“I think I ought to go and see Helen, uncle,” she said.
“Certainly, certainly!” he cried, more eager than she was. “Order the brougham at once, and be sure you take plenty of wraps. Is there any thing we could send? Think, my dear: is there any thing I could do? I would like—to show every respect.”
He made a movement as if he would go to the escritoire in which he kept his money; for checks were not, or at least were not for individual purposes, in those days.
“Uncle,” she said, “they are not poor people; you cannot send money—they are like ourselves.”
“Let me tell you,” he said, with a little irritation, “that there are many families even like ourselves, as you say, which the Blythes are not, who would be very thankful for a timely present at such a moment. But, however—— Is there nothing you can take—no cordial, or a little of the port, or—or any thing?”
“Helen wants nothing, uncle—but perhaps a kind word.”
“Helen! Ah, that’s true: the auld man’s gone that would have known the good of it. Well, tell her at least that if I can be of any use to her—— I always thought,” he cried, with a little evident but quickly suppressed emotion, “that he had something he wanted to say to me, something that was on his mind.”
How little he thought what it was that the old minister had on his mind! and how well Lily knew!
Helen was very calm, almost calmer than Lily was, when they met in the old parlor where the great chair was already set against the wall. “You are not to cry, Lily. He was very clear in his mind, though sore wearied in his body. He was glad at the last to get away. He said: ‘I’ve had my time here, and no a bad time either, the Lord be praised for all his mercies, and I’ll maybe find a wee place to creep into that She will have keepit for me: not a minister,’ he said, oh, Lily! ‘but maybe a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.’ Is that not all we could wish for, that his mind should have been like that?” said Helen, with eyes too clear for tears. She was arranging every thing in her quiet way, requiring no help, quite worn out with watching, but incapable of rest until all that was needful had been done. The darkened room where so much had happened, isolated now from the common day by the shutting out of the light, seemed like a sort of funereal, monumental chamber in all its homely shabbiness, a gray and colorless vault, not for him who had gone out of it, but for the ghosts and phantoms of all that had taken place there. Lily’s heart was more oppressed by the gray detachment of that room, in which her own life had been decided, than either by the serene death above or the serene sorrow by her side.
When she got back, Sir Robert, very fretful, was sitting over the fire. He was hoarse and coughing, and more impatient than she had seen him. “If it goes on like this, I’ll not stay here,” he said, “not another week, let them say what they like! Four weeks of frost, a measured month, and as much more in that bitter sky. No. I will not stay; and, however attached you are to the place, you’ll come with me, Lily. Yes, you’ll come with me! We’ll take up my old travelling carriage and we’ll get away to the South, if I were but free of this confounded cold!”