Next morning Mr. Lothian went to the Glebe as early as he could permit
himself to go, though his heart had been on the way for hours before he
permitted his reluctant footsteps to follow. He found Isabel lying on
the sofa in the parlour, in the very spot where Margaret had died, and
naturally the association of ideas struck him profoundly. ‘Why have you
laid her there?’ he said to Jean, turning back from the door. There went
a chill to his heart as if he had seen the tragedy all acted over
again, and heard that the end was already approaching.
Jean Campbell stared at him, only partially comprehending what he could
mean. ‘Where else could I put her,’ she said, ‘unless it was ben in the
kitchen with me? and the doctor says she’s to be kept quiet. And it’s
mair cheerful there than in a bedroom, where she could see nobody.’
‘Cheerful!’ echoed the minister.
‘Eh aye real cheerful,’ said Jean, in whose mind perpetual use and wont
had subdued the force of melancholy associations. ‘When I’ve put the
sofa she can see the road, and the Loch, and the steamboat, which is
real diverting--and I’m aye coming and going to keep her cheery myself.
She’s no to call ill. It’s but the sorrow and the weakness and a’ her
trouble. We’ve no need to be alarmed about her health, he says.’
Mr. Lothian, silenced by this matter of fact treatment of the subject,
went into the parlour, feeling even his own apprehensions a little
calmed down.
‘I am very glad to hear you are better,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes. I never was ill to speak of. I know I never was ill,’ said
Isabel, turning away her head.
‘Then perhaps the rest and quiet is all you want?’ said the minister,
not knowing in his agitation what to say. And then there was a pause.
There were a hundred things which he had longed to say to her, but could
not when the moment thus came. He felt as if some cruel necessity was
upon him to think of Margaret--to remind her that Margaret had died just
where she was lying--to beg her to change her attitude, and look, which
made his heart sick with terror. He had to restrain himself with an
effort from suggesting to her this strange topic. And perhaps the other
things he was tempted to say would have been less palatable still. At
last, after a perplexed and painful pause, he brought out of his pocket
the letter of which he was the unwilling bearer.
‘I have a letter for you,’ he said, ‘it was left with me last night.’
‘A letter!’ said Isabel, growing pale, and then she turned it about in
her hands, and looked at it. ‘It has no address.’
‘It was put up in such haste,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘Isabel, will you read
it now, in case I can give you any explanation?--or shall I go away?’
‘It is from----’
‘Horace Stapylton. I gave my promise I would bring it--though against my
will.’
Isabel gazed at him, for a moment growing pale. She held the letter
helplessly in her hand. What could he mean? It had been _left_ with him
last night. He could perhaps give some explanation. What could he mean?
Her pulse began to beat again as it had not done since her faint. She
made Mr. Lothian a little sign with her hand to stay, for he had risen,
and stood quite apart from her in the centre of the room. Then with a
hasty hand she tore open the letter. When the minister gave a stolen
glance at her, he could see that her cheeks were growing more and more
flushed and feverish. The colour on them was no passing glow of delight
and modesty, but the burning red of excitement and sudden passion. She
went over it all rapidly, and then she uttered a low cry. Mr. Lothian
glanced at her, but, seeing that the cry was unconscious, betook himself
again to the window with what calmness was possible. Isabel had come to
the postscript. He did not look round again for what seemed to him an
age. What roused him at last was the rustle of the paper falling to the
ground, and turning round hastily, he found Isabel with her face buried
in her hands in a passion of tears. This was hard to bear. He went back
to his seat beside the sofa, and picking up the letter laid it gently on
her lap; and then he touched her shoulder softly with a fatherly,
caressing hand, and said, ‘My poor child! my poor child!’ in a voice
that came out of the very depths of his heart.
Then Isabel uncovered hastily her passionate, tear-stained face.
‘It is not that!’ she cried--‘it is not that! Oh, I think shame! Am I
one to be spoken to so?--is it my doing? I think my heart will break!
Take it and read it, and tell me if it is my doing, before I die of
shame.’
He could only gaze at her, wondering if her mind were unhinged; but
hasty Isabel, all ablaze with passion and misery, could not stop to
think. She took up the letter--her lover’s letter, and thrust it into
his rival’s hand.
‘If it is my doing--oh, never speak to me again!’ she cried. Shame and
anger, and disappointment and anguish, were all tearing her asunder. And
she had no Margaret to go to, to relieve her. Someone must give her that
support and solace which her heart demanded, or she felt she must die.
She hung upon his looks as he read it, reading his expression.
‘Could it be my fault?’ she cried. ‘Oh, Mr. Lothian, was I such a light
lass? Was it anything I did that made him write like that to me?’
‘No, Isabel,’ he said, with a blaze of rage in his eyes, taking her
feverish hand. ‘No, Isabel. My dear, think no more of it. It is that he
understands neither yours nor you.’
And then instinctively, in an instant, hasty Isabel felt the mistake she
had made, and felt that she could not bear any criticisms upon her lover
even now. She took back her letter as suddenly as she had given it, and
folded it up with trembling hands.
‘He does not understand,’ said Mr. Lothian, altogether unconscious of
this rapid revolution. ‘You speak a language he cannot comprehend. The
women he knows are a different species. Isabel, I have never said a word
against him----’
‘No,’ she cried, hurriedly. ‘No; I am always a fool, and never know what
I am doing. No. Dinna say a word now.’
Then he stopped suddenly, the very words arrested on his lips, and gazed
at her wondering, not knowing what she could mean.
‘You don’t understand me either,’ cried Isabel. ‘Oh, not a word--not a
word! You cannot judge him right; you never saw him like me. He was
bewildered with the news; he never meant that.’
‘If I were to say the like, would you ever forgive me?’ said the
minister, shaking his head. She answered only by weeping, a mode of
reply which took all power of remonstrance or protestation away from the
spectator. A hundred contradictory emotions were in Isabel’s tears.
Shame and pain over the letter; shame still sharper, if not so deep,
that she had offered it to the criticism of another; wrath against
Stapylton; rage at herself; and a certain bitterness against her
companion for not taking her lover’s part to her, for not contradicting
her, and pleading his rival’s cause. She could not have spoken all this
wild jumble of pain and passion; but she poured it all forth in tears.
It was the postscript which had specially excited her, and which ran as
follows:--
‘I have just heard that my father is ill, and I must go. I would have
waited till to-morrow even now, but I hear he might alter his will,
which would never do. It is all your own fault. I was ready, waiting for
you--as you know. What could a man do more? If you will come, and meet
me somewhere on the Border, as soon as this business is settled, you
will find me as ready then as I was to-day. No time to say a word more.’
Mr. Lothian once more left her side, and went back to the window in his
perplexity.
‘I should not disturb you,’ he said, with his back to her. ‘I should go
away. But it is grievous to me to see your tears. I would give my very
blood to save one tear falling from your eyes. And he would wring tears
of blood out of your heart; and yet he is chosen, and I am rejected.
What more can I have to say?’
‘Nothing! oh, nothing!’ cried Isabel. ‘Oh, will you not understand? I
would like to hide myself in the depths of the earth. I was going to him
yesterday, when I fainted. I have kept it a secret, and it was like a
lie burning in my heart. Now I have told you; I would have gone with him
if I had kept in life. What better am I than him? He is free to speak,
for he sees I am no better. It is my fault, and not his. And now you
know,’ cried the girl, clasping her passionate hands together, ‘and you
may despise me! I let him tempt me; I could not bear the awfu’ quiet.
I’ll cure you at least, if I shame myself. It was me that was to blame.’
‘But I am not cured. I’ll never be cured, my dear, my dear!’ cried the
grey-haired man, coming back to her, with tears in his eyes, and taking
her hands into his own. ‘It was your innocence, and your grief. Do you
think I do not know of the struggle that was in your heart?’
She left her hands indifferently in his, not seeming to care for, nor
scarcely to perceive, his emotion. She fixed her eyes vacantly upon the
air, with great tears rising in them.
‘And Margaret knows it all,’ she said; two piteous tears, the very
essence of her pain, dilated her eyes into two great globes, but did not
fall. Self-abasement could go no further. Margaret, in Heaven, would not
despise her sister. But what could she think of the variable, miserable
creature who, fresh from her own death-bed, could be tempted by such a
poor temptation, and think such thoughts as these?