Page 20 of Enlightened

Chalmers gazed at the ceiling, pondering that.

“When you see her,” he said at last, his voice dropped almost to a whisper, “tell her—tell her that I’m sorry I allowed Kinnell to propose to her. I never liked the look of him, and I should have gone with my gut instead of being swayed by Margaret’s wishes.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“And tell her I want her to be happy—above all else. If she loves MacLennan, she should have him. It’s not her fault that she can’t marry him.” His eyes drooped again as he rested back against the pillows, breathing shallowly. He was exhausted now, paper white, with a sheen of perspiration on his brow. Yet he steeled himself to speak once more. “Tell her about—about Mary,” he said.

“I will,” David murmured, covering one frail hand with his own. “I promise.”

“You are a good man, David.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Oh, you are. I can never tell you how grateful I am for what you did for my girl. You needn’t have done it. I don’t know if I’d’ve done it, in your shoes. But it’s how you are. You see the wrong and the right in the world, and you feel responsible for making it better.”

“That’s a generous view of me,” David said, embarrassed by the older man’s breathless, heartfelt words. “Lord Murdo scolds me when I get on my high horse. He says I’m too black-and-white about everything.” He chuckled, and Chalmers smiled in return.

“Perhaps at times,” he allowed. “Certainly, you’re very hard on yourself. I wish you’d let yourself be happy.”

That surprised him. He stared at Chalmers, wide-eyed. “Iamhappy,” he protested.

“Are you? You’re a fine lawyer, lad, but I worry that’s all you have in your life. Work.”

David felt himself flush. “My work is important to me. It brings me great satisfaction.”

“I know. But it is not all there is in life. You realise that?”

Chalmers would never know, David thought, how much more difficult that question was for a man like him. It was easy enough for a man—a normal man—to sayYes, there is more to life than workwhen themorehe yearns for is marriage to a woman, his own hearth, his own children. But when a man’smoreis something entirely forbidden? When hismoremeans embracing a life made up of long, solitary waiting broken up with bright moments of stolen happiness?

David realised Chalmers still waited for his reply, and he made himself smile, though his heart ached. “I do,” he said. “I do realise it.”

“I hope so,” Chalmers whispered. “Because you deserve to be happy, lad. Same as everyone, and more than most.”

Chalmers fell into a delirious sort of doze after that, while David considered what the man had said to him, and the words he’d been asked to pass on to Elizabeth.

Be happy. Don’t let love go.

Don’t deny it.

After twenty minutes, David began to wonder if Chalmers would ever wake. Concerned, he rang the bell, and soon Mrs. Jessop appeared.

“Should I have called before?” David asked anxiously as she bent over Chalmers.

“No, sir,” Mrs. Jessop replied, adjusting the pillows. “He is in and out of sleep almost constantly now. Sleep is a blessing for him, you see, a safe harbour from the pain.”

David nodded, fighting the ache that grew in his chest as the realisation of his friend’s mortality struck him anew.

“I should go now and leave him to his rest.”

He stepped forward to touch one last time the thin, dry hand that rested on the bedcovers. The tears in his throat tasted hot and salty.

“Good-bye, old friend,” he whispered.

Beneath his fingers, Chalmers’s hand stirred, just a tiny movement, then his papery eyelids cracked open.

“Be happy, lad,” he breathed. Then closed his eyes once more.

Chapter Seven