Sir Robert's Fortune

CHAPTER XVII

This New Year’s Eve remained, amid all the experiences of Lily, a thing apart. It became painful to her to think of it in after times, but in the present it was like a completion and climax of life, still all in the visionary stage, yet so close on the verge of the real that she became herself like an instrument, thrilling to every touch, answering every air that blew, every word that was said, in each and all of which there were meanings hidden of which none was aware but herself. There was the little dinner first, so carefully prepared by Katrin, so tenderly served by Beenie, the two young people sitting on either side of the table as if at their bridal banquet, while the sound of the festivities going on in the kitchen came up by times when the door was opened: a squeak of the fiddle, the sound of the stamping of the guisards as they performed their little archaic drama, adding a franker note of laughter to the keen supreme pleasure that reigned above. Beenie went and came, always bringing with her along with every new dish that little gust of laughter and voices from below, to which she kept open half an ear, while with the other she attended to what her little mistress said.

“You maun come down, Miss Lily, to do them a grace: they a’ say they’ll no steer till they’ve seen the young leddy; and they’re decent lads just come out to play, as the bairns say in their sang, neither beggars nor yet stravaigers, but lads from the town, to please ye with their bit performance; and I ken a’ their mothers!” Beenie cried with a little outburst of affectionate emotion.

When Lily went down accordingly, followed closely by her lover, the little primitive drama was repeated, with more stamping and shouting than ever; and then there was an endless reel, to the sound of the squeaking fiddle, in which Lily danced as long as she could hold out, and Beenie held out, as it seemed, forever, wearing out all the lads.

“Eh! I was a grand dancer in my time,” she admitted, when she had breath enough, while the fiddle squeaked on and on.

And then, as was right, Ronald said good-night as the rural band streamed away from the door. The curious group of the guisards, some of them in white shirts outside their garments, some in breastplates of tin, with an iron pot on their heads by way of helmet, “set him home” with much respectful kindness. “But I wuss ye were coming with us to the toun, for Tam the shepherd’s is no a howff for a gentleman,” they said.

“Any hole will do for me,” said Ronald in the exhilaration of the evening; and all the house came out of doors to speed the parting guests. The moon shone mistily over the long stretch of the moor, throwing up a sinister gleam here and there from the deep cuttings, and flinging a veil as of gossamer over the great breadth of the country. The air was fresh, not over-cold, “saft,” as Dougal called it, with the suggestion of rain, and the sudden irruption of voices and steps into the supreme and brooding silence made the strangest effect in the middle of the night. Lily stood watching them as they streamed away, Ronald so distinct from them all as they streamed down under the shadow of the bank, to show again, chiefly by reason of their disguises, upon the road a little way down. Lily lingered until a speck of white in the distance was all that was visible. She was wrapped in a plaid which Ronald had put round her, drawing the soft green and checkered folds closely around her face, and as warm physically as she was at heart. Now he was himself; he had flung all prudences and fancies to the wind; he had forgotten Sir Robert and his fortune, and every other common thing that could come between. Lily danced up the spiral staircase with a heart that sang still more than her lips did as she “turned” the tune to which they had been dancing. No one can keep still to whom “Tullochgoram” is sung or played. She danced up the stairs, keeping time faster and faster to the mad melody—the essence unadulterated of reckless fun and drollery.

“Eh, my bonnie leddy!” Beenie cried, who had gone before with the candles; while Katrin stood looking after her, and Dougal locked and bolted the great hall-door. Katrin shook her head a little: she was much experienced. “Eh, if he be but worthy of her!” she sighed.

“It’s late, late at nicht, and the New Year well begun,” said Robina. “Eh, Miss Lily, you’ll never forget this New Year?”

“Why should I forget it?” said Lily. “You had better wait till it is past before you say that. But maybe you are right, after all, for there never was a Hogmanay like this; and to think that the morn will come, and that it will be no more like the other days than this has been! Beenie, did you ever hear that folk might be as feared for joy as for trouble? or is it only me that am so timorsome, and cannot tell which it is going to be?”

“’Deed, and I’ve heard o’ that many’s the day. It’s just the common way, my bonnie dear. Many a bonnie lassie would fain flee to the ends of the earth the day before her bridal that is just pleased enough when a’s said and done. You mustna lose heart.”

“I’m not losing heart,” said Lily. “The day before my bridal! Is that what it is? I will just be happy to-night and never think of the morn; for when I begin to think, it takes so many things to be satisfied, and I would like to be satisfied just for once, and take no thought.”

Robina had a great deal to do in Lily’s room that night. She kept moving to and fro, softly opening and shutting drawers and presses, laying away her mistress’s things with a care that was scarcely necessary, and meant only restlessness and excitement and an incapacity to keep still. Long before she had done moving about the half-lighted room Lily was fast asleep, her excitement, though presumably greater, not being enough to keep sleep from the eyes which were dazzled with the sudden gleam of something so new and strange in her life, as well as tired with an unusual vigil. Lily slept as soundly as a child till the clear, somewhat shrill daylight, touched with frost, shone upon her late in the wintry morning and called her up much more effectually than the wavering call of Beenie, who was hanging over her in the morning, as she had been at night, the first to meet her eyes.

“Eh, Miss Lily, what a grand sleep ye have had!” Beenie cried. She had slept but little herself, her head full of the new situation and all the strange things that might be to come. The house in general had a sense of excitement breathing through it, not visible, indeed, in Dougal, who was, as usual, wrestling with the powny outside, but very apparent in Katrin, who went about her morning work with an extremely serious face, as if all the cares of the world were on her shoulders. Robina and she had various stolen moments of communication through the day, indeed, which testified to a degree of confidence between them, and a mutual preoccupation.

“I’m no to say a word to her; but how am I to keep my tongue in my head when Dauvit himself says that when he was musin’ the fire burnt!”

“Losh,” cried Katrin, “if it was naething but haudin’ your tongue! but what I’ve to think of is mair than that. Eh, I’m doing that for Miss Lily I would do for none of my kin, no, nor Dougal himself; and I wish I was just clean out of it, for I’m no fond of secrets—they are uncanny things.”

“Eh, woman! ye wouldna betray them?” Beenie cried.

“Betray them? Am I a person to betray what’s trusted to me? But I wish there were nae secrets in this world. It’s just aye cheating somebody. Ye canna be straichtforward, do what ye will, when ye’ve got other folks’ secrets to keep, let alone them that are your ain.”

“I’m no sae particular,” said Beenie, with a little toss of her head, “and there will be no stress upon ye for long. It’s just the ae step.”

“I have my doubts,” said Katrin, shaking her head.

“Ye have your doubts? And what doubts would ye have? It will a’ be plain when ance it’s done. There are nae mair secrets after that! It’s just as I said, the ae step. Eh me, I could have likit it far better in Sir Robert’s grand house in George Square, and a’ Edinburgh there, and the Principal himself to join their hands thegether, and my bonnie Miss Lily in the white satin, and the auld lady’s grand necklace about her bonnie white neck. But we canna have every thing our ain gate. The Manse parlor is just a’ that can be desired in the circumstances we’re noo in; and when it’s done, it will just be done and naething more to say.”

But Katrin still shook her head. She was a far-seeing woman. “I’m no just sure we will be out of it sae easy as that,” she said.

This talk was not completed at once, but came in on various occasions, a few words here and there, as opportunity secured; and the two women, though both were excited and disturbed, did no doubt enjoy the rôle of conspirator, more or less, and felt that those secret consultations added a zest to life. Beenie, whose lips were sealed in the presence of her mistress, and Katrin, who had to maintain an aspect of absolute calm in the sight of Dougal, could not but feel a consciousness of superiority, which consoled them for much that was uncomfortable. But, indeed, it was exasperatingly easy to deceive Dougal. He suspected nothing; secrets or mysteries had never come his way. Life meant to him his daily work, his daily parritch, the comfort of a crack now and then with his friends, a glass of toddy on an occasion, and the prevailing consciousness of being well done for at all times, with a clean hearthstone, and the parritch and the broth both well boiled and appetizing, more than fell to the lot of ordinary men. If he had known even that Katrin was keeping a secret from him, it is doubtful whether he would have been at all moved. He would have thought it some whigmaleerie of the wife’s, and would have remained perfectly easy in his mind, in the conviction that she would tell him if it was any thing he had to do with, and if not, wha was minding? Nothing that she did or said roused his curiosity to any great degree. There had need to be something more serious than Dougal to account for the little contraction over Katrin’s eyes.

This was, perhaps, more visible, however, after the conversation she had with Mr. Lumsden on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. I cannot tell what he said to her, but there was something in it additional to what he had said on the evening before, when he had told her and Beenie what their parts were to be in the little drama for which he had not yet fully prepared the chief actor of all. Lily waited for him at the window with a heart that beat high in her breast on that frosty morning, when all the stretches of the moor were crisp and white, and every little rowan-tree and bush of withered heather shone like something of frosted silver across the gray surface, tinged with a lower tone of whiteness. Lily saw him almost before he had come within the range of mortal vision, so far off that the road itself could not be seen, and only a faint speck that moved was distinguishable in the chill and frozen silence. The speck moved on, disappeared, came out again till it grew into absolute sight and knowledge, near enough to be recognized from the window, and hastily met at the door with a sweep of flying feet and hands outstretched. “My bonnie Lily! the only flower that’s not frosted!” he said. The change that had taken place between them was made plain by this: that he came quite openly to the door, and that Lily flew to meet him. There was no longer any occasion for the supposed accident of meetings on the moor. How this change came about Lily did not stop to enquire. It was, and that was enough; and she was too happy in it ever to wonder what could have been said or done underneath to make the lover’s appearance now a thing expected, and which it was unnecessary to attempt to conceal.

“It will perhaps be for to-morrow and perhaps for the day after; I am not certain yet,” Ronald said.

“What will perhaps be for to-morrow?” Lily cried, with a sudden flush on her cheek.

“We are not going to make any fuss about it, Lily. You promised me you would not desire that. It’s very easy to be married in our country. If we were to call Dougal up and Katrin, and say we were man and wife, we would be married just as fast as by all the ministers in the world.”

“Ronald!” cried Lily, growing pale.

“I am not suggesting such a thing. Do you think that I would put a scorn on my bonnie Lily with a marriage like that? Not I! What I cannot bear is that you should be stinted of one thing you would like—though, for my part, the less the better, I say, and the most agreeable to me. But no; I am not that kind of man. I like the sanction of the Kirk. I like every thing done decently and in order. That is why I say to-morrow or the next day, for I have not yet seen Mr. Blythe.”

“And is it to be so soon as that?” said Lily with awe.

“My darling, what object have we in waiting? The vacation is short enough anyway. We must not lose a day. You promised to be ready at a moment’s warning. Well, I’m giving you a day’s warning. If every thing had been right, it would have been you to fix the time, and all your fancies consulted. But we’re past that, Lily. You know you put yourself into my hands to have it done as soon as was possible.”

“Did I?” said Lily, confused; and then she added: “I know. I am not one to make a trouble. It is best to be done when we can—and as soon as we can—and end this dreary life.”

“That is what I knew you would say. No certainty, no ground to stand on, and not knowing what might happen at any moment. No, Lily, it is no time for scruples now.”

“Still,” said Lily, “I would have liked to have heard all your plans and what we are to do. It is fine planning. It is aye a pleasure, even when it comes to nothing. And now, when it must come to something–”

“That’s the difference, I suppose, between man and woman,” said Ronald, with a laugh. “I have no thought of any thing but one thing. I care nothing about plans. You, that are all made up of imagination, you shoot past and begin again. But me, I think only of getting my Lily, of having her for my own. I have neither plots nor plans in my head.”

“It is a good thing, then, that women think of them, for we can’t do without them,” Lily said. But she was soothed and pleased that her bridegroom should have no thought but for herself. Perhaps this was what was most fit for the man. The woman had the outset to think of, the new house to live in, and every thing else that was involved. The reverse thought gives pleasure in other circumstances. There is no consistency in the reasonings of this period of life.

“Let us go out now,” said Ronald; “the frost is hard, and it’s fine dry walking; we’ll get a turn round the moor, and then I will be off to the ‘toun’ to see the minister, and to-night I’ll come back and tell you all about it. Wrap up well, for it’s cold, but so bright that it does the heart good. But it is the day itself, and because it is the day, that does the heart most good,” he said, once more wrapping Lily up, close round her pretty throat, with the soft, voluminous folds of the plaid. The two faces so close together, the light in her eyes, the contagious happiness in his face, took every shadow from Lily’s heart. There had been no shadows, only a faint sort of floating gossamer, which had no meaning, and now it melted all away.

The ramble round the moor filled all the bright noon of the wintry day. It was not possible to wander among the ling bushes, or by the soft, meandering lines of turf. All was crisp with the curling whiteness of the frost, except here and there where a prominent point had been melted and darkened by the sun. They went along the road, which crackled under their feet, with small ice crystals in every fissure. The mountains stood blue in a faint haze that seemed to breathe into the still air, and the moor stretched white, like a piece of crisp embroidery, under the shining of the light. How wintry the air was, and how exhilarating, tightening the nerves and stimulating every force! Toward the north the sky was heavy and spoke of snow, but there were soft breaks of blue and lines of yellow light in the brighter quarter. They walked now quickly as they faced the wind, now slowly as they turned their backs upon it, and, wrapped in their soft plaids, felt the soft glow and warmth mount to their youthful cheeks. I doubt if any summer ramble, in the sweetest air and among the flowers, was more full of pleasure. They talked to each other incessantly, but perhaps not very much that would bear repeating; yet there was a little veiled conflict certainly going on all the time, scarcely conscious, hidden in innocent questions and suggestions, in innocent seeming evasions. Lily wanted to ask so much, but half feared to put a direct question lest it should be an offence, while he wanted to keep every question at arm’s-length, but did not dare to do so lest it should excite suspicion. There was an occasional flash of the rapiers, soon covered up in the softest tones and touches, but still they kept their distinct parts: she anxious to see a little beyond, he eager to keep her within the limits of the day. He parried all her thrusts with this pretence: that his thoughts could not stray beyond to-morrow. “Sufficient unto the day is the happiness thereof,” he said.