“Can I do it, father?” said Helen.
“Just let me and Miss Lily be. She will do it fine, and not grudge the trouble. Is that man hovering about this house? Is he always there? I will have to send for the constable if he will not go away.”
“I hope he is gone for to-night, Mr. Blythe.”
“For to-night—to be back to-morrow like a shadow hanging round the place. You’re a young woman and a bonnie one, and that carries every thing with a man like him. Get him away! I cannot endure it longer. Get him away!”
“Mr. Blythe——”
“I am saying to you get him away!” said the minister in incisive, sharp notes. And then he added: “After all, the old eyes are not so much worse than the young ones. Many thanks to you all the same.”
CHAPTER XXX
This agitating episode in Lily’s life was a relief to her from her own prevailing troubles. They all apologized to her for bringing her into the midst of their annoyances, but it was, in fact, nothing but an advantage. To contrast what she had herself to bear with the lot of Helen even was good for Lily. If she had but known a little sooner how long and sweetly that patient creature had waited, how many years had passed over her head, while she did her duty quietly, and neither upbraided God nor man, Lily thought it would have shamed herself into quiet, too, and prevented, perhaps, that crowning outcome of impatience which had taken place in the Manse parlor on that January night. Did she regret that January night with all its mystery, its hurry, and tumult of feeling? Oh, no! she said to herself, it would be false to Ronald to entertain such a thought; but yet how could she help feeling with a sort of yearning the comparative freedom of her position then, the absence of all complication? Lily had believed, as Ronald told her, that all complications would be swept away by this step. She would be freed, she thought, at once from her uncle’s sway, and ready to follow her husband wherever their lot might lie. Every thing would be clear before her when she was Ronald’s wife. She had thought so with certain and unfeigned faith. She might perhaps have been in that condition still, always believing, feeling that nothing was wanted but the bond that made them one, if that bond had not been woven yet. Poor Lily! She would not permit herself to say that she regretted it. Oh, no! how could she regret it? Every thing was against them for the moment, but yet she was Ronald’s, and Ronald hers, forever and ever. No man could put them asunder. At any time, in any circumstances, if the yoke became too hard for her to bear, she could go unabashed to her husband for succor. How, then, could she regret it? But Helen had waited through years and years, while Lily had grown impatient before the end of one; or perhaps it was not Lily, but Ronald, that had grown impatient. No, she could not shelter herself with that. Lily had been as little able to brave the solitude, the separation, the banishment, as he. And here stood Helen, patient, not saying a word, always bearing a brave face to the world, enduring separation, with a hundred pangs added to it, terrors for the man she loved, self-reproach, and all the exactions of life beside, which she had to meet with a cheerful countenance. How much better was this quiet, gentle woman, pretending to nothing, than Lily, who beat her wings against the cage, and would not be satisfied? Even now what would not Helen give if she could see her lover from time to time as Lily saw her husband, if she knew that he was satisfied, and, greatest of all, that he was unimpeachable, above all reproach? For that certainty Helen would be content to die, or to live alone forever, or to endure any thing that could be given her to bear. And Lily was not content, oh! not at all content! Her heart was torn by a sense of wrong that was not in Helen’s mind. Was it that she was the most selfish, the most exacting, the least generous of all? Even Ronald was happy—a man, who always wanted more than a woman—in having Lily, in the fact that she belonged to him; while she wanted a great deal more than that—so much more that there was really no safe ground between them, but as much disagreement as if they were a disunited couple, who quarrelled and made scenes between themselves, which was a suggestion at which Lily half laughed, half shuddered. If it went on long like this, they might turn to be—who could tell?—a couple who quarrelled, between whom there was more opposition and anger than love. Lily laughed at the thought, which was ridiculous; but there was certainly a shiver in it, too.
Duff had gone away before her short visit to the Manse came to an end. He disappeared after a last long interview with Helen under the bare lilac bushes, of which the little party in the parlor was very well aware, though no one said a word. The minister shifted uneasily on his chair, and held his paper with much fierce rustling up in his hands toward the lamp, as if it had been light he wanted. But what he wanted was to shield himself from the observation of the others, who sat breathless, exchanging, at long intervals, a troubled syllable or two. Mr. Douglas had, perhaps, strictly speaking, no right to be there, spying, as the old minister thought, upon the troubles of the family, and, as he himself was painfully conscious, intrusively present in the midst of an episode with which he had nothing to do. But he could not go away, which would make every thing worse, for he would then probably find himself in face of Helen tremblingly coming back, or of the desperate lover going away. A consciousness that it was the last was in all their minds, though nobody could have told why. Lily sat trembling, with her head down over her work, sometimes saying a little prayer for Helen, broken off in the middle by some keen edge of an intrusive thought, sometimes listening breathless for the sound of her step or voice. At last, to the instant consciousness of all, which made the faintest sound audible, the Manse door was opened and closed so cautiously that nothing but the ghost of a movement could be divined in the quiet. No one of the three changed a hair-breadth in position, and yet the sensation in the room was as if every one had turned to the door. Was she coming in here fresh from that farewell? Would she stand at the door, and look at them all, and say: “I can resist no longer. I am going with him.” This was what the old minister, with a deep distrust in human nature, which did not except Helen, feared and would always fear. Or would she come as if nothing had happened, with the dew of the night on her hair, and Alick Duff’s desperate words in her ears, and sit down and take up her seam, which Lily, feeling that in such a case the stress of emotion would be more than she could bear, almost expected? Helen did none of these things. She was heard, or rather felt, to go upstairs, and then there was an interval of utter silence, which only the rustling of the minister’s paper, and a subdued sob, which she could not disguise altogether, from Lily, broke. And presently Helen came into the room, paler than her wont, but otherwise unchanged. “It is nine o’clock, father,” she said; “I will put out the Books.” The “Books” meant, and still mean, in many an old-fashioned Scotch house, the family worship, which is the concluding event of the day. She laid the large old family Bible on the little table by his side, and took from him the newspaper, which he handed to her without saying a word. And Marget came in from the kitchen, and took her place near the door.
Thus Helen’s tragedy worked itself out. There is always, or so most people find when their souls are troubled, something in the lesson for the day, or in “the chapter,” as we say in Scotland, when it comes to be read in its natural course, which goes direct to the heart. Very, very seldom, indeed, are the instances in which this curious unintentional sortes fails. As it happened, that evening the chapter which Mr. Blythe read in his big and sometimes gruff voice was that which contained the parable of the prodigal son. He began the story, as we so often do, with the indifferent tones of custom, reverential as his profession and the fashion of his day exacted, but not otherwise moved. But perhaps some glance at his daughter’s head, bent over the Bible, in which she devoutly followed, after the prevailing Scotch fashion, the words that were read, perhaps the wonderful narrative itself, touched even the old minister’s heavy spirit. His voice took a different tone. It softened, it swelled, it rose and fell, as does that most potent of all instruments when it is tuned by the influence of profound human feeling. The man was a man of coarse fibre, not capable of the finer touches of emotion; but he had sons of his own out in the darkness of the world, and the very fear of losing the last comfort of his heart made him more susceptible to the passion of parental anguish, loss, and love. Lower and lower bowed Helen’s head as her father read; all the little involuntary sounds of humanity, stirrings and breathings, which occur when two or three are gathered together, were hushed; even Marget sat against the wall motionless; and when finally, like the very climax of the silence, another faint, uncontrollable sob came from Lily, the sensation in the room was as of something almost too much for flesh and blood. Mr. Blythe shut the book with a sound in his throat almost like a sob. He waved his hand toward the younger man at the table. “You will give the prayer,” he said in what sounded a peremptory tone, and leaned back in the chair, from which he was incapable of moving, covering his face with his hands.