It was a Lover and his Lass. Oliphant Margaret
Church is that?" said Lewis, with his friendly candour of mind. "I am a very great ignoramus."
"Ah, I suppose you are High," said the minister, "and don't acknowledge our orders. Of course, you cannot expect me to consent to that. The Church of England is a great institution, but apt to carry things with a high hand, and look down upon Protestant brethren."
"Ah, yes – but I don't know anything about England," said Lewis, still puzzled; upon which Mr. Seton made many apologies.
"I ought to have known – of course, your complexion and all that; you come from the land of enlightenment, where everything is subservient to intellect. How glad I shall be of the opportunity ask to your advice about some passages I am in doubt about! Your fatherland is the home of biblical science."
"I am not a German," said Lewis, "but I know the language well enough, and if I can be of any use – Oh, no, I am an Englishman, though I never was in England – unless I may call this England."
"Which you certainly must not do," said the minister; "we've fought hard enough on that account in our day. I suppose you are here for the fishing," he added, as everybody did, but with a little disingenuousness, for by this time all the world was aware that Lewis did not fish, nor pretend to fish, nor, indeed, do anything but what the good people of Murkley called idling his time away.
"I am no fisher," he said – "not a sportsman at all, and not much of an artist either. I am not very good at anything. I came here because it struck my fancy."
He laughed somewhat uneasily, because it was not true, and he was a bad deceiver; but then Mr. Seton had no reason to suppose that it was not true, and he took it with great composure as a natural reason enough.
"It is a fine country," he said. "I am free to say it, for it is not my country. I am from the south myself."
"The south!" said Lewis, deceived in his turn, and looking with a little surprise at the fine burly form and grizzled locks of the clergyman, who seemed to him of the same type as Adam, and not like anything that he realized as the south. "Do you mean of France, or still nearer the mezzo-giorno? Oh, I know the south very well. I have been through the wildest parts of Sicily and Calabria, as well as most civilized regions."
"I meant Dumfriesshire," said the minister, with a blush. He felt as if he had been guilty of false pretences. "That is south to us. You have been a great traveller, Mr. – "
"Murray," said Lewis, quickly.
"You are a Murray, too? Then I suppose you had ancestors in this district. That's very common; I have had people come here from all the ends of the world anxious to look at the tombstones or the parish register."
"I shall not need to do that," the young man said. "The name came to me with some property," he added, with his usual mixture of caution and imprudence – "from my god-father," he added, after another pause. This was so far true that it was the name by which the young dependent on his bounty had been used to call old Sir Patrick; his voice softened at the word, which he had not used for so long. "He brought me up – he was very good to me. I have lost him, there is about a year."
The minister felt that it was necessary to reply in his professional capacity.
"Ah," he said, "such losses shatter the world to us; but so long as they turn our thoughts to better things, to the land whither we must all travel – "
Lewis was not used to spiritual consolation; he gave his companion a nod of not uncheerful assent.
"He always wished me to travel," he said. "It has become to me a second nature. I am told that it is to the Highlands that tourists go, but otherwise this pleases me very much."
"And you are comfortable at Adam Burnet's? He is a character – the sort of mind that we flatter ourselves is peculiarly Scotch," said the minister. "I hope you will gratify my wife and me by taking your luncheon with us. A stranger is always welcome," he continued, leading the way after Lewis had consented with a smile and bow and flourish of his hat, which made Mr. Seton smile, "in a Scotch manse; and if you are making a long stay, Mr. Murray – "
It was thus that Lewis made his first entry into society in the village.
"You should have seen his bow, my dear," the minister said; "he is just awfully foreign, but a good fellow for all that, or else my skill in faces is at fault."
This was to prepare Mrs. Seton to receive the stranger, whom, indeed, the minister brought in with a sense of an unauthorized interference in what was not his department. He was at liberty to bring an old elder, a brother minister, even a farmer of superior description; but Mrs. Seton was particular about young men. Katie was sixteen, and "there was never any telling," her mother said. In the present case the risks were even greater than usual, for this young man was without an introduction, nobody to answer for him or his respectability, and a foreigner besides, which was at once more terrible and more seductive than an intruder native born.
"Your father is so imprudent," she said to Katie. "How can we tell who he is?"
"He looks very innocent," said that young woman, who had seen the stranger a great many times, and found him entirely unlike her ideal. Innocent was not what Miss Katie thought a young man ought to look. She followed her mother to the early Sunday dinner, which Mr. Seton entitled lunch, without the slightest excitement, but there was already some one in the room whose presence disturbed Katie's composure more. Of the three gentlemen there assembled, Lewis was the least in height and the least impressive in appearance. The two stalwart Scotchmen, between whom he stood, with vigour in every line of their long limbs and every curl of their crisp locks, threw him into the shade. He was shorter, slighter, less of him altogether. His hair was light, and not very much of that. In all probability when he was older he would be bald, and people who depreciated Lewis were apt to say of him that he was all one colour, hair and complexion. His dress had a little of a foreign cut, or rather it was elaborately English à la mode de Paris, and he was not at all indifferent about his reception here, but sincerely anxious to please and make a favourable impression, and did not in the least hesitate to show that he was so. This went against him with the party generally, but Lewis was quite unaware of that.
The other young man whom he had found there, when the minister showed him into the little drawing-room and went to report what he had done to his wife, was in reality half a head taller, and looked twice the size of Lewis. He was brown and ruddy like most of the men about, accustomed to expose himself to the weather, and to find his occupation and pleasure out of doors. He was slightly shy, but yet quite at his ease, knowing that it was his duty to talk and be friendly to the stranger, and doing his duty accordingly, though he had none of Lewis's eager desire to make himself agreeable. When the minister entered they were introduced to each other as Mr. Murray and Mr. Stormont, upon which Lewis said immediately, with a little effusive pleasure,
"Ah, I know your name very well; you must belong to the tower on the other side of the river. I attempt to sketch you almost every day."
"Oh!" said young Stormont, and in his mind he added, "It's an artist," which seemed to account for the stranger at once.
"My attempts have not been very successful," Lewis added, laughing. "I go out with Adam when he goes to fish, and when a trout is very interesting my sketch-book falls out of my hands."
"You can't see much of the tower from the other side," said Stormont. "I hope you will come and study it near at hand."
"That I will do with great pleasure," cried Lewis. It exhilarated him to find himself again in good company. "You are very kind to admit me into your house," he said, with frank gratification, to the minister. "Mrs. Janet and her husband are very interesting; they throw a great light upon the country: but I began to long to exchange a little conversation with persons – of another class."
"I am sure we are very glad to see you," said Mrs. Seton. "It must be lonely in an inn, especially if you have come out of a family. We have seen you passing, and wondered what you could find in Murkley. There is no society here. Even the tourists going out and in are a variety when you are further north, but here we are just dropped in a corner and see nothing. Oh, yes, old Pat Lindsay who thinks of nothing but his trout. Trout are nice enough things on the table, but not