MARJORY did not leave the house for some days. She was disgusted with everything. She had no heart to encounter the shining of the ceaseless sunshine out of doors, and the gay scenes upon the Links—gay yet sober, with a Northern brightness. They seemed to tantalise and mock her in the heaviness of her heart. And yet when she considered calmly (or tried to do so) she had so little foundation for this excessive and fantastic feeling. So far as Fanshawe went, she might never, she said to herself, see him again; and though of course she could not help having a certain feeling of friendship for him, considering the circumstances in which they had been drawn together, yet, after all, whether he was a good-for-nothing, or the most useful and admirable member of society, it mattered very little to Marjory. And in so far as respected this unknown girl, it mattered less still—it mattered absolutely nothing. Marjory knew, as all who know the peasant population of Scotland are compelled to admit, however reluctantly, that deviations of such a kind are unfortunately much too common, and in general much too leniently judged. Such painful incidents of rural life had come in her way before, and shocked and disturbed her without having this paralyzing and sickening effect. Why was it? Was it her nerves, her bodily health, one of those simple physical reasons which disagreeable philosophers represent as at the bottom of all our supposed moral sentiments? This was an explanation which Marjory hated and scorned, as was natural, and which vexed her already wounded mind all the more that she could not absolutely put it out of the question. It might be that suffering and exhaustion had given to events, which would have affected her little under other circumstances, a special power to sting. She had to account for her gloom to her uncle by a headache, that most plausible excuse for all unrevealable griefs, and she overcame Milly by a quick prayer for silence—
“Never mind me, dear,” she said. “I am worried; my head aches—don’t ask me any questions.”
Obedient Milly asked no more, but she crept to her sister’s side, and kept looking at her with wistful glances, which were more inquisitive than the questions themselves. Marjory was a person of too much importance to be allowed to be out of temper, or out of heart, with impunity.
“Your headache is lasting a long time, my dear,” Mr. Charles said, after vainly suggesting “a turn on the Links” by way of remedy. “Don’t you think it would be well to see the doctor?”
And Milly wept a few ready tears at the idea that May might be ill. Thus Marjory was compelled to give up her headache; but her heartache, which nobody knew of, was more difficult to get rid of. She went no more to the Spindle, but strayed listlessly along the country roads, which are not interesting, and tried her best to forget all about an encounter which had interested her so much at first, and had wounded her so unduly. Both the interest and the vexation were, she felt, excessive—a trick of the nerves, a weakness of the body, a tendency to emotion, produced by the strain she had sustained for so long.
A whole week had elapsed in this way, when one day she was told that a woman wanted to see her; “a decent woman, but a poor body,” was the description of the maid. Marjory went down to the court to see this visitor, expecting some applicant from the poor quarter of the town, or other petitioner. She was surprised and excited to see that it was the woman who had caused her so much vexation, the mistress of the cottage at the Spindle, who stood with an anxious face, expecting her approach.
“Oh, mem,” she cried, almost as soon as Marjory came in sight. “Come back, come back, and see yon poor lass! She’s breaking her heart. She’s been worse than ever, crying for you night and day, and since she heard that I had tell’t ye, she’s had no peace in her mind. All her cry is, ‘Bring back the leddy, bring back the leddy! I canna die till I’ve seen the leddy.’ We’ve tried to pacify her a’ we could. We’ve said nae doubt you were gane away; folk come to St. Andrews for the sea-bathing, and then they go away; or we said nae doubt the leddy finds it’s ower long a walk; but naething would content her; and at last I came away, seeing it was my fault, to try if I could find you. And oh, mem, maybe I was hard-hearted yon day. We mauna be unforgiving. She’s but a bairn, so to speak, and it was a gentleman that deluded her with his flattering tongue. When it’s a gentleman it’s a’ the harder on a poor lass; and they have such deceiving ways. When I was young myself, there was a student lad, a minister’s son, no less——”
“What does she want with me?” said Marjory, coldly.
“Oh, mem, how can I tell ye? whiles a poor creature like that will take a yearning; it may be for one thing, it may be for another. Sometimes it’s for meat and drink; but this poor thing is no of that kind. You’ve spoken to her soft and kindly, as I dinna doubt is your nature, and she canna bide that you should think ill of her.”
“How can I do other than think ill of her,” said Marjory, “after what you said?”
“Well, mem, I canna tell. You maun hear her story; one says one thing, and another another. I canna tell the rights of it; but this I maun say that she’s no just a common lass. If there are any excuses that a lady like you would think excuses, you may be sure she has them; and it would break a heart of stone to see her there, whiles in her bed, whiles on her chair, greeting and praying, ‘Oh, bring the leddy back!’ I canna stand it, mem,” said the woman, wiping her eyes, “I canna stand it, and if you saw her, neither could you.”
Then a curious sensation came over the proud young lady, who had been so deeply disgusted. It was as if some frozen spring in her had suddenly melted; her whole heart seemed to give way. A kind of yearning desire to obey the call thus made upon her, overcame all other feelings in her mind. She made a brief, ineffectual stand against this flood of unaccountable emotion.
“I do not see what good I can do her,” she said. “I have no right to judge her, and I don’t judge her; but what can I do? If I can help her in any way, you have only to tell me; but I, whom she scarcely knows, who know nothing of her, why should I go to her? What good could I do?”
“Na, mem,” said the woman earnestly, “that’s mair than I can tell. It’s just a fancy. I’m no saying it’s more than a fancy; but ah, you ken yourself, sometimes all the world is no so much good to us as just something we have wished for and wanted; some bit thing that was nae solid advantage. Oh! if you would but come! You’re a leddy well kent and much thought o’, that can take no harm. It could not harm you; and oh! the comfort it would be to her!”
“Did you know me?” said Marjory, not knowing how to delay a little longer, and to make a last effort to stifle the melting of the heart in her own breast; “or did she know me? How did you trace me here?”
“Poor thing, she knows nobody,” said the woman; “and neither did I ken ye, mem. I ken few strangers. I found ye out by your description. I spoke to a friend of mine, a fisher’s wife, that comes whiles with her creel to the door; and as soon as she had heard me out, she said, ‘Unless I’m sair mista’en, I ken the young leddy;’ and, sure enough, she brought me to this door; but now I ken ye, Miss Heriot. My man has a cousin that lives at Comlie, and mony a time I’ve heard of the Laird’s family. Oh! Miss Heriot, come out with me! She’s in her bed, yon poor lass. Come and give her a little life, and hear her story. The sight of her would melt a heart of stone.”
Marjory’s was not a heart of stone, and it pled with her, more strongly than did this intercessor. She had seen the girl only three or four times, and had spoken to her but twice; though that had been enough to rouse in her a vague but powerful sentiment, for which she felt there was no adequate foundation. Now, however, this sentiment rose into a certain passionate force; she dismissed her visitor with a vague promise to go some time or other; but the moment the woman was gone, the pleading voice within awoke with double force, and gave her no rest. It interfered with her inevitable duties; it made her silent and pre-occupied, unable to respond to her little sister’s constant questions, and the remarks of Mr. Charles, who chose to come home for luncheon upon that day of all others, and was full of the doings of the new ladies at Pitcomlie, whom somebody he had met had been telling him doleful stories about. Mr. Charles’s brow was puckered with anxiety, and his niece did not give him the sympathy he hoped for. “I do not know what is to come of the old house, or what I can do,” he cried. “No doubt I am joint guardian; but how I am to fight against these two young women, or keep them from having their way—it’s a position I never anticipated, never anticipated, May.”
“No doubt.” She was thinking she heard the cry “bring back the leddy!” and Matilda and her sister had no interest for Marjory, even though they were turning upside down her father’s house.
“For you see,” said Mr. Charles, with his perplexed look; “though I am joint guardian, so is she; and you may say what you please, May, when it comes to be judged between two people, and one of them a pretty young woman, there’s no tribunal yet invented that will hold the scales of justice altogether even. I might do the best for the boy and his inheritance; but she’s his mother, and has nature on her side. The claims of nature might not tell so much if she were not bonnie; but the two together are irresistible. I do not know if I have your attention—”
“Oh yes, uncle!” said Marjory. But she was not, in reality, paying any attention. Her mind was away, speeding along the coast towards the Spindle Rock, and the lowly cottage under its shadow. Mr. Charles went back to his golf somewhat disappointed at the want of interest with which his plaints had been heard, and with a secret uneasiness in his mind as to the cause of Marjory’s abstraction. He ran over all the list of men whom he had asked to dinner, in the accidental manner suggested by Miss Jean, with an anxious self-inquiry whether any of them might have to do with it. The idea was not a pleasant one. He had obeyed the old woman’s suggestion because he could not help himself, and with a secret certainty that nothing would come of it; but the thought that something might come of it was not agreeable. It confused him in his playing that afternoon; he made such a failure on the putting green as had not been known to be made by an experienced player for many a day, and covered himself with confusion. “It’s all these young women,” Mr. Charles said to himself ruefully; as, indeed, many another man has felt, if not said.
“May I come with you, May?” said little Milly wistfully. This was another difficulty to be got over. “I never go with you now; and at Pitcomlie I never was away from you.”
“At Pitcomlie there were no links,” said Marjory, smiling; and with a promise to walk with her in the evening, she disposed of her little sister. The afternoon sunshine was blazing over the coast when she set out finally on her long walk. A whole fleet of red-sailed fishing-boats were out at sea, and dropping forth from the sheltered embrace of the little harbour; a brisk little wind was blowing from the west, a genial breeze which never disturbs the Firth, or brings up foaming waters in the bay. The sun shone with that soft and tempered light which rejoices the heart, without affecting unpleasantly the physical frame. Marjory hastened on, tracing the turnings of the coast, ascending and descending, now on the crest of the cliffs, now at their feet. She had no eyes for the landscape, no ear for the soft splash and murmur of the waves; her heart beat with anticipations for which it was impossible to give, even in imagination, any reasonable motive. Nothing that she could hear could affect her personally, and yet the emotion which possessed her was too strong to be entirely sympathetic. She said to herself that it must be some tale of pathetic shame for sin at the best, which awaited her; some story which might rouse her pity, but which would probably repel and disgust her at the same time. What better could she look for? But she hastened as if to hear news of the greatest personal importance, with a thrill in her veins, and a quite unusual palpitation in her heart.
Just before she came in sight of the Spindle, a very unlooked-for encounter happened to Marjory; she had heard steps following her for some time, but was too much pre-occupied to notice them; nor was it until she heard a voice from behind addressing her that she thought at all on the subject. When she heard herself called, she turned round hastily, and to her great surprise found herself face to face with the young woman whom she had seen at Pitcomlie, and at the family burying-place. Her aspect, however, was changed; she it was now who accosted Marjory; and there was an amount of anxiety in her round face which changed its expression entirely; she kept calling, as if this anxiety had excited her beyond all ordinary habits of self-control. “Miss Heriot, Miss Heriot!” she cried, as she came forward, stumbling among the whin-bushes in her excitement. “Where are you going, where are you going?” A certain sharp sense of amusement, mingled with anger, a perception of the ludicrous inappropriateness of the question, as addressed to herself by a person who had steadily refused to afford her any information as to her own movements, struck Marjory, amid all her impatience. She smiled as she turned round, and waited for a moment, in answer to the urgent appeal.
“Where am I going?” she said.
“Ay, Miss Heriot, where are you going? You may think I’ve nae right to ask!” cried the girl, breathless; “but you’re a leddy, and I’m but an ignorant lass. Maybe I have something to hide, but you have nothing. Oh, for the sake o’ a’ that’s merciful, tell me! it’s straightforward and simple to you, but no’ to me. You’re going for your diversion, or for kindness, or for I kenna what; but me, I’m travailing and working for life and death; for the life or death of a poor sorrowful creature that’s perishing of grief and shame, and has done nothing, nothing to be so sore punished!” she cried, with sudden tears.
Marjory had stopped, arrested, in spite of herself, by the passion in the girl’s voice. Her heart softened unawares towards this penitent opponent, who had refused all explanation on her own part, and yet demanded it with such confidence. “I am going to the cottage at the Spindle,” she said. “You have no right to ask, nor to interfere; but I tell you because you are in trouble; because you seem to think I have something to do with it.”
“No!” said the girl, pausing in her breathless course; “no you; but them that belong to you. Oh, dinna be angry, dinna upbraid me! It maun be God that’s brought you here. When I heard of the leddy, something told me it was you; but I wouldna believe it. I wanted to do a’, a’ mysel’; to bring her up from the gates o’ the grave, to give her back her good name, to be her Saviour in this world. Eh, the Lord’s hard upon us whiles! He’ll let you do all the foolishness you please; but if there’s one great thing, one good thing that ye would like to do, and then die—oh me, oh me! He brings in other folk; when your heart’s full of hope, and ye see your way clear before ye—He brings in other folk!”
Here she sat down and covered her face and wept. That these tears sprung from some disappointment connected with herself, Marjory divined, though she could not understand how this could be. She stood by for some time, respecting the strong emotion which she did not understand. At last, however, she went up to her, and laid her hand softly on the young woman’s shoulder.
“If I am to help you in anything,” she said, with a sudden inspiration, as unaccountable to herself as all the rest, “do not stop and cry, and lose precious time; but come, like a brave girl, as I am sure you are, and show me the way.”
“I will!” cried the girl, springing suddenly to her feet. “I will! there is enough for both you and me.”
The cottage door stood half open; everything was still about; there was at first no one to be seen. A lonely place, musical with ripple of waves, with soft sough of the quiet winds, with those mysterious breathings of nature which make for themselves a language in solitary places. The two anxious and excited human creatures, one full of a sorrow and enthusiasm which had taken possession of her whole being—the other almost as much excited with that suspense of uncertainty, curiosity, and wonder which is equally enthralling—brought their painful life into the stillness, like creatures of another sphere, dispersing the natural sentiment of the place.
“There is no one here,” said Marjory, unawares; but her voice produced a strange echo, a low cry from the half open door, and immediately after the figure of the sick girl appeared, holding herself up by the door, and gazed out eagerly. Her face was suddenly suffused with colour and life as she saw them.
“Oh, come in! oh, come in!” she cried, with pathetic entreaty, tottering forward with extended hands. The other young woman brushed past Marjory without a word, and threw her arm round her sister.
“Bell, you’ll kill yourself!” she cried.
“And what if I did?” said the other, softly; “if you will but let me tell the lady. I must tell the lady. Oh, come in, come in! do not pass by the door.”
“I am coming,” said Marjory; her heart strangely divided between sympathy and the involuntary repugnance which again made itself felt within her as she approached the girl who had “gone astray.” It is hard for a delicate-minded woman, brought up in all feminine traditions, to overcome, without long training and some strong motive, this involuntary shrinking. She followed the sisters into the cottage with a strong thrill of repulsion, which almost tempted her to turn her back upon the sufferer. But she restrained herself, and entered after them into the dim little room. The sick girl had been seated near the open door, in a chair with pillows. Here her sister placed her again, propping her up. She was breathless with her exertions, but, notwithstanding her weakness, kept her anxious eye fixed upon Marjory, with an anguish of eagerness which fascinated the other, and held her fast. When Marjory sat down by her, this anxious gaze somewhat softened; the terror went out of it; she looked at her more calmly, her eyes lingering on her face.
“You do not come near me to-day,” she said. “You’re kind, but I can see the difference. You have come for Christian duty, but no so soft, no so sweet as when you came last and knew nothing. Oh, lady! you’ve judged me in your heart, and it’s no just. You have not waited to hear what I had to say.”
“No,” said Marjory, “that is true; but I don’t judge you. It is not for me to judge you, or any one. I have been disappointed—but God knows your excuses; how can I know them? I am very sorry for you,” Marjory added, sympathetic tears coming into her eyes as she saw the large drops that veiled the luminous dying brightness of the other’s.
“Oh, my bonnie Bell,” cried the other girl. “Never heed her; they’re all hard, hard, there’s nobody that understands but me.”
Bell did not make any answer. She fumbled with a black ribbon round her neck, pulling out slowly, with an effort which showed how great her weakness was, something which was hidden within her dress.
“I’ve never taken it from its place,” she said, “because he put it there himself. He hung it round my neck, and he said, ‘Some day, Isabell, some day I’ll put it on your finger.’ It’s aye been there since. Why should I put it on my finger when he’s no here to do it? Rings and ornaments are no for me. Oh, lady, your heart’s moved! Agnes, she’s saying something. My heart beats, and I canna hear.”
“She’s saying nothing but your name,” said Agnes, almost harshly, watching with a keenness that lost not a gesture or motion of the lips, the proceedings of the visitor. And, indeed, all that Marjory felt able to say was a startled wondering repetition of the name, “Isabell, Isabell, Isabell!”
“Here it is,” said the poor girl, panting with the effort, and holding out in the palm of her worn hand, with a piteous mingling of tears and pride, a ring attached to her ribbon. “Naebody has seen it till now. I’ve carried it next my heart. He was not the one, oh, he was never the one to bring shame on them he loved! I wasna his equal—him a gentleman that made the heart glad to see him, and me an ignorant creature that knew nothing. But I took his fancy. Oh, lady, maybe it’s because you are a lady and kind, that I think you’re sometimes like him, the turns of your voice and the way you put your hands. I took his fancy. When you came and sat under the Spindle Rock, and saw me sitting at my door—some way, oh, mem,” she cried, with a pathetic apology, “I took your fancy too!”
“Go on, go on!” cried Marjory.
But Isabell knew no reason for haste. She looked at the others wondering. They were excited, but she, poor soul, had ceased to be excited. A kind of pensive shadow of happiness stole over her as she traced out the story of her love, and sought that simple apology for her lover.
“I took your fancy too,” she repeated, softly. “I watched, and watched, and wished you would speak, but it was you that came the first. That was just as he did; but men are no made like us. Yours was kindness, but his was love. Oh, lady, dinna hurry me; my heart’s fluttering as if it would break forth; it’s like a bird in my breast. I’m his marriet wife.”
“Whose wife?” cried Marjory, rising up. She came forward in her excitement, her tall figure towering over the others. Her passion of anxiety and wonder took almost the form of anger. “Whose wife?” she repeated, involuntarily taking hold of the ring. “Is this all you have to make you so? Oh, woman, do not make me curse the dead in his grave! Is this all? Did he deceive you so?”
“What does she say—what does she say? Oh, my heart’s fluttering! Was that all? I am his marriet wife,” cried the girl. “I am his marriet wife!”
Marjory turned her eager eyes to the other, breathless, unable to speak. Agnes had her arm round her sister, supporting her. She was defiant, as always, but somewhat subdued by the command in the eyes of the lady, whom she felt to be her rival.
“It was a private marriage,” she said, hurriedly. “No the minister; poor folk are no like leddies. It wasna right, but it’s nae shame. They were marriet—before witnesses. He took her, and she took him. It’s a thing that’s done among the like of us.”
Marjory stood stupefied in the centre of the little dim room, faintly lighted by its green windows. It seemed to her that she could neither move nor speak. Was it a dream? or was it possible? Could it be? All her old thoughts at the reading of Tom’s letter swept over her mind like a gust. If this was Isabell, then what was her real position? and what changes might be involved of which nobody had dreamed? Marjory’s heart began to flutter like the sick girl’s. A cloud of confusion seemed to float round her. She saw the others but dimly out of her hot excited eyes. Isabell—his wife! “God help us,” she stammered, not knowing what she said. “I don’t understand it—I don’t understand it! Whose wife?”
Isabell raised her pathetic eyes, wondering and appealing, to her visitor’s face. Agnes looked at her steadily with an uncommunicating defiance. The one knew nothing of the confusion in Marjory’s mind, but only felt with a painful anguish such as sometimes rends the hearts of the dying, that this sympathy which she longed for, had failed her—the other knew, and confronted the lady who was her rival, daring her to avoid the revelation which was impending, but altogether unconscious and incapable of comprehending Marjory’s thoughts. Neither of them spoke. And in the moment everything that had happened during the last four months whirled through Marjory’s brain, passed before her eyes like a panorama. Poor Tom on his death-bed, playing with the something that he would and would not tell her—then in the last hurried scene of all believing he had told her, thanking God that he had done it. Oh! the pitifulness of that thanksgiving for a confession never made! Had he made it, where would this girl have been now? It might have been life to her instead of death, it might have saved the life of the old father who broke his heart for Tom. It might have—God knows what mazes of sudden fancy she plunged into;—then all in a moment, came back to find herself crouching down for support in her chair, holding by it, looking at Isabell’s pale alarmed face through a darkness that slowly dispersed. “What has happened?” she heard herself saying as she came out of the darkness. She had not fainted nor fallen; but a mist had come about her, parting her from reality, and engrossing her faculties at the very moment when the secret she had sought so long looked at her out of her companions’ eyes.
As Isabell’s face, however, slowly appeared to her out of that mist, and she saw the intense expression of suffering and anxiety in it, the weakness, every blue vein showing, the large circle round those too luminous eyes, the wistful look in which her whole soul was—Marjory’s heart was touched so suddenly that one impulse swept all other feelings away.
“Poor Isabell, poor Isabell!” she said with a cry unawares. “He tried to tell me on his death-bed. It was not his wish to leave you so. He thought he had told me;” and with an effusion of pity and tenderness which overcame all doubt, she took the girl’s wasted hands into her own.
Wonder overcast poor Isabell’s face. She began to cry softly, overpowered by the sweetness of this accost, but not knowing what it meant. “Oh, did you know him?” she murmured. “Oh, weel I ken he meant no harm. Lady, lady, did you know my Mr. Heriot—my man, my dear, dear man?”
“Bell,” cried Agnes, whispering in her ear. “Bell! it’s Miss Heriot her very sel’!”
That evening Marjory sent a hurried anxious note to Fanshawe, calling upon him to come and help her. She did it by a sudden impulse, carried away by feelings which she felt incapable of expressing to any one else. Him only she could confide in, he only could help her in the struggle that was to come.