“You think not,” said Lily, “but if you have dragged your father’s——”
“You little devil,” he cried, “to mind me of that!” and then he took off his hat stiffly, and with ceremony, and said: “I beg your pardon, Miss Ramsay, or whatever your name may be.”
“You are very insulting to me!” said Lily. “Why should I stand out here and let you abuse me? What are you to me that I should bear it?” But presently she added, softening: “I’m very sorry for you, all the same.”
She was hurrying away when he seized her by the arm and held her back. “Do you see that? Am I to stand still and see that, and hold my peace forever?”
The corner among the lilacs had this advantage, carefully calculated, who could doubt, years ago? that those who stood there, though unseen themselves, could see any one who approached the door of the Manse. The young minister, Mr. Douglas, had come quietly in while they were speaking: his footstep was not one that made the gravel fly. He stood, an image of quietness and good order, on the step, awaiting admittance. Scotch ministers of that date were not always so careful in their dress, so regardful of their appearance, as this young Levite. He had his coat buttoned, his umbrella neatly folded. He was not impatient, as Duff would have been in his place, but stood immovable, waiting till Marget in the kitchen had snatched her clean apron from where it lay, and tied it on to make herself look respectable before she answered the bell. Duff gripped Lily’s arm, not letting her go, and shaking with fierce internal laughter, which burst forth in an angry shout when the door was closed again and the assistant and successor admitted. “Call that a man!” he said, “with milk in his veins for blood; and you’re all in a plot to take her from me, and give her to cauld parritch like that!”
“He would keep her like the apple of his eye. There would no wind blow rough upon her if he could help it!” cried Lily, shaking herself free.
“And you think that a grand thing for a woman?” he cried scornfully, “like a petted bairn, instead of the guardian of a man’s life.”
“Oh, Alick Duff!” cried Lily, half exasperated, half overcome, “come back, come back an honest man, for her father will not live forever.”
“What would I want with her then if I was all I wanted without her?” he said, with another harsh laugh, and then turned on his heel, grinding the gravel under his foot, and without another word stalked away.
How strange it was to go in with fiery words ringing in her ears and the excitement of such a meeting in her veins, and find these people apparently so calm, sitting in the little dimly lighted parlor, where two candles on the table and a small lamp by Mr. Blythe’s head on the mantel-piece were all that was thought necessary! Lily was too much moved herself to remark how they all looked up at her with a certain expectation: Helen wistful and anxious, the old minister closing his open book over his hand, the young one rising to greet her, with almost an appealing glance. They seemed all, to Lily’s eyes, so harmonious, the same caste, the same character, fated to spend their lives side by side. And what had that violent spirit, that uncontrollable and impassioned man, with his futile ideal, to do in such a place? Mr. Douglas belonged to it and fell into all its traditions, but the other could never have had any fit place within the little circle of those two candles on the table. When the pause caused by her entrance—a pause of marked expectation, though none of the party anticipated that she would say a word—was over, the usual talk was resumed, the conversation about the parish folk who were ill, and those who were in trouble, and those to whom any special event had happened. John Logan and the death of his cows, poor things, who were the sustenance of the bairns; and the reluctance of poor Widow Blair to part with her son, who was a “natural,” and had just an extraordinary chance of being received into one of those new institutions where they are said to do such wonderful things for that kind of poor imbecile creature: this was what Helen and her friend were talking of. The minister himself had a more mundane mind. He held his Scotsman fiercely, and read now and then out loud a little paragraph; and then he looked fixedly at Lily behind the cover of the newspaper, till his steady gaze drew her eyes to him. Then he put a question to her with his lips and eyes, without uttering any sound, and finding that unsuccessful, called her to him. “See you here, Miss Lily: there’s something here in very small print ye must read to me with your young eyes.”