Маргарет Олифант
Sir Robert's Fortune
CHAPTER XX
It was all like a dream, a scene without light or sound, shadows moving in the faint twilight, at first not a word said. Beenie remained at the door, holding the handle to guard the entrance. Katrin had risen up too, and stood against the wall, trembling very much, but not betraying it in this faint light. These two were in the light side of the room, the half made visible by the window with its fading sunset glimmer. The other two passed into the darker side and were all but lost to sight. A sudden flicker of the fire caught the color of Lily’s dress and revealed her outline for the moment. She had taken off her hat, not knowing why, and the soft beaver with its feather was hanging down by her side in her hand. Katrin made a step forward and relieved her of it, trembling lest some dreadful voice should come to her ears out of the darkness, though not seeing the minister’s eyes, which shot upon her a fiery glance. Then he broke that strange haunted silence, in which so many thoughts and passions were hidden, by his voice suddenly rising harsh, sounding as if it were loud: it was not at all loud, it was, indeed, a soft voice on ordinary occasions, only in the circumstances and in the intense quiet it had a strange tone. To Ronald it sounded menacing, to Lily only half alarming, as she knew no reason why it should be less kind than usual; the women were so awe-stricken already that to them it was as the voice of fate. The brief little ceremony was as simple as could be conceived. The troth was not given, as in other rites, by the individuals themselves, but simply said by the old minister’s deepening voice, which he was at pains to subdue after the shock of the first words, and assented to by the bride and bridegroom, Lily, to the half horror of the two women, who gripped each other wildly in their excitement at the sound, giving an audible murmur of assent, while Ronald bowed, which was the usual form. “Yon’ll be the English way,” Katrin whispered to Beenie. “Oh, whisht, whisht!” said the other. And then in the darkness there ensued a few rolling words of prayer, the long vowels solemnly drawn out, the long words following each other slowly and with a certain grandeur of diction in their absolute simplicity, and the formula common to all: “Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” And then there was a little stir in the darkness and all was over.
“But there’s just this to say to you, young man,” came out of the gloom from the old voice, quavering a little with feeling or fatigue: “Forasmuch as ye have been wanting before, so much the more are ye pledged now to be all a man ought to be to this young creature that has trusted herself to you. If ever I hear an ill word of your conduct or your care, and me living, you will have one to answer to that will have it in his power to do you an ill turn, and will not refrain. Mind you this: if I am in the land of the living, and know of any hairm to this poor lassie, I will not refrain; and ye know what I mean, and that I am one that will do what I say.”
“If you think I require to be frightened into loving and cherishing my bonnie wife–” said Ronald, confused and alarmed, but attempting to take a high tone.
“Oh, Mr. Blythe!” cried Lily, “how little you know!” She could speak in the dark, where no one could see, though the light would have reduced her to silence and blushes. She put her hand with a pretty gesture within Ronald’s arm.
“I, maybe, know more than I’m thought to do,” he said gruffly; “light that candle that you’ll find on the mantel-piece, and let us get our work done.” The candle brought suddenly to light the confused scene, all the party standing except the figure of the minister, large and shapeless in his big chair. And there was a moment of commotion, while one by one they signed the necessary papers, the young pair quickly, the women with a grotesqueness of awe and difficulty which might have transferred the whole scene at once to the regions of the burlesque. Both to Katrin and Robina it was a very solemn business, slowly accomplished with much contortion both of countenance and figure. “Women, can ye not despatch?” Mr. Blythe said sternly. “My daughter may be here any minute, the time of my supposed rest is over, and this sederunt should be over too. Marget will be in from the kitchen with the lamp.”
“Oh, Beenie, be quick, quick!” murmured Lily. She had feared to be entreated with the constant hospitality of the Manse to wait until Helen came, and to take tea. It gave her a curious wound to feel that this was not likely to be the case, even though she was most anxious to escape. She was indeed a little frightened for Marget and the lamp, and for Helen and the tea; but it hurt her that the minister who had just made her Ronald’s wife should have any hesitation. Feelings are not generally so fine in rural places. A bride is one to be eagerly embraced, not kept out of sight. Though, indeed, she did not want to see Helen or any one, she said almost indignantly to herself.
“And now there are your lines, Mistress Lumsden,” the minister said. “Keep them safe and never let them out of your own hands, and I wish ye all that is good. If it’s been a hasty step or an unconsidered, it’s you that will probably have to bear the wyte of it. I will not deceive you with smooth things; but if there has been error at the beginning–”
“Excuse me,” said Ronald in a low fierce voice, “but there is snow in the sky, and it’s already dark, and I must take my wife away.”
“Don’t you interrupt me,” said the old minister, “or I will, maybe, say more than I meant to say. If there’s been error at the beginning, my poor lassie, take you care to be all the more heedful in time to come. Do nothing ye cannot acknowledge in the face of day. And God bless you and keep you and lift up the light of his countenance upon you,” he said, lifting up his arms. The familiar action, the familiar words, subdued all the group in a moment. He had not meant with these words to bless the bride that had been brought before him as poor Lily had been, but it had been drawn from him phrase by phrase.
And then the door opened, and Lily found herself once more outside in the keen air touched with the foretaste of snow which is so distinct in the North. The sky was heavy with it for half the circle from north to south, but in the west was something of that golden radiance still, and a clear blueness above, and one or two stars sparkling through the frost. She lifted her eyes to these with relief, with a feeling of consolation. Was that the light of His countenance that was to shine upon her? But below all things were dark and dreary. To the hurry of excitement which had possessed her before something vexing, troublous, had come in. She had wished, and was eager to hurry away, to escape Helen, but why had she been hurried away, made to perceive that she was not intended to see Helen? It was more fantastic than could be put into words. And Ronald too was in so great a hurry, eager to get her beyond the observation of the people coming from the market, almost to hide her in a sheltered corner, while he himself went to get the pony. “Nobody will see you here,” he said. She wished that nobody should see her, but yet an uncalled-for tear came to Lily’s eyes as she stood and waited. It looked almost as if it was a path into heaven, the narrow way which was spoken of in the Bible, that strip of golden light with the stars shining above. But it was not to heaven she wanted to go in the joy of her espousals, on her wedding day. She wanted the life that was before her—the human, the natural, the life that other women had; to be taken to the home her husband had made for her, to be free of the bonds of her girlhood and the loneliness of her previous days. But Lily did not know, not even a step of the path before her. It rushed upon her now that he had never said a word, never one definite word. She did not know what was going to happen to-morrow. To-night it was too late, certainly too late, to go further than Dalrugas, but to-morrow! She remembered now suddenly, clearly, that to all her questions and imaginings what they were to do he had never made one distinct reply. He had allowed her to talk and to imagine what was going to be, but he had said not a word. There seemed nothing, nothing clear in all the world but that one golden path leading up into the sky. “Lift up the light of His countenance upon you.” That did not mean, Lily thought, half pagan as the youthful thinker so often is, the blessing that is life and joy, but rather that which is consolation and calm. And it was not consolation or calm she wanted, but happiness and delight. She wanted to be able to go out upon the world with her arm in her husband’s and her head high, and to shape her new life as other young women did—a separate thing, a new thing, individual to themselves, not any repetition or going back. Standing there in the dark corner, hidden till he could find the pony and take her up secretly out of sight, hurrying away not to be seen by any one—Lily’s heart revolted at these precautions, even though it had been to a certain extent her own desire they should be taken. But, oh! it was so different, her own desire! that was only the bridal instinct to hide its shy happiness, its tremor of novelty and wonder. It was not concealment she had wanted, but withdrawal from the gaze of the crowd; but it was concealment that was in Ronald’s thought, a thing always shameful, not modest, not maidenly, but an expedient of guilt.
Perhaps Ronald was just a little too long getting the pony; but he was not very long. He had her safely in the little geeg, with all her wraps carefully round her, before fifteen minutes had passed; but fifteen minutes in some circumstances are more than as many hours in others. Lily was very silent at first, and he had hard ado to rouse her from the reflections that had seized upon her. “What are we going to do?” she said out of the heaviness of these reflections, when all that found its way to his lips was the babble of love at its climax. Was it that she loved him less than he loved her? He whispered this in her ear, with one arm holding her close, while Rory made his way vigorously along the road, scenting his stable, and also the snow that was coming. Lily made no answer to the suggestion. Certainly that murmur of love did not seem to satisfy her. She was overcome by it now and then, and sat silent, feeling the pressure of his arm, and the consciousness that there was nobody but him and herself in the world, with the seductive bewilderment of emotion shared and intensified, yet from time to time awoke sharply to feel the force over again of that question: “What are we going to do?” Oh, why had she not insisted on an answer to it before? The night grew darker, the snow began to fall in large flakes. They were more and more isolated from the world which was invisible round them, nothing but Rory tossing his shaggy ears and snorting at the snow that melted into his nostrils. By the time they reached the Tower, discovering vaguely, all at once, the glimmer of the lights and the voice of Dougal calling to the pony to moderate the impatience of his delight at sight of his own stable, they were so covered with snow that it was difficult for Lily to shake herself clear of it as she stumbled down at the great door. “Bide a moment, bide a moment; just take the plaid off her bodily. It’s mair snaw than plaiden!” cried Dougal. “Ye little deevil, stand still, will ye? Ye’ll get neither bite nor sup till your time comes. Have ye no seen the ithers on the road? Silly taupies to bide so long, and maybe be stormsted in the end!”
“They’re on the road, Dougal,” cried Lily, with humility, remembering that she had never once thought of Katrin and Beenie. “I am sure they’re on the road.”
“They had better be that,” he said angrily. “What keepit them, I’m asking? Sir, if ye’ll be advised by me, ye’ll just bid good-by to the young leddy and make your way to Tam’s as fast as ye can, for every half-hour will make it waur. It’s on for a night and a day, or I have nae knowledge of the weather.”
“Half-an-hour can’t make much difference, Dougal,” said Ronald, with a laugh.
“Oh, can it no? It’s easy to see ye ken little of our moor. And the e’en will be as black as midnicht, and the snaw bewildering, so that ye’ll just turn round and round about, and likely lie down in a whin bush, and never wake more.”
A half shriek came from Lily in the doorway, while Ronald’s laugh rang out into the night. “It will be no worse in half-an-hour,” he said.
“Ay, will it! There’s a wee bit light in the west the noo, but there will be nane then. Heigh! is’t you? Weel, that’s aye something,” Dougal said, as the other little vehicle, with its weight of snow-covered figures, came suddenly into the light; and in the bustle of the second arrival, which was much more complicated than the first, nothing more was said. Katrin and Beenie had shaken off the awe of their conspiracy. They were full of spirits and laughter, and their little cart crowded with parcels of every kind. They had found time to buy half the market, as Dougal said, and they occupied him so completely with their talk, and the bustle of getting them and their cargo safely deposited indoors, that the young couple stole upstairs unnoticed. “Tam may whistle for me to-night,” Ronald said, “and Dougal growl till he’s tired, and the snow fall as much as it pleases. I’m safe of my shelter, Lily. A friend in court is worth many a year’s fee.”
“Who is your friend in court?” she said, shivering a little. The cold and the agitation had been a little too much for Lily. Her teeth chattered, the light swam in her eyes.
It was Katrin who was the Providence of the young people. She it was who ordained peremptorily, not letting Dougal say a word, that to send Mr. Lumsden off to Tam’s cottage on such a night was such a thing as had never been heard of.
“I wouldna turn out a dog,” she cried, “to find its way, poor beast, across the moor.”
“I warned the lad,” said Dougal; “I tell’d him every half-hour would make it waur. It is his ain fault if he is late. What have you and me to do harboring a’ the young callants in the country, or out of it, that may come here after Miss Lily? You’ve just got some nonsense about true love in your head.”
“Am I the person,” said Katrin, “to have true love cast in my face, me that have been married upon you, Dougal, these thirty year? Na, na! I’m no that kind of woman; but I have peety in my heart, and there’s a dozen empty rooms in this house. I think it’s just a shame when I think of the poor bodies that are about, maybe sleepin’ out on the cauld moor. I’ll not take the life of this young lad, turning him away, and neither shall you, my man, if you want to have any comfort in your ain life.”
“I warned him,” said Dougal; “if he didna take my warning, it’s his ain wyte.”
“It shanna be mine nor yours either,” said Katrin, and, indeed, even Dougal, when he looked out, perceived that there was nothing to be said. The snow had fallen so continuously since their arrival that already every trace, either of wheels or hoofs, was filled up. The whiteness lay unbroken in the court-yard and up to the very door, as if no one had come near the house for days. Sandy was in the stable with his lantern, hissing over the little black pony as he rubbed him down; but even Sandy’s steps to the stable were wiped out by the snow-storm. It covered every thing, fair things and foul, and, above all, every trace of a path or road.
“I’m no easy in my mind about what Sir Robert would say,” he muttered, pushing his cap to his other ear.
“And what would Sir Robert say? If it had been a lad on the tramp, a gangrel person or selling prins about the road, he would never have grudged him a bed, or at the worst a pickle straw in the stable, on such a night. And this is a young gentleman of the family of the Lumsdens of Pontalloch, kent folk, and as much thought of as any person. Is’t a pickle straw the laird would have offered to a gentleman’s son like that? He’s just biding here till the storm’s over, if it was a week or a fortnicht, and I’ll answer for it to the laird!” Katrin cried.
Dougal looked at her in consternation. “A week or a fortnight! It’s no decent for the young leddy,” he said.
“It’s just a grand chance for the young lady—company to pass the time till her, and her all her lane. If he will bide—but maybe he will not bide,” said Katrin, with a sigh. Katrin, too, was a little anxious, as Lily was, for what to-morrow would bring forth. She had but taken the bull by the horns, in Dougal’s person, saying the worst that could be said. “But it’s my hope, Beenie,” she said afterward, with an anxious countenance, “that he’ll just take his bonnie wife away to his ain house as soon as the snaw’s awa’.”
“Oh, ay! ye needna have any doubt of that,” said Beenie, with a broad smile of content.
“Then you’ll just take off your grand gown and serve them with their dinner. I have naething but the birds to put to the fire, and that will take little time; and if they never had a good dinner before nor after, they shall have one that any prince might eat, between you and me, Robina, poor things, on their wedding night.”
CHAPTER XXI
The snow-storm lasted for about a week, day after day, with an occasional interval, with winds that drifted it, and dreadful nights of frost that made it shrink, but covered it over with sparkling crystals, and with occasional movements of a more genial temperature, that touched the surface only to make it freeze again more fiercely when that relenting was over. The whole landscape was turned to whiteness, and the moor, with all its irregular lines, rounded as if a heavy white blanket had been laid over the hummocks of the ling and the hollows and deep cuttings. The hills were white, too, but showing great seams and crevasses of darkness, from which all the magical color had been taken by the absence of light. Black and white was what every thing was reduced to, like the winter Alps, with a gray sky overhead still heavy with inexhaustible snow. This snow-storm was “a special providence” to the inhabitants of Dalrugas—at least to most of them. Dougal grumbled, and suggested various ways in which it might be possible for the lad from Edinburgh to get away. He might walk two miles north, to a village on the main road, where the coach was bound to pass every lawful day, whether it snowed or whether it blew; or he might get the geeg from the inn at Kinloch-Rugas to carry him south, and strike the route of another coach also bound to travel on every lawful day. But Dougal talked to the air, and nobody gave him heed: not to say that the gentleman from Edinburgh found means to conciliate him by degrees, and that, at last, a crack with Mr. Lumsden became a great relief to Dougal from the unmitigated chatter of the womankind by which he was surrounded night and day.
This week of snow flew as if on wings. They were shut off from all intrusion, and even from every invading question, by the impossibility of overstepping that barrier which nature had placed around them; they lived as in a dream, which circumstances had thus made possible without any strain of nature. Nobody could turn a stranger out into the snow, not Sir Robert himself. Had he been there, however little he liked his visitor, he would have been compelled to keep him in his house, and treat him like a favored guest. Not even an enemy’s dog could have been turned out into the snow. It made every thing legitimate, every thing simple and natural. I don’t know that Lily required this thought to support her, for, indeed, she was not at that time aware that any secret was made of the marriage, that it was concealed from any one in the house, even Dougal, or that Helen Blythe at the Manse, for instance, had not been made aware of it by that time. She had never clearly entered into the question why Helen Blythe had not been present, why the ceremony had been performed in the darkening, and so much mystery had surrounded it, except by the natural reason that no observation which could be avoided should be drawn upon the bride, and that, indeed, all possibility of vulgar remark should be guarded against. The question, what was to be done next? had filled Lily’s mind on that day; but the snow had silenced it and covered it over like the ling bushes and the burn, which no longer made its usual trill of running remark, but was also hushed and bound by the new conditions which modified all the life of this portion of the earth. The moor and all its surroundings hung between heaven and earth in a great silence during this period. The gray sky hung low, so that it seemed as if an unwary wayfarer, if he went far enough against that heavy horizon, might strike against it, blinded as he must have been by the whirling flakes that danced and fluttered down, sometimes quickening in pace like the variations of a swift strathspey, sometimes falling large and deliberate like those dilated flakes of fire that fell on the burning sands in the Inferno. There were no images, however different in sentiment, that might not have been applied to that constant falling. It was snow, always snow, and yet there was in it all the variety of poetry when you looked at it, so to speak, from within, looking through it upon an empty world in which no other life or variety seemed to be left.
Sometimes, however, the pair sallied forth, notwithstanding the snow, to breathe the crisp and frosty air, and to feel with delight the great atmosphere and outdoor world around them instead of four walls. Lily wore a great camlet cloak, rough, but a protection against both wet and chill, with a large silver clasp under her chin, and her head and shoulders warmly hooded and wrapped in her plaid of the Ramsay color, which she wore as fair Ramsays did in Allan Ramsay’s verse. Lily’s eyes sparkled under the tartan screen, and not to risk the chilling of a hand which it would have been necessary to put forth to clasp his arm, Ronald in his big coat walked with his arm round her, to steady her on the snow; for every path was obliterated, and they never knew when they might not stumble over a stifled burn or among the heathery hillocks of the moor. These walks were not long, but they were delightful in the stillness and loneliness, the white flakes clothing them all over in another coat, lighting upon Lily’s hair and Ronald’s beard, getting into their eyes, half blinding them with the sudden moisture, and the laughter that followed. I will not attempt to give any account of the talk with which they beguiled both these devious rambles and the long companionship indoors in the warm room from which they looked out with so much comfort on the white and solitary world. It harmonized and made every thing legitimate, that lucky snow. One could not ask: “What shall we do to-morrow?” in the sight of the absolute impossibility of doing any thing. It was not the bridegroom but Nature herself who had arranged this honeymoon. If it would but last! But then it was in the nature of things that it could not last.
The frost began to break up a little on the eighth day, or rather it was not the frost that broke up, but the sky that cleared. In the evening instead of the heavy gray there came a break which the sky looked through, and in it a star or two, which somehow changed altogether the aspect of affairs. That evening, as she stood looking out at the break so welcome to every-body, but which she was not so sure of welcoming as other people were, Lily felt the question again stir, like a bird in its nest, in the hushed happiness of her heart. In the morning, when she looked out upon a world that had again become light, with blue overhead, and a faint promise of sun, and no snow falling, it came back more strongly, this time like a secret ache. The women and Dougal and Sandy and even the ponies were full of delight in the end of the storm. “What a bonnie morning!” they shouted to each other, waking Lily from her sleep. A bonnie morning! There was color again on the hills and color in the sky. The distance was no longer shut out, as by a door, by the heavy firmament: it was remote, it was full of air, it led away into the world, into worlds unseen. As Lily gazed a golden ray came out of it and struck along the snow in a fine line. Oh, it was bonnie! as they called to each other in the yard, as Rory snorted in his stable, and all the chickens cackled, gathering about Katrin’s feet. The snow was over! The storm was over! In a little while the whiteness would disappear and the moor would be green again. “What are we going to do?” All nature seemed to ask the question.
“I wish,” said Ronald, “those fowls would cease their rejoicings about the end of the snow. I wish the snow could have lasted another fortnight, Lily; though perhaps I should not say that, for I could not have taken advantage of it. I should need to have invented some means of getting away.”
“Because you were tired of it, Ronald?” she said, with a smile; but the smile was not so bright as it had been. It was not Lily’s snow-smile, all light and radiance; it was one into which the question had come, a little wistful, a little anxious. Ronald saw, and his heart grieved at the change.
“That’s the likely reason!” he said, with a laugh; “but, oh, Lily, my bonnie love, here is the Parliament House all astir again, the judges sitting, and all the work begun.”
“Well,” she said, that smile of hers shooting out a pure beam of fire upon him, “I am ready, Ronald, I am ready, too.”
“Ready to speed the parting husband, and to wish me good luck?” he said with a faint quiver in his voice. He was not a coward by nature, but Ronald this time was afraid. He had not forgotten the question: “What are we going to do?” which had been expressed in every line of Lily’s face, in every tone of her voice, before the evening of the marriage. He knew it had come again, but he did not know how he was to meet it. He plunged into the inevitable conflict with his heart in his mouth.
“To speed the parting– Are you going, Ronald, are you thinking of going, without me?”
“My dearest,” he said, spreading out his hands in deprecation, “it’s like rending me asunder; it is like tearing my heart out of my bosom.”
“I am not asking you what it is like!” cried Lily. “What I am asking is your meaning. Were you thinking of going without me?”
“Lily, Lily!” he said, “don’t be so dreadfully hard upon me! What am I to do? I know nothing else that I can do.”
“Oh, if it’s only that,” she said, “I can tell you, and very easy, what to do. You will just take me down to Kinloch-Rugas, or to that other place where the coach stops, and wrap me well in my camlet cloak and in my tartan plaid, and I’ll not feel the cold, not so much as you will, for women’s blood is warm, and when we get to Edinburgh we will take the topmost story of a house, and make it as warm as a nest, and get the first sunshine and the bonnie view away to Fife and the north. And Beenie will follow us with my things and her own; but we’ll just be all alone for the first day or two, and I will make you your dinner with my own hands,” said Lily, holding up those useful implements with a look of triumph, which was, alas! too bright, which was like the sun when a storm is coming: brilliant with alarm and a sense of something very different to come.
“They don’t look very fit for it, those bits of white hands,” he said, eager, if possible, by any means to divert her from the more important question, and he took her hands in his and kissed them; but Lily was not to be diverted in this way.
“You may think what you like of how they look, but they are just a very useful pair of hands, and can cook you a Scots collop or a chicken or fish in sauce as well as any person. I know what I have undertaken, and if you think I will break down, you are mistaken, Ronald Lumsden, in me.”
“I am not mistaken in you, Lily. I know there is nothing you could not do if you were to try; but am I to be the one to make a drudge of my Lily—I that would like her to eat of the fat and drink of the sweet, as the ministers say, and have no trouble all her days?”
“It depends upon what you call trouble,” said Lily, still holding up her flag. “Trouble I suppose we shall have, sooner or later, or we’ll be more than mortal; but to serve you your dinner is what I would like to do. You’ll go out to the Parliament House and work to get the siller, for it must be allowed that between us we have not much of the siller, and you cannot buy either collops or chuckies without it, nor scarcely even a haddie or a herring out of the sea. But that’s the man’s share. And then I will buy it and clean it, and put it on in the pot, and you will eat of your wife’s cooking and your heart will be glad. Do you think I want to go back to George Square, or a fine house in one of the new Crescents, and sit with my hands before me? Not me, not me!”
“My bonnie Lily,” he cried, “it’s a bonnie dream, and like yourself, and if you only cooked a crust, it would be better than all the grand French kickshaws in the world or the English puddings to me.”
“You need not be so humble, sir,” said Lily; “I will cook no crust. It will be savory meat, such as thy soul loveth; though I’ll not cheat you as that designing woman Rebekah did.”
“My bonnie Lily, you’ll always do more for me, and better for me, than I deserve,” he cried. “Is that the postman for the first time coming up the road from the town?”
They went to the window to look out at this remarkable phenomenon, and there he kept her, pointing out already the break of the snow upon the side of the moor, revealing the little current of the burn, and something of the edge of the road, along which, wonderful sight! that solitary figure was making its way. “But it will not be passable, I think, till to-morrow for any wheeled thing, so we will make ourselves happy for another day,” Ronald said; and this was all the answer he gave her. He was very full of caresses, of fond speeches, and lover’s talk all day. He scarcely left an opening for any thing more serious. If Lily began again with her question, he always found some way of stopping her mouth. Perhaps she was not unwilling, in a natural shrinking from conflict, to have her mouth stopped. But there rose between them an uneasy sense of something to be explained, something to be unravelled, a desire on one side which was to encounter on the other resistance not to be overcome.
