Allison Bain; Or, By a Way She Knew Not

by Margaret M. Robertson

Allison Bain’s name was spoken also. Had she been wrong to go away? Had she been right? If she had accepted her lot, might she have saved him, and lived to be a happy woman in spite of all? Who could say? But if all was true that his man Dickson was saying, she had helped to save him at last.

In silence they laid him down within sight of the grave where Allison had knelt one sorrowful day, and there they left him to his rest.

Allison was worn and spent, but she was a strong woman and she would soon be herself again, she said, and her friends said so also. They did not know that Doctor Fleming had, at this time, some anxiety about her. He remembered the first days of his acquaintance with her, and the dull despair into which she had fallen, before he sent her to Nethermuir, and he would not have been surprised if, after the long strain upon mind and body through which she had passed, the same suffering had fallen upon her again. Therefore it was that he used both his authority as a physician and his influence as a friend, to prevent any allusion to business matters; and though he was guarded in all that he said to Mr Rainy on the subject, he yet said enough to show him the propriety of letting all things remain as they were, for a time.

So Allison was left at peace,—in the quiet little house which she was beginning to call her home. She had been asked, and even entreated by Mrs Hume, to come to the manse for a while. Mrs Beaton had written to say how glad it would make her if Allison would come to her for a week or two. But remembering the misery of her first months in Nethermuir, Allison hesitated at first, and then refused them both. She was better where she was, she said, and in a few days she would be ready for her work again.

She did not say it to them, and she hardly confessed it to herself, but she shrank from the thought of the eyes that would be looking at her, and the tongues that would be discussing her, now that her secret was known. For of course it could not be kept. All her small world would know how who she was, and why she had come to take refuge in the manse. They would think well of her, or ill of her, according to their natures, but that would not trouble her if she were not there to hear and see. So she stayed where she was, and as she could not do what she would have liked best, she made up her mind to go back to the infirmary again.

She would have liked best to go away at once to her brother in America, and some of her friends were inclined to wonder that she did not do so. But Allison had her reasons, some of which she was not prepared to discuss with any one,—which indeed she did not like to dwell upon herself. She had been asked to come to the home of the Haddens to stay there till her brother was ready for her. When she was stronger and surer of herself, she would accept their kind invitation, and then she would go to Willie—it did not matter where. East or West, far or near, would be all the same to her in that strange land, so that she and Willie might be able to help one another.

“And, oh! I wish the time were only come,” said she.

Since this must be waited for, she would have liked well to ask kind Doctor Thorne, who had called her “a born nurse,” to let her come to him, that she might be at his bidding, and live her life, and do some good in the world. The first time that Doctor Fleming had come to see her, after her long labour and care were over, it had been on her lips to ask him to speak to the good London doctor for her. But that was at the very first, and the fear that Doctor Fleming might wonder at her for thinking of new plans, before the dead man was laid in his grave, had kept her silent. After that she hesitated for other reasons. London was faraway, and the journey was expensive, and it would only be for a year at most, and possibly for less, as whenever her brother said he was ready for her she must go. So there was nothing better for her to do than just to return to her work in the infirmary, and wait with patience.

“And surely that ought to be enough for me, after all I have come through, just to stay there quietly and wait. I ought to ken by this time—and I do ken—that no real ill can come upon me.

“Pain? Yes, and sorrow, and disappointment. But neither doubt, nor fear, nor any real ill can harm me. I may be well content, since I am sure of that. And I am content, only—whiles, I am foolish and forget.”