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!”