The day was one of those Highland days which are a dream of freshness
and beauty and delight. I do not claim that they are very frequent, but
sometimes they will occur in a cluster, two or three together, like a
special benediction out of heaven. The sun has a purity, a clearness, an
ecstasy of light which it has nowhere else. It looks, as it were, with a
heavenly compunction upon earth and sky, as if to make up for the many
days when it is absent, expanding over mountain and moor with a smiling
which seems personal and full of intention. The air is life itself,
uncontaminated with any evil emanation, full of the warmth of the sun,
and the odor of the fir-trees and heather, and the murmur of all the
living things about. The damp and dew which linger in the shady places
disappear as if by magic. No unkindly creature, no venomous thing, is
abroad; no noise, no jar of living, though every thing lives and grows
and makes progress with such silent and smiling vigor. The two lovers in
the midst of this incense-breathing nature, so still, yet so strong, so
peaceful, yet so vigorous, felt that the scene was made for them, that
no surroundings could have been more fitly prepared and tempered for the
group which was as the group in Eden before trouble came. They wandered
about together through the glen, and by the side of the shining brown
trout stream, which glowed and smiled among the rocks, reflecting every
ray and every cloud as it hurried and sparkled along, always in haste,
yet always at leisure. They lingered here and there, in a spot which was
still more beautiful than all the others, though not so beautiful as
the next, which tempted them a little further on. Sometimes Ronald’s rod
was taken out and screwed together; sometimes even flung over a dark
pool, where there were driftings and leapings of trout, but pulled in
again before, as Lily said, any harm was done. “For why should any
peaceful creature get a sharp hook in its jaw because you and me are
happy?” she said. “That’s no reason.” Ronald, but for the pride of
having something to carry back in his basket, was much of her opinion.
He was not a devoted fisherman. Their happiness was no reason, clearly,
for interfering with that of the meanest thing that lived. And they
talked about every thing in heaven and earth, not only of their own
affairs, though they were interesting enough. Lily, who for a month had
spoken to nobody except Beenie, save for that one visit to the Manse,
had such an accumulation of remark and observation to get through on her
side, and so much to demand from him, that the moments, and, indeed, the
hours, flew. It is astonishing, even without the impulse of a long
parting and sudden meeting, what wells of conversation flow forth
between two young persons in their circumstances. Perhaps it would not
sound very wise or witty if any cool spectator listened, but it is
always delightful to the people concerned, and Lily was not the first
comer, so to speak. She was full of variety, full of whim and fancy, no
heaviness or monotony in her. Perhaps this matters less at such a moment
of life than at any other. The dullest pair find the art of entertaining
each other, of keeping up their mutual interest. And now that the cold
chill of doubt in respect to Ronald was removed from her mind Lily
flowed like the trout stream, as dauntless and as gay, reflecting every
gleam of light.
“The worst thing is,” Ronald said, “that the Vacation will come to an
end, not now or soon, Heaven be praised; but the time will come when I
shall have to go back and pace the Parliament House, as of old, and my
Lily will be left alone in the wilderness.”
“Not alone, as I was before,” said Lily--“never that any more; for now
I have something to remember, and something to look forward to. You’ve
been here, Ronald; nothing can take that from us. I will come and sit on
this stone, and say to myself: ‘Here we spent the day; and here we had
our picnic; and this was what he said.’ And I will laugh at all your
jokes over again.”
“Ah!” he said, “it’s but a grim entertainment that. I went and stood
behind those curtains in that window, do you remember? in George Square,
and said to myself: ‘Here my Lily was; and here she said----’ But,
instead of laughing, I was much more near crying. You will not find much
good in that.”
“You crying!” she said, with the water in her eyes, and a little soft
reproving blow of her fingers upon his cheek. “I do not believe it. But
I dare say I shall cry and then laugh. What does it matter which? They
are just the same for a girl. And then I shall say to myself: ‘At the
New Year he is coming back again, and then----’”
“What shall we do at the New Year?” he said. “No days like this then.
How can I take my Lily out on the moor among the snow?”
“If I am a Lily, I am one that can bloom anywhere--in the snow as well
as the sun.”
“And so you are, my dearest, making a sunshine in a shady place. But
still we must think of that. Winter and summer are two different things.
Cannot we find a friend to take us in?”
“I will tell you where we shall find a friend. You’ll come to the Tower
with your boldest face as if it was the first time you had been near.
And you will ask: ‘Does Miss Ramsay live here?’ And Katrin will say:
‘’Deed does she, sir. Here and no other place.’ And you will smite your
thigh in your surprise, and say: ‘I thought I had heard that! I am a
friend from Edinburgh, and I just stopped on the road to [here say any
name you please] to say “Good-day” to the young lady, if she was here.’
And then you will look about, and you will say: ‘It is rather a lonesome
place.’”
“Go on,” said Ronald, laughing; “I like the dialogue--though whether we
should trust your keepers so far as that----”
“My keepers! They are my best of friends! Well, Katrin will look round
too, and she will say, as if considering the subject for the first time:
‘In winter it is, maybe, a wee lonesome--for a young leddy. Ye’ll maybe
be a friend of Sir Robert’s, too?’ And you will say: ‘Oh, yes, I am a
great friend of Sir Robert’s.’ And she will open the door wide and say:
‘Come ben, sir, come ben. It will be a great divert to our young leddy
to see a visitor. And you’re kindly welcome.’ That’s what she will say.”
“Will she say all that, and shall I say all that? Perhaps I shall,
including that specious phrase about being a friend of Sir Robert’s,
which would surprise Sir Robert very much.”
“Well, you know him, surely, and you are not unfriends. It strikes me
that, to be a lawyer, Ronald, you are full of scruples.”
“What a testimonial to my virtue!” he said, with a laugh. “But it is not
scruples; it is pure cowardice, Lily. Are they to be trusted? If Sir
Robert were to be written to, and I to be forbidden the door, and my
Lily carried off to a worse wilderness, abroad, as he threatened!”
“I will tell you one thing: I will not go!” said Lily, “not if Sir
Robert were ten times my uncle. But you need not fear for Katrin. She
likes me better than Sir Robert. You may think that singular, but so it
is. And I am much more fun,” cried Lily, “far more interesting! I
include you, and you and me together, we are a story, we are a romance!
And Katrin will like us better than one of the Waverley novels, and she
will be true to us to the last drop of her blood.”
“These Highlanders, you never can be sure of them,” said Ronald, shaking
his head. He spoke the sentiment of his time and district, which was
too near the Highland line to put much confidence in the Celt.
“But she is not a Highlander. She is Aberdeen,” cried Lily. “Beenie is a
Highlander, if you call Kinloch-Rugas Highland, and she is as true as
steel. Oh, you are a person of prejudices, Ronald; but I trust all the
world,” she cried, lifting her fine and shining face to the shining sky.
“And so do I,” he cried, “to-day!” And they paused amid all
considerations of the past and future to remember the glory of the
present hour, and how sweet it was above every thing that it should be
to-day.
Thus the afternoon fled. They made their little table in the sunshine,
for shade is not as desirable in a Highland glen as in a Southern
valley, and ate their luncheon merrily together, Lily recounting, with a
little shame, how it had been intended for Helen Blythe instead of
Ronald Lumsden. “I was very near telling a fib,” she said
compunctiously, “but I did not do it. I left it to Katrin’s
imagination.”
“Helen Blythe must have a robust appetite if all this was for her,” he
said. “Is this an effort of imagination too? But come, Lily, we must do
our duty by the view. There is the old brig to climb, and all the Fairy
Glen to see.”
“I promised not to climb the old brig,” she said. “But that promise, I
suppose, was only to hold in case it was Helen Blythe that was with me,
for she could give little help if I slipped, whereas you----”
“I? I hope I can take care of my Lily,” said the young man; and after
they had packed their basket, and put it ready to be tied once more to
Rory’s saddle, who was picnicking too on the grass in one continuous and
delicate meal, they wandered off together to make the necessary
pilgrimage, though the old brig and the Fairy Glen attracted but little
of the attention of the pair, so fully engrossed in each other. They
climbed the broken arch, however, which was half embedded in the slope
of the bank, and overgrown with every kind of green and flourishing
thing, arm in arm, Ronald swinging his companion lightly over the
dangerous bits, for love, while Lily, for love, consented to be aided,
though little needing the aid. And how it happened will never be known,
but their happy progress came to a sudden pause on an innocent bit of
turf where no peril was. If it were Ronald who stepped false, or Lily,
neither of them could tell, but in a moment calamity came. He disengaged
himself from her, almost roughly, pushing her away, and thus, instead of
dragging her with him, crashed down alone through the briers and bushes,
with a noise which, to Lily, filled the air like thunder. When she had
slipped and stumbled in her fright and anxiety after him, she found him
lying, trying to laugh, but with his face contorted with pain, among the
nettles and weeds at the bottom. “What has happened? What has happened?”
she cried.
“What an ass I am,” said he, “and what a nuisance for you, Lily! I
believe I have sprained my ankle, of all the silly things to do! and at
this time, of all others, betraying you!”
Lily, I need not say, was for a moment at her wit’s end. There were no
ambulance classes in those days, nor attempts to train young ladies in
the means of first help. But there is always the light of nature, a
thing much to be trusted to, all the same. Lily took his handkerchief,
because it was the largest, and bound up his foot, as far as that was
possible, cutting open the boot with his knife; and then they held a
brief council of war. Ronald wished to be left there while she went for
help, but there was no likelihood of obtaining help nearer than
Kinloch-Rugas, and finally it was decided that, in some way or other, he
should struggle on to Rory’s back, and so be led to the Manse, where a
welcome and aid were sure to be found. It was a terrible business
getting this accomplished, but with patience, and a good deal of pain,
it was done at last, the injured foot supported _tant bien que mal_ in
the stirrup, and a woful little group set forth on the way to the
village. But I do wrong to say it was a woful group, for, though the
pain made Ronald faint, and though Lily’s heart was full of anguish and
anxiety, they both exerted themselves to the utmost, each for the sake
of the other. Lily led the reluctant pony along, sometimes running by
his side, sometimes dragging him with both her hands, too much occupied
for thought. What would people think did not occur to her yet. People
might think what they liked so long as she got him safe to the Manse.
She knew that they would be kind to him there. But what an end it was to
the loveliest of days: and the sun was beginning to get low, and the
road so long.
“Oh, Rory, man!” cried poor Lily, apostrophizing the pony after the
manner of Dougal. “If you would only go steady and go soft to-day!
To-morrow you may throw me if you like, and I will never mind; but, oh,
go canny, if there is any heart in you, to-day!” I think that Rory felt
the appeal by some magnetism in her touch if not by her words, on which
point I cannot say any thing positively; but he did at least overcome
his flightiness, and accomplished the last half of the road at a steady
trot, which gave Ronald exquisite pain, and kept Lily running, but
shortened considerably the period of their suffering. They were received
with a great outcry of sympathy and compassion at the Manse, where
Ronald was laid out at once on the big hair-cloth sofa, and his foot
relieved as much as Helen’s skill, which was not inconsiderable, could
do. It was he who made the necessary explanations, Lily, in her trouble,
having quite forgot the necessity for them.
“I was so happy,” he said, “so fortunate as to be seen by Miss Ramsay,
who knew me--the only creature hereabouts who does; and you see what she
has done for me: helped me to struggle up, put me on her pony, and
brought me here--a perfect good Samaritan.”
“Oh, don’t, don’t speak like that!” said Lily in her distress. She felt
she could not at this moment bear the lie. Nobody had ever seen Lily
Ramsay so dishevelled before: her hair shaken out by her run, her skirt
torn where she had caught her foot in it in her struggles to help
Ronald, and covered with the dust of the road.
“She would just be that,” said Helen Blythe, receiving the narrative
with faith undoubting, “and what a good thing it was you, my dear, that
knew the gentleman, and not a strange person! And what a grand thing
that you were riding upon Rory! Just lie as quiet as you can; the hot
bathing will relieve the pain, and now the boot’s off ye’ll be easier;
and the doctor will come in to see you as soon as he comes home. Don’t
ye make a movement, sir, that ye can help. Just lie quiet, lie quiet!
that is the chief remedy of all.”
“He is Mr. Lumsden, Helen,” said Lily, composed, “a friend of my
uncle’s, from Edinburgh. Oh, I am glad he is in your hands. He had
slipped down the broken arch at the old brig, where all the tourists go;
and I had ridden there to-day just to see it.”
“Eh, my dear, how thankful you must be,” was all Helen’s reply; but it
seemed to Lily that the old minister in his big chair by the fireside
gave her a glance which was not so all-believing as Helen’s.
“It was just an extraordinary piece of good luck for the young man,” the
minister said. “Things seldom happen so pat in real life. But a young
lady like you, Miss Lily, likes the part of the good Samaritan.”
She could not look him full in the face, and the laugh with which he
ended his speech seemed the most cruel of mocking sounds to poor Lily.
She put up her hands to her tumbled hair.
“May I go to your room and make myself tidy?” she said to Helen. “I had
to run most of the way with Rory, and my skirt so long for riding. I
don’t know what sort of dreadful person they must have thought me in the
town.”
“Nobody but will think all the better of you for your kindness,” said
Helen, “and we’ll soon mend your skirt, for there’s really little harm
done. And I think you should have the gig from the inn to drive you
back, my dear, for your nerves are shaken, and the afternoon’s getting
late, and you must not stir from here till you have got a good rest and
a cup of tea.”
“The gig may perhaps take me back to the inn first,” said Ronald, “for
it is there I am staying--for the fishing,” he added, unable to keep out
of his eyes a half-comic glance at the companion of his trouble.
“Indeed, you are going back to no inn,” said Helen; “you are just going
to stay at the Manse, where you will be much better attended to; and
Lily, my dear, you’ll come and see Mr. Lumsden, that owes so much to you
already, and that will help to make him feel at home here.”
But when Lily came down stairs, smoothed and brushed, with her hair
trim, and the flush dying off her cheeks, and her skirt mended, though
in many ways the accident had ended most fortunately, she could not meet
the smile in the old minister’s eyes.