It was not with a very easy mind that Ronald Lumsden had executed the
great _coup_ which had, so far as Lily was concerned, such disastrous
consequences. He had been deeply perplexed from the moment of the baby’s
birth, nay, before that, as to what his future action was to be. It had
been apparent to him from the first that the child could not remain at
Dalrugas. Much had been ventured, much had been done, to all appearance
successfully enough. No scandal had been raised in the countryside by
his own frequent visits. What might be whispered in the cottages no one
knew; but, apart from such a possibility, nothing that could be called
public, no rumor of the least importance, had arisen. Every thing was
safe up to that point. And he was not much concerned even had there been
any subdued scandal floating about. At any moment, should any crisis
arise, Lily could be justified and set right. What could it matter,
indeed, if any trouble of a moment should arise? He was not indifferent
to his wife’s good name. He considered himself as the best guardian of
that, the best judge as to how and when it should be defended. He had
(he thought) the reins in his hands, the command of all the
circumstances. If he should ever see the moment come when the credit of
his future family should be seriously threatened, and the position of
Lily become an affair of vital importance, he was prepared to make any
sacrifice. The moment it became serious enough for that he was ready to
act; but in the meantime it was his to fight the battle out to the last
step, and to defend her rights as her uncle’s heir, and to secure the
fortune for her behalf and his own. He regarded the situation largely as
from the point of view of a governor and supreme authority. As long as
the circumstances could be managed, the world’s opinion suppressed or
kept in abeyance, and the one substantial and important object kept
safe, what did a little imaginary annoyance matter, or Lily’s fantastic
girlish notions about a house of her own, and a public appearance on her
husband’s arm, wearing her wedding ring and calling herself Mrs.
Lumsden? He liked her the better for desiring all that, so far as it
meant a desire to be always with him; otherwise the mere promotion of
being known as a married lady was silly and a piece of vanity, which did
not merit a thought on the part of the arbiter of her affairs. All the
little by-play about the house which could not be got till the term,
etc., had been a jest to him, though it had been so serious to Lily. He
had never for a moment intended that she should have that house. To keep
her quiet, to keep her contented, Ronald did not stint at such a small
matter as a lie. Between lovers, between married people, there must be
such things. If a man intends to keep at the head of affairs, and yet to
keep the woman, who has no experience and knows nothing of the world,
satisfied and happy, of course there must be little fictions made up and
fables told. Lily would be the first to justify them when the necessity
was over, when the money was secured and their final state arrived at--a
dignified life together, with every thing handsome about them. He had no
compunctions, therefore, about the original steps. It might have been
more prudent, perhaps, if they had not married at all, if they had
waited till Sir Robert died and Lily was free, in the course of nature,
to give her hand and her fortune where she pleased. That, no doubt, was
a rash thing to do, but the wisest of men commit such imprudences. And,
with the exception of that, Ronald approved generally of his own
behavior. He did not find any thing to object to in his conduct of the
matter altogether.
But the baby put every thing out. The prospect, indeed, occupied Lily
and kept her quiet and reasonable for a long time, but the moment he
knew what was coming a new care came into Lumsden’s mind. A baby is not
a thing to be hid. It was certain that nothing would induce Lily to part
with it, or to be reasonable any longer. She would throw away the result
of all his precautions, of all his careful arrangements, of his
self-denial and thought, in a moment, for the sake of this little thing,
which could neither repay her nor know what she was doing for it. Many
an hour’s reflection, night and day, had he given to this subject
without seeing any way out of it. With all his powers and gifts of
persuasion he had not ventured even to hint to Lily the idea of sending
away the child. Courage is a great thing, but sometimes it is not enough
to face a situation of the simplest character. He could not do it. After
the child arrived, when the inconveniences of keeping it there became
apparent, he had thought it might perhaps be easier; and many times he
had attempted to arrange how this could be done, but never had succeeded
in putting it into words. To do him justice, it was he who had sought
out and chosen with the utmost care the nurse Marg’ret, in whose hands
both mother and child would be safe, and he looked forward with that
vague and foolish hope in some indefinite help to come which the wisest
of men, when their combinations fail, still believe in, like the most
foolish; perhaps some suggestion might come from herself, who could
tell? some sense of the trouble and inconvenience arising in Lily’s own
mind might assist him in disposing of the little intruder. Why do babies
thrust themselves into the world so determinedly where they are not
wanted? Why resist the most eager calls and welcomes where they are?
This confusing question was no joke to Ronald. It made him hate this
meddling baby, though he was not without a young father’s sense of pride
and satisfaction, too.
He had instructed Marg’ret fully beforehand in the part she might be
called upon to play, though he could not tell her either how or when he
would accomplish the purpose which had gradually grown upon him as a
necessity. In these circumstances, while he yet pondered and turned
every thing over in his mind, failing as yet to perceive any way in
which it could be accomplished, the suddenness of Sir Robert’s coming,
which he learned by accident, was like sudden light in the most profound
darkness. Here was the necessity made ready to his hands. Lily could not
doubt, could not waver; whatever might happen afterward, it was quite
clear Sir Robert could not be greeted on his first arrival by the voice
of an infant--an infant which had no business to be there, and whose
presence would have to be accounted for on the very threshold, without
any preliminary explanation--in the face, too, of his friends whom he
brought with him, revealing all the secrets of his house. This was a
chance which made Ronald himself, with all his coolness, shiver. And
Lily, still in her weakness, not half recovered--what might the effect
be upon her? It might kill her, he decided; for her own sake, in her own
defence, not a moment was to be lost. The reader knows how he flashed
into his wife’s room in haste, but not able even then, in face of Lily’s
perfect calm, and utter inability to conceive the real difficulty of the
situation, to suggest it to her, accomplished his design, secretly
leaving her--not even then with any unkind intention, very sorry for
her, but not seeing any other way in which it was to be done--to
discover her loss and bear it as she might. He was any thing but happy
as he drove away with the traitor woman by his side and the baby hidden
in its voluminous wrappings. Marg’ret was not such a traitor either as
she seemed. She had been made to believe that, though no parting was to
be permitted to agitate the young mother, Lily, too, was aware, and had
consented to this proceeding. “The poor little lassie, the poor wee
thing!” Marg’ret had said, even while wrapping up the baby for its
journey; and she had slipped out into the darkness and waited at the
corner for the geeg with a heavy heart.
It startled Lumsden very much that no wail of distress, no indignant
outcry, came from Lily on discovering her loss. These were not the days
of frequent communications. People had not yet acquired the habit of
constant correspondence. They were accustomed to wait for news, with no
swift possibility of a telegram or even a penny post to make them
impatient; not, perhaps, that they would have grudged--certainly not
that Ronald would have grudged--the eightpence which was then, I think,
the price of the conveyance of a letter from one end of Scotland to the
other, but that they had not acquired the custom of frequent writing.
When no protest, no remonstrance, no passionate outcry, reached him for
a week or two after the event, Lumsden became exceedingly alarmed. He
said to himself at first that it was a relief, that Lily herself
recognized the necessity and had yielded to it; but he did not really
believe this, and as the days went on, genuine anxiety and terror were
in his mind. Had it killed her? Had his Lily, in her weakness, bowed her
head and died of this outrage? the worst, he now felt in every fibre of
his being, to which a woman could be subjected. He wrote, enclosing his
letter to Beenie; then he wrote to Beenie herself, entreating her to
send him a line, a word. But Lily was unconscious of every thing, and
Beenie of all that did not concern her mistress, when these letters
arrived. They were not even opened until Lily was convalescent, and then
Beenie by her mistress’s orders, in her large sprawling handwriting, and
with many tears, replied briefly to the three or four anxious demands
for news which had arrived one after the other. Beenie wrote:
“SIR: My mistress has been at the point of death with what they
call a brain-fever. It has lasted the longest and been the
fiercest that ever the doctor saw. She is coming round now--the
Lord be praised--but very slow. She has but one thought--you will
know well what that is--and will never rest till she has got
satisfaction, night or day.
“I am, sir,
“Your obedient servant,
“ROBINA RUTHERFORD.
“P. S.--I was to tell you the last part, for it is not from me.”
There was not much satisfaction to be got from this letter, and, indeed,
his mind got little relief from any thing, and the time of Lily’s
illness was a time of mental trouble for the husband, which was not,
perhaps, more easy to bear. Had he lost her altogether? It seemed like
that, though he could not think it possible that the child at least
should be allowed to drop, or that the fever could have made her forget,
which it was evident she had not done in his own case. The courts had
begun again, and Lumsden was more occupied than he had ever been in his
life. He made one furtive visit to Kinloch-Rugas, where he heard
something of Lily’s state, and engaged Helen Blythe to communicate with
him any thing that reached her ears. But no one was allowed to see her
in her illness, and this gave him small satisfaction. He did not dare to
go near the house, which Sir Robert guarded more effectually than a
squadron of soldiers. There was nothing for him to do but to wait. The
unusual rush of occupation which came upon him with the beginning of the
session had a certain irony in it, that irony which is so often apparent
in life. Was he about to become a successful man now that the chief
thing which made life valuable was slipping out of his grasp? He went
about his business briskly, and rose to the claims of his business and
profession, so that he began to be mentioned in the Parliament House and
among his contemporaries, and even by elder men of still more
importance, who said of him that young Lumsden, old Pontalloch’s son,
though he had hung fire at first, was now beginning at last to come to
the front. Was it possible that this was coming to him, this
exhilarating tide of success, just at the moment when Lily, who would
have stood by him in evil fortune and never failed him, had dropped away
from his side? To do him justice, he had never thought of success, of
wealth, of prosperity, without her to share it. And he did not
understand it now. He could not understand how even a woman, however
ignorant or unreasonable by nature, could be so narrow as not to see
that all he had done had been for the best. The last step, no doubt,
might be allowed to be hard upon her, but what else was possible? Could
she for a moment have entertained the idea of keeping the child--a baby
that cried and made a noise, and could not be hid--at Dalrugas? Even if
there had been no word of Sir Robert, it still would have been
impossible; and he had done no more than he had a right to do. He had
considered, and considered most carefully--he did himself but justice in
this--what as her head and guardian it was best for him to do. It was
his duty as well as his right; and the responsibility being upon him as
the husband, and not upon her as the wife, he had done it. Was it
possible that Lily--a creature full of intelligence on other matters,
who even now and then picked up a thing quicker than he did
himself--should not have sense enough and judgment enough to see this?
But these thoughts, though they mingled with all he did, and accompanied
him night and day, did not make things any better. The fact that she had
taken no notice of him all this time, that she had not written to him
even to upbraid him, that she had not even asked him for news of the
child, was very heavy on Lumsden’s mind--almost, I had said, upon his
heart, for he still had a heart, notwithstanding all that had come and
gone. Perhaps it might have relieved him a little had he known that news
had been obtained of the child, though not through him. Marg’ret--who,
though she had been unfaithful to the young mother, to whom at the same
time she had been so kind, certainly had a heart, which smote her much
as being a party to a proceeding which became more and more doubtful the
more she thought of it--had written twice to Beenie, altogether superior
to the question of the eightpence to pay, to assure her of the baby’s
health. He was well, he was thriving, his mother would not know him he
had grown so big and strong, and Marg’ret hoped that ere long she would
put him, just a perfect beauty, into his mother’s arms. These queer
missives, sealed with a wafer and a thimble, had been better than all
the eloquent letters in the world to Lily. When those from Ronald, full
of excellent reason and all the philosophy that could be brought to bear
on the circumstances, were given to her on her recovery, they had but
made her wound more bitter and her resentment more warm; but the nurse’s
letters had given her strength. They had made her able to charm and
please her uncle; they had enabled her to face life again and fight her
way back to a certain degree of health; they had sustained her in her
journey, and this first set out upon the world to manage her own
affairs, which was as novel to her as if she had been fifteen, instead
of twenty-five. They wanted only one thing--they had no address. The
postmark was Edinburgh, but Edinburgh was (to these inexperienced women)
a very wide word.
What Lily had intended to do when she had found out Marg’ret and
recovered her child--as she was so confident of doing--I cannot tell.
She did not herself know. This was the first step to be taken: every
thing else came a world behind. Whether she was to carry the baby
back in her arms, to beard Sir Robert with it and make her
explanation--though with the conviction that she would then be turned
from the door of her only home forever--or whether she intended, having
escaped, to do what always seems so easy and natural to a girl’s
imagination: to fly away somewhere and hide herself with her child, and
be fed by the ravens, like the prophet--she herself did not know and I
cannot tell. The only thing certain was that she thought of the little
house among the Edinburgh roofs--that house which could only be got at
the term, and which it now made her heart sick to think of--no more. Had
she found the door open for her and every thing ready Lily would have
turned her back on that open door. She could not endure the thought of
it; she could not even think of the time when it would have been
paradise to her, the realization of her dearest hopes. In the depths of
her injured soul she would have desired to find her child without even
making her presence known to her husband. She had no desire even to see
him again--he seemed to have alienated her too completely for any
repentance. And up to this moment, her mind being altogether occupied by
her child, none of those relentings toward those whom we have loved and
who have wronged us, which make the heart bleed, had come upon Lily. She
thought of nothing but her child, her child! to have him again in her
arms, to possess him again, the one thing in the world that was entirely
her own, altogether her own. The fact that this was not so, that the
child was not and never could be entirely her own, did not disturb
Lily’s mind. Had she been reminded of it she would not have believed.
She thought, as every young mother thinks in the wonderful closeness of
that new relation and the sense of all it has cost her, that to this at
least there could be no contradiction and no doubt--that her baby was
hers, hers! and that no one in the world had the right to him that she
had. It was for him that she hurried, as much as any one could hurry in
these days, to Edinburgh, grudging every moment of delay--the time of
changing the horses, which she felt inclined to get out and do herself,
so slow, so slow was every-body concerned; the time for refreshments, as
if one wanted to eat and drink when one was hastening to recover one’s
child. But however slow a journey is the end of it comes at last. It was
a comfort to Lily that she knew where to go to--to the house of a very
decent woman, known to Beenie, who kept lodgings, and where she could be
quite quiet, out of the way of her former friends. But they arrived
only in the evening, and there was another long night to be gone through
before any thing could be done.