Маргарет Олифант
Sir Robert's Fortune
CHAPTER XXVI
“Did you mean that, Ronald—that you are really going away to-morrow?”
“Indeed and alas, I meant it, Lily. It is the middle of the session. How could I stay longer? It was, as I said to the minister—though you never more than half believe what I say—a real piece of business with Sir John’s factor at Ardenlennie that gave me the occasion of spending a few days with my Lily, which I seized upon without giving you any warning, as you know.”
“And me that thought you could not do without me one day longer, and were coming hurrying to bring your wife home!”
“My darling!” said Ronald, with no lack of ardor on his part. “But then my bonnie Lily has always sense to know that the longing of the heart changes nothing, and that it is no more the term in March than it is in January. Where could I find a place to put you now, or till Whit-Sunday comes?”
Was it true? Oh, yes; it was true. In Scotland you do not find an empty house and go into it whenever you want to—especially not in the Scotland of those days. You have to wait for the term, which is the legitimate time. Nevertheless Lily was very sure that, if she were now in Edinburgh looking for a place to establish her nest in, she would find it; but perhaps a man has not the time, perhaps he cannot take the trouble, going upstairs and down stairs looking at all kinds of unlikely places. This, Lily felt sure, was another of the things that gentlemen could not abide.
“We must make the best of you, then, while we have you,” she said, drawing her chair to the side of the fire after their dinner together. It was cold at night, though the hardy folk of the North were content to believe that spring was coming, and that there was a different “feel” in the air. The wind was sweeping over the moor as keen as a knife, bending the gray bushes of the ling and spare rowan-trees that cowered before it like human travellers caught in the cutting breeze. There was a cold moon shining fitfully, with frightened, swift-flying glimpses from among the clouds which flew over her face. Colder than the depth of winter outside, but within, with the firelight and lamplight, and Lily making the best of her husband’s flying visit, very bright and very warm.
“I will just look for the next term, Ronald, and pack up all my things and be ready, so that if you came suddenly, as you did the other day–”
“Do you bid me, then,” he said, “not to come till Whit-Sunday? which is a long time to be without a sight of my Lily. If I should have another chance like this of getting a day or two—which is better than nothing–”
“Oh, no, do not miss the day or two,” cried Lily; “how could you think I meant that? But I’ll look for the term-time, like the maids when they’re changing their places. It’s more than that to me, for it will be the first home I have ever had. Uncle Robert’s house was never a home—there was no woman in it.”
“Nor will there be any woman, Lily–”
“I will be the woman,” she cried, with a playful blow on his shoulder; “it is me that will make it home. And you will be the man. And if any stranger comes into it—not to say a poor, motherless bairn like what I was—their hearts will sing for pleasure; for there will be one for kindness and warmness, and one for protecting and caring, and that will make it home. Uncle Robert was but one, and not one that was caring. If you were there, he just let you be. ‘Oh,’ he would say, ‘you are here!’ as if it was a surprise. Do you wonder that I hunger and thirst for my own home, Ronald, when I never had in my life any thing but that?”
“It will come in its time, my Lily,” he said, holding her close to him, with her hands in his.
“Ay, but you mind what Shakespeare says: ‘While the grass grows–’”
“If the proverb was musty then,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “it’s mustier now.”
“So it is; but as true as ever. And I weary for it, I weary for it!” cried the girl. “However, sit you there, and me here; and we’ll think it is our own house—that you will have come in, and you will have had your dinner, and you will be telling me every thing that has passed in the day.”
“What, all the pleas before the Fifteen, and old Watty’s speeches, and the jokes of Johnny Law, and the wiles of–”
“Every one of them! When you are in a profession, you should know every thing about it. If you were a—tailor, say, who would make your fine buttonholes, and the braiding of the grand waistcoats, but your wife? Or a—school-master it would be me to look after the exercises; and wherefore not an advocate’s wife to know all about the Parliament House, and how to conduct a case if there should be occasion?”
“So that you might go down to the court instead of me, and plead for me if I had a headache,” said Ronald, laughing. “It would be grand for my clients, Lily, for I’ll answer for it, with Symington on the bench, and Hoodiecraw and the two Elders, you would gain every plea.”
“That’s while I am young and–” said Lily, with a little toss of her head. She was saucy and gay and full of malice, as he had never seen her, for this was not much Lily’s way. “I did not say I would plead; but I would have to know. Every thing you would have to tell me, as well as the jokes of the old lords.”
“Well,” said Ronald, “I might do that, and you would take no harm, for you would not understand them, my Lily. But they all like a bonnie lass, and you would win every plea. I’ll tell you all the stories, Lily, and there are plenty of them. The plainstanes of the Parliament House know more human trouble and vice than any other place in Edinburgh. I’ll tell you–”
“Oh, not the wicked things!” cried Lily, clasping her hands, “for how could we help those that suffer by them? or what could that have to do with you and me?”
“If you leave out the wicked things, there would be little to do,” said Ronald, “for the courts of law.”
“But we will leave them out!” cried Lily. “All our cases shall be about mistakes, or something that comes from not understanding; so that as soon as you put it to them very clear they will see the right and own it and go back to the just way. For there is nobody that would not rather be in the right than in the wrong if they knew, and that is my principle; things are so twisted in and out it’s hard to understand; and bad advice and thinking too much of himself make a man do a sudden thing without thinking, till he finds that it is wrong. And then when he sees, he is sorry and puts it back.”
“If it were so easy as all that, Lily, it would be new heavens and a new earth.”
“Well, we’ll try,” said Lily gayly. She was so gay, she was so full of quips and cranks, so ready with amusing turns of speech and audacious propositions, that Ronald found her a new Lily, full of brightness and fun and novel, ridiculous suggestions and high-flown notions, which she was ready herself to laugh at as high-flown, yet taking his sober thoughts to pieces and turning them upside down. What would it be, indeed, to carry her away with him, to have her always there, turning every little misfortune into fun and laughter, making every misadventure a source of amusement instead of trouble! A gleam of light rose in his eyes, and then he shook his head slightly to himself and sighed. The shake of the head and the sigh were when Lily’s back was turned. He dared not let her see them, divine them, answer them with a hundred quick-flashing arguments. She had an answer for every thing, he knew. She cared nothing for the things that were, after all, the chief things to care for—money, progress in the world, that sound foundation in life without which no man could make sure of rising to the head of his profession. Some did it without doubt. There was Lord Pleasaunce, that had fought his way to the bench, marrying a wife and beginning in a garret, as Lily wished; now he thought of it, she was something like Lily, the judge’s wife, though fat now and roundabout. They had even been Lord Advocate in their time, and gone to London (with such a couple, even Ronald felt instinctively, you don’t say he, but they) and struggled through somehow; but always poor, always poor! They did not seem to mind; but then Ronald knew that he would always mind. They had no fortunes for their daughters nor to put out their sons well in the world. He shook his head again as he rejected once more that possibility which for a moment, only for a moment, had caught and almost beguiled him. Lily had gone out of the room, but, coming back, caught that last shake of his head.
“And what is that for?” she said. “You will have been thinking that Lily is good for very little, that she could not keep the house and make the meat as she thinks, but would look to be served herself, hand and foot, as she is here.”
“Not that—but still my Lily has always been served hand and foot. There is Beenie, without whom we cannot budge a step–”
“No,” said Lily gravely, “without Beenie I could not budge a step—not because Beenie is my maid, and I need her to serve me, but because it would break her heart.”
“My love, poor folk as we shall be cannot afford to think of breaking hearts.”
“I will break yours rather!” cried Lily, with a little stamp of her foot. “I will give ye ill dinners and a house that is never redd up, and keep Beenie like a lady in the best room and give her all the good things.”
“That is just what I say,” said Ronald; “we will have a train—all the old servants that cannot endure their lives without Miss Lily, perhaps Katrin and Dougal, too.”
Lily stood looking at him for a moment, with her eyes enlarged and her face pale. “Is it in fun, or in earnest?” she said, with a little gasp.
“Oh, in fun, in fun,” he said hastily, “though considering how they have fulfilled their duty to Sir Robert, it would not be strange if he turned them out of his doors—and whom, then, could they turn to but you and me?”
“It is not for you and me to blame them,” said Lily, still under the impression of what he had said, “and this is not the kind of fun that is good fun. But it is true, after all, though I never thought of that before. Katrin is kind, but she has, perhaps, not been quite as true to Uncle Robert as to me; but Dougal, he knows nothing. Dougal has never known any thing; he has never meant to desert Uncle Robert. Ronald,” cried Lily, with sudden affright, “we have all been cheating Uncle Robert! This is what we have done, and nothing else, since you first came here.”
“I am well aware of it, Lily,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “and for my part I am quite agreed to go on cheating Uncle Robert for as long as you please.”
“It does not please me!” she said; “I would like to cheat nobody. It is a new thing to me—I did not think of that. Oh, Ronald, take me away! I laugh and I chatter, but my heart’s breaking. We are cheating every body—not Uncle Robert only, but Helen Blythe and every creature that knows me. What do I care how poor we are, or if I have to work for my living? I will work, oh, with a good heart! but take me away, take me away!”
Ronald held her hands in his and steadied her against her will. He had foreseen such an outburst, as well as the other manifestations of her agitated and disturbed life. He was ready to allow even that it was no wonder she became excited by times, that she had been more patient than he could have hoped. He was himself very cool, and could afford to be moderate and humor her. He held her hands in his, and restrained the violence of her feelings by that steady clasp. “My Lily, my Lily!” he said. The girl yielded to that restraining influence in spite of herself. She could almost have struck him in the vehemence of her passion and in the intolerable sensation of this sharp light upon the situation altogether; but the cool touch of his hands, his firm hold, his soothing voice, subdued her. The question between two people at such a crisis is almost entirely the question which is stronger, and on this occasion Ronald was certainly the stronger. When Lily’s passion ended in the natural flood of tears, she shed them on his shoulder, encircled by his arm, all her resistance quenched. And he was very kind to her; no one could have consoled her more lovingly, or more tenderly soothed the nervous and excited feelings which had got beyond her control. He was master of the situation, and felt it, but used his power in the most gentle way. And Lily said not a word more—what was there to be said? She had put herself in the wrong by her passion and by her tears. This was not the calm reason with which a woman ought to discuss the beginning of her life—with which, she said to herself, a man expected his wife to consider and discuss these affairs. She had neither been calm nor reasonable. She had been passionate, excited, perhaps hysterical. Lily was deeply ashamed of herself. She was humble toward him who must, she thought, be disappointed in her, and find her like the women in books, all folly and excitement, instead of a creature able to take all the circumstances into consideration. Nothing could have subdued her spirits like that sense of being in the wrong.
Later in the evening she endeavored to make up for her foolishness by returning to the mood of gayety with which she began the evening. She gave Ronald a little sketch of the humors of Rory, and the respect in which Dougal held that small and fiery personage. She told him about Katrin’s cows and her chickens, and the amusement which these living creatures had given during the long winter days to the little family at Dalrugas.
“But spring is coming,” he said.
“Oh, yes; spring is coming; the moor will soon be dry enough for walking, and many a ramble I will have. I am beginning,” said Lily, “to grow very fond of the moor. You see, it is all we have. It’s cross and market and college and court and all together to me. In the morning the bees will be busy among the whins—there is always a bud somewhere on a whin bush—and full of honey as they can hold; and then in the evening there is the sunset, and the hills all standing out against the west, with their old purple cloaks around them. What with the barnyard and what with the moor, there’s no want of diversion here.”
“My bonnie Lily,” he cried in sudden compunction, “not much diversion for the like of you!”
“What do you call the like of me? I am very well off. I have neighbors and all. There is Helen Blythe, poor thing, she is not so well off. The minister is a handful; he holds her night and day. And who was yon glum man, Ronald, and what had he to do with her? Her eyes were red, and she had been crying; and I am sure it was something about that man.”
“Alick Duff? Nonsense, Lily! He is a black sheep, if ever there was one. That was all a foolish story, we’ll suppose. A good little thing like the minister’s daughter should never be thrown away on him.”
“Perhaps she is a good little thing. We are all good little things till we show ourselves different. But her eyes were red and her cheeks were pale. I must see if I can comfort her,” said Lily half to herself. “And now, sir, if you are going away to-morrow, you should go to your bed, for you’ll have a weary day.”
“Yes, I shall have a weary day; but I could bear that and more to see my Lily,” Ronald said.
“Well, if you care for her at all, you would need to do that, for she must either be there or here,” Lily said. “It’s a pity I’m solid, that I cannot fly away like the birds, and tap at your window as the lady does in the ballad. What ballad? I don’t remember. Perhaps it was after she was dead. And does Mrs. Buchanan always make you comfortable and cook as well as Katrin? Oh, Katrin is very good for some things, though you think her an ill housekeeper for Uncle Robert. But never mind that. Tell me about Luckie Buchanan. I will wager you a silver bawbee, as Beenie says, that she does not send you up your bird as good as we do here.”
“Nothing is so good as it is here. You take me up too quick, Lily.”
“Me take you up quick? I do nothing but try to please you. But I know how it is, Ronald. You think shame of Luckie Buchanan. She burns your bird, and she does your chop in the frying-pan, and her kettle is not half boiled. Young men are very badly treated in their lodgings. I know very well. Uncle Robert’s men that came to see him were always complaining, and they were old men that could make their curries themselves and drive womenfolk desperate, whereas you’re only young and would think shame to look as if you cared. I wonder if she brushes your clothes right, and gives you nice burnished boots, as you like them to be,” said Lily, with a critical look at the sleeve of his coat, which she was smoothing down with her hand.
“You will make me think myself a terrible being, taken up with my own wants,” he said in a vexed tone.
“It is me that am taken up with your wants,” she said, “and what more right than that—a man’s wife! What is the good of her but to look after her man! And when I cannot do it for failure of circumstances, not good will, then I must just ask and plague you till you tell me there’s nothing more for me to do—till the term comes, and I go home to my place,” cried Lily, with a laugh, but with two tears, which she turned away her head that he might not see. “It’s my first place!” she cried. “You cannot wonder I am excited about it, Ronald; and I hope I will give you satisfaction—Beenie and me!”
Next morning Lily got up without, as appeared, any cloud on her face, and gave him his breakfast, and saw to the packing of his bag, and that his big coat was well strapped on to Sandy’s shoulders, who was to walk into the town with him and carry his small belongings. “You will not want it walking, but you will want it in the coach,” she said, “and be sure you keep yourself warm, for, though it’s March, the wind is terrible cold over the moor; and here is a scarf to put round your neck for the night journey. It will keep you warm, and it will mind you of me.”
“Do I want that to mind me of my Lily?” he said reproachfully.
“No, after I have been giving you such a taste of my humors, and you know I am not just the good thing you thought. But you might be more grateful for my bonnie scarf that I took out of the lavender to give you to wrap round your throat at night! And it is a very bonnie scarf,” said Lily; “look at the flowers worked upon it, the same on both sides, and as soft as a dove’s feathers that are of silver. You will put it round your neck and say Lily gave me this; and then at Whit-Sunday, when I take up my place, I will find it again, laid away in some drawer, and I will take it back, and it will belong then both to you and me.”
“That is a bargain,” he said, more moved by the parting than he had ever been; but Lily went with him to the head of the stairs, and there stood looking after him from the staircase window, to keep up some sort of transparent fiction for Dougal’s sake, with her eyes shining and a smile upon her mouth. She was resolved that this was how he should see her when he went away. There should be no more breakings down. She would importune him no more. She would not shed a tear. When he turned round to wave his hand before he disappeared under the bank, she was still smiling and calm. It was, perhaps, a little startling to Ronald, who had never seen her so reasonable before—and reasonableness, though so desirable, is sometimes a little alarming too.
CHAPTER XXVII
When she was sure that the travellers were out of sight, Lily flew down the spiral stairs, snatched her plaid from where it hung as she passed, and rushed out to the only shelter and refuge she had—the loneliness and silence of the moor. She had to push through between the two women, who would so fain have stopped her to administer their consolation and caresses, but whom, in her impatience, she could not tolerate, shaking her head as they called after her to put on her plaid and that she would get her death of cold. It was March and a beautiful morning, the air almost soft in the broad beaming of the sun, and the moisture, which lay heavy on the moss-green turf and ran and sparkled in little pools and currents everywhere; but the breeze was keen and cold, and blew upon her with a sharp and salutary chill, cooling her heated cheeks. Lily sprang over the great bushes of the ling, which, bowed for a moment by her passage, flung back upon her a shower of dew-drops as they recovered their straightness, and the whins caught at the plaid on her arm as she brushed past; but she took no notice of these impediments, nor of the wetness under her feet, nor the chill of the air upon her uncovered head, and shoulders clothed only in her indoor dress. She paused upon a little green hillock slightly rising over the long level, which was a favorite point of vision, and from which, as she had often found, the furthest view was possible of any thing within the horizon of this little world. But it was not to see that little speck on the road, which was Ronald, that Lily had made this rush into the heart of the moor. It was for the utter solitude, the silence which enclosed and surrounded her, the separation from every thing that could intrude upon that little speck of herself, so insignificant in the great fresh shining world, yet so much more living in her trouble than all the mountains and the moors. Lily sank down on the mossy green and covered her face with her hands. She had shed passionate tears on her husband’s shoulder last night, but these were different which forced their way now without any thing to restrain them. They were not mere tears of a parting, which, after all, was no wonderful thing. He would come again. Lily had no fear that he would come again. She had no doubt of his love, no thought that he might grow cold to her. Of the two it was Ronald who was the warmer lover, holding her in perfect admiration as well as in all the fondness of a young husband, which was not exactly what could be said on her side. But his love was of a different kind, as perhaps a man’s always is. He did not want all that she did in their marriage. A little house of their own, wherever it was—a home, a known and certain place: was it the woman who thought of this rather than the man? It gave her a pang even to think that it might perhaps be so, or at least that Ronald did not care for what she might suffer in this respect. He might be content with casual visits, but what she wanted was her garret, her honest name, and honor and truth.
And then Whit-Sunday, Whit-Sunday, the term when people did their flitting, and the maids went to their new places! Oh, happy, honest prose that had nothing to do, Lily thought, with romance or poetry. Would it come—in two months, not much more—and make an end of all this? or would it never come? Poor Lily’s heart was so wrung out of its right place that she lost her confidence even in the term; she could scarcely think of any thing in earth or heaven, she who had once been so confident, of which she could now think that there was no fear.
By this time the cold had begun to creep to Lily’s heart, her fever of excitement having found vent, and she was glad to wrap herself closely in her plaid, putting it over her head and gathering the soft folds round her throat. She put back the hair which the cold breeze and the disorder of her weeping had brought about her face, smoothing it back under the tartan screen, the soft warm folds that gave a little color to her pale face. Oh, if she could have had a plaid, but that of Ronald’s tartan, to wrap about her heart, the chilled spirit and soul that had no warmth of covering! But that must not be thought of now, when Lily’s business was to go back to her dreary home, to meet the eyes that would be fixed upon her, to bear her burden worthily, and to betray to no one, even her most confidential companion, the doubts and terrors that were in her own heart.
As she came out upon the road, having made a long round of the moor to give herself more time, Lily perceived two figures in front of her, whom she did not at once recognize; but after a moment or two her attention was attracted by the voice of the man, who spoke loudly, and by something in the attitude of the little figure walking by his side, and replying sometimes in an inaudible monosyllable, sometimes by a deprecating gesture only, to his vehement words. Was it Helen Blythe who was here so far from home by the side of a man who spoke to her almost roughly, certainly not as so gentle a creature ought ever to have been spoken to? It was some time before Lily’s faculties were sufficiently roused to hear what he was saying, or at least to discover that she could hear if she gave her attention; when, however, a sudden “If you had ever loved me, Helen!” caught her ear, Lily cried out in alarm: “Oh, whisht, whisht! Whoever you are, I am coming behind you and I can hear what you say.”
The man turned round almost with rage, showing her the dark and clouded face of the stranger whom she had met the day before with Ronald, and who was the cause, as she had divined, of Helen’s sad eyes. “Confound you!” he cried in his passion, “can ye not pass on, and leave the road free to folk going about their own business?” These words came out with a rush, and then he paused and reddened, and took off his hat. “Miss Ramsay!” he said, “I beg your pardon,” placing himself hastily between her and his companion.
“I neither want to see nor hear,” cried Lily. “Let me pass; you need have no fear of me.”
At the voice Helen came quietly out of his shadow. “You need not hide me from Lily,” she said, “for Lily is my dear friend. I’ve walked far, far from home, Lily, with one that—one that—I may never see again,” she said, turning a pathetic look upon the man by her side. “He blames me now, and perhaps I am to be blamed. But to think it is, maybe, the last time, as he is telling me, breaks my heart. Lily, will you take us in, if it was only for half-an-hour? I feel as if I could not go on another step, for my heart fails me as well as my feet.”
“You never told me you were wearied, Helen!” he cried in a tone of fierce penitence. “How was I to know? I could have carried you like a feather.”
She shook her head. “You could carry more weight than me, Alick, but as soon Schiehallion as me. And I was not wearied till I saw rest at hand.”
“Miss Ramsay,” he said, “you know what she and I are to each other.”
“I know nothing,” cried Lily, “and you need not tell me, for what Helen does is always right; but come in and welcome, and have your talk out in peace. Never mind to explain to me—I scarcely know your name.”
“It is, alas, no credit, or rather I am no credit to a good name that has been well kept on this countryside; but we are old, old friends, Helen Blythe and me. She should have been my wife, Miss Ramsay, though you might not think it, nearly ten long years ago. If she had kept her promise, they would never have called me wild Alick Duff, and the black sheep of the family, as they do now. This is the third time I’ve come back to bid her keep her word; for I have her word, rough and careless as you may think me. Each time I’m less worth taking than I was the time before, and I’m not going to risk it any more. When she drops me this time, I will just go to the devil, which is the easiest way, and trouble nobody more about me.”
“And why should you go to the devil?” said Lily, “for that is what nobody except your own self can make you do.”
“Oh, do not hearken to him, Lily; let us come in for half-an-hour, for neither will my feet carry me nor will my heart hold me up if there is more.”
Lily made her guests enter before her when they reached the door of Dalrugas; but lingering behind as Helen made her way slowly with her tired steps up the spiral stairs, caught Duff by the sleeve and spoke in his ear: “Do you not think shame of yourself to break her heart, a little thing like that, with putting the weight of your ill deeds upon her, and you a big strong man?”
“Me—think shame!” he said, with a low laugh.
“I would think shame,” cried Lily vehemently, all her hot blood surging up in her veins, “to lay the burden of a finger’s weight upon her, and her not a half or a quarter so big as me!”
This sharp, indignant whisper Helen heard as a murmur behind her while she went up the stairs. She turned round when she reached the drawing-room, meeting the others as they appeared after her. “And what were you two saying to each other?” she asked, with a tremulous smile.
“I am going,” said Lily, “to leave you to yourselves; and when you have had your talk out, you will come down to me to have something to eat; and then we will think, Helen, how we are to get you home.”
“You are coming in here, Lily. Him and me we have said all there is to be said. And he has told you what there is between us, as perhaps I would never have had the courage to do. Come and tell him over again, Lily, you that are a young lass and have known no trouble—tell him what a woman can do and cannot do, for he will not believe me.”
“How can I tell? that have known no trouble, as you say,” cried Lily. But Helen knew nothing to explain the keen tone of irony that was in the words, and looked at the girl with an appeal in her patient eyes, too full of her own sorrow to remember that, perhaps, this younger creature might have sorrows too. “How should I know,” said Lily, “what a woman cannot do? If it is to keep a man from wrong-doing, is that a woman’s business, Helen? How do I know? They say in books that it’s the women that drive them to it. Are you to take him on your shoulders and carry him away from the gates of – Or what are you expected to do?”
“If she had married me when I asked her,” cried Duff, “she would have done that. Ay, that she would! From the gates of hell, that a little thing like you daren’t name. I would never have known the way they lay if she had put her hand in mine and come with me. And that I have told you, Helen, a hundred times, and a hundred more.”
“Oh, Alick, Alick!” was all that Helen said.
“And you never would have thought shame,” cried Lily, “to ride by on her shoulders, instead of walking on your own feet? I would have set my face like a flint and passed them by, and scorned them that wiled me there! I would have laid it upon nobody but myself if I had not heart enough to save my own head!”
