When Isabel found herself once more in the drawing-room at Lochhead, it
wrought the most curious change upon her. She sat almost silent, while
Miss Catherine and the minister talked, but with a mind awaking to all
the influences about her--the grace, the superior softness, the
refinement of the place. Life here must, it seemed to Isabel, be a
different thing from the life she had always known. There were books of
all kinds about, and her appetite for books was great, though as yet it
had been but scantily supplied. The ample window gave an amount of
atmosphere and breadth to the room, which Isabel perceived by instinct,
without knowing how it was. It was very nearly the same view as that
from the parlour window at the Glebe, and she could not tell what made
the difference; unless indeed it was the superior grandeur, splendour,
amplitude of the life. There were a hundred resources within, which were
impossible at her lower level of existence, and a much widened
perception of the world without. She had no notion that it was the old
furniture and the great windows which impressed this so strangely upon
her. It was something in the atmosphere, the expanded breathing, and
hearing, and seeing of a larger life.
And as the minister accompanied her home, Isabel, unawares, fell into a
little self-revelation. ‘You can see the same view out of the village
windows,’ she said, ‘and from the Glebe; but the Loch is grander and the
braes are higher, and away down to Clyde is like a picture--I don’t know
how it is.’
‘You like it better than the Glebe?’
‘I cannot tell,’ said Isabel; ‘it is so different; and so many things to
fill your life. I think I would never tire reading; but then I know my
books off by heart, and reading them is little good. And there’s always
a seam. I know a seam is _right_,’ said Isabel, with decision; ‘I did
not mean that.’
‘But sometimes you would like something else,’ he said, growing foolish
as he looked at her; and finding something half-divine in her girlish
simplicity.
‘I don’t know,’ she said; ‘I have made up my mind to be content. But
still one has eyes, and one can see it is different. I never thought--of
such things--before.’ And a rush of tears came to her pensive eyes.
Mr. Lothian left her finally at the door of the Glebe, and found himself
in such a state of _attendrissement_ that he rushed in once more upon
Miss Catherine as he passed the house. ‘Life is beginning to stir within
her,’ he said with excitement; ‘she is feeling that all is not over and
past. The sight of you has done her good.’
‘The sight of me is not difficult to be had,’ said Miss Catherine,
‘though it’s early yet, after a death, to get good from the like of
that.’
‘She is so young,’ said the minister, ‘her mind goes quicker than yours
and mine. Not that she grieves less; but everything goes quicker--the
days, and the events, and the beats of the heart.’
‘I doubt if you would take as much trouble to understand the beats of my
heart,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Minister, you’re a sensible man in other
things----’
Mr. Lothian retreated from her look, and turned to the window. In
comparison with himself, Miss Catherine was an old woman; but still,
when he was brought to task for it, he had nothing to advance in defence
of his love.
‘You need not turn away your face,’ she said, with a smile, ‘as if I had
not seen it grow red and grow pale many a time at the lassie’s glance.
And she’s but a bairn when all is said. It’s a mystery to me. A woman of
your age would think as little of a lad of hers, as of an infant. And
yet you, an honest man, that might be her father, let such a lassie fill
up your very heart. No! you are a man and I am a woman; you might
explain till ye were tired, and I would never understand. A man is a
queer being, and, so far as I can see, we must take him as he is till
his Maker mends him. And about Isabel, if that lad does not come
back----’
‘Whether he comes back or not,’ said Mr. Lothian, hotly; ‘he has
disgusted her so much that she will never think of him again.’
Miss Catherine shook her head. ‘Make what progress you can while he’s
away,’ she said. ‘Keep him away if you can; but don’t you trust to her
disgust. He is her first love?’
‘I suppose so,’ said the minister, with a very rueful face.
‘Then she’ll forgive him all,’ said Miss Catherine, with perhaps a
thrill of painful knowledge in her voice; there was a vibration in it
which made her companion glance round at her with keen momentary
curiosity. But her face betrayed no story. ‘She’ll forgive him all,’ she
repeated; ‘and to undeceive her would take a long time. Perhaps it’s
only by dint of marrying him that a woman finds out what’s wanting in
her first love. And you would not like her to go through that process.
But if he keep away----’
Mr. Lothian’s face had gone through as many alternations of hope and
fear as though he had been on trial for his life. ‘He loves her,’ he
said under his breath, ‘as well as he knows how.’
‘But he loves himself better,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘and if he has to
hang about at home for fear of being disinherited he’ll save you some
trouble here. And there is no other man about the parish to come in your
way----’
‘Her thoughts are differently employed,’ he said, with a little
annoyance. ‘What does she know of the men in the parish--or care----’
‘That’s very true, no doubt,’ said Miss Catherine, gravely. ‘There was
never one like her on the Loch, nor a lad worthy of her, since Wallace
Wight. But yet Isabel has eyes like her neighbours. And there is nobody
in your way. My word! if I were a comely man like you, little the worse
for your years, and not another suitor in the field, she should be
Isabel Lothian before the year was out!’
Mr. Lothian coloured like a girl with excitement and gratification.
Scarcely on Isabel’s own cheeks could there have risen a purer red and
white. He was, as Miss Catherine said, ‘little the worse for his years.’
He was as erect and elastic in his step as if he had been
five-and-twenty--his colour as fresh, and his eyes as bright.
‘If it depends on me’--he said, with a sparkle in his eye.
‘And who else should it depend on?’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Take your
courage by both hands, and, take my word, you’ll not fail.’
Thus the house of Lochhead rained influence on this eventful day. Isabel
went home with a vague longing in her mind for wider air and a fuller
life. But when the minister had left the door, going back with his mind
full of tenderness, and just touched by hope, she sat down by the
parlour window, and took out Stapylton’s letter, and began to read
herself into satisfaction with it. The careless words which had struck
her like stings at the first reading, she set herself to smooth and
soften. ‘He meant them to cheer me,’ she said to herself; ‘to be cheery
himself and to cheer me;’ and then she would make an effort and swallow
the sentences to which no such explanation could be applied. ‘It was all
his love,’ she said again. Words change their character when thus
studied. Out of what seemed almost an insult this tender casuistry
brought but another proof of the confidence and certainty of love. ‘He
did not choose his words,’ Isabel said at length, with a certain
indignation against herself; ‘he felt I would understand--how should I
miss understanding when I knew his heart?’ And then there were other
apologetic murmurings, less assured, but not less anxious. ‘After all,
he is but a man--he does not think like the like of us;’ and--‘That will
be the English way; he always said it was different.’ Thus the fanciful
girl went on with her letter, until at length she kissed and put it away
among her treasures, all anger having gone out of her heart.
Through all the interview between Miss Catherine and the minister, in
which so very different an aspect of her affairs was discussed, Isabel
sat gazing on the Loch as it faded to evening, with a vague smile about
her mouth, and liquid soft eyes, and dreamed. She saw how it would all
happen as well as she saw the boat on the Loch making its way from
Ardnamore. Perhaps he might not come for three or even six months. His
friends would tell him what time must pass before Margaret’s sister
could consent. His mother would tell him, for surely even in England
mothers could not be so far different. And he would come asking pardon
with his lips, claiming more than forgiveness. And Margaret would bless
her sister--would plead _up yonder_ for a blessing. And the two would
stand side by side on the spot where Margaret had died, and plight their
troth as it were to her, in her very presence, to love each other for
ever and ever. She sat and dreamed while the minister, with unusual
light in his eyes, went home to dream on his side of how different an
ending. And neither the one nor the other saw aught but boundless
happiness, the very climax of life and love, and perfection of human
existence in the visionary future that lay beyond.
And then a great quietness came over the Loch. The marriage of Mr. John
and Ailie Macfarlane was a nine days’ wonder, but that died out by
degrees; and even among his relatives or hers, little, after a while,
was said of the pair. They had gone out ‘into the world,’ like Adam and
Eve, seeking the unknown region in which their Tongue would be
intelligible, and themselves received as the bringers in of a new
dispensation. But in the meantime they disappeared from Loch Diarmid,
and the lesser prophets they had left behind soon failed to interest the
crowd which was used to excitement. Things fell into their former
quietness: worldly amusements began again to be heard of.
All was very quiet at the Glebe. Day after day, week after week--nay,
month after month, Isabel had sat silent, expecting, looking for the
letter which never came, for the familiar step and voice which she had
made so sure would come back to her. And neither letter nor visitor had
come to break the wistful silence; no one knew the longing looks she
cast from her window, as the winter twilight darkened night by night,
over the gleaming surface of the Loch. She felt sure he must write,
until the time was past for writing; and then a strange confidence that
he would come seized upon her. And she had no one to whom she could say
a word of her expectations, to whom she could even whisper his name. If
Jean perceived her eager watch for the postman, her shivering start and
thrill when any footstep was audible by night, or knock came to the
door, she mentioned it to no one. Three months and not a word--then six
months, the year turning again unawares, the snow melting from the
hills, the snowdrops beginning to peep above the surface of the soil--
It would be impossible to describe all the alternations between fear and
hope which moved her as the months went on. Spring came, stretching day
by day, more green, more warm, more cheery and sunny on the hills. The
poor girl, in her loneliness, sat watching, holding on, as it were, to
the darker season which melted away under her grasp, taking comfort in
every gloomy day, saying to herself, ‘It is winter still!’ The birds
warbling in all the trees about was a trouble to her. No; not spring
again--not so far on as everybody thought; only a little lightening of
the cold, or gleam of exceptional weather. She kept this thought
steadily before her mind, through March and April, refusing to
understand what months they were. But in May she could no longer refuse
to perceive. The trees had shaken out all their new leaves from the
folds. The hill-side was sweet with wild flowers, the primroses were
over. ‘Everything is so early this year,’ Isabel said to herself with a
sick heart.
‘No so early either,’ said Jean, with profound unconsciousness of her
stepdaughter’s sentiments; ‘no that early. I’ve seen the lilac-tree in
flower a fortnight sooner than now.’
And then the girl could no longer shut her eyes. Winter was over; the
charm of early summer was in the air; everything had come again--the
lambs, the birds, the flowers, the sunshine, the fresh thrill of life
and brightness--everything except Margaret, who was dead; and Stapylton,
who was lost; and these two were all in all to Isabel.