“Why,” he cried, “is not this what has been in our minds for ever so long? Have you not promised, however poor I was, in whatever straits——”
“Yes, yes, there is no question of that.”
“And why, then, should it take away your breath? My bonnie Lily, is it not an old bargain now? We have waited and waited, but nothing has come of waiting. And Providence has put us in a quiet place, with nothing but friends round, and a good old minister, a kind old fellow, who likes a good glass of wine and knows what he’s drinking!” He laughed at this as he drew her closer toward him. “Lily, with every thing in our favor, you will not put me off and make a hesitation now?”
Oh, this was not quite the way, not the way she looked for! Yet she drew her breath hard, that breath which fluttered in spite of herself, and put both her hands in his. No, after so long waiting why should she make a hesitation now? And then they went down to the kitchen together, arm in arm, Lily yielding to the delightful consciousness that there was no need for concealment, to see the guisards act their primitive drama, and to bring in the New Year.
Oh, the New Year! which was coming in amid that rustic mirth among those true, kind, humble friends to whom the young pair were as gods in the glory of their love and youth. Lily trembled in her joy: what bride does not? What would it bring to them, that New Year?
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.