THERE was great excitement in the Tower when the gig from “the toun” was seen slowly climbing the brae. Almost every-body in the house was in commotion, and Beenie, half crazy with anxiety, had been at the window for hours watching for Lily’s return, and indulging in visions and conjectures which her companions knew nothing of. All that Dougal and Katrin thought of was an accident. Though, as they assured each other, Rory’s bark was worse than his bite, it was yet quite possible that in one of his cantrips he might have thrown the inexperienced rider in her long skirt; and even if she was not hurt, she might have found it impossible to catch him again and might have to toil home on foot, which would account for the lateness of the hour. Or she might have sprained her ankle or even broken her arm as she fell, and been unable to move. When these fears began to take shape, the boy had been sent off flying on the black pony to the scene of the picnic, the only argument against this hypothesis being that, had any such accident happened, Rory by this time would in all probability have reached home by himself. Beenie, I need not say, was tormented by other fears. Was it possible that they had fled together, these two who had now fully discovered that they could not live without each other? Had he carried her away, as it had been on the cards he should have done three months ago? and a far better solution than any other of the problem. These ideas alternated in Robina’s mind with the suggestion of an accident. She did not believe in an accident. Lily had always been masterful, able to manage any thing that came in her way, “beast or bird,” as Beenie said, and was it likely she would be beaten by Rory, a little Highland pony, when she had ridden big horses by Sir Robert’s side, and never stumbled? Na. “She’ll just have gone away with him,” Beenie said to herself, and though she felt wounded that the plan had not been revealed to her, she was not sorry, only very anxious, feeling that Lily would certainly find some opportunity of sending her a word, and telling her where to join them. “It is, maybe, the best way out of it,” she said over and over again to herself, and accordingly she was less moved by Katrin’s wailings than that good woman could understand. Katrin and Dougal were out upon the road, while Beenie kept her station at the window. And Dougal’s fears for the young lady were increased by alarms about his pony, an older and dearer friend than Lily. “If the poor beast has broken his knees, I’ll ne’er forgive myself for letting that bit lassie have the charge of him alone.”
“The charge of him!” said his wife in high indignation, “and her that has, maybe, twisted her ankle, or broken her bonnie airm, the darlin’, and a’ the fault of that ill-willy beast. And it’s us that has the chairge of her.”
This argument silenced Dougal for the moment, but he still continued to think quite as much of Rory as of the young lady, whichever of the two was responsible for the trouble which had occurred. When the boy came back to report that there was nothing to be found at the old brig but great marks on the ruin, as if somebody had “slithered down,” branches torn away, and the herbage crushed at the bottom, the alarm in the house rose high. And Dougal had fixed his cap firmly on the top of his head, as a man prepared for any emergency, and taken his staff in his hand to take the short cut across the moor, and find out for himself what the catastrophe had been, when a shout from Sandy on the top of the bank, and Beenie at the window, stopped further proceedings. There was Lily, pale, but smiling, in the gig from the inn, and Rory, tossing his red head, very indignant at the undignified position in which he found himself, tied to that shabby equipage. “The puir beast, just nickering with joy at the sight of home, but red with rage to be trailed at the tail of an inn geeg,” Dougal said, hurrying to loose the rope and lead the sufferer in. He was not without concern for Lily, but she was evidently none the worse, and he asked no more.
“I have had such an adventure,” she said, as soon as she was within hearing, “but I am not hurt, and nothing has happened to me. Such an adventure! What do you think, Beenie? A gentleman climbed up the old brig while we were there, and slipped and fell; and when I ran to see, who should it be but Mr. Lumsden, Ronald Lumsden, whom we used to see so much in Edinburgh.” Here Lily’s countenance bloomed so suddenly red out of her paleness that Katrin had a shock of understanding, and saw it all in a moment, if not more than there was to see. “And he had sprained his ankle,” Lily said, a paleness following the flush; “he couldn’t move. You may fancy what a state we were in.”
“Eh,” said Katrin, with her eyes fixed on Lily’s face, “what a good thing Miss Eelen was with you, for she kens as much about that sort o’ thing as the doctor himsel’.”
“I got him on the pony at last,” said Lily, “and we bound up his foot, and then we took him to the Manse. It was the nearest, and the doctor just at their door. But, oh, what a race I had with the pony, leading him, and sometimes he led me till I had to run; and I put my foot through my skirt, see? We mended it up a little at the Manse, and drew it out of the gathers. But look here: a job for you, Beenie. And my hair came down about my shoulders, and if you had seen the figure I was, running along the road——”
“But Miss Eelen with ye made a’ right,” said Katrin. “Ah, what a blessing that Miss Eelen was with ye.”
Lily was getting out of the gig, from the high seat of which she had hastened to make her first explanations. It was not an easy thing getting out of a high gig in those days, and “the geeg from the inn” was, naturally, without any of the latest improvements. She had to turn her back to the spectators as she clambered down, and if her laugh sounded a little unsteady, that was quite natural. “She is, indeed, as good as the doctor,” she said; “if you had seen how she cut open the boot and made him comfortable! And Rory behaved very well, too,” she said. “I spoke to him in his ear as you do, Dougal. I said: ‘Rory, Rory, my bonnie man, go canny to-day; you can throw me to-morrow, if you like, an I’ll never mind, but, oh, go canny to-day.’ And you did, Rory, you dear little fellow, and dragged me, with my hair flying like a wild creature, along the road,” she added, with a laugh, taking the rough and tossing head into her hands, and aiming a kiss at Rory’s shaggy forehead. But the pony was not used to such dainties and tossed himself out of her hands.
“You’re awfu’ tired, Miss Lily, though you’re putting so good a face upon it, and awfu’ shaken with the excitement, and a’ that. And to think o’ you being the one to find him—just the right person, the one that knew him—and to think of him being here, Maister Lumsden, touring or shooting or something, I suppose.”
Beenie’s speech ended spasmodically in a fierce grip of the arm with which Lily checked her as she went upstairs.
“What need have you,” said the young lady in an angry whisper, “to burden your mind with lies? Say I have to do it, and, oh, I hate it! but you have no need. Hold your tongue and keep your conscience free.”
“Eh, Miss Lily,” said Beenie in the same tone, “I’m no wanting to be better than you. If ye tell a lee, and it’s but an innocent lee, I’ll tell one too. If you’re punished for it, what am I that I shouldna take my share with my mistress? But about the spraining o’ the ankle, my bonnie dear: that’s a’ true?”
Lily answered with a laugh to the sudden doubt in Robina’s eyes. She was very much excited, too much so to feel how tired she was, and capable of nothing without either laughter or tears. “Oh, yes, it’s quite true; and, oh, Beenie, he is badly hurt and suffering a great deal of pain. Poor Ronald! But he will be safe in Helen’s hands. If he were only out of pain! Perhaps it is a good thing, Beenie. That is what he whispered when I came away. Oh, how hard it was to come away and leave him there ill, and his foot so bad! but I am to go down to-morrow, and it will be a duty to stay as long as I can to cheer him up and to save Helen trouble, who has so many other things to do. I am not hard-hearted; but he says himself, if he were only out of pain, perhaps it’s a good thing.”
Here Lily stopped and cried, and murmured among her tears: “If it had only been me! It’s easier for a girl to bear pain than a man.”
“But if it had been you, Miss Lily, it would have been no advantage. You can go to him at the Manse, but he could not have come to you here.”
“That is true,” cried Lily, laughing; “you are a clever Beenie to think of that. But how am I to live till to-morrow, all the long night through, and all the morning without news?”
“A young gentleman doesna die of a sprained ankle,” said Beenie sedately, “and if you are a good bairn, and will go early to bed, and take care of yourself, I’ll see that the boy goes into the toun the first thing in the morning to hear how he is.”
“You are a kind Beenie,” cried Lily, clasping her arms about her maid’s neck. But it was a long time before Robina succeeded in quieting the girl’s excitement. She had to hear the story again half-a-dozen times over, now in its full reality, now in the form which it had to bear for the outside world, with all the tears and laughter which accompanied it. “And he grew so white, so white, I thought he was going to faint,” said Lily, herself growing pale.
“I’m thankful ye were spared that. It is very distressing to see a person faint, Miss Lily.”
“And then he cheered up and gave a grin in the middle of his pain: I will not call it a smile, for it was no more than a grin, half fun and half torture. Poor Ronald! oh, my poor lad, my poor lad!”
“He was a lucky lad to get you to do all that for him, Miss Lily.”
“Me! What did it matter if it was me or you or a fishwife,” said Lily, “when a man is in such dreadful pain?”
They discussed it over and over again from every point of view, until Lily fell asleep from sheer weariness in the hundredth repetition of the story. Beenie, for her part, was exceedingly discreet at supper that evening. Indeed, she was altogether too discreet to be successful with a quick observer like Katrin, who saw, by the extreme precautions of her friend, and the close-shut lips with which Beenie minced and bridled, and made little remarks about nothing in particular, that there was something to conceal. Katrin was very near to penetrating the mystery even now, but she said nothing except those somewhat ostentatious congratulations to all parties on the fact that Miss Eelen was there, which were designed to show the growing conviction that Miss Eelen was not there at all. Beenie was quite quick enough to perceive this, but she exercised much control over herself, and made no signs before Dougal. He was chiefly occupied by the address to Rory which Lily had made, which struck him as an excellent joke, and which he repeated to himself from time to time, with a laugh which came from the depths of his being. “She said till him: ‘Ye can throw me the morn, and welcome, if ye’ll go canny the day.’ Losh, what a spirit she has, that lassie, and the fun in her! ‘Go canny the day, and ye can throw me, if ye like, the morn.’ And Rory to take it a’ in like a Christian!” He laughed till he held his sides, and then he said feebly: “It’ll be the death of me.”
The joke did not strike the women as so brilliant. “I hope he’ll no take her at her word,” said Beenie.
“Na, na, he’ll no take her at her word: he’s ower much of a gentleman; but if he does, you’ll see she’ll stand it and never a word in her head. That’s what I call real spirit, feared at nothing. ‘Go canny the day, and you can throw me, if you like, the morn.’ I think I never heard any thing so funny in a’ my born days.”
“You’re easy pleased,” said his wife, though she was quite inclined to consider Lily’s speeches as brilliant, and herself as the flower of human kind, but to let a man suppose that he was the discoverer of all this was not to be thought of. She communicated, however, some of her suspicions to Dougal, for want of any other confidant, when they were alone in the stillness of their chamber. “I have my doubts,” said Katrin, “that it was nae surprise to her at a’ to find the gentleman, and that it was him that was the Miss Eelen that met her at the auld brig.”
“Him that was Miss Eelen? And how could he be Miss Eelen, a muckle man?” said Dougal.
“Oh, ye gowk!” said his wife, and she put back her discoveries into her bosom, and said no more.
Lily was very restless next day until she was able to get away on her charitable mission. “I must go now,” she said, “to help to take care of him, or Helen will have no time for her other business, and she has so much to do.”
“You maun take care and no find another gentleman with a broken foot,” said Katrin; “you mightn’t be able to manage Rory so well a second time.”
“Oh, I am not afraid of Rory,” the girl cried. “I just speak to him, as Dougal does, in his ear.”
“Mind you what you’ve promised him, Miss Lily,” said that authority, chuckling; “he is to cowp you over his head, if he likes, the day.”
“He’ll not do that!” cried Lily confidently, waving her hand to the assembled household, who were standing outside the door to see her start. What a diversion she was, with her comings and goings, her adventures and mishaps, to that good pair! How dull it must have been for them before Lily came to excite their curiosity and brighten their sense of humor. Dougal returned to his work, shaking once more with a laugh that went down to his boots and thrilled him all over, saying to himself: “He’s ower much of a gentleman to take her at her word;” while Katrin stood shading her eyes with her hand, and looking wistfully after the young creature in her confidence and gayety of youth. “Eh, but I hope the lad’s worthy of her,” was what Katrin said.
Ronald was lying once more upon the big hair-cloth sofa, as she had left him. He would not stay in bed, Helen lamented, though it would have been so much better for him. “But a simple sprain,” she said, “no complication. If I could have persuaded him to bide quiet in his bed, he would have been well at the end of the week; but nothing would please him but to be down here, limping down stairs, at the risk of a fall, with two sticks and only one foot. My heart was in my mouth at every step.”
“But he is none the worse,” cried Lily, “and I can understand Mr. Lumsden, Helen. It is far, far more cheery here, where he can see every thing that is going on, and have you and Mr. Blythe to talk to. A sprain makes your ankle bad, but not your mind.”
“That is true,” said Ronald, “and what I have been laboring to say, but had not the wit. My ankle is bad, but not my mind. I am in no such hurry to get well as Miss Blythe thinks. Don’t you see,” he said, looking up in Lily’s face, as she stood beside him, “in what clover I am here?”
Lily answered the look, but not the words. A tremulous sense of ease and happiness arose in her being. The moor was sweet when he was there, and to look for that hour in the evening had been enough for the first days to make her happy. But to start out to meet him, nobody knowing, glad as she had been to do it, cost Lily a pang. There are some people to whom the stolen joys are the most sweet, but Lily was not one of these. The clandestine wounded her sense of delicacy, if not her conscience. She was doing no wrong, she had said to herself, but yet it felt like wrong so long as it was secret, so long as a certain amount of deception was necessary to procure it. She was like the house-maid, stealing out to meet her lover. To the house-maid there was nothing unbecoming in that, but there was to Lily. She had suffered even while she was happy. But now the clandestine was all over. The constant presence of the old minister, who regarded them with eyes in which there was too much insight and satire for Lily’s peace of mind, was troublesome, but it was protection; it set her heart at rest. The accident restored all at once the ease of nature. “It is the best thing that could have happened,” Ronald said, when Helen left them alone, and Mr. Blythe had hidden himself behind the large, broad sheet of The Scotsman, the new clever Whig paper which had lately begun to bring the luxury of news twice a week to the most distant corners of the land. “I don’t mean to get better at the end of the week. It was a dreadful business yesterday, but I see the advantage of it now.”
“Was it so dreadful yesterday, poor Ronald?” she said in the voice of a dove, cooing at his ear.
“It was not delightful yesterday, though I had the sweetest Lily. But now I warn you, Lily, I mean to keep ill as long as I can. You will come and stay with me; it is your duty, for nobody knows me at Kinloch-Rugas but only you, and you are the good Samaritan. You put me on your own beast, and brought me to the inn.”
“Oh, do not speak like that, do not put me in mind that we are both deceivers! I have forgotten it, now that we are here.”
“We are no deceivers,” he said. “It is all quite true; you put me on your own beast. And where did you get all that strength, Lily? You must have almost lifted me in your arms, you slender little thing, a heavy fellow like me!”
“Oh, you did very well on your one foot,” said Lily, trying to laugh; but she shuddered and the tears came into her eyes. She was aching still with the strain that necessity had put upon her, but he did not think of that—he only thought how strong she was.
“Here, you two,” said the minister, “I’m going to read you a bit out of the paper. It is just full of stories, as good as if I had told them myself.”
“Oh, never heed with your stories, father,” said Helen; “keep them till Lily goes away, for she has a wonderful way with her, and keeps things going. Our patient will not be dull while Lily is here.”
Was that all she meant, or did Helen, too, suspect something? The two lovers interchanged a glance, half of alarm, half of laughter, but Helen went and came, unconscious, sometimes pausing to turn the cushion under the bad foot, or to suggest a more comfortable position, with nothing but kindness in her mild eyes.