On the whole the years which followed the birth of Ralph’s child were as happy as any Macneillie had known since Christine’s marriage, and as tranquil as his life was ever likely to be. Ralph and Evereld were like a son and daughter to him, and both were able to do much to help him in the busy and harassing days which fall to the lot of most managers.
Still there was no denying that his private troubles had more or less shattered his health; he worked on bravely, as had always been his custom, but now and then an intolerable sense of weariness crept over him and he would wonder how much longer he could keep going.
At last, soon after Dick had celebrated his second birthday, the manager suddenly broke down.
There was nothing which could definitely account for his failure; he had indeed been very busy with preparations for the Shaksperian Performances at Stratford-on-Avon, which were that year to be given by his company during the birthday week. But hard work seldom does people any harm. It was rather that he had for years been bearing a load which overtaxed his strength and at last, from sheer exhaustion, nature gave way.
His old enemy, utter sleeplessness, returned to torment him, and there was nothing for it but to obey the doctor’s orders and go to Scotland for rest and change.
“You are looking sorely fagged, Hugh,” was his mother’s comment when on the evening of his arrival at Callander they sat together by the fireside. It was some months since she had seen him and she was quick to note that he was hollow-cheeked and that his face, as she expressed it, “looked all eyes.”
“Scottish air will soon cure me,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “I shall sleep to-night.”
“Ah lad,” she said with a sigh, “and what reason is there that you should not be always breathing your native air? If you had but chosen the calling I would have had you choose, how different all might have been.”
“Yes, we might now have been sitting in the most comfortable Manse,” said Macneillie, a gleam of humour lighting up his grave face. “Instead of a lean and hard-worked actor, roaming from place to place, I might have been a portly minister revered by half the neighbourhood.”
“I believe you are tired of your wandering life after all,” she said, scrutinizing his careworn face with her keen eyes.