A Daughter of Fife Part 23

"Thank you, Maggie, historical places are not much to see, often, but they are a great deal to feel. That hymn set me back into the sixth century, and I have been wondering what sort of women you and I would have been then. Perhaps nuns, Maggie."

"We will not think ill o' ourselves, Miss Campbell. Nane o' the Promoters were ever Catholics."

"The Campbells prayed as the king prayed always--we have been a prudent clan for both worlds, Maggie. 'To get on' has been the one thing needful with us; but there are many families of that kind. Has not the wind changed?"

"Yes; it looks like bad weather;" and the mist as she spoke came rolling down the sound with the swoop of a falcon. Hitherto they had been singularly fortunate. "Fine weather and fair winds," had been the usual morning greeting; or if a pa.s.sing squall appeared it had found them near to some sheltered loch, or inlet. Lord Forfar was for putting into Boisdale, for the gla.s.s was going down rapidly; but Lady Bruce was sure, "a little breeze would be a most delightful change."

It was not very likely to be so with the wind rising out of the northeast; and ere long the Petrel's topmast was sent down, and a double reef put in her mainsail. Until midnight it blew hard with a fast rising sea, and a mist as thick as a hedge. After this, it was ugly weather all the way home, and as they pa.s.sed Ailsa Craig the wind changed to full north, and fetched the sea down with it.

"The waves come high down the Frith," said Maggie to the owner of the yacht, a hardy young fellow who leaned against the taffrail, and watched his boat hammering through the heavy seas.

"They come any size you like down here, Miss Promoter. But our skipper is a good sailor; he has only one fault; he drives a boat without mercy.

Still I think even Captain Toddy will run for shelter to-night."

Captain Toddy thought not. He had a name for carrying on, and the Petrel was not his boat if she did get a bit crushed. So the ladies, sitting under the weather railing, watched the storm from among the folds of yellow oilskin in which they had been tucked. Ere long, in the thick of a gusty squall, the Petrel took her first header very heavily. Her bow disappeared to the b.u.t.ts, and with a tremendous noise the sea came over the deck in a deluge. Every plunge she made it was the same thing, and all of the ladies were thoroughly drenched. The cabin was wet and miserable, and there was no promise of any favorable change. Evidently the best thing to do was to make for the port of Ayr; for on the following day Mary Campbell was suffering very much from the effects of her exposure, and when Captain Toddy let the anchor fly underfoot pretty near the 'auld Brig' she was in a high fever, and breathing with pain and difficulty.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BROKEN TRYST.

"I sit on my creepie, and spin at my wheel, And I think on the laddie that lo'ed me sae weel; He had but ae sixpence, he brake it in twa, And gied me the hauf o' t when he gaed awa'.

He said, think na lang la.s.sie tho' I gang awa'.

I'll come and see you in spite o' them a'"

--Logie O Buchan.

"I am going to be ill," said Mary, with trembling lips, "I feel as if I were walking into a great darkness, Maggie."

They were driving toward Drumloch in the early morning, and there was that haunted, terrified look in her eyes, with which a soul apprehensive of suffering and danger bespeaks the help and sympathy of those near to it.

Maggie had seen the look before; the little children dying upon her knees had pierced her heart with it. She remembered it, even in the eyes of strong men driven by a sense of duty or humanity into the jaws of death.

Mary took her hand and clung to it; and let her head fall helplessly upon Maggie's breast. When they reached home, she had almost to be carried to her room, and servants were sent off on fleet horses for medical aid.

"A bad case of inflammation of the lungs," was the doctor's verdict. "It is likely to be a serious business, Miss Promoter, and Miss Campbell's friends should be informed at once of her condition."

Mary would not be spoken to on the subject. "Her uncle," she said, "was her only friend. In his last letter he had told her to send communications to the Hotel Neva at Riga. It was uncertain when he would get there. And what was the use of alarming him, when he was too far away to help her?"

Maggie perceived from the first moment of Mary's conviction of danger and suffering, that the girl had flung herself upon her love and care. With all her soul she accepted the charge. She would have held herself as unworthy to live if she had had one moment's reluctance in the matter. In strong physical anguish it is almost impossible to be generous and self-forgetting, and Mary, in the first hours of acute, lacerating agony, forgot all things but her ever-present need of relief. Early in the second day the fever reached the brain, and her talk became incoherent. It required all Maggie's firm strength and tender love to control the suffering girl.

And it was nearly time for her tryst with Allan. On the twenty-ninth of August he had bidden her farewell; two years from that day he had promised to be in Pittenloch. She believed he would keep his promise; but how was she to keep hers? Only by being recreant to every sentiment of honor, grat.i.tude and humanity. "And if I could be that false to Mary Campbell, I wad weel deserve that Allan should be false to me," she said. She had never read Carlyle, never heard of him, but she arrived at his famous dictum, as millions of good men and women have done, by the simplest process of conscientious thought: "I'll do the duty that lies close by my hand and heart, and leave the rest to One wiser than I am."

She remembered also that she could write to Allan. There was a bare chance that he might get the letter, especially if he should linger a few days in Fife. But although she was ignorant of the action which David had taken with regard to Janet Caird, she never thought of addressing the letter to her care. For a moment she hesitated between Willie Johnson and Elder Mackelvine, but finally chose the former, for Willie and Allan had been great friends, and she was certain if Allan went to Pittenloch he would not leave the village without seeing his old boat mate. It was a loving, modest little letter, explaining the case in which she found herself, and begging him to come to Drumloch and say a word of kindness to her. When she folded and sealed it, she thought with pleasure of Allan's astonishment and delight at her improvement; and many an hour she pa.s.sed, calculating, as well as she could, the distance, the time, and the chances of Allan receiving her message.

As it happened, he just missed it; but it was Maggie's own fault. If she had trusted it to the Drumloch mail-bag and servant it would have reached Dalry on the twenty-ninth; and on that day Willie Johnson was in the post-village, and received several letters lying there for himself and others in Pittenloch. But when, in our anxiety, we trust to our own judgment, instead of to that something which, for lack of a better name, we call good fortune, we are usually, and perhaps justly, deserted by good fortune. Maggie feared the footman would shirk her solitary letter, and perhaps keep it until his regular visit to the post the following day; so she gave it to the doctor, earnestly asking him to post it as he pa.s.sed through the town. And the doctor fully intended to do so, but he was met by an urgent call for help; he forgot it then; he did not pa.s.s near the post-office for two days, and the two days might as well have been two months, for it was fully that time before Willie Johnson received his next letters.

Mary was exceedingly ill on the twenty-ninth. Her soul had reached the very border-land of being. In the dim, still room she lay, painfully breathing, faintly murmuring words unintelligible and very far away. But as Maggie sat motionless beside her, sometimes hopelessly watching, sometimes softly praying, she could not help thinking of the beach at Pittenloch, of the fresh salt air, and the sea coming in with the wind, and the motion and sparkle and sunshine, and the tall, handsome man she loved looking with sorrowful longing for her. And though she never grudged Mary one moment of the joy she was sacrificing, yet her tears dropped upon the clay-like hands she clasped in her own; for human love and human hopes are very sweet, never perhaps more sweet than in the very hour in which we yield them up to some n.o.ble duty, or some cruel fatality.

And Maggie mourned most of all, because Allan would think her faithless; would judge her from the wicked, envious tongues that had driven her from her home; and it is always the drop of injustice in sorrow that makes sorrow intolerable. Only, Maggie trusted! In spite of many a moment's fear and doubt she trusted! Trusted G.o.d, and trusted Allan, and trusted that somehow out of sorrow would come joy; and as she stepped softly about her loving cares, or watched, almost breathlessly, Mary pa.s.sing Death's haggard hills, she often whispered to herself part of a little poem they had learned together:

"I will try to hope and to trust in G.o.d!

In the excellent Glory His abode Hath been from of old; thence looketh He, And surely He cannot help seeing me.

And I think perhaps He thinks of me; For my heart is with Him continually."

In the meantime, Allan, like all true lovers, had outrun the clock to keep his tryst. On the evening of the 28th of August a small steamer cast anchor at Pittenloch pier. She had one pa.s.senger, Allan Campbell. He had been waiting two days in Leith, but no boat from Pittenloch having arrived during that time, he had hired a small steamer to run up the coast with him. He landed in the evening, just about the time the lamps in the cottages were being lit; and he looked eagerly toward the Promoter cottage for some such cheering sign. As he looked, the window became red, and he leaped off the boat in a fever of joyful expectation. Surely Maggie would be watching! The arrival of a strange steamer must have told her who was coming. Every moment he expected to see her at the open door. As he neared it, the turfs sent up a ruddy glow, and touched the whole interior with warm color. The entrance was light, but the house place was empty. Smiling to himself, he went in, and stood upon the snow-white hearth, and glanced round the dear, familiar room. Nothing was changed. In a moment or two he heard a step; he looked eagerly toward it, and a very pleasant-looking old woman entered.

"I thocht it wad be you, Maister Campbell. Welcome hame, sir! I'll mak you a cup o' tea anon, for the kettle's boiling, and a' things ready."

"Thank you. I don't remember--I suppose Mistress Caird has left?"

"Sent awa', sir--not before she deserved it."

"And you are in her place? I think I have seen you before?"

"Nae doot, sir. I'm Mysie Jardine--the Widow Jardine, sir."

"And Maggie? Is she near by? At home? Where is she?"

"There is nane ken that, sir."

"What do you mean, Mysie?"

"Maggie's gane awa', sir."

"Maggie gone away! Where to?"

"'Deed, sir, I'd be fain to ken where to--but I hae the house for the care o' things; and David Promoter left word that if I took up Maggie's name in my lips, I wad be to leave instanter; sae I'll say naething at a'. Elder Mackelvine kens a' that anybody kens, and when you hae had a drap o' tea, you can ask him a' the questions you like to."

"Never mind tea, I am going at once to Mackelvine's."

"I'll be to get your room ready, sir; and put a bit o' fire in it, and the like o' that?"

"Yes, I shall come back here." He felt stunned, and glad to get into the fresh air. Maggie gone! He could hardly believe the words he had heard.

Sorrow, anxiety, keen disappointment, amazement, possessed him; but even in those moments of miserable uncertainty he had not one hard or wrong thought of Maggie. Elder Mackelvine's cottage was quite at the other end of the village, and he was walking rapidly down the shingle toward it, when he met Willie Johnson.

"I heard tell you were here, Maister Campbell, and I cam' instanter to meet you, sir. You'll hae to bide wi' us to-night, for a' is changed at the Promoters."

"So I see, Willie." Then mindful of Maggie's good name, and of the fact that their betrothal was unknown, he said, with as much of his old manner as he could a.s.sume, "What has come to the Promoters? I hope some good fortune?"

"I hope that, too; but there's nane can say, if it be good or ill. Davie, you will dootless hae heard tell o'?"

"I have heard nothing from him for two years."

"Then your ears will be like to tingle wi' the news; for he has set himsel' in a' the high seats in Glasca' College; and folks talk o'

naething less than a Glasca' pu'pit for him; and you ken, it tak's doctors in divinity to stand up afore a Glasca' congregation. Elder Mackelvine never wearies o' talking anent him. For mysel', I canna say I ever likit him o'er weel; and since puir Maggie gaed awa', I hae ta'en little pleasure in the honor he has done oor village."

"Maggie gone away! Where to?"