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.