And so she was. Young and naturally hopeful, it is not to be supposed that Allison’s sorrow, heavy and sore though it was, could make all the future dark to her, and bow her always to the earth. She had lost herself for a time in the maze of trouble, into which death, and her enforced marriage, and her brother’s sin and its punishment, had brought her. But she was coming to the end, and out of it now. She was no longer living and walking in a dream. She was able to look over the last year of her life at home with calmness, and she could see how, being overwrought in mind and body, spent with work and watching and care, she had fallen under the mastery of blind terror for her brother’s safety, and had yielded where she ought to have stood firm.
She had no one to blame for what had befallen her. Her mother had hardly been in a state to know what was going on around her, except that her “bonny Willie”—as she called him in her prayers, and in her murmured longings for him—was faraway, and might not come home in time to see her die, or to help to lay her in her grave. Her father grieved for his son, but, angry at him also, had uttered no word either to help or to hinder the cause of the man who had made Allison’s promise the price of her brother’s safety. But he went about with bowed head, listening, and looking, and longing, ay longing, for the coming of the lad. So what could she do but yield for their sakes, and take what seemed the only way to bring him back again?
But one wrong was never righted by the doing of another, and her sacrifice had come to worse than naught. Though she had sinned blindly, she had suffered for her sin, and must suffer still. But gradually the despair which darkened all the year was passing. There was hope in her heart now, and a longing to throw off the dead-weight which had so long held her down. And the lightening of her burden showed now and then in eye, and voice, and step, so that all could see the change. But with all this the thought of John Beaton had nothing to do.
She had seen him just as she had seen other folk and he had come into her thoughts once or twice when he was not in her sight. But that was because of the good understanding there was between him and little Marjorie. The child had much to say about him when he was at home; and when she was carried out in Allison’s arms on those days, she was always wishing that they might meet him before they went home again.
One day they met, and Marjorie being gently and safely transferred to John’s arms, Allison turned and went back into the house without a word of explanation or apology.
“It’s ironing day,” explained Marjorie, a little startled at the look on John’s face.
“Oh! it’s ironing day, is it? Well, never mind. I am going to take you to the very top of Windhill to give you a taste of the fresh air, and then I shall carry you home to take tea with my mother and me.”
“That will be delightful,” said Marjorie with a sigh of pleasure.
No. In those days Allison was thinking nothing at all about John. When she went about the house, with no gloom, but only a shadow of softened sadness on her face, and a look of longing in her eyes, it was of her brother that she was thinking. She was saying in her heart:
“God help him in that dismal place—he who should be free upon the hills with the sheep, or following the plough on his ain land at home.”