HE had come back; he had come—could there be any doubt on that point?—to take his wife away, to take her home.
Lily, at least in her own mind, would admit of no doubt. She was transported in a moment from the depths to the heights. So much the more as it had been impossible yesterday to see any light, there was now such a flushing of the whole horizon that doubt was out of the question. She came toward the house with him with his arm around her, thinking of no precautions. Why should they conceal any thing, this young pair? The man had come to take his wife away. When he withdrew his arm from her waist and drew her hand through it, it did not, however, strike her that there was any thing in that. It was more decorous, like old married people, no longer mere lad and lass. She walked proudly by his side, leaning on his arm. Who cared if Sir Robert himself were there to see? Lily had never cared much for Sir Robert, had always been ready to defy him and vindicate her rights over her own life. As it happened there was nobody but Katrin standing at the door, looking out with her hand over her eyes. Katrin was very quick to make believe that she was dazzled by any little bit of light.
And the lonely moor lighted up and became as paradise to Lily. He brought her all kinds of news, besides the best news of all, which was to see him there. He brought back her old world to her—the world where she had been so happy and so full of friends; her new world, where so soon, in a day or two, she was to find her young companions again, and resume the former life more cordial, more kind, more full of friendship and every gentle affection than ever.
While he sat there thawing, expanding, shaking the cold from him, Lily, who a little while ago had been the fastidious little maiden, courted and served, began to move about the room serving him, eager to get every thing for him he wanted, to undo his muffler, to bring him his slippers. Yes, she would have liked to bring him his slippers as she brought him, like a house-maid, on a little silver salver, not a cup of tea, which probably Ronald would not have appreciated, but something stronger, “to keep out the cauld,” which Katrin recommended and brought upstairs with her own hands to the drawing-room door. “You are not going to serve me, my Lily?” Ronald said. “But I am just going to serve you,” she cried, with a little stamp of her foot, “and who has a better right? and who should wait on my man but me that am bound to take care of him? and him come to take me away.”
Was she afraid to say these words out loud lest they should break the spell? or was he afraid that she might say them and he not be able to ignore them? But between them something was thrown down, a noise was made in which they were inaudible. I do not know if Lily had any little tremor that made her avoid explanation that evening; at all events she had a sort of hunger to be happy, to enjoy it to the utmost. She laid the table with her own hands, shutting the door in the face of the astonished Robina, who hurried up as soon as she came in to have her share. “I can do without you for all so grand as you think yourself,” Lily cried; “I am just going to wait upon my own man!”
“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Beenie, terrified; but she added to herself: “What a good thing there’s naebody in the house! Dougal will not be in till it’s late, and most likely he’ll be fou when he comes—and be nane the wiser. And naething will need to be said.” I cannot tell whether Katrin made quite the same explanation to herself; but she had taken her precautions in case that should happen to Dougal which happened in these days to many honest men on a market night without much infringement of their character for sobriety. It would make the explanation much simpler about the gentleman upstairs. In short, it would not be necessary to make any explanation at all.
“Get out the boxes, Beenie,” said Lily, at a later hour. “Do not make any fuss or have things lying about, for gentlemen, you know, cannot endure that; but just prepare quietly, without any fuss.”
“Oh, Miss Lily! do you think it has come to that?” Beenie cried, clasping her hands with a start of joyful surprise, but with a countenance full of doubt.
“And what else should it come to?” cried Lily, radiant. “Is this what folk are married for, to live one in Edinburgh and one up far in the Hielands? And what should my man come for but to take me home?”
She must have believed it or she would not have said it with such boldness. She gave Beenie a shake and then a kiss, but cried: “Don’t make a confusion, don’t leave the things lying about, for that is what gentlemen cannot endure,” as she ran away to rejoin her husband. Robina stood immovable, looking after her. “Who has learnt her that?” she said to herself; and then she began to shake her head. “They soon, soon learn what a gentleman canna bide; and set him up! that he should not bide any thing coming from her!” But Beenie did not bring out any boxes. She concluded that at all events it would be time enough for that to-morrow.
Ronald remained for three or four days, during which time Dougal, who had carried out the judicious previsions of the women, and had required no explanations of any kind on the market night, maintained a very sullen countenance and did not welcome the visitor, of whom he was suspicious without well knowing why. During this time there was scarcely any pretence kept up of sending Ronald off to the cottage of Tam Robison or in any way making a stranger of him. He was “the young leddy’s freend.” “Young leddies had nae sic freends in my time,” said Dougal. “They have aye had them in my time,” said Katrin, “and that cannot be far different.” He did not know what to say; but he was very glum, and open to no blandishments on the part of the stranger. And those were days of anxious happiness for Lily. Ronald said nothing upon that one sole subject which she longed to know of. He sounded no note of freedom amid all the litanies he sang to her about her own sweetness, her beauty, her kindness. Lily grew sick of hearing her own praises. “Oh, if he would but say I was an ugly, troublesome thing! and then say: ‘You must be ready, Lily, for we’re going home to-morrow!’” But Lily was very sweet to her husband; this short visit was full of delight to him; he loved to look at her, to take her in his arms, to know she was his. Going away from her was hard to bear. He would have bemoaned his very hard case if he had not feared that she would beseech him to put an end to it, to take her away with him, and that it need be hard no longer. That was not what he wanted. He preferred the moments of rapture and the separations between. At least he preferred them to the loss of many other things which would be otherwise involved.
One day they went down to the Manse, Lily riding upon Rory, and her husband walking by her side. “You can say I have just come over for the day,” he said. “The minister of course knows very well, but your friend Miss Helen——”
“Why should we tell lies about it, Ronald? Isn’t it very easy, very easy to understand?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, “in any case it’s easy to understand; but we might as well avoid gossip if we could.”
“There would be no gossip,” cried Lily, “about a man coming to see his wife! The only thing would be that folk would wonder why he did not take her home.”
“Folk would wonder about something, you may be sure; but I’ve noticed that ladies think less of that than men. You think it is natural that people’s minds should be occupied with you, my bonnie Lily. And so it is; but not with a common man. Maybe it is the jealousy that’s in human nature. I hate the chance of it, you see!”
He spoke with a little vehemence, and Lily’s eyes filled with tears. It was almost approaching the border of a first quarrel. “You and me,” she said plaintively, “though I would not have believed it, Ronald, do not always think the same.”
“Did we ever think the same? No, Lily. But so long as we feel the same—and it’s best to be on the safe side. I’ll say I have come over for the day from—what do you call that place?—Ardenlennie, on the other side, where I had to see Sir John’s man of business—which is true. And I found you coming out to pay your visit and came with you. Will that do?”
“Oh, it will do as well as any other—false story,” said Lily, “if we are to go on telling lies all our days!”
“Not all our days, I hope,” he said gently. He was very good to her. No lover could have been more devoted to her service, with no eyes or ears but for her. That ride, though Lily was not happy in the depths of her heart, though she was fretted almost beyond endurance, was yet sweet to her in spite of herself. “Do you mind how we careered along that other day, me riding, you running,” he said, “pushing at Rory behind, and pulling him before, and the poor little beast astonished with the weight on him of a long-legged chield instead of a bonnie lady? My Lily, what you did for me that day! What should I have done without you—at that or any other time?”
“You have to do without me—not that I think I am much good—when you go away.”
“Come,” he said, “you must not harp forever on this going away. Holloa!” he added immediately, retiring from her side with a sudden impulse as if some hand had pushed him away, “there is a man I know.”
“A man you know!” she cried, startled, not so much by this intimation as by the start it produced in him.
“Not a very creditable acquaintance,” he went on, with a short laugh, dropping Rory’s bridle and keeping, as Lily remarked with a pang, quite apart from her. “I thought he had been at the other end of the world. He is Alick Duff, one of the Duffs of Blackscaur. They were once the great people up here; but the present laird, I believe, is never at home. You might ride on while I say a word to him. He’s not an acquaintance for you.”
Rory, however, at this moment did not show any inclination to quicken his pace, and Lily heard the greeting between the two men. “Holloa, Lumsden, is that you?” and “Duff! I thought you were at the other end of the world!”
“Well, no, here I am—no in such clover as you,” said the new-comer, with a rough laugh. “Present me to the lady, Ronnie—Miss Ramsay, I’m sure.”
“This is Mr. Alick Duff—Miss Ramsay,” Lumsden said with a dark color on his face. “We are going the same way.”
“And I’m going the contrary road—I’m sorry,” said the stranger, who was a heavy man, older and far less well looking than Ronald. “I’m going to have a look at the old place and see if they’ll have any thing to say to me there. Then I’m off again to the ends of the world, as you say; and the further the better,” he added, again with a harsh laugh. Rory by this time had moved on, and Lily, though she heard the men’s voices almost loud on the still air, did not make out what they said. In a few moments Ronald rejoined her almost out of breath.
“That’s the black sheep of the family,” he said; “not likely he’ll get much of a reception at home, even if there’s any body there. The only thing that could be wished, for all belonging to him, is that he should never be heard of more.”
“He is a dreadful-looking man,” said Lily, with a shudder, “and seems to laugh at every thing, and looks as if he might do any terrible thing.”
“You should ask Helen Blythe about that,” Ronald said. He was still keeping at a certain distance, the other wayfarer being still in sight. Ronald did not know that, when at the sudden turn of the next corner he resumed his place at Rory’s bridle, it was almost in the heart of his wife to have pushed him back with her hands. This incident stopped the question about Helen Blythe which was trembling on Lily’s lips. What could he know about Helen Blythe, and what could she have to do with this dreadful man?
The minister sat in his big chair as usual, immovable, by the fire, with a keen glance at Ronald and another at Lily as they came in. Lily was a little flushed with the fresh air and exercise, and with the associations of the place, and the sense that to one person here at least her secret was known. She would not take upon herself a syllable of the explanation which Ronald hastened to give fluently over her shoulder. “I am up at Ardenlennie, on business with Sir John’s factor,” he said, “and I was so fortunate as to find Miss Ramsay just setting out on a visit to you, so I thought I might come too.”
“You’re welcome,” said the minister curtly. “Come in to the fire, my dear young lady, and take a seat here.”
“Eh, Lily, my dear,” cried Helen, “I am feared you are not well, for you’ve turned white in a moment after that bonnie color you had!” Helen herself was not looking well. There was a little redness in her eyes, as if she had been crying, and her cheeks were still paler than Lily’s. She was interrupted by her father’s peremptory voice:
“If you would but let your friends be! Sit down here and rest. No doubt ye’re both tired and cold. And, Eelen, if you had any sense, you would get the tea.”
“That’s one word for you, Lily, and two for himself,” said Helen, with a smile. “He’s as fond of his tea as if he were an old woman. I will just tell Marget and come back in a moment.” Perhaps she was glad to be out of sight, even for that moment; but poor Lily, wholly occupied with her own concerns, and wondering whether Helen knew any thing, or how much she knew, or what she would think of this dreadful deception, had no leisure in her mind to think of any possible troubles of Helen’s own.
“Did you meet any—waif characters on the road?” the minister said, with a bitter pause before the last words to give emphasis. It was said loud enough for Helen to hear.
“We met—Alick Duff; I thought he was in Australia or America. He is not precisely what one would call a—fine character,” Lumsden said.
“There are not very many of them about,” said the old man; “some take one turn and some another; but them that stick to the straight road are few, as was said on a—more important occasion. And how will you be liking your stay in Dalrugas, Miss Lily, after all the daffing of the New Year is over? A visitor for a day or so maybe makes it bearable; but it’s lonely for the like of you.”
“Oh,” cried Lily, involuntarily putting her hands together, “I get very tired of it! But I think,” she added, with a confidence she was far from feeling, “that I shall not be very long there now.”
“Oh! ye think ye will not be very long there?” he repeated after her. There was not very great assurance or encouragement in his voice.
“Well,” said Helen, who had come back, “I understand it’s dull for you; but here is one person that will be very sorry, Lily. It will, maybe, be better for you, but the whole countryside will miss you; for many a one takes pleasure to see you pass—you and the powny—that never has said a word to you. She is just a public benefit,” said the minister’s daughter, “with her bonnie face.”
A silence ensued, nobody said a word, and it became visible that Helen’s cheeks were a little glazed, as if by sudden application of cold water to wash away certain stains from her eyes. She had seated herself for a moment where all the light from the window fell on her, but restlessly jumped up again and began to remove her work and some books from the table in preparation for tea. “And when are you leaving this neighborhood, Mr. Lumsden? I hope you have some time to stay.”
“Alas! I am going to-morrow. A man who has his work to do has little leisure,” said Ronald. “We must keep our noses to the grindstone whatever happens. Ladies are better off.”
“Do you think we are better off,” said Helen, with a sigh, “to bide at home whatever happens, and wait for news that maybe never comes? to see the others go away, and never be able to follow them, except with the longings of our hearts? I have had two brothers——” she said, with a sudden little catch in her throat.
“Eelen,” said the minister, “I never knew you for a hypocrite, whatever you were. It is none of your brothers——”
“Oh, father, how can you ken? Do I wear my heart on my sleeve that you can tell what’s in it? You never thought much about them yourself, and how could you know what was in another’s heart? But it’s not for me to speak. I have aye my duty. It’s just Mr. Lumsden’s notion that it’s a fine thing for us to sit quiet at home and endure all things and never hear.”
“Well, here is your tea at all events,” said Mr. Blythe, “and I see James Douglas passing the window to get a cup. When there’s nothing to do in an afternoon and every thing low, as it is at that period in the day, there is a great diversion in tea. In fact,” he added, “the best of meals is just the diversion they make. You are shaken out of yourself. Ye say your grace and ye carve your chuckie, or even a sheep’s head on occasion, and your thoughts are taken clean away from the channel, maybe a troublesome one, that they are in. Still better is a cup of tea. Come ben, come ben, Mr. Douglas; there’s plenty of room for you. We were just thinking, Eelen and me, that it is a long time since you have been here.”
A pleasant light shone in the young minister’s face. “If I thought I could make myself missed, I would have the heart to stay away longer still,” he said, “but then I think that out of sight is often out of mind.”
It was pathetic to observe how he sought the eyes of Helen, and how he contrived to put his chair next hers at the table, round which they all sat. Helen took but little notice of the gentle young man; she set down his cup before him with a precipitation that was almost rude, and turned away to Lily, with whom she talked in an undertone. What about? Neither one nor the other knew. Yet neither one nor the other had any perception of what was in her neighbor’s bosom. Helen’s trouble to her filled all the world. It was greater than anything else she knew; the air tingled with it; the very horizon could scarcely contain it. Lily, a child, with all the world smiling upon her!—what could there be in her lot to approach the greatness of the pain which Helen had to bear? She was half angry with the girl for making a fuss about being dull, as if that mattered; or seeing her sweetheart only by intervals, which was all, she thought, that Lily had to complain of. The little spoiled child! but what a real heartbreak was, Helen knew.