“Oh, do not speak like that, do not put me in mind that we are both deceivers! I have forgotten it, now that we are here.”
“We are no deceivers,” he said. “It is all quite true; you put me on your own beast. And where did you get all that strength, Lily? You must have almost lifted me in your arms, you slender little thing, a heavy fellow like me!”
“Oh, you did very well on your one foot,” said Lily, trying to laugh; but she shuddered and the tears came into her eyes. She was aching still with the strain that necessity had put upon her, but he did not think of that—he only thought how strong she was.
“Here, you two,” said the minister, “I’m going to read you a bit out of the paper. It is just full of stories, as good as if I had told them myself.”
“Oh, never heed with your stories, father,” said Helen; “keep them till Lily goes away, for she has a wonderful way with her, and keeps things going. Our patient will not be dull while Lily is here.”
Was that all she meant, or did Helen, too, suspect something? The two lovers interchanged a glance, half of alarm, half of laughter, but Helen went and came, unconscious, sometimes pausing to turn the cushion under the bad foot, or to suggest a more comfortable position, with nothing but kindness in her mild eyes.
Ronaldwas, as he had prophesied, a long time getting well. Even Helen was a little puzzled, she who thought no evil, at the persistency of his suffering; at the end of the second week he could, indeed, stumble about with histwo sticks, but still complained of great pain when he tried to walk. The prolonged presence of the visitor began at last to become a little trouble, even to the hospitable Manse, where strangers were entertained so kindly, but where there was but one maid-of-all-work, with the occasional services, chiefly outdoors, of the minister’s man; and an invalid of Ronald’s robust character, whose presence necessitated better fare and gave a great deal of additional work, was a serious addition both to the expenses and labors of the house. It would have been much against the traditions of the Manse to betray this in any way; but there was no doubt that the minister was a little more sharp in his speeches, and apt to throw a secret dart, in the disguise of a jest, at the guest whose convalescence was so prolonged. Lily rode down from Dalrugas every day to help to nurse the patient, that Helen might not have the whole burden of his helplessness on her shoulders; but Lily, too, became aware that, delightful though this freedom of meeting was, and the long hours of intercourse which were made legitimate as being a form of duty, they were beginning to last too long and awaken uneasy thoughts. Helen, who was so tender to her at first, became a little wistful as the days went on. The gentle creature could think no harm, but perhaps it was her father’s remarks which put it into her head that the two young people were making a convenience of her hospitality, and that all was not honest in the tale which had brought so unlooked-for a visitor under the shelter of her roof. And then the village, as was inevitable, made many remarks. “Bless me, but the young leddy at Dalrugas is an awfu’ constant visitor, Miss Eelen. She comes just as if she was coming to her lessons every morning at the same hour.” “She is the kindest heart in the world,” said Helen. “You see, this gentleman that sprained his foot is a friend of her uncle’s, and she could not take him to Dalrugas, where there is nobody but servants; and she will not let me have all the trouble of him. A man, when he is ill, takes a great deal of attendance,” said the minister’s daughter, with a smile.
“Losh! I would just let him attend upon himsel’,” said one.
“He should send for a sister, or somebody belonging to him,” said another.
“Oh, not that,” said Helen—“I could not put up a lady, there is but little room in the Manse—and with Miss Lily’s help we can pull through.”
“He should get an easy post-chaise from Aberdeen—there’s plenty easy carriages to be got there nowadays—and go back to his ain folk. He’s a son of Lumsden of Pontalloch, they tell me; that’s not so far but that he might get there in a day.”
“I have no doubt he will do that as soon as he is well enough,” said Helen; but all these remarks made her uneasy. Impossible for Scotch hospitality to give a hint, to intimate a thought, that the visitor had overstayed his welcome—and a man that had been hurt and was, perhaps, still suffering! “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. But it troubled her gentle mind that Lily’s visits should be so remarked, and it was strange—or was it only the village gossip that made her feel that it was strange? Lily perceived all this with an uneasy perception of new elements in the air.
“Ronald,” she said one day, when they were alone for a few minutes, “you could put your foot to the ground without hurting when you try. You will have to go away.”
“Why should I go away?” he said, with a laugh. “I am very comfortable. It is not luxury, but it does very well when I see my Lily every day——”
“But, oh,” she cried, the color coming to her cheeks, which had been growing pale these few days, “there are things of more consequence than Lily! The Manse people are not rich——”
“You need not tell me that,” he said, looking round at the shabby furniture with a smile.
“But, oh, Ronald, you don’t see! They try to get nice things for you, they spend a great deal of trouble upon you, and they were glad at first—but it is now a fortnight.”
“Lily, my love,” he said quickly, “if you have ceased to care for this chance of meeting every day—if you want me to go away, of course I will go.”
“Do you think it likely I should have ceased to care?” she said, with tears in her eyes. “But we must think of other people, too.”
“Thinking of other people is generally a mistake. We all know how to take care of ourselves best—unless it is here and there some one like you, if there is any one like my Lily. But, dear, I give very little trouble. What is there to do for me? Another bed to make, another knife and fork—or spoon, I should say, for we have broth, broth, and nothing but broth—and a little grouse now and then, sent to them by somebody, and therefore costing nothing.”
“It is ungenerous to say that!” Lily cried.
“My dearest, you will tell me what present I can send them when at last I am forced to tear myself away. A good present that will make up to them—a chest of tea, or a barrel of wine, or—— But I don’t want to go away, Lily; I would rather stay here and see you every day until I am forced to go back to my work.”
“Oh, and so would I!” cried Lily; “but,” she added, with a sigh, “we must think of them. Mr. Blythe sits always, always in this room. It is the sunny room in the house, and he likes it best. But you see he has gone into his little study this day or two—which is very dreary—all because we are here.”
“Very considerate of him,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “if that is a reason for going away, that they now leave us sometimes alone. I fear it will not move me, Lily; you must find a better than that.”
“Oh, Ronald, will you not see?” cried Lily in distress. But what could a girl do? She could not put understanding into his eyes nor consideration into his heart. He was willing to take advantage of these good people, and the inducement was strong. She spoke against her own heart when she urged him to go away, and she was glad to be laughed out of her scruples, to be told of the “goodpresent” that would make up for every thing, of the gratitude that he would always feel, and his conviction that he gave very little trouble, and added next to nothing to their expenses. “Broth is not expensive,” he said, “and the grouse, you know, Lily, the grouse!” Lily turned her head away, sick at heart. Oh, it was not how he should speak of the people who were so kind to him; but still, when she mounted Rory—now quite docile and accustomed to trot every day into Kinloch-Rugas—in the afternoon, she could not but be glad to think that she might still come to-morrow, that there was at least another day.
One of these afternoons the parlor was full of people, under whose eyes Lily could not continue to sit by the side of the sofa and minister to the robust invalid’s wants. There was the doctor, who gave him a little slap on his leg and said: “I congratulate ye on a perfect cure. You can get up and walk when you like, like the man in the Bible.” And the school-master’s wife, who said: “Eh, what a good thing for you, Mr. Lumsden, and you been on your back so long.” And there was the assistant and successor, Mr. Douglas, who was visibly anxious to get rid of all interlopers and speak a word to Helen. Oh, why did he not follow Helen when she went out to open the door for her visitors, and leave Lily free to say once more to Ronald, but more energetically: “You must go!”
“I was wanting to say, sir,” said Mr. Douglas, “and I may add that I have Miss Eelen’s opinion all on my side, that I would like very much if you would say a parting word to the lads that are going out to Canada. We have taken a great deal of trouble with them, and a word from the minister——”
“You are the minister yourself, Douglas; they know more of you than they do of me.”
“Not so, Mr. Blythe. I am your assistant, and Miss Eelen she is your daughter and the best friend they ever had; but it’s your blessing the callants want, and a word from you——”
“My blessing!” the old man said, with an uneasy laugh.“You’re forgetting, my young man, that there’s no sacerdotal pretensions in the auld Kirk.”
“You blessed them when they were christened, sir, and you blessed them and gave them the right hand of fellowship when they came to the Lord’s table. I’m thinking nothing of sacerdotalism. I’m thinking of human nature. We have no bishops, but while we have ordained ministers we must always have fathers in God.”
Mr. Blythe had never been of this new-fangled type of devotion. He had been an old Moderate, very shy of overmuch religion, and relying upon habit and tradition and a good deal of wholesome neglect. But the young man’s earnestness, backed as it was by the serious light in Helen’s eyes, brought a color to his old face. He was a little ashamed of the importance given to him, and half angry at the young people’s high-flown notions. “I am not sure,” he said, “that I go with you, Douglas, nor with Eelen either, in your dealings with these lads. You just cultivate a kind of forced religion in them, that makes a fine show for a moment; it’s the seed that fell by the wayside and sprang up quickly, but had no root in itself.”
“We can never tell that, sir,” said the assistant; “it may help them when they have no ordinances to mind them of their duty. If they remember their Creator in the days of their youth——”
“’Deed,” said the old minister, “it is just as often as not to forget every thing all the quicker when they come to man’s estate. Solomon knew mainy things, but not the lads in a parish so near the Highlant line.”
“Anyway, father, it will be kindly like, and them going so far, far away.”
“That is just it,” said Mr. Blythe: “why should they go far, far away? Why couldn’t ye let them jog on as their fathers did before them? I’m not an advocate for emigration. There are plenty of things the lads could do without leaving their own country. Let them go to Glasgow, where there’s work for every-body, or to the South. You think you can do every thing with your arrangementsand your exhortations, and looking after more than ye were ever asked to look after. I have never approved of all these meetings and things, and your classes and your lessons, and all the fyke you make about a few country callants. Let them alone to their fathers’ advice and their mothers’. You may be sure the women will all warn them to keep off the drink—and much good it will do, whatever you may say, either them or you.”
“But just a word of farewell, sir,” pleaded the assistant; “we ask no more.”
“And that is just a great deal too much in present circumstances,” cried the old minister. “Where would ye have me speak to them—a dozen big country lads, like colts out of the stable? I cannot go out to the cold vestry at night, me that seldom leaves the house at all. And the dining-room is too small, and what other room have we free? Eelen, you know that as well as me. I cannot have them up in my bedchalmer, and the kitchen, with lasses in it, would be no place for such a ceremonial. No, no; we have no room, that is true.”
“I hope, sir,” said Ronald from his sofa, “you are not saying this from consideration for me. I’d like nothing better than to see the boys, and hear your address to them. It would be good, I am sure, and I am as much in need of good advice as any of them can be.”
“You are very considerate, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, after a pause. “It is a great thing to have an inmate that takes so much thought. But how can I tell that it would not be bad for you in your delicate state, with your nurses at your side all the day?”
“Delicate! I am not delicate!” cried Ronald, with a flush. “It is only, you know, this confounded foot.”
“Well, Douglas,” said the minister, “between Mr. Lumsden’s confoondit foot and your confoondit pertinacity, what am I to do? Since your patient, Eelen, is so kind and permits the use of our best parlor, have them in, have ben your callants. I must not be less gracious than my own guest,” the old man said.
Lily went away trembling after this scene, giving Ronald a beseeching glance, but she had no opportunity for a word. Next day, still tremulous, she returned, to find him still there, a little defiant, not to be driven out. But a short time after, when she was again preparing to go into the “toun”—without any pleasant looks now from her household, or complaisance on the part of Dougal, who openly bemoaned his pony—the whole population of Dalrugas turned out to see the inn “geeg” once more climbing the brae. It contained Ronald and his portmanteau, speeding off to catch the coach, but incapable, as he said, in the hearing of every-body, of going away without thanking and saying farewell to his kind nurse. “Do you know what this young lady did for me?” he said to the little company, which included Rory, ready saddled, and the black pony harnessed, with the boy at his head. “She lifted me, I think, from where I lay, and put me on her own beast, like the good Samaritan. She was more than the good Samaritan to me. Look at her, like a fairy princess, and me a heavy lump, almost fainting, and with but one foot. That is what charity can do.”
“Well, it was a wonderful thing,” Katrin allowed, “but maist more than that was riding down ance errand to the town to take care of ye every day.”
“Ah, that was for Miss Blythe’s sake and not mine,” he said. “May I come in, Miss Ramsay, to give you her message? Oh, Robina, I am glad to see you here. I can carry the last news to Sir Robert, and tell him how both mistress and maid are thriving on the moor.”
It was all false, false, as false as words that were true enough in themselves could be. Lily ran up the spiral stair, while Beenie helped him to follow. The girl’s heart was beating high with more sensations than she could discriminate. This was the parting, then, after so long a time together; the farewell, which was more dreadful than words could say—and yet she was glad he was going. He was her own true-love, and nobody was like him in the world, and yet Lily’s mind revolted against every word he said.
“Why did you say all that?” she cried, breathless, when they were alone. “It was not wanted, surely, here!”
“Necessary fibs,” he said. “You are too particular, Lily, for me that am only carrying out my rôle. You see, I am obeying you and going away at last.”
“Oh, Ronald, it was not that I wanted you to go away.”
“No, if I could have gone away, yet stayed all the same. But one can’t do two opposite things at the same time. And, Lily, it must be good-by now—for a little while. You will look out for me at the New Year.”
“Do you call it just a little while to the New Year?” she cried, with the tears in her eyes.
“Three months, or a little more. I shall not come to Kinloch-Rugas; I’ll find a lodging in some little farm. And in the meantime you will write to me, Lily, and I will write to you.”
“Yes, Ronald,” she said, giving him both her hands. Was this to be all? It was not for her to ask; it was for him to say:
“My bonnie Lily! If I could but carry you off, never to part more! But if nothing happens to release you, if Sir Robert does not relent, mind, my dearest, we must make up our minds and take it into our own hands. He is not to keep us apart forever. You will let me know all that goes on, and whether those people down stairs have reported the matter; and I, for my part, will take my measures. When we meet again, every thing will be clearer. And, Lily, on your side, you will tell me every thing, that we may see our way.”
“There will be nothing to tell you, Ronald. There will be no report sent; Uncle Robert, I think, has forgotten my existence. There will be nothing, nothing to say but that it is weary living alone here on the moor.”
“Not more weary than my life in Edinburgh, pacing up and down the Parliament House, and looking out for work. But we’ll see what is going to happen before the New Year; and I will send the present to those good Manse folk, and you will keep up with them, for they may be very usefulfriends. Is it time for me to go? Well, I will go if I must; and good-by for the present, my darling, good-by till the New Year!”
Was it possible that he was gone, that it was all over, and Lily left again alone on the moor? She ran to Beenie’s room, which was on the other side of the house, to watch the inn “geeg” as long as it was in sight. Nothing is ever said of what is intended to be said in a hasty last meeting like this. It was worse than no meeting at all, leaving all the ravelled ends of parting. And was it true that all was over, and Ronald gone and nothing more to be done or said?
Thedead calm into which Lily fell after all the agitations of this wonderful period was like death itself, she thought, after the tumult and commotion of a climax of life. Those days during which she had trotted down to the village on Rory, the mountain breezes in her face, and all the warmest emotions stirred in her breast, days full of anxiety and expectation, sometimes of more painful feelings, agitations of all kinds, but threaded through and through with the consciousness that for hours to come she would be with her lover, ministering to his wants, hearing him speak, going over and over with him, in the low-voiced talk to which the old minister behind his newspaper gave, or was supposed to give, no heed, their own prospects and hopes, their plans for the future—all those things that are more engrossing and delightful to talk of than any other subjects in heaven or earth—were different from all the days that had passed over her before. Her youthful existence was like a dream, thrown back into the distance by the superior force and meaning of all that had happened since: both the loneliness and the society, the bitter time of self-experience and solitude, the joy of the reunion, the love so crossed and mingled which hadgrown with greater intensity with every chance. The little simple Lily who had “fallen in love,” as she thought, with Ronald Lumsden, as she might have fallen in love with any one of a half-dozen of young men, was very, very different from the Lily who had been torn out of her natural life on his account, who had doubted him and found him wanting, who had been converted into the faith of an enthusiast in him, and conviction that it was she, and not he, that was in the wrong. Their stolen meetings on the moor, which had startled her back into the joy of existence, which had been so few, yet so sweet; their little meal together, which was like a high ceremony and sacrament of a deeper love and union; the tremendous excitement of the accident, and the agitated chapter of constant yet disturbed intercourse which followed (disturbed at last by a renewed creeping in of the old doubts, and anxiety to push him forward, to make him act, to make him think not always of himself, as he was so apt to do)—all these things had formed an epoch in her life, behind which every thing was childish and vague. She herself was not the same. It happens often in a woman’s life that the change from youth and its lighter atmosphere of natural, simple things comes before the mind is developed, before the character is able to bear that wonderful transformation. Lily at first had been essentially in this condition. Her trial came to her before she had strength for it, and every new point of progress was marked, so to speak, with a new wound, quickly healed over, as became her youth, yet leaving a scar, as all internal wounds do. Even when the thrill of happiness had been in her young frame and mind it had been intensified by a thrill of pain: the pang of secrecy, the sharp sting of falsehood—falsehood which was abhorrent to Lily’s nature. She had laughed as other girls laugh at the stratagems of lovers, their devices to escape the observation of jealous parents, the evils that are said to be legitimate in love and war. Nobody is so severe as to judge harshly these aberrations from duty. Even the sternest parent smiles at them when they are notdirected against himself. But when it came to inventing a story day by day; when it came to deceiving Katrin, with her sharp eyes, at one end, and Helen’s unsuspicious soul at the other—then Lily could not bear the tangled web in which she had wound herself. She had to go on; it was too late to tell the truth now, she had said to herself, day by day, her heart aching from those thanks which Helen showered upon her for her kind attendance upon the unexpected guest. “If it had not been for you, Lily, what could I have done?” the minister’s daughter had said, again and again; and Lily’s heart had grown sick in the midst of her strained and painful happiness at Ronald’s side.
Now this was over and another phase come. She had urged him to go, feeling the position untenable any longer in a way which his robust self-confidence had not felt; but when suddenly he had taken the step she urged, Lily felt herself flung back upon herself, the words taken out of her mouth, and the meaning from her mind. All her little fabric of life tumbled down about her. Those habits which are formed so quickly, which a few days suffice to bind upon the soul like iron, dropped from her, and she felt as if the framework by which she was sustained had broken down, and she could no longer hold herself erect. Her life seemed suddenly to have lost all its meaning, all its occupations. There was no sense in going on, no reason for its continuance merely to eat meals, to take walks, to go to bed and to get up again. She looked behind her, to the immediate past, with a pang, and before her, to the immediate future, with a blank sense of vacancy which was almost despair. When the “geeg” that carried him away was gone quite out of sight, Lily went slowly back to the drawing-room, and seated herself at the window from which she had first seen him appearing across the moor. It had been then all ablaze with the heather, which now had died away into rustling bunches of dead flowers, all dried like husks upon the stalks, gray and dreary, like the dull evening of a glowing day. Herheart beat dull with the reverberation of all those convulsions that had gone through it. And now they were all over, like the glow of the heather—and what was before her? The winter creeping on, with its short days and long nights; storm and rain, when even Rory would not face the keen wind; solitude unbroken for weeks and months; and beyond that what was there to look forward to? Oh, if it had been but poverty—the little flat under the roofs in a tall Edinburgh house, and to work her fingers to the bone! Poor Lily, who knew so little what working your fingers to the bone meant! who thought that would be blessedness beside one you loved, and in the world where you were born! So, no doubt, it would have been; but yet, in all probability, though she did not intend it so, it would have been Robina’s fingers, not hers, that were worked to the bone.
I would not have the reader think that, translated into ordinary parlance, all this meant the vulgar fact that Lily was longing to be married, and would not accept the counsels of patience and wait, though she was only twenty-three, and had so many, many years before her. Had Ronald been an eager lover, ready to brave fortune for her sake, and consider that, for love, the world were well lost, she would no doubt have taken the other side of the question, and preached patience to him, and borne her own part of the burden with a smile. But it is very different when it is the lover who is prudent, and when the girl, with an unsatisfied heart, has to wait and know that her happiness, her society, her life, are of less value to him than the fortune which he hopes, by patience, to secure along with her; also that she can do nothing to emancipate herself, nothing to escape from whatever painful circumstances may surround her, till he gives the word, which he shows no inclination to give, and which womanly pride and feeling forbid her even to suggest; also, and above all, that in his hesitation, in his prudence and delay, he is falling short of the ideal which every lover should fulfil or lose his place and power. This was the worst ofall: not only that Ronald was acting so, but that it was so far, far different from the manner in which Ronald, had he been the Ronald she thought, would have acted. This gave the bitterness under which Lily’s heart sank. Again, she did not know what he meant to do, or if he meant to do any thing, or if she were to remain as she was, perhaps for long years, consuming her heart in loneliness and vacancy, diversified by moments of clandestine meeting and unlovely happiness, bought by deceit. She could not again yield to that, she said to herself, with passionate tears. Though her heart were to break, she would not heal it at the cost of lies. It might not have given Lily many compunctions, perhaps, to have deceived her uncle; but to deceive Helen, to deceive kind Katrin and Dougal, to give false accounts of the simplest circumstances—oh! no, no; never again, never again! She said this to herself, with passionate tears falling like rain, as she sat at her lonely window on many a dreary day, straining her eyes across the moor, where the rain so often fell to double the effect of those tears. Let them give each other up mutually; let them part and be done with it if he chose; but to deceive every-body and meet secretly, or meet openly upon the falsest of pretences—oh! no, no, Lily said to herself, never more!
But how these decisions melted when, in the heart of the winter, there began to dawn the promise of the New Year, it is easy to imagine, and I do not need to say. Lily, it must be remembered, had no one but Ronald to represent to her happiness and life. She had never had many people to love. Her father and mother had both died before she was old enough to know them. She had no aunt, though that is often an unsatisfactory relation, not even cousins whom she knew, which is strange to think of in Scotland—nobody to take her part or whom she could repose her heart upon but Beenie, her maid, to whom Lily’s concerns were her own sublimated, and who could only agree in and intensify Lily’s own natural impulses and thoughts. Ronald was all she had, the onlyone who could help her, the sole deliverer possible, and opener to her of the gates of life. To be sure, she might have renounced him and so returned to her uncle, to be dragged about in a back seat of his chariot, if not at its wheels; though, indeed, even this was problematical, for Sir Robert was a selfish old man, who was, on the whole, very glad to have got rid of the burden of a young woman to take about with him, and considered that she would do very well at the old Tower, and might be quite content with such a quiet and comfortable home, a good cook (which Katrin was), a pony to ride upon, and the run of the moor. He had half forgotten her existence by this time, as Lily divined, and was absent “abroad” in that vague and wide world of which stayers at home in Scotland knew so much less then than every-body knows now. And as the time approached for Ronald’s return, Lily, in her longing for him, added to her longing for something, for some one, for society, emancipation, something that was life, began to forget all her old aches and troubles of mind; the doubts flew away; she remembered only that Ronald was coming, that he was coming, that the sun was about to shine again, that there was happiness in prospect, love and company and talk and sympathy, and all that is good in youth and life. This time she must manage so that the deceit of old would be necessary no longer. Helen should know that the two who had met so often in the Manse parlor had come to love each other. What so natural, what so fitting, seeing they had spent so much time together under her own wing and her own mild eyes? And Katrin and Dougal should be permitted to see what Lily was very sure they had divined already, that the poor gentleman whom Lily had nursed so faithfully was more to her than any other gentleman in the world. He should come to Dalrugas to see her, and be with her openly as her lover in the sight of all men. If Sir Robert heard of it, why, then she must escape, she must fly; the pair must at last take it, as Ronald had said, into their own hands—and Lily did not feel that she would be verysorry if this took place. At all events now every thing should be open and honest, clandestine no more.
It seemed as if he had come to the same decision when he arrived on the night which was then called in Scotland, and is perhaps still to some extent, Hogmanay—why I do not know, nor I believe does any one—the last night of the year. He came in the early twilight, when the short, dark day was ending, and the long, cheerful evening about to begin. What a cheerful evening it was! the fire so bright, the candles twinkling, the curtains drawn, and from the kitchen the sound of the children singing who had come out in a band all the way from the village to call upon Katrin:
“Get up, gudewife, and shake your feathers,And dinna think that we are beggars,For we are bairns, come out to play;Get up and gie’s our Hogmanay.”
“Get up, gudewife, and shake your feathers,And dinna think that we are beggars,For we are bairns, come out to play;Get up and gie’s our Hogmanay.”
“Get up, gudewife, and shake your feathers,And dinna think that we are beggars,For we are bairns, come out to play;Get up and gie’s our Hogmanay.”
Lily was about to go down, flying down the spiral stairs, her heart beating loud with expectation, wondering breathlessly when he would come, how he would come, who alone could bring the Hogmanay cheer to her, and in the meantime ready, for pure excitement, and to keep herself still, to join the women in the kitchen, and fill the children’s wallets with cakes, cakespar excellence, the oatmeal cakes to wit, which are still what is meant in Scotland by that word, baked thin and crisp, and fresh from the girdle, making a pleasant smell; and over and above these with shortbread, in fine, brown farls, the true New Year’s dainty, and great pieces of bun, the Scotch bun, which is something between a plum-pudding and the Pan Giallo of the Romans, a mass of fruit held together by flour and water. Great provision of these delights was in the kitchen, which was all “redd up” and shining for the festival, with Katrin in her best cap, and Beenie in a silk gown and muslin apron, a resplendent figure. A band of “guisards” had accompanied the children, ready to enact some scene of the primitive drama of prehistoric tradition.Lily was hastening down to join this party, in a white dress which she too had put on in honor of the occasion. The kitchen was very noisy, full of these visitors, and nobody but she heard the summons at the big hall-door. Lily hesitated for a moment, her heart giving a bound as loud as the knock—then opened it. And there he stood—the hero and the centre of all!
“And, eh, what a lucky thing to come this night that Miss Lily may have her ploy too! You will just stop and eat your bit dinner with her, Maister Lumsden!” Katrin cried.
“Will it be a ploy for Miss Lily? I would like to be sure of that.”
“Eh, nae need to pit it in words,” said Katrin: “look at her bonnie e’en; and reason good, seeing that she has never spoken to one of her own kind, and least of all to a young gentleman, since the day ye gaed away.”
“I am staying at Tam the shepherd’s, on the other side of the moor,” said Ronald.
“Losh me! at Tam the shepherd’s, for the shootin’?” she asked in a tone of consternation.
“Well,” he said, with a laugh, “you can judge, Katrin, for yourself.”
“Ay, ay,” she said, brightening all over, “I judge for mysel’, sir, and I see it’s just the auld story. Tam the shepherd’s an awfu’ haverel, but his wife’s an honest woman, and clean,” she added, “as far as she kens. But you shall have a good dinner with Miss Lily, I promise you, for once in a way.”
Lily only half listened, but she heard all that was said. And her heart danced to see his open look, and the words in which there was no pretence of shooting, or any reason, save the evident one, for his presence there. The excuses were all over; there was to be no more deception. Honestly he came as her lover, endeavoring to throw no dust in the eyes of her humble guardians. If they had been noble guardians, holding her fate in their hands, Lily could not have been more happy. They were not to be deceived.Openness and honesty were to be around her in the house which was her home. What was wanted but this to make her the happiest girl that ever piled shortbread into a child’s wallet in honor of Hogmanay, and the New Year which was coming to-morrow? A new year, a new life, a different world! Katrin came up to her with half-affected horror and tender kindness, grasping her arm. “Eh, Miss Lily,” she cried, “you’ll just ruin the family, and we’ll no have a single farl of shortbread left for our ain use; and the morn’s the New Year! Ye are giving every thing away. Na, na, we must mind oursel’s a wee. No more for you, my wee man. Miss Lily’s just ower good to you. Run up the stairs, my bonnie leddy, for Beenie is setting the table, and you’ll get your dinner, you and the gentleman, before the guisards begin.”
“The gentleman!” Lily felt her countenance flame, as she laughed and turned away. “How kind you are, Katrin,” she said, “to provide me with company, too, me that never sees any body.”
“Am I no kind,” cried Katrin in triumph, “and him for coming just at the right moment? I am awfu’ pleased that you have a pairty of your ain to bring in a good New Year.”
How strange, how delightful it was to sit down opposite to him at the table, to eat Katrin’s excellent dinner, which, though it was almost impromptu, was so good—trout and game, the Highland luxuries, which were, indeed, almost daily bread on the edge of the moor, but not to Ronald, who amid all their happiness was man enough to like his dinner and praise it. “This is how we shall sit at our own table, and laugh at all our little troubles when they are over,” he said.
“Oh, Ronald!” said Lily, with a little cloud in the midst of joy. They might be little troubles to him, but not to her, all lonely in the wilderness.
“At all events they will soon be over,” he said. His eyes were bright and his tones assured; there was no longer any doubt in his look, which she examined in themoments when he was not looking at her with an anxious criticism. “And tell me about the good folk at the Manse, and kind Miss Eelen and her assistant and successor. Is he to be her assistant, too, as well as her father’s? I had a famous letter from the old gentleman about the wine I sent him. And, Lily, I think that with very little trouble I will get him to do all we want as soon as you can make up your mind to it. After all this time we must not have any more delay.”
“To do all we want?” she said, looking up at him with surprise. The dinner was over by this time, and they had left the table and were standing by the fire.
“Yes,” he said. “What do we want but to belong to each other, Lily? You don’t need grand gowns or all the world at your wedding. Oh, yes, I should have liked to see my Lily with all her friends about her, and none so sweet as herself. But since we cannot do that, why should we mind it, when the old minister here can make every thing right in half an hour?”
“Ronald,” she said, with a gasp, “you take away my breath!”
“Why,” he cried, “is not this what has been in our minds for ever so long? Have you not promised, however poor I was, in whatever straits——”
“Yes, yes, there is no question of that.”
“And why, then, should it take away your breath? My bonnie Lily, is it not an old bargain now? We have waited and waited, but nothing has come of waiting. And Providence has put us in a quiet place, with nothing but friends round, and a good old minister, a kind old fellow, who likes a good glass of wine and knows what he’s drinking!” He laughed at this as he drew her closer toward him. “Lily, with every thing in our favor, you will not put me off and make a hesitation now?”
Oh, this was not quite the way, not the way she looked for! Yet she drew her breath hard, that breath which fluttered in spite of herself, and put both her hands in his. No, after so long waiting why should she make a hesitationnow? And then they went down to the kitchen together, arm in arm, Lily yielding to the delightful consciousness that there was no need for concealment, to see the guisards act their primitive drama, and to bring in the New Year.
Oh, the New Year! which was coming in amid that rustic mirth among those true, kind, humble friends to whom the young pair were as gods in the glory of their love and youth. Lily trembled in her joy: what bride does not? What would it bring to them, that New Year?
ThisNew Year’s Eve remained, amid all the experiences of Lily, a thing apart. It became painful to her to think of it in after times, but in the present it was like a completion and climax of life, still all in the visionary stage, yet so close on the verge of the real that she became herself like an instrument, thrilling to every touch, answering every air that blew, every word that was said, in each and all of which there were meanings hidden of which none was aware but herself. There was the little dinner first, so carefully prepared by Katrin, so tenderly served by Beenie, the two young people sitting on either side of the table as if at their bridal banquet, while the sound of the festivities going on in the kitchen came up by times when the door was opened: a squeak of the fiddle, the sound of the stamping of the guisards as they performed their little archaic drama, adding a franker note of laughter to the keen supreme pleasure that reigned above. Beenie went and came, always bringing with her along with every new dish that little gust of laughter and voices from below, to which she kept open half an ear, while with the other she attended to what her little mistress said.
“You maun come down, Miss Lily, to do them a grace: they a’ say they’ll no steer till they’ve seen the youngleddy; and they’re decent lads just come out to play, as the bairns say in their sang, neither beggars nor yet stravaigers, but lads from the town, to please ye with their bit performance; and I ken a’ their mothers!” Beenie cried with a little outburst of affectionate emotion.
When Lily went down accordingly, followed closely by her lover, the little primitive drama was repeated, with more stamping and shouting than ever; and then there was an endless reel, to the sound of the squeaking fiddle, in which Lily danced as long as she could hold out, and Beenie held out, as it seemed, forever, wearing out all the lads.
“Eh! I was a grand dancer in my time,” she admitted, when she had breath enough, while the fiddle squeaked on and on.
And then, as was right, Ronald said good-night as the rural band streamed away from the door. The curious group of the guisards, some of them in white shirts outside their garments, some in breastplates of tin, with an iron pot on their heads by way of helmet, “set him home” with much respectful kindness. “But I wuss ye were coming with us to the toun, for Tam the shepherd’s is no a howff for a gentleman,” they said.
“Any hole will do for me,” said Ronald in the exhilaration of the evening; and all the house came out of doors to speed the parting guests. The moon shone mistily over the long stretch of the moor, throwing up a sinister gleam here and there from the deep cuttings, and flinging a veil as of gossamer over the great breadth of the country. The air was fresh, not over-cold, “saft,” as Dougal called it, with the suggestion of rain, and the sudden irruption of voices and steps into the supreme and brooding silence made the strangest effect in the middle of the night. Lily stood watching them as they streamed away, Ronald so distinct from them all as they streamed down under the shadow of the bank, to show again, chiefly by reason of their disguises, upon the road a little way down. Lily lingered until a speck of white in the distance was all thatwas visible. She was wrapped in a plaid which Ronald had put round her, drawing the soft green and checkered folds closely around her face, and as warm physically as she was at heart. Now he was himself; he had flung all prudences and fancies to the wind; he had forgotten Sir Robert and his fortune, and every other common thing that could come between. Lily danced up the spiral staircase with a heart that sang still more than her lips did as she “turned” the tune to which they had been dancing. No one can keep still to whom “Tullochgoram” is sung or played. She danced up the stairs, keeping time faster and faster to the mad melody—the essence unadulterated of reckless fun and drollery.
“Eh, my bonnie leddy!” Beenie cried, who had gone before with the candles; while Katrin stood looking after her, and Dougal locked and bolted the great hall-door. Katrin shook her head a little: she was much experienced. “Eh, if he be but worthy of her!” she sighed.
“It’s late, late at nicht, and the New Year well begun,” said Robina. “Eh, Miss Lily, you’ll never forget this New Year?”
“Why should I forget it?” said Lily. “You had better wait till it is past before you say that. But maybe you are right, after all, for there never was a Hogmanay like this; and to think that the morn will come, and that it will be no more like the other days than this has been! Beenie, did you ever hear that folk might be as feared for joy as for trouble? or is it only me that am so timorsome, and cannot tell which it is going to be?”
“’Deed, and I’ve heard o’ that many’s the day. It’s just the common way, my bonnie dear. Many a bonnie lassie would fain flee to the ends of the earth the day before her bridal that is just pleased enough when a’s said and done. You mustna lose heart.”
“I’m not losing heart,” said Lily. “The day before my bridal! Is that what it is? I will just be happy to-night and never think of the morn; for when I begin to think, it takes so many things to be satisfied, and Iwould like to be satisfied just for once, and take no thought.”
Robina had a great deal to do in Lily’s room that night. She kept moving to and fro, softly opening and shutting drawers and presses, laying away her mistress’s things with a care that was scarcely necessary, and meant only restlessness and excitement and an incapacity to keep still. Long before she had done moving about the half-lighted room Lily was fast asleep, her excitement, though presumably greater, not being enough to keep sleep from the eyes which were dazzled with the sudden gleam of something so new and strange in her life, as well as tired with an unusual vigil. Lily slept as soundly as a child till the clear, somewhat shrill daylight, touched with frost, shone upon her late in the wintry morning and called her up much more effectually than the wavering call of Beenie, who was hanging over her in the morning, as she had been at night, the first to meet her eyes.
“Eh, Miss Lily, what a grand sleep ye have had!” Beenie cried. She had slept but little herself, her head full of the new situation and all the strange things that might be to come. The house in general had a sense of excitement breathing through it, not visible, indeed, in Dougal, who was, as usual, wrestling with the powny outside, but very apparent in Katrin, who went about her morning work with an extremely serious face, as if all the cares of the world were on her shoulders. Robina and she had various stolen moments of communication through the day, indeed, which testified to a degree of confidence between them, and a mutual preoccupation.
“I’m no to say a word to her; but how am I to keep my tongue in my head when Dauvit himself says that when he was musin’ the fire burnt!”
“Losh,” cried Katrin, “if it was naething but haudin’ your tongue! but what I’ve to think of is mair than that. Eh, I’m doing that for Miss Lily I would do for none of my kin, no, nor Dougal himself; and I wish I was just clean out of it, for I’m no fond of secrets—they are uncanny things.”
“Eh, woman! ye wouldna betray them?” Beenie cried.
“Betray them? Am I a person to betray what’s trusted to me? But I wish there were nae secrets in this world. It’s just aye cheating somebody. Ye canna be straichtforward, do what ye will, when ye’ve got other folks’ secrets to keep, let alone them that are your ain.”
“I’m no sae particular,” said Beenie, with a little toss of her head, “and there will be no stress upon ye for long. It’s just the ae step.”
“I have my doubts,” said Katrin, shaking her head.
“Ye have your doubts? And what doubts would ye have? It will a’ be plain when ance it’s done. There are nae mair secrets after that! It’s just as I said, the ae step. Eh me, I could have likit it far better in Sir Robert’s grand house in George Square, and a’ Edinburgh there, and the Principal himself to join their hands thegether, and my bonnie Miss Lily in the white satin, and the auld lady’s grand necklace about her bonnie white neck. But we canna have every thing our ain gate. The Manse parlor is just a’ that can be desired in the circumstances we’re noo in; and when it’s done, it will just be done and naething more to say.”
But Katrin still shook her head. She was a far-seeing woman. “I’m no just sure we will be out of it sae easy as that,” she said.
This talk was not completed at once, but came in on various occasions, a few words here and there, as opportunity secured; and the two women, though both were excited and disturbed, did no doubt enjoy the rôle of conspirator, more or less, and felt that those secret consultations added a zest to life. Beenie, whose lips were sealed in the presence of her mistress, and Katrin, who had to maintain an aspect of absolute calm in the sight of Dougal, could not but feel a consciousness of superiority, which consoled them for much that was uncomfortable. But, indeed, it was exasperatingly easy to deceive Dougal. He suspected nothing; secrets or mysteries had never come his way. Life meant to him his daily work, his dailyparritch, the comfort of a crack now and then with his friends, a glass of toddy on an occasion, and the prevailing consciousness of being well done for at all times, with a clean hearthstone, and the parritch and the broth both well boiled and appetizing, more than fell to the lot of ordinary men. If he had known even that Katrin was keeping a secret from him, it is doubtful whether he would have been at all moved. He would have thought it some whigmaleerie of the wife’s, and would have remained perfectly easy in his mind, in the conviction that she would tell him if it was any thing he had to do with, and if not, wha was minding? Nothing that she did or said roused his curiosity to any great degree. There had need to be something more serious than Dougal to account for the little contraction over Katrin’s eyes.
This was, perhaps, more visible, however, after the conversation she had with Mr. Lumsden on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. I cannot tell what he said to her, but there was something in it additional to what he had said on the evening before, when he had told her and Beenie what their parts were to be in the little drama for which he had not yet fully prepared the chief actor of all. Lily waited for him at the window with a heart that beat high in her breast on that frosty morning, when all the stretches of the moor were crisp and white, and every little rowan-tree and bush of withered heather shone like something of frosted silver across the gray surface, tinged with a lower tone of whiteness. Lily saw him almost before he had come within the range of mortal vision, so far off that the road itself could not be seen, and only a faint speck that moved was distinguishable in the chill and frozen silence. The speck moved on, disappeared, came out again till it grew into absolute sight and knowledge, near enough to be recognized from the window, and hastily met at the door with a sweep of flying feet and hands outstretched. “My bonnie Lily! the only flower that’s not frosted!” he said. The change that had taken place between them was made plain by this: that he came quiteopenly to the door, and that Lily flew to meet him. There was no longer any occasion for the supposed accident of meetings on the moor. How this change came about Lily did not stop to enquire. It was, and that was enough; and she was too happy in it ever to wonder what could have been said or done underneath to make the lover’s appearance now a thing expected, and which it was unnecessary to attempt to conceal.
“It will perhaps be for to-morrow and perhaps for the day after; I am not certain yet,” Ronald said.
“What will perhaps be for to-morrow?” Lily cried, with a sudden flush on her cheek.
“We are not going to make any fuss about it, Lily. You promised me you would not desire that. It’s very easy to be married in our country. If we were to call Dougal up and Katrin, and say we were man and wife, we would be married just as fast as by all the ministers in the world.”
“Ronald!” cried Lily, growing pale.
“I am not suggesting such a thing. Do you think that I would put a scorn on my bonnie Lily with a marriage like that? Not I! What I cannot bear is that you should be stinted of one thing you would like—though, for my part, the less the better, I say, and the most agreeable to me. But no; I am not that kind of man. I like the sanction of the Kirk. I like every thing done decently and in order. That is why I say to-morrow or the next day, for I have not yet seen Mr. Blythe.”
“And is it to be so soon as that?” said Lily with awe.
“My darling, what object have we in waiting? The vacation is short enough anyway. We must not lose a day. You promised to be ready at a moment’s warning. Well, I’m giving you a day’s warning. If every thing had been right, it would have been you to fix the time, and all your fancies consulted. But we’re past that, Lily. You know you put yourself into my hands to have it done as soon as was possible.”
“Did I?” said Lily, confused; and then she added:“I know. I am not one to make a trouble. It is best to be done when we can—and as soon as we can—and end this dreary life.”
“That is what I knew you would say. No certainty, no ground to stand on, and not knowing what might happen at any moment. No, Lily, it is no time for scruples now.”
“Still,” said Lily, “I would have liked to have heard all your plans and what we are to do. It is fine planning. It is aye a pleasure, even when it comes to nothing. And now, when it must come to something——”
“That’s the difference, I suppose, between man and woman,” said Ronald, with a laugh. “I have no thought of any thing but one thing. I care nothing about plans. You, that are all made up of imagination, you shoot past and begin again. But me, I think only of getting my Lily, of having her for my own. I have neither plots nor plans in my head.”
“It is a good thing, then, that women think of them, for we can’t do without them,” Lily said. But she was soothed and pleased that her bridegroom should have no thought but for herself. Perhaps this was what was most fit for the man. The woman had the outset to think of, the new house to live in, and every thing else that was involved. The reverse thought gives pleasure in other circumstances. There is no consistency in the reasonings of this period of life.
“Let us go out now,” said Ronald; “the frost is hard, and it’s fine dry walking; we’ll get a turn round the moor, and then I will be off to the ‘toun’ to see the minister, and to-night I’ll come back and tell you all about it. Wrap up well, for it’s cold, but so bright that it does the heart good. But it is the day itself, and because it is the day, that does the heart most good,” he said, once more wrapping Lily up, close round her pretty throat, with the soft, voluminous folds of the plaid. The two faces so close together, the light in her eyes, the contagious happiness in his face, took every shadow from Lily’s heart. There hadbeen no shadows, only a faint sort of floating gossamer, which had no meaning, and now it melted all away.
The ramble round the moor filled all the bright noon of the wintry day. It was not possible to wander among the ling bushes, or by the soft, meandering lines of turf. All was crisp with the curling whiteness of the frost, except here and there where a prominent point had been melted and darkened by the sun. They went along the road, which crackled under their feet, with small ice crystals in every fissure. The mountains stood blue in a faint haze that seemed to breathe into the still air, and the moor stretched white, like a piece of crisp embroidery, under the shining of the light. How wintry the air was, and how exhilarating, tightening the nerves and stimulating every force! Toward the north the sky was heavy and spoke of snow, but there were soft breaks of blue and lines of yellow light in the brighter quarter. They walked now quickly as they faced the wind, now slowly as they turned their backs upon it, and, wrapped in their soft plaids, felt the soft glow and warmth mount to their youthful cheeks. I doubt if any summer ramble, in the sweetest air and among the flowers, was more full of pleasure. They talked to each other incessantly, but perhaps not very much that would bear repeating; yet there was a little veiled conflict certainly going on all the time, scarcely conscious, hidden in innocent questions and suggestions, in innocent seeming evasions. Lily wanted to ask so much, but half feared to put a direct question lest it should be an offence, while he wanted to keep every question at arm’s-length, but did not dare to do so lest it should excite suspicion. There was an occasional flash of the rapiers, soon covered up in the softest tones and touches, but still they kept their distinct parts: she anxious to see a little beyond, he eager to keep her within the limits of the day. He parried all her thrusts with this pretence: that his thoughts could not stray beyond to-morrow. “Sufficient unto the day is the happiness thereof,” he said.
Then they went in and had their mid-day meal together, once more attended by Beenie, with a world of meaning in every glance. “They are just twa bonnie doos crooning on a branch,” she said to Katrin, as she came down stairs for another dish. “Doos!” cried Katrin; “they have a very good will to their meat, that’s a’ that I can say.” “They are like twa bonnie squirrels in a wood,” cried Beenie, at her next dive into the kitchen, “givin’ aye a look the one to the ither.” “Squirrels, my certy! but I wouldna like to gether the nits for them a’ the year through,” said Katrin. But when Beenie came back for the pudding, and declared that “they were like twa bonnie fishes side by side in the burn, the ane mair silvery and golden than the other,” Katrin’s amazement and ridicule, and the excitement underneath, found vent in a shriek which brought Dougal hurrying in from the barn. “Losh, woman! are ye burnt in the fire, or have ye spilt the boiling pot upon ye, or what have ye done?” “I’ll gie you the boiling pot yourself, and a dishclout to pin to your tail, and that will learn ye to ask fule questions!” Katrin said.
Ronaldwalked into Kinloch-Rugas after the plentiful lunch upon which Katrin had made so many remarks. His head was buzzing and his bosom thrilling with the excitement natural at that period of existence. He loved Lily—as well as he was capable of loving—with all the mingled sentiment and passion, the emotions high and low, the very human and half divine, which are involved in that condition of mind. He was a healthy, vigorous, and in no way vicious young man. If he had not the highest ideal, he had not at all the lowered standard of a man whose mind has been debased by evil communications. He was, in his way, a true lover, at the climax of life which is attained by a bridegroom. His thoughts wereset to a kind of rhythmic measure of “Lily, Lily,” as he walked swiftly and strongly down the long road toward the village. If his mind had been laid bare by a touch of the angel’s spear, it would not, I fear, have satisfied Lily, nor any one who loved her, but it sufficiently satisfied himself. He did not want to look beyond the next step, which, he had convinced himself, was the right step to take; what was to follow was, he tried to assure himself, in the providence of God; or, if that was too serious (but Ronald was a serious man, willingly conceding to God the right to influence human affairs), it was open to all the developments, chances even, if you like to say so, of natural events. Who could say what would happen on the morrow? In the meantime a reasonable man’s concern was with the events of the day. And though he was not a highly strung person by nature, he was to-day all lyrical, and thrilling with the emotions of a bridegroom. He was not unworthy of the position. His very foot acknowledged that thrill, and struck the ground in measure, as if the iron strings of frost had been those of a harp. The passer-by, plodding along with head down and nose half sheltered from the cutting wind, took that member half out of the folds of his plaid to see what it was that was so bye-ordinary in the man he met. He did not sound like a common man going into the town on common business, nor look like it when the spectator turned to breathe the softer way of the wind for a moment and look after the stranger. Neither did Ronald feel like any one else on that wintry afternoon. He was a bridegroom, and the thrill of it was in all his veins.
It was nearly dark when he came in sight of the lights, chiefly twinkling lights in windows, for there was no gas as yet to illuminate every little place as we have it now. In the Manse, with its larger windows, it was still light enough, and the soft yellow and pink of the frosty evening sky lent color, as well as light, to the calm of the parlor, facing toward the west, where Mr. Blythe sat alone. It was the minister’s musing time. Sometimes he had adoze; sometimes he sat by the fire, but with his chair turned to the sunset, and indulged in his own thoughts. These were confessedly, in many cases, his old stories, over which he would go from time to time, with a choke of a laugh in the stillness over this and that: perhaps there were moments in which his musings were more solemn, but of these history bears no record. The Manse parlor had no feature of beauty. It was a very humdrum room; but to the minister it was the abode of comfort and peace. He wanted nothing more than was to be found within its four walls; life was quite bounded to him by these walls, and I think he had no wish for any future that went beyond them: hisScotsman, which lasted him from one day to another, till the next (bi-weekly) number came in; his books, chiefly volumes of old history or Reminiscences, sometimes a Scots (occasionally printed Scott’s) novel—but that was a rare treat, and not to be calculated upon; a bout of story-telling now and then with another clerical brother or old elder whose memory stretched back to those cheerful, jovial, legendary days, where all the stories come from: these filled up existence happily enough for the old minister. His work was over, and I fear that perhaps he had never put very much of his heart into that, and he had his daughter to serve him “hand and foot,” as the maids said. He did not need even to take the trouble of finding his spectacles (which, like most other people, he was always losing) for himself. “Eelen, where’s my specs?” he said, without moving. Such was this old Scotch presbyter and sybarite, and though a paradise of black hair-cloth and mahogany does not much commend itself to us nowadays, I think Mr. Blythe would gladly have compounded for the deprivation of pearly gates and golden streets could he have secured the permanence of this.
He was very glad to see Ronald, notwithstanding that he had become very anxious to get rid of him during his stay at the Manse. A visitor of any kind was a godsend in the middle of winter, and at this time of the year, and especially a visitor from Edinburgh, with news to tell, andperhaps a fresh story or two of the humors of the courts and the jokes of the judges, things that did not get in even toThe Scotsman. “And what’s a’ your news, Mr. Lumsden?” he said eagerly. Ronald, who had had many opportunities of understanding the old minister, had come provided with a scrap or two piquant enough to please him, and what with the jokes, and what with the politics, made a very good impression in the first half-hour of his visit. Then came the turn of more personal things.
“Yon was a fine glass of wine, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, with a slight smack of his lips.
“I am very glad you liked it, sir; it was chosen by one of my friends who is learned in such matters. I would not trust it to a poor judge like myself.”
“Better for you, Mr. Lumsden, better for you at your age not to be too good a judge. Look not upon the wine when it is red, says the prophet, which is just when it’s best, many persons think. I am strongly of his opinion when your blood’s hot in your veins, like the most of you young lads; but when a man begins to go down the hill, and when he’s well exercised in moderation, and to use without abusing, then a grand jorum of wine like yon makes glad the heart, as is to be found in one rather mysterious scripture, of God and man.”
“I hoped it would give you a charitable thought of one that was rather asorner, as I remember you said, upon your hospitality.”
“That was never meant, that was never meant,” said the minister, waving his large flabby hands. Ronald had risen from his seat and was now standing by the fire, leaning his arm on the mantel-piece. The slow twilight was waning, and though the daffodil sky still shone in the window, the fire had begun to tell, especially in the shadow of the half-lit room.
“You see, sir,” said Ronald, with a leap of his heart into his throat, and of the voice which accompanied it, coming forth with sudden energy, “there was more in that than met the eye.”
“Ay, do ye say so?” said Mr. Blythe, also with a quickened throb of curiosity in his voice.
“Miss Ramsay and I—had met in Edinburgh,” said Ronald, clearing his throat, “we had seen—a great deal of each other. We had, in short——”
“I always said it, I always said it!” said the minister. “I told Eelen the very first night. I’ve seen much in my day. ‘These two are troth-plighted,’ I said to my daughter, before ye had been in my house a single night.”
“I thought it was vain to attempt deceiving your clever eyes,” said Ronald; “I told Lily so; but ladies, you know, are never so sure—they think they can conceal things.”
“Thrust their heads into the sand like the ostriches, silly things, and think nobody can see them!” said the minister. “I know them well; that’s just what they all do.”
“Well, so it was, at least,” said Ronald. “You will not, perhaps, wonder now that I stayed as long as I could, outstaying my welcome, I fear, and wearing out even your hospitality; but it was a question of seeing Lily, without exciting any suspicion, in a natural, easy way.”
“I will not say much about that last, for it was more than suspicion on my part.”
“Ah, but every-body is not like you; neither your experience nor your powers of observation are common,” said Ronald. He paused a moment, to let this compliment sink in, and then resumed. “Mr. Blythe, I will admit to you that Sir Robert is not content, and that, in short, Lily was banished here to take her away from me.”
“I cannot think it a great banishment to be sent to Dalrugas, which is a fine house in its way, though maybe old-fashioned, and servants to be at her call night and day,” said the minister, “but you may easily see it from another point of view. Proceed, proceed,” he added, with another wave of his hand.
“Well, sir, I can but repeat: Sir Robert does not think me rich enough for his niece. She is his only kin; he would like her to marry a rich man; he would sacrifice her,my bonnie Lily, to an old man with a yellow face and bags of money.”
“Well, well, that’s no so unnatural as you think. I would like my Eelen to have a warm down-sitting if I could help her to it, to go no further than myself.”
“I understand that, sir; my Lily is worthy of a prince, if there could be a prince that loved her as well as I do. But it is me she has chosen and nobody else, and she is not one to change if she were shut up in Dalrugas Tower all her life.”
“Eh, I would not lippen to that,” said the minister; “she is but a young thing. Keep you out of the gate, and let her neither hear from you or see you, and her bit heart, at that age, will come round.”
“Thank you for the warning, sir,” said Ronald, with a laugh that was forced and uncomfortable; “that’s what Sir Robert thought, I suppose. But you may believe there is no pleasure to me in thinking so. And besides, it would never happen with Lily, for Lily is true as steel.” He paused for a moment, with a little access of feeling. It remained to be seen whether he was true as steel himself, and perhaps he was not quite assured on that point; yet he was capable, so far, of understanding the matter that he was sure of it in Lily, and the conviction expanded his breast with pride and pleasure. He paused with natural sentiment, and partly with the quickening of his breath, to take the full good of that sensation; and then he resumed:
“I am not rich, you will easily understand; we are a lot of sons at home, and my share will not be great. But I have a good profession, and in a few years, so far as I can see, I may be doing with the best. As far as family is concerned, there can be no question between any Ramsay and my name.”
The minister waved his hand soothingly over this contention. It was not to be gainsaid, nor was any comparison of races to be attempted. He said: “In that case, my young friend, if it’s but a few years to wait and youwill be doing so well, and both young, with plenty of time before ye, so far as I can see ye can well afford to wait.”
“I might afford to wait, that am kept to my work, and little enough time to think, but Lily, Mr. Blythe. Here is Lily alone in the wilderness, as she says. I’m forbidden to see her, forbidden to write to her.”
“Restrictions which ye have broken in both cases.”
“Yes,” cried Ronald. “How could we let ourselves be separated, how could I leave her to languish alone? I tried as long as I could. I did not write to her. I did not come near her, but flesh and blood could not bear it. And then when I saw how glad she was to see me, and how her bonnie countenance changed——” Here he nearly broke down, his voice trembled, so genuine and true was his feeling. “We cannot do it,” he said faintly, “and that’s all that’s to be said. Mr. Blythe, you are the minister, you have the power in your hands——”
“Eh, man! but I’m only the auld minister nowadays,” cried the old gentleman, with a sudden outburst of natural bitterness to which he very seldom gave vent. He was delighted to have nothing to do, but did not love his supplanter any more on that account. “Ye must ask nothing from me; go your ways to my assistant and successor—he is your man.”
“I will go to nobody but you!” cried Ronald, with all the fervor of a temptation resisted. “Mr. Blythe, will you marry Lily to me?”
Mr. Blythe made a long pause. “If ye are rightly cried in the kirk, I have no choice but to marry ye,” he said.
“But I want it done at once, and very private, without any crying in the kirk.”
“That would be very irregular, Mr. Lumsden.”
“I know it would, but not so irregular as calling up Beenie and Dougal and Katrin, and saying before them: ‘This is my wife.’”
“No,” said the minister, “not just so bad as that, but very irregular. Do ye know, young man, I would be subject to censure by the Presbytery, and I canna tell whatpains and penalties? And why should I do such a thing, to save you a month or two, or a year or two’s waiting, that is nothing, nothing at your age?”
“It is a great deal when people are in our circumstances,” cried Ronald. “Lily so lonely, not a creature near her, no pleasure in her life, no certainty about any thing: for Sir Robert might hear I had been seen about, and might just sweep her away, abroad, to the ends of the earth. You say she would forget, but she does not want to forget, nor do I, you may be sure, whereas, if you will just do this for us, you will make us both sure of each other forever, and I can never be taken from her, nor she from me.”