“Comfortable!” said Lily in high disdain, “and parted from my husband!” The word was not familiar to her lips, and it brought a flush of color over her face.
“Oh, whisht, my bonnie leddy,” Beenie cried.
“Why should I whisht? for it is true. I might not have said it before, but I will say it now, for where he is I ought to be, and whatever he has I ought to share, and what do I care for Dougal’s birds and Katrin’s fine cooking when my Ronald (that has aye a fine appetite for his dinner,” cried Lily in a parenthesis, with a flash of her girlish humor) “is away?” The last words were said in a drooping tone. Her mood changed like the changing skies. Even now she had irruptions of laughter into the midst of her trouble, which was not yet trouble, indeed, so long as he was still not absolutely gone; and who could tell what might happen before morning, the chill morning of the parting day?
Lily was up and astir early on that terrible morning. There had been a hope in her mind that Providence would re-tighten the bonds of the frost and bring the snow blinding and suffocating to stop all possibility of travel; but, alas! that was not the case: bands of faint blue diversified the yellow grayness of the clouds, and the early sun gave a bewildering glint over the moor, making the snow garment shrink a little more and show its rents and crevasses. Every thing was cheerfully astir in the yard, the black pony rearing as Sandy backed him into the shafts of the cart, snorting and shaking his head for joy at thought of the outing, and the sniff of the fresh, exhilarating air into which, as yet, there had come little of the limpness of the thaw. There was an air out of doors partly of pleasure in the excitement of the departure, or at least in the little commotion about something which is an agreeable break in the monotony of all rural solitudes. Dougal looked on and criticised with his hands in his pockets and gave Sandy directions as if this were the first time the boy had ever touched the pony which had been his charge for more than a year; and Katrin, too, stood at the door watching all these preparations, though the air was cold as January air could be. Upstairs there was a very different scene. Lily had tried to insist upon driving to the town to see her husband off, a proposal which was crushed by both Ronald and Robina with horror. “Expose yoursel’ to the whole countryside!” Beenie cried.
“Expose myself! and me his wife! Who should see him off if not his wife?” said Lily. And then Ronald came behind her and drew her against his breast once more.
“My bonnie Lily! We need not yet flourish that before the world. You are as safe here as a bird in its nest. Why should we set everybody talking about you and me? Sir Robert will hear soon enough and there is no need to send him word. There’s nobody to penetrate our secret and publish it if you will be patient a little till better things can be.”
“Our secret!” said Lily, springing from his hold with a great cry.
“A secret that is well shared by those that care for my Lily; but we need not flourish it before the world.” Lily’s color rose from pale to red, then faded. She stood apart from him, her countenance changing; her pride was deeply wounded that she should be supposed to be desirous of flourishing any thing before the world. It was an injury to her and a scorn, though this was no moment to resent it, and the sharp impression only mingled with the anguish of parting a sense of being wronged and misjudged, which was very hard to bear. “I may come down to the door, I suppose,” she said, in a voice from which she tried to banish every tone of offence.
“No, my darling,” he said, “not even to the door. I could not say farewell to my Lily with strangers looking on. I will like to think when I am gone of every thing round you here, all the old chairs and tables even, where my Lily and I have had our honeymoon.” Oh, there was nothing to complain of in the warmth of his farewell. No man could have loved his young wife better, or have held her close to him with deeper feeling. “I will soon be back, I will soon be back!” he cried. His eyes were wet like hers. It was as great a thing for him to tear himself away as it was for her to remain behind and see him go. But then Lily could only stand trembling and weeping at the head of the stairs, that nobody might see, and catch a distorted glimpse through the window over the door of the cart, into which he got with Sandy, while Dougal still murmured that “a stoot gentleman would have done better to walk,” and to see him hold out his hand to sulky Dougal, and to Katrin, who had her apron at her eyes, and Beenie, who was sobbing freely! They could stand there and cry, but she might not go down stairs lest she should flourish her story before the world. And why should she not, after all, flourish it before the world? Is a marriage a thing to be hid? When the little cart drove away, the pony, very fresh after his long confinement, executing many gambols, Lily went back to her window, from which she could see them disappear under the high bank, coming out again lower down. The deep road was so filled up with snow that the moment of disappearance was a very short one, and then she could trace for a long time along the road the little dark object growing less and less, till it disappeared altogether. The pony’s gambols, which, though he was too far off to be distinctly visible, still showed in the meandering of his progress and sudden changes of pace, the head of one figure showing over the other, the gradual obliteration in the gray of distance, kept all her faculties occupied. It seemed hours, though it was but a very little time, when Lily let her head droop on the arm of the old-fashioned sofa and abandoned herself to the long-gathering, long-restrained torrent and passion of tears.
It was a heavy, dreary day. When you begin life very early in the morning, it ought to be for something good, for some natural festivity or holiday, in the light of which the morning goes brightening on to some climax, be it a happy arrival for which the moments are counted or a birthday party. But to begin with a parting and live the livelong day after it, every hour more mournful and more weary, is a melancholy thing. This used to be very common in the old days, when travelling was slower, and night trains not invented, and night coaches not much thought of. It added a great deal to the miseries of a farewell: in the evening there is but little time before the people who are left behind; they have an excuse for shutting themselves up, going to bed, most likely, if they are young, sleeping before they know, with to-morrow always a new day before them. But Lily had to live it all out, not excused by Beenie or her other faithful retainers a single hour or a single meal. They brought her her dinner just as though he had not shared it with her yesterday, and pressed her to eat, and made a grievance of the small amount she swallowed. “What is the use,” Katrin said majestically, “of taking all this trouble when Miss Lily turns her back upon it and will not eat a morsel?” “Oh, try a wee bit, Miss Lily,” Beenie cried, adding in her ear, with a coaxing kindness that was insupportable: “Do you think he would relish the cauld snack he’ll be getting on the road if he thought his bonnie leddy was not touching bite or sup?”