“His own opinion is that he owes everything to you,” said Christine with a smile. “I heard a great deal about you on Sunday from both of them. I shall be so glad if I can really do anything for people you care for, Hugh. The Denmeads will be quite a new object in life for me.” Those words and the look which went with them were Macneillie’s comfort when, shortly after, he parted with Christine. But to stay longer at Stratford with nothing to do had become impossible for him. The river was a haunted place, he dared not go on it again, everything which on his arrival had seemed so peaceful bore upon it now the ineffaceable stamp of the bitter struggle he had passed through. To go back to his work was directly against the doctor’s orders, but go somewhere he must. He packed his portmanteau, and tried to think of any place in the world he wished to see, but could not care even to return to his own country. All things were “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.” “Fate shall decide,” he said to himself with the ghost of a smile playing about his lips. And dragging out an ancient atlas from the pile of books on the sitting-room table, he opened at the map of Europe and solemnly spun a threepenny bit. After threatening to come to an end in the middle of the German Ocean it finally settled down in Holland. “Via Harwich and the Hook,” said Macneillie pocketing the arbiter of his fate. “So be it. I will run across and see if the bulbs are coming into bloom.” CHAPTER XL “Be noble! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead Will rise in majesty to meet thine own; Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes, Then will pure light around thy path be shed, And thou wilt never more be sad and lone.”--Lowell. |The entire change of scene, the vigour of his own mind, and the sturdy resolution with which he laid aside care and anxiety soon restored Macneillie to a great extent. He recovered his power of sleeping, and returned to Stratford to find Ralph and Evereld already settled there and awaiting him with a warmth of welcome which did his heart good. To hear him telling comical stories of his adventures among the Dutch as they lingered over the supper table that first evening, no one would have believed that he had passed through any ordeal whatever, and he seemed quite ready for all the hard work that lay before him. Indeed Ivy Grant thought him unnecessarily vigorous. “It’s all very well for Mr. Macneillie who has been enjoying a holiday all these weeks, but it’s rather hard on us,” she protested, “to be kept rehearsing every day till four o’clock, just when we wanted a little free time, too.” For Ivy was rejoicing in the presence of Dermot and Bride O’Ryan, who had come down for the Shaksperian performances, Bride for pleasure, and Dermot chiefly to see Ivy and to write a series of articles for his paper.