But while he was hurrying on his journey of love and succor, Maggie was
watching in an indescribable sickness of delayed hope. If Allan got her
letter on the 29th she thought he would surely be at Drumloch on the 30th.
She gave him until the evening. She invented excuses for his delay for
several more wretched days. Then she resigned all hope of seeing him. Her
letter had missed him, and perhaps he would never again visit Pittenloch.
What a week of misery she spent! One morning Dr. Fleming turned her
sharply to the light. "Miss Promoter," he said, "you are very near ill.
Go away and cry. Take a good cry. It may save you a deal of suffering. I
will stay by Miss Campbell an hour. Run into the garden, my brave woman,
and have it out with yourself."
She was thankful to do so. She wrapped her plaid around her and almost
fled to the thick laurel shrubbery. As she walked there she cried softly,
"Oh, Allan, Allan, Allan, it wasna my fault, dearie! It wasna Maggie's
fault! It wasna Maggie's fault!" Her bit of broken sixpence hung by a
narrow ribbon round her neck. She laid it in her hand, kissed it, and wept
over it. "He'll maybe come back to me! He'll maybe come back to me! And if
he never comes back I'll be aye true to him; true till death to him. He'll
ken it some time! He'll ken it some time!" She cried passionately; she let
her quick nature have full way; and sobbed as she had been used to sob
upon the beach of Pittenloch, or in the coverts of its bleak, black rocks.
The cruelty of the separation, the doubt, the injustice that must mingle
in Allan's memory with her, this was what "rent her heart." Oh, words of
terrible fidelity! And how was she to conceal, to bear this secret wound?
And who should restore to her the dear face, the voice, the heart that
wrapped her in its love? In that sad hour how prodigal she was of tender
words! Words which she would perhaps have withheld if Allan had been by
her side. What passionate avowals of her affection she made, so sweet, so
thrilling, that it would be a kind of profanation to write them.
When she went back to the house she was weary, but calm. Only hope seemed
to have gone forever. There are melancholy days in which the sun has no
color, and the clouds hang in dark masses, gray upon darker gray. Life has
the same pallors and glooms; we are weary of ourselves and of others, we
have the sensation of defeat upon defeat, of hopeless struggles, of mortal
languors that no faith can lift. As Maggie watched that day beside her
friend she felt such prostration. She smiled scornfully to herself as she
remembered that ever in the novels which she had read the lover and the
hero always appeared in some such moments of extremity as she had gone
through. But Allan had not found her in the laurel walk, and she did not
believe he would ever try to find her again. Sorrow had not yet taught her
that destiny loves surprises.