Later in the evening she endeavored to make up for her foolishness by returning to the mood of gayety with which she began the evening. She gave Ronald a little sketch of the humors of Rory, and the respect in which Dougal held that small and fiery personage. She told him about Katrin’s cows and her chickens, and the amusement which these living creatures had given during the long winter days to the little family at Dalrugas.
“But spring is coming,” he said.
“Oh, yes; spring is coming; the moor will soon be dry enough for walking, and many a ramble I will have. I am beginning,” said Lily, “to grow very fond of the moor. You see, it is all we have. It’s cross and market and college and court and all together to me. In the morning the bees will be busy among the whins—there is always a bud somewhere on a whin bush—and full of honey as they can hold; and then in the evening there is the sunset, and the hills all standing out against the west, with their old purple cloaks around them. What with the barnyard and what with the moor, there’s no want of diversion here.”
“My bonnie Lily,” he cried in sudden compunction, “not much diversion for the like of you!”
“What do you call the like of me? I am very well off. I have neighbors and all. There is Helen Blythe, poor thing, she is not so well off. The minister is a handful; he holds her night and day. And who was yon glum man, Ronald, and what had he to do with her? Her eyes were red, and she had been crying; and I am sure it was something about that man.”
“Alick Duff? Nonsense, Lily! He is a black sheep, if ever there was one. That was all a foolish story, we’ll suppose. A good little thing like the minister’s daughter should never be thrown away on him.”
“Perhaps she is a good little thing. We are all good little things till we show ourselves different. But her eyes were red and her cheeks were pale. I must see if I can comfort her,” said Lily half to herself. “And now, sir, if you are going away to-morrow, you should go to your bed, for you’ll have a weary day.”
“Yes, I shall have a weary day; but I could bear that and more to see my Lily,” Ronald said.
“Well, if you care for her at all, you would need to do that, for she must either be there or here,” Lily said. “It’s a pity I’m solid, that I cannot fly away like the birds, and tap at your window as the lady does in the ballad. What ballad? I don’t remember. Perhaps it was aftershe was dead. And does Mrs. Buchanan always make you comfortable and cook as well as Katrin? Oh, Katrin is very good for some things, though you think her an ill housekeeper for Uncle Robert. But never mind that. Tell me about Luckie Buchanan. I will wager you a silver bawbee, as Beenie says, that she does not send you up your bird as good as we do here.”
“Nothing is so good as it is here. You take me up too quick, Lily.”
“Me take you up quick? I do nothing but try to please you. But I know how it is, Ronald. You think shame of Luckie Buchanan. She burns your bird, and she does your chop in the frying-pan, and her kettle is not half boiled. Young men are very badly treated in their lodgings. I know very well. Uncle Robert’s men that came to see him were always complaining, and they were old men that could make their curries themselves and drive womenfolk desperate, whereas you’re only young and would think shame to look as if you cared. I wonder if she brushes your clothes right, and gives you nice burnished boots, as you like them to be,” said Lily, with a critical look at the sleeve of his coat, which she was smoothing down with her hand.
“You will make me think myself a terrible being, taken up with my own wants,” he said in a vexed tone.
“It is me that am taken up with your wants,” she said, “and what more right than that—a man’s wife! What is the good of her but to look after her man! And when I cannot do it for failure of circumstances, not good will, then I must just ask and plague you till you tell me there’s nothing more for me to do—till the term comes, and I go home to my place,” cried Lily, with a laugh, but with two tears, which she turned away her head that he might not see. “It’s my first place!” she cried. “You cannot wonder I am excited about it, Ronald; and I hope I will give you satisfaction—Beenie and me!”
Next morning Lily got up without, as appeared, any cloud on her face, and gave him his breakfast, and saw tothe packing of his bag, and that his big coat was well strapped on to Sandy’s shoulders, who was to walk into the town with him and carry his small belongings. “You will not want it walking, but you will want it in the coach,” she said, “and be sure you keep yourself warm, for, though it’s March, the wind is terrible cold over the moor; and here is a scarf to put round your neck for the night journey. It will keep you warm, and it will mind you of me.”
“Do I want that to mind me of my Lily?” he said reproachfully.
“No, after I have been giving you such a taste of my humors, and you know I am not just the good thing you thought. But you might be more grateful for my bonnie scarf that I took out of the lavender to give you to wrap round your throat at night! And it is a very bonnie scarf,” said Lily; “look at the flowers worked upon it, the same on both sides, and as soft as a dove’s feathers that are of silver. You will put it round your neck and say Lily gave me this; and then at Whit-Sunday, when I take up my place, I will find it again, laid away in some drawer, and I will take it back, and it will belong then both to you and me.”
“That is a bargain,” he said, more moved by the parting than he had ever been; but Lily went with him to the head of the stairs, and there stood looking after him from the staircase window, to keep up some sort of transparent fiction for Dougal’s sake, with her eyes shining and a smile upon her mouth. She was resolved that this was how he should see her when he went away. There should be no more breakings down. She would importune him no more. She would not shed a tear. When he turned round to wave his hand before he disappeared under the bank, she was still smiling and calm. It was, perhaps, a little startling to Ronald, who had never seen her so reasonable before—and reasonableness, though so desirable, is sometimes a little alarming too.
Whenshe was sure that the travellers were out of sight, Lily flew down the spiral stairs, snatched her plaid from where it hung as she passed, and rushed out to the only shelter and refuge she had—the loneliness and silence of the moor. She had to push through between the two women, who would so fain have stopped her to administer their consolation and caresses, but whom, in her impatience, she could not tolerate, shaking her head as they called after her to put on her plaid and that she would get her death of cold. It was March and a beautiful morning, the air almost soft in the broad beaming of the sun, and the moisture, which lay heavy on the moss-green turf and ran and sparkled in little pools and currents everywhere; but the breeze was keen and cold, and blew upon her with a sharp and salutary chill, cooling her heated cheeks. Lily sprang over the great bushes of the ling, which, bowed for a moment by her passage, flung back upon her a shower of dew-drops as they recovered their straightness, and the whins caught at the plaid on her arm as she brushed past; but she took no notice of these impediments, nor of the wetness under her feet, nor the chill of the air upon her uncovered head, and shoulders clothed only in her indoor dress. She paused upon a little green hillock slightly rising over the long level, which was a favorite point of vision, and from which, as she had often found, the furthest view was possible of any thing within the horizon of this little world. But it was not to see that little speck on the road, which was Ronald, that Lily had made this rush into the heart of the moor. It was for the utter solitude, the silence which enclosed and surrounded her, the separation from every thing that could intrude upon that little speck of herself, so insignificant in the great freshshining world, yet so much more living in her trouble than all the mountains and the moors. Lily sank down on the mossy green and covered her face with her hands. She had shed passionate tears on her husband’s shoulder last night, but these were different which forced their way now without any thing to restrain them. They were not mere tears of a parting, which, after all, was no wonderful thing. He would come again. Lily had no fear that he would come again. She had no doubt of his love, no thought that he might grow cold to her. Of the two it was Ronald who was the warmer lover, holding her in perfect admiration as well as in all the fondness of a young husband, which was not exactly what could be said on her side. But his love was of a different kind, as perhaps a man’s always is. He did not want all that she did in their marriage. A little house of their own, wherever it was—a home, a known and certain place: was it the woman who thought of this rather than the man? It gave her a pang even to think that it might perhaps be so, or at least that Ronald did not care for what she might suffer in this respect. He might be content with casual visits, but what she wanted was her garret, her honest name, and honor and truth.
And then Whit-Sunday, Whit-Sunday, the term when people did their flitting, and the maids went to their new places! Oh, happy, honest prose that had nothing to do, Lily thought, with romance or poetry. Would it come—in two months, not much more—and make an end of all this? or would it never come? Poor Lily’s heart was so wrung out of its right place that she lost her confidence even in the term; she could scarcely think of any thing in earth or heaven, she who had once been so confident, of which she could now think that there was no fear.
By this time the cold had begun to creep to Lily’s heart, her fever of excitement having found vent, and she was glad to wrap herself closely in her plaid, putting it over her head and gathering the soft folds round her throat. She put back the hair which the cold breeze and the disorderof her weeping had brought about her face, smoothing it back under the tartan screen, the soft warm folds that gave a little color to her pale face. Oh, if she could have had a plaid, but that of Ronald’s tartan, to wrap about her heart, the chilled spirit and soul that had no warmth of covering! But that must not be thought of now, when Lily’s business was to go back to her dreary home, to meet the eyes that would be fixed upon her, to bear her burden worthily, and to betray to no one, even her most confidential companion, the doubts and terrors that were in her own heart.
As she came out upon the road, having made a long round of the moor to give herself more time, Lily perceived two figures in front of her, whom she did not at once recognize; but after a moment or two her attention was attracted by the voice of the man, who spoke loudly, and by something in the attitude of the little figure walking by his side, and replying sometimes in an inaudible monosyllable, sometimes by a deprecating gesture only, to his vehement words. Was it Helen Blythe who was here so far from home by the side of a man who spoke to her almost roughly, certainly not as so gentle a creature ought ever to have been spoken to? It was some time before Lily’s faculties were sufficiently roused to hear what he was saying, or at least to discover that she could hear if she gave her attention; when, however, a sudden “If you had ever loved me, Helen!” caught her ear, Lily cried out in alarm: “Oh, whisht, whisht! Whoever you are, I am coming behind you and I can hear what you say.”
The man turned round almost with rage, showing her the dark and clouded face of the stranger whom she had met the day before with Ronald, and who was the cause, as she had divined, of Helen’s sad eyes. “Confound you!” he cried in his passion, “can ye not pass on, and leave the road free to folk going about their own business?” These words came out with a rush, and then he paused and reddened, and took off his hat. “Miss Ramsay!” he said,“I beg your pardon,” placing himself hastily between her and his companion.
“I neither want to see nor hear,” cried Lily. “Let me pass; you need have no fear of me.”
At the voice Helen came quietly out of his shadow. “You need not hide me from Lily,” she said, “for Lily is my dear friend. I’ve walked far, far from home, Lily, with one that—one that—I may never see again,” she said, turning a pathetic look upon the man by her side. “He blames me now, and perhaps I am to be blamed. But to think it is, maybe, the last time, as he is telling me, breaks my heart. Lily, will you take us in, if it was only for half-an-hour? I feel as if I could not go on another step, for my heart fails me as well as my feet.”
“You never told me you were wearied, Helen!” he cried in a tone of fierce penitence. “How was I to know? I could have carried you like a feather.”
She shook her head. “You could carry more weight than me, Alick, but as soon Schiehallion as me. And I was not wearied till I saw rest at hand.”
“Miss Ramsay,” he said, “you know what she and I are to each other.”
“I know nothing,” cried Lily, “and you need not tell me, for what Helen does is always right; but come in and welcome, and have your talk out in peace. Never mind to explain to me—I scarcely know your name.”
“It is, alas, no credit, or rather I am no credit to a good name that has been well kept on this countryside; but we are old, old friends, Helen Blythe and me. She should have been my wife, Miss Ramsay, though you might not think it, nearly ten long years ago. If she had kept her promise, they would never have called me wild Alick Duff, and the black sheep of the family, as they do now. This is the third time I’ve come back to bid her keep her word; for I have her word, rough and careless as you may think me. Each time I’m less worth taking than I was the time before, and I’m not going to risk it any more. When she drops me this time, I will just go to the devil,which is the easiest way, and trouble nobody more about me.”
“And why should you go to the devil?” said Lily, “for that is what nobody except your own self can make you do.”
“Oh, do not hearken to him, Lily; let us come in for half-an-hour, for neither will my feet carry me nor will my heart hold me up if there is more.”
Lily made her guests enter before her when they reached the door of Dalrugas; but lingering behind as Helen made her way slowly with her tired steps up the spiral stairs, caught Duff by the sleeve and spoke in his ear: “Do you not think shame of yourself to break her heart, a little thing like that, with putting the weight of your ill deeds upon her, and you a big strong man?”
“Me—think shame!” he said, with a low laugh.
“Iwould think shame,” cried Lily vehemently, all her hot blood surging up in her veins, “to lay the burden of a finger’s weight upon her, and her not a half or a quarter so big as me!”
This sharp, indignant whisper Helen heard as a murmur behind her while she went up the stairs. She turned round when she reached the drawing-room, meeting the others as they appeared after her. “And what were you two saying to each other?” she asked, with a tremulous smile.
“I am going,” said Lily, “to leave you to yourselves; and when you have had your talk out, you will come down to me to have something to eat; and then we will think, Helen, how we are to get you home.”
“You are coming in here, Lily. Him and me we have said all there is to be said. And he has told you what there is between us, as perhaps I would never have had the courage to do. Come and tell him over again, Lily, you that are a young lass and have known no trouble—tell him what a woman can do and cannot do, for he will not believe me.”
“How can I tell? that have known no trouble, as you say,” cried Lily. But Helen knew nothing to explain the keen tone of irony that was in the words, and looked at thegirl with an appeal in her patient eyes, too full of her own sorrow to remember that, perhaps, this younger creature might have sorrows too. “How should I know,” said Lily, “what a woman cannot do? If it is to keep a man from wrong-doing, is that a woman’s business, Helen? How do I know? They say in books that it’s the women that drive them to it. Are you to take him on your shoulders and carry him away from the gates of —— Or what are you expected to do?”
“If she had married me when I asked her,” cried Duff, “she would have done that. Ay, that she would! From the gates of hell, that a little thing like you daren’t name. I would never have known the way they lay if she had put her hand in mine and come with me. And that I have told you, Helen, a hundred times, and a hundred more.”
“Oh, Alick, Alick!” was all that Helen said.
“And you never would have thought shame,” cried Lily, “to ride by on her shoulders, instead of walking on your own feet? I would have set my face like a flint and passed them by, and scorned them that wiled me there! I would have laid it upon nobody but myself if I had not heart enough to save my own head!”
“Oh, Lily, Lily!” cried Helen, turning upon her champion, “my bonnie dear! it’s you that are too young to understand. Maybe he’s wrong, but he’s a kind of right, too. I am not blaming him for that. Many a woman keeps a man on the straight road almost without knowing, and him no worse of it nor her either. I could tell you things! And, Alick, I will not deceive you; if I had not been so young that time—if I had only had the courage—for there was no reason then, but just that I was a young lass, and frightened, and did not know—— There was no reason—then——”
“Except that I was wild Alick Duff, that they said would settle to nothing, and not a man that would ever make salt to his kale.”
Helen made no answer, but shook her head with a sigh.
“How can I stand between you and him?” said Lily.“You take away my breath. I cannot understand the tongue you are speaking. It’s not good English nor Scots either, but another language. Are we angels, to make men good? and is it no matter what evil thing a woman takes into her heart if she can but make her man look like a whited sepulchre, and keep him, as you say, on the straight road? Is that what we were made for?” she cried in all the indignation of her youth.
Duff, a little surprised, a little confused by this unexpected controversy, too much occupied with his own purpose not to be impatient with any digression, yet uncertain whether this strange digression might not serve his cause in the end, made answer, first fixing his eyes upon Lily, the little girl who knew no trouble: “I’m thinking that was a good part of it,” he said. “You had the most to do with bringing ill into the world; you should have the most to do with driving it out. But what do I care about women?” he cried. “It’s Helen I’m thinking of. There might never be such another, but there she is that could have done it, and would not lift her little finger. And now she will smile and send me away.”
“He speaks,” cried Lily, “as if it were your responsibility and not his—as if you would be answerable!”
“Oh,” said Helen in a hurried undertone, “and that is what I lie and think upon in the watches of the night. Will the Lord demand an account at my hands? Will he say: ‘Helen, where is thy brother?’ I that was maybe appointed for him to be his keeper, to take care of him, with all his hot blood and all his fancies that nobody understood but me!”
Duff was walking impatiently about the room, not listening to what the two women spoke between themselves, and Lily was too much bewildered by this new view to make any answer, except by a brief exclamation: “It is like a coward to put the blame upon you!”
“I would not shrink from it if I might bear it,” said Helen. “It’s not that. But to think it might be a man’s ruin that a poor frightened creature of a woman—no, alassie, twenty years old, no more—could not see her duty. For there was no reason then. My mother was living, my father was a strong man. The boys had been unlucky, but me, I was free. And I let him go away. Oh, lay the wyte on me!” she said, clasping her hands. “Oh, lay the wyte on me!”
Duff came suddenly to a stand-still before her, catching up something of what she said. “I’ll forgive you all that’s come and gone, and all that might have been, and the vows I’ve broken, and the little good I’ve ever done”—a tender light came over his dark face—“Helen, I’ll forgive you all my ruin, and we’ll gather up the fragments that are left, if you will but come with me now.”
“Forgive her!” cried Lily, indignant.
“Ah, forgive her! you that know nothing of the heart of man. Can she ever give it back? She says herself the Lord will seek my blood at her hands: how much more me, that knows what might have been and never has been because she was not there? But, Helen, let it be now! It may be but the hinder end of life that’s left, but better that than nothing at all. We are not so old yet, neither you nor me. And there’s the fragments that remain—the fragments that remain.” He held out his hands toward her, the face that Lily had thought so dark and forbidding melting in every line, the lowering brows lifted, the fierce eyes softened with moisture. And Helen looked up at him with her own overflowing, and a light as of martyrdom on her face.
“Oh, Alick, my father, my father! I cannot leave my father now.”
He kicked away a footstool on the carpet with a sudden movement which, to Lily, at first appeared as if he were offering violence to Helen herself. “Your father!” he cried, “the minister that will have no broken man for his daughter nor ill name for his house, that wants the siller of them that come to woo, that would sell you away to that white-faced lad because he has something to the fore and a respectable name! Oh, don’t speak to me of yourfather, Helen Blythe, him that should be all spirit and that’s all flesh! Confound him and you and all your sleekit ways! In what way is he better than me?”
“Man! you will kill her!” cried Lily, springing forward and putting herself between them. “How dare you swear at her, that is far, far too good for you!”
But Helen was not horrified, like Lily. She looked at him still, bending her head to the other side. “My father,” she said, “has his faults, like us all. He is a mixture, as you are yourself. I am not angry at what you say. He likes his pleasure as you do, Alick. He is more moderate: he is a minister. He has not, maybe, been tempted like you, but I allow that it is not far different. Perhaps in the sight of God——” But here her voice failed her, suddenly interrupted by something deeper than tears.
“He likes his pleasure,” said Duff, with a short laugh; “he likes a good glass of wine, not to say whiskey, and a good dinner, and tells his stories, and is no more particular when he’s with his cronies than me. Only I’ll tell you what he does, Helen, that me I cannot do. Would he have had it in him if he had not been a minister, nor had a wife, nor been kept from temptation? That is what none of us can tell. He knows when to stop; he likes himself better than his pleasures. He keeps the string about his neck and stops himself when he’s gone far enough. I do not esteem that quality,” cried the big man, striding about the room, making the boards groan and creak. “I am not fond of calculation. Alick Duff has cost me many a sore head and many a sore heart. I scorn him,” he cried, with a strong churning out of the fierce letters that make up that word, “both for what he’s done and what he hasn’t done. But it’s no for him I would draw bridle if I were away in full career. But I would for you!” he said, suddenly sinking his voice, and throwing himself in a chair that swung and rocked under him by Helen’s side. “Helen, I would for you!”
Lilyhad an agitating and troubled day between this strange pair, which had the good effect upon her, however, of turning her thoughts entirely away from her own affairs, the struggle and trouble of which seemed of so little importance beside this conflict which had the air of being for life or death. She did not understand either of the combatants: the man who so fearlessly owned his weaknesses, and put the weight of his soul upon the woman who ought to have saved him; or the woman who did not deny that responsibility, nor claim independence or a right irrespective of him to follow her own way. Helen Blythe had ideas of life, it was evident, very different from those that had ever come into Lily’s mind. In those days there were no discussions of women’s rights; but in those days, alas! as in all other periods, the heart of a high-spirited young woman here and there swelled high with imagination, wrath, and indignation at the thought of those indignities which all women had to suffer. That it should be taken as a simple thing that any man, after he had gone through all the soils and degradations of a reckless life, should have a spotless girl given to him to make him a new existence, was one of those bitter thoughts that rankled in the minds of many women, though nothing was said on the subject in public, and very little even among themselves. For those were subjects which girls shrank from and blushed to hear of. The knowledge was horrible, and made them feel, when any chance fact came their way, as if their very souls were soiled by the hearing. Not that the elder women, especially those inconceivably experienced and impartial old ladies of society, who see every thing with the sharpest eyesight, and discuss every thing with words that cut and glance like steel, and whohave surmounted all that belongs to sex, except a keen dramatic interest in its problems, did not talk of these matters after their kind, as in all the ages. But the girls were not told, they did not know, they shrank from information which they would not have understood had it been conveyed to them, except, indeed, a few principles that were broad and general: that to marry a girl to an old man or a wicked man was a hideous thing, and that the old doctrine of a reformed rake, which had been preached to their mothers, was a scorn to womankind, and no longer to be suggested to them. For the magic of the Pamelas was over, and Sir Walter had arisen in the sky, which cleared before him, all noisome things flying where he made his honest, noble way. Not much these heroes of his, people say, not worth a Tom Jones with his stress and storm of life; but bringing in a new era, the young and pure with the young and true, and not a whitewashed Lovelace in the whole collection. Lily was of Scott’s age; and when she saw this wolf approaching the lamb, or rather this black sheep, as every-body called him, demanding a maiden sacrifice to clean him from his guilt, her heart burned with indignation and the rage of innocence. She could not understand Helen’s strange acquiescence, nor her sense of possible guilt in not having accepted that part which was offered to her. The very atmosphere which surrounded Duff was obnoxious to Lily: the roughness of his tones and his clothes, his large, noisy movements and vehemence and gestures. He had lost, she thought, that air of a gentleman which is the last thing a man loses who is born to it, and never, as she believed, loses innocently.
She was glad beyond description when, after much more conversation, and a meal to which his excitement and passion did not prevent him from doing a certain justice, Duff was got out of the house, leaving Helen behind, for whom the cart with the black pony had to be brought out once more. Helen was greatly exhausted by all the agitations of the day. He had left her withoutbringing her to any change of mind, yet vowing he would see her once again and make her come with him still, that he would not yet abandon all hope, while she sat tired out, shaking her head softly, with a melancholy smile on her face—a smile more pitiful than many complaints. She did not rise from her chair to see him go away, but followed him with wistful eyes to the door—eyes that were full of a dew of pain that flooded them, but did not fall. She did not say any thing for a long time after he had gone. Was she listening to his steps as he went away, leaving on the air a lingering sound, measured and heavy? Helen had thought that footstep like music. She had watched for it many a day, and heard it, as she thought, miles off, in the stillness of the long country roads, and again, in imagination, many and many a day when he was far out of hearing. She heard it now, long after it had been lost by every ear but her own. Her face had a strained look, as if that sound drew her after him, yet stronger resolution kept her behind.
“You did not mean that, Helen—oh, not that!” Lily said, encircling her friend with her arm.
“My bonnie Lily! but that I did, with all my heart!”
“That you, a good woman, would go away out into the world with an ill man, knowing he was an ill man, and thinking that you could turn him and mend him! Oh, Helen, Helen! take him to your heart, that is pure as snow, knowing he was an ill man?”
“Lily, you are very young—you are little more than a bairn. What are our small degrees of good and ill—or rather of ill and worse—before our Maker? Do you think he judges as we judge? They say my poor Alick is wild, and well I wot he is wild, and has taken many, many a wrong step on the road. Oh, if you think it presumptuous of me to believe I could have held him fast so that he should not fall, that would be more true! But, Lily, if ye were long in this countryside, you would see it with your own e’en. The women long ago were not so feared as we were. They just married the lad they liked, and ifhe were wild, forgave him; and I’ve known goodwives that have just pushed them through—oh, just pushed them through!—till they came to old age with honor on their heads and a fine family about them, that would have sunk into the miry pit and the horrible clay if the woman had not had the heart to do it. I am not saying I had not the heart,” said Helen, with a melancholy shake of her head, “but I was young and knew nothing, and the moment passed away.”
“It can never be right,” cried Lily, “to run such a dreadful risk! Oh, if they cannot guide themselves, who are we that we should guide them? I am not like you, Helen. I know for myself I could guide no man.”
No! well she knew that! Not so much as for the taking of a little house—not so much as the simplest duty as ever lay in a man’s road. Helen was not so clever as Lily, she had no such pretensions in any way; every thing—blood and breeding, and the habit of carrying out her own projects and holding her head high—was in the favor of the younger. But Lily had no such confidence as Helen. She did not believe in any influence she could exert. Her opinion, her entreaties, were of no use. They did not move Ronald. He dismissed them with a kiss and a smile. “I could guide no man,” she repeated with a bitter conviction in her heart.
“It would, maybe, not be a perfect life,” said Helen; “far from that; there would be many an ill moment. The goodwife has her cross to carry, and it’s not light; but, oh, Lily, better that than ruin to the man, and a lonely life, with little use in it, toher; and there is aye the hope of the bairns that will do better another day.”
“The bairns,” said Lily, “that would be the worst of all. An ill man’s bairns—to carry on the poison in the blood.”
“You are a hard judge,” said Helen, pausing to look at her, “for one so young; but it’s because you are so young, my bonnie dear. We are all ill men and women, too. There’s a line of poetry that comes into my head, though it’s a light thing for such a heavy subject, and I cannotmind it exact to a word. It says we were all forfeit once, but he that might have best took the advantage found out the remedy. It is bonnier than that, and it is just the truth. The Lord said: ‘Neither do I condemn thee.’ Ye will mind that at least, Lily.”
“I mind them both,” cried Lily, piqued to have her knowledge doubted, “but yet——”
“And you must not speak of my poor Alick as an ill man. Oh, if I could but let you see how little he is an ill man! His heart is just as innocent as a bairn’s in some things, I’m not saying in all things. He is wild, poor lad, the Lord forgive him! He does a foolish thing, and then he thinks after that he shouldn’t have done it. If I were there, I would make him think first, I would think for him; and then, if the thing was done, there would be me to try to mend it and him, too. But why should I speak as if that was in my power?” cried Helen, with a sudden soft momentary rush of tears, “for I cannot, I cannot, go with Alick and leave my father! I will have to stand by and see my poor lad go out again without a friend by his side into the terrible, terrible world.”
Lily put her arm round her friend, kneeling beside her, giving a warm clasp of sympathy if nothing more. Helen’s heart was beating sadly, with a suppressed passion, but Lily felt as if her slim young frame was all one desperate pulse, clanging in her ears and tingling to her fingers’ ends. Was it her fault that in all her veins there burned this sense of impotence, this dreadful miserable consciousness that she could do nothing, move no one, and was powerless to shape her own fate? Helen was powerless too, but in how different a way! sure that she would have been able to fulfil that highest purpose if only her steps had been free, whereas Lily was humiliated by the certainty that there was no power at all in her, that to everybody with whom she was connected she was a creature without individual potency, whose fate was to be decided for her by the will of others. The contrast of Helen’s feeling, which was so different, gave a bitterness to her pain.
“It was all very simple,” said Helen. “My father—you have never seen him at his best, Lily; there is not a cleverer man, nor a better learned, in all this countryside—was tutor to Mr. Duff when they were both young, and the boys, as they grew up, used to come to him for lessons. Alick was the youngest, just two years older than me, that am the last of all. They were great friends with our own boys, who are both out in the world, and, oh, alack! not doing so very well that we should cast a stone at other folk. Eh but he was a bonnie boy! dark, always dark, like his mother, but the flower of the flock, and courted and petted wherever he went. He was a wild boy, and wild he was, I will not deny it, in his youth, and began by giving me a very sore heart; for, from the first that I can mind of, I have never thought of any man but him. And then he was sent away abroad—oh, not for punishment—to do better and make up the lost way. He came to my father and he said: ‘Let Helen go with me and I’ll do well.’ I was but nineteen, Lily, and him twenty-one. They just laughed him to scorn. ‘It would be the Babes in the Wood over again,’ they said, and what was I, a little lass at home, that I could be of any help to a man? Lily!” cried Helen, her mild eyes shining, her cheeks aglow, “I knew better myself, though I dared not say it, and he, poor laddie, he knew best of all. I should have gone with him then! that very moment! if I had but seen it; and, oh, I did see, but I was so young, and no boldness in my heart. My father said: ‘Work you your best for five years and wipe out all the old scores, and come back and ye shall have her, whether it pleases your father or no.’ For the family would not have it. I was not good enough for them. But little was my father minding for that. He never thought upon the old laird but as a boy he had given palmies to, and kept in for not knowing his lessons. He did not care a snap of his fingers for the old laird.”
“At nineteen, and him twenty-one!” Lily said.
“Oh, yes—they all said it was folly, and maybe I wouldsay so, too, if I saw another pair. But for all that it was not folly, Lily. He wanted me to run away with him and say no word. And, oh, but I was in a terrible swither what to do. It’s peetiful to be so young: you have no experience; you cannot answer a word when they preach you down with their old saws. I thought upon my mother that was weakly, and Tom and Jamie giving a good deal of trouble. And at the last I would not. It was my moment,” she said softly, with a sigh, “and I had a perception of it; but I was frightened, Lily, and, oh, so silly and young!”
“Helen, you could not, you should not, have done it. It would have been impossible! It would have been wrong!”
Helen only shook her head with a melancholy smile. “And then he came back,” she said, “at the end of the five years. Never, never, Lily, may you have the feeling I had when I saw Alick Duff again. Something said in me: ‘Eelen, Eelen, that is your work!’ The light had gone from his eyes, and the open look; his bonnie brow was all lined. He had grown to be the man you saw to-day. But what would that have mattered to me? He had but the more need of me. Alas, alas! my mother was dead, the boys all adrift, and my father taken with his illness, and what could I do then? He pleaded sore and my heart went with him. Oh, I fear he had been wild, wild! He came back without a shilling in his pocket or a prospect before him. The old laird was still living and went about with a brow like thunder. He looked as if he hated every man that named Alick’s name; but them that knew best said he was the favorite still of all the sons. And Mrs. Duff, that had been so proud, that would not have the minister’s daughter for her bonnie boy, she came to me herself, Lily. You see, it was not me only that thought it. She said: ‘Eelen, if you will marry him, you will save my bonnie lad yet.’ But I could not, I could not, Lily. How could I leave my own house, that had trouble in it, and nobody to make a stand but me?”
“They were selfish and cruel!” cried Lily; “they would have sacrificed you for the hope of saving an ill man!”
“Oh, whisht, whisht,” cried Helen again. “And now he has come back. And every thing is changed. The old laird is dead and gone, and John Duff, that was never very kind, is laird in his stead, and there’s no home for him there in his father’s house. And he’s a far older man—eight years it was this time that he was away. And you will wonder to hear me say a bonnie lad when you look at that black-browed man. But I see my bonnie lad in him still, Lily; he is aye the same to me. And, oh, if you knew how it drags my heart out of my bosom when he bids me come with him and I cannot! He says we might save the fragments that remain—but there’s more than that, more than that! He has wasted his youth, but he has not yet lived half his life. And there’s that to save, Lily; and him and me together we could stand. Oh, Lily, there’s neither man nor devil that I would fear for Alick’s sake, and at Alick’s side, to save him—before it is too late!”
“Helen,” cried Lily, “what do I know? I dare not speak; but what if after all you could not save him? If he cannot stand by himself, how could you make him? You are but a little delicate woman; you are not fit to fight. Oh, Helen, Helen, what if you could not save him when all is done!”
“I am not feared,” Helen said with a serene countenance. And then there suddenly came a cloud over her, and tears came to her eyes. “What is the use of speaking,” she said, throwing up her hands with an impatience unlike her usual calm, “when I can do nothing? when he must just go away again without hope, my poor Alick! and come back no more? And that will be the end both of him and me,” she went on, “two folk that might have made a home, and served God in our generation, and brought up children and received strangers and held our warm place in the cold world. One of us will perish away yonder, among wild beasts and ill men, and one of us willjust fade away on the roadside like a flower thrown away when its sweetness is gone—and it will be no better for any mortal, but maybe worse, that Alick Duff and Helen Blythe were born into this weary world.”
“Oh, Helen, Helen!” cried Lily, “I think Alick Duff must have been the cloud that has come over your life and turned its brightness to dark. If you had not always been thinking of him, you would have had another home and a brighter life. And even now—can I not see myself?—don’t you know very well there is a good man——”
“Oh,” cried Helen, rising up with sudden animation, almost pushing Lily’s kneeling figure from her, “go away from me with your good man! It is enough to make a person unjust, to make ye hate the name of good! How do you know whether they are good or no, one of them? Were they ever tempted like him? Had they ever the fire of hot thoughts in their head, or the struggle in their hearts? Was nature ever in them running free and wild like a great river, carrying the brigs and the dams away? or just a drumlie quiet stream, aye content in its banks, and asking no more? Oh, dinna speak to me of your good man! It’s blasphemy, it’s sacrilege, it’s the sin that will never be pardoned! There is but one man, be he good or bad, and one woman that is bound to do her best for him; and ill be her lot if she fails to do it, for it is not herself she will ruin,—that would matter little—the feckless creature, no worth her salt,—but him, too, but him, too!”
She sat down again after this little outburst and dried her eyes. Lily, who had risen hurriedly to her feet, too, startled and almost angry, stood irresolute, not knowing how to reply, when Helen put out to her a trembling hand. “You are not to be troubled about me,” she said; “you are not to be angry at what I say. It is a comfort to speak out my mind. Who can I speak to, Lily? Not to my father, who stands between me and my life; not tohim, that rages at me as you have heard because I cannot arise and follow him, as I would do if I could, to the end of the world. Oh, Lily, it is good for the heart, when it is fulllike mine, to speak. It takes away a little of the burden. ‘I leant my back until an aik’—do you mind the old song? You are not an oak, you’re only a lily-plant, but, oh! the comfort to lean on you, Lily, just for a moment, just till I get my breath.”
“Say to me whatever you like, Helen; say any thing. I may not agree——”
“I am not asking you to agree—how should you agree, you that know nothing? Oh, Lily, my bonnie Lily,” cried Helen, suddenly looking in her face, “am I speaking blasphemy, too? You may know more than I think; there is that in your face that was not there six months ago.”
The color changed in Lily’s cheek, but she did not flinch. “If I know any thing,” she said, “it is not in your way, Helen. I am not the kind of woman that can change a man’s thoughts or his life. I am one that has no power. If I tried your way, I would fail. No one has changed a thought or a purpose in all my life for me. I am useless, useless. I have to do what other folk tell me, and wait other folk’s pleasure, and blow here and blow there like a straw in the wind. And I love it not, I love it not!” she cried. “It is as bad for me as for you.”
Helen thought she knew what the girl meant. She was here in durance, bound by her uncle’s hard will; prevented, too, from carrying out the choice of her heart. It had not yet dawned upon the elder woman that Lily’s experience had gone further than this. And it is possible that the gentle Helen, used all her life to an influence over others far stronger than seemed natural to her character, and believing fully and strongly in that power, could not have understood the higher trial of the far more vivacious and vigorous nature beside her, which flung itself in vain against the rock of another mind inaccessible to any power it possessed, and, clear-sighted and strong-willed, had yet to submit and do nothing but submit.
AlickDuff went away from the valley of the Rugas, calling on heaven and earth to witness that he would never be seen there more, and that from henceforward he was to be considered as an altogether shipwrecked and ruined man. “There is nobody that will contradict you there,” the minister said sternly, “and nothing but the grace of God, my man, for all you threep and swear to make my poor Eelen meeserable, that would ever have made any difference.” “And who will say,” cried Duff, “that it was not justherthat would have been the grace o’ God?” The minister shook his head, yet was a little startled by the argument. As for Helen, she said little more to her strange lover. “It is no use speaking now. There is nothing more to say. I cannot leave my father.” Lily, to whom this story had come like a revelation in the midst of the quiet country life which seems, especially in Scotland, never to be ruffled by emotion, much less passion, and on whom it acted powerfully, restoring her mental balance and withdrawing at least a portion of her thoughts from herself, was a great deal at the Manse during this agitating period, which was all the more curious that nothing was ever said about it on the surface of the life which flowed on in an absolutely unbroken routine, as if there was no impassioned despairing man outside in the darkness waiting the moment to fling himself and his terrible needs and wishes at Helen’s feet, and no terrible question tearing her heart asunder. That it was there underneath all the time was plain enough to those who were in the secret. The minister had an anxious look, even when he laughed and told his stories; and Helen, though her serenity was extraordinary, grew pale and red with an unconscious listening for every sound which Lily divined. He might burst in at any moment and make ascene in the quiet Manse parlor, destroying all the pretence of composure with which they had covered their life, or, worse still, he might do something desperate—he might disappear in the river or end his existence with a shot, leaving an indelible shame on his memory, and upon those who belonged to him, and upon her who, as the country folk would say, “had driven him to it.” If she had married Alick Duff and gone away with him, there would have been an unanimous cry over her folly; but if in his despair he had cut the thread in any such conclusive way, Helen never would have been mentioned afterward but as the woman who drove poor Alick Duff to his death. There was a thrill of this possibility even in the air of the little town, where he was seen from time to time wandering about the precincts of the Manse, and where every-body knew him and his story. But the most exciting thing of all to Lily was to see the face and watch the ways of the excellent young minister, Mr. Blythe’s assistant and successor, who went and came through these troubled days, talking of the affairs of the parish, sedulously restraining himself that he might not appear to think of, or be conscious of, any thing else, but with a countenance which reflected Helen’s, which followed every change of hers, yet when her attention was attracted toward him, closed up in a moment, with the most extraordinary effort dismissing all meaning from his countenance. Lily became fascinated by Mr. Douglas, through whom she could read, as in a mirror, every thing that was happening. He said not a word on this subject, which, indeed, nobody spoke of, nor did he betray any consciousness of the other man’s presence, about which even the maid in the kitchen and the minister’s man, who never had been so assiduous in the discharge of his duties as now, were so perfectly informed; but yet she felt sure that something in him tingled to the neighborhood of his rival like an elastic chord. He would come in sometimes pale, with a stern look in his closely drawn mouth, and then Lily would feel sure that he had seen Alick Duff in the way, waiting till Helen shouldappear. And sometimes the lines of his countenance would relax, so that she felt sure he had heard good news and believed that haunting figure to have gone away; and then at a sound which was no sound outside, at the most trifling change in Helen’s face, the veil, the cloud, would shut again over his face.
The manner in which Lily attained the possibility of making these studies was that by the minister’s invitation, seconded, but not with very much warmth, by Helen, she had come to the Manse on a visit of a few days. Whatever prejudice Mr. Blythe had against her—and she was sure he had a prejudice, though she could not imagine any cause for it—had disappeared under the pressure of his own sore need. He himself was helpless either to watch over or to protect his daughter, and in despair he had thought of the other girl, herself caught in a tangle of the bitter web of life, and full of secret knowledge of its difficulties, who, though she was so much younger, had learned to some degree the lesson which Helen was so slow to learn. “She’s but a girl, but I’ll warrant she could give Eelen a fine lesson what it is to lippen to a man,” the minister said to himself. He had no high view of human nature, for his part. To lippen to a man seemed to him, though he had been in that respect severely virtuous himself, the last thing that a woman should do. For his own part he lippened to, that is, trusted, nobody very much, and thought he was wise in so doing. To have Lily there, seeing every thing with those young eyes, no doubt throwing her weight on the other side, allowing it at least to be seen that a man was not so easily turned round a woman’s little finger as poor Helen thought, would be something gained in the absence of all other help. Mr. Blythe had a tacit conviction that Lily’s influence would be on the opposite side, though his chief reason for thinking so was one that was fictitious.
This was how Lily came to be acquainted with all that was going on. They all appealed to her behind backs, each hoping he or she was alone in calling for her sympathy.“You will tell her better than I can; they all distrust an old man. They think the blood’s dry in his veins and he has forgotten he was once like the rest. And she will listen to him at the last. The thought that he’s going away, to fall deeper and deeper, and that strong delusion she has got that she can save him, will overcome her, and I’ll be left in the corner of the auld Manse sitting alone.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Blythe, never think that; Helen will not leave you.”
“I would not trust her, nor one of them,” he cried, and there in the dark, sitting almost unseen beside the fire, his voice came forth toneless, like that of a dead man. “I have never been thought to make much work about my bairns: one has gone and another has gone, and it has been said that the minister never minded. But there was once an auld man that said: ‘When I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.’”
Lily put her hand upon the large, soft, limp hand of the old minister in quick sympathy. “She will never leave you,” she repeated: “you need fear nothing for that—she will never go away.”
He shook his head and put his other hand for a moment over hers. “You may have been led astray,” he said, “poor little thing! but your heart is in the right place.”
Lily did not think or ask herself what he meant about being led astray. She was too much occupied with Helen, who came in at the moment with the thrill and quiver in her which was the sign that she had seen her lover. The waning sunset light from the window which had seen so many strange sights indicated this movement too, the tremor that affected her head and slight shoulders like a chill of colder air from without. She said softly as she passed Lily: “There is one at the door would fain speak a word to you.” It was not a call which Lily was very ready to obey. She had kept as far as possible out of the reach of Duff, and she had not the same sympathy for him as for the others involved; indeed, it must be allowed that, notwithstanding the charm of the romance, Lily’s feelingswere far more strongly enlisted on the side of the gentle and patient young minister than on any other. She lingered, putting away some scraps of work which had been on the table, until she could no longer resist Helen’s piteous looks. “Oh, go, go!” she whispered close to Lily’s ear. It was a blustering March night, the wind and the dust blowing in along the passage when the Manse door was opened, and Lily obeyed, very reluctantly, the gesture of the dark figure outside, which moved before her to a corner sheltered by the lilac bushes, which evidently was a spot very familiar. She felt that she could almost trace the steps of Helen on the faint line which was not distinct enough to be a path, and that opening among the branches—was it not the spot where she had leaned for support through many a trying interview? Duff tacitly ceded that place to Lily, and then turned upon her with his eyes blazing through the faint twilight. “You are with them all day, you hear all they’re saying. They’re all in a conspiracy to keep me hanging on, and no satisfaction. Tell me: am I to be cast off again like an old clout, or is there any hope that she’ll come at the last?”
“There is no hope that she’ll come; how could she?” cried Lily. “Her father is old and infirm, Mr. Duff, she has told you. It is cruel to keep her like this, always in agitation. She cannot; how could she? Her father——”
“Confound her father!” he cried, swinging his fist through the air. “What’s her father to her own life and mine? You think one person should swamp themselves for another, Lily Ramsay. You’ve not been so happy in doing that yourself, if all tales be true.”
“What tales?” cried Lily, breathless with sudden excitement; and then she paused and said proudly: “Take notice, Mr. Duff, that I am not Lily Ramsay to you!”
“What are you, then?” he cried, with a laugh of scorn. “If you’ve kept your father’s name, you are just Lily Ramsay to Alick Duff, and nothing else. Our forefathers have known each other for hundreds of years. There was even a kind of a cousinship, a grandmother of mine thatwas a Ramsay, or yours that was a Duff, I cannot remember; but if you expect me, that knew you before you were born, to stand on ceremony—and Lumsden too,” he added, in a lower tone, “whatever you may be to him.”
“If it was my concerns you asked me out here to discuss, I think I will go in,” said Lily, “for it is cold out of doors, and I have nothing to say to you.”
“You know well whose concerns it was. Is she coming? Does she understand that it’s for the last time? I know what she thinks. I’ve been such a fool hitherto she thinks I will be as great a fool as ever, and come hankering after her to the stroke of doom. If she thinks that, let her think it no more. This time I will never come back. I will just let myself go. Oh, it’s easier, far easier, than to hold yourself in, even a little bit, as I’ve done. I’ve always had the fear of her before my eyes. I’ve always said to myself: ‘Not that! not that! or she will never speak to me again;’ but now——” He swung his fist once more with a menacing gesture through the dim air. It seemed to Lily as if he were shaking it in the face of Heaven.
“And you don’t think shame to say so!” cried Lily, tremulous with cold and agitation, and finding no argument but this, which she had used before.
“Why should I think shame? There are things a woman like Eelen Blythe can look over, but there are some you would not let her hear of, not to save your soul. It’s a matter of saving a man’s soul, Lily Ramsay, whatever ye may think. The worst is she knows every word I have to say: there’s nothing new to tell her—except just this,” he said with vehement emphasis: “that this time I will never come back!”
“And that is not new either. I have heard you tell her so fifty times. Oh, man,” cried Lily, “cannot you go and leave her at peace? She will never forget you, but she will accept what cannot be helped. Me, I fight against it, but I have to submit too. And Helen will not fight. She will just live quiet and say her prayers for you night and day.”
“Her prayers! I want herself to stand by my side and keep my heart.”
“You would be better with her prayers than with many a woman’s company. Your heart! Can you not pluck up a spirit and stand for God and what is right without Helen? How will you do it with her, then? You would mind her at first—oh, I do not doubt every word she said—but then you would get impatient, and cry: ‘Hold your tongue, woman!’”
“Is that,” he cried quickly, “what he says to you? He is just a sneaking coward, and that I would tell him to his face!”
“You are a coward to call any man so that is not here to defend himself!” cried Lily, wild with rage and pain, “though who you mean I know not, and what you mean I care not. Never man spoke such words to me, but you would do it, you are of the kind to do it. You have thought and thought that she could save you, and then when you found it was not so, you would be fiercer at her and bitterer at her than you have been at your own self. Oh, let Helen be! She will never forget you, but she will never go with you so long as her old father sits there and cannot move in his big chair.”
“If I thought that——” he said, then paused. “If that’s what’s to come of it all after more than a dozen years! Would I have been a vagabond on the face of the earth if she had taken me then? I trow no. You will think I am not the kind good men are made of? Maybe no; but there’s more kinds than one, even of decent men. I would not drag what was her name in the dust.”
“You think not,” said Lily, “but if you have dragged your father’s——”
“You little devil,” he cried, “to mind me of that!” and then he took off his hat stiffly, and with ceremony, and said: “I beg your pardon, Miss Ramsay, or whatever your name may be.”
“You are very insulting to me!” said Lily. “Why should I stand out here and let you abuse me? What areyou to me that I should bear it?” But presently she added, softening: “I’m very sorry for you, all the same.”
She was hurrying away when he seized her by the arm and held her back. “Do you see that? Am I to stand still and see that, and hold my peace forever?”
The corner among the lilacs had this advantage, carefully calculated, who could doubt, years ago? that those who stood there, though unseen themselves, could see any one who approached the door of the Manse. The young minister, Mr. Douglas, had come quietly in while they were speaking: his footstep was not one that made the gravel fly. He stood, an image of quietness and good order, on the step, awaiting admittance. Scotch ministers of that date were not always so careful in their dress, so regardful of their appearance, as this young Levite. He had his coat buttoned, his umbrella neatly folded. He was not impatient, as Duff would have been in his place, but stood immovable, waiting till Marget in the kitchen had snatched her clean apron from where it lay, and tied it on to make herself look respectable before she answered the bell. Duff gripped Lily’s arm, not letting her go, and shaking with fierce internal laughter, which burst forth in an angry shout when the door was closed again and the assistant and successor admitted. “Call that a man!” he said, “with milk in his veins for blood; and you’re all in a plot to take her from me, and give her to cauld parritch like that!”
“He would keep her like the apple of his eye. There would no wind blow rough upon her if he could help it!” cried Lily, shaking herself free.
“And you think that a grand thing for a woman?” he cried scornfully, “like a petted bairn, instead of the guardian of a man’s life.”
“Oh, Alick Duff!” cried Lily, half exasperated, half overcome, “come back, come back an honest man, for her father will not live forever.”
“What would I want with her then if I was all I wanted without her?” he said, with another harsh laugh,and then turned on his heel, grinding the gravel under his foot, and without another word stalked away.
How strange it was to go in with fiery words ringing in her ears and the excitement of such a meeting in her veins, and find these people apparently so calm, sitting in the little dimly lighted parlor, where two candles on the table and a small lamp by Mr. Blythe’s head on the mantel-piece were all that was thought necessary! Lily was too much moved herself to remark how they all looked up at her with a certain expectation: Helen wistful and anxious, the old minister closing his open book over his hand, the young one rising to greet her, with almost an appealing glance. They seemed all, to Lily’s eyes, so harmonious, the same caste, the same character, fated to spend their lives side by side. And what had that violent spirit, that uncontrollable and impassioned man, with his futile ideal, to do in such a place? Mr. Douglas belonged to it and fell into all its traditions, but the other could never have had any fit place within the little circle of those two candles on the table. When the pause caused by her entrance—a pause of marked expectation, though none of the party anticipated that she would say a word—was over, the usual talk was resumed, the conversation about the parish folk who were ill, and those who were in trouble, and those to whom any special event had happened. John Logan and the death of his cows, poor things, who were the sustenance of the bairns; and the reluctance of poor Widow Blair to part with her son, who was a “natural,” and had just an extraordinary chance of being received into one of those new institutions where they are said to do such wonderful things for that kind of poor imbecile creature: this was what Helen and her friend were talking of. The minister himself had a more mundane mind. He held hisScotsmanfiercely, and read now and then out loud a little paragraph; and then he looked fixedly at Lily behind the cover of the newspaper, till his steady gaze drew her eyes to him. Then he put a question to her with his lips and eyes, without uttering any sound, and finding that unsuccessful,called her to him. “See you here, Miss Lily: there’s something here in very small print ye must read to me with your young eyes.”
“Can I do it, father?” said Helen.
“Just let me and Miss Lily be. She will do it fine, and not grudge the trouble. Is that man hovering about this house? Is he always there? I will have to send for the constable if he will not go away.”
“I hope he is gone for to-night, Mr. Blythe.”
“For to-night—to be back to-morrow like a shadow hanging round the place. You’re a young woman and a bonnie one, and that carries every thing with a man like him. Get him away! I cannot endure it longer. Get him away!”
“Mr. Blythe——”
“I am saying to you get him away!” said the minister in incisive, sharp notes. And then he added: “After all, the old eyes are not so much worse than the young ones. Many thanks to you all the same.”