This state of things could not go on for ever. Miss Catherine, who had
made a hundred vain exertions to draw her young kinswoman to her house,
and out of all the melancholy associations of her own, at last became
seriously alarmed about Isabel. And the minister, who all the winter
through had been indulging himself in such hopes, slowly woke to a
perception of the absorbed looks, the languor, the wandering of her eye,
and the paleness of her cheeks. She was very soft to him and gentle,
accepting his kindness as she had never done before, looking up to him
in a way which filled him with a thousand fond dreams. She had done this
with unconscious selfishness, because she wanted the support of
affection and kindness, not with any thought of him. She was struggling
along her solitary way with so much expenditure of strength and life
that it would have seemed hard to Isabel to deny herself that comfort on
the road, the anxious devotion that surrounded her like a soft
atmosphere. And yet she did not mean to be selfish; but by and by they
all found out that her strength and heart were failing her. ‘I canna
tell what it is,’ Jean said, with her apron to her eyes; ‘she’ll sit for
hours on the hill, and syne she’ll come home that worn, she hasna a word
for one of us; and her eyes ay wandering miles away, as if she were
looking for somebody. I canna tell what it is.’
‘It cannot be any of their wild notions,’ said Miss Catherine,
anxiously, ‘of Margaret coming back from the grave.’
‘Na, na, she has a’ her senses,’ said Jean; ‘she’ll look as pleased now
and then when she sees the minister coming up the brae.’
Mr. Lothian’s cheek flushed, but he shook his head. ‘Alas! it is not for
me,’ he said; and yet a little secret hope that perhaps it pleased her
to watch his approach crept into his heart.
‘It canna be that English lad she’s thinking of,’ said Miss Catherine;
and Mr. Lothian, struck as with a sudden chill, raised his head and
fixed his eyes anxiously on Jean’s face.
‘She never mentions his name,’ said Jean. ‘I’ve reason to think she was
awfu’ angry at him. The time she fainted she let fall words in her
sleep--Na, it canna be that.’
‘Provided it is not her health,’ said Miss Catherine; and Jean again
raised her apron to her eyes.
‘I darena say it even to mysel,’ she cried. ‘I will not say it: but, O
Miss Catherine, that’s my dread night and day. I try to shut my eyes,
but I canna forget that our Margaret was much the same. You ken weel she
was a perfect saint, and it was prayer and the Book that filled her
mind. But at first, when her illness was coming on, she would sit like
that--and look and look! It makes me that sick when I think o’t, that I
canna sit and look at the other one going the same gait. I canna do it.
I think it will break my heart.’
‘The same gait!’ said the minister, raising a blanched face of woe, ‘the
same road as--Margaret? No, no--don’t say so. It cannot be!’
But both the women shook their heads.
‘I canna be mistaken, that hae watched them baith,’ said Jean, with her
apron to her eyes.
‘And we all know it’s in the family,’ said Miss Catherine, sinking her
voice to solemnity.
There came a sudden groan out of the minister’s breast. He turned away
from them to the other end of the room, with a pang to which he could
give no expression. No, no--God could not do it: it was impossible.
Margaret--yes--whose visionary soul was fixed on heaven from her cradle;
but Isabel, impetuous, faulty, sweet human creature, whose presence made
the whole world bright. No, no; after all, God had some regard for the
hopes and wishes of His creatures: He would not thwart and trample upon
their hearts like this.
‘It’s in the family,’ repeated Miss Catherine. ‘Her mother, my
kinswoman, Margaret Diarmid, was not five-and-twenty--and her sister
younger still; and that branch of the family is extinct, you may say,
barring Isabel. But so far as flesh and blood can strive, I’ll fight for
the lassie’s life.’
Mr. Lothian had no power of speech left; but he came to her and took her
hands in his, and pressed them with a look of gratitude such as no words
could express.
‘She shall not be lost if I can help it,’ repeated Miss Catherine. ‘It
may be a kind of brag to say, but there are many things that can be done
when you take it in time. Leave her to me, Mr. Lothian, and do not break
your heart.’
This conversation took place while Isabel was absent on one of her usual
visits to the hill. When the minister had left them, Miss Catherine
turned to Jean and began to inquire into the girl’s symptoms.
‘She has no cough,’ she said; ‘I have noticed that. But now that man is
gone, tell me, Jean Campbell, are ye sure it’s not a pining for yon
English lad?’
‘I canna tell,’ said Jean doubtfully, shaking her head. ‘Whiles I hae my
doubts. She had ay a craving about the post at first. That’s past. But
if she hears a footstep sudden in the road, or maybe a neighbour, coming
in for a crack, lifting the latch at the outer door, she gives a start
that drives me wild; but she never names him. And there were some words
she let drop----’
‘Don’t tell me of words,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘It was her first love,
and there’s nothing in this world she’ll not forgive him. That’s it. And
now I see what I must do.’
But nothing was done that day, nor for several weeks after. It was, as
so often happens, the very crisis of Isabel’s affairs on which they
first discussed the question. When she came home that evening she was
ill. The spring winds were cold, and she had taken a chill on the wet
braes; and for some weeks every symptom which could most afflict her
friends made its appearance. It was whispered in the Loch, with much
shaking of heads, that the Captain’s Isabel was soon to follow her
sister: that she had fallen into ‘a decline;’ that she had never
recovered Margaret’s death; and even that the twin sisters had but one
life between them according to the common superstition, and that the one
could not long outlive the other. These prognostications reached the
minister’s ears, moving him to a misery of which the people who caused
it had not the remotest conception. On the whole the parish, though
deeply grieved, enjoyed talking this matter over; and even Jean
Campbell, though her heart, as she said, was breaking, had long
consultations with Miss Catherine, and with Jenny Spence, and many other
anxious visitors, touching the resemblance between Isabel’s illness and
the beginning of Margaret’s. She was rather bent, indeed, on making this
out to be the case, although her tears flowed at every suggestion of
danger to her remaining charge.
‘Her cough has taken no hold of her; she’ll shake it off,’ said Miss
Catherine.
‘I mind when Margaret’s was no more than that,’ Jean would answer,
shaking her head. And notwithstanding the profound pain which the
thought of any approaching misfortune to Isabel gave them, there was
almost a degree of mournful enjoyment in the comparing of notes and
exchanges of confidences which took place among the nurses. But the
effect was very different upon the minister. The mere thought of danger
to her acted upon him like a temptation to blasphemy. In such a case
what would remain to him but to curse God and die? Wherever he went,
people met him with questions. ‘Have you heard how the Captain’s Isabel
is the day?’ ‘Eh, I thought she would gang like her sister.’ ‘Ye see
twins, ye never can separate them in life or death.’ Such were the
comments he was in the daily habit of hearing; and they stung him so
that every day was full of torture--pain which, after the bright dreams
he had been indulging in, was doubly hard to bear.
But as it turned out the pain was unnecessary. Isabel had caught cold,
her body being susceptible at all points, and her mind unhinged--just
such a cold as might, had her constitution been weaker, have ended as
Margaret’s had done. Jean was right in her diagnosis--just as Isabel’s
illness began Margaret’s had begun: there had been, even to some extent,
the same cause. The shock which Mr. John’s love, and the painful
interruption of it had given her, had unstrung Margaret’s strength just
as Stapylton’s absence had done her sister. But there the resemblance
stopped. The elder sister’s constitution was feeble and Isabel’s was
strong, and other influences besides that of disappointed love had come
in, in Margaret’s case. The shock had struck at all the delicacies of
her nature, and made her sick of the life in which such thoughts could
be. And her contemplative nature, her visionary heart had taken refuge
in heaven; but with Isabel it was not so. Her illness, though it lasted
only for a few weeks, looked like an interval of months or years. It put
Stapylton at a distance from her. So long as she had lain in her sick
room, all expectation of his coming or longing for it had gone out of
her heart; and as she recovered the thought came back but dimly to her.
She had not forgotten him, but time had gone faster than its wont, and
he was further off than she could have supposed--drifted away.
Then Miss Catherine, moved by the urgency of the case as she had
scarcely ever before been moved, announced her intention of taking
Isabel away for change. As soon as she was able to move, they went to
one of the watering-places in which Scotland believes--the Bridge of
Allan, and then to Edinburgh. It was not a very long journey, but
everything was new to Isabel. It roused her in spite of herself. Youth
gained the ascendancy over all the facts which had lessened its
brightness. So many new things to see, the bright summer weather, the
change and movement--the sight of crowds and novelties, drove things
more urgent out of her mind.
And then Mr. Lothian came and paid them frequent visits; so frequent
that the parish was moved to its depths, and grumbled at his repeated
absence. ‘We might a’ dee for what he cares,’ said the women at the
village-doors; and even John Macwhirter, though unused to interfere,
gave forth his opinion on the subject: ‘I’m no a man to insist on a call
from the minister every other day,’ he said. ‘He’s enough ado with his
sermons, if he gives his mind to them as he ought; but he’s an aulder
man than me that have half a dozen weans to think of; and a bonnie
example that is to his flock, trailing over half the country after a
young lass. Lord, if I was like him I would bide. Ye wouldna see me
bring wife and bairns on my head at his time of life; and a young wife’s
a bonnie handful for an auld man. Ye may gloom, Mr. Galbraith, but
you’re no far from the same way of thinking yoursel.’
‘I’m thinking there’s many young lasses in Edinburgh and many things of
more importance,’ said the Dominie. ‘Mr. Lothian hasna left the parish
for years. And his sermons are running dry, if you’ll take my opinion.
No doubt the world’s a wicked place, but it does the best of men good to
see it now and again. I wouldna say, John Macwhirter, but even you
yourself might take a hint from smiths of more advanced views. And as
for a divine----’
‘You’re grand at your jokes,’ said the half-offended blacksmith; ‘but if
I were to take hints, as ye call it, in the same kind of style as the
minister, I would like to ken what my Margret would say? She would be
neither to hand nor to mind.’
‘Now, I was saying,’ continued the Dominie, ‘a divine has most need of
all. He hears what folk are thinking, and a’ the new wiles o’ the Evil
One to fortify your spirits against them. Maybe you think the Auld Enemy
is always the same?--which shows how much you know about it. No, no,
John. Keep you to your anvil and your iron, and let the minister alone.’
‘Na, if it’s the deevil he’s studying I’ve no a word to say,’ said John;
‘a’ the world kens there’s nae teacher for that like a woman;’ and
having thus secured the last word and the victory, as far as the
applauding laughter of his audience was concerned, John proceeded to
constitute himself the champion of the minister when the Dominie
withdrew from the field. ‘After a’ thae prophets and trash, I’m no
surprised he should take the play, but he’ll be cleverer than I take him
for if he gets bonnie Isabel.’
‘It would be the best thing she could do, a lass with no friends,’ said
one of the bystanders.
‘But she’ll not do it,’ said the blacksmith, confidently, wrapping
himself all at once in a flaming mist of sparks. Such was the general
opinion of the Loch. ‘I canna believe she’ll have the sense,’ Jean
Campbell said, to whom it was most important; and after a while the
parish almost forgave the minister for his neglect of them in
consideration of the interest with which they regarded his suit.
Everybody, except Isabel herself, was aware of the conspiracy against
her. To herself it appeared strange that Miss Catherine, out of love for
her, should leave the Loch and her own home so long, and waste the early
summer, which was her favourite season, in the dusty, windy Edinburgh
streets. Isabel accepted the sacrifice with the faith of her age in
personal attachment, and said to herself that she could never be
grateful enough to her old friend. She could not but acknowledge to
herself that the change had made of her a new creature. She looked, and
thought, and spoke, and felt herself so to do with a touch of soft
surprise--like one of the young ladies whom she had sometimes seen at
Lochhead. She, too, was a lady born--yet with envy and wonder she had
looked at the strangers whose look and air were so different from her
own. They were not different now. Insensibly to herself Isabel had
acquired another tone and air. Her soft Scottish speech was still as
Scotch as ever, but it was changed. She felt herself to move in a
different way, all her sensations were different. Sometimes she thought
of the Glebe with a thrill of strange alarm. To go back to Jean and her
children, and the solitude without books, without variety--could she do
it? Or if that was all in store for her, was it not cruel to have
brought her to this different life?
‘Now bring me some of your friends from the College, and let her hear
you talk,’ said Miss Catherine, in furtherance of her deep design. The
minister, whom she addressed, only shook his head with a doubtful smile.
‘What will she care for our talk?’ he said. ‘The nonsense of a ball-room
would please her better. She would take my friends for a parcel of old
fogies; and so indeed we are.’
‘And ready to go to the stake for your own notions all the same,’ said
Miss Catherine, with much scorn. ‘Are you, or am I, the best judge of
what she’ll think? As for ball-rooms, heaven be praised, in her mourning
that’s out of the question; and if she set her eyes upon a man under
forty, except in the street, it may be your fault, but it shall not be
mine.’
‘Will that serve me, I wonder? or is it fair to her?’ said the
scrupulous minister.
‘The more I see of men, the more I feel what fools they all are,’ said
Miss Catherine; ‘go and do what I tell you, minister, and leave the rest
to me.’
And accordingly Miss Catherine Diarmid’s lodging became the scene of a
few gatherings, which to a girl more experienced in society than Isabel
would have looked sufficiently appalling. But Isabel, with her mind and
intelligence just awakened, and with that fresh sense of ignorance which
made her intelligence doubly attractive, regarded them as banquets of
the gods. Mr. Lothian’s friends were unquestionably old fogies; they had
their ancient jests among themselves, at which they laughed
tumultuously, and the outer world stared; and they had endless
reminiscences, also among themselves, which were far from amusing to the
uninitiated. But then by times they would talk as people talked in the
old days when conversation was one of the fine arts. And Isabel opened
her great brown eyes, and her red lips fell a little apart, like the
rose-mouth of a child. She listened with an interest and admiration, and
shy longing to take part, and shyer drawing back which made it
impossible, which altogether rapt her quite out of herself. And her eyes
turned with a certain pride to the minister, who would take his full
share, and was not afraid to lift his lance against any professor of
them all. Isabel raised her pretty head when he spoke, and followed his
words with quiet understanding glances, with rapid comprehension of what
he meant, with the ever ready applause of her bright eyes. He could hold
his own among them all; he was not afraid to enter into any argument. He
contributed his full share to all that was going on; and Isabel looking
at him grew proud of him--with the partizanship of his parishioner, and
friend, and--favourite.
And all this time Miss Catherine sat, like a benevolent crafty spider at
the opening of her net. Nobody divined the deep intention in her choice
of her visitors. Not a man under forty, as she had betrayed to Mr.
Lothian, ever penetrated within her doors. If the question had been
suggested to Isabel, no doubt she would have recognised it as unusual
that gentlemen in Edinburgh should be all approaching half a century.
But it did not occur to Isabel. She was awed and filled with admiration
of the men she saw. It did not come into her heart to ask where were the
young men who would have better matched herself and the other girls
whose society Miss Catherine cultivated for her sake. Even the chatter
of these girls did not enlighten her. They talked of pleasures of which
she knew nothing--dancing all night, for instance--but how could it ever
be possible for Isabel to dance all night? No, was not this better,
loftier, a kind of amusement not inconsistent with all those solemnities
of life into which she had had premature admission? Therefore the
absence of the youth did not strike her. Miss Catherine was old, and it
was natural she should choose her friends to please herself.