ISABEL went out again on her way home with a mingled feeling of relief and bewilderment. She was not nourishing one single thought of herself or her own affairs as she threaded the winding way; and perhaps it was for this reason that the sight of the figure, advancing to meet her as she turned the corner, came upon her with such startling suddenness. Two steps brought her from the solitude of the road immediately in front of him, and these two steps marked the immensely greater revulsion from unselfish solicitude for another to the sudden wild return of her own life into her passive soul, which seemed no actor, but only a spectator of the change. She came round the corner lightly and swiftly with dreaming eyes, looking into the air, which was vacant of everything but the trees and the reflections of sky and water, and all the sweetness of the time—and suddenly looked full into the face of Horace Stapylton, so near to her that he seemed to have sprung from some hiding-place, or dropped from the sky! Had there been even a minute’s interval to prepare her for his appearance, it would have been different. But he came upon her all at once without even a sound of his step on the mossy, grassy path. She stood still and gave a low cry. Her heart gave a leap as to her lips. A sudden colour rushed over her face, and with a pang as sudden, the sense of having betrayed herself rushed after the first thrill of emotion into her heart.
‘Isabel!’ he said, making one rapid step towards her, and taking her hand in his. He would never have ventured to do it, but for her self-betrayal. He had not been taken by surprise. He gazed at her with eyes that shone and glowed with unconcealed feeling. Isabel grew as suddenly pale as she felt the warm pressure of his hand. She drew herself away, and stepped aside, and made him a little formal bow.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, ‘Mr. Stapylton; I did not know you were there. It was—the surprise——’
‘And then when you recollect, and get over the surprise, you drive me away,’ he said, looking as he had looked in the old days, when he had a lover’s right to her attention, and dared complain and quarrel with her. ‘Why should you drive me away? Why may we not be friends?’
‘Mr. Stapylton, you mistake,’ she said, with confusion; ‘I was not thinking—there is no reason. I was startled to see you—I mean, to see anyone. The road is so lonely here.’
‘There was a time,’ he said, turning with her as she made a movement to go on—‘there was a time when it would have been no surprise to you to meet me anywhere, wherever I knew you to be.’
‘But times change,’ she said, breathlessly, and then, with eagerness to change the subject, made the best plunge she could into general conversation. ‘I have been seeing Mrs. Diarmid, at Ardnamore.’
‘That was Ailie; was it not?’
‘Yes, it was Ailie,’ she said, regaining a little courage. ‘She married Mr. John. Not caring for him, perhaps—that is—I mean—not at first.’
‘People do such things,’ he said, not looking at her, ‘every day.’
‘And she has come back,’ said Isabel, who was too much agitated to think that he meant to launch any passing arrow at herself, ‘and I do not understand what ails her. She is no longer a prophet; but that is not all. She sits and never looks at you, never speaks; and she says God has deceived her; and her husband has gone away.’
‘They must be a strange couple,’ said Stapylton, bringing that subject to a sudden close. Perhaps it was her evident agitation, the tremor with which she recognised him in her surprise, that made him so bold; but he was impatient, it was clear, of ordinary conversation. ‘I can’t call you by your new name,’ he said, suddenly. ‘When I saw you the other day, with that old woman by your side—and that—child—in your arms——’
‘Mr. Stapylton, you are not to speak to me so!’
‘When I saw you,’ he repeated, with a certain hurry and sweep of passion, which she could not stand against, ‘it shook me like an earthquake. Yes, Isabel—I have been like you, trying not to think. Don’t try now to make me believe you are quite calm talking of other things. You can’t forget three years ago—I know you don’t forget——’
‘I have nothing to be ashamed of—in—three years ago,’ said Isabel, trembling, and with all the colour rushing to her face.
‘And I have,’ he said. ‘Ah, I acknowledge that; I would confess it on my knees if you would listen. Ashamed—bitterly ashamed! To think of all that might have been prevented—all the harm that might have been spared—if I had not been such a coward and a fool.’
There was self-reproach in his voice; and Isabel felt a tender compunction seize her, felt her strength stolen from her. If going away from her had made him desperate, should not she be the first to forgive?
‘Indeed I do not blame you,’ she said softly; ‘it has turned out—for the best.’
‘For the best!’ he cried passionately; ‘at least, you cannot expect me to grant that. Your very dress which you wear for him—your very name—everything—how can I stand here and look at you and bear it—I who never changed in my heart?’
‘Mr. Stapylton,’ said Isabel, ‘you have nothing to do with me now. You are a stranger, and we were not speaking of your heart. That has nothing—nothing to do with me. I must go home to my baby. I beg of you not to come any further, but to let me go.’
‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘look at me, don’t turn your eyes away from me: I am not a stranger; you could not make me so were you ever so cruel; the time will never be when we shall have nothing to do with each other, you and I—only look at me! What reason can there be why we should part now?’
‘Oh, Mr. Stapylton, let me go,’ she said, shrinking aside from him, not venturing to raise her eyes. She dared not look at him as he begged her to do. She knew that her eyes would have betrayed her—that the beating in her temples and the throbbing in her ears would have found some expression in every look she could turn upon him. Never for all these years had her heart beat as it was beating now. She had been a wife and a widow and a mother, and yet the sound of Horace Stapylton’s voice moved her more deeply than all the events of her own life had done. She hated herself for it, but yet it was so. Her heart went out to him past all her power of restraint. And though her face flushed with bitter shame, and her heart ached with self-reproach, yet she could not help it. The only safeguard she had was in flight. ‘Let me go,’ she repeated, keeping her eyes on the ground, and keeping as far apart from him as the narrow path would permit.
‘Yes, if you hate me altogether,’ he said, with vehemence. ‘If you do, I might have spared myself—much, very much, that can’t be undone. If you hate me, I will let you go!’
The sound of his voice went to her heart. She was free to pass, yet she could not refrain from one glance at him. He was trembling; his face was as pale as death, and drawn together with tragic force of passion. And Isabel could not bear this dreadful expression on the face of the man she had once loved.
‘Oh, it is not that I hate you!’ she cried, out of the depths of her heart.
‘Then you love me!’ he said, wildly seizing her hand. ‘Between us there can be no alternative. Oh, Isabel, I have bought you dear! Never send me away again.’
‘Oh, let me go!’ she repeated, with such a struggle going on within as her whole past life had not experienced. She, Mr. Lothian’s wife, to stand here with a man—any man, be he whom he might, kissing her hand! She, little Margaret’s mother! She could not bear it. She snatched her hand from him, and covered her face with it, and sank down on the grassy bank where she stood. What else could she do but weep her heart out, words being impossible? She could say no more; she could not dare to look at him again. The struggle had come to such a point that there was nothing left for her but the unspeakable utterance of tears.
And she was grateful to him that he took no advantage of her weakness. He did not even take her hand again, or take her into his arms as he might have done, but stood looking at her, with something she did not understand in his eyes. How it was she saw the look in his face, through her passionate tears, she herself could not have explained. But she was conscious of it, and of a certain compassion and awe mingled in the eagerness of his gaze, which kept him standing apart, with a delicacy which had never appeared in him before.
‘Isabel,’ he said, hoarsely; ‘though you are cruel to me, I will not be hard upon you. I love you the same as ever—and you love me; all that has come between us is past. Don’t let us so much as speak of that—it is all over, my darling; there is no obstacle between us now. No, I will not press you further. I would not vex you for all the world. I will come to you to the old place or to your own house, my dear, if that is better. And after all it has cost us, Isabel—oh, Isabel! may we not be happy at last?’
‘Horace, let me be!’ she cried, rising to her feet and holding out her hands to him as with an appeal for mercy.
‘I can never let you be,’ he cried, seizing her hands and putting down his face upon them for one moment. She felt that his eyes were wet and his lips dry and quivering, and their positions seemed reversed all at once—and it was she who yearned over him, longing to console him and give some comfort to his heart.
‘Oh, Horace,’ she said, ‘you are going away—you said you were going away? and you’ll forget. I could not live if I thought it grieved you and made your heart sore. You’ll go away, and you’ll think on me no more! Why should we be so sorry? It has not been appointed that you and me should be together. Bid me farewell; and, oh, go away and mind me no more. But I’ll think of you every night when I say my prayers.’
His answer was such a groan as made her start and shrink; and then he raised a pale, passionate face to her, and drew her to him, holding both her hands.
‘You are to be my wife, Isabel!’ he said.
‘No: oh, no. I am his wife,’ she said, with a cry half of terror; ‘and my child—my child!’
‘Was it my fault he took you from me?’ he cried. ‘I was absent and did not know. Your child shall be mine, Isabel; and you are mine—say you are mine! We can never more part again.’
‘Oh, Horace! let me go.’
It was the sound of a step on the road which interrupted this strange struggle. He let her hands fall as this sound, and that of a cheerful rural voice singing some homely ditty, fell suddenly into those exclamations of passion, and stopped them as by a spell. When Helen, the ‘lass’ from Ardnamore, came down the road she saw, at first without surprise, Mrs. Lothian walking down before her, with a ‘strange gentleman’ by her side—‘ane of thae English,’ Helen said to herself, reflecting that the young widow had been in London, and consequently might be supposed to be acquainted with that nation in general. Helen’s after reflections, when she came to put this and that together, were of a different character, but for the moment she was not suspicious. She passed them with the ordinary salutation, ‘It’s a fine day,’ taking no note of the tearful dilation of Isabel’s eyes; and, all unconsciously to herself, was Isabel’s guardian and protector. It was like the Stapylton of old that he should have fallen into a moody silence after this interruption. And he left Isabel when they reached the highroad. ‘I will see you again,’ was all he said. To see them thus parting, taking different directions, no one would have thought what a contest of wills had just taken place between them, nor with what an agitated soul Isabel turned along the sunny way by the Loch side, to the home which had once been so still and quiet, where her baby awaited her, and her tranquil, pensive, unexciting life remained waiting to be taken up again as soon as she should return.