Suddenly, I know not why, I thought of the grey stranger, and, with a laugh, I cried:—
“The grey traveller taught me all I have said to you.”
“The grey traveller! Who may he be?”
But I lay back upon the pillows and refused to answer, and very soon the doctor went, still bending uneasy, nervous eyes upon me.
In those eyes I read the change that had stolen over my intellect, as in the hand-mirror I had read the change that had stolen over my face. This strange fever had caused both soul and body to blossom. I trembled with an exquisite joy. Had Fate relented to me at last? Was it possible that I was to know the joys of the heroes? I longed for, yet feared my full recovery. In it alone should I discover how sincere was my transformation. Doctor Wedderburn did not come to me again. The days passed, my convalescence strengthened, watched over by the pretty nurse, Kate Walters, a fresh, pure, pious, innocent, beautiful soul, tender, temperate, and pitiful for all sorrow and evil. At length I was well. At length I knew, to some extent, my new, my marvellous self. For I had, indeed, been folded up in my fever like a vesture, and, like a vesture, changed. I had grown taller, expanded, put forth mighty muscles as a tree puts forth leaves. My cheeks and my eyes glowed with the radiance of strong health. I went out with my cousin Gavin, whose estate marched with mine, and I shot so well that he was filled with admiration, and forthwith conceived a sort of foolish worship for me—having a sportsman's soul but no real mind. For the first time in my life I felt absolutely at home on a horse, an unwonted skill came to my hands, and I actually schooled Gavin's horses over some fences he had had set up in a grass park at the Mains of Cossens. The keepers who had once secretly jeered at me were now at my very feet. Their children looked upon me as a young god. I rejoiced in my strength as a giant. But I asked myself then, as I ask myself now—what does it mean? The days of miracles are over. Yet, is this not a miracle? And in a miracle is there not a gleam of terror, as there is a gleam of stormy yellow in the fated opal? But here I leave my condition of body alone, and pass on to the episode of Doctor Wedderburn, partially related in the newspapers of the day and marvelled at, I believe, by all who ever knew, or even set eyes upon him.
The doctor, as I have said, did not come again to see me, but I felt an over-mastering desire to set forth and visit him. This was surprising, as hitherto I had rather avoided and hated him. Now something drew me to the Manse. At first I resisted my inclination, but a chance word led me to yield to it impulsively. Since my illness I had not once attended church. Moved by a violent distaste for the religious service, that was novel in me, I had frankly avowed my intention of keeping away. But, as I did not go to the kirk, I missed seeing Dr Wedderburn; and I wanted to see him. One day, leaning by chance against a stone dyke in the Glen of Ogilvy, smoking a pipe and enjoying the soft air of Spring as it blew over the rolling moorland, I heard two ploughmen exchange a fragment of gossip that made excitement start up quick within me.
One said:—
“The doctor's failin'. Man, he was fairly haverin' last Sabbath, on and on, wi'out logic or argeyment or sense.”
The other answered:—
“Ay; he's greatly changed. He's no the man he was. It fairly beats me; I canna mak' it out. Ye've heard that—” And here he lowered his voice and I could not catch his words.