Then, however, there came before Sir Robert, by some more kindly touch of memory, certain scenes from the old life, when Dalrugas was the warmest and happiest home in the world, always overflowing with kindly neighbors and friends of youth. Their names came back to him one by one—Duffs, Gordons, Sinclairs. Where were they all now? There would be at least their representatives in all the old places—sons, nay, perhaps grandsons, of his contemporaries, young asses that would turn up their noses at avieille moustache; yet perhaps some of the old folk too. Lily would know; no doubt but Lily would know every one of them. She would have her partners among the boys and her cronies among the girls. He felt glad that Lily washere to renew the alliances of the old place. What had he sent her here for, by-the-bye? Something about a silly sweetheart that she would not give up, the silly thing. Probably she would have forgotten his very name by this time, as Sir Robert did; and there would be another now waiting his sanction. Well, no harm if it was a fit match for the last Ramsay. He would insist upon that. Somebody that had gear enough, and good blood, and a proper place in the world. No other should poor James’s daughter marry; that was one thing sure.
And then he began to think what had become of Lily that she had neither come to meet him last night nor appeared this morning. Was she bearing malice? or sulking at her old uncle? He would soon see there was an end to that. If she was ill, she must have the doctor. If it was but some silly cold or other, or the headache that a woman sets up at a moment’s notice, she must get up out of her bed, she must come down stairs. Self-indulgence was good for nobody, especially at Lily’s age. He would see her woman, Beenie, who was her shadow, and whom Sir Robert began to recollect he had not seen any more than Lily herself. And then the alternative should be given her—the doctor, who would stand no nonsense, or to get up and put a shawl about her, and nurse her cold by the fireside, where she could talk to him, and be much better than if she were in bed. Sir Robert quickened Rory’s paces, and, indeed, as the pony was nothing loath to reach his stable, appeared at the house with almost undignified haste to put in immediate operation this plan.
“Nobetter 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, SirRobert, 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’slittle 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. Itseemed 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 theconvivesbores, 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 owndisabilities 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 gooddishes 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, andsome 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 thingthere; 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 thesubject. 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 ownsuperiority 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.
Therehad been a pause after Lily called to Marg’ret to bring the baby on the night when Ronald left her. Marg’ret, though very kind, was a person who liked her own way. If the child’s toilet was not complete, accordingto her own elaborate rule, she did not obey in a moment even the eager call of the young mother. There were allowances made for her, as there always are for those who insist upon having their own way.
Accordingly there was a pause. Lily lay and listened to the wheels of the geeg which carried Ronald away. They did not bring the same chill to her heart as usual, and yet a chill began to steal into the room. The night was warm and soft—the early August, which in the North is the height of summer—and there was no chill at all in the atmosphere. It seemed to Lily’s keen ears as she lay listening that the geeg paused as if something had been forgotten, but then went on at double speed, galloping up the brae, till the sound of the wheels was extinguished in the night and distance. Then she called again sharply: “Marg’ret, Marg’ret! bring in my baby!” But still there was no reply.
“She’s just a most fastidious woman, with all her dressings and her undressings. She’ll no have finished him just to the last string tying,” said Robina.
“Bid her come at once, at once!” cried Lily. “I want my little man.”
And Beenie dived into the next room, which was muffled in curtains, great precautions having been taken lest the cry of the child should be heard down stairs. There was another room still within that, into which the nurse occasionally retired; but there was no one in either place, nor were there any traces of the little garments lying about which betray a baby’s presence—every thing appeared to have been swept away. Beenie, who had come for the child with her rosy countenance beaming, stood still in consternation, her mouth open, her terrified eyes taking in every thing with speechless dismay; for Marg’ret had never ventured down stairs as yet, nor had, they flattered themselves, a sound of the infant been heard, to awaken any question there. Beenie stood silent and terrified for a moment, and then, instead of returning to her mistress, she flew down stairs. Katrin was alone, doing some of herdelicate cooking carefully over the fire; all was still, as if nothing but the most commonplace and tranquil events had ever happened there. Beenie, who had burst into the place like a whirlwind, again paused, confounded by this every-day tranquillity. “Katrin, Katrin, where is Marg’ret?” she cried, adding in a lower tone, “and the bairn?”
“What a question to ask me!” said Katrin. “She’s with your mistress without a doubt. Have you ta’en leave of your senses,” she murmured in a hurried undertone, “to roar out like that about a bairn? What bairn?”
Here Beenie found herself at the end of all her resources. She burst out into loud weeping. “She’s no up the stair and she’s no down the stair,” cried Beenie, “and my bonnie leddy is crying out for her, and will not be satisfied! And she’s no place that I can find her—neither her nor yet the bairn.”
Katrin thrust her saucepan from her as if it had been the offending thing; she wiped her hands with her apron. She looked at Beenie, both of them pale with horror. “Oh, the ill man!” she cried. “Oh, the monster! Oh, sic a man for our bonnie dear! I have been misdoubting about the bairn—but wha could have expectit that a young man no hardened in iniquity would have thought of a contrivance like that?”
Beenie had no thought or time to spare even on such an enormity. “How am I to face her—and tell her?” she said.
And at this moment they heard Lily’s voice calling from above, at first softly, then shouting, screaming all their names. “Marg’ret! Beenie! Katrin! Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Beenie! Katrin! Where is my bairn? where is my bairn?”
The two women flew up the stairs, at the head of which they found Lily in her white night-dress, with her feet bare, her hair waving wildly about her head, her face convulsed and drawn. “My bairn!” she cried, “my bairn! my little bairn! Where is Marg’ret? Where is my baby? Marg’ret!Marg’ret! Beenie! Katrin! bring me my baby—my baby!” She seized Beenie wildly with her trembling hands.
“Oh, my daurlin’!” Beenie cried. “Oh, my bairn—oh, my bonnie Miss Lily!”
Lily flung the large weeping woman from her with a passion of impatience. “Katrin!” she said breathlessly, “you have sense; where is my baby? bring me my baby! My little bairn! Did ye ever hear that an infant like that should be kept from his mother? Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Where has she taken my baby—my baby—my——”
Lily’s voice rose to a kind of scream. She ceased to have command of her words, and went on calling, calling, for Marg’ret and for her child in an endless cry, not knowing what she said.
“You will come back to your bed first and then I will tell you,” said Katrin. There was no one in the house but themselves, and they were isolated in this sudden tragedy from all the world by the distance and the silence of night and the moor. The door stood open at the foot of the stairs, and a cold air blew up through the long, many-cornered passage, chill and searching notwithstanding the warmth of the night. Lily was glad to lean shivering upon the warm support of the kind woman who encircled her with her arm. “You will tell me—you will tell me,” she murmured, permitting herself to be drawn back to her room. The blind had been raised from one of the windows, and the moonlight streamed in, crossing the dimly lighted chamber with one white line of light. The bed, with the little table by it, and the candle burning calmly, seemed too peaceful for Lily’s mood of suspense and alarm. She stood still in the moonlight, which seemed to make her figure luminous with her white bare feet and pale face. “Tell me!” she cried, “tell me! Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Where has she taken my baby? I want my baby—nothing more—nothing more.”
“For the Lord’s sake, mem!” said Katrin, “ye are shivering and trembling. Go back to your bed.”
“Oh, my daurlin’!” cried the weeping Beenie. “Oh,my bonnie lamb, he’s just away with his father in the geeg. Ye needna cry upon Marg’ret; she’ll no hear you, for it’s just her that’s taken him away!”
“Oh, you born fool!” Katrin cried, supporting her young mistress with her arm.
But Lily twisted out of her hold. She turned upon Beenie, bringing her hands together wildly with a loud clap that startled all the silences about like the sudden report of a pistol, and then fell suddenly with a cry at their feet.
Since that moment she had not recovered consciousness. Both of them knew by the force of experience how dangerous a symptom in Lily’s condition is the strong convulsive shivering which had seized her, and for the greater part of that dreadful night before Sir Robert’s arrival they were both by her bedside striving with every kind of hot application to restore a natural temperature. But when they had partially succeeded in this, she still lay unconscious, sometimes agitated and disturbed, flinging herself about with her arms over her head, and once or twice repeating, what filled them with horror, the extraordinary clap together of her hands—sometimes quite still, and murmuring under her breath a continuous flow of inarticulate words, but never conscious of them or their ministrations, saying no word that had meaning in it. Sir Robert’s arrival made a certain change, and left the weight of the nursing upon Beenie, Katrin, with her many additional labors, being unable to bear her share. They had already, however, had time for several consultations on the subject, which Sir Robert naturally disposed of with so much ease, but which to the two women was a much more serious matter—a doctor. Would not a doctor divine at once with his keen, educated eyes what had happened so recently? Would not he read as clearly as in a book what had been the beginning of Lily’s illness? She lay helpless now, able to give them no assistance in disposing of her—she, so wilful by nature, who had always got her own way, so far, at least, as they were concerned. It filled them with aweto look at her lying unconscious, and to feel that her fate was in their hands. What were they to do? They were responsible for her life or death.
The doctor, when he came, listened with very small attention to Beenie’s long and confused story, chiefly made up from things she had read and heard of the causes of Lily’s illness. Whatever the causes were, the result was clear enough. She was in a high fever, her faculties all lost in that confusion of violent illness which takes away at once all consciousness of the present and all personal control. “Fever” was an impressive word in those days, more alarming in some senses, less so in others, than now. It was not mapped out and distinct, with its charts and its well-known rules. There was not, so far as I am aware, such a thing as a clinical thermometer known, at least not in ordinary practice; and the word “fever” meant something dangerously “catching,” something before which nurses fled and friends retired in dismay—which is not to say that those who suffered from it were less sedulously guarded and taken care of by their own people then than now. The first idea of both Beenie and Katrin, however, was that it must be “catching,” being fever, and Sir Robert, when he was informed, was not much wiser. “Fever—where could she have got it?” he said with a sudden imagination of some wretched beggar-woman with a sick child who might have given it to the young lady. “It is not a thing of that kind. You are thinking of scarlatina or maybe typhus. Nothing of that sort. It does not spring from infection. It is brain-fever,” the medical man said. “Brain-fever!” said Sir Robert, indignant. “There was never any thing of that kind in my family.” He took it as a reproach, as if the Ramsays had ever been a race subject to disturbance in the brain!
But whatever they said, it mattered little to Lily. She lay on her bed for hours together moving her restless head to and fro, muttering inarticulate words, then pouring forth a stream of vague discourse, through which there gleamed occasionally a ray of meaning, a wild suddendemand, a flash of protest and expostulation. “Not that! not him!” she would sometimes say, “any thing but him!” and the doctor, making out as much as that one day, believed that the poor girl had been refused her lover, and that it was the sudden arrival of the uncle, who was hostile to them, which had brought on or precipitated the trouble in her brain. Sometimes she would call for “Marg’ret, Marg’ret, Marg’ret!” in accents now of impatience, now of despair. And then he asked who Marg’ret was and why she did not come, or rather: “Which of you is Marg’ret?” to the confusion of the two women. “Oh, sir, neither her nor me,” cried Beenie, “neither her nor me! but a woman that had something to do with her—in an ill moment.” “Let her be sent for, then,” he said peremptorily. Beenie and Katrin had a great deal to bear. Knowing every thing, they had to pretend they knew nothing, to shake their heads and wonder why the patient should utter words which were heartrending to them as betraying the dreadful persistence of that impression of misery in her mind which they knew so well. They gave themselves the comfort of exchanging a glance now and then, which was almost all the mutual consolation they had. For Katrin was very much occupied with the housekeeping and her work, and the necessity for satisfying her master and his guests, who, knowing nothing of Sir Robert’s family, and never having seen his niece, did not propose to go away, as guests in other circumstances would have done. And Sir Robert was very far from desiring that they should go away. He was terrified to find himself here alone, without even Lily’s company, and therefore said very little of her illness. What difference could it make to her, if she never saw them or heard of them, whether Sir Robert had company or not? So Katrin labored morning and night to feed with her best the party in the dining-room, and with very imperfect help at first to look after all the wants of the gentlemen, while Beenie, isolated in her mistress’s room, nursed night and day the helpless, unconscious creature who required solittle, yet needed so much care. Those were not the days of carefully regulated nursing, in which the most important matter of all is the preservation of the nurse’s health and her meals and hours of taking exercise. It was an age when the household was sufficient for itself, and the domestic nurse devoted herself night and day to her charge, accepting all the risks and fatigue as a matter of course. Beenie had no help and wanted none. Sometimes for a moment’s refreshment she would go down to the door, and breathe in a long draught of the fresh morning air, while Katrin stood by Lily’s bed trying to elicit from her a look or sign of intelligence. But Beenie could not have remained absent from her young mistress had the wisest of nurses been there to take her place. “Na, na; I’ve ta’en care of her a’ her days, and I’ll take care of her till the end,” Beenie said, when Katrin exhorted her to take a few minutes more of the outdoor freshness. “Hold your tongue, woman, with your ends!” cried Katrin—“a young thing like that with a’ her life in her! She will see us baith out.” “Oh, the Lord grant it!” cried Beenie, shaking her large head. “But how is she to live and face the truth and ken all that’s happened if ever she comes to herself? She will just sit up in her bed, and clap her two hands together as she did yon dreadful night—and give up the ghost.”
“God forgive him—for I canna!” said Katrin, with a deep-drawn breath.
“And Marg’ret! What do ye say to her, the deep designing woman, that had been planning it, nae doubt, all the time?”
“Marg’ret!” cried Katrin with disdain, with the gesture of throwing something too contemptible for consideration from her. But she added: “There is just this to be said: We could not have keepit the bairn. No possible, her so ill, and the doctor about the house, and a wee thing that bid to have had the air and could not be keepit silent, nor yet hid. Oh, mony’s the thought I’ve had on that awful subject. It was the deed of a villain, Beenie! Maybe Godwill forgive him, but never me. And yet, being done, it’s weel that it was done.”
“Katrin!” cried Beenie in dismay.
But something, perhaps, in their low-toned but vehement conversation had caught some wandering and confused faculty not entirely overwhelmed in Lily’s bosom. She began to call out their names again with a wild appeal, “Marg’ret, Marg’ret!” above all the others, flinging out her arms and rising up in her bed, as Beenie had described in her gloomy anticipations, as if to give up the ghost.
And in this way days and weeks passed away. Lily’s fever seemed to have become a natural part of the life of the house. Robina seemed to herself unable to remember the time when she went to bed at night and got up again in the morning like other people, and had ordinary meals and went and came about the house. And all the incidents that had gone before became dim. If an answer had been demanded of her hurriedly, she could scarcely have ventured to affirm that any one was true: the marriage ceremony in the Manse parlor, the meetings of the young husband and wife, and above all the last tremendous event, which had seemed in its turn to be of more importance than any thing else that ever occurred. They had all faded away into the background, while Lily, sometimes pale as a ghost, sometimes flushed with the agitation of fever, lay struggling between life and death. The doctor, an ordinary village doctor, knew little of such maladies. He was reduced by his practical ignorance to the passive position which is now so often adopted by the highest knowledge. He watched the patient with anxious and sympathetic eyes, naturally sorry for a creature so young, with her girlish beauty fading like a flower. He did not know what to do, and he wisely did nothing. He had made, as was natural, many attempts to find out how an attack so serious had been brought on. Had she received any great shock? Katrin and Beenie, looking at each other, had answered cautiously that maybe it might be so, but they could not tell. Had she suddenly heard any badnews? Oh, yes, poor thing, she had done that! very bad news that had just gone straight to her heart like the shot of a gun. “But, doctor, you’ll say nothing to Sir Robert of that.” The doctor drew his own conclusions and satisfied himself. No doubt the shock was the arrival of the old uncle. He had heard something of the young gentleman who was always coming and going, and that the two would make a bonnie couple if every thing went right, though this good-natured speech was accompanied by shakings of the head and prognostications of dreadful things that might happen if every thing went wrong. The doctor nodded his head and made up his mind that he had penetrated the affair. It would not even have shocked him to hear that it had gone the length of a secret marriage. Private marriages acknowledged late were not looked upon in Scotland with very severe eyes. Both law and custom excused them, though in such a case as Lily’s it was strange that any thing of the kind should occur.
But it becomes of very little importance, when such a malady has dragged along its weary course for weeks, to know what was the cause of it. The rapid cures which a promise of happiness works, in fiction at least, very seldom occur in life, and when the spiritual part of the patient becomes lost, as it were, in the hot running current of fevered blood, and the predominance of the agitated body is complete over all the commotions of the mind, it is vain to think of proposing remedies for the original wrong, even if that were possible. Sir Robert now and then paid a visit to his niece’s room, short and unwilling, dictated solely by a sense of duty. He stood near the door and looked at her, tossing on her pillows, or lying as if dead in the apathy of exhaustion, with an uneasy sense, partly that he was himself badly used by Providence, partly that he might, perhaps, be partially himself to blame. He had left her here very lonely. Perhaps it was a mistake in judgment; but then he had been entirely ignorant of the circumstances, and how could it be said to be his fault? When she began to talk, he could not understand what shesaid—nor, indeed, could any one in the quickened and hurrying incoherence of the utterance—except the cry of Marg’ret, Marg’ret, Marg’ret! which still sometimes came with a passion that made it intelligible from her lips. “Who is Marg’ret?” he asked angrily. “I remember no person of that name.” “Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Marg’ret!” cried Lily again, her confused mind caught by his repetition of the name. She flung herself toward the side of the bed which was nearest the door, opening her eyes wide, as if to see better, and adding, with a cry of ecstasy: “She has brought him back—she has brought him back!” Sir Robert hurried away with a thrill of alarm. Who was it that was to be brought back? Who was the Marg’ret for whom she cried night and day? Was it the mere delirium of her fever, or was something else—something real and unknown—hidden below?
SirRobert 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 wifebeing 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 lameterthat 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 beenvery 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 crossthe 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. “Iforce 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. “Iforce 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, likeany 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 orBeenie, 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 somemental 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 passionslike 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!”