It was almost twilight when Isabel and Horace Stapylton entered the
little parlour where Margaret lay back wearily in her chair, longing for
rest and the silence of the night; but she smiled softly at her sister,
and half rose from her seat, weak, but courteous to acknowledge the
presence of the stranger. Stapylton was the son of an English squire,
who had been sent to Scotland to study agriculture, and from the high
farming of Lothian had found his way to Ayrshire on the score of
cheesemaking, and thence to the other side of the Loch to Mr. Smeaton’s
great stock farm. It had been autumn when he came, and the grouse was a
still more potent attraction. And after a while he had found his way
over the braes to see Mr. Lothian, who had once been tutor to the young
earl (before he came to be marquis), and had many English friends. A
Scotch Manse is the home of hospitality, and young Stapylton found
himself comfortable and saw Isabel, and discovered many attractions in
the place; and, after a succession of flying visits, had settled down as
Mr. Lothian’s permanent guest. In the primitive world of Loch Diarmid he
was distinguished by his nationality, which placed him on a little
pedestal apart from all competitors. He was ‘yon English lad’ to the
prejudiced multitude; and more kindly bystanders entitled him ‘the young
Englishman at the Manse.’ He was a ruddy, well-looking, not highly
refined type of man; but he was a stranger and ‘English,’ and surrounded
with a certain agreeable half-mystery in consequence. His accent had a
sound of refinement and elevation in it to ears used to the broader
vowels and ‘West-country drawl’ of the vernacular. And to Isabel Diarmid
he had a charm more subtle even than the attraction of singularity and
unlikeness to the multitude. He was the first man who had openly and
evidently owned her power as a woman, which of itself is a great matter.
It did not matter where she went, he knew of it as by magic, and was
always at hand, a kind of persecution which is not always disagreeable
to an inexperienced girl. It gave to Isabel that vague, sweet sense of
being one of the princesses of romance which tells for so much in a
young life. She went in now, to her sister, with life breathing about
her, with the wild perfume of the summer blossoms, the heather she had
been brushing against, the bog-myrtle she had been treading under foot,
like an atmosphere round her; and love untold and hope without bounds,
all tender, vague, and splendid, encircling her like the air she
breathed. This was the difference between the two sisters, and it was a
strange difference. If Margaret had been an ordinary invalid it would
have been a touching and melancholy contrast. But as it was the
advantage was not all on her sister’s side.
‘We’ve been hearing of Ailie Macfarlane,’ said Isabel, eagerly; ‘I have
seen her. If it is faith that has cured Ailie, why should you lie there
so weak? Oh, my bonnie Maggie! If it was the like of me it would be
different; but why should Ailie be well and strong and you lie there?’
‘I think because it’s God’s will,’ said Margaret: ‘but Miss Catherine
has been here, and I have done nothing this hour but talk of myself; it
is not the best subject. Mr. Stapylton, I thought you were leaving the
Loch? There is not much to take up a young man like you here.’
‘There is more here than anywhere else in the world,’ said young
Stapylton; ‘I should like to stay all my life--I hate the very thought
of going away.’
‘But your friends are all in England,’ said Margaret. ‘and your life--it
is not easy for me now to feel what life is. I am like one lying by a
riverside, seeing it glide and glide away. I can do little but speak,
and that’s poor work. But you that are young and strong are
different--you and Isabel. You should not put off each other’s time.’
‘We met by chance,’ said Isabel, with a sudden blush; ‘and I have done
all I had to do. There are times when one cannot work; it’s gloaming now
and the day is past. There is a meeting down at the Lochhead with Mr.
Lothian and all the ministers. But I would rather stay with you. _She’s_
coming in from the Lochhead, and the bairns are ready for their
supper--and, Margaret, we’ve wearied you.’
_She_ was Jean Campbell, the stepmother to whom Isabel was less kind and
tolerant than her sister, and whom presently they heard come in with a
little commotion into the large low kitchen where the family took its
meals. Little Mary had been with her mother, and by and by a little
knock at the parlour-door announced her approach. The lady-visitors were
very great people to the child, and only she of ‘the other family’ ever
ventured uninvited into that splendid apartment. She was like Isabel,
though Isabel was indignant to be told so--with two large excitable,
brilliant brown eyes, which at this moment blazed out of the little
flushed and agitated face. She had been at the meeting, and had heard
all, and felt all, with precocious sensibility. While Isabel went out
under pretence of helping her stepmother, but in reality to accompany
her visitor to the door, the child knelt down on the stool she had been
sitting on by Margaret’s side, and began her little passionate tale.
‘It was like in the Bible,’ said little Mary; ‘in the middle of the
reading the Holy Spirit came. O Margaret, I couldn’t bear it! Ailie gave
a great cry, and then she spoke; but it wasna _her_ that spoke: her
countenance was shining white, like the light--just like the Bible; and
she spoke out like a minister, but far better than the minister. It was
awfu’ to hear her; and, O Margaret, I couldn’t bear it; I thought
shame.’
‘Why did you think shame?’ said Margaret. ‘You should have been glad to
hear, thankful to hear--even if it was too high for a bairn like you to
understand.’
‘It wasna that,’ cried the child. ‘I thought shame that it wasna you.
Why can Ailie do it, and no you? And they say you are as good as Ailie,
and as holy; but they say you havena faith. O Margaret, would you let
_her_ ay be the first, and a’ the folk going after her? I canna bear it!
I have faith mysel. You could get up this minute, and go and speak like
Ailie, if you would but have faith.’
Margaret put her arm softly round the excited child, and the little
thing’s agitation found vent in tears. She put down her head on her
sisters shoulder, and sobbed with childish mortification and wounded
pride. Whether any echo of that cry woke in the patient soul thus
strangely reproached, the angels only know. Margaret said nothing for
some minutes; she held the child close with her feeble arm, and calmed
and soothed her; and it was only when the sobs were over and the
excitement subdued that she spoke.
‘So you think God’s no so kind to me?’ she said softly in the darkness.
‘My little Mary, you are too little to understand. I am not one that
craves for gifts; I am content with love. I am best pleased as it is.
Ailie and me are two different spirits; not that one is better and the
other worse. If we had both been angels, we would still have been
different. You are too little to understand. I am not the one to speak
and to work; I am the one to be content.’
‘But you shouldna be content,’ said little Mary; ‘you should have faith.
O Margaret, I’m little, but I’ve faith. Rise up, and be well and live!
They a’ say that to be ill and die is a sin against the Holy Ghost.’
The child had risen up in her excitement, and stood stretching out her
little arms over her sister. The room was dark and still, with but the
‘glimmering square’ of the window fully risible, and night gathering in
all the corners. Margaret’s form was invisible in the soft gloom; the
outline of her reclining figure, the little phantom standing over her,
the suggestion of a contrast, intense as anything in life, was all that
could have been divined by any spectator. Presently soft hands stretched
upwards, and took hold of the little rigid arms of the would-be
marvel-worker; and a voice still softer--low like the coo of a dove,
came out of the darkness.
Margaret attempted no reply; she made no remonstrance; she only repeated
that psalm which is as the voice of its mother to every Scottish
child--the first thing learnt, the last forgotten:--
‘The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want,
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill;
For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still.’
As the soft familiar voice went on, poor little Mary’s excited nerves
broke down. She burst once more into tears, and ere the psalm was ended
added her small faltering voice to the low and steady tones of her
sister. She was overcome by influences much too exciting to be
understood by a child. The little creature yielded, because her physical
endurance was not equal to the task she had set herself, but her mind
was unchanged. She was impatient, angry, and mortified. Her sister’s
rival had triumphed, and little Mary could not bear it. As for Margaret,
she rose when her psalm was ended, and took her little sister’s hand and
led her into the kitchen, where the family table was prepared. Margaret
sat down in the cushioned chair which awaited her, still holding little
Mary by the hand. She had to pause to take breath before she spoke, and
the child stood by her like an eager little prisoner, with her big eyes
shining. Mary’s mind was precocious, and stimulated into premature
action by the strange circumstances that surrounded her. She felt as
profoundly as if she had been twenty, that while Margaret and Isabel
were the Miss Diarmids, she was only ‘Jean Campbell’s bairn;’ and now a
sure way of obtaining individual distinction, the highest of all grades
of rank, had burst upon the child; therefore she was in no mood for the
half-reproof which she foresaw was to come.
‘I think little Mary is too young for the meetings,’ said Margaret; ‘not
that I mean she should not learn; but she is very quick and easy moved,
and she is but a bairn.’
The stepmother looked up with a little flash of not unnatural suspicion.
‘She is no a lady born like you,’ said Jean, hastily; ‘but in my way of
thinking that’s a reason the more why she should learn.’
‘But no when she is so young,’ said Margaret. ‘Her little face is all
moving, and the bairn herself trembling. It’s her nerves I’m thinking
of,’ said the sick girl, with a deprecating smile; at which, however,
Jean only shook her head, as she looked at the child’s glowing, startled
face.
‘Nerves! I never heard of nerves in her kith or kin,’ said the woman;
and then added, ‘You may speak to Isabel about nerves, Margaret; she’s
been greeting about the house like an infant, and tells me “naething,”
when I asks what ails her. It’s to her you should speak.’
Margaret looked at her sister across the table, and shook her head. ‘You
all take your own way,’ she said, with a touch of sadness, ‘though you
say it is to please me. I am thankful beyond measure that you care for
the kirk and for prayer, but little Mary might be as well if she was
left with me. We are great friends. And, Isabel, you’ll make your bonnie
eyes red, but you’ll no give up a hard thought or a hasty word; and yet
that would be worth more than miracles. Jamie, come and tell me what has
happened to-day on the hill.’
‘Me!’ said Jamie, looking up with his mouth full of porridge, and his
eyes large with wonder. ‘There’s never naething happens till me.’
‘Is that a way to answer when Margaret speaks to you?’ cried his mother.
‘But he’ll never learn manners--never, whatever you do. I think whiles
he’s no better than a natural born.’
‘But he knows every creature on the hill, and every bird on the trees,’
said Margaret, ‘and is never cruel to one of them. That’s grand manners.
He’s good to everything God has made. Jamie, did you see the minister
to-day?’
‘Hunting flowers on the hill,’ said Jamie promptly, thrusting away his
thick matted white hair from his round, staring, wondering eyes.
‘So mony great things going on at his very side, and him gathering a
wheen useless flowers! And it was well seen on him,’ she cried; ‘there
was Mr. Fraser of the Langholm and Mr. Wood on the other side of the
hill, that took it a’ upon themselves; though Ailie’s in our parish, and
a’ the stir. And our ain minister without a word to say! I’ve ay said he
was ower much taken up with his flowers, and his fancies; no, but what
I think it would be a far better thing for Isabel----’
‘Nothing about me, if you please,’ said Isabel, flashing into sudden
wrath; and then she gave Margaret a guilty look. As for Margaret she but
shook her head softly once more.
‘He is not so sure in his own mind,’ she said ‘that is what makes him
silent. Mr. Wood and Mr. Fraser are different kind of men. Some can just
believe without more ado, and some have to think first. Isabel, if
you’re ready, it is the bairns’ bedtime, and we can go.’
‘You’re awfu’ anxious to-night about the bairns,’ said Jean, still
irritable and displeased.
‘She is so little,’ said Margaret, stooping over little Mary to kiss
her. ‘If you would but believe me, and no take her down yonder. How can
she understand at her age? and she has nerves as well as Isabel. Will
you promise me not to think to-night? but just to fall asleep, little
Mary, as soon as you’ve said your prayers?’
‘I’ll pray for you, Margaret,’ cried the child, with the tremulous tones
of excitement, ‘and you’ll, maybe, be well and strong like Ailie the
morn’s morn.’
‘Then wait till morning comes,’ said Margaret, ‘for to-night I am
wearied, and I want to rest.’
Thus they separated, the sisters with their candles retiring to their
little parlour--the lights in the window of which were watched by more
than one watcher from far, with tender thoughts of the young inmates.
But Margaret was weary--too weary--for the counsel she had to give. She
went to bed leaving Isabel, the latest of all the house, sitting alone,
in a fever of thought which she could now indulge for the first time.
The lonely little window sent a feeble ray upon the hill-side road, and
was visible on the Loch to such a late hour as seldom witnessed any
window alight in Loch Diarmid. There were many causes for the tumult of
fancies which absorbed the girl and made her forget the progress of
time. The very air around her was full of excitement; her sister for
anything she knew might the next day rise healed from her bed. She
herself might be free as the winds to choose her own life; and it was at
the very climax and crisis of this life that Isabel stood.