Yes, she helped him, and gave him hope. And in helping him, she herself was helped.
“I will let it all go,” she said to herself, at last. “Was I right? Was I wrong? Would it have been better? Would it have been worse? God knows, who, though I knew it not, has had His hand about me through it all. I am content. As for what may be before me—that is in His hand as well.”
Would she have had it otherwise? No, she would not—even if it should come true that the life she had fled from, might still be hers. But that could never be. Brownrig helpless, repentant, was no longer the man whom she had loathed and feared.
Since the Lord himself had interposed to save him, might not she—for His dear name’s sake—be willing to serve him in his suffering and weakness, till the end should come? And what did it matter whether the service were done here or there, or whether the time were longer or shorter? And why should she heed what might be said of it all? Even the thought of her brother, who would be angry, and perhaps unreasonable in his anger, must not come between her and her duty to this man, to whom she had been brought as a friend and helper at last.
And so she let all go—her doubts, and fears, and cares, willing to wait God’s will. Her face grew white and thin in these days, but very peaceful. At the utterance of some chance word, there came no more a sudden look of doubt or fear into her beautiful, sad eyes. Face, and eyes, and every word and movement told of peace. Whatever struggle she had been passing through, during all these months, it was over now. She was waiting neither for one thing nor another,—to be bound, or to be set free. She was “waiting on God’s will, content.”
They all saw it—Mistress Robb, in whose house she lived, and Robert Hume, and Doctor Fleming, who had been mindful of her health and comfort all through her stay. Even Mr Rainy, who had little time to spare from his own affairs, took notice of her peaceful face, and her untroubled movements as she went about the sickroom.
“But oh! I’m wae for the puir lassie,” said he, falling like the rest into Scotch when much moved. “She kens little what’s before her. He is like a lamb now; but when his strength comes back, if it ever comes back,—she will hae her ain adoes with him. Still—she’s a sensible woman, and she canna but hae her ain thochts about him, and—and about—ahem—the gear he must soon—in the course o’ nature—leave behind him. Weel! it will fall into good hands; it could hardly fall into better, unless indeed, the Brownrig, that young Douglas of Fourden married against the will o’ his friends some forty years ago, should turn out to be the factor’s eldest sister, and a soldier lad I ken o’, should be her son. It is to a man’s own flesh and blood, that his siller (money) should go by rights. But yet a man can do what he likes with what he has won for himsel’—”
All this or something like it, Mr Rainy had said to himself a good many times of late, and one day he said it to Doctor Fleming, with whom, since they both had so much to do with Brownrig, he had fallen into a sort of intimacy.
“Yes, she is a sensible woman, and may make a good use of it. But it is to a man’s ain flesh and blood that his gear should go. I have been taking some trouble in the looking up of a nephew of his, to whom he has left five hundred pounds, and I doubt the lad will not be well pleased, that all the rest should go as it’s going.”
The doctor had not much to say about the matter. But he answered: