“No better this morning! What is the matter with her? I never heard Lily
was unhealthy or delicate!”
“She is neither the one nor the other,” said Katrin, indignant, “but
she’s not well to-day. The best of us, Sir Robert, we’re subjeck to
that.”
“Ye think so!” he said rather fiercely, as if it were a dogma to
question. And then he added: “There’s that big Beenie creature, that is,
I suppose, as much with her as ever--send her to me.”
“Eh, Sir Robert, how is she to leave Miss Lily, that is just not well at
all this morning?”
“Send her to me at once!” the old gentleman said imperatively. He went
into the dining-room, which was on the lower floor and the room he liked
best, the most comfortable in the house. There were no signs of a
woman’s presence in that room. A vague wonder crossed his mind if, after
all, Lily had been here at all. He forgot that he had been much
incommoded the evening before by the books and the work-baskets, the
cushions and the footstools, which had demonstrated the some time
presence of a woman upstairs. He kept walking up and down the room
stiffly, feeling his foot a little, as he owned to himself. Sir Robert
truly felt that he would not be sorry if the prescription of his native
air failed manifestly at once.
“Well,” he said, turning round hastily at a timid opening of the door.
“How’s your mistress--how’s my niece? What does she mean by taking
shelter in her bed, and never appearing to bid me welcome?”
“Oh, Sir Robert, Miss Lily----” said Beenie. She held the door open and
stood leaning against the edge, as if ready to fly at a call from
without or a thrust from within. Beenie’s hair, which it was difficult
to keep tidy at the best of times, hung over her pale countenance like a
cloud, a short lock standing out from her forehead. We are accustomed
now to every vagary of which hair is capable, and are not disturbed by
loose locks; but in those days strict tidiness was the rule; and Beenie,
very white as to her cheeks and red round the eyes, partly with tears,
partly with watching, was, to Sir Robert, a being unworthy of any
confidence.
“Woman!” he cried, “you look as if you had been up all night--and not a
fit person to be a lady’s body-servant, and with her night and day!”
“Fit or no,” said Beenie, with a sob, “I’m the one Miss Lily’s aye had,
and her and me will never be parted either with her will or mine.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Sir Robert. But he was wise man enough to
know that a favorite servant was a difficult thing to attack. He asked
peremptorily: “What is the matter with her?” placing himself, like a
judge, in the great chair.
“Eh, Sir Robert, if Marg’ret, my cousin, had been here, that is half a
doctor herself! but me I know nothing,” cried Beenie, wringing her
hands.
“Is it a cold?”
“It was, maybe, a cold to begin with,” said Beenie cautiously, but then
she melted into tears and cried: “She’s awfu’ fevered, she’s the color
o’ fire, and kens nothing,” in a lamentable voice.
“Bless me,” cried Sir Robert, “is there any fever about?”
“There’s nae fever about that I ken of--there’s nae folk hereby to get a
fever,” Beenie said.
“Then I’ll go and see her myself!” cried Sir Robert, rising from his
chair.
“Eh, Sir Robert!” cried Katrin, from behind the door, “you a gentleman
that could do the puir thing no good! It’s better to leave her to us
women folk.”
“There is truth in that, too,” Sir Robert said. He took a turn about the
room and then sat down again in his chair, his forehead contracted with
a line of annoyance and perplexity which might have been called anxiety
by a charitable onlooker. Beenie had seized the opportunity of Katrin’s
appearance to hurry away, and he found himself face to face with his
housekeeper. He gave a long breath of relief. “It’s you, Katrin,” he
said; “you’re a sensible person according to your lights. There’s fever
with all things--a wound (but that’s of course impossible for her), or a
cold, or any accident. What’s your opinion? Is it a thing that will pass
away?”
“Leave her with Beenie and me for another day, Sir Robert, and the
morn, if she’s no better, I’ll be the first to ask for a doctor; and eh,
I hope it’s safe no to have him the day.” The latter part of this speech
Katrin said to herself under cover of the door.
“She’ll have got cold coming home late from one of her parties,” said
the old gentleman, regaining his composure.
“Her pairties, Sir Robert!” said Katrin, almost with a shriek. “And
where, poor thing, would she get pairties here?”
“She has friends, I suppose?” he said with a little impatience,
“companions of her own age. Where will young creatures like that not
find parties? is what I would ask.”
“Eh, Sir Robert! but I’m doubting you’ve forgotten our countryside.
There’s Miss Eelen at the Manse that is her one great friend; and John
Jameson’s lass at the muckle farm, that has been at the school in
Edinburgh, and would fain, fain think herself a lady, poor bit thing,
would have given her little finger to be friends with Miss Lily. But you
would not have had her go to pairties in the farmhouse; and at the Manse
they give nane, the minister being such a lameter. Pairties! the Lord
bless us! Wha would ask her to pairties on this side of the moor?”
“There are plenty of people,” said Sir Robert almost indignantly, “that
should have shown attention to my brother James’s daughter, both for my
sake and his. What do you call the Duffs, woman? and the Gordons of the
Muckle moor, and Sir John Sinclair’s family at the Lews? Many a merry
night have we passed among us when we were all young. The Duffs’ is not
more than a walk, even if Lily were setting up for a fine lady, which,
to do her justice, was not her way.”
“Eh, hear till him!” breathed Katrin under her breath. She said aloud:
“Times are awfu’ changed, Sir Robert, since your days. The present Mr.
Duff he’s married on an English lady, and they say she cannot bide the
air of the Highlands, though it is well kent for the finest air in a’
the world. He comes here whiles with a wheen gentlemen for the first of
the shooting--but her never, and there’s little to be said for a house
when the mistress is never in it. Of the Gordons there’s nane left but
one auld leddy, the last of them, I hear, except distant connections.
And as for Sir John at the Lews, poor man, poor man, he just died
broken-hearted, one of his bonnie boys going to destruction after the
other. They say the things are to be roupit and the auld mansion-house
to be left desolate, for of the twa that remain the one’s a
ne’er-do-well and the other a puir avaricious creature, feared to spend
a shilling, and I canna tell which is the worst.”
“Bless me, bless me!” Sir Robert had gone on saying, shaking his head.
He was receiving a rude awakening. He saw in his mind’s eye the old
house running over with lively figures, with fun and laughter--and now
desolate. It gave him a great shock, partly from the simple fact, which
by itself was overwhelming, partly because of a sudden pity which sprang
up in his mind for Lily, and, most of all, for himself. What, nobody to
come and see him, to tell the news and hear what was in the London
papers; no cheerful house to form an object for his walk, no men to talk
to, no ladies to whom to pay his old-fashioned compliments! This
discovery went very much to his heart. After a long time he said: “It
would be better to let the houses than to leave them to go to rack and
ruin, or shut up, as you say--the best houses in the countryside.”
“Let them!” cried Katrin. “Gentlemen’s ain houses! We’re maybe fallen
low, Sir Robert, but we’re no just fallen to that.”
“You silly woman! the grandest folk do it,” cried Sir Robert. Then he
added in a lower tone: “Lily, I am afraid, may not have had a very
lively life.”
“You may well say that!” cried Katrin. “Poor bonnie lassie, if she had
bidden ony gangrel body on the road, or any person travelling that
passed this way, to come in and bear her company, I would not have been
surprised for my part.”
Katrin spoke very deliberately, _avec intention_. It seemed well to
prepare an argument, in case it might be used with effect another time.
And Sir Robert was much subdued. He had not meant to inflict such a
punishment upon his niece. He had believed, indeed, that her life at
Dalrugas would be even more gay than her life in Edinburgh. There the
parties might occasionally be formal, or the _convives_ bores, according
to his own experience at least; but here there was nothing but the good,
warm, simple intimacy of the country, the life almost in common, the
hospitable doors always open. If a compunctious recollection of Lily
ever crossed his mind in the midst of his own elderly amusements, this
was what he had been in the habit of saying to himself: “There will be
lads enough to make a little queen of her, and lasses enough to keep her
company, for she’s a bonnie bit thing when all is said.” He had always
been a little proud of her, though she had been a great trouble to him;
and he thought he knew that in his old home Lily would be fully
appreciated. That he had sent her out into the wilderness had never
entered his thoughts. He dismissed Katrin with an uneasy mind, imploring
her, almost with humility, to do every thing she could think of for his
poor Lily, and if she was not better in the morning, to send at once for
the best doctor in the neighborhood. Who was the best doctor in the
neighborhood? Indeed, there was but little choice--the doctor at
Kinloch-Rugas, who was not so young as he once was, and had, alas, a
sore weakness for his glass, and the one at Ardenlennie on the other
side, who was well spoken of. “Let it be the one at Ardenlennie,” Sir
Robert said. He spent rather a wretched day afterward, taking two or
three short constitutionals, up and down the high-road, three-quarters
of an hour at a time, to while away the lonely day until his friends
returned from the moor. It was far too painful an ordeal, to spend the
12th of August alone in this place where, in his recollection, the 12th
of August had always been ecstasy. He should have chosen another moment.
He had not imagined that he would have felt so much his own
disabilities of old age. He had been wont to boast that he did not feel
them at all, one kind of enjoyment having been replaced by another, and
his desire for athletic pleasures having died a natural death in the
perfection of his matured spirit and changed tastes, which were equal to
better things. But he had certainly subjected himself to too great a
trial now. That the 12th should be his first day at home, and that all
his sport should consist of a convoy given to the sportsmen on the back
of Rory, but not a gun for his own shoulder, not a step on the heather
for his foot! It was too much. He had been a fool. And then this silly
misadventure of Lily and her illness to make every thing worse.
A moment of comparative comfort occurred in the middle of the day when
he had his luncheon. “Really that woman’s not bad as a cook,” he said to
himself. She was but a woman, and a Scotch, uncultivated creature, but
she had her qualities--and there was taste in what she sent him, that
priceless gift, especially for an old man. He took a little nap after
his luncheon, and then he took another walk, and so got through the day
till the sportsmen came back. They came in noisy and triumphant, with
their bags, and their stories of what happened at this and that corner,
of the cheepers that had been missed and the old birds that were full of
guile. Had they been Sir Robert’s sons it is possible that he might have
listened benignly, and felt more or less the pleasure by proxy which
some gentle spirits taste. But they were strangers, mere “friends” in
the jargon of the world, meaning acquaintances more or less intimate. Of
the three he bore best the laughter and delight and brags and eagerness
to show his own prowess of the young man. The others awakened a sharper
pang of contrast. “Almost my own age!” Alas! the difference between
fifty and seventy is the unkindest of comparisons. They were not even
good companions for him in the evening. When they had talked over every
step of their progress, and every bird that had fallen before them, and
eaten of Katrin’s good dishes an enormous dinner, the strong air of the
moor, and the hot fire of the peats, and the fatigue of the first day’s
exercise and excitement, overpowered them one after another with sleep.
This would not have been the case had Lily been afoot to sing a song or
two and keep them to their manners. Sir Robert was driven to the
expedient of sending for Dougal when they had all, with many excuses,
gone to bed. Dougal was sleepy, too, and tired, though not so much so as
“the gentlemen,” to whom the grouse and the moor were, more or less,
novelties. He gave his wife a curious look when Sir Robert’s man called
him to his master, and Katrin responded with one that partly entreated
and partly threatened. She said: “You can tell him Miss Lily is very
bad, and I’ll get the doctor the first thing the morn.”
Dougal uttered no word. He could not wear his bonnet when he went up to
see the laird, but he took it in his hands, which was some small
consolation. He was in a dreadful confusion of mind, not knowing what
was to be said to him, what was to be demanded of him. He might be about
to be put through his “questions,” and want all his strength to defend
himself; or it might be nothing at all--some nonsense about the guns or
the birds. His heavy shock of hair stood up from his forehead, giving
something of an ox-like breadth and heaviness of brow. He held his head
somewhat down, with a trace of defiance. Katrin might gloom; it was
little he cared for Katrin when his blood was up; but there was not a
bit of the traitor in Dougal. No blood of a black Monteith in him, if
they were to put the thumbscrews on him or matches atween his fingers.
That poor bonnie creature, whatever was her wyte--they should get
nothing to trouble her out of him.
“Well, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, dangerously genial, “you see I’m left
all alone. My friends they have gone to their beds, as if they were
callants home from the school.”
“The gentlemen would be geyan tired,” said Dougal; “they’re English, and
no accustomed to our moors, and some of them no so young either. You
never kent that, Sir Robert, you that were to the manner born.”
“But too auld for that sort of thing, Dougal, now.”
“Maybe, and maybe not,” said Dougal. “There’s naething like the auld
blood and the habit o’t. I’d sooner see you cock a rifle, Sir Robert,
though I say it as shouldna, than the whole three of them.”
“No, no, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, “that’s flattery. They’re not very
good shots, then,” he said, with a smile. He was not indisposed to hear
this of them, though they were his friends.
“Well, Sir Robert, I wouldna say, on their ain kind o’ ground, among the
stubble and that kind o’ low-country shooting, which, I’m tauld, is the
common thing _there_; but no on our moors. When you’re used to the
heather, it’s a different thing.”
“No doubt there is something in that,” Sir Robert allowed with discreet
satisfaction. And then he added: “What’s this I hear from your wife
about all the old neighbors, and that there’s scarcely a house open I
knew in my young days?”
“What is that, Sir Robert?” said Dougal cautiously.
“The neighbors, ye dunce, my old friends that were all about the
countryside when I was young, and that I thought would be friends for my
poor little Lily when she came here. I’m told there’s not one of them
left.”
Dougal did not readily take up what was meant, but he held his own
firmly. “There’s been nae gentleman’s house,” he said, “what you would
call open and receiving visitors round about Dalrugas as long as I
mind--no more than Dalrugas itsel’.”
“Ah, Dalrugas itself,” said Sir Robert, a little abashed. It was
true--if the others had closed their doors, so had Dalrugas; if they
were left to silence and decay, so had his own house been. Other reasons
had operated in his case, but the result was the same. “I’m afraid,
Dougal,” he said, “that my poor little Lily has had an ill time of it,
which I never intended. Give me your opinion on the subject. Your
wife’s a very decent woman--and an excellent cook, I will say that for
her--but she’s like them all, she stands up for her own side. She would
have me think that my niece has been very solitary among the moors. Now
that was never what I intended. Tell me true: has Miss Lily been a kind
of prisoner, and seen nobody, as Katrin says?”
Dougal pushed his mass of hair to one side as if it had been a wig. “The
young leddy,” he said, “had none o’ the looks of a prisoner, Sir Robert.
I’ve seen her when you would have thought it was the very sun itsel’
shining on the moor.”
“You’re very poetical, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, with a laugh.
“And she would whiles sing as canty as the birds, and off upon Rory as
light as a feather down to the market to see all the ferlies o’ the
toun, and into the Manse for her tea.”
“That sounds cheerful enough,” said the old gentleman, “though the
ferlies of the town were not very exciting, I suppose. And old Blythe’s
still at the Manse? He’s one of the old set left at least.”
“He’s an altered man noo, Sir Robert; never a step can he make out o’
his muckle chair; they say he’s put into his bed at nicht, but it’s a
mystery to me and many more how it’s done, for he’s a muckle heavy man.
But year’s end to year’s end he’s just living on in his muckle chair.”
“Lord bless us!” Sir Robert said. He looked down on his own still
shapely and not inactive limbs with an involuntary shiver of comparison,
and then he added, with a half laugh: “A man that liked his good dinner,
and a good bottle of wine, and a good crack, with any of us.”
“That did he, Sir Robert!” Dougal said.
“Poor old Blythe! I must go and see him,” said the happier veteran, with
an unconscious stretch of his capable legs, and throwing out of his
chest. It was not any pleasure in the misfortune of his neighbor which
gave him this glow of almost satisfaction. It was the sense of his own
superiority in well-being, the comparison which was so much in his own
favor. The comparison this morning had not been in his own favor and he
had not liked it. He felt now, let us hope with a sensation of
thankfulness, how much better off he was than Mr. Blythe.
“Well, well, the Manse was always something, Dougal,” he said. “Manses
are cheerful places; there’s always a great coming and going. I hope
there was nobody much out of her own sphere that Miss Lily met there--no
young ministers coming up here after her, eh? They have a terrible flair
for lasses with tochers, these young ministers, Dougal?”
“Ay, Sir Robert, that have they,” said Dougal, “but I’ve seen no
minister here.”
“That was good luck for Lily--or we that are responsible for her,” said
the old gentleman. “Well, Dougal, my man, you’ll be tired yourself and
ready for your bed, and to make an early start to-morrow with the
gentlemen.”
“Ay, Sir Robert,” said Dougal. He was very glad to accept his dismissal,
and to feel that without so much as a fib he had kept his own counsel
and betrayed nothing. But when he had reached the door, he turned round
again, crushing his bonnet in his hands. “I was to tell you Miss Lily
was no better, poor thing, and that the women thought the doctor would
have to be sent for the morn.”
Sir Robert’s countenance clouded over. “Tchick, tchick!” he said, with
an air of perplexity. “You’ll see that the best man in the neighborhood
is the one that’s sent for,” he cried.