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