Mrs. Oliphant

“ Oh, my uncle, my uncle! It’s not,” she cried, “that I wouldn’t be fond of him if he would let me, and care for what he said, and do what he wanted as far as I was able: but his money! I wish—oh, I wish his money—his money—was all at the bottom of the sea!”
“Whisht! whisht!” cried Beenie, with a movement of horror. “Oh, but that’s a dreadful wish! You would, maybe, no like it yourself, Miss Lily, for all you think now; but what would auld Sir Robert be without his money? Instead of a grand gentleman, as he is, he would just be a miserable auld man. ”

“ Edinburgh is empty as a desert when the courts are up and the schools closed. The emptiness of London after the season, which is such perfect fiction and such absolute truth, is nothing to the desolation of Edinburgh in the time of its holiday. To live, as he said, in a garret in the old town, or even in the top story of one of the newer, more convenient houses in the modern quarter, while every-body was away, instead of here on the edge of the glorious heather, among the summer delights of the moor, was folly itself to think of. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But I was not lost, you see, only wonderfully diverted, and spent a happy evening, and you never knew.”
“Miss Lily,” said Beenie, with tears, “never more, if I should starve, will I go down to my supper again!”
“You will just go down to your supper to-night and every night, and have your cracks with Dougal and Katrin, and be as happy as you can, for I am happy too. I am lonely no more. I am just the Lily I used to be before trouble came—oh, better! for it’s finer to be happy again after trouble than when you are just innocent and never have learned what it is.” ”

“ Lily said, encircling her friend with her arm.
“My bonnie Lily! but that I did, with all my heart!”
“That you, a good woman, would go away out into the world with an ill man, knowing he was an ill man, and thinking that you could turn him and mend him! Oh, Helen, Helen! take him to your heart, that is pure as snow, knowing he was an ill man?”
“Lily, you are very young—you are little more than a bairn. What are our small degrees of good and ill—or rather of ill and worse—before our Maker? Do you think he judges as we judge? ”

“ Helen said.
“Oh, no,” cried Lily, with a laugh of fierce emotion, “at the very best time, just to bring me back to myself. I’ve been having a quarrel with Beenie just for a little diversion. We’ve been at it hammer and tongs, calling each other all the bonnie names—or perhaps it was me that called her all the names. How do you think we could live out here in the quiet and the snow if we did not have a quarrel sometimes to keep up our hearts?”
“Lily, you are a strange lassie,” said Helen, sitting down by the fire and loosening her cloak. “You just say whatever comes into your head. Poor Beenie! ”

“ You can have, not love in a cottage, but love on a moor, which soon will be unrequited love, and that, we all know, is the most tragic and interesting of all.”
“Uncle,” said Lily, slowly recovering herself, “do you think it is a fine thing for a man like you, a grand gentleman, and old, and that knows every thing, to make a jest and a mockery of one that is young like me, and has no words to make reply? Is it a joke to think of me breaking my heart, as you say, among all the bonnie sunsets and the moonlight nights and the lonely, lonely moor? ”

“ He had thought of recovering Lily as she was in the freshness of her love and faith before even the first stroke of that disappointment about the house, the garret in Edinburgh, upon which her hopes had been fixed: full of brightness and variety, a companion of whom one never would or could tire, whose faith in him would make up for any failure of appreciation on the part of the rest of the world, nay, make an end of that—for would not such a faith have inspired him to believe in himself, to be all she believed him to be? ”

“ But May was sweet that year; in these high-lying regions the whins, which never give up altogether, lighted a blaze of color here and there among the green knowes and hollows where there was solid standing-ground, and where one who did not mind an occasional dash from the long heads of the ling which began to thrill with sap, or an occasional sinking of a foot on a watery edge, might now venture again to trace the devious way upon the most delicious{275} turf in the world here and there across the moor. The advancing season brought many a thrill of rising life to Lily. ”

“ I do not believe it: nature is stronger than fashion, though fashion is strong, and can momentarily affect the very springs of life. But when it did come into Lily’s mind as she sat in a silent absorption of happiness, not thinking much, working at her “seam,” which had come to be the most delightful thing in heaven or earth, that the new event that was coming would demand new provisions and create new necessities which it seemed impossible could be provided for at Dalrugas, the thought gave an additional impetus to the secret joy that was in her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By one of those strange gifts of temperament which triumph over every thing that humanity can encounter, this young creature, overwhelmed by so many griefs—a deserted wife, a mother whose child had been torn from her, her secret life so full of incidents and emotion ending all at once in a blank—became in the added grace of her weakness and of the spirit and courage which overcame it as sweet a companion to her old uncle, as full of variety and freshness, as the heart could desire. ”

“ The sun has a purity, a clearness, an ecstasy of light which it has nowhere else. It looks, as it were, with a heavenly compunction upon earth and sky, as if to make up for the many days when it is absent, expanding over mountain and moor with a smiling which seems personal and full of intention. The air is life itself, uncontaminated with any evil emanation, full of the warmth of the sun, and the odor of the fir-trees and heather, and the murmur of all the living things about. ”

“ Lily, it must be remembered, had no one but Ronald to represent to her happiness and life. She had never had many people to love. Her father and mother had both died before she was old enough to know them. She had no aunt, though that is often an unsatisfactory relation, not even cousins whom she knew, which is strange to think of in Scotland—nobody to take her part or whom she could repose her heart upon but Beenie, her maid, to whom Lily’s concerns were her own sublimated, and who could only agree in and intensify Lily’s own natural impulses and thoughts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lily cried, with a touch of scorn which brought back its natural tone to her voice.
“No, I dare swear you were not,” said the old gentleman; “but if not you, there were others. It’s never a good thing to play with money: either it sticks to your fingers and defiles you, or it’s like a canker on your good name. He’s away to his account, that maybe had something to answer for. He should have given you your choice—your lad or my siller. He should have put it into words. He should have given you your choice.”
“He did,” said Lily, almost under her breath. ”

“ Helen made no answer, but shook her head with a sigh.
“How can I stand between you and him?” said Lily.{244} “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. ”

“ If you fear discovery, it dodges you at every step, it is always in your way. But if you desire it, by natural perversity the danger is lessened, and nobody suspects what you would wish{289} found out. So that even this element added something to Lily’s happiness in her new prospects. That hope in the mind of most women needs nothing to enhance it; the great mystery, the silent joy of anticipation, the overwhelming thought of what is, by ways unknown, by long patience, by suffering, by rapture, about to be, fills every faculty of being. ”

“ She was as white as the snow, and cold, and trembled. “Is that all—is that all that is between you and me, Ronald?” she cried.
“Now, Lily, my dearest, how can you ask such a question? Is that all? Nothing is all! There are no bounds to what is between you and me; but because we have to be parted for a time that was not a reason for always keeping apart, was it, Lily? I thought, my darling, you agreed with me there. We have had a happy honeymoon as ever any pair had, happier, I think, than ever any blessed man but me. And now I must go out to the bleak world to work for my bonnie wife. ”

“ I am not like you, Helen. I know for myself I could guide no man.”
No! well she knew that! Not so much as for the taking of a little house—not so much as the simplest duty as ever lay in a man’s road. Helen was not so clever as Lily, she had no such pretensions in any way; every thing—blood and breeding, and the habit of carrying out her own projects and holding her head high—was in the favor of the younger. But Lily had no such confidence as Helen. She did not believe in any influence she could exert. Her opinion, her entreaties, were of no use. They did not move Ronald. ”

“ To call her “My bonnie Lily!” to lean her head upon his breast that she might cry it all out there and be comforted, was no reply to the demand in her heart. And the hysteria passion did not come to tears in this case. She choked them down by a violent effort. She subdued herself, and withdrew from his supporting arm, not angrily, but with something new in her seriousness which startled Ronald, he could not tell why. “We will go upstairs,” she said, “or, if you would like it, out on the moor. It is bonnie on the moor these long, long days, when it is night, and the day never ends. ”

“ She was now a great deal better off, her life a great deal brighter, with all manner of good things within her reach, than Helen, on her little bit of land, pushing her rough husband, with as few detours as possible, along the path of life, and smiling over her hard task. Lily was a wealthy woman, with a delightful boy, and all those openings of new hope and interest before her in him which give a woman perhaps a more vivid happiness than any thing strictly her own. ”

“ She was of an age when any vanity of personal appearance, if ever sanctioned at all, is considered, by her grave race, to be entirely out of place; but yet was trim and neat by effect of nature, and wore the shortgown with a consciousness that it became her. A gleam of sunshine had come out as the two vehicles approached in a little procession; and Katrin had put up her hand to her eyes to shade them from that faint gleam{47} of sun as she looked down the road. The less of sun there is the more particular people are in shielding themselves from it ”

“ 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{240} 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! ”