“For how can I forsake him now? And yet—how can I go with him—to meet all that may wait me there? Have I been wrong all the way through, from the very first, and is this the way in which my punishment is to come? And is it my own will I have been seeking all this time, while I have been asking to be led?”
There was no wind to battle against to-day, but when she came to the place where she had been once before at a time like this, she sat down at the foot of the great rock, and went over it all again. To what purpose!
There was only one way in which the struggle could end,—just as it had often ended before.
“I will make no plan. I will live just day by day. And if I am led by Him—as the blind are led—what does it matter where?”
So she rose and went slowly home, and was “just as usual,” as far as Mrs Robb, or even the clearer-eyed Robert, could see. Robert was back to his classes and his books again, and he took a great but silent interest in Allison’s comings and goings, gathering from chance words of hers more than ever she dreamed of disclosing. And from her silence he gathered something too.
A few more days passed, and though little difference could be seen in Brownrig’s state from day-to-day, when the week came to an end, even Allison could see that a change of some kind had come, or was drawing near. The sick man spoke, now and then, about getting home, and about the carriage which was to be sent for him, and when the doctor came, he asked, “Will it be to-morrow?” But he hardly heeded the answer when it was given, and seemed to have no knowledge of night or day, or of how the time was passing.
He slumbered and wakened, and looked up to utter a word or two, and then slumbered again. Once or twice he started, as if he were afraid, crying out for help, for he was “slipping away.” And hour after hour—how long the hours seemed—Allison sat holding his hand, speaking a word now and then, to soothe or to encourage him, as his eager, anxious eyes sought hers. And as she sat there in the utter quiet of the time, she did get a glimpse of the “wherefore” which had brought her there.
For she did help him. When there came back upon him, like the voice of an accusing enemy, the sudden remembrance of some cruel or questionable deed of his, which he could not put from him as he had done in the days of his strength, he could not shut his eyes and refuse to see his shame, nor his lips, and refuse to utter his fears. He moaned and muttered a name, now and then, which startled Allison as she listened, and brought back to her memory stories which had been whispered through the countryside, of hard measure meted out by the laird’s factor, to some who had had no helper—of acts of oppression, even of injustice, against some who had tried to maintain their rights, and against others who yielded in silence, knowing that to strive would be in vain.
Another might not have understood, for he had only strength for a word or two, and he did not always know what he was saying. But Allison understood well, and she could not wonder at the remorse and fear which his words betrayed. Oh! how she pitied him, and soothed and comforted him during these days.
And what could she say to him, but the same words, over and over again? “Mighty to save!—To the very utmost—even the chief of sinners,—for His name’s sake.”