Sir Robert's Fortune

“Ronald,” she said one day, when they were alone for a few minutes, “you could put your foot to the ground without hurting when you try. You will have to go away.”

“Why should I go away?” he said, with a laugh. “I am very comfortable. It is not luxury, but it does very well when I see my Lily every day–”

“But, oh,” she cried, the color coming to her cheeks, which had been growing pale these few days, “there are things of more consequence than Lily! The Manse people are not rich–”

“You need not tell me that,” he said, looking round at the shabby furniture with a smile.

“But, oh, Ronald, you don’t see! They try to get nice things for you, they spend a great deal of trouble upon you, and they were glad at first—but it is now a fortnight.”

“Lily, my love,” he said quickly, “if you have ceased to care for this chance of meeting every day—if you want me to go away, of course I will go.”

“Do you think it likely I should have ceased to care?” she said, with tears in her eyes. “But we must think of other people, too.”

“Thinking of other people is generally a mistake. We all know how to take care of ourselves best—unless it is here and there some one like you, if there is any one like my Lily. But, dear, I give very little trouble. What is there to do for me? Another bed to make, another knife and fork—or spoon, I should say, for we have broth, broth, and nothing but broth—and a little grouse now and then, sent to them by somebody, and therefore costing nothing.”

“It is ungenerous to say that!” Lily cried.

“My dearest, you will tell me what present I can send them when at last I am forced to tear myself away. A good present that will make up to them—a chest of tea, or a barrel of wine, or– But I don’t want to go away, Lily; I would rather stay here and see you every day until I am forced to go back to my work.”

“Oh, and so would I!” cried Lily; “but,” she added, with a sigh, “we must think of them. Mr. Blythe sits always, always in this room. It is the sunny room in the house, and he likes it best. But you see he has gone into his little study this day or two—which is very dreary—all because we are here.”

“Very considerate of him,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “if that is a reason for going away, that they now leave us sometimes alone. I fear it will not move me, Lily; you must find a better than that.”

“Oh, Ronald, will you not see?” cried Lily in distress. But what could a girl do? She could not put understanding into his eyes nor consideration into his heart. He was willing to take advantage of these good people, and the inducement was strong. She spoke against her own heart when she urged him to go away, and she was glad to be laughed out of her scruples, to be told of the “good present” that would make up for every thing, of the gratitude that he would always feel, and his conviction that he gave very little trouble, and added next to nothing to their expenses. “Broth is not expensive,” he said, “and the grouse, you know, Lily, the grouse!” Lily turned her head away, sick at heart. Oh, it was not how he should speak of the people who were so kind to him; but still, when she mounted Rory—now quite docile and accustomed to trot every day into Kinloch-Rugas—in the afternoon, she could not but be glad to think that she might still come to-morrow, that there was at least another day.

One of these afternoons the parlor was full of people, under whose eyes Lily could not continue to sit by the side of the sofa and minister to the robust invalid’s wants. There was the doctor, who gave him a little slap on his leg and said: “I congratulate ye on a perfect cure. You can get up and walk when you like, like the man in the Bible.” And the school-master’s wife, who said: “Eh, what a good thing for you, Mr. Lumsden, and you been on your back so long.” And there was the assistant and successor, Mr. Douglas, who was visibly anxious to get rid of all interlopers and speak a word to Helen. Oh, why did he not follow Helen when she went out to open the door for her visitors, and leave Lily free to say once more to Ronald, but more energetically: “You must go!”

“I was wanting to say, sir,” said Mr. Douglas, “and I may add that I have Miss Eelen’s opinion all on my side, that I would like very much if you would say a parting word to the lads that are going out to Canada. We have taken a great deal of trouble with them, and a word from the minister–”

“You are the minister yourself, Douglas; they know more of you than they do of me.”

“Not so, Mr. Blythe. I am your assistant, and Miss Eelen she is your daughter and the best friend they ever had; but it’s your blessing the callants want, and a word from you–”

“My blessing!” the old man said, with an uneasy laugh. “You’re forgetting, my young man, that there’s no sacerdotal pretensions in the auld Kirk.”

“You blessed them when they were christened, sir, and you blessed them and gave them the right hand of fellowship when they came to the Lord’s table. I’m thinking nothing of sacerdotalism. I’m thinking of human nature. We have no bishops, but while we have ordained ministers we must always have fathers in God.”

Mr. Blythe had never been of this new-fangled type of devotion. He had been an old Moderate, very shy of overmuch religion, and relying upon habit and tradition and a good deal of wholesome neglect. But the young man’s earnestness, backed as it was by the serious light in Helen’s eyes, brought a color to his old face. He was a little ashamed of the importance given to him, and half angry at the young people’s high-flown notions. “I am not sure,” he said, “that I go with you, Douglas, nor with Eelen either, in your dealings with these lads. You just cultivate a kind of forced religion in them, that makes a fine show for a moment; it’s the seed that fell by the wayside and sprang up quickly, but had no root in itself.”

“We can never tell that, sir,” said the assistant; “it may help them when they have no ordinances to mind them of their duty. If they remember their Creator in the days of their youth–”

“’Deed,” said the old minister, “it is just as often as not to forget every thing all the quicker when they come to man’s estate. Solomon knew mainy things, but not the lads in a parish so near the Highlant line.”

“Anyway, father, it will be kindly like, and them going so far, far away.”

“That is just it,” said Mr. Blythe: “why should they go far, far away? Why couldn’t ye let them jog on as their fathers did before them? I’m not an advocate for emigration. There are plenty of things the lads could do without leaving their own country. Let them go to Glasgow, where there’s work for every-body, or to the South. You think you can do every thing with your arrangements and your exhortations, and looking after more than ye were ever asked to look after. I have never approved of all these meetings and things, and your classes and your lessons, and all the fyke you make about a few country callants. Let them alone to their fathers’ advice and their mothers’. You may be sure the women will all warn them to keep off the drink—and much good it will do, whatever you may say, either them or you.”

“But just a word of farewell, sir,” pleaded the assistant; “we ask no more.”

“And that is just a great deal too much in present circumstances,” cried the old minister. “Where would ye have me speak to them—a dozen big country lads, like colts out of the stable? I cannot go out to the cold vestry at night, me that seldom leaves the house at all. And the dining-room is too small, and what other room have we free? Eelen, you know that as well as me. I cannot have them up in my bedchalmer, and the kitchen, with lasses in it, would be no place for such a ceremonial. No, no; we have no room, that is true.”

“I hope, sir,” said Ronald from his sofa, “you are not saying this from consideration for me. I’d like nothing better than to see the boys, and hear your address to them. It would be good, I am sure, and I am as much in need of good advice as any of them can be.”

“You are very considerate, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, after a pause. “It is a great thing to have an inmate that takes so much thought. But how can I tell that it would not be bad for you in your delicate state, with your nurses at your side all the day?”

“Delicate! I am not delicate!” cried Ronald, with a flush. “It is only, you know, this confounded foot.”

“Well, Douglas,” said the minister, “between Mr. Lumsden’s confoondit foot and your confoondit pertinacity, what am I to do? Since your patient, Eelen, is so kind and permits the use of our best parlor, have them in, have ben your callants. I must not be less gracious than my own guest,” the old man said.

Lily went away trembling after this scene, giving Ronald a beseeching glance, but she had no opportunity for a word. Next day, still tremulous, she returned, to find him still there, a little defiant, not to be driven out. But a short time after, when she was again preparing to go into the “toun”—without any pleasant looks now from her household, or complaisance on the part of Dougal, who openly bemoaned his pony—the whole population of Dalrugas turned out to see the inn “geeg” once more climbing the brae. It contained Ronald and his portmanteau, speeding off to catch the coach, but incapable, as he said, in the hearing of every-body, of going away without thanking and saying farewell to his kind nurse. “Do you know what this young lady did for me?” he said to the little company, which included Rory, ready saddled, and the black pony harnessed, with the boy at his head. “She lifted me, I think, from where I lay, and put me on her own beast, like the good Samaritan. She was more than the good Samaritan to me. Look at her, like a fairy princess, and me a heavy lump, almost fainting, and with but one foot. That is what charity can do.”

“Well, it was a wonderful thing,” Katrin allowed, “but maist more than that was riding down ance errand to the town to take care of ye every day.”

“Ah, that was for Miss Blythe’s sake and not mine,” he said. “May I come in, Miss Ramsay, to give you her message? Oh, Robina, I am glad to see you here. I can carry the last news to Sir Robert, and tell him how both mistress and maid are thriving on the moor.”

It was all false, false, as false as words that were true enough in themselves could be. Lily ran up the spiral stair, while Beenie helped him to follow. The girl’s heart was beating high with more sensations than she could discriminate. This was the parting, then, after so long a time together; the farewell, which was more dreadful than words could say—and yet she was glad he was going. He was her own true-love, and nobody was like him in the world, and yet Lily’s mind revolted against every word he said.

“Why did you say all that?” she cried, breathless, when they were alone. “It was not wanted, surely, here!”

“Necessary fibs,” he said. “You are too particular, Lily, for me that am only carrying out my rôle. You see, I am obeying you and going away at last.”

“Oh, Ronald, it was not that I wanted you to go away.”

“No, if I could have gone away, yet stayed all the same. But one can’t do two opposite things at the same time. And, Lily, it must be good-by now—for a little while. You will look out for me at the New Year.”

“Do you call it just a little while to the New Year?” she cried, with the tears in her eyes.

“Three months, or a little more. I shall not come to Kinloch-Rugas; I’ll find a lodging in some little farm. And in the meantime you will write to me, Lily, and I will write to you.”

“Yes, Ronald,” she said, giving him both her hands. Was this to be all? It was not for her to ask; it was for him to say:

“My bonnie Lily! If I could but carry you off, never to part more! But if nothing happens to release you, if Sir Robert does not relent, mind, my dearest, we must make up our minds and take it into our own hands. He is not to keep us apart forever. You will let me know all that goes on, and whether those people down stairs have reported the matter; and I, for my part, will take my measures. When we meet again, every thing will be clearer. And, Lily, on your side, you will tell me every thing, that we may see our way.”

“There will be nothing to tell you, Ronald. There will be no report sent; Uncle Robert, I think, has forgotten my existence. There will be nothing, nothing to say but that it is weary living alone here on the moor.”

“Not more weary than my life in Edinburgh, pacing up and down the Parliament House, and looking out for work. But we’ll see what is going to happen before the New Year; and I will send the present to those good Manse folk, and you will keep up with them, for they may be very useful friends. Is it time for me to go? Well, I will go if I must; and good-by for the present, my darling, good-by till the New Year!”

Was it possible that he was gone, that it was all over, and Lily left again alone on the moor? She ran to Beenie’s room, which was on the other side of the house, to watch the inn “geeg” as long as it was in sight. Nothing is ever said of what is intended to be said in a hasty last meeting like this. It was worse than no meeting at all, leaving all the ravelled ends of parting. And was it true that all was over, and Ronald gone and nothing more to be done or said?

CHAPTER XVI

The dead calm into which Lily fell after all the agitations of this wonderful period was like death itself, she thought, after the tumult and commotion of a climax of life. Those days during which she had trotted down to the village on Rory, the mountain breezes in her face, and all the warmest emotions stirred in her breast, days full of anxiety and expectation, sometimes of more painful feelings, agitations of all kinds, but threaded through and through with the consciousness that for hours to come she would be with her lover, ministering to his wants, hearing him speak, going over and over with him, in the low-voiced talk to which the old minister behind his newspaper gave, or was supposed to give, no heed, their own prospects and hopes, their plans for the future—all those things that are more engrossing and delightful to talk of than any other subjects in heaven or earth—were different from all the days that had passed over her before. Her youthful existence was like a dream, thrown back into the distance by the superior force and meaning of all that had happened since: both the loneliness and the society, the bitter time of self-experience and solitude, the joy of the reunion, the love so crossed and mingled which had grown with greater intensity with every chance. The little simple Lily who had “fallen in love,” as she thought, with Ronald Lumsden, as she might have fallen in love with any one of a half-dozen of young men, was very, very different from the Lily who had been torn out of her natural life on his account, who had doubted him and found him wanting, who had been converted into the faith of an enthusiast in him, and conviction that it was she, and not he, that was in the wrong. Their stolen meetings on the moor, which had startled her back into the joy of existence, which had been so few, yet so sweet; their little meal together, which was like a high ceremony and sacrament of a deeper love and union; the tremendous excitement of the accident, and the agitated chapter of constant yet disturbed intercourse which followed (disturbed at last by a renewed creeping in of the old doubts, and anxiety to push him forward, to make him act, to make him think not always of himself, as he was so apt to do)—all these things had formed an epoch in her life, behind which every thing was childish and vague. She herself was not the same. It happens often in a woman’s life that the change from youth and its lighter atmosphere of natural, simple things comes before the mind is developed, before the character is able to bear that wonderful transformation. Lily at first had been essentially in this condition. Her trial came to her before she had strength for it, and every new point of progress was marked, so to speak, with a new wound, quickly healed over, as became her youth, yet leaving a scar, as all internal wounds do. Even when the thrill of happiness had been in her young frame and mind it had been intensified by a thrill of pain: the pang of secrecy, the sharp sting of falsehood—falsehood which was abhorrent to Lily’s nature. She had laughed as other girls laugh at the stratagems of lovers, their devices to escape the observation of jealous parents, the evils that are said to be legitimate in love and war. Nobody is so severe as to judge harshly these aberrations from duty. Even the sternest parent smiles at them when they are not directed against himself. But when it came to inventing a story day by day; when it came to deceiving Katrin, with her sharp eyes, at one end, and Helen’s unsuspicious soul at the other—then Lily could not bear the tangled web in which she had wound herself. She had to go on; it was too late to tell the truth now, she had said to herself, day by day, her heart aching from those thanks which Helen showered upon her for her kind attendance upon the unexpected guest. “If it had not been for you, Lily, what could I have done?” the minister’s daughter had said, again and again; and Lily’s heart had grown sick in the midst of her strained and painful happiness at Ronald’s side.

Now this was over and another phase come. She had urged him to go, feeling the position untenable any longer in a way which his robust self-confidence had not felt; but when suddenly he had taken the step she urged, Lily felt herself flung back upon herself, the words taken out of her mouth, and the meaning from her mind. All her little fabric of life tumbled down about her. Those habits which are formed so quickly, which a few days suffice to bind upon the soul like iron, dropped from her, and she felt as if the framework by which she was sustained had broken down, and she could no longer hold herself erect. Her life seemed suddenly to have lost all its meaning, all its occupations. There was no sense in going on, no reason for its continuance merely to eat meals, to take walks, to go to bed and to get up again. She looked behind her, to the immediate past, with a pang, and before her, to the immediate future, with a blank sense of vacancy which was almost despair. When the “geeg” that carried him away was gone quite out of sight, Lily went slowly back to the drawing-room, and seated herself at the window from which she had first seen him appearing across the moor. It had been then all ablaze with the heather, which now had died away into rustling bunches of dead flowers, all dried like husks upon the stalks, gray and dreary, like the dull evening of a glowing day. Her heart beat dull with the reverberation of all those convulsions that had gone through it. And now they were all over, like the glow of the heather—and what was before her? The winter creeping on, with its short days and long nights; storm and rain, when even Rory would not face the keen wind; solitude unbroken for weeks and months; and beyond that what was there to look forward to? Oh, if it had been but poverty—the little flat under the roofs in a tall Edinburgh house, and to work her fingers to the bone! Poor Lily, who knew so little what working your fingers to the bone meant! who thought that would be blessedness beside one you loved, and in the world where you were born! So, no doubt, it would have been; but yet, in all probability, though she did not intend it so, it would have been Robina’s fingers, not hers, that were worked to the bone.

I would not have the reader think that, translated into ordinary parlance, all this meant the vulgar fact that Lily was longing to be married, and would not accept the counsels of patience and wait, though she was only twenty-three, and had so many, many years before her. Had Ronald been an eager lover, ready to brave fortune for her sake, and consider that, for love, the world were well lost, she would no doubt have taken the other side of the question, and preached patience to him, and borne her own part of the burden with a smile. But it is very different when it is the lover who is prudent, and when the girl, with an unsatisfied heart, has to wait and know that her happiness, her society, her life, are of less value to him than the fortune which he hopes, by patience, to secure along with her; also that she can do nothing to emancipate herself, nothing to escape from whatever painful circumstances may surround her, till he gives the word, which he shows no inclination to give, and which womanly pride and feeling forbid her even to suggest; also, and above all, that in his hesitation, in his prudence and delay, he is falling short of the ideal which every lover should fulfil or lose his place and power. This was the worst of all: not only that Ronald was acting so, but that it was so far, far different from the manner in which Ronald, had he been the Ronald she thought, would have acted. This gave the bitterness under which Lily’s heart sank. Again, she did not know what he meant to do, or if he meant to do any thing, or if she were to remain as she was, perhaps for long years, consuming her heart in loneliness and vacancy, diversified by moments of clandestine meeting and unlovely happiness, bought by deceit. She could not again yield to that, she said to herself, with passionate tears. Though her heart were to break, she would not heal it at the cost of lies. It might not have given Lily many compunctions, perhaps, to have deceived her uncle; but to deceive Helen, to deceive kind Katrin and Dougal, to give false accounts of the simplest circumstances—oh! no, no; never again, never again! She said this to herself, with passionate tears falling like rain, as she sat at her lonely window on many a dreary day, straining her eyes across the moor, where the rain so often fell to double the effect of those tears. Let them give each other up mutually; let them part and be done with it if he chose; but to deceive every-body and meet secretly, or meet openly upon the falsest of pretences—oh! no, no, Lily said to herself, never more!

But how these decisions melted when, in the heart of the winter, there began to dawn the promise of the New Year, it is easy to imagine, and I do not need to say. Lily, it must be remembered, had no one but Ronald to represent to her happiness and life. She had never had many people to love. Her father and mother had both died before she was old enough to know them. She had no aunt, though that is often an unsatisfactory relation, not even cousins whom she knew, which is strange to think of in Scotland—nobody to take her part or whom she could repose her heart upon but Beenie, her maid, to whom Lily’s concerns were her own sublimated, and who could only agree in and intensify Lily’s own natural impulses and thoughts. Ronald was all she had, the only one who could help her, the sole deliverer possible, and opener to her of the gates of life. To be sure, she might have renounced him and so returned to her uncle, to be dragged about in a back seat of his chariot, if not at its wheels; though, indeed, even this was problematical, for Sir Robert was a selfish old man, who was, on the whole, very glad to have got rid of the burden of a young woman to take about with him, and considered that she would do very well at the old Tower, and might be quite content with such a quiet and comfortable home, a good cook (which Katrin was), a pony to ride upon, and the run of the moor. He had half forgotten her existence by this time, as Lily divined, and was absent “abroad” in that vague and wide world of which stayers at home in Scotland knew so much less then than every-body knows now. And as the time approached for Ronald’s return, Lily, in her longing for him, added to her longing for something, for some one, for society, emancipation, something that was life, began to forget all her old aches and troubles of mind; the doubts flew away; she remembered only that Ronald was coming, that he was coming, that the sun was about to shine again, that there was happiness in prospect, love and company and talk and sympathy, and all that is good in youth and life. This time she must manage so that the deceit of old would be necessary no longer. Helen should know that the two who had met so often in the Manse parlor had come to love each other. What so natural, what so fitting, seeing they had spent so much time together under her own wing and her own mild eyes? And Katrin and Dougal should be permitted to see what Lily was very sure they had divined already, that the poor gentleman whom Lily had nursed so faithfully was more to her than any other gentleman in the world. He should come to Dalrugas to see her, and be with her openly as her lover in the sight of all men. If Sir Robert heard of it, why, then she must escape, she must fly; the pair must at last take it, as Ronald had said, into their own hands—and Lily did not feel that she would be very sorry if this took place. At all events now every thing should be open and honest, clandestine no more.