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.
As it happened, he just missed it; but it was Maggie's own fault. If she
had trusted it to the Drumloch mail-bag and servant it would have reached
Dalry on the twenty-ninth; and on that day Willie Johnson was in the
post-village, and received several letters lying there for himself and
others in Pittenloch. But when, in our anxiety, we trust to our own
judgment, instead of to that something which, for lack of a better name,
we call good fortune, we are usually, and perhaps justly, deserted by good
fortune. Maggie feared the footman would shirk her solitary letter, and
perhaps keep it until his regular visit to the post the following day; so
she gave it to the doctor, earnestly asking him to post it as he passed
through the town. And the doctor fully intended to do so, but he was met
by an urgent call for help; he forgot it then; he did not pass near the
post-office for two days, and the two days might as well have been two
months, for it was fully that time before Willie Johnson received his next
letters.
Mary was exceedingly ill on the twenty-ninth. Her soul had reached the
very border-land of being. In the dim, still room she lay, painfully
breathing, faintly murmuring words unintelligible and very far away. But
as Maggie sat motionless beside her, sometimes hopelessly watching,
sometimes softly praying, she could not help thinking of the beach at
Pittenloch, of the fresh salt air, and the sea coming in with the wind,
and the motion and sparkle and sunshine, and the tall, handsome man she
loved looking with sorrowful longing for her. And though she never grudged
Mary one moment of the joy she was sacrificing, yet her tears dropped upon
the clay-like hands she clasped in her own; for human love and human hopes
are very sweet, never perhaps more sweet than in the very hour in which we
yield them up to some noble duty, or some cruel fatality.