Sir Robert's Fortune

CHAPTER XVIII

Ronald walked into Kinloch-Rugas after the plentiful lunch upon which Katrin had made so many remarks. His head was buzzing and his bosom thrilling with the excitement natural at that period of existence. He loved Lily—as well as he was capable of loving—with all the mingled sentiment and passion, the emotions high and low, the very human and half divine, which are involved in that condition of mind. He was a healthy, vigorous, and in no way vicious young man. If he had not the highest ideal, he had not at all the lowered standard of a man whose mind has been debased by evil communications. He was, in his way, a true lover, at the climax of life which is attained by a bridegroom. His thoughts were set to a kind of rhythmic measure of “Lily, Lily,” as he walked swiftly and strongly down the long road toward the village. If his mind had been laid bare by a touch of the angel’s spear, it would not, I fear, have satisfied Lily, nor any one who loved her, but it sufficiently satisfied himself. He did not want to look beyond the next step, which, he had convinced himself, was the right step to take; what was to follow was, he tried to assure himself, in the providence of God; or, if that was too serious (but Ronald was a serious man, willingly conceding to God the right to influence human affairs), it was open to all the developments, chances even, if you like to say so, of natural events. Who could say what would happen on the morrow? In the meantime a reasonable man’s concern was with the events of the day. And though he was not a highly strung person by nature, he was to-day all lyrical, and thrilling with the emotions of a bridegroom. He was not unworthy of the position. His very foot acknowledged that thrill, and struck the ground in measure, as if the iron strings of frost had been those of a harp. The passer-by, plodding along with head down and nose half sheltered from the cutting wind, took that member half out of the folds of his plaid to see what it was that was so bye-ordinary in the man he met. He did not sound like a common man going into the town on common business, nor look like it when the spectator turned to breathe the softer way of the wind for a moment and look after the stranger. Neither did Ronald feel like any one else on that wintry afternoon. He was a bridegroom, and the thrill of it was in all his veins.

It was nearly dark when he came in sight of the lights, chiefly twinkling lights in windows, for there was no gas as yet to illuminate every little place as we have it now. In the Manse, with its larger windows, it was still light enough, and the soft yellow and pink of the frosty evening sky lent color, as well as light, to the calm of the parlor, facing toward the west, where Mr. Blythe sat alone. It was the minister’s musing time. Sometimes he had a doze; sometimes he sat by the fire, but with his chair turned to the sunset, and indulged in his own thoughts. These were confessedly, in many cases, his old stories, over which he would go from time to time, with a choke of a laugh in the stillness over this and that: perhaps there were moments in which his musings were more solemn, but of these history bears no record. The Manse parlor had no feature of beauty. It was a very humdrum room; but to the minister it was the abode of comfort and peace. He wanted nothing more than was to be found within its four walls; life was quite bounded to him by these walls, and I think he had no wish for any future that went beyond them: his Scotsman, which lasted him from one day to another, till the next (bi-weekly) number came in; his books, chiefly volumes of old history or Reminiscences, sometimes a Scots (occasionally printed Scott’s) novel—but that was a rare treat, and not to be calculated upon; a bout of story-telling now and then with another clerical brother or old elder whose memory stretched back to those cheerful, jovial, legendary days, where all the stories come from: these filled up existence happily enough for the old minister. His work was over, and I fear that perhaps he had never put very much of his heart into that, and he had his daughter to serve him “hand and foot,” as the maids said. He did not need even to take the trouble of finding his spectacles (which, like most other people, he was always losing) for himself. “Eelen, where’s my specs?” he said, without moving. Such was this old Scotch presbyter and sybarite, and though a paradise of black hair-cloth and mahogany does not much commend itself to us nowadays, I think Mr. Blythe would gladly have compounded for the deprivation of pearly gates and golden streets could he have secured the permanence of this.

He was very glad to see Ronald, notwithstanding that he had become very anxious to get rid of him during his stay at the Manse. A visitor of any kind was a godsend in the middle of winter, and at this time of the year, and especially a visitor from Edinburgh, with news to tell, and perhaps a fresh story or two of the humors of the courts and the jokes of the judges, things that did not get in even to The Scotsman. “And what’s a’ your news, Mr. Lumsden?” he said eagerly. Ronald, who had had many opportunities of understanding the old minister, had come provided with a scrap or two piquant enough to please him, and what with the jokes, and what with the politics, made a very good impression in the first half-hour of his visit. Then came the turn of more personal things.

“Yon was a fine glass of wine, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, with a slight smack of his lips.

“I am very glad you liked it, sir; it was chosen by one of my friends who is learned in such matters. I would not trust it to a poor judge like myself.”

“Better for you, Mr. Lumsden, better for you at your age not to be too good a judge. Look not upon the wine when it is red, says the prophet, which is just when it’s best, many persons think. I am strongly of his opinion when your blood’s hot in your veins, like the most of you young lads; but when a man begins to go down the hill, and when he’s well exercised in moderation, and to use without abusing, then a grand jorum of wine like yon makes glad the heart, as is to be found in one rather mysterious scripture, of God and man.”

“I hoped it would give you a charitable thought of one that was rather a sorner, as I remember you said, upon your hospitality.”

“That was never meant, that was never meant,” said the minister, waving his large flabby hands. Ronald had risen from his seat and was now standing by the fire, leaning his arm on the mantel-piece. The slow twilight was waning, and though the daffodil sky still shone in the window, the fire had begun to tell, especially in the shadow of the half-lit room.

“You see, sir,” said Ronald, with a leap of his heart into his throat, and of the voice which accompanied it, coming forth with sudden energy, “there was more in that than met the eye.”

“Ay, do ye say so?” said Mr. Blythe, also with a quickened throb of curiosity in his voice.

“Miss Ramsay and I—had met in Edinburgh,” said Ronald, clearing his throat, “we had seen—a great deal of each other. We had, in short–”

“I always said it, I always said it!” said the minister. “I told Eelen the very first night. I’ve seen much in my day. ‘These two are troth-plighted,’ I said to my daughter, before ye had been in my house a single night.”

“I thought it was vain to attempt deceiving your clever eyes,” said Ronald; “I told Lily so; but ladies, you know, are never so sure—they think they can conceal things.”

“Thrust their heads into the sand like the ostriches, silly things, and think nobody can see them!” said the minister. “I know them well; that’s just what they all do.”

“Well, so it was, at least,” said Ronald. “You will not, perhaps, wonder now that I stayed as long as I could, outstaying my welcome, I fear, and wearing out even your hospitality; but it was a question of seeing Lily, without exciting any suspicion, in a natural, easy way.”

“I will not say much about that last, for it was more than suspicion on my part.”

“Ah, but every-body is not like you; neither your experience nor your powers of observation are common,” said Ronald. He paused a moment, to let this compliment sink in, and then resumed. “Mr. Blythe, I will admit to you that Sir Robert is not content, and that, in short, Lily was banished here to take her away from me.”

“I cannot think it a great banishment to be sent to Dalrugas, which is a fine house in its way, though maybe old-fashioned, and servants to be at her call night and day,” said the minister, “but you may easily see it from another point of view. Proceed, proceed,” he added, with another wave of his hand.

“Well, sir, I can but repeat: Sir Robert does not think me rich enough for his niece. She is his only kin; he would like her to marry a rich man; he would sacrifice her, my bonnie Lily, to an old man with a yellow face and bags of money.”

“Well, well, that’s no so unnatural as you think. I would like my Eelen to have a warm down-sitting if I could help her to it, to go no further than myself.”

“I understand that, sir; my Lily is worthy of a prince, if there could be a prince that loved her as well as I do. But it is me she has chosen and nobody else, and she is not one to change if she were shut up in Dalrugas Tower all her life.”

“Eh, I would not lippen to that,” said the minister; “she is but a young thing. Keep you out of the gate, and let her neither hear from you or see you, and her bit heart, at that age, will come round.”

“Thank you for the warning, sir,” said Ronald, with a laugh that was forced and uncomfortable; “that’s what Sir Robert thought, I suppose. But you may believe there is no pleasure to me in thinking so. And besides, it would never happen with Lily, for Lily is true as steel.” He paused for a moment, with a little access of feeling. It remained to be seen whether he was true as steel himself, and perhaps he was not quite assured on that point; yet he was capable, so far, of understanding the matter that he was sure of it in Lily, and the conviction expanded his breast with pride and pleasure. He paused with natural sentiment, and partly with the quickening of his breath, to take the full good of that sensation; and then he resumed:

“I am not rich, you will easily understand; we are a lot of sons at home, and my share will not be great. But I have a good profession, and in a few years, so far as I can see, I may be doing with the best. As far as family is concerned, there can be no question between any Ramsay and my name.”

The minister waved his hand soothingly over this contention. It was not to be gainsaid, nor was any comparison of races to be attempted. He said: “In that case, my young friend, if it’s but a few years to wait and you will be doing so well, and both young, with plenty of time before ye, so far as I can see ye can well afford to wait.”

“I might afford to wait, that am kept to my work, and little enough time to think, but Lily, Mr. Blythe. Here is Lily alone in the wilderness, as she says. I’m forbidden to see her, forbidden to write to her.”

“Restrictions which ye have broken in both cases.”

“Yes,” cried Ronald. “How could we let ourselves be separated, how could I leave her to languish alone? I tried as long as I could. I did not write to her. I did not come near her, but flesh and blood could not bear it. And then when I saw how glad she was to see me, and how her bonnie countenance changed–” Here he nearly broke down, his voice trembled, so genuine and true was his feeling. “We cannot do it,” he said faintly, “and that’s all that’s to be said. Mr. Blythe, you are the minister, you have the power in your hands–”

“Eh, man! but I’m only the auld minister nowadays,” cried the old gentleman, with a sudden outburst of natural bitterness to which he very seldom gave vent. He was delighted to have nothing to do, but did not love his supplanter any more on that account. “Ye must ask nothing from me; go your ways to my assistant and successor—he is your man.”

“I will go to nobody but you!” cried Ronald, with all the fervor of a temptation resisted. “Mr. Blythe, will you marry Lily to me?”

Mr. Blythe made a long pause. “If ye are rightly cried in the kirk, I have no choice but to marry ye,” he said.

“But I want it done at once, and very private, without any crying in the kirk.”

“That would be very irregular, Mr. Lumsden.”

“I know it would, but not so irregular as calling up Beenie and Dougal and Katrin, and saying before them: ‘This is my wife.’”

“No,” said the minister, “not just so bad as that, but very irregular. Do ye know, young man, I would be subject to censure by the Presbytery, and I canna tell what pains and penalties? And why should I do such a thing, to save you a month or two, or a year or two’s waiting, that is nothing, nothing at your age?”

“It is a great deal when people are in our circumstances,” cried Ronald. “Lily so lonely, not a creature near her, no pleasure in her life, no certainty about any thing: for Sir Robert might hear I had been seen about, and might just sweep her away, abroad, to the ends of the earth. You say she would forget, but she does not want to forget, nor do I, you may be sure, whereas, if you will just do this for us, you will make us both sure of each other forever, and I can never be taken from her, nor she from me.”

“Young man,” said the minister impressively, “I got my kirk from the Ramsays; they’re patrons o’ this parish, and I was a young man with little influence. I was tutor to Mr. James, but I had little chance of any thing grander than a parish school, where I might have just flourished as a stickit minister all my days, and it was the Ramsays that made me a placed minister, and set me above them a’: that was the old laird before Sir Robert’s days. But Sir Robert has been very ceevil the times he has been here. He has asked me whiles to my dinner, and other whiles he has sent me just as many grouse and paitricks as I could set my face to. Would it be a just return, think ye, to marry away his bonnie niece to a landless lad as ye confess ye are, with nothing but fees at the best, and not too many of them coming in?”

“Mr. Blythe,” cried Ronald, “if it was Mr. James you were tutor to, it is to Mr. James you owe all this, and Mr. James, had he been living, would never have gone against the happiness of his only child!”

“Eh! but who can tell that?” cried the minister. “Little was he thinking of that or of any kind of child. He was a young fellow, maybe as heedless, maybe more than ye are yourself. Na, there was no thought neither of wife nor bairn in his head.”

“But,” cried Ronald, “you must feel you have a double duty to one that is his child, and his only one, little as he knew of it at the time.”

“A double duty: and what is that?” said the minister, shaking his head. “The duty to keep her from any rash step, puir young unfriended thing, or to let her work out her silly will, which, maybe, in a year’s time she would rather have put her hand in the fire than have done?”

“You give a bonnie character of me,” Ronald said, with a harsh laugh.

“I am giving no character of you. I am thinking nothing of you. I am thinking of the bit lassie. It is her I am bound to protect, both for her father’s sake and her own. Most marriages that are made in haste are, as the proverb says, repented of at leisure. She might be heart-grieved at me that helped her to her will to-day when she knows more of life and what it means. Na, na, my young friend, take you your time and wait. Waiting is aye a salutary process. It brings out many a hidden virtue, it consolidates the character, and if you are diligent in your business it brings ye your reward, which ye enjoy more than if you had snatched it before your time.”

“I tell you, minister,” cried Ronald, “that we cannot wait, that it’s a matter of life and death to us, both to Lily and me!”

“What is that you are saying? I am hoping there is no meaning in it, but only words,” the old man said sharply in an altered tone.

The room had grown almost quite dark, the daffodil color had all faded away, and the heavy curtain of the coming snow was stretching over the last faint streak of light. The fire was smouldering and added little to the room, which lay in a ruddy dark, warmed rather than lighted up. Ronald stood with his elbow on the mantel-piece close to the old minister, whose face had been suddenly raised toward him with an expression of keen command and alarm. And who can tell what devil had stolen in with the dark to put words of shame into the mouth of the young man who had come down the frosty moorland road like a song of joy and youth? It was rapid as a dart. He stooped down and said something in the old minister’s ear.

The shameful lie! the shameful, shameful lie! The temptation, the fall, was so instantaneous that Ronald himself was scarcely conscious of it, or of what he had done in his haste. The old gentleman uttered into the darkness a sort of moan. And then he spoke briefly and sharply, with a keen tone of scorn in his words which stung his companion even through the confusion of the time.

“If that’s so, ye’re a disgraceful blackguard! but it’s not my part to speak. Be here at this house the morn, with her and your witnesses; I insist upon the witnesses, two of them, to sign the lines. I will send Eelen out of the way. Come before it’s dark, as ye came to-day; I am always alone at this hour. That’s enough, man, I hope. What are you wanting more?”

“I want only to say that you judge me very hastily, Mr. Blythe.”

“It’s a case in which least said is soonest mended,” said the minister. “To-morrow, just before the darkening, and, thank the Lord, there need not be another word said between you and me!”

CHAPTER XIX

Ronald started back on his way to Dalrugas in the beginning of the wintry night in a condition very different from that in which he came. His head was dazed and swimming; something had happened to him; he had taken a step such as he had never contemplated taking, a step which, did Lily ever know or suspect it, would, he knew, open such a gulf between them as nothing could ever bridge over. He was in a hundred minds to turn back, to confess his sin before he had passed the last house in the village. We do not call that a temptation when we are impelled to do right, but it is the same thing, only the temptations to do right are somehow less potent than those to do wrong. He was torn by a strong impulse to go back and remedy what he had done: the temptation to commit that fault had been momentary, but overwhelming; the temptation to go back and confess was continuous, but evidently feeble, for he went straight on through all its tuggings, and did not walk more slowly. But yet it would have done him much good and probably no harm had he done so: the minister would have forgiven a fault so soon repented of; he would probably, in the natural feeling toward a penitent sinner, have acceded to his wishes all the same. These thoughts went through Ronald’s head without ever stopping his steady and quick walk into the dark. He repented, if that had been enough, in sackcloth and ashes; he was so deeply ashamed of what he had done that he felt his countenance flame in the darkness where nobody could by any possibility see. But he did not turn back. And presently by repetition the impulse weakened a little, his brain cleared, and the world became steady once again. The thing was done; it could not be undone. There was no possibility that Lily should ever hear of it; nobody would ever know of it but old Blythe and himself, and old Blythe would die. It would be a recollection which, in the depth of the night, in moments of solitude, or when awakened by a sudden touch of the past, would go on stinging him like a serpent all the days of his life, but it would be otherwise innocuous. Lily would never hear of it, that was the great thing; there was no chance that she could ever hear. The old minister’s lips were sealed. It would be contrary to every rule of honor if he were to betray what had been said to him. Ronald said to himself that he must accept the stinging of that recollection, which he would never get rid of all his life, as his punishment; but no one else would suffer, Lily least of all.

These feelings were hot and strong in his mind as he set out; but a walk of four miles against a cold wind, and with the snow threatening to come down every moment, is a very good thing for dispersing troublous thoughts: they gradually blew away as he went on, and the bridegroom’s state of triumph and rapture came back, dimly at first, and as if he dared not indulge it, but gaining strength every moment, until, before he reached Dalrugas, from the first moment when he saw his love’s light in her window shining far over the moor, it came back in full force, driving every thing else away. He saw, first, the little star of light hanging midway between earth and sky, and then the shape of the window, and then Lily’s figure or shadow coming from time to time to look out; and no lover’s heart could have risen higher or beat more warmly. He entirely forgot how he had wronged her in the glory of having her, of knowing her to be there waiting for him, and that she would be his wife to-morrow. She came to the top of the stairs to meet him, while he rushed up three steps at a time, rubbing against the narrow spiral of the stair with such passion and force of feeling as the best man in the world could not have surpassed. One does not require, it is evident, to be the best man in the world, or even a true man at all, to love truly and fervently, and with all the force of one’s being. One might say that it was selfishness on Ronald’s part to appropriate at any cost the girl he loved; but the fact remained, a fact far deeper than any explanation, that he did love her as deeply, as warmly, as sincerely as any man could. Their meeting was a moment of joy to both, like a poem, like a song; their hearts beat as high as if it had been a first meeting after years of absence, and yet it would have been less complete had they been parted for more than the two or three hours which was its real period. I need not go any further into this record. It did not matter what they said; words are of little account at such moments. It is only to note that a man who had just told a disgraceful lie, and put upon his bride a stigma of the most false and cruel kind, and whose mind was already shaping thoughts which were destined to work her woe, was at the moment when he met her with the news that their marriage was to take place next day as much, as tenderly in love with her as heart could desire. The problem is one which I have no power to explain.

Next day being still one of the daft days, bright with the reflection of the New Year, and the day of the weekly market in Kinloch-Rugas, Katrin announced early her intention of going in to the toun in the course of the day, an expedition which Beenie, with much modesty and reference to Miss Lily, proposed to share. “I havena been in the toun, no to say in the toun, ither than at the kirk, which is a different thing, since I came to Dalrugas. I’ll maybe get ye a fairing, laddie, for the sake of the New Year–”

“If he gangs very canny with the powny, and tak’s care of a’ our bundles,” Katrin said.

“And me, I’m to be left my lane, to keep the hoose,” said Dougal, “like Joan Tamson’s man.”