“Deadly tired,” he admitted with a sigh. “But what has that to do with it? Are not half the manses in the land filled with weary men who would give anything for a change in the dull routine of the work they are called to do? It is the same with all of us, Mother. However much we love our profession there must be hard times now and again, and somehow we have got to live through them like men.”
She did not reply, but silently knitted away at one of his socks, thinking to herself how different his life would have been had she had the ordering of it. He should have come to great honour, should have been a noted preacher filling a high position in Edinburgh, he should have married well, and about her in her old age troops of grandchildren should have played. As it was, his life had she felt been wrecked by the luckless taste for dramatic art which had puzzled her so much from his childhood upwards. She laid all his misfortunes to that strange and unaccountable passion for acting which she was wholly unable to comprehend. It was this which had brought him into contact with Christine Greville, this which had debarred him from marriage, this which had for years prevented him from settling down, and forced him to lead the life of a wanderer.
“Hugh,” she said, “is it even now too late? Could you not give up acting and do something more worthy of your powers?”
He started as though someone had struck him a blow.
“Give up my profession?” he said in amazement. “Why no, mother, I could never do that. I am tired out and in a grumbling mood but you must not take me too literally. My vocation has saved me again and again from making utter shipwreck. Depend upon it no other work is as you would say ‘more worthy’ of me.”
She urged it no more; but the old sore feeling that his mother could not understand his point of view, that she still in her heart desired him to take up work for which he was wholly unfitted, came back to mar the entire peace of Macneillie’s holiday.
On the Saturday before Holy Week he could no longer resist the restless craving for change which took possession of him as his strength gradually returned. And taking leave of his mother he left Callander and travelled down to Stratford, intending there to await the arrival of his company later on.
It was a mild bright afternoon in mid April when he reached the quiet little town. It seemed to sleep tranquilly in the golden sunshine, scarcely a breath of air stirred the trees, the beautiful spire of the stately old church rose into the bluest of skies, and the green fields flecked with daisies seemed to be just the right setting for a picture so fair and peaceful. The pastoral character of the scenery somehow suited Macneillie’s mood better even than the rugged mountains of his own land. Surely in this quiet loveliness, rich in associations with the great Master he could gain the rest and the ease he so grievously needed!
He would spend his days on the river, would not allow any business anxieties or arrangements for the following week to invade his repose; Shakspere and Shakspere’s country should hearten him for the future—the quiet of Holy Week should lift him up out of the depression which sought to drag him back into its dreary torture chambers.
So he thought to himself on the evening of his arrival; forgetting that “through the shadow of an agony cometh redemption”;—never dreaming that in this most tranquil place he was to be confronted with the worst ordeal of his whole life.