“It might be much to me,” said the minister’s man, who was known for a “bletherin’ idiot” all over the parish. “It’s just a secret, and a secret is aye worth siller.”
“Well, I wish ye may get it,” Katrin said. During this time she was, to tell the truth, more or less anxious about the demeanor of her husband. It was true that Dougal knew nothing unless what he might have found out for himself, putting two and two together. Katrin had great confidence in the slowness of his intellect and his incapacity to put together two and two. Perhaps her trust was too great in this incapacity, and too little in the dogged loyalty with which Dougal respected his own roof-tree and all that sheltered under it. At least the fact is certain that the authorized gossip of the parish carried very little with him to compensate him for the cold drive and all the miseries of the way.
Lily took out her letter and went over it again when Helen had gone. She found it far too eloquent, too argumentative, too full of a foregone conclusion. Why should she assume that Ronald did not mean to provide a home for her, that there was any reason to believe in an intention on his part of keeping their marriage a secret and their lives apart? All his behavior during the past week had been against this. How could there have been a more devoted lover, a husband more adoring? She asked herself what there was in him to justify such fears, and answered herself: Nothing, nothing! not a shadow upon his love or delight in her presence, the happiness of being with her, for which he had sacrificed every thing else. He might have spent that New Year amid all the mirth and holiday of his kind: in the merry crowd at home, or in Edinburgh, where he need never have spent an hour alone; and he had preferred to be shut up all alone with her on the edge of a snowy wintry moor. Did that look as if he loved her little, as if he made small account of her happiness? Oh, no, no! It was she who was so full of doubts and fears, who had so little trust, who must surely love him less than he loved her, or such suggestions would never have found a place in her heart. If she already felt this in the evening, how much more did she feel it next morning, when the post brought her a little note all full of love, and the sweet sorrow of farewell, which Ronald had slipped into the post in the first halting-place beyond Dalrugas?
It was written in pencil, it was but three lines, but after she received it Lily indignantly snatched her letter from the blotting-book and flung it into the fire, which was too good an end for such a cruel production. Was it possible that she had questioned the love of him who wrote to her like that? Was it possible that she, so adored, so longed for, should doubt in her heart whether he did not mean to conceal her like a guilty thing? Far from her be such unkind, disloyal thoughts. Ronald had gone off into the world, as it is the man’s right and privilege and his duty to do, to provide a nest for his mate. If she were left solitary for a moment, that was inevitable: it was but the natural pause till he should have prepared for her, as every husband did. Instead of the indignation, the resentment, the bitter doubt she had felt, nothing but compunction was now in Lily’s mind. It was not he but she who was to blame. She was the unfaithful one, the weak and wavering soul who could never hold steadily to her faith, but doubted the absent as soon as his back was turned, and was worthy of nothing except to undergo the fate which her feeble affection feared. She was, perhaps, a little high-flown in the revulsion of her feelings, as in the fervor of these feelings themselves. A little less might have been expected from Ronald, a little charity extended to him in his short-coming; and certainly the vehemence and enthusiasm of her faith in him now was a little excessive. “Yes, it is better you should call me Miss Lily,” she said to Robina; “it is best just to keep it to ourselves for a while. Mr. Lumsden thought of all that, though he left it entirely to me, without a word said. There would be so many questions asked, even Dougal and Helen Blythe. I would have had to summer and winter it, and her not very quick at the uptake. It is a long time till Whit-Sunday,” said Lily, with a little quiver of her lip. “I will just be Miss Ramsay till then.”
“Eh, you will aye be Miss Lily to me, whatever!” Beenie cried.
“And I am just Miss Lily,” said her mistress, with a little air of dignity which was new to the girl. It was as if a princess had consented to that humiliation, sweetly, with a grace of self-abnegation which made it an honor the more.
It cannot be denied, however, that it was difficult, after all the agitations that had passed, after the supreme excitement of the New Year, and the short, yet wonderful, union of their life together, to fall back upon that solitude, and endeavor, once more, to “take an interest” in the chickens and the ponies, and the humors of Sandy and Dougal, which Lily, in the beginning, had succeeded in occupying herself with to some extent. She did what she could now to rouse her own faculties, to fill her mind with harmless details of the practical life. How comforting it would have been had she but been compelled to plan and contrive like Katrin for all those practical necessities—how to feed her family, how to make the most of her provisions, how to diet her cows and her hens; or like Dougal to care for the comfort of the beasts, and amuse himself with Rory’s temper, and the remarks that little snorting critic made upon things in general; or even to look over the “napery” and see if it wanted any fine darning, as Beenie did, and to regulate the buttons and strings of the garments and darning of the stockings. Then Lily might have done something, trying hard to make volunteer work into duty, and consequently into occupation and pleasure. But, Beenie being there, she had no need to do what would have simply thrown Beenie, instead of herself, out of work; and this was still more completely the case with Katrin, who, gladly as she would have contributed to the amusement in any way of her little mistress, would have resented, as well as been much astonished by, any interference with her own occupations. Lily could not do much more than pretend to be busy, whatever she did. She knitted socks for Ronald; beguiled by Beenie, she began with a little enthusiasm the manufacture into household necessaries of a bale of linen found by Katrin among the stores of the establishment, but stopped soon with shame, asking herself what right she had to take Sir Robert’s goods for that “plenishing” of abundant linen which is dear to every Scotch housewife’s heart. This was a scruple which the women could not share. “Wha should have it if no you?” cried Katrin. “Sir Robert he has just presses overflowing with as nice napery as you would wish to see. There is plenty to set up a hoose already, besides what’s wanted, and never be missed, let alone that except yourself, my bonnie Miss Lily, there is nae person to use thae fine sheets. But the auld leddy’s web that she had woven at the weaver’s and never lived to make it up—wha should have it, I should like to know, but you?”
“Not while my uncle is the master, Katrin.”
“I’ve nothing to say against Sir Robert,” cried Katrin—“he’s our maister, it’s true, and no an ill maister, just gude enough as maisters go—but the auld leddy was just your ain grandmother, Miss Lily, and your plenishing would come out of her hands in the course of nature, and for wha but you would she have given all that yarn (that she span herself, most likely) to be made into a bonnie web o’ linen? There is not a word to be said, as Robina will tell ye as weel as me. It’s just a law afore a’ the laws that a woman has her daughter’s plenishing to look to as soon as the bairn is born, and her bairn’s bairn with a’ the stronger reason, the only one that is left in the auld house.”
“Eh, Miss Lily, that’s just as sure as death,” Beenie said.