“Young man,” said the minister impressively, “I got my kirk from the Ramsays; they’re patrons o’ this parish, and I was a young man with little influence. I was tutor to Mr. James, but I had little chance of any thing grander than a parish school, where I might have just flourished as a stickit minister all my days, and it was the Ramsays that made me a placed minister, and set me above them a’: that was the old laird before Sir Robert’s days. But Sir Robert has been very ceevil the times he has been here. He has asked me whiles to my dinner, and other whiles he has sent me just as many grouse and paitricks as I could set my face to. Would it be a just return, think ye, to marry away his bonnie niece to a landless lad as ye confess ye are, with nothing but fees at the best, and not too many of them coming in?”
“Mr. Blythe,” cried Ronald, “if it was Mr. James you were tutor to, it is to Mr. James you owe all this, and Mr. James, had he been living, would never have gone against the happiness of his only child!”
“Eh! but who can tell that?” cried the minister. “Little was he thinking of that or of any kind of child. He was a young fellow, maybe as heedless, maybe more than ye are yourself. Na, there was no thought neither of wife nor bairn in his head.”
“But,” cried Ronald, “you must feel you have a doubleduty to one that is his child, and his only one, little as he knew of it at the time.”
“A double duty: and what is that?” said the minister, shaking his head. “The duty to keep her from any rash step, puir young unfriended thing, or to let her work out her silly will, which, maybe, in a year’s time she would rather have put her hand in the fire than have done?”
“You give a bonnie character of me,” Ronald said, with a harsh laugh.
“I am giving no character of you. I am thinking nothing of you. I am thinking of the bit lassie. It is her I am bound to protect, both for her father’s sake and her own. Most marriages that are made in haste are, as the proverb says, repented of at leisure. She might be heart-grieved at me that helped her to her will to-day when she knows more of life and what it means. Na, na, my young friend, take you your time and wait. Waiting is aye a salutary process. It brings out many a hidden virtue, it consolidates the character, and if you are diligent in your business it brings ye your reward, which ye enjoy more than if you had snatched it before your time.”
“I tell you, minister,” cried Ronald, “that we cannot wait, that it’s a matter of life and death to us, both to Lily and me!”
“What is that you are saying? I am hoping there is no meaning in it, but only words,” the old man said sharply in an altered tone.
The room had grown almost quite dark, the daffodil color had all faded away, and the heavy curtain of the coming snow was stretching over the last faint streak of light. The fire was smouldering and added little to the room, which lay in a ruddy dark, warmed rather than lighted up. Ronald stood with his elbow on the mantel-piece close to the old minister, whose face had been suddenly raised toward him with an expression of keen command and alarm. And who can tell what devil had stolen in with the dark to put words of shame into the mouth of the young man who had come down the frosty moorlandroad like a song of joy and youth? It was rapid as a dart. He stooped down and said something in the old minister’s ear.
The shameful lie! the shameful, shameful lie! The temptation, the fall, was so instantaneous that Ronald himself was scarcely conscious of it, or of what he had done in his haste. The old gentleman uttered into the darkness a sort of moan. And then he spoke briefly and sharply, with a keen tone of scorn in his words which stung his companion even through the confusion of the time.
“If that’s so, ye’re a disgraceful blackguard! but it’s not my part to speak. Be here at this house the morn, with her and your witnesses; I insist upon the witnesses, two of them, to sign the lines. I will send Eelen out of the way. Come before it’s dark, as ye came to-day; I am always alone at this hour. That’s enough, man, I hope. What are you wanting more?”
“I want only to say that you judge me very hastily, Mr. Blythe.”
“It’s a case in which least said is soonest mended,” said the minister. “To-morrow, just before the darkening, and, thank the Lord, there need not be another word said between you and me!”
Ronaldstarted back on his way to Dalrugas in the beginning of the wintry night in a condition very different from that in which he came. His head was dazed and swimming; something had happened to him; he had taken a step such as he had never contemplated taking, a step which, did Lily ever know or suspect it, would, he knew, open such a gulf between them as nothing could ever bridge over. He was in a hundred minds to turn back, to confess his sin before he had passed the last house in thevillage. We do not call that a temptation when we are impelled to do right, but it is the same thing, only the temptations to do right are somehow less potent than those to do wrong. He was torn by a strong impulse to go back and remedy what he had done: the temptation to commit that fault had been momentary, but overwhelming; the temptation to go back and confess was continuous, but evidently feeble, for he went straight on through all its tuggings, and did not walk more slowly. But yet it would have done him much good and probably no harm had he done so: the minister would have forgiven a fault so soon repented of; he would probably, in the natural feeling toward a penitent sinner, have acceded to his wishes all the same. These thoughts went through Ronald’s head without ever stopping his steady and quick walk into the dark. He repented, if that had been enough, in sackcloth and ashes; he was so deeply ashamed of what he had done that he felt his countenance flame in the darkness where nobody could by any possibility see. But he did not turn back. And presently by repetition the impulse weakened a little, his brain cleared, and the world became steady once again. The thing was done; it could not be undone. There was no possibility that Lily should ever hear of it; nobody would ever know of it but old Blythe and himself, and old Blythe would die. It would be a recollection which, in the depth of the night, in moments of solitude, or when awakened by a sudden touch of the past, would go on stinging him like a serpent all the days of his life, but it would be otherwise innocuous. Lily would never hear of it, that was the great thing; there was no chance that she could ever hear. The old minister’s lips were sealed. It would be contrary to every rule of honor if he were to betray what had been said to him. Ronald said to himself that he must accept the stinging of that recollection, which he would never get rid of all his life, as his punishment; but no one else would suffer, Lily least of all.
These feelings were hot and strong in his mind as he set out; but a walk of four miles against a cold wind, andwith the snow threatening to come down every moment, is a very good thing for dispersing troublous thoughts: they gradually blew away as he went on, and the bridegroom’s state of triumph and rapture came back, dimly at first, and as if he dared not indulge it, but gaining strength every moment, until, before he reached Dalrugas, from the first moment when he saw his love’s light in her window shining far over the moor, it came back in full force, driving every thing else away. He saw, first, the little star of light hanging midway between earth and sky, and then the shape of the window, and then Lily’s figure or shadow coming from time to time to look out; and no lover’s heart could have risen higher or beat more warmly. He entirely forgot how he had wronged her in the glory of having her, of knowing her to be there waiting for him, and that she would be his wife to-morrow. She came to the top of the stairs to meet him, while he rushed up three steps at a time, rubbing against the narrow spiral of the stair with such passion and force of feeling as the best man in the world could not have surpassed. One does not require, it is evident, to be the best man in the world, or even a true man at all, to love truly and fervently, and with all the force of one’s being. One might say that it was selfishness on Ronald’s part to appropriate at any cost the girl he loved; but the fact remained, a fact far deeper than any explanation, that he did love her as deeply, as warmly, as sincerely as any man could. Their meeting was a moment of joy to both, like a poem, like a song; their hearts beat as high as if it had been a first meeting after years of absence, and yet it would have been less complete had they been parted for more than the two or three hours which was its real period. I need not go any further into this record. It did not matter what they said; words are of little account at such moments. It is only to note that a man who had just told a disgraceful lie, and put upon his bride a stigma of the most false and cruel kind, and whose mind was already shaping thoughts which were destined to work her woe, was at the moment when he met her withthe news that their marriage was to take place next day as much, as tenderly in love with her as heart could desire. The problem is one which I have no power to explain.
Next day being still one of the daft days, bright with the reflection of the New Year, and the day of the weekly market in Kinloch-Rugas, Katrin announced early her intention of going in to the toun in the course of the day, an expedition which Beenie, with much modesty and reference to Miss Lily, proposed to share. “I havena been in the toun, no to say in the toun, ither than at the kirk, which is a different thing, since I came to Dalrugas. I’ll maybe get ye a fairing, laddie, for the sake of the New Year——”
“If he gangs very canny with the powny, and tak’s care of a’ our bundles,” Katrin said.
“And me, I’m to be left my lane, to keep the hoose,” said Dougal, “like Joan Tamson’s man.”
“Weel,” said Katrin, “ye’re in there mony a day and me at hame; it would be a funny thing if I couldna gang to the market once at the New Year.”
“I’m saying nothing against you and your market. And here’s Miss Lily away to her tea at the Manse, and maun have Rory no less to drive her in the geeg with that lad from Edinburgh. I wish there was less of that lad from Edinburgh; he’s nae ways agreeable to me.”
“Losh, man! it’s no you he’s running after,” cried Katrin, “nor me neither. But he’s a fine lad for all that.”
“Fine or foul, I would like to see the back of him,” said Dougal; and the women in their guilty consciences trembled. They had both been brought to Ronald’s side. Both of them had a soft heart for true love, and the fact of stealing a march upon Sir Robert was as pleasant to Katrin as if she had been ten times his housekeeper. The house was full of subdued excitement, hidden words exchanged between the women on the stairs and in dark corners, as if they were conspirators or lovers. “Has he any suspicion, do ye think?” Beenie whisperedin Katrin’s ear. “Him!” cried Katrin. “If it was put under his nose in black and white, he would bring it to me to spell it out till him.” “Eh, but sometimes these simple folks discern a thing when others that are wiser see nothing.” “Wha said my man was simple? There’s no a simple bit about him; but he knows I’m a woman to be trusted, and he’ll no gang a step without Katrin!” It was not, perhaps, a moment when an anxious enquirer could feel this trust justified. “Eh, Katrin,” cried Robina, “tell me just what’s the worst that could happen to them if it was found out.” “The worst is just that he would have to take his bride away, Beenie.” “Eh! she would no be minding! That’s just what she wants most.” “And lose her uncle’s siller,” Katrin added, with a deeper gravity of tone. “That wouldna trouble her either,” said Beenie, shaking her head as over a weakness of her mistress which she could not deny. “But I am feared, feared,” said Katrin solemnly, with that repetition which makes an utterance emphatic, “that it would be a sore trouble to him.” “Anyway, it’s a’ settled now, and we’ll have to stick to them,” said Beenie doubtfully. “Oh, I’ll stick to them as long as I can stand,” Katrin said with vigor; and this was the last word.
It was clear enough that something was going to take place at the tower of Dalrugas on that Thursday; but this was sufficiently accounted for by the fact that Katrin was going to the market, a thing that did not happen above twice or thrice a year. There were a great many arrangements to make, and the black powny had begun his toilet, and the little cart had been scrubbed and brushed before the sun was well up in the sky to receive the two substantial forms, which, on their side, were arrayed in their best gowns before the early dinner to which they sat down, each with her heart in her mouth in all the excitement of the ripe conspiracy. Only an hour or two now, and the signal would be given, the cord would be pulled, and the great scene would open upon them. “Will you and me ever forget this day, Katrin?” Beenie gasped,unable to control herself. Katrin gave her a push with her shoulder, and took her own place soberly at the board to dispense the dinner as usual. “There’s an awfu’ fine piece of beef in the pot,” she said, “ower good for the like of us; but it’ll mind ye, Dougal, of the day ye keepit the house, and I gaed to the toun.”
“It’s no the first day I’ve keepit the house, and you been the one to gang to the toun.”
“No, maybe, ye’ve done it four times since you and me were marriet. If ye ever got better broth than thae broth, it’s no me that made them. They’re that well boiled they just melt in your mouth with goodness, with a piece of meat in them fit for the laird’s table. Have ye taken up some of my broth, Beenie, to the young lady and her friend up the stair?”
“You’re no taking much of them yourself,” said Dougal, “nor Beenie either. Bless the women, your heads are just turned with the grand ploy o’ going to the market. Me, I gang to the market and say naething about it, nor ever lose a bite of a bannock on that account. But you’re queer creatures, no to be faddomed by man. Are ye going to spend a lot o’ siller that ye’re in siccan a state? Beenie, now, she’ll be wanting a new gown.”
“If ye think that I, that am used to a’ the grand shops in Edinburgh, would buy a gown at Kinloch-Rugas——”
“Oh, when ye can get nae better, it’s aye grand to tak’ what ye can get,” said Dougal. “As for Katrin, I canna tell what’s come over her. Her hand’s shaking——”
“My hand’s no shakin’!” cried Katrin vehemently. “I’m just as steady as any person. But I’ve been awfu’ busy this mornin’ putting every thing in order, and I’ve very little appetite. I’m no a great eater at any time.”
“Nor me,” said Beenie, “and I’m tired too. I’ve just been turning over and over Miss Lily’s things.”
“Ye had very little to do,” said Katrin, resenting the adoption of her own argument. “Miss Lily’s things could easy wait. Sup up your broth, and dinna keep us all waiting. Sandy, here’s a grand slice for you. It’s seldomyou’ve tasted the like of that. And as soon as you’re done, laddie, hurry and put in the pony, for we must have a good sight o’ the market, Beenie and me, before it gets dark.”
Dougal came out to the door to see them off, with his bonnet hanging upon the side of his head by a hair. He felt the presence of something in the atmosphere for which he could not account. What was it? It was some “ploy” among the women, probably not worth a man’s trouble to enquire into. And, as soon as they were off, he had Rory to put in, and await the pleasure of “thae twa” upstairs. He could not refuse Lily any thing, nor, indeed, had he any right to refuse to Sir Robert’s niece the use of Rory, on whom she had already ridden about so often. But the lad from Edinburgh was a trial to Dougal. He had an uneasy feeling that it would not please his master to hear of this visitor, and that a strange man about the house was not to be desired. “If it had but been a lassie,” he said, in that case he would have been glad that Miss Lily had some company to amuse her; but a gentleman, and a gentleman too that was a stranger, not even of the same county—a lawyer lad from the Parliament House. He did not willingly trust a long-leggit loon like that to drive Rory. He was mair fit to carry Rory than Rory to carry him. So that Dougal’s countenance was entirely overcast.
There had been some snow in the morning, a sprinkling just enough to cover the ground more softly and deeply than the hoar frost, but that was but preliminary—there was a great deal more to come. Dougal stood when the pony was ready, pushing his cap from side to side and staring at the sky. “Ye’ll do weel to bide but very short time, Miss Lily,” he said; “the tea at the Manse is, maybe, very good, but the snow will be coming down in handfu’s before you get hame.”
“We shall not stay long, Dougal, I promise you,” Lily said. There was a tremble in her voice as there had been in Katrin’s and in Robina’s. “The women are all cleangyte!” Dougal said to himself. He watched them go away, criticising bitterly the pose of Ronald as he drove. “A man with thae long legs has no mortal need for a pony,” he said; “they’re just a yard longer than they ought to be. I’m about the figure of a man, or just a thought too tall, for driving a sensitive beast like our Rory. Puir beast, but he has come to base uses,” said Dougal. I don’t know where he had picked up this phrase, but he was pleased with it, and repeated it, chuckling to himself.
That evening, just before the darkening, when once more the sunset sky was flushed with all kinds of color, and shone in graduated tints of rose pink darkening to crimson, and blue melting into green, through the Manse window, one homely figure after another stole into the Manse parlor. Katrin had brought the minister a dozen of her own fresh eggs, and what could he do less than call her in and say, “How is a’ with ye?” at New Year’s time, when everybody had a word of good wishes to say? “And this is Robina,” he added, with a touch of reserve and severity in his tone. Beenie could not understand how to her, always so regular at the kirk and known for a weel-living woman, the minister should be severe; but it was easy to understand that on such an occasion he had a great deal on his mind. There was a chair at either end of the great sofa that stood against the wall; for in these days furniture was arranged symmetrically, and it was not permitted that any thing should be without its proper balance. The two women placed themselves there modestly one at each end; the great arms of the sofa half hid them in the slowly growing twilight. Katrin, who was nearest the door, was blotted out altogether. Beenie, who was at the end nearest the window, showed like a shadow against the light.
And then there was a pause; it was a very solemn pause indeed, like the silence in church. The minister sat in his big chair in the darkest part of the room, with the red glow of a low fire just marking that there was something there, but not a word, not a movement, disturbing the dark. The room after a while seemed to turn round to thetwo watchers, it was so motionless. When Mr. Blythe drew a long breath, a sort of suppressed scream came from both of them. Was it rather a death than a marriage they had come to witness? They had never seen any living thing so still, and the awe of the old man’s presence was overwhelming enough in itself.
“What’s the matter with you,” he said almost roughly. “Can I not draw my breath in my own house?”
“Oh, sir, I beg your pardon,” cried Katrin, thankful to recover her voice. “It was just so awfu’ quiet, and we’re no used to that. In our bit houses there’s nobody but says whatever comes into his head, and we’re awfu’ steering folk up at Dalrugas Tower.”
“Just in the way o’ kindness, and giving back an answer when you’re spoken to,” said Beenie deferentially, in her soft, half-apologetic voice. It was a great comfort to them in the circumstance, which was very unusual and full of responsibility, to hear themselves speak.
“Ye must just try and possess your souls in patience till ye get back again,” the minister said out of his dark corner. It was just a grand lesson, both thought, and the kind of thing that the minister ought to say. And the silence fell again with a slow diminution of the light, and gradual fading of the yellow sky. To sit there without moving, without breathing, with always the consciousness of the minister unseen, fixing a penetrating look upon them, which probably showed him, so clever a man, the very recesses of their hearts, became moment by moment more than Katrin or Robina could bear.
“The young fools; I’ll throw it all up if they dinna put in an appearance before that clock strikes!” cried Mr. Blythe at last. “Look out of the window, one of you women, and see if ye can see them.”
“There’s nothing, minister, nothing, but a wheen country carts going from the market,” said Beenie in the rôle of Sister Anne.
“The idiots!” said Mr. Blythe again with that force of language peculiar to his country. “Not for their ainpurposes, and them all but unlawful, can they keep their time.”
“Oh, sir, ye mustna be hard upon them at siccan a moment!” cried Katrin, rocking herself to and fro in anxiety.
“Eh, but I see the powny!” cried Beenie from the window; “there’s a wee laddie holding Rory. And will I run and open the door no to disturb Marget in the kitchen?” she said, not waiting for an answer. The spell of the quiet had so gained upon Robina, and the still rising tide of excitement, that she swept almost noiselessly into the narrow hall, and opened the door mysteriously to the two other shadows who stole in, as it seemed, out of the yellow light that filled up the doorway behind into a darkness which, turning from that wistful illumination, seemed complete.
Itwas all like a dream, a scene without light or sound, shadows moving in the faint twilight, at first not a word said. Beenie remained at the door, holding the handle to guard the entrance. Katrin had risen up too, and stood against the wall, trembling very much, but not betraying it in this faint light. These two were in the light side of the room, the half made visible by the window with its fading sunset glimmer. The other two passed into the darker side and were all but lost to sight. A sudden flicker of the fire caught the color of Lily’s dress and revealed her outline for the moment. She had taken off her hat, not knowing why, and the soft beaver with its feather was hanging down by her side in her hand. Katrin made a step forward and relieved her of it, trembling lest some dreadful voice should come to her ears out of the darkness, though not seeing the minister’s eyes, which shot upon her a fiery glance. Then he broke that strange haunted silence, in which so many thoughts andpassions were hidden, by his voice suddenly rising harsh, sounding as if it were loud: it was not at all loud, it was, indeed, a soft voice on ordinary occasions, only in the circumstances and in the intense quiet it had a strange tone. To Ronald it sounded menacing, to Lily only half alarming, as she knew no reason why it should be less kind than usual; the women were so awe-stricken already that to them it was as the voice of fate. The brief little ceremony was as simple as could be conceived. The troth was not given, as in other rites, by the individuals themselves, but simply said by the old minister’s deepening voice, which he was at pains to subdue after the shock of the first words, and assented to by the bride and bridegroom, Lily, to the half horror of the two women, who gripped each other wildly in their excitement at the sound, giving an audible murmur of assent, while Ronald bowed, which was the usual form. “Yon’ll be the English way,” Katrin whispered to Beenie. “Oh, whisht, whisht!” said the other. And then in the darkness there ensued a few rolling words of prayer, the long vowels solemnly drawn out, the long words following each other slowly and with a certain grandeur of diction in their absolute simplicity, and the formula common to all: “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” And then there was a little stir in the darkness and all was over.
“But there’s just this to say to you, young man,” came out of the gloom from the old voice, quavering a little with feeling or fatigue: “Forasmuch as ye have been wanting before, so much the more are ye pledged now to be all a man ought to be to this young creature that has trusted herself to you. If ever I hear an ill word of your conduct or your care, and me living, you will have one to answer to that will have it in his power to do you an ill turn, and will not refrain. Mind you this: if I am in the land of the living, and know of any hairm to this poor lassie,I will not refrain; and ye know what I mean, and that I am one that will do what I say.”
“If you think I require to be frightened into loving andcherishing my bonnie wife——” said Ronald, confused and alarmed, but attempting to take a high tone.
“Oh, Mr. Blythe!” cried Lily, “how little you know!” She could speak in the dark, where no one could see, though the light would have reduced her to silence and blushes. She put her hand with a pretty gesture within Ronald’s arm.
“I, maybe, know more than I’m thought to do,” he said gruffly; “light that candle that you’ll find on the mantel-piece, and let us get our work done.” The candle brought suddenly to light the confused scene, all the party standing except the figure of the minister, large and shapeless in his big chair. And there was a moment of commotion, while one by one they signed the necessary papers, the young pair quickly, the women with a grotesqueness of awe and difficulty which might have transferred the whole scene at once to the regions of the burlesque. Both to Katrin and Robina it was a very solemn business, slowly accomplished with much contortion both of countenance and figure. “Women, can ye not despatch?” Mr. Blythe said sternly. “My daughter may be here any minute, the time of my supposed rest is over, and this sederunt should be over too. Marget will be in from the kitchen with the lamp.”
“Oh, Beenie, be quick, quick!” murmured Lily. She had feared to be entreated with the constant hospitality of the Manse to wait until Helen came, and to take tea. It gave her a curious wound to feel that this was not likely to be the case, even though she was most anxious to escape. She was indeed a little frightened for Marget and the lamp, and for Helen and the tea; but it hurt her that the minister who had just made her Ronald’s wife should have any hesitation. Feelings are not generally so fine in rural places. A bride is one to be eagerly embraced, not kept out of sight. Though, indeed, she did not want to see Helen or any one, she said almost indignantly to herself.
“And now there are your lines, Mistress Lumsden,” theminister said. “Keep them safe and never let them out of your own hands, and I wish ye all that is good. If it’s been a hasty step or an unconsidered, it’s you that will probably have to bear the wyte of it. I will not deceive you with smooth things; but if there has been error at the beginning——”
“Excuse me,” said Ronald in a low fierce voice, “but there is snow in the sky, and it’s already dark, and I must take my wife away.”
“Don’t you interrupt me,” said the old minister, “or I will, maybe, say more than I meant to say. If there’s been error at the beginning, my poor lassie, take you care to be all the more heedful in time to come. Do nothing ye cannot acknowledge in the face of day. And God bless you and keep you and lift up the light of his countenance upon you,” he said, lifting up his arms. The familiar action, the familiar words, subdued all the group in a moment. He had not meant with these words to bless the bride that had been brought before him as poor Lily had been, but it had been drawn from him phrase by phrase.
And then the door opened, and Lily found herself once more outside in the keen air touched with the foretaste of snow which is so distinct in the North. The sky was heavy with it for half the circle from north to south, but in the west was something of that golden radiance still, and a clear blueness above, and one or two stars sparkling through the frost. She lifted her eyes to these with relief, with a feeling of consolation. Was that the light of His countenance that was to shine upon her? But below all things were dark and dreary. To the hurry of excitement which had possessed her before something vexing, troublous, had come in. She had wished, and was eager to hurry away, to escape Helen, but why had she been hurried away, made to perceive that she was not intended to see Helen? It was more fantastic than could be put into words. And Ronald too was in so great a hurry, eager to get her beyond the observation of thepeople coming from the market, almost to hide her in a sheltered corner, while he himself went to get the pony. “Nobody will see you here,” he said. She wished that nobody should see her, but yet an uncalled-for tear came to Lily’s eyes as she stood and waited. It looked almost as if it was a path into heaven, the narrow way which was spoken of in the Bible, that strip of golden light with the stars shining above. But it was not to heaven she wanted to go in the joy of her espousals, on her wedding day. She wanted the life that was before her—the human, the natural, the life that other women had; to be taken to the home her husband had made for her, to be free of the bonds of her girlhood and the loneliness of her previous days. But Lily did not know, not even a step of the path before her. It rushed upon her now that he had never said a word, never one definite word. She did not know what was going to happen to-morrow. To-night it was too late, certainly too late, to go further than Dalrugas, but to-morrow! She remembered now suddenly, clearly, that to all her questions and imaginings what they were to do he had never made one distinct reply. He had allowed her to talk and to imagine what was going to be, but he had said not a word. There seemed nothing, nothing clear in all the world but that one golden path leading up into the sky. “Lift up the light of His countenance upon you.” That did not mean, Lily thought, half pagan as the youthful thinker so often is, the blessing that is life and joy, but rather that which is consolation and calm. And it was not consolation or calm she wanted, but happiness and delight. She wanted to be able to go out upon the world with her arm in her husband’s and her head high, and to shape her new life as other young women did—a separate thing, a new thing, individual to themselves, not any repetition or going back. Standing there in the dark corner, hidden till he could find the pony and take her up secretly out of sight, hurrying away not to be seen by any one—Lily’s heart revolted at these precautions, even though it had been to a certain extent her own desire theyshould be taken. But, oh! it was so different, her own desire! that was only the bridal instinct to hide its shy happiness, its tremor of novelty and wonder. It was not concealment she had wanted, but withdrawal from the gaze of the crowd; but it was concealment that was in Ronald’s thought, a thing always shameful, not modest, not maidenly, but an expedient of guilt.
Perhaps Ronald was just a little too long getting the pony; but he was not very long. He had her safely in the little geeg, with all her wraps carefully round her, before fifteen minutes had passed; but fifteen minutes in some circumstances are more than as many hours in others. Lily was very silent at first, and he had hard ado to rouse her from the reflections that had seized upon her. “What are we going to do?” she said out of the heaviness of these reflections, when all that found its way to his lips was the babble of love at its climax. Was it that she loved him less than he loved her? He whispered this in her ear, with one arm holding her close, while Rory made his way vigorously along the road, scenting his stable, and also the snow that was coming. Lily made no answer to the suggestion. Certainly that murmur of love did not seem to satisfy her. She was overcome by it now and then, and sat silent, feeling the pressure of his arm, and the consciousness that there was nobody but him and herself in the world, with the seductive bewilderment of emotion shared and intensified, yet from time to time awoke sharply to feel the force over again of that question: “What are we going to do?” Oh, why had she not insisted on an answer to it before? The night grew darker, the snow began to fall in large flakes. They were more and more isolated from the world which was invisible round them, nothing but Rory tossing his shaggy ears and snorting at the snow that melted into his nostrils. By the time they reached the Tower, discovering vaguely, all at once, the glimmer of the lights and the voice of Dougal calling to the pony to moderate the impatience of his delight at sight of his own stable, they were so coveredwith snow that it was difficult for Lily to shake herself clear of it as she stumbled down at the great door. “Bide a moment, bide a moment; just take the plaid off her bodily. It’s mair snaw than plaiden!” cried Dougal. “Ye little deevil, stand still, will ye? Ye’ll get neither bite nor sup till your time comes. Have ye no seen the ithers on the road? Silly taupies to bide so long, and maybe be stormsted in the end!”
“They’re on the road, Dougal,” cried Lily, with humility, remembering that she had never once thought of Katrin and Beenie. “I am sure they’re on the road.”
“They had better be that,” he said angrily. “What keepit them, I’m asking? Sir, if ye’ll be advised by me, ye’ll just bid good-by to the young leddy and make your way to Tam’s as fast as ye can, for every half-hour will make it waur. It’s on for a night and a day, or I have nae knowledge of the weather.”
“Half-an-hour can’t make much difference, Dougal,” said Ronald, with a laugh.
“Oh, can it no? It’s easy to see ye ken little of our moor. And the e’en will be as black as midnicht, and the snaw bewildering, so that ye’ll just turn round and round about, and likely lie down in a whin bush, and never wake more.”
A half shriek came from Lily in the doorway, while Ronald’s laugh rang out into the night. “It will be no worse in half-an-hour,” he said.
“Ay, will it! There’s a wee bit light in the west the noo, but there will be nane then. Heigh! is’t you? Weel, that’s aye something,” Dougal said, as the other little vehicle, with its weight of snow-covered figures, came suddenly into the light; and in the bustle of the second arrival, which was much more complicated than the first, nothing more was said. Katrin and Beenie had shaken off the awe of their conspiracy. They were full of spirits and laughter, and their little cart crowded with parcels of every kind. They had found time to buy half the market, as Dougal said, and they occupied him so completely withtheir talk, and the bustle of getting them and their cargo safely deposited indoors, that the young couple stole upstairs unnoticed. “Tam may whistle for me to-night,” Ronald said, “and Dougal growl till he’s tired, and the snow fall as much as it pleases. I’m safe of my shelter, Lily. A friend in court is worth many a year’s fee.”
“Who is your friend in court?” she said, shivering a little. The cold and the agitation had been a little too much for Lily. Her teeth chattered, the light swam in her eyes.
It was Katrin who was the Providence of the young people. She it was who ordained peremptorily, not letting Dougal say a word, that to send Mr. Lumsden off to Tam’s cottage on such a night was such a thing as had never been heard of.
“I wouldna turn out a dog,” she cried, “to find its way, poor beast, across the moor.”
“I warned the lad,” said Dougal; “I tell’d him every half-hour would make it waur. It is his ain fault if he is late. What have you and me to do harboring a’ the young callants in the country, or out of it, that may come here after Miss Lily? You’ve just got some nonsense about true love in your head.”
“Am I the person,” said Katrin, “to have true love cast in my face, me that have been married upon you, Dougal, these thirty year? Na, na! I’m no that kind of woman; but I have peety in my heart, and there’s a dozen empty rooms in this house. I think it’s just a shame when I think of the poor bodies that are about, maybe sleepin’ out on the cauld moor. I’ll not take the life of this young lad, turning him away, and neither shall you, my man, if you want to have any comfort in your ain life.”
“I warned him,” said Dougal; “if he didna take my warning, it’s his ain wyte.”
“It shanna be mine nor yours either,” said Katrin, and, indeed, even Dougal, when he looked out, perceived that there was nothing to be said. The snow had fallen socontinuously since their arrival that already every trace, either of wheels or hoofs, was filled up. The whiteness lay unbroken in the court-yard and up to the very door, as if no one had come near the house for days. Sandy was in the stable with his lantern, hissing over the little black pony as he rubbed him down; but even Sandy’s steps to the stable were wiped out by the snow-storm. It covered every thing, fair things and foul, and, above all, every trace of a path or road.
“I’m no easy in my mind about what Sir Robert would say,” he muttered, pushing his cap to his other ear.
“And what would Sir Robert say? If it had been a lad on the tramp, a gangrel person or selling prins about the road, he would never have grudged him a bed, or at the worst a pickle straw in the stable, on such a night. And this is a young gentleman of the family of the Lumsdens of Pontalloch, kent folk, and as much thought of as any person. Is’t a pickle straw the laird would have offered to a gentleman’s son like that? He’s just biding here till the storm’s over, if it was a week or a fortnicht, and I’ll answer for it to the laird!” Katrin cried.
Dougal looked at her in consternation. “A week or a fortnight! It’s no decent for the young leddy,” he said.
“It’s just a grand chance for the young lady—company to pass the time till her, and her all her lane. If he will bide—but maybe he will not bide,” said Katrin, with a sigh. Katrin, too, was a little anxious, as Lily was, for what to-morrow would bring forth. She had but taken the bull by the horns, in Dougal’s person, saying the worst that could be said. “But it’s my hope, Beenie,” she said afterward, with an anxious countenance, “that he’ll just take his bonnie wife away to his ain house as soon as the snaw’s awa’.”
“Oh, ay! ye needna have any doubt of that,” said Beenie, with a broad smile of content.
“Then you’ll just take off your grand gown and serve them with their dinner. I have naething but the birds to put to the fire, and that will take little time; and if theynever had a good dinner before nor after, they shall have one that any prince might eat, between you and me, Robina, poor things, on their wedding night.”
Thesnow-storm lasted for about a week, day after day, with an occasional interval, with winds that drifted it, and dreadful nights of frost that made it shrink, but covered it over with sparkling crystals, and with occasional movements of a more genial temperature, that touched the surface only to make it freeze again more fiercely when that relenting was over. The whole landscape was turned to whiteness, and the moor, with all its irregular lines, rounded as if a heavy white blanket had been laid over the hummocks of the ling and the hollows and deep cuttings. The hills were white, too, but showing great seams and crevasses of darkness, from which all the magical color had been taken by the absence of light. Black and white was what every thing was reduced to, like the winter Alps, with a gray sky overhead still heavy with inexhaustible snow. This snow-storm was “a special providence” to the inhabitants of Dalrugas—at least to most of them. Dougal grumbled, and suggested various ways in which it might be possible for the lad from Edinburgh to get away. He might walk two miles north, to a village on the main road, where the coach was bound to pass every lawful day, whether it snowed or whether it blew; or he might get the geeg from the inn at Kinloch-Rugas to carry him south, and strike the route of another coach also bound to travel on every lawful day. But Dougal talked to the air, and nobody gave him heed: not to say that the gentleman from Edinburgh found means to conciliate him by degrees, and that, at last, a crack with Mr. Lumsden became a great relief to Dougal from the unmitigated chatterof the womankind by which he was surrounded night and day.
This week of snow flew as if on wings. They were shut off from all intrusion, and even from every invading question, by the impossibility of overstepping that barrier which nature had placed around them; they lived as in a dream, which circumstances had thus made possible without any strain of nature. Nobody could turn a stranger out into the snow, not Sir Robert himself. Had he been there, however little he liked his visitor, he would have been compelled to keep him in his house, and treat him like a favored guest. Not even an enemy’s dog could have been turned out into the snow. It made every thing legitimate, every thing simple and natural. I don’t know that Lily required this thought to support her, for, indeed, she was not at that time aware that any secret was made of the marriage, that it was concealed from any one in the house, even Dougal, or that Helen Blythe at the Manse, for instance, had not been made aware of it by that time. She had never clearly entered into the question why Helen Blythe had not been present, why the ceremony had been performed in the darkening, and so much mystery had surrounded it, except by the natural reason that no observation which could be avoided should be drawn upon the bride, and that, indeed, all possibility of vulgar remark should be guarded against. The question, what was to be done next? had filled Lily’s mind on that day; but the snow had silenced it and covered it over like the ling bushes and the burn, which no longer made its usual trill of running remark, but was also hushed and bound by the new conditions which modified all the life of this portion of the earth. The moor and all its surroundings hung between heaven and earth in a great silence during this period. The gray sky hung low, so that it seemed as if an unwary wayfarer, if he went far enough against that heavy horizon, might strike against it, blinded as he must have been by the whirling flakes that danced and fluttered down, sometimes quickening in pace like the variations of a swiftstrathspey, sometimes falling large and deliberate like those dilated flakes of fire that fell on the burning sands in the Inferno. There were no images, however different in sentiment, that might not have been applied to that constant falling. It was snow, always snow, and yet there was in it all the variety of poetry when you looked at it, so to speak, from within, looking through it upon an empty world in which no other life or variety seemed to be left.
Sometimes, however, the pair sallied forth, notwithstanding the snow, to breathe the crisp and frosty air, and to feel with delight the great atmosphere and outdoor world around them instead of four walls. Lily wore a great camlet cloak, rough, but a protection against both wet and chill, with a large silver clasp under her chin, and her head and shoulders warmly hooded and wrapped in her plaid of the Ramsay color, which she wore as fair Ramsays did in Allan Ramsay’s verse. Lily’s eyes sparkled under the tartan screen, and not to risk the chilling of a hand which it would have been necessary to put forth to clasp his arm, Ronald in his big coat walked with his arm round her, to steady her on the snow; for every path was obliterated, and they never knew when they might not stumble over a stifled burn or among the heathery hillocks of the moor. These walks were not long, but they were delightful in the stillness and loneliness, the white flakes clothing them all over in another coat, lighting upon Lily’s hair and Ronald’s beard, getting into their eyes, half blinding them with the sudden moisture, and the laughter that followed. I will not attempt to give any account of the talk with which they beguiled both these devious rambles and the long companionship indoors in the warm room from which they looked out with so much comfort on the white and solitary world. It harmonized and made every thing legitimate, that lucky snow. One could not ask: “What shall we do to-morrow?” in the sight of the absolute impossibility of doing any thing. It was not the bridegroom but Nature herself who had arranged this honeymoon. If itwould but last! But then it was in the nature of things that it could not last.
The frost began to break up a little on the eighth day, or rather it was not the frost that broke up, but the sky that cleared. In the evening instead of the heavy gray there came a break which the sky looked through, and in it a star or two, which somehow changed altogether the aspect of affairs. That evening, as she stood looking out at the break so welcome to every-body, but which she was not so sure of welcoming as other people were, Lily felt the question again stir, like a bird in its nest, in the hushed happiness of her heart. In the morning, when she looked out upon a world that had again become light, with blue overhead, and a faint promise of sun, and no snow falling, it came back more strongly, this time like a secret ache. The women and Dougal and Sandy and even the ponies were full of delight in the end of the storm. “What a bonnie morning!” they shouted to each other, waking Lily from her sleep. A bonnie morning! There was color again on the hills and color in the sky. The distance was no longer shut out, as by a door, by the heavy firmament: it was remote, it was full of air, it led away into the world, into worlds unseen. As Lily gazed a golden ray came out of it and struck along the snow in a fine line. Oh, it was bonnie! as they called to each other in the yard, as Rory snorted in his stable, and all the chickens cackled, gathering about Katrin’s feet. The snow was over! The storm was over! In a little while the whiteness would disappear and the moor would be green again. “What are we going to do?” All nature seemed to ask the question.
“I wish,” said Ronald, “those fowls would cease their rejoicings about the end of the snow. I wish the snow could have lasted another fortnight, Lily; though perhaps I should not say that, for I could not have taken advantage of it. I should need to have invented some means of getting away.”
“Because you were tired of it, Ronald?” she said, witha smile; but the smile was not so bright as it had been. It was not Lily’s snow-smile, all light and radiance; it was one into which the question had come, a little wistful, a little anxious. Ronald saw, and his heart grieved at the change.
“That’s the likely reason!” he said, with a laugh; “but, oh, Lily, my bonnie love, here is the Parliament House all astir again, the judges sitting, and all the work begun.”
“Well,” she said, that smile of hers shooting out a pure beam of fire upon him, “I am ready, Ronald, I am ready, too.”
“Ready to speed the parting husband, and to wish me good luck?” he said with a faint quiver in his voice. He was not a coward by nature, but Ronald this time was afraid. He had not forgotten the question: “What are we going to do?” which had been expressed in every line of Lily’s face, in every tone of her voice, before the evening of the marriage. He knew it had come again, but he did not know how he was to meet it. He plunged into the inevitable conflict with his heart in his mouth.
“To speed the parting—— Are you going, Ronald, are you thinking of going, without me?”
“My dearest,” he said, spreading out his hands in deprecation, “it’s like rending me asunder; it is like tearing my heart out of my bosom.”
“I am not asking you what it is like!” cried Lily. “What I am asking is your meaning. Were you thinking of going without me?”
“Lily, Lily!” he said, “don’t be so dreadfully hard upon me! What am I to do? I know nothing else that I can do.”
“Oh, if it’s only that,” she said, “I can tell you, and very easy, what to do. You will just take me down to Kinloch-Rugas, or to that other place where the coach stops, and wrap me well in my camlet cloak and in my tartan plaid, and I’ll not feel the cold, not so much as you will, for women’s blood is warm, and when we get toEdinburgh we will take the topmost story of a house, and make it as warm as a nest, and get the first sunshine and the bonnie view away to Fife and the north. And Beenie will follow us with my things and her own; but we’ll just be all alone for the first day or two, and I will make you your dinner with my own hands,” said Lily, holding up those useful implements with a look of triumph, which was, alas! too bright, which was like the sun when a storm is coming: brilliant with alarm and a sense of something very different to come.
“They don’t look very fit for it, those bits of white hands,” he said, eager, if possible, by any means to divert her from the more important question, and he took her hands in his and kissed them; but Lily was not to be diverted in this way.
“You may think what you like of how they look, but they are just a very useful pair of hands, and can cook you a Scots collop or a chicken or fish in sauce as well as any person. I know what I have undertaken, and if you think I will break down, you are mistaken, Ronald Lumsden, in me.”
“I am not mistaken in you, Lily. I know there is nothing you could not do if you were to try; but am I to be the one to make a drudge of my Lily—I that would like her to eat of the fat and drink of the sweet, as the ministers say, and have no trouble all her days?”
“It depends upon what you call trouble,” said Lily, still holding up her flag. “Trouble I suppose we shall have, sooner or later, or we’ll be more than mortal; but to serve you your dinner is what I would like to do. You’ll go out to the Parliament House and work to get the siller, for it must be allowed that between us we have not much of the siller, and you cannot buy either collops or chuckies without it, nor scarcely even a haddie or a herring out of the sea. But that’s the man’s share. And then I will buy it and clean it, and put it on in the pot, and you will eat of your wife’s cooking and your heart will be glad. Do you think I want to go back to George Square, or a fine housein one of the new Crescents, and sit with my hands before me? Not me, not me!”
“My bonnie Lily,” he cried, “it’s a bonnie dream, and like yourself, and if you only cooked a crust, it would be better than all the grand French kickshaws in the world or the English puddings to me.”
“You need not be so humble, sir,” said Lily; “I will cook no crust. It will be savory meat, such as thy soul loveth; though I’ll not cheat you as that designing woman Rebekah did.”
“My bonnie Lily, you’ll always do more for me, and better for me, than I deserve,” he cried. “Is that the postman for the first time coming up the road from the town?”
They went to the window to look out at this remarkable phenomenon, and there he kept her, pointing out already the break of the snow upon the side of the moor, revealing the little current of the burn, and something of the edge of the road, along which, wonderful sight! that solitary figure was making its way. “But it will not be passable, I think, till to-morrow for any wheeled thing, so we will make ourselves happy for another day,” Ronald said; and this was all the answer he gave her. He was very full of caresses, of fond speeches, and lover’s talk all day. He scarcely left an opening for any thing more serious. If Lily began again with her question, he always found some way of stopping her mouth. Perhaps she was not unwilling, in a natural shrinking from conflict, to have her mouth stopped. But there rose between them an uneasy sense of something to be explained, something to be unravelled, a desire on one side which was to encounter on the other resistance not to be overcome.
Ronald went out to Dougal after dinner and stood by him while he suppered the pony. “I think the roads will be clear to-morrow, Dougal,” he said.
“I wouldna wonder,” said Dougal. His opinion was that the lad from Edinburgh would just sorn on there forever eating Sir Robert’s good meat and would never more go away.
“Which do you think would be best? to lend me Rory and the little cart to take me in to Kinloch-Rugas, or to send for the geeg from the inn to catch the coach on the South Road at Inverlochers?”
“I could scarcely gie an opinion,” said Dougal. “A stoot gentleman o’ your age might maybe just as easy walk.”
When Dougal said “a stoot gentleman” he did not mean to imply that Ronald was corpulent, but that he was a strong fellow and wanted no pony to take him four miles.
“That’s true enough,” said Ronald; “but there’s my portmanteau, which is rather heavy to carry.”
“As grand as you——” Dougal began, but then he stopped and reflected that he was, so to speak, on his own doorstep (in the absence of Sir Robert), and that it was a betrayal of all the traditions of hospitality to be rude to a guest, especially to one who was about to take himself away. “Weel,” he added quickly, with a push to his bonnet, “I canna spare you Rory—the young leddy might be wanting a ride; but Sandy and the black powny will take in the bit box if ye’re sure that you’ve made up your mind—at last.”
“I dare say you thought I was never going to do that,” Ronald said, with a laugh.
And then Dougal melted too. “Oh,” he said, “I just thought you knew when you were in good quarters,” in a more friendly voice.
“And did not you think I was a sensible fellow,” said the amiable guest, “to lie warm and feed well instead of fighting two or three days, or maybe more, through the snow? But now the courts are opened, and the judges sitting, and every-body waiting for me. I would much rather bide where I am, but I must go.”
“If it’s for your ain interest,” said Dougal; “and I wudna wonder but ye’re a wee tired of seeing naebody and doing naething, no even a gun on your shoulder. I’ll bid the laddie be ready, I’ll say, at sax of the clock.”
“Six o’clock!” said Ronald in dismay; “the coach does not leave till ten.”
“Weel, I’ll say aicht if you like. You should be down in good time. Whiles there are a heap of passengers, and mair especial after a storm like this, that has shut up a’ the roads.”
“I shall be very much obliged to you, Dougal. I have been obliged to you all the time. I will explain the circumstances to Sir Robert if he is in Edinburgh in the spring, and I will tell him that Katrin and you have been more than kind.”
“’Deed, and if I were you,” said Dougal, “I would just keep a calm sough and say naething to Sir Robert. He might wonder how ye got here; he would maybe no think that our young leddy—— I’m wanting no certificate frae any strange gentleman,” said Dougal, “and least said is soonest mended. There are folk that canna bide to hear their ain house spoke of by a stranger, nor friends collecting about it that might maybe no just be approved. No, no, haud you your tongue and keep your ain counsel; and so far as things have gaen, you’ll hear nae more about it frae Katrin or me.”
Ronald was confounded by this speech. “So far as things have gaen.” Had this rough fellow any idea how far they had gone? Had his wife told him what happened in the Manse parlor? Had his suspicions penetrated the whole story? But Dougal turned back to the pony with a preference so unaffected, and whistled “Charlie is my darling” with so distinct an intention of dismissing his interlocutor, that Ronald could not imagine him to see in the least into the millstone of this involved affair. Dougal was much more occupied with his own affairs than either those of Lily or those so very little known to him of the strange gentleman who had kept Lily company during the daft days, the saturnalia of the year. He proceeded with his work, pausing sometimes to swing his arms and smite his breast for cold, clanking out and in through the warm atmosphere of the stable to the wildly cold and sharp airoutside, absorbed more than was at all necessary in the meal and the toilet of Rory, and taking no further heed of the guest.
“Atlast,” said Ronald, coming upstairs with his light-springing foot three steps at a time, “at last, Lily, I have settled with Dougal, and I am starting to-morrow morning: at eight, he says, but nine will do. And this for a little while, my darling, will be my last night in the nest.”
The room had undergone a wonderful change since it had first been Lily’s bower. It had changed much while she was there alone, but the change was much greater within the last week than all that had happened before. It had become a home: there were two chairs by the fire, there was an indefinable consciousness in every thing of two minds, two people, the union and conjunction which make society. It was all warm, social, breathing of life, no suggestion in it of loneliness or longing, or unsatisfied thought, or the solitude which breathes a chill through every comfort. Lily, sitting alone, had been, it was very clear, left but for a moment. This sentiment cannot, indeed, expand stone walls, yet the once dull and chilly drawing-room, with its deep small windows, seemed to possess a widened circle, a fuller atmosphere. Into this already had there pushed a care or two, the reflection of the diversities of two minds as well as their union? If so, it only helped to widen the sphere still further, to make it more representative of the world. Lily looked up from the book she had taken up in her husband’s absence with a change of countenance and sudden exclamation.
“Youare going to-morrow? Notwe?” she cried.
“My bonnie Lily, you were always reasonable—how could it bewe? I’m thankful, though, that you meant it to be we, for it was not a happy thought that my ownlassie, my wife of a week old, was pushing me away, back with the first loosening of the frosts, into the world.”
“You never thought that, you never could have thought that!” cried Lily, divided between indignation and a tumult of new feeling that rose in her. And then she covered her face with her hands. “Are you going to leave me here, Ronald, my lane, my lane?” she cried, with a tone of anguish in her voice.
He was behind her, drawing her head upon his shoulder, soothing her in every way he knew. “Oh, Lily, my darling, don’t say I have beguiled you! What could it be else, what could it be? I might have held out by myself and kept away. I might have sworn I would never go near you, for your sweet sake. Would you rather I had done that, Lily? Is it not better to belong to each other, my darling, at any cost, so as to be ready in a moment to take advantage of a bright day when it comes?”
“Of a bright day when it comes?” she said, suddenly taking her hands from her face. A chill as if of the ice outside came upon Lily. She was as white as the snow, and cold, and trembled. “Is that all—is that all that is between you and me, Ronald?” she cried.
“Now, Lily, my dearest, how can you ask such a question? Is that all? Nothing is all! There are no bounds to what is between you and me; but because we have to be parted for a time that was not a reason for always keeping apart, was it, Lily? I thought, my darling, you agreed with me there. We have had a happy honeymoon as ever any pair had, happier, I think, than ever any blessed man but me. And now I must go out to the bleak world to work for my bonnie wife. Oh, it will be a bleak world no longer; it will all be bright with the thought that it is for my bonnie Lily. And you will just wait and keep your heart in a kist of gold, and lock it with a silver key.”
“Ah, that was what she says she should have done before——” cried Lily with a sharp ring of pain in her voice. Then she subdued herself and looked up into his face. “Iam ready to share whatever you have, Ronald. I want no luxuries, no grand house. I want no time to get ready. I’ll be up before you to-morrow and my little things in a bundle and ready to follow you, if it was in a baggage-wagon or at the plough’s tail!”
“I almost wish it was that,” he said, eager for any diversion. “If I had been a ploughman lad, coming over the hills to Nannie O; with a little cot to take her to as soon as she could be my own!” These were echoes of the songs Lily had sung to him, and he to her, in their hermitage when shut in by the snow.
“But just up under the roof in a high house in the old town, or one of the new ones out to the west of Princes Street—that new row, with a nice clean stair and a door to it to shut it in: to me that would be as good as any little cot upon the ploughed fields.” Lily spoke eagerly, turning round to him with hands involuntarily clasped.
“A strange place,” he said, “for Sir Robert Ramsay’s heir.”
“Oh, what am I caring for Sir Robert Ramsay! If he was ill and wanted me, I would be at his call night and day—he is my uncle, whatever happens; but because he is rich and can leave me a fortune! that is nothing, Ronald, to you and me.”
He made no immediate reply, but smoothed the little curls of her hair upon her forehead, which was at once an easier and a much more pleasant thing to do.
“Besides,” she said, “I have known plenty of kent folk, as good as you or me, who lived, and just liked it very well, up a common stair.”
“I would not like my Lily, coming out of George Square, to set up in life like that.”
“Would you like your Lily,” she cried again, turning upon him with glowing cheeks, “to sit alone and pingle at her seam and eat her heart away, even at George Square, where she might see you whiles, or, worse still, here at Dalrugas,” she said, springing from her seat with energy, “to be smoored in the snow?”
He followed her round to the window, and stood holding her in his arm and looking at her admiringly. “You will never be smoored in the snow, my Lily! The fire in you is enough to melt it into rivers all about.”
“Rivers that will carry me—where?” she cried in a tone half of laughter, half of despair.
“Listen to me, my darling,” he said. “We will be practical: there is always the poetry to fall back upon. For one thing, I’ve no house, even if it were up a common stair or in the highest house of the old town, to take you to. Houses, as you know as well as me, can only be got at the term. There is no chance now till Whit-Sunday of finding one. We must just be patient, Lily; we can do no more. It is not you, my darling, that will suffer the most. Think of me in all the old places that will mind me of you at every moment, and seeing all the folk that know you, and even hearing your name——”
“Oh,” cried Lily, and then suddenly she fell a-crying, leaning on her husband, “I would like to hear your name now and then just to give me heart, and to see the folk that know you, and the old places——”
“My bonnie Lily!” he cried.
Perhaps this outburst did her good. She cried for a long time, and all the evening an occasional sob interrupted her voice, like the lingering passion of a child. But Lily, like a child, had to yield to that voice of the practical, the voice of reason. She said no more at least, but sadly assisted at the packing of the portmanteau, which had been brought across the snow somehow from the cottage in which Ronald had found refuge before the storm and all its privileges began.
“I am not going with him,” she said to Robina, when these doleful preparations were over. “You see, there are no preparations made, and you cannot get a house between the terms. You might have minded me of that, Beenie. What is the use of being a person of experience if you cannot tell folk that are apt to forget?”
“I ought to have minded, my bonnie dear,” said Beenie with penitence.
“And it’s a long time till Whit-Sunday; but we’ll need to have patience,” Lily said.
“So we will, my darling bairn,” Beenie replied.
“You say that very cut and dry. You are not surprised; you look as if you had known it all the time.”
“Eh, Miss Lily, my dear, how could I help but ken? Here’s a young gentleman that has little siller, and no the mate that Sir Robert would choose.”
“I wish,” cried Lily, “that Sir Robert was at the bottom of the sea! No, no, I’m wishing him no harm, but, oh, if he only had nothing to do with me!”
“The only thing ye canna do in this world is to change your blood and kin,” said Beenie; “but, oh, Miss Lily, ye must just be real reasonable and think. If he were to take you away, it would spoil a’. He has gotten you for his ain, and you have gotten him for your ain, and nothing can come between you two. But he hasna the siller to give ye such a down-sitting as you should have, and nae house at all possible at this time of the year. No, I’m no way surprised. I just knew that was how it had to be, and Katrin too. It would be just flyin’ in the face of Providence, she says, to take ye away off to Edinburgh, without a place for the sole of your foot, when ye have a’ your uncle’s good house at your disposition, and good living and folk about you that tak’ a great interest in you. Katrin herself she canna bide the thought of losing her bonnie leddy. ‘If Miss Lily goes, I’ll just take my fit in my hand and go away after her,’ she says. But what for should ye go? It will be far more comfortable here.”
“Comfortable!” said Lily in high disdain, “and parted from my husband!” The word was not familiar to her lips, and it brought a flush of color over her face.
“Oh, whisht, my bonnie leddy,” Beenie cried.
“Why should I whisht? for it is true. I might not have said it before, but I will say it now, for where he is I ought to be, and whatever he has I ought to share, andwhat do I care for Dougal’s birds and Katrin’s fine cooking when my Ronald (that has aye a fine appetite for his dinner,” cried Lily in a parenthesis, with a flash of her girlish humor) “is away?” The last words were said in a drooping tone. Her mood changed like the changing skies. Even now she had irruptions of laughter into the midst of her trouble, which was not yet trouble, indeed, so long as he was still not absolutely gone; and who could tell what might happen before morning, the chill morning of the parting day?
Lily was up and astir early on that terrible morning. There had been a hope in her mind that Providence would re-tighten the bonds of the frost and bring the snow blinding and suffocating to stop all possibility of travel; but, alas! that was not the case: bands of faint blue diversified the yellow grayness of the clouds, and the early sun gave a bewildering glint over the moor, making the snow garment shrink a little more and show its rents and crevasses. Every thing was cheerfully astir in the yard, the black pony rearing as Sandy backed him into the shafts of the cart, snorting and shaking his head for joy at thought of the outing, and the sniff of the fresh, exhilarating air into which, as yet, there had come little of the limpness of the thaw. There was an air out of doors partly of pleasure in the excitement of the departure, or at least in the little commotion about something which is an agreeable break in the monotony of all rural solitudes. Dougal looked on and criticised with his hands in his pockets and gave Sandy directions as if this were the first time the boy had ever touched the pony which had been his charge for more than a year; and Katrin, too, stood at the door watching all these preparations, though the air was cold as January air could be. Upstairs there was a very different scene. Lily had tried to insist upon driving to the town to see her husband off, a proposal which was crushed by both Ronald and Robina with horror. “Expose yoursel’ to the whole countryside!” Beenie cried.
“Expose myself! and me his wife! Who should seehim off if not his wife?” said Lily. And then Ronald came behind her and drew her against his breast once more.
“My bonnie Lily! We need not yet flourish that before the world. You are as safe here as a bird in its nest. Why should we set everybody talking about you and me? Sir Robert will hear soon enough and there is no need to send him word. There’s nobody to penetrate our secret and publish it if you will be patient a little till better things can be.”
“Our secret!” said Lily, springing from his hold with a great cry.
“A secret that is well shared by those that care for my Lily; but we need not flourish it before the world.” Lily’s color rose from pale to red, then faded. She stood apart from him, her countenance changing; her pride was deeply wounded that she should be supposed to be desirous of flourishing any thing before the world. It was an injury to her and a scorn, though this was no moment to resent it, and the sharp impression only mingled with the anguish of parting a sense of being wronged and misjudged, which was very hard to bear. “I may come down to the door, I suppose,” she said, in a voice from which she tried to banish every tone of offence.
“No, my darling,” he said, “not even to the door. I could not say farewell to my Lily with strangers looking on. I will like to think when I am gone of every thing round you here, all the old chairs and tables even, where my Lily and I have had our honeymoon.” Oh, there was nothing to complain of in the warmth of his farewell. No man could have loved his young wife better, or have held her close to him with deeper feeling. “I will soon be back, I will soon be back!” he cried. His eyes were wet like hers. It was as great a thing for him to tear himself away as it was for her to remain behind and see him go. But then Lily could only stand trembling and weeping at the head of the stairs, that nobody might see, and catch a distorted glimpse through the window over the door of thecart, into which he got with Sandy, while Dougal still murmured that “a stoot gentleman would have done better to walk,” and to see him hold out his hand to sulky Dougal, and to Katrin, who had her apron at her eyes, and Beenie, who was sobbing freely! They could stand there and cry, but she might not go down stairs lest she should flourish her story before the world. And why should she not, after all, flourish it before the world? Is a marriage a thing to be hid? When the little cart drove away, the pony, very fresh after his long confinement, executing many gambols, Lily went back to her window, from which she could see them disappear under the high bank, coming out again lower down. The deep road was so filled up with snow that the moment of disappearance was a very short one, and then she could trace for a long time along the road the little dark object growing less and less, till it disappeared altogether. The pony’s gambols, which, though he was too far off to be distinctly visible, still showed in the meandering of his progress and sudden changes of pace, the head of one figure showing over the other, the gradual obliteration in the gray of distance, kept all her faculties occupied. It seemed hours, though it was but a very little time, when Lily let her head droop on the arm of the old-fashioned sofa and abandoned herself to the long-gathering, long-restrained torrent and passion of tears.