I do not think that Lily in the least realized what had happened to her
when her uncle died. She grieved for him with a very natural, not
excessive, sorrow, as a daughter grieves for an old father whose life
she is aware cannot be long prolonged. He was more to her than it was to
be expected he could have been. These two years of constant intercourse,
and a good deal of kindness, which could scarcely be called unselfish,
yet was more genuine on that very account, had brought them into real
relationship with each other; and Lily, who never had known what family
ties were, had come to regard the careless Uncle Robert of her youth, to
whom she had been a troublesome appendage, as he was to her the
representative of a quite unaffectionate authority, as a father, who,
indeed, made many demands, but made them with a confidence and trust in
her good feeling which were quite natural and quite irresistible,
calling forth in her the qualities to which that appeal was made. Sir
Robert had all unawares served Lily, though it was his coming which was
the cause of the great catastrophe in her life. She did not blame him
for that--it was inevitable; in one way or other it must have come--but
she was grateful to him for having laid hands upon her, so to speak, in
the failure of all things, and given her duties and a necessity for
living. And now she was sorry for him, as a daughter for a father, let
us say a married daughter, with interests of her own, for a father who
had been all that was natural to her, but no more.
She was a little dazed and confused, however, with the rapidity of the
catastrophe, the week’s close nursing, the fatigue, the profound feeling
which death, especially with those to whom his presence is new,
inevitably calls forth; and very much subdued and sorrowful in her mind,
feeling the vacancy, the silence, the departure of the well-known
figure, which had given a second fictitious life to this now doubly
deserted place. And it did not occur to Lily to think how her own
position was affected, or what change had taken place in her life. She
was not an incapable woman, whom the management of her own affairs would
have frightened or over-burdened, but she never had possessed any
affairs, never had the command of any money, never arranged, except as
she was told, where or how she had to live. Until her uncle had given
her, when she went to Edinburgh, the sum which to her inexperience was
fabulous, and which she had spent chiefly in her vain search after her
child, she had never had any money at all. She did not even think of it
in this new change of affairs, nor of what her future fate in that
respect was to be.
This indifference was not shared by the household, or at least by those
two important members of it Katrin and Robina, who had been most
attentive and careful of Sir Robert in his illness, but who, after he
was dead, having little tie of any kind to the old gentleman, who had
been a good enough master and no more, dropped him as much as it was
possible to drop the idea of one who lay solemnly dead in the house, the
centre of all its occupations still, though he could influence them no
more. “What will happen now?” they said to each other, putting their
heads together, when the “strange women,” subdued by “a death in the
house,” were occupied with their special businesses, and Sir Robert’s
man, his occupation gone, had retired to his chamber, feeling himself in
want of rest and refreshment after the labors of nursing, which he had
not undergone. “What will happen noo?” said Katrin. “And what will we do
with her?” Beenie said, shaking her large head. “I’ll tell you,” said
Katrin, “the first thing that will happen: Before we ken where we are
we’ll hae _him_ here!”
“No, no,” said Beenie; “no, no! I am not expecting that.”
“You may expect what ye like, but that is what will happen. He will come
in just as he used to do, with a fib about the cauld of the Hielands,
and a word about the steps that are so worn and no safe. Woman, he has
the ball at his fit now. Do you no ken when a man’s wife comes into her
siller it’s to him it goes? She will have every thing, and well he kens
that, and it’s just the reason of all that has come and gone.”
“He’ll never daur,” said Beenie, “after leaving her so long to herself,
and after a’ that’s come and gone, as you say.”
“It’s none of his fault leaving her to hersel’. He has written to her
and written to her, for I’ve seen the letters mysel’; and if she has
taken no notice, it is her wyte, and not his. She will have a grand
fortune, a’ auld Sir Robert’s money, and this place, that is the home o’
them all.”
“I never thought so much of this place. She’ll not bide here. Her and me
will be away as soon as ever it’s decent, I will assure you o’ that, to
seek the bairn over a’ the world.”
“You’ll never find him,” said Katrin.
“Ay, will we! Naebody to say her nay, and siller in her pouch, and the
world before her. We’ll find him if he were at its other end!”
“Ye’ll never find him without the father of him!” cried Katrin, becoming
excited in her opposition.
“That swore he was dead!” cried Beenie, flushing, too, with fight and
indignation, “that stood up to my face, me that kent better, and
threepit that the bairn was dead! And her that was his mother sitting
by, her bonnie face covered in her hands!”
“Woman!” cried Katrin, “would you keep up dispeace in a house for any
thing a man may have said or threepit? I’m for peace, whatever it costs.
What is a house that’s divided against itsel’? Scripture will tell ye
that. Even if a man is an ill man, if he belongs to ye, it’s better to
have him than to want him. It’s mair decent. Once you’ve plighted him
your word, ye must just pit up with him for good report or evil report.
If the father’s in one place and the mother’s in another, how are ye to
bring up a bairn? And a’ just for a lie the man has told when he was in
desperation, and for taking away the bairn when we couldna have keepit
him, when it was as clear as daylight something had to be done. Losh!
Dougal might tear the hair out o’ my head, or the claes frae my back, he
would be my man still.”
“Seeing he is little like to do either the one thing or the other, it’s
easy speaking,” Beenie said.
Lily did not come so far as this in her thoughts till a day or two had
passed, and then there came upon her, as Beenie had divined, the sudden
impulse, which nevertheless had been lying dormant in her mind all this
time, to get up and go at once in pursuit of her baby. All the people
she had employed, all the schemes she had tried, had come to nothing. At
first her ignorant efforts had been balked by that very ignorance
itself, by not knowing what to do or whom to trust, and then by distance
and time and agents who were not very much in earnest. To look for a
great criminal--that was a thing which might waken all the natural
detective qualities even before detectives were. But to look for a baby,
with no glory, no notoriety, whatever might be one’s success! Lily saw
all this now with the wisdom that even a very little practical
experience gives. But his mother--that would be a very different matter.
His mother would find him wheresoever he was hidden. And after the first
day of consternation, of confusion and fatigue, this resolution flashed
upon her, as it had done at times through all the miserable months that
were past. She had been obliged to crush it then, but now there was no
occasion to crush it any longer. She was free; no one had any right to
stop her; she was necessary to nobody, bound to nobody. So she thought,
rejecting vehemently in her mind the idea of her husband, who had robbed
her, who had lied to her, but who should not restrain her now, let the
law say what it would. Lily did not even know how much the property of
her husband she was. Even in the old bad times it was only when evil
days came that the women learned this. The majority of them, let us
hope, went to their graves without ever knowing it, except in a jibe,
which was to the address of all women. She did not think of it. Ronald
had robbed her, had lied to her, and was separated from her forever; but
that he would even now attempt to control her did not enter into Lily’s
mind. He was a gentleman, though these were not the acts of a gentleman.
She did not fear him nor suspect him of any common offence against her.
He had been guilty of these crimes--that was the only word to use for
them--but to herself, Lily, he could do nothing. She had so much
confidence in him still. Nor, indeed (she thought at first), would he
have any thing to do with it. He would know nothing; she would go after
her child at once, as was natural, his mother’s right. And he surely
would not be the man to interfere.
Then as she began to wait, to feel herself waiting, every nerve tingling
and excitement rising in her veins every hour, in the enforced silence
of the shadowed house, until the funeral should set her free, Lily came
to life altogether, she could not tell how, in a moment, waking as if
from the past, the ice, the paralysis that had bound her. She had lived
with her uncle these two years, and she had not lived at all. She had
not known even what was the passage of time. Her existence had been
mechanical, and all her days alike, the winter in one fashion, the
summer in another. The child, the thought of the child, had been a
thread which kept her to life; otherwise there had been nothing. But
now, when that thought of the child became active and an inspiration,
her whole soul suddenly came to life again. It was as when the world has
been hid by the darkness of night, and we seem to stand detached, the
only point of consciousness with nothing round us, till between two
openings of the eyelids there comes into being again a universe that had
been hidden, the sky, the soil, the household walls, all in a moment
visible in that dawn which is scarcely light, which is vision, which
recreates and restores all that we knew of. To Lily there came a change
like that. She closed her eyes in the wintry blackness of the night, and
when she opened them, every thing had come back to her. It was not that
she had forgotten: it was all there all the time; but her heart had been
benumbed, and darkness had covered the face of the earth. It was not the
light or warmth of the sunrise that came upon her; it was that
revelation of the earliest dawn that makes the hidden things visible,
and fills in once more the mountains and the moors, the earth and the
sky.
It was with a shock that she saw it all again. She had been wrapped in a
false show, every thing vanity and delusion about her--Miss Ramsay, a
name that was hers no longer; but in reality she was Ronald Lumsden’s
wife, the mother of a child, a woman with other duties, other rights.
And he was there, facing her, filling up the world. In her benumbed
state he had been almost invisible; so much of life as she had clung to
the idea of the baby. When he appeared to her, it was as a ghost from
which she shrank, from which every instinct turned her away. But now he
stood there, as he had stood all the time, looking her in the face. Had
he been doing so all these years? or had she been invisible to him as he
to her? She was seized with a great trembling as she asked herself that
question. Had he been watching her through the dark as through the
light, keeping his eye upon her, waiting? She shuddered, but all her
faculties became vivid, living, at this touch. And then there were other
questions to ask: What would he do? Failing that, more intimate still,
what would she do, Lily, herself? What, now that she was free, alone,
with no bond upon her, what should she do? This question shook her very
being. She could go on no longer with her life of lies: what should she
do?
Sir Robert’s man of business came from Edinburgh as soon as the news
reached him. He told her that she was, as she had a right to be, her
uncle’s sole heir, there being no other relation near enough to be taken
into consideration at all. Should she tell him at once what her real
position was? It was a painful thing for Lily to do, and until she was
able to set out upon that search for her child, which was still her
first object, she had a superstitious feeling that something might
happen, something that would detain or delay her, if she told her secret
at once. She had arranged to go away on the morning after the funeral.
That day, before Mr. Wallace left Dalrugas, she resolved that she would
tell him, and, through him, all who were there. Her heart beat very loud
at the thought. To keep it so long, and then in a moment give it up to
the discussion of all the world! To reveal--was it her shame? Oh, shame,
indeed, to have deceived every one, her uncle, every creature who knew
her. But yet not shame, not shame, in any other way. Much surprised was
Mr. John Wallace, W. S., Sir Robert’s man of business, to find how
indifferent Miss Ramsay was as to the value and extent of the property
her uncle had left her. She said “Yes,” to all his statements, sometimes
interrogatively, sometimes in simple assent; but he saw that she did
not take them in, that the figures had no meaning for her. Her mind was
otherwise absorbed. She was thinking of something. When he asked her,
not without a recollection of things he had heard, as he said to
himself, “long ago,” when Sir Robert’s niece had been sent off to the
wilds out of some young birky’s way, whether there was any one whom she
would like specially summoned for the funeral, Lily looked up at him
with a quick, almost terrified glance, and said: “No, no!” She had, he
felt, certainly something on her mind. I don’t know whether, in those
days, the existence of a private and hidden story was more common than
now: there were always facilities for such things in Scotland in the
nature of the marriage laws, and many anxious incidents happened in
families. A man acknowledging a secret wife, of whose existence nobody
had known, was common enough. But a young lady was different. At all
events there could be no doubt that this young lady had something on her
mind.
The arrangements were all made in a style befitting Sir Robert’s
dignity. The persons employed came from Edinburgh with a solemn hearse
and black horses, and all the gloomiest paraphernalia of death. A great
company gathered from the country all about. They had begun to arrive,
and a number of carriages were already waiting round to show the respect
of his neighbors for the old gentleman, of whom they had actually known
so little. The few farmers who were his tenants on the estate, which
included so little land of a profitable kind among the moors (not yet
profitable) and the mountains, waited outside in their rough gigs, but
several of the gentlemen had gathered in the drawing-room, where cake
and wine were laid out upon a table, and Mr. Douglas, now the minister
of Kinloch-Rugas, stood separate, a little from the rest, prepared to
“give the prayer.” The Church of Scotland knew no burial service in
those days other than the prayer which preceded the carrying forth of
the coffin. Two ladies had driven over, with their husbands, to stay
with Lily when the procession left the house. They did not know very
much of her, but they were sorry for her in her loneliness. The
appearance of a woman at a funeral was an unknown thing in those days in
Scotland, and never thought of. This little cluster of black dresses was
in a corner of the room, in the faint light of the shadowed windows,
Lily’s pale face, tremulous with an agitation which was not grief,
forming the point of highest light in the sombre room, among the
high-colored rural countenances. She meant to tell them on their return.
It was at this moment, in the preliminary pause, when Mr. Douglas,
standing out in the centre of the room, was about to lift his hand as
the signal for the prayer--about to begin--that a rapid step became
audible, coming up the stairs, stumbling a little on the uppermost steps
as most people did. It was nothing wonderful that some one should be a
little late, yet there was something in the step which made even the
most careless member of the company look round. Lily, absorbed in her
thoughts, was startled by the sound, she could not tell why. She moved
her head a little, and it so happened that the gentlemen standing about
by an instinctive movement stepped aside from between her and the door,
so as to leave room for the entrance of the new-comer. He was heard to
quicken his pace, as if fearing to be too late, and the minister stood
with his hand raised, waiting till the interruption should be over and
the tardy guest had appeared.
Then the door opened quickly, and Ronald Lumsden came in. He was in full
panoply of mourning, according to the Scotch habit, his hat, which was
in his hand, covered with crape, his sleeves with white “weepers,” his
appearance that of chief mourner. “I am not too late?” he said, as he
came in. Who was he? Some of those present did not know. Was he some
unacknowledged son, turning up at the last moment to turn away the
inheritance? Mr. Wallace stepped out a little to meet him, in
consternation. Suddenly it flashed through his memory that this was the
young fellow out of whose way Lily Ramsay had been sent by her uncle.
He knew Lumsden well enough. He made a sign to him to be silent,
pointing to the minister, who stood interrupted, ready to begin.
“I see,” said Ronald in the proper whisper, with a nod of his head; and
then he stepped straight up, through the little lane made for him, to
where Lily sat, like an image of stone, her lips parted with a quick,
fluttering breath. He took her hand and held it in his, standing by her
side. “Pardon me that I come so late,” he said, “I was out of town; but
I am still in time. Mr. Wallace, I will take my place after the coffin
as the representative of my wife.” This was said rapidly, but calmly, in
the complete self-possession of a man who knows he is master of the
situation. There was scarcely a pause, the astonished company had
scarcely time to look into each other’s face, when the proceedings went
on. The minister’s voice arose, with that peculiar cadence which is in
the sound of prayer. The men stood still, arrested in their excitement,
shuffling with their feet, covering their faces with one hand so long as
they could keep up that difficult position. But this was all unlike a
funeral prayer. The atmosphere had suddenly become full of excitement,
the pulsations quickened in every wrist.
Lily remained in her chair; she did not rise. It was one of the points
of decorum that a woman should not be able to stand on such an occasion.
The two ladies, all one quiver of curiosity, stood behind her, and
Ronald by her side, holding her hand. He did not give it up, though she
had tried to withdraw it, but stood close by her, holding his hat, with
its long streamers of crape, in his other hand, his head drooped a
little, and his eyes cast down in reverential sympathy. To describe what
was in her mind would be impossible. Her heart had given one wild leap,
as if it would have choked her, and then a sort of calm of death had
succeeded. He held her hand, pressing it softly from time to time. He
gave no sign but this of any other feeling but the proper respectful
attention, while she sat paralyzed. And then came the stir--the
movement. He let her hand drop, and, bending over her, touched her
forehead with his lips; and then he made a sign to the astonished men
about, even to Mr. Wallace, who had been, up to this moment, the chief
authority, to precede him. There was a sort of a gasp in the astonished
assembly, but every one obeyed Ronald’s courteous gesture. There was
nothing presumptuous, nothing of the upstart, in it: it was the calm and
dignified confidence of the master of the house. He was the last to
leave the room, which he did with another pressure of Lily’s hand, and a
glance to the ladies behind, which said as distinctly as words: “Take
care of my wife.” And he was the first in the procession, placing
himself at once behind the coffin. The burying-ground was not far away;
it was one of those lonely places among the hills, with a little chapel
in ruins, a relic of an older form of faith, within its gray walls,
which are so pathetic and so solemn. The long line of men walking two
and two made a great show in their black procession, their feet ringing
upon the hard frost-bound road. But Ronald walked alone, in front, as if
he had been Sir Robert’s son. And his heart was full of a steady and
sober elation. It had been a hard fight, but he had conquered. Though he
was not a son, but an enemy, he was, as he had always intended, Sir
Robert’s heir.