It was a Lover and his Lass

To this Philip made no reply. He was wounded, and withdrew a little to the other end of the tree. It was a scene which had been played a great many times, and they were both quite familiar with it: but it was always new to them, and always threatened for ten minutes at least a tragical severance, which, however, happily never came.

"That, however, is nothing to me," said Katie; "but when your mother comes and speaks as if – oh, as if I were the dust beneath her feet – as if I were nobody that had ever been heard of before – as if I were a girl that could be bought in the market like a slave in the 'Arabian Nights' – "

"Katie, for goodness sake tell me what she said!"

Katie continued to play with his curiosity for some time longer, until she had worked that and her own indignation into a tragic heat; then, with tears of youthful fury and injured feeling in her eyes, she unfolded her wrongs.

"Mr. Murray was there – he had come to play his piece to mamma – and Mrs. Stormont turned round and looked me straight in the face, and said to him that he must settle in Murkley. 'You'll get a nice house,' she said, 'and a wife; you can pick and choose among the young ladies – oh, yes you can take your choice of them,' and she looked at me – all the time she looked at me! She just offered me – as if she had any business with me! – to that man that is not a man, that can do nothing but fiddle on the piano," cried Katie, transported by her wrongs and her indignation. She even cried a little – hot tears, out of pity for herself and the sense of injury which swelled all her youthful veins.

Philip on his side was greatly relieved to find that it was no worse. What he had feared was that his mother had interfered definitely in his own affairs. His mind was greatly eased when he heard the extent of her transgressions. He ventured upon a short laugh under his moustache.

"That was so like my mother," he said.

"It may have been very like your mother, Mr. Stormont," cried Katie, "but if you think that I am going to put up with it – and mamma too!"

"Was Mrs. Seton angry?" said Philip. "Don't call me Mr. Stormont. Now just reflect; I have nothing to do with it; I did not make my mother. Was Mrs. Seton angry? – what did Mrs. Seton say? If you think my mother ill-tempered, Katie, I know that your mother is kind. What did she say?"

"Oh," said Katie, softened, "she said nothing at all. She said that to go out for a walk would do me good. She did not say a word; she just said it was Mrs. Stormont's way."

"I don't think it is her way," said Philip, piqued a little; "but it was like my mother," he added, "oh, yes, it was like her. She would wish to snatch you away under my very nose, and marry you to another man before I knew what she was doing. Oh, that is just what she would like to try. She would think it was no harm to you."

"And what business had she with me at all?" cried Katie, but more gently, the storm having had its way.

"Well, I suppose she guesses what you know so well," said the young lover, "and that is what you are to me, Katie: that there is nobody but you for me: that I would not care if all the world was swept away so long as I had you safe: that – "

"Oh, that is just your way of talking," said Katie, but she did not withdraw her hand; "that is just your nonsense. As if it was likely the world would be swept away, and me left! But that is no reason, if you do like me, that she should think ill of me. I have done nothing to her – why should she be so cruel to me?"

"I am all she has, you see," said Philip, "and she does not like to give me up, as she will have to do."

"I am sure I am not wanting you," cried Katie. "She is welcome to keep you to herself for me; besides, if it was not me, it would be somebody else," she added, after a moment, reflectively, with a philosophy that poor Mrs. Stormont would have done well to emulate. "At your age you are sure to have somebody. She ought to mind that. If it was Annie Borrodaile, would she be better pleased? Most likely," said Katie, "it will be Annie Borrodaile after all."

It was when Philip was employed in energetic disposal of this hypothesis, which it was her pleasure to fling at him whenever the liveliness of the conversation flagged, that Lewis Murray, emerging from the woods of Murkley, in which he had been wandering, thinking over his own urgent affairs, approached the water-side. He came down from behind the scaur by a path half overgrown with tall beeches and brushwood, which was little used. The path was clothed with mosses and covered with the brown beech-wort and the slippery droppings of the firs, and a footstep was scarcely audible upon it. In the hollow of the scaur the little girls were playing, the redness of the earth throwing up their small active figures as they performed their little mimicry of life, "pretending" to be grown-up actors in it, their voices sounding clear into the echoes. At a distance the boys were shouting to each other, and Vixen barking, all of them after the water-rat which had not yet been exhausted as a possibility of fun.

Lewis looked at the children with ready pleasure and sympathy, without thinking of anything further. He was just about to call to them, when a lower murmur of voices caught his ear. He was still on a higher level than the angle of the little wood where it ran down to the river, and, as he glanced in the direction of this softer sound, the young pair became apparent to him. They were close together now, bending towards each other, making but one shadow. Philip's head was uncovered, the light catching its vigorous reddish-brown, and Katie's blue frock made a little background for the group as Lewis looked down upon them, separating that spot from the brown of the tree's trunk and the green of the foliage. A spectator may be pardoned for looking a moment at such a scene before he makes his presence known, especially when he comes upon it by surprise. Lewis stood still in a passion of soft sympathy and emotion which he himself did not quite understand. In some things he was younger than his age. He had known none of the innocent emotions of boy and girl; darker and less lovely episodes he had heard of in plenty, but fortunately for him his absorption in the life of an old man, kind as his patron had been, had kept him apart from all such seductions, and it had never been within his possibilities to fall sweetly and innocently in love, according to what was the course of nature with Katie and Philip.

He gazed at them as they sat together with a sudden comprehension, a curious self-compassion and sense of envy. He laughed to himself softly, so softly that it did not sound in the quiet evening air, with that amusement which is everybody's first impulse at sight of a pair of lovers: and then he grew suddenly grave. This was very different from what he was contemplating for himself. He had thought of duty, not of happiness, in all his recent plans. It had been a something incumbent upon him to fulfil, a wrong to atone for, a blunder to set right, that had been his inspiration. Perhaps his foreign breeding was responsible for the fact that Lewis had not looked upon the marriage which he thought it right to make as having much to do with his happiness at all. It was a portion of life, a necessity, like another, to be accepted manfully, but not the great and crowning want of youth, not the turning-point of existence. Romance was not in it to his straightforward views: and he was not unwilling to accept Miss Jean for the partner of his life, even had she been less pleasant than he found her. He would have approached even Miss Margaret in the same spirit, and with the same dauntless simplicity, had that been the right thing to do, and would have done his duty by either without any sense of hardship or even regret. But when he saw Philip Stormont and Katie, something awoke in him which was like a new sense. Oh, yes, he had heard of love, he had read of it; there was not a novel without it, and scarcely a song. He had seen lovers before now. But somehow this soft and lingering eve, the novelty of all around him, the resolution he had taken, even the satirical advice of Mrs. Stormont, and her suggestion that he had but to pick and choose, were all working together in his mind.

Suddenly it occurred to him that here was the something more which was in life, which he had never known, which he had been vaguely conscious of, but never laid hold upon, or even divined. He laughed, and then he grew grave. He took in at a glance all the points of the situation, which were so different from any of his experiences. It is to be feared that Lewis was somewhat shocked by the facts of the case. He thought that Katie ought not to have been here meeting her lover, and he divined that it was a meeting which took place daily, and that it was to both of them the chief feature in the twenty-four hours. But it was something which would never be his. He stood very gravely, and looked down upon the group for a moment more. His wooing would not be like this; it would be all orderly, decorous, calm. He would be kind, always tender, respectful, friendly to the lady whom he married. It was not in him to fail in the regard which would be her due. But this was another thing altogether. After he had laughed, he sighed. Nature in him had made a mute protest. He looked wistfully and with an irrepressible envy at the lovers. The lovers! As for himself, that was a character which he was never likely to bear. His first idea had been to make his presence known, to warn them of his coming, that they might not be caught by his sudden appearance, or feel themselves found out. But the result of this strange, new impression upon Lewis was that, after that pause, he turned back, and went away out of sight into the woods again, and, after a long détour, found his way by another path back to the village. A sort of awe and wistful admiration was in his mind. He would not have them know that anybody had surprised their secret. This tender delicacy of sentiment was untouched by the fact that he thought the meeting wrong. But, wrong or right, it was something which was beyond him, something which he should never know or share.

"Poor Murray; if he were to take my mother's advice, you would think no more of breaking his heart, if he has a heart – " Philip was saying, as Lewis stole quietly away.

"How can you tell that? He is very nice. He waltzes a great deal better than you do, though I have tried so hard to teach you my step. And if you had only heard him play his piece to mamma! If he were to take your mother's advice – perhaps I would take her advice too."

"And I'll tell you what I should do, Katie; pitch him into the Witch's Cauldron, which is the deepest hole in the water. Play his piece! It would do him a great deal of good to play his pieces there."

And they both laughed, all unconscious of his observation, as they rose from their rustic seat unwillingly, and went lingeringly back towards the manse, and the world, out of that enchanted wood. The children had been faintly called half-a-dozen times before, but now Katie's voice had a tone in it which they felt to convey a real command. The little girls followed slowly; the boys sped on before. It was the recognized way in which, as far as the ferry, where Philip's path struck off, the procession moved towards home.