THE morning rose anxiously over all the personages of this little drama. Isabel, sleepless, fatigued, and unresolved, rose pale to the new day which she felt might bring change incalculable to her life. Jean, who kept hovering about her, watching with keen attention every movement she made, increased Isabel’s suppressed agitation. There was a permanent flush on her face; her eyes were abstracted, and took little note of what was going on. She seemed scarcely aware of the passage of time, and was irritated when she was called upon to sit down at the table and eat, and go through all the ordinary domestic routine. ‘Oh, if you would leave me quiet!’ she exclaimed, half unconsciously, turning away her face from the scrutiny of which she was only half aware.
‘My bonnie woman! you’re no weel?’ said Jean.
‘I am quite well; there is nothing the matter with me. I have—a headache. I don’t feel—able to talk,’ said Isabel, stumbling from one sentence to another. And then she wound up with the plaint of weariness, so familiar in its sound, ‘Oh, if you would let me be!’
Let her alone—leave her to revolve and re-revolve the questions that were rushing through her mind in endless succession without any answer! Poor Jean did her best to answer this prayer. She went and shut herself up in the kitchen with her children, and gave them their dinner. And then she thought the broth was exceptionally good, and that fasting was bad for a headache; so she got up from her own meal and carried a basin of the family soup into the parlour. ‘They’re real good the day,’ she said, wistfully; ‘try a spoonfu’, Isabel.’
Isabel was standing at the window once more looking out. She turned round quickly at the sound of the opening door, and a blaze of momentary anger came across her face. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I could not eat;’ and then sat down suddenly, drawing her work to her. Jean stood in the doorway and gazed, holding always the basin in her hand.
‘Are you looking for somebody?’ she said. ‘Oh, Isabel, if you would but tell me! There’s something wrong, but what it is I canna tell.’
‘There is nothing wrong,’ said Isabel; and for a moment her needle flew through her work, while Jean stood looking at her. Then she roused to impatience again. ‘I said I had a headache; if you would leave me quiet, just for a little while——!’
‘I’ll do that, my bonnie woman,’ said Jean; and withdrew regretfully with her broth. But before she resumed her place at the table another thought struck her. This time it was a glass of wine she carried into the parlour. ‘No to disturb you, Isabel,’ she said; ‘but a young thing like you shouldna fast so lang. I’ve brought you a glass of sherry-wine; it’s no ill to take and it will keep your heart——’
‘I want nothing, thank you,’ said Isabel.
‘But you’ll take it to please me,’ said Jean. Just then a knock at the door made both of them start. Isabel, without speaking, raised her eyes with a dumb, wistful appeal to the only comforter within her reach. And Jean, in her agitation, spilled the wine as she placed it on the table. ‘It’s maybe naebody,’ she said, with sudden comprehension, and with a yearning of her heart over the child about to be exposed to danger and trial.
‘What will I do?’ cried Isabel, clasping her hands.
‘Oh, Isabel, think of the bairn, and the Lord will be a guide to you,’ said Jean, with tears in her eyes. Not a word of explanation had passed between them, but the elder woman came and kissed the younger one with a sudden understanding of the conflict and struggle such as no words could have conveyed to her. Then the knock was repeated, and Jean hurried away to open the door, wiping her hands with her apron. Her own anxieties and jealousies were all quenched in a moment in that rush of genuine sympathy. ‘For she ay likit the lad!’ Jean said to herself, feeling by instinct that poor Isabel had traitors within as well as temptations without.
It was, however, not Stapylton, but the Dominie who stood waiting at the door; and the revulsion of feeling was such that Jean could scarcely be civil to Mr. Galbraith. ‘Oh, aye, she’s ben the house; but she’s no weel the day, and I canna have her vexed,’ said Isabel’s anxious guardian, looking jealously at this new disturber of her repose.
‘I’m sorry she’s not well; but I have not come to vex her,’ said the Dominie. His reception was so strange a one that it was not wonderful if it startled him. When he went into the parlour he met the wistful gaze of Isabel’s dilated, excited eyes; but when she saw it was him, and not another, her look changed in a moment, and she fell into a sudden outburst of tears. Disappointment, relief, a strain of feeling which he could not understand, was in the sudden change which came over her face—and the Dominie, being but a man, was not so quick of apprehension as Jean.
‘I have startled you, my dear,’ he said.
‘Oh, not startled—’ said Isabel; ‘but—my head aches; and—I was not expecting you—and——’
The explanation fell into a broken murmur of words; and she dried her tears hastily with an agitated hand. The Dominie had come with the intention of saying some word of warning; though how it was to be introduced, or what kind of warning it was to be, he could not have told anyone. He had hoped that circumstances might have led to some remark about the strangers in the parish, and that he would have said something which should ‘put her on her guard.’ Such warnings seem so much easier to give when the person to be warned is not present. He sat down by her in her little parlour, and found that, so far as his mission was concerned, he had not a word to say.
‘What would you say to a change of air,’ said the Dominie, ‘if you are not well?’
‘You forget I have just come home.’
‘And so I did,’ he said. ‘But I do not like these mild inland places like the Bridge of Allan. If you were to go to the sea, or to the hills——’
‘I am best at home,’ said Isabel.
And then there was a dead pause. She had taken her work, and was labouring against time, her needle flying through the linen, her head bent down over it. Mr. Galbraith gave a quiet sigh, and felt himself baffled. He did not know how to introduce his subject, and he could not understand the state of suppressed excitement in which she evidently was.
‘There are a great many strangers in the parish just now,’ he said at last, himself making the remark which he had hoped might have come from her, ‘and some that are not strangers altogether. I hear, Mrs. Lothian, that you’ve been at Ardnamore?’
‘Yes, I’ve been at Ardnamore.’
‘And you’ve seen them all?’ asked Mr. Galbraith, with emphasis.
‘I have seen Ailie and—Mr. John,’ she said, raising her eyes to his face. (It seemed to her, as she spoke, that there was another step on the road, and that she could hear it pause at the cottage-door; and in her trouble she betook herself to craft, as was natural.) ‘But you must not ask me about them,’ she said; ‘it was more—than I could bear. It—brought everything back. It is that, I suppose, that has made me so foolish to-day.’
‘It can never be foolish to remember what is past,’ said the Dominie, reassured. ‘Don’t drive the thought from you, as silly folk tell you. The past is precious; sometimes it is all that is left to us. You are young, and you have your child; but I doubt if you will ever have such a treasure as yon year. Isabel, my dear, I’ve seen you a bairn, though you were my friend’s wife. Think on him still. There are few such seen in this life.’
‘I know that well,’ said Isabel, glad, poor child, in unconscious hypocrisy to secure thus a pretence for her too ready tears.
‘Aye, think upon him!’ said the Dominie. ‘You’re bonnie and young, and may get the offer of many a man; but, perhaps, never another like him—most likely never another like him. You should be proud of the past. You have had one of the best men that ever was born; and if you had been an angel out of Heaven, he could not have set you up higher, or made more of you. Isabel, sometimes you must think of that!’
‘Oh, I think of it!’ said Isabel, with streaming eyes. And the Dominie drew his large hand over the great caves that lay under his eyebrows; his heavy eyelids were wet, and the muscles quivering about his mouth. He did not attempt to explain to her, nor even to himself, why he was so much in earnest, why he addressed her in so solemn a strain. It seemed natural. As for Isabel, she wanted no explanation; she was neither offended, nor even surprised. The very atmosphere around her spoke to her as plainly as he had spoken. At such a crisis it was but natural that everyone should be moved, even stocks and stones if that could be.
‘And now I must go away,’ he said, rising, with a smile gleaming out under the unshed tear. ‘It’s the hour of the bairns’ dinner, and a kind of necessity was upon me to come and see you. No; I’ll take nothing. The afternoon school is not so long. God bless you, Isabel! and guide you aright—in——’
He broke off in the middle of the sentence, as if (she thought) there was something he could not trust himself to say—and went away without looking round, or adding any ordinary farewell. But his agitation did not wound or even surprise Isabel. She dried her own wet eyes when he was gone, and tried to throw herself back, as he had told her, into ‘yon year’—the year of her marriage—when she had been worshipped like something divine, and guarded as the apple of her husband’s eyes. ‘You should be proud of the past,’ her Mentor had said. And Isabel had strained at it, trying with all her might to bring it back to her mind; but could not. Her imagination rushed instead to that meeting on the hill-side under Ardnamore, to every word, every look, every tone of that strange interview. Oh, how bitter it was, to be unable to control her thoughts, or turn them as she would, or keep them to matters which her mind could approve. They escaped from her with a leap to go to him; and with a guilty pang at her heart, Isabel felt that the bitter was not so poignant, not so irresistible as the sweet.
Baby Margaret woke, and began to cry from the inner room, while her mother sat lost in this struggle. Isabel rose with the alacrity of custom to take the child; but Jean rushed suddenly in before her, and had the infant in her arms before the mother could reach it. Jean was pale, and her eyes all a-glow with excitement. ‘Na, na,’ she said, holding the child fast, ‘leave her with me. There’s ane coming up the brae, Isabel, that ye’ll have to see.’
‘Give me my bairn,’ said the poor young mother with a cry; and then she sank trembling in a chair, her very limbs failing under her. Half defiant, half sympathetic, Jean stood before her with the baby in her arms.
‘It’s no fit she should be here. You’ll have to see him, and to say what’s to be. But, oh, Isabel, dinna forget that you have a bairn!’ said Jean, with sudden tears.
‘No till I forget myself,’ said Isabel, not knowing what she said; and then there was a sudden stillness round her, and she became aware that she was face to face with her fate.
She raised her eyes, which were veiled with dreams, yet shining with suppressed excitement, to the face of Stapylton, who stood looking down upon her. The man who had tried to beguile her from her last duty to Margaret—who had wooed her and tempted her, and almost spurned her on the braes—who had written that letter—who had left her for a whole year alone to comfort herself as she might, before she could consent to permit the other truer, generous love to console her in her solitude. All this rushed through her mind as she looked up at him; and at the same moment her heart flew from her like a bird, and took refuge, as it were, in his breast. She had no power to help herself.
‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘I have come to say what you would not let me say yesterday. Why should we keep apart, you and I? I have not come to speak of the past—not a word. Thank Heaven it is over. It shall never be mentioned between us. You were my Isabel when my father sent for me; be my Isabel now.’
‘How can that be?’ she said, under her breath.
‘It can be,’ he answered, bending down over her; and—it was not self-delusion on her part—there was a softness in his voice, a tenderness that had never been there before. For the first time Isabel felt a certainty that he was thinking of her, how to be most gentle to her, how to please and to move her, more than of himself. ‘I might have looked for you on the hills as I used to do,’ he went on, ‘but I thought it was best to come here to your own home. Isabel, there is no time for courting now. We cannot play with the thought, and quarrel, and make friends, as we used to do. Life is more serious nowadays. We must be man and wife!’
‘You are not the judge, Mr. Stapylton,’ she cried, with a touch of her old impatience; ‘it is for me to settle that, and not you.’
‘But you will settle it, Isabel. We are older, we should know our own minds, and the time for the braes is over,’ he said. ‘Isabel! you have never been out of my heart. I tried to forget you at first, and then—but I said there was to be nothing of the past.’
‘You succeeded well,’ said Isabel, ‘in forgetting me. There was a year—a whole year——’
He sat down by her and took her hand. She had given up the contest when she thus upbraided him; and it seemed to her, as he seated himself by her side, that a strange long dream was over, and that all things were again as they had been when the two had met upon the braes.
‘I was not a free man;’ he said: ‘my father was lying dying, and he would not die. Don’t question me of that. Is it not all past? And, my darling, you are mine again.’
‘No; oh no,’ she cried, with a little instinctive shudder, drawing back; ‘there was more—far more, than that.’
‘What more?’ He was pale with the suspense and with eagerness. He stretched out his hand again to claim hers, which she had withdrawn. ‘Yes, there was more,’ he continued, looking fixedly in her face; ‘would to God I could forget the rest!’
A flush of shame rushed over Isabel’s cheeks. At that moment, when he professed for her a constant love which had known no interruption, what could she say of her own marriage; how could she even think of it? Was it not treachery, almost vice? The colour came up like flame over her face. She felt their positions changed at once, and she herself put to the bar.
‘I was alone in the world,’ she said, ‘and I had not heard of you—not a word, for a whole year.’
Now, indeed, he got her hand into his, and triumphed over all her pretence at indifference. She had begun to excuse herself, almost to beg his pardon. ‘We will speak of it no more,’ he said; ‘now my Isabel is mine again we’ll think of it no more.’
‘Oh! hush, hush, I never said that,’ she cried, evading his caress. But he was close by her as in the old days; his voice, so much softened, in her ears—that voice which had first woke echoes in her girl’s heart; his hand holding hers, and her heart melting, yearning to her first love. How could she resist not him only, but herself? She had no heart to say him nay. After this sudden renewal what would become of her if life settled down again in its grey colours, and he disappeared out of it once more for ever? A month ago that subdued life, with her child in it for sunshine, had been very sweet—but now?
And yet, in the very happiness that thus stole over her, there was a grasp and constriction in her throat, as of guilt and pain. She was doing something for which she could never have anything but blame from herself or from others—for which she could not defend herself. Her reason seemed to stand by disapproving, regretful, while the poor heart of her made the plunge. The one was no help to the other. Her unity of being was all torn asunder and made an end of. She did not think this in so many words, but was vaguely, dimly conscious of it, as the happiness stole flooding through her, penetrating every nook and corner. ‘Oh, Horace! do you not feel as if it should not be?’ she said, with one last effort to resist.
‘I feel that it ought to be,’ he said, drawing her close to him. ‘If you wish me to have a hope in the world,—if you would not see me perish; not for your sake, Isabel, that are innocent, but for my sake——’
‘Are you not innocent?’ she said, gazing at him with wonder and alarm in her great, tear-dilated eyes.
He put his head down upon her arm, upon the sleeve of her black dress, and kissed that. He had her hand in his, but it was not her hand which he touched with his trembling lips. And she felt that he trembled. For the first time his heart was so touched that the very frame felt the vibration. It was so different from his composure of old, that it moved Isabel beyond expression. When he answered her with an almost groan, his voice half stifled by his attitude, she leaned over him to catch what he said, as if it had been the most precious utterance. ‘Not innocent like you,’ he said sighing, almost moaning as from a heavy heart. And she melted and yearned over him like a mother over a child.
‘Oh, Horace, if you have done wrong we will set it right!’ she said, unconscious of the vast pledge she took. And thus the contest was ended, and all the struggles of reason made an end of it in one outburst of that enthusiasm of pity and tenderness which raises innocent love to the height of passion. The moment she could escape from him, Isabel rushed to the door without saying a word. She opened it, all radiant yet all tearful, her eyes shining, her face full of soft colour, the lines of her mouth quivering with sobs and smiles. Outside, Jean was walking about, very grave and almost stern, with Baby Margaret lying on her shoulder, hushing, or trying to hush, the child to sleep. But the child had no intention of sleeping; she lay with her head over Jean’s shoulder, and two great grave eyes gazing intent into the summer air in that wonderful abstraction of childhood which is so mysterious and unfathomable. To her excited mother it seemed as if the child already disapproved and protested, and was saddened by the event which she could not understand. Isabel snatched her baby out of her stepmother’s arms, who gazed at her like Margaret, and understood better why this sudden movement was. She felt the momentary chill strike to her heart; but did not stop to realise it. Without saying a word, she returned again into the parlour where Stapylton sat surprised awaiting her. He, too, understood her meaning when she reappeared with her child in her arms. She came up to him with two great tears running over from her brilliant, excited eyes; her mouth quivering so that she could scarcely speak; yet smiling. She held out her baby to him without a word. Perhaps it was that he had not expected, had not thought of this little living evidence of the ineffaceable past. He rose to his feet with a sudden hoarse exclamation. The joy in his face sank into a momentary wildness, almost horror; and he trembled as the child’s unconscious, solemn eyes gazed at him. Another pang and chill came over Isabel; she had thought he would have taken the child from her, and kissed it, and vowed some tender vow of protection and love. But this, too, was momentary, and passed before she had time to realise it. He did not take the child, but he took the mother into his arms, embracing the bewildered baby also without touching her. ‘She shall be my child,’ he said.
His child! Isabel broke away from him, and clasped her baby to her bosom, and sat down apart and cried. Ah, no! For the first time a distinct sense of the claims of the other who was dead and gone, but who was little Margaret’s father, came with a certain sickening pang to her heart. His wife might go from him and be another man’s wife: could his child, too, be another man’s child, and every trace of him disappear from the earth? Ah, no!—once more, no! She said nothing, restrained, even at that moment, by the strange, new, instinctive sense that she must not breathe a word that could suggest prejudice or dislike to the mind of her lover in respect to her child; but in her heart there rose a certain jealousy of him for her dead husband’s sake, a remorse and compunction unspeakable. She had given herself up to him; she had appealed to him, with moving looks and gestures, to take her child too into his heart; and yet her whole being roused into contradiction of his claim, into dumb indignant assertion of the real father’s right, as soon as he responded to her appeal. She sat apart from him, not looking at him, holding little Margaret to her heart and weeping hot tears with a vehemence which Stapylton could not understand. And she could not understand it herself; she could do nothing but weep her passion out, already putting restraint upon her tongue, feeling instinctively that her freedom had gone from her, that she dared not say to him in his moment of triumph what sudden thought had arisen in her mind. Thus it was with poor Isabel, in the moment of what might have been her triumph too, when she gave up her heart and her life into the hands of the only man she had ever loved.