The morning rose anxiously over all the personages of this little drama.
Isabel, sleepless, fatigued, and unresolved, rose pale to the new day
which she felt might bring change incalculable to her life. Jean, who
kept hovering about her, watching with keen attention every movement she
made, increased Isabel’s suppressed agitation. There was a permanent
flush on her face; her eyes were abstracted, and took little note of
what was going on. She seemed scarcely aware of the passage of time, and
was irritated when she was called upon to sit down at the table and eat,
and go through all the ordinary domestic routine. ‘Oh, if you would
leave me quiet!’ she exclaimed, half unconsciously, turning away her
face from the scrutiny of which she was only half aware.
‘My bonnie woman! you’re no weel?’ said Jean.
‘I am quite well; there is nothing the matter with me. I have--a
headache. I don’t feel--able to talk,’ said Isabel, stumbling from one
sentence to another. And then she wound up with the plaint of weariness,
so familiar in its sound, ‘Oh, if you would let me be!’
Let her alone--leave her to revolve and re-revolve the questions that
were rushing through her mind in endless succession without any answer!
Poor Jean did her best to answer this prayer. She went and shut herself
up in the kitchen with her children, and gave them their dinner. And
then she thought the broth was exceptionally good, and that fasting was
bad for a headache; so she got up from her own meal and carried a basin
of the family soup into the parlour. ‘They’re real good the day,’ she
said, wistfully; ‘try a spoonfu’, Isabel.’
Isabel was standing at the window once more looking out. She turned
round quickly at the sound of the opening door, and a blaze of momentary
anger came across her face. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I could not eat;’ and
then sat down suddenly, drawing her work to her. Jean stood in the
doorway and gazed, holding always the basin in her hand.
‘Are you looking for somebody?’ she said. ‘Oh, Isabel, if you would but
tell me! There’s something wrong, but what it is I canna tell.’
‘There is nothing wrong,’ said Isabel; and for a moment her needle flew
through her work, while Jean stood looking at her. Then she roused to
impatience again. ‘I said I had a headache; if you would leave me quiet,
just for a little while----!’
‘I’ll do that, my bonnie woman,’ said Jean; and withdrew regretfully
with her broth. But before she resumed her place at the table another
thought struck her. This time it was a glass of wine she carried into
the parlour. ‘No to disturb you, Isabel,’ she said; ‘but a young thing
like you shouldna fast so lang. I’ve brought you a glass of sherry-wine;
it’s no ill to take and it will keep your heart----’
‘I want nothing, thank you,’ said Isabel.
‘But you’ll take it to please me,’ said Jean. Just then a knock at the
door made both of them start. Isabel, without speaking, raised her eyes
with a dumb, wistful appeal to the only comforter within her reach. And
Jean, in her agitation, spilled the wine as she placed it on the table.
‘It’s maybe naebody,’ she said, with sudden comprehension, and with a
yearning of her heart over the child about to be exposed to danger and
trial.
‘What will I do?’ cried Isabel, clasping her hands.
‘Oh, Isabel, think of the bairn, and the Lord will be a guide to you,’
said Jean, with tears in her eyes. Not a word of explanation had passed
between them, but the elder woman came and kissed the younger one with a
sudden understanding of the conflict and struggle such as no words could
have conveyed to her. Then the knock was repeated, and Jean hurried away
to open the door, wiping her hands with her apron. Her own anxieties and
jealousies were all quenched in a moment in that rush of genuine
sympathy. ‘For she ay likit the lad!’ Jean said to herself, feeling by
instinct that poor Isabel had traitors within as well as temptations
without.
It was, however, not Stapylton, but the Dominie who stood waiting at the
door; and the revulsion of feeling was such that Jean could scarcely be
civil to Mr. Galbraith. ‘Oh, aye, she’s ben the house; but she’s no weel
the day, and I canna have her vexed,’ said Isabel’s anxious guardian,
looking jealously at this new disturber of her repose.
‘I’m sorry she’s not well; but I have not come to vex her,’ said the
Dominie. His reception was so strange a one that it was not wonderful if
it startled him. When he went into the parlour he met the wistful gaze
of Isabel’s dilated, excited eyes; but when she saw it was him, and not
another, her look changed in a moment, and she fell into a sudden
outburst of tears. Disappointment, relief, a strain of feeling which he
could not understand, was in the sudden change which came over her
face--and the Dominie, being but a man, was not so quick of apprehension
as Jean.
‘I have startled you, my dear,’ he said.
‘Oh, not startled--’ said Isabel; ‘but--my head aches; and--I was not
expecting you--and----’
The explanation fell into a broken murmur of words; and she dried her
tears hastily with an agitated hand. The Dominie had come with the
intention of saying some word of warning; though how it was to be
introduced, or what kind of warning it was to be, he could not have told
anyone. He had hoped that circumstances might have led to some remark
about the strangers in the parish, and that he would have said
something which should ‘put her on her guard.’ Such warnings seem so
much easier to give when the person to be warned is not present. He sat
down by her in her little parlour, and found that, so far as his mission
was concerned, he had not a word to say.
‘What would you say to a change of air,’ said the Dominie, ‘if you are
not well?’
‘You forget I have just come home.’
‘And so I did,’ he said. ‘But I do not like these mild inland places
like the Bridge of Allan. If you were to go to the sea, or to the
hills----’
‘I am best at home,’ said Isabel.
And then there was a dead pause. She had taken her work, and was
labouring against time, her needle flying through the linen, her head
bent down over it. Mr. Galbraith gave a quiet sigh, and felt himself
baffled. He did not know how to introduce his subject, and he could not
understand the state of suppressed excitement in which she evidently
was.
‘There are a great many strangers in the parish just now,’ he said at
last, himself making the remark which he had hoped might have come from
her, ‘and some that are not strangers altogether. I hear, Mrs. Lothian,
that you’ve been at Ardnamore?’
‘Yes, I’ve been at Ardnamore.’
‘And you’ve seen them _all_?’ asked Mr. Galbraith, with emphasis.
‘I have seen Ailie and--Mr. John,’ she said, raising her eyes to his
face. (It seemed to her, as she spoke, that there was another step on
the road, and that she could hear it pause at the cottage-door; and in
her trouble she betook herself to craft, as was natural.) ‘But you must
not ask me about them,’ she said; ‘it was more--than I could bear.
It--brought everything back. It is that, I suppose, that has made me so
foolish to-day.’
‘It can never be foolish to remember what is past,’ said the Dominie,
reassured. ‘Don’t drive the thought from you, as silly folk tell you.
The past is precious; sometimes it is all that is left to us. You are
young, and you have your child; but I doubt if you will ever have such a
treasure as yon year. Isabel, my dear, I’ve seen you a bairn, though you
were my friend’s wife. Think on him still. There are few such seen in
this life.’
‘I know that well,’ said Isabel, glad, poor child, in unconscious
hypocrisy to secure thus a pretence for her too ready tears.
‘Aye, think upon him!’ said the Dominie. ‘You’re bonnie and young, and
may get the offer of many a man; but, perhaps, never another like
him--most likely never another like him. You should be proud of the
past. You have had one of the best men that ever was born; and if you
had been an angel out of Heaven, he could not have set you up higher, or
made more of you. Isabel, sometimes you must think of that!’
‘Oh, I think of it!’ said Isabel, with streaming eyes. And the Dominie
drew his large hand over the great caves that lay under his eyebrows;
his heavy eyelids were wet, and the muscles quivering about his mouth.
He did not attempt to explain to her, nor even to himself, why he was so
much in earnest, why he addressed her in so solemn a strain. It seemed
natural. As for Isabel, she wanted no explanation; she was neither
offended, nor even surprised. The very atmosphere around her spoke to
her as plainly as he had spoken. At such a crisis it was but natural
that everyone should be moved, even stocks and stones if that could be.
‘And now I must go away,’ he said, rising, with a smile gleaming out
under the unshed tear. ‘It’s the hour of the bairns’ dinner, and a kind
of necessity was upon me to come and see you. No; I’ll take nothing. The
afternoon school is not so long. God bless you, Isabel! and guide you
aright--in----’
He broke off in the middle of the sentence, as if (she thought) there
was something he could not trust himself to say--and went away without
looking round, or adding any ordinary farewell. But his agitation did
not wound or even surprise Isabel. She dried her own wet eyes when he
was gone, and tried to throw herself back, as he had told her, into ‘yon
year’--the year of her marriage--when she had been worshipped like
something divine, and guarded as the apple of her husband’s eyes. ‘You
should be proud of the past,’ her Mentor had said. And Isabel had
strained at it, trying with all her might to bring it back to her mind;
but could not. Her imagination rushed instead to that meeting on the
hill-side under Ardnamore, to every word, every look, every tone of that
strange interview. Oh, how bitter it was, to be unable to control her
thoughts, or turn them as she would, or keep them to matters which her
mind could approve. They escaped from her with a leap to go to _him_;
and with a guilty pang at her heart, Isabel felt that the bitter was not
so poignant, not so irresistible as the sweet.
Baby Margaret woke, and began to cry from the inner room, while her
mother sat lost in this struggle. Isabel rose with the alacrity of
custom to take the child; but Jean rushed suddenly in before her, and
had the infant in her arms before the mother could reach it. Jean was
pale, and her eyes all a-glow with excitement. ‘Na, na,’ she said,
holding the child fast, ‘leave her with me. There’s ane coming up the
brae, Isabel, that ye’ll have to see.’
‘Give me my bairn,’ said the poor young mother with a cry; and then she
sank trembling in a chair, her very limbs failing under her. Half
defiant, half sympathetic, Jean stood before her with the baby in her
arms.
‘It’s no fit she should be here. You’ll have to see him, and to say
what’s to be. But, oh, Isabel, dinna forget that you have a bairn!’ said
Jean, with sudden tears.
‘No till I forget myself,’ said Isabel, not knowing what she said; and
then there was a sudden stillness round her, and she became aware that
she was face to face with her fate.
She raised her eyes, which were veiled with dreams, yet shining with
suppressed excitement, to the face of Stapylton, who stood looking down
upon her. The man who had tried to beguile her from her last duty to
Margaret--who had wooed her and tempted her, and almost spurned her on
the braes--who had written that letter--who had left her for a whole
year alone to comfort herself as she might, before she could consent to
permit the other truer, generous love to console her in her solitude.
All this rushed through her mind as she looked up at him; and at the
same moment her heart flew from her like a bird, and took refuge, as it
were, in his breast. She had no power to help herself.
‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘I have come to say what you would not let me say
yesterday. Why should we keep apart, you and I? I have not come to speak
of the past--not a word. Thank Heaven it is over. It shall never be
mentioned between us. You were my Isabel when my father sent for me; be
my Isabel now.’
‘How can that be?’ she said, under her breath.
‘It can be,’ he answered, bending down over her; and--it was not
self-delusion on her part--there was a softness in his voice, a
tenderness that had never been there before. For the first time Isabel
felt a certainty that he was thinking of her, how to be most gentle to
her, how to please and to move her, more than of himself. ‘I might have
looked for you on the hills as I used to do,’ he went on, ‘but I thought
it was best to come here to your own home. Isabel, there is no time for
courting now. We cannot play with the thought, and quarrel, and make
friends, as we used to do. Life is more serious nowadays. We must be man
and wife!’
‘You are not the judge, Mr. Stapylton,’ she cried, with a touch of her
old impatience; ‘it is for me to settle that, and not you.’
‘But you will settle it, Isabel. We are older, we should know our own
minds, and the time for the braes is over,’ he said. ‘Isabel! you have
never been out of my heart. I tried to forget you at first, and
then--but I said there was to be nothing of the past.’
‘You succeeded well,’ said Isabel, ‘in forgetting me. There was a
year--a whole year----’
He sat down by her and took her hand. She had given up the contest when
she thus upbraided him; and it seemed to her, as he seated himself by
her side, that a strange long dream was over, and that all things were
again as they had been when the two had met upon the braes.
‘I was not a free man;’ he said: ‘my father was lying dying, and he
would not die. Don’t question me of that. Is it not all past? And, my
darling, you are mine again.’
‘No; oh no,’ she cried, with a little instinctive shudder, drawing back;
‘there was more--far more, than that.’
‘What more?’ He was pale with the suspense and with eagerness. He
stretched out his hand again to claim hers, which she had withdrawn.
‘Yes, there was more,’ he continued, looking fixedly in her face; ‘would
to God I could forget the rest!’
A flush of shame rushed over Isabel’s cheeks. At that moment, when he
professed for her a constant love which had known no interruption, what
could she say of her own marriage; how could she even think of it? Was
it not treachery, almost vice? The colour came up like flame over her
face. She felt their positions changed at once, and she herself put to
the bar.
‘I was alone in the world,’ she said, ‘and I had not heard of you--not a
word, for a whole year.’
Now, indeed, he got her hand into his, and triumphed over all her
pretence at indifference. She had begun to excuse herself, almost to beg
his pardon. ‘We will speak of it no more,’ he said; ‘now my Isabel is
mine again we’ll think of it no more.’
‘Oh! hush, hush, I never said that,’ she cried, evading his caress. But
he was close by her as in the old days; his voice, so much softened, in
her ears--that voice which had first woke echoes in her girl’s heart;
his hand holding hers, and her heart melting, yearning to her first
love. How could she resist not him only, but herself? She had no heart
to say him nay. After this sudden renewal what would become of her if
life settled down again in its grey colours, and he disappeared out of
it once more for ever? A month ago that subdued life, with her child in
it for sunshine, had been very sweet--but now?
And yet, in the very happiness that thus stole over her, there was a
grasp and constriction in her throat, as of guilt and pain. She was
doing something for which she could never have anything but blame from
herself or from others--for which she could not defend herself. Her
reason seemed to stand by disapproving, regretful, while the poor heart
of her made the plunge. The one was no help to the other. Her unity of
being was all torn asunder and made an end of. She did not think this in
so many words, but was vaguely, dimly conscious of it, as the happiness
stole flooding through her, penetrating every nook and corner. ‘Oh,
Horace! do you not feel as if it should not be?’ she said, with one last
effort to resist.
‘I feel that it ought to be,’ he said, drawing her close to him. ‘If you
wish me to have a hope in the world,--if you would not see me perish;
not for your sake, Isabel, that are innocent, but for my sake----’
‘Are you not innocent?’ she said, gazing at him with wonder and alarm in
her great, tear-dilated eyes.
He put his head down upon her arm, upon the sleeve of her black dress,
and kissed that. He had her hand in his, but it was not her hand which
he touched with his trembling lips. And she felt that he trembled. For
the first time his heart was so touched that the very frame felt the
vibration. It was so different from his composure of old, that it moved
Isabel beyond expression. When he answered her with an almost groan, his
voice half stifled by his attitude, she leaned over him to catch what he
said, as if it had been the most precious utterance. ‘Not innocent like
you,’ he said sighing, almost moaning as from a heavy heart. And she
melted and yearned over him like a mother over a child.
‘Oh, Horace, if you have done wrong we will set it right!’ she said,
unconscious of the vast pledge she took. And thus the contest was ended,
and all the struggles of reason made an end of it in one outburst of
that enthusiasm of pity and tenderness which raises innocent love to the
height of passion. The moment she could escape from him, Isabel rushed
to the door without saying a word. She opened it, all radiant yet all
tearful, her eyes shining, her face full of soft colour, the lines of
her mouth quivering with sobs and smiles. Outside, Jean was walking
about, very grave and almost stern, with Baby Margaret lying on her
shoulder, hushing, or trying to hush, the child to sleep. But the child
had no intention of sleeping; she lay with her head over Jean’s
shoulder, and two great grave eyes gazing intent into the summer air in
that wonderful abstraction of childhood which is so mysterious and
unfathomable. To her excited mother it seemed as if the child already
disapproved and protested, and was saddened by the event which she could
not understand. Isabel snatched her baby out of her stepmother’s arms,
who gazed at her like Margaret, and understood better why this sudden
movement was. She felt the momentary chill strike to her heart; but did
not stop to realise it. Without saying a word, she returned again into
the parlour where Stapylton sat surprised awaiting her. He, too,
understood her meaning when she reappeared with her child in her arms.
She came up to him with two great tears running over from her brilliant,
excited eyes; her mouth quivering so that she could scarcely speak; yet
smiling. She held out her baby to him without a word. Perhaps it was
that he had not expected, had not thought of this little living evidence
of the ineffaceable past. He rose to his feet with a sudden hoarse
exclamation. The joy in his face sank into a momentary wildness, almost
horror; and he trembled as the child’s unconscious, solemn eyes gazed at
him. Another pang and chill came over Isabel; she had thought he would
have taken the child from her, and kissed it, and vowed some tender vow
of protection and love. But this, too, was momentary, and passed before
she had time to realise it. He did not take the child, but he took the
mother into his arms, embracing the bewildered baby also without
touching her. ‘She shall be my child,’ he said.
His child! Isabel broke away from him, and clasped her baby to her
bosom, and sat down apart and cried. Ah, no! For the first time a
distinct sense of the claims of the other who was dead and gone, but who
was little Margaret’s father, came with a certain sickening pang to her
heart. His wife might go from him and be another man’s wife: could his
child, too, be another man’s child, and every trace of him disappear
from the earth? Ah, no!--once more, no! She said nothing, restrained,
even at that moment, by the strange, new, instinctive sense that she
must not breathe a word that could suggest prejudice or dislike to the
mind of her lover in respect to her child; but in her heart there rose a
certain jealousy of him for her dead husband’s sake, a remorse and
compunction unspeakable. She had given herself up to him; she had
appealed to him, with moving looks and gestures, to take her child too
into his heart; and yet her whole being roused into contradiction of his
claim, into dumb indignant assertion of the real father’s right, as soon
as he responded to her appeal. She sat apart from him, not looking at
him, holding little Margaret to her heart and weeping hot tears with a
vehemence which Stapylton could not understand. And she could not
understand it herself; she could do nothing but weep her passion out,
already putting restraint upon her tongue, feeling instinctively that
her freedom had gone from her, that she dared not say to him in his
moment of triumph what sudden thought had arisen in her mind. Thus it
was with poor Isabel, in the moment of what might have been her triumph
too, when she gave up her heart and her life into the hands of the only
man she had ever loved.