Whena honeymoon has been thus disturbed the idyll is over, and the only safe thing for the two human creatures who have thus played too long the dangerous drama of Love in Idleness is to get back with as little delay as possible to common life and work. Most frequently it is the woman who retards this salutary change of scene, hoping fondly that the idyll may come back, and fearing the ordinary routine which must separate to some extent the two existences. But Isabel was not in the innocent, primitive position which could render such a delusion possible. She had thought that this alone was life, and that all that went before was a dream; but every day, as it went on, made her more and more aware that the past was no dream, that it could not be severed from her soul, or sink into annihilation, however rapturous and vivid the present might be. She sat at the window of her lodging and did her fancy work, and watched her husband’s moods, and longed to be back. Oh, to be back!—if he were but a labouring man in a cottage going out to his wholesome work, coming in to find everything prepared for him, his wife and his house bright with smiles at his approach—instead of the lounging, the caressing, the vacancy, the fits of fondness and fits of sullenness, and anxious watching of the changes of his face.
‘Did not you once speak of a farm, Horace?’ she said with a hesitation that was almost timidity, when he had himself burst forth into an angry exclamation about the dullness of the place.
‘I hate this country,’ he said, with impatience; ‘but if you have madeup your mind you won’t go to America——’
‘Indeed I never said so.’
‘No, of course you never did; but it comes to the same thing. And by the way, I bought some of Smeaton’s stock.’ he said; ‘I thought I might have to wait and kick my heels at your door, Isabel, longer than you made me do. You were kinder than I expected. I thought I might have had to wait, and that I had better be doing something. I had forgotten all about that.’
He thought he might have had to wait! The tone in which he said it was not unkind, but there was in it that note of incipient scorn which a woman’s ear is so fine to catch. She had yielded sooner than he expected. She had been an easy conquest after all his wrongs to her! The arrow went through and through Isabel’s heart. Sudden shame and humiliation so penetrated her that all power of speech was gone for the moment. No wonder her friends, the country-side, all who knew her, should disapprove and look on her coldly—when even he——
‘Was it a farm in our own parish you thought of?’ she cried, faltering, after a pause.
‘I thought of offering for Smeaton’s once,’ he said; ‘but that was on account of you. Now I have got you, it is a different matter; but hang it, Isabel, we can’t go on like this, you know. A man is bored to death here. Will you make up your mind, like a brave girl, to come with me directly and get it over, or shall we go back to Kilcranion, or somewhere, and wait till spring? By that time you ought to have made up your mind.’
‘Horace,’ she said, still speaking very low, ‘to every thing but one thing I can make up my mind at once, and that one thing I can never do—never! Don’t ask me. I cannot leave my baby behind.’
‘But, by Jove, if I insist upon it, youmust!’ he cried, with a certain bravado in his tone.
She got up and went to him with a glow as of hidden fire in her eyes. ‘I will not!’ she said. ‘I will do anything—everything else you ask me, but not this!’
With her the crisis had reached the point of desperation. But as for Stapylton, he gazed at her for a moment, and, struck by her passion, turned round with a shrug of his shoulders, and what he meant to be an air of indifference. ‘For Heaven’s sake don’t make a fuss,’ he said. ‘I hate women who make a fuss—though I think you’ve always had rather a turn that way, Isabel. Well, never mind. It is better to wait for spring, anyhow. I’ll run over to Kilcranion to-morrow, and engage one of the sea-bathing houses till April. They should be cheap enough.’
‘But, Horace,’ said Isabel, with parched and trembling lips, ‘you must understand—not then nor now, can Ileave her behind me. It is but one thing. I will do whatever you wish—whatever you tell me, except this.’
He stood eyeing her for a moment, as if uncertain how to deal with this obstinacy. Then he turned away with once more that careless shrug of his shoulders.
‘Of course it is the only thing I do ask,’ he said, ‘as is always the way with women. But never mind: May is better for a long voyage than December; and something may have happened by that time to change the circumstances—or you may have changed your mind.’
‘What could happen, Horace? and I will never change my mind.’
‘Well, well, say no more about it,’ he said, ‘and we shall see when the time comes.’
Next day she was left alone to think over all this, and exaggerate all her difficulties in her own silent mind, closed up from all possibility of help or sympathy. Stapylton went off to Kilcranion in the morning, to look, as he said, for a house. He did not ask her to go with him, but took it for granted that she should remain behind with her fancy work, and be ready to receive him when he arrived by the evening boat. When she had watched the morning boat depart which conveyed him away, and found herself alone standing on the shore in this strange place where she knew no one, Isabel felt herself seized upon by the strangest tumult of feeling. She was free. His back was turned who was dearest to her, and yet whom she had begun to fear. Oh, if she had wings like a dove to flee to her baby! Oh, to go to Margaret!
A yearning came over her such as she could not restrain. She cried aloud, as the sheep do on the hill, in mournfullest bleating, for the lost lambs. Oh, her baby!—her nursling, taken out of her bosom! not by God, which must be borne; but by a caprice—a mistake—the unkind will of a man.
‘Will he no be in to his dinner?’ said the landlady, coming with a sharp knock to the door, and disturbing all Isabel’s thoughts.
‘Not till the evening,’ said Isabel, hastily drying her eyes. ‘Mr. Stapylton is coming back by the last boat.’
‘But ye’ll hae your dinner yoursel,’ said the woman. ‘Fasting’s ill for a’body, especially for the like of you. Eh, but you’re red een, Mrs. Stapylton! Him and you have had a little tiff afore he left.’
‘No, indeed—nothing of the sort,’ said Isabel, indignantly. ‘And I don’t want anything, thank you. I shall not want anything till Mr. Stapylton comes back.’
‘I never heard of a couple yet but what had a tiff whiles,’ said the landlady, with philosophical calm;‘especially when the man is about the house a’ day, and naething to do. You’re no to think too much o’ ‘t. But dry your een, like a bonnie leddy, and gie him a smile when he comes hame.’
‘Indeed you are quite mistaken, I assure you,’ cried Isabel, half crying in her excitement, but trying to smile.
‘I have seen an awfu’ heap o’ couples in my day,’ said the woman, shaking her head in the composure of superior penetration. ‘And the fonder they are of ilk ither, ay the more like to have a tiff; but you’ll see it will a’ be blown past if ye gie him ane o’ your bonnie smiles when he comes hame.’
If there is anything which can intensify the gloom of one of those tragic contentions which sometimes rend man and wife asunder, it is this gleam of kindly, consolatory ridicule from without, throwing over the deadly combat thefausse airof a lovers’ quarrel. Poor Isabel could not cry after this interruption. How far had she floated beyond the light and pleasant time when a lovers’ quarrel, with its fond offence and fonder reconciliation, was possible! She took up her worsted work, poor mortal rag into which she had woven so many painful fancies, and sat down by the window, and tried to make out for herself some plan of action. But her thoughts went away from her like so many deserters, some to follow Horace, and wonder what intentions might be in his mind in respect to the future, and what his feelings really were towards her child; some to haunt the well-known place in which the baby was, and imagine every little detail of its existence. The little rooms at the Glebe came before her like an island of calm in the stormy ocean upon which she had launched herself; should she ever recover that peace, or such peace as that—should she ever come to have any security in her life again? And then her mind, which was so running over with thought as to be incapable of thinking, suddenly turned and caught at the poor landlady’s homely bit of philosophy: ‘Dry your een, like a bonnie leddy, and gie him a smile when he comes hame.’ Yes, she would give him a smile; she would crush down every suspicion—every terror; she would take it for granted—absolutely for granted—that he meant all good and no evil. She would smile upon him, and ignore everything that was not love and kindness—and surely love would conquer in the end.
This she said to herself, with a pathetic smile, wiping away the moisture which would come to the corners of her eyes; and then went out anxious, abject, ready to put herself under his feet, to meet the lord and master whose yoke she had wilfully taken upon her. She tooka walk first against the wind with the unconscious craft of weakness, until the colour was kindled in her cheek, and the light brightened in her eyes. He was more fond of her when she looked best. This strange, half-flattering, half-humiliating fact Isabel had already found out. And she must use every weapon now for the struggle which was a matter of life and death.
The effort was rewarded. When she went to the boat, like any Odalisque, having done all she knew to heighten the effect of her simple beauty, she perceived by her husband’s first glance that she had succeeded. He looked at her with a fondness which had begun to die out of his eyes. ‘What have you been doing to yourself?’ he said; ‘you are looking quite lovely. You have not suffered much from my absence. It is nice, after all, to have such a little wife to come home to. Come, and I’ll tell you all I’ve been about.’
And they sauntered down, arm in arm, towards their lodging, feeling, after all, as if it had been only a ‘tiff.’ Only a lovers’ quarrel! was that all? and no harm in the heart of the fond young husband, nor fear in that of the wife?
‘Shouldn’t you like to go to the old place?’ he said, ‘first? You can go if you like while I settle some other affairs. I’ll take you to-morrow if you like, and bring a gig for you to take you to Kilcranion in the evening. Will that please you? You see I am not so bad as you thought.’
‘Oh, Horace, as if I ever thought you were bad; as if you ever were anything but good to me, and full of love and kindness!’ said Isabel, like a slave, trembling and glowing with happiness and with tears in her eyes.
‘You may be sure that is what I always mean,’ he said, in his lordly, condescending way; ‘and now you know how to make me do anything you like. Look as lovely as you are looking now and be sweet to me, and you can’t think how much I’ll do to please you, my pretty darling!’ He looked down upon her with such glowing eyes that Isabel was confused with the sudden revulsion. Could she doubt him after this? She clasped her hands on his arm and lifted her face to his, full of beseeching, flattering, appealing tenderness. If that was how to win him, then it should be that way; and if there was a little vague pang of she knew not what mingled with the sweetness, why then it must be herself who was to blame? Thus the transition from the old minister’s princess to the young husband’s ‘pretty darling’ was made in a confusing, bewildering sort of way. Una changed into Scheherazade or Zuleika all at once, without any preparation, no doubt would have felt the change bewildering.And so did Isabel. But he was very tender to her and full of caressing fondness, and she was to be taken to her baby to-morrow. Was not that happiness enough to obliterate all lesser evils?
Themorning came so much wished for, in a blaze of wintry sunshine befitting such a joyful day. Kilcranion was a village on the other side of the hills from Loch Diarmid, which lived upon the summer visitors to ‘the saut-water,’ and shut up its houses all the winter through, so that Stapylton had been hailed as an angel of light, when he offered to take one of them, and had every difficulty smoothed out of his way. He was to go there when he had taken Isabel to the Glebe, and complete the necessary arrangements about the house, and would come for her, he said, in the evening to take her home.
Her heart beat so loudly when once more the steamer carried her up Loch Diarmid, that the very power of speech seemed to forsake her. This time there was no kind, homely face looking out from the pier to welcome her. No one knew she was coming. The village folk gave her a gruff ‘good-day’ as she passed, with a look towards her husband, half of scorn, half of disgust. There was no sign of life in the windows of the House, as they passed Lochhead together. People on the road stared at her, and then turned round and stared again, disapproving of her, unfriendly to him. Isabel had known it all, and believed that she had accepted it, half in scorn, half in resignation; but she felt the difference when it was thus brought before her. And Stapylton’s face had clouded over the moment they set foot on the shores of Loch Diarmid. A sullen shadow came over him. He walked with his eyes cast down, saying little to her, taking no notice of anything around.
‘I hate the place!’ he said, with angry energy; ‘if you had taken my feelings into consideration you would never have asked me to come back.’
‘Oh, Horace!’ cried poor Isabel, faltering, ‘let me get my baby, and let us go wherever you like! I will never more ask you to come back.’
‘Always that baby!’ he said, with something that sounded like an oath; and thus all the flutter of joy was stilled in her heart as they went up the hill.
But when she entered the familiar house, and, rushing in all eager and breathless, found herself by the side of the homely cradle in which little Margaret was sleeping, the young mother’s heart felt ready to burst with delightand misery. She fell softly on her knees beside it, and worshipped. Soft tears gushed to her eyes, a soft transport filled her. ‘Oh, my baby, my darling!’ she cried, putting down her head upon the little coverlet, with other inarticulate cries, like the cooings of a dove. When she recollected herself, and looked up with a sudden pang of terror, she caught her husband’s eye bent upon her with that look of incredulity which goes to a woman’s heart. He thought it was a piece of acting for his benefit. He did not believe in the reality of any such overflowing of the heart over an unresponsive child. He would have been, indeed, more offended had he thought it real, than he was by the supposed simulation. The one would have proved his wife to be capable of loving something else as well as she did himself; the other was but the homage of weakness to power. ‘You think you can take me in with all this,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘It is very good acting, Isabel; but I know better than that.’
‘Acting?’ she said, rising slowly to her feet, with wonder so great that it almost overwhelmed the pain.
‘Yes,’ he said, taking her into his arms. ‘Do you think I don’t know that not for all the babies in the world would you risk parting with me?’
She gave a little cry, which he did not understand; and all the sages in the world could not have explained to Horace Stapylton the nature of those tears which his wife shed on his shoulder, with her face buried in her hands; the anguish—the despair of ever understanding, he her, or she him; the sudden fiery indignation, the bitter disappointment, the struggle of love with love, and blame and pity. Oh, that he whom she loved could feel so! Oh, that he could be so little, so—— and then she stopped herself even in her thoughts, and moaned aloud.
‘Well, well,’ he said, superior and compassionate, ‘don’t take it so much to heart, if I’ve found you out. I’ll go now, and at four o’clock I’ll come back for you; but mind you are ready, for I don’t want to be driving about the country in a moonless night.’
When he went away, Isabel felt that she drew a long breath of relief. She was glad, and yet how miserable it was to feel herself glad! She dropped wearily into a chair, and sat and gazed upon her sleeping child. She was thus seated in a kind of stupor, with eyes blinded with tears, when Jean came into the room. Jean had been mollified, in spite of herself, by the care her stepdaughter had taken to provide for her. Even such a benefit could not purchase her approval of the marriage; but that and Isabel’s absence, and a certain something in her eye, which did not speak of perfect satisfaction in her new lot, had touched Jean’s kindly heart.
‘Isna she a picture?’ she cried, placing herself behind Isabel with uplifted hands of worship; ‘and as thriving and as firm as heart could desire. Eh, Isabel! I thought she would have broken her bit heart the day you went away. There would be ay a look at the door, and stretching out her arms to everyone that came nigh, and ay another wail when the poor infant was disappointed. I got an awfu’ fear that it might bring on something—but sin syne she’s been as good and as bonnie as you see her now.’
‘My little darling!’ was all the young mother could say.
‘Hoots, dinna greet: it’s meeting and no parting now,’ said Jean, with a keen look of inspection. And then there was a pause. Isabel had not the heart to move nor to speak, nor even to take her child into her arms.
‘If it had been me I would have had her afore now! Hoots, never mind waking her; whisht, my bonnie lamb! Your little bed’s saft, but no so saft as your ain mother’s bosom. There she is to ye,’ said Jean, putting the rosy, half-awakened child into her mother’s arms. The good woman stood and gazed at the group with a cordial, kindly pleasure. ‘Poor lass! poor bairn!’ she said to herself as she watched the mother’s passion of kisses and tears and unintelligible words: vague suspicions were creeping about Jean’s mind. This close strain of passion, those tears which did not dry up as they ought to have done, or give place to smiles, filled her with alarm—an alarm, it must be confessed, not unmixed with satisfaction, for had not she, in common with all the country-side, declared that of such a marriage no good could come?
‘Mr. Stapylton, he’s away to Kilcranion?—ye’re to bide there, I hear? but what for could you no come hame, Isabel, to your own house?’
‘It is your house now,’ said Isabel, with an attempt at a smile.
‘Na, na, only the life-rent,’ said Jean, ‘of my ain end; and I’m awfu’ thankfu’ to have that. Am I one to come ben to the parlour and set up for a leddy? No, my bonnie woman, it’s hers and yours a’ the days of my life, as well as when I’m dead and gone. Him and you might have been as comfortable here as in Johnny Gibb’s house at Kilcranion. There’s nae accounting for tastes—but sure am I there’s no a room in it equal to the new parlour here in the Glebe.’
‘It is only for a short time—a month or two,’ said Isabel.
‘And where are you going then, if ane might ask?’
‘We were talking of going to America,’ said Isabel, under her breath. The child had relapsed into sleep again with its head nestled against her breast.
‘To America!’ said Jean. ‘Eh, Isabel! that’s an awfu’ change to think of—and the bairn——?’
‘What of the bairn?’ cried Isabel in a sudden wild panic of terror; and gathering up her child’s rosy, dimpled limbs in her arms, she rose and confronted her stepmother as if there could be any meaning or power in Jean’s unconsidered words.
‘Na, Isabel, I’m meaning nothing,’ said Jean, falling back in dismay; the sharp misery of the young mother’s tone, her desperate attitude, the sudden mastery of her excitement over all her motherly care not to disturb the baby, came like a revelation to her stepmother; with a woman’s wit she seized upon the sudden pang which had come to herself, to comfort with that, the unknown and deeper misery which thus erected itself before her without a moment’s warning. ‘It’s just that my heart will break to part with the darling,’ she cried, putting her apron to her eyes.
And then Isabel calmed down and took her seat again, and shed a few silent tears, trembling meanwhile with excitement, and the secret something which Jean could see was ‘on her mind’ but could not divine. She made no complaint, however, and no disclosure, but quieted herself with a power of self-command which the homely but close observer standing by perceived to be new developed in her. When she spoke again it was about little Margaret’s ‘things,’ that they might be packed up and ready when the gig came for them at four o’clock.
‘Will ye take her away with ye?’ said Jean; ‘it’s awfu’ sudden; will ye take her this very night?’
‘Do you think I would give my darling up again?’ cried Isabel, with her cheek pressed against the child’s cheek.
‘If you’re sure it’s for the best,’ said Jean, whose mind was really disturbed and anxious for her stepdaughter. ‘Isabel, my bonnie woman, I’m meaning no slight to him; but men are queer creatures. They’re no fond whiles of a little bairn that takes up the mother’s time, even when it’s their ain bairn; and she’ll no go to strangers. And ye canna have her with you at night as ye used to have her. My dear, if I was you I would take time to think.’
‘I will never part with my baby again!’ said Isabel. In the quietness her old nature seemed to come back to her. The spell of Stapylton’s presence began to lose its fascinations. She began again to feel that it was still lawful for her to judge and decide for herself.
‘But if it was to make any—dispeace. I’m meaning no offence. She’s well and safe, and ye can trust her with me. My bonnie woman! you must not do that in haste that you’ll repent o’ before the day’s done.’
‘How should I repent of it?’ she said, hastily, but would not yield. She had made up her mind entirely how it was to be done. She would say not a word to her husband, but take it for granted as a thing inevitable. Even, if she saw that to be expedient, she would cover up her baby under her cloak, until thetrajetwas accomplished. In one way or other, howsoever she might be baffled, she had determined to take the child with her. All that Jean, who saw the practical difficulties better than she did, could succeed in settling was that Jenny Spence’s eldest daughter, at present ‘out of a place,’ whom little Margaret knew, should go with her to Kilcranion, to take care of her, and relieve the young mother from constant attention to the child. Jean sent off her boy instantly to warn Nelly Spence that she must make ready. ‘If she goes by the afternoon boat, she’ll be at the house as soon as you,’ said Jean; and when that was fairly accomplished, it was, as she said, a weight off her mind.
Meanwhile, Isabel sat sunk in a quiet which was almost stupor; the past days had been very agitating days. And now the stillness and the soft sleep of the child, and the embracing of the old kindly house which seemed to stretch its arms round her with a forgiving calm, and Jean’s kindly accustomed ministrations lulled her very soul within her. The good things she had lost came back and floated round her, bringing something of their own peace into her heart; and all that was disturbing and novel had passed away for a moment like a dream. She felt as if she could have slept like the baby.
‘Sleep, my darling, if ye can,’ said Jean, compassionately, ‘you’ve been doing more than you were able—it’s the cold air, and then the fire—— ’
‘No, no,’ said Isabel, rousing up. ‘Instead of that, if you will pack up her things, I’ll take little Margaret out for a walk, while the sun is so warm on the braes.’
‘Weel, weel,’ said Jean, ‘ye’ll come to nae harm therenow.’ Not now, all the harm was over and done. ‘And that she’s no happy is written in her face,’ Jean continued, as she watched her straying out into the sunshine, with a spark of natural wonder that she should take that way of spending the short day. But she was mollified when she saw that Isabel crossed the road to the spot on the hill where it had been Margaret’s custom to pray. ‘And she’ll maybe get good there, poor thing, so ill as she has done for herself,’ the sympathetic woman said to herself, looking out from the door. She had watched wilful Isabel so often taking her wayward course from that door; sometimes to meet her ‘lad,’ as in the old times upon the braes; sometimes demure and stately tojoin Miss Catherine in some long longed-for pleasure; then leaning on her husband’s arm, the serene minister’s wife; then mournful in her widow’s weeds. ‘I understood a’ but this,’ Jean said, meditatively, to herself. ‘But that she’s no happy is written in her face.’
The child was now awake, smiling upon her, after the first momentary blank of forgetfulness, and had made her heart leap by saying, or stammering, ‘Mamma,’ the accomplishment which all this time Jean had been labouring to teach her. Little Margaret danced and babbled in her mother’s arms, and stretched out her hands to the running burn and to the bare branches of the other Margaret’s rowan-tree, when Isabel paused beneath it. She had meant to bring her great trouble out with her there, and to ask God’s counsel, when she left the cottage; but the baby’s mirth beguiled the poor young mother. She sat down on the grassy seat, and forgot everything, and played with her child. What good would thinking do her? What good (she had almost said, and stopped herself with a pang of reproach) would prayer do her? Oh, if she could but pray! and then, in her agitation, she caught at the momentary delight that was nearest to her, and played with her baby, and on the edge of the precipice forgot her terror. Then, as softer and softer thoughts gained her mind, Isabel rose up again, and, half stealthily, went past her own door and up the hill-side to the spot where she had so often met her lover under the little birch-tree. The grass and the heather were heavy with wintry moisture, but she was unaware of it. And again her head grew giddy, and everything looked to her like a dream. Was it Stapylton’s wife who was standing there under the tree, where he had been so fond and so cruel? Was this his child in her arms? Was her life one and indivisible, or a thing of shreds and patches, broken into fragments? She stood and grew giddy with the thought, looking over the wintry braes, while little Margaret caught at the drooping branches of the birch, and laughed at the shower of dewy spray which they scattered over her. Her baby laugh seemed to her mother to wake echoes all over earth and Heaven—echoes that reached the churchyard, wheretheywere lying who would have defended the child—which might reach the child’s enemy on the road miles away, and put evil thoughts in his mind against the innocent, unconscious creature. And her child’s enemy was her own lover and husband—could such a misery be?
She was standing thus as in a dream, when a voice in her ear made her start, and spring aside in mortal terror. She could not have told what she was afraid of. Something—anything—ghosts in the daylight; and what shesaw was not unlike a ghost. It was Ailie in her white dress, with a shawl over her head—Ailie, who had fallen as entirely out of Isabel’s self-absorbed musings as if she had never been.
‘What are you doing here, Isabel Diarmid?’ she said, ‘your courting’s past, and you’re married to another man. You have chosen this world, and you’re satisfied. What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, Ailie! you frighten me,’ said Isabel, holding her child fast in her arms.
‘Many a time I frighten mysel,’ said Ailie, ‘I come and go, and I carena where. I am seeking the Lord and I canna find Him. Something says in my heart Lo here and Lo there—but there’s nae sound of His coming, though I’m ay listening night and day?’
‘And are you no better?’ said Isabel, in her bewilderment: ‘and is there no word of Mr. John?’
‘Oh, aye, Mrs. Lothian, she’s better,’ said old Janet Macfarlane, coming forward nimbly from among the heather. The old woman was worn with anxiety and excitement, but kept her undaunted courage. ‘I beg your pardon, I canna mind your new name; they’re awfu’ fashious thae English names. Mrs. Diarmid’s a hantle better, since the letters came from Ardnamore. He’s in Paris, he’s among his grand friends. I canna understand what it’s a’ about myself, but he says it’ll be in the papers if he shouldna hae time to write: and if your goodman should get an English paper, maybe you would let us hear. She’s real weel, and taking her walks, her and me, like the auld times,’ said Ailie’s champion. She met Isabel’s eye steadily, as she told this lie of pride and love. Ailie for her part took no notice. She was standing by Isabel’s side, looking with wistful eyes on the wild landscape, and seeing nothing; a creature distraught, and torn out of all the common woes and rules of life—but not mad, though even her mother thought so—at least not yet.
‘I was never ill,’ she said softly, ‘I want but one thing, Isabel, but that I canna get. I would be as well as you, and as light-footed, and as ready to do whatever there was to do—if I had but light from the Lord.’
‘Has it never come back?’ said Isabel, wistfully, not knowing what to say.
‘Whiles I think it will never come back,’ said Ailie, shaking her head, ‘and whiles there is a glimmer of hope. My mother’s ay at my side night and day; and if she is that kind, would He break His word? Isabel, it’s an awfu’—awfu’ trial! What are your trials to that? To be disappointed in your God! But ifsheis that kind, would He break His word? I never was a mother myself.But if you were tempted with a’ this world could bestow, would you give up your little bairn?’
A cry burst out of Isabel’s heart. She clasped her child closer, and sprang apart from the strange questioner.
‘Oh, no never—never! not if I should die.’
‘And you’re but a young thing, and she’s but an old worldly woman,’ said Ailie, with solemn calm, ‘and would He break His word that’s above a’?’
Isabel’s heart, which had been momentarily still, beat so loudly at this unthought-of anticipation of her inmost struggle that she could not speak, but only gaze with awe and troubled wonder, while Ailie glided away as she came without another word. She passed along among the heather, threading her way by instinct, a strange, ghostly white figure, with her mother like a shadow beside her. Thus the shuttle which wove out one of those lives, shot across the other once again, making a mystic connection between them. Isabel went home, hushed and silent, after this strange encounter. The wonder of it overpowered her, and silenced her own thoughts.
‘You have told me nothing about Ailie,’ she said, when she was once more seated in the little parlour before the cheerful fire.
‘She’s taken to wandering far and near,’ said Jean, ‘ay in her white gown. Some say she’s clean daft, poor lass; but I canna think it’s as bad as that. She’s awfu’ good to the poor folk, and whiles will stop and say a word—if you’ll believe me, Isabel—mair like our Margret’s words and mair comforting and reasonable than when she spoke inthe power.’
‘But her heart is broken,’ said Isabel, with a sigh, which came from the depths of her own.
‘And there’s something, they say down by, in this week’s paper about Mr. John. But you’ll hear better than me. Some awfu’ business there’s been in France about killing the king. They say he’s one of thae revolutionaries. But I havena seen the paper myself,’ said Jean. ‘I’m thinking I hear the wheels of the gig coming up the brae.’
Isabel gave a hurried glance up in her face, and another at her child. A glance not of suggestion, but of speechless, bewildered appeal.
‘Go out and meet your man, my bonnie woman,’ her stepmother added hurriedly, ‘and give me the bairn.’
Not another word was said between them on the subject. There was no confidence made, no counsel asked. But Isabel understood that her stepmother saw vaguely, yet truly, what was in her heart. The wintry afternoon was growing dark; the stars were already half visible in the frosty sky.
‘Make haste, for it is getting late!’ Stapylton shouted from the door. Isabel put on her own outdoor dress with trembling hands, while Jean dressed her child. Then she took little Margaret into her arms under her cloak. Her face was deadly pale with excitement, and resolution, and terror. She put up her white lips to her stepmother to kiss her, though such salutations were rare between them—and then went out firmly with her precious hidden burden—her heart bounding wildly against her breast.
‘Make haste, Isabel!’ her husband shouted from the gig. He did not get down to help her into it, having already begun to glide out of the habits of a lover. And, after an awful moment of fear, she found herself seated by his side, without remark on his part. The baby moved and struggled under the cloak, but Stapylton took no notice. ‘What are you putting in now to delay us?’ he cried to Jean, who was placing the child’s little basket of ‘things’ behind. He was full of impatience to be off, and thought of nothing else for the moment. ‘It will be quite dark before we get home,’ he said, with almost a scowl at the delay.
Jean stood and gazed after them as they darted from the door. ‘Oh, canny, canny, down the brae!’ she cried. She had not shed a tear over the parting, but her heart was heavy and sore. ‘She’ll repent it but once, and that will be a’ her life,’ she said to herself, as the black speck disappeared over the hill, ‘and it’s begun already. I ay said it, if that were ony satisfaction; but she never would listen to me.’
Therewas no moon, and the night grew speedily dark; and the road was no smooth, level highway, but a road up hill and down dale, as was natural to the country. Stapylton was so absorbed with its difficulties that he took no notice of the little traveller whose presence could not long be concealed.
‘What is it?’ he said, when little Margaret with a struggle made herself visible from under the cloak.
‘It is only the child,’ Isabel answered in the easiest tone she could attain to, though her very lips were trembling with excitement, and resolution, and alarm. What he said was lost in the night breeze which swept past them as they flew on against it. She thought he too had taken little Margaret’s presence for granted, and her heart seemed to go back with a leap to its natural place in her breast. But the fact was that Stapylton’s mind was at the moment too much occupied to have time to think of the child. When she looked up at him again, she saw that his brow was contracted, his lips firmly set together, a look of oppression and almost terror in his face.
‘This confounded country of yours!’ he said, ‘it is bad enough in daylight, but it’s horrible in the dark. Why did you keep me waiting so long at that infernal cottage-door?’ But he did not seem to notice the answer Isabel made in her dismay. And they swept along through the dark with nothing visible but the pale stars in the sky, and the great shadows of the hills, and glimmer of the larger loch on the other side of the braes to which they were descending; and nothing audible but the sharp din of the horse’s hoofs on the road, and Baby Margaret’s little murmurs as she nestled to her mother’s side. The curious oppression in Stapylton’s face made Isabel, too, hold her breath, though otherwise she would have felt no alarm upon the well-known way. But past agitation had unstrung her, and the thought of the struggle to come. ‘Would you give up your little bairn?’ Ailie’s words were still ringing in her ears, and she kept repeating to herself over and over, ‘Never, oh, never, if I should die!’ While this was going through her mind, Isabel, seated by her husband’s side, trembled with the question, What would he think if he knew her thoughts? What might he be thinking even now, so close to her that she could not move without touching him, so far off that her profoundest skill could not fathom what was in his mind?
It was thus that they reached the first place which in their new-married life they could call home. With a relief which an hour before she could not have believed possible, Isabel placed her baby in the hands of Nelly Spence, who was waiting for them at the door.
‘You’ll take great care of her,’ she said, whispering, as she put the child into her arms.
‘Eh, aye, I’ll take awfu’ care of her,’ was the answer.
And the young mother was glad to be thus relieved, to go to her husband, and do her best to conciliate and please him. The fire was burning brightly in the little bare dining-room, and the table spread; and Horace, still with cloudy looks, sat in a great armchair thrust back into the shadow. It was not home, but yet it was more like home than the honeymoon lodgings. It was, at least, their own house. She had come to him giving up her baby, feeling that such a sacrifice was his due; and, perhaps, she expected that some special word or look of tenderness should reward her. But it was soon evident that his mood was very far from lover-like. He burstout when she came up to the fire and stood with her face turned towards him in the full glow of the firelight. Her agitation had roused all the dormant expression in Isabel’s face. Her eyes looked larger, and were full of light and shadow. A tremulous colour went and came on her cheek. Her mouth was all trembling and eloquent with suppressed feeling, and the glimmering of the firelight gave a certain increase of effect to the whole. He did not even look at her at first, but suddenly burst out:—
‘I hate this country of yours! I always did hate it! I don’t know what made me such an ass as to consent to stay. By Jove! I wonder if any woman was ever worth——’
‘What, Horace?’ she said, trying to laugh.
‘The things we do for them,’ he said. ‘You are a kind of demons with your pretty faces. You tempt us to do a thousand things that if we had our wits about us——’
‘Horace, we have surely something more than pretty faces? Is that all you care for?’ said Isabel.
‘Well, never mind,’ he said, coarsely; ‘if you were plain, you would not ask such a question; but if you had been plain, Isabel, you should never have been my wife.’
He expected her to be pleased with the rough compliment: and, pleased himself, roused up a little out of the shadow, and suffered his face to relax and looked at her as at a picture. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you should never have been my wife. I never thought, even when I admired you most in the old times, that you would have turned out so handsome, Isabel; and when I look at you I don’t mind——’
‘What is it you don’t mind?’
‘All you have cost me,’ he said, falling back into the shadow. ‘By Heaven that night at the opera, when I saw you dazzling—you whom I had been persuading myself to believe was only a pretty country girl. And there you were like a queen of beauty. I shall never forget how I felt that night.’
‘Oh, don’t speak of it!’ she cried. ‘I cannot bear it; don’t remind me of that.’
‘If I could bear it, you may,’ he said, with a certain tone of contempt; ‘but I don’t mind, you are worth it all, my dear; and now let us have some dinner. I have got you in spite of everything, and at least we may be jolly to-night.’
So they sat down to their dinner, which Stapylton himself had taken the trouble to order; and not a word was said about the child. He had accepted it as a natural part of their household, she thought; and Isabel’s heart grew a little lighter with every word he spoke. He had forgotten, no doubt, all that had been said in a different mood; and she began to flatter herself it had been but a passing moment of ill-temper; and that now the child was under his roof, there would be no further comment upon it. A feverish gaiety took possession of her as she caught at this thought. She made a conscious effort to amuse him, stirring up all her dormant powers. She told him of her meeting with Ailie, and did not wince at his rude comments upon the woman he had no understanding of. She was so anxious to please him that she could have borne anything he chose to say. She was lowering to his level, though she did not know it; a certain pleasure in the fact of being able to make him laugh, and turn his thoughts from more serious matters, took possession of her. Oh, if she could only have gone on telling him stories like Scherazade, and occupying him with any romance or trifle till they had embarked on their voyage, and little Margaret under her shawl had been conveyed into the ship unnoticed! It was the first piece of practical falsehood she had ever attempted, and it had been successful beyond her hopes; and in the haste and agitation of the moment it seemed to her that this was the soundest policy, and that there was no other course before her to pursue.
‘That woman was always mad,’ said Stapylton, ‘I could see it from the first; but, by Jove! she must be cunning, too. To get that mad fellow to marry her and make a lady of her, as they say, was the cleverest thing I know. What a fool he must have been, to be sure!’
‘Oh, Horace! you don’t understand Ailie,’ said Isabel.
‘I understand her a great deal better than you do, my dear; though I believe in your heart, if you were to tell the truth,yousaw what she was at all along. Depend upon it, there is always some meaning in those got-up things. When I remember how you were all taken in, and expected your sister to get better too—when anybody with half an eye could see she was going as fast as she could go.’
‘Oh, Horace! don’t speak of that,’ cried Isabel. ‘They say there is something in the papers about Mr. John—something that has happened in France. There is the newspaper lying with your letters, will you open it and see?’
‘Time enough for that,’ he said, drawing his chair to the fire. ‘By Jove! he must have been a fool—a bigger fool than even I am, to come down here and bury myself in this hole, all for the sake of you! You ought to be a good wife to me, Isabel, instead of setting up yoursilly little notions. You never were as happy in all your life before,Iknow. You never had anyone to pet you before, and make a little idol of you. And yet you go and vex me and spoil all our plans for some foolish notion about a baby, that cares as much for the first country lass that makes a fuss over it as it does for you. Yes, it is a true bill, my darling. You know what a naughty little rebel you are. Now acknowledge that in all your life you never were so happy before?’
It would be safe to say that at this moment, with her husband’s arm round her, and his eyes glowing upon her with admiration and fondness, Isabel had scarcely ever been more unhappy, more torn by painful struggles. ‘Oh, Horace!’ she cried, faintly, hiding her face in her hand. The question humiliated her. She was ashamed, mortified, offended; and at the same time stung to the heart by the contrast between the state of her feelings and his opinion of them. Happy! was there any meaning in the word? But, fortunately, no thought of this crossed Stapylton’s mind. He was full of the comfort of his dinner and his rest, and the indigenous toddy which steamed by his elbow. Ease and that genial influence had mollified him, and made him complacent. He took Isabel’s confusion for the evidence of a shy rapture.
‘You were always a shy little fool,’ he said, kissing her; ‘but I know you were never so happy before. Trust me to know it. You have never told me the secrets of your prison-house, but I can guess them. By Jove! you should be grateful to a man when you find yourself delivered out of that tomb, and brought safe off here, to be made a pet of. It’s all very well to pretend, and to make up a pretty little scene, like that you treated me to this morning; butIknow you can’t care for that brat of a baby, nor put it in comparison with me.’
‘Oh, Horace, let me love my child!’ cried Isabel. ‘I will love you all the better—don’t take my little one from me! I will serve you on my knees—I will study your every look, if you will but consent that I should love my own child.’
‘And what should you do if I did not consent?’ he said, with a smile. ‘You would cry very prettily, Isabel, I know, and make a scene as all women do, but you’d give in at the end. Now, why not give in at the beginning, and save yourself all the trouble? Do you think there is any doubt, my love, who would conquer at the last?’
‘Yes,’ she said, in a voice scarcely audible, trying to free herself from his arms. ‘There is a doubt—for I might die.’
‘What has your dying to do with it? No, my love.You’ll give in to me and do your duty, and we’ll be as happy as the day is long,’ he said, and with another kiss let her go free. ‘Now give me the paper, and I’ll read you the news. All sorts of things have been happening, and we have been too happy to mind; but now, you know, it is time to think of our duties, now we’ve come back to the world.’
A dayor two passed in idleness, not unlike the honeymoon idleness of Ranza Bay. Stapylton lounged out and saw the steamer come and go, and lounged back again with nothing to occupy him, sometimes lavishing caresses upon his wife, sometimes sullen to her, complaining of the delay and the time he was losing, and of being buried alive in ‘such a hole as this.’
One morning, about a week after their establishment at Kilcranion, a message came to Isabel from Janet Macfarlane, begging her to go to Ailie. It was while they were seated at breakfast that the message arrived. ‘Eelin,’ the ‘lass’ who had been witness of the first meeting between Mrs. Lothian and her former lover, was Janet’s messenger. ‘Eh, mem, there’s word frae Ardnamore,’ said the young woman; ‘you’ll have heard of a’ that’s come and gone. Eh, I would have brought ye the paper if I had thought ye didna ken. He’s joined thae radicals that are ay plotting; and it was some awful plan to blow up the king. And Ardnamore he’s been blown up himself instead, and it’s no thought he’ll live. And there’s been letters. You wouldna have thought the mistress was that taken up with him, when he was here; but she’s ta’en her bed, and we dinna ken what to do. And auld Janet—I’m meaning Mrs. Macfarlane—has awfu’ confidence in you. If you were to come, she thinks maybe Ailie—eh, Gude forgive me, I’m meaning the mistress—would mind what you would say.’
‘If you’ll wait a little, Helen,’ said Isabel, ‘I will see what I can do.’ She went back to her husband with a little excitement. ‘You never told me,’ she said, ‘that there was something in the papers about Mr. John. And now they say he is dying, and I am sent for to Ailie. Poor Ailie! she scarcely said good-bye to him when he went away; and she will feel it now. Horace, will you get the gig and drive me over the hill, or must I wait for the boat?’
‘Neither the one nor the other!’ he said. ‘Why should you go to every Ailie in the country-side when they sendfor you? Nonsense! You have no official position now, Isabel. You are my wife, and I won’t have you go!’
‘But, Horace, I must!’ said Isabel, quite unsuspicious that this was the voice of authority. ‘Poor Ailie! I had to do with her marriage, though I did not wish it—and I was there when he went away. And I am Margaret’s sister. There is nobody she will speak to like me. I will stay as short a time as possible, but I could not refuse to go.’
‘By Jove! but you shall refuse to go,’ he said, ‘when I say it. If that is what you think your duty, it is not my view. Tell the woman I’ll see her at Jericho first!Mywife trotting about the country to every fool that sends for her! No, no. Don’t say anything, Isabel. I tell you, you shan’t go.’
She stood gazing at him with amazement so complete that there was no room for any other feeling. Obedience after this fashion had never so much as entered into Isabel’s conception of the duties of a wife. Her mind was incapable of grasping this strangest new idea. ‘I am sorry you don’t like it,’ she said; ‘but, Horace, you know—I can’t refuse.’
‘I don’t know anything of the sort,’ he said; ‘youshallrefuse. Here, Jenny, Mary—whatever your name is—Mrs. Stapylton can’t come. Do you hear? Tell your mistress, or whoever it was that sent you; she has got something else to do than dance attendance on the parish now. Mrs. Stapylton is not going; do you hear? Now, take yourself off and shut the door!’
‘If the leddy will tell me herself,’ said Eelin, standing her ground. Cæsarism of this description was unknown on Loch Diarmid, and naturally the very sight of a rampant husband awoke the spirit of the female messenger. ‘Oh, mistress,’ she added, turning with sudden softening to Isabel, who sat dumb with crimson cheeks and downcast eyes, ‘dinna forsake us in our trouble. There is no one on a’ the Loch that can be of any help to us but you.’
‘Go ben to the kitchen and get a cup of tea after your long walk,’ said Isabel; ‘and I will come and speak to you, Helen. Go now and sit down and rest.’
Her voice was very low, she did not raise her eyes; but the woman understood and had compassion, and obeyed her without a word. A sudden harsh assumption of authority is a dangerous matter in any relationship, and perhaps most dangerous of all in that difficult transition from the love-dream to the ordinary conditions of life. Isabel’s proud and delicate spirit had never yet received so strange a shock. She sat dumb for themoment, quivering so painfully with the blow that she was unable to speak.
‘You may say what you like to her besides,’ said Stapylton; ‘but this you must just make up your mind to say, my love—that you shan’t go.’
There was a certain air of smiling insolence in the young man’s face. He was making his first experiment in the matter of sovereignty—beginning as he meant to end, he would have said.
‘Is this how it is to be?’ said Isabel, with quivering lips. ‘I—don’t understand. It never came into my mind before. Oh, Horace, is this how it is to be between us? It could never be any pleasure to me to do what you don’t like; but is it to be you who are to judge always, and never me?’
‘Didn’t you promise to obey me, you little rebel?’ he said, still with artificial playfulness; ‘and, of course, I mean to be obeyed. You may trust me not to give up my right.’
‘But not as a baby obeys,’ said Isabel, in a voice which was scarcely audible.
He got up with a laugh which jarred on all her excited nerves.
‘I don’t mind how you make it out,’ he said; ‘but I mean you to do what I like, and for this once you had better make up your mind. You shan’t go!’
It was at this moment—moved by what evil suggestion it is impossible to tell—that Nelly Spence, who had gradually been growing to a fever point of indignation at the little notice taken of her baby, suddenly opened the door of the room in which such a momentous discussion was going on. They both turned round, and for a moment nothing was visible; then little Margaret, staggering in her first baby run, came swift and unsteady through the open door, her attendant appearing behind her, stretching out sheltering arms. ‘She’s walking!’ said Nelly, with a shriek of delight. And Isabel, for the moment forgetting all her wounds, gave a cry of instinctive joy, and, turning round, held out her arms. Stapylton turned away with an oath. He went to the window, turning his back on the scene—so pretty a scene!—the young mother melting into a sudden transport out of her first hard passage of beginning life; the young nurse, half frantic with exultation, the little fairy creature rushing into the arms held out for it. Never was happy household yet, in which such a moment does not detach itself from the blank of years like a picture—sweet, evanescent, innocent delight! But here the bonds of nature were twisted awry. Isabel took her child into her arms with a throb of happiness, and then signedto its nurse to go away, and turned round with a deeper pang of pain. It banished even her own humiliation out of her mind. She gazed wistfully at her husband, not knowing whether to speak to him or remain silent—longing to say, ‘I will be your slave, only tolerate my child.’
‘Do you want to drive me mad with that man’s child?’ he said, turning round upon her with a look of hatred and horror which struck her with consternation; and then went out of the room, out of the house, without another word. She saw him go rapidly past the window while she still sat thunderstruck, holding her baby. Poor Isabel! And this conflict was to last all her life.
She did not know how long she sat thus silent, with a thousand thoughts passing through her mind. She was not thinking; she was stunned, and incapable of any mental action. Her thoughts came and went independently, presenting their arguments before her like so many unseen pleaders. Little Margaret slid from her arms to the floor, and sat there playing with anything that came to hand, gurgling with sweet rills of laughter, sweet murmurs, and those attempts at words which mothers know how to translate. But she took no notice. Slowly the invisible advocates delivered their pleas, and set forth all their reasonings. There rose before her a vision of what must be done, of what it was impossible to do. She was his wife; she had counted the cost and taken the risk, and now the forfeit was required of her. The time had been when she was little Margaret’s mother before all; but she had willingly, consciously, taken up another responsibility. She was his wife. Life must be transformed, must be so arranged that it should be practicable with him and not another. Isabel took the baby up from the floor and pressed it to her heart with a despair which could find no words. Thus it must be. She had drawn her lot with her eyes open, knowing she must pay some hard price for it, though not this price. The decision to be made was so bitter and so terrible that it quenched down even her impetuous, passionate nature. She could not be angry as she would have been had the occasion been less trivial. She was beyond anger. There was in her whole being the silence of despair.
The whole day passed over her in a hush like that which comes before a storm. She framed the softest message she could, and sent Eelin back with it, declaring that it was impossible she could come. And she occupied her mind with schemes for her baby’s comfort, and for keeping some trace of her own recollection before the child when they should be parted, perhaps for ever and ever. For ever and ever—that was most likely—withthe great ocean between them, and life more bitter than any ocean. Jean would be good to the child she knew, and Miss Catherine would keep a watchful eye on her—and—— Only the mother would have no part—no part in little Margaret’s life. She could not shed any more tears, they were all dried up, scorched up out of her eyes; but she sat all day by herself, and thought, and thought. Yes, this was how it must be. Her own life was decided and settled by her own deed; and Isabel would not say even to herself what a prospect she felt to be before her. But to expose Margaret to the hatred of the man who ought to stand to her in the place of a father, to make her little life subject to such storms, to give her no happy home, full of love and tender freedom, but a nook on suffrance in the house of ‘another family’—better let the mother’s heart break once for all, and the child be happy, caressed, above all criticism. Thus it must be.
When Stapylton returned that evening his mood was changed. Perhaps he was ashamed, and felt that he had gone too far. Perhaps it was a natural revulsion towards the wife he was still so fond of, that he was determined to have her all to himself. He never mentioned little Margaret or made any reference to her, but he was very tender to Isabel. ‘I am an ill-tempered fellow,’ he went so far as to say; ‘and if I make myself disagreeable sometimes, my Isabel must forgive me.’ And Isabel, for her part, was worn out; much emotion had worn her as great fatigue might have done. She yielded her soul to the sweetness when it came. She laid her head on his shoulder when he drew her to him, and cried, and despaired, and yet was consoled.
‘I am going to Maryburgh fair,’ he said to her next morning. ‘Smeaton has written to me to fetch away the cattle I bought. But I don’t want them now; so I must sell them if I can. I shall be back by the last steamer at dusk.’
‘Then that is farewell to all your thoughts of settling here?’
‘Farewell was said long ago,’ he said, ‘unless, indeed, there was something very tempting. No, no, don’t look at me so eagerly; I don’t mean to raise any hopes—America is the place for you and me. But, of course, if there was any great temptation——’
‘Oh, Horace, if I might hope it would be so’—cried Isabel, with her heart leaping to her mouth.
‘Well, well, wait and see what will happen,’ he said cheerfully; and in that sudden gleam of comfort she hung about him, feeling all her fears and sorrows melt away like mists in the sunshine. She kissed him with her very heart on her lips before he left her. Isabel hadbeen bred in all the reticence of a grave Scottish maiden; her kisses were few, and very rarely bestowed, but in this moment of revulsion, her heart smote her for all the hard things she had been thinking. ‘Dear Horace!’ she said, hanging about him, ‘I am always so hasty; but every day I will know you better.’
‘And every day you grow sweeter,’ he said with a lover’s looks—and thus they parted; he to the boat which should carry him to Maryburgh, she to little Margaret’s room to dance her baby, and sing all manner of joyful ditties to the child. ‘Oh, my bonnie darling, shall I keep you after all?’ was the burden of Isabel’s gladness. She sang the words over and over in her joy, as if they had been therefrainof a song; and little Margaret crowed and clapped her baby hands in reply, and the whole was like the blessed awaking from a bad dream.
When Isabel had exhausted herself with enjoyment, she sat down at length, having ordered the daintiest dinner she could contrive for his comfort when he should return, and began to her wifely work, sewing on buttons and putting her husband’s ‘things’ in order. It was pleasant to be engaged about his ‘things’ at such a moment. She said to herself that she had done him injustice, and her heart in the revulsion went back to him with a warmth beyond the fervency even of her first love. The cloud had blown past—surely for ever. She had misconceived him altogether. While she had supposed him to be so harsh and unsympathetic, was it not evident that all the time he had been overcoming his own prepossessions, bringing himself to acquiescence in her desires? Her heart uttered confessions of her sin against him, and praises of his goodness, while she put the buttons on his shirts. And little Margaret played at her feet, and the sunshine came in and lighted on the baby’s golden head, and for almost the first time since her marriage Isabel’s heart was light, and her happiness was unclouded as the day.
It was about two o’clock in the afternoon when the messenger whom Stapylton had sent from Maryburgh reached the house. It was one of the men upon the pier, whom Isabel knew. He brought her a little note, written in pencil, from her husband, sending the key of a desk of his which he always kept locked.
‘I want some money,’ Stapylton wrote. ‘I see something here I can buy with advantage, but I have not money enough. Open the right-hand drawer above the pigeon-hole; be sure you don’t touch anything else—and send me a pocket-book you will find in it. Remember not to touch anything else, for there are things in it which belong to other people, and I can’t have my papers interfered with. Lock it up again as soon as you have taken out the pocket-book, and send me back the key.’
Isabel was a little startled by the note, anticipating evil at the sight of it, as women instinctively do. And she was a little fluttered by the haste of the messenger, who had to return by the boat in half an hour, and was very pressing. She gave little Margaret over to Nelly Spence, and put aside her work and hastened upstairs to her room where the desk was. The very fact of his wishing to buy something, whatever it might be, was an additional proof that he did not mean to go away, but was thinking in earnest of remaining at home. She ran lightly upstairs, and went to the old-fashioned brass-bound desk which had so often roused her curiosity. She did not remember ever to have seen him open it. It had belonged to his grandfather, he had once told her, and had secret drawers in it, and all kinds of wonders. It was, however, commonplace enough when it was opened. One side folded down to form the slope for writing, and the other was filled with a little range of drawers exactly alike. The right-hand one, however, was quite unmistakable; the pigeon-hole below was clear of papers, and distinguished it from all the rest. But it was stiff, and cost Isabel a great deal of trouble to open it. She had to pull and pull till the little ivory knob came off, and then her task was more difficult than ever. While she was trying her best to get it open, with the thought in her mind that the messenger was waiting all the time, and the boat ready to start, and her husband fretting for the man’s arrival, her finger suddenly caught something below, which came out with a little rush and click as of a spring. It came upon her hand and hurt it, which was the first thing that attracted her attention. Then it occurred to her that she might now get a better hold upon her obstinate drawer; and putting her hand in behind, she at length pulled it out triumphantly, and found the pocket-book, the object of her search. No curiosity was in Isabel’s mind as to the other contents of the desk. She shut the drawer hastily, and only then looked at the smaller one below, which she had involuntarily opened. It would not push back again in haste like the other. She stooped over it to adjust the spring, thinking of nothing. Next moment she uttered a low cry of horror. The pocket-book fell out of her hand on the floor. She stood paralysed—immovable; her lips dropping apart like the lips of an idiot, her face blanched as by a sudden whisper of Death.
‘I must go!’ said the man below stairs; ‘he’ll be that rampaging I’ll no daur face him. Gang up the stair,my woman, and ask the mistress if I’m to bide here a’ day.’
‘The boat’s ay late,’ said the servant-woman out of the kitchen. ‘Take patience, man; she’ll no keep you waiting, unless there’s some reason for it; and I’m busy wi’ my cakes, and canna stir, rampage as muckle as ye please.’
‘Then, lassie, gang you,’ said Stapylton’s messenger. ‘She’s been half an hour up the stair—half an hour, as I’m a sinner!—and her man cursing and swearing a’ the time on Maryburgh pier. Rise up and ask, like a bonnie lass! Tell her—answer or no answer—I maun away.’
‘Oh, aye, I’ll gang,’ said Nelly Spence; ‘but give me my wean. Now she’s walking she’s mair trouble than when she was carried. She’s away, half way down the passage before ye ken.’
‘Rin first and speak after,’ said the man. ‘Lord, woman, maun I gang up the stair to the mistress mysel?’
Thus stimulated, Nelly Spence, with little Margaret in her arms, went upstairs to the bedroom door. She knocked, but there was no answer. She called softly, then louder, getting frightened; finally, she opened the door and looked in. Isabel was standing in the same attitude, like a creature suddenly congealed into ice or snow. Her side face, which was visible to Nelly, was so ghastly white, and so like the face of an idiot, that the girl was dumb with panic. She went quickly forward, making a noise which at last seemed to catch Isabel’s ear. Her action, then, was as extraordinary as her looks had been. She turned suddenly round, and placed herself between the new-comer and the open desk, going back upon the latter and putting her hands behind her, as if to conceal it.
‘What do you want?’ poor Nelly supposed her to say; but it was a babble, instead of words. She was like the old people who were paralysed.
‘Oh, Isabel,’ cried Nelly, in her terror forgetting all conventional rules of respect, ‘Oh, Isabel, dinna look at me like that! I’ll rin for the doctor. You’ve had a stroke!’
‘No!’ Isabel said, with an imperative gesture; and then, though her look did not change, she struggled into utterance.
‘What do you want—what is it?’ she said.
‘It’s the man,’ cried Nelly; ‘he’s wanting his answer. But, oh, you’re fitter to be in your bed. I’ll rin for the doctor, and tell him you’re no able. Oh, what will we do?—a young thing like you!’
‘Tell him,’ said Isabel, regaining her voice by degrees—‘to tell—Mr. Stapylton—there’s no answer. You hearme, Nelly: there is—no answer. That is what he is to say.’
‘But, eh,’ said Nelly, with anxious kindliness, ‘he’ll be awfu’ angry. If you would let me help you, and find it, whatever it was——’
‘Hold your peace!’ said Isabel, harshly. ‘Go and tell him. There is—no answer. And leave me to myself. I have something here I want to do.’
‘Is she going to kill herself? Does she want him to kill her?’ Nelly said, talking to herself as she went down the stair. When she was gone, Isabel, with unsteady step, came across the room and locked the door. She caught a glimpse of herself in the glass as she passed, and wondered vaguely who it was. Then she went back to the open desk, and took out the little secret drawer, and carried it, staggering as she went, to the window. There was but one thing in it: a little broach set round with pearls, with hair in the centre, attached to a long gold pin. Adhering to the pin were still some ragged threads of the cambric in which Isabel, with her own hands, had placed it one June morning, not yet two years ago. This was the treasure shut carefully away in Horace Stapylton’s secret drawer.