Маргарет Олифант - Sir Robert's Fortune

“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.”

“You little–” He could not find an epithet that suited, so left the adjective by itself, in sheer disability to express himself. He would have said hussy had he been an Englishman. He was tempted to say cutty, being a Scot—innocent epithets enough, both, but sufficient to make that little– flare up. “You mean,” he said, “I suppose, that you have nothing to do with it, and that the whole affair is in my hands.”

“Yes, uncle, I think it is,” said Lily very sedately.

He looked at her again with another ejaculation on his lips, and then he laughed.

“Well, my dear,” he said, “if that is the case, we can make short work of it—as you are in such a submissive frame of mind and have no will or intentions on your own part.”

Here Lily’s impatient spirit got the better of the hasty impulse of policy which she had taken up by sudden inspiration. “I never said that!” she cried.

“Then you will be so good as to explain to me what you did say, or rather what you meant, which is more important still,” Sir Robert said.

“I meant—just what I have always meant,” said Lily, drawing back her chair a little and fixing her eyes upon her foot, which beat the floor with a nervous movement.

“And what is that?” he asked.

Lily drew back a little more, her foot ceased to tap, her hands clasped each other. She looked up into his face with half-reproachful eyes full of meaning. “Oh, Uncle Robert, you know!”

Sir Robert jumped up from his chair, and then sat down again. Demonstrations of wrath were of no use. He felt inclined to cry, “You little cutty!” again, but did not. He puffed out a quick breath, which was a sign of great impatience, yet self-repression. “You mean, I suppose, that things are exactly as they were—that you mean to pay no attention to my representations, that you choose your own will above mine—notwithstanding that I have complete power over you, and can do with you what I will?”

“Nobody can do that,” said Lily, only half aloud. “I am not a doll,” she said, “Uncle Robert. You have the power—so that I don’t like to disobey you.”

“But do it all the same!” he cried.

“Not if I can help it. I would like to do it. I would like to be independent. It seems dreadful that one should be obliged to do, not what one wishes, but what another person wills. But you have the power–”

“Of the ways and means,” he said; “I have the purse-strings in my hand.”

It was Lily’s turn now to start to her feet. “Oh, how mean of you, how base of you!” she said. “You, a great man and a soldier, and me only a girl. To threaten me with your purse-strings! As if I cared for your purse-strings. Give it all away from me; give it all—that’s what I should like best. I will go away with Beenie, and we’ll sew, or do something else for our living. I’m very fond of poultry—I could be a henwife; or there are many other things that I could do. Give it all away! Tie them up tight. I just hate your money and your purse-strings. I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea!”

“You would find things very different if they were, I can tell you,” he said, with a snort.

“Oh, yes, very different. I would be free. I would take my own way. I would have nobody to tyrannize over me. Oh, uncle! forgive me! forgive me! I did not mean to say that! If you were poor, I would take care of you. I would remember you were next to my father, and I would do any thing you could say.”

He kept his eyes fixed on her as she stood thus, defiant yet compunctious, before him. “I don’t doubt for a moment you would do every thing that was most senseless and imprudent,” he said.

Then Lily dropped into her chair and cried a little—partly that she could not help it, partly that it was a weapon of war like another—and gained a little time. But Sir Robert was not moved by her crying; she had not, indeed, expected that he would be.

“I don’t see what all this has to do with it,” he said. “Consider this passage of arms over, and let us get to business, Lily. It was necessary there should be a flash in the pan to begin.”

Lily dried her eyes; she set her little mouth much as Sir Robert set his, and then said in a small voice: “I am quite ready, Uncle Robert,” looking not unlike the bust as she did so. He did not look at all like the bust, for there was a great deal of humor in his face. He thought he saw through all this little flash in the pan, and that it had been intended from the beginning as a preface of operations and by way of subduing him to her will. In all of which he was quite wrong.

“I am glad to hear it, Lily. Now I want you to be reasonable: the thunder is over and the air is clearer. You want to marry a man of whom I don’t approve.”

“One word,” she said with great dignity. “I am wanting to marry—nobody. There is plenty of time.”

“I accept the correction. You want to carry on a love affair which you prefer at this moment. It is more fun than marrying, and in that way you get all the advantages I can give you, and the advantage of a lover’s attentions into the bargain. I congratulate you, my dear, on making the best, as the preacher says, of both worlds.”

Lily flushed and clasped her hands together, and there came from her expanded nostrils what in Sir Robert’s case we have called a snort of passion. Lily’s nostrils were small and pretty and delicate. This was a puff of heated breath, and no more.

“Eh?” he said; but she mastered herself and said nothing, which made it more difficult for him to go on. Finally, however, he resumed.

“You think,” he said, “that it will be more difficult for me to restrain you if you or your lover have no immediate intention of marrying. And probably he—for I do him the justice to say he is a very acute fellow—sees the advantage of that. But it will not do for me. I must have certainty one way or another. I am not going to give the comfort of my life over into your silly hands. No, I don’t even say that you are sillier than most of your age—on the contrary; but I don’t mean,” he added deliberately, “to put my peace of mind into your hands. You will give me your word to give up the lad Lumsden, or else you will pack off without another word to Dalrugas. It is a comfortable house, and Dougal and his wife will be very attentive to you. What’s in a locality? George Square is pleasant enough, but it’s prose of the deepest dye for a lady in love. You’ll find nothing but poetry on my moor. Poetry,” he added, with a laugh, “sonnets such as you will rarely match, and moonlight nights, and all the rest of it; just the very thing for a lovelorn maiden: but very little else, I allow. And what do you want more? Plenty of time to think upon the happy man.”

His laugh was fiendish, Lily thought, who held herself with both her hands to keep still and to retain command of herself. She made no answer, though the self-restraint was almost more than she could bear.

“Well,” he said, after a pause, “is this what you are going to decide upon? There is something to balance all these advantages. While you are thinking of him he will probably not return the compliment. Out of sight, out of mind. He will most likely find another Lily not so closely guarded as you, and while you are out of the way he will transfer his attention to her. It will be quite natural. There are few men in the world that would not do the same. And while you are gazing over the moor, thinking of him, he will be taking the usual means to indemnify himself and forget you.”