A Daughter of Fife, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [best classic literature .txt] 📗

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