Chapter Seven.A Friend in Need.Mrs Stirling’s cottage stood not far from the high-road that leads to Dunmoor, at the distance of a mile and a half from Kirklands. It was Nancy’s own, and though humble and small, it was yet a very comfortable abode; for her reputation for neatness and order was as well established as her reputation for grumbling. There were no evidences of a refined taste about the place; but perfect order prevailed. There was not a weed in the garden without, nor a speck in the house within. Every article made of wood was as white as soap and sand or as bright as turpentine and wax and much rubbing could make it; and every piece of metal was dazzling to behold.There were some relics of former grandeur, too; for Mrs Stirling had not always lived in so humble a home. Her husband had been prosperous in a small way, but the property he left had been sadly mismanaged after his death, or there would have been a larger portion for his widow. But she had enough to supply her simple wants; and there were those among her neighbours so uncharitable as to say that she enjoyed the opportunity for murmuring which its loss afforded, more than she could have enjoyed the possession of twice her means.“Mrs Stirling might be as happy as the day is long, with nobody to trouble her from one year’s end to the other,” was the frequent remark of many a toil-worn mother, fighting with poverty and cares, in the midst of many children. Yet none of them would have changed her life of care for Nancy’s solitary comfort. Not that Nancy did not enjoy life in her way. She enjoyed greatly putting things to rights and keeping things in order. She enjoyed her garden and her neighbours’ good-natured envy on account of its superiority to their own. And, much more than people supposed, she enjoyed doing a good turn to any one who really needed it. It is true that her favours were, as a general thing, conferred ungraciously; but even those who had the least patience with her infirmities of temper availed themselves of her good offices, acknowledging that, after all, “her bark was worse than her bite.”During the last few months of their intercourse, Lilias had seen comparatively little of Mrs Stirling’s characteristic ungraciousness, and she felt very grateful to her for her many kindnesses during the winter. Unconsciously to herself, in seeking her advice she was making the return which her friend could best appreciate.Mrs Stirling was standing at the door, with her water-bucket in her hand, as Lilias came in sight that Saturday afternoon.“Eh! yon’s Lilias Elder coming up the hill. What can bring her here? I don’t know the day when I have seen her so far from home. Eh, but she’s a bonny, genteel little lassie! There’s no doubt of that.”It could not have been her apparel that called forth Mrs Stirling’s audible acknowledgment of Lilias’ gentility; for her black frock was faded and scant, and far too short, though the last tuck had been let down in the skirt; and her little straw bonnet was not of this nor of last year’s fashion. But Nancy’s declaration was not a mistake, for all these disadvantages. Her greeting was characteristic.“What made you come up the hill at that pace, you thoughtless lassie? Anybody to see you might think you had breath enough and to spare; and, if I’m not mistaken, you need it all.”Lilias laughed as she shook hands, and then sat down wearily on the door-step.“Ah, sit down and rest yourself. You’ll be going to meet your brother, or, maybe, to take your tea at the manse?” said Mrs Stirling, inquiringly.“No: Archie’s not coming home till the evening. He’s going to Broyra with Davie Graham. I’m going no farther to-day. I came to see you, Mrs Stirling. I want you to advise me.”Nancy would not acknowledge to herself, and certainly she would not acknowledge to Lilias, that she was a good deal surprised and flattered by this announcement; and she merely said:“Well, sit still and rest yourself first. I’m going down to the burn to get a drop of soft water to make my tea. It makes it best. Sit still and rest; for you look weary.”Weary she was, too weary even to take in the lovely scene before her, the hills and valleys in their fresh May garments. Far away on the dusty highway a traveller was approaching; and her eyes fastened themselves mechanically upon him. Sometimes he lingered and looked back over the way he had come, and then hurried on, as though his business would not brook delay. Still watching him as he advanced, Lilias idly wondered whence he came, and whither he was going, and whether it was hope or fear that urged him to such speed.Then she thought of the many travellers on the highway of life, weary and ready to faint with the journey; and, closing her eyes, she strove to send a thought over her own uncertain future. She could see only a little way before her. The school must be given up; but what was to come after, she could not tell. She could think of no plan to bring about what she most wished—the power to do something and yet stay at home with her aunt. Change and separation must come, and she could not look beyond these; and then she sighed, as she had done many a time before.“Oh, if I were only strong and well again!” So occupied was she with her thoughts that she had not noticed the return of Mrs Stirling from the brook, and was only made aware of it when she put a cut-glass goblet filled with water in her hand. A very beautiful goblet it was, no doubt equal to the one for which the Roman emperor, in the story, paid a small fortune; and you may be sure it was a great occasion in Mrs Stirling’s eyes that brought it from the cupboard in the corner. No lips save those of the minister had touched the brim for many a month.But Lilias was too much occupied with her own thoughts to notice the unwonted honour; and, strange to say, the slight was not resented. Placing the glass in Lilias’s hand, Mrs Stirling went into the house again.As Lilias raised it to her lips, her eyes fell again upon the approaching stranger toiling along the dusty road, and her hand was arrested. He had again slackened his pace, and his face was turned full upon Lilias as he drew near. Upon it care or grief, or it might be crime, had left deep traces. Now it wore a wild and anxious look that startled Lilias, as, instead of passing along the high-road, he rapidly came up the garden-path towards her.“Can you tell me if I am on the high-road to Kirklands?” he asked, as he drew near.“Yes; go straight on. It is not much more than a mile from this place.”He did not turn to go when she had answered him, but gazed for a moment earnestly into her face, and then said:“Perhaps you can tell me— But no: I will not ask. I shall know the worst soon enough.”The look of pain deepened in his face, and his very lips grew pale as he spoke.“You are ill!” exclaimed Lilias, eagerly offering him the water she held in her hand. He drank a little, and, giving back the glass, thanked her and went away. But before he had gone far he turned again, and, coming to Lilias, said in a low, hoarse voice:“Child, I see the look of heaven’s peace on your face. Your wish must bring good to one like me. Bid me God-speed.”“God speed you!” said Lilias, reverently, and wondering much. “And God avert the evil that you dread!”She watched while he continued in sight, forgetting, for the time, her own troubles in pity for his.“There are so many troubles in life,” she thought; “and each one’s own seems worst to bear. When will it all end?”Poor, drooping Lily! She had sat so long in the shadow of care that she was in danger of forgetting that there were lightsome places on the earth; and “When will it end?” came often to her lips now. Not that she was growing impatient under it; but she felt herself so weak to do or to endure.“If I only were strong and well again! If God would only make me well again, and show me what to do!”Mrs Stirling’s voice startled her at last.“Come into the house, Lilias, my dear. There’s a cold wind creeping round the hill, and the ground is damp yet. You mustn’t sit longer there.”She placed a seat for her in the bright little kitchen.“I won’t put you into the parlour, for a fire’s pleasant yet, May though it be. Sit down here, and I’ll be through with my baking in a few minutes.”The kettle was already singing on the hearth, and fresh cakes were toasting at the fire. After the usual Saturday tidying-up, the room was “like a new pin;” and Lilias’s eyes expressed her admiration as she looked, about her. Nancy hastened her work and finished it, and, as she seated herself on the other side of the hearth, she said:“Well, my dear, what were you thinking to ask me?”In a few words Lilias told her all her trouble: how, though the spring had come, her aunt was by no means well yet, nor able to take charge of the school again; how she sometimes felt she was growing ill herself, at least she was sometimes so weary that she feared she could not go on long. Indeed, she tried not to be weary, but she could not help it. The feeling would come upon her, and then she grew dazed and stupid among the children; and she must try and get something else to do. This was what she wanted to be advised about.By a strong effort, in her capacity of adviser, Nancy was able to keep back the words that came to the tip of her tongue:—“I knew it. Anybody might have seen the upshot. To put a lassie like that to do the work of a strong woman! What could one expect?”She did not speak aloud, however, but rose and mended the fire under the tea-kettle, asking, as she sat down again:“And what are you thinking of doing, my dear?”“It’s not that I’m really ill,” continued Lilias, eagerly. “I think it’s because I have been within doors so much. If I could get something to do in the open air, I should soon be as well as ever again. I can’t go to service now, because I must stop at home with my aunt at night. She can’t be left. But I thought if I could be a herd-girl like Elsie Ray, or get weeding to do, or light field-work, or something—” And she looked so eagerly and so wistfully that Nancy was fain to betake herself to mending the fire again. For there was a strange, remorseful feeling stirring not unkindly at Nancy’s heart. To use her own words, she “had taken just wonderfully to this old-fashioned child.” Her patience, her energy, her unselfishness, her devotion to her aunt, had ever excited her admiration and respect. But that there was “a good thick layer of pride” for all these good qualities to rest upon, Nancy never doubted.“And why not? Who has better right? The lassie is bonny and wise, and has good blood and a good name. Few have so much to be proud of. And if Mrs Blair thinks it’s more becoming in her brother’s daughter to teach children the catechism than to go out to common service, who can blame her that mind her youth and middle age?”Indeed, it had always been a matter of congratulation to Mrs Stirling that this “leaven of pride” prevented Lilias’s absolute perfection; but now, to see “that delicate lassie, so bonny and gentle, more fit for the manse parlour or the drawing-room at Pentlands than any other place,”—to see her so utterly unmindful of pride or station, wishing so eagerly, for the sake of those she loved, to become a herd-girl or a field-labourer, quite disarranged all Nancy’s ideas. By another great effort, she checked the expression of her feelings, and asked:“And what does your aunt say to all this?”“Oh, I have said nothing to her yet. It would only trouble her; and if I can get nothing else to do, I must keep the children till the ‘harvest-play’ comes. That won’t be so very long now.”“But, dear me, lassie! it must be that you have awful little to live on, if the few pence you could earn would make a difference,” said Nancy, forgetting, in her excitement, her resolution to say nothing rashly. “Surely it’s not needful that you should slave yourself that way.”“My aunt would not like me to speak about it. But I ought to do all I can; and I would like herding best.”Nancy’s patience was ebbing fast.“Well, lass, you’ve sought advice from me, and you shall get it. You’re just as fit for herding as you are for breaking stones. Now, just be quiet, my dear. What do you ken about herding, but what you have learnt beneath Elsie Ray’s plaid on a summer’s afternoon? And what good could you do your aunt,—away before four in the morning, and not home till dark at night, as you would need to be?”The last stroke told.“I could do little, indeed,” thought Lilias; but she could not speak, and soon Nancy said:“As for light field-labour, if such a thing was to be found in the countryside, which is not my thought, your aunt would never hear of such a thing. Field-labourers canna choose their company; and they are but a rough set at best. Weeding might do better. If you could have got into the Pentlands gardens, now. But, dear me! It just shows that there’s none exempt from trouble, be they high or be they low. Folk say the Laird o’ Pentlands is in sore trouble, and the sins of the father are to be visited on the children. The Lady of Pentlands and her bairns are going to foreign parts, where they needn’t think shame to be kenned as puir folk. There will be little done in the Pentlands gardens this while, I doubt. There’s Broyra, but that is a good five miles away: you could never go there and come back at night.”“But surely there’s something that I can do?” said Lilias, entreatingly.“Yes, there’s just one thing you can do. You can have patience, and sit still, and see what will come out of this. If I were you, and you were me, you could, I don’t doubt, give me many a fine precept and promise from the Scriptures to that effect. So just take them to yourself, and bide still a while, till you see.”“I’ll have to go on with the school yet,” said Lilias, quietly.“No, no, my lass: you’ll do no such thing as that, unless you’re tired of your life. You have been at that work over-long already, or I’m mistaken. Go into the house and look in the glass. Your face will never be paler than it is at this moment, Lilias Elder, my dear.”“I’m tired,” said Lilias, faintly, her courage quite forsaking her, and the tears, long kept back, finding their way down her cheeks.“Tired! I’ll warrant you’re tired; and me, like an old fool, talking away here, when the tea should have been ready long since.” And Nancy dashed into her preparations with great energy. The tea was made in the little black teapot, as usual; but it was the best tray, and Nancy’s exquisite china, that were laid on the mahogany stand brought from the parlour for the occasion; for Nancy seemed determined to do her great honour. By a strong effort, Lilias checked her tears after the first gush, and sat watching the movements and listening to the rather unconnected remarks of her hostess.“It’s not often they’re taken down, except to wash,” she said, as with a snowy napkin she dusted the fairy-like cream-pot. “There’s but few folk of consideration coming to see the like of me. Young Mr Crawford doesn’t seem to think that I belong to him,—maybe because I go so often to Dunmoor kirk. He hasn’t darkened my door but once yet, and he’s not like to do it now. They say he’s to be married to one of Fivie’s daughters; and I mind Fivie a poor herd-laddie. Eh me! but the Lord brings down one and puts up another! To think of the Lady of Pentlands having to leave yon bonny place! Who would have thought it? This is truly a changeful scene. Folk must have their share of trouble at one time or other of their lives. There was never a truer word said than that.”“Yes,” said Lilias, softly: “it is called a pilgrimage,—a race,—a warfare.”Nancy caught the words.“Ay, that’s a good child, applying the Scripture, as you ought to do. But you can do that at your leisure, you know. Sit by the table and take your tea. I dare say you need it.”And indeed Lilias, faint and weary, did need it. She thought she could not swallow a crumb; but she was mistaken. The tea was delicious; for Mrs Stirling was a judge of tea, and would tolerate no inferior beverage.“I’m willing to pay for the best; and the best I must have,” was the remark that generally followed her brief but emphatic grace before meat; and it was not omitted this time. “It will do you good, Lilias, my dear.”And it did do her good. The honey and cakes were beyond praise, and Lilias ate and was refreshed. When the tea was over, Mrs Stirling rather abruptly introduced the former subject of conversation.“And what were you going to do with your brother when you made your fine plans for the summer?” she asked.“Archie’s at the school, you know,” answered Lilias, shrinking rather from Nancy’s tone and manner than from her words.“Yes; he’s at the school just now. But he wasn’t going to stop at the school, surely, when you went to the herding?”“Oh yes; he is far better at the school.”“Ay, he’s better at the school than playing. But wherefore should not he go to the weeding or the herding as well as you?”“Archie! Why, he’s but a child! What could he do?”“And what are you but a child?” asked Nancy, smiling. “I’m thinking there is little over the twelve months between you.”“But Archie never was strong. It would never do to expose him to all kinds of weather or to fatigue. Don’t you mind such a cripple as he was when we came here? You used to think he wouldn’t live long. Don’t you mind?”“Yes, I mind; but he did live, and thrive too; and he’s the most life-like of the two to-day, I’m thinking. Fatigue, indeed! and he ranging over the hills with that daft laddie Davie Graham, and playing at the ball by the hour together! What should ail him, I wonder?”“But even if Archie were strong and well, and could gain far more than I can, it would yet be far better for him to be at the school. A man can do so little in the world if he has no education; and now is Archie’s time to get it.”“Well, it may be. And when’s your time coming?” asked Nancy, drily.“Oh, it is quite different with me,” said Lilias, with a feeble attempt at a laugh. “A woman can slip through the world quietly, you know. I shan’t need learning as Archie will. And, besides, I can do a great many things; and I can learn though I don’t go to the school.”“Learn, indeed! and slip through the world quietly!” exclaimed Mrs Stirling, with an expression of mingled pity and contempt. “These may be your doctrines, but they’re not mine. But it’s easy seen what will be the upshot of this. It’s just your aunt and your father over again. She would have laid her head beneath Alex Elder’s feet, if it would have pleasured him; and you are none behind her. Such ways are neither for your good nor his. There are plenty of folk that’ll say to-day that your father would have been a stronger man if he hadn’t been so much spared as a laddie.”“If Archie grows up to be such a man as my father was, I shall have no more to wish for him!” exclaimed Lilias, rising, with more of spirit in her voice and manner than Mrs Stirling had ever witnessed there before.“Eh, sirs! did you ever hear the like of that in all your born days?” (lifting her hands as if appealing to an invisible audience). “As though I would say a word to make light of her father! It’s well-known there were few left like him in the countryside when he went away. And for her to put herself in such a passion! Not that I’m caring, Lilias, my dear. I think it has done you good. I haven’t seen you with such a colour in your face this good while. But it ill becomes you to be offended with the like of me.”“I’m not angry. I didn’t mean to be angry,” said Lilias, meekly enough now; “but I can’t bear to think you should suppose I would do anything that is not for Archie’s good. I’m sure I wish to do what is right.”“I’m as sure of that as you are,” said Nancy; “but Lilias, my dear, you must mind that it’s not the sapling that has the closest shelter that grows to be the strongest tree. With you always to think and do for him, your brother would never learn to think and do for himself. It is not real kindness to think first of him. You must let him bear his share of the burden.”“But he’s such a child,” said Lilias; “and he was never strong, besides.”“Now, only hear her!” exclaimed Nancy, again appealing to an invisible audience. “You would think, to hear her speak, she was three-score at least. Lilias Elder, hear what I’m saying to you. You are just taking the best way to ruin this brother of yours, with your petting. All the care that you are lavishing on him now, he’ll claim as his right before long, and think himself well worthy of it, too. Do you not wonder sometimes, that he is so blithe-like, when you have so much to make you weary? I doubt the laddie is overfull of himself.”“You are wrong, Mrs Stirling!” exclaimed Lilias, the indignant colour again flushing her face. “Archie is not full of himself. He would do anything for my aunt or me. And why should he not be blithe? I’m blithe, too, when he is at home; and, besides, he doesna know all.”The thought of what that “all” was—the struggle, the exhaustion, the forced cheerfulness—made her cheek grow pale; and she sat down again, saying to herself that Nancy was right, and that, for a while at least, she must rest.“No; and he’ll never ken as much as is for his good, if it depends on you. But he’ll hear something ere he’s many days older.”“Mrs Stirling,” said Lilias, rising, and speaking very quietly now, “you must not meddle between me and my brother. He is all I have got; and I know him best. He never was meant for a herd-boy or a field-labourer. He must bide at the school; and he’ll soon be fit for something better; and can you not see that will be as much for my good as his? I must just have patience and wait; and you are not to think ill of Archie.”“Me think ill of him! No, no; I think he’s a fine laddie, as his father was before him, and that makes it all the more a pity that he should be spoiled. But if you’ll promise to be a good bairn, and have patience till you are rested and quite strong again, and say no more about your fine plans till then, I’ll neither make nor meddle between you. Must you go? Well, wait till I cover the fire with a wet peat, and I’ll go down the brae with you. I dare say you are all right; your aunt will be wearying for you.”As Nancy went bustling about, Lilias seated herself again upon the door-step. The scene was changed since she sat there before; but it was not less lovely with the long shadows upon it than it was beneath the bright sunshine. It was very sweet and peaceful. The never-silent brook babbled on closely by, but all other sounds seemed to come from a distance. The delicate fringes of young birches waved to and fro with a gentle, beckoning motion; but not a rustle nor a sigh was heard.Yes, it was very sweet and peaceful; and as she let her eyes wander over the scene, Lilias had a vague feeling of guilt upon her in being so out of tune with it all. Even in the days when she and Archie used to sit waiting, waiting for their weary mother it had not been so bad. She wondered why everything seemed so changed to her.“I suppose it is because I’m not very well. I mind how weary and restless Archie used to be. I must have patience till I grow stronger. And maybe something will happen that I’m not thinking about, just as Aunt Janet came to us then. There are plenty of ways beyond my planning; and the Lord has not forgotten us, I’m sure of that. I must just wait. There is nothing else I can do. There! I won’t let another tear come to-night, if I can help it.”She did her best to help it, for Mrs Stirling came bustling out again, and they set off down the brae. She had leisure to help it, too; for from the moment the great door-key was hidden in the thatch, till they paused beside the stepping-stones, she did not need to speak a word. Nancy had all the talk to herself, and rambled on from one thing to another, never pausing for an answer, till they stood beside the brook. Here Nancy was to turn back.“And now, Lilias, my dear, you’ll mind what I have been saying to you, and that you have promised to have patience? It winna be easy. You have ay been doing for your aunt and your brother; and the more you had to do the better you liked it. But it’s one thing to do, and it’s another thing to sit with your hands tied and see them needing the help you canna give. I doubt you may have a sorer heart to carry about with you than you have kenned of yet. No, that I’m feared for you in the end. And, though it’s no pleasant thing to ask favours, I have that faith in you that I would come to you, and wouldna fear to be denied. I ken you would have more pleasure in giving than in withholding; and I would take a gift from you as freely as I ken it would be freely given.”She paused a moment, and Lilias tried to say that indeed she might trust her, for it would give her more pleasure than she had words to tell, to be able to do anything for so kind a friend.“As to that, we’ll say nothing,” said Nancy, drily. But suddenly, changing her tone and manner, she added, “What I have to say is this. You’ll not refuse to me what I wouldna refuse to you, you that are far wiser and better than I am, or ever expect to be? What’s the use of having friends if you canna offer them a helping hand in their time of need? And mind, I’m no giving it,” she added, opening her hands and showing three golden sovereigns. “There’s no fear but I’ll get them back with interest. There’s nine-and-twenty more where these came from, in the china teapot in the press; though that’s neither here nor there. And, Lilias, my dear, no soul need ever know.” The last words were spoken beseechingly.Lilias did not refuse the gift in words. She had no words at her command. But she shut Nancy’s fingers back upon the gold, and, as she did so, she stooped and touched the brown wrinkled hand with her lips.“Indeed, it is not pride,” she said, at last. “You must not think it’s pride. But I am only a child; and it is my aunt who must accept and thank you for your kindness.”Nancy’s face was a sight to see. At first she could have been angry; but her look changed and softened strangely at the touch of Lilias’s lips upon her hand.“My dear,” said she gently, “it’s easy to say ‘my aunt,’ but it is you who have borne the burden for her this while, poor helpless body!”“Yes,” said Lilias, eagerly. “Just because she is helpless, we must consider her the more; and she might not be pleased at my speaking to you first. But if we really need it, we will come to you; for you are a true friend. And you won’t be angry?” she added, wistfully, as she held out her hand for good-bye.“Angry with you! My little gentle lammie!”Her tones, so unlike Nancy’s usually sharp accents, brought back the child’s tears with a rush, and she turned and ran away. Nancy stood watching her as she went over the stepping-stones and up the bank, and she tried to walk quietly on. But as soon as she was out of sight she ran swiftly away, that she might find a hiding-place where she could cry her tears out without danger of being seen.“It’s the clearing-shower, I think; and I must get it over before I go home. If Archie were to see me crying, I should have to tell him all; and I’m sure I don’t know what would happen then.”As the thought passed through her mind, a footstep sounded on the rocky pathway, and her heart leaped up at the sound of her brother’s voice. In a moment he was close beside her. She might have touched him with her outstretched hand. But the last drops of the clearing-shower were still falling.“And I’m not going to spoil his pleasant Sabbath with my tears,” she said to herself. So she lay still on the brown heather, quite unseen in the deepening gloaming.“Lily!” cried Archie, pausing to listen—“Lily!” He grasped a branch of the rowan-tree, and swung himself down into the torrent’s bed. “Lily! Are you here, Lily?”She listened till the sound of his footsteps died away, and then swung herself down as he had done. Dipping her handkerchief into the water of the burn, she said to herself, as she wiped the tear-stains from her face, “I’ll be all the brighter to-morrow for this summer shower.” And she laughed softly to herself as she followed the sound of her brother’s voice echoing back through the glen.
Mrs Stirling’s cottage stood not far from the high-road that leads to Dunmoor, at the distance of a mile and a half from Kirklands. It was Nancy’s own, and though humble and small, it was yet a very comfortable abode; for her reputation for neatness and order was as well established as her reputation for grumbling. There were no evidences of a refined taste about the place; but perfect order prevailed. There was not a weed in the garden without, nor a speck in the house within. Every article made of wood was as white as soap and sand or as bright as turpentine and wax and much rubbing could make it; and every piece of metal was dazzling to behold.
There were some relics of former grandeur, too; for Mrs Stirling had not always lived in so humble a home. Her husband had been prosperous in a small way, but the property he left had been sadly mismanaged after his death, or there would have been a larger portion for his widow. But she had enough to supply her simple wants; and there were those among her neighbours so uncharitable as to say that she enjoyed the opportunity for murmuring which its loss afforded, more than she could have enjoyed the possession of twice her means.
“Mrs Stirling might be as happy as the day is long, with nobody to trouble her from one year’s end to the other,” was the frequent remark of many a toil-worn mother, fighting with poverty and cares, in the midst of many children. Yet none of them would have changed her life of care for Nancy’s solitary comfort. Not that Nancy did not enjoy life in her way. She enjoyed greatly putting things to rights and keeping things in order. She enjoyed her garden and her neighbours’ good-natured envy on account of its superiority to their own. And, much more than people supposed, she enjoyed doing a good turn to any one who really needed it. It is true that her favours were, as a general thing, conferred ungraciously; but even those who had the least patience with her infirmities of temper availed themselves of her good offices, acknowledging that, after all, “her bark was worse than her bite.”
During the last few months of their intercourse, Lilias had seen comparatively little of Mrs Stirling’s characteristic ungraciousness, and she felt very grateful to her for her many kindnesses during the winter. Unconsciously to herself, in seeking her advice she was making the return which her friend could best appreciate.
Mrs Stirling was standing at the door, with her water-bucket in her hand, as Lilias came in sight that Saturday afternoon.
“Eh! yon’s Lilias Elder coming up the hill. What can bring her here? I don’t know the day when I have seen her so far from home. Eh, but she’s a bonny, genteel little lassie! There’s no doubt of that.”
It could not have been her apparel that called forth Mrs Stirling’s audible acknowledgment of Lilias’ gentility; for her black frock was faded and scant, and far too short, though the last tuck had been let down in the skirt; and her little straw bonnet was not of this nor of last year’s fashion. But Nancy’s declaration was not a mistake, for all these disadvantages. Her greeting was characteristic.
“What made you come up the hill at that pace, you thoughtless lassie? Anybody to see you might think you had breath enough and to spare; and, if I’m not mistaken, you need it all.”
Lilias laughed as she shook hands, and then sat down wearily on the door-step.
“Ah, sit down and rest yourself. You’ll be going to meet your brother, or, maybe, to take your tea at the manse?” said Mrs Stirling, inquiringly.
“No: Archie’s not coming home till the evening. He’s going to Broyra with Davie Graham. I’m going no farther to-day. I came to see you, Mrs Stirling. I want you to advise me.”
Nancy would not acknowledge to herself, and certainly she would not acknowledge to Lilias, that she was a good deal surprised and flattered by this announcement; and she merely said:
“Well, sit still and rest yourself first. I’m going down to the burn to get a drop of soft water to make my tea. It makes it best. Sit still and rest; for you look weary.”
Weary she was, too weary even to take in the lovely scene before her, the hills and valleys in their fresh May garments. Far away on the dusty highway a traveller was approaching; and her eyes fastened themselves mechanically upon him. Sometimes he lingered and looked back over the way he had come, and then hurried on, as though his business would not brook delay. Still watching him as he advanced, Lilias idly wondered whence he came, and whither he was going, and whether it was hope or fear that urged him to such speed.
Then she thought of the many travellers on the highway of life, weary and ready to faint with the journey; and, closing her eyes, she strove to send a thought over her own uncertain future. She could see only a little way before her. The school must be given up; but what was to come after, she could not tell. She could think of no plan to bring about what she most wished—the power to do something and yet stay at home with her aunt. Change and separation must come, and she could not look beyond these; and then she sighed, as she had done many a time before.
“Oh, if I were only strong and well again!” So occupied was she with her thoughts that she had not noticed the return of Mrs Stirling from the brook, and was only made aware of it when she put a cut-glass goblet filled with water in her hand. A very beautiful goblet it was, no doubt equal to the one for which the Roman emperor, in the story, paid a small fortune; and you may be sure it was a great occasion in Mrs Stirling’s eyes that brought it from the cupboard in the corner. No lips save those of the minister had touched the brim for many a month.
But Lilias was too much occupied with her own thoughts to notice the unwonted honour; and, strange to say, the slight was not resented. Placing the glass in Lilias’s hand, Mrs Stirling went into the house again.
As Lilias raised it to her lips, her eyes fell again upon the approaching stranger toiling along the dusty road, and her hand was arrested. He had again slackened his pace, and his face was turned full upon Lilias as he drew near. Upon it care or grief, or it might be crime, had left deep traces. Now it wore a wild and anxious look that startled Lilias, as, instead of passing along the high-road, he rapidly came up the garden-path towards her.
“Can you tell me if I am on the high-road to Kirklands?” he asked, as he drew near.
“Yes; go straight on. It is not much more than a mile from this place.”
He did not turn to go when she had answered him, but gazed for a moment earnestly into her face, and then said:
“Perhaps you can tell me— But no: I will not ask. I shall know the worst soon enough.”
The look of pain deepened in his face, and his very lips grew pale as he spoke.
“You are ill!” exclaimed Lilias, eagerly offering him the water she held in her hand. He drank a little, and, giving back the glass, thanked her and went away. But before he had gone far he turned again, and, coming to Lilias, said in a low, hoarse voice:
“Child, I see the look of heaven’s peace on your face. Your wish must bring good to one like me. Bid me God-speed.”
“God speed you!” said Lilias, reverently, and wondering much. “And God avert the evil that you dread!”
She watched while he continued in sight, forgetting, for the time, her own troubles in pity for his.
“There are so many troubles in life,” she thought; “and each one’s own seems worst to bear. When will it all end?”
Poor, drooping Lily! She had sat so long in the shadow of care that she was in danger of forgetting that there were lightsome places on the earth; and “When will it end?” came often to her lips now. Not that she was growing impatient under it; but she felt herself so weak to do or to endure.
“If I only were strong and well again! If God would only make me well again, and show me what to do!”
Mrs Stirling’s voice startled her at last.
“Come into the house, Lilias, my dear. There’s a cold wind creeping round the hill, and the ground is damp yet. You mustn’t sit longer there.”
She placed a seat for her in the bright little kitchen.
“I won’t put you into the parlour, for a fire’s pleasant yet, May though it be. Sit down here, and I’ll be through with my baking in a few minutes.”
The kettle was already singing on the hearth, and fresh cakes were toasting at the fire. After the usual Saturday tidying-up, the room was “like a new pin;” and Lilias’s eyes expressed her admiration as she looked, about her. Nancy hastened her work and finished it, and, as she seated herself on the other side of the hearth, she said:
“Well, my dear, what were you thinking to ask me?”
In a few words Lilias told her all her trouble: how, though the spring had come, her aunt was by no means well yet, nor able to take charge of the school again; how she sometimes felt she was growing ill herself, at least she was sometimes so weary that she feared she could not go on long. Indeed, she tried not to be weary, but she could not help it. The feeling would come upon her, and then she grew dazed and stupid among the children; and she must try and get something else to do. This was what she wanted to be advised about.
By a strong effort, in her capacity of adviser, Nancy was able to keep back the words that came to the tip of her tongue:—“I knew it. Anybody might have seen the upshot. To put a lassie like that to do the work of a strong woman! What could one expect?”
She did not speak aloud, however, but rose and mended the fire under the tea-kettle, asking, as she sat down again:
“And what are you thinking of doing, my dear?”
“It’s not that I’m really ill,” continued Lilias, eagerly. “I think it’s because I have been within doors so much. If I could get something to do in the open air, I should soon be as well as ever again. I can’t go to service now, because I must stop at home with my aunt at night. She can’t be left. But I thought if I could be a herd-girl like Elsie Ray, or get weeding to do, or light field-work, or something—” And she looked so eagerly and so wistfully that Nancy was fain to betake herself to mending the fire again. For there was a strange, remorseful feeling stirring not unkindly at Nancy’s heart. To use her own words, she “had taken just wonderfully to this old-fashioned child.” Her patience, her energy, her unselfishness, her devotion to her aunt, had ever excited her admiration and respect. But that there was “a good thick layer of pride” for all these good qualities to rest upon, Nancy never doubted.
“And why not? Who has better right? The lassie is bonny and wise, and has good blood and a good name. Few have so much to be proud of. And if Mrs Blair thinks it’s more becoming in her brother’s daughter to teach children the catechism than to go out to common service, who can blame her that mind her youth and middle age?”
Indeed, it had always been a matter of congratulation to Mrs Stirling that this “leaven of pride” prevented Lilias’s absolute perfection; but now, to see “that delicate lassie, so bonny and gentle, more fit for the manse parlour or the drawing-room at Pentlands than any other place,”—to see her so utterly unmindful of pride or station, wishing so eagerly, for the sake of those she loved, to become a herd-girl or a field-labourer, quite disarranged all Nancy’s ideas. By another great effort, she checked the expression of her feelings, and asked:
“And what does your aunt say to all this?”
“Oh, I have said nothing to her yet. It would only trouble her; and if I can get nothing else to do, I must keep the children till the ‘harvest-play’ comes. That won’t be so very long now.”
“But, dear me, lassie! it must be that you have awful little to live on, if the few pence you could earn would make a difference,” said Nancy, forgetting, in her excitement, her resolution to say nothing rashly. “Surely it’s not needful that you should slave yourself that way.”
“My aunt would not like me to speak about it. But I ought to do all I can; and I would like herding best.”
Nancy’s patience was ebbing fast.
“Well, lass, you’ve sought advice from me, and you shall get it. You’re just as fit for herding as you are for breaking stones. Now, just be quiet, my dear. What do you ken about herding, but what you have learnt beneath Elsie Ray’s plaid on a summer’s afternoon? And what good could you do your aunt,—away before four in the morning, and not home till dark at night, as you would need to be?”
The last stroke told.
“I could do little, indeed,” thought Lilias; but she could not speak, and soon Nancy said:
“As for light field-labour, if such a thing was to be found in the countryside, which is not my thought, your aunt would never hear of such a thing. Field-labourers canna choose their company; and they are but a rough set at best. Weeding might do better. If you could have got into the Pentlands gardens, now. But, dear me! It just shows that there’s none exempt from trouble, be they high or be they low. Folk say the Laird o’ Pentlands is in sore trouble, and the sins of the father are to be visited on the children. The Lady of Pentlands and her bairns are going to foreign parts, where they needn’t think shame to be kenned as puir folk. There will be little done in the Pentlands gardens this while, I doubt. There’s Broyra, but that is a good five miles away: you could never go there and come back at night.”
“But surely there’s something that I can do?” said Lilias, entreatingly.
“Yes, there’s just one thing you can do. You can have patience, and sit still, and see what will come out of this. If I were you, and you were me, you could, I don’t doubt, give me many a fine precept and promise from the Scriptures to that effect. So just take them to yourself, and bide still a while, till you see.”
“I’ll have to go on with the school yet,” said Lilias, quietly.
“No, no, my lass: you’ll do no such thing as that, unless you’re tired of your life. You have been at that work over-long already, or I’m mistaken. Go into the house and look in the glass. Your face will never be paler than it is at this moment, Lilias Elder, my dear.”
“I’m tired,” said Lilias, faintly, her courage quite forsaking her, and the tears, long kept back, finding their way down her cheeks.
“Tired! I’ll warrant you’re tired; and me, like an old fool, talking away here, when the tea should have been ready long since.” And Nancy dashed into her preparations with great energy. The tea was made in the little black teapot, as usual; but it was the best tray, and Nancy’s exquisite china, that were laid on the mahogany stand brought from the parlour for the occasion; for Nancy seemed determined to do her great honour. By a strong effort, Lilias checked her tears after the first gush, and sat watching the movements and listening to the rather unconnected remarks of her hostess.
“It’s not often they’re taken down, except to wash,” she said, as with a snowy napkin she dusted the fairy-like cream-pot. “There’s but few folk of consideration coming to see the like of me. Young Mr Crawford doesn’t seem to think that I belong to him,—maybe because I go so often to Dunmoor kirk. He hasn’t darkened my door but once yet, and he’s not like to do it now. They say he’s to be married to one of Fivie’s daughters; and I mind Fivie a poor herd-laddie. Eh me! but the Lord brings down one and puts up another! To think of the Lady of Pentlands having to leave yon bonny place! Who would have thought it? This is truly a changeful scene. Folk must have their share of trouble at one time or other of their lives. There was never a truer word said than that.”
“Yes,” said Lilias, softly: “it is called a pilgrimage,—a race,—a warfare.”
Nancy caught the words.
“Ay, that’s a good child, applying the Scripture, as you ought to do. But you can do that at your leisure, you know. Sit by the table and take your tea. I dare say you need it.”
And indeed Lilias, faint and weary, did need it. She thought she could not swallow a crumb; but she was mistaken. The tea was delicious; for Mrs Stirling was a judge of tea, and would tolerate no inferior beverage.
“I’m willing to pay for the best; and the best I must have,” was the remark that generally followed her brief but emphatic grace before meat; and it was not omitted this time. “It will do you good, Lilias, my dear.”
And it did do her good. The honey and cakes were beyond praise, and Lilias ate and was refreshed. When the tea was over, Mrs Stirling rather abruptly introduced the former subject of conversation.
“And what were you going to do with your brother when you made your fine plans for the summer?” she asked.
“Archie’s at the school, you know,” answered Lilias, shrinking rather from Nancy’s tone and manner than from her words.
“Yes; he’s at the school just now. But he wasn’t going to stop at the school, surely, when you went to the herding?”
“Oh yes; he is far better at the school.”
“Ay, he’s better at the school than playing. But wherefore should not he go to the weeding or the herding as well as you?”
“Archie! Why, he’s but a child! What could he do?”
“And what are you but a child?” asked Nancy, smiling. “I’m thinking there is little over the twelve months between you.”
“But Archie never was strong. It would never do to expose him to all kinds of weather or to fatigue. Don’t you mind such a cripple as he was when we came here? You used to think he wouldn’t live long. Don’t you mind?”
“Yes, I mind; but he did live, and thrive too; and he’s the most life-like of the two to-day, I’m thinking. Fatigue, indeed! and he ranging over the hills with that daft laddie Davie Graham, and playing at the ball by the hour together! What should ail him, I wonder?”
“But even if Archie were strong and well, and could gain far more than I can, it would yet be far better for him to be at the school. A man can do so little in the world if he has no education; and now is Archie’s time to get it.”
“Well, it may be. And when’s your time coming?” asked Nancy, drily.
“Oh, it is quite different with me,” said Lilias, with a feeble attempt at a laugh. “A woman can slip through the world quietly, you know. I shan’t need learning as Archie will. And, besides, I can do a great many things; and I can learn though I don’t go to the school.”
“Learn, indeed! and slip through the world quietly!” exclaimed Mrs Stirling, with an expression of mingled pity and contempt. “These may be your doctrines, but they’re not mine. But it’s easy seen what will be the upshot of this. It’s just your aunt and your father over again. She would have laid her head beneath Alex Elder’s feet, if it would have pleasured him; and you are none behind her. Such ways are neither for your good nor his. There are plenty of folk that’ll say to-day that your father would have been a stronger man if he hadn’t been so much spared as a laddie.”
“If Archie grows up to be such a man as my father was, I shall have no more to wish for him!” exclaimed Lilias, rising, with more of spirit in her voice and manner than Mrs Stirling had ever witnessed there before.
“Eh, sirs! did you ever hear the like of that in all your born days?” (lifting her hands as if appealing to an invisible audience). “As though I would say a word to make light of her father! It’s well-known there were few left like him in the countryside when he went away. And for her to put herself in such a passion! Not that I’m caring, Lilias, my dear. I think it has done you good. I haven’t seen you with such a colour in your face this good while. But it ill becomes you to be offended with the like of me.”
“I’m not angry. I didn’t mean to be angry,” said Lilias, meekly enough now; “but I can’t bear to think you should suppose I would do anything that is not for Archie’s good. I’m sure I wish to do what is right.”
“I’m as sure of that as you are,” said Nancy; “but Lilias, my dear, you must mind that it’s not the sapling that has the closest shelter that grows to be the strongest tree. With you always to think and do for him, your brother would never learn to think and do for himself. It is not real kindness to think first of him. You must let him bear his share of the burden.”
“But he’s such a child,” said Lilias; “and he was never strong, besides.”
“Now, only hear her!” exclaimed Nancy, again appealing to an invisible audience. “You would think, to hear her speak, she was three-score at least. Lilias Elder, hear what I’m saying to you. You are just taking the best way to ruin this brother of yours, with your petting. All the care that you are lavishing on him now, he’ll claim as his right before long, and think himself well worthy of it, too. Do you not wonder sometimes, that he is so blithe-like, when you have so much to make you weary? I doubt the laddie is overfull of himself.”
“You are wrong, Mrs Stirling!” exclaimed Lilias, the indignant colour again flushing her face. “Archie is not full of himself. He would do anything for my aunt or me. And why should he not be blithe? I’m blithe, too, when he is at home; and, besides, he doesna know all.”
The thought of what that “all” was—the struggle, the exhaustion, the forced cheerfulness—made her cheek grow pale; and she sat down again, saying to herself that Nancy was right, and that, for a while at least, she must rest.
“No; and he’ll never ken as much as is for his good, if it depends on you. But he’ll hear something ere he’s many days older.”
“Mrs Stirling,” said Lilias, rising, and speaking very quietly now, “you must not meddle between me and my brother. He is all I have got; and I know him best. He never was meant for a herd-boy or a field-labourer. He must bide at the school; and he’ll soon be fit for something better; and can you not see that will be as much for my good as his? I must just have patience and wait; and you are not to think ill of Archie.”
“Me think ill of him! No, no; I think he’s a fine laddie, as his father was before him, and that makes it all the more a pity that he should be spoiled. But if you’ll promise to be a good bairn, and have patience till you are rested and quite strong again, and say no more about your fine plans till then, I’ll neither make nor meddle between you. Must you go? Well, wait till I cover the fire with a wet peat, and I’ll go down the brae with you. I dare say you are all right; your aunt will be wearying for you.”
As Nancy went bustling about, Lilias seated herself again upon the door-step. The scene was changed since she sat there before; but it was not less lovely with the long shadows upon it than it was beneath the bright sunshine. It was very sweet and peaceful. The never-silent brook babbled on closely by, but all other sounds seemed to come from a distance. The delicate fringes of young birches waved to and fro with a gentle, beckoning motion; but not a rustle nor a sigh was heard.
Yes, it was very sweet and peaceful; and as she let her eyes wander over the scene, Lilias had a vague feeling of guilt upon her in being so out of tune with it all. Even in the days when she and Archie used to sit waiting, waiting for their weary mother it had not been so bad. She wondered why everything seemed so changed to her.
“I suppose it is because I’m not very well. I mind how weary and restless Archie used to be. I must have patience till I grow stronger. And maybe something will happen that I’m not thinking about, just as Aunt Janet came to us then. There are plenty of ways beyond my planning; and the Lord has not forgotten us, I’m sure of that. I must just wait. There is nothing else I can do. There! I won’t let another tear come to-night, if I can help it.”
She did her best to help it, for Mrs Stirling came bustling out again, and they set off down the brae. She had leisure to help it, too; for from the moment the great door-key was hidden in the thatch, till they paused beside the stepping-stones, she did not need to speak a word. Nancy had all the talk to herself, and rambled on from one thing to another, never pausing for an answer, till they stood beside the brook. Here Nancy was to turn back.
“And now, Lilias, my dear, you’ll mind what I have been saying to you, and that you have promised to have patience? It winna be easy. You have ay been doing for your aunt and your brother; and the more you had to do the better you liked it. But it’s one thing to do, and it’s another thing to sit with your hands tied and see them needing the help you canna give. I doubt you may have a sorer heart to carry about with you than you have kenned of yet. No, that I’m feared for you in the end. And, though it’s no pleasant thing to ask favours, I have that faith in you that I would come to you, and wouldna fear to be denied. I ken you would have more pleasure in giving than in withholding; and I would take a gift from you as freely as I ken it would be freely given.”
She paused a moment, and Lilias tried to say that indeed she might trust her, for it would give her more pleasure than she had words to tell, to be able to do anything for so kind a friend.
“As to that, we’ll say nothing,” said Nancy, drily. But suddenly, changing her tone and manner, she added, “What I have to say is this. You’ll not refuse to me what I wouldna refuse to you, you that are far wiser and better than I am, or ever expect to be? What’s the use of having friends if you canna offer them a helping hand in their time of need? And mind, I’m no giving it,” she added, opening her hands and showing three golden sovereigns. “There’s no fear but I’ll get them back with interest. There’s nine-and-twenty more where these came from, in the china teapot in the press; though that’s neither here nor there. And, Lilias, my dear, no soul need ever know.” The last words were spoken beseechingly.
Lilias did not refuse the gift in words. She had no words at her command. But she shut Nancy’s fingers back upon the gold, and, as she did so, she stooped and touched the brown wrinkled hand with her lips.
“Indeed, it is not pride,” she said, at last. “You must not think it’s pride. But I am only a child; and it is my aunt who must accept and thank you for your kindness.”
Nancy’s face was a sight to see. At first she could have been angry; but her look changed and softened strangely at the touch of Lilias’s lips upon her hand.
“My dear,” said she gently, “it’s easy to say ‘my aunt,’ but it is you who have borne the burden for her this while, poor helpless body!”
“Yes,” said Lilias, eagerly. “Just because she is helpless, we must consider her the more; and she might not be pleased at my speaking to you first. But if we really need it, we will come to you; for you are a true friend. And you won’t be angry?” she added, wistfully, as she held out her hand for good-bye.
“Angry with you! My little gentle lammie!”
Her tones, so unlike Nancy’s usually sharp accents, brought back the child’s tears with a rush, and she turned and ran away. Nancy stood watching her as she went over the stepping-stones and up the bank, and she tried to walk quietly on. But as soon as she was out of sight she ran swiftly away, that she might find a hiding-place where she could cry her tears out without danger of being seen.
“It’s the clearing-shower, I think; and I must get it over before I go home. If Archie were to see me crying, I should have to tell him all; and I’m sure I don’t know what would happen then.”
As the thought passed through her mind, a footstep sounded on the rocky pathway, and her heart leaped up at the sound of her brother’s voice. In a moment he was close beside her. She might have touched him with her outstretched hand. But the last drops of the clearing-shower were still falling.
“And I’m not going to spoil his pleasant Sabbath with my tears,” she said to herself. So she lay still on the brown heather, quite unseen in the deepening gloaming.
“Lily!” cried Archie, pausing to listen—“Lily!” He grasped a branch of the rowan-tree, and swung himself down into the torrent’s bed. “Lily! Are you here, Lily?”
She listened till the sound of his footsteps died away, and then swung herself down as he had done. Dipping her handkerchief into the water of the burn, she said to herself, as she wiped the tear-stains from her face, “I’ll be all the brighter to-morrow for this summer shower.” And she laughed softly to herself as she followed the sound of her brother’s voice echoing back through the glen.
Chapter Eight.The Prodigal’s Return.“I have stayed too late. They’ll be wondering what has kept me,” said Archie to himself, as he saw the firelight gleaming from the cottage-window. “I wonder where Lily can be, that she didn’t come to meet me? I wonder if anything has happened?”Something had happened. He paused a moment at the door to listen, as a strange voice reached his ear. It was a man’s voice. Going in softly, he saw his aunt in her accustomed seat, and close beside her, with his head bowed down on his hands, sat a stranger. There was a strange look, too, on his aunt’s face, the boy thought, and the tears were running down over her cheeks. Wondering and anxious, he silently approached her.“Archie, are you come home?” said she, holding out her hand to him as he drew near. “Hugh, this is your uncle’s son. Archie, this is your cousin Hugh come home again.”With a cry Archie sprang forward—not to take his cousin’s offered hand, but to clasp him round the neck; and, trembling like a leaf, the returned wanderer held him in a close embrace.“I knew you would come back,” said Archie at last through his tears. “I always told Lilias you would be sure to come back again.—Oh, Aunt Janet, are you not glad?—And you’ll never go away again? Oh, I was sure you would come home soon!”Even his mother had not received her prodigal without some questioning, and the sudden clasping of Archie’s arms about his neck, the perfect trust of the child’s heart, was like balm to the remorseful tortures of Hugh Blair, and great drops from the man’s eyes mingled with the boy’s happy tears.“Archie,” said his aunt after a little time, “who spoke to you of your cousin Hugh?”“Oh, many a one,” answered Archie, as he gently stroked his cousin’s hair. “Donald Ross, and the Muirlands shepherds, and Mrs Stirling.” And then he added, in a hushed voice, “Lilias heard you speak his name in your prayers often, when you thought her sleeping.”Hugh Blair groaned in bitterness of spirit. The thought of his mother’s sleepless nights of prayer for him revealed more of the agony of all those years of waiting than her lips could ever utter. He thought of this night and that in his career of reckless folly, and said to himself: “It may have been then or there that my name was on her lips. O God, judge me not in Thine anger!”The words did not pass his lips, but the look he turned to his mother’s face was a prayer for pardon, and she strove to smile as she said hopefully, “It is all past now, my son. God did not forget us—blessed be His name!”“And Lily!” exclaimed Archie, starting up at last. “Lily! where are you? Oh, will she not be glad?”“I am here, Archie. What has happened?” said Lilias at the door.“Cousin Hugh has come home again,” he whispered, drawing her forward; and then she saw the stranger who had taken the water from her hand. He knew her, too, as the child who had bidden him “God-speed!”“Ah! is this the wee white Lily of Glen Elder?” he said softly.Lilias’s greeting was very quiet.“I am glad you are come home again, Cousin Hugh,” said she, as she gave him her hand; and then she looked at her aunt.“God has been better to me than my fears. He has given me the desire of my heart—blessed be His name!” whispered Mrs Blair, as Lilias bent over her.All that it is needful to give here of Hugh Blair’s story may be given in a few words. He had not enlisted as a soldier, as had been at first believed. But, in an hour of great misery and shame, he had gone away from home, leaving behind him debt and dishonour, fully resolved never to set foot in his native land again till he had retrieved his fortunes and redeemed his good name.To redeem one’s good name is easily resolved upon, but not so easily accomplished. He took with him, to the faraway land to which he had exiled himself, the same hatred of restraint, the same love of sinful pleasures, that had been his bane at home. It is true he left the companions who had led him astray and encouraged him in his foolish course; but, alas! there are in all lands evil-doers enough to hinder the well-doing of those who have need to mend their ways. He sinned much, and suffered much, before he found a foothold for himself in the land of strangers.Many a mother’s prayers have followed a son into just such scenes of vice and misery as he passed through before God’s messenger, in the shape of sore sickness, found him. Alone in a strange land, he lay for weeks dependent on the unwilling charity of strangers. The horrors of that fearful illness, the dreariness of that slow convalescence, could not be told. Helpless, homeless, friendless, with no memories of the past which his follies had not embittered, no hopes for the future which he dared to cherish, it was no wonder that he stood on the brink of despair.But he was not forsaken utterly. When he was ready to perish, a countryman of his own found him, and, for his country’s sake, befriended him. He took him from the poisoned air of a tropical city away to the country, amid whose hills and slopes reigns perpetual spring; and here, under the influences of a well-ordered home, he regained health both of body and of mind, and found also in his countryman and benefactor a firm and faithful friend.Now, indeed, he began life anew. Bound by many ties of gratitude to his employer and friend, he strove to do his duty, and to honour the trust reposed in him; and he did not strive in vain. During the years that followed, he became known as an honourable and a successful man; and when at last, partly for purposes of business and partly with a view to the re-establishment of his health, he determined to return home for a time, he was comparatively a man of means.He had all this time been doing one wrong and foolish thing, however. He had kept silence towards his mother. He had not forgotten her. He made many a plan, and dreamed many a dream, of the time when, with all stains wiped from his name and his life, he would return to make her forget all that was painful in the past. He had never thought of her all these years but as the honoured and prosperous mistress of Glen Elder. It had never come into his mind that, amid the chances and changes of life, she might have to leave the place which had been the home of her youth and her middle age.When he returned, to find a stranger in his mother’s place, it was a terrible shock. All that he could learn concerning her was that she had had no choice but to give up the farm, and that on leaving it she had found a humble but welcome shelter in a neighbouring county; but whether she was there still, or whether she was even alive, they could not tell him.As he stood before the closed door of what had once been his home, it seemed to him that a mark more fearful than that of Cain was upon him. Heart-sick with remorse, he turned away. Not daring to make further inquiries, lest he might learn the worst, he went on, past familiar places, with averted eyes, feeling in his misery that the guilt of his mother’s death must rest upon his sinful soul unless he might hear her living lips pronounce the pardon of which he knew himself to be unworthy.God was merciful to him. He opened the door of the humble cottage by the common, to inquire his way; and there, in the old armchair so well remembered, sat his mother, with her Bible on her knee. She did not know him, but she gave him kindly welcome, bidding him sit and rest, as he seemed weary. She did not know him till she felt his hot tears dropping on her hands, and heard him praying for pardon at her feet.It would do no good to tell what passed between the mother and the son. That the meeting was joyful, we need not say; but it was very sorrowful, too. For years of sin and years of suffering must leave traces too deep for sudden joy to efface. Hugh Blair had left his mother in the prime of life, a woman having few equals as regards all that in a woman is admired. He returned to find her feeble, shrunken, helpless, with the hair beneath her widow’s cap as white as snow. He had redeemed his good name; he had returned to surround her last days with comfort; he had brought wealth greater than had blessed her most prosperous time. But for all those years of poverty and doubt and anxiety, those years which had made her old before her time, what could atone for these? And as for her, even amid her thankful gladness the thought would come, “How shall I ever learn to put trust in him, after all these years? Can his guileless child’s heart come back again to him?”Oh, yes! the meeting was sorrowful, as well as glad.With the joy of Archie and Lilias no misgiving mingled. Their cousin Hugh had come home again. That was enough for them. In his youth he had done many foolish things, and maybe some wrong things, they thought. He had sinned against God and his mother. He had left his home, like the prodigal, choosing his own will and way rather than do his duty. But now, like the prodigal, he had come home repenting; and the best robe and the ring for his hand these happy children made ready for him.“There is joy among the angels to-night, Lily,” said Archie, coming back to whisper it to her, after she thought he was asleep.“Yes: ‘this my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost and is found,’” answered Lilias softly.“And now Aunt Janet’s midnight prayers will be changed to thanksgivings,” was the last thought of the weary child, as she lay down that night. Her first thought in the morning was that her aunt would not want the children for a few days at least, now that her cousin had come home, and she would get rest and be well again. Her next was that Mrs Stirling’s golden sovereigns might stay with the other nine-and-twenty in the china teapot; and a curious feeling of regret mingled itself with the pleasure of the thought.“I almost wish that I had taken them,—just to show her that it wasn’t pride; but I dare say Hugh would be better pleased as it is. I wonder if he is strong and ready at doing things? He doesn’t look very strong; but he is a man and will know how to manage things; and my aunt will not be anxious and cast down any more. And now I see how foolish I was to vex myself with what was to happen to us. I might have known that the Lord was caring for us all the time. ‘Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’” Lilias repeated the words with a sudden gush of happy tears, hiding her face in the pillow, lest her aunt should see.Hugh and Archie went over the hills to the kirk at Dunmoor that day; but Lilias dreaded the long walk a little, and she dreaded a great deal the wondering looks and curious questioning which the sight of the stranger would be sure to call forth. So she went to the kirk close at hand, saying nothing to the people who spoke to her of her cousin’s return, lest their coming and going might break the Sabbath quiet of her aunt. And a very quiet afternoon they had together. Her aunt sat silent, thinking her own thoughts; and Lilias sat “resting,” she said, with her cheek on her little Bible, and her eyes fixed on the faraway clouds, till the cousins came home again.As for Archie, it was with a radiant face, indeed, that he went into the full kirk, holding the hand of his cousin Hugh. Some in the kirk remembered him, others guessed who he might be; and many a doubtful glance was sent back to the days of his wayward youth, and many an anxious thought was stirred as to whether his coming home was to be for good or for ill.It was well for him that he had learnt to hide his thoughts from his fellow-men, to suffer and give no sign of pain, or he would have startled the Sabbath quiet of the kirk that day by many a sigh and bitter groan. Sitting in his old familiar place, and listening to the voice which had taught and warned his childhood, it came very clearly and sharply before him how impossible it is to undo an evil deed. Closing his eyes, he could see himself sitting there a child, as his young cousin sat now at his side; and between this time and that lay years darkened by deeds which, in the bitterness of his remorse and self-upbraidings, he said to himself “could never be outlived—never forgotten.” These years had been lost out of his life—utterly lost for all good; but, oh, how full of sin to him, of pain to others! His sin might be forgiven, washed away in that blood which cleanseth from all sin. But could his mother, could others, who had suffered through it, ever quite outlive the shame and pain?It seemed to him that the grave, earnest faces about him were settling themselves into sternness at the stirring of the same bitter memories and accusing thoughts; and he would fain have escaped from the glances, some of them kind and others half averted, that followed him into the kirk-yard when the service was over. But he could not escape.Who could resist the look on Archie’s joyful face, so frankly challenging a welcome for the returned wanderer? Not James Muir, nor the master, nor scores besides. Not even Nancy Stirling herself, when Archie, sending a smile up into her face, said—“This is my cousin Hugh come home again.”“Oh, ay! he’s come home again. I kenned him when he was a guileless laddie, like yourself, Archie, man,” said Nancy, not sparing her little prick to the sore heart. “And where’s your sister to-day? Is your aunt so ill yet as to need to keep her from the kirk?” she added, with the air of finding a grievance in Lilias’s absence. “Or is the lassie not well herself? She looked weary and worn enough when I bade her good-night at the stepping-stones in the gloaming. You’re not come home over soon, Maister Hugh. It’s time your mother had some one to care for her besides these bairns.”Archie looked indignant; but Hugh said gravely and gently—“You are right, Mrs Stirling. You have been a kind friend to my mother and my cousin Lilias, they tell me, and I thank you from my heart.”Nancy looked not a little discomfited at this unexpected answer.“It would have been liker Hugh Blair to turn on his heel and go his own way,” said she afterwards; “but it may be that many a thing that was laid to his door in the old days belonged less to him than to those who beguiled him into evil, poor lad! And, whether or not, it would ill become me to cast up to him his past ill-deeds to-day.”“And all the folk were so glad to see him!” said Archie when he came home. Hugh was lingering outside, speaking to a friend who had walked with them over the hills, and Archie spoke fast and earnestly to have all told before he came in. “And they all minded on you, aunt, and said how thankful you would be, and how the Lord was good to you in your old age. And James Muir said he hoped he was never to go away again; and Allan Grant said that English Smith was to give up Glen Elder, and why should it not go back into the old hands again? They all said he would surely stay in the countryside now.”“And what said my son to that?” asked Mrs Blair tremulously. She had not ventured to ask him herself yet.“Oh, he said little. I think it was because his heart was so full. And, Lily, he put five golden sovereigns into the poor’s box! Steenie Muir told me that he saw his grandfather count it, and he heard him say that now surely the Lord was to bring back the good days to Glen Elder; and he thanked God for your sake, aunt. And, Lily, who kens but you may be ‘the wee white Lily of Glen Elder’ again?”“A ‘wee white Lily,’ indeed,” said her aunt fondly and gravely; but Lilias laughed, first at the thought of the golden sovereigns and Nancy’s “nine-and-twenty more,” destined still to be hidden away in the china teapot, and then a little at being called the “Lily of Glen Elder.”“It’s like a story in a book, aunt. It would be too much happiness to have the old days come back again—the happy days at Glen Elder;” and then her ready tears flowed at the thought that followed—“They can never—never quite come back again.”
“I have stayed too late. They’ll be wondering what has kept me,” said Archie to himself, as he saw the firelight gleaming from the cottage-window. “I wonder where Lily can be, that she didn’t come to meet me? I wonder if anything has happened?”
Something had happened. He paused a moment at the door to listen, as a strange voice reached his ear. It was a man’s voice. Going in softly, he saw his aunt in her accustomed seat, and close beside her, with his head bowed down on his hands, sat a stranger. There was a strange look, too, on his aunt’s face, the boy thought, and the tears were running down over her cheeks. Wondering and anxious, he silently approached her.
“Archie, are you come home?” said she, holding out her hand to him as he drew near. “Hugh, this is your uncle’s son. Archie, this is your cousin Hugh come home again.”
With a cry Archie sprang forward—not to take his cousin’s offered hand, but to clasp him round the neck; and, trembling like a leaf, the returned wanderer held him in a close embrace.
“I knew you would come back,” said Archie at last through his tears. “I always told Lilias you would be sure to come back again.—Oh, Aunt Janet, are you not glad?—And you’ll never go away again? Oh, I was sure you would come home soon!”
Even his mother had not received her prodigal without some questioning, and the sudden clasping of Archie’s arms about his neck, the perfect trust of the child’s heart, was like balm to the remorseful tortures of Hugh Blair, and great drops from the man’s eyes mingled with the boy’s happy tears.
“Archie,” said his aunt after a little time, “who spoke to you of your cousin Hugh?”
“Oh, many a one,” answered Archie, as he gently stroked his cousin’s hair. “Donald Ross, and the Muirlands shepherds, and Mrs Stirling.” And then he added, in a hushed voice, “Lilias heard you speak his name in your prayers often, when you thought her sleeping.”
Hugh Blair groaned in bitterness of spirit. The thought of his mother’s sleepless nights of prayer for him revealed more of the agony of all those years of waiting than her lips could ever utter. He thought of this night and that in his career of reckless folly, and said to himself: “It may have been then or there that my name was on her lips. O God, judge me not in Thine anger!”
The words did not pass his lips, but the look he turned to his mother’s face was a prayer for pardon, and she strove to smile as she said hopefully, “It is all past now, my son. God did not forget us—blessed be His name!”
“And Lily!” exclaimed Archie, starting up at last. “Lily! where are you? Oh, will she not be glad?”
“I am here, Archie. What has happened?” said Lilias at the door.
“Cousin Hugh has come home again,” he whispered, drawing her forward; and then she saw the stranger who had taken the water from her hand. He knew her, too, as the child who had bidden him “God-speed!”
“Ah! is this the wee white Lily of Glen Elder?” he said softly.
Lilias’s greeting was very quiet.
“I am glad you are come home again, Cousin Hugh,” said she, as she gave him her hand; and then she looked at her aunt.
“God has been better to me than my fears. He has given me the desire of my heart—blessed be His name!” whispered Mrs Blair, as Lilias bent over her.
All that it is needful to give here of Hugh Blair’s story may be given in a few words. He had not enlisted as a soldier, as had been at first believed. But, in an hour of great misery and shame, he had gone away from home, leaving behind him debt and dishonour, fully resolved never to set foot in his native land again till he had retrieved his fortunes and redeemed his good name.
To redeem one’s good name is easily resolved upon, but not so easily accomplished. He took with him, to the faraway land to which he had exiled himself, the same hatred of restraint, the same love of sinful pleasures, that had been his bane at home. It is true he left the companions who had led him astray and encouraged him in his foolish course; but, alas! there are in all lands evil-doers enough to hinder the well-doing of those who have need to mend their ways. He sinned much, and suffered much, before he found a foothold for himself in the land of strangers.
Many a mother’s prayers have followed a son into just such scenes of vice and misery as he passed through before God’s messenger, in the shape of sore sickness, found him. Alone in a strange land, he lay for weeks dependent on the unwilling charity of strangers. The horrors of that fearful illness, the dreariness of that slow convalescence, could not be told. Helpless, homeless, friendless, with no memories of the past which his follies had not embittered, no hopes for the future which he dared to cherish, it was no wonder that he stood on the brink of despair.
But he was not forsaken utterly. When he was ready to perish, a countryman of his own found him, and, for his country’s sake, befriended him. He took him from the poisoned air of a tropical city away to the country, amid whose hills and slopes reigns perpetual spring; and here, under the influences of a well-ordered home, he regained health both of body and of mind, and found also in his countryman and benefactor a firm and faithful friend.
Now, indeed, he began life anew. Bound by many ties of gratitude to his employer and friend, he strove to do his duty, and to honour the trust reposed in him; and he did not strive in vain. During the years that followed, he became known as an honourable and a successful man; and when at last, partly for purposes of business and partly with a view to the re-establishment of his health, he determined to return home for a time, he was comparatively a man of means.
He had all this time been doing one wrong and foolish thing, however. He had kept silence towards his mother. He had not forgotten her. He made many a plan, and dreamed many a dream, of the time when, with all stains wiped from his name and his life, he would return to make her forget all that was painful in the past. He had never thought of her all these years but as the honoured and prosperous mistress of Glen Elder. It had never come into his mind that, amid the chances and changes of life, she might have to leave the place which had been the home of her youth and her middle age.
When he returned, to find a stranger in his mother’s place, it was a terrible shock. All that he could learn concerning her was that she had had no choice but to give up the farm, and that on leaving it she had found a humble but welcome shelter in a neighbouring county; but whether she was there still, or whether she was even alive, they could not tell him.
As he stood before the closed door of what had once been his home, it seemed to him that a mark more fearful than that of Cain was upon him. Heart-sick with remorse, he turned away. Not daring to make further inquiries, lest he might learn the worst, he went on, past familiar places, with averted eyes, feeling in his misery that the guilt of his mother’s death must rest upon his sinful soul unless he might hear her living lips pronounce the pardon of which he knew himself to be unworthy.
God was merciful to him. He opened the door of the humble cottage by the common, to inquire his way; and there, in the old armchair so well remembered, sat his mother, with her Bible on her knee. She did not know him, but she gave him kindly welcome, bidding him sit and rest, as he seemed weary. She did not know him till she felt his hot tears dropping on her hands, and heard him praying for pardon at her feet.
It would do no good to tell what passed between the mother and the son. That the meeting was joyful, we need not say; but it was very sorrowful, too. For years of sin and years of suffering must leave traces too deep for sudden joy to efface. Hugh Blair had left his mother in the prime of life, a woman having few equals as regards all that in a woman is admired. He returned to find her feeble, shrunken, helpless, with the hair beneath her widow’s cap as white as snow. He had redeemed his good name; he had returned to surround her last days with comfort; he had brought wealth greater than had blessed her most prosperous time. But for all those years of poverty and doubt and anxiety, those years which had made her old before her time, what could atone for these? And as for her, even amid her thankful gladness the thought would come, “How shall I ever learn to put trust in him, after all these years? Can his guileless child’s heart come back again to him?”
Oh, yes! the meeting was sorrowful, as well as glad.
With the joy of Archie and Lilias no misgiving mingled. Their cousin Hugh had come home again. That was enough for them. In his youth he had done many foolish things, and maybe some wrong things, they thought. He had sinned against God and his mother. He had left his home, like the prodigal, choosing his own will and way rather than do his duty. But now, like the prodigal, he had come home repenting; and the best robe and the ring for his hand these happy children made ready for him.
“There is joy among the angels to-night, Lily,” said Archie, coming back to whisper it to her, after she thought he was asleep.
“Yes: ‘this my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost and is found,’” answered Lilias softly.
“And now Aunt Janet’s midnight prayers will be changed to thanksgivings,” was the last thought of the weary child, as she lay down that night. Her first thought in the morning was that her aunt would not want the children for a few days at least, now that her cousin had come home, and she would get rest and be well again. Her next was that Mrs Stirling’s golden sovereigns might stay with the other nine-and-twenty in the china teapot; and a curious feeling of regret mingled itself with the pleasure of the thought.
“I almost wish that I had taken them,—just to show her that it wasn’t pride; but I dare say Hugh would be better pleased as it is. I wonder if he is strong and ready at doing things? He doesn’t look very strong; but he is a man and will know how to manage things; and my aunt will not be anxious and cast down any more. And now I see how foolish I was to vex myself with what was to happen to us. I might have known that the Lord was caring for us all the time. ‘Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’” Lilias repeated the words with a sudden gush of happy tears, hiding her face in the pillow, lest her aunt should see.
Hugh and Archie went over the hills to the kirk at Dunmoor that day; but Lilias dreaded the long walk a little, and she dreaded a great deal the wondering looks and curious questioning which the sight of the stranger would be sure to call forth. So she went to the kirk close at hand, saying nothing to the people who spoke to her of her cousin’s return, lest their coming and going might break the Sabbath quiet of her aunt. And a very quiet afternoon they had together. Her aunt sat silent, thinking her own thoughts; and Lilias sat “resting,” she said, with her cheek on her little Bible, and her eyes fixed on the faraway clouds, till the cousins came home again.
As for Archie, it was with a radiant face, indeed, that he went into the full kirk, holding the hand of his cousin Hugh. Some in the kirk remembered him, others guessed who he might be; and many a doubtful glance was sent back to the days of his wayward youth, and many an anxious thought was stirred as to whether his coming home was to be for good or for ill.
It was well for him that he had learnt to hide his thoughts from his fellow-men, to suffer and give no sign of pain, or he would have startled the Sabbath quiet of the kirk that day by many a sigh and bitter groan. Sitting in his old familiar place, and listening to the voice which had taught and warned his childhood, it came very clearly and sharply before him how impossible it is to undo an evil deed. Closing his eyes, he could see himself sitting there a child, as his young cousin sat now at his side; and between this time and that lay years darkened by deeds which, in the bitterness of his remorse and self-upbraidings, he said to himself “could never be outlived—never forgotten.” These years had been lost out of his life—utterly lost for all good; but, oh, how full of sin to him, of pain to others! His sin might be forgiven, washed away in that blood which cleanseth from all sin. But could his mother, could others, who had suffered through it, ever quite outlive the shame and pain?
It seemed to him that the grave, earnest faces about him were settling themselves into sternness at the stirring of the same bitter memories and accusing thoughts; and he would fain have escaped from the glances, some of them kind and others half averted, that followed him into the kirk-yard when the service was over. But he could not escape.
Who could resist the look on Archie’s joyful face, so frankly challenging a welcome for the returned wanderer? Not James Muir, nor the master, nor scores besides. Not even Nancy Stirling herself, when Archie, sending a smile up into her face, said—
“This is my cousin Hugh come home again.”
“Oh, ay! he’s come home again. I kenned him when he was a guileless laddie, like yourself, Archie, man,” said Nancy, not sparing her little prick to the sore heart. “And where’s your sister to-day? Is your aunt so ill yet as to need to keep her from the kirk?” she added, with the air of finding a grievance in Lilias’s absence. “Or is the lassie not well herself? She looked weary and worn enough when I bade her good-night at the stepping-stones in the gloaming. You’re not come home over soon, Maister Hugh. It’s time your mother had some one to care for her besides these bairns.”
Archie looked indignant; but Hugh said gravely and gently—
“You are right, Mrs Stirling. You have been a kind friend to my mother and my cousin Lilias, they tell me, and I thank you from my heart.”
Nancy looked not a little discomfited at this unexpected answer.
“It would have been liker Hugh Blair to turn on his heel and go his own way,” said she afterwards; “but it may be that many a thing that was laid to his door in the old days belonged less to him than to those who beguiled him into evil, poor lad! And, whether or not, it would ill become me to cast up to him his past ill-deeds to-day.”
“And all the folk were so glad to see him!” said Archie when he came home. Hugh was lingering outside, speaking to a friend who had walked with them over the hills, and Archie spoke fast and earnestly to have all told before he came in. “And they all minded on you, aunt, and said how thankful you would be, and how the Lord was good to you in your old age. And James Muir said he hoped he was never to go away again; and Allan Grant said that English Smith was to give up Glen Elder, and why should it not go back into the old hands again? They all said he would surely stay in the countryside now.”
“And what said my son to that?” asked Mrs Blair tremulously. She had not ventured to ask him herself yet.
“Oh, he said little. I think it was because his heart was so full. And, Lily, he put five golden sovereigns into the poor’s box! Steenie Muir told me that he saw his grandfather count it, and he heard him say that now surely the Lord was to bring back the good days to Glen Elder; and he thanked God for your sake, aunt. And, Lily, who kens but you may be ‘the wee white Lily of Glen Elder’ again?”
“A ‘wee white Lily,’ indeed,” said her aunt fondly and gravely; but Lilias laughed, first at the thought of the golden sovereigns and Nancy’s “nine-and-twenty more,” destined still to be hidden away in the china teapot, and then a little at being called the “Lily of Glen Elder.”
“It’s like a story in a book, aunt. It would be too much happiness to have the old days come back again—the happy days at Glen Elder;” and then her ready tears flowed at the thought that followed—
“They can never—never quite come back again.”
Chapter Nine.Light at Eventide.“Bonny Glen Elder!” repeated Archie to himself many times, as, holding his cousin’s hand, he walked over the fair sloping fields and through the sunny gardens. His cousin repeated it, too, sometimes aloud, sometimes sighing the words in regretful silence, remembering all that had come and gone since the happy days when he, a “guileless laddie,” had called the place his home.The farm had been rented by the Elder family for three generations. Archie’s father had never held it. It had been in the hands of Hugh’s father during his short lifetime; but Archie’s father and grandfather had been born there, and his great-grandfather had spent the greater part of his life on the place; and it quite suited Archie’s ideas of the fitness of things that it should again be held by his cousin, who, though he did not bear the name, was yet of the blood of these men, whose memory was still honoured in the countryside. It suited Hugh’s ideas, too, but with one difference. He knew two or three things that Archie did not know. He had not come back a very rich man, according to his ideas of riches, though he knew the people about him might call him rich. He had come home with no plan of remaining, for he was a young man still, and looked upon the greater part of his life’s work as before him. And through the talk he was keeping up with Archie as they went on, there was running all the time the question, “Should the rest of his work be done in India or in Glen Elder?” It was not an easy question to answer. He felt, with great unhappiness, that, whatever the answer might be, it must give his mother pain.One thing he had determined upon. His mother was to be again the mistress of Glen Elder. This might be brought to pass in one of two ways. He could lease the farm, as his forefathers had done, and be a farmer, as they had been, living a far easier life than they had lived, however, because of the means he had acquired during the last ten years. Or, he could purchase Glen Elder, and invest the rest of his fortune for the benefit of his mother and his little cousins, and then go back to his business in India again. He thought his mother would like the first plan best; but it did not seem the best to him.He was afraid of himself. He had never, in his youth, liked a quiet, rural life, and his manner of life for the past ten years had not been such as to prepare him to like it better. He feared that he could never settle down contented and useful in such a life; and he knew that an unwilling sacrifice would never make his mother happy. And, yet, would it be right to leave her, feeble and aged as she was? Of course his going away would be different now. He would leave her in comfortable circumstances, with no doubt about his fate, no fears as to his well-doing, to harass her. But even in such a case it would not be right to go away without her full and free consent.It spoiled the pleasure of his walk—that and some other thoughts he had; and he sighed as he sat down to rest on a bank where he had often rested when a child.“I can fancy us all living very happily here, if some things were different,” he said at last.“What things, Cousin Hugh?” asked Archie, in some surprise.Hugh laughed.“I ought to have said, ‘if I were different myself,’ I suppose.”“But youaredifferent,” said Archie.“Yes,” said his cousin gravely, after a moment’s hesitation; “but oh, lad, I have many sad things to mind, and sinful things, too. All these years cannot be blotted out nor forgotten.”“But they are past, Cousin Hugh, and forgiven, and in one sense blotted out. There is nothing of them left that need hinder you from being happy here again.”“Ah, well, that may be. God is good. But I was thinking of something else when I spoke first. I was thinking that I am not a farmer.”“But you can learn to be one. It’s easy enough.”“I am afraid I should not find it easy. I am afraid I should not do justice to the place. It spoils one for a quiet life, to be knocked about in the world as I have been. And I know I could never make my mother happy if I were discontented myself; at least, if she knew of my discontent.”“She would be sure to see it. You couldn’t hide it from her, if discontent was in your heart. My aunt doesn’t say much, but she sees clearly. But why should you not be happy here? I can’t understand it.”“No; I trust you may never be able to understand it. Archie, lad, it is one of the penalties of an evil life that it changes the nature, so that the love of pure and simple pleasures, which it drives away, has but a small chance of coming back again, even when the life is amended. It is a sad experience.”“But an evil life, Cousin Hugh! You should not say that,” said Archie sorrowfully.“Well, what would you have? A life of disobedience to one’s mother, ten years of forgetfulness—no, not forgetfulness, but neglect of her. Surely that cannot be called other than an evil life. And it bears its fruit.”There was a long pause; and then Archie said:“Cousin Hugh, I’ll tell you what I would do. I would speak to my aunt about it. If it is true that you could never settle down contented here, she will be sure to see that it is best for you to go, and she will say so. I once heard James Muir say that he knew no woman who surpassed my aunt in sense and judgment. She will be sure to see what is right, and tell you what to do.”Pleasure and pain oddly mingled in the feelings with which Hugh listened to his cousin’s grave commendation of his mother’s sense and judgment; but he felt that there was nothing better to be done than to tell her all that was in his heart, and he lost no time in doing so, and Archie’s words were made good. She saw the situation at a glance, and told him “what to do.” Much as she would have liked to have her son near her, she knew that he was too old to acquire new tastes, and too young to be content with a life of comparative inactivity. She told him so, heartily and cheerfully, not marring the effect of her words by any murmurs or repinings of her own. She only once said:“If you could but have stayed in Scotland, Hugh, lad; for your mother is growing old.”“Who knows but it may be so arranged?” said Hugh thoughtfully. “There is a branch of our house in L—. It might be managed. But, whether or not, I have a year, perhaps two, before me yet.”But it came to pass, all the same, that before the month of May was out they were all settled at Glen Elder. Though “that weary spendthrift,” Maxwell of Pentlands, as Mrs Stirling called him, could not break the entail on the estate of Pentlands, as for the sake of his many debts and his sinful pleasures he madly tried to do, he could dispose of the outlying farm of Glen Elder; and Hugh Blair became the purchaser of the farm and of a broad adjoining field, called the Nether Park. So he owned the land that his fathers had only leased; or, rather, his mother owned it, for it was purchased in her name, and was hers to have and to hold, or to dispose of as she pleased. His mother’s comfort, Hugh said, and the welfare of his young cousins, must not be left to the risks and chances of business. They must be put beyond dependence on his uncertain life or possible failure, or he could not be quite at rest with regard to them when he should be far away.Glen Elder had not suffered in the hands of English Smith. As a faithful servant of the owner, he had held it on favourable terms, and had hoped to hold it long. So he had done well by the land, as all the neighbours declared; though at first they had watched his new-fangled plans with jealous eyes. It was “in good heart” when it changed hands, and was looking its very best on the bright May day when they went home to it. It was a happy day to them all, though it was a sad one, too, for Hugh and his mother. But the sadness passed away in the cheerful bustle of welcome from old friends; and it was not long before they settled down into a quiet and pleasant routine.The coming home, and the new life opening before her, seemed for a long time strange and unreal to Lilias. She used to wake in the morning with the burden of her cottage-cares upon her, till the sight of her pleasant room, and the sunshine coming in through the clustering roses, chased her anxious thoughts away. The sense of repose that gradually grew upon her in her new home was very grateful to her; but she did not enter eagerly into the new interests and pleasures, as her brother did. Indeed, she could do very little but be still and enjoy the rest and quiet; for, when all necessity for exertion was over, that came upon her which must have come soon at any rate: her strength quite gave way, and, for some time, anxiety on her account sobered the growing happiness of the rest.Even her aunt did not realise till then how much beyond her strength had been the child’s exertions during the winter and spring. Not that she would acknowledge herself to be ill. She was only tired, and would be herself again in a little while. But months passed before that time came. For many a day she lay on the sofa in the long, low parlour of Glen Elder, only wishing to be left in peace, smiling now and then into the anxious faces of her aunt and Archie, saying “it was so nice to be quiet and to have nothing to do.”But this passed away. In a little while she was beguiled into the sunny garden, and before the harvest-holidays set Archie at liberty she was quite ready and able for a renewal of their rambles among the hills again.As for Mrs Blair, the return of her son, and the coming home to Glen Elder, did not quite renew her youth; but when the burden that had bowed her down for so many years was taken away, the change in her was pleasant to see. For a long time she rejoiced with trembling over her returned wanderer; but as day after day passed, each leaving her more assured that it was not her wayward lad that had returned to her, but a true penitent and firm believer in Jesus, a deeper peace settled down upon her long-tried spirit, and “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He hath set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He hath put a new song in my mouth,” became a part of her daily thanksgiving.As for him, if it had been the one desire of his life to atone for the sorrow he had caused her in his youth, he could not have done otherwise than he did. He made her comfort his first care. Her slightest intimation was law to him. Silently and unobtrusively, but constantly, did he manifest a grave and respectful tenderness towards her, till she, as well as others, could not but wonder, remembering the lad who would let nothing come between him and the gratification of his own foolish desires.“You dinna mind your cousin Hugh, Lilias, my dear?” said Mrs Stirling to her one day. “I mind him well—the awfulest laddie for liking his own way that ever was heard tell of! You see, being the only one left to her, his mother thought of him first always, till he could hardly do otherwise than think first of himself; and a sore heart he gave her many a time. There’s a wonderful difference now. It must just be that,” added she, meditatively. “‘A new heart will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you.’ Lilias, my dear, he’s a changed man.”A bright colour flashed into Lilias’s face, and tears started in her eyes.“I am sure of it! We may be poor and sick and sorrowful again, but the worst of my aunt’s troubles can never come back to her more.”He was very kind to his young cousins, partly because he wished to repay the love and devotion which had brightened so many of his mother’s dark days, but chiefly because he soon loved them dearly for their own sakes. Lilias he always treated with a respect and deference which, but for the gentle dignity with which his kindness was received by her, might have seemed a little out of place offered to one still such a child.With Archie he was different. The gravity and reserve which seemed to have become habitual to Hugh Blair in his intercourse with others never showed itself to him. The frank, open nature of the lad seemed to act as a charm upon him. The perfect simplicity of his character, the earnestness with which he strove first of all to do right, filled his cousin with wonder, and oftentimes awoke within him bitter regret at the remembrance of what his own youth had been; and a living lesson did the unconscious lad become to him many a time.No one rejoiced more heartily than did Mrs Stirling at the coming home of Hugh Blair and the consequent change of circumstances to his mother and his little cousins; but her joy was expressed in her own fashion. One might have supposed that, in her opinion, some great calamity had befallen them, so dismal were her prophecies concerning them.“It’s true you have borne adversity well, and that is in a measure a preparation for the well-bearing of prosperity. But there’s no telling. The heart is deceitful, and it is no easy to carry a full cup. You’ll need grace, Lilias, my dear. And you’ll doubtless get it if you seek it in a right spirit.” But, judging from Mrs Stirling’s melancholy tones and shakings of the head, it was plain to see that she expected there would be failure somewhere.With keen eyes she watched for some symptoms of the spoiling process in Lilias, and was slow to believe that she was not going to be disappointed in her, as she had been in so many others. But time went on, and Lilias passed unscathed through what, in Nancy’s estimation, was the severest of all ordeals. She was sent to a school “to learn accomplishments,” and came home again, after two years, “not a bit set up.” So Mrs Stirling came to feel at last that she might have faith in the stability of her young favourite.“She’s just the very same Lilias Elder that used to teach the bairns and go wandering over the hills with her brother; only she’s blither and bonnier. She’s Miss Elder of the Glen now, as I heard young Mr Graham calling her to his friend; but she’s no’ to call changed for all that.”And Mrs Stirling was right. Lilias was not changed. Prosperity did no unkind office for her. Those happy days developed in her no germ of selfishness. Still her first thought was for others, the first desire of her heart still was to know what was right, and to obtain grace and strength to do it. In some respects she might be changed, but in this she was the very same.She grew taller and wore a brighter bloom on her cheeks, and she gradually outgrew the look that was older than her years; but she never lost the gentle gravity that had made her seem so different from the other children in the eyes of those who knew her in her time of many cares.Nancy had not the same confidence in Archie. Not that she could find much fault with him; but he had never been so great a favourite with her as his sister, and his boyish indifference to her praise or blame did not, in her opinion, accord with the possession of much sense or discretion.“And, Miss Lilias, my dear, it’s no’ good for a laddie like him to be made so much of,” said she. “The most of the lads that I have seen put first and cared for most have, in one way or another, turned out a disappointment. Either they turned wilful, and went their own way to no good; or they turned soft, and were a vexation. And it would be a grievous thing indeed if the staff on which you lean should be made a rod to correct you, my dear.”But Lilias feared no disappointment in her brother.“‘The law of the Lord is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide,’” she answered softly to Mrs Stirling; and even she confessed that surely he needed no other safeguard.A great deal might be told of the happy days that followed at Glen Elder. Hugh Blair never went back to India again. He married—much to his mother’s joy—one whom he had loved, and who had loved him, in the old time, before evil counsels had beguiled him from his duty and driven him from his home,—one who had never forgotten him during all those sorrowful days of waiting. Their home was at a distance; but they were often at Glen Elder, and Mrs Blair’s declining days were overshadowed by no doubt as to the well-doing or the well-being of her son.Archie went first to the high school, and then to college. The master was loth to part from his favourite pupil; but David Graham was going. It would be well, the master said, for Davie to get through the first year of the temptations while his brother John was there “to keep an eye on him;” and Davie’s best friends and warmest admirers could not but agree, and, though not even the doubting Nancy was afraid for Archie as his master was afraid for his more thoughtless friend, it was yet thought best that the friends should go together. Archie had some troubles in his school and college life, as who has not? but he had many pleasures. He gained honour to himself as a scholar, and, what was better, he was ever known as one who feared God and who sought before all things His honour.Lilias passed her school-days with her friend Anne Graham, in the house of the kind Dr Gordon. It need not be said that they were happy, and that they greatly improved under the gentle and judicious guidance of Mrs Gordon, and that Lilias learnt to love her dearly.And when their school-days were over, there followed a useful and happy life at home. The girls kept up their old friendship begun that day in the kirk-yard, with fewer ups and downs than generally characterise the friendships of girls of their age. Another than Lilias might have fancied Anne’s tone to be a little peremptory sometimes; but, if Miss Graham thought herself wiser than her friend in some things, she as fully believed in her friend’s superior goodness; and not one of all the little flock that Lilias used to rule and teach in the cottage by the common, long ago, deferred more to her than, in her heart, did Anne.So a constant and pleasant intercourse was kept up between them, and Lilias was as much at home in the manse as in the Glen. They still pursued what Davie derisively called “their studies.” That is, they read history and other books together, some of them grave and useful books, and some of them not quite so useful, but nice books for all that. Lilias delighted in poetry, and in the limited number of works of imagination permitted within the precincts of the manse. Anne liked them too; but, believing it to be a weakness, she said less about her enjoyment of them. Indeed, it was her wont to check the raptures of Lilias and her little sister Jessie over some of their favourites, and to rebuke the murmurs of the latter over books that were “good, but not bonny.”They had other pleasures, too—gardening, and rambles among the hills, and cottage-visiting. But the chief business and pleasure of Lilias was in caring for the comfort of her aunt, and in the guiding of the household affairs at Glen Elder. Matters within and without were so arranged that, while she might always be busy, she was never burdened with care; and so the quiet days passed on, each bringing such sweet content as does not often fall to the lot of any household for a long time together.But, though Lilias took pleasure in her friends and her home, her books and her household occupations, her best and highest happiness did not rest on these. Afterwards, when changes came, bringing anxious nights and sorrowful days, when the shadow of death hung over the household, and the untoward events of life seemed to threaten separation from friends who were none the less dear because no tie of blood united them, the foundation of her peace was unshaken. “For they that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, that cannot be removed.”Here for the present our story must close.They went home to Glen Elder in May. Three years passed, and May came again, and Glen Elder and Kirklands, and all the hills and dales between, were looking their loveliest in their changing robes of brown and purple and green. The air was sweet with the scent of hawthorn-blossoms, and vocal with the song of birds and the hum of bees. There was not a fleck of cloud on all the sky, nor of mist on all the hills. The day was perfect, warm, bright, and still; such a day as does not come many times in all the Scottish year.Nancy Stirling stood at her cottage-door, looking out over the green slope, and the burn running full to the fields beyond, and the faraway hills; and, as she looked, she sighed, and quite forgot the water-bucket in her hand, and that she was on her way to the burn for water to make her afternoon cup of tea. We speak of spring as a joyful season; we say, “the glad spring,” and “the merry, merry May;” and it is a glad season to the birds and the bees, the lambs and the little children, and to grown people, too, who have nothing very sad to remember. But the coming back of so many fair things as the spring brings reminds many a one of fair things which can never come again; and hearts more contented than Mrs Stirling’s was, sometimes sigh in the light of such a day.“It’s a bonny day,” said she to herself, “a seasonable day for the country; and we should be thankful.” But she sighed again as she said it; and, for no reason that she could give, her thoughts wandered away to a row of graves in the kirk-yard, and farther away still, to a home and a time in which she saw herself a little child, so blithe, so full of happy life, that, as it all came back, she could not but wonder how she ever should have changed to the troubled, dissatisfied woman that she knew herself to be.“Oh, well! It couldna but be so, in a world like this. Such changes ay have been, and ay must be,” said she, trying to comfort herself with the “old philosophy.” But she did not quite succeed. For the passing years had changed her, and it came into her mind, as it had often come of late, that she might perhaps have made a better use of all that life had brought her. But it was not a pleasant thought to pursue; and she gave a little start of relief and pleasure as she caught sight of two figures coming slowly up the brae.“It’s Lilias Elder and Archie. She’ll have nothing left to wish for now that she has him home again. Eh! but she’s a bonnie lassie, and a good! And Archie, too, is a well-grown lad, and not so set up as he might be, considering.”It was Lilias and her brother. Archie was at home, after his first session at the college; and Nancy was right; Lilias had little left to wish for.“Well, bairns,” she said, after the first greetings were over, “will you come in, or will you sit down here at the door? It’s such a bonny day. So you’re home again, Archie, lad, and glad to be, I hope?”“Very glad,” said Archie. “I never was so glad before.”“You said that last time,” said Lilias, laughing.“Well, maybe I did. But it’s true all the same. I’m more glad every time.”“And you didna come home before it was time,” said Nancy. “You’re thinner and paler than your aunt likes to see you, I’m thinking.”“I’m perfectly well, I assure you,” said Archie.“He will have a rest and the fresh country air again,” said Lilias. “He has been very close at his books.”“Well, it may be that,” said Mrs Stirling. “And so you’re glad to be home again? You havena been letting that daft laddie, Davie Graham, lead you into any mischief that you would be afraid to tell your sister about, I hope?”Archie laughed, and shook his head. Lilias laughed a little, too, as she said—“Oh no, indeed. Even John says they have done wonderfully well: and after that you need have no fear.”“It’s not unlikely that two or three things might happen in such a place, and John Graham be none the wiser. And it’s not likely that he’ll say any ill of your brother in your hearing,” said Nancy drily. “Not that I’m misdoubting you, Archie, man; and may you be kept safe, for your sister’s sake!”“For a better reason than that, I hope, Mrs Stirling,” said Lilias gravely.“Well, so be it; though his sister is a good enough reason for him, I hope. But where have you been? To see Bell Ray? How is she to-day, poor body?”“We have not been there,” said Lilias. “We meant to go when we came from home; but we stayed so long down yonder that we had no time. I am going some day soon.”“And where’s ‘down yonder,’ if I may ask?” demanded Mrs Stirling.“At the moor cottage,” said Lilias. “We came over the hills to see it again, just to mind us of old times.”“And we stayed so long, speaking about these old times, that we are likely to be late home,” said Archie; “and they are all coming up from the manse, to have tea in the Glen. We must make haste home, Lily.”“Yes; and we stayed a while at the old seat under the rowan-tree. We could only just reach it, the burn is so full. And look at all the flowers I found in the cottage-garden—heart’s-ease, and daisies, and sweet-brier, and thyme. It seemed a pity to leave them, with nobody to see them. Give me something to put them in, Mrs Stirling, and I’ll leave some of them for you. We will have time enough for that, Archie, never fear.”She sat down on the door-step, and laid the flowers on her lap.“And wherefore should you be caring to mind yourselves of the old times, I wonder?” said Nancy, as she sat down beside her, holding the jug for the flowers in her hand. “Some of those days were sad enough, I’m sure. Maybe it’s to make you humble?”“Yes, and thankful,” said Lilias softly.“And those days were very pleasant, too, in one way,” said Archie.“Ay, to you, lad. But some of them brought small pleasure to your sister, I’m thinking,” said Nancy sharply. “You’re a wise lad, but you dinna ken everything that came in those old times, as you call them.”“But some of the things that I like best to remember happened on some of the very worst of those days,” said Lilias. “I should never have known half your goodness, for one thing. Do you mind that last day that I came to you? Oh, how weary I was that day!”“And much good I did you,” said Nancy.“Indeed you did, more than I could tell you then, more than I can tell you now,” said Lilias, giving the last touch to the flowers as she rose. “I like to think of those days. We are all the happier now for the troubles of the old times.”“And truly I think you’ll ay be but the happier for whatever time may bring you,” said Nancy musingly, as she watched them hastening over the hill together. “‘To mind us of the old times,’” quoth she. “There are few folk but would be glad to forget, and to make others forget, ‘the hole of the pit.’ And look at these flowers, now! Who but Lilias Elder would think of a poor body like me caring for what is good neither to eat nor to drink? She’s like no one else. And as for her brother, he’s not so set up as folk might expect. May they be kept safe from the world’s taint and stain! I suppose the Lord can do it. I’m sure He can. ‘The law of the Lord is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide.’ She said it of her brother once; and if it is true of him it’s true of her. It is that that makes the difference. They have no cause to be afraid, even though ‘the earth be removed.’ Eh! but it is a grand thing to have the Lord on our side! Nothing can go far wrong with us then.”
“Bonny Glen Elder!” repeated Archie to himself many times, as, holding his cousin’s hand, he walked over the fair sloping fields and through the sunny gardens. His cousin repeated it, too, sometimes aloud, sometimes sighing the words in regretful silence, remembering all that had come and gone since the happy days when he, a “guileless laddie,” had called the place his home.
The farm had been rented by the Elder family for three generations. Archie’s father had never held it. It had been in the hands of Hugh’s father during his short lifetime; but Archie’s father and grandfather had been born there, and his great-grandfather had spent the greater part of his life on the place; and it quite suited Archie’s ideas of the fitness of things that it should again be held by his cousin, who, though he did not bear the name, was yet of the blood of these men, whose memory was still honoured in the countryside. It suited Hugh’s ideas, too, but with one difference. He knew two or three things that Archie did not know. He had not come back a very rich man, according to his ideas of riches, though he knew the people about him might call him rich. He had come home with no plan of remaining, for he was a young man still, and looked upon the greater part of his life’s work as before him. And through the talk he was keeping up with Archie as they went on, there was running all the time the question, “Should the rest of his work be done in India or in Glen Elder?” It was not an easy question to answer. He felt, with great unhappiness, that, whatever the answer might be, it must give his mother pain.
One thing he had determined upon. His mother was to be again the mistress of Glen Elder. This might be brought to pass in one of two ways. He could lease the farm, as his forefathers had done, and be a farmer, as they had been, living a far easier life than they had lived, however, because of the means he had acquired during the last ten years. Or, he could purchase Glen Elder, and invest the rest of his fortune for the benefit of his mother and his little cousins, and then go back to his business in India again. He thought his mother would like the first plan best; but it did not seem the best to him.
He was afraid of himself. He had never, in his youth, liked a quiet, rural life, and his manner of life for the past ten years had not been such as to prepare him to like it better. He feared that he could never settle down contented and useful in such a life; and he knew that an unwilling sacrifice would never make his mother happy. And, yet, would it be right to leave her, feeble and aged as she was? Of course his going away would be different now. He would leave her in comfortable circumstances, with no doubt about his fate, no fears as to his well-doing, to harass her. But even in such a case it would not be right to go away without her full and free consent.
It spoiled the pleasure of his walk—that and some other thoughts he had; and he sighed as he sat down to rest on a bank where he had often rested when a child.
“I can fancy us all living very happily here, if some things were different,” he said at last.
“What things, Cousin Hugh?” asked Archie, in some surprise.
Hugh laughed.
“I ought to have said, ‘if I were different myself,’ I suppose.”
“But youaredifferent,” said Archie.
“Yes,” said his cousin gravely, after a moment’s hesitation; “but oh, lad, I have many sad things to mind, and sinful things, too. All these years cannot be blotted out nor forgotten.”
“But they are past, Cousin Hugh, and forgiven, and in one sense blotted out. There is nothing of them left that need hinder you from being happy here again.”
“Ah, well, that may be. God is good. But I was thinking of something else when I spoke first. I was thinking that I am not a farmer.”
“But you can learn to be one. It’s easy enough.”
“I am afraid I should not find it easy. I am afraid I should not do justice to the place. It spoils one for a quiet life, to be knocked about in the world as I have been. And I know I could never make my mother happy if I were discontented myself; at least, if she knew of my discontent.”
“She would be sure to see it. You couldn’t hide it from her, if discontent was in your heart. My aunt doesn’t say much, but she sees clearly. But why should you not be happy here? I can’t understand it.”
“No; I trust you may never be able to understand it. Archie, lad, it is one of the penalties of an evil life that it changes the nature, so that the love of pure and simple pleasures, which it drives away, has but a small chance of coming back again, even when the life is amended. It is a sad experience.”
“But an evil life, Cousin Hugh! You should not say that,” said Archie sorrowfully.
“Well, what would you have? A life of disobedience to one’s mother, ten years of forgetfulness—no, not forgetfulness, but neglect of her. Surely that cannot be called other than an evil life. And it bears its fruit.”
There was a long pause; and then Archie said:
“Cousin Hugh, I’ll tell you what I would do. I would speak to my aunt about it. If it is true that you could never settle down contented here, she will be sure to see that it is best for you to go, and she will say so. I once heard James Muir say that he knew no woman who surpassed my aunt in sense and judgment. She will be sure to see what is right, and tell you what to do.”
Pleasure and pain oddly mingled in the feelings with which Hugh listened to his cousin’s grave commendation of his mother’s sense and judgment; but he felt that there was nothing better to be done than to tell her all that was in his heart, and he lost no time in doing so, and Archie’s words were made good. She saw the situation at a glance, and told him “what to do.” Much as she would have liked to have her son near her, she knew that he was too old to acquire new tastes, and too young to be content with a life of comparative inactivity. She told him so, heartily and cheerfully, not marring the effect of her words by any murmurs or repinings of her own. She only once said:
“If you could but have stayed in Scotland, Hugh, lad; for your mother is growing old.”
“Who knows but it may be so arranged?” said Hugh thoughtfully. “There is a branch of our house in L—. It might be managed. But, whether or not, I have a year, perhaps two, before me yet.”
But it came to pass, all the same, that before the month of May was out they were all settled at Glen Elder. Though “that weary spendthrift,” Maxwell of Pentlands, as Mrs Stirling called him, could not break the entail on the estate of Pentlands, as for the sake of his many debts and his sinful pleasures he madly tried to do, he could dispose of the outlying farm of Glen Elder; and Hugh Blair became the purchaser of the farm and of a broad adjoining field, called the Nether Park. So he owned the land that his fathers had only leased; or, rather, his mother owned it, for it was purchased in her name, and was hers to have and to hold, or to dispose of as she pleased. His mother’s comfort, Hugh said, and the welfare of his young cousins, must not be left to the risks and chances of business. They must be put beyond dependence on his uncertain life or possible failure, or he could not be quite at rest with regard to them when he should be far away.
Glen Elder had not suffered in the hands of English Smith. As a faithful servant of the owner, he had held it on favourable terms, and had hoped to hold it long. So he had done well by the land, as all the neighbours declared; though at first they had watched his new-fangled plans with jealous eyes. It was “in good heart” when it changed hands, and was looking its very best on the bright May day when they went home to it. It was a happy day to them all, though it was a sad one, too, for Hugh and his mother. But the sadness passed away in the cheerful bustle of welcome from old friends; and it was not long before they settled down into a quiet and pleasant routine.
The coming home, and the new life opening before her, seemed for a long time strange and unreal to Lilias. She used to wake in the morning with the burden of her cottage-cares upon her, till the sight of her pleasant room, and the sunshine coming in through the clustering roses, chased her anxious thoughts away. The sense of repose that gradually grew upon her in her new home was very grateful to her; but she did not enter eagerly into the new interests and pleasures, as her brother did. Indeed, she could do very little but be still and enjoy the rest and quiet; for, when all necessity for exertion was over, that came upon her which must have come soon at any rate: her strength quite gave way, and, for some time, anxiety on her account sobered the growing happiness of the rest.
Even her aunt did not realise till then how much beyond her strength had been the child’s exertions during the winter and spring. Not that she would acknowledge herself to be ill. She was only tired, and would be herself again in a little while. But months passed before that time came. For many a day she lay on the sofa in the long, low parlour of Glen Elder, only wishing to be left in peace, smiling now and then into the anxious faces of her aunt and Archie, saying “it was so nice to be quiet and to have nothing to do.”
But this passed away. In a little while she was beguiled into the sunny garden, and before the harvest-holidays set Archie at liberty she was quite ready and able for a renewal of their rambles among the hills again.
As for Mrs Blair, the return of her son, and the coming home to Glen Elder, did not quite renew her youth; but when the burden that had bowed her down for so many years was taken away, the change in her was pleasant to see. For a long time she rejoiced with trembling over her returned wanderer; but as day after day passed, each leaving her more assured that it was not her wayward lad that had returned to her, but a true penitent and firm believer in Jesus, a deeper peace settled down upon her long-tried spirit, and “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He hath set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He hath put a new song in my mouth,” became a part of her daily thanksgiving.
As for him, if it had been the one desire of his life to atone for the sorrow he had caused her in his youth, he could not have done otherwise than he did. He made her comfort his first care. Her slightest intimation was law to him. Silently and unobtrusively, but constantly, did he manifest a grave and respectful tenderness towards her, till she, as well as others, could not but wonder, remembering the lad who would let nothing come between him and the gratification of his own foolish desires.
“You dinna mind your cousin Hugh, Lilias, my dear?” said Mrs Stirling to her one day. “I mind him well—the awfulest laddie for liking his own way that ever was heard tell of! You see, being the only one left to her, his mother thought of him first always, till he could hardly do otherwise than think first of himself; and a sore heart he gave her many a time. There’s a wonderful difference now. It must just be that,” added she, meditatively. “‘A new heart will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you.’ Lilias, my dear, he’s a changed man.”
A bright colour flashed into Lilias’s face, and tears started in her eyes.
“I am sure of it! We may be poor and sick and sorrowful again, but the worst of my aunt’s troubles can never come back to her more.”
He was very kind to his young cousins, partly because he wished to repay the love and devotion which had brightened so many of his mother’s dark days, but chiefly because he soon loved them dearly for their own sakes. Lilias he always treated with a respect and deference which, but for the gentle dignity with which his kindness was received by her, might have seemed a little out of place offered to one still such a child.
With Archie he was different. The gravity and reserve which seemed to have become habitual to Hugh Blair in his intercourse with others never showed itself to him. The frank, open nature of the lad seemed to act as a charm upon him. The perfect simplicity of his character, the earnestness with which he strove first of all to do right, filled his cousin with wonder, and oftentimes awoke within him bitter regret at the remembrance of what his own youth had been; and a living lesson did the unconscious lad become to him many a time.
No one rejoiced more heartily than did Mrs Stirling at the coming home of Hugh Blair and the consequent change of circumstances to his mother and his little cousins; but her joy was expressed in her own fashion. One might have supposed that, in her opinion, some great calamity had befallen them, so dismal were her prophecies concerning them.
“It’s true you have borne adversity well, and that is in a measure a preparation for the well-bearing of prosperity. But there’s no telling. The heart is deceitful, and it is no easy to carry a full cup. You’ll need grace, Lilias, my dear. And you’ll doubtless get it if you seek it in a right spirit.” But, judging from Mrs Stirling’s melancholy tones and shakings of the head, it was plain to see that she expected there would be failure somewhere.
With keen eyes she watched for some symptoms of the spoiling process in Lilias, and was slow to believe that she was not going to be disappointed in her, as she had been in so many others. But time went on, and Lilias passed unscathed through what, in Nancy’s estimation, was the severest of all ordeals. She was sent to a school “to learn accomplishments,” and came home again, after two years, “not a bit set up.” So Mrs Stirling came to feel at last that she might have faith in the stability of her young favourite.
“She’s just the very same Lilias Elder that used to teach the bairns and go wandering over the hills with her brother; only she’s blither and bonnier. She’s Miss Elder of the Glen now, as I heard young Mr Graham calling her to his friend; but she’s no’ to call changed for all that.”
And Mrs Stirling was right. Lilias was not changed. Prosperity did no unkind office for her. Those happy days developed in her no germ of selfishness. Still her first thought was for others, the first desire of her heart still was to know what was right, and to obtain grace and strength to do it. In some respects she might be changed, but in this she was the very same.
She grew taller and wore a brighter bloom on her cheeks, and she gradually outgrew the look that was older than her years; but she never lost the gentle gravity that had made her seem so different from the other children in the eyes of those who knew her in her time of many cares.
Nancy had not the same confidence in Archie. Not that she could find much fault with him; but he had never been so great a favourite with her as his sister, and his boyish indifference to her praise or blame did not, in her opinion, accord with the possession of much sense or discretion.
“And, Miss Lilias, my dear, it’s no’ good for a laddie like him to be made so much of,” said she. “The most of the lads that I have seen put first and cared for most have, in one way or another, turned out a disappointment. Either they turned wilful, and went their own way to no good; or they turned soft, and were a vexation. And it would be a grievous thing indeed if the staff on which you lean should be made a rod to correct you, my dear.”
But Lilias feared no disappointment in her brother.
“‘The law of the Lord is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide,’” she answered softly to Mrs Stirling; and even she confessed that surely he needed no other safeguard.
A great deal might be told of the happy days that followed at Glen Elder. Hugh Blair never went back to India again. He married—much to his mother’s joy—one whom he had loved, and who had loved him, in the old time, before evil counsels had beguiled him from his duty and driven him from his home,—one who had never forgotten him during all those sorrowful days of waiting. Their home was at a distance; but they were often at Glen Elder, and Mrs Blair’s declining days were overshadowed by no doubt as to the well-doing or the well-being of her son.
Archie went first to the high school, and then to college. The master was loth to part from his favourite pupil; but David Graham was going. It would be well, the master said, for Davie to get through the first year of the temptations while his brother John was there “to keep an eye on him;” and Davie’s best friends and warmest admirers could not but agree, and, though not even the doubting Nancy was afraid for Archie as his master was afraid for his more thoughtless friend, it was yet thought best that the friends should go together. Archie had some troubles in his school and college life, as who has not? but he had many pleasures. He gained honour to himself as a scholar, and, what was better, he was ever known as one who feared God and who sought before all things His honour.
Lilias passed her school-days with her friend Anne Graham, in the house of the kind Dr Gordon. It need not be said that they were happy, and that they greatly improved under the gentle and judicious guidance of Mrs Gordon, and that Lilias learnt to love her dearly.
And when their school-days were over, there followed a useful and happy life at home. The girls kept up their old friendship begun that day in the kirk-yard, with fewer ups and downs than generally characterise the friendships of girls of their age. Another than Lilias might have fancied Anne’s tone to be a little peremptory sometimes; but, if Miss Graham thought herself wiser than her friend in some things, she as fully believed in her friend’s superior goodness; and not one of all the little flock that Lilias used to rule and teach in the cottage by the common, long ago, deferred more to her than, in her heart, did Anne.
So a constant and pleasant intercourse was kept up between them, and Lilias was as much at home in the manse as in the Glen. They still pursued what Davie derisively called “their studies.” That is, they read history and other books together, some of them grave and useful books, and some of them not quite so useful, but nice books for all that. Lilias delighted in poetry, and in the limited number of works of imagination permitted within the precincts of the manse. Anne liked them too; but, believing it to be a weakness, she said less about her enjoyment of them. Indeed, it was her wont to check the raptures of Lilias and her little sister Jessie over some of their favourites, and to rebuke the murmurs of the latter over books that were “good, but not bonny.”
They had other pleasures, too—gardening, and rambles among the hills, and cottage-visiting. But the chief business and pleasure of Lilias was in caring for the comfort of her aunt, and in the guiding of the household affairs at Glen Elder. Matters within and without were so arranged that, while she might always be busy, she was never burdened with care; and so the quiet days passed on, each bringing such sweet content as does not often fall to the lot of any household for a long time together.
But, though Lilias took pleasure in her friends and her home, her books and her household occupations, her best and highest happiness did not rest on these. Afterwards, when changes came, bringing anxious nights and sorrowful days, when the shadow of death hung over the household, and the untoward events of life seemed to threaten separation from friends who were none the less dear because no tie of blood united them, the foundation of her peace was unshaken. “For they that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, that cannot be removed.”
Here for the present our story must close.
They went home to Glen Elder in May. Three years passed, and May came again, and Glen Elder and Kirklands, and all the hills and dales between, were looking their loveliest in their changing robes of brown and purple and green. The air was sweet with the scent of hawthorn-blossoms, and vocal with the song of birds and the hum of bees. There was not a fleck of cloud on all the sky, nor of mist on all the hills. The day was perfect, warm, bright, and still; such a day as does not come many times in all the Scottish year.
Nancy Stirling stood at her cottage-door, looking out over the green slope, and the burn running full to the fields beyond, and the faraway hills; and, as she looked, she sighed, and quite forgot the water-bucket in her hand, and that she was on her way to the burn for water to make her afternoon cup of tea. We speak of spring as a joyful season; we say, “the glad spring,” and “the merry, merry May;” and it is a glad season to the birds and the bees, the lambs and the little children, and to grown people, too, who have nothing very sad to remember. But the coming back of so many fair things as the spring brings reminds many a one of fair things which can never come again; and hearts more contented than Mrs Stirling’s was, sometimes sigh in the light of such a day.
“It’s a bonny day,” said she to herself, “a seasonable day for the country; and we should be thankful.” But she sighed again as she said it; and, for no reason that she could give, her thoughts wandered away to a row of graves in the kirk-yard, and farther away still, to a home and a time in which she saw herself a little child, so blithe, so full of happy life, that, as it all came back, she could not but wonder how she ever should have changed to the troubled, dissatisfied woman that she knew herself to be.
“Oh, well! It couldna but be so, in a world like this. Such changes ay have been, and ay must be,” said she, trying to comfort herself with the “old philosophy.” But she did not quite succeed. For the passing years had changed her, and it came into her mind, as it had often come of late, that she might perhaps have made a better use of all that life had brought her. But it was not a pleasant thought to pursue; and she gave a little start of relief and pleasure as she caught sight of two figures coming slowly up the brae.
“It’s Lilias Elder and Archie. She’ll have nothing left to wish for now that she has him home again. Eh! but she’s a bonnie lassie, and a good! And Archie, too, is a well-grown lad, and not so set up as he might be, considering.”
It was Lilias and her brother. Archie was at home, after his first session at the college; and Nancy was right; Lilias had little left to wish for.
“Well, bairns,” she said, after the first greetings were over, “will you come in, or will you sit down here at the door? It’s such a bonny day. So you’re home again, Archie, lad, and glad to be, I hope?”
“Very glad,” said Archie. “I never was so glad before.”
“You said that last time,” said Lilias, laughing.
“Well, maybe I did. But it’s true all the same. I’m more glad every time.”
“And you didna come home before it was time,” said Nancy. “You’re thinner and paler than your aunt likes to see you, I’m thinking.”
“I’m perfectly well, I assure you,” said Archie.
“He will have a rest and the fresh country air again,” said Lilias. “He has been very close at his books.”
“Well, it may be that,” said Mrs Stirling. “And so you’re glad to be home again? You havena been letting that daft laddie, Davie Graham, lead you into any mischief that you would be afraid to tell your sister about, I hope?”
Archie laughed, and shook his head. Lilias laughed a little, too, as she said—
“Oh no, indeed. Even John says they have done wonderfully well: and after that you need have no fear.”
“It’s not unlikely that two or three things might happen in such a place, and John Graham be none the wiser. And it’s not likely that he’ll say any ill of your brother in your hearing,” said Nancy drily. “Not that I’m misdoubting you, Archie, man; and may you be kept safe, for your sister’s sake!”
“For a better reason than that, I hope, Mrs Stirling,” said Lilias gravely.
“Well, so be it; though his sister is a good enough reason for him, I hope. But where have you been? To see Bell Ray? How is she to-day, poor body?”
“We have not been there,” said Lilias. “We meant to go when we came from home; but we stayed so long down yonder that we had no time. I am going some day soon.”
“And where’s ‘down yonder,’ if I may ask?” demanded Mrs Stirling.
“At the moor cottage,” said Lilias. “We came over the hills to see it again, just to mind us of old times.”
“And we stayed so long, speaking about these old times, that we are likely to be late home,” said Archie; “and they are all coming up from the manse, to have tea in the Glen. We must make haste home, Lily.”
“Yes; and we stayed a while at the old seat under the rowan-tree. We could only just reach it, the burn is so full. And look at all the flowers I found in the cottage-garden—heart’s-ease, and daisies, and sweet-brier, and thyme. It seemed a pity to leave them, with nobody to see them. Give me something to put them in, Mrs Stirling, and I’ll leave some of them for you. We will have time enough for that, Archie, never fear.”
She sat down on the door-step, and laid the flowers on her lap.
“And wherefore should you be caring to mind yourselves of the old times, I wonder?” said Nancy, as she sat down beside her, holding the jug for the flowers in her hand. “Some of those days were sad enough, I’m sure. Maybe it’s to make you humble?”
“Yes, and thankful,” said Lilias softly.
“And those days were very pleasant, too, in one way,” said Archie.
“Ay, to you, lad. But some of them brought small pleasure to your sister, I’m thinking,” said Nancy sharply. “You’re a wise lad, but you dinna ken everything that came in those old times, as you call them.”
“But some of the things that I like best to remember happened on some of the very worst of those days,” said Lilias. “I should never have known half your goodness, for one thing. Do you mind that last day that I came to you? Oh, how weary I was that day!”
“And much good I did you,” said Nancy.
“Indeed you did, more than I could tell you then, more than I can tell you now,” said Lilias, giving the last touch to the flowers as she rose. “I like to think of those days. We are all the happier now for the troubles of the old times.”
“And truly I think you’ll ay be but the happier for whatever time may bring you,” said Nancy musingly, as she watched them hastening over the hill together. “‘To mind us of the old times,’” quoth she. “There are few folk but would be glad to forget, and to make others forget, ‘the hole of the pit.’ And look at these flowers, now! Who but Lilias Elder would think of a poor body like me caring for what is good neither to eat nor to drink? She’s like no one else. And as for her brother, he’s not so set up as folk might expect. May they be kept safe from the world’s taint and stain! I suppose the Lord can do it. I’m sure He can. ‘The law of the Lord is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide.’ She said it of her brother once; and if it is true of him it’s true of her. It is that that makes the difference. They have no cause to be afraid, even though ‘the earth be removed.’ Eh! but it is a grand thing to have the Lord on our side! Nothing can go far wrong with us then.”