It was an event of which the country-side remained incredulous, until
the very last moment. The strange pair were ‘cried’ in church, both
being present when the banns were proclaimed, in defiance of all
superstition: but still no one believed it could be. Ailie sat passive
in her seat while her name was read out, not a passing flicker of
colour, not an indication of embarrassment being visible about her. And,
to the amazement of the parish, no attempt at interference was made.
Miss Catherine sat still within her ancestral palace, the homely
mansion-house of Lochhead, like an offended queen. She absented herself
from church on the Sunday of the banns, and was not seen of human eye
until all was completed; but she made no attempt to interfere. Neither
did Mr. Diarmid of Clynder on the other side of the hills, Mr. John’s
uncle. The opposition which everybody had expected never made itself
visible.
Meanwhile Isabel, profoundly moved by her interview with Ailie, and by
all that had since occurred, had made up her mind to one final
remonstrance ere the sacrifice should be accomplished. When she had said
to Jean, ‘I am going to see Ailie,’ the good woman’s consternation had
known no bounds. Not only was the condescension unparalleled, but it was
not to be expected that Isabel, as a lady born, and entitled to the
possession of feelings more delicate than those of ‘common folk,’ should
yet be able to pay any visits even among her equals. ‘Ailie!’ she
remonstrated energetically; ‘and wha’s Ailie, that you should gang to
see her at such a time? She’s no John Diarmid’s wife yet; and if she
was----’
‘That is why I must see her,’ said Isabel. ‘She must never marry that
man!’
Upon which Jean uttered the usual comment half in scorn and half in
indignation. ‘Set her up! I would like to ken what right she has to ony
such man.’
‘She does not want him,’ said Isabel. ‘She’ll go and marry him and break
her heart. Oh, I must go! If they were cried yesterday there is no time
to lose.’
‘They’re to be married the morn,’ said Jean. ‘And if that is what you
have set your heart on, wait till I’ve gotten on my Sunday bonnet. I’ll
gang with ye myself.’
‘It is not necessary,’ said Isabel.
‘Bell, my bonnie woman,’ said her stepmother, ‘I ken better what is
needful than you do. It’s no a moment to have you wandering on the road
your lane.’
And thus it was that Jean found herself in the midst of the village
group, while Isabel penetrated into Ailie’s cottage. The young
prophetess was seated, silent, with a sombre fire in her eye, dejected
yet excited, when Isabel was ushered in by her anxious mother. Janet had
begun to take alarm about her daughter’s aspect; but such an honour as
the visit of the Captain’s Isabel, no doubt paid to the prospective Mrs.
Diarmid of Ardnamore, was a foreshadowing of greatness to come which
went to her heart.
‘Ailie, my woman!’ she said. ‘Here’s Isabel from the Glebe. It’s most
kind of her to come and see you, and I hope you’ll let her see you think
it kind.’
‘Isabel!’ said Ailie, dreamily; she was sitting on the side of her bed,
pondering over her little Bible. ‘Oh, aye, mother, I’m glad to see her;
if she’ll come ben.’
‘Let me speak to her alone,’ Isabel had begged at the door; and the
mother, half pleased yet half doubtful, withdrew with wistful looks. If
perhaps the mission of the mourner might be to reconcile Ailie with the
wonderful match she was making; and yet, again, a fanciful young girl
might do her harm.
‘I’ve come to speak to you before it is all over,’ said Isabel. ‘O,
Ailie, you mind what you said to me? You are not happy. You are not
looking happy; and yet they say you’re to be married----’
‘The morn,’ said Ailie, mechanically.
‘To-morrow!’ repeated Isabel, carefully choosing her words, to be more
impressive; ‘and yet you are not happy. Ailie, Ailie, it must not be!’
‘What’s God’s will must be,’ she said; ‘happy is neither here nor
there;’ and began again to turn over the leaves of the small Bible she
held in her hands.
‘He is going to take you away,’ said Isabel, ‘where none of your friends
perhaps will ever see you more; where you will be all alone with none
but him, and no love for him in your heart. Oh, Ailie, listen! you will
hate him if ye cannot love him. I could not rest; I’ve been in no
strange house till now _since_--but I could not rest. Oh, Ailie, God
would not have you to be miserable; that can never be His will. You are
wiser than me, but you have ay been thinking of other folk, and not of
what was in your own heart.’
‘Little but deceitfulness and wickedness,’ said Ailie, musing, ‘well I
know; and a root of bitterness in the best. But, Isabel, there’s no a
word to say. It’s no in my own hands. It was settled and ordained before
you or me were born.’
‘And nothing will make you change your mind?’
‘It’s no my mind I’m speaking of,’ she said, with a half-despairing
smile; ‘if it was me to decide! But whisht! whisht! and say no more; my
mother is coming. I’ve had ill thoughts and thankless thoughts, and
you’ve seen them, Isabel; but I’m the handmaid o’ the Lord, and it’s no
to His glory to betray my weakness--no even to my mother.’
‘I’ll not betray you,’ cried Isabel, with a little natural heat. Ailie
turned wearily away, with a sigh of languor and heaviness; and just then
her mother came bustling in, carrying a white muslin dress on her
extended arms.
‘It’s no to call grand,’ said Janet, ‘but I thought you would like to
see it. As for Ailie, she takes nae mair notice than if a wedding was a
thing that happened every day.’
‘She’s so full of her own thoughts,’ said Isabel, instinctively
attempting an excuse.
‘Thoughts are grand things,’ said Mrs. Macfarlane, ‘and our Ailie, as is
weel kent, is a lass far out of the ordinar. But her wedding-gown! A
woman made out of stone would take an interest in that! I would be real
thankful if you would put some real feeling in her mind.’
‘She has done her best,’ said Ailie, still bending absorbed over her
book; ‘but I’m thinking of the Lord’s will, and no of men’s pleasure. My
black gown that I wear every day is good enough for me.’
‘Hear to her!’ said the mother; ‘but eh, Isabel, you that’s young
yoursel, ye might tell her this earth is nearer than Heaven, and that we
maun take some thought for the things of the flesh.’
‘Do you think she’s happy?’ said Isabel, wistfully, feeling the full
misery of this indifference, and yet bound by honour not to reveal what
she knew of Ailie’s mind.
‘Happy!’ echoed Janet, ‘with Ardnamore waiting to make a lady of her?
What would she get better in this world? And I hope you’ll no put
nonsense in her head. It would just break my heart.’
‘I’ll put no nonsense in her head,’ said Isabel. And then, surmounting
her irritation, she added, ‘But oh, think if she were to be unhappy, and
away in the world with nobody to comfort her.’
The mother turned away with a little laugh. ‘Simple thing!’ she said,
under her breath, ‘you’re like hersel; ye take it a’ for gospel, every
word they say.’
‘Are they not going away?’ asked Isabel in amaze.
‘Oh, aye, they’re going away; but think ye the world’s like Loch
Diarmid, Isabel? They’ll soon tire o’ their preaching and their
wandering among fremd folk. She’s a’ spirit and little flesh, my poor
lamb. And her heart will fail her, and he’ll be sick o’t a’, and syne
they’ll come cannily hame. And I’ll see my bairn at kirk and market,
with her bairns about her--no a common body like me,’ said Janet, wiping
her eyes with her apron, ‘but a leddy of Ardnamore.’
‘But she’ll break her heart,’ said Isabel.
‘I’m no feared for her heart,’ said the mother. ‘She’s a loving thing,
though you wouldna think it. Her heart will turn to her husband when she
has nane but him.’
This was Janet’s programme of the strange romance. Isabel, though she
was not used to contrasts of this description, went down the hill in a
maze of reflections, wondering over the difference. Ailie’s tragic
purpose of going forth into the world to save it, her first step being
upon her own heart, and all its maiden hopes; and her mother’s
frightful, sceptical, middle-aged prescience of the effects of weariness
and failure--the inevitable disappointment, the sickening of heart, the
giving up of hope, the despairing flight homeward to seek peace at least
and quietness--stood before her side by side like two pictures. Would
the two enthusiasts content themselves with common life and comfort
after their high dreams, or was there, after all, nothing in the dreams
for which Ailie was making so awful a sacrifice? Isabel was too
inexperienced to come to light on the subject; but Janet Macfarlane’s
cheerful unbelief struck her with mingled horror and pain. She did not
ask herself whether all that was beautiful and wonderful in the hopes
and beliefs of beginning life was thus looked upon by the calm eyes of
the elders as so much delusion to be dispersed by the winds and storms.
But that suggestion of insecurity, unreality--and of the better-informed
spectator, who realised and knew the downfall that was coming--appalled
and terrified her. The sight of Mr. Lothian, who came out from the
Mansegate as she passed, was, perhaps for the first time, a relief to
Isabel. She was glad to have him come to her, to hear his sympathetic
voice, to feel that there were people in the world who were not
sceptical. ‘I have been seeing Ailie,’ she said, accounting
half-apologetically for the little shiver of nervous excitement which
she could not restrain.
‘And now you’ll come and see Miss Catherine,’ said Mr. Lothian. ‘You
cannot help the one, but you can help the other, Isabel.’
‘Me help Miss Catherine? No, Mr. Lothian,’ said Isabel, with a little
air of dignity. ‘She is never pleased, whatever I do. She would like me
to pretend to be somebody else, and not myself.’
‘And I am so foolish,’ said the minister, with a smile, ‘as to like
yourself best of all; and so does she, Isabel, if you saw her heart.
You’ll come and see her with me.’
‘To please you,’ said the girl not meaning any coquetry, nor thinking of
the tenderness with which words so unusually soft moved this man, who
might have been her father. Even as she spoke her eye caught some
passing figure in the distance, which was like that of the lover whom
she fancied she had abjured; and her heart sprang up and began to beat
furiously against her breast. She knew very well it was not
Stapylton--but the merest vision that reminded her of him, how different
was the feeling it awakened within her! She walked on leisurely by Mr.
Lothian’s side, making him soft answers, which, in spite of all his
better knowledge, filled him with a sweet intoxication. And all the time
her object was to lead him artfully with all the youthful skill of which
she was mistress to some allusion to her lover. ‘Are you glad to be
alone?’ she said at last, stooping as she did so, to pluck off a thorny
branch which had caught her dress. And he did not even perceive what
that leading question meant, so wrapt was he in the delusion
which--half-intentionally in her unconscious selfishness for her own
purposes--she had been weaving round him.
‘I would not be glad to be alone if I could have the company I like
best,’ said the deluded man; and so, deceiver and deceived, they went
along the quiet rural way.