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.