A Daughter of Fife

The woods adjoining the road were the Campbells' property, he leaped the wall, and took the footpath through them. How silent it was under the pines! the more so because of that vague stir in the air among them. What nameless perfumes! emanations from the resinous earth, from the old trunks, from the foliage. What delightful mysteries in their nooks! Bird twitterings intimate and charming; chirpings of the mothers to their newly fledged young; little cries of joy, and counsel, and innocent surprises! A large, cool, calm hand was laid upon his heart, the hand of nature; he sauntered slowly in the aromatic air, he dreamed impossible dreams of bliss, and with the faith of youth believed in them. Good! When we have weaned youth from dreams, from poetry, from enthusiasms, and made it thoroughly sensible, and material, what kind of race will remain to the world?

And alas! All happy dreams are short enough. Allan's was dissipated by a sound of suppressed weeping. He looked cautiously around, and on the clean, brown ground beneath the pines, a little in advance of him, he saw a woman sitting. Her back was against the trunk of a large tree, her face was turned quite away from him, but he knew it was Mary Campbell. And softly and hurriedly he retraced his own steps for some distance, and then he found the wall, and leaped into the highway, and walked home by it; thoroughly awake and disenchanted.

He did not meet Mary until the dinner hour. She was then elegantly dressed, her face clear and bright, her manner, as it always was, gentle and yet cheerful.

"The sphinx," thought Allan, "is some inscrutable woman on our own hearth-stone." He remembered the low sobbing he had heard in the wood, the bowed head, the unmistakable attitude of grief, and then he looked at Mary's face dimpling with smiles, and at her pretty figure, brave in glistening silk and gold ornaments. And somehow, that night, she made him feel that she was the head of the House of Campbell, and the heiress of Drumloch.

The next day was the Sabbath. She was very particular about her religious duties; she went to kirk twice, she had the servants in the evening for catechism and parallel passages.

She gave Allan no opportunity of seeing her alone. On Monday morning, although it rained, she insisted on going to Glasgow; and she stayed in Glasgow until the following Wednesday evening. It was perhaps the first sensation of "snub" that Allan had ever received; and it annoyed him very much.

But on Wednesday night she seemed to relent, and she did all in her power to make their last dinner together one pleasant to remember. When she left her uncle and cousin to finish their wine, she left them well disposed to kindly confidence. For since Allan's return from Fife he had not felt confidence possible. His father had asked no questions, and shown no disposition to discuss his plans. But at this hour he voluntarily renewed the subject.

"You went to Fife, I suppose, Allan?"

"Yes, sir. I was there two days."

"And are you still in the same mind?"

"Nothing can change my mind on that subject, sir."

"Time has worked greater wonders, Allan. However, I will venture no opinion for two years. When do you go Westward?"

"I shall leave for Liverpool by to-morrow night's train. I shall sail on Saturday."

"Call at the office early, or go to town with me. All is ready for you. Write as often as you can, Allan, I shall weary for your letters." His eyes were full of tears, he lifted his wine glass to conceal them.

"Father, is there any special reason why I should go so far away from you? Can I not wait two years at home?"

"In justice to my own side of the bargain, Allan, you must travel and compare other women with this Fife girl. You must not only be where you can not see her, but also, where you can see many others. I think American women will be a fair test of your affection. Between Boston and New Orleans their variety is infinite. Gillbride says, they are the blood, and beauty, and intellect of all races potently mingled. Mary has a right to be considered; she is evidently embarrassed by your presence; the least you can do for her now, is to relieve her from it. Next spring there will be an opportunity to re-consider matters, if you desire. Money has accumulated belonging to Drumloch, and Mary has decided to expend it on the house. A new wing is to be built, and she will go to reside there. The work will get on better, and the tenants look with justice to the advantages of an open house again. But there is no more to be said at this time. Come, Allan, let us go to the drawing-room, I hear Mary playing a song I never can resist, no nor any other person, I think—" and he began to hum "O Love will venture in."

"Isn't it a wonderful combination of thirds and sevenths? There is nothing like it in the whole portfolio of music. Nothing so winning, nothing that can so charm and haunt your ear-chambers." And they stepped softly and slowly, and stood at the door together, to listen to the enchaining plaintive little song:

[Musical notation omitted.]

O love will venture in where it daurna weel be seen,O love will venture in where wisdom once has been;But I will down the river rove amang the woods so green,And a' to pu' a posie to my ain dear May.The primrose I will pu', the firstling o' the year,And I will pu' the pink, the emblem o' my dear:For she's the pink o' womankind and blooms without a peer:And a' to be a posie to my ain dear May.I'll pu' the budding rose when Phoebus peeps in view,For it's like a baumy kiss o' her sweet bonnie mou'The hyacinth's for constancy, wi' its unchanging blueAnd a' to be a posie for my ain dear MayThe lily it is pure and the lily it is fair,And in her lovely bosom I'll place the lily there,The daisy's for simplicity of unaffected air;And a' to be a posie to my ain dear May.The woodbine I will pu' when the e'ening star is nearAnd the diamond draps o' dew shall be her e'en sae clear;The violet's for modesty, which weel she fa's to wearAnd a' to be a posie to my ain dear May.I'll tie the posie round wi' the silken band of love,And I'll place it on her breast, and I'll swear by a' above.That to the latest breath o' life the band shall ne'er remove.And this will be a posie to my ain dear May.

The last long drawn notes of melancholy sweetness were scarcely still, when a servant entered. "The minister is here, sir."

"I had forgotten," said Campbell hastily. "There is an extra kirk session to-night. It is about the organ, Mary. Will you go?"

"I would rather not. Every one will have his testimony to raise against it, and I should get cross."

"Then good night, bairnies. I must not keep the minister waiting. Maybe I'll be beyond your time. Don't lose your beauty sleep for me."

He left the room in a hurry, and in a few minutes the "bairnies" heard the crunch of the retreating wheels upon the gravel. Mary continued at the piano, lightly running over with one hand the music she happened to turn. Allan stood on the hearth watching her. Both were intensely and uncomfortably conscious of their position. At length Allan said, "Mary, suppose you cease playing, and talk with me!"

"Very well." She rose slowly and turned with affected reluctance. Affected, because she really wished for some satisfactory conversation with him. The recollection of their last confidence was painful and humiliating. She could hardly bear the idea of carrying its memory throughout two years. Few as the steps were between herself and Allan, she determined, as she took them, to speak with all the candor which her position gave her the right to use; and at any rate, not to end their interview again in debt to self-esteem. The strength of the Scotch mind is in its interrogative quality, and instinctively Mary fell behind the cover of a question.

"Why should we talk, Allan? Is there any thing you can say that will unsay the words you have spoken?"

"You were not fair with me, Mary. You took me up before I had finished my explanation."

"Oh, I think there was enough said."

"You made words hard to me, Mary. You forgot that we had been brought up together on terms of perfect confidence. I always held you as my sister. I told you all my boyish secrets, all the troubles and triumphs of my college life, all my youthful entanglements. I had few, very few, secrets from you. I think we both understood by implication—rather than by explanation—that it was our father's intention to unite the two branches of the Drumloch family, and so also unite their wealth by our marriage."

"I never understood there was any such intention. No one ever spoke to me of it. But if the plan had been possible, it was a wise plan; any sensible parents would have conceived it, and hoped and worked for its accomplishment."

"When I left home last spring—if I had thought you cared for me—one word would have detained me."

"Was it my place to say that word? And, Allan, you would not have been moved by any word at that time. You thought only of asserting yourself, your rights, your inclinations. The crown of England would not have fitted you, unless it had been your gracious will to select it."

"A man must have some individuality—"

"At twenty-four years old how much has he? He is a mass of undigested learning and crude opinions. What he will be at thirty-four depends upon a thousand circumstances which he cannot even apprehend. Wishes and advices from a father are not commands. You showed a petulant, foolish temper, quite unworthy of you, in turning your back on Uncle John, and saying in effect, 'I don't intend to take your advice, I intend to take my own way, even though it lead me to a Fife fishing village—and a degrading love affair."

She said the words calmly, looking steadily, not at Allan, but into the depths of the Argand lamp. There was no nervous movement of her hands; her interlaced fingers lay motionless on the table before her.

Allan answered promptly, "I have no degrading love affair in any Fife village. If I had, do you think I should have entered your presence at all? The woman I love is as sacred in my eyes as you are. I intend to make her my wife. I should have told you all about her the morning that you took for granted my offer in order to peremptorily refuse me—if you had allowed me"—

"Oh, Allan! don't say that! We are getting deeper and deeper into mistakes. I certainly thought you wanted me to refuse you. I tried to make the necessity as easy as possible for you. But imagine how I felt when I came to consider things! I was asked to do this humiliating piece of deception, in order that I might clear your way to some fisher-girl. It was too bad, Allan!"

"I do seem to have treated you badly, Mary, because you gave me no opportunity to tell you every thing, and to ask as a great sisterly kindness what you gave under a sense of indignation and wrong. I feel that it is now useless to explain; but how did you know that I was in love with a fisher-girl?"

"I have seen the pictures you painted while you were away. They revealed the story to me—as much of it as I care to know."

"There is now no secrecy in the matter. I have told my father all, and he has asked me to go to America for two years. At the end of that time he will accept my marriage."

"Poor Uncle John! I wonder how people can toil and deny themselves for ungrown children! When they come to years of have-my-own-way, they generally trample upon all their love and labor. For instance, you see a tall, large, handsome woman in what you think picturesque poverty, you want her, just as you used to want the fastest boat on the river, or the fastest horse in the field. The fact that you ought not to have her, that you cannot have her, except by trampling on all your father's dearest hopes, does not, in the least, control you. You can conceive of nothing better than the gratification of your own wishes. If all the men were like you, and all the women were in my mind, there would be no more marrying in the world, Allan Campbell!"

"Mary, if you should ever be really in love, you will then excuse me; at present I can make no apology which you will understand or accept. Forgive me upon credit. I am going away for a long time; and I cannot go happily if we are at variance." He sat down by her side, and she let him take her hand, and plead the memory of all their past affection for, and reliance on each other. "Be my friend, my sister still, Mary; though you will not answer me, I will trust to you. Let us part kindly now, we can gain nothing by further discussion, at this time." He lifted her face and kissed it; and the next moment she heard the door close behind his footsteps, and realized that the opportunity of which she had made such an unhappy use was gone.

There is little need to say that she was miserable. All of us have been guilty of like perversities. We have said unkind things when our hearts were aching with suppressed affection; we have been so eager to defend ourselves, to stand fairly in some dear one's sight, that we have hasted in the wrong direction, and never blundered into the right one until it was too late. Poor Mary! She had stung herself all over. She could think of nothing that she had said that she did not wish unsaid; and of many things of sisterly care, and even friendly courtesy, that she had entirely forgotten. Mortification dismissed all other feelings, and she set her reflections to its key. "How glad he must be to have escaped a wife so sharp-tongued and domineering! No doubt that Fife girl would have been all submission and adoration! When a man falls in love with a girl so much beneath him, it is a piece of shameless vanity. It is the savage in the man. He wants her to say 'my lord' to him, and to show him reverence! I could not do that kind of thing, no, not even if he filled the highest pulpit in the land, and preached to the queen herself every Sunday."

When John Campbell returned, he found Mary still in the parlor. She was playing some noisy, mechanical "variation," whose rapid execution was a physical vent for her chagrin and disappointment. She rose with alacrity, rang for hot water, brewed his toddy, and affected the greatest interest in the kirk meeting. Indeed she was interested in it; for the gathering had been to consider whether John Campbell's offer of an organ, and her own offer of her services as organist, could be accepted by the church.

"It was hopeless from the first," said Campbell with a queer smile; "every shepherd in Bute was there to protest. You would have thought I had proposed a Popish Mass Book, or at least an Episcopal Litany. There will be no 'music boxes' in Bute kirks this generation, Mary. And, would you believe it, the minister was dead against it?"

"I thought he favored an organ in the choir?"

"I was always uncertain about him. I never could interest him in the subject. He would listen, and shake his head, or say, 'just so, sir,' or refer to a session in which all could say the word in their heart; and so on. To-night, after an opening prayer, in which he took the liberty to remind the Lord of all the spiritual dangers connected with praising Him with instruments of our own handiwork, he stood up and said, 'I'm not in favor of any music with the Psalms of David, they are far better without it. And if I were willing for the organ box, we are a poor kirk, and could not afford to rob our stipendary and mission funds to pay a man player on instruments; and as for women interfering with the ordinances in any way, you all know what St. Paul says on that subject.' And, of course, when the minister talks with the people's prejudices, he is omnipotent."

"Was it put to the vote?"

"Yes. Two of the congregation, Burns of Blantree, and myself, stood up when the organ was proposed; the rest sat grim and dour. Nothing less than an earthquake could have made them stir. When those opposed to an organ were requested to rise, they stood up solid as a phalanx, and firm as a stone wall. I wish Allan had gone with me. Where is the lad?"

"He bade me 'good-by' some time since. I dare say he has several things to do in his rooms. A man cannot go away for two years and leave his treasures to moths, and dust, and unchecked decay. Uncle, how soon can we begin to build at Drumloch? This organ business has made me lose sympathy with the Meriton people:—and I want something to do, Uncle John, something to think about, and look after."

"Then I will have the plans drawn, and estimates made, and you shall go to your own home, Mary, as soon as possible. The people are looking forward to your return. You will be happier among them. We can return to Glasgow at once; I shall be very glad to do so; and you can go to Drumloch in the spring."

The proposal pleased Mary. She wanted to get away from Meriton. She did not like being in the same house with those numerous similitudes of the Fife girl. The garden in which Allan had made her that pretence of an offer, the parlor in which she had given way to such a petulant, disagreeable temper, were full of mortifying remembrances. She wanted to turn over a new leaf of life, to cross the past one, and to cancel forever the hopes there credited.

CHAPTER IX

SEVERED SELVES AND SHADOWS

"Now I would speak the last Farewell, but cannot;It would be still Farewell a thousand times;So let us part in the dumb pomp of grief."* * * * *"Rumor is a pipeBlown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,And if so easy and so plain a stopThe still discordant, wavering multitudeCan play upon't."

At that time, Mary saw no more of her Cousin Allan. He had gone when she rose next morning, gone away in a slow, even downpour of rain, that was devoid of every hope of blue sky or sunshine. On the river they were in a cloud of fog impenetrable to sight, and inexpressibly dreary. Everything also in the little boat was clammy and uncomfortable. There was a long day before Allan; for his business scarcely occupied him an hour, and then he went out into the black, chill street, and felt thoroughly miserable. His father's face had been so white, his hands had trembled so, he had made such a brave effort to say a cheerful 'good-by.' Allan's conscience troubled him; he felt supremely selfish, he could not satisfy himself that he had any right to put so good a parent to so much sorrow.

If he could have written to Maggie, it would have been some consolation. But he had not been able to make any arrangements for that solace. A post office did not exist in Pittenloch; if a letter were addressed there, it lay in Dysart until the Dysart postmistress happened to see some one from Pittenloch. Under such circumstances, there was no telling into whose hands his letters might fall. And a letter to Maggie Promoter from strange parts, would be a circumstance to rouse unbounded curiosity. Either curiosity would be illegitimately satisfied, or Maggie would be the object of endless suspicions.

He thought of David, but there would be little comfort in seeing David, for he could not talk to him of Maggie. Allan would have liked well to confide in David, and explain, as he thought he ought to, his honorable intentions toward his sister; but Maggie had earnestly entreated that nothing should be said to her brother. "He'll be aye questioning me. He'll be aye watching me. He'll maybe tell folks, and I'll feel everybody's eye is on me. Forbye, he willna be as happy in what you hae done for him. He thinks now, it was just for your admiration o' his abilities, and your liking for his sel', that you sent him to Glasga' College. If he kent you thocht o' me, he wad be sure it was for my sake, and that wad jist tak' the good out o' everything for Davie." Thus, Maggie had reasoned, and Allan thought her reasoning both generous and prudent.

So there would be little comfort in threading the dirty ways of Argyle Street to the Candleriggs; and he went to his hotel and ordered dinner, then back to his father, and begged him to come and spend the last hours of his delay with him. And John Campbell was delighted. "Things will go tapsalteerie, Allan, but let them; we will have a bite and a cup of kindness together." It was a very pleasant bite and cup, seasoned with much love, and many cheerful confidences; and when Allan, at length, left the dreary precincts of the old Caledonian Station, the last thing he saw was his father's bare, white head, and that courtly upward movement of the right hand which was his usual greeting or adieu; a movement which is as much the natural salutation of a gentleman, as a nod is the natural one of a vulgar mind.

John Campbell remained in Glasgow for the next three days, and Mary was lonely enough at Meriton. It was a little earlier than they usually removed to their city home, but she began to make preparations for that event. In the course of these preparations, it was necessary to inspect the condition of Allan's apartments. How desolate and forsaken they looked! No other rooms in the house had the same sense of loss, even though they had been in the same measure dismantled. The empty polished grates, the covered furniture, the closed blinds, the absence of all the little attributes of masculine life—pipes, slippers, newspapers, etc.—were painfully apparent.

But no one had touched any of the numerous pictures of Maggie. They were on the wall, the mantel, the table, the easel. She glanced at them, and left the room; but after a moment's hesitation, she returned, drew up the blinds, and stood resolutely before the large one upon the easel. "What is there in her face that is so charmful?" she asked. "Why did it draw me back here? Does my sense of justice forbid me to dislike without a reason, and am I looking for one?" She went from picture to picture. She stood long before some, she took one or two in her hand. She did not like the girl, but she would not be unfair in her criticisms. "Whatever she is doing, she is like a poem. I could not bake oat cakes, and look as if I had stepped out of Gessner's Idyls. But she does. What limpid eyes! And yet they have a look of sorrow in them—as if they had been washed clear in tears—she is not laughing anywhere. I like that! If she were gay and jocund in that picture how vulgar it would be.—If her splendid hair were unbound, and her fine throat and neck without kerchief, and if she were simpering with a finger on a dimple in her cheek, I know that I should detest her. It is her serenity, her air of seriousness, which is so enthralling—I wonder what her name is—it should be something grand, and sweet, and solemn—I should think Theodora would suit her—What nonsense! In a Fife fishing village every girl is either Jennie or Maggie or Christie." So she mused, going from picture to picture, until they acquired a kind of personality in her mind.

Her uncle came home a little sad. "Allan has gone again," he said. "I seem to have seen very little of the lad. He is such a fine lad, too. We had a few happy hours together at the last. I am very glad of that! When he comes home next time, he will settle, and never leave me again. I shall be a happy man when that day gets around, Mary."

"He will settle, that is, he will marry that fisher-girl! He has told you all about her, he says?"

"He was very honest and candid with me, very."

"What is her name, uncle?"

"I do not know. He did not tell me, and I never thought of asking."

"Where does she live?"

"Really, Mary, I never asked that either. I don't think it makes the least difference."

"Oh, but it does. I am very much disappointed. I was thinking we could take a trip to the village, and see the girl ourselves. Would not that be a good thing?"

"It would be a very bad thing, a very dishonorable thing. If I thought it necessary to play the spy on my son Allan, I should prefer to know he was dead. The girl may become my daughter. I should be ashamed to meet her, if I had gone to peep at her behind her back. She would not despise me more than I should despise myself."

"I do not look at it in that light, uncle. There might be several good reasons."

"We won't discuss them, Mary. Let us talk of Drumloch. Wilkie is drawing the plan of the new wing. When will you go back to Glasgow? I was at Blytheswood Square to-day; the house is in beautiful order."

"I will go back to-morrow. I am weary of Meriton this year. I have found myself everywhere at a discount. Allan refuses my estate and myself. The minister and the kirk refuse my services as organist. And when I had a very kind idea in my head about Theodora, you make me feel as if I had been plotting treason against her, and against honor and everything else of good report. Let me hide my head in the smoke of Glasgow to-morrow."