They were married very shortly after--there being no reason why they
should wait. Nobody approved of them nor of their match, nor would have
been likely to do so had they waited half a dozen years. Their little
world stood round, as it were, and gazed upon them, declaring it washed
its hands of all responsibility. Her stepmother went about the house as
if she were assisting at a funeral--even little Mary turned reproachful
eyes upon her.
‘Poor wee baby! Poor wee Margret!’ she would say, caressing the child.
‘Why is she _poor_ baby?’ said Isabel, and little Mary would sigh and
shake her head. As for Miss Catherine, she made a formal proposal to
take the child under her own care, and leave Mrs. Lothian to ‘her other
duties.’
‘A bairn in the house will be an interruption,’ she said. ‘A man with a
young wife is often impatient enough of a baby of his own; and ye cannot
expect he would be more tender to another man’s child.’
‘She is my child!’ said Isabel, holding her baby tightly strained in her
arms.
‘But she is my dear old friend’s child as well,’ said Miss Catherine;
‘and she should not be brought up in ignorance of her father’s very
name.’
‘Oh, Miss Catherine, you are hard--hard!’ cried Isabel. ‘If he was your
friend, he was my husband, and knew all, and would never, never have
judged me like this!’
‘Isabel Diarmid,’ said Miss Catherine, sternly, ‘it’s little more than a
year since he was brought home to his house to die, and for a time I
thought it was your death-blow too; and now, with your baby in your
arms, you are going to wed another man. You should not speak of harsh
judgment to me.’
‘But I must,’ said poor Isabel. ‘Oh, Miss Catherine, if you would but
think how it all was. Can I put it in words? I was fond--fond of
him--and oh! but he was good to me. But you know--the difference; and if
you had said a month since--_He_ is coming; let us fly away, not to
meet him, not to bring back the past--I would have gone to the end of
the world. I would be--almost--glad--now----’
‘Of what, Isabel?’ cried Miss Catherine. ‘My dear, my dear, come, and I
will go with you, and free you from this man!’
‘I can never be free of him--now!’ she said. ‘To say the words is an
offence to me. I would have clung to my old life, to be Mr. Lothian’s
widow and little Margaret’s mother, and nothing more; but now that is
all past. If that was what you wanted, why did you let me see the one
man--the only man----’
Here Isabel stopped, silenced by her sobs and her shame. She was not
ashamed to love him, but she was ashamed to say it in words, to disclose
the sacred depths of the heart to any strange eye. She bent her crimson
tear-wet face over her child. Poor little Margaret! if she could have
known the meaning of all those looks of trouble, and passion, and
distress, at which she gazed so gravely with profound baby eyes! Miss
Catherine rose up and shook out her dress with an agitated movement, as
if shaking the very dust from it, according to scriptural injunction;
and yet she had been touched, though she would not admit it, by Isabel’s
cry.
‘You must judge for yourself,’ she said. ‘All has been said that can be
said. I cannot change your heart or settle your life for you, one way or
another. You must do as you will. You know what I think, and what a sore
blow this is to me; and I can say no more.’
And Miss Catherine swept out of the room and out of the house, leaving
poor Isabel with her face hidden and her heart torn asunder.
It did not even strike Isabel as strange that she received no overtures
of friendship from his family, nor, indeed, heard of them in any way.
Her case seemed too far removed out of the ordinary course of life to
leave her any interest in ordinary circumstances. She never thought of
his people; all who surrounded herself were hostile or disapproving, and
the effect upon her was to make her independent (as she thought) of
sympathy. The world was hard upon her, and she turned her back upon the
world.
And thus it happened that they were married, without paying any
attention to the objections and protestations of Loch Diarmid. It was in
the beginning of winter, when little Margaret was nearly a year old.
Margaret’s father had been but a year and a half dead, which was the
fact that chiefly shocked the parish.
Stapylton took his bride to a pretty sea-side village further down the
Clyde where the winter was mild, and where there were no associations to
disturb the peace of their beginning. He bore with her in her distress
at that temporary parting with her child--he bore with her anxieties
about little Margaret and longings after her, in the little interval
which he might have claimed as specially his own. He was thoughtful of
her every wish, putting aside his own comfort (she thought) for hers.
And Isabel found herself, all unawares, wrapt in that dream of happiness
which most hearts entertain one time or other, and which so few realise.
Out of her doubts she came into a sense of reality which was exquisite
to her--and she who had loved her lover without believing in him, grew,
with a blessed surprise and delight, which was like Heaven to her, to
trust as much as she loved. The change was like that from night into the
brightest day. She had reached the heights all radiant with the sun
rising, after the valley of the shadow of death.
‘You have been a bride of brides,’ he said to her one day, when a few
weeks of this dream had gone. ‘You have never asked me where we were to
go, or what we were to do. I wish I could reward you for your trust, my
love, and take you to a fine castle, and say you were queen----’
‘It was not that,’ said Isabel, ‘don’t praise me too much. It was
because I had so much in my mind I forgot. But, Horace, it is trust
now.’
‘And that is all I want,’ he said, ‘and we can settle together where we
are to go.’
‘But you have your own home?’ said Isabel.
‘I sold that; did I never tell you? I have no ties but you now,’ he
said. ‘I meant to have gone to America--two years ago. Shall we go now?
or shall we stay in your own country? or what are we to do?’
‘I have been a fool,’ cried Isabel, ‘to think of nothing all this time.
But you must have had plans of your own.’
‘Yes, to disappear out of the world if you would not have me,’ he said;
‘but since I knew you would have me, everything else has gone out of my
head.’ And then she clasped his arm with both her hands, and they walked
on forgetting everything, even their plans. Oh, how different it was
from the tender quiescence with which she had accepted the minister’s
love! That had been but a dream and this was life.
They went on together wandering along the beach which was lit up by all
the glories of the sunset. She too happy to think of anything; he
absorbed in her.
‘Oh, Horace, how different everything is!’ she said. Her heart was full
and spoke out of its abundance. ‘If I could have thought this would ever
come in those weary days when I looked for you, and you stayed away
from me----’
‘But you forgot me, Isabel.’
‘Did I forget you? Oh, how I wearied for you, Horace!’ There was
something like guilt in the confession; but the meaning in her mind was
different from his conception of it. The time in which she ‘wearied’ for
him had not been that pure, calm, cloistered year of her marriage, when
all vain thoughts and wishes had been hushed in the unspeakable quiet.
She had not thought of him then. She had been faithful and true as an
angel to her father-husband, whose love surrounded her like a
dwelling-place, and kept her pure from all the soils of earth. So
detached was that period from her life that she did not even remember it
while she spoke. It was a vision, a trance, a world apart. But in the
other agitated world of her young lonely life it seemed now as if there
had been but one thought, and that was him. ‘You left me all that
year--all that weary, weary year, after our Margaret was taken from me,’
she said, looking up at him with her tender, shining eyes; ‘and I
thought I would break my heart.’
‘And at the end of it--’ he said, ‘shall I remind you, Isabel, how you
showed your love to me? or shall we let by-gones be by-gones, and speak
of it no more?’
‘How I showed my love for you?’ said innocent Isabel--innocent,
heartless, ungrateful--and yet, in her heart, loyal, after their
degrees, to all affections. She looked in his face with genuine
surprise. And then, all at once, with a scorching blush remembered what
he meant.
‘He was so good to me,’ she murmured, with downcast looks; ‘oh, so kind,
like my father! What could I do? It was different. Never, never, could
he have been--like you.’
Stapylton drew her to his side with a shudder. ‘We’ll speak of it no
more,’ he said; ‘I could not trust myself, Isabel; one moment of my life
I was in Hell--and it was by seeing you----’
‘Seeing me?’ she said, aghast.
‘With him--more lovely than I ever dreamt of--in London--at the opera.
My God! when I think of it,’ said the young man, with a blackness
impenetrable to her anxious gaze coming over his face.
‘Oh, Horace! was it you? Oh, was it you? There was something there that
made me miserable. Oh, my Horace!’ she said, with pity, and remorse, and
terror, clinging to his arm.
‘It was Hell!’ he said, wiping his forehead, upon which great drops of
moisture were standing. ‘I had been forgetting as best I could--till
then. It was Hell; but this is Heaven,’ he added, after a pause, holding
her closer. Isabel, terrified and appalled, clung to him, gazing, with
her wistful eyes, into his face. ‘It is all past now,’ she said,
clinging close to him, with her hands clasped on his arm.
‘My darling! and this is Heaven!’
One evening, a week later than the conversation we have just recorded,
it happened unfortunately that the cry of a child in one of the cottages
awoke the heart of the young mother within her. Her maternity had been
slumbering, but was not weakened by absence from her child. ‘If I had
but my baby!’ she sighed softly, half to herself, without thinking--as,
indeed, she ought to have done--what an interruption such an exclamation
must have been to any young man’s love-dream.
He said something--she could not distinguish what; but there was
impatience in the tone, and it jarred upon her. He quickened his pace,
too, out of the lover’s ramble, drawing her along with him. When Isabel
thought of it, she saw, with a new-born power of putting herself in his
place, that it was cruel to bring in the baby at that moment; but at
first it hurt her, and brought a little pang into her heart.
‘Cannot you be content with me for a little?’ he said; and then there
was a pause, and they both turned, by instinct, to their lodgings. It
was a winter night; but there are nooks along the coast where the soft
west, even in Scotland, cheats the visitor into dreams which would
better become the south. The sun was setting behind the Arran hills,
lighting up all the horizon with a brilliant wintry glory. The tints
were deeper, the gold more dazzling, than in summer; and far away
stretched the sea, blue as steel, and brimming over with a rounded
fullness, as if it could hold no more. The night air blew somewhat chill
in their faces: perhaps it was that alone which made Isabel so cold and
so willing to return.
‘If we were to go away there,’ Stapylton said, pointing across the
steel-blue glistening water, ‘it would be hard work exposing a baby to
such a voyage. Could you make up your mind, Isabel, to leave her at
home?’
‘Leave--my child!’ she cried, with a little shriek; and her joy all at
once seemed to die suddenly out of her heart.
‘I do not say so,’ said Stapylton; ‘I am only making a suggestion. At
her age it would be hard upon her. You could not get milk for her, nor
anything. Poor child! If you could trust her to anyone at home----’
‘Oh, Horace, ask me anything but that,’ said Isabel, clinging to his
arm.
‘Well, well,’ he said, subduing his impatience, as her quickened senses
could discern, by an effort, ‘I am not asking you to do it; I am only
suggesting what might be for her good.’
And then they went in, and a change came over the heavens and the earth
to Isabel. It was not that he had changed: he was as anxious to be good
to her, to save her all annoyance, to make her happy, as ever. It was
that a note, which jarred upon the perfect happiness she had begun to
rise into, had been struck, as it were, unawares. Her husband was still
her lover, still full of fond delight in her, and eager to please her;
but a meaning she could not quite fathom, a purpose which was not made
clear to her, seemed to be under his love and his fondness--now more,
now less clearly visible from that day. He spoke a great deal of
America, pointing out all its advantages to her; and Isabel, who had no
dear friends to leave behind her, and of whom her neighbours all
disapproved, was not disinclined to think of emigration. But then there
were the discomforts of the voyage, upon which he insisted with
ever-strengthening force of words.
‘I would never hesitate if we were alone; but the child necessitates a
maid,’ he said, ‘and the maid brings other troubles in her train.’
‘But I want no maid; I can take care of my child without any help,’
cried Isabel.
‘And if you did that how much should I see of you?’ he said, with an
almost sneer. ‘No, Isabel, I don’t want to be disagreeable, but my wife
must be my wife, and not a baby’s nurse.’
‘She will soon be walking,’ said the young mother, trying with anxious
wiles to recommend her child. ‘She would soon be--a help to me, Horace,
instead of a trouble.’
‘You must consider it all well,’ he said; ‘it is not just our--your own
pleasure that you must think of; you must remember what you owe to the
child. She is too young for a long voyage, Isabel; probably she might
fall ill--and die. My dear, I don’t want to frighten you--babies so
often do.’
‘Oh, Horace, not with my care!’ cried Isabel. ‘God would protect her by
sea as well as by land. The poor women have all their little children
with them. What should happen to my darling more than to the rest?’
‘But it does happen to the half of the rest,’ he said, calmly. ‘I don’t
want to frighten you, Isabel; but afterwards, if anything were to
happen, you would blame me for not telling you. And then if she lived
and grew up she might object to be severed from all her friends and her
own country. She has her friends, I suppose--her--father’s friends.’
‘She can have no friend so near as her mother,’ said Isabel, in a voice
which was scarcely audible.
‘What do you say? Of course you are her mother, my dear; but if she were
to grow up to feel herself alone in a family, she--did not belong to,
one may say--don’t you think she would reflect upon you for taking her
from her home? My darling! I did not mean to vex you; I am only saying
what you will think yourself when you look at it calmly and see it in a
reasonable light.’
‘Oh, Horace, Horace,’ cried Isabel, clasping her hands, ‘did not you say
she should be as your own? You would not take your own child from its
mother? You would not leave her behind?’
‘Why should not I,’ he said, ‘if it would be for the child’s good?’
For a moment she looked at him aghast, and then hid her face in her
hands. He towered over her in superior virtue condemning her woman’s
weakness. ‘If it were for the child’s good. It is not our own pleasure
we must think of.’ The sound of these sentiments bewildered Isabel. Was
it possible that her eagerness to keep her baby at any cost or risk was
but the selfishness of maternity? Could it be that he would actually be
so self-denying as to leave even his own child behind him, if it was
‘for its good’? Isabel’s heart protested against such virtue, and yet it
silenced her indignant cry.
‘I believe I have strength of mind enough to do it,’ he said, ‘if it was
for the child’s good. Drag her out there with you to undergo all the
hardships of a long voyage, to be exposed to disease perhaps, to be
parted from her own relations and the country in which her property
lies. If she had been unprovided for the case might be different.’
There was a shade of bitterness in his voice. Was he angry that little
Margaret’s fortune was safe and out of reach, though he himself had
taken pains to make all the arrangements? Isabel withdrew her hands from
her face, and gazed at him confused by his vehemence. What could it be
that he meant?
‘But she is very well provided for,’ he added, with meaning--‘quite a
little heiress. And her friends would never be content that her property
should go out of the country. I see a thousand difficulties in the way.
And if I were you, I would choose the most careful guardian I could get
for her, and leave her quietly at home, at least till she knows what is
what, and can decide for herself.’
‘Oh, Horace, do you remember she is my child--my only child, that I love
more than my life? If I had to leave her I would die!’ cried Isabel;
‘but I cannot leave my baby, it would be worse than leaving my life.’
‘Which shows you don’t make much account of me,’ said Stapylton. And
then he went out suddenly and left her, leaving all those suggestions to
take form and germinate within her. She threw herself down on the sofa
in the little lodging-house parlour, and hid her face in the cushions.
It would be too much to investigate what her thoughts were at this
dreadful moment. A storm raged within her moving Heaven and earth. A
hundred mocking spirits seemed to come round and gibe at her, and laugh
at her vague, splendid anticipations. Was the joy over, and the
consolation, along with the honeymoon? And were distress, and distrust,
and a consuming terror to enter in and take possession so soon?