THE night was a winter’s night—long and dark. Stapylton sat down in his solitary room, and tried to think. He would let her alone, was his first thought; he would leave her at peace. No doubt she had gone away to the baby who was her idol. She must have told him a lie when she said it was gone. But he would leave her to herself: he had plenty to think of, Heaven knew. ‘It was not I that killed him,’ he said to himself, as he had said a thousand times before. Oh, the intolerable night! so silent, so full of horrible suggestions; and that aching void into which all in a moment any horror might spring. He took up his candle, in his misery, and went wandering all over the house, trying every door. He went to the door of the room in which the servants had locked themselves, and heard them rustling in their beds, and whispering to each other in their panic; and he went to another door from which came no sound—‘Isabel, Isabel, come back to me!’ he said, and a sigh seemed to breathe through the house, but no answer came. He wanted her not so much to return to him and resume the common life, as to come and protect him at that awful moment, to keep spirits and appearances away from him. He had hours of darkness to get through, and how was he to live through them by himself? It was this panic that made him try the doors; but it sent a deeper panic into the hearts of the three women who listened to his movements in the silence. Isabel, alone in the room where her child had been, believed in her heart that he had come to kill her, as he said, and wound herself up in her misery to bear whatever she might be compelled to bear; and yet trembled and wept, in a stillness as of death.
For seven or eight awful hours of darkness this torture continued. No one closed an eye in the agitated house; and yet, save when Stapylton went or came, a horrible silence reigned in it, unbroken by any complaint or appeal for help. It was not daylight at last which aroused her from that century-long vigil—daylight did not come till about eight o’clock, when the morning was far advanced. It was the first sound of early life outside, which came like a voice from Heaven to Isabel. When she heard it she rose up softly from the cramped position she had maintained all night, thrust up into the corner, and very quietly, with trembling hands and heart, utterly unnerved by the horrors of the night, prepared to make her escape. She could bear it no longer. She had faced the man who had threatened to kill her, with dauntless resolution, on the previous night, feeling almost that such a conclusion would be as desirable as any other. But the night had taken away all her courage and force. She trembled like a leaf and could not command herself. Before her, like a vision of Heaven, appeared that little room at the Glebe, where her child no doubt was sleeping. If she could but reach that palace of peace! Stealthily, that no sound might betray her, she bathed her hot forehead, and put up her hair, and drew her cloak round her. It was more difficult to open the door without noise, and steal down the stairs, which creaked under her, soft as her steps were. When she stepped out at last into the darkness, which was no longer night but morning, and felt the chill air on her face, and heard behind her sounds of the early world beginning to stir, a certain excitement of hope rose in Isabel’s mind. She thought she had escaped.
But her husband had heard her movements, soft as they were. He was fully dressed as he had been on the previous evening, and, like her, feverish with passion and want of sleep. He took out a pistol from the box in which it reposed beside his desk. The pistol was old-fashioned as well as the desk, and he had been in the habit of calling the weapons curiosities. He charged it hurriedly in the dark, not knowing what he did, and put it in the breast-pocket of his coat, and rushed out after his wife into the rain and wind.
She was half way up the lower slope towards the Loch Diarmid road, when she heard his step behind her, and felt, with a sudden leap of all her pulses, that not yet—not yet, had she escaped her fate. It was no surprise to her when he came up and laid his hand on her shoulder: the first far-off sound of his step had made it evident to her that there was still a struggle to come.
‘You are flying from me,’ he said to her, breathless. ‘Do you think I will let you escape from me like this without another word?’
‘I was not thinking of escape,’ said Isabel, faltering. ‘I could not bear it longer. I could not bear it. That was all.’
‘And yet you think I am to bear it,’ he said, making a clutch at her arm. ‘False accusations and abuse and scorn, and desertion, and all your hard words and contempt of me. You think I am to bear it all!’
‘Alas!’ she said, ‘when did I ever show contempt of you? But, oh! let me go. What can we do but weary each other with vain words? If we had quarrelled we might talk and talk and mend it. But that which is between us is beyond help. Let me go.’
‘No, by God!’ he cried, holding her fast, ‘after the price I have paid for you. No! What is to hinder me from killing you as you say I did—him? I will not be left alone to think. You shall stay with me and share with me, or by God, I will make an end of you!’
Isabel felt that her last hour was come. It was so dark that she could with difficulty see his face. There was silence and blackness round them—not a human creature from whom to ask help—and if there had been a thousand, she would have asked help from none.
‘It must be as you will,’ she said, with the sudden calm of despair—‘as you will!’ and waited, wondering, would it be a knife or a bullet, or the more horrible agony of his hands and blows—his hands, which had embraced her so often—at her throat? She closed her eyes instinctively, as if the darkness was not enough, and stood waiting, waiting for the touch of the death, which was so near.
‘And you have not a word to say for yourself,’ he said, his breath burning her cheek. ‘Not a word? Have you nothing to offer me for your life?’
The bitterness of death was upon her; his grasp upon her shoulder was like iron. ‘Let it be quick!’ she said, with a shudder. ‘Maybe it’s best so—maybe it’s best.’
‘And that is all?’
‘Oh! do it and be done,’ she cried, falling at his feet, ‘or leave me living for your own sake—for your sake. Is my life worth struggling for now? but for yourself let me be——’
‘Is that all?’ he said again. And then drew something from his breast, and a cold mouth of iron touched Isabel’s cheek. An involuntary cry burst from her by instinct. Now it had come. Suddenly she heard a report, and started aside from the sudden flash in the darkness, and fell back, but not wounded. She had been so sure of death that her safety threw her into a convulsive fit of horror and fear; there was an awful moment in which she could not tell what had happened, if it was her who was killed or anyone. Then there was a movement, a swing of his arm—his dark shadow was still standing beside her—and the pistol was thrown high ever her head, and went dashing down over the rocks, into the black invisible Loch, which raged and beat upon the unseen shore.
‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘give me a kiss before we part.’
Oh, awful darkness that enclosed them round and round! Oh, awful nearness and separation! Her heart melted and sunk within her at that last prayer.
‘Oh, Horace, let me die!’
She would have fallen, but for his arms round her; but even at that supreme moment he did not know why she would rather have died than have been thus enveloped for the last time in his embrace. The melting of her heart, the old love rising up within her like a giant, the struggle of faithful nature which could die, but could not forsake and abandon, wrung Isabel’s whole being, body and soul. But not his; he kissed her, and he let her go. He stood for a moment in the darkness before her, and then he turned and went away.
It was all over. She called after him faintly, ‘Horace!’ in a voice swallowed by the wind, and sank down on the cold ground, prostrate, covering her face with her hands. She could hear his steps going down the hill and count them, each echoing on her heart. It was all over. Death, and danger, and love, and strife, and happiness, had all departed from her.
It was nearly noon before Isabel, stumbling at every step, reached the Glebe Cottage, the aim she had been vaguely struggling to—was it for hours or days? She went in with her haggard face, so changed and drawn with suffering, that Jean gave a cry of terror, and did not know her. She had not even a smile for her child, nor any interest in her. ‘Let me rest! Let me rest!’ was all she could say. Jean put the baby down on the carpet in the parlour, and gave all her care to the young mother thus come back to her for pity and consolation. ‘Ye’ve been caught in the storm, my lamb!’ she said, tenderly. But Isabel gave no explanation. She suffered herself to be undressed and laid in her own room—the little chamber she had occupied for the greater part of her life. Nothing but a murmur of thanks, or a sudden shudder, or a sigh, came from her as her stepmother tended and caressed her. When Jean questioned her, she shook her head and made no answer. The good woman was driven to her wits’ end. To her limited perceptions it was apparent that there had been a quarrel between the husband and wife about little Margaret; that Isabel, after leaving her child in safety the previous night, had come back again to see her, and had been caught in the storm, and that at ‘any moment’ Stapylton himself might appear to claim the runaway. ‘He never could think she would take it to heart like this,’ Jean said to herself. But the strangest thing was, that Isabel took no notice of the baby after suffering so much for her. When Jean could bear the mystery and responsibility no longer, she sent a mysterious message to Miss Catherine: ‘My mother says, if you ever cared for our Isabel, you’re to come now, and lose no time,’ said little Mary, who was the messenger and in whose hands the mystery lost none of its power. ‘Lord bless me, is your mother mad?’ was Miss Catherine’s forcibly reply. But notwithstanding, she made haste to get her great waterproof cloak and her umbrella, and set out as soon as there was a pause in the rain to ascertain what grounds there might be for so strange an appeal.
‘There is nae love lost between him and me,’ Jean explained, when Miss Catherine had been introduced into Isabel’s room, and had looked horror-stricken at the change in her face, without, so far as they could see, being recognised by the sufferer. ‘But I couldna bear to expose the family; what am I to say to the doctor, if I send for him? When a woman is as ill as that, she should be in her ain house.’
‘Say!’ said Miss Catherine. ‘It may be life or death—let him see her first, and tell us what is to be done, and then we will think what to say. Let Jamie go at once—if I am not mistaken there is more here than meets the eye.’
‘I kent they never would ‘gree about that wean,’ said Jean, with her apron to her eyes. ‘Eh, the darling, that I should speak of her so; I ay said there would be dispeace about wee Margaret. It would have been better to have left her with me.’
‘If there had not been dispeace about that, it would have been something else,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘nothing good could have come out of it—nothing good was possible—it was what we all said.’
‘She was well warned,’ said Jean, ‘if onything could be a comfort to remember at sic a time; but, poor thing, it must never be cast up to her now.’
‘And where is her man?’ said Miss Catherine.
This question was repeated over and over again in many a tone of wonder ere many hours had passed. The fact that he did not come to inquire after her all that evening, that no search whatever was made, but the runaway wife suffered to sink into her old home without protestation or appeal, bewildered everybody about. The doctor, and Jean Campbell, and Jenny Spence, and by degrees all the village, and even the parish, grew aghast with wonder. A quarrel about the child was a comprehensible thing, and was received by everybody with many shakings of the head, and declarations of their own foresight. ‘I ay kent how it would be,’ said one after another, and for the first moment it would be vain to say that it was anything less than a sensation of triumph that burst upon the Loch. But when the husband did not appear to make friends, and when it began to be rumoured about the parish that ‘bonnie Isabel’ was lying ill in a fever, altogether alone and deserted by the man for whom she had separated herself from her home and her friends, pity began to take the place of this self-gratulation. This was carrying matters too far. The next day in the afternoon Nelly Spence came over the hill carrying her own bundle and little Margaret’s, and with a scared and agitated face. Her story ran like wildfire round the Loch. She told the tale of the first night of terror till the gossips’ hair stood on end. She told of the exit of both parties in the early morning, of Stapylton’s re-entrance, of his commands to them to keep quiet and wait for their mistress’s return—commands which woke in their minds the frantic thought that he had thrown her into the Loch in the darkness, and that she never would come back. They had been too much frightened, however, by Stapylton’s presence and looks to do more than make furtive little excursions round the house, and furtive questions to the neighbours, none of whom had seen Isabel. He had taken his meals as usual, cursing Nelly’s ‘neebor’ for her bad cookery, and had occupied himself packing all the day long; and at night he had gone away, neither of the terrified women having strength of mind to stop or to interrogate him. It was too late after his departure to take any further steps. They sat up half the night in their terror, still thinking it possible that Isabel might return. That morning they had roused the village and made all sorts of frantic searches for her, and at last had ascertained that she had been seen on her way to the Glebe. Such was the story which Nelly told with unbounded fullness of detail. It left the public in more profound ignorance and wilder wonder than before. He had gone away taking everything with him; he had not even asked for her before his departure, and she was too ill to afford any explanations.
It was when Isabel was just beginning to wake into faint gleams of returning life that the visit was paid her which made so much commotion on the Loch. Everybody had learned by this time that Stapylton had ‘taken it upon him’ to refuse permission to his wife to visit Ailie at Ardnamore. And when Ailie, herself pale as a spirit and so weak that she had to be lifted out of the carriage, passed through the village on her way to the Glebe, the whole population stirred with a hope that now at last the explanation was to come. The cottage was unusually full at the time, of nurses and attendants. Miss Catherine herself rarely left the little parlour where she waited the chances of Isabel’s strange disorder; and Nelly Spence was in charge of little Margaret, and her mother came and went helping Jean to attend upon the patient. It was thus into a little community, with all grades represented, that Ailie came leaning on her mother’s arm. She was worn to a shadow, and so weak that she could scarcely keep upright; over her white dress she wore a large veil of black crape, for she was now a widow. Her appearance was not less extraordinary than before, but her visionary eyes had lost their wildness, and a softened expression had come over her face.
‘I am dying myself,’ she said to Miss Catherine, ‘and I would fain see Isabel before I go. Ye needna fear me now. I would like to tell her just that I’m reconciled in my mind. She has seen my sore trouble. No, I’ll say nothing to disturb her; I’m dying myself, as you may see.’
‘Hoot no, my bonnie woman! hoot no!’ said her mother who supported her; ‘when the bonnie weather comes, and you get your feet on the May gowans—ye see, Miss Catherine, it’s a’ the grief and trouble she’s had, and poor Ardnamore taken from us so sudden at the last.’
But to Miss Catherine there was nothing sublime in the spectacle of the dauntless old woman supporting on her arm the dying creature who ought to have been the support of her old age, and facing the world courageously with her pathetic fictions to the last. To her, Janet was no champion-mother, but a worldly old woman, bent upon elevating the social position of her child. ‘I am not afraid of you, Ailie,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘why should I be? Isabel, poor thing! has her reason, though she’s weak. Sit down, and I’ll ask if she can see you. You are far from strong yourself.’
‘I am dying,’ said Ailie, softly, with a smile which lit up her face. ‘Eh, and when I think upon Margaret! She will be my sister where I’m going. Tell Isabel that. Life has been a burden and a trouble, though I thought it was so good. Tell Isabel. It has been hard on her, too.’
‘Oh, how hard!’ Miss Catherine said to herself, with an involuntary tear, as she went into the inner room. ‘Two young creatures, still so young, one overwhelmed in the conflict, and about to die and escape from it; the other fated, perhaps, to remain and live and bear the scars and the brand of it for years. Was it not well with Margaret, who, of all the penalties of living, had only death to bear? The old lady bent over Isabel in her bed, and kissed her forehead with unusual emotion. ‘Can you see Ailie, my dear?’ she asked, and a little gleam of eagerness came into the sufferer’s eyes. Miss Catherine ushered the visitors into the room, but would not stay to listen to the strange conversation that passed between them. It was not that she was wanting in curiosity, but that the pity of it was too much for even her strong nerves. She returned to the parlour with a flood of impatient tears coming to her eyes. They had been to blame. Ailie had married for—what? This severe judge said for ambition—a man incomprehensible to her, whom she did not, and could not love, and who sought her only in the madness of disappointment and grief. Such was the common-sense view of the matter, and the end was, as might have been expected, misery and despair. And Isabel; Isabel had done worse than Ailie. She had sinned against her womanhood—her dead husband, her living child. She had loved, she had taken her own way, and misery was the result. Miss Catherine, looking back into her own experience, could remember a time when she too had wanted her own way, and had given it up proudly, and sacrificed her heart. Was she the better for it? This long calm of hers, or Isabel’s brief fever—which was the least like that vision of joy and strength which the imagination calls life? A few hot tears fell from her old eyes. It was hard to pronounce any judgment, even now.
Ailie tottered to Isabel’s bedside, supported by her mother’s arm. ‘Since you canna come to me, I have come to you,’ she said. ‘Isabel, I’ve come to tell ye I am reconciled in my mind. He sent me over word before he died that yon was no message from the Lord; it was his own mad will, and no my God that said it. We’ve sinned, and we’re punished; but His word stands fast. Eh, but I’m content!’
‘Oh, Ailie,’ said Isabel, looking wistfully from the bed, ‘I cannot follow what you say.’
‘Never mind, it will come back some time,’ said Ailie; ‘and I’m come to bless you, Isabel Diarmid. I was uplifted in my mind, and deceived myself, but you, a simple lass, spoke the truth. Ye were right when ye bid me not to wed, and ye were right when ye bid me say farewell to him that came back nae mair. He perished with the sword, as I said; and now I’m going after him, and to Margaret. Margaret will be my sister. O Isabel, rouse up in your mind! Give me a word to say to Margaret; I’m going to her now.’
The tears came in a flood to Isabel’s eyes. All this time they had burned with fever, neither sleep nor tears coming to refresh them. ‘O my Margaret!’ she cried; and then Jean interposed in terror, not aware how great a relief to the patient’s brain was this outburst of tears.
‘She canna bear it,’ said Jean. ‘O Ailie, my woman, come away.’
‘Jean,’ said old Janet, fiercely turning upon her, ‘that’s no a way to speak to Mrs. Diarmid of Ardnamore.’
Thus the tragic and the trifling met together as everywhere. Ailie took no notice of either. She stooped over the bed, and kissed, as she had never done before, the face of the woman who had been so strangely connected with her life.
‘I’ll tell her a’ you say,’ she cried; ‘I’ll carry her a’ the love in your heart; and the Lord bless you, Isabel. You’re no like her, and you’re not like me, but the like of you is best for this life.’
‘O Ailie, my bonnie woman,’ cried Jean, unmoved by the mother’s remonstrances, in the height of her own anxiety, ‘she canna bear it; come away!’
‘Life’s an awfu’ riddle—an awfu’ riddle,’ said Ailie, ‘and her and me we’ve guessed wrong; but the Lord will set a’ right.’
These were Ailie’s last words so far as concerned the inmates of the Glebe. When she died, some time after, her death-bed ejaculations became the property of the parish, and were repeated far and wide, and finally made into a book. It was said that the power returned to her at the last, and that she prophesied and ended her existence in a blaze of spiritual triumph. These last utterances of exulting faith were heard by many, and could not be gainsaid. But this was the end and sum of her testimony so far as concerned Isabel and her own life.