Wayfaring Men: A Novel

by Edna Lyall

Since her marriage he had never seen Christine; at first he had purposely avoided her, and after his return from America had still deemed it prudent to refuse a London engagement, and to enter on that career as manager of a travelling company which had now for some years absorbed his thoughts and his energies. He wondered often whether their paths would ever again cross, and with a certain sturdy Scottish resolution he held on his way, neither seeking nor avoiding a meeting.

He was still talking to Ralph on this summer afternoon, when his mother came into the room with the letters of the second post.

“Ha, here is one from Edinburgh,” exclaimed Macneillie. “Now we shall hear your fate. Well, it’s not much of an offer but better than nothing. Middle of June to the end of July, that will fit in well enough. To be walking gentleman after the parts you have been playing will be uninteresting, but you will at any rate be secure of your salary, and will be acting with better people. Here is the list of plays; let us see who the stars are.”

Glancing down the paper he gave a perceptible start.

“That’s an odd coincidence after what we were just talking about,” he said, handing the list to his companion; and Ralph saw that in the first week of July, Christine Greville was to appear as Ellen Douglas. He hardly knew whether he were glad or sorry. Naturally his affection for Macneillie tended to make him a somewhat severe judge of the woman who, after a ten years’ betrothal, had forsaken her lover and married for money; but nevertheless he wanted to meet her, and Macneillie was not ill pleased at the chance of thus learning indirectly how Christine prospered in the life she had chosen.

Somehow the news seemed to cheer them both. Macneillie stood gazing out of the window, lost in thought.

The rain had ceased, and though the sky was still in part overclouded there were little rifts of blue, and in the west a bright gleam which swept across the hills facing the window in a long level line of golden brightness. Above, were the dark mountain tops, below, in deep shade, the woods; and the points of the trees stood out sharply defined along the broad intervening strip of sunlit grass. He could not have explained his own feelings, but it seemed to him that some unexpected gleam of brightness had come, too, into his overclouded life.

During the days that followed something of the old hero-worship began to reassert itself in Ralph’s heart as he learnt to understand more of his friend’s character. To the genius and fervour and romance of the Kelt, Macneillie united a singularly strong and virile nature, and although he had shaken off some of the trammels of the school of theology to which his mother still belonged, he was emphatically one whose life was ruled by faith. This was indeed generally recognised, although he was not given to many words; but the world agreed in describing him by that unsatisfactory phrase, “a religious man,” and many in the profession could testify that his religion was of that pure and undefiled kind which is known not so much by words or outward observances, as by the living of a good, manly life.

There was, to Ralph’s mind, something very touching in the relations between the actor and his mother. His care in avoiding all topics that could pain her, his solicitude for her comfort, and the pleasure he took in the restful home-life, which could only be his at long intervals, formed but one side of the picture. There was the ineffable pride of the old lady in her only son, her delight in his success being only modified by the unconquerable scruples which she still felt as to the stage, scruples which were, however, difficult to maintain in all their fulness when she was every day confronted by so admirable a representative of the actor’s profession.

As soon as it was practicable, Macneillie made the convalescent spend a great part of each day out of doors, at first in the garden or in the wood at the back of the house, and later on, when walking became possible, on the hill-side near the wishing-well, where far away from houses and with a glorious panorama of lake and mountain they rested for hours on the heather.