IT did not snow that year: the weather was mild and wet. There was not the exhilaration, the mystery, the clear-breathing chill, of the snow, the great gorgeous sunsets over the purple hills. But the little world was closed in with opaque walls of cloud; the sky low, as if you could almost touch it; the hills absent from the landscape, replaced by banks of watery mist, indefinite, meaning nothing; and all life shut up within the enclosure, where there was shelter to be had, and warmth, if nothing else. It was thus that the anniversary of Lily’s honeymoon passed by. Her mind was like the sky, covered by heavy mists, falling low, as if there were no longer earth and heaven, but only a land of darkness and of despair between. Behind these mists all her existence had disappeared. Her child, perhaps, was there, her husband was there, the woman she might have been was there, so was the old Lily, the girl full of laughter and flying thoughts, full of quick resolutions and plans and infinite hope. The woman who stood by the window was a woman whom Lily scarcely knew, who did what she had to do mechanically, whether it was ordering Sir Robert’s dinner, or playing piquette with him, or gazing, gazing out of that window before he came down stairs. She gazed, but she looked for no one upon the distant road; her gaze meant nothing, any more than her life did. She had no hope of any thing, scarcely, she thought to herself, any desire left. A ball! to go to a ball! which her uncle thought every one of her age must wish to do. He had been going out to dinner that night; most likely he was going to balls also, about the New Year time, when there were so many in Edinburgh. He could not well get out of it, he would probably say to himself. At the New Year time! the New Year!
That season passed over, and so did many more. Miss Ramsay of Dalrugas became almost well known in the county. She went nowhere, being very much devoted, every-body said, to her old uncle, and perhaps a little bitter at being tied to him, never able to do any thing to please herself; for it was only natural to suppose it would please her better to see her friends, to see the world, to have her share of the amusements that were going, than to sit over the fire with that old man. “I must say that she is goodness itself to him,” Lady Dalzell said; “now at least, whatever she may have been.” These words fired the imagination of her company, who were eager to know what Miss Ramsay might have been in the past, but Lady Dalzell was very discreet, all the more that she knew nothing and was unprovided with any story to tell. “Whatever she may have done, she is not the least what she used to be when she was a girl in Edinburgh,” she said. And every-body was disposed to believe that Lady Dalzell referred to the recollections of her own youth, when she was herself a girl in Edinburgh, and Miss Ramsay of Dalrugas perhaps a little younger and something of a contemporary. There was nobody who did not add on ten years at least to Lily’s age.
The little population at Dalrugas itself almost felt the same. To them, too, it seemed that ten years and more had suddenly been added to their young mistress’s age. They themselves had departed to an incredible distance from her or she from them. To think how they had surrounded her with their almost protecting and familiar love so short a time before, watching every movement, feeling every variation of feeling in her, knowing all her secrets, giving her their most zealous guardianship, and that now they should be pushed so far away—the servants of the house, to receive their orders, but all silence between them, every thing that had been ignored, not a word said. It was Katrin who felt it most, having been aware all the time that she herself had much more to do in the matter, and was a more responsible person, than Beenie, who often would have been very little fitted to meet any such emergencies as had occurred, but who was now the best off, receiving from time to time a scrap of confidence, perhaps, at least the chance of close attendance, while Katrin had to be thinking of her dinner, and of all that was wanted in the enlarged and much more troublesome household. Lily never looked at Katrin, even, as if there had been any thing more intimate between them than the ordinary relations of mistress and servant. Had she forgotten how Katrin had stood by her, all she had seen, all she had known? Sometimes Katrin asked herself, with indignation and a sense of injured affection, what Lily, with more reason, asked herself, too: had these scenes ever existed but in imagination? had it been all a dream? Sometimes as she came down stairs with her orders for the day, and with a full heart, swelling with disappointment after some little implied appeal to the past, of which Lily had taken no notice, Katrin had hard work to keep from crying, which would, she felt, be an eternal disgrace to her “afore thae strange women”—the maids, who now took the work of the house from her shoulders, and enforced the bondage of the conventional upon her life. Katrin felt this as deeply as if she had been the most high-minded of visionaries. Nowadays she had always to “behave herself,” always to be upon her p’s and q’s. She could not even fly out upon Dougal, which sometimes might have been a consolation, lest these strange women should exchange looks, and say to each other how little dignified for Sir Robert’s housekeeper this person was. Dougal, indeed, in the emergency, was the only one who gave her a rough support. He would say, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the stairs: “She’s no just hersel’ the noo. Ye should ken that better than me; but ye make nae allowance. I would like to get her out some day for a ride upon the powny, and maybe she would open her heart.”
“To you!” Katrin said, with a sort of shriek, pushing him from her, the strange women for once being out of the way.
“She might do waur,” said Dougal, pushing his bonnet to his other ear. “But, my faith! if I ever lay my hand on that birky frae Edinburgh, him or me shall ken the reason!” he cried, bending his shaggy brows, and swinging his clenched fist through the air.
“You’re a bonnie person to interfere in my mistress’s affairs,” Katrin cried, “your pownies and you! If she’s mair distant and mair grand, it’s just what’s becoming, and the house full of gentlemen and ladies, no to speak o’ thae strange women, that are at a person’s tails, spying every movement, day and night. For gudeness’ sake, gang away and let me be quit of ye, man! If you come in on the top o’ a’ to take up ony moment’s peace I have, I will just gang clean out of the sma’ sense that’s left me, and pison ye all in your broth!” cried Katrin, with flashing eyes.
Dougal withdrew to the place in which he was most at home in the altered house, Rory’s stable, where he and his favorite rubbed their shaggy heads together in mutual consolation. Rory, too, had fallen from his high estate. Never now did he carry the young lady of the house (which, truth to tell, was not an honor he had ever appreciated much), never convey a guest to the coach or the market. Rory went to the hill for peat; he was ridden into the town, helter-skelter, by a reckless young groom, for the letters; instead of the gentleman of the stable, with the black pony under him to do all the rough work, it was he who had become, as it were, the black pony, the pony-of-all-work of the establishment. Yet what things he had known! What scenes he had seen! There was a consciousness of it all, and a choking, no doubt, of honest merit undervalued in his throat, too, as he rubbed his nose against Dougal’s shoulder. He had been even “further ben” than Dougal in the secrets of the life that was past.
And Lily did not console Katrin, said nothing to Robina, did not even attempt to save the pony from his hard fate. She was as hard as Fate herself, wrapped up as in robes of ice or stone, smiling as if from a pinnacle of chill unconsciousness upon all those spectators of her past existence, the conspirators who had helped out every contrivance, the accomplices. And yet it was not the rage which sometimes silently devoured her which separated her from her humble friends. She was angry with them, as with all the world, and herself most of all. But sometimes her heart yearned, too, for a kind word, for a look from eyes which knew all that had been and was no more. But I think she dared not let it be seen, lest the flood-doors, once opened, should give forth the whole tide and could never close again.
When all this came to an end, I do not think Lily was aware how long it had been: if it had been two years or three years, I believe she never quite knew; the dates, indeed, established the course of time, but when did she think of dates, as the monotonous seasons followed each other, day by night, and summer by winter, and meal by meal? Routine was very strong in Sir Robert’s house, where every hour was measured, and every repast as punctual as clockwork, and there was nothing which happened to-day which did not happen to-morrow, and would so continue, unwavering, unending, till time was over. Such a routine makes one forget that time will ever be over: it looks as if it might go on forever, as if no breach were possible, still less any conclusion; and yet, in the course of time, the conclusion must always come at last.
One of these winters was a bad one for the old folk; something ungenial was in the air. It was not actually that the temperature was much lower than usual, but the cold lasted long, without breaks or any intervals of rest: always cold, always gray, with no gleams in the sky. The babies felt it first, and then the old people; every-body had bronchitis, for influenza was not in those days. There was coughing in every cottage, and by degrees the old fathers and mothers began to disappear. There were not enough of them to startle people in the newspapers as with any record of an epidemic, but only the old people who were ripe for falling, and wanted only a puff of wind to blow them away like the last leaves on a tree, felt that puff, and dropped noiselessly, their time being come. It began to appear of more decided importance when Mr. Blythe was known to be very ill, not in his usual quiet chronic manner, but with bronchitis, too, like all the rest. There had not been very much intercourse between Dalrugas and the Manse since Sir Robert’s arrival. He had been eager to see the old minister, who was almost the only relic of the friends of his youth, and they had found a great deal to say to each other on the first and even on the second visit. But Sir Robert liked his visitors to come to him, and Mr. Blythe was incapable of moving from his chair, so that their intercourse gradually lessened even in the first year, and in the second came almost to nothing at all. There was an embarrassment, too, between the two old gentlemen. Mr. Blythe felt it, and would stop short even in the midst of one of his best stories, struck by some sudden suggestion, and grow portentously grave, just where the laugh came in. Sometimes he would look round at Lily, half angry, half enquiring. He could not be at ease with his old friend when so great a secret lay between them, and though Sir Robert knew nothing about any secret, nor even suspected the existence of such a thing, he yet felt also that there was something on Blythe’s mind. “What is it he wants to speak to me about?” he would say to Lily. “I am certain there is something. Is it about his girl? He should be able to leave his girl pretty well off, or at least to provide for her according to her station. Does he want me to take the charge of his girl?” “Helen will want nobody to take care of her,” said Lily. “Then what is it he has on his mind?” Sir Robert asked, but got no reply. Thus it was that their intercourse had been checked. And there was a cloud between Lily and Helen, who was deeply troubled in her mind by the complete disappearance of Lumsden from the scene. There were many things about him, and her friend’s connection with him, that had disturbed Helen in the past. She had not known how to account for many circumstances in the story: his constant reappearance, the mystery of an intercourse which never came to any thing further, yet never slackened, had troubled her sorely. She had not asked, nor wished to hear, any explanation which might be, in however small a degree, derogatory to Lily. She would rather bear the pain of doubt than the worse pain of knowing that her doubts were justified. And there were a host of minor circumstances which had added to her confusion and trouble just before Sir Robert’s arrival, when Lily had, as she thought, withdrawn from her society, and even made pretexts not to see her, to Helen’s astonishment and dismay. And then there came Lily’s illness, and Ronald’s anxious visit, and then—nothing more: a curtain falling, as it were, on the whole confused drama; an end, which was no end. Ronald’s name had never been mentioned since; he had never been seen in the country; he had gone out of Lily’s life, so far as appeared, totally without reason given or word said. And Helen had not continued to question Lily, whom she, like every-body else, found to be so much changed by her illness. There was something in the face which had been so sweet and almost child-like a little time before which now stopped expansion. Helen looked into it wistfully, and was silent. And thus the veil which had fallen between the two old men came down still more darkly between the other two, and the intercourse had grown less and less, until, in the cold wintry weather of this miserable season, it had almost died away.
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.