“Katrin!” cried Beenie in dismay.
But something, perhaps, in their low-toned but vehement conversation had caught some wandering and confused faculty not entirely overwhelmed in Lily’s bosom. She began to call out their names again with a wild appeal, “Marg’ret, Marg’ret!” above all the others, flinging out her arms and rising up in her bed, as Beenie had described in her gloomy anticipations, as if to give up the ghost.
And in this way days and weeks passed away. Lily’s fever seemed to have become a natural part of the life of the house. Robina seemed to herself unable to remember the time when she went to bed at night and got up again in the morning like other people, and had ordinary meals and went and came about the house. And all the incidents that had gone before became dim. If an answer had been demanded of her hurriedly, she could scarcely have ventured to affirm that any one was true: the marriage ceremony in the Manse parlor, the meetings of the young husband and wife, and above all the last tremendous event, which had seemed in its turn to be of more importance than any thing else that ever occurred. They had all faded away into the background, while Lily, sometimes pale as a ghost, sometimes flushed with the agitation of fever, lay struggling between life and death. The doctor, an ordinary village doctor, knew little of such maladies. He was reduced by his practical ignorance to the passive position which is now so often adopted by the highest knowledge. He watched the patient with anxious and sympathetic eyes, naturally sorry for a creature so young, with her girlish beauty fading like a flower. He did not know what to do, and he wisely did nothing. He had made, as was natural, many attempts to find out how an attack so serious had been brought on. Had she received any great shock? Katrin and Beenie, looking at each other, had answered cautiously that maybe it might be so, but they could not tell. Had she suddenly heard any bad news? Oh, yes, poor thing, she had done that! very bad news that had just gone straight to her heart like the shot of a gun. “But, doctor, you’ll say nothing to Sir Robert of that.” The doctor drew his own conclusions and satisfied himself. No doubt the shock was the arrival of the old uncle. He had heard something of the young gentleman who was always coming and going, and that the two would make a bonnie couple if every thing went right, though this good-natured speech was accompanied by shakings of the head and prognostications of dreadful things that might happen if every thing went wrong. The doctor nodded his head and made up his mind that he had penetrated the affair. It would not even have shocked him to hear that it had gone the length of a secret marriage. Private marriages acknowledged late were not looked upon in Scotland with very severe eyes. Both law and custom excused them, though in such a case as Lily’s it was strange that any thing of the kind should occur.
But it becomes of very little importance, when such a malady has dragged along its weary course for weeks, to know what was the cause of it. The rapid cures which a promise of happiness works, in fiction at least, very seldom occur in life, and when the spiritual part of the patient becomes lost, as it were, in the hot running current of fevered blood, and the predominance of the agitated body is complete over all the commotions of the mind, it is vain to think of proposing remedies for the original wrong, even if that were possible. Sir Robert now and then paid a visit to his niece’s room, short and unwilling, dictated solely by a sense of duty. He stood near the door and looked at her, tossing on her pillows, or lying as if dead in the apathy of exhaustion, with an uneasy sense, partly that he was himself badly used by Providence, partly that he might, perhaps, be partially himself to blame. He had left her here very lonely. Perhaps it was a mistake in judgment; but then he had been entirely ignorant of the circumstances, and how could it be said to be his fault? When she began to talk, he could not understand what she said—nor, indeed, could any one in the quickened and hurrying incoherence of the utterance—except the cry of Marg’ret, Marg’ret, Marg’ret! which still sometimes came with a passion that made it intelligible from her lips. “Who is Marg’ret?” he asked angrily. “I remember no person of that name.” “Marg’ret! Marg’ret! Marg’ret!” cried Lily again, her confused mind caught by his repetition of the name. She flung herself toward the side of the bed which was nearest the door, opening her eyes wide, as if to see better, and adding, with a cry of ecstasy: “She has brought him back—she has brought him back!” Sir Robert hurried away with a thrill of alarm. Who was it that was to be brought back? Who was the Marg’ret for whom she cried night and day? Was it the mere delirium of her fever, or was something else—something real and unknown—hidden below?
CHAPTER XXXVI
Sir Robert had not at this time a happy life. His friends went away at last, having exhausted the little shootings of Dalrugas and finding that social amusement of any kind was not to be found there, besides the ever-present reason of “illness in the house” why they should not outstay the limits of their invitation. And no one else came. Why should they, considering how very little inducement he had to offer? This of itself was a hard confession for the proud old man to make, who, perhaps, had been tempted now and then to enhance at his club, or in his favorite society, those attractions of his little patrimony, which were so very different, as he remembered them, from what they were now. John Duff of Blackscaur made a call to say chiefly how sorry he was that he could show no civilities to his neighbor, having only come to a dismantled house for a few weeks’ shooting, his wife being abroad. “I was glad to give a little sport to one of the young Lumsdens last year,” he said. “I heard he was a friend of yours.” “No friend of mine!” cried Sir Robert, suddenly recalled by the name to the original cause, which he had more than half forgotten, of Lily’s banishment. “Ah!” cried John Duff indifferently, “it was a mistake, then. Of course I knew his father.” This was the only social overture made to Sir Robert Ramsay, and it carried with it a sting, which gave him considerable uneasiness. “Would the fellow have the audacity to come after her here?” he asked himself. And he made up his mind wrathfully, when Lily was better, to enquire into this allusion. When Lily was better! But he was still more angry when any doubt was expressed on that subject. Katrin’s tearful looks once or twice when the patient was worse he took as a personal affront. He would not believe that Providence, however hostile, could treat him so badly as that.
When he was in this lonely and unsatisfied state of mind, a letter came for him one day from the Manse, begging him in his charity to go and see the minister, who was unable to come to him. “Ah! old Blythe,” Sir Robert said. He would not have thought very much of old Blythe in other days, but now he remembered, not without pleasure, the good stories the minister told, and the good company he was. “Will Rory last with me as far as the Manse?” he said to Dougal. “Rory, Sir Robert, he’ll just last till the Day o’ Judgment,” said Dougal. “I have no occasion for him so far as that!” Sir Robert replied sharply; and he felt that it was not quite becoming his dignity to ride into Kinloch-Rugas mounted upon a Highland pony; but what can one do when there is no other way? The minister sat as usual in his great chair by the fire, which burned dully still, though the day was August. He said: “Come in, Sir Robert, come ben! I’m very glad to see you, though it is a long time since we met. You will, maybe, find the fire too much at this time of the year, but, you see, I’m a lameter that cannot move out of my chair, and I never find it warm enough for me.”
“You should have a chair that you could move about and get into the sun now and then; that’s the only thing that warms the blood—at our age.”
“I am years older than you. I consider you a fine trim and trig elderly young man.”
The minister laughed more cordially at this jest than Sir Robert did. He did not like the faintest suggestion of ridicule. It is true that he was trim and well dressed, an example of careful toilet and appearance beside the careless old heavy form in the easy chair. Mr. Blythe had long since ceased to care what his appearance was. Sir Robert was “very particular” and careful of every detail.