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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Sir Robert's Fortune," Mrs. Oliphant weaves a complex narrative that delves into themes of duty, love, and the moral dilemmas inherent in the pursuit of wealth. Published in the late 19th century, this novel reflects the societal norms and expectations of Victorian England, presenting a rich tapestry of characters whose lives are intricately connected. Oliphant's prose is both eloquent and incisive, capturing the subtleties of human emotions and the impact of social standing on personal relationships, all while employing a sophisticated narrative style that challenges readers to ponder the ethical ramifications of ambition and fortune. Mrs. Oliphant, a prominent figure in the Victorian literary scene, was known for her keen insights into the human condition and her ability to portray the complexities of female experience. Having lived through significant social upheaval and changes in gender roles, her works often reflect her advocacy for women's autonomy and moral agency. "Sir Robert's Fortune" can be seen as an exploration of these themes, revealing the intricacies of how wealth can complicate personal honor and familial bonds. This novel is highly recommended for readers interested in exploring the intersection of morality and wealth, as well as those who appreciate rich character development and social commentary. Mrs. Oliphant's adept storytelling and nuanced exploration of these timeless themes offer a rewarding reading experience that resonates with contemporary issues. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Sir Robert's Fortune
Table of Contents
Introduction
A fortune can bind as tightly as it liberates, testing character, kinship, and conscience. Sir Robert’s Fortune by Mrs. Oliphant introduces readers to a moral landscape where money is never simply money, but a measure of duty, power, and vulnerability. Written by the Victorian novelist Margaret Oliphant, long known for her clear-eyed social observation and subtle irony, the book engages the perennial question of what wealth does to people and what people do with wealth. Without resorting to melodrama, Oliphant sketches a world in which outward respectability and inner conviction are continually weighed against the pressures of rank and reputation.
The book belongs to the broad tradition of nineteenth-century British social and domestic fiction, the sphere in which Oliphant was especially prolific. Her career spanned the 1850s to the 1890s, and she published extensively in periodicals and in book form during the high Victorian decades. Sir Robert’s Fortune sits within this milieu, shaped by the era’s fascination with property, lineage, and the public face of private life. Readers can expect the calibrated pace and closely observed settings typical of the period, where drawing rooms, offices, and parish spaces become small theaters for negotiations of influence, affection, and responsibility.
Without revealing its turns, the premise gathers a circle of lives around title, property, and expectation, asking what kind of person emerges when prosperity becomes both promise and burden. The experience is one of attentive realism rather than sensation, with an emphasis on moral testing over spectacle. Oliphant’s narration, noted for its restraint and intelligence, allows motives to unfold gradually, giving each character the grace of complexity. The result is an immersive study of conduct under pressure. Readers meet a society that is recognizably ordinary in its routines, yet charged with the high stakes that accompany reputation, inheritance, and public scrutiny.
Central themes include the ethics of wealth, the obligations that attend privilege, and the erosions and reinforcements of family loyalty. Oliphant is interested in how money intersects with gendered expectations and with the tacit codes that govern social belonging. She probes the felt distance between what one owes to others and what one owes to oneself, tracking the compromises and assertions that define adulthood in a watchful community. Fortune in this sense means more than capital; it also signifies chance, fate, and the uncertainty of outcomes, reminding readers that control and contingency are uneasily entwined in the pursuit of a good life.
The novel also examines the influence of custom and law on private decisions, showing how the frameworks that distribute power shape personal choices. Property is not simply possessed; it is administered, advised upon, and contested within networks of kin, patrons, and dependents. Oliphant’s interest lies less in legal technicalities than in their human ramifications, especially where duty collides with desire. She portrays a culture attentive to surfaces yet alive with unspoken negotiations, where small gestures register as moral commitments. In this way, the narrative becomes a study of conscience under institutional constraint, illuminating how social systems both protect and imperil individual integrity.
For contemporary readers, Sir Robert’s Fortune remains relevant in its questions about privilege and accountability. It invites reflection on how wealth circulates, who stewards it, and what it means to use advantage well. The book’s measured scrutiny of reputation anticipates modern conversations about public image and private ethics, while its attention to intergenerational expectations resonates with current debates over legacy and opportunity. Oliphant’s calm, discerning voice offers a counterpoint to more sensational treatments of similar material, proposing that the real drama lies in everyday choices and in the compromises that define ordinary virtue.
Approached as character-driven fiction, the novel rewards patient attention to tone, motive, and social texture. Readers who value the moral psychology of Victorian realism will find in Oliphant a steady guide, at once sympathetic and exacting. The prose is lucid, the mood reflective, and the judgment humane, creating a narrative atmosphere that encourages careful reading and thoughtful response. Sir Robert’s Fortune ultimately offers an invitation to consider how prosperity can be both test and tool, and to ask, alongside its author, what forms of fidelity and courage are possible within the constraints of a world organized around wealth.
Synopsis
Sir Robert’s Fortune opens in a world alert to the power of money and reputation. Sir Robert, a self-made baronet with extensive means, has shaped his household and circle with deliberate care. His wealth touches relatives near and far, prompting expectations, anxieties, and quiet maneuvering. The narrative sketches a social landscape spanning a provincial community and the wider orbit of London, where name and income regulate access. Early chapters outline Sir Robert’s careful habits, his interest in orderly philanthropy, and his intention to secure a legacy that will outlast personal caprice. These foundations establish the question that propels the book: what should a great fortune do?
A change in circumstances brings Sir Robert’s provisions into effect, and the arrangements he has set in motion become the focus. A younger relative, reared modestly and unaccustomed to grandeur, is drawn to the center of events. Guardians and advisers, each with a distinct sense of duty, step forward to interpret the baronet’s wishes. The household absorbs new faces, while distant kin draw closer, hoping for influence. The narrative traces this transition with attention to practical detail: inventories, letters, interviews, and the quiet reconfiguration of rooms, habits, and expectations. The fortune, once an abstraction, becomes a daily presence shaping conduct and choice.
Social life expands rapidly around the new arrangement. Calls and invitations accumulate, and charitable committees take notice of a name that now carries weight. The protagonist, navigating drawing rooms for the first time, learns to interpret courtesy, rivalry, and advice disguised as kindness. A would-be mentor offers guidance while a well-placed friend counsels caution, reflecting the mixed motives that accompany generosity. Meanwhile, legal counsel interprets the terms of trusts and allowances, ensuring that Sir Robert’s practical mind remains evident after his withdrawal from the scene. The tension between private inclination and public obligation forms the quiet current beneath new routines.
Family opposition emerges with controlled intensity. A branch that feels overlooked presses a claim, and old grievances, documented in letters and recollections, resurface. The heirs-at-a-distance emphasize fairness and blood, while the guardians insist on fidelity to carefully written instructions. The protagonist, though inexperienced, perceives how easily fortune can turn kinship into calculation. Meetings with solicitors outline contingencies and reveal how money, once gathered, is surrounded by rules that slow passion and impose procedure. The narrative stresses patience and tact, showing that the baronet’s provisions were crafted to outlast quarrel, yet cannot prevent resentment from shaping tone and decision.
Midway through, an unexpected disclosure reframes assumptions about Sir Robert’s intentions. A neglected memorandum, a conversation remembered at the right moment, or a clause once overlooked expands the moral horizon of the estate. To understand this new angle, the protagonist travels to places significant to the baronet’s rise, hearing accounts of debts repaid, risks taken, and loyalties maintained. The journey grounds the fortune in work and sacrifice rather than mere accumulation, and makes clear that any distribution carries historical meaning. Returning with altered perspective, the protagonist sees the fortune as a trust—not a prize—and recalibrates relations with claimants, advisers, and beneficiaries.
A public test follows. A philanthropic scheme previously aligned with the baronet’s name falters, or an investment long considered secure wavers. Newspaper comment and private gossip converge, and allies hesitate. The family dispute, no longer an internal matter, threatens to color the standing of the entire household. Under pressure, the protagonist must weigh prudence against principle: whether to retreat into safety or sustain commitments that were part of the fortune’s original purpose. The narrative maintains suspense without disclosing outcomes, emphasizing instead the poise required when reputation and resources move together. Negotiations acquire urgency, and small decisions begin to carry outsized consequence.
Regaining initiative, the protagonist chooses steady work over display. Rather than rely solely on agents, they meet claimants and dependants, visit institutions linked to the baronet’s name, and convert promises into audited action. The household is reorganized for clarity and economy, while correspondence shifts from defensive tone to constructive purpose. A personal understanding deepens with a confidant whose counsel reflects experience rather than advantage, giving the protagonist a private anchor amid public scrutiny. With each step, the fortune is framed less as entitlement than stewardship. Incremental successes restore confidence, and erstwhile skeptics acknowledge competence grounded in transparent, even-tempered decisions.
The narrative moves toward resolution through careful conferences and signatures rather than sudden revelations. Lawyers clarify boundaries, families accept negotiated arrangements, and charitable obligations are calibrated to means and mission. The most contentious points find measured answers that honor both the baronet’s written will and the spirit inferred from his life. Relationships that had hardened begin to soften, not because every desire is met, but because the terms now feel intelligible and fair. The protagonist emerges defined by choices rather than by the inheritance alone, standing within the community not as a symbol of wealth, but as a custodian accountable for its uses.
In closing, Sir Robert’s Fortune presents wealth as a test of character and a framework for duty. The final chapters leave precise distributions understated, preserving narrative discretion while signaling stability, reconciliation, and practical benevolence. Family bonds settle into a workable peace; public obligations continue under wiser oversight; private happiness is suggested through equilibrium rather than spectacle. The book’s central message is clear: a great fortune exerts force, yet its moral shape depends on steady judgment, respect for history, and consideration for others. By returning to everyday rhythms, the story affirms that durable legacies are built in small, continuous acts.
Historical Context
Sir Robert’s Fortune unfolds within the late Victorian world, roughly the 1860s to the 1880s, when Scotland’s traditional landed society intersected with the increasingly powerful world of London and Glasgow finance. The social fabric is recognizably Scottish—Edinburgh’s sober professional milieu, parish life shaped by competing Presbyterian allegiances, and the expectations attached to a Lowland estate and baronetcy—yet the plot’s anxieties are urban and modern. Railways, the telegraph, and joint-stock companies draw the country house into the City, making investments as consequential as acres. The setting presumes a Britain governed by Queen Victoria, a United Kingdom unified by empire and markets, but riven by regional disparities and rapid economic change.
The Scottish law of entail (tailzie) and landed primogeniture form a central historical backdrop. The Entail Amendment (Scotland) Act 1848 (the Rutherfurd Act), followed by further reforms in 1868 and the Entail (Scotland) Act 1882, progressively loosened strict settlements that had tied estates to heirs and restricted sale or mortgage. Such statutes reshaped the power of heirs, trustees, and creditors, and affected marriage settlements. Historically, these changes allowed estate disentailement with specified consents, altering the bargaining power of families and lenders. The novel mirrors this legal environment by treating “fortune” as both land and negotiable capital, and by staging conflicts where honor, lineage, and liquidity must be reconciled under changing law.
The rise of joint-stock enterprise and limited liability transformed British wealth after mid-century. The Limited Liability Act 1855, the Joint Stock Companies Act 1856, and the Companies Act 1862 regularized incorporation and attracted middle- and upper-class investors into railways, mines, and banks. The Overend, Gurney & Co. failure on 10 May 1866 precipitated a severe credit panic in London, constricting loans and collapsing speculative ventures. Historically, dividends fluctuated with alarming speed, and prudent rent-rolls could be eclipsed by paper gains—or losses. The book engages this milieu by placing a baronet’s stability at the mercy of the City’s cycles, contrasting landed prudence with the risky seductions of yield and leverage.
The Great Depression of British Agriculture (c. 1873–1896) destabilized estates across Britain. Cheap American wheat, enabled by railroads and steamships, undercut domestic prices; the disastrous harvest of 1879 compounded distress, while refrigerated shipping in the 1880s weakened pastoral returns. Rents fell, drainage loans weighed on proprietors, and mortgages multiplied. Scottish lairds pursued “improvements,” from enclosure to new leases, yet many faced arrears and sales. This historical squeeze—after generations of assuming land was the safest wealth—shifts the calculus of inheritance and marriage in the narrative. The novel’s preoccupation with whether to modernize, sell timber, or part with ancestral acres reflects the real arithmetic of post-1873 rural decline.
Religious conflict and ecclesiastical patronage debates mark the period. The Disruption of 1843 saw 474 ministers leave the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church over the right of congregations versus patrons; Parliament finally abolished patronage in the established church by the Patronage Act 1874. These schisms reshaped parish authority, charity, and social oversight, especially in small towns and estates. Historically, kirk courts, elders, and lay benefactors influenced schooling and poor relief. The novel channels this environment by depicting reputations governed by congregational opinion, philanthropy as moral duty, and domestic decisions weighed against pulpit standards, where ecclesiastical politics quietly regulate alliances, careers, and respectability.
Electoral and administrative reforms enlarged the political nation and eroded automatic deference to the gentry. The 1832 Reform Act broadened representation, the 1867 Second Reform Act enfranchised urban artisans, the Ballot Act 1872 introduced secret voting, and the Representation of the People Act 1884 extended the franchise to many rural laborers. Local government modernized with county councils (England and Wales, 1888; Scotland, 1889). Historically, candidates now courted shopkeepers, clerks, and tenant-farmers, while newspapers amplified scrutiny. The book echoes these shifts by staging local contests where a baronet’s influence must compete with organized ratepayers, civic committees, and professional men whose votes and voices constrain paternalistic decision-making.
Industrial Scotland, particularly the Clyde, supplies economic context and hazard. Glasgow’s population surged to over half a million by 1871, with shipbuilding, engineering, and commerce drawing capital. The City of Glasgow Bank collapse on 2 October 1878—its shareholders held unlimited liability—ruined over a thousand middle-class investors; directors were later prosecuted for falsified accounts (1879). The crisis demonstrated how provincial respectability could mask reckless finance. Such episodes reverberate in the story’s background: suitors’ fortunes prove contingent, trustees weigh the credibility of balance sheets, and the baronet’s “fortune” is shadowed by the possibility that the safest-looking bank or debenture may conceal insolvency, turning social rank into precarious arithmetic.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the fragility of hereditary prestige when measured against modern capital, law, and public opinion. It scrutinizes class stratification sustained by entail and settlement while showing how financial markets redistribute power to speculators, professionals, and creditors. The narrative highlights women’s economic vulnerability despite the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, since dynastic land often remains male-controlled. It questions paternalism by depicting tenants and townspeople as stakeholders whose voices matter under expanded franchise. Above all, it indicts the moral hazard of opaque banking and speculation, revealing how respectability can collude with risk to produce private ruin and public scandal.
Sir Robert's Fortune
CHAPTER I
“We are to see each other no more.”
These words were breathed rather than spoken in the dim recess of a window, hidden behind ample curtains, the deep recess in which the window was set leaving room enough for two figures standing close together. Without was a misty night, whitened rather than lighted by a pale moon.
“Who says so?”
“Alas! my uncle,” said the white figure, which looked misty, like the night, in undistinguishable whiteness amid the darkness round.
The other figure was less distinguishable still, no more than a faint solidity in the atmosphere, but from it came a deeper whisper, the low sound of a man’s voice. “Your uncle!” it said.
There was character in the voices enough to throw some light upon the speakers, even though they were unseen.
The woman’s had a faint accentuation of feeling, not of anxiety, yet half defiance and half appeal. It seemed to announce a fact unchangeable, yet to look and hope for a contradiction. The man’s had a tone of acceptance and dismay. The fiat which had gone forth was more real to him than to her, though she was in the position of asserting and he of opposing it.
“Yes,” she said, “Ronald, my uncle—who has the strings of the purse and every thing else in his hands——”
There was a moment’s pause, and then he said: “How does he mean to manage that?”
“I am to be sent off to-morrow—it’s all settled—and if I had not contrived to get out to-night, you would never have known.”
“But where? It all depends upon that,” he said with a little impatience.
“To Dalrugas[1],” she answered, with a sigh; and then: “It is miles and miles from anywhere—a moor and a lodge, and not even a cottage near. Dougal and his wife live there, and take care of the place; not a soul can come near it—it is the end of the world. Oh, Ronald, what shall I do? what shall I do?”
Once more in the passionate distress of the tone there was an appeal, and a sort of feverish hope.
“We must think; we must think[1q],” he said.
“What will thinking do? It will not change my uncle’s heart, nor the distance, nor the dreadful solitude. What does he care if it kills me? or any body?” The last words came from her with a shriller tone of misery, as if it had become too much to bear.
“Hush, hush, for Heaven’s sake; they will hear you!” he said.
On the other side of the curtain there was a merry crowd in full career of a reel, which in those days had not gone out of fashion as now. The wild measure of the music, now quickening to lightning speed, now dropping to sedater motion, with the feet of the dancers keeping time, filled the atmosphere—a shriek would scarcely have been heard above that mirthful din.
“Oh, why do you tell me to hush?” cried the girl impetuously. “Why should I mind who hears? It is not for duty or love that I obey him, but only because he has the money. Am I caring for his money? I could get my own living: it would not want much. Why do I let him do what he likes with me?”
“My darling,” said the man’s voice anxiously, “don’t do any thing rash, for God’s sake! Think of our future. To displease him, to rebel, would spoil every thing. I see hope in the loneliness, for my part. Be patient, be patient, and let me work it out.”
“Oh, your working out!” she cried. “What good has it done? I would cut the knot. It would be strange if we two could not get enough to live upon—or myself, if you are afraid.”
He soothed her, coming closer, till the dark shadow and the white one seemed but one, and murmured caressing words in her ears: “Let us wait till the case is desperate, Lily. It is not desperate yet. I see chances in the moor and the wilderness. He is playing into our hands if he only knew it. Don’t, don’t spoil every thing by your impatience! Leave it to me, and you’ll see good will come out of it.”
“I would rather take it into my own hands!” she cried.
“No, dearest, no! I see—I see all sorts of good in it. Go quite cheerfully, as if you were pleased. No, your own way is best—don’t let us awake any suspicions—go as if you were breaking your heart.”
“There will be no feigning in that,” she said; “I shall be breaking my heart.”
“For a moment,” he said. “‘Weeping endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’”
“Don’t, Ronald! I can’t bear to hear you quoting Scripture.”
“Why not? I am not the devil, I hope,” he said, with a low laugh.
There was a question in the girl’s hot, impatient heart, and then a quick revulsion of feeling. “I don’t know what to do, or to think; I feel as if I could not bear it,” she said, the quick tears dropping from her eyes.
He wiped them tenderly away with the flourish of a white handkerchief in the dark. “Trust to me,” he said soothingly. “Be sure it is for our good, this. Listen: they are calling for you, Lily.”
“Oh, what do I care? How can I go among them all, and dance as if I were as gay as the rest, when my heart is broken?”
“Not so badly broken but that it will mend,” he whispered, as with a clever, swift movement he put aside the curtain and led her through. He was so clever: where any other man would have been lost in perplexity, or even despair, Ronald Lumsden always saw a way through. He was never at a loss for an expedient: even that way of getting back to the room out of the shadow of the curtains no one could have performed so easily, so naturally as he did. He met and entered into the procession of dancers going out of the room after the exertions of that reel as if he and his partner formed part of it, and had been dancing too. People did not “sit out” in those days, and Ronald was famous for his skill in the national dance. Nobody doubted that he had been exerting himself with the rest. Lily was half English—that is, she had been sent to England for part of her education, and so far as reels[3] were concerned, had lost some of her native skill, and was not so clever. She was not, indeed, supposed to be clever at all, though very nice, and pretty enough, and an heiress—at least she was likely to be an heiress, if she continued to please her uncle, who was not an easy man to please, and exacted absolute obedience. There were people who shook their heads over her chances, declaring that flesh and blood could not stand Sir Robert Ramsay[6]’s moods; but up to this time Lily had been more or less successful, and the stake being so great, she had, people said, “every encouragement” to persevere.
But Lily was by no means so strong as her lover, who joined the throng as if he had formed part of it, with a perfect air of enjoyment and light-heartedness. Lily could not look happy. It may be said that in his repeated assurance that all would be right, and that he would find a way out of it, she ought to have taken comfort, feeling in that a pledge of his fidelity and steadiness to his love. But there was something in this readiness of resource which discouraged, she could not have told why, instead of making her happy. It would have been so much simpler, so much more satisfactory, to have given up all thoughts of Sir Robert’s money, and trusted to Providence and their own exertions to bring them through. Lily felt that she could make any sacrifice, live upon nothing, live anywhere, work her fingers to the bone, only to be independent, to be free of the bondage of the uncle and the consciousness that it was not for love but for his money that she had to accept all his caprices and yield him obedience. If Ronald would but have yielded, if he would have been imprudent, as so many young men were, how thankful she would have been! She would have been content with the poorest living anywhere to be free, to be with him whom she loved. She would have undertaken the conduct of their little ménage herself, without even thinking of servants; she would have cooked for him, cleaned the house for him, shrunk from nothing. But that, alas, was not Ronald’s way of looking at the matter. He believed in keeping up appearances, in being rich at almost any cost, and, at best, in looking rich if he were not really so; and, above all and beyond all, in keeping well with the uncle, and retaining the fortune. He would not have any doubt thrown on the necessity of that. He was confident of his own powers of cheating the uncle, and managing so that Lily should have all she wanted, in spite of him, by throwing dust in his eyes. But Lily’s soul revolted against throwing dust in any one’s eyes. This was the great difference between them. I do not say that there was any great sin in circumventing a harsh old man, who never paused to think what he was doing, or admitted a question as to whether he was or was not absolutely in the right. He was one of the men who always know themselves to be absolutely right; therefore he was, as may be said, fair game. But Lily did not like it. She would have liked a lover who said: “Never mind, we shall be happy without him and his fortune.” She had tried every thing she knew to bring young Lumsden to this point. But she was not able to do so: his opinion was that every thing must be done to preserve the fortune, and that, however hard it might be, there was nothing so hard but that it must be done to humor old Sir Robert, to prevent him from cutting his niece out of his will. Was not this right? Was it not prudent, wise, the best thing? If he, an advocate without a fee, a briefless barrister[4], living as best he could on chance windfalls and bits of journalism, had been as bold as she desired, and carried her off from the house in Moray Place to some garret of his own up among the roofs, would not every-body have said that he had taken advantage of her youth and inexperience, and deprived her of all the comforts and luxuries she was used to? That Lily cared nothing for those luxuries, and that she was of the mettle to adapt herself to any circumstances, so long as she had somebody to love and who loved her, was not a thing to reckon with public opinion about; and, indeed, Ronald Lumsden would have thought himself quite unjustified in reckoning with it at all. To tell the truth, he had no desire on his own part to give up such modest luxuries for himself as were to be had.
The day of clubs was not yet, at least in Edinburgh, to make life easy for young men, but yet to get along, as he was doing precariously, was easier for one than it would be for two. Even Lily, all hot for sacrifice and for ministering with her own hands to all the needs of life, had never contemplated the idea of doing without Robina, her maid, who had been with her so many years that it was impossible for either of them to realize what life would be if they were separated. Even if it should be a necessary reality, Robina was included as a matter of course. How it might be that Lily should require to scrub, and clean, and cook with her own hands, while she was attended by a lady’s maid, was a thing she had never reasoned out. You may think that a lady’s maid would probably be of less use than her mistress had such service been necessary; but this was not Robina’s case, who was a very capable person all round, and prided herself on being able to “turn her hand” to any thing. But then a runaway match was the last thing that was in Lumsden’s thoughts.
It was a dance which every-body enjoyed that evening in the big, old-fashioned rooms in George Square. George Square has fallen out of knowledge in all the expansions of new Edinburgh, the Edinburgh that lies on the other side of the valley, and dates no farther back than last century. It also is of last century, but earlier than the Moray Places and Crescents; far earlier than the last developments, the Belgravia of the town. There Sir Walter once lived, in, I think, his father’s house; and these substantial, ample, homely houses were the first outlet of the well-to-do, the upper classes, of Edinburgh out of the closes and high-up apartments, approached through the atrocities of a common stair, in which so refined and luxurious a sybarite as Lawyer Pleydell still lived in Sir Walter’s own time. These mansions are severely plain outside—“undemonstrative,” as Scotch pride arrogantly declares itself to be, aping humility with a pretence to which I, for one, feel disposed to allow no quarter; but they are large and pleasant inside, and the big square rooms the very thing to dance in or to feast in. They were full of a happy crowd, bright in color and lively in movement, with a larger share of golden hair and rosy cheeks than is to be seen in most assemblies, and, perhaps, a greater freedom of laughter and talk than would have been appropriate to a solemn ball in other localities. For Edinburgh was not so large then as now, and they all knew each other, and called each other by their Christian names—boy and girl alike—with a general sense of fraternity modified by almost as many love affairs as there were pairs of boys and girls present. There were mothers and aunts all round the wide walls, but this did not subdue the hilarity of the young ones, who knew each other’s mothers and aunts almost as well as they knew their own, and counted upon their indulgence. Lily Ramsay was almost the only girl who had nobody of her own to turn to; but this only made her the more protected and surrounded, every-body feeling that the motherless girl had a special claim. They were by no means angels, these old-fashioned Edinburgh folk: sharper tongues could not be than were to be found among them, or more wicked wits; but there was a great deal of kindness under the terrible turbans which crowned the heads of the elder ladies and the scarfs which fell from their bare shoulders, and they all knew every one, and every one’s father and mother for generations back. Their dress was queer, or rather, I should have said, it was queer before the present revival of the early Victorian or late Georgian style began. They wore puffed-out sleeves, with small feather pillows in them to keep them inflated; they had bare shoulders and ringlets; they had scarfs of lace or silk, carefully disposed so as not to cover any thing, but considered very classical and graceful, drawn in over the elbows, by people who knew how to wear them, making manifest the slender waist (or often the outlines of a waist which had ceased to be slender) behind. And they had, as has been said, a dreadful particular, which it is to be hoped the blind fury of fashion will not bring up again—turbans upon their heads. Turbans such as no Indian or Bedouin ever wore, of all colors and every kind of savage decoration, such as may be seen in pictures of that alarming age.
When young Lumsden left his Lily, it was in the midst of a group of girls collected together in the interval between two dances, lamenting that the programme was nearly exhausted, and that mamma had made a point of not staying later than three o’clock. “Because it disturbs papa!” said one of them indignantly, “though we all know he would go on snoring if the Castle Rock were to fall!” They all said papa and mamma in those days.
“But mamma says there are so many parties going,” said another: “a ball for almost every night next week; and what are we to do for dresses? Tarlatan’s in rags with two, and even a silk slip is shameful to look at at the end of a week.”
“Lily has nothing to do but to get another whenever she wants it,” said Jeanie Scott.
“And throw away the old ones, she’s such a grand lady,” said Maggie Lauder.
“Hold all your tongues,” said Bella Rutherford; “it does her this good, that she thinks less about it than any of us.”
“She has other things to think of,” cried another; and there was a laugh and a general chorus, “So have we all.” “But, Lily! is Sir Robert as dour as ever?” one of the rosy creatures cried.
“I don’t think I am going to any more of your balls,” said Lily; “I’m tired of dancing. We just dance, dance, and think of nothing else.”
“What else should we think about at our age?” said Mary Bell, opening wide a pair of round blue eyes.
“We’ll have plenty other things to think about, mamma says, and that soon enough,” said Alison Murray, who was just going to be married, with a sigh. “But there’s the music striking up again, and who’s my partner? for I’m sure I don’t remember whether its Alick Scott, or Johnnie Beatoun, or Bob Murray. Oh! is it you, Bob?” she said with relief, putting her hand upon an outstretched arm. They were almost all in a similar perplexity, except, indeed, such as had their own special partner waiting. Lily was almost glad that it was not Ronald, but a big young Macgregor, who led her off to the top of the room to a sedate quadrille. The waltz existed in those days, but it was still an indulgence, and looked upon with but scant favor by the mothers. The elder folks were scandalized by the close contact, and even the girls liked best that it should be an accepted lover, or at the least a brother or cousin, whose arm encircled their waist. So they still preferred dances in which there were “figures,” and took their pleasure occasionally in a riotous “Lancers” or a merry reel with great relief. Lily was young enough to forget herself and her troubles even in the slow movement of the quadrilles, with every-body else round chattering and beaming and forgetting when it was their turn to dance. But she said to herself that it was the last. Of all these dances of which they spoke she would see none. When the others gathered, delighted to enjoy themselves, she would be gazing across the dark moor, hearing nothing but the hum of insects and the cry of the curlew, or, perhaps, a watchful blackbird in the little clump of trees. Well! for to-night she would forget.
I need not say it was Lumsden who saw her to her own door on the other side of the square. No one there would have been such a spoil-sport as to interfere with his right whatever old Sir Robert might say. They stole out in a lull of the leave-taking, when the most of the people were gone, and others lingered for just this “one more” for which the girls pleaded. The misty moonlight filled the square, and made all the waiting carriages look like ghostly equipages bent upon some mystic journey in the middle of the night. They paused at the corner of the square, where the road led down to the pleasant Meadows, all white and indefinite in the mist, spreading out into the distance. Lumsden would fain have drawn her away into a little further discussion, wandering under the trees, where they would have met nobody at that hour; but Lily was not bold enough to walk in the Meadows between two and three in the morning. She was willing, however, to walk up and down a little on the other side of the square before she said good-night. Nobody saw them there, except some of the coachmen on the boxes, who were too sleepy to mind who passed, and Robina, who had silently opened the door and was waiting for her mistress. Robina was several years older than Lily, and had relinquished all thoughts of a sweetheart in her own person. She stood concealing herself in the doorway, ready, if any sound should be made within which denoted wakefulness on the part of Sir Robert, to snatch her young lady even from her lover’s arms; and watching, with very mingled feelings, the pair half seen—the white figure congenial to the moonlight, and the dark one just visible, like a prop to a flower. “Lily’s her name and Lily’s her nature,” said Robina to herself, with a little moisture in her kind eyes; “but, oh! is he worthy of her, is he worthy of her?” This was too deep a question to be solved by any thing but time and proof, which are the last things to satisfy the heart. At last there was a lingering parting, and Lily stole, in her white wraps, all white from top to toe, into the dark and silent house.
CHAPTER II
Lily’s room was faintly illuminated by a couple of candles, which, as it was a large room with gloomy furniture, made little more than darkness visible, except about the table on which they stood, the white cover of which, and the dressing-glass that stood upon it, diffused the light a little. It was not one of those dainty chambers in which our Lilys of the present day are housed. One side of the room was occupied by a large wardrobe of almost black mahogany, polished and gleaming with many years’ manipulation, but out of reach of these little lights. The bed was a large four-post bed, which once had been hung with those moreen curtains which were the triumph of the bad taste of our fathers, and had their appropriate accompaniment in black hair-cloth sofas and chairs. Lily had been allowed to substitute for the moreen white dimity, which was almost as bad, and hung stiff as a board from the valance ornamented with bobs of cotton tassels. She could not help it if that was the best that could be done in her day. Every thing, except the bed, was dark, and the distance of the large room was black as night, except for the relief of an open door into a small dressing-room which Robina occupied, and in which a weird little dip candle with a long wick unsnuffed was burning feebly. Nobody can imagine nowadays what it was to have candles which required snuffing, and which, if not attended to, soon began to bend and topple over, with a small red column of consumed wick, in the midst of a black and smoking crust. A silver snuffer tray is quite a pretty article nowadays, and proves that its possessor had a grandfather; but then! The candles on the dressing-table, however, were carefully snuffed, and burned as brightly as was possible for them while Robina took off her young mistress’s great white Indian mantle, with its silken embroideries, and undid her little pearl necklace. Lily had the milk-white skin of a Scotch girl, and the rose-tints; but she was brown in hair and eyes, as most people are in all countries, and had no glow of golden hair about her. She was tired and pale that night, and the tears were very near her eyes.
“Ye’ve been dancing more than ye should; these waltzes and new-fangled things are real exhaustin’,” Robina said.
“I have been dancing very little,” said Lily; “my heart was too heavy. How can you dance when you have got your sentence in your pocket, and the police coming for you to haul you away to the Grassmarket[5] by skreigh of day?”
“Hoot, away with ye!” cried Robina, “what nonsense are ye talking? My bonnie dear, ye’ll dance many a night yet at a’ the assemblies, and go in on your ain man’s airm——”
“It’s you that’s talking nonsense now. On whose arm? Have we not got our sentence, you and me, to be banished to Dalrugas to-morrow, and never to come back—unless——”
“Ay, Miss Lily, unless! but that’s a big word.”
“It is, perhaps, a big word; but it cannot touch me, that am not of the kind that breaks my word or changes my mind,” said Lily, raising her head with a gesture full of pride.
“Oh, Miss Lily, my dear, I ken what the Ramsays are!” cried the faithful maid; “but there might be two meanings till it,” and she breathed a half sigh over her young mistress’s head.
“You think, I know—and maybe I once thought, too; but you may dismiss that from your mind, as I do,” said the girl, with a shake of the head as if she were shaking something off. And then she added, clasping her hands together: “Oh, if I were strong enough just to say, ‘I am not caring about your money. I am not afraid to be poor. I can work for my own living, and you can give your siller where you please!’ Oh, Beenie, that is what I want to say!”
“No, my darlin’, no; you must not say that. Oh, you must not say that!” Robina cried.
“And why? I must not do this or the other, and who are you that dares to say so? I am my mother’s daughter as well as my father’s, and if that’s not as good blood, it has a better heart. I might go there—they would not refuse me.”
“Without a penny,” said Robina. “Can you think o’t, Miss Lily? And is that no banishment too?”
Lily rose from her chair, shaking herself free from her maid, with her pretty hair all hanging about her shoulders. It was pretty hair, though it was brown like every-body else’s, full of incipient curl, the crispness yet softness of much life. She shook it about her with her rapid movement, bringing out all the undertones of color, and its wavy freedom gave an additional sparkle to her eyes and animation to her look. “Without a penny!” she cried. “And who is caring about your pennies? You and the like of you, but not me, Beenie—not me! What do I care for the money, the filthy siller, the pound notes, all black with the hands they’ve come through! Am I minding about the grand dinners that are never done, and the parties, where you never see those you want to see, and the balls, where—— Just a little cottage, a drink of milk, and a piece of cake off the girdle, and plenty to do: it’s that that would please me!”
“Oh, my bonnie Miss Lily!” was all that Beenie said.
“And when I see,” said the girl, pacing up and down the room, her hair swinging about her shoulders, her white under-garments all afloat about her in the energy of her movements, “that other folk think of that first. Whatever you do, you must not risk your fortune. Whatever you have to bear, you must not offend your uncle, for he has the purse-strings[2] in his hand. Oh, my uncle, my uncle! It’s not,” she cried, “that I wouldn’t be fond of him if he would let me, and care for what he said, and do what he wanted as far as I was able: but his money! I wish—oh, I wish his money—his money—was all at the bottom of the sea!”
“Whisht! whisht!” cried Beenie, with a movement of horror. “Oh, but that’s a dreadful wish! You would, maybe, no like it yourself, Miss Lily, for all you think now; but what would auld Sir Robert be without his money? Instead of a grand gentleman, as he is, he would just be a miserable auld man. He couldna bide it; he would be shootin’ himself or something terrible. His fine dinners and his house, and his made dishes and his wine that costs as much as would keep twa-three honest families! Oh, ye dinna mean it, ye dinna mean it, Miss Lily! You dinna ken what you are saying; ye wouldna like it yoursel’, and, oh, to think o’ him!”
Lily threw herself down in the big chair, which rose above her head with its high back and brought out all her whiteness against its sober cover. She was silenced—obviously by the thought thus suggested of Sir Robert as a poor man, which was an absurdity, and perhaps secretly, in that innermost seclusion of the heart, which even its possessor does not always realize, by a faint chill of wonder whether she would indeed and really like to be poor, as she protested she should. It was quite true that a drink of milk and a piece of oatcake appeared to her as much nourishment as any person of refinement need care for. In the novels of her day, which always affect the young mind, all the heroines lived upon such fare, and were much superior to beef and mutton. But there were undoubtedly other things—Robina, for instance; although no thought of parting from Robina had ever crossed Lily’s mind as a necessary part of poverty. But she was silenced by these thoughts. She had not, indeed, ever confessed in so many words even to Robina, scarcely to herself, that it was Ronald who cared for the money, and that it was the want of any impulse on his part to do without it that carried so keen a pang to her heart. Had he cried, “A fig for the money!” then it might have been her part to temporize and be prudent. The impetuosity, the recklessness, should not, she felt, be on her side.
It was on the very next day that her decision was to be made, and it had not been till all other means had failed that Sir Robert had thus put the matter to the touch. He had opposed her in many gentler ways before it came to that. Sir Robert was not a brute or a tyrant—very far from it. He was an old gentleman of fine manners, pluming himself on his successes with “the other sex,” and treating all women with a superfine courtesy which only one here and there divined to conceal contempt. Few men—one may say with confidence, no elderly man without wife or daughters—has much respect for women in general. It is curious, it is to some degree reciprocal, it is of course always subject to personal exceptions; yet it is the rule between the two sections of humanity which nevertheless have to live in such intimate intercourse with each other. In an old bachelor like Sir Robert, and one, too, who was conscious of having imposed upon many women, this prepossession was more strong than among men of more natural relationships. And Lily, who was only his niece, and had not lived with him until very lately, had not overcome all prejudices in his mind, as it is sometimes given to a daughter to do. He had thought first that he could easily separate her from the young man who did not please him, and bestow her, as he had a right to bestow his probable heiress, on whom he pleased. When this proved ineffectual, he cursed her obstinacy, but reflected that it was a feature in women, and therefore nothing to be surprised at. They were always taken in by fictitious qualities—who could know it better than he?—and considered it a glory to stick to a suitor unpalatable to their belongings. And then he had threatened her with the loss of the fortune which she had been brought up to expect. “See if this fine fellow you think so much of will have you without your money,” he said. Lily had never in so many words put Lumsden to the trial, never proposed to him to defy Sir Robert; but she had made many an attempt to discover his thoughts, and even to push him to this rash solution, and, with an ache at her heart, had felt that there was at least a doubt whether the fine fellow would think so much of her if she were penniless. She had never put it to the test, partly because she dared not, though she had not been able to refrain from an occasional burst of defiance and hot entreaty to Sir Robert to keep his money to himself. And now she was to decide for herself—to give Ronald over forever, or to give over Edinburgh and the society in which she might meet him, and keep her love at the cost of martyrdom in her uncle’s lonely shooting-box on the moors. There was, of course, a second alternative—that which she had so often thought of: to refuse, to leave Sir Robert’s house, to seek refuge in some cottage, to live on milk and oatcake, and provide for herself. If the alternative had been to run away with her lover, to be married to him in humility and poverty, to keep his house and cook his dinners and iron his linen, Lily would not have hesitated for a moment. But he had not asked her to do this—had not dreamed of it, it seemed; and to run away alone and work for herself would be, Lily felt, to expose him to much animadversion as well as herself; and, most of all, it would betray fully to herself and to her uncle, with that sneer on his face, the certainty that Ronald would not risk having her without her money, that discovery which she held at arm’s-length and would not consent to make herself sure of. All these thoughts were tumultuous in her mind as she opened her eyes to the light of a new day. This was the final moment, the turning-point of her life. She thought at first when she woke that it was still the same misty moonlight on which she had shut her eyes, and that there must still be some hours between her and the day. But it was only an easterly haar with which the air was full—a state of atmosphere not unknown in Edinburgh, and which wraps the landscape in a blinding shroud as of white wool, obliterating every feature in a place which has so many. Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Craigs and the Castle Rock had all disappeared in it from those who were in a position to see them; and here, in George Square, even the brown houses opposite had gone out of sight, and the trees in the garden loomed dimly like ghosts, a branch thrust out here and there. Lily asked herself, was it still night? And then her mind awoke to a state of the atmosphere not at all unusual, and a sense that the moment of her fate had arrived, and that every thing must be settled for her for good or for evil this day.
She was very quiet, and said scarcely any thing even to Robina, who dressed her young mistress with the greatest care, bringing out a dress of which Sir Robert had expressed his approval, without consulting Lily, who indeed paid little attention to this important matter. Considering the visions of poverty and independence that ran in her mind, it was wonderful how peaceably she resigned herself to Robina’s administration. Sometimes, when a fit of that independence seized her, she would push Robina away and do every thing for herself. Beenie much exaggerated the misfortunes of the result in such moments. “Her hair just a’ come down tumbling about her shoulders in five minutes,” she said, which was not true: though Lily did not deny that she was not equal to the elaborate braids which were in fashion at the moment, and could not herself plait her hair in any thing more than three strands, while Beenie was capable of seven, or any number more.
But to-day she was quite passive, and took no interest in her appearance. Her hair was dressed in a sort of coronet, which was a mode only used on grand occasions. Ordinarily it was spread over the back of the head in woven coils and circles. There was not any thing extraordinary in Lily’s beauty. It was the beauty of youth and freshness and health, a good complexion, good eyes, and features not much to speak of. People did not follow her through the streets, nor stand aside to make way for her when she entered a room. In Edinburgh there were hundreds as pretty as she; and yet, when all was said, she was a pretty creature, good enough and fair enough to be a delight and pride to any one who loved her. She had innumerable faults, but she was all the sweeter for them, and impulses of temper, swift wrath, and indignation, and impatience, which proved her to be any thing but perfect. Sometimes she would take you up at a word and misinterpret you altogether. In all things she was apt to be too quick, to run away with a meaning before you, if you were of slow movement, had got it half expressed. And this and many other things about her were highly provoking, and called forth answering impatience from others. But for all this she was a very lovable, and, as other girls said, nice, girl. She raised no jealousies; she entertained no spites. She was always natural and spontaneous, and did nothing from calculation, not even so much as the putting on of a dress. It did not occur to her even to think, to enquire whether she was looking her best when the hour had come at which she was to go to Sir Robert. Robina took her by the shoulders and turned her slowly round before the glass; but Lily did not know why. She gave her faithful servant a faint smile over her own shoulder in the mirror, but it did not enter into her mind that it was expedient to look her best when she went down stairs to her uncle. If any one had put it into words, she would have asked, what did he care? Would he so much as notice her dress? It was ridiculous to think of such a thing—an old man like Sir Robert, with his head full of different matters. Thus, without any thought on that subject, she went slowly down stairs—not flying, as was her wont—very sedately, as if she were counting every step; for was it not her fate and Ronald’s which was to be settled to-day?
CHAPTER III
“So you are there, Lily,” Sir Robert said.
“Yes, uncle, I am here.”
“There is one thing about you,” he said, with a laugh: “you never shirk. Now judicious shirking is not a bad thing. I might have forgotten all about it——”
“But I couldn’t forget,” said Lily firmly. These words, however, roused her to sudden self-reproach. If she had not been so exact, perhaps the crisis might have been tided over and nothing happened. It was just like her! Supposing her little affairs were of more importance than any thing else in the world! This roused her from the half-passive condition in which she had spent the morning, the feeling that every thing depended on her uncle, and nothing on herself.
“Now that you are here,” he said, not at all unkindly, “you may as well sit down. While you stand there I feel that you have come to scold me for some fault of mine, which is a reversal of the just position, don’t you think?”
“No, uncle,” replied Lily, “of course I have not come to scold you—that would be ridiculous; but I am not come to be scolded either, for I have not done any thing wrong.”
“We’ll come to that presently. Sit down, sit down,” he said with impatience. Lily placed herself on the chair he pushed toward her, and then there was a moment’s silence. Sir Robert was an old man (in Lily’s opinion) and she was a young girl, but they were antagonists not badly matched, and he had a certain respect for the pluck and firmness of this little person who was not afraid of him. They were indeed so evenly matched that there ensued a little pause as they both looked at each other in the milky-white daylight, full of mist and cold, which filled the great windows. Sir Robert had a fire, though fires had been given up in the house. It burned with a little red point, sultry and smouldering, as fires have a way of doing in summer. The room was large and sombre, with pale green walls hung with some full-length portraits, the furniture all large, heavy, and dark. A white bust of himself stood stern upon a black pedestal in a corner—so white that amid all the sober lines of the room it caught the eye constantly. And Sir Robert was not a handsome man. His features were blunt and his air homely; his head was not adapted for marble. In that hard material it looked frowning, severe, and merciless. The bust had lived in this room longer than Sir Robert had done, and Lily had derived her first impressions of him from its unyielding face. The irregularities of the real countenance leaned to humor and a shrewdness which was not unkindly; but there was no relenting in the marble head.
“Well,” he said at last, “now we’ve met to have it out, Lily. You take me at my word, and it is best so. How old are you now?”
“I don’t see,” said Lily breathlessly, “what that can have to do with it, uncle! but I’m twenty-two—or at least I shall be on the 20th of August, and that is not far away.”
“No, it is not far away. Twenty-two—and I am—well, sixty-two, we may say, with allowances. That is a great difference between people that meet to discuss an important question—on quite an equal footing, Lily, as you suppose.”
“I never pretended—to be your equal, uncle!”
“No, I don’t suppose so—not in words, not in experience, and such like—but in intention and all that, and in knowing what suits yourself.”
Lily made no reply, but she looked at him—silent, not yielding, tapping her foot unconsciously on the carpet, nervous, yet firm, not disposed to give way a jot, though she recognized a certain truth in what he said.
“This gives you, you must see, a certain advantage to begin with,” said Sir Robert, “for you are firmly fixed upon one thing, whatever I say or any one, and determined not to budge from your position; whereas I am quite willing to hear reason, if there is any reason to show.”
“Uncle!” Lily said, and then closed her lips and returned to her silence. It was hard for her to keep silent with her disposition, and yet she suddenly perceived, with one of those flashes of understanding which sometimes came to her, that silence could not be controverted, whereas words under Sir Robert’s skilful attack would probably topple over at once, like a house of cards.
“Well?” he said. While she, poor child, was panting and breathless, he was quite cool and collected. At present he rather enjoyed the sight of the little thing’s tricks and devices, and was amused to watch how far her natural skill, and that intuitive cunning which such a man believes every woman to possess, would carry her. He was a little provoked that she did not follow that impetuous exclamation “Uncle!” with any thing more.
“Well,” he repeated, wooing her, as he hoped, to destruction, “what more? Unless you state your case how am I to find out whether there is any justice in it or not?”
“Uncle,” said Lily, “I did not come to state my case, which would not become me. I came because you objected to me, to hear what you wanted me to do.”
“By Jove!” said Sir Robert, with a laugh; and then he added, “To be so young you are a very cool hand, my dear.”
“How am I a cool hand? I am not cool at all. I am very anxious. It does not matter much to you, Uncle Robert, what you do with me; but,” said Lily, tears springing to her eyes, “it will matter a great deal to me.”
