THE Loch was in full beauty when the minister and his wife returned home. It was a clear, lovely summer night, with stretches of daffodil sky over the blue hills towards the west, and a pale young moon glimpsing at herself in the water. The flowers were all bright in the Manse garden, the villagers nodding pleasant recognition, the Loch all cheerful with boats skimming like seabirds over the water. ‘This is worth London twenty times over,’ Mr. Lothian said. ‘Are you glad or sorry, Isabel, to come home?’
‘Glad,’ she said, standing by his side, looking out well pleased on the scene she knew so well. ‘But I am glad we went, too. Seeing things makes people experienced; it is like growing old. But you should not laugh at everything I say.’
‘It is not at you, my dear,’ said the minister; ‘but do not get old on my account, my darling. I like my bonnie Isabel to be young.’
‘I should like to be thirty,’ she said, with a soft laugh; ‘then I would be nearer you.’
‘You could be no nearer me,’ he said, drawing her close to him, ‘my bonnie darling! Remember always that I could not be happier, Isabel. I have the desire of my heart.’
Why this little scene should have taken so solemn a tone, neither could tell. One moment they had laughed, and the very next moment he was making this little confession of supreme happiness as if for her comfort when he should be away from her. But he was not going away from her; neither was there any possibility of estrangement in their future. There was no passion in Isabel’s mind to make her exacting or difficult. She held up her soft cheek to him, and he kissed her as if she had been his daughter.
‘If we were behaving as the people do in your favourite opera,’ said the minister, ‘we would sing a duet of felicity. My dear, you’ve got a pretty, sweet little voice. I think you must learn to sing.’
‘Oh, don’t speak of that opera,’ said Isabel; ‘I hated it. The men singing about everything—even their dinner! And Lucy Ashton——’
‘My dear, it was not Lucy Ashton; it was Lucia di Lammermoor.’
‘I know; but it was meant to be all one,’ said Isabel. ‘Lucy sing like yon! Oh, they cannot tell what it is to be in despair.’
‘My darling, and how should you know?’ said the minister, looking at her with his admiring smile.
‘I don’t think I know; but I can divine,’ said Isabel; and her eyes seemed to deepen so, that her husband gazing into them could not make out their meaning. But he saw a little shudder, quite slight and momentary, pass over her. And his first thought was that she must be ill.
‘Come in,’ he said; ‘it is growing cold. How is it we have twice become so serious this pleasant night, after coming home?’
‘It is that opera; I never like to think of it,’ said Isabel, and shivered again, and went in, her husband following. It was very childish of her; and yet somehow she felt just as she had felt at the opera, as if someone were watching them—looking at their tranquil life with unkindly eyes.
Next day, Mr. Lothian stayed at home, going no further than the village to see the wives and ask after the men; and in the evening came Mr. Galbraith to resume with delight his long-interrupted ‘cracks.’ Instead of the fire they sat at the open window, Isabel gliding out and in cutting flowers, and looking after her garden. ‘There is some comfort in this—now we have got our pleasant nights back again,’ said the Dominie. ‘You saw many fine things in London, but I’ll be bound you saw nothing so bonnie as the Loch, and that young moon.’
‘No,’ said Isabel; ‘nothing but streets, and churches, and ladies riding. Yet I am glad to have gone; now I will never feel ignorant when you speak. It was as good as jumping ten years.’
‘All her thought is to make herself thirty,’ said the minister, with a laugh of happiness; ‘but I tell her, Galbraith, I like her best as she is. Sometimes I think I am too happy,’ he went on as she flitted out into the garden; ‘I have everything I can desire.’
‘I never knew the feeling myself,’ said the Dominie; ‘but they say it is of kin to melancholy. No more to wish for. I cannot say I wish for much myself; but that’s no out of satisfaction, but out of despair.’
‘Despair is a hard word,’ said the minister.
‘Oh, aye; far too hard a word. I’ve not vigour enough left to nourish a passion. It’s more a sense of the impossibility of any change, and a kind of content; and, minister, I’m free to acknowledge it—I thought you were but an old fool, setting your heart on a young thing; but I see now you were a wise man.’
‘A happy one at least,’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘but it would be harder now to leave this life than ever it was before.’
‘Well, well, there’s little likelihood,’ said the Dominie, with some impatience; ‘let us be thankful—you are as likely to live till a hundred as any man I know.’
But just then Isabel came hastily up and brushed past them almost running, as if in fear.
‘I thought I saw a man in the garden,’ she said, shedding, for the first time for ever so long, a few hasty tears.
‘My darling,’ cried the minister, starting up, ‘where?’
‘Oh, down among the trees,’ she said, ‘down there—outside the garden wall. I saw the branches stir—and I thought——’
‘But, my dear, any man that likes may be on the other side of the wall,’ said her husband: ‘why should that frighten you?’
And then Isabel dried her tears. ‘It was very foolish,’ she said, ‘I know it might be anybody; but it gave me a fright—as if he were going to jump over the wall and come in to us here.’
‘And if he had?’ said the minister, smiling—till Isabel smiled too, seeing the absurdity of her alarm. But she watched anxiously when Mr. Lothian and the Dominie made the round of the garden. Of course, there was no man to be seen, and they went in and closed the windows, and talked very comfortably for an hour before they separated, with no more interest or solemnity. Mr. Lothian had to attend a meeting of Presbytery next day. This pleasant evening was the end of his holiday: and such a holiday as it had been—a poem in his life.
Next morning he rode away from the Manse door, looking, his wife thought, a very picture of what a man of ‘his years’ ought to be. She had smoothed down the cambric ruffles in which she took so much interest with her own hand, and put the gold pin carefully into the clean, well-starched, daintily-crimped folds. There was not a spot upon him, nor upon the glossy hide of the horse, which was a recent acquisition, and, in the opinion of the neighbourhood, ‘too spirity a beast’ for the minister. ‘I shall be back as soon as I can,’ he said, as he turned from the door; ‘but I may be obliged to stop and dine somewhere, so don’t be alarmed, my dear, if I am late.’ And he took off his hat to his darling, and rode away saluting her as if she had been the Queen. All this adoration and tender respect had their effect upon Isabel, though she was not conscious of it. She went in and put away some of the things from the breakfast-table, the little silver tea-caddy, the pretty crystal dishes for the butter and jam, things too dainty to be touched by the hands of the servants, and put the room into more delicate order, moving about in her summer morning-dress, like a bit of light in the solid mahogany-furnished dining-room. And then she went and gave her orders for the dinner, which for that day was to be something which would not spoil by waiting, and which could be eaten cold on the morrow, if Mr. Lothian was not back in time. ‘The minister may stop to dine with the Presbytery,’ his wife said; and lingered a little in the clean, bright kitchen, hearing some scraps of news from Kirstin, and arranging about various things that had to be done. ‘If Janet gets her work finished soon, we might put up the curtains in the spare room, not to lose the day,’ said the mistress of the Manse, ‘as the minister is away.’ It was a day of leisure, with no special point in it, a day for odd little pieces of business, and the sweet silent leisure which breaks so pleasantly into the routine of a settled life.
It was about dusk in the long summer evening, when, listening for her husband’s return, and growing a little weary of her solitude, Isabel heard someone ride past the Manse gate, and a few minutes after the Dominie came in to tell her that Mr. Lothian had just passed—that he had been sent for by someone who was sick up towards Kilcranion, but did not expect to be long. ‘He dined at Maryburgh,’ the Dominie said, ‘and here’s some parcels he threw to me as he passed. If you’ll put on your hat, Mrs. Lothian, it’s a bonnie night—we might take a stroll among the heather, and meet him as he comes home?’
He had called her Mrs. Lothian scrupulously ever since her marriage. Isabel went out with him, well pleased, into the soft night, which was musical with the rustle of the trees, and the splash of the water on the shore, and the voices from the village.
‘But I think it will rain,’ she said, looking up to the sky.
‘And that’s true,’ said the Dominie, turning sharp round, as a sudden blast, for which he was unprepared, came in his face. Clouds had been gathering overhead during all the evening, but now it came down all at once, with an evident intention of continuing for the rest of the night. They stood for a moment uncertain, hearing, as Isabel long remembered, the sound of the horse’s hoofs carrying her husband over the hill in the stillness of the night.
‘And nobody could run after him now with a plaid or a cloak,’ she said, throwing her gown over her head, as was the fashion of the country, to shield her from the rain.
‘He would be a clever runner that would make up to them,’ said Mr. Galbraith; ‘but after sixteen years at Loch Diarmid, a drop or two, more or less, will do him no harm.’
And then they went back into the dining-room where the lamp was lighted. The lamp did not give a very brilliant light when there was no fire to help it, and the room had a dusky look, as rooms will have of summer evenings after all the light and gladness of the day.
‘I think I will light the fire,’ said Isabel. ‘He’ll be cold, and he likes to see it. Here,’ she added, with a little pride in her London experience, ‘it is never too warm for a fire.’
‘All the better,’ said the Dominie, stretching his hands over the cheerful, crackling blaze, when Isabel had lifted away the ornaments on the hearth, and set light to the fire, which, in conformity with the necessities of the climate, was laid ready below. ‘A fire is a kind of Christian creature, and keeps a lonely man company; but, if I were you, Mrs. Lothian, considering the long day he’s had, and a wetting at the end of it, I would have ben the kettle too.’
‘And so I will,’ said Isabel, who was nowise shocked by the suggestion. The kettle was brought accordingly, and placed on the hob, where the old man contemplated it with much satisfaction; and she opened her press, and brought out the silver liqueur-stand which had been Mr. Galbraith’s present to her on her marriage, and the silver sugar-basin, and the toddy ladles, and all that was necessary. She was so pleased with her pretty silver things that it was a pleasure to her to have to take them out, and see them reflecting the light on the table; and the fire began to brighten up all the dark corners of the room, and to glance upon her pretty hair, which reflected it, and her ornaments, which made little gleams about her as she went and came.
‘And a lucky man he is to have such a home-coming,’ the Dominie said, half to himself, with a growl which he intended for a sigh. And Isabel smiled without taking any further notice, seeing herself pass in the glass on the mantelpiece with all the reflections about her, and all the ruddy light dancing about the room; better than a bachelor-den with two men over the fire; there could not be much doubt about that. And she made all her preparations, and had her tea-tray brought in and placed at one end of the table, and bent her ear through all her activity to hear her husband come home.
While the entire household was thus engaged, both servants and mistress preparing for the master’s arrival, it was the Dominie who first noticed that the little fire they had made for him was beginning to burn out, and the kettle to puff away all its contents in steam. He made a little joke over it, and had both renewed, but began to feel uneasy in his heart. The night had grown very dark all at once, and the rain would drive right in the horse’s face as it came down the brae. ‘And such a spirity beast!’ Mr. Galbraith glanced out from the window when Isabel was not looking, and saw that the Loch had got up in a white foam, and that the sky was growing blacker and blacker. Just then the sound of the horse’s hoofs was heard again. It approached, dashing furiously down the hill, and echoed past the house towards the stable which was at the back.
‘There he is at last!’ said Isabel cheerfully, not noting in the easiness of her mind the precipitate gallop, or that there was anything out of the ordinary in her husband dismounting at the stable-door.
‘It will be for the wet,’ the Dominie said, feeling a sudden pang of alarm. ‘I’ll go and see, with your permission——’
It seemed to Isabel that he was never coming back, and that her husband took the most unreasonable time to make his appearance. ‘He’ll be telling David about the horse,’ she said to herself. ‘He is so particular to make the poor beast comfortable.’ Then she poked up the fire to make it blaze, and drew his easy chair to its side. ‘He’ll be taking off his wet things,’ she went on half-aloud, accounting to herself for his delay; ‘He’ll be warming himself at the kitchen fire—but why not here? He’ll have gone upstairs to change.’ At last she ran out to the door, losing patience. The Dominie met her coming back. She could not imagine what was the matter with him. If he could have been drinking—and if there had been time for him to intoxicate himself—that might have explained the glazed look in his eye, and the imbecile smile about his lips.
‘It was not him at all,’ said the Dominie, with a jaunty air, which made her wonder again—‘Could he have taken a dram in the kitchen?’ ‘It was all a mistake. It was someone riding post-haste to Maryburgh—somebody from—Kilcranion, I suppose. You do not think the minister would come down upon us at a breakneck gallop like that?’
‘But it went to the stable-door,’ said Isabel, astonished, but not yet roused to alarm.
‘No, no, nothing of the kind. Sounds are deceiving in the night. It’s a man and horse away to Maryburgh. Ye can hear them echoing down the road now,’ he said, throwing the windows suddenly open. A gust of wind and rain suddenly came in, and he closed it again hurriedly, with a nervous haste, which made the identification of any sound impossible. ‘There’s a storm brewing,’ he said, ‘but we’ll draw to the fire, and be all the cosier within.’
And with a curious gallantry, which took Isabel entirely by surprise, he placed a chair by the fire for her, and made her sit down. Then he resumed his own, and held his hands, which she could see were trembling, over the blaze. ‘I think I’ll go and look if I can see him,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Don’t you stir, Mrs. Lothian. It’s no a night for you to put your bonnie head out of doors. Promise me you’ll no stir!’
Isabel could make no answer in her amaze. And he went away, closing the door carefully after him, and left her, beginning to hear her heart beat, and wondering what it could mean. No doubt, had her love been of a more passionate description, it would have taken fright before now. But it was so difficult to realise that anything could happen to the husband-father—the man who had encountered all the risks of country life unharmed as long as she could remember. She asked herself, what could be the matter with the Dominie?—and then she wondered what ailed the Diarmids of Glencorrie, where Mr. Lothian had gone, that they should have sent for him so late. And then she listened intently in the silence, till her heart fluttered up in her ears, and she could hear nothing else. She sat, it seemed to her for a long time, over the fire, waiting and wondering, and then she heard the kitchen-door open and shut, and a sound as of voices. By this time alarm had begun to take possession of her—not terror so much as uneasiness, wonder—a sense that in this night, which was so dark, and through which the wind began to howl, something—anything might happen. This only—but it worked sharply upon Isabel. She sprang up and ran to the door, and out into the hall. There she caught a glimpse for one moment of her maids, and the Dominie, and the gardener, all clustered about a drenched figure, with a face as pale as death, which she recognised to be her stepmother, Jean Campbell. When they heard her, they fell apart, with looks of fright, and Mr. Galbraith advanced towards her. He was pale too, white to the very lips, and pointed to her to go back into the room she had left.
‘My dear,’ he said, taking her hand, leading her in, with gentle force, ‘don’t go there just now. Keep up your courage. He has met with an accident.’
‘An accident!’ said Isabel, rousing at once, ‘oh, Mr. Galbraith, let David get out the old gig—that would help him home.’
‘They’re bringing him home, my dear,’ he said, looking at her wistfully. ‘You must keep up your courage; they are coming.’
‘Let me run and see that his room is ready,’ said Isabel, trying to break from him; ‘he will be wet, and there should be a fire. I like to see to everything myself. Oh, Mr. Galbraith, let me go and see that his room is right!’
‘The women are looking to that,’ he said, with a suppressed groan; ‘my dear, I fear it’s a bad accident. You must summon your courage.’
‘Is he not able to walk?’ said Isabel, her face blanching suddenly as there came to her through the pauses of the wind sounds as of the tramp of men approaching. This time the Dominie groaned aloud. He took both her hands and placed her trembling in the chair she had placed by the fireside for him.
‘Stay still here,’ he said; ‘you must not go out to—agitate him. I will bring you your stepmother—she will tell you all about it.’ And he rushed away from her once more, closing the door. Oh, what was it? Isabel’s brow began to throb, and her heart jumped wildly against her breast. A bad accident! It would be the new horse that was so ‘spirity.’ Oh, why was she shut in and not to go to him? She could not bear it; she was the fit person to receive him, whatever had happened. And who but herself could see that the room was all right and everything in order? A second time she rose and ran to the door, but once more was met as she opened it, not this time by the Dominie, but by Jean Campbell, who came in, all wet and shivering, with such a distraught look in her face as Isabel had never seen there before.
‘O my bonnie lamb!’ cried Jean, throwing her arms round and detaining her. ‘No yet, you mustna go yet. O my bonnie woman! You that I thought so safe and free of all trouble! But it canna be, Isabel—it canna be—stay here with me.’
‘I will go,’ said Isabel, struggling with her. ‘I will see what is wrong. If he has hurt himself, he wants me all the more.’
‘He’s feeling nae hurt,’ cried Jean, holding her stepdaughter fast; her pale face working and her eyes straining. ‘He’s in nae pain—O my bonnie Isabel!’
‘What do you mean?’ said Isabel, with inward horror, under her breath.
‘O my lamb!’ Jean answered, clasping her in her arms. The young wife broke out of the embrace with her old petulant impatience. She threw the door wide open, rushing upon the knowledge of her fate. At the very moment when she did so, the men had entered the hall moving slowly with their burden. She stood uttering not a word, like a creature made out of stone. It was not that she was stupified. She recognised the men individually one by one, and through her mind there passed the curious speculation how they could all have been found together at such a time. And they carried—what? Something all covered over with a great grey plaid, stretched out upon a broad plank of the wood which had been lying by the roadside fresh from the sawmill—something which neither moved, nor groaned, nor betrayed the least uneasiness at the unsteady progress of its bearers. She gave a cry, as much of wonder as of misery. What was it? And then Mr. Galbraith tottered to her, staggering like a drunken man, with tears rolling down his grey ashy cheeks. ‘O my child!’ cried the old man, taking her into his arms. She looked him piteously in the face; she could not understand his tears, strange though the sight of them was. She would believe nothing but words. ‘What is it?’ she cried, ‘what does it mean?’
By degrees it was got into her mind—she never knew how; they did not tell her he was dead, though they believed so: but that the doctor had been sent for, and would tell what was to be done. Isabel did not faint—such an escape from the consciousness of evil was not possible to her. She retained all her faculties in an acuteness beyond all previous knowledge.
‘I should be there,’ she said, struggling with them, ‘to do what is wanted. Let me go—nobody shall nurse him but me.’ But she was stopped again by the doctor, who had arrived at once, and who put her back, exchanging a look of pity with the Dominie.
‘You must stay here, Mrs. Lothian,’ he said; ‘I must see him alone, and I’ll come and tell you.’ When he was gone, Isabel walked about the room with the fierce impatience of suspense. ‘You’ll no tell what it is,’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘Oh, tell me what it is. Is it his head or a leg broken, or what is it? Is it only me that must not know?’
And then Jean came to her and took her in her arms; but all that she said was, ‘My bonnie woman! my bonnie lamb!’ words that meant nothing. They waited, it seemed for an hour or more, and then a man’s steps sounded slowly and solemnly on the stair, and the doctor with a troubled face looked in. He did not look at Isabel, eagerly as she was confronting him; but cast an appealing glance over her head at Jean Campbell. ‘Tell her!’ he said, with agitation in his voice. And then the young widow knew.
‘God preserve us!’ the men were saying in the passage, ‘two hours ago he passed, as fine a man as ye could see—and now he’s a heap o’ motionless clay.’
‘There’s been foul play,’ said John Macwhirter. ‘Ye’ll never tell me but there’s been foul play.’
‘But wha could have an ill thought to the minister? He hadna an enemy in the world. Oh, neebors,’ said Andrew White, ‘we’ve lost a God-fearing man.’
‘It maun have been for robbery,’ said another.
‘There’s nae signs of robbery, except the cambric ruffles a’ torn from his shirt and the breastpin he ay wore.’
‘That wasna worth much,’ said Macwhirter, ‘but nae doubt the villain was disturbed and grabbit at the first thing he saw. As ye say, Andrew, he hadna an enemy in the world.’
This conversation the Dominie overheard—the low bass voices of the men sounding strangely concentrated and solemn amid the wailing and tears of the house. Isabel herself had been taken away, capable of no tears as yet. And there was the cheerful kettle singing and steaming, the fire blazing, all the preparations upon the table for the return of the master of the house. And it was thus the minister had come home. The depths of desolation had opened all at once in the mysterious world, and swallowed up this house with all its joys and hopes. But a touch and the whole fairy palace had crumbled into dust and ashes.