CHAPTER XII. — 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.