“So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate,

True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth,

And between earth and heaven stand simply great,

That these shall seem but their attendants both.”

Lowell.

For some days Ralph gave his new friends a good deal of anxiety; no doubt the worry and the underfeeding of the past nine months had told upon him, and culminating in this week of hardship and exposure had left him very ill-fitted to resist the modern plague which was scourging the country. By the time he had turned the corner and was able to spend part of each day in the adjoining room, he had wound himself very closely about the hearts both of the mother and the son. For there was something in his blithe cheerfulness which was very winning and which not even the depression that always accompanies influenza could affect for very long, any more than Sir Matthew Mactavish’s treatment could really embitter his nature, though it occasionally made him speak a few cynical words.

Macneillie had by this time heard the story of his life, and had set his mind at rest by offering to have him in his company at the beginning of August. He wrote, moreover, to a friend of his, the manager of one of the Edinburgh theatres, and tried to obtain a temporary engagement for him, to fill up the summer months. To this there was for some days no response, and Ralph, who was beginning to chafe at the thought of his penniless condition, grew depressed, and with the sensitiveness of a convalescent feared that he was a burden to his kindly host. Macneillie was quick to discern what was passing in his mind.

“Pining for that hospital you were so anxious to find at Callander?” he said one afternoon when he had found Ralph unusually depressed.

The invalid smiled.

“Not exactly. But I’m wishing I needn’t spoil your holiday.”.

“Have you forgotten what I told you as we waited for the coach that day at Kilmahog?” said Macneillie, bracing himself up as though for some effort. “This house would never have been built if it had not been for you. I saw you hardly took in what I was saying, but it’s as true as that you and I sit here together smoking. I will try to tell you the whole story.”

“Years ago, when I was a young fellow playing juvenile lead in Castor’s travelling company, there joined us a little, forlorn girl of sixteen, fresh from school, and utterly innocent. She was very unhappy, and I, naturally enough, fell into the sort of position that you fell into with Ivy Grant. She badly wanted a protector, and I did what I could for her. Well, little by little, this sort of friendship drifted into love, and though our engagement was not made public and was never recognised by her parents, they did not exactly forbid it or in any way hinder our intercourse, being shrewd enough, I suppose, to see that had they done so, their daughter would only have become more resolute and determined. Things drifted on like this for ten years. For five of these years we were acting in the same theatre in London, and I was fairly satisfied to wait, and never once doubted her. But there came a time when she felt hampered in her profession for want of money, and just then came an offer of marriage from a man who, though old enough to be her father, was immensely rich. He had a title moreover, and as far as I know, he was not a bad fellow—had he not been of decent repute, I am sure she would not have married him. Still I had seen enough of him to know that they had not a taste in common, and the misery of it all unhinged me. She was to be married at the close of the season, and every night—twice on Saturdays—we had to act together. It all went on like some ghastly dream”—he pushed back his chair and began to pace the room as though the recollection were intolerable. “The play was invariably ‘Hamlet;’ I have never been able to face the thought of acting the part again. The only thing that carried me through was a sort of desperate resolve to keep up appearances for her sake. There had been, naturally enough, a certain amount of gossip about us, but few knew that we had been actually engaged, and in the very worst of the time there was a sort of odd sense of triumph, for I knew that I was acting behind the scenes with a perfection which I was never likely to touch before the curtain. It told on me, though. When the end of the season came I had been for eight nights without sleep, and after saying good-bye to her, and realising that there was no need to keep up any longer, all power of rational thought seemed suddenly to go from me. I had acted my part so well that she believed that I had become reconciled to the thought of her marriage, and I suppose she thought that I should take that position of friend, which she wished me to take. At any rate her last words were a request that I would be present at the little country church where the wedding was to take place.

“I left it uncertain whether I would go or not, and went home debating which would really be best for her, which would set her most at ease. Could I for the time efface myself so completely as to play the part of an old friend? If she had really cared for the man she was to marry, that would have been possible; I could have rejoiced in her happiness. But this, as things were, I thought out of the question. And then in the darkness of the night, as I lay wondering stupidly which would be the best for her, a wild notion that it would be best if I were dead suddenly took possession of me. I was too worn out to think anything at all about the right and wrong of the matter; it was just an overmastering idea that crowded out every other consideration. I even forgot my own mother,—that has always seemed to me the most incredible part of the whole business. When morning came, I made my preparations and walked out, with no notion at all as to place, but only a vague wish to be away from bricks and mortar. After a time I found myself in Richmond Park, and was making for a quiet glade I knew of, when there came a sound of footsteps hurrying after me, a small boy was speaking to me, telling me I had saved him once, and begging me to accept a silver knife. Here it is you see—I have carried it ever since.”

Ralph in amazement looked at his father’s old fruit knife; could such a trifling thing have played so great a part in the life of his friend?

“I only parted with yours the other day at Forres,” he said, “when everything that could be spared had to go to the pawnbroker.”

“Well, I’m glad it is gone,” said Macneillie. “This is the only souvenir needed. I have had presentations both before that time and since, but never one that touched me as yours did. Your emphatic assurance that fruit-knives were of no use to you, since you always ate peel and all, tickled my fancy and made me smile; that was the first step back to life. And then your boyish praise was so real that it pleased me, and your hero-worshipping face haunted me. It reminded me that I should be missed at any rate by some, and when I reached the glade I was glad that by a sudden impulse I had given you my knife in exchange. Being thus disarmed there was nothing to do but to lie down and rest, and what with the heat of the day and the long walk, I somehow fell asleep at last. When I woke my brain was perfectly clear again, but there was this little embossed knife to remind me of the narrow escape I had had. I remember that in the distance the deer were feeding peacefully, and within a few hundred yards of me rabbits were scampering to and fro. A great longing for home seized me as I lay there watching them, the sort of hunger that always comes over a Scotsman when he has been long away from the mountains. So I hurried back to town, packed my portmanteau, and took the night train to the north. There! that is all I have to tell you; and perhaps now you’ll understand that you are no ordinary stranger to me and to my mother, but that you belong to us.”

“It is good of you to have told me,” said Ralph, “to have trusted me with so much. But I, too, have a confession to make. That day, when we were in St. James’ Park, Evereld and I knew who was talking with you as you walked up and down, and once when you stopped close to the water we could not help hearing what you both said. I think it was partly that which made us look on you as our special hero.”

Macneillie paced the room silently, seeing with all the vividness of a powerful imagination that scene in the far past: the broad sunny path, the calm expanse of water, with its little wooded island, the white sails of the toy boat, the two children watching its progress, and beyond the trees on the further side of the park the great gloomy pile of Queen Anne’s Mansions looming up against the sky. Again he seemed to stand in his misery beside the iron railing looking down into a face which was deliberately hardening itself against him, yet was still the face that haunted his dreams with its strange inexplicable fascination.

Since her marriage he had never seen Christine; at first he had purposely avoided her, and after his return from America had still deemed it prudent to refuse a London engagement, and to enter on that career as manager of a travelling company which had now for some years absorbed his thoughts and his energies. He wondered often whether their paths would ever again cross, and with a certain sturdy Scottish resolution he held on his way, neither seeking nor avoiding a meeting.

He was still talking to Ralph on this summer afternoon, when his mother came into the room with the letters of the second post.

“Ha, here is one from Edinburgh,” exclaimed Macneillie. “Now we shall hear your fate. Well, it’s not much of an offer but better than nothing. Middle of June to the end of July, that will fit in well enough. To be walking gentleman after the parts you have been playing will be uninteresting, but you will at any rate be secure of your salary, and will be acting with better people. Here is the list of plays; let us see who the stars are.”

Glancing down the paper he gave a perceptible start.

“That’s an odd coincidence after what we were just talking about,” he said, handing the list to his companion; and Ralph saw that in the first week of July, Christine Greville was to appear as Ellen Douglas. He hardly knew whether he were glad or sorry. Naturally his affection for Macneillie tended to make him a somewhat severe judge of the woman who, after a ten years’ betrothal, had forsaken her lover and married for money; but nevertheless he wanted to meet her, and Macneillie was not ill pleased at the chance of thus learning indirectly how Christine prospered in the life she had chosen.

Somehow the news seemed to cheer them both. Macneillie stood gazing out of the window, lost in thought.

The rain had ceased, and though the sky was still in part overclouded there were little rifts of blue, and in the west a bright gleam which swept across the hills facing the window in a long level line of golden brightness. Above, were the dark mountain tops, below, in deep shade, the woods; and the points of the trees stood out sharply defined along the broad intervening strip of sunlit grass. He could not have explained his own feelings, but it seemed to him that some unexpected gleam of brightness had come, too, into his overclouded life.

During the days that followed something of the old hero-worship began to reassert itself in Ralph’s heart as he learnt to understand more of his friend’s character. To the genius and fervour and romance of the Kelt, Macneillie united a singularly strong and virile nature, and although he had shaken off some of the trammels of the school of theology to which his mother still belonged, he was emphatically one whose life was ruled by faith. This was indeed generally recognised, although he was not given to many words; but the world agreed in describing him by that unsatisfactory phrase, “a religious man,” and many in the profession could testify that his religion was of that pure and undefiled kind which is known not so much by words or outward observances, as by the living of a good, manly life.

There was, to Ralph’s mind, something very touching in the relations between the actor and his mother. His care in avoiding all topics that could pain her, his solicitude for her comfort, and the pleasure he took in the restful home-life, which could only be his at long intervals, formed but one side of the picture. There was the ineffable pride of the old lady in her only son, her delight in his success being only modified by the unconquerable scruples which she still felt as to the stage, scruples which were, however, difficult to maintain in all their fulness when she was every day confronted by so admirable a representative of the actor’s profession.

As soon as it was practicable, Macneillie made the convalescent spend a great part of each day out of doors, at first in the garden or in the wood at the back of the house, and later on, when walking became possible, on the hill-side near the wishing-well, where far away from houses and with a glorious panorama of lake and mountain they rested for hours on the heather.

It was at these times that Ralph received some of those lessons in his art which were later on of the greatest service to him.

By the middle of June he had shaken off the last effects of the influenza, but although he was thankful to have secured an engagement, he left Callander very reluctantly, only comforting himself with the reflection that at the beginning of August he should once more be with Macneillie, and able perhaps to do a little in return for all the kindness that had been shown to him.

His Good Samaritan started him on his way with sound advice, and all things needful for a fresh beginning, and the weeks in Edinburgh passed pleasantly enough.