Upon the day after the storm, a high wind still prevailed. No sailing vessel dared put out to sea from Inverness. The sky was dun and gray, with now and then a fitful gleam of sickly yellowish sunlight. The black waters were all alive with “white caps,” and the sullen roar of the waves, as they hurled themselves against the cliffs upon whose summit stood the house of Heather Hills, filled all the house with its monotonous tumult.
Lally Bird spent the morning in her own room, upon a sofa in a recessed window. Mrs. Peters came and went softly, bestowing pitying glances upon the round gipsy face lying so white and sorrowful against the cushions, but the dusky eyes were looking seaward with a strange, far off, steadfast gaze, and it was evident that the young girl was not even conscious of the presence of her attendant.
At noon Mrs. Peters brought up a tray on which was spread a tempting luncheon of chocolate, hot rolls, delicate game birds, and jellies. She placed the tray upon a low table, and wheeled it beside the sofa. Still Lally did not stir.
“Miss Lally,” cried the good woman, her lips quivering. “Are you not going to eat to-day? You had no breakfast. You will be ill. I know that I have offended you beyond all forgiveness, and that my face must be unpleasant in your sight, but I would undo what I have done if I could. Better almost any kind of a marriage than to see you lying here looking so wan and hopeless. Oh, Miss Lally, if you would only speak to me!”
Lally turned her face slowly, with a look of surprise mingling with her expression of pain.
“Why, Peters,” she said kindly, “I did not know you were so troubled about me. I am not angry at you. You meant what you did for the best. There, don’t cry, Peters. I am not angry; indeed, I am not. You are as much my friend as ever. Sit down by me, and we will eat our luncheon together.”
Peters complied as soon as she could command her emotion, and Lally aroused herself to speak cheerfully, and to inquire concerning the results of the storm.
After the luncheon the young mistress of Heather Hills announced her intention of going out for a solitary walk. The wind was not so high as it had been in the morning, and Mrs. Peters did not venture any objections. Lally attired herself in a bombazine walking dress and astrachan jacket, hat and muff, and about two o’clock she went out alone for a walk along the cliffs.
For an hour or more she rambled on, stopping now and then to rest, and keeping near the sea, over whose wide wild waters her gaze strayed and fixed itself with singular steadfastness. At last she sat down upon a great bowlder, and the slender black figure was outlined against the gray sky with startling distinctness.
Before her lay the wild and restless sea, behind her the undulating fields of her new domain. At one side of her, in the gray distance, was the house of Heather Hills, and on the other hand, and nearer, was the low range of heath-clad hills which gave the estate its name.
It was a lonely spot, that upon which she had paused to rest, with a bold bluff surmounted by a very chaos of rocks, upon whose summit she had perched herself. A few sea-gulls were screaming in the air, but besides them and the wild birds on the heath there was no sign of life far or near.
An hour passed. The wind still blew strong and fierce, tugging at her hat and garments with strong, despoiling hands. Her vail was swept over the bluff into the abyss of waters, and her hair was torn from its confining braids, and tumbled over her shoulders in a dusky cascade. But still Lally sat high up upon the rocky mass, paying no heed to wind or murmur of wave, her soul being busy with the great problem of her destiny.
And so, looking seaward with great longing eyes, she did not see a human figure coming toward her over the fields. It came nearer and nearer—the figure of Rufus Black!
The young man had gone back to Inverness upon the previous night, but he had not been content to accept his dismissal at the hands of Mrs. Peters. His old love for Lally was strong and fierce, and he was determined to win back his lost young wife, if energy and patience and love and sincere repentance could win her back. So, after a sleepless night, and a morning spent in indecision and irresolution, he had come out again to Heather Hills. Mrs. Peters was in her own room, and the housemaid had answered his knock. Rufus had inquired for Miss Bird, but the housemaid had never heard the name. He then asked for Mrs. Black. That name was also unknown at Heather Hills. In this dilemma, believing Lally to be at the Hills, as a companion to Miss Wroat, and believing her to have taken a new name as a disguise, he boldly asked for Miss Wroat, determined to see Lally’s supposed employer, and to entreat her to intercede in his behalf with Lally. The housemaid had told him that Miss Wroat had gone out for a walk, indicating the direction, and calling up all his courage, Rufus had started in pursuit.
He saw the dark and slender figure perched on the peaks while yet afar off. Something in its droop reminded him of Lally, and he came on at a swinging pace, his eager gaze never swerving from her; and as he came nearer and yet nearer, the conviction stole upon him that it was Lally at whom he looked.
“She must have come out with Miss Wroat,” he thought. “Rich ladies never walk without an attendant. She has dropped behind, being tired. It is Lally! it is—it is!”
He came up swiftly, the damp soil deadening the sound of his footsteps. He gained the rocks, and began to climb them to Lally’s side, but the girl did not stir, nor notice his approach.
A sudden sound at her side at last startled her. With a quick exclamation, she turned her head—and beheld him!
She did not speak, but her great black eyes grew larger, and her face grew suddenly so deathly white that he thought she must be fainting.
“Lally! O Lally!” he cried to her, in an anguished, broken voice. “Thank God! I have found you! Oh, my darling, my little wife, whom I have mourned as dead!”
He knelt down before her, in the shadow of a projecting rock, the tears streaming over his face, and his eyes regarding her in wild imploring. So a devotee might have knelt to his patron saint, feeling unworthy to approach her, but longing and praying with his whole soul for forgiveness and mercy.
Lally felt her soul melt within her.
“Oh, Rufus!” she gasped, in a choking whisper.
He put up his arms to enfold her. She shrank back, not with loathing, but with a sudden dignity, a sort of majesty, that awed him.
“You must not touch me, Rufus,” she commanded. “I am not your wife—”
“You are! You are! Before God, I declare that you are my wife—”
“Hush, Rufus! You wrote to me that I was not your wife. Don’t you remember? You said that our marriage was ‘null and void.’”
“I thought it was. My father told me so!” cried Rufus. “O Lally, I have been a poor, weak-souled wretch. I am not worthy of your love. I should have stood by you, instead of basely deserting you through my own personal cowardice. My father threatened to have me indicted for perjury, in swearing that we were of age at the time of our marriage, and I—I was afraid. You can never respect me, Lally, nor love me again, I know, but if you knew how I have suffered you would pity me.”
“I have always pitied you,” she murmured.
“I thought you dead. I saw your poor mutilated drowned body in my dreams. Day and night it haunted me. I was nearly beside myself. I thought I should go mad. My father’s mind was set upon my marriage with a great Kentish heiress who loved another than me. I appealed to her to save me—to save me from my anguish, torture and remorse, produced by continual thoughts of you! I had no heart to give her. I was base and unmanly in offering her the dregs of the cup that had been filled for you; but oh, Lally, I was half mad and wholly despairing! I wanted the love of some good woman to interpose and save me from going to perdition.”
“I heard your offer of marriage to her,” said Lally. “And you are engaged to marry her?”
“No; she refused me. I am free, Lally, and I thank God for it. What should I have done if I had married her and then discovered that you still live? I love you and you alone in the whole world. I am of age and my own master. I have thrown off the shackles my father has kept upon me. I mean to be brave and honest and true henceforward, so help me God! I mean to be a man, Lally, in the best and noblest sense of the word. It shall never be said again of me that I am ‘unstable as water,’ or that I am a coward. Lally, I offer you a second marriage, which no one can contest. Will you forgive me, and take me back?”
His words found echo in Lally’s heart, but she did not speak. Her pallor gave place to a sudden rose stain, and she began to tremble.
“I came to-day to entreat Miss Wroat to intercede with you for me,” said Rufus, becoming alarmed at her silence. “I have not a fine home to offer you, such as Miss Wroat gives you, but I will work for you, Lally. I will make myself a great painter for your sake. Those worthless daubs I painted at New Brompton belong to the past life. Henceforward I will paint better pictures, and show that there is something in me. We will have two cosy rooms somewhere in the London suburbs, and you shall have a sunny window for flowers, and I will work for you, and you shall never know want or misery again. I can do anything with and for you, Lally, but if left to stand by myself I shall surely fall. Lally, little wife, take me back!”
He crept up nearer to her and held out his arms.
She crept in to them like a weary child.
She might justly have reproached him for his weakness and cowardice, and have taunted him with having courted the heiress of Hawkhurst, but she did neither. She nestled in his arms, and looked up at him with great tender eyes full of a sweet compassion and love and offered him her lips to kiss!
And so they were reunited.
For a while they sat in silence, their hearts too full for words. Then Rufus Black reverently touched her black garments, and asked simply:
“Are these worn for me?”
Lally shook her head.
“For the lost love and vanished trust?” he asked. “Yes, I see. But, my wife, if you will love and trust me again, I will try to make your life all rose color. Poor little wife! How you have suffered! I know the whole story from Miss Wroat. When I called at the house yonder last evening and asked for you as Mrs. Peters, a tall bony woman who stood in the hall came forward and said she was Mrs. Peters. I was completely mystified, for I had decided in my own mind that you were known here as Mrs. Peters, but I now see how it is. The old lady knows your story and was angry at me, and called herself Mrs. Peters to throw me off your track. She told me all your adventures since we parted. And now, little wife, let us seek your employer and tell her that you have taken me back, and that we are to be married to-morrow morning at Inverness.”
“So soon, Rufus?”
“Yes. I mean to make you mine in a new bond that no one can contest. I have never taken steps to have our first marriage set aside, and I think it still stands. But we will be married quietly to-morrow morning in a Presbyterian church, and we can be so married without a license or publication of bans. May I take you to church to-morrow, little wife?”
“Yes,” said Lally, softly. “Oh, Rufus, I do think you are going to be strong and brave and true henceforward, and if so I shall not regret what I have suffered. It has been very bitter,” and she shuddered; “but God is good to us at the last. I will try and be a good wife, and to strengthen and uphold you.”
“You were always a good wife to me,” sobbed Rufus, with a sudden remembrance of her gentleness, her tenderness, her strong faith in him, and her resolute faith that he would some day achieve honors and wealth. “Oh, Lally, I am not worthy to touch the hem of your garments, but for your sake I will be a man.”
Lally stroked his cheek softly, as she had been wont to do in the long-ago, at the dingy lodgings at New Brompton.
“My poor boy!” she whispered yearningly. “My poor dear boy!”
“Shall we go now in search of Miss Wroat?” asked Rufus, drying his eyes. “I do not see her on the shore. I own I am afraid to meet her, Lally. It’s a remnant of the old cowardice, you see. But last night, when she told me your pitiful story, I quailed before her. She must despise me, and she will surely try to persuade you to cast me off.”
“My poor Rufus!” said Lally, with a gay, sweet smile, such as had not visited her roguish mouth since the blight had fallen on her life. “Mrs. Peters is harsh in seeming, but her heart is true and tender. She loves me dearly, and I love her more as a friend than as a mistress. One thing we must understand, Rufus,” and Lally’s gayety increased, “I can’t part with dear old Peters.”
Rufus looked aghast.
“You—you won’t marry me then?” he gasped.
“Yes, Rufus; but I must keep Peters. She won’t leave me; and besides, it was only yesterday I thought her the only friend I had in the world.”
“Her name is Peters then?” said Rufus, bewildered. “I traced you two up from London under the names of Miss Wroat and Mrs. Peters. I didn’t notice a third name as belonging to the party. By what name are you known here then, Lally?”
“As Miss Wroat, dear.”
Rufus looked his amazement.
“I—I don’t understand,” he said helplessly. “They said that Miss Wroat was an eccentric old lady, who was rich, and odd as Dick’s hatband. Has she adopted you?”
“Do you remember, Rufus, that last morning we spent together at New Brompton?” said Lally gravely. “I told you then that I had no relative living except a great-aunt, an old lady who lived in London, and who was rich, but whose name I did not know. That aunt I afterward discovered. Her name was Mrs. Wroat. She was an eccentric old lady, but good and sweet at heart, and I loved her. She is dead, and it is for her I wear mourning.”
Rufus looked open-eyed astonishment.
“That is not all,” said Lally. “I took my aunt’s name at her death, at her request. She made me her heiress. I am the owner of the town house in Mount street, and of the estate of Heather Hills, and have besides fifty thousand pounds safely invested, so that I have an income of about three thousand pounds a year.”
Rufus’ arms dropped from his wife’s waist.
“An heiress!” he muttered. “And I have dared to dream that you would take me back? An heiress! A trifle of money will set you free, Lally, from any marriage claims, and you can marry according to your new position. I do not wonder that Mrs. Peters turned me out of your house, a poor, good-for-nothing coward unfit even to address you. An heiress! O Heaven! The word is like a two-edged sword between us!”
He moved backward, white and trembling.
A mischievous gleam shot from Lally’s gipsy eyes.
“I have known so much of poverty,” she said, “that I should like to keep this wealth. It would make a good basis to build upon. But if it is ‘like a two-edged sword between us,’ I suppose I can endow some already rich hospital with it, or give it to Peters, or send it to the heathen.”
“You don’t mean, Lally,” cried Rufus, all agitation, “that you, a rich lady, will stoop from your high estate and marry me, and try to make something of me?”
“I do mean just that!” cried Lally, with spirit. “For you know, Rufus, I—I love you.”
Rufus was at her side again in an instant.
The hour wore on, and the early dusk of the gathering evening fell around the reunited lovers. Lally started at last, crying out:
“How dark it grows! It must be five o’clock, and Mrs. Peters will be distracted about me. I don’t know as it is just etiquette, Rufus, but the circumstances are peculiar, and I don’t believe that Mrs. Grundy has laid down any rule to fit the precise case, and the situation is so remote, and I don’t believe anybody will know or care; and so—and so I’ll invite you to remain to dine with me. But at an early hour—by ten o’clock, mind!—you must start for Inverness.”
“And you will meet me there at eleven o’clock in the morning, at the kirk, little wife?”
“Yes,” said Lally solemnly, and with a holy joy in her black eyes, “I will be there! Who shall part us now, Rufus?”