So there would be little comfort in threading the dirty ways of Argyle
Street to the Candleriggs; and he went to his hotel and ordered dinner,
then back to his father, and begged him to come and spend the last hours
of his delay with him. And John Campbell was delighted. "Things will go
tapsalteerie, Allan, but let them; we will have a bite and a cup of
kindness together." It was a very pleasant bite and cup, seasoned with
much love, and many cheerful confidences; and when Allan, at length, left
the dreary precincts of the old Caledonian Station, the last thing he saw
was his father's bare, white head, and that courtly upward movement of the
right hand which was his usual greeting or adieu; a movement which is as
much the natural salutation of a gentleman, as a nod is the natural one of
a vulgar mind.
John Campbell remained in Glasgow for the next three days, and Mary was
lonely enough at Meriton. It was a little earlier than they usually
removed to their city home, but she began to make preparations for that
event. In the course of these preparations, it was necessary to inspect
the condition of Allan's apartments. How desolate and forsaken they
looked! No other rooms in the house had the same sense of loss, even
though they had been in the same measure dismantled. The empty polished
grates, the covered furniture, the closed blinds, the absence of all the
little attributes of masculine life--pipes, slippers, newspapers, etc.--
were painfully apparent.
But no one had touched any of the numerous pictures of Maggie. They were
on the wall, the mantel, the table, the easel. She glanced at them, and
left the room; but after a moment's hesitation, she returned, drew up the
blinds, and stood resolutely before the large one upon the easel. "What is
there in her face that is so charmful?" she asked. "Why did it draw me
back here? Does my sense of justice forbid me to dislike without a reason,
and am I looking for one?" She went from picture to picture. She stood
long before some, she took one or two in her hand. She did not like the
girl, but she would not be unfair in her criticisms. "Whatever she is
doing, she is like a poem. I could not bake oat cakes, and look as if I
had stepped out of Gessner's Idyls. But she does. What limpid eyes! And
yet they have a look of sorrow in them--as if they had been washed clear
in tears--she is not laughing anywhere. I like that! If she were gay and
jocund in that picture how vulgar it would be.--If her splendid hair were
unbound, and her fine throat and neck without kerchief, and if she were
simpering with a finger on a dimple in her cheek, I know that I should
detest her. It is her serenity, her air of seriousness, which is so
enthralling--I wonder what her name is--it should be something grand, and
sweet, and solemn--I should think Theodora would suit her--What nonsense!
In a Fife fishing village every girl is either Jennie or Maggie or
Christie." So she mused, going from picture to picture, until they
acquired a kind of personality in her mind.