Sir Robert had not at this time a happy life. His friends went away at
last, having exhausted the little shootings of Dalrugas and finding that
social amusement of any kind was not to be found there, besides the
ever-present reason of “illness in the house” why they should not
outstay the limits of their invitation. And no one else came. Why should
they, considering how very little inducement he had to offer? This of
itself was a hard confession for the proud old man to make, who,
perhaps, had been tempted now and then to enhance at his club, or in his
favorite society, those attractions of his little patrimony, which were
so very different, as he remembered them, from what they were now. John
Duff of Blackscaur made a call to say chiefly how sorry he was that he
could show no civilities to his neighbor, having only come to a
dismantled house for a few weeks’ shooting, his wife being abroad. “I
was glad to give a little sport to one of the young Lumsdens last year,”
he said. “I heard he was a friend of yours.” “No friend of mine!” cried
Sir Robert, suddenly recalled by the name to the original cause, which
he had more than half forgotten, of Lily’s banishment. “Ah!” cried John
Duff indifferently, “it was a mistake, then. Of course I knew his
father.” This was the only social overture made to Sir Robert Ramsay,
and it carried with it a sting, which gave him considerable uneasiness.
“Would the fellow have the audacity to come after her here?” he asked
himself. And he made up his mind wrathfully, when Lily was better, to
enquire into this allusion. When Lily was better! But he was still more
angry when any doubt was expressed on that subject. Katrin’s tearful
looks once or twice when the patient was worse he took as a personal
affront. He would not believe that Providence, however hostile, could
treat him so badly as that.
When he was in this lonely and unsatisfied state of mind, a letter came
for him one day from the Manse, begging him in his charity to go and see
the minister, who was unable to come to him. “Ah! old Blythe,” Sir
Robert said. He would not have thought very much of old Blythe in other
days, but now he remembered, not without pleasure, the good stories the
minister told, and the good company he was. “Will Rory last with me as
far as the Manse?” he said to Dougal. “Rory, Sir Robert, he’ll just last
till the Day o’ Judgment,” said Dougal. “I have no occasion for him so
far as that!” Sir Robert replied sharply; and he felt that it was not
quite becoming his dignity to ride into Kinloch-Rugas mounted upon a
Highland pony; but what can one do when there is no other way? The
minister sat as usual in his great chair by the fire, which burned dully
still, though the day was August. He said: “Come in, Sir Robert, come
ben! I’m very glad to see you, though it is a long time since we met.
You will, maybe, find the fire too much at this time of the year, but,
you see, I’m a lameter that cannot move out of my chair, and I never
find it warm enough for me.”
“You should have a chair that you could move about and get into the sun
now and then; that’s the only thing that warms the blood--at our age.”
“I am years older than you. I consider you a fine trim and trig elderly
young man.”
The minister laughed more cordially at this jest than Sir Robert did. He
did not like the faintest suggestion of ridicule. It is true that he was
trim and well dressed, an example of careful toilet and appearance
beside the careless old heavy form in the easy chair. Mr. Blythe had
long since ceased to care what his appearance was. Sir Robert was “very
particular” and careful of every detail.
“And how are you liking your home-coming?” Mr. Blythe said. “It’s a
trial and a risk when you have been away all the best of your life. I’m
doubting the auld tower looks but small to your eyes by what it did in
the old days.”
“Things are changed certainly,” said Sir Robert a little stiffly,
“especially among the old neighbors. There used to be plenty of society;
now there seems none, or next to none.”
“And that is true. The old folk are dead and gone; the young generation
is changed: the lads go away and never come back, the lasses marry into
strange houses. It’s very true; but you are just very fortunate. Like
me, you have a child to your old age; though you did not, like me, Sir
Robert, take the trouble to provide her for yourself.”
Sir Robert stared a little at this speech, and then said: “If you mean
my niece Lily, Blythe, you probably know that she’s very ill in bed, and
a cause of great anxiety, not of comfort, to me.”
“Ay, ay,” said the minister, “we had heard something, but did not know
it was so bad as that. But it will be a thing that will pass by; just
some chill she has got out on the moor, or some other bit small matter.
She has been very well and blooming, a fine young creature all the time
we have had her here.”
“I am by no means sure,” said Sir Robert, with a cloud on his brow,
“that I did not make a mistake in sending her here. I had no intention
to send her into a desert. My mind was full of the old times, when we
were cheerful enough, as you will remember, Blythe, whatever else we
might be. There was not much money going--nor perhaps luxury--but there
was plenty of company. However, I’m glad you have so good a report to
give of her. She’s neither well nor blooming, poor lassie, now.”
The minister cleared his throat two or three times, as if he found it
difficult to resume. “Sir Robert,” he said, and then made a pause, “I am
not a man that likes to interfere. I have as little liking for that part
as you or any man could have--to be meddled with in what you will think
your own affairs.”
Sir Robert stiffened visibly, uplifting his throat in the stiff stock,
which, in his easiest moment, seemed to hold him within risk of
strangulation. “I fail to see,” he said, “what there is in my affairs
that would warrant interference from you or any man; but if you’ve got
any thing to say, say it out.”
“I meddle with nobody,” said the minister as proudly, “unless it is for
the young of the flock. I can scarcely call you one of my flock, Sir
Robert.”
“A grewsome auld tup at the best, you’ll be thinking,” said Sir Robert,
with a harsh laugh.
“Man!” said the minister, “at the least of it we are old friends. We
know each other’s mettle; if we quarrel, it’ll do little good or harm to
any body. And if you like to fling off in a fit, you must just do it.
What I’ve got to say is just this: Women folk are hard to manage for
them that are not used to them. I’ve not just come as well out of it as
I would have liked myself; and that little thing up at Dalrugas is a
tender bit creature. She has blossomed like the flowers when she has
been let alone, and never lost heart, though she has had many a dull
day. Do not cross the lassie above what she is able to bear. If you’re
still against the man she likes herself, for the love of God, Robert
Ramsay, force no other upon her, as you hope to be saved!”
The old minister was considerably moved, but this did not perhaps
express itself in the most dignified way. What with the fervor of his
mind, and the heat of the fire, and the little unusual exertion, the
perspiration stood in great drops on his brow.
“This is a very remarkable appeal, Blythe,” said Sir Robert. “_I_ force
another man upon her! Granted there is one she likes herself, as you
seem so sure--though I admit nothing of my own knowledge--am I a man to
force a husband down any woman’s throat?”
“I will beg your pardon humbly if I’m wrong,” said Mr. Blythe, subdued,
wiping the moisture from his face, “but if you think a moment, you will
see that appearances are against you. We heard of your arriving in a
hurry with a young gentleman in your train; and then there came the news
Miss Lily was ill--she that had stood out summer and winter against that
solitude and never uttered a word--that she should just droop the moment
that it might have been thought better things were coming, and company
and solace--Sir Robert, I ask you----”
“To believe that it was all out of terror of me!” cried Sir Robert, who
had risen up and was pacing angrily about the room. “Upon my word,
Blythe, you reckon on an old soldier’s self-command above what is
warranted! Me, her nearest relation, that have sheltered and protected
her all her life--do you mean to insinuate that Lily is ill and has a
brain-fever out of dread of me?”
“If you brought another man to her, knowing her wishes were a different
way, and bid her take him or be turned out of your doors!”
Sir Robert was not a man who feared any thing. He stood before the
minister’s very face, and swore an oath that would have blown the very
roof off the house had Mr. Douglas, the assistant and successor, sat in
that chair. Mr. Blythe was a man of robust nerves, yet it impressed
even him. “_I_ force a young man down a lassie’s throat!” cried Sir
Robert in great wrath, indignation, and furious derision. “Me make
matches or mar them! Is’t the decay of your faculties, Blythe, your old
age, though you’re not much older than I am, or what is it that makes
you launch such an accusation at me?”
“There’s nothing decayed about me but my legs,” said the old minister
with half a jest. “I’ll beg your pardon heartily, Sir Robert, if it’s
not true.”
“You deserve no explanations at my hands,” said the other, “but I’ll
give them for the sake of old times. The young man was a chance
acquaintance for a week’s shooting. I’ll perhaps never see him again,
nor did he ever set eyes on Lily. And I have not exchanged a word with
her since I came back. She knows me not--from you, or from Adam. Blythe,
she is very ill, the poor lassie. She knows neither night nor day.”
“Lord bless us!” said the minister, and then he put forth his large soft
hand. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “See how little a thing makes a big
lie and slander when it’s taken the wrong color. I was deceived, but I
hope you’ll forgive. In whose hands is she? what doctor? There’s no
great choice here.”
“A man from the other side of the water,” said Sir Robert in the old
phraseology of the countryside. “Macalister, I think.”
“Well, it’s the best you can do here. Our man’s a cleverer man, if you
could ever be sure of finding him with his head clear. But Macalister is
an honest fellow. I would not say but I would have a man from Edinburgh
if it was me.”
“Do you think so?” said Sir Robert.
“If it was my Eelen--Lord, it’s no one, but half-a-dozen men I’d have
from Edinburgh before I’d see her slip through my fingers. But there’s
nothing like your own very flesh and blood.”
“I will write at once!” cried Sir Robert.
“I would send a man--the post’s slow. I would send a man by the coach
that leaves to-night; for an hour lost you might repent all the days of
your life, Robert Ramsay,” said the minister, once more grasping and
holding fast in his large, limp, but not unvigorous hand the other old
gentleman’s firm and hard one. “Just bear with me for another word. If
she’s hanging between life and death--and you know not what may
happen--and if there is a man in Edinburgh she would rather see than any
doctor, for the love of God, man, don’t do things by halves, but send
for him, too.”
“What the deevil do you mean with your ‘man in Edinburgh’?” Sir Robert
said, with a shout, drawing his hand forcibly away.
He rode home upon Rory, much discomfited and disturbed. It is scarcely
too much to say that he had forgotten much, or almost all, about Ronald
Lumsden in the long interval that had occurred, during which he was
fully occupied with his own life, and indifferent to what took place
elsewhere. He had sent Lily off to Dalrugas to free her from the
assiduities of a young fellow who was not a proper match for her. That
is how Sir Robert would have explained it; and he had never entertained
a doubt that, what with the fickleness of youth and the cheerful company
about, Lily had forgotten her unsuitable suitor long ago. But to have it
even imagined, by the greatest old fool that ever was, that Lily’s
terror of being obliged by her uncle to accept another man had upset her
very brain and brought on a deadly fever was too much for any man to
bear. And old Blythe was not an old fool, though he had behaved like
one. If he thought so, other people would think so, and he--Robert
Ramsay, General, K. C. B., a man almost as well known as the Prince of
Wales himself, a member of the best clubs, an authority on every social
usage--he, the venerated of Edinburgh, the familiar of London--he would
be branded, in a miserable hole in the country, with the character of a
domestic tyrant, with the still more contemptible character of a
match-maker, like any old woman! Sir Robert’s rage and annoyance were
increased by the consciousness that he was not himself cutting at all a
dignified figure on the country road mounted upon Rory, for whom his
legs were too long (though he was not a tall man) and his temper too
short. Rory tossed his shaggy head to the winds, and did battle with his
master, when the pace did not please him. He all but threw the old
gentleman, who was famed for his horsemanship. And it was in the last
phase of exasperation, having dismounted, and, with a blow of his light
switch, sent Rory careering home to his stable riderless, that Sir
Robert encountered the doctor returning from his morning’s visit. Mr.
Macalister’s face was grave. He turned back at once, and eagerly,
desiring, he said, a few minutes’ conversation. “I cannot well speak to
you with your people and those women always about.”
“I am afraid, then,” said Sir Robert, “you have something very serious
to say.”
“Maybe--and maybe not. In the first place there are indications this
morning of a change--we will hope for the better. The pulse has fallen.
There’s been a little natural sleep. I would say in an ordinary subject,
and with no complications, that perhaps, though we must not just speak
so confidently at the first moment, the turn had taken place.”
“I’m delighted to hear it!” cried Sir Robert. It was really so great a
relief to him that he put out his hand in sudden cordiality. “I will
never forget my obligations to you, Macalister. You have given me the
greatest relief. When the turn has really come, there is nothing, I’ve
always heard, but great care wanted--care and good food and good air.”
“That was just what I wanted to speak to you about, Sir Robert,” said
the doctor, with one of those little unnecessary coughs that mean
mischief. “Good air there is--she could not have better; and good food,
for I’ve always heard your housekeeper is great on that; and good
nursing--well, yon woman, that is, your niece’s maid, Bauby or Beenie,
or whatever they call her, is little more than a fool, but she’s a
good-hearted idiot, and sticks to what she’s told--when there’s nobody
to tell her different. So we may say there’s good care. But when that’s
said, though it’s a great deal, every thing is not said.”
“Ay,” said Sir Robert, “and what may there be beyond that?” He had
become suspicious after his experiences, though it did not seem possible
that from such a quarter there should come any second attack.
“I’m very diffident,” said the doctor in his strong Northern accent,
with his ruddy, weather-beaten countenance cast down in his
embarrassment, “of mentioning any thing that’s not what ye might call
strictly professional, or taking advantage of a medical man’s poseetion.
But when a man has a bit tender creature to deal with, like a flower,
and that has just come through a terrible illness, the grand thing to
ask will be, Sir Robert, not if she has good food and good nursing,
which is what is wanted in most cases, but just something far more hard
to come by--if she’s wanting to live----”
“Wanting to live!” cried Sir Robert. “What nonsense are you speaking? A
girl of that age!”
“It’s just precisely that age that fashes me. Older folk have got more
used to it: living’s a habit with the like of us. We just find we must
go on, whatever happens; but a young lass is made up of fancies and
veesions. She says to herself: ‘I would like better a bonnie green turf
in the kirkyard than all this fighting and striving,’ and just fades
away because she has no will to take things up again. I’ve seen cases
like that before now.”
“And what’s my part in all this?” cried Sir Robert. “You come to me with
your serious face, as if I had some hand in it. What can I do?”
“Well, Sir Robert,” said the doctor, “that is what I cannot tell. I’m
not instructed in your affairs--nor do I wish to be; but if there is any
thing in this young lady’s road that crosses her sorely--the state of
the brain that made this attack so dangerous evidently came from some
mental shock--if it’s within the bounds of possibility that you can give
in to her, do so, Sir Robert. I am giving you a doctor’s advice--not a
private man’s that has nothing ado with it. If you can give her her own
way, which is dear to us all, and more especially to women folk, give it
to her, Sir Robert! It will be her best medicine. Or if you cannot do
that, let her think you will do it--let her think you will do it! It’s
lawful to deceive even in a case like this--to save her life.”
“You are trying to make me think, doctor, that my niece has been
pretending to be ill all this time in order to get her own way.”
“You may think that if you like, Sir Robert. It’s a pretending that has
nearly cost you a funeral, and I will not say may not do so yet--but me,
out of my own line, my knowledge is very imperfect. You know your own
affairs best. But you cannot say I have not warned you of the
consequences,” Dr. Macalister said.
All the world seemed in a conspiracy against Sir Robert. He took off his
hat formally to the doctor, who responded, somewhat overawed by such a
solemn civility. What was it that this man, a stranger, supposed him to
be doing to Lily? It was ridiculous, it was absurd! first old Blythe,
and then the doctor. He had never done any harm to Lily; he had stopped
a ridiculous love affair, a boy and girl business, with a young fellow
who had not a penny. He did not mean his money to go to fit out another
lot of long-legged Lumsdens, a name he could not bear. No, he had done
no more than was his right, which he would do again to-morrow if
necessary. But then in the meantime here was another question. Her life,
a lassie’s life! Nothing was ever more ridiculous: her life depending on
what lad she married, a red-headed one, or a black-headed one, the silly
thing! But nevertheless it seemed it was true. Here was the doctor, a
serious man, and old Blythe, both in a story. Well, if she were dying
for her lad, the foolish tawpy, he would have to see what could be done.
To think of a Ramsay, the last of his race, following her passions like
that! But it would be some influence from the other side, from the
mother, James’s wife, who, he had always heard, was not over-wise.
He was turning over these thoughts in his mind as he approached close to
the house, when he was suddenly aware of some one flying out toward him
with arms extended and a lock or two of red hair dropped out of all
restraint and streaming in the wind. Beenie had waited and watched and
lived half in a dream, never sleeping, scarcely eating, absorbed in that
devotion which has no bounds, for the last six weeks. Her trim aspect,
her careful neatness, her fresh and cheerful air, had faded in the air
of the sick room. Combs do not hold nor pins attach after such a long
vigil. She flew out, running wildly toward him with arms extended and
hair streaming until, unable to stop herself, she fairly ran into the
old gentleman’s arms.
“Oh, Sir Robert,” cried Beenie, gasping and trying to recover her
breath, but too far gone for any apology, “she’s come to herself! She’s
as weak as water, and white as death. But she’s come to herself and
she’s askin’ for you. She’s crying upon you and no to be silenced. ‘I
am wanting Uncle Robert, I am wanting Uncle Robert!’ No breath to speak,
and no strength to utter a voice, but come to hersel’, come to hersel’!
And, oh! the Lord knows if it’s for death or life, for none of us can
tell!”