A Daughter of Fife

CHAPTER V. — OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE.

The next day Allan bade David “good-bye,” for a week. He went first to his father’s office; where he received a glad welcome. Their dispute did not interfere with the courtesies of life; nor indeed, had it in any degree dulled the sincere affection between father and son. As they stood a moment hand-fast, they looked into each other’s face, and in the mutual look there was a dumb acknowledgment of a love which could not be easily shadowed, and which no circumstances could altogether extinguish.

“Where have you been so long, Allan? I have wearied to see you.”

“I was on the East coast, father.”

“Trying to find out what you really wanted?”

“That, and also making some fine studies. I have brought back with me a few pictures which I hope you will like. Shall I take the noon boat to Meriton, or wait for you?”

“Go at noon. I may stop at Largo to see a yacht I think of buying.”

“How is Mary?”

“Well and bonnie. She will be glad to see you. She has been glad always to see a letter with the Edinburgh postmark. James Sinclair is waiting for advices, so ‘good-bye’ until we meet at Meriton. Just tell MacRoy to let us have a bottle of the ‘comet’ [Footnote: Comet wine, that of 1811, the year of the comet, and the best vintage on record; famed for its delicate aroma.] Madeira tonight. The occasion will excuse it.” Allan felt grateful, for he knew what the order really meant—it was the wine of homecoming, and rejoicing, and gratitude. And afterall, he had been something of a prodigal, and his father’s greeting, so full of regard, so destitute of reproach, had touched him very much. How beautiful was Clyde side! How homelike the heathery hills, the dimpling bays, the luxuriant stretches of wood, the stately dwellings crowning the smooth green, sloping lawns! The bold rocks of Fife, the bellowing waves, the plaintive cries of the fishermen, the salt and sparkle of the great sea, the rocking, bounding boat upon it, all these things slipped from his memory in the charm of the present picture.

He was impatient to reach his home, and glad to see the coachman and a phaeton waiting, when the steamer touched the little jetty. The man raised his hat with a pleasure there was no mistaking. “I came my ways doon on a may be,’ sir,” he said proudly, “I jist had a feeling o’ being wanted here. Whiles, thae feelings are as gude as a positive order. You’ll be come to stay, Mr. Allan, surely, sir. There’ll be a sight o’ birds in the heather this year.”

“My stay depends on this and that, Archibald. Is there any change round Meriton?”

“Nane worth the praising, sir. We hae a new minister. I dinna think much o’ him.”

“Not orthodox, I suppose.”

“A puir body, sir, a puir body at a sermon. I like a gun and a minister to shoot close. Dr. MacDonald is an awfu’ scattering man. He’ll be frae Genesis to Revelations in the same discourse, sir.”

They were passing between plantations of young larch; the great hills rose behind them, the songs of a multitude of birds filled the warm, sweet air. The horses tossed their heads, and lifted proudly their prancing feet. Allan had a keen sense of the easy, swift motion through the balmy atmosphere. As he leaned back against the comfortably cushioned vehicle, he could not help contrasting the circumstances with the hoary sea-shattering rocks of Fife, the tossing ocean, the tugging oars, and the fisherman’s open boat. He did not try to decide upon the merits of the different situations; he simply realized the present, and enjoyed it.

The great doors of Meriton House stood open, and a soft-treading footman met him with bows and smiles, and lifted his cloak and luggage, and made him understand that he had again entered a life in which he was expected to be unable to wait upon himself. It gave him no trouble to accept the conditions; he fell at once into the lofty leisurely way of a man accustomed to being served. He had dismissed his valet in Edinburgh, when he determined to go to Pittenloch, but he watched his father’s servant brushing his dinner suit, and preparing his bath and toilet, without one dissenting feeling as to the absolute fitness of the attention. The lofty rooms, the splendor and repose, the unobtrusive but perfect service, were the very antipodes of the life he had just left. He smiled to himself as he lazily made contrasts of them. But Fife and the ways of Fife seemed far away. It was like a dream from which he had awakened, and Meriton was the actual and the present.

He knew that he would meet Mary Campbell very soon, and he was not indifferent to the meeting. He could not help glancing with complaisance at the new evening suit he had brought with him; and looking a little ruefully at his browned and hardened hands, and the tan of wind and weather on his face. He hoped he would meet Mary before his father’s arrival; so that he could get accustomed to the situation before he had to exhibit himself in it to those keen and critical observers, the servants.

He went early into the dining-room, and found Mary already there. She had some ferns and roses in her hands, and was mingling them, for the adornment of the dinner table. She put them down, and went to meet him with a smile like sunshine. Her small, slender figure clothed in white India mull had a peculiarly fragile appearance; but Allan watched her, as she glided about the room filling the crystal vases, with a restful content. He thought how intelligent her face is! How graceful her diction, how charming her low, sweet voice!

The dinner was a kind of festival. Mac Roy made every one feel so, when he served with careful and elaborate ceremonies the famous wine. Allan felt almost pained by the significance given to his return. It roused the first feeling of opposition in him. “I will not float with the current unless I wish to do so,” was his mental determination; “and I will not have it supposed that my return home is a surrender of my inclinations.” Unfortunately John Campbell regarded it as such; and his desire was to adequately show his appreciation of the concession. Before Allan had been at home three days, he perceived that his father was restless and impatient. He had watched and waited so long, he could not help feeling that Allan was unkind to keep a question of such importance in abeyance and uncertainty.

But the week Allan had allowed himself nearly passed and he had not been able to say a word to Mary on the subject pressing him so closely. He felt that he must have more time, and he went into Glasgow to see David. He found him in Professor Laird’s study hard at work; and he saw at a glance the easy attitude of the young man among his new surroundings. When the servant said, “Here is a gentleman to call on you, Mr. Promoter,” David rose without the slightest embarrassment to welcome his visitor; though when the door was closed, he said with a smile, “I let them call me Mister Promoter;’ I must consider the office I’m seeking and gie it honor; but it sounds unca strange, sir. Whiles, I feel as if I wad be glad to hear somebody say ‘David’ to me.”

“Well, David, have you had a good week?”

“A week fu’ o’ grand promises, sir. I hae had a glint inside spacious halls o’ delightfu’ stillness and wonderfu’ wisdom. I’ll ne’er forget the joy o’ it.”

“We promised Maggie to return in seven days. I shall not be able to keep my promise, but I think it will be right for you to do so.”

“I wad be glad if you were going wi’ me.”

“I shall follow ere long; and even if I should never see you again, David, I think your future is assured. Would you like me to go with you as far as Edinburgh?”

“I wad like it, but there is nae occasion for it. The city doesna fright me noo. If I couldna find my way to Pittenloch wi’ a gude Scot’s tongue in my mouth, and siller in my purse, I wad hae little hope of ever finding my way into a pulpit. Thank you kindly, sir.”

“Then good-bye for the present, Davie, and give my regards to your sister.”

He felt like a traitor to Maggie and to his own heart, but what was there else for him to say. When he reached the street the whole atmosphere of life seemed to have changed. A sudden weariness of the placid existence at Meriton attacked him. Was he to go on, year after year, dressing and visiting, and taking little rows in land-locked bays, and little rides and drives with Mary Campbell? “I would rather fling a net in the stormiest sea that ever roared, for my daily bread,” he said. Yet he went on dressing, and rowing, and riding, and visiting for many more weeks; sometimes resenting the idle, purposeless life as thoroughly enervating; more frequently, drifting in its sunshiny current, and hardly caring to oppose it, though he suspected it was leading him to Drumloch.

What curious “asides” and soliloquies of the soul are dreams! Perhaps if we cared to study them more conscientiously they would reveal us to ourselves in many startling ways. The deep, real feelings which we will not recognize while awake, take possession of us when we sleep; and the cup-bearer who was slain for dreaming that he poisoned the king was, very likely, righteously slain. The dream had but revealed the secret thought of his soul. “We sleep, but our heart waketh,” and though

One morning, just at the gray dawn, Allan had a dream of this kind. He saw Maggie on the sea alone, and he was sailing away from her. She stood upright in a little open boat, which the waves tossed to and fro:—a speechless, woe-stricken woman, who watched him with sorrow-haunted eyes, but neither by word, look, nor movement called him to her.

He awoke, and could sleep no more. The dream had revealed him to himself. Who was there in all the world as dear to him as Maggie was? He felt that she was wretched, and he hated himself for having made her so. That very hour he wrote to David, and said all that he might say, to give her hope and comfort, and over and over he declared his purpose of being in Pittenloch, before David left it for Glasgow. How soon David might get the letter was a very uncertain thing, but still he could not rest until he had written it.

He was dull and silent at breakfast, and hid himself and his moody temper behind his favorite newspaper. Mary had often noticed that men like to be quiet in the early morning; she gave them naturally all the benefit they claim from the pressure of unread mails and doubtful affairs. If her cousin was quiet and sombre, he might have half-a-dozen innocent reasons for the humor; when he felt more social, he would be sure to seek her. And when she saw him sauntering toward her favorite retreat she was nothing astonished. It was the fulfillment of as natural an expectation as that the clock should strike at the full hour.

“I am glad to see you, Allan,” she said, with a charming serenity of manner. “We shall not now have many days as fair as this one is.” She wore a gown of pale blue lawn, and had a great cluster of scarlet fuchsias in her hand. Behind the garden bench on which she sat, there was a hedge of fuchsias seven feet high and very thick. Her small dark head rested against its green and scarlet masses. The little bay tinkled and murmured among the pebbles at her feet. She had a book, but she was not reading. She had some crochet, but she was not working. Allan thought he had never seen her look so piquant and interesting: but she had no power to move him. The lonely, splendid beauty of the woman he had seen in his morning vision filled his heart. He sought Mary that hour only for Maggie’s sake.

While he was wondering how he could best introduce the conversation he desired, Mary broke the silence by a sudden question. “Cousin Allan, where were you this spring? I have often wanted to ask you.”

“Why did you not ask me? I wish you had, I should like to have talked on that subject. I was in the Fife fishing district.”

“Oh!”

“Why do you feel curious, Mary?”

“I have always thought there was something singular about that journey. What took you to Fife? I never heard you speak of Fife before.”

“It was an accident. My hat blew off, a Fife fisherman got it for me. I liked the man, and went back to Fife with him.”

“Accidents open the door to Fate. Now then, what singular thing happened to you in Fife?”

“Nothing unusual happened. Is this my catechism or yours, Mary?”

“We can divide it. It is your turn to question.”

“Do you know why I left home?”

“You had a ‘difference’ with Uncle John.”

“What about?”

“Money, I dare say. I feel sure you were very extravagant while you were abroad.”

“It was not about money.”

“About going into business then? You ought to do something, Allan. It is a shame for you to be so lazy.”

“It was not about business. It was about you.”

“Me!”

“My dear Mary, for what I am going to say, I beg your pardon in advance, for I feel keenly the position in which I must appear before you. You know that the welfare of Drumloch has been my father’s object by day, and his dream by night. He cannot bear to think of a stranger or a strange name in its old rooms. Long ago, when we were little children, our marriage was planned, and when the place was clear, and you had grown to a beautiful womanhood, and I had completed my education, father longed to see us in Drumloch. There were points we could not agree upon. He was angry, I was obstinate—Mary, I know not how to tell you; how to ask you—”

“Allan, my dear brother Allan, spare yourself and me any more words.” She looked up with clear, candid eyes, and laid her hand upon his. “Uncle is not unjust in his expectations. His outlay, his cares, his labor, have saved Drumloch to the family. It is as much his purchase as if he had bought every acre at public roup. And he has been a second father to me; kind, generous, thoughtful. It is hard enough for him that his plans must fail; it would be cruel indeed if he were parted from a son he loves so tenderly as he loves you, Allan. Let me bear the blame. Let it be my fault his hopes cannot be realized.”

“Can they not be realized, Mary?”

“Do you mean by that question to offer me your hand, Allan? At any rate I will consider it a fulfillment of your father’s desire. No, they cannot be realized. You are to me as a brother. I distinctly refuse to accept you as a husband. Uncle John is a gentleman; he will consider my ‘no’ as final; and he is too just to blame you, because I decline to be your wife. Nor shall we be any worse friends, Allan, for this honest talk, I am sure of that.” She smiled bravely in his face, and he did not suspect how deeply both her affections and her pride had been wounded.

“Let us go back to the house; the air is heavy and hot, we may have a storm.”

Allan was thoroughly miserable and unsettled. As soon as Mary had so positively refused him, he began to have doubts and longings. “Drumloch was a fine estate—the name was old and honorable, and in a fair way for greater honors—Mary was sweet and sensible, and a woman to be desired above all other women—except Maggie. Yet, after all, was he not paying a great price for his pearl?” Mary and Maggie were both difficult to resign. He began to grumble at events and to blame every one but himself. “If his father had not been so unreasonable, he never would have gone to Edinburgh at the time he did—never would have gone to Pittenloch—never would have met Maggie Promoter.”

John Campbell came home in unusually high spirits. He had made a profitable contract, and he had done a kindness to an old friend. Both circumstances had been mental tonics to him. He felt himself a happy man. The atmosphere of the dinner table chilled him a little, but for once the subject on which he was always hoping and fearing did not enter his mind. When Mary left the room, he said cheerfully, “We will be with you anon, dearie, and then you shall sing for us, ‘The Lass O’ Gowrie,’” and he began to hum the pretty melody as he poured out for himself another glass of port. “Help yourself, Allan. You do not seem very bright to-night.”

“I do not feel very bright. Mary told me positively this morning that she would not marry me.”

“What! Not marry you? Did you ask her?”

“She said ‘no’.”

“Oh, but she be to marry you! Your father would not have taken ‘no’, sir.”

“A man cannot force a rich girl to be his wife. If you will speak to Mary, you will understand how useless any further hope is.”

“I will speak to her. I can hardly believe this sorrow has really come to me.”

He rose and went to his niece. “Come here, Mary, and sit down beside me. Allan tells me you will not have him for your husband. Your decision is a sore trouble to me; almost the worst trouble that could come to me. Oh, Mary, what is the matter? Is not Allan handsome, and kind, and good, and rich enough to mate you? And he loves you, too; I am sure he loves you; he could not help it.”

“But, uncle, what if he loves some other girl better than me?”

“That isn’t possible. Did he tell you such a thing as that?”

“No; but I am sure it is so. However, Allan is the second thought, uncle; Drumloch is the first. We must save Drumloch for the Campbells, uncle.”

“You dear lassie! But how can that be done if Allan is not in the same mind?”

“Three things may happen, uncle. I may remain unmarried, I may marry, I may die. If I remain unmarried, I am only the steward of Drumloch; I shall save it for Allan or Allan’s children. If I die, its disposition will be the same. If I marry into a strange name or family, I will sell Drumloch to you before I change my name.”

“You are a wise, kindly little woman; and you have found a drop of comfort for me. I will buy Drumloch any day you wish to sell it. May be then I’ll be Campbell of Drumloch myself.”

“Drumloch will be well off with such a laird. I would not fret yourself one moment, uncle. There is more good in a disappointment than can be seen.”

“God bless you, my dearie! Allan is blind, and deaf, and foolish, or he would never have taken ‘no’ from you.”

“He is in love, uncle. That accounts for everything. Do you know where he was during his last absence?”

“On the east coast, making pictures. The two he gave me are wonderful. He has genius certainly; the Campbells mostly have genius. I had siller to make, or I could have painted pictures myself. I have a remarkable perception anent color.”

“He was in the Fife fishing villages.”

“And a very good place for subjects. The Fife fishers are a fine race —faithful, religious, handsome.”

“Very handsome, I should think. Did you notice the woman in the pictures Allan gave you?”

“Yes, I did; a splendid study in both cases.”

“Have you been in Allan’s room lately?”

“Not since he returned home.”

“Go to it to-night. You will find the walls covered with studies from Fife. In nearly every study the same figure reappears. That is the woman Allan loves. I am right, uncle; I feel I am.”

“A fisher-girl!”

“Perhaps; but what a fisher-girl! The mother of men must have been like her. There is one picture in which she leans against a jagged mass of rocks, gazing over the sea. The face is so splendid, the figure so fine, the sense of life so ample, that it haunts you. And every likeness of her has just that tinge of melancholy which lies at the bottom of all things that are truly happy, or truly beautiful. How could Allan care for any other woman, having seen her?”

“You are a quick observer, Mary.”

“The heart has its oracles as well as the head, uncle.”

She spoke sadly, and John Campbell looked with a kindly curiosity at her. He felt almost certain that she had suffered a keen disappointment, as well as himself. “But she would die before she would make a complaint,” he thought, “and I may learn a lesson from her. It is a weak soul that is not capable of its own consolation. She has evidently determined to make the best of things beyond her sorting.”

After a short silence, Mary slipped quietly from the room. John Campbell scarcely noticed her departure. He had the heartache, and men of sixty have it far worse than men of twenty. When their hopes fail, they have no time left, often no ability left to renew them. To make the best of things was all that now remained; and he was the more able to do this because of Mary’s promise to him. But it is always hard to feel in the evening that our day’s work has been unsuccessful, and that resignation, and not success, must make the best of the hours remaining.

As he mused the storm, which had threatened all the afternoon, broke. The swash and patter of the rain against the windows, and the moaning of the trees on the lawn, made a dreary accompaniment to his melancholy musings. It grew chill, and a footman entered, put a match to the laid fuel, and lighted the gas. Then John Campbell made an effort to shake off the influence which oppressed him. He laid down the ivory paper knife, which he had been turning mechanically in his fingers, rose, and went to the window. How dark it was! The dripping outlook made him shiver, and he turned back to the slowly burning fire. But solitude and inaction became unbearable. “Regretting never mended wrong; if I cannot get the best, I can try for the second best. And perhaps the lad is not beyond reasoning with.” Then he rose, and with a decided air and step went straight to Allan’s room.

CHAPTER VI. — MAGGIE.

The suite of rooms which belonged especially to the heir of Meriton were very handsome ones, and their long, lofty parlor was full of art treasures gathered from the various cities which Allan had visited. The fire in this room had been lighted for some time and was burning cheerily, and the young man sat in its ruddy glow when his father entered.

“I was lonely to-night, Allan, so I have come to make you a visit.”

“You do me a great honor, sir, and are most welcome.” And he went to meet him gladly. But as Blair, his valet, was softly moving about in an inner room, conversation was confined to conventional grooves until the servant with a low “good night, sir,” glided away. As soon as they were alone the effort to conceal emotion was mutually abandoned. John Campbell sat on one side of the hearth, with his head dropped toward his folded hands. Allan kept his eyes fixed upon the glowing coals; but he was painfully aware of his father’s unhappy presence, and waiting for him to open the conversation which he saw was inevitable.

“I have had a knock-me-down blow to-night, son Allan.”

“And I am much to blame for it; that is what grieves me, father.”

“You are altogether to blame for it, Allan. I thought Mary loved you when you came home this summer; to-night I am sure she loves you. You must have made some great blunder or she would have married you.”

“There was a great blunder. I did the thing accidentally which I had often had in my heart to do, but which I am very certain would have been impossible to me, had it not blundered out in a very miserable way. We were speaking of my late absence, and I let her know that she had been the cause of our dispute, the reason why I had left home.”

“If you had planned to get ‘no,’ you could have taken no better way. What girl worth having would take you after you had let her understand you preferred a quarrel with your father, and an exile from your home, to a marriage with her?”

“I would, for your sake, father, unsay the words if I could. Is there any excuse, any—”

“There is no excuse but time and absence. Mary loves you; go away from her sight and hearing until she forgets the insult you have given her. I don’t mean go away to the east or to the west coast, or even to London or Paris. I mean go far away—to China or Russia; or, better still, to America. I have friends in every large sea-port. You shall have all that my name and money can do to make your absence happy—and women forgive! Yes, they forget also; wipe the fault quite out, and believe again and again. God bless them! You can write to Mary. Where a lover cannot go he can send, and you need not blunder into insults when you write your words. You have time to think and to rewrite. I shall have to part with you again, son Allan. I feel it very bitterly.”

Allan did not answer at once. He sat looking at his father’s bent face and heavy eyes. The blow had really aged him, for “‘tis the heart holds up the body.” And to-night John Campbell’s heart had failed him. He realized fully that the absence and interval necessary to heal Mary’s sense of wrong and insult might also be full of other elements equally inimical to his plans. Besides, he had a real joy in his son’s presence. He loved him tenderly; it maimed every pleasure he had to give him up.

“What do you say, Allan? There has been a mistake, and we must make the best of the chances left us. Had you not better go away? Mary will forgive you sooner at a distance.”

Allan bit his lips, and looked steadily at the kind, sorrowful face opposite him. Then he answered, “You are too good a father to deceive, sir. I will not do you that wrong, however angry you may be with me. I love another woman. I never can marry Mary without wronging both her and myself.”

“That alters everything, Allan. How long have you loved this other woman?”

“Since I left home last March.”

“You cannot be sure of a love only a few months old. Will you tell me who she is?”

Allan took a taper and lit every gas-jet in the room. “Look around, father, you will see her everywhere.” He led him first to the picture still upon his easel—Maggie, in her long, brown merino kirk dress; with linen cuffs folded back over the tight, plain sleeves! and a small, turned down linen collar at the throat. She had a sea-shell in her open left palm, and she was looking at it, with that faint melancholy smile Allan always chose for her face! He asked for no criticism, and John Campbell made none. Silently the two men passed from picture to picture. Maggie always. Maggie baking the oat cakes. Maggie at the wheel. Maggie mending the nets. Maggie peering through misty gloom for the boats, out on the angry sea. Maggie bending over the open Bible. Maggie with a neighbor’s baby cuddled up to her breast. Maggie rowing, with the wind blowing her fine hair like a cloud around her. Maggie knitting by the fireside, her face beaming with sisterly love on the pale dark face of her brother David. As Allan had said, “Maggie everywhere.”

The elder man went back to look at several of the pictures; he stood long before the one on the easel. He sat down again, still silent; but Allan saw that there was no anger on his face.

“Well, father?”

“She is a grand looking woman. No one can deny that. A peasant woman, though?”

“Yes, sir, a peasant woman; the daughter of a Fife fisherman.”

“She is not a common peasant woman. You could not believe that she would ever kick her heels in a ‘foursome reel,’ or pass coarse jokes with the lads. Yet she must be uneducated, and perhaps vulgar.”

“She is never vulgar, sir. She has a soul, and she is conscious of it. She had parents, grave and thoughtful, who governed by a look, without waste of words. Though she lives on the wild Fife coast, she has grown up beneath the shade of Judea’s palms; for the Bible has blended itself with all her life. Sarah, Moses, Joshua, Ruth, and David, are far more real people to her than Peel or Wellington, or Jenny Lind, or even Victoria. She has been fed upon faith, subjected to duty, and made familiar with sorrow and suffering and death. The very week I met her, she had lost her father and three eldest brothers in a sudden storm. If you could see her eyes, you could look into her pure soul. A woman like that is never vulgar, father.”

“A lover is allowed to exaggerate, Allan.”

“But I do not exaggerate. Uneducated she certainly is. She can write a little; and in the long stormy days and evenings, I read aloud to her and to her brother. But Scott and Burns and Leigh Hunt are not an education. Her Bible has really been her only teacher.”

“It is His Word,” said John Campbell, reverently. “It is the best of teachers. The generations to whom Scotland owes everything, had no other book. It made her men calm, reflective, courageous unto death. It made her women gentle, faithful, pure, ideal. I remember my mother, Allan; she came from the same school. Her soul lived so much in the Book, that I am sure if an angel had suddenly appeared to her, she would scarcely have been surprised. What domestic women those were! How peaceful and smiling! How fond of the children! How dear to the children!” He had wandered a few moments back into his own past; and though he hastily recalled himself, the influence was upon him.

“Allan?”

“Yes, father.”

“Have you said anything to this girl? Have you in any way committed your promise to her?”

“I have never sought her love. I was their guest, I would not wrong her by a thought. There was in my heart a real intention to marry Mary Campbell. I am your son, do you think I would plot shame or sorrow for any girl?”

“Does she love you?”

“I cannot tell—sometimes I fear so.”

“Allan, there are few loves that conquer life. Life would be a hurly-burly of unbridled passion, if we had not the power to control our likes and dislikes. We two cannot quarrel. You are my one child. The sole desire of my heart is your welfare and happiness. We will make a paction between us. Go away for two years. Let absence test the love you have conceived for this strange girl. At the end of it you will either love her better, or your heart will have turned back to the friend and hope of your childhood and youth. If so, Mary will forgive you, and I may yet see you Laird of Drumloch. But if the new love outgrows the old; if you are sure, after two years’ test, that none but this fisher-girl can be your wife, I will not oppose your happiness. I can trust you to bring no woman to Meriton who will be a shame or a grief to my old age.”

He leaned forward and put out his hand; Allan clasped and kissed it. “No man could have a wiser or a kinder father. I will do whatever you advise, sir.”

“You will not require to go to Fife again, I hope?”

“I promised to go there again. I must keep my word. It would be cruel to drop out of so dear a life, and if she loves me, give her neither hope nor promise.”

“Write.”

“I promised to go.”

“Then keep your word. I can depend upon you. If you say anything to her, tell the whole truth. Allan, I am not asking more from you than I have already given. Some years ago, I met again bonnie Jessie Russell. She was my first love. I nearly broke my heart about her. The old affection came back to both of us. I could have married her then, but she was a widow with four children. I would not divide your inheritance. I put down my own longing, and thought only of you, and of Drumloch. Love is meant to comfort and brighten life, but not to rule it like a despot. I have had my say. Good night, Allan.”

He rose and went slowly out of the room, and he stopped at the easel and looked again at the pictured woman upon it. “Does she know who you are, Allan?” he asked.

“She knows only that my name is Campbell.”

“Do not tell her more. When a love affair gets named, it travels far. I draw many sailors from the Fife sea-towns. We don’t want strangers to discuss our personal affairs;”—and leaning upon Allan’s arm, he passed out of the room, in which he had not only bravely buried his own desires, but also, wisely and kindly accepted others materially altering the few years of life left him. But oh, how selfish is youth! Only one thing is indispensable to it, the need of being happy at any cost. How good is God to those whom he permits to ripen into middle, and old age, and become mellow, and generous, and self-forgetting!

It will be seen, then, that John Campbell was not one of those money-makers with stunted senses, and incomplete natures, for whom all the grapes in the garden of God are sour. He had loved and suffered, the songs of his native land had sweet echoes in his heart, he could appreciate beauty, he delighted in color, he had learned the blessedness of giving and forgiving, he had found out that with renunciation the higher life begins. When Allan told him in the morning that he was going to Fife, he accepted the information pleasantly, as part of an understood arrangement.

“Will you be long away, Allan?”

“A few days, sir.”

“And when you return? What then?”

“I have decided to go Westward.”

“I am glad of it. Boston! New York! Baltimore! Charleston! New Orleans! Why the very names are epics of enterprise! Old as I am, if I could win away from my desk, I would take a year or two to read them.”

They parted pleasantly with a lingering handclasp, and words of “good speed;” and though Allan was going to bid Maggie a long farewell, he was light-hearted, for it was not a hopeless one. If she loved him, and could have patience for two years, he would be free to make her his wife. And he intended to give her this hope to share with him.

When he arrived in Edinburgh, the city was all astir with moving regiments, and the clear, crisp autumn air thrilling with military music—that admirable metallic music so well disciplined, so correct, and yet all the more ardent and passionate for its very restraint. It typified to him the love he had for Maggie Promoter. Its honorable limitations, the patience and obedience by which it was restricted, only made it stronger; and he understood how in order to love a woman well, truth and honor must be loved still better.

The first person he saw upon Leith pier was Willie Johnson. “Willie!” he cried, laughing outright in his pleasured surprise; “have you come to take me to Pittenloch? I want to go there.”

“Hech! but I’m glad to see you, Master Campbell, I’ll put to sea noo. I cain’ awa in spite o twaill signs, and the wind turned wrang, and my feesh all spoiled, and I hae had a handfu’ o bad luck. Sae I was waiting for the luck tide to turn, and there is nane can turn it sae weel as yoursel’ We’ll be awa’ hame noo, and we’ll hae wind and water with us

said Allan gayly, and the old classical couplet sent his thoughts off to the Aegean sea and the Greek fishermen, and the superstitions which are the soul alphabet of humanity.

Johnson had very little news for him. “There’s few wonderfu’ to see, or hear tell o’, in Pittenloch, sir. The Promoters were you asking for? Ay they are well, and doing well, and like to do better still. They say that David is quite upsetten wi his good luck and keeps himsel mair from folk than need be But a fu’ cup is hard to carry.

“They are mistaken, Johnson, I am sure David Promoter has not a pennyworth of personal pride in him He is studying hard, and books—”

“Books’ sir, he’s got a boat fu’ o’ them. It isn’t vera kindly taken, his using a boat for kirk business. Some think it willna be lucky for the rest.”

“What foolishness, Willie!”

“‘Deed, sir, it is just an invite to misfortune to bring the kirk into the boats. There’s naething so unlucky around them as a minister, if it be nae a black cat, or a pair o’ tongs.”

Allan laughed; he could not help laughing, he was so happy. Maggie was growing nearer to him every moment; and it was a real joy to be again upon the sea, to feel the fresh wind blowing through his hair, and the cradling motion of the wide swell of the waves. Early in the morning they arrived at Pittenloch. There was the brown pier, and the blue water, and the spaces of yellow sand, and the sea-weed and tangle all populous with birds whose shrill cries filled the air. There were the white cottages, and the men strolling off to the boats and the women in the open doors watching them away.

There was the Promoters cottage. It was closed and Allan was disappointed. Surely Maggie should have felt him coming. Every moment as he went toward it, he expected the door to open, and a sense of unkindness was chilling his heart, when he heard a swift, light step behind him. He turned, and there stood Maggie. She had the dew of the sea on her face, her cheeks were like a rose, pink and wet before sunrise. Her eyes had a glint as of the morning star in them, she was trembling and panting with her surprise and rapid motion.

He had thought of the sweetest words to greet her with, he had imagined that he might find it possible to take her in his arms and kiss his welcome from her lips. But in spite of her evident gladness, something in her manner restrained him; also, there was Christie Buchan, and half a dozen other women watching them. So what he said and did, was only to hold out his hand, and ask, “Are you well, Maggie? Are you glad to see me?”

“Weel, and right happy, sir.”

“And David?”

“He is weel and happy too, sir. He likes the early hours for study, and I aye try to tak’ a walk and let him hae the house place quiet, and to himsel’.”

“He should have used my room. Students are tyrants, Maggie, if you give in to them, they will stop the clock and make you breathe with your fingers on your lips.”

Smiling, she opened the door and said, “Step inside, sir; there’s nae foot welcomer.”

“I thocht you wad come! I said you wad come!” cried David joyfully. “Noo I’m the proudest man in Fife! Maggie, let us hae some tea, and a kippered herring, and toast the oat cake crisp. I’ll no call the king my cousin to-day! Mr. Campbell, you are just the answer to my heart’s desire.”

“Thank you, David. It is pleasant to be made so much of”—and he opened the door of his room, and cried out, “O how nice it is, Maggie! I will just wash the salt off my face and then come and breakfast with you; and toast me a couple of herring, Maggie, for I am as hungry as a fisherman, and I have not tasted a herring since I left Pittenloch.”

Three at a little round table, and only some tea, and fish, and oat cake; and yet, never was there a gayer meal. After it was over, David was eager to show Allan what he had accomplished, and the young men went together into Allan’s room to examine lexicons and exercises.

David was full of quick interest, and Allan deserved credit for affecting a sympathy it was impossible for him to feel. In a little while, some one began to sing and the voice was singularly clear, and sweetly penetrating. Allan put down the papers in his hand, and listened like one entranced.

“It’s just Maggie, and I’m mair astonished at her. She hasna sung a word since fayther’s death. What for is she singing the noo? It’s no kind o’ her, and me wi’ yoursel’ and the books;” said David very fretfully; for he did not like to be interrupted in his recitations.

“Hush! hush! I would not lose a syllable for all the Latin language, David.”