“Where is she?” cried Lumsden, seizing his hat.
“She said,” said Beenie with much intensity: “‘He will most likely be going out to his dinner. I will not have him break his engagement for me!’”
“I think,” he cried, “that you mean to drive me mad! Where is she? Does any one know she is here?”
“It is known she is here,” said Beenie sententiously, “to get change of air, as is thought, after her long, long illness; but, in fack, to look for her dear little bairn, which is the object in her ain mind, my poor bonnie leddy. And, oh, sir! if ye ken where the baby is, as ye must ken, having taken the responsibility upon your hands, for we canna find him, we canna find him! and it will just break her heart and she will die!”
“Here—and looking for the child without consulting me!” he said, with an exclamation of anger and astonishment. He flung on a coat rapidly, and, almost thrusting Beenie out of the room before him, hurried her away. A few more questions put to her as they hastened along the streets showed him exactly the state of the case. It was no running away. Lily had not come to him to throw herself upon his mercy, to be owned and established and have her child restored to her in the legitimate way. Had it been so it would have been very difficult to reject her, to silence her prayer and send her back, without losing hold upon her altogether. Had he lost hold upon her altogether without that? He was very much alarmed, but yet he felt that the situation was less impossible than if she had come to demand her place at his side and public acknowledgment. She did not want him—she wanted her baby; and what without him could she do with her baby? how produce it, how account for it? Ronald began to feel more at his ease, to feel himself again master of the situation as he hurried Beenie, who was very tired and wretched, and scarcely able to keep up with him, to Lily’s refuge. Let no one suppose for a moment that he meant to disown her, that any dishonor was in his thoughts. In the last resort, if nothing else was to be done, Ronald had no intention but to stand faithfully by his wife. He had not, indeed, any power of doing otherwise; for were there not Mr. Blythe and the two witnesses and the marriage lines against him? But, as a matter of fact, he never thought of that, although he breathed more freely when he knew no such claim was intended, and felt once again that the helm was in his own hands.
But in the meantime how to meet Lily was occupation enough for his thoughts. He walked along the darkling streets, with the wind in his face and a whirlwind of thought in his mind. How was he to meet her—what was he to say to her? It was an interview on which might depend the whole after-course of his life.
CHAPTER XLI
It was a very little, homely lodging in which Lily was, the little parlor of an old-fashioned poor little house, intended at its best to receive an Edinburgh lawyer’s clerk, or perhaps a poor minister or teacher, on his promotion. Ronald had never seen his wife in such surroundings. He gave a cry of surprise and dismay as he pushed open the door. How often had she said that she would share any poverty with him, and yet it hurt him to see her here, out of her natural sphere, like a princess banished into a sordid world of privation and ugliness. At the sound of his voice Lily sprang up from the slippery black hair-cloth sofa on which she had been reposing. He thought at first it was to meet him as of old with open arms and heart to heart, but of this she showed no sign, nor even when he rushed forward to take her into his arms did she make any movement. She had seated herself on the sofa again, drawing back in an attitude of repulsion which could not be mistaken. “Lily!” he cried, “Lily! Is this the way you receive me? Have you nothing to say to me?”
“Oh, yes, I have a great deal to say to you. Give Mr. Lumsden a chair, Beenie. It is as I thought; you were going out to dinner,” said Lily, with a gleam of exasperation at the sight of his evening dress, which was of course wholly unreasonable. “Why should you have broken your engagement for me?”
“You know well I would break any engagement for you,” he said. “You must know all that I have suffered during the past two months, unable to see you, even to hear of you, and not a word, not a word from yourself all that time.”