CHAPTER IV.

Oh, youth! for years so many and sweet’Tis known that thou and I were one;I’ll think it but a fond deceit—It cannot be that thou art gone;Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled,And thou wert aye a masquer bold;What strange disguise hast now put onTo make believe that thou art gone?I see these locks in silvery slips,This drooping gait, this altered size;But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!Life is but thought; so think I willThat youth and I are housemates still.—Coleridge.

TheLaird of Mossgray stood alone beneath a high beech, whose silvery trunk and delicate buds made it the most noticeable of all the neighbouring trees. His figure was tall, thin, and stooping; his hair the most delicate silvery gray; his face full of thoughtful fortitude and wisdom in its gentlest guise; but his usual serenity was ruffled to-day, the calm of his meditative age was broken.

Those dim lands of memory in whose gentle twilight he did so much love to wander, among the fairy shadows, tender and pensive, of things which once were stern and hard enough, had been suddenly illuminated by a flash of the intense and present reality which once they had. The old man’s quietness had suddenly been rent asunder, and floatedaway from him like a mist, while the stormy blood of his more vehement days was swelling in his veins again.

He held a letter in his hand; the fingers which traced its trembling lines were now lying in a nameless grave. A worn-out, wearied woman, prematurely old, and glad to lay down her head in that one place where the weary are at rest, was the writer of those earnest, living words. The Laird of Mossgray did not remember that she was old—the past years were in this moment a fable and a dream to him. He thought of Lilias only as he saw her last, enshrined in all the pure and gentle dignity of his young fancies; for Lilias was dead.

And dying, she had revealed to the old man what she was. Not indeed the lofty lady of his dreaming days, but a gentle, chastened, meek woman, who knew now, and had long known, the worth of the generous heart she threw away. In the bitterness of his soul he had believed her an unsubstantial vision; but the faithful hand of death had brought back to him the true Lilias, worthy of the place he had given her in his best days.

“I do not ask you to forgive me,” wrote the dying Lilias, “because I know that long ago you must have forgiven the witless girl’s heart that did itself so much more wrong than you. I did not know myself, my own slight, shallow, girlish self, and pardon me then, Adam Graeme, that I did not know you. Since then I have learned—what have I not learned that is bitter and sorrowful? Care, poverty, death, and miserable shames and humiliations, such as never crossed your path, have been the constant companions of mine: they are all ending now. I am going hence to my Lord, and to the children whom He took from me one by one, till my heart was well-nigh broken; but I cannot go till I make one prayer to you, one last entreaty for the sake of our youth.

“I would not speak of the time when we last met; in pity to my bitter lot, and to the dead whose faults we lay with them in the grave to be forgotten, as I have laid Edward, and as stranger hands shall soon lay me, do not think of that time. I have one last treasure remaining to me, one last request to make, and there is no one in the world but you, whom I have wronged, to whom I can address my prayer.

“Mossgray, I have a child; a friendless, unprotected,solitary girl, who will soon be left utterly alone. If I shrink from subjecting her to the cold charity of Walter’s wife, forgive me, because I am her mother. I know that Lilias is not what I was. I know that our subdued and clouded life has given to her youth a greater maturity than I had when I was her mother. I have fancied often that Lilias is what you thought me to be, and there has been a sad pleasure in the hope, that for her weak mother’s sake, your heart would melt to my child.

“I cannot ask you. I feel that I cannot venture to beg of you this last service; my heart fails me, when I remember how little I deserve any grace at your hands. But you who have always been so kind and pitiful, think of the misery of leaving her thus, alone in an evil world. If you think I presume upon you, if you refuse to hear my prayer, I still must plead it for her sake. Adam Graeme, will you protect my Lilias? Will you forgive the sins we have done against you, and protect our child?”

There was more than this; there were the solemn farewells of the dying, the pathetic earnestness of sorrowful repentance which bade God bless him for ever. Except in his gray hairs, and in the strength which began gently to fail and glide away, Adam Graeme was not old. The tide of his strong and ardent feelings rushed back in that mighty revulsion, with which the generous soul repents when it has blamed unjustly. He remembered no injury Lilias had done him—he forgot the blight of his youth, the solitude of his old age; he only felt that she was again, the Lilias of his early dreams; and that the commands she laid upon him were sacred and holy, a trust dearer than any other thing on earth.

And yet, a few brief days before, the old man had solemnly recorded his resolution to shun their presence; to avoid all contact with Lilias and her child, that the peace of his age might not be broken. Their very name was pain to him; therefore he prayed that he might not cross their path. He resolved to keep himself from any, the most distant intercourse with them. In solemn earnest he formed this purpose, or rather he formed it not: it was the instinctive necessity of his heart.

He remembered it now no more. It was not that he combatted his former resolution; it was swept away before the resistless force of that impulsive, generous heart, which in itssolitary pain had built this barrier about itself; and there was no inconsistency here. Had his ear been dull to the voice of Lilias, had he hesitated to respond to her appeal, then had Adam Graeme in his old age ceased to be consistent to himself; for the same power which made him resolve to keep himself separate and distant always from those whose very names had might enough to move him still, asserted itself in the instant return of all the ancient tenderness and honour, which painfully taken away from the living Lilias, could flow forth unrestrained and unblamed upon the dead.

In the enclosure of the letter, a trembling hand had written the date of the first Lilias’s death. It struck with a dull pang the heart to which she was restored, yet only thus, he knew, could he have regained her.

That evening the Laird of Mossgray set out on a lonely journey. Before his going, he warned his anxious housekeeper of the young guest he might probably bring home with him. The intimation occasioned considerable excitement in the little household.

The early twilight of the April night had fallen, when Adam Graeme left the dim lights of Fendie behind him, and travelled away into the darkness, shaping his course to the south. The faint indefinite sounds, and musical “tingling silentness” of the night, came close about him, like the touch of angels’ wings. The stars were shining here and there through the soft clouds of spring, and the dim shadowy sky blended its line yonder, in the distance, so gently with the darkened earth, that you could not mark the place of their meeting. The moon herself had been an intruder there; the subdued and pensive dimness which told of that nightly weeping of the heavens from which the young spring draws its freshness and its life, and the faint shining of yon solitary stars high in the veiled firmament, harmonized most meetly with the lonely spirit of the traveller, going forth to look upon the grave of his dead. The sad, wistful, yearning melancholy which belongs to this hour “between the night and the day,” who does not know—those faint hushed hopes, those inarticulate aspirations, turning then, when there is dimness on the earth, to the better something beyond—there are few who have not felt the influence of “the holy time.”

A charmed sway it had borne at all times over the mind of Adam Graeme. And now it travelled with him like ahuman friend: in the stillness of his night journey there were gentle ministrations about him, influences of the earth and of the sky.

Touch the chords gently—Those strings are heart-strings, and the sounds they utter—Be silent when you hear them—are the groaningsOf uttermost pain, the sighings of great sorrow,Voices from out the depths.—Anon.

Abouttwelve or thirteen years before the date of our last chapters, a young man from Glasgow, with his wife and one child, came as lodgers to a humble road-side cottage not far from the town of Fendie, and very near the Waterside. Walter Buchanan was an invalid. A delicate, sensitive man by nature, whose fine nervous organization was of that kind which is akin to weakness and not to strength—for there are both varieties—his health had been broken by the confinement and harassing labour of his vocation as a clerk in a mercantile office. His wife had a little portion, a very little one, which nevertheless to their inexperienced eyes seemed able to last long and accomplish much; so on the strength of it, and in obedience to the doctor’s peremptory order, that he should have rest and country air, Walter gave up his situation, and the young couple began to make the dangerous experiment of living upon their little capital. The gentle poetic man had been charmed in his early days, in some chance visit to the neighbourhood, by the stately water and pretty town of Fendie, and the pleasant remembrance decided their new habitation.

These rash, youthful folk were more fortunate than prudent people might think they deserved. They excited the interest and kindly sympathy of Mrs Oswald, the banker’s wife, and through her, of her sterner husband; so that when the pleasant summer air had done its gentle spiriting on the wan cheek of Walter Buchanan, and he felt himself able for work again—which was happily before his wife’s little portion was altogether exhausted—he was received into the bank as Mr Oswald’s clerk.

To be called “of the bank,” in a country town in Scotland, is a matter of considerable dignity, and the salary, if small, was enough for their limited expenses. The Oswalds were kind and neighbourly; other friends gathered about the gentle couple; and as they stood in their own garden beneath the heavy branches of their own fruit-trees, in those serene autumnal evenings, watching the sun go down gloriously behind the dark crest of yonder hill, they were wont to render quiet thanksgiving out of full hearts.

This pleasant life continued through ten happy years, and in its placid course the delicate man seemed strengthened in mind no less than in body. His nervous melancholy glided away into graceful mists of pensive thought. The nervous impatience and irritability, which it had once cost him so much pains to subdue, were soothed and softened. He became, mentally no less than physically, as it seemed, a more healthful and a stronger man.

At the end of the ten years his position was changed. They had saved enough to raise their little capital to a larger amount than the original sum on which their inexperience had braved the evils of the world. This was invested in the purchase of bank shares, and Walter Buchanan, a clerk no longer, became Mr Oswald’s partner in the agency of the bank.

An unhappy change. The one peculiar, distinguishing feature of the Scottish banking system, over which our economists boast themselves, became a source of constant torment to Walter Buchanan. The quick and prompt decisions of Oswald, in which he could not join, made him feel his own weaker will overborne and set aside. A hundred “peculiar cases,” and “very peculiar cases,” in which the clear, acute mind of the banker could see no peculiarity at all, troubled the midnight rest of his nervous and tenderhearted partner. That this struggling man whose security was dubious, or that hapless farmer wading knee-deep in difficulties, whose cash account was already overdrawn, and who wanted more, should be dealt with summarily, was clear to Oswald’s steady eye; but was enveloped in painful mists of distress and perplexity to Walter Buchanan, himself acquainted with all the restless shifts and expedients of the struggling poor.

His feelings became morbid again under that exercise. He imagined himself ill-used, despised, trampled upon, when the finer points of his compassionate and impulsive benevolence came into collision with the strong sense and energy of his partner, who in his turn grew impatient of the sentiment which he thought sickly, and the tenderness which he called weak. There was a rupture at last. A struggling man with dubious security came to Buchanan when Oswald was absent from Fendie. The sensitive man of feeling forgot prudence in compassion, and by his ill-judged acceptance of the uncertain “cautioner,” brought serious loss to the bank. Oswald returned; there were sharp and high words spoken by both, which neither, in less excited mood, would have given utterance to; and in a storm of bitter anger and wounded to the very heart, Walter Buchanan threw up his situation, dissolved his partnership with Oswald, and left the bank.

Very soon to leave the world; for, before the winter was over, his course had ended. He could not bear such tempests of excitement, for pain to him was agony, and anger madness. So in his weakness he died, and left his gentle widow and his young daughter to fight with the world alone.

Helen Buchanan was only sixteen. She had a fair proportion of what people call accomplishments, and might almost have been a governess in a boarding-school or a “gentleman’s family;” and beneath the accomplishments there was a sound substratum of education, and a mind matured too early for her own happiness. Fendie was abundantly supplied withladies’schools; so Helen, in her flush of youthful pride and independence, determined to offer her services to the humbler mothers, and to receive as her pupils not the young ladies, but the little girls of Fendie.

Mrs Buchanan reluctantly acquiesced. She was a gentle, hopeful woman, accustomed to yield always to the quick impulses and keen feelings of her husband, and now rendering a kindred submission to her daughter. Helen was a very dutiful, very loving child, but her mother’s cheerful, patient nature was made to be thus influenced, and unconsciously and involuntarily the stronger spirit bore the mastery.

So when the first pangs of their grief were over, Mrs Buchanan regretfully removed her substantial furniture from the dining-room of which she had been once so proud, and with many sighs saw her little maid-servant arrange in it the bare benches and large work-table which befitted its new character of school-room; and the youthful teacher began her labours.

These had gone on successfully for four or five years before the pleasant April-tide on which Hope Oswald returned home; eventful years to Helen. It is not well to leave the unconscious happiness of girlhood too soon, even to enter upon the enchanted ground of youth. Toil, poverty, and William Oswald; the three together were well nigh too many for the youthful champion who had to struggle, single-handed, against them all.

In the twilight of that April evening she sat in their little parlour alone. The faint firelight gave a wavering flush to the shadowy air of the holy time; and Helen sat in the recess of the window, wandering through the mazes of such a reverie, as belongs especially to her peculiar temperament and mind. For those delicate lines in her face, those continually moving features, those slight starts now and then, and altogether the elastic impulsive energy and life which you could perceive in her figure even in its repose, testified her inheritance of the constitution of her father. With one difference.Hisnervous, sensitive temperament was akin to weakness; hers, with all its expressive grace, its swift instinctive feelings, its constant life and motion, was strong—strong to endure, although its pain was sorer a thousand times than that of more passive natures—strong to struggle—mighty to enjoy.

She had been out, watching the sun as he shed a golden mist over the dark mass of yonder hill, where it stands out boldly into the Firth, a strong sentinel, keeping watch upon the sea; gleaming in the mid-waters of the estuary, gleaming in the wet sand and shining pools of the deep bay, and throwing out the sunless hillock at the river’s mouth, with its little tower and quiet houses, in bold relief against the far away mountain, and its mantle of streaming gold. The wonderful sky in the west, the broad bed of the Firth, the sunset and its noble scene—there was an enjoyment in these to the delicate soul of Helen, which duller natures have not in the greatest personal blessings of the world.

And now, with her pale cheek resting on her hand, and leaning forward on the window-sill, Helen was lost in a reverie. What was it? only a mist of fair thoughts indefinitely woven together; scenes starting up here and there of the future and of the past, with fairy links of association drawing their strangely-varied band together; old stories, old songs, andbreath of music floating through all in gentle caprice—the sweet and pleasant gloaming of the mind.

Mrs Buchanan was out, doing some household business in Fendie, and Helen did not hear the footstep of Hope Oswald as she entered by the garden gate. These quiet houses are innocently insecure; when Hope’s summons remained unanswered, she opened the door herself, and went in.

“Oh, Helen!” exclaimed Hope, as she precipitated herself upon her friend, dispersing in that nervous start all the fair visions of the evening dream. “How glad I am to be home again—how glad I am to see you!—but I scarcely can see you either, because it’s quite dark; and, Helen—you don’t know how I used to weary in Edinburgh just to hear you speak again!”

“Thank you, Hope,” said Helen. “I am very glad to see you; or rather to hear you speak, according to your own sensible distinction. Come, we will get a light and look at each other.”

Mingling with the quick movement of surprise at first, there had been a deep blush and a temporary shrinking from William Oswald’s sister; but another moment restored Hope to her old privileged place of favourite, and Helen rose, her young companion’s eager arms clinging about her waist, to light the one candle on the little table.

The room was small and plainly furnished, though its substantial mahogany chairs and sofa looked respectable in their declining years. On the carpet here and there were various spots of darning artistically done, which rather improved its appearance than otherwise. A large work-basket stood upon the table containing many miscellaneous pieces of sewing; shirts in every stage of progress, narrow strips of muslin, bearing marks of the painful initiation of very little pupils into the mysteries of the thoughtful craft, mingled here and there with scraps of humble “fancy” work, samplers, and the like—all of which the young school-mistress had to arrange and set to rights before the work of to-morrow commenced. A book lay beside the basket—a well-thumbed book from the library. Helen had been idling; for she sometimes did snatch the brief relaxation of a novel, though Maxwell Dickson, the librarian, had no great choice of literature.

“Oh, Helen,” exclaimed Hope again, when the feeble light of the candle revealed to her the pale face of her friend, “I am so very glad to see you again!”

“Thank you, Hope,” repeated Helen; “how you are growing—you will be above us all by and by. When did you come home?”

“Only yesterday,” said Hope; “but are you sure you are quite well, Helen?”

“Quite sure—why?”

“Only because you look pale—paler than you used to do; and, Helen, what makes you sigh?”

“Did I sigh?” said Helen, her delicate wavering colour gradually heightening beneath the girl’s steady affectionate look. “I did not know of it, Hope—it must have been for nothing, you know, when I was not aware of it.”

“Ah, but it was when you were sitting in the dark before you saw me,” said Hope gravely, “and you must have been thinking of something.”

Helen’s colour heightened more and more, yet she smiled.

“Are you going to be an inquisitor, Hope? Do you know people sometimes think very deeply, as you saw me to-night, about nothing? Ah, you shake your head and are very grave and wise, and experienced, I see. Come, I will show you what Cowper says about it.”

“Oh, I know,” said Hope. “I learned all that for Miss Swinton because she likes Cowper; but, Helen, you are not so clever as one of our young ladies; it’s Miss Mansfield, you know, that’s going to Calcutta, and she’s old—she is near eighteen, I am sure—and she sighs; but when Miss Swinton spoke to her about it, she said she was only drawing a long breath. I think,” said Hope disconsolately, “that the people in Fendie are very dull and sad now; for everybody draws long breaths.”

“Have you seen so many, Hope?” said Helen, with an uneasy flush upon her face, and with some evident interest in the question; those constantly moving features were sad telltales.

“I mean just the people I care about,” said Hope; “there is poor William. I do not know what ails William—for he sat in the dark like you, last night, and will always lean his head upon his hands, and sigh—sigh—and my mother—I wish you would not all be so sad.”

Helen Buchanan turned round to examine the contents of her work-basket. Her slender figure was very slightly drawn up; something almost imperceptible like the faint touch ofwind upon leaves passed over her; you could not tell what it was, though you could read its swift expression as clearly as written words. Pride—sympathy—a conciousness that moved her heart and yet made it firmer; but Hope’s piece of incidental information did not sadden the face of Helen.

Hope had a comprehension of—though she could by no means have explained how she comprehended—the silent language of Helen Buchanan’s looks and motions; and she arrived at a pretty accurate conclusion in her own simple and shrewd reasonings on the subject. Mrs Buchanan came in so soon that she could try no further experiments with Helen; but as she past through the dim road, half-street, half-lane, in which their house stood, and came into the quiet Main Street of Fendie, with its half-shut shops and groups of wayside talkers, great schemes began to germinate within the small head of Hope Oswald. If only that very unreasonable opposition of her father’s could be overcome, Hope decided that William would be condemned to draw long breaths in the dark no longer. “Miss Swinton says I am sensible,” mused Hope within herself, “and my father says I am clever. I don’t know—I think it will turn out the right way some time, and we shall all be very happy, but just now—I will try!”

And immediately there flitted before the eyes of Hope, in the gentle darkness of the April night, a fairy appearance, we do not venture to say it was anything very ethereal. It was only a vision of a lilac satin frock like that famous one which Miss Adelaide Fendie, of Mount Fendie, wore at her sister’s marriage, and very fascinating was the gleam which it shed about the young schemer as she lingered at her father’s door. Hope Oswald was only fourteen.

We must at first endureThe simple woe of knowing they are dead—A soul-sick woe in which no comfort is—And wish we were beside them in the dust!That anguish dire cannot sustain itself,But settles down into a grief that loves,And finds relief in unreproved tears.Then cometh sorrow, like a Sabbath! HeavenSends resignation down and faith; and lastOf all there falls a kind oblivionOver the going out of that sweet lightIn which we had our being.—Professor Wilson.

Inthe waning afternoon of another dim spring day the Laird of Mossgray entered the Cumberland valley, to which the letter of Lilias had directed him.

He had traversed the fair country beyond Carlisle, with its sloping glades, and belts of rich woodland, and now had reached a chiller and more hilly region, whose bleak inhospitable fells, still scarcely touched by the breath of spring, did yet reveal home-like glimpses, here and there, of sheltered glens and quiet houses, dwelling alone among the hills. He had to pass several of the pleasant towns of Cumberland before he reached the sequestered hamlet in which the last days of Lilias had been spent. It lay in a nook by itself, a scanty congregation of gray roofs, with the church “a gracious lady,” as was the poet’s church among the hills, serenely overlooking all, reigning over the living and the dead. From the end of the little glen you commanded the long range of a wider and more important valley, at the further end of which lay one of the most picturesque of those northern towns, its gray limestone buildings making a sheen in the distance, and a delicate cloud of smoke hovering about the points of its white spires, like something spiritual, marking where household hearths were gathered together in social amity. Not far away lay the consecrated country of the lakes: and everywhere around, bare, brown, scathed hill-tops stood out against the sky.

Mossgray proceeded to the churchyard first of all; allthings beside were strange to him in the unknown village, but here he had a friend. After long search among the gray memorials of the forefathers of the hamlet, he came upon a green mound marked by no name, where the soft, green turf was faintly specked with the fragile blue of the forget-me-not; in the village churchyard this alone and the daisy found a place—occupants more fit than the garish flowers with which modern taste has peopled the cities of the dead. The Laird of Mossgray turned aside to ask the name of the occupant of this grave. It was a Scottish widow—said the sexton—lately dead, whose name was Maxwell. The inquirer returned again, and seating himself on a hillock, covered his face with his hands. The old man never knew how long he lingered there. He was not an old man then; the fervid affection of his youth—the burning grief of his early trial, were in his heart passionate and strong as when they thrilled it first; and it was not until the night fell and the dew dropped gently on him, that the sacred sorrow which belongs to the dead, came down to still the stronger throbs of his solitary heart. When he looked up, the stars were shining again in the dim and dewy sky—the hills stood up, like watching Titans, clothed in the shadowy unformed garments of the early earth, and ghost-like in the darkness rose ancient tombstones, gray with years, and the green mounds of yesterday. The great, silent, conscious world, tingling with the spiritual presence which over-brimmed its mighty precincts—and the dead—the solemn sleepers who have lived, and do but wait to live again.

But there were the faint village lights close at hand, and the orphan to be sought for there, who was committed to his care. So the old man withdrew from the grave of Lilias, to seek her child.

The bearing of the Laird of Mossgray had in it so much of the graceful olden courtesy of the gentleman born, that it never failed to bring deference and attention. The very little inn which stood in the centre of the hamlet was not much frequented by strangers. Wandering pedestrian tourists of the student or artist class, to whom its humbleness was a recommendation, did sometimes refresh themselves in its well-sanded kitchen; but the ruddy landlady had scarcely ever welcomed such a guest as Mossgray under her homely roof. So she ushered him into a little boarded room, of dignity superior to the kitchen, though communicating with it, anddusted a huge old-fashioned chair with her apron, and stood curtseying before him, waiting for his orders, and secretly cogitating whether there would be time to dress a fowl for supper, or if the universal ham and eggs would do.

But Mossgray was by no means concerned about supper. He was silent for a few moments, during which the comfortable hostess stood before him marvelling, and when he did address her, it was to ask whether she knew a young Scottish lady, a Miss Maxwell, who, he believed, lived in the village.

The good landlady was a little shocked. What had the like of him to do with young ladies? but his grave face reassured her.

“And that will be the poor young creature that lost her mother, a fortnight come Friday, it’s like?”

“Yes,” said Mossgray, slowly, to steady his voice, “yes, she is an orphan—her mother is dead.”

“Ay, sure; and I wouldn’t wonder a bit,” said the stout hostess, smoothing down her ample skirts, “if she didn’t bide long behind her; for a thin long slip of a thing she is, and no more red on her cheek than the very snow, and I’ve heard say that such like troubles run in the blood. There’s the Squire’s family down in the dale—you’ll know them sure, better than the likes of me—they’ve all followed one another, for all the world like a march of folk at a funeral going to the grave.”

“And is Lilias—is the young lady affected with this disease?” exclaimed Mossgray.

“The young lady did you say, Sir? Why, the poor girl had her bread to work for, like the rest on us—and a weakly white thing she was if there were ne’er another; but she thought herself a young lady sure enow, and what mun she do but go and be a governess, as they ca’ it. Her mother was a prideful body, to have nothing, and so was Miss; but I say, I’d sooner have my girl a dairy-maid any day, if Susan needed to go out of her father’s house for a living, which she doesn’t, thank Providence.”

“But, my good woman,” said Mossgray mildly, “Miss Maxwell has no intention of being a governess, I trust, as she has no need. You will oblige me if you can tell me where I shall find her.”

“Well, and that’s just more than I can tell you, Sir; for the Rector’s gone from home, and they say Miss went with them;—but if it’s your pleasure to stay—”

“I will stay this night, if you can accommodate me,” was the answer.

The landlady curtsied.

“I’ll send up Susan to the Rectory for Mary, and mayhap she can tell.”

In half an hour Susan was despatched, her mother in the mean time taking upon herself to prepare the unbidden supper; and in about an hour and a half after, Susan returned alone. The Rectory Mary had deserted her post, and was now half a dozen miles away over the fell, visiting her mother, and the girl left in charge had been fain to keep Susan for an hour’s gossip to cheer her loneliness. She knew only that the Rector and her mistress had gone to Scotland; but as Scotland, in the reckoning of Susan of the inn and Sally at the Rectory was a word of quite indefinite signification, meaning sometimes a village like their own, and sometimes enlarging into the dimensions of a dale, or of a great town like the picturesque one near them, which filled up to overbrimming their idea of “the world,” the information thus obtained was anything but satisfactory. So Mossgray endeavoured to ascertain something further from the landlady.

“They came here eighteen months past, come Whitsuntide. I mind it particular, because my Susan and more o’ the young folks were up at the confirmation the Bishop had up yonder, in the town, the end of that summer; and it would have done any one’s heart good to have seen my girl in her white muslin, and her cap, and all of them trooping down the dale in the fine morning. But the Scotch lady wouldn’t have her daughter go, though the Rector took the trouble to talk to her himself. I donna understand such things, but mayhap, Sir, the like of you do that are learned, why the young Miss shouldn’t have gone with the rest, like any other Christian. But they were quiet, peaceable folks, no one can say again that; and except it were wandering about the dale, the old lady leaning heavy on Miss, and looking as faint when she came back as if she had done a day’s work, I know no pleasure they ever took, young or old of them; and they cared about nought but books and the post. I have seen them sit on the brow yonder in the summer time reading for hours; and in the winter time I’ve looked in at the window passing by—not that I’m a prying body, or care about my neighbour’s business, but only, there was nought like their ways in the whole dale—and there they would be, with a turffire you could ’most have held in your two hands, one of them doing fine work, and the other reading; and beautiful Miss can work, Mary at the Rectory says, and it was all for some rich friends that sent them money now and again—though sure it wasn’t much—but it’s like you’ll know, Sir?”

A painful colour was on the face of Adam Graeme: “Poor, and in trouble, and ye visited me not.” He felt every word an accusation, and could scarcely answer “No.”

“And every month or two—I donna know but what it was every month—Miss went by herself into the town to get letters: and I’ve heard say she’d pay more for them than would have put a bit of something comfortable on their table many a day. They were from some far away part, and they came as regular as Sunday comes: but no one could tell who sent them, for she had ne’er a brother, and her father was dead. The Rector’s lady took a deal of notice of Miss and her mother; not that she is one of that kind herself, for she’s just a good easy creature, that doesn’t trouble her head about learning; but she came from Scotland herself you know. I’ve heard Mary at the Rectory say that the old lady had been in such a many places—never biding long in one, I reckon; and you know the old word, Sir, about the rolling stone. Well, they had been in this way more than a year—a good fourteen months it would be, for it was past Midsummer—when the old lady fell ill; and she kept on getting better and worse, better and worse, till a fortnight come next Friday when she died—and a week past on Monday they buried her. At the burial, I know for certain, Miss was like nought but a shadow, and just yesterday the Rector and his lady went off to Scotland and took her with them. I’ve heard Mary at the Rectory say she was gone to be governess to the Rector’s lady’s sisters; but I donna know what’s their name, nor where they live; and please, Sir, that’s all I can tell you.”

The talkative landlady recollected other scraps of gossip however, before she suffered so good a listener to escape her. The subdued and quiet life of the mother and daughter—the proud poverty that made no sign—the privations which were guessed at—which perhaps were magnified—the mysterious letters—the little incidental and unconscious touches which revealed through a mist of verbiage something of the second Lilias, in the fresh youth which knew no cares but those of poverty, and in the first paralysis and stupor of her heavy grief. But the other figure—the sadNaomi leaning on the girl’s arm, and sinking, amid hardship and the chill pains of penury, into a stranger’s grave—every new touch did but deepen the sad cold colours of the picture, and this was the lofty Lily of the old man’s dream—the sunny and joyous daughter of Greenshaw.

The next morning Mossgray left the Cumberland glen, resolving, if his search did not prosper in Scotland, to return when the reverend ruler of the little dale should have returned to his flock and his dominions. He remembered however with annoyance, when he had reached Carlisle on his way home, that he had not ascertained the Rector’s name. It had not been mentioned by his primitive parishioners, to whom “the Rector” was the title of titles; but Mossgray resolved to make immediate inquiry of Mrs Fendie, whose eldest daughter had married an English clergyman somewhere in this same district. He would write also to Walter Johnstone; he would advertise if other means failed, calling on the second Lilias to honour the bequest her mother had made to him. The trust was more sacred now than ever; it was enough that one had gone down uncomforted to the grave.

She was a sonsie maydenOf substance eke, and weight,Nae cares did vex her, nae thoughts perplex her,And her name it was callit Kate.—Old Song.

Onthe following morning, a low pony carriage, very little above the rank of a gig, and packed in its lower departments with sundry empty baskets, drew up at the door of the Bank. It was the market-day in Fendie, and the strong rustic driver of the little vehicle seemed considerably more interested in the acquaintances whom he noticed in the crowded Main Street than in the young ladies whom he assisted to alight. The elder of them was about fifteen, a little older than Hope Oswald. She was a large, clumsy, heavy girl, with soft fair features, and sleepy blue eyes. The face was well enough, so far as mere form went, and had a certain slumbrous, passive good-humour in it, not unprepossessing; but speculation there was none under the heavylids of those large eyes. The soft face had its tolerable proportions of white and red, but was informed by no inspiring light; for this was Hope Oswald’s stupid schoolfellow—Miss Adelaide Fendie.

With her was a younger sister, a girl of ten, whose face only was less stupid, because it had a spitefulness and shrewish expression perfectly alien to the soft good-humour of Adelaide. They were both dressed after that peculiar fashion which belongs to the caterpillar state (if we may venture on such an expression) of young ladies—in unhandsome dresses of faded colours, short enough to display quite too much of Adelaide’s white trousers and considerable feet, and hanging wide and clumsily on shoulders which needed no addition to their natural proportions.

The Fendies of Mount Fendie were an old family; but Mr George Oswald the banker had also some pretensions to blood, and Mrs Oswald was a laird’s daughter; so there was no great derogation in the intimacy with which the youthful Misses of the more aristocratic house honoured the sprightly Hope. Miss Victoria was the more condescending of the two. She felt to the full the superiority of Mount Fendie, with its wide grounds and sweeping avenues and lodges ornamented by the delicate taste of “mamma,” and considerably despised the great stone building in the main street of Fendie, with the mechanical inscription of “Bank” over its stately portico.

Adelaide knew better; even in the dignified educational establishment in Edinburgh there was some certain degree of republicanism, and Adelaide had attained to a dull consciousness of Hope’s superiority, and a habit of being guided by her will, much to the comfort of her slumbrous self, whom Hope managed to carry through scrapes and difficulties in a manner which even excited a faint degree of passive wonder in the slugglish inert nature, which could not comprehend her quick intelligence. And Adelaide liked Hope, and by good fortune did not envy her; and Hope had a sort of affection of habit for Adelaide, whose dulness she laid siege to with girlish impetuosity, understanding it as little as her companion understood her; for Hope could not persuade herself that it was natural to be stupid, and so assailed the impenetrable blank of Adelaide’s mind with all manner of weapons, but always unsuccessfully.

John Brown, the trusty major-domo of Mount Fendie, was bound for the market, and, not without some coaxing,had consented to bring the young ladies with him. John touched his hat in gruff good-humour as Hope Oswald’s bright face looked out from the open door, and after depositing Miss Victoria safely on the pavement, drove off with a sigh of relief, muttering,—

“That lassie’ll be twenty stane afore she’s dune growing. I wad as sune lift the brockit quey. Gude day to ye, Tam,—hoo’s the wife? Gar the laddie gie the beast a feed—I haena muckle time.”

With which prudent beginning John descended, and evinced his haste practically, by entering into a lengthened controversy with Tam Dribble, the master of a little inn which it pleased John to patronize. Tam was a man very great in the “affairs of the state,” and the Provost of Fendie was his especial scapegoat for the sins of those in authority; so there was so much to be said for and against some recent act of this dignitary—for John Brown was a constitutional man, and defended the powers that be—that it was not until they had moistened their argument with a dram or two, and suffered the pony to make a very leisurely and substantial meal, that the factotum of Mount Fendie summed up with a clap of his hands, which made the room ring.

“Man, Tam, ye’re a born gowk—and it’s a’ havers—and here am I wasting guid daylicht listening to you. An it had been night, I might hae bidden to gie ye your answer—but me, that’s a responsible man, and under authority—hout awa’ wi’ ye!”

With which triumphant conclusion John Brown strode forth to the market.

“Oh, Hope! isn’t he a great bear, that John?” exclaimed Victoria Fendie. “Adelaide asked mamma to let us come, and mamma never will do anything at first that we want; but we coaxed her, and then when she said we might go, we had to ask John Brown to take us—to ask John Brown, indeed!—only think of ladies asking a servant! and mamma would not order him to do it. I know what I will do—I’ll get some of Alick’s powder and put it in the snuffers, and then I’ll ask John to come and snuff the candles for me.”

“Very well, Victoria,” said Hope, “I’ll tell John to-day.”

“Oh, goodness, Adelaide, only listen—how ill-natured she is! I don’t care—I’ll do something; it’s a great shame of mamma to make us ask John Brown.”

“Hope,” said Adelaide, “the new governess is coming to-morrow, and mamma says you’re to come up and see her.”

“Mamma only said she might come if she liked,” interposed Victoria.

Adelaide paused to deliberate upon an answer.

“If I did not like to come sometimes to see Adelaide, Adelaide would not ask me,” said Hope.

“But, Hope,” said Adelaide, lifting her large dull blue eyes, “it’s the new governess you’re to come to see.”

“Well, I know that; but I shall see you too, shall I not?”

“Yes,” repeated the obtuse Adelaide; “but you’re to come to see the new governess, mamma says.”

Hope was seized with one of her fits of impatience. Why would Adelaide be so stupid?

“Shan’t we tease her!” exclaimed Victoria, triumphantly. “Fred says he won’t learn his lessons to a woman, and I won’t learn any lessons at all, if I can help it, and mamma won’t let me if I have a head-ache. Do you ever have any head-aches, Hope?”

“No,” said Hope, stoutly, “head-aches! Miss Mansfield used to have them at school—you mind, Adelaide? but it’s a great shame, and Miss Swinton says girls have no right to have head-aches.”

“Oh, Hope! ‘youmind.’ Mamma would whip me if I said ‘you mind.’”

“Mymother would not,” said the resolute Hope, “and mind is a far better word than remember or recollect. It’s only one syllable, and—it’s our own tongue, and it’s a very good word.”

“I think so too,” said Adelaide, with an unwonted exertion, “because when a word’s short it’s easier said.”

Adelaide’s sentence terminated abruptly in a peal of malicious laughter from Victoria.

“Well,” said the elder sister, with some faint flush of anger, “I am sure Miss Swinton used to say so—and you’ve no right to laugh, Victoria—I’ll tell mamma.”

“I don’t care,” was the response; “mamma is not so well pleased when you always talk about that stupid governess—you know that.”

“Stupid governess!” Hope’s eyes sparkled. “If you were not a child, Victoria,” she said, with the dignity of a senior, “you would not speak so. Miss Swinton is alady—Miss Swinton is a gentlewoman! I don’t know any one like Miss Swinton, except mamma, and—”

“Oh, come, tell us—tell us!” cried Victoria.

Hope drew herself up.

“Except mamma and Helen—Miss Buchanan—but you don’t know her.”

“Yes I do—she keeps a school; yes I do—a governess and a schoolmistress—and Hope does not know any other ladies! I hope I shall never be one of Hope’s ladies.”

“What are you doing now, Hope?” said Adelaide. “Mamma has made me begin to work a cover for something; I don’t know what the shape of it will be, but it’s all in bits like this, and mamma says it will be very pretty—and Charlotte’s bringing such a load of music, and that governess!—you might come up, Hope, and help me, for I’m sure you’re not doing anything yourself.”

Hope acknowledged her idleness.

“No indeed, Adelaide; but I have only been two days at home; and—what’s the use of working covers? I don’t know why people labour at such things.”

“Because their mammas make them,” said Adelaide, gravely, and with a sigh; “but I think I like it too, Hope, for it’s very pretty, you know.”

Hope shook her head. She had been visited several times of late by some grave ruminations on this subject, and began to feel that working covers, however pretty, was in reality a quite unsatisfactory mode of life. But the cogitations were inarticulate; they had attained no shape, except at present a decided disinclination to work at all.

“And, Hope,” added Adelaide, “how long do you practise every day?”

“I don’t practise at all,” answered Hope.

The sleepy lids of Adelaide’s eyes were elevated in wonder.

“Then what in all the world do you do?” exclaimed Victoria. “I should like to be you, Hope—I should like to play all day; but Adelaide thinks she is too old to play.”

“I don’t play all day,” said Hope, with some indignation. “Yesterday I was at Friarsford with my mother, and at Mossgray—”

“Oh, Hope!” said Adelaide, “what makes you go to see that girl? she is only a farmer’s daughter.”

“I don’t care for her now,” said Hope, with some sadness; “but it’s not because she’s a farmer’s daughter—it’s becauseshe is—I mean it’s becauseshepractises, and knits and works covers, and doesn’t care for anybody—but never mind that. And then we went to Mossgray. We did not see Mr Graeme; but there’s a beautiful pony—the prettiest one ever you saw—and Mrs Mense says I am to give it its name. What should I call it, Adelaide? come and help me.”

Adelaide slowly shook her head—this was a stretch of invention quite beyond her.

“Call it Mischief,” suggested Victoria.

“Mischief,” deliberated Hope. “No, I don’t like that—I want a pretty name—give me a pretty name, Adelaide.”

An idea gradually illuminated Adelaide’s stolid countenance.

“Call it Pretty, Hope—that would do very well.”

“Oh, no, no!” exclaimed Hope; “you might call a lap-dog that, but a fine pony! so merry, and brisk, and lively—oh, no, no!”

“Call it after me,” said Victoria.

“Mischief?” said Hope.

“No, indeed, not Mischief, but Victoria, or Adelaide, or—I have got it—I have got it!—call it Lillie, after our new governess.”

“Is her name Lillie?” asked Hope.

“It’s her first name—her Christian name,” said Adelaide, “and Charlotte says she looks pretty, Hope; but she is so quiet and sad—you know she lost her mamma just a fortnight ago.”

“And has she no home?” said Hope.

“No home? I am sure I don’t know; Charlotte does not say anything about her home; only her mamma is dead, and she is very quiet, and looks pretty.”

There was no more to be got out of Adelaide—she could only repeat her text, and wonder at the questions that sprang out of it.

“And is she coming with Mrs Heavieliegh?” asked Hope.

“Yes—you know Mr Heavieliegh is the Rector of the place her mother died in—but she came from Scotland at first, and Charlotte was very good to her, and because mamma wanted a governess, Charlotte engaged her to come to the Mount.”

“Will Mrs Heavieliegh stay long?” inquired Hope.

The conversation was getting low, Victoria being busilyemployed at the other end of the room, endeavouring with all her might to destroy some favourite plants of Mrs Oswald’s.

“Not just now—but do you know, Hope, Alick is coming next summer, from India, where he was sent with his regiment, and mamma will give parties, and perhaps a ball—a real ball, Hope!—and you must be there. Oh, we shall be so happy!”

“Is he coming to stay?” asked Hope.

“I don’t know, mamma didn’t say; but she said there was to be a ball, and that Alick would perhaps bring some officers with him. I only wish the time were come—shall you not be glad, Hope?”

“If my mother will let me go, I shall like it very well,” said Hope; “but about the new governess, Adelaide—is she to teach you?”

“Mamma says so,” said Adelaide; “but I think I don’t need any more teaching—do you, Hope? after having had to learn such quantities of things. I am sure I wish mamma would just try it herself.”

Hope was not quite inclined to acquiesce in this conclusion; but there was no possibility of keeping up an argument with Adelaide, who had nothing to add to her first sentence on any subject, but merely the trouble of repeating it. So Hope wisely went to seek her mother, and to suggest the preparation of some juvenile lunch for her friends, which speedily made its appearance in the substantial form of bread and butter, jam and fruit—healthful dainties which were plentifully discussed by the visitors. John Brown arrived very shortly after, with the pony carriage, the baskets in which were no longer empty, and having with some difficulty hoisted the young ladies in, drove them away, leaving Hope pledged for “the day after to-morrow to come and see the new governess.”

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