THE snow-storm lasted for about a week, day after day, with an occasional interval, with winds that drifted it, and dreadful nights of frost that made it shrink, but covered it over with sparkling crystals, and with occasional movements of a more genial temperature, that touched the surface only to make it freeze again more fiercely when that relenting was over. The whole landscape was turned to whiteness, and the moor, with all its irregular lines, rounded as if a heavy white blanket had been laid over the hummocks of the ling and the hollows and deep cuttings. The hills were white, too, but showing great seams and crevasses of darkness, from which all the magical color had been taken by the absence of light. Black and white was what every thing was reduced to, like the winter Alps, with a gray sky overhead still heavy with inexhaustible snow. This snow-storm was “a special providence” to the inhabitants of Dalrugas—at least to most of them. Dougal grumbled, and suggested various ways in which it might be possible for the lad from Edinburgh to get away. He might walk two miles north, to a village on the main road, where the coach was bound to pass every lawful day, whether it snowed or whether it blew; or he might get the geeg from the inn at Kinloch-Rugas to carry him south, and strike the route of another coach also bound to travel on every lawful day. But Dougal talked to the air, and nobody gave him heed: not to say that the gentleman from Edinburgh found means to conciliate him by degrees, and that, at last, a crack with Mr. Lumsden became a great relief to Dougal from the unmitigated chatter of the womankind by which he was surrounded night and day.
This week of snow flew as if on wings. They were shut off from all intrusion, and even from every invading question, by the impossibility of overstepping that barrier which nature had placed around them; they lived as in a dream, which circumstances had thus made possible without any strain of nature. Nobody could turn a stranger out into the snow, not Sir Robert himself. Had he been there, however little he liked his visitor, he would have been compelled to keep him in his house, and treat him like a favored guest. Not even an enemy’s dog could have been turned out into the snow. It made every thing legitimate, every thing simple and natural. I don’t know that Lily required this thought to support her, for, indeed, she was not at that time aware that any secret was made of the marriage, that it was concealed from any one in the house, even Dougal, or that Helen Blythe at the Manse, for instance, had not been made aware of it by that time. She had never clearly entered into the question why Helen Blythe had not been present, why the ceremony had been performed in the darkening, and so much mystery had surrounded it, except by the natural reason that no observation which could be avoided should be drawn upon the bride, and that, indeed, all possibility of vulgar remark should be guarded against. The question, what was to be done next? had filled Lily’s mind on that day; but the snow had silenced it and covered it over like the ling bushes and the burn, which no longer made its usual trill of running remark, but was also hushed and bound by the new conditions which modified all the life of this portion of the earth. The moor and all its surroundings hung between heaven and earth in a great silence during this period. The gray sky hung low, so that it seemed as if an unwary wayfarer, if he went far enough against that heavy horizon, might strike against it, blinded as he must have been by the whirling flakes that danced and fluttered down, sometimes quickening in pace like the variations of a swift strathspey, sometimes falling large and deliberate like those dilated flakes of fire that fell on the burning sands in the Inferno. There were no images, however different in sentiment, that might not have been applied to that constant falling. It was snow, always snow, and yet there was in it all the variety of poetry when you looked at it, so to speak, from within, looking through it upon an empty world in which no other life or variety seemed to be left.
Sometimes, however, the pair sallied forth, notwithstanding the snow, to breathe the crisp and frosty air, and to feel with delight the great atmosphere and outdoor world around them instead of four walls. Lily wore a great camlet cloak, rough, but a protection against both wet and chill, with a large silver clasp under her chin, and her head and shoulders warmly hooded and wrapped in her plaid of the Ramsay color, which she wore as fair Ramsays did in Allan Ramsay’s verse. Lily’s eyes sparkled under the tartan screen, and not to risk the chilling of a hand which it would have been necessary to put forth to clasp his arm, Ronald in his big coat walked with his arm round her, to steady her on the snow; for every path was obliterated, and they never knew when they might not stumble over a stifled burn or among the heathery hillocks of the moor. These walks were not long, but they were delightful in the stillness and loneliness, the white flakes clothing them all over in another coat, lighting upon Lily’s hair and Ronald’s beard, getting into their eyes, half blinding them with the sudden moisture, and the laughter that followed. I will not attempt to give any account of the talk with which they beguiled both these devious rambles and the long companionship indoors in the warm room from which they looked out with so much comfort on the white and solitary world. It harmonized and made every thing legitimate, that lucky snow. One could not ask: “What shall we do to-morrow?” in the sight of the absolute impossibility of doing any thing. It was not the bridegroom but Nature herself who had arranged this honeymoon. If it would but last! But then it was in the nature of things that it could not last.
The frost began to break up a little on the eighth day, or rather it was not the frost that broke up, but the sky that cleared. In the evening instead of the heavy gray there came a break which the sky looked through, and in it a star or two, which somehow changed altogether the aspect of affairs. That evening, as she stood looking out at the break so welcome to every-body, but which she was not so sure of welcoming as other people were, Lily felt the question again stir, like a bird in its nest, in the hushed happiness of her heart. In the morning, when she looked out upon a world that had again become light, with blue overhead, and a faint promise of sun, and no snow falling, it came back more strongly, this time like a secret ache. The women and Dougal and Sandy and even the ponies were full of delight in the end of the storm. “What a bonnie morning!” they shouted to each other, waking Lily from her sleep. A bonnie morning! There was color again on the hills and color in the sky. The distance was no longer shut out, as by a door, by the heavy firmament: it was remote, it was full of air, it led away into the world, into worlds unseen. As Lily gazed a golden ray came out of it and struck along the snow in a fine line. Oh, it was bonnie! as they called to each other in the yard, as Rory snorted in his stable, and all the chickens cackled, gathering about Katrin’s feet. The snow was over! The storm was over! In a little while the whiteness would disappear and the moor would be green again. “What are we going to do?” All nature seemed to ask the question.
“I wish,” said Ronald, “those fowls would cease their rejoicings about the end of the snow. I wish the snow could have lasted another fortnight, Lily; though perhaps I should not say that, for I could not have taken advantage of it. I should need to have invented some means of getting away.”
“Because you were tired of it, Ronald?” she said, with a smile; but the smile was not so bright as it had been. It was not Lily’s snow-smile, all light and radiance; it was one into which the question had come, a little wistful, a little anxious. Ronald saw, and his heart grieved at the change.
“That’s the likely reason!” he said, with a laugh; “but, oh, Lily, my bonnie love, here is the Parliament House all astir again, the judges sitting, and all the work begun.”
“Well,” she said, that smile of hers shooting out a pure beam of fire upon him, “I am ready, Ronald, I am ready, too.”
“Ready to speed the parting husband, and to wish me good luck?” he said with a faint quiver in his voice. He was not a coward by nature, but Ronald this time was afraid. He had not forgotten the question: “What are we going to do?” which had been expressed in every line of Lily’s face, in every tone of her voice, before the evening of the marriage. He knew it had come again, but he did not know how he was to meet it. He plunged into the inevitable conflict with his heart in his mouth.
“To speed the parting—— Are you going, Ronald, are you thinking of going, without me?”
“My dearest,” he said, spreading out his hands in deprecation, “it’s like rending me asunder; it is like tearing my heart out of my bosom.”
“I am not asking you what it is like!” cried Lily. “What I am asking is your meaning. Were you thinking of going without me?”
“Lily, Lily!” he said, “don’t be so dreadfully hard upon me! What am I to do? I know nothing else that I can do.”
“Oh, if it’s only that,” she said, “I can tell you, and very easy, what to do. You will just take me down to Kinloch-Rugas, or to that other place where the coach stops, and wrap me well in my camlet cloak and in my tartan plaid, and I’ll not feel the cold, not so much as you will, for women’s blood is warm, and when we get to Edinburgh we will take the topmost story of a house, and make it as warm as a nest, and get the first sunshine and the bonnie view away to Fife and the north. And Beenie will follow us with my things and her own; but we’ll just be all alone for the first day or two, and I will make you your dinner with my own hands,” said Lily, holding up those useful implements with a look of triumph, which was, alas! too bright, which was like the sun when a storm is coming: brilliant with alarm and a sense of something very different to come.
“They don’t look very fit for it, those bits of white hands,” he said, eager, if possible, by any means to divert her from the more important question, and he took her hands in his and kissed them; but Lily was not to be diverted in this way.
“You may think what you like of how they look, but they are just a very useful pair of hands, and can cook you a Scots collop or a chicken or fish in sauce as well as any person. I know what I have undertaken, and if you think I will break down, you are mistaken, Ronald Lumsden, in me.”
“I am not mistaken in you, Lily. I know there is nothing you could not do if you were to try; but am I to be the one to make a drudge of my Lily—I that would like her to eat of the fat and drink of the sweet, as the ministers say, and have no trouble all her days?”
“It depends upon what you call trouble,” said Lily, still holding up her flag. “Trouble I suppose we shall have, sooner or later, or we’ll be more than mortal; but to serve you your dinner is what I would like to do. You’ll go out to the Parliament House and work to get the siller, for it must be allowed that between us we have not much of the siller, and you cannot buy either collops or chuckies without it, nor scarcely even a haddie or a herring out of the sea. But that’s the man’s share. And then I will buy it and clean it, and put it on in the pot, and you will eat of your wife’s cooking and your heart will be glad. Do you think I want to go back to George Square, or a fine house in one of the new Crescents, and sit with my hands before me? Not me, not me!”
“My bonnie Lily,” he cried, “it’s a bonnie dream, and like yourself, and if you only cooked a crust, it would be better than all the grand French kickshaws in the world or the English puddings to me.”
“You need not be so humble, sir,” said Lily; “I will cook no crust. It will be savory meat, such as thy soul loveth; though I’ll not cheat you as that designing woman Rebekah did.”
“My bonnie Lily, you’ll always do more for me, and better for me, than I deserve,” he cried. “Is that the postman for the first time coming up the road from the town?”
They went to the window to look out at this remarkable phenomenon, and there he kept her, pointing out already the break of the snow upon the side of the moor, revealing the little current of the burn, and something of the edge of the road, along which, wonderful sight! that solitary figure was making its way. “But it will not be passable, I think, till to-morrow for any wheeled thing, so we will make ourselves happy for another day,” Ronald said; and this was all the answer he gave her. He was very full of caresses, of fond speeches, and lover’s talk all day. He scarcely left an opening for any thing more serious. If Lily began again with her question, he always found some way of stopping her mouth. Perhaps she was not unwilling, in a natural shrinking from conflict, to have her mouth stopped. But there rose between them an uneasy sense of something to be explained, something to be unravelled, a desire on one side which was to encounter on the other resistance not to be overcome.
Ronald went out to Dougal after dinner and stood by him while he suppered the pony. “I think the roads will be clear to-morrow, Dougal,” he said.
“I wouldna wonder,” said Dougal. His opinion was that the lad from Edinburgh would just sorn on there forever eating Sir Robert’s good meat and would never more go away.
“Which do you think would be best? to lend me Rory and the little cart to take me in to Kinloch-Rugas, or to send for the geeg from the inn to catch the coach on the South Road at Inverlochers?”
“I could scarcely gie an opinion,” said Dougal. “A stoot gentleman o’ your age might maybe just as easy walk.”
When Dougal said “a stoot gentleman” he did not mean to imply that Ronald was corpulent, but that he was a strong fellow and wanted no pony to take him four miles.
“That’s true enough,” said Ronald; “but there’s my portmanteau, which is rather heavy to carry.”
“As grand as you——” Dougal began, but then he stopped and reflected that he was, so to speak, on his own doorstep (in the absence of Sir Robert), and that it was a betrayal of all the traditions of hospitality to be rude to a guest, especially to one who was about to take himself away. “Weel,” he added quickly, with a push to his bonnet, “I canna spare you Rory—the young leddy might be wanting a ride; but Sandy and the black powny will take in the bit box if ye’re sure that you’ve made up your mind—at last.”
“I dare say you thought I was never going to do that,” Ronald said, with a laugh.
And then Dougal melted too. “Oh,” he said, “I just thought you knew when you were in good quarters,” in a more friendly voice.
“And did not you think I was a sensible fellow,” said the amiable guest, “to lie warm and feed well instead of fighting two or three days, or maybe more, through the snow? But now the courts are opened, and the judges sitting, and every-body waiting for me. I would much rather bide where I am, but I must go.”
“If it’s for your ain interest,” said Dougal; “and I wudna wonder but ye’re a wee tired of seeing naebody and doing naething, no even a gun on your shoulder. I’ll bid the laddie be ready, I’ll say, at sax of the clock.”
“Six o’clock!” said Ronald in dismay; “the coach does not leave till ten.”
“Weel, I’ll say aicht if you like. You should be down in good time. Whiles there are a heap of passengers, and mair especial after a storm like this, that has shut up a’ the roads.”
“I shall be very much obliged to you, Dougal. I have been obliged to you all the time. I will explain the circumstances to Sir Robert if he is in Edinburgh in the spring, and I will tell him that Katrin and you have been more than kind.”
“’Deed, and if I were you,” said Dougal, “I would just keep a calm sough and say naething to Sir Robert. He might wonder how ye got here; he would maybe no think that our young leddy—— I’m wanting no certificate frae any strange gentleman,” said Dougal, “and least said is soonest mended. There are folk that canna bide to hear their ain house spoke of by a stranger, nor friends collecting about it that might maybe no just be approved. No, no, haud you your tongue and keep your ain counsel; and so far as things have gaen, you’ll hear nae more about it frae Katrin or me.”
Ronald was confounded by this speech. “So far as things have gaen.” Had this rough fellow any idea how far they had gone? Had his wife told him what happened in the Manse parlor? Had his suspicions penetrated the whole story? But Dougal turned back to the pony with a preference so unaffected, and whistled “Charlie is my darling” with so distinct an intention of dismissing his interlocutor, that Ronald could not imagine him to see in the least into the millstone of this involved affair. Dougal was much more occupied with his own affairs than either those of Lily or those so very little known to him of the strange gentleman who had kept Lily company during the daft days, the saturnalia of the year. He proceeded with his work, pausing sometimes to swing his arms and smite his breast for cold, clanking out and in through the warm atmosphere of the stable to the wildly cold and sharp air outside, absorbed more than was at all necessary in the meal and the toilet of Rory, and taking no further heed of the guest.