“Have you heard any thing, Beenie?” cried Lily, turning pale. She had been so sure that the cup of joy was within reach, that the thirsting of her heart would be at once satisfied, that she felt as if a disappointment would be more than she could bear.
“Oh, mem,” cried Beenie, producing a bottle of salts from her capacious pocket, “dinna let down your heart! I have heard naething. I was just speaking of a common fact that every-body kens. And if she had flitted, they would maybe ken where she had gone. Oh, ay, they would certainly ken where she has gone—a woman and a bairn canna disappear leaving no sign. It’s not like a single person, that might just be off and away, and nobody the wiser, mem! I am maybe just speaking nonsense, and we’ll see her at her door in a moment, with our bonnie boy in her airms.”
Beenie, however, had succeeded better than she had hoped. She had conveyed to her mistress that sickening of the heart which, from the most ancient days of humanity, has been the consequence of hope deferred. The light went out of Lily’s eyes. She leaned back in her corner, closing them upon a world which had suddenly grown black and void. She did not lose consciousness, being far too strongly bound to life by hope and despair and pain to let the thread drop even for a moment; but Beenie thought she had fainted, and, heartstruck with what seemed to her her own work, produced out of the reticule she carried a whole magazine of remedies—precious eau-de-Cologne, which was no common thing in those days, and vinegar with a sharp, aromatic scent, more used then than now, and even as the last resort a small bottle of whiskey, which she tried hard, though with a hand that trembled, to administer in a teaspoon. Lily had strength enough to push her away, and, in self-defence, opened her eyes again, seeing grayly once more the firmament, and the high houses on either side, and the dull day from which all light seemed to have gone. It was she, however, who sprang out of the coach when it stopped at the entrance to the close. Every-body knows what the Canongate of Edinburgh is—one of the most noble streets, yet without question the most squalid and spoiled of any street in Europe, with beautiful stately old houses standing sadly among the hideous growths of yesterday, and evil smells and evil noises enough to sicken every visitor and to shame every man who has any thing to do with such a careless and wicked sacrifice of the city’s pride and ornament.[A] But even in the midst of this disgraceful debasement there remain beyond the screen of the great old houses glimpses of the outlets which the old citizens provided for themselves—old court-yards, even old gardens, old houses secure within their little enclosures where the air is still pure and the sky is still visible. Lily’s heart rose a little as she came out of the narrow entrance of the close into one of these unexpected openings. If he were here, he would be well. She could see the green beyond and the high slopes of Salisbury Crags. There was something in the vision of greenness, in the noble heights flung up against the sky, which restored her confidence.
But it was perhaps well that Beenie had spoken even so little adroitly on the way, for, indeed, Marg’ret was not found at her old address. She had never gone back there, they were told, since the time when she was called away in the summer to attend a lady in the North. She had not, indeed, been expected back. She had given up her rooms on going away, and removed her little furniture, and the rooms had been relet at once to a member of the same profession, who hoped to be sometimes mistaken for Marg’ret, a person of high reputation in her own line. The landlady knew nothing of the baby she had now to take care of nor where she was. The furniture? Oh, yes, she could find out where the furniture had been taken, but Marg’ret herself, she felt sure, had never come back. She was maybe with the lady still—the lady in the North. She was so much thought upon that whiles they would keep her, if the baby were delicate, for months and months. She had a wonderful way with babies, the woman said. (At this Lily, who had been leaning heavily on her attendant’s arm, with her pale face hidden under her veil, and all her courage gone, began to gather a little spirit and looked up again.) Oh, just a wonderful way! They just throve wi’ her like flowers in May. What she did different from ither folk there was not one could tell: if it was the way she handled them, or the way she fed them, or the pittin’ on o’ their claithes, with fykes and fancies that a puir buddy with the man’s meat to get and the house to keep clean had no time for. But the fack was just this, that there was nobody like Marg’ret Bland for little bairns. They were just a different thing a’thegither when they were in her hands.
As this little harangue went on Lily’s feeble figure hanging on Beenie’s arm straightened itself by degrees. She put up her veil and beamed upon the homely woman, who showed evident signs that she had little time, as she said, to keep herself tidy for one thing. Lily was not discouraged by so small a matter. She said, holding out her hand: “Then you would leave a baby in her hands and have no fear?”
“Eh, my bonnie leddy,” cried the woman, with a half shriek, wiping her hands upon her apron before she ventured to touch the lady’s glove, “I would trust Marg’ret Bland maist to bring them back from the deid.”
“We must find her, that is all,” said Lily, as they turned away, Beenie trembling and miserable, with subdued sniffs coming from under her deep bonnet. Her mistress, in the petulance which neither anxiety nor trouble could quench, gave her “a shake” with her arm, which still leaned upon hers, though Lily for the moment was the more vigorous of the two. “We must find her, that is all! She must be clever indeed if she can hide herself in Edinburgh and you and me not find her, Beenie! We must search every street till we find her!” Lily cried. The color had come back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes. That blessed assurance that, wherever Marg’ret might be, the baby was safe, doubly safe in her skilled and experienced hands, was to the young mother like wine. The horror of the disappointment seemed to be disguised, almost to pass away, in that unpremeditated testimony. If it was for to-morrow rather than for to-day so long as he was so safe, so well, so assured against all harm, as that! “We have only to find her,” Lily said, dragging Beenie back to the hackney coach, in which they immediately drove to the place where Marg’ret, now to be spoken of as Mistress Bland, had been supposed to place her furniture. But this was no more than a warehouse, where the person in charge allowed disdainfully that twa-three auld sticks o’ furniture in that name were in his charge, but knew nothing more of the wumman than just that they were hers, and that that was her name. Lily, however, was not discouraged. She drove about all day in her hackney coach, catching at every clue. She went to the hospitals, where Mrs. Bland was known but supposed to be still with the lady in the North who had secured her services in the summer.
“If you know where she’s to be heard of,” one of the matrons said, “I will be too thankful, for there is another place waiting for her or somebody like her.”
“And is she such a good nurse as that?” cried Lily, glowing with eagerness all in a moment, though her face had relapsed into pallor and anxiety.
“She is one of the best nurses we have; and especially happy with delicate children,” the matron answered with some astonishment. And she tapped Beenie on the shoulder and said an indignant word in her ear. “Woman!” she said, “are you mad to let your mistress wander about like this, when it’s well to be seen she’s just out of her bed, and in my opinion not long past her time?”