There could not have been a more striking welcome than the celestial
glimmer of light which came over Isabell’s countenance at this sight.
She stayed her weeping with an effort, she held out her thin hands; she
looked at the new-comer with pathetic delight.
“Oh, you’ve come, you’ve come at last!” she cried with an unconscious
reproach. She was so weak that the fit of weeping which she had
restrained, interrupted her by an involuntary long-drawn sob now and
then, like the sobbing of a child and Marjory thought that this sobbing
too was her fault.
“I thought you would never come,” said Isabell, “it makes me nigh well
to see you. Oh no, Miss Heriot, I’m no worse; I’m wearing away, wearing
away, but no faster than everybody expected. Oh, it does me good to see
you--to say your name.”
“Did you ever hear of me--from--Tom?” said Marjory with hesitation, yet
with a generous desire to make up for her late failure in interest. She
had not melted into any familiarity as a more gushing nature might have
done. Poor Isabell! this gave her an excuse to weep quietly, to expend
her half-shed tears.
“Oh, I never called him by that name,” she said, “I daredna’. It was
aye his desire I should, but I never could say anything but Mr. Heriot.
I liked to say it; it seemed like himself, grander than me, far above
me--I was never anything but Isabell. Yes, Miss Heriot, he said once how
good ye were, and that, whoever was hard, you would be kind. He called
you May--is that your name?”
“Yes, that is my name.” Marjory could not unbend altogether, could not
tell this girl, though her heart yearned towards her, to call her by
that name, to call her sister, as so many effusive girls would have
done. She answered quite simply and shortly without further expansion.
Was it true that she would have been kind whoever had been cruel?
Marjory had not much faith in herself so far as this was concerned. She
remembered the horror which had taken possession of her when she had
thought of this young woman becoming the mistress of Pitcomlie. All such
feelings had fled away now; but yet she could not feel that Tom had any
reason for his confidence in her. “I came to warn you, my poor Isabell,”
she said, “my uncle is anxious to come, to speak to you about all this;
you must know that it is a very important matter for us. He is the only
one remaining who has any right to interfere, and he wishes to come, to
question you. He is an old man, and very kind; but he will not be
satisfied unless he sees you himself; if it is not too much for you--”
“Oh,” cried Isabell, with a long-drawn breath, “naething’s too much for
me! I’ll be glad, glad to tell him all I can, to do anything I can to
satisfy him or you. It’s hard to tell the truth and find nobody to
believe you; but all I can do is to tell him, and leave the rest to God,
Miss Heriot. Eh, what cause I have to trust in Him! A while ago I
thought I never would hear the name again; and now there will be Heriots
a’ about me--you that are my kindest friend--and this gentleman. If it
was not too much trouble, oh, might I see the bonnie little lady with
the gold hair that Agnes says is like my baby? He’s a Heriot too,” said
poor Isabell, with a wistful upward glance at Marjory’s face. She was
trustful, but yet afraid. She made a little fluttering movement towards
something beside her in the bed, something that Marjory had not seen
till this moment, and only divined now. “He’s a Heriot too,” the young
mother pleaded, “oh, may I let you see him? If I once saw him in your
arms I would be happy--”
“Bell!” said Agnes, in a voice of angry warning, “you said the bairn was
to be mine, John’s and mine--no an hour ago before this leddy came, you
said it. It’s her mainner and her voice and her flattering ways that
have taken your heart.”
“It’s no that,” said Isabell, “I’m doing you no wrong. You will be a
mother to him, and he’ll ken no other mother; but I would like Miss
Heriot to take him just once in her arms, just to give him a kiss for
his father’s sake, just to see if he’s no like his father. If it was no
more than that--no to take him from you that have the best right--”
“My daughters, mem, are not civil to me,” said the old woman coming
forward for the first time. “You hear the one say that’s it the other
that has the best right; yet this bairn was born under my auld roof, and
put first into my auld arms, me that bore his mother, and bred her up by
the toil of my hands and the sweat of my brow. They think I’ve naething
to do with it; that I’m to sit by and hear him given away from one to
another and never say a word.”
“It’s John and me,” said Agnes breaking in, “that can do best for the
bairn.”
“And who will love him best?” said the old mother, “you will have bairns
of your ain. You will push him by and make no account of him. He will
have the orphan’s fate. He will eat the bread of tears, he will have to
bide in his corner, and haud his tongue, and walk wary, wary, lest worst
should befall him.”
Here Isabell turned with a cry to the unconscious infant at her side.
They pierced her gentle soul with a hundred poisoned arrows without
meaning it. Poor people do not build up foolish pictures of possible
recovery round their dying up to the last moment, as some of us do. They
never throw any sort of doubt upon that certain and near approaching
termination. Not even a charitable suggestion that she might live to
watch her child’s growth was made by any one; nor did Isabell expect it.
Perhaps on the whole this was the most real kindness, and it was the
only treatment she had ever been used to; but yet in her delicate soul,
she felt the want of tenderness without knowing how it was.
Meanwhile Marjory sat by bewildered, and listened to this dispute in
confusion. She tried to interrupt them more than once, but their eager
voices were too much for her. The strife was a generous strife in its
way; but was it possible that they did not know if his mother’s marriage
was proved what the child must become at once? She interposed at last as
calmly as she could.
“If all the proof is obtained that will be necessary,” she said, “if the
marriage is proved, and everybody satisfied” (at these words Isabell
turned round, took her hand and kissed it gratefully, while her mother
retreated to the furthest corner, persistently shaking her head, and
uttering sighs that were deep enough to be groans), “then I think our
family will have to be consulted. It is not quite so simple as you
think. There will be something also for us to do.”
The old woman came back from her corner of the room, and Isabell turned
wistful, smiling, beaming upon the speaker.
“Oh,” she said, “it was what I aye hoped, but I daredna ask. My wee man
will not have the hard life we’ve all been born to? Oh, I’m joyful,
joyful of that! not for the money, Miss Heriot; but if you knew the
difference of him and you, folk that have been gently nurtured as they
say in books, from the like of us; gently nurtured, that’s what I would
like--learned to speak soft, and think of others’ feelings, and move
quiet and be like him and you. Without money that cannot be; if he’s to
be brought up to work for his living like the rest, that cannot be.”
“If you mean the rest of my bairns, Isabell,” said her mother, hotly,
“your wean will be real well off if he’s like them. An honest working
man may look any gentleman in the face. I’ve aye trained ye up to that.”
“Ay, mother,” said Isabell, “that’s very true; but a gentleman’s son is
no like a ploughman’s son; and oh, if my boy might be like his father!
They’ll no let me speak of his father; but Miss Heriot, I may to you.”
“Yes,” said Marjory, faintly. A fastidious cloud had come over her
again. Tom, poor Tom, had not been to her an ideal being; it seemed to
her that his education, and the result of it, might both be improved in
a new human creature. But poor Isabell thought differently; a new world
opened before her eyes, which were full of tears, grateful tears, made
sweet by an unexpected and unlooked for gladness.
“Oh, if I could live to see it!” she sighed, with a quivering smile. It
was the first time that such a possibility had occurred to her. She
threw a wistful glance into the future, which she must never see, and
for one moment longed to live. Then for another moment the tears turned
salt and bitter. “But that mayna be,” she added, still more low. No, she
could not live to see it; but still this sunset gleam had given a gentle
radiance to her life.
“A little siller is aye a good thing. I’m very glad the bairn’s
provided for,” said the old woman, looking at Marjory keenly. Pride kept
her from further inquiry; her ears were keenly open, and her mind intent
to find out more fully what was meant; but she would have died sooner
than ask a question. Somehow, however, this simple speech of Marjory’s
changed the aspect of affairs to Isabell’s mother. It gave a probability
to the story of the marriage, which it had never hitherto possessed in
her eyes; the moment that money is involved it gives reality to
everything. The old woman’s feeling was very different from that vague
sense of beatitude with which Isabell herself regarded the possibility
of her child’s future wealth; but Marjory was instantly aware of the
deepened interest, the increased disposition to believe the story true.
She went on to comment on what news she had of the search in which
everything was involved.
“The gentleman you saw,” she said, addressing Agnes, and feeling, to her
great annoyance, that she blushed, “has gone off in search of these
people. He is to go to Guernsey; first and in the meantime we have put
advertisements in all the papers for John Macgregor.”
“Adver-tisements!” said Agnes, with dismay. “To give him notice that he
may get out of the way and hide himself.”
“Why should he get out of the way and hide himself?”
“It is how they aye do,” said Agnes, obstinately adhering to her own
theory. “Whenever a man is wanted for anything, that’s what aye happens.
And I would do it myself. If there was an adver-tisement for me in the
papers, I would leave my place, or change my lodgings in a moment. Eh,
that would I! I would not let myself be taken in a net. And John
Macgregor’s no a fool--no such a fool as to come for an advertisement.
Na, Miss Heriot, it would have been better to have left it to me.”
The mother drew near, also interested in this question. It was the first
time she had taken any distinct interest in it.
“I ken naething about it,” she said, “but putting a man’s name in the
papers is like sending a hue and cry after him. I ken John Macgregor,
though I put nae trust in him. Ye’ll never tell me that he’ll be brought
back by that.”
“No,” said Agnes. They both came near, and stood by shaking their heads;
while Isabell, with a face which gradually grew more and more keen with
anxiety, raised her eyes to Marjory, and put her thin hands together.
“It’s my last hope,” she said.
Perhaps there was just enough of old-fashioned prejudice in Marjory’s
own mind to agree with them a little, and she knew how strong that
prejudice was amongst this class. But somehow the protest thus made
against her proceedings roused in her again the fastidious and fanciful
disgust which only occurred to her mind after she had thrown her whole
heart into this effort.
“Well,” she said, somewhat coldly, “if what I do is unsuccessful, you
can then take it back into your hands. We can only adopt the means we
think best. It is not my place to interfere at all; all my friends have
told me as much.”
“Oh, dinna say that!” said Isabell, with appealing eyes. They all fought
over this patient, unresisting creature. To all of them it was a
secondary matter--to her it was life and death. In the pause that ensued
she was driven almost to despair. All that her imagination could
conceive she had already done. She had told her tale, she had opened her
heart, she had thrown herself upon their sympathy, she had appealed to
them by every argument in her power. The only thing yet remaining to her
she did now. With a sudden movement, which was almost too much for her
weakness, she lifted the infant by her side, and thrust it, without any
warning, into Marjory’s arms. Partly it was a simple artifice to prevent
the possibility of a refusal, and partly it was the hurry of weakness
which made this act so rapid. “This is--his bairn,” said poor Isabell,
falling back upon her pillow, and closing her pale eyelids. The tears
stole softly out from under those lids, the hectic colour faded from her
face. She turned her head aside, as if to avoid seeing the failure of
her last experiment. And the others stood looking on with keen interest,
with feelings vaguely quickened, with a sense of reality in the whole
matter such as they had never felt before.
Marjory was disconcerted more than she could say. She was not used to
young children. She had almost a repugnance to this morsel of humanity
suddenly thrust into her arms--this creature, which should have come
into the world amid the clamour of rejoicing, which should have been its
mother’s pride, the hope of an old family, the inheritor of wealth and
influence, and a kind of power. At the present moment it was its
mother’s shame; it was the shame of the dead man who had made no
provision for it in this world, who had allowed it to be supplanted in
his heedlessness, and made its future insecure; and over the child’s
existence a certain cloud of shame must always hover: legitimate indeed,
but legitimate only by that expedient to make guilt less guilty--making
only a hairbreadth escape from humiliation and ignominy. The baby was
fast asleep; it was warm and downy like a little nestling taken suddenly
out of the nest. Even the rapid movement did not disturb its utter calm.
It lay on Marjory’s lap, among the circle of agitated spectators, rapt
in an absolute tranquillity which went to the heart of these women. The
old mother began to weep. Agnes stood by with hungry eyes, ready to
snatch the child from the stranger, who was as closely related to it as
she, but who was an interloper, having nothing to do with it, she felt;
while Marjory sat still, without touching it, with the long white dress
streaming over her black one, looking into its sleeping face. Another
scene came over her with a flood of recollection, mingling itself
somehow in this one, giving to it an added effect. Once before an infant
like this had been placed in her arms by a dying mother. The child was
Milly, who since then had been as her own child to the elder sister; and
the tears rushed all at once like a stream in flood to Marjory’s eyes
as she recognised the likeness. It was as if Milly had been sent back
again into babyhood; little rings of soft golden hair clustered about
the baby head, the little face was waxen in its paleness, but every
feature was like Milly. She kissed it with an enthusiasm which carried
away all her repugnance.
“I will bring Milly to see you to-morrow,” she cried, hastily; and then
as she looked other likenesses stole upon her. A shadow of her father’s
face before suffering bowed him down, and of both “the boys,” in those
nursery days which came up so clear and fresh like a picture before her.
Both the boys! Charlie most, perhaps, whose own child was not like him.
Marjory’s tears began to fall heavily on the little white nightdress
made by poor Isabell’s failing fingers with all the nicety which love
could suggest. She forgot how all three were watching her eagerly,
waiting for every word she said. She held the child close as it lay in
serenest sleep, unconscious of her scrutiny, its pearly little hands
spread out in that ease of perfect repose which denotes at the same time
perfect health and comfort. “He is a true Heriot,” she cried, “God bless
him!”
“And God bless you!” said pale Isabell, from her bed, with a gleam of
joy over her worn face, which looked like sunshine. Agnes walked away
with a trembling thrill of jealousy and keen displeasure. But the mother
drew nearer.
“If the bairn is provided for, it will aye be something,” she said.
Who could have divined what a strange little scene was going on in the
dim cottage room, where so many different emotions surrounded that one
passive and peaceful thing which slept through all--the little creature,
possessing nothing in life but the soft, almost noiseless breath which
rose and fell, regular, measured, unbroken, like a soft strain in music?
Certainly the other group approaching the cottage thought nothing of it
as they straggled across the rocks, each taking his own way, and
occupied with his or her own thoughts. They reached the door just when
Marjory had risen and was replacing the sleeping baby in the warm nest
from which he had been taken. She was stooping over the homely bed.
Nothing could be poorer or more humble; but Marjory had forgotten all
this. Her pride and pangs of revulsion had all gone from her; so had any
doubts or difficulties that had ever crossed her mind.
“You must live, you must live, Isabell!” she was saying, scarcely aware
of what she said.
And the poor young mother lay back upon her pillows with the countenance
of one beatified. She shook her head quietly, but a wavering light had
come into her face like the far-off glimmer of some lamp of hope that
flickered somewhere in the distance. She had given herself up to death
with that gentle resignation which is peculiar to the young and the
poor; but she was young, and perhaps a voice powerful enough, the voice
of a great joy, might yet call her back from the dangerous brink.
It was at this moment that a loud summons came to the door. It startled
them all, and Agnes and her mother had a brief but earnest discussion as
to whether the applicants should be admitted. Marjory paid but little
attention for the first moment. She drew her shawl round her, and wiped
the traces of tears from her eyes, and rose to go away before the
visitors, if there were visitors, should appear. But her attention was
roused when she heard what voice it was which asked admittance when the
knocking had remained for some time unheeded.
“Is there any one in? Open the door, open the door!” said the new-comer.
It was Mr. Charles. A murmur of other voices with him came in like a
faint chorus; and once more quickly and eagerly came the knocking at the
door.