WHEN she was sure that the travellers were out of sight, Lily flew down the spiral stairs, snatched her plaid from where it hung as she passed, and rushed out to the only shelter and refuge she had—the loneliness and silence of the moor. She had to push through between the two women, who would so fain have stopped her to administer their consolation and caresses, but whom, in her impatience, she could not tolerate, shaking her head as they called after her to put on her plaid and that she would get her death of cold. It was March and a beautiful morning, the air almost soft in the broad beaming of the sun, and the moisture, which lay heavy on the moss-green turf and ran and sparkled in little pools and currents everywhere; but the breeze was keen and cold, and blew upon her with a sharp and salutary chill, cooling her heated cheeks. Lily sprang over the great bushes of the ling, which, bowed for a moment by her passage, flung back upon her a shower of dew-drops as they recovered their straightness, and the whins caught at the plaid on her arm as she brushed past; but she took no notice of these impediments, nor of the wetness under her feet, nor the chill of the air upon her uncovered head, and shoulders clothed only in her indoor dress. She paused upon a little green hillock slightly rising over the long level, which was a favorite point of vision, and from which, as she had often found, the furthest view was possible of any thing within the horizon of this little world. But it was not to see that little speck on the road, which was Ronald, that Lily had made this rush into the heart of the moor. It was for the utter solitude, the silence which enclosed and surrounded her, the separation from every thing that could intrude upon that little speck of herself, so insignificant in the great fresh shining world, yet so much more living in her trouble than all the mountains and the moors. Lily sank down on the mossy green and covered her face with her hands. She had shed passionate tears on her husband’s shoulder last night, but these were different which forced their way now without any thing to restrain them. They were not mere tears of a parting, which, after all, was no wonderful thing. He would come again. Lily had no fear that he would come again. She had no doubt of his love, no thought that he might grow cold to her. Of the two it was Ronald who was the warmer lover, holding her in perfect admiration as well as in all the fondness of a young husband, which was not exactly what could be said on her side. But his love was of a different kind, as perhaps a man’s always is. He did not want all that she did in their marriage. A little house of their own, wherever it was—a home, a known and certain place: was it the woman who thought of this rather than the man? It gave her a pang even to think that it might perhaps be so, or at least that Ronald did not care for what she might suffer in this respect. He might be content with casual visits, but what she wanted was her garret, her honest name, and honor and truth.
And then Whit-Sunday, Whit-Sunday, the term when people did their flitting, and the maids went to their new places! Oh, happy, honest prose that had nothing to do, Lily thought, with romance or poetry. Would it come—in two months, not much more—and make an end of all this? or would it never come? Poor Lily’s heart was so wrung out of its right place that she lost her confidence even in the term; she could scarcely think of any thing in earth or heaven, she who had once been so confident, of which she could now think that there was no fear.
By this time the cold had begun to creep to Lily’s heart, her fever of excitement having found vent, and she was glad to wrap herself closely in her plaid, putting it over her head and gathering the soft folds round her throat. She put back the hair which the cold breeze and the disorder of her weeping had brought about her face, smoothing it back under the tartan screen, the soft warm folds that gave a little color to her pale face. Oh, if she could have had a plaid, but that of Ronald’s tartan, to wrap about her heart, the chilled spirit and soul that had no warmth of covering! But that must not be thought of now, when Lily’s business was to go back to her dreary home, to meet the eyes that would be fixed upon her, to bear her burden worthily, and to betray to no one, even her most confidential companion, the doubts and terrors that were in her own heart.
As she came out upon the road, having made a long round of the moor to give herself more time, Lily perceived two figures in front of her, whom she did not at once recognize; but after a moment or two her attention was attracted by the voice of the man, who spoke loudly, and by something in the attitude of the little figure walking by his side, and replying sometimes in an inaudible monosyllable, sometimes by a deprecating gesture only, to his vehement words. Was it Helen Blythe who was here so far from home by the side of a man who spoke to her almost roughly, certainly not as so gentle a creature ought ever to have been spoken to? It was some time before Lily’s faculties were sufficiently roused to hear what he was saying, or at least to discover that she could hear if she gave her attention; when, however, a sudden “If you had ever loved me, Helen!” caught her ear, Lily cried out in alarm: “Oh, whisht, whisht! Whoever you are, I am coming behind you and I can hear what you say.”
The man turned round almost with rage, showing her the dark and clouded face of the stranger whom she had met the day before with Ronald, and who was the cause, as she had divined, of Helen’s sad eyes. “Confound you!” he cried in his passion, “can ye not pass on, and leave the road free to folk going about their own business?” These words came out with a rush, and then he paused and reddened, and took off his hat. “Miss Ramsay!” he said, “I beg your pardon,” placing himself hastily between her and his companion.
“I neither want to see nor hear,” cried Lily. “Let me pass; you need have no fear of me.”
At the voice Helen came quietly out of his shadow. “You need not hide me from Lily,” she said, “for Lily is my dear friend. I’ve walked far, far from home, Lily, with one that—one that—I may never see again,” she said, turning a pathetic look upon the man by her side. “He blames me now, and perhaps I am to be blamed. But to think it is, maybe, the last time, as he is telling me, breaks my heart. Lily, will you take us in, if it was only for half-an-hour? I feel as if I could not go on another step, for my heart fails me as well as my feet.”
“You never told me you were wearied, Helen!” he cried in a tone of fierce penitence. “How was I to know? I could have carried you like a feather.”
She shook her head. “You could carry more weight than me, Alick, but as soon Schiehallion as me. And I was not wearied till I saw rest at hand.”
“Miss Ramsay,” he said, “you know what she and I are to each other.”
“I know nothing,” cried Lily, “and you need not tell me, for what Helen does is always right; but come in and welcome, and have your talk out in peace. Never mind to explain to me—I scarcely know your name.”
“It is, alas, no credit, or rather I am no credit to a good name that has been well kept on this countryside; but we are old, old friends, Helen Blythe and me. She should have been my wife, Miss Ramsay, though you might not think it, nearly ten long years ago. If she had kept her promise, they would never have called me wild Alick Duff, and the black sheep of the family, as they do now. This is the third time I’ve come back to bid her keep her word; for I have her word, rough and careless as you may think me. Each time I’m less worth taking than I was the time before, and I’m not going to risk it any more. When she drops me this time, I will just go to the devil, which is the easiest way, and trouble nobody more about me.”
“And why should you go to the devil?” said Lily, “for that is what nobody except your own self can make you do.”
“Oh, do not hearken to him, Lily; let us come in for half-an-hour, for neither will my feet carry me nor will my heart hold me up if there is more.”
Lily made her guests enter before her when they reached the door of Dalrugas; but lingering behind as Helen made her way slowly with her tired steps up the spiral stairs, caught Duff by the sleeve and spoke in his ear: “Do you not think shame of yourself to break her heart, a little thing like that, with putting the weight of your ill deeds upon her, and you a big strong man?”
“Me—think shame!” he said, with a low laugh.
“I would think shame,” cried Lily vehemently, all her hot blood surging up in her veins, “to lay the burden of a finger’s weight upon her, and her not a half or a quarter so big as me!”
This sharp, indignant whisper Helen heard as a murmur behind her while she went up the stairs. She turned round when she reached the drawing-room, meeting the others as they appeared after her. “And what were you two saying to each other?” she asked, with a tremulous smile.
“I am going,” said Lily, “to leave you to yourselves; and when you have had your talk out, you will come down to me to have something to eat; and then we will think, Helen, how we are to get you home.”
“You are coming in here, Lily. Him and me we have said all there is to be said. And he has told you what there is between us, as perhaps I would never have had the courage to do. Come and tell him over again, Lily, you that are a young lass and have known no trouble—tell him what a woman can do and cannot do, for he will not believe me.”
“How can I tell? that have known no trouble, as you say,” cried Lily. But Helen knew nothing to explain the keen tone of irony that was in the words, and looked at the girl with an appeal in her patient eyes, too full of her own sorrow to remember that, perhaps, this younger creature might have sorrows too. “How should I know,” said Lily, “what a woman cannot do? If it is to keep a man from wrong-doing, is that a woman’s business, Helen? How do I know? They say in books that it’s the women that drive them to it. Are you to take him on your shoulders and carry him away from the gates of —— Or what are you expected to do?”
“If she had married me when I asked her,” cried Duff, “she would have done that. Ay, that she would! From the gates of hell, that a little thing like you daren’t name. I would never have known the way they lay if she had put her hand in mine and come with me. And that I have told you, Helen, a hundred times, and a hundred more.”
“Oh, Alick, Alick!” was all that Helen said.
“And you never would have thought shame,” cried Lily, “to ride by on her shoulders, instead of walking on your own feet? I would have set my face like a flint and passed them by, and scorned them that wiled me there! I would have laid it upon nobody but myself if I had not heart enough to save my own head!”
“Oh, Lily, Lily!” cried Helen, turning upon her champion, “my bonnie dear! it’s you that are too young to understand. Maybe he’s wrong, but he’s a kind of right, too. I am not blaming him for that. Many a woman keeps a man on the straight road almost without knowing, and him no worse of it nor her either. I could tell you things! And, Alick, I will not deceive you; if I had not been so young that time—if I had only had the courage—for there was no reason then, but just that I was a young lass, and frightened, and did not know—— There was no reason—then——”
“Except that I was wild Alick Duff, that they said would settle to nothing, and not a man that would ever make salt to his kale.”
Helen made no answer, but shook her head with a sigh.
“How can I stand between you and him?” said Lily. “You take away my breath. I cannot understand the tongue you are speaking. It’s not good English nor Scots either, but another language. Are we angels, to make men good? and is it no matter what evil thing a woman takes into her heart if she can but make her man look like a whited sepulchre, and keep him, as you say, on the straight road? Is that what we were made for?” she cried in all the indignation of her youth.
Duff, a little surprised, a little confused by this unexpected controversy, too much occupied with his own purpose not to be impatient with any digression, yet uncertain whether this strange digression might not serve his cause in the end, made answer, first fixing his eyes upon Lily, the little girl who knew no trouble: “I’m thinking that was a good part of it,” he said. “You had the most to do with bringing ill into the world; you should have the most to do with driving it out. But what do I care about women?” he cried. “It’s Helen I’m thinking of. There might never be such another, but there she is that could have done it, and would not lift her little finger. And now she will smile and send me away.”
“He speaks,” cried Lily, “as if it were your responsibility and not his—as if you would be answerable!”
“Oh,” said Helen in a hurried undertone, “and that is what I lie and think upon in the watches of the night. Will the Lord demand an account at my hands? Will he say: ‘Helen, where is thy brother?’ I that was maybe appointed for him to be his keeper, to take care of him, with all his hot blood and all his fancies that nobody understood but me!”
Duff was walking impatiently about the room, not listening to what the two women spoke between themselves, and Lily was too much bewildered by this new view to make any answer, except by a brief exclamation: “It is like a coward to put the blame upon you!”
“I would not shrink from it if I might bear it,” said Helen. “It’s not that. But to think it might be a man’s ruin that a poor frightened creature of a woman—no, a lassie, twenty years old, no more—could not see her duty. For there was no reason then. My mother was living, my father was a strong man. The boys had been unlucky, but me, I was free. And I let him go away. Oh, lay the wyte on me!” she said, clasping her hands. “Oh, lay the wyte on me!”
Duff came suddenly to a stand-still before her, catching up something of what she said. “I’ll forgive you all that’s come and gone, and all that might have been, and the vows I’ve broken, and the little good I’ve ever done”—a tender light came over his dark face—“Helen, I’ll forgive you all my ruin, and we’ll gather up the fragments that are left, if you will but come with me now.”
“Forgive her!” cried Lily, indignant.
“Ah, forgive her! you that know nothing of the heart of man. Can she ever give it back? She says herself the Lord will seek my blood at her hands: how much more me, that knows what might have been and never has been because she was not there? But, Helen, let it be now! It may be but the hinder end of life that’s left, but better that than nothing at all. We are not so old yet, neither you nor me. And there’s the fragments that remain—the fragments that remain.” He held out his hands toward her, the face that Lily had thought so dark and forbidding melting in every line, the lowering brows lifted, the fierce eyes softened with moisture. And Helen looked up at him with her own overflowing, and a light as of martyrdom on her face.
“Oh, Alick, my father, my father! I cannot leave my father now.”
He kicked away a footstool on the carpet with a sudden movement which, to Lily, at first appeared as if he were offering violence to Helen herself. “Your father!” he cried, “the minister that will have no broken man for his daughter nor ill name for his house, that wants the siller of them that come to woo, that would sell you away to that white-faced lad because he has something to the fore and a respectable name! Oh, don’t speak to me of your father, Helen Blythe, him that should be all spirit and that’s all flesh! Confound him and you and all your sleekit ways! In what way is he better than me?”
“Man! you will kill her!” cried Lily, springing forward and putting herself between them. “How dare you swear at her, that is far, far too good for you!”
But Helen was not horrified, like Lily. She looked at him still, bending her head to the other side. “My father,” she said, “has his faults, like us all. He is a mixture, as you are yourself. I am not angry at what you say. He likes his pleasure as you do, Alick. He is more moderate: he is a minister. He has not, maybe, been tempted like you, but I allow that it is not far different. Perhaps in the sight of God——” But here her voice failed her, suddenly interrupted by something deeper than tears.
“He likes his pleasure,” said Duff, with a short laugh; “he likes a good glass of wine, not to say whiskey, and a good dinner, and tells his stories, and is no more particular when he’s with his cronies than me. Only I’ll tell you what he does, Helen, that me I cannot do. Would he have had it in him if he had not been a minister, nor had a wife, nor been kept from temptation? That is what none of us can tell. He knows when to stop; he likes himself better than his pleasures. He keeps the string about his neck and stops himself when he’s gone far enough. I do not esteem that quality,” cried the big man, striding about the room, making the boards groan and creak. “I am not fond of calculation. Alick Duff has cost me many a sore head and many a sore heart. I scorn him,” he cried, with a strong churning out of the fierce letters that make up that word, “both for what he’s done and what he hasn’t done. But it’s no for him I would draw bridle if I were away in full career. But I would for you!” he said, suddenly sinking his voice, and throwing himself in a chair that swung and rocked under him by Helen’s side. “Helen, I would for you!”