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Sir Robert's Fortune
“There is nothing, nothing,” cried Lily, “that should keep a mother from her bairn! You are a kind woman, Katrin, but you’ve never had a bairn. When once I get him here, how can I ever give him up again?” she said, straining her arms to her breast as if the child was within them. Beenie wept behind her mistress’s shoulder, overwhelmed with sympathy, but Katrin shook her head.
“When you see Mr. Lumsden there, and go over it all–”
Lily’s face became instantly as if the windows of her mind had been closed up. Her lips straightened, her eyes became blank. She said nothing, but turned away, not looking at either of them nor saying a word. “And it was no me breathed his name or as much as thought upon him,” Beenie said a little later in an aggrieved tone, when she had rejoined Katrin down stairs.
“It was me that breathed his name, and I’ll do it again till some heed is paid to what I say. We should maybe have refused yon day to be his witnesses. But being sae, Beenie, the burden is on you and me as well as on him. They should have owned each other and spoke the truth from that day. But now that it has all gone so far and no a whisper risen, and the countryside just as innocent as if they were two bairns playing, oh, I wouldna now just burst it all upon the auld man’s head! He’s no an ill auld man. He’s provided for her all her life; he is very muckle taken up with her now, maybe in a selfish way, for he’s feeling his age and his mainy infirmities, and he’s wanting a companion. But, oh! I would not burst it on him now! He could never abide her man, and, to tell the truth, Beenie, I’m not that fond of him mysel’, and she, poor thing, has had a fearfu’ opening to her eyes. How could ye have the bairn here and no the father? Could she say to her uncle: ‘I was very silly about him once and married him, and now I canna abide him’? Oh, no! that is what she will never say.”
“And I hope she’ll never think it either,” Beenie said.
“Beenie,” said the other solemnly, “you are a real innocent if such a thing ever was.”
“No more than yoursel’,” said Beenie, indignant; but she had to return to her mistress, and further discussion could not be held on this question.
They went away on the second morning, which was a little frosty, though bright. The establishment had widened out by this time. Sir Robert was not a man to be driven to kirk or market in the little geeg, drawn at his wilful pleasure by Rory, which had answered all Lily’s purposes. There was now a phaeton and a brougham, and three or four horses accommodated tant bien que mal in the old stables, which had to be cleared of much rubbish and Dougal’s accumulations of years before they were in a state to receive their costly inmates. It was in the brougham that Lily, wrapped up in every kind of shawl and comforter, drove with her maid to Kinloch-Rugas to take the coach, where the best places had been reserved for them. Beenie’s pride in this journey exceeded the anxiety with which her mind was full, in respect to her mistress’s health in the first place, and the many issues of their journey. But it was not a “pride” which met with much sympathy from her dear friends and fellow-servants. Dougal for his part stood out in the stable-yard carefully isolated from all possible connection with the new grooms and the new horses, though neither was he without a thrill of pride in the distinction of a kind of part-proprietorship with Sir Robert in these dazzling articles. He kept apart, however, with an air of conscious superiority to such innovations. “I wish ye a good journey,” he said; “maybe it’ll be warmer this fine morning in a shut-up carriage, but, Lord! I would rather have Rory and the little geeg than all the coaches in England!”
Lily was thrilling with nervous excitement, scarcely able to contain herself, but she made an effort to give a word and a smile to the whilom arbiter of all the movements of Dalrugas. “I would rather have you and Rory in the summer weather,” she said. “If it is a warm day when I come back, you will come for me, Dougal.”
“Na, mem, no me; we’re no grand enough now to carry leddies: which I wouldna care much for, for leddies, as ye ken, are whiles fantastic and put awfu’ burdens on a beast—but just because his spirit is broken with trailing peats from the hill, and visitors’ boxes from the toun. They’re sensitive creatures, pownies. I just begin to appreciate the black powny’s feelings now I see the effect upon my ain.”
“He shall drive me when I come back,” said Lily, waving her hand as the brougham flashed away, the coats of the horses shining in the frosty sunshine, and the carriage panels sending back reflections. It was certainly more comfortable than the geeg. But the light went out of Lily’s face as they left Dalrugas behind. The little color in her cheeks disappeared. She leaned back in her corner and once more pressed her arms against her breast. “Oh, shall I find him? shall I find him?” she cried.
“You’ll do that—wherefore should you no do that?” said Beenie encouragingly.
“He’ll be grown so big we will not know him, Beenie, and he will not know his mother; that woman Margaret that took him away will have all his smiles—she will be the first face that he sees, now that he’s old enough to notice. Oh, my little bairn! my little bairn!”
“A bairn that is two months auld takes but little notice, mem,” said Beenie, strong in her practical knowledge. “You need not fash your head about that. They may smile, but if ye were to ask me the very truth, I wouldna hide from you that what they ca’ smiling is just in my opinion the–”
“If you say that word, I will kill you!” cried Lily. She laughed and then she cried in her excitement. “How will I contain myself? how will I keep quiet and face the world, and the folk in the world, and every-body about, till the moment comes—oh, the moment, Beenie!—when I will get my baby into my arms?”
“Eh, mem! but you must not make yoursel’ sae awfu’ sure about that,” said Beenie. “We might not find them just at first—or he might have a little touch of the cauld, or maybe the thrush in his wee mouth, or measles, or something. You must not make yourself so awfu’ sure.”
“He is ill!” cried Lily, seizing her in a fierce grip. “He is ill, oh, you false, false woman, and you have never said a word to me!”
“There is naething ill about him; he is just thriving like the flowers. But I canna bide when folk are so terrible sure. It seems as if you were tempting God.”
“It’s you that are tempting me—to believe in nothing, neither Him nor women’s word. But what would make a woman deceive a baby’s mother about her own child? A man might do it, that knows nothing about what that means; but a woman never would do it, Beenie—a woman that has been about little babies and their mothers all her days?”
“No, mem, I never thought it,” said Beenie in dutiful response.
At the coach, where they were received with all the greater honor on account of Sir Robert’s brougham, and the beautiful prancing horses, Helen Blythe met them. “They would not let me come to see you,” she said. “It’s long, long, since I’ve seen you, Lily, and worn and white you’ve grown—but just as bonnie as ever: there comes up the color just as it used to do—but you must look stronger when you come back.”
“I am going away for that,” Lily said.
“And it is just the wisest thing she could do,” said the doctor, who had come also to see her off. “And stay away as long as you can, Miss Ramsay, and just divert yourself a little. You have great need of diversion after that long time at the old Tower.”
“She is not one that is much heeding diversion,” said Helen, looking at her affectionately.
“We’re all needing it whether we’re heeding it or no,” said the doctor. “And if you will take my advice, you will just take a little pleasure to yourself, as you would take physic if I ordered it. Good-by, Miss Ramsay, and mind what I say.”
“He’s maybe right,” said Helen; “they say he’s a clever man. I know little about diversion. But, oh! I would like to see you happy, Lily—that would be better than all the physic in the world.”
“Perhaps I will bring it back with me,” said Lily, with a smile.
CHAPTER XXXIX
It was not with a very easy mind that Ronald Lumsden had executed the great coup which had, so far as Lily was concerned, such disastrous consequences. He had been deeply perplexed from the moment of the baby’s birth, nay, before that, as to what his future action was to be. It had been apparent to him from the first that the child could not remain at Dalrugas. Much had been ventured, much had been done, to all appearance successfully enough. No scandal had been raised in the countryside by his own frequent visits. What might be whispered in the cottages no one knew; but, apart from such a possibility, nothing that could be called public, no rumor of the least importance, had arisen. Every thing was safe up to that point. And he was not much concerned even had there been any subdued scandal floating about. At any moment, should any crisis arise, Lily could be justified and set right. What could it matter, indeed, if any trouble of a moment should arise? He was not indifferent to his wife’s good name. He considered himself as the best guardian of that, the best judge as to how and when it should be defended. He had (he thought) the reins in his hands, the command of all the circumstances. If he should ever see the moment come when the credit of his future family should be seriously threatened, and the position of Lily become an affair of vital importance, he was prepared to make any sacrifice. The moment it became serious enough for that he was ready to act; but in the meantime it was his to fight the battle out to the last step, and to defend her rights as her uncle’s heir, and to secure the fortune for her behalf and his own. He regarded the situation largely as from the point of view of a governor and supreme authority. As long as the circumstances could be managed, the world’s opinion suppressed or kept in abeyance, and the one substantial and important object kept safe, what did a little imaginary annoyance matter, or Lily’s fantastic girlish notions about a house of her own, and a public appearance on her husband’s arm, wearing her wedding ring and calling herself Mrs. Lumsden? He liked her the better for desiring all that, so far as it meant a desire to be always with him; otherwise the mere promotion of being known as a married lady was silly and a piece of vanity, which did not merit a thought on the part of the arbiter of her affairs. All the little by-play about the house which could not be got till the term, etc., had been a jest to him, though it had been so serious to Lily. He had never for a moment intended that she should have that house. To keep her quiet, to keep her contented, Ronald did not stint at such a small matter as a lie. Between lovers, between married people, there must be such things. If a man intends to keep at the head of affairs, and yet to keep the woman, who has no experience and knows nothing of the world, satisfied and happy, of course there must be little fictions made up and fables told. Lily would be the first to justify them when the necessity was over, when the money was secured and their final state arrived at—a dignified life together, with every thing handsome about them. He had no compunctions, therefore, about the original steps. It might have been more prudent, perhaps, if they had not married at all, if they had waited till Sir Robert died and Lily was free, in the course of nature, to give her hand and her fortune where she pleased. That, no doubt, was a rash thing to do, but the wisest of men commit such imprudences. And, with the exception of that, Ronald approved generally of his own behavior. He did not find any thing to object to in his conduct of the matter altogether.
But the baby put every thing out. The prospect, indeed, occupied Lily and kept her quiet and reasonable for a long time, but the moment he knew what was coming a new care came into Lumsden’s mind. A baby is not a thing to be hid. It was certain that nothing would induce Lily to part with it, or to be reasonable any longer. She would throw away the result of all his precautions, of all his careful arrangements, of his self-denial and thought, in a moment, for the sake of this little thing, which could neither repay her nor know what she was doing for it. Many an hour’s reflection, night and day, had he given to this subject without seeing any way out of it. With all his powers and gifts of persuasion he had not ventured even to hint to Lily the idea of sending away the child. Courage is a great thing, but sometimes it is not enough to face a situation of the simplest character. He could not do it. After the child arrived, when the inconveniences of keeping it there became apparent, he had thought it might perhaps be easier; and many times he had attempted to arrange how this could be done, but never had succeeded in putting it into words. To do him justice, it was he who had sought out and chosen with the utmost care the nurse Marg’ret, in whose hands both mother and child would be safe, and he looked forward with that vague and foolish hope in some indefinite help to come which the wisest of men, when their combinations fail, still believe in, like the most foolish; perhaps some suggestion might come from herself, who could tell? some sense of the trouble and inconvenience arising in Lily’s own mind might assist him in disposing of the little intruder. Why do babies thrust themselves into the world so determinedly where they are not wanted? Why resist the most eager calls and welcomes where they are? This confusing question was no joke to Ronald. It made him hate this meddling baby, though he was not without a young father’s sense of pride and satisfaction, too.
He had instructed Marg’ret fully beforehand in the part she might be called upon to play, though he could not tell her either how or when he would accomplish the purpose which had gradually grown upon him as a necessity. In these circumstances, while he yet pondered and turned every thing over in his mind, failing as yet to perceive any way in which it could be accomplished, the suddenness of Sir Robert’s coming, which he learned by accident, was like sudden light in the most profound darkness. Here was the necessity made ready to his hands. Lily could not doubt, could not waver; whatever might happen afterward, it was quite clear Sir Robert could not be greeted on his first arrival by the voice of an infant—an infant which had no business to be there, and whose presence would have to be accounted for on the very threshold, without any preliminary explanation—in the face, too, of his friends whom he brought with him, revealing all the secrets of his house. This was a chance which made Ronald himself, with all his coolness, shiver. And Lily, still in her weakness, not half recovered—what might the effect be upon her? It might kill her, he decided; for her own sake, in her own defence, not a moment was to be lost. The reader knows how he flashed into his wife’s room in haste, but not able even then, in face of Lily’s perfect calm, and utter inability to conceive the real difficulty of the situation, to suggest it to her, accomplished his design, secretly leaving her—not even then with any unkind intention, very sorry for her, but not seeing any other way in which it was to be done—to discover her loss and bear it as she might. He was any thing but happy as he drove away with the traitor woman by his side and the baby hidden in its voluminous wrappings. Marg’ret was not such a traitor either as she seemed. She had been made to believe that, though no parting was to be permitted to agitate the young mother, Lily, too, was aware, and had consented to this proceeding. “The poor little lassie, the poor wee thing!” Marg’ret had said, even while wrapping up the baby for its journey; and she had slipped out into the darkness and waited at the corner for the geeg with a heavy heart.
It startled Lumsden very much that no wail of distress, no indignant outcry, came from Lily on discovering her loss. These were not the days of frequent communications. People had not yet acquired the habit of constant correspondence. They were accustomed to wait for news, with no swift possibility of a telegram or even a penny post to make them impatient; not, perhaps, that they would have grudged—certainly not that Ronald would have grudged—the eightpence which was then, I think, the price of the conveyance of a letter from one end of Scotland to the other, but that they had not acquired the custom of frequent writing. When no protest, no remonstrance, no passionate outcry, reached him for a week or two after the event, Lumsden became exceedingly alarmed. He said to himself at first that it was a relief, that Lily herself recognized the necessity and had yielded to it; but he did not really believe this, and as the days went on, genuine anxiety and terror were in his mind. Had it killed her? Had his Lily, in her weakness, bowed her head and died of this outrage? the worst, he now felt in every fibre of his being, to which a woman could be subjected. He wrote, enclosing his letter to Beenie; then he wrote to Beenie herself, entreating her to send him a line, a word. But Lily was unconscious of every thing, and Beenie of all that did not concern her mistress, when these letters arrived. They were not even opened until Lily was convalescent, and then Beenie by her mistress’s orders, in her large sprawling handwriting, and with many tears, replied briefly to the three or four anxious demands for news which had arrived one after the other. Beenie wrote:
“Sir: My mistress has been at the point of death with what they call a brain-fever. It has lasted the longest and been the fiercest that ever the doctor saw. She is coming round now—the Lord be praised—but very slow. She has but one thought—you will know well what that is—and will never rest till she has got satisfaction, night or day.
“I am, sir,“Your obedient servant,“Robina Rutherford.
“P. S.—I was to tell you the last part, for it is not from me.”
There was not much satisfaction to be got from this letter, and, indeed, his mind got little relief from any thing, and the time of Lily’s illness was a time of mental trouble for the husband, which was not, perhaps, more easy to bear. Had he lost her altogether? It seemed like that, though he could not think it possible that the child at least should be allowed to drop, or that the fever could have made her forget, which it was evident she had not done in his own case. The courts had begun again, and Lumsden was more occupied than he had ever been in his life. He made one furtive visit to Kinloch-Rugas, where he heard something of Lily’s state, and engaged Helen Blythe to communicate with him any thing that reached her ears. But no one was allowed to see her in her illness, and this gave him small satisfaction. He did not dare to go near the house, which Sir Robert guarded more effectually than a squadron of soldiers. There was nothing for him to do but to wait. The unusual rush of occupation which came upon him with the beginning of the session had a certain irony in it, that irony which is so often apparent in life. Was he about to become a successful man now that the chief thing which made life valuable was slipping out of his grasp? He went about his business briskly, and rose to the claims of his business and profession, so that he began to be mentioned in the Parliament House and among his contemporaries, and even by elder men of still more importance, who said of him that young Lumsden, old Pontalloch’s son, though he had hung fire at first, was now beginning at last to come to the front. Was it possible that this was coming to him, this exhilarating tide of success, just at the moment when Lily, who would have stood by him in evil fortune and never failed him, had dropped away from his side? To do him justice, he had never thought of success, of wealth, of prosperity, without her to share it. And he did not understand it now. He could not understand how even a woman, however ignorant or unreasonable by nature, could be so narrow as not to see that all he had done had been for the best. The last step, no doubt, might be allowed to be hard upon her, but what else was possible? Could she for a moment have entertained the idea of keeping the child—a baby that cried and made a noise, and could not be hid—at Dalrugas? Even if there had been no word of Sir Robert, it still would have been impossible; and he had done no more than he had a right to do. He had considered, and considered most carefully—he did himself but justice in this—what as her head and guardian it was best for him to do. It was his duty as well as his right; and the responsibility being upon him as the husband, and not upon her as the wife, he had done it. Was it possible that Lily—a creature full of intelligence on other matters, who even now and then picked up a thing quicker than he did himself—should not have sense enough and judgment enough to see this? But these thoughts, though they mingled with all he did, and accompanied him night and day, did not make things any better. The fact that she had taken no notice of him all this time, that she had not written to him even to upbraid him, that she had not even asked him for news of the child, was very heavy on Lumsden’s mind—almost, I had said, upon his heart, for he still had a heart, notwithstanding all that had come and gone. Perhaps it might have relieved him a little had he known that news had been obtained of the child, though not through him. Marg’ret—who, though she had been unfaithful to the young mother, to whom at the same time she had been so kind, certainly had a heart, which smote her much as being a party to a proceeding which became more and more doubtful the more she thought of it—had written twice to Beenie, altogether superior to the question of the eightpence to pay, to assure her of the baby’s health. He was well, he was thriving, his mother would not know him he had grown so big and strong, and Marg’ret hoped that ere long she would put him, just a perfect beauty, into his mother’s arms. These queer missives, sealed with a wafer and a thimble, had been better than all the eloquent letters in the world to Lily. When those from Ronald, full of excellent reason and all the philosophy that could be brought to bear on the circumstances, were given to her on her recovery, they had but made her wound more bitter and her resentment more warm; but the nurse’s letters had given her strength. They had made her able to charm and please her uncle; they had enabled her to face life again and fight her way back to a certain degree of health; they had sustained her in her journey, and this first set out upon the world to manage her own affairs, which was as novel to her as if she had been fifteen, instead of twenty-five. They wanted only one thing—they had no address. The postmark was Edinburgh, but Edinburgh was (to these inexperienced women) a very wide word.
What Lily had intended to do when she had found out Marg’ret and recovered her child—as she was so confident of doing—I cannot tell. She did not herself know. This was the first step to be taken: every thing else came a world behind. Whether she was to carry the baby back in her arms, to beard Sir Robert with it and make her explanation—though with the conviction that she would then be turned from the door of her only home forever—or whether she intended, having escaped, to do what always seems so easy and natural to a girl’s imagination: to fly away somewhere and hide herself with her child, and be fed by the ravens, like the prophet—she herself did not know and I cannot tell. The only thing certain was that she thought of the little house among the Edinburgh roofs—that house which could only be got at the term, and which it now made her heart sick to think of—no more. Had she found the door open for her and every thing ready Lily would have turned her back on that open door. She could not endure the thought of it; she could not even think of the time when it would have been paradise to her, the realization of her dearest hopes. In the depths of her injured soul she would have desired to find her child without even making her presence known to her husband. She had no desire even to see him again—he seemed to have alienated her too completely for any repentance. And up to this moment, her mind being altogether occupied by her child, none of those relentings toward those whom we have loved and who have wronged us, which make the heart bleed, had come upon Lily. She thought of nothing but her child, her child! to have him again in her arms, to possess him again, the one thing in the world that was entirely her own, altogether her own. The fact that this was not so, that the child was not and never could be entirely her own, did not disturb Lily’s mind. Had she been reminded of it she would not have believed. She thought, as every young mother thinks in the wonderful closeness of that new relation and the sense of all it has cost her, that to this at least there could be no contradiction and no doubt—that her baby was hers, hers! and that no one in the world had the right to him that she had. It was for him that she hurried, as much as any one could hurry in these days, to Edinburgh, grudging every moment of delay—the time of changing the horses, which she felt inclined to get out and do herself, so slow, so slow was every-body concerned; the time for refreshments, as if one wanted to eat and drink when one was hastening to recover one’s child. But however slow a journey is the end of it comes at last. It was a comfort to Lily that she knew where to go to—to the house of a very decent woman, known to Beenie, who kept lodgings, and where she could be quite quiet, out of the way of her former friends. But they arrived only in the evening, and there was another long night to be gone through before any thing could be done.
