There was no moon, and the night grew speedily dark; and the road was no
smooth, level highway, but a road up hill and down dale, as was natural
to the country. Stapylton was so absorbed with its difficulties that he
took no notice of the little traveller whose presence could not long be
concealed.
‘What is it?’ he said, when little Margaret with a struggle made herself
visible from under the cloak.
‘It is only the child,’ Isabel answered in the easiest tone she could
attain to, though her very lips were trembling with excitement, and
resolution, and alarm. What he said was lost in the night breeze which
swept past them as they flew on against it. She thought he too had taken
little Margaret’s presence for granted, and her heart seemed to go back
with a leap to its natural place in her breast. But the fact was that
Stapylton’s mind was at the moment too much occupied to have time to
think of the child. When she looked up at him again, she saw that his
brow was contracted, his lips firmly set together, a look of oppression
and almost terror in his face.
‘This confounded country of yours!’ he said, ‘it is bad enough in
daylight, but it’s horrible in the dark. Why did you keep me waiting so
long at that infernal cottage-door?’ But he did not seem to notice the
answer Isabel made in her dismay. And they swept along through the dark
with nothing visible but the pale stars in the sky, and the great
shadows of the hills, and glimmer of the larger loch on the other side
of the braes to which they were descending; and nothing audible but the
sharp din of the horse’s hoofs on the road, and Baby Margaret’s little
murmurs as she nestled to her mother’s side. The curious oppression in
Stapylton’s face made Isabel, too, hold her breath, though otherwise she
would have felt no alarm upon the well-known way. But past agitation had
unstrung her, and the thought of the struggle to come. ‘Would you give
up your little bairn?’ Ailie’s words were still ringing in her ears, and
she kept repeating to herself over and over, ‘Never, oh, never, if I
should die!’ While this was going through her mind, Isabel, seated by
her husband’s side, trembled with the question, What would he think if
he knew her thoughts? What might he be thinking even now, so close to
her that she could not move without touching him, so far off that her
profoundest skill could not fathom what was in his mind?
It was thus that they reached the first place which in their new-married
life they could call home. With a relief which an hour before she could
not have believed possible, Isabel placed her baby in the hands of Nelly
Spence, who was waiting for them at the door.
‘You’ll take great care of her,’ she said, whispering, as she put the
child into her arms.
‘Eh, aye, I’ll take awfu’ care of her,’ was the answer.
And the young mother was glad to be thus relieved, to go to her husband,
and do her best to conciliate and please him. The fire was burning
brightly in the little bare dining-room, and the table spread; and
Horace, still with cloudy looks, sat in a great armchair thrust back
into the shadow. It was not home, but yet it was more like home than the
honeymoon lodgings. It was, at least, their own house. She had come to
him giving up her baby, feeling that such a sacrifice was his due; and,
perhaps, she expected that some special word or look of tenderness
should reward her. But it was soon evident that his mood was very far
from lover-like. He burst out when she came up to the fire and stood
with her face turned towards him in the full glow of the firelight. Her
agitation had roused all the dormant expression in Isabel’s face. Her
eyes looked larger, and were full of light and shadow. A tremulous
colour went and came on her cheek. Her mouth was all trembling and
eloquent with suppressed feeling, and the glimmering of the firelight
gave a certain increase of effect to the whole. He did not even look at
her at first, but suddenly burst out:--
‘I hate this country of yours! I always did hate it! I don’t know what
made me such an ass as to consent to stay. By Jove! I wonder if any
woman was ever worth----’
‘What, Horace?’ she said, trying to laugh.
‘The things we do for them,’ he said. ‘You are a kind of demons with
your pretty faces. You tempt us to do a thousand things that if we had
our wits about us----’
‘Horace, we have surely something more than pretty faces? Is that all
you care for?’ said Isabel.
‘Well, never mind,’ he said, coarsely; ‘if you were plain, you would not
ask such a question; but if you had been plain, Isabel, you should never
have been my wife.’
He expected her to be pleased with the rough compliment: and, pleased
himself, roused up a little out of the shadow, and suffered his face to
relax and looked at her as at a picture. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you should
never have been my wife. I never thought, even when I admired you most
in the old times, that you would have turned out so handsome, Isabel;
and when I look at you I don’t mind----’
‘What is it you don’t mind?’
‘All you have cost me,’ he said, falling back into the shadow. ‘By
Heaven that night at the opera, when I saw you dazzling--you whom I had
been persuading myself to believe was only a pretty country girl. And
there you were like a queen of beauty. I shall never forget how I felt
that night.’
‘Oh, don’t speak of it!’ she cried. ‘I cannot bear it; don’t remind me
of that.’
‘If I could bear it, you may,’ he said, with a certain tone of contempt;
‘but I don’t mind, you are worth it all, my dear; and now let us have
some dinner. I have got you in spite of everything, and at least we may
be jolly to-night.’
So they sat down to their dinner, which Stapylton himself had taken the
trouble to order; and not a word was said about the child. He had
accepted it as a natural part of their household, she thought; and
Isabel’s heart grew a little lighter with every word he spoke. He had
forgotten, no doubt, all that had been said in a different mood; and she
began to flatter herself it had been but a passing moment of ill-temper;
and that now the child was under his roof, there would be no further
comment upon it. A feverish gaiety took possession of her as she caught
at this thought. She made a conscious effort to amuse him, stirring up
all her dormant powers. She told him of her meeting with Ailie, and did
not wince at his rude comments upon the woman he had no understanding
of. She was so anxious to please him that she could have borne anything
he chose to say. She was lowering to his level, though she did not know
it; a certain pleasure in the fact of being able to make him laugh, and
turn his thoughts from more serious matters, took possession of her. Oh,
if she could only have gone on telling him stories like Scherazade, and
occupying him with any romance or trifle till they had embarked on their
voyage, and little Margaret under her shawl had been conveyed into the
ship unnoticed! It was the first piece of practical falsehood she had
ever attempted, and it had been successful beyond her hopes; and in the
haste and agitation of the moment it seemed to her that this was the
soundest policy, and that there was no other course before her to
pursue.
‘That woman was always mad,’ said Stapylton, ‘I could see it from the
first; but, by Jove! she must be cunning, too. To get that mad fellow to
marry her and make a lady of her, as they say, was the cleverest thing I
know. What a fool he must have been, to be sure!’
‘Oh, Horace! you don’t understand Ailie,’ said Isabel.
‘I understand her a great deal better than you do, my dear; though I
believe in your heart, if you were to tell the truth, _you_ saw what she
was at all along. Depend upon it, there is always some meaning in those
got-up things. When I remember how you were all taken in, and expected
your sister to get better too--when anybody with half an eye could see
she was going as fast as she could go.’
‘Oh, Horace! don’t speak of that,’ cried Isabel. ‘They say there is
something in the papers about Mr. John--something that has happened in
France. There is the newspaper lying with your letters, will you open it
and see?’
‘Time enough for that,’ he said, drawing his chair to the fire. ‘By
Jove! he must have been a fool--a bigger fool than even I am, to come
down here and bury myself in this hole, all for the sake of you! You
ought to be a good wife to me, Isabel, instead of setting up your silly
little notions. You never were as happy in all your life before, _I_
know. You never had anyone to pet you before, and make a little idol of
you. And yet you go and vex me and spoil all our plans for some foolish
notion about a baby, that cares as much for the first country lass that
makes a fuss over it as it does for you. Yes, it is a true bill, my
darling. You know what a naughty little rebel you are. Now acknowledge
that in all your life you never were so happy before?’
It would be safe to say that at this moment, with her husband’s arm
round her, and his eyes glowing upon her with admiration and fondness,
Isabel had scarcely ever been more unhappy, more torn by painful
struggles. ‘Oh, Horace!’ she cried, faintly, hiding her face in her
hand. The question humiliated her. She was ashamed, mortified, offended;
and at the same time stung to the heart by the contrast between the
state of her feelings and his opinion of them. Happy! was there any
meaning in the word? But, fortunately, no thought of this crossed
Stapylton’s mind. He was full of the comfort of his dinner and his rest,
and the indigenous toddy which steamed by his elbow. Ease and that
genial influence had mollified him, and made him complacent. He took
Isabel’s confusion for the evidence of a shy rapture.
‘You were always a shy little fool,’ he said, kissing her; ‘but I know
you were never so happy before. Trust me to know it. You have never told
me the secrets of your prison-house, but I can guess them. By Jove! you
should be grateful to a man when you find yourself delivered out of that
tomb, and brought safe off here, to be made a pet of. It’s all very well
to pretend, and to make up a pretty little scene, like that you treated
me to this morning; but _I_ know you can’t care for that brat of a baby,
nor put it in comparison with me.’
‘Oh, Horace, let me love my child!’ cried Isabel. ‘I will love you all
the better--don’t take my little one from me! I will serve you on my
knees--I will study your every look, if you will but consent that I
should love my own child.’
‘And what should you do if I did not consent?’ he said, with a smile.
‘You would cry very prettily, Isabel, I know, and make a scene as all
women do, but you’d give in at the end. Now, why not give in at the
beginning, and save yourself all the trouble? Do you think there is any
doubt, my love, who would conquer at the last?’
‘Yes,’ she said, in a voice scarcely audible, trying to free herself
from his arms. ‘There is a doubt--for I might die.’
‘What has your dying to do with it? No, my love. You’ll give in to me
and do your duty, and we’ll be as happy as the day is long,’ he said,
and with another kiss let her go free. ‘Now give me the paper, and I’ll
read you the news. All sorts of things have been happening, and we have
been too happy to mind; but now, you know, it is time to think of our
duties, now we’ve come back to the world.’