Маргарет Олифант
Sir Robert's Fortune
But it was a great shock to hear, one gray, dull morning when every thing seemed more miserable than ever, the sky more heavy, the frost more bitter, that the minister had died in the night. This news came to them with the letters and the early rolls, for which every morning now a groom rode into Kinloch-Rugas upon the humiliated Rory. The minister dead! Sir Robert was more impressed by it than could have been imagined possible. “Old Blythe!” he said to himself, with a shock which paled his own ruddy countenance. Why should he have died? The routine of his life was as fixed and certain as that of Sir Robert himself. There seemed no necessity that it should ever be broken. He was part of the landscape, like one of the hills, like the gray steeple of his church, a landmark, a thing not to be removed. Yet he was removed, and Mr. Douglas, the assistant and successor, was now minister of Kinloch-Rugas. In a little while the place which had known him so long would know him no more. Sir Robert ate very little breakfast that morning; he had himself a bad cold which he could not shake off; he got up and walked about the room, almost with excitement. “Old Blythe!” he repeated, and began to recall audibly to himself, or at least only half to Lily, the time when old Blythe was young, as young as other folk, and a very cheery fellow and a good companion and no nonsense about him. And now he was dead! It was probably the fault of that dashed drunken doctor, who fortunately was not Sir Robert’s doctor, who had let him die. Lily on her part was scarcely less moved. Dead! The man who had held so prominent a place in that dream, who had never forgotten it, in whose eyes she had read her own history, at least so far as he knew it, the last time she met his look, with so living a question in them, too, almost demanding, was that secret never to be told? ready to insist, to say: “Then I must tell it if you will not!” She had read all that in his look the last time she had seen him, and in her soul had trembled. And now he was dead and could never say a word. She had a vague sense, too, that she had one less now among the few people who would stand by her. But she wanted no one to stand by her, she was in no trouble. The mystery of her existence would never now be revealed.
“I think I ought to go and see Helen, uncle,” she said.
“Certainly, certainly!” he cried, more eager than she was. “Order the brougham at once, and be sure you take plenty of wraps. Is there any thing we could send? Think, my dear: is there any thing I could do? I would like—to show every respect.”
He made a movement as if he would go to the escritoire in which he kept his money; for checks were not, or at least were not for individual purposes, in those days.
“Uncle,” she said, “they are not poor people; you cannot send money—they are like ourselves.”
“Let me tell you,” he said, with a little irritation, “that there are many families even like ourselves, as you say, which the Blythes are not, who would be very thankful for a timely present at such a moment. But, however– Is there nothing you can take—no cordial, or a little of the port, or—or any thing?”
“Helen wants nothing, uncle—but perhaps a kind word.”
“Helen! Ah, that’s true: the auld man’s gone that would have known the good of it. Well, tell her at least that if I can be of any use to her– I always thought,” he cried, with a little evident but quickly suppressed emotion, “that he had something he wanted to say to me, something that was on his mind.”
How little he thought what it was that the old minister had on his mind! and how well Lily knew!
Helen was very calm, almost calmer than Lily was, when they met in the old parlor where the great chair was already set against the wall. “You are not to cry, Lily. He was very clear in his mind, though sore wearied in his body. He was glad at the last to get away. He said: ‘I’ve had my time here, and no a bad time either, the Lord be praised for all his mercies, and I’ll maybe find a wee place to creep into that She will have keepit for me: not a minister,’ he said, oh, Lily! ‘but maybe a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.’ Is that not all we could wish for, that his mind should have been like that?” said Helen, with eyes too clear for tears. She was arranging every thing in her quiet way, requiring no help, quite worn out with watching, but incapable of rest until all that was needful had been done. The darkened room where so much had happened, isolated now from the common day by the shutting out of the light, seemed like a sort of funereal, monumental chamber in all its homely shabbiness, a gray and colorless vault, not for him who had gone out of it, but for the ghosts and phantoms of all that had taken place there. Lily’s heart was more oppressed by the gray detachment of that room, in which her own life had been decided, than either by the serene death above or the serene sorrow by her side.
When she got back, Sir Robert, very fretful, was sitting over the fire. He was hoarse and coughing, and more impatient than she had seen him. “If it goes on like this, I’ll not stay here,” he said, “not another week, let them say what they like! Four weeks of frost, a measured month, and as much more in that bitter sky. No. I will not stay; and, however attached you are to the place, you’ll come with me, Lily. Yes, you’ll come with me! We’ll take up my old travelling carriage and we’ll get away to the South, if I were but free of this confounded cold!”
“We must take care of you, uncle. You must let us take care of you, and your cold will soon go.”
“You think so?” he said eagerly. “I thought you would think so. I never was a man for catching cold. I never had a bronchitis in my life; that’s not my danger. If that doctor man would but come, for I thought it as well to send for him?”
He looked up at her with an enquiring look. He was anxious to be approved in what he had done. “It was the only thing to do,” she said, and he was as glad she thought so as if she had been the mistress of his actions.
But by the evening Sir Robert was very ill. He fought very hard for his life. He was several years over seventy, and there did not seem much in life to retain him. But nevertheless he fought hard for it, and was very unwilling to let it go. He made several rallies from sheer strength of will, it appeared. But in the end the old soldier had to yield, as we must all do. The long frost lasted, the bitter winds blew, no softening came to the weather or to Fate. Sir Robert died not long after the old minister had been laid in the grave. It was a dreadful year for the old folk, every-body said; they fell like the leaves in October before every wind.
CHAPTER XLIV
I do not think that Lily in the least realized what had happened to her when her uncle died. She grieved for him with a very natural, not excessive, sorrow, as a daughter grieves for an old father whose life she is aware cannot be long prolonged. He was more to her than it was to be expected he could have been. These two years of constant intercourse, and a good deal of kindness, which could scarcely be called unselfish, yet was more genuine on that very account, had brought them into real relationship with each other; and Lily, who never had known what family ties were, had come to regard the careless Uncle Robert of her youth, to whom she had been a troublesome appendage, as he was to her the representative of a quite unaffectionate authority, as a father, who, indeed, made many demands, but made them with a confidence and trust in her good feeling which were quite natural and quite irresistible, calling forth in her the qualities to which that appeal was made. Sir Robert had all unawares served Lily, though it was his coming which was the cause of the great catastrophe in her life. She did not blame him for that—it was inevitable; in one way or other it must have come—but she was grateful to him for having laid hands upon her, so to speak, in the failure of all things, and given her duties and a necessity for living. And now she was sorry for him, as a daughter for a father, let us say a married daughter, with interests of her own, for a father who had been all that was natural to her, but no more.
She was a little dazed and confused, however, with the rapidity of the catastrophe, the week’s close nursing, the fatigue, the profound feeling which death, especially with those to whom his presence is new, inevitably calls forth; and very much subdued and sorrowful in her mind, feeling the vacancy, the silence, the departure of the well-known figure, which had given a second fictitious life to this now doubly deserted place. And it did not occur to Lily to think how her own position was affected, or what change had taken place in her life. She was not an incapable woman, whom the management of her own affairs would have frightened or over-burdened, but she never had possessed any affairs, never had the command of any money, never arranged, except as she was told, where or how she had to live. Until her uncle had given her, when she went to Edinburgh, the sum which to her inexperience was fabulous, and which she had spent chiefly in her vain search after her child, she had never had any money at all. She did not even think of it in this new change of affairs, nor of what her future fate in that respect was to be.
This indifference was not shared by the household, or at least by those two important members of it Katrin and Robina, who had been most attentive and careful of Sir Robert in his illness, but who, after he was dead, having little tie of any kind to the old gentleman, who had been a good enough master and no more, dropped him as much as it was possible to drop the idea of one who lay solemnly dead in the house, the centre of all its occupations still, though he could influence them no more. “What will happen now?” they said to each other, putting their heads together, when the “strange women,” subdued by “a death in the house,” were occupied with their special businesses, and Sir Robert’s man, his occupation gone, had retired to his chamber, feeling himself in want of rest and refreshment after the labors of nursing, which he had not undergone. “What will happen noo?” said Katrin. “And what will we do with her?” Beenie said, shaking her large head. “I’ll tell you,” said Katrin, “the first thing that will happen: Before we ken where we are we’ll hae him here!”
“No, no,” said Beenie; “no, no! I am not expecting that.”
“You may expect what ye like, but that is what will happen. He will come in just as he used to do, with a fib about the cauld of the Hielands, and a word about the steps that are so worn and no safe. Woman, he has the ball at his fit now. Do you no ken when a man’s wife comes into her siller it’s to him it goes? She will have every thing, and well he kens that, and it’s just the reason of all that has come and gone.”
“He’ll never daur,” said Beenie, “after leaving her so long to herself, and after a’ that’s come and gone, as you say.”
“It’s none of his fault leaving her to hersel’. He has written to her and written to her, for I’ve seen the letters mysel’; and if she has taken no notice, it is her wyte, and not his. She will have a grand fortune, a’ auld Sir Robert’s money, and this place, that is the home o’ them all.”
“I never thought so much of this place. She’ll not bide here. Her and me will be away as soon as ever it’s decent, I will assure you o’ that, to seek the bairn over a’ the world.”
“You’ll never find him,” said Katrin.
“Ay, will we! Naebody to say her nay, and siller in her pouch, and the world before her. We’ll find him if he were at its other end!”
“Ye’ll never find him without the father of him!” cried Katrin, becoming excited in her opposition.
“That swore he was dead!” cried Beenie, flushing, too, with fight and indignation, “that stood up to my face, me that kent better, and threepit that the bairn was dead! And her that was his mother sitting by, her bonnie face covered in her hands!”
“Woman!” cried Katrin, “would you keep up dispeace in a house for any thing a man may have said or threepit? I’m for peace, whatever it costs. What is a house that’s divided against itsel’? Scripture will tell ye that. Even if a man is an ill man, if he belongs to ye, it’s better to have him than to want him. It’s mair decent. Once you’ve plighted him your word, ye must just pit up with him for good report or evil report. If the father’s in one place and the mother’s in another, how are ye to bring up a bairn? And a’ just for a lie the man has told when he was in desperation, and for taking away the bairn when we couldna have keepit him, when it was as clear as daylight something had to be done. Losh! Dougal might tear the hair out o’ my head, or the claes frae my back, he would be my man still.”
“Seeing he is little like to do either the one thing or the other, it’s easy speaking,” Beenie said.
Lily did not come so far as this in her thoughts till a day or two had passed, and then there came upon her, as Beenie had divined, the sudden impulse, which nevertheless had been lying dormant in her mind all this time, to get up and go at once in pursuit of her baby. All the people she had employed, all the schemes she had tried, had come to nothing. At first her ignorant efforts had been balked by that very ignorance itself, by not knowing what to do or whom to trust, and then by distance and time and agents who were not very much in earnest. To look for a great criminal—that was a thing which might waken all the natural detective qualities even before detectives were. But to look for a baby, with no glory, no notoriety, whatever might be one’s success! Lily saw all this now with the wisdom that even a very little practical experience gives. But his mother—that would be a very different matter. His mother would find him wheresoever he was hidden. And after the first day of consternation, of confusion and fatigue, this resolution flashed upon her, as it had done at times through all the miserable months that were past. She had been obliged to crush it then, but now there was no occasion to crush it any longer. She was free; no one had any right to stop her; she was necessary to nobody, bound to nobody. So she thought, rejecting vehemently in her mind the idea of her husband, who had robbed her, who had lied to her, but who should not restrain her now, let the law say what it would. Lily did not even know how much the property of her husband she was. Even in the old bad times it was only when evil days came that the women learned this. The majority of them, let us hope, went to their graves without ever knowing it, except in a jibe, which was to the address of all women. She did not think of it. Ronald had robbed her, had lied to her, and was separated from her forever; but that he would even now attempt to control her did not enter into Lily’s mind. He was a gentleman, though these were not the acts of a gentleman. She did not fear him nor suspect him of any common offence against her. He had been guilty of these crimes—that was the only word to use for them—but to herself, Lily, he could do nothing. She had so much confidence in him still. Nor, indeed (she thought at first), would he have any thing to do with it. He would know nothing; she would go after her child at once, as was natural, his mother’s right. And he surely would not be the man to interfere.
Then as she began to wait, to feel herself waiting, every nerve tingling and excitement rising in her veins every hour, in the enforced silence of the shadowed house, until the funeral should set her free, Lily came to life altogether, she could not tell how, in a moment, waking as if from the past, the ice, the paralysis that had bound her. She had lived with her uncle these two years, and she had not lived at all. She had not known even what was the passage of time. Her existence had been mechanical, and all her days alike, the winter in one fashion, the summer in another. The child, the thought of the child, had been a thread which kept her to life; otherwise there had been nothing. But now, when that thought of the child became active and an inspiration, her whole soul suddenly came to life again. It was as when the world has been hid by the darkness of night, and we seem to stand detached, the only point of consciousness with nothing round us, till between two openings of the eyelids there comes into being again a universe that had been hidden, the sky, the soil, the household walls, all in a moment visible in that dawn which is scarcely light, which is vision, which recreates and restores all that we knew of. To Lily there came a change like that. She closed her eyes in the wintry blackness of the night, and when she opened them, every thing had come back to her. It was not that she had forgotten: it was all there all the time; but her heart had been benumbed, and darkness had covered the face of the earth. It was not the light or warmth of the sunrise that came upon her; it was that revelation of the earliest dawn that makes the hidden things visible, and fills in once more the mountains and the moors, the earth and the sky.
It was with a shock that she saw it all again. She had been wrapped in a false show, every thing vanity and delusion about her—Miss Ramsay, a name that was hers no longer; but in reality she was Ronald Lumsden’s wife, the mother of a child, a woman with other duties, other rights. And he was there, facing her, filling up the world. In her benumbed state he had been almost invisible; so much of life as she had clung to the idea of the baby. When he appeared to her, it was as a ghost from which she shrank, from which every instinct turned her away. But now he stood there, as he had stood all the time, looking her in the face. Had he been doing so all these years? or had she been invisible to him as he to her? She was seized with a great trembling as she asked herself that question. Had he been watching her through the dark as through the light, keeping his eye upon her, waiting? She shuddered, but all her faculties became vivid, living, at this touch. And then there were other questions to ask: What would he do? Failing that, more intimate still, what would she do, Lily, herself? What, now that she was free, alone, with no bond upon her, what should she do? This question shook her very being. She could go on no longer with her life of lies: what should she do?
Sir Robert’s man of business came from Edinburgh as soon as the news reached him. He told her that she was, as she had a right to be, her uncle’s sole heir, there being no other relation near enough to be taken into consideration at all. Should she tell him at once what her real position was? It was a painful thing for Lily to do, and until she was able to set out upon that search for her child, which was still her first object, she had a superstitious feeling that something might happen, something that would detain or delay her, if she told her secret at once. She had arranged to go away on the morning after the funeral. That day, before Mr. Wallace left Dalrugas, she resolved that she would tell him, and, through him, all who were there. Her heart beat very loud at the thought. To keep it so long, and then in a moment give it up to the discussion of all the world! To reveal—was it her shame? Oh, shame, indeed, to have deceived every one, her uncle, every creature who knew her. But yet not shame, not shame, in any other way. Much surprised was Mr. John Wallace, W. S., Sir Robert’s man of business, to find how indifferent Miss Ramsay was as to the value and extent of the property her uncle had left her. She said “Yes,” to all his statements, sometimes interrogatively, sometimes in simple assent; but he saw that she did not take them in, that the figures had no meaning for her. Her mind was otherwise absorbed. She was thinking of something. When he asked her, not without a recollection of things he had heard, as he said to himself, “long ago,” when Sir Robert’s niece had been sent off to the wilds out of some young birky’s way, whether there was any one whom she would like specially summoned for the funeral, Lily looked up at him with a quick, almost terrified glance, and said: “No, no!” She had, he felt, certainly something on her mind. I don’t know whether, in those days, the existence of a private and hidden story was more common than now: there were always facilities for such things in Scotland in the nature of the marriage laws, and many anxious incidents happened in families. A man acknowledging a secret wife, of whose existence nobody had known, was common enough. But a young lady was different. At all events there could be no doubt that this young lady had something on her mind.
The arrangements were all made in a style befitting Sir Robert’s dignity. The persons employed came from Edinburgh with a solemn hearse and black horses, and all the gloomiest paraphernalia of death. A great company gathered from the country all about. They had begun to arrive, and a number of carriages were already waiting round to show the respect of his neighbors for the old gentleman, of whom they had actually known so little. The few farmers who were his tenants on the estate, which included so little land of a profitable kind among the moors (not yet profitable) and the mountains, waited outside in their rough gigs, but several of the gentlemen had gathered in the drawing-room, where cake and wine were laid out upon a table, and Mr. Douglas, now the minister of Kinloch-Rugas, stood separate, a little from the rest, prepared to “give the prayer.” The Church of Scotland knew no burial service in those days other than the prayer which preceded the carrying forth of the coffin. Two ladies had driven over, with their husbands, to stay with Lily when the procession left the house. They did not know very much of her, but they were sorry for her in her loneliness. The appearance of a woman at a funeral was an unknown thing in those days in Scotland, and never thought of. This little cluster of black dresses was in a corner of the room, in the faint light of the shadowed windows, Lily’s pale face, tremulous with an agitation which was not grief, forming the point of highest light in the sombre room, among the high-colored rural countenances. She meant to tell them on their return.
It was at this moment, in the preliminary pause, when Mr. Douglas, standing out in the centre of the room, was about to lift his hand as the signal for the prayer—about to begin—that a rapid step became audible, coming up the stairs, stumbling a little on the uppermost steps as most people did. It was nothing wonderful that some one should be a little late, yet there was something in the step which made even the most careless member of the company look round. Lily, absorbed in her thoughts, was startled by the sound, she could not tell why. She moved her head a little, and it so happened that the gentlemen standing about by an instinctive movement stepped aside from between her and the door, so as to leave room for the entrance of the new-comer. He was heard to quicken his pace, as if fearing to be too late, and the minister stood with his hand raised, waiting till the interruption should be over and the tardy guest had appeared.
Then the door opened quickly, and Ronald Lumsden came in. He was in full panoply of mourning, according to the Scotch habit, his hat, which was in his hand, covered with crape, his sleeves with white “weepers,” his appearance that of chief mourner. “I am not too late?” he said, as he came in. Who was he? Some of those present did not know. Was he some unacknowledged son, turning up at the last moment to turn away the inheritance? Mr. Wallace stepped out a little to meet him, in consternation. Suddenly it flashed through his memory that this was the young fellow out of whose way Lily Ramsay had been sent by her uncle. He knew Lumsden well enough. He made a sign to him to be silent, pointing to the minister, who stood interrupted, ready to begin.
“I see,” said Ronald in the proper whisper, with a nod of his head; and then he stepped straight up, through the little lane made for him, to where Lily sat, like an image of stone, her lips parted with a quick, fluttering breath. He took her hand and held it in his, standing by her side. “Pardon me that I come so late,” he said, “I was out of town; but I am still in time. Mr. Wallace, I will take my place after the coffin as the representative of my wife.” This was said rapidly, but calmly, in the complete self-possession of a man who knows he is master of the situation. There was scarcely a pause, the astonished company had scarcely time to look into each other’s face, when the proceedings went on. The minister’s voice arose, with that peculiar cadence which is in the sound of prayer. The men stood still, arrested in their excitement, shuffling with their feet, covering their faces with one hand so long as they could keep up that difficult position. But this was all unlike a funeral prayer. The atmosphere had suddenly become full of excitement, the pulsations quickened in every wrist.
Lily remained in her chair; she did not rise. It was one of the points of decorum that a woman should not be able to stand on such an occasion. The two ladies, all one quiver of curiosity, stood behind her, and Ronald by her side, holding her hand. He did not give it up, though she had tried to withdraw it, but stood close by her, holding his hat, with its long streamers of crape, in his other hand, his head drooped a little, and his eyes cast down in reverential sympathy. To describe what was in her mind would be impossible. Her heart had given one wild leap, as if it would have choked her, and then a sort of calm of death had succeeded. He held her hand, pressing it softly from time to time. He gave no sign but this of any other feeling but the proper respectful attention, while she sat paralyzed. And then came the stir—the movement. He let her hand drop, and, bending over her, touched her forehead with his lips; and then he made a sign to the astonished men about, even to Mr. Wallace, who had been, up to this moment, the chief authority, to precede him. There was a sort of a gasp in the astonished assembly, but every one obeyed Ronald’s courteous gesture. There was nothing presumptuous, nothing of the upstart, in it: it was the calm and dignified confidence of the master of the house. He was the last to leave the room, which he did with another pressure of Lily’s hand, and a glance to the ladies behind, which said as distinctly as words: “Take care of my wife.” And he was the first in the procession, placing himself at once behind the coffin. The burying-ground was not far away; it was one of those lonely places among the hills, with a little chapel in ruins, a relic of an older form of faith, within its gray walls, which are so pathetic and so solemn. The long line of men walking two and two made a great show in their black procession, their feet ringing upon the hard frost-bound road. But Ronald walked alone, in front, as if he had been Sir Robert’s son. And his heart was full of a steady and sober elation. It had been a hard fight, but he had conquered. Though he was not a son, but an enemy, he was, as he had always intended, Sir Robert’s heir.
