“BUT this is all very strange and requires explanation. I do not doubt in the least what you say, but it requires explanation,” Mr. Wallace said.
Only a few of the gentlemen returned with him to the house. Two of them were the husbands of the two ladies who had been with Lily, and who now, with each a volume in her face, joined the surprised and curious men. Lily, too, had come back to the room. It was now that she had intended to make her statement, and it had become unnecessary. She was saved something, and yet there was worse before her than if this had not been saved.
“There is no explanation we are not ready to give,” said Ronald calmly. “We were married four years ago, in the Manse of Kinloch-Rugas, by Mr. Douglas’s predecessor, dead, I am sorry to hear, the other day. My wife has the lines, which she will give you. Two witnesses of the marriage are in the house. Every thing is in perfect order and ready for any examination. The reason of the secrecy we were obliged to keep up was the objection of Sir Robert, whom we have just laid with every respect in his grave.”
“With every respect!” Mr. Wallace said with emphasis, and there was a murmur of agreement from the company round.
“These are my words—with every respect. One may respect a man and yet fail to sacrifice one’s own happiness entirely to him. My wife and I were in accord as to saving Sir Robert any thing that might vex him in his old age.”
Here Lily raised her head as if about to speak, but said nothing by a second thought, or perhaps by inability to utter any thing in the midst of the flow of his address.
“It is unnecessary to say what it has cost us to keep up this, but we have done it at every risk. Our duty now is changed, and it is as necessary to make our position clearly understood as it was before to keep it private to ourselves. I would not allow Mrs. Lumsden to take this avowal upon herself, as I am sure she would have done had I not been here, or to encounter the fatigue of the day alone. I have preferred to look like an intruder, as I fear some of the gentlemen here must have thought me.”
“No intruder,” said one. “No, no, to be sure, no intruder,” said another. “Not,” said a third, “if this extraordinary story is true.”
“That’s the whole question,” said Mr. Wallace. “My client knew nothing of it. He left his money to his niece as to a single woman. The lady has always been known as Miss Ramsay. How are we to know it is true?”
“You know me, however,” said Ronald, with a smile: “Ronald Lumsden, advocate, son of John, of that name, of Pontalloch. I think I have taken fees from you before now, Mr. Wallace. It is not very likely I should tell you such a lie as that in the lady’s face.”
“Miss Ramsay,” said Mr. Wallace—“Lord! if I knew what to call the lady!—madam, is this true?”
“It is true that I have deceived my uncle and every one who knew me. It has been heavy, heavy on my conscience, and a shame in my heart. I can look no one in the face!” cried Lily. “I meant to confess it to you to-day, as he says. Yes, it is true!”
Though the house was still the house of death, according to all etiquette, and the blinds not yet drawn up from the windows, Mr. Wallace, W. S., uttered, in spite of himself, a low whistle of astonishment. And then he coughed, and drew himself up that nobody should suspect him of such an impropriety. “This is a strange case, a very strange case! These gentlemen must understand that I had no inkling of it when I invited them here to-day.”
“What would it have mattered what inkling you had, Wallace?” said one of the most important of the strangers. “We cannot change what is done. Perhaps, indeed, there’s no occasion. It is a dreary moment for congratulations, Mrs.—Mrs. Lumsden, or I would wish you joy with a good heart.”
“You will let me thank you on my wife’s account,” said Ronald. “As you say, it’s a dreary moment—and we have had a dreary time of it; but that I hope is all over now.”
“Over by the death of the poor gentleman that suspected nothing; that has treated his niece like his own child,” said Mr. Wallace. “It is not a pretty thing, nor is it a pleasant consideration. I hope you will not think I am meaning any thing unkind to you, Miss Lily—I beg your pardon, the other name sticks in my throat. It was not with any thought of this that my old friend left all his money to his niece; and we are met here to mourn his death, not to give thanks with these young people that it’s over. He was a good friend to me, gentlemen. You’ll excuse me; it sticks in my throat—it sticks in my throat!”
“The feeling is very natural, and I’m sure we’re all with you, Wallace; but, as I was saying, what’s done cannot be undone,” said the first gentleman again.
“And no doubt it is a painful thing for the young people,” said another charitably, “to have to tell it at this moment, and to have it received in such a spirit. No doubt they would rather have put it off to another season. It’s honest of them, I will say for one, not to put it off.”
“And there’s the will, I suppose, to read,” said another, “and the days are short. My presence is certainly not indispensable, and I think I must be getting home.”
“You will not take it unkind, Mrs. Lumsden, if we all say the same. It’s enough to give the horses their deaths, standing about in the cold.”
“There’s no difficulty about the will,” said Mr. Wallace. “It is just leaving all to her, and no question about it. Scarcely any thing more but a legacy or two to the servants. He was a thoughtful man for all that were kind to him. You can see the will when you please at my office, and the business can be put into your hands, Lumsden, when you please. I suppose you’re not intending to remain here?”
“That is as my wife pleases,” said Ronald. “In that respect I can have no will but hers.”
And then they all stood for a moment, in the natural awkwardness of such a breaking up. No will read; nothing to make a natural point of conclusion. The ladies came to the rescue, as was their part. One of them, touched by pity, took Lily into her arms, and spoke tenderly in her ear.
“My dear, you must not blame yourself beyond measure,” she said. “You were very good to the old man. I have thought for a long time you had something on your mind. But if you had been his daughter ten times over, and had a conscience void of offence, you could not have been a better bairn to the old man.”
“Thank you for saying so,” said Lily. “I will remember you said it as long as I live.”
“Hoot!” said the kind woman, “you will soon be thinking of other things. I will come back soon to see you, and you must just try to forgive yourself, my dear.” She paused a moment, and Lily divined that she would have said, “and him,” but these words did not come.
“We will all come back—and bring our good wishes—another day,” said this lady’s husband, and then they all shook hands with her, with at least a show of cordiality, the half-dozen men feeling to Lily like a crowd, the other lady saying nothing to her but a half-whispered good-by. Ronald elaborately shook hands with them all, with a little demonstration again as of the master of the house. He went to the door with them, seeing them off, enquiring about their carriages. He was perfectly good-mannered, courteous, friendly, but showing a familiarity with the place, warning the strangers of the dark corners, and especially of that worn step at the top of the stairs, which was positively dangerous, Ronald said, and must be seen to at once, and with an assumption of the position of the man of the house which did not please the country neighbors. He was too well acquainted with every thing, too pat with all their names, overdoing his part.
“Oh, Miss Lily, Miss Lily,” cried old Wallace, who had not called her by that name since she was a child, “how could you deceive him? a man that trusted in you with all his heart!”
“Nobody can blame me,” said Lily drearily, “as I blame myself.”
“You would never have had his money had he known. The will’s all right, and nobody can contest it, but that siller would burn my fingers if it were me. I would have no enjoyment in it. I would think it a fortune dearly bought.”
“The money—was I thinking about the money?” Lily cried, with a touch of scorn which brought back its natural tone to her voice.
“No, I dare swear you were not,” said the old gentleman; “but if not you, there were others. It’s never a good thing to play with money: either it sticks to your fingers and defiles you, or it’s like a canker on your good name. He’s away to his account, that maybe had something to answer for. He should have given you your choice—your lad or my siller. He should have put it into words. He should have given you your choice.”
“He did,” said Lily, almost under her breath.
“He did! I’m glad to hear it—it was honest of him—and you—thought it better to have them both. I understand now. It was maybe wise, but not what I would have expected of you.”
Lily had not a word to say; she had hidden her face in her hands.
“Mr. Wallace,” said Ronald, coming back, “I cannot have my wife questioned in my absence about things for which, at the utmost, she is only partially to blame. I am here to answer for her, and myself, too.”
“You will have enough to do with yourself. Did you think, sir, you were to come and let off a surprise on us all, and claim Sir Robert’s money, and receive his inheritance, and never a word said?”
“If it eases your mind, say as many words as you like!” cried Ronald cheerfully; “they will not hurt either Lily or me—precious balms that do not break the head!”
“I would just like, my young sir, to punish ye well for your mockery of the Holy Scriptures, if not of me!”
“The punishment is not in your hand,” said Lily, uncovering her pale face. “We are not clear of it, nor ever will be; it will last as long as our lives.”
“I can well believe that,” said old Wallace. He put up the papers with which the table was strewn into his bag. “You can come to me in my office when you like, Mr. Lumsden, and I will show you every thing. It’s unnecessary that you and me should go over it here,” he said, snapping the bag upon them, almost with vehemence. “She’s badly hurt enough; there is no occasion for turning the knife in the wound. I will leave you to make it up within yourselves,” he said.
Once more Ronald accompanied the departing guest down stairs. He called Mr. Wallace’s clerk; he helped Mr. Wallace to mount into the geeg which awaited him. No master of a house could have been more attentive, more careful of his guest. He wrought the old gentleman up to such a pitch of exasperation that he almost swore—a thing which occurred to him only in the greatest emergencies; and that it was all he could do to prevent himself from using his whip upon the broad shoulders of the interloper who was thus speeding the parting guests. But the exigencies of the coach, which he had to get at Kinloch-Rugas at a certain hour, prevented much further delay. And Ronald stood and watched the departure of the angry man of business in the Kinloch-Rugas geeg with a sensation of relief. Was it relief? He was glad to get rid of him, no doubt, and of all the consternation and disapproval with which his appearance had been greeted. No one now had any right to say a word—the first and greatest ordeal was over. But yet there remained something behind which made Ronald’s nerves tingle; all that was outside had passed away. He had now to confront alone an antagonist still more alarming: his Lily, whom he loved in spite of every thing, whose image had filled this gray old place with sweetness, who had always, up to their last meeting, been sweet to him, sweeter than words could say—his first and only sweetheart, his love, his wife. Now all the strangers were gone the matter was between him and her alone. And Ronald, though he was so sensible and so strong, was, for the first time, afraid.
He came upstairs slowly, collecting himself for what was before him; not without a pause at the top to examine again that defective step, which he had so often remarked upon, which now must be seen to at once. He had accomplished all he had hoped. Sir Robert had not even kept him long waiting. Two years was not a very long time to wait; two years in comparison with the lifetime that lay before Lily and himself was nothing. They were young, and with this foundation of Sir Robert’s fortune every thing was at their feet: all that his profession could give, all its prizes and honors, all that was best in life—the ease of never having to think or scheme about money, the unspeakable freedom and exemption from petty cares which that insures. To do him justice, he did not think of the money itself. He thought that now, whether he was successful or unsuccessful, Lily was safe—that she would have no struggle to undergo, no discomfort—while, at the same time, he was very sure now that he would be successful, that every thing was possible to him. A modest fortune to begin with, enough to keep the wife and family comfortable, whatever happens, and to free him from every thought but how to make the best of himself and his powers—was not that the utmost that a man could desire, the best foundation? He went back to his Lily, saying all this to himself, but he could not get his heart up to the height of that elation which had possessed him when he had put on his weepers and his crape for Sir Robert. He had not quite recognized the drawbacks then. Half of them—oh, more than half of them—had been got over. There only remained Lily: Lily, his wife, who loved him, for whom he had in store the most delightful of surprises, to whom he could show now, fully and freely, without fear of any man, how much he loved her, whose future life he should care for in every detail, letting her feel the want of nothing; oh, far better than that—the possession of every thing that heart of woman could desire.
She was sitting as he had left her, in a large chair drawn out almost into the centre of the room—a sort of chair of state, where she, as the object of all sympathy, had been surrounded by her compassionate friends. It chilled him a little to see her there. She wanted that encirclement the ladies behind her, supporting her, the surrounding of sympathetic faces. Now that position meant only isolation, separation; it gave the aspect of one alone in the world. He went up to her, making a little use of this as a man skilled in taking advantage of every incident, and took her hand. “Lily, my darling, let me put you in another place. Here is the chair you used to sit in. Come, it will be more like yourself.”
“I am very well where I am,” she said.
There was the chair beside the fire where she had once been used to sit. How suggestive these dumb things, these mere articles of furniture, are when they have once taken the impress of our mortal moods and ways! It had been pushed by chance, by the movement of many people in the room, into the very position which Lily had occupied so often, with her lover, her husband, hanging over her or close beside her, in all the closeness of their first union, when the snow had built its dazzling drifts on every road, and shut them out from all the world. To both their minds there came for a moment the thought of that, the sensation of the chill fresh air, the white silence, the brilliance of the sun upon the sparkling crystals. But it was a hard and bitter frost that enveloped them now—black skies and earth alike, every sound ringing harshly through. Lily sat unmoving. She looked at him with what seemed a stern calm. She seemed to herself to have suffered all that could be suffered in so short a space of time, the shame of her story all laid bare—her story, which had so different an aspect now, no longer the story of a true, if foolish and imprudent, love, but of calculation, of fraud, of a long, bold, ably planned deception for the sake of money. Her neighbors did not, indeed, think so of her, or speak so of her, as they jogged along the frost-bound roads, talking of nothing but this strange incident; but she thought they were doing so, and her heart was seared and burned up with shame.
He drew a chair near to her and laid his hand upon hers. “Lily!” he said.
She did not move; the touch of his hand made her start, but did not affect her otherwise. “There is no need for that,” she said, somehow with an air as if she scorned even to withdraw her hand, which was so cold and irresponsive. She added with a long-drawn breath: “You can tell me what you want—now that you have got what you want. It is all that need be said between you and me.”
“Lily,” he said, lifting her hand, which was like a piece of ice, and holding it between his, “what I want is you. What is any thing I can get or wish for without you?”
She withdrew her hand with a little force. “All that,” she said, “is over and past. Why should so sensible a man as you are try to keep up what is ended, or to go on speaking a language which is—which has lost its meaning? You and I are not what we were; I at least am not what I was.”
“You are my wife, Lily.”
“Yes, the more’s the pity—the more’s the pity!” she cried.
“That’s not what I should ever have expected from you. You are angry, Lily, and I confess there are things which I have done—in haste, or on the spur of the moment, or considering our joint interests perhaps more, my dear, than your feelings——”
“It would be well,” cried Lily with some of her old animation, “to decide which it was—a hasty impulse, as you say, on the spur of the moment, or our joint interests, which I deny for one! I never for a day was for any thing but honesty and openness, and no interest of mine was in it. But at least make up your mind. It was either in your haste or it was your calculation—it could not be both.”
“I did not think you would ever bring logic against me,” he said.
“Because I was an ignorant girl—and so I was, believing every thing you said, so many things that turned out one after another to be untrue: that you were to take me home at once as soon as the snow was over; that you were to get a house at Whit-Sunday, at Martinmas, and then at another Whit-Sunday, and then——” Lily had allowed herself to run on, having once begun to speak, as women are apt to do. She stopped herself now with an effort. “Of these things words can be said, but of what remains there are no words to speak. I will not try! I will not try! You have trampled on my heart and my soul and my life to your own end—my uncle’s money, my poor uncle that believed me, every word I said! And now I ask, what do you want more? Let me know it, and if I can, I will do it.”
“Do you know,” he cried, suddenly grasping her hand again with an almost fierce clutch, “that you can do nothing but what I permit? You are my wife, you have nothing, your uncle’s money or any other, but what I give you. You’re not your own to do what you like with yourself, as you seem to think, but mine to do what I like, and nothing else. If we’re to play at that, Lily, you must know that the strong hand is with me!”
“So it appears,” she said, with a fierce smile, looking at her fingers, crushed together, with the blood all pressed out of them, as he dropped her hand. His threat, his defiance, did not enter into her mind in all its force. Even in those days such a bondage of one reasonable creature to another was at first impossible to conceive. And Ronald was quick to change his tone. Of all things in the world the last he wanted was to enter into the enjoyment of Sir Robert’s fortune without his wife.
“Lily,” he said, “Heaven knows it is far from my wish to be tyrannical to you. There is no happiness for me in this world without you. If you can do without me, I cannot do without you. Am I saying I am without fault? No, no! I’ve done wrong, I’ve done many things wrong. But not beyond forgiveness, Lily—surely not that? What I did I thought was for the best. If I had thought you would not understand me, would not make allowance for me—but I believed you would trust me as I trusted you. Anyway, Lily, forgive me. We’re bound till death us part. Forgive me; a man can say no more than that.”
He was sincere enough at least now. And Lily’s heart was torn with that mingling of attraction and strong repulsion which is the worst of all such unnatural separations. She said at last: “I am going away to-morrow, Beenie and me. I had it settled before. You will not stop that. If you will give your help, I will be thankful. Nothing in this world, you or any other, can come between me and that! If it is a living bairn, or if it is a green grave——” Lily stopped, her voice choked, unable to say a word more.