IT was a long time after this—almost Christmas—when Isabel’s baby was born. Even the Glebe Cottage put on a different aspect with the coming of the new life. The grey parlour, which was so full of memories, the room in which Margaret had died, in which Isabel had been married, and which under other circumstances would have been an awful place to return to, in the renewed and deepened gloom, was all a flutter now with the white robes, the baby-paraphernalia, all the scraps of lace and heaps of muslin in which young mothers find so much delight. The place was metamorphosed and knew itself no longer. It was the centre of a hundred sweet consultations, such gossiping, in the true sense of the word, as renews the female soul. Even Miss Catherine was transfigured by the new event. ‘I have gotten a grandchild in my old age,’ she said with tears and smiles as she carried little Margaret into the parlour where one of Mr. Lothian’s old friends stood waiting by the white-covered table to baptise the fatherless child. It was one of many scenes which were heart-breaking in their pathos to the bystanders, but did not somehow bear the same aspect to the principal actor in them. The old clergyman who performed the ceremony broke down in the midst of it. He was a grandfather himself, and had not hesitated a year ago to make many a kindly joke upon Lothian’s infatuation. But the sight of his old comrade’s child, which would have been the crown of his joy, and which he had not even been permitted to know of, was more than the good man could bear. And the Dominie, who was standing by, turned quite round and leaned his grey head upon the wall, and could not suppress the groan which came out of his heart. And Miss Catherine and all the women wept aloud. But Isabel, with her child in her arms, smiled in the midst of all their tears. Her eyes were wet, which made them all the brighter. The excitement of the moment in her weak condition had quickened all the tints of lily and rose in her soft cheeks—the golden life-gleam in her brown hair shone out under her cap like a concealed crown. And she smiled upon them all with a certain wonder at their emotion, facing life and fate and all that could come out of the unknown, tranquil with her treasure in her arms.
‘Poor thing!’ the Dominie said; ‘poor thing!’ laying one hand on the mother’s young head, and looking down from his great height upon the child, his harsh face all working with emotion. He had hard ado not to weep like the women, and to keep down the climbing sorrow which choked him, in his throat.
‘Why poor thing?’ said Isabel softly, looking up to him, ‘why poor thing? She has me.’
‘And you are but a bairn yourself,’ said the Dominie, with his broken groan.
‘I am her mother,’ said Isabel, ‘who had I but Margaret? and Margaret was only my sister. And I am young and strong. She has me!’
‘My dear,’ said the old minister, who with all his sympathy could not let such a speech pass unrebuked, ‘she has her Father in Heaven. She has the Father of the fatherless. You must not build on your youth and strength. Have we not all seen what awful change and overturn may happen in a single day?’
And then Isabel looked up at him with her tear-dilated, smiling eyes. It was cruel to thrust back upon her at such a moment the terrible tragedy in which she had such a part. But even that did not discourage the young mother. Two great tears wrung out of their fountains, as if her heart had been suddenly grasped by some harsh hand, dropped from her eyes. Before they fell she had already turned her head with a little start, that they might not drop upon the child. ‘I’ll live for her,’ she said. ‘Oh I’ll have strength for her—God would never have me leave my baby alone in the world.’ And then the smile came back—an invincible smile, not to be quenched by any discouragement. When she was left alone even, and had no longer that stimulus of self-defence and resistance which came natural to her character, in the silence she still kept her smile. There, where Margaret had died—where she herself had stood up in her white simplicity of maidenhood to be married, she sat by the imperfect light of the fire with her baby asleep on her knees, and defied all fear and sorrow. All the frivolous thoughts of youth had died out of her (so far as she was aware) as much as if she had been Miss Catherine’s age. No longing for any love beyond the one she possessed was in her heart. Her sister, and her husband, whom she could scarcely dissociate now the one from the other, had left her on the way. But did not this make amends—this which no one could take away, which was altogether her own?
‘Has the lassie no heart?’ said the Dominie, as he attended Miss Catherine down the brae. His own was sore for his friend. The minister had been to him a profounder loss than to Isabel; the solace of his life, his companion, the occupation of those evenings which were all that remained to him to enjoy in this world, had all gone with Mr. Lothian. And to think his friend could have thrown away all his love on an insensible woman who could smile over her baby, and forget him so soon! ‘This time twelvemonth he was planning where he was to take her—how he was to please her; and now—— Have women no hearts?’
‘Her heart is full of her child,’ said Miss Catherine, with a touch of personal compunction, for she, too, had been thinking of the baby, and not of its father. ‘You forget—she was fond of him, and grateful to him, but she might have been his daughter. It was not love like—what was thought of in my day.’
‘Or in mine,’ said the Dominie.
What the two old people thought in the pause that followed, it is not for us to expound. Surely the world had changed somehow since ‘my day,’ was colder, less real, less true—and life was growing more and more into such stuff as dreams are made of. But that perhaps was because to both of them—old unwedded, inexperienced souls, the half of life had never been any more than a dream.
‘You must not think ill of Isabel,’ said Miss Catherine, after a pause. ‘Until this hope came to her, she was heart-broken enough, poor bairn! and now she is all for the baby. Had the father been living and well, she would have forgotten his existence in the presence of that child.’
‘And that’s why I ask,’ said the Dominie, with bitterness: ‘Have women no hearts?’
‘Some of us,’ said Miss Catherine; and they walked on together along the head of the Loch without exchanging another word.
But it was not the past which occupied Isabel, as she sat, in the firelight, with her baby on her knee. It was chiefly a soft respite from all pains and cares, the sense of ease, and weakness, and repose in the present. And whether it was feminine insensibility, as the Dominie thought, or absorption in her new treasure, or the want of any real love towards her dead husband, certain it is that no longing for him or for anyone was in her mind. What she had was enough for, and filled her up. To find herself, a shipwrecked creature, tossed from one woe to another, finding calm but to lose it again—disappointed, sorrowful, and bereaved—to have suddenly floated once more into this safe, sure haven, so warm and still and satisfying and full of hope, was such a wonder and blessing as silenced all other thoughts. But for the child, what a desert her life would have been! And with the child, was it not a rich garden, to be filled with flowers and fruits and everything that makes existence lovely? Such were her musings, as she sat by the fire, a soft, weak, helpless woman, tired if she went two or three times across the little room, but, nevertheless, fearless to confront life and all it could do to her, no longer languid or discouraged now that she had, not only herself to care for, but her child.
‘My bonnie woman!’ said Jean, coming in, ‘you mustna sit there and think. Ye’ve been real brave, and kept up your heart wonderful; but you mustna think, for her sake as well as your ain.’
‘I am not thinking,’ said Isabel, softly, and for the moment there sprung up in her a certain wonder at her own insensibility. Was she really insensible, unfeeling? She was not moved as they expected her to be. Things that she was encouraged to be brave for, as ‘a trial,’ proved no trial to her. Was it that her heart had sunk into coldness? And yet was it not full of love that ran over and filled every crevice of her being, for the baby on her knee?
‘Tell me, was this your feeling when they were born?’ she said, with a little movement of her head towards the other part of the house in which Jean’s children were; ‘that nothing mattered any more—that you could bear everything and forget what it was to grieve, and work and toil and never tire—was that your feeling, too?’
‘Eh, I canna mind what was my feeling,’ said Jean, shaking her head, ‘except that I was awfu’ glad it was over. But your father was living, Isabel, and I had no need to take that thought—and besides, I was different from you.’
‘Ah, my father was living!’ said Isabel, with a little gasp, stopped short by the words, although even then she did not apply them to herself with any feeling that her case was harder than that of her stepmother. If it was harder it was sweeter, too, for her child was all her own.
‘Awfu’ different from you,’ said Jean; ‘ye can sit still and put a’ your bit fancies together, you lady-things that are above common folk; but what I was thinking was, how to get weel and be stirring about the house to keep a’ right for the Captain, and Margaret, and you. My weans were what I loved best, I’ll no deny it—but they werena my first thought; I had to think of him, first and the house, and how to please ye a’; and syne took the wee thing to my breast for a comfort. There was ay the work that came first—and maybe when a’s done it is the best way.’
‘You think I’m idle,’ said Isabel, with a faint blush, ‘but you shall see how different it will be. I was thinking we might build something on to the cottage—another room, or perhaps two. We have plenty now; and by the time she grows up——’
‘Oh, Isabel, ye’re like a bairn with a new doll: let the poor infant take a grip of her life before you think of the time when she’ll be grown up. Ye’ll be for a man to her next.’
‘Oh, no, no man,’ said Isabel, with a little shiver; ‘what should my baby want with a man? She’ll be mine as I am hers—my only one, all I have in the world.’
‘You’re little better than two weans together,’ said Jean, looking pitifully down upon the mother and child and drying her eyes. Two-and-twenty, that was the girl’s age, with half a century of life still before her, all its stormier, harder part, the heat of the day and the burden. Could she go through the world as she thought, with no wakening of other feelings in her heart—altogether wrapt in this motherly virginal passion for her child? ‘She’ll be but a young woman still, when the bairn is twenty,’ said Jean to herself from the eminence of her own more advanced age. Such a thing was possible as that the heart thus thrown into one strain should never diverge, nor throb to any other touch. It was possible. But the woman in her experience sighed over it, and dried her eyes with her apron, and softly shook her head.