she was, on the whole, regarded with approval as doing her part towards making the best of an unfortunate business. And when, two or three years later, Margaret, to her own inexpressible astonishment, found herself actually fallen in love with by the most charming and unexceptionable of young curates, a curate too with every prospect of before long becoming a rector, and when this prospect was ere long fulfilled, and Margaret, in consequence, became Mrs Western, her Brooke cousins approved of her still more highly, to the extent even of sending her a tea-pot, cream-jug, and sugar-basin of the best electro-plate as a wedding present.
But all that was now nearly a quarter of a century ago – the generation of Brookes who had seen Margaret in her youth, who had some of them been contemporaries of her father, had mostly died out – they were not a long-lived race – and the old relationship had grown to seem more of a legend than a fact. A legend, however, which, little as the young Westerns knew of the far-off cousins who now represented their mother’s people, was not likely to be allowed by them to sink into oblivion. They were too well-bred and right-minded to be ashamed of their mother’s position when their father wooed and won her, but, nevertheless, half unconsciously to themselves, perhaps, the knowledge of this fact made it all the more agreeable to be able to say to each other, with dignity and satisfaction, “Though mamma was poor when she was a girl, her family was quite as good, if not, indeed, better than papa’s.”
And “papa” himself was the first always, on the rare occasions when such subjects came under discussion, to remind his girls and boys of the fact, but Mrs Western herself thought little about it. She lived in the present, even her lookings forward to the future were but a sort of transference of her own life and experience to others. She hoped that her daughters, if they married at all, would marry as happily as she had done, and beyond this she was not ambitious for them, and conscientiously tried to check Lilias’s good-tempered murmurings at the monotony of their life by platitudes, in which she herself so entirely believed that they sometimes carried with them a certain weight.
Mrs Western was less interested than the rest of the Rectory party in the mysterious strangers who had so disturbed the Hathercourt devotions this Sunday morning. She did not like strangers; she had a vague fear of them – not from shyness, but from a sort of apprehensiveness which her early life, probably, had caused to become chronic with her. When Lilias snubbed little Frances’s inquiry as to whether these ladies and gentlemen would come to church again next Sunday, in her heart the mother hoped the elder sister’s “no, of course not,” would be justified by the event, and, secretly, she chafed at the talk that went on round the table, talk in which even Mr Western was interested, as she could see.
“You remember Romary, Margaret?” he said, across the table, “that splendid place near Withenden?”
“Yes, I remember it,” replied Mrs Western, “but I don’t like splendid places,” she added, with a little smile.
“Nor splendid people?” said Lilias, half mischievously. “Isn’t mother funny – odd I mean, in some ways – difficult to understand?” she said afterwards to Mary, “she seems so afraid of our ever going the least out of the jog-trot, stupid way.”
“She is over-anxious, perhaps,” said Mary.
“No, I don’t think it is that exactly,” said Lilias. “I think papa is the more anxious of the two. I sometimes wish mamma were a little more, not anxious exactly – I don’t know what to call it – a little more worldly, perhaps.” Mary laughed.
“You would have liked her to invite those fine people to luncheon last Sunday, and then, perhaps, they would have taken a fancy to us, and invited us to go to see them?” she said, inquiringly.
“Nonsense, Mary! Do leave off talking about those people. I am tired to death hearing about them,” replied Lilias, impatiently. “Invite them to luncheon – to roast mutton and rice pudding, and a dozen children round the table! – Mary, I wish you wouldn’t say such silly things.”
“You are difficult to please, Lilias. Only the other day you told me, if I would be silly sometimes I should be almost perfect,” said Mary, dryly.
And then Lilias kissed her, and called herself “cross,” and there was peace again. But somehow, after this, the subject of the strangers was scarcely alluded to.
And “next Sunday” came and went, and if Mary descried some little attempt at extra self-adornment on Lilias’s part, she was wise enough not to take notice of it; and if Mr Western preached his new sermon in the morning instead of the afternoon, I question if any one discovered the fact. For, with these possible exceptions, the day was not a marked one in any way, and with a little sigh, and a smile too at her own folly, Lilias decided, as she fell asleep, that as yet there was little prospect of a turning-point in her life being at hand.
The week that followed this uneventful Sunday was a date to be remembered, and that had been tremulously anticipated by one heart, at least, among those of the Rectory party. It was to see the eldest son started on his career in life, and calm enough though she kept herself to outward appearance, to the mother this parting was a painful crisis. Her “boy Basil” was leaving her forever, for “boy” she could not expect him to return. He was going up to town for a few months in the first place, having been lucky enough to obtain a junior clerkship in a great mercantile firm, with a prospect – the few months over – of being transferred to the branch house abroad, where his chances of success, said the authorities, “if he behaved himself,” were pretty certain in the long run, though not, in the mean time, bewilderingly brilliant. He was a good sort of a boy in his way, and family affection among the Westerns was fairly and steadily developed; but nevertheless, with the exception of his mother, none of the household lost a night’s rest on account of his approaching departure, and Lilias openly avowed her conviction that Basil was greatly to be envied, and that it would be far pleasanter for him to pay home visits now and then, when he knew something of the world, and could make himself entertaining, than to have a great hulking hobbledehoy always hanging about, and getting into mischief. Mary, too, agreed that “it was a very good thing for Basil,” and nobody cried when he said good-bye except poor Francie, whose seven years were innocent of philosophy or common sense, and who only realised that her big brother was going “far, far away.”
But still, when he was fairly gone, there fell over them all a certain depression – a sort of blank and flatness, which every one was conscious of, though no one would own it to another. It was a dull afternoon, too, threatening to rain, if not actually doing so, and, to suit Basil’s convenience, they had had dinner at half-past twelve, a whole hour earlier than usual, so that by four o’clock Lilias declared she felt ready to go to bed.
“You are suffering from suppressed excitement, after all, I suspect,” said Mary, looking up from Alexa’s German translation, which she was correcting. “There is a sort of excitement in thinking poor Basil is really started, though we are glad of it.”
“I am not excited; I wish I were,” said Lilias, listlessly. “I am only idle and stupid!”
“Get something to do then,” replied Mary. “There, I have finished the school-room affairs for to-day. I wonder if mamma has anything she would like us to do – I can’t ask her; she is up in her own room, and I don’t like to disturb her yet. It is too dull to go out. Supposing we practice that duet, Lilias?”
“Supposing in the first place we make this room tidy,” said Lilias, looking round her reflectively. “Supposing now, Mary – just supposing any one were to come to call, what would they think of this room?”
“They wouldn’t think ill of the poor room,” answered Mary, laughing, and setting to work energetically as she spoke to “tidy up;” “they would probably reserve their thoughts for the careless people who lived in it. There now, that looks better; let us poke up the fire
