A Daughter of Fife

"I have heard you speak much of Mr. Campbell, I would like well to see him."

"You should have seen him ere this, Maggie; but I was waiting until —until, you looked and spoke as you do this morning;" and she rose and kissed the blush of Maggie's cheek, and then turned the conversation to the dark tartans which she thought would be the best material for travelling dresses. "And we want them very prettily made," she added, with a rising color, "for it is fine folk we are going to meet, Maggie—Lord John Forfar, and Captain Manners, and Lady Emma Bruce, and Miss Napier; so you see, Miss Promoter and Miss Campbell must dress accordingly."

Maggie was young enough and happy enough to feel all the excitement of the proposed trip. Still she was troubled about her tryst with Allan. Oban and the Highlands were so far away. In Pittenloch, her mother, coming from Skye, had been looked upon almost as a foreigner. She was quite unable to compute the distances; she knew nothing of the time it would take to travel them: she felt ashamed to show anxiety to Mary on the matter. "But I'll trust my way to His ordering. He'll no let me be too late for any good thing He wills me;" and having thus settled the subject in her heart, she went about the necessary preparations in a joy of anticipation, which made Mary feel how pleasant it would be to have so fresh and charming a companion.

Two weeks afterward they were in Oban, watching from the heights the exquisite bay, and the lovely isle of Kerrera, the high mountains of Mull, and Ossian's "Misty Morven." The Petrel, a cutter yacht of forty tons, was lying at anchor. In the morning they were to start for a glimpse of the Atlantic across the purple bogs of the Lews; going by way of Mull and Canna, and swinging round Barra Head, toward the red, rent bastions of Skye. Through that charmful circle of the outer isles, with their slumbrous tarns, and meres, and treeless solitudes they went. And oh, how full of strange and dreamy beauty were the long quiet summer days in that land of mystic forgetfulness! that great, secret land of waters, with its irresistible tides, and the constant ocean murmur haunting it like a spirit voice.

Maggie enjoyed them with all her soul, though she did not speak in italics about her feelings; perhaps she did not know very well how to express herself. Forty years ago, even highly educated women did not rave about scenery, they knew nothing of shadows and colors, nothing of "effects" scarped, jagged and rifted. Neither had they any uneasy consciousness that they ought to blend the simple delights of fresh air, fresh scenes, and pleasant company, with some higher kind of recreation.

Coming home through the sound of Barra, Mary said, "We are a day or two late, Maggie, but I have not forgotten your tryst. We shall run down the coast now, and round the Mull of Kintyre on the 24th. The next day we may be at Drumloch, that will be early enough?"

"Mair than enough, Miss Campbell. I needna leave Drumloch until the 27th, though if it came easy I would leave before that."

"How near we are to the cliffs; we are rippling the shadows along shore. Look at those forlorn headlands, Maggie. It was the sombre sadness of this land that charmed the early saints, and girt all these isles with their solitary cells."

"I liked well to read about them; and I can never think of Iona without remembering Columba with his face bright from the communion of angels."

"And the hymn he wrote there, Maggie, we shall never forget that; it breathes the soul of the saint, and pictures the scene of his saintship. Now to the cries of the sea-birds overhead, let us have a few lines; the swell of the waves will keep the time and the tune."

"That I might often see
The face of the ocean.
That I might see its heaving waves
Over the wide ocean,
When they chaunt music to their Father
Upon the world's course,
That I might see its level sparkling strand,
It would be no cause of sorrow,
That I might hear the songs of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks;
That I might hear the roar by the side of the church
Of the surrounding sea,
That I might see its ebb and flood
In their career;
That I might bless the Lord
Who conserves all,
Heaven with its countless bright orders.
Land, strand and flood.
At times kneeling to beloved Heaven;
At times psalm-singing;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven,
Holy, the Chief;
At times work without compulsion;
This would be delightful;
At times plucking duilisc from the rocks;
At times fishing;
At times giving food to the poor;
At times in a solitary cell.
The best advice in the presence of God
To me has been vouchsafed.
The King, whose servant I am, will not let
Anything deceive me."

    Skene, Celtic Scotland, v. 2, p. 93.
"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 passing squall appeared it had found them near to some sheltered loch, or inlet. Lord Forfar was for putting into Boisdale, for the glass 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 passed 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 butts, 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 lassie 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, gratitude 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 passed, 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 passed 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 pass 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 noble duty, or some cruel fatality.