RONALD was, as he had prophesied, a long time getting well. Even Helen was a little puzzled, she who thought no evil, at the persistency of his suffering; at the end of the second week he could, indeed, stumble about with his two sticks, but still complained of great pain when he tried to walk. The prolonged presence of the visitor began at last to become a little trouble, even to the hospitable Manse, where strangers were entertained so kindly, but where there was but one maid-of-all-work, with the occasional services, chiefly outdoors, of the minister’s man; and an invalid of Ronald’s robust character, whose presence necessitated better fare and gave a great deal of additional work, was a serious addition both to the expenses and labors of the house. It would have been much against the traditions of the Manse to betray this in any way; but there was no doubt that the minister was a little more sharp in his speeches, and apt to throw a secret dart, in the disguise of a jest, at the guest whose convalescence was so prolonged. Lily rode down from Dalrugas every day to help to nurse the patient, that Helen might not have the whole burden of his helplessness on her shoulders; but Lily, too, became aware that, delightful though this freedom of meeting was, and the long hours of intercourse which were made legitimate as being a form of duty, they were beginning to last too long and awaken uneasy thoughts. Helen, who was so tender to her at first, became a little wistful as the days went on. The gentle creature could think no harm, but perhaps it was her father’s remarks which put it into her head that the two young people were making a convenience of her hospitality, and that all was not honest in the tale which had brought so unlooked-for a visitor under the shelter of her roof. And then the village, as was inevitable, made many remarks. “Bless me, but the young leddy at Dalrugas is an awfu’ constant visitor, Miss Eelen. She comes just as if she was coming to her lessons every morning at the same hour.” “She is the kindest heart in the world,” said Helen. “You see, this gentleman that sprained his foot is a friend of her uncle’s, and she could not take him to Dalrugas, where there is nobody but servants; and she will not let me have all the trouble of him. A man, when he is ill, takes a great deal of attendance,” said the minister’s daughter, with a smile.
“Losh! I would just let him attend upon himsel’,” said one.
“He should send for a sister, or somebody belonging to him,” said another.
“Oh, not that,” said Helen—“I could not put up a lady, there is but little room in the Manse—and with Miss Lily’s help we can pull through.”
“He should get an easy post-chaise from Aberdeen—there’s plenty easy carriages to be got there nowadays—and go back to his ain folk. He’s a son of Lumsden of Pontalloch, they tell me; that’s not so far but that he might get there in a day.”
“I have no doubt he will do that as soon as he is well enough,” said Helen; but all these remarks made her uneasy. Impossible for Scotch hospitality to give a hint, to intimate a thought, that the visitor had overstayed his welcome—and a man that had been hurt and was, perhaps, still suffering! “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. But it troubled her gentle mind that Lily’s visits should be so remarked, and it was strange—or was it only the village gossip that made her feel that it was strange? Lily perceived all this with an uneasy perception of new elements in the air.
“Ronald,” she said one day, when they were alone for a few minutes, “you could put your foot to the ground without hurting when you try. You will have to go away.”
“Why should I go away?” he said, with a laugh. “I am very comfortable. It is not luxury, but it does very well when I see my Lily every day——”
“But, oh,” she cried, the color coming to her cheeks, which had been growing pale these few days, “there are things of more consequence than Lily! The Manse people are not rich——”
“You need not tell me that,” he said, looking round at the shabby furniture with a smile.
“But, oh, Ronald, you don’t see! They try to get nice things for you, they spend a great deal of trouble upon you, and they were glad at first—but it is now a fortnight.”
“Lily, my love,” he said quickly, “if you have ceased to care for this chance of meeting every day—if you want me to go away, of course I will go.”
“Do you think it likely I should have ceased to care?” she said, with tears in her eyes. “But we must think of other people, too.”
“Thinking of other people is generally a mistake. We all know how to take care of ourselves best—unless it is here and there some one like you, if there is any one like my Lily. But, dear, I give very little trouble. What is there to do for me? Another bed to make, another knife and fork—or spoon, I should say, for we have broth, broth, and nothing but broth—and a little grouse now and then, sent to them by somebody, and therefore costing nothing.”
“It is ungenerous to say that!” Lily cried.
“My dearest, you will tell me what present I can send them when at last I am forced to tear myself away. A good present that will make up to them—a chest of tea, or a barrel of wine, or—— But I don’t want to go away, Lily; I would rather stay here and see you every day until I am forced to go back to my work.”
“Oh, and so would I!” cried Lily; “but,” she added, with a sigh, “we must think of them. Mr. Blythe sits always, always in this room. It is the sunny room in the house, and he likes it best. But you see he has gone into his little study this day or two—which is very dreary—all because we are here.”
“Very considerate of him,” said Ronald, with a laugh, “if that is a reason for going away, that they now leave us sometimes alone. I fear it will not move me, Lily; you must find a better than that.”
“Oh, Ronald, will you not see?” cried Lily in distress. But what could a girl do? She could not put understanding into his eyes nor consideration into his heart. He was willing to take advantage of these good people, and the inducement was strong. She spoke against her own heart when she urged him to go away, and she was glad to be laughed out of her scruples, to be told of the “good present” that would make up for every thing, of the gratitude that he would always feel, and his conviction that he gave very little trouble, and added next to nothing to their expenses. “Broth is not expensive,” he said, “and the grouse, you know, Lily, the grouse!” Lily turned her head away, sick at heart. Oh, it was not how he should speak of the people who were so kind to him; but still, when she mounted Rory—now quite docile and accustomed to trot every day into Kinloch-Rugas—in the afternoon, she could not but be glad to think that she might still come to-morrow, that there was at least another day.
One of these afternoons the parlor was full of people, under whose eyes Lily could not continue to sit by the side of the sofa and minister to the robust invalid’s wants. There was the doctor, who gave him a little slap on his leg and said: “I congratulate ye on a perfect cure. You can get up and walk when you like, like the man in the Bible.” And the school-master’s wife, who said: “Eh, what a good thing for you, Mr. Lumsden, and you been on your back so long.” And there was the assistant and successor, Mr. Douglas, who was visibly anxious to get rid of all interlopers and speak a word to Helen. Oh, why did he not follow Helen when she went out to open the door for her visitors, and leave Lily free to say once more to Ronald, but more energetically: “You must go!”
“I was wanting to say, sir,” said Mr. Douglas, “and I may add that I have Miss Eelen’s opinion all on my side, that I would like very much if you would say a parting word to the lads that are going out to Canada. We have taken a great deal of trouble with them, and a word from the minister——”
“You are the minister yourself, Douglas; they know more of you than they do of me.”
“Not so, Mr. Blythe. I am your assistant, and Miss Eelen she is your daughter and the best friend they ever had; but it’s your blessing the callants want, and a word from you——”
“My blessing!” the old man said, with an uneasy laugh. “You’re forgetting, my young man, that there’s no sacerdotal pretensions in the auld Kirk.”
“You blessed them when they were christened, sir, and you blessed them and gave them the right hand of fellowship when they came to the Lord’s table. I’m thinking nothing of sacerdotalism. I’m thinking of human nature. We have no bishops, but while we have ordained ministers we must always have fathers in God.”
Mr. Blythe had never been of this new-fangled type of devotion. He had been an old Moderate, very shy of overmuch religion, and relying upon habit and tradition and a good deal of wholesome neglect. But the young man’s earnestness, backed as it was by the serious light in Helen’s eyes, brought a color to his old face. He was a little ashamed of the importance given to him, and half angry at the young people’s high-flown notions. “I am not sure,” he said, “that I go with you, Douglas, nor with Eelen either, in your dealings with these lads. You just cultivate a kind of forced religion in them, that makes a fine show for a moment; it’s the seed that fell by the wayside and sprang up quickly, but had no root in itself.”
“We can never tell that, sir,” said the assistant; “it may help them when they have no ordinances to mind them of their duty. If they remember their Creator in the days of their youth——”
“’Deed,” said the old minister, “it is just as often as not to forget every thing all the quicker when they come to man’s estate. Solomon knew mainy things, but not the lads in a parish so near the Highlant line.”
“Anyway, father, it will be kindly like, and them going so far, far away.”
“That is just it,” said Mr. Blythe: “why should they go far, far away? Why couldn’t ye let them jog on as their fathers did before them? I’m not an advocate for emigration. There are plenty of things the lads could do without leaving their own country. Let them go to Glasgow, where there’s work for every-body, or to the South. You think you can do every thing with your arrangements and your exhortations, and looking after more than ye were ever asked to look after. I have never approved of all these meetings and things, and your classes and your lessons, and all the fyke you make about a few country callants. Let them alone to their fathers’ advice and their mothers’. You may be sure the women will all warn them to keep off the drink—and much good it will do, whatever you may say, either them or you.”
“But just a word of farewell, sir,” pleaded the assistant; “we ask no more.”
“And that is just a great deal too much in present circumstances,” cried the old minister. “Where would ye have me speak to them—a dozen big country lads, like colts out of the stable? I cannot go out to the cold vestry at night, me that seldom leaves the house at all. And the dining-room is too small, and what other room have we free? Eelen, you know that as well as me. I cannot have them up in my bedchalmer, and the kitchen, with lasses in it, would be no place for such a ceremonial. No, no; we have no room, that is true.”
“I hope, sir,” said Ronald from his sofa, “you are not saying this from consideration for me. I’d like nothing better than to see the boys, and hear your address to them. It would be good, I am sure, and I am as much in need of good advice as any of them can be.”
“You are very considerate, Mr. Lumsden,” said the minister, after a pause. “It is a great thing to have an inmate that takes so much thought. But how can I tell that it would not be bad for you in your delicate state, with your nurses at your side all the day?”
“Delicate! I am not delicate!” cried Ronald, with a flush. “It is only, you know, this confounded foot.”
“Well, Douglas,” said the minister, “between Mr. Lumsden’s confoondit foot and your confoondit pertinacity, what am I to do? Since your patient, Eelen, is so kind and permits the use of our best parlor, have them in, have ben your callants. I must not be less gracious than my own guest,” the old man said.
Lily went away trembling after this scene, giving Ronald a beseeching glance, but she had no opportunity for a word. Next day, still tremulous, she returned, to find him still there, a little defiant, not to be driven out. But a short time after, when she was again preparing to go into the “toun”—without any pleasant looks now from her household, or complaisance on the part of Dougal, who openly bemoaned his pony—the whole population of Dalrugas turned out to see the inn “geeg” once more climbing the brae. It contained Ronald and his portmanteau, speeding off to catch the coach, but incapable, as he said, in the hearing of every-body, of going away without thanking and saying farewell to his kind nurse. “Do you know what this young lady did for me?” he said to the little company, which included Rory, ready saddled, and the black pony harnessed, with the boy at his head. “She lifted me, I think, from where I lay, and put me on her own beast, like the good Samaritan. She was more than the good Samaritan to me. Look at her, like a fairy princess, and me a heavy lump, almost fainting, and with but one foot. That is what charity can do.”
“Well, it was a wonderful thing,” Katrin allowed, “but maist more than that was riding down ance errand to the town to take care of ye every day.”
“Ah, that was for Miss Blythe’s sake and not mine,” he said. “May I come in, Miss Ramsay, to give you her message? Oh, Robina, I am glad to see you here. I can carry the last news to Sir Robert, and tell him how both mistress and maid are thriving on the moor.”
It was all false, false, as false as words that were true enough in themselves could be. Lily ran up the spiral stair, while Beenie helped him to follow. The girl’s heart was beating high with more sensations than she could discriminate. This was the parting, then, after so long a time together; the farewell, which was more dreadful than words could say—and yet she was glad he was going. He was her own true-love, and nobody was like him in the world, and yet Lily’s mind revolted against every word he said.
“Why did you say all that?” she cried, breathless, when they were alone. “It was not wanted, surely, here!”
“Necessary fibs,” he said. “You are too particular, Lily, for me that am only carrying out my rôle. You see, I am obeying you and going away at last.”
“Oh, Ronald, it was not that I wanted you to go away.”
“No, if I could have gone away, yet stayed all the same. But one can’t do two opposite things at the same time. And, Lily, it must be good-by now—for a little while. You will look out for me at the New Year.”
“Do you call it just a little while to the New Year?” she cried, with the tears in her eyes.
“Three months, or a little more. I shall not come to Kinloch-Rugas; I’ll find a lodging in some little farm. And in the meantime you will write to me, Lily, and I will write to you.”
“Yes, Ronald,” she said, giving him both her hands. Was this to be all? It was not for her to ask; it was for him to say:
“My bonnie Lily! If I could but carry you off, never to part more! But if nothing happens to release you, if Sir Robert does not relent, mind, my dearest, we must make up our minds and take it into our own hands. He is not to keep us apart forever. You will let me know all that goes on, and whether those people down stairs have reported the matter; and I, for my part, will take my measures. When we meet again, every thing will be clearer. And, Lily, on your side, you will tell me every thing, that we may see our way.”
“There will be nothing to tell you, Ronald. There will be no report sent; Uncle Robert, I think, has forgotten my existence. There will be nothing, nothing to say but that it is weary living alone here on the moor.”
“Not more weary than my life in Edinburgh, pacing up and down the Parliament House, and looking out for work. But we’ll see what is going to happen before the New Year; and I will send the present to those good Manse folk, and you will keep up with them, for they may be very useful friends. Is it time for me to go? Well, I will go if I must; and good-by for the present, my darling, good-by till the New Year!”
Was it possible that he was gone, that it was all over, and Lily left again alone on the moor? She ran to Beenie’s room, which was on the other side of the house, to watch the inn “geeg” as long as it was in sight. Nothing is ever said of what is intended to be said in a hasty last meeting like this. It was worse than no meeting at all, leaving all the ravelled ends of parting. And was it true that all was over, and Ronald gone and nothing more to be done or said?