Isy had contrived to postpone her return to her aunt until James was
gone; for she dreaded being in the house with him lest anything should
lead to the discovery of the relation between them. Soon after his
departure, however, she had to encounter the appalling fact that the
dread moment was on its way when she would no longer be able to conceal
the change in her condition. Her first and last thought was then, how
to protect the good name of her lover, and avoid involving him in the
approaching ruin of her reputation. With this in view she vowed to God
and to her own soul absolute silence with regard to the past: James’s
name even should never pass her lips! Nor did she find the vow hard to
keep, even when her aunt took measures to draw her secret from her; but
the dread lest in her pains she should cry out for the comfort which
James alone could give her, almost drove her to poison, from which only
the thought of his coming child restrained her. Enabled at length only
by the pure inexorability of her hour, she passed through her sorrow and
found herself still alive, with her lips locked tight on her secret.
The poor girl who was weak enough to imperil her good name for love of
a worthless man, was by that love made strong to shield him from the
consequences of her weakness. Whether in this she did well for the
world, for the truth, or for her own soul, she never wasted a thought.
In vain did her aunt ply her with questions; she felt that to answer one
of them would be to wrong him, and lose her last righteous hold upon the
man who had at least once loved her a little. Without a gleam, without
even a shadow of hope for herself, she clung, through shame and blame,
to his scathlessness as the only joy left her. He had most likely, she
thought, all but forgotten her very existence, for he had never written
to her, or made any effort to discover what had become of her. She clung
to the conviction that he could never have heard of what had befallen
her.
By and by she grew able to reflect that to remain where she was would be
the ruin of her aunt; for who would lodge in the same house with _her_?
She must go at once! and her longing to go, with the impossibility
of even thinking where she could go, brought her to the very verge of
despair, and it was only the thought of her child that still gave her
strength enough to live on. And to add immeasurably to her misery, she
was now suddenly possessed by the idea, which for a long time remained
immovably fixed, that, agonizing as had been her effort after silence,
she had failed in her resolve, and broken the promise she imagined
she had given to James; that she had been false to him, brought him to
shame, and for ever ruined his prospects; that she had betrayed him into
the power of her aunt, and through her to the authorities of the church!
That was why she had never heard a word from him, she thought, and she
was never to see him any more! The conviction, the seeming consciousness
of all this, so grew upon her that, one morning, when her infant was
not yet a month old, she crept from the house, and wandered out into the
world, with just one shilling in a purse forgotten in the pocket of
her dress. After that, for a time, her memory lost hold of her
consciousness, and what befel her remained a blank, refusing to be
recalled.
When she began to come to herself she had no knowledge of where she had
been, or for how long her mind had been astray; all was irretrievable
confusion, crossed with cloud-like trails of blotted dreams, and vague
survivals of gratitude for bread and pieces of money. Everything she
became aware of surprised her, except the child in her arms. Her story
had been plain to every one she met, and she had received thousands of
kindnesses which her memory could not hold. At length, intentionally or
not, she found herself in a neighbourhood to which she had heard James
Blatherwick refer.
Here again a dead blank stopped her backward gaze—till suddenly once
more she grew aware, and knew that she was aware, of being alone on a
wide moor in a dim night, with her hungry child, to whom she had given
the last drop of nourishment he could draw from her, wailing in her
arms. Then fell upon her a hideous despair, and unable to carry him a
step farther, she dropped him from her helpless hands into a bush, and
there left him, to find, as she thought, some milk for him. She could
sometimes even remember that she went staggering about, looking under
the great stones, and into the clumps of heather, in the hope of finding
something for him to drink. At last, I presume, she sank on the ground,
and lay for a time insensible; anyhow, when she came to herself, she
searched in vain for the child, or even the place where she had left
him.
The same evening it was that Maggie came along with Andrew, and found
the baby as I have already told. All that night, and a great part of the
next day, Isy went searching about in vain, doubtless with intervals of
repose compelled by utter exhaustion. Imagining at length that she had
discovered the very spot where she left him, and not finding him, she
came to the conclusion that some wild beast had come upon the helpless
thing and carried him off. Then a gleam of water coming to her eye, she
rushed to the peat-hag whence it was reflected, and would there have
drowned herself. But she was intercepted and turned aside by a man who
threw down his flauchter-spade, and ran between her and the frightful
hole. He thought she was out of her mind, and tried to console her with
the assurance that no child left on that moor could be in other than
luck’s way. He gave her a few half-pence, and directed her to the next
town, with a threat of hanging if she made a second attempt of the
sort. A long time of wandering followed, with ceaseless inquiry,
and alternating disappointment and fresh expectation; but every day
something occurred that served just to keep the life in her, and at last
she reached the county-town, where she was taken to a place of shelter.