“Sir:My mistress has been at the point of death with what they call a brain-fever. It has lasted the longest andbeen the fiercest that ever the doctor saw. She is coming round now—the Lord be praised—but very slow. She has but one thought—you will know well what that is—and will never rest till she has got satisfaction, night or day.“I am, sir,“Your obedient servant,“Robina Rutherford.“P. S.—I was to tell you the last part, for it is not from me.”
“Sir:My mistress has been at the point of death with what they call a brain-fever. It has lasted the longest andbeen the fiercest that ever the doctor saw. She is coming round now—the Lord be praised—but very slow. She has but one thought—you will know well what that is—and will never rest till she has got satisfaction, night or day.
“I am, sir,“Your obedient servant,“Robina Rutherford.
“P. S.—I was to tell you the last part, for it is not from me.”
There was not much satisfaction to be got from this letter, and, indeed, his mind got little relief from any thing, and the time of Lily’s illness was a time of mental trouble for the husband, which was not, perhaps, more easy to bear. Had he lost her altogether? It seemed like that, though he could not think it possible that the child at least should be allowed to drop, or that the fever could have made her forget, which it was evident she had not done in his own case. The courts had begun again, and Lumsden was more occupied than he had ever been in his life. He made one furtive visit to Kinloch-Rugas, where he heard something of Lily’s state, and engaged Helen Blythe to communicate with him any thing that reached her ears. But no one was allowed to see her in her illness, and this gave him small satisfaction. He did not dare to go near the house, which Sir Robert guarded more effectually than a squadron of soldiers. There was nothing for him to do but to wait. The unusual rush of occupation which came upon him with the beginning of the session had a certain irony in it, that irony which is so often apparent in life. Was he about to become a successful man now that the chief thing which made life valuable was slipping out of his grasp? He went about his business briskly, and rose to the claims of his business and profession, so that he began to be mentioned in the Parliament House and among his contemporaries, and even by elder men of still more importance, who said of him that young Lumsden, oldPontalloch’s son, though he had hung fire at first, was now beginning at last to come to the front. Was it possible that this was coming to him, this exhilarating tide of success, just at the moment when Lily, who would have stood by him in evil fortune and never failed him, had dropped away from his side? To do him justice, he had never thought of success, of wealth, of prosperity, without her to share it. And he did not understand it now. He could not understand how even a woman, however ignorant or unreasonable by nature, could be so narrow as not to see that all he had done had been for the best. The last step, no doubt, might be allowed to be hard upon her, but what else was possible? Could she for a moment have entertained the idea of keeping the child—a baby that cried and made a noise, and could not be hid—at Dalrugas? Even if there had been no word of Sir Robert, it still would have been impossible; and he had done no more than he had a right to do. He had considered, and considered most carefully—he did himself but justice in this—what as her head and guardian it was best for him to do. It was his duty as well as his right; and the responsibility being upon him as the husband, and not upon her as the wife, he had done it. Was it possible that Lily—a creature full of intelligence on other matters, who even now and then picked up a thing quicker than he did himself—should not have sense enough and judgment enough to see this? But these thoughts, though they mingled with all he did, and accompanied him night and day, did not make things any better. The fact that she had taken no notice of him all this time, that she had not written to him even to upbraid him, that she had not even asked him for news of the child, was very heavy on Lumsden’s mind—almost, I had said, upon his heart, for he still had a heart, notwithstanding all that had come and gone. Perhaps it might have relieved him a little had he known that news had been obtained of the child, though not through him. Marg’ret—who, though she had been unfaithful to the young mother, to whom at the same timeshe had been so kind, certainly had a heart, which smote her much as being a party to a proceeding which became more and more doubtful the more she thought of it—had written twice to Beenie, altogether superior to the question of the eightpence to pay, to assure her of the baby’s health. He was well, he was thriving, his mother would not know him he had grown so big and strong, and Marg’ret hoped that ere long she would put him, just a perfect beauty, into his mother’s arms. These queer missives, sealed with a wafer and a thimble, had been better than all the eloquent letters in the world to Lily. When those from Ronald, full of excellent reason and all the philosophy that could be brought to bear on the circumstances, were given to her on her recovery, they had but made her wound more bitter and her resentment more warm; but the nurse’s letters had given her strength. They had made her able to charm and please her uncle; they had enabled her to face life again and fight her way back to a certain degree of health; they had sustained her in her journey, and this first set out upon the world to manage her own affairs, which was as novel to her as if she had been fifteen, instead of twenty-five. They wanted only one thing—they had no address. The postmark was Edinburgh, but Edinburgh was (to these inexperienced women) a very wide word.
What Lily had intended to do when she had found out Marg’ret and recovered her child—as she was so confident of doing—I cannot tell. She did not herself know. This was the first step to be taken: every thing else came a world behind. Whether she was to carry the baby back in her arms, to beard Sir Robert with it and make her explanation—though with the conviction that she would then be turned from the door of her only home forever—or whether she intended, having escaped, to do what always seems so easy and natural to a girl’s imagination: to fly away somewhere and hide herself with her child, and be fed by the ravens, like the prophet—she herself did not know and I cannot tell. The only thing certain was thatshe thought of the little house among the Edinburgh roofs—that house which could only be got at the term, and which it now made her heart sick to think of—no more. Had she found the door open for her and every thing ready Lily would have turned her back on that open door. She could not endure the thought of it; she could not even think of the time when it would have been paradise to her, the realization of her dearest hopes. In the depths of her injured soul she would have desired to find her child without even making her presence known to her husband. She had no desire even to see him again—he seemed to have alienated her too completely for any repentance. And up to this moment, her mind being altogether occupied by her child, none of those relentings toward those whom we have loved and who have wronged us, which make the heart bleed, had come upon Lily. She thought of nothing but her child, her child! to have him again in her arms, to possess him again, the one thing in the world that was entirely her own, altogether her own. The fact that this was not so, that the child was not and never could be entirely her own, did not disturb Lily’s mind. Had she been reminded of it she would not have believed. She thought, as every young mother thinks in the wonderful closeness of that new relation and the sense of all it has cost her, that to this at least there could be no contradiction and no doubt—that her baby was hers, hers! and that no one in the world had the right to him that she had. It was for him that she hurried, as much as any one could hurry in these days, to Edinburgh, grudging every moment of delay—the time of changing the horses, which she felt inclined to get out and do herself, so slow, so slow was every-body concerned; the time for refreshments, as if one wanted to eat and drink when one was hastening to recover one’s child. But however slow a journey is the end of it comes at last. It was a comfort to Lily that she knew where to go to—to the house of a very decent woman, known to Beenie, who kept lodgings, and where she could be quite quiet, out of the way of her former friends. Butthey arrived only in the evening, and there was another long night to be gone through before any thing could be done.
Robinahad become more and more anxious and uneasy as they approached Edinburgh. She did not seem to share the anxious elation with which her mistress hailed the well-known features of the country, and recognized the Castle on its rock, and the high line of houses against the sky. Lily was in a state of feverish excitement, but it was mingled with so many hopes and anticipations that even her anxiety was a kind of happiness. “To-morrow! to-morrow!” she said to herself. Beenie listened with much solemnity to this happy tone of certainty. She would have liked to moralize, and bid her mistress modify her too great confidence. As the moment approached when it should be justified Beenie’s mind became more and more perturbed. It was she who had been instrumental in bringing Marg’ret from Edinburgh, pretending, indeed, that the woman was her cousin, and she had till now taken it for granted, as Lily had done, without any doubt in her mind, that where Marg’ret had been found once she would be found again. But as the hour came nearer Beenie’s confidence in this became much shaken. Ifhewanted to hide the child from his mother—a course which Beenie acknowledged to herself would be the wisest one, for how could the baby and Sir Robert ever live under the same roof?—would he have allowed the nurse to settle there, where her address was known and she could be found in a moment? Beenie’s intellect was not quick, but she did not think this was probable. She was not accustomed to secrecy or to the tricks of concealment: they had not even occurred to her till now; but when she realized that she was to be her mistress’s guide on the next morning to the house whereLily had persuaded herself she was certain to find her child, her heart sank to her boots, and there was no more strength left in her. “And what if we dinna find her there? and wherefore should we find her there?” Beenie asked herself. It stood to reason, as she saw now, that Lumsden would never have permitted her to remain. Why had she not thought of it before? Why had she come on such a fool’s errand, to plunge her mistress only into deeper and deeper disappointment? Beenie did not sleep all night, though Lily slept, in her great fatigue, like a child. Beenie was terrified of the morning, and of the visit which she now felt sure would be in vain. Oh, why had she not seen it before? He must have known that the mother would not give up her child without an attempt to recover him (“Though what we are to do with him, poor wee man, when we get him!” Beenie said to herself), and he would never have left the baby where it could be found at once, and all his precautions made an end of. Beenie saw now, enlightened by terror, that this plan must have been in Lumsden’s head all the time, though Sir Robert’s sudden arrival gave the opportunity for carrying it out. She saw now that after all that had been done to keep the secret he was not likely to allow it to be thrown to the winds by the presence of the child at Dalrugas if he could help it. She divined this under the influence of her own alarm and anxiety. And would he let the woman bide there in a kent place where Lily could lay her hands upon the child whenever she pleased, night or day? Oh, no, no, no! he would never do that, was the refrain that ran through Beenie’s mind all the night. She had thought how delightful it would be to hear the clocks striking and the bells ringing after the deep, deep silence of the moor. But this satisfaction was denied her, for all the bells and the clocks seemed to upbraid her for her foolishness. “Sae likely! Sae likely!” one of them seemed to say in every chime. “Cheating himself! Cheating himself!” said another. And was there not yet one, heavier than the rest—St. Giles himself for any thing she could tell—which seemed to echo out:“You fool, Beenie! You fool, Beenie!” over all the listening town?
“Oh, my bonnie leddy!” said Beenie, when Lily, all flushed and eager with anticipation, took her place in the old-fashioned hackney coach that was to take them to Marg’ret’s abode. This was in a narrow street, or rather close, leading off the Canongate—one of those places hidden behind the great houses which lead to tranquil little spots of retirement, and openings into the fresh air and green braes, which no stranger could believe possible. “Oh, my bonnie leddy, dinna, dinna be so terrible sure! I’ve been thinking a’ the way—what if she should have flitted? There was nae address to her letter. She may have flitted to another house. She may be away at other work.”
“What! and leave my baby!” cried Lily, “when she said in her letter he was all her occupation, as well as all her pleasure! I almost forgave her what she’s done to me for saying that.”
“And so she did,” said Beenie doubtfully. “Oh, I’m no saying a word against Marg’ret—she would be faithfu’ to her trust. But she might flit to another house for a’ that. In Edinburgh the folk are aye flittin’. I canna tell what possesses them. Me—I would bide where I was well off; I would never think of making a change just for change’s sake. But that is what they’re aye doing here.”
“Have you heard any thing, Beenie?” cried Lily, turning pale. She had been so sure that the cup of joy was within reach, that the thirsting of her heart would be at once satisfied, that she felt as if a disappointment would be more than she could bear.
“Oh, mem,” cried Beenie, producing a bottle of salts from her capacious pocket, “dinna let down your heart! I have heard naething. I was just speaking of a common fact that every-body kens. And if she had flitted, they would maybe ken where she had gone. Oh, ay, they would certainly ken where she has gone—a woman anda bairn canna disappear leaving no sign. It’s not like a single person, that might just be off and away, and nobody the wiser, mem! I am maybe just speaking nonsense, and we’ll see her at her door in a moment, with our bonnie boy in her airms.”
Beenie, however, had succeeded better than she had hoped. She had conveyed to her mistress that sickening of the heart which, from the most ancient days of humanity, has been the consequence of hope deferred. The light went out of Lily’s eyes. She leaned back in her corner, closing them upon a world which had suddenly grown black and void. She did not lose consciousness, being far too strongly bound to life by hope and despair and pain to let the thread drop even for a moment; but Beenie thought she had fainted, and, heartstruck with what seemed to her her own work, produced out of the reticule she carried a whole magazine of remedies—precious eau-de-Cologne, which was no common thing in those days, and vinegar with a sharp, aromatic scent, more used then than now, and even as the last resort a small bottle of whiskey, which she tried hard, though with a hand that trembled, to administer in a teaspoon. Lily had strength enough to push her away, and, in self-defence, opened her eyes again, seeing grayly once more the firmament, and the high houses on either side, and the dull day from which all light seemed to have gone. It was she, however, who sprang out of the coach when it stopped at the entrance to the close. Every-body knows what the Canongate of Edinburgh is—one of the most noble streets, yet without question the most squalid and spoiled of any street in Europe, with beautiful stately old houses standing sadly among the hideous growths of yesterday, and evil smells and evil noises enough to sicken every visitor and to shame every man who has any thing to do with such a careless and wicked sacrifice of the city’s pride and ornament.[A]Buteven in the midst of this disgraceful debasement there remain beyond the screen of the great old houses glimpses of the outlets which the old citizens provided for themselves—old court-yards, even old gardens, old houses secure within their little enclosures where the air is still pure and the sky is still visible. Lily’s heart rose a little as she came out of the narrow entrance of the close into one of these unexpected openings. If he were here, he would be well. She could see the green beyond and the high slopes of Salisbury Crags. There was something in the vision of greenness, in the noble heights flung up against the sky, which restored her confidence.
But it was perhaps well that Beenie had spoken even so little adroitly on the way, for, indeed, Marg’ret was not found at her old address. She had never gone back there, they were told, since the time when she was called away in the summer to attend a lady in the North. She had not, indeed, been expected back. She had given up her rooms on going away, and removed her little furniture, and the rooms had been relet at once to a member of the same profession, who hoped to be sometimes mistaken for Marg’ret, a person of high reputation in her own line. The landlady knew nothing of the baby she had now to take care of nor where she was. The furniture? Oh, yes, she could find out where the furniture had been taken, but Marg’ret herself, she felt sure, had never come back. She was maybe with the lady still—the lady in the North. She was so much thought upon that whiles they would keep her, if the baby were delicate, for months and months. She had a wonderful way with babies, the woman said. (At this Lily, who had been leaning heavily on her attendant’s arm, with her pale face hidden under her veil, and all her courage gone, began to gather a little spirit and looked up again.) Oh, just a wonderful way! They just throve wi’ her like flowers in May. What she did different from ither folk there was not one could tell: if it was the way she handled them, or the way she fed them, or the pittin’ on o’ their claithes, with fykes and fancies that a puir buddy with theman’s meat to get and the house to keep clean had no time for. But the fack was just this, that there was nobody like Marg’ret Bland for little bairns. They were just a different thing a’thegither when they were in her hands.
As this little harangue went on Lily’s feeble figure hanging on Beenie’s arm straightened itself by degrees. She put up her veil and beamed upon the homely woman, who showed evident signs that she had little time, as she said, to keep herself tidy for one thing. Lily was not discouraged by so small a matter. She said, holding out her hand: “Then you would leave a baby in her hands and have no fear?”
“Eh, my bonnie leddy,” cried the woman, with a half shriek, wiping her hands upon her apron before she ventured to touch the lady’s glove, “I would trust Marg’ret Bland maist to bring them back from the deid.”
“We must find her, that is all,” said Lily, as they turned away, Beenie trembling and miserable, with subdued sniffs coming from under her deep bonnet. Her mistress, in the petulance which neither anxiety nor trouble could quench, gave her “a shake” with her arm, which still leaned upon hers, though Lily for the moment was the more vigorous of the two. “We must find her, that is all! She must be clever indeed if she can hide herself in Edinburgh and you and me not find her, Beenie! We must search every street till we find her!” Lily cried. The color had come back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes. That blessed assurance that, wherever Marg’ret might be, the baby was safe, doubly safe in her skilled and experienced hands, was to the young mother like wine. The horror of the disappointment seemed to be disguised, almost to pass away, in that unpremeditated testimony. If it was for to-morrow rather than for to-day so long as he was so safe, so well, so assured against all harm, as that! “We have only to find her,” Lily said, dragging Beenie back to the hackney coach, in which they immediately drove to the place where Marg’ret, now to be spoken of as Mistress Bland, had been supposed to place her furniture. Butthis was no more than a warehouse, where the person in charge allowed disdainfully that twa-three auld sticks o’ furniture in that name were in his charge, but knew nothing more of the wumman than just that they were hers, and that that was her name. Lily, however, was not discouraged. She drove about all day in her hackney coach, catching at every clue. She went to the hospitals, where Mrs. Bland was known but supposed to be still with the lady in the North who had secured her services in the summer.
“If you know where she’s to be heard of,” one of the matrons said, “I will be too thankful, for there is another place waiting for her or somebody like her.”
“And is she such a good nurse as that?” cried Lily, glowing with eagerness all in a moment, though her face had relapsed into pallor and anxiety.
“She is one of the best nurses we have; and especially happy with delicate children,” the matron answered with some astonishment. And she tapped Beenie on the shoulder and said an indignant word in her ear. “Woman!” she said, “are you mad to let your mistress wander about like this, when it’s well to be seen she’s just out of her bed, and in my opinion not long past her time?”
“My mistress,” said Beenie, with a gasp, “is just a young lady—in from the country.”
“Just you get her back as fast as you can,” said the experienced woman, “or you’ll have her worse than ever on your hands again.”
But this was what Beenie could not do. She had to follow Lily’s impetuous lead on many a wild-goose-chase and hopeless expedition here and there from one place to another during the rest of the day; and when they returned to their lodgings, worn out and cast down, in the evening, it was still the mistress who had the most strength and spirit left. “There is only one thing to do now,” she said, while Beenie placed her on the hard sofa beside the fire, and endeavored to induce her to rest. Her face wasvery pale and her eyes very bright, with a faint redness round the eyelids accentuating the absence of color. “There is one thing to do. Mr. Lumsden”—she paused a little after the name, as if it made her other words more difficult or exhausted her breath—“will have come back now to his lodging. You know where that is as well as I do. You will go and tell him that he is to come to me here.”
“Mem!” cried Beenie in great perturbation.
“Did you think,” said Lily, very clear, in a high, scornful tone, “that I would come to Edinburgh and not see my husband? Is it not my duty to see my husband? You will go to him at once!”
“It is no that,” cried Beenie; “I thought you would see him first of all. He’s your man, oh! my dear, dear lassie—you’re married upon him never to be parted till death comes atween you. I would have had you see him first of a’, and weel ye ken that; but now when you’re wearied out body and mind, and nae satisfaction in your heart, and every thing that is atween ye worse and worse by reason of muckle pondering and dwelling on it—oh, mem, my dear, no to-night, no to-night! You have a sharp tongue, though you never mean it, and he is a gentleman that is not used to be crossed and has aye had his ain way. Oh, mem, he’s a masterful man, though he’s never been but sweet as sugar to you. Try to take a sleep and rest, and wait for the morn. The morn is aye a new day.”
“I am glad,” said Lily, with shining eyes, “that you think I have a sharp tongue, Beenie; and you may be sure, if ever I meant it in my life, I will mean it now. But I will not discuss Mr. Lumsden with you or any one. You will just go to him——”
“Mem, let me speak once, if I’m never to say a word again!” cried Beenie. “That your heart should be sore to see the dear bairn, to take him back into your airms, oh, that I can weel understand. So is mine, though I’m far, far from being what you are to him, and no to be named in the same breath. But, mem, oh, my dear leddy, my bonnieMiss Lily! if I may just say that once again, what will ye do with him when you have him? Oh, let me speak—just this once. You canna, canna take him to that auld gentleman at hame; you canna do it. He has maybe not been much to you in the years that are past, but he’s awfu’ fond of you now. He looks to you to make him a home, to be the comfort of his old age. Oh! I’m no saying he deserves it at your hands. But what do the best of us deserve? We just get what we dinna deserve from God the first, and sometimes from a tender he’rt here below. And he is an auld man and frail; he has maybe no long to live. Will you tell him a’ that long story, how we’ve deceived him and the whole world, and about your marriage, and about the birth, and a’ in his house, that he meant for such different things?”
“Beenie,” said Lily, “stop, or you will kill me. If I have deceived him so long, it was with no will of mine. Oh, God knows, if none of you know, with no will of mine, nor yet intention! Is that not the more reason that I should deceive him no longer? He may turn me away. What will that matter? We will be poor creatures the two of us, you and me, if we cannot help ourselves and the darling bairn.”
“But it will maitter to him,” said Beenie steadily, “the poor auld gentleman in that lonely house. He’s been a kind of a father to you, if no so tender a father as might have been. I’m no saying you should have deceived him, but that’s done, and it canna be undone. If you tell him now, it will maybe kill him at the hinder end, and whether that will be better you must just think for yoursel’, for I have said all that I’m caring to say.”
Lily had covered her face with her hands, and there was a moment of silence, unbroken save by a sob from Beenie, who naturally, having spoken forth her soul, was now crying as if her heart would break.
“Beenie,” said Lily, all at once looking up, “you will go to Mr. Lumsden, who will be now at his lodgings dressing, I would not wonder, to go out to dinner—that iswhat is most likely—and tell him I am here. I would not wish to make him lose his engagement if he has one; you can say that.”
“Oh, mem!” murmured Beenie under her breath.
“But when it suits with his convenience, I would like to see him, to ask him a question or two. Go now, go,” she said impatiently, “or you will be too late.”
Weeping, Beenie went forth to do her mistress’s behest. Weeping, she put on her big bonnet, with a veil over it, of a kind of Spanish lace with huge flowers, which was the fashion of the day, and which allowed here and there a patch of her tearful countenance to appear, blocking out the rest. She found some difficulty in gaining admittance to Ronald, who was, his landlady informed her, “dressing to go out to his dinner,” as Lily had foretold, and it was in the full glory of evening dress that he came forth upon her after she had fought her way to his sitting-room, and had waited some time for his appearance. He was very much startled by the sight of her, and came up taking her hand, demanding: “Lily—how is my Lily?” with an energy and anxiety which partly quenched Beenie’s unreasonable exasperation at the sight of his dress.
“She is here, sir, and wishful to see you,” said Beenie, “when it’s convenient to you.”
“Lily here—where? What do you mean? Convenient! Do you mean she is at the door?”
“It is not likely, sir,” cried Beenie with indignant disgust.
“What do you mean, woman? Lily who, you wrote to me, was just recovered from a nearly fatal illness!”
“And that’s true. Her blood would have been on the head of them that brought it on her if it had not been for the mercy of God.”
“Where is she?” cried Lumsden, seizing his hat.
“She said,” said Beenie with much intensity: “‘He will most likely be going out to his dinner. I will not have him break his engagement for me!’”
“I think,” he cried, “that you mean to drive me mad! Where is she? Does any one know she is here?”
“It is known she is here,” said Beenie sententiously, “to get change of air, as is thought, after her long, long illness; but, in fack, to look for her dear little bairn, which is the object in her ain mind, my poor bonnie leddy. And, oh, sir! if ye ken where the baby is, as ye must ken, having taken the responsibility upon your hands, for we canna find him, we canna find him! and it will just break her heart and she will die!”
“Here—and looking for the child without consulting me!” he said, with an exclamation of anger and astonishment. He flung on a coat rapidly, and, almost thrusting Beenie out of the room before him, hurried her away. A few more questions put to her as they hastened along the streets showed him exactly the state of the case. It was no running away. Lily had not come to him to throw herself upon his mercy, to be owned and established and have her child restored to her in the legitimate way. Had it been so it would have been very difficult to reject her, to silence her prayer and send her back, without losing hold upon her altogether. Had he lost hold upon her altogether without that? He was very much alarmed, but yet he felt that the situation was less impossible than if she had come to demand her place at his side and public acknowledgment. She did not want him—she wanted her baby; and what without him could she do with her baby? how produce it, how account for it? Ronald began to feel more at his ease, to feel himself again master of the situation as he hurried Beenie, who was very tired and wretched, and scarcely able to keep up with him, to Lily’s refuge. Let no one suppose for a moment that he meant to disown her, that any dishonor was in his thoughts. In the last resort, if nothing else was to be done, Ronald had no intention but to stand faithfully by his wife. He had not, indeed, any power of doing otherwise; for were there not Mr. Blythe and the two witnesses and the marriage lines against him? But, as a matter of fact, he never thoughtof that, although he breathed more freely when he knew no such claim was intended, and felt once again that the helm was in his own hands.
But in the meantime how to meet Lily was occupation enough for his thoughts. He walked along the darkling streets, with the wind in his face and a whirlwind of thought in his mind. How was he to meet her—what was he to say to her? It was an interview on which might depend the whole after-course of his life.
Itwas a very little, homely lodging in which Lily was, the little parlor of an old-fashioned poor little house, intended at its best to receive an Edinburgh lawyer’s clerk, or perhaps a poor minister or teacher, on his promotion. Ronald had never seen his wife in such surroundings. He gave a cry of surprise and dismay as he pushed open the door. How often had she said that she would share any poverty with him, and yet it hurt him to see her here, out of her natural sphere, like a princess banished into a sordid world of privation and ugliness. At the sound of his voice Lily sprang up from the slippery black hair-cloth sofa on which she had been reposing. He thought at first it was to meet him as of old with open arms and heart to heart, but of this she showed no sign, nor even when he rushed forward to take her into his arms did she make any movement. She had seated herself on the sofa again, drawing back in an attitude of repulsion which could not be mistaken. “Lily!” he cried, “Lily! Is this the way you receive me? Have you nothing to say to me?”
“Oh, yes, I have a great deal to say to you. Give Mr. Lumsden a chair, Beenie. It is as I thought; you were going out to dinner,” said Lily, with a gleam of exasperation at the sight of his evening dress, which was of coursewholly unreasonable. “Why should you have broken your engagement for me?”
“You know well I would break any engagement for you,” he said. “You must know all that I have suffered during the past two months, unable to see you, even to hear of you, and not a word, not a word from yourself all that time.”
“What hindered you coming to see me?” she asked. “What prevented you? If I had died, as seemed likely, it could have done you no harm in the world, for with me every hope of Uncle Robert’s money, which is what has been my destruction, would have fallen to the ground.”
“Lily, you never will understand! I did go to Kinloch-Rugas. I was once under your windows, but got no satisfaction. A man has to be silent and endure where a woman cries out. I did what I could to——”
“That is enough,” said Lily, waving her hand. “Between you and me there need be no more talking. I sent for you for one thing, to ask you one question—where is my baby? You took him out of my arms; bring him back again to me, and then there may be ground to speak.”
“He is my baby as well as yours, Lily. I have the responsibility of the family. I did what I felt to be best both for him and you.”
“What was best?” she cried. “Are you a god to judge what is best? But I will not argue with you. Give me my baby back! His mother’s arms—that is his natural place! Give me back my child, and then, perhaps, I may hear you speak.”
He had thought this matter over as he came along with the rapidity of highly stimulated thought, and a sudden great necessity for decision; he had thought of it often before, looking at the subject from every point of view. To give her back the baby was to ruin every thing for which he had fought. He had not deprived himself of the company of a wife he loved, he said to himself, for a small motive; not for nothing had he encountered all the difficulties of the position in the past, and all her reproaches,tacit and expressed. Her very look at him had often been very hard to bear, and yet he paused now before making his last stroke. Once more, like lightning, the question passed through his mind, what other way was there? Was there any other way in which her mind could be satisfied and her foolish search made an end of? Could he in any other way secure her return to her home, and the carrying out to the end of his scheme? But on the other hand would she ever forgive him for what he must now do? He had not more than a moment to carry on that controversy, to make his final decision. And she was looking at him all the time: Lily’s eyes, which so often had smiled upon him, so often followed him with tenderness and met him with the sudden flash of love and delight, were fixed upon him steadily now, shaded by curved brows, regarding him sternly without indulgence, without wavering or softening. He was no longer to Lily covered with the glamour of love. She saw him as he was, nay, worse than he was, with a look that took no account of his real feeling toward herself, or of what was in fact a perverted desire to do the best, as he saw it, for her as well as for himself. Would these eyes ever soften, whatever he might do or say? Would she ever forgive him even now?
“Lily,” he said with an effort, overcoming the dryness of his throat, trying still to gain a little time. “I am your husband, I am your natural head and guide; it is my part to judge what is wisest, what is the best thing for you. I am older than you, I am more experienced in the world. I know what can be done, and what cannot be done. Whatever you may wish and whatever you may say, it is for me to judge what is the best.”
It is not often that a woman hears an uncompromising statement of this kind with patience, and Lily was little likely to have done so in her natural condition of mind, but at present she had no thought but one. “I have told you,” she cried, “that you can speak after, and that I will hear. But in the meantime bring me back my littlebaby. I ask nothing but that, I’ve no mind for reasoning now. Give me back my baby, my little bairn; that’s all I am asking. My baby, my baby! Ronald, if ever in your life you had a kind thought of me, a thought that was not all interest and money, and for the love of God, if ever you knew that, give me back my baby! and then,” she cried with a gasp—“then we can talk!”
His mind was made up now; there was nothing else for it. His face assumed an air of the deepest gravity; that was not difficult, for, indeed, his situation was grave enough. He put out his hand and laid it upon hers for a moment. “Lily,” he said, “I’ve been endeavoring to put off this blow. It was perhaps foolish, but I thought you would feel it less were you kept in ignorance than if all your hopes were cut off. Fain, fain would I bring back your baby and lay him in your arms again! You think I am a harsh man with no softness for a mother and a child, but you are mistaken, Lily. All that I am worth in this world I would give to bring him back. But there is but one hand that could do that.”
She raised herself up with a start, flinging off his hand, which again had touched hers. “What do you mean? What do you mean?” she cried, with wild staring eyes, eyes that seemed to be bursting from her head. She had been leaning back on the hard sofa in her weakness. Now she sat upright, her hands raised before her as if to push off some dreadful fate.
“You know what I mean, Lily,” he said, looking at her with a determined steadiness of gaze. “What is the life of an infant like that? It is like a new-lighted candle that every breath can blow out. Oh! blame me, blame me; I will not say a word. Tell me it was the night journey, the plunge into the cold, after the warm bosom of his mother. I thought it was the only thing I could do, but I will not say a word if you tell me I was to blame. Anyhow, whosever blame it was, the baby, poor little thing——”
“You mean he is dead!” said Lily, with a great cry.
He thought she had fainted: they all were in the wayof thinking she had fainted when all her life went from her, except pain, which is the strongest life of all. Every thing was black before Lily’s eyes; her heart leaped with a wild movement and then seemed to die and become still in her breast; her lips dropped apart, as if the last breath had passed there with that cry. Ronald thought she had fainted for the first moment, and then he thought she had died. He sprang up with anguish in his heart; he had done it, braving all the risks, knowing her weakness, yet Beenie, rushing in at the sound of Lily’s cry, with all her battery of remedies, forgave him whatever he might have done at the sight of his face. “I have killed her! I have killed her!” he cried; “it is my fault!”
“Oh, sir, you should mind how weak she is!” cried Beenie, bringing forth her essences, her salts, her aromatic vinegar. Their words came faintly to Lily’s brain. She struggled up again from the sofa, on which she had fallen back, beating the air with her hands, as if to find and clutch at something that would give her strength. “My baby is dead!” she cried, stumbling over the words. “My baby, my baby is dead, my baby is dead!” It seemed as if the wail had become mechanical in the completeness of her downfall and misery, body and soul.
“Oh, sir!” cried Beenie again. She looked at him once more with another light in her eyes. She was but a simple woman, but to such there comes at times a kind of divination. But Ronald’s look was fixed upon Lily, his eyes were touched with moisture, the deepest pain was in his face. Could it be that a man could look like that and yet lie?
“Say nothing to her!” she cried almost with authority; “let her get her breath. But tell you me, sir, when was it that this came about? I heard you tell her to blame you if she pleased. What for were you to blame? Tell me that I may explain after. Mr. Lumsden, she has a right to ken. When did it happen and what was the cause? For all so little as a bairn is, it’s no without a cause when the darlings die.”
“You take too much upon you, Beenie,” he said. “You have no right to demand explanations. And yet, why should not I give them?” he said, with a tone of resignation. “I fear the poor little thing never got the better of that night journey. What could I do? I could not stay there to face Sir Robert on his first arrival. I could not leave Lily to bear the brunt. I had but little time to think, but what was there else to do? I felt even that to snatch him away at a stroke would be better for her than a lingering parting with him, and the anticipation of it. There was every cause. Beenie, you’re a reasonable woman.”
“I will not say, sir,” said Beenie, “that it was without reason; me and Katrin have said as much as that between ourselves, seeing a’ that had gone before.”
“Seeing all that had gone before,” Ronald repeated with readiness. “But Providence,” he added, “turns all our wisest plans sometimes to nought. I know nothing about children——”
“But Marg’ret kent weel about children!”
“Yes, she was perhaps the more to blame, if any one is to blame. Anyhow, the poor little thing—I can’t explain it, you should see her, she would tell you—caught cold or something. How could I send you word whenshewas so ill? I would have kept it from her now, at least till she was stronger and better able to bear it.”
“It would, maybe, have been better,” Beenie said, with a brevity that surprised Ronald and made him slightly uneasy. The woman did not break forth into lamentations, as he had expected, but that might be for Lily’s sake, who, lying back again upon the white pillow which Beenie had placed behind her head, with the effect of making her almost transparent countenance, with its faint but deepened lines, look more fragile than ever, was coming gradually to herself. Tears were slowly welling forth under her closed eyelids, but she was very still. Whether she was listening, or whether she was absorbed in her own sorrow and careless of what was going on, he could nottell. Anyhow, it was a relief to him that she was silent, and that the woman who was her closest attendant and confidant was so easily satisfied. He began to question her anxiously as to where Lily should go for her convalescence now that her object in coming there was so sadly ended. Portobello, Bridge of Allan, wherever it was, he would go at once and look for rooms. He would come when she was settled and spend as much time as possible with her. He took the whole matter at once into his own hands. And it was with a sensation of relief that he concluded after all this was said that he could now go away. “You will do well to get her to bed and give her a sleeping-draught if you have one,” he said, bending over Lily with a most anxious and tender countenance as she lay, still with her eyes closed, against the pillow. It was not how he had expected her to take this dreadful news which he had brought: he had expected a passion of grief, almost raving; he had expected violent weeping, a storm of lamentation. He had, on the contrary, got through very easily; the tears even had ceased to hang upon Lily’s closed eyelids. He bent down over her and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. She shrank from the touch, indeed, but yet he felt that he must expect so much as that.
“There is but one thing, sir,” said Beenie: “the woman Marg’ret, that does not seem to me to be such a grand nurse as we heard she was—you say we should see her and she would tell us a’. And that is just what I’m wanting, to see her, if you could tell me where to find her.”
“I tell you! How should I know?” he said. “She will be in the same place where we found her before, I suppose.”
“No, sir, she is not there.”
“Then she will have gone off to nurse somebody else. That’s her way of living, isn’t it? No, I can tell you nothing about her. You may suppose the sight of her was not very pleasant to me after—— But she is a well-known person. You will find no difficulty in finding her out.”
“If that’s your real opinion, Mr. Lumsden——”
“Of course it is my opinion. I will take a run to the Bridge of Allan to-morrow, and in the evening I will bring you word.”
With this, and with careful steps, not to disturb Lily, but yet with an uneasy soul and no certainty that he had succeeded in his bold stroke, Lumsden went away, Beenie respectfully accompanying him to the door. But when it was closed upon him, Beenie, though no light-footed girl, flew up the stairs, and rushing into the room with her hands outstretched, was met by Lily, who fell upon her maid’s shoulder, both of them saying together: “It is not true! it’s no true!”
“The Lord forgive him!” said Beenie. “And, oh, I hope you’ll be able to do it, but no me! I’m not a good woman, I’m just a wild Highlander, and I could have put a pistol to his head as he stood there!”
“I can forgive him easier,” said Lily, with the tears now coming freely, “than if it had been true. Oh, Beenie! if it had been true!”
“Whisht, whisht, my darling leddy! but no, my dear, just greet your fill. Eh, mem, how little a man kens! They’re so grand with their wisdom, and never to think that a woman would send a scart of a pen whatever to let us ken the dear lamb was well. I’ve often heard the ministers say that the deevil’s no half as clever as he seems, and now I believe it this day. But you’ll just go to your bed and I’ll give you the draught, as he said, for this has been an awfu’ day.”
“Yes, I’ll go, to be strong for to-morrow,” said Lily, and then she turned back and caught Beenie again, throwing her arms round her. “But first,” she cried, “we’ll give God thanks on our bended knees that my baby is safe. Oh, if it had been true!”
They both felt the baby’s life to be more certain and more assured because his father had sworn he was dead, and they knew that was not true.
Next morning they were both up betimes and hadchanged their lodging early, going not to Portobello nor to the Bridge of Allan, but to a village on the seaside, very obscure and little thought of, where, late as the season was, they could still spend a week or two without being remarked; and when she had settled her mistress there, Beenie went back to Edinburgh to search again and again through every corner that could be thought of, where Marg’ret might be heard of, but in vain.
They went again next day, and every day, together, and I think traversed Edinburgh almost street by street on a quest so hopeless that both had given it up in their heart before either breathed a word of her despair. Then they did what seemed even to Lily (and still more to Beenie) a most terrible and unparalleled thing to do, and to which she had great difficulty in bringing her mind. This was to apply to the police on the subject, what we should call putting it into the hands of the detectives. Perhaps even now there are innocent persons to whom the idea of “sending the police after” an innocent wanderer still seems a dreadful thing to do. And these were days in which the idea of the detective was little developed and still less understood. They are not always still the most successful of functionaries, but they have at least become heroes of the popular imagination, and a certain class of fiction is full of the wonderful deeds they have succeeded in doing, when all things were arranged to their hand. I do not know that there was a single individual of the order at that time in Edinburgh under the present title and conditions, but the thing must have existed more or less always; and when, with many hesitations and much trouble of mind, Lily made her appeal to the ingenuity of the police service to find the missing woman, it was with a little flutter of hope that she saw Margaret Bland’s name and description taken down. Beenie would not even be present when this was done. She lifted up her testimony, declaring that nothing would induce her to send the police after a decent honest woman that had never done any body any harm. “Oh, mem, you may say what you like,”Beenie cried. “She has had no ill intention. Send the pollisman after Anither if you will. It wasna her contrivancy, it wasna her contrivancy! I would sooner die myself than harry a woman to her ruin and take away her good name!” This had been the peroration with which Beenie had broken away, slamming the door in the face of the official who came to take Miss Ramsay’s orders. Lily was very unhappy and deeply depressed. She had no one to stand by her. “It is for no harm. You will understand she is to come to no harm. Her address only—that is all I want,” she cried. “We’ll put it,” said the man, writing down his notes in his little book, “that it will be something to her advantage. That or a creeminal chairge is the only way of dealing with yon kind of folk.”
“Yes, yes—let it be something to her advantage,” Lily cried. “And it will,” she said, “it will! it will be more to her advantage than any thing she has ever known. You will take care that she is not frightened, not harmed in any way, not in any way!”
“How should it harm an innocent person, if this person is an innocent person?” the functionary said, and left Lily trembling for what she had done, and unable to bear the eye of Beenie, who would scarcely for a whole day after forgive her mistress. They themselves lived in terror of being found, perhaps, in their turn, hunted down by the pollis, Beenie cried—“for if you can do it for her, mem, what for no him that has nae scruples for you?” Lily in her heart trembled too at this thought. It seemed to her that if such means were set in action against herself she would die of misery and shame.
Ten days later she returned to Dalrugas, a little stronger, for her youth and vigor, and the distraction of her thoughts, even though so painfully, from all preoccupation with herself, had given her elastic vitality its chance of recovery: but a changed and saddened woman, never again to be the Lily of the past. Her husband had not sought her, at least had not found her, nor had she wished him to do so; but yet that he should not have penetrated so very easy amystery seemed to prove to her that he had not wished to do so, and, despite of all that had come and gone, that was a very different matter. Lily’s heart was as heavy as a woman’s heart could be as she went home. The whole secret of her existence, the mystery in which she had been wrapped, which she had felt to be so guilty a secret, and a mystery so oppressive, seemed now to be about to melt away, leaving her for her life long a false and empty husk of being, an appearance and no reality. All this tremendous wave of existence seemed to have passed over her head and to be gone, leaving her, as she was, Lily Ramsay, her uncle’s companion, the daughter of the desolate house, and no more, neither wife nor mother, nothing but a false pretence, a pitiful ghost, the fictitious image of something that she was not, and never again could be.
Itwas not without much thought that Lumsden decided to leave his wife unmolested when she fled from him. It did not cost him much trouble to discover where she had gone, and he watched her proceedings and those of Beenie carefully, and had little difficulty in discovering what their object was. But he had foreseen all that and taken his precautions, and he had no doubt as to the result. With Lily’s absolute inexperience, and the few facilities which existed at that period, a very simple amount of care would have been enough to baffle her. But he had taken a great deal of care. Margaret Bland and her charge were out of the reach of any researches made in Scotland, and his mind was quite easy as to the chances of further investigation, for Scotland was very much more separated from the rest of the world in those days than it is now. I do not say that it did not cost him a pang to know that Lily herself was within reach and to refrain from seeing her, from saying a word further to excuse or explain, andfrom making at least an endeavor to recover her confidence. But he had gone too far now for excuses and expedients, and he felt that it was wiser to refrain from every thing of the kind until the moment came when, in the course of nature, he would be liberated from all restrictions and be able to go to her and claim her freely, without fear of interference. If he could do so, bringing a great joy and surprise in his hand, he felt that he was more likely to be received and forgiven than if he were able only to establish a reconciliation upon the old basis of concealment and clandestine meetings, which now, indeed, would be impossible. He thought that absence would draw her heart toward him, and that in the silence she would make his excuses to herself better than he could do; and what would not a man merit who would bring back to a mother, who had mourned for him as dead, her living child? He said over to himself, being a man of literary taste, some verses of Southey’s, who was more thought of then as a poet than now: