on; but I must do nothing but practise and read, practise and read, till I'm sick of everything. I never have any pleasure, nor diversion, nor novelty, nor anything at all, and Katie——"
"Katie! Katie is nothing but the minister's daughter, with no expectations, nor future before her. If she marries a minister like her father, she will do all that can be expected from her. How can you speak of Katie? Jean and me," said Miss Margaret, "have just devoted ourselves to you from your cradle."
"Not quite from her cradle, Margaret, for we were then young ourselves, and her mother, poor thing——"
"Well, well, I did not intend to be taken to the letter," said Miss Margaret, impatiently. "Since ever you have been in our hands—and that is many years back—we have been more like aunts than sisters to you. We have given up all projects of our own. A woman of forty, which is my age, is not beyond thinking of herself in most cases."
"And, reason good, still less," said Miss Jean, "a woman of eight-and-thirty."
"So little a difference as two years cannot be said to count; but all our hopes we have put upon you, Lilias. We might have been jealous of you, seeing what your position is, and what ours is; we would have had great cause. But, on the contrary, we have put all our pride upon you, and thought of nothing but what was the best for you, and pinched ourselves to get masters and means of improvement, and taken houses in Edinburgh winter after winter——"
"Not to speak," said Miss Jean, "of the great things Margaret has planned, when the time comes, which was not done either for her or me."
"I know you are very kind," said Lilias, drying her eyes.
"My dear," said Miss Margaret, "a season in London, and you presented to the Queen, and all the old family friends rallying round you—would I think of a bit little country party with a prospect before me like that?"
At this Lilias looked up with her eyes shining through the wetness that still hung upon her eyelashes.
"It is very, very nice to think of, I don't deny. Oh, and awfully, awfully kind of you to think of it."
(Let it be said here in a parenthesis that this "awfully, awfully," on the lips of Lilias was not slang, but Scotch.)
"I think it is rather good of us. It was never done, as she says, for either Jean or me."
"I doubt if it would have made any difference," said Miss Jean. "What is to be will be; and making a curtsey to the Queen—unless one could get to be acquainted with Her Majesty, which would be a great honour and pleasure——"
"It just makes all the difference," said Miss Margaret, who was more dogmatic; "it just puts the stamp upon a lady. If you're travelling it opens the doors of foreign courts, if you stay at home—well, there is always the Drawing-room to go to."
"And can you go whenever you like, after you have been once introduced?" Lilias added, with a gleam of eagerness.
"Surely, my dear; you send in your name, and you put on your court dress."
"That will be very nice," said the girl. Her bosom swelled with a sigh of pleasure. "For of course the finest company must be always there, and you will hear all the talk that is going on, and see everybody—ambassadors and princes, when they come on visits. Of course you would not be of much importance among so many grand people, just like the 'ladies, &c.,' in Shakespeare. They say nothing themselves, but sometimes the Queen will beckon to them and send them a message, or make them hold her fan, or bring her a book; but you hear all the conversation and see everybody."
"I am afraid," said Miss Jean, who had been watching an opportunity to break in, "you are thinking of maids-of-honour and people in office. Drawing-rooms——" but here she caught her sister's eye and broke off.
"Maids-of-honour are of course the foremost," said Miss Margaret. "I don't see, for my part, why Lilias should not stand as good a chance as any. Her father was a distinguished soldier, and her grandfather, though he has not behaved well to us, was a man that was very well-known, and had a great deal of influence. And the Queen is very feeling. Why she might not be a maid-of-honour, as well as any other young lady, I am at a loss to see."
Lilias jumped to her feet again, this time in a glow of pride and ambitious hope.
"Me!" she said (once more not for want of grammar, but for stress of Scotch). Miss Jean, scarcely less excited, put down her knitting and softly clapped her thin hands.
"That is a good idea; there is no one like Margaret for ideas," she said.
"I see no reason why it should not be. She has the birth, and she would have good interest. She has just got to let herself be trained in the manners and the ways that are conformable. Silly lassie! but she would rather go to a little tea-party in the country."
"No, no, no!" cried the girl, making a spring towards her, and throwing her arms round the speaker's neck. "You don't know me yet, for I am ambitious; I should like to raise the house out of the dust, as you say—I, the last one, the end of all. That would be worth living for!" she cried, with a glow of generous ardour in her eyes.
But when Lilias watched her sisters walking away, with their maid behind them carrying their shoes across the park to the little gate and green lane which led by a back-way to the manse, it was scarcely possible that her heart should not sink within her. Another of those lingering, endless evenings, hour after hour of silvery lightness after the day was over, like a strange, unhopeful morning, yet so cool and sweet, lingered out moment by moment over this young creature alone. She had "her book" which, meaning literature in the abstract, was constantly recommended to her by the other ladies; and she had her sketch-book, and her needlework. Miss Margaret was wont to express absolute consternation that, with so many things to amuse her, a girl should ever feel dull. But this poor little girl, though surrounded by all these, did feel dull and very lonely. To go to Drawing-rooms, which Lilias innocently took to mean the inner circle of the court, and to be a maid-of-honour was a prospect which took away her breath. With that before her it would indeed be wonderful if she could not bear up and submit to being dull and lonely as every girl, her sisters told her, had to do before she came out; but, after she had repeated this to herself half a dozen times, the impression on her mind grew faint, the possible maid-of-honour, the gorgeous imagination of a Drawing-room floated away; they were so far away at the best, so uncertain, while it was very certain that she was lonely to-night, and that other people of her age were enjoying themselves very much. Lilias' thoughts ended, as was very natural, in a fit of crying, after which she rose up a little better, and, the new box from the library happening by good fortune to arrive at that moment, got out a new novel, which it was a small excitement to be able to begin at her own will before her sisters had decided which was and which was not good for her, and in that happiness forgot her trouble, as she had so often done before.
"Did you really mean yon, Margaret?" Miss Jean said to her sister, as she walked along towards the manse.
"Do you think I ever say out like that anything I don't mean, Jean? I might humour the child's fancies, and let her think the drawing-rooms were real society, like what she reads; but the other, to be sure I meant it—wherefore not?—the lust of our family, her father's daughter, and a girl with beauty. We must always recollect that. You and I were good-looking enough in our day; you are sometimes very good-looking yet——"
"That's your kind heart, Margaret."
"What has my kind heart to do with it? But Lilias has more than we ever had—she has beauty, you know. Something should be made of that. It should not just run away into the dust like our good looks, and be of profit or pleasure to nobody. I struck out the idea," said Miss Margaret, with a little pride, "on the spot, it is true; it came to me, and I did not shut my mind to it; but it's full of reason, when you come to think of it. I see a great many reasons for it, but none against it. They have a sort of a little income—just something for their clothes. They need not be extravagant in clothes, for Her Majesty takes little pleasure in vanity and dressing; and then they have honourable to their name. The Honourable Lilias Murray—it would sound very well; and then in the service of the Queen. Don't go too far forward, Jean; but it is a thing to think of, to keep her heart up with. The little thing is very high-spirited when you take her the right way."
"My heart smote me to come away and leave her, Margaret."
"Why should your heart smite you? Would you like her to be talked about as the belle of a manse parlour, and perhaps worse than that—who can tell, at her age? She might see some long-legged fellow that would take her fancy—a factor's son, or an assistant minister, or even Philip Stormont, who is not a match for a Murray."
"Say no more, Margaret. I am quite of your opinion."
"And that is a great comfort to me, Jean. We can do things together that we could never do separate. Please God she shall have her day; she shall shine, at the Queen's court, and marry nobly, and, if the family must be extinguished as seems likely, we'll be extinguished with éclat, my dear, not just wither out solitary like you and me."
It was an ambition, after its sort, of a not unworthy kind. The two sisters, with scarfs thrown over their caps, and their maid following at a few paces' distance, on their way to their tea-party, stepped out with a certain elation in their tread, like two figures in a procession, holding their heads high. They had each had experiences, no doubt, of their own, and neither of them had expected that their family should wither out solitary in their persons. But here they had a new life in their hands, a new hope. Many fathers and mothers have had the same thought—to secure that in the persons of their children which they had never been able to attain themselves, to raise the new generation on their shoulders, making themselves a pedestal for the future greatness. Is it selfishness disguised, the rapacity of disappointment? or is it love the purest, love unconquerable? Miss Margaret and Miss Jean never asked themselves this question. They were not in the habit of examining themselves except as to their religious duty. But they reached the manse with a little thrill of excitement about them, and a sort of exultation in their minds. The windows were all open, and a hum of many voices reached them as they crossed the smooth-shaven lawn. Margaret gave Jean a look.
"Was it not a good thing we left her at home?" they both cried.