CHAPTER V.

I walk as ere I walked forlornWhen all our path was fresh with dewAnd all the bugle breezes blewReveillée to the breaking morn.—In Memoriam.

I am looking out from the deep window of my study, through the sharp air of a frosty, clear November night. There are lights gleaming in some cottage windows, so far down under the bare trees by the water-side, that you would think them glow-worms on the grass; and silvery mists are floating about the sky, and yonder lie some great distant mountain clouds, with stars embayed in creeks and inlets at their feet, like lights of anchored ships.

The face of the beautiful night before me brings back another time. I fancy I am leaning again over the grey wall, which bounds the sloping road on yonder Calton, looking down with rapt and dreamy eyes upon that wonderful scene below. Hew Murray’s arm is in mine; we have the visionary reverence of youth upon us, and when we speak, we speak low, and with few words. Yonder noble hill with its proud crest, and its visible darkness—yonder faint towers, far below, of storied Holyrood—that grand rugged line from the dim valley of the palace to the bluff front of the castle, with its graceful hovering crown of St Giles lying so fitly upon the stately head of our royal city—the gleaming lights, halfway between the dim sky and the dimmer earth—the confused hum ascending up in softened dreamy murmurs. So near the life and din of a great city; so near the wonderful gloom and silence of the everlasting hills. There is a jarring sound below. I start and open my eyes—and I am looking forth upon the placid water of Fendie, the low cottage lights below, and the steady stars above—an old man and alone!

After our third session together at college, Hew Murray went to his distant destination. Murrayshaugh himself came to Edinburgh to superintend his son’s outfit, and to my very great grief, and the regret of the whole band of us, slightly mingled with envy, Hew set sail in a Leith smack—we had no steamers in those days—for London, from whence he was to proceed to Portsmouth, where his ship lay.

Hew was not of the cosmopolitan class; he was one of those—happily still existing, and I hope increasing in these days—whom the very name of home and country stirred like a trumpet. After the greatest motive of all—and I fear that in our youthful timethathad but little comparative weight with us, as it had little place in the teachings of those who had the guiding of our unformed minds—the honour of his name and of his native land roused the warm spirit of my dear friend, Hew, as no other causes could. “For poor auld Scotland’s sake”—in some degree we all shared the intense and loving loyalty which took this as its centre, but it was a ruling principle with Hew Murray; and he felt his banishment most painfully, though he submitted to the necessity like a man—for Hew had not any very brilliant hopes.

“There is little chance that I will be able to return till I am old, Adam,” he said to me, sadly, as we lingered on our favourite walk for the last time, looking down on the Old Town through the balmy dim spring night; “and if I should come home as rich as old Major Wardlaw of the Elms, what then? One would scarcely like to look forward to such an end of one’s labours. His gouty chair, and his hot unwholesome room, and his solitude, and his grumbling, and his spiceries, and his inflammable temper. Man, Adam! to think that I must leave home, and part with Lucy and with all of you, and toil through my whole life where I shall never hear a Scotch tongue, for such an end as that!”

“You will hear many Scotch tongues in Bombay, Hew,” said I, “and then you are sure to marry somebody’s daughter, and come home immediately.”

Hew’s frank happy laugh rang into the dim air pleasantly; its sound always cheered me, but the remembrance that I might not hear it again for years fell upon me in blank pain. We made a great many hysterical attempts after that to be merry, but failed so woefully in every case, that we turned at last in silence round the brow of the hill, and looked out upon the sea: the noble Firth spreading its silvery lengths far away in the distance, with its dark islands and steady lights, and the broad line of its princely highway leading forth into the foreign world!

The cold, strange, alien world where home was not, norfriends. Hew Murray’s hand grasped my arm for a moment with a convulsive pressure, and there were tears under our eyelids,—tears which we were not ashamed to shed under cover of the gentle night.

The next day I watched a white sail gliding smoothly over the peaceful Firth, until I lost it on the horizon far away—and my dearest friend was gone.

For Charlie Graeme, brother-like as we were, was less closely joined to me than Hew. It is a vulgar notion that the warmest friendship requires a contrast of minds. Charlie and I had very distinct individualizations. Hew resembled me closely—I had almost said, that in matters of the mind and heart Hew Murray and I had all things common. In things physical there was the same connection between my cousin and myself; but heartily as I liked Charlie, there were many points on which I certainly knew that we could by no possibility agree; there were many matters of feeling and thought which I shrank from bringing under his keen glance—that glance which pierced through my bashful sentimentalities with so little pity.

Maxwell got on delicately with those medical studies of his. He was a great favourite everywhere, his weakness, as usual, bringing him in for much more than his average share of consideration. Charlie and Walter toiled manfully at the dry initiatory necessities of their profession. They were “clever lads” of good parts and promise, both, and both too well endowed with stout common sense and the natural self-interest and ambition, to be, except in rare outbursts, loiterers or idlers. For my desultory self, I dabbled in all scientific crafts; was a metaphysician for one fit, and a chemist for another, and an antiquarian for a third; I dipped into Charlie’s dreary quartos, and lingered at the threshold of the dissecting-room with Edward, and for my own hand got through heaps of reading, systematic and unsystematic, not always drawn from the venerable shelves of the college library. It formed a pile of strange rubbish altogether, built up as it was with the crude philosophies peculiar to my years.

But sauntering along the Calton Hill now, alone, to dream over the Old Town, in its antique grace and beauty, made me sick at heart. Hew Murray was one of those rare friends whom one does not need to be continually talking to. A stranger who observed our few words might have taken us for very indifferent companions, but this was aboveall, the sign of our closest brotherhood. When Charlie was with us, we were talkative enough, for then a foreign element was introduced, but we were too much one when we were alone to have any such constraint upon us. And when from these silent walks we emerged into the bustle and light of the street below, and throwing off the charm, began to be as loud as our neighbours, we felt, both of us, that the chain of our regard was drawn closer by these communings. Never friend in this world did I appropriate and feel mine so entirely as Hew, and the dim hill-side where my silence was unshared, where there was none to dream beside me as I dreamt, or to feel as I felt, became painful to my solitary eyes. I did not return to Edinburgh after Hew went away. It had lost its charm for me. I remained alone at Mossgray.

I was then a man. I had nearly reached my majority, and having perhaps exaggerated notions of what became my place and position in respect to the tenants and cottages around me, I began to bestir myself to ascertain how I could do some work in this brief district, allotted to me by Providence. I have always been inclined to the contemplative, but I am not idle, and with all the proud hopes and ambitions of youth to buoy me up, I laboured and deliberated “for the good of the people,” with much enjoyment of the philanthropy.

Lucy Murray had grown into a young woman; graceful and grave, with lines of thought upon her forehead, printed perhaps too deeply for one so young. That slender ring upon her finger was Charlie’s gift, and contains in its small enclosure one of those circlets of his sunny hair, which cling so lovingly about his temples and become them so well; for their engagement is a grave matter now, acknowledged and known. And yet I fancy them scarcely like each other yet, for Lucy has dwelt long with her own thoughts silently, and in solitude, and Charlie, with his whole soul, has embarked on the busy sea of life; but the contrast gives them singular grace when they are together, and Lucy is more than ever a sister to me.

The bright face at Greenshaw, which, with all its happy changes, has been the angel of my boyish dreams for years, is brighter now in the grace of early womanhood than ever before. I fancy her the inmate of some pure and holy atmosphere, the star of some loftier sky. I forget when I am near Greenshaw that there is sin in the world—I become heterodox in my very faith—for evil has no share in Lilias.

The name echoes in my ear with a ring of silvery music. The beautiful and pure of all ages shed their glory about her, and claim my devouter homage. The Rachel of yonder plains of Syria, the Mary, blessed among women, the Una, the Desdemona of our own land. Their shadow is upon her in all places; the very neighbours, common-place as they are, speak low, I fancy, when they speak of “Lillie,” and I forgive them the familiarity for the sake of the gracious name; for the stately flower in its royal purity symbolizes my ideal well, and my garden at Mossgray grows white with snowy lilies, and I wander among them dreamily, in a mist of indefinite hopes, and fancied future gladnesses, too bright to tell.

The beautiful time! when every foundation stood fast, and all that was, was true and constant, and of kin to the pure heavens.

Yet Lilias was only the daughter of Mr Johnstone of Greenshaw, who had little honour or standing beyond the bounds of Fendie. Murrayshaugh would have growled the utmost thunder of his anathema upon Lucy, had he known that in her sisterly kindness she had accompanied me to the comfortable plebeian parlour where shone my star, and electrified good Mr Johnstone into hopes of future friendships with those adjacent landed families, who had not hitherto condescended to notice him. But Lilias was shy of Lucy, and seemed, to my chagrin, indifferent to her visit; so I had to console myself with a transitory belief that Lilias felt proudly the injustice of those artificial barriers of society, and was sensible of wrong done to her native dignity by the false rule which made the Laird’s daughter of Murrayshaugh a greater person than she, and by Lucy’s quiet smile and gentle word of consolation. “By and by, Adam—we will be better friends, by and by.”

Yes—there was no landed family of them all which could boast a line so long and so unbroken as that of Mossgray. The encumbrances on the estate had gradually melted away during my frugal minority. I was able to maintain appropriately the position I had inherited. Only this one external matter of rank did Lilias want, and I had it, to lay it at her feet—the name itself acquired new honour and dignity, when my heart beat to anticipate the advent of anew lady of Mossgray, who should eclipse all who went before.

I greatly affected Mr Johnstone’s company then. He was a shrewd man, if not a refined one; and albeit he did not possess that fearful command of words which strikes one with utter panic when one comes to the beginning of a speech of his fellow-craftsman the “Wanderer” of Wordsworth, he yet could manage to keep up a conversation tolerably well, by help of an occasional monosyllable from the other interlocutor—we became great friends. He gave me counsel about the management of my lands; he told me that Matthew Irving of Friarsford, whose tack was nearly out, had been holding his farm for some years past nearly rent free, so greatly had the land increased in value, since his father got the lease. He talked to me of foreign wars and home politics—I listened in happy unconsciousness, feeling only that I was conciliating the goodwill of the father of Lilias, and advancing slowly to my aim.

Mr Johnstone was too shrewd a man not to perceive by and by what brought me so often, bashful and absorbed, into that corner of his parlour. The good man evidently believed at first that I sought the benefit and enlightenment of his conversation; but through a flood of random answers, and unhappy lack of comprehension on my part, of arguments which I never heard, his eyes were opened. He was by no means displeased, I fancied. I was “Mossgray” already, my income was good, my prospects better. I was altogether eligible for a son-in-law.

And by and by, I thought I discovered that the Fendie young ladies, who bore Lilias company sometimes, looked at her with wicked secret laughs and whisperings when I entered the room. Could Liliasguessherself? Alas, I could not tell! I was too self-conscious to be at ease with her, and she had always been shy to me.

And matters remained in this uncertain state for a considerable time. I became of age. Murrayshaugh gruffly resigned, as he had gruffly undertaken, the guardianship of myself and my possessions. His house grew more and more desolate as I fancied, and Lucy paler and more thoughtful every day. She was quite alone, and we used to walk together sometimes on the old terrace in silent sympathy, thinking of Hew. He had reached his destination safely, and entered with cheerfulness (as he told us) into the duties of his office;but the loss of him cast a sad shadow over the house of his fathers. Perhaps it might be only that—perhaps there was something more; but a sadder decay seemed to be gathering over it every time I visited Murrayshaugh.

I leaned my back unto an aik,I thought it was a trusty tree;But first it bowed, and syne it brake,And sae did my true love to me.—Old Song.

Ourthree students, Charlie, Walter, and Edward, at length completed their studies, and entered upon the duties of their respective professions. Charlie got his first brief from an old friend of the family, and there actually was a report of his speech on the case, by no means an important one, but greatly interesting and very momentous to us, in one of the Edinburgh papers. It was something about a quarry, I think, though what about it, I cannot very well remember. I hurried up to Murrayshaugh with the paper. It was a bright day of early summer, and Charlie himself was to be with us in a week; a visit to which we had long looked forward, and of which Lucy and I had more than once spoken.

I found Lucy in her own little parlour, at the low window which opened to the terrace. The willows were sweeping their long branches over the sighing water, and in spite of the May sunshine over all, and the universal joy without, there was a look of sadness here. I involuntarily restrained my quick step as I reached the window, and Lucy looked up from her habitual work with her usual kindly and gentle smile.

“Look here, Lucy! I have brought you news,” said I, “news worth seeing. Come, don’t read them in a dull room this May-day. Come out into the sunshine and read them here.”

Lucy rose eagerly.

“What is it? is it about Hew, Adam, or—” She paused;a wavering painful colour came upon her cheek, and her fingers played nervously with the work she had laid down.

“Lucy, you do not think I could bring you anything but good news to-day. Come out and read Charlie’s first speech. His pleadings on his first brief, you know—you heard all about that.”

I fancied I saw a slight shiver of her frame. She had not heard it! but in a moment after Lucy stept out upon the terrace and took the paper and read. I thought her figure seemed taller and more distinct against the shadowy background of willows, as she stood there before me with the paper in her hand. There was something in it of firm pride and endurance which struck me as new—some greater emotion than I had ever known.

“Did Charlie send you this, Adam?” she asked, as she gave it back to me.

“Yes, Lucy,” said I humbly, feeling myself guilty of giving her great pain when I had expected to bring her pleasure; “it came last night.”

There was a slight, almost imperceptible shiver again, and a wandering of the fingers towards each other, as though they would fain be clasped together in the instinctive gesture of grief.

“Wait for me a moment, Adam,” said Lucy; “I have something to say to you.”

I waited upon the terrace while she went in. What could this portend? I believed, and so did all the countryside, that their marriage was delayed only until Charlie had a prospect of success in his profession. He had told me so himself; it was an understood thing; yet Lucy had not been told of his first brief.

She joined me almost immediately, having only gone in, as it appeared, to throw the light plaid she usually wore, over her shoulders and head, and I waited in anxious silence for her first words.

We had reached the water-side, and paused there together, the long willow-boughs sweeping over us sadly, before she spoke,—

“Adam,” she said then, “have you had any conversation with my father lately? Has he ever spoken to you about—about his own affairs?”

“No, Lucy,” said I.

“Adam, I may speak to you,” said Lucy. “There is somenew calamity hanging over us. I have seen my father receive letters of late—letters that I could perceive were from lawyers—which have brought to his face that white look of despair which you never saw. I mentioned Walter Johnstone’s name to him once—when you told us he had gone into partnership with some one in Edinburgh—because he was Hew’s companion, and—and yours—and my father broke out into a curse upon him, immediately adding, however,—‘Not him—why should I swear at a packman’s son? but my own miserable fortune, that am doomed to be tortured to death by these hired hounds of lawyers!’ I dared ask nothing then, but I have been ready to catch at every word since; and my father has vaguely intimated to me some intention that we should go to France—at least,” said Lucy, hastily, with an indignant blush burning on her face, and a painful heaving of her breast, “that he would go—and, of course, I will not leave him.”

“But the cause, Lucy?” said I. “He can have no cause.”

“Alas, Adam, I cannot tell!” said Lucy, sadly, “for he never has taken me into his confidence; but I think it must be some responsibility—some—Adam, I do not need to hesitate—you know well that we have always been poor.”

I did not know how to answer her; I leaned upon the old mossy wall by Lucy’s side, eager to speak of herself—of Charlie, and yet afraid.

“Is there anything that I can do!” I said. “You can trust me, Lucy; is there anything that I can do?”

“No, no, Adam! I do not mean that; no one must interfere with my father or his purposes, you know; but I only desired to tell you that you might understand as much as I do of why we went, if we do go away, and—I only wished to tell you, Adam.”

Lucy turned her head away; one or two tears, so large that one could see by what bitter force they had been restrained, fell softly on the moss of the wall, but she thought I did not see them.

“Lucy, Lucy, this must not be!” said I; “tell me what I can do; I will venture anything rather than that this should come upon us! If Hew were only here—if you would but plead for me, Lucy, that your father may remember that what I have is yours—yours with my whole heart.”

I saw her shake and tremble in the strong effort to restrain herself, but it would not do. She pressed her hand across her eyes, and again the tears fell singly upon the moss—a few large bitter tears, as if they had been gathered long—an essence of intense pain too powerful to spend itself in much weeping—deliberate drops wrung from her very heart.

“I thank you, Adam,” she said at last, “and yet I do not need to say, I thank you—you know that—but this cannot be; you must do nothing; none of us can do anything except submit. It was only a selfish desire to pain you, I am afraid, which made me tell you this; for it will indeed be very hard to leave Murrayshaugh!”

I could say nothing in return. Alas! there are harder trials than even bidding farewell to one’s home. All was not well in this beautiful world; there were other things among us than those I had dreamed of, and my heart sickened as I tried to reassure myself.

By and by, Lucy turned along a quiet sheltered way, close by the water-side, and I went with her—perhaps I should have left her there, but I followed in spite of myself. We began to speak of Hew.

“Do you think we shall ever meet all together again, Adam?” said Lucy.

“Surely—I hope so,” said I, hastily. “We are all young, Lucy; we may be changed externally perhaps, but that will be all.”

“If we are ever together again, we shall be changed in every way, Adam.”

“Nay, nay, Lucy,” said I, “I cannot let you take up that gloomy notion. Why should we change? We know each other far too well to alter our old likings. We will be the same, Lucy, when we are grey-headed.”

“Willyou, Adam?—will all of us?—or are we indeed what we think we are?—are we not clothing ourselves and others with some ideal of our own, which hides the natural spirit from us?”

“Lucy!”

“Suppose one had done that,” said Lucy, hurriedly, turning her head away, and speaking more, as I thought, to herself than to me. “Suppose one had clothed another in an ideal so beautiful, so noble, that one almost trembled at one’s own wondrous gladness beholding it; and suppose that suddenly a blast came, and rent the glorious tissue here and there, and revealed a hidden thing of clay below; and one came to know that this noble spirit had neverbeenat all, save in the fancy that created it. I dreamt of such a thing theother night; and dreams come true sometimes. Adam, we all change—not one, but all of us.”

I could not speak then, nor did I try to answer her. What could I say? it was the first check put upon my joyous confidence in all whom I called friends.

“Has your father told Hew, Lucy, that he thinks of leaving Murrayshaugh?” I inquired at last, eager to change the subject.

“I think not. I hope it is onlypossible, Adam; I know nothing more than that; my father does not trust me; but we must know soon.”

I left Murrayshaugh sadly that day. When I had nearly reached Mossgray, I met Lilias with some of her companions, driving her father’s little four-wheeled equipage. They paused a moment to receive my eager bashful salutations, and then drove on. The sunshine of that young face dispersed the cloud of doubt and unhappiness that hung about me; for anything false, anything sad, could not come near Lilias—

“I trow that countenance cannot lieWhose thoughts are legible in the eie,”

I said to myself joyously as I went on. I repented me of my suspicions of Charlie. Lucy must be mistaken. His conduct could be explained. The bright mist fell again over the world, and I forgot my fears and anxieties; they all fled before the smile of Lilias.

I did not see Lucy Murray again before Charlie himself arrived. He reached Mossgray on the afternoon of another brilliant May-day. He was very full of his prospects, and considerably elated with the successful beginning. He even told me the particulars of this first case, I recollect, in natural excitement and exultation, and very humdrum as they were, they interested me too, for his sake.

He had been nearly an hour in the house. Mrs Mense, the housekeeper, was preparing a magnificent dinner in honour of Mr Charlie, the great advocate; and there he sat, lounging half out of the open window, talking himself out of breath. I am nervous when I have any cause of anxiety. I began to change my position, to walk about the room, to take up and throw down everything within my reach. Charlie made no sign—he lounged and talked and laughed; he discussed the things which hewoulddo, and which Ishould. I could bear it no longer.

“Charlie,” said I, “you intend to go to Murrayshaugh I suppose before dinner. You should set out at once, and make haste, for Mrs Mense will not forgive you if you spoil her trout to-day.”

“Trout!” said Charlie, “are we to have trout to-day? Mrs Mense is a sensible woman, Adam. I would not endanger Fendie trout for the world.”

“You are illogical, Charlie,” said I, “you forget that the governing clause in my sentence concerned Murrayshaugh, and not the fish.”

“Pooh—Murrayshaugh’s a bore,” said Charlie, hastily. “Do you angle yet, Adam, yourself? you lucky fellow, who have nothing to do, and can choose your own solacements!”

“But, Charlie,” said I, anxiously; “of course you intend to go some time this evening. I will undertake to make your peace with Nancy. There now, away with you, like a good fellow.”

“It’s ill talking between a fou man and a fasting,” said Charlie, with a forced laugh. “Come, Adam, let’s have dinner first—you forget my journey.”

He went off to his own room immediately, and I could say no more. I trembled for him. I feared to see the glorious tissue rent, as Lucy Murray said, and some other alien spirit appear below, which was not my friend and brother—which was not the true and generous Charlie Graeme.

We dined alone, and there was a certain constraint upon our conversation. Charlie, it is true, still spoke much, but he seemed, as I fancied, to speak against time. How he lingered at table—how he spun out his stories, and deliberated over every little change, and laboured to fasten arguments upon me, as though endeavouring to shut my eyes to the progress of those slowly darkening hours. I bore it as long as I could, and I bore it in intense pain—I had never known so great a trial.

“Charlie,” said I at last, “how we waste our time here. Come, I will walk up with you to Murrayshaugh.”

Charlie muttered something between his teeth. I only heard “Murrayshaugh,” but there was a syllable before which I blushed to guess at. “Ah, don’t weary me out,” he said aloud. “You don’t think I am made of cast-iron like your Herculean rustics. It’s too late now, Adam.”

I turned round and looked at him earnestly. He startedto his feet with the quick anger of one who knows himself in the wrong.

“Well, what do you mean, Adam?”

“What do I mean, Charlie? It is I who should ask that question.Youmean something by this—what is it?”

“By what?—come, come, Adam, this won’t do. Don’t assume the head of the family, I beg. I can manage my own affairs without any interference from you.”

I thought of Lucy Murray standing alone upon yon mossy terrace, without one in the world who could know, or could lighten her grief, aware that he was here, and looking for his coming in vain, and in the warmth of my youthful feelings I was overcome.

“Charlie,” said I, “you will grieve Lucy sadly if you do not go till to-morrow. Lucy is alone.”

“Well, I will save her the infliction,” said Charlie, with affected boldness. “It is well I had arranged it so before. I return to Edinburgh to-morrow.”

“Do you want to break her heart?” I exclaimed.

“I am not answerable to any one for what I intend to do,” said Charlie, sullenly.

“Yes, Charlie,” said I, “youareanswerable—to one higher than we—to Hew had he been here—even to me. What is this, Charlie? You do not mean it—it is some passing quarrel which a few words will set right.”

“So!” said Charlie, with a sneer, “Miss Lucy has been complaining to you!”

My mood changed in a moment; from the utmost sorrow it became the most passionate anger. I had been labouring to prevent this inevitable rupture—now I was only eager that it should be completed.

“No,” I exclaimed, “you have never known Lucy Murray. I, who have been with you so long, only begin to know you now. You—you will never know Lucy—it is well you feel yourself unworthy of her—it is fit indeed that her true heart should not be wasted upon you.”

My own heart ached as I turned away from him. I had lost my friend. I began to grope in a world of shadows where truth was not; and not even the smile of Lilias could have woven again those fair ideal garments about Charlie Graeme.

We were mutually silent and sullen after that. Charlie was the first to speak.

“Adam,” he said, “I don’t want to quarrel with you, but I will answer to no man for my conduct; my motives and purposes are my own—and there has been quite enough of this. Walter Johnstone came out with me from Edinburgh to-day. Will you go over with me to Greenshaw to see him?”

I shrank from him—that he, unveiled and disenchanted as he was, should breathe the air which Lilias made holy—that her smile should fall uponhim! I could hardly restrain myself, but for my old affection’s sake, and for Lucy’s sake, I did.

“I will follow you,” I answered, “at present I cannot go.”

He left the room, and, in a few minutes, the house, and I saw him go down the water whistling a merry tune, and pausing now and then to look round upon those peaceful home scenes, which his presence now desecrated to me. Murrayshaugh was in the opposite direction. I hurried along towards it under the trees, with an instinctive desire to see Lucy, and, unseen myself, to carry at least one sympathetic heart to her vicinity. It was a superstition of its kind. I had no thought of that—it was an instinct with me.

And there she certainly was upon the terrace, with her soft light plaid about her head, and her figure gliding strangely through shadows of the trees, and of the quaint, fantastic gables of the house, which the light of a young moon threw faintly on the ground at her feet. I saw her threading the maze of these, as she moved like a spirit upon the mossy garden path, and I began to fancy in the bitterness of my heart that it was thus with us all; that those shadowy unreal forms of ours were but wandering blindly through a shadowy world of pains and sorrows, which if it were not all false, was yet involved in a miserable twilight, where one knew not what was false and what was true.

The old decaying house, with its marks of gradual downfal and lingering sorrowful pride, and the one faint light in the window of the library where sat its aged possessor struggling with a young man’s strength of haughty resistance against the slow ruin that was gliding upon him like a thundercloud. The low cadence of those rustling willows, wooing the answering murmur of the water—the silence of the waning evening, made sadder and more spirit-like by the wan young moon, which gave to its dimness a spectral lightand shadow—and Lucy Murray in her early youth, with not one heart that could or dared stand by her in her need, wandering among those shades, with the dark sky above, in the dim world, alone! I hurried away again. I could not look upon her.

Alas!I do confess I thought all hearts were true,As I did see the whole bright world—how fair!For linked in happy fancies were the twain—This beautiful—that pure—And like the mountains of this noble landDid Love and Faith and Honour stedfastlyLift their high heads to the bright sun that crowned them,As I thought, in my sight.I do confess me—if it was a sin,Behold these tears—for bitterly awaking,I found I had but dreamed.

Theparlour of Greenshaw was exceedingly bright when I entered it that night—brighter in reality, for they were rejoicing over Walter’s return—and brighter still in contrast with the scene I had left.

“Here he is at last,” cried Walter Johnstone, starting up to shake hands with me as I entered. “Why, have you been seeing ghosts, Adam? One would think that we were the rustics and he the townsman, Charlie.”

“You were always a contemplative man, Mossgray,” said Edward Maxwell, greeting me warmly; “but take care—if you do not tremble for the consequences of a prescription from me, I do, I can tell you.”

Edward’s manner was more manly than usual. In my yearning for something to make up for the fatal loss I had sustained, I caught at this eagerly. Perhaps I had neglected him hitherto. I resolved to do so no longer.

I tried to seat myself so as to shut out Charlie from the light of that countenance, which made me forget evenhisunworthiness. I grudged him the slightest word from Lilias—I fancied how the pure soul within her would withdraw itself in lofty indignation, did she know him as I did.

“Mossgray,” said Walter, “have you any message for your friend Hew Murray? Maxwell is going to follow his example, do you know.”

“How?” I asked.

“Oh, that famous appointment we have heard so much of has come at last,” said Edward. “The —— regiment are to have the benefit of my learned services, and they are lying at some heathenish place not far from Hew’s head-quarters. The name I have learned to write after a day’s practice—but the pronunciation—come now, Walter, be merciful—don’t make me desperate by forcing these dislocated syllables over my lips—at least not in Miss Johnstone’s presence.”

“Oh, never mind Miss Johnstone—Lilie is not such an epicure in sounds,” said Walter. “Come along, Mixy. After all, man, I believe you don’t know the true secret so well as I do. A professed lady’s man should never be ladylike himself. What do you say, Mossgray? Do you hear me, Charlie—am I not right?”

Mixy was our familiar contraction of Edward’s respectable surname—we were rather proud of our ingenuity in manufacturing a diminutive which suited name and profession alike so well; and he took it with wonderful good humour. To-night however he seemed displeased a little. I did not wonder; for who could endure to be exposed to ridicule in the presence of Lilias?

“You’re right in the abstract, Wat,” answered Charlie, with perfect coolness: “but wrong in this particular instance. To think of giving counsel to Mixy in such matters—why, Mixy’s irresistible!”

Edward coloured and laughed.

“There now, Charlie, that will do. Don’t believe them, I beg, Miss Johnstone; it’s mere malice, I assure you.”

“Take care, Lilie,” said Walter, “he wants to put you off your guard. Ask Mossgray, if you don’t believe me.”

I coloured more deeply than Edward—this was carrying the joke too far—that Lilias, in her unapproachable purity and loftiness, should be so addressed was a kind of sacrilege. I started in jealous eagerness to save her name from the carelessbadinagewhich was profanity to me.

“All this has nothing to do with Hew Murray,” I said hastily, and I felt my cheek burn as I turned away from Charlie. “Are you to be in Bombay, Edward?—are you to be near Hew?”

“Yes, Bombay is my first destination,” said Edward. “I shall seek him out of course—and I suppose I must go in a month or two, so you may prepare your remembrances, Adam.”

“And will you be long away, Mr Maxwell?” said Lilias, softly.

I bent forward at the sound of her voice. I always did—but this night, for the first time, I felt myself grow hot and angry when I saw Edward’s head also inclined towards the speaker, and his face brighten to answer her.

“Many years, I fear, Miss Johnstone—many sad years—if I ever do see Fendie again.”

I thought the low fall of his voice was affectation. Then I repented me—I was exquisitely uncomfortable; doing them all injustice except herself and Charlie—my pure and beautiful star whom no imperfection could cast a shadow on, and the untrue, detected man whom I had called my friend. To these, in their extremes of honour and humiliation, I could not fail to do perfect justice.

“Come, don’t be sentimental,” said Johnstone. “You’ll come home, Mixy—not the least fear of you—and build a thing with pagodas, and a verandah, and call it by an outlandish name, and end your history like a fairy tale. Hew, poor fellow—I am afraidhischance of seeing Fendie again is worse than yours.”

“How is that?” I exclaimed. “Has anything happened, Walter? Have you heard of anything adverse to the Murrays?”

“The poor old man has ruined himself,” said Walter. “I am afraid he must lose everything—but to be sure that is not a thing to be discussed so publicly.”

I turned round and looked Charlie Graeme in the face. He lifted his coward eyes to me for a moment in quick self-consciousness, but they fell before mine. This then was the pitiful reason—I turned indignantly away. I could scarcely bear to look at him again.

We all rose to leave Greenshaw together. Walter accompanied us to Fendie. I put my arm through his hurriedly, and kept him behind, while Charlie and Edward went on before us. I was eager to question him about Murrayshaugh, and eager to escape from the society of my cousin.

“If it is no breach of confidence, Walter,” I said, “I would be glad if you could tell me, what this is that seems to threaten Murrayshaugh?”

“It is no breach of confidence now,” said Johnstone, “for I fear it must very soon be public enough. Murrayshaugh undertook a heavy responsibility long ago for some old friend, Adam; and many years since this friend died, and the whole burden of the debt fell upon Mr Murray, so that only the unusual forbearance of the creditor kept him from being ruined. But now the original creditor, who knew the circumstances, is also dead, and his heir will have no mercy, so that the old man I fear must give up everything. I am afraid, Adam, they will think of me very unfavourably—but that my partner happened, before I joined him, to be their creditor’s agent, is of course no fault of mine. It annoys me though, often; I wish you would just mention that when you write to Hew—not that any sensible person would blame me of course—but only there’s an uncomfortable feeling.”

“Hew will understand,” said I, “but of course I will do what you ask me, Walter; and Murrayshaugh will lose all—did you say all?—and can nothing be done to help him?”

“Nothing but paying the money,” said the man of business by my side, “and it’s a very heavy sum, what with costs and interest, and other such devourers of impoverished means—and besides, Murrayshaugh is too proud to receive a favour, Adam, even from you. He would rather lose everything, you know. I confess, harsh and repulsive as he has always been, there will be something wanting in the countryside if that proud old man does not decay peacefully here, like any other ruined tower—but he would take assistance as an insult—you know he would.”

I did know it, and went on sadly, thinking of the desolate household, and scarcely remembering my companion’s presence.

“And by the by, Mossgray,” said Walter abruptly, “you might mention that—about my partner being this man’s agent—to Miss Murray; not that she will care of course—but just—one does not like to be unjustly blamed.”

“Lucy does not know,” said I, “but I will tell her, Walter, since you wish it. Poor Lucy!—I mean,” I added, as I saw his keen eye shoot from me to Charlie, who walked before us, with an intelligent glance, “I mean it will be so great a trial to her to leave Murrayshaugh.”

Johnstone did not speak. I felt that this was not known to me only, and I remembered bitterly then, that onherthe scorn would lie, the stigma of being slighted and deserted;and that scarcely either man or woman would think the worse of him—him, the faithless coward who had thus failed in need.

I scarcely recollect how Charlie and I managed our brief intercourse after that, but it was a very great relief to me when he departed next day. For the first time since we knew each other, Charlie went into Fendie to take his departure alone, with no one to bid him farewell. I believe he felt in some degree the emphasis of the broken custom. I almost believe he would have been glad then to undo what he had done—but the die was cast—it was too late.

A few days after, I went to Murrayshaugh, anxious, if I could manage it indirectly, to see Lucy, and yet afraid to meet her. It was a chill day for summer, with a clouded sky and a loud boisterous breeze tossing the long willow boughs into a sort of fantastic unearthly mirth, which moved me, much as the unseemly merry-making of a mourner might have done. Lucy was sitting in a favourite corner of hers, at the end of the terrace, reading—at least she had a book in her hand. As I approached the stile, and little bridge, over the Murrayshaugh burn, under cover of the eldritch willow branches, she perceived me, and observing that I hesitated to enter, beckoned me to her. I obeyed at once.

I do not think she was paler that day than she had always been, but there was a grave composure about her face which made her seem so. Whatever struggle there had been it was over—and I remember a consciousness of something clear and chill about her, such as one feels in the air after a storm—an atmosphere in which everything stands out in bold relief, disclosing all its points and angles against the distinct far-distant sky. Yet Lucy was no less benign—no less gentle than she had always been.

“I wanted to see you, Adam,” she said. “I will write to Hew to-day—have you anything to say to him?”

“No,” said I, stammering and hesitating, for I felt painfully the great event, the era in our lives which had become known to me since I saw her last. “No, Lucy—except what Hew does not need to be told, I hope—that I constantly think of him as of my most dear friend, and that scarcely anything in the world would delight me so much as to see him again.”

“I will tell him,” said Lucy; “one likes to hear such things sometimes, Adam, even when one is in no doubt of them—and I will tell him any other pleasant thing you know,to make amends for the sad news I must send him—for I am afraid that is certain now, Adam, which I said before was only possible—we must leave Murrayshaugh.”

“Is there no way of averting this calamity?” I exclaimed.

“You know my father, Adam,” said Lucy, “he does not trust me as he might do; but I have almost been acting as a spy these few days, and there is no hope I see; for one of the few trials that can really shake his iron nature is this of leaving home, and if there was any hope of averting it, he would try all means before he yielded.”

“Lucy,” said I, “help me to present my petition to your father—beg him to remember how greatly I am indebted to you all, and entreat him to consider me thus far as his son. If what I have will do, why should he not take it, Lucy? I am a young man—I am ashamed of my own indolence—I will go and seek my fortune like Hew, and will be far happier so than as I am. Lucy—”

“Hush, Adam,” said Lucy, stopping me, as I eagerly pleaded with her, “you must not think of this. I cannot suffer you to say another word, and you know my father with his harsh pride would not be indebted even to his own son for such assistance. No, no, he will bear his own burden alone, and so must I—that it is not easy or light is a lesser matter—we must bear our own lot; but, Adam, I am glad you have said this—I am glad,” said Lucy slowly, a gush of sudden tears coming to her eyes, which seemed to flow back again, and did not fall. “I am glad you would havedoneit, Adam. I will mind it when I am heavy again, and sinking—and I will tell Hew.”

“But, Lucy, listen to me,” I exclaimed. “May I not speak to Murrayshaugh? may I not ask your father?”

“Not unless you wish to make him desperate, Adam. Nay, do not look impatient. To satisfy you, I will mention it to him myself, and even urge it if I can. I know what the issue will be, but I will do you this justice, Adam—are you content?”

I was compelled to be so. I hardly could have dared myself, under any circumstances, to offer pecuniary assistance to Murrayshaugh.

We parted very soon. Lucy did not make the slightest allusion to Charlie—there was not even a hint or inference which I could fancy pointed to him. She was very composed—so much so, as to make it evident to me, who knew her well,that there had indeed been some grievous troubling of those quiet waters, before so dead a stillness fell upon them—but no one who knew her or observed her less could have seen any trace of a crisis past, or a great struggle completed, in the grave composure of her manner. Whatever memorials of the storm there might be within, there were none without.

I thought when I left her of an ascending road leading westward from Fendie, which, when you look along its line at night, seems to go off so abrupt and chill into the clear cold sky beyond, that its solitary wayfarers mysteriously disappear there, into the luminous blank of heaven, and you watch them with a feeling of desolate loneliness, as they glide in silence away. I thought of Lucy on that road alone—since then, whenever I recall her memory, I have fancied I saw her slight figure there, travelling away steadily into the cold horizon, unwavering and alone.

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