Thereare times when a great shock paralyses the whole being, and makes it incapable of action; and there are other circumstances under which it stimulates every power, sends the blood coursing to the heart, and fills the mind with such promptitude of despair, as renders thought unnecessary. At this awful moment both these effects were produced on Isabel. She was paralysed. The sight of that terrible token changed her into stone. The convulsive trembling of her figure steadied gradually as she stood by the window looking at that terrible evidence of what had happened to her; and, as it did so, a sudden, swift, indescribable sense of what she had to do swept through her mind—not what she had to suffer; that was swept out of sight for the moment; besides she was dead, and there was no sense of suffering in her; all she was conscious of was what she had to do.
She took the fatal little drawer first, and locked it up in a box of her own, but walked over the pocket-book on the floor in utter unconsciousness, having lost perception of everything that did not concern the one frightful subject-matter of her thoughts. Then, with hasty hands, she put on her bonnet and cloak, and hurried out tolittle Margaret’s room, leaving Stapylton’s desk open. She took the baby out of Nelly Spence’s arms, and began to put on its out-door dress. She had got over her trembling, but her face was ashy white, paler than Nelly had ever seen any living creature before. ‘Oh, where are ye going? Oh, let me take the wean! Oh, mistress, ye’re no fit to be out of your bed!’ wailed Nelly in her consternation. Isabel made no reply. She was even so far mistress of herself as to be able to smile a ghastly smile, and nod her head at the baby as she put on its wraps. ‘I shall be back before—dinner,’ she said as she went away. ‘Before dinner!’ Could anything be more horrible than to think of the household table, the common daily use and wont, in face of such a tragical conclusion? But Isabel took no note of her own words. She took the child in her arms; she repeated the same explanation to the maid in the kitchen; and, passing out, took the way across the hill to Loch Diarmid. Little Margaret, in her infant unconsciousness, babbled sweetly over her mother’s shoulder, pulling Isabel’s veil and bonnet with her dimpled hands, and smiling radiantly at the unaccustomed pleasure. Her little voice ran on, with now and then a half-articulate word, in broken rills of baby exclamation, wonder, delight, amusement—the little, loving, broken monologue, which is so sweet to kindred ears; and Isabel, without a look round her, without a pause, pressed on. It was a lonely, long, dreary road, over the hill. She had never carried such a burden before, and the baby was lively and happy, and not to be kept quiet. The only conscious thought in the mother’s mind was, Oh, if she would but go to sleep, and relieve the tired arms in which she danced and frolicked. Once or twice Isabel sat down for a moment on the roadside, but dared not prolong her rest, she had so much—so much to do. The early winter twilight was fading when she went in breathless to the Glebe Cottage, and sank, without a word, into the great old high-backed chair in the kitchen. Jean, with joy and wonder, and then with wonder and consternation, rushed forward to take the child, and overwhelmed her with welcome and astonishment. ‘Eh, my wee darling—eh, Isabel, my bonnie woman! Where have ye come from so sudden? There’s nae boat at this hour!’ Jean said in her amaze. And then the delight of the child’s return fortunately occupied her, and gave Isabel a moment’s breathing-time. Breathless, fainting, weary to death, she lay back in the great chair. Her arms ached, her head ached, her heart was panting with the effort for breath. She seemed to require rest only—nothing but rest. The warmth of the fire, the quiet, the familiar objects round her, lulled heras if they had been singing a cradle-song. A confused longing came over her to end here and stay, and go no farther. Alas, how was she ever, ever to retrace that weary, darkling path over the hills!
‘You’ve never walkit all the way?’ cried Jean at last. ‘It’s enough to have killed you, Isabel, my woman! You’re awfu’ white, and ye dinna say a word. Is there anything ails ye? and what has brought ye walking with the wean ower the hills? Eh, I’m feared something’s happened! Bide a moment, my bonnie woman, till I get you a glass of sherry wine!’
The wine restored Isabel a little to herself. It brought back the energy which had begun to fail her. ‘I have brought you Margaret,’ she said. ‘It is nothing. I could have sent Nelly, of course, but it was—pleasanter—I mean I liked better—to bring her myself. She is fond of you—you’ll be very, very good to her—whatever happens!’
‘Oh, Isabel! what should happen?’ cried Jean.
‘One never knows,’ said Isabel, drearily. ‘That is not what I meant to say; I mean, you’ll take great care of my baby; she is all I have. Except for her, what do I care what happens? Nelly will come, you know, with her things. I will send her as soon as I get—home.’
‘But, my bonnie woman, there’s no boat to-night,’ cried Jean. ‘Walk! na, I would never hear of that. Ye canna walk a’ the way to Kilcranion ower the hills.’
‘I must go at once,’ said Isabel. And then, again, the thought, Must she go? came over her. Could not she stay here in her own house, where she had taken refuge? Were there not her old friends, who would arrange everything for her? A sudden sickening of heart came over her; and yet her whole being was so confused, that she was not sure whether it was the mere walk, or what would come after that walk, which overwhelmed her most.
‘Oh, if you would hide me!—Oh, if ye would take me away!’ she cried, in the misery of her soul.
‘Hide ye! take ye away! Oh, Isabel, has it come to this? Aye, I’ll hide ye—aye, I’ll defend ye!’ cried Jean, roused up to sudden wrath. ‘Trust to me, my bonnie woman. Nae man, were he the king, shall come rampaging here!’
These very words, which expressed the deepest evil Jean could dream of, and which yet were so trifling, so shallow, compared to the facts, awoke Isabel fully to a sense of her position. She rose up, composing herself as best she could.
‘Hush!’ she said. ‘I must go back. I was speaking—like a fool. I have a great deal to do. The only thingis, that you’ll take care of little Margaret; you’ll never let her out of your sight. My bonnie darling! let me kiss her, and I’ll go.’
‘No this night—oh, no this night!’ cried Jean. ‘Ye’ll drop down on the hill, ye’ll be that wearied; it’s enough to be your death.’
‘That would be the best of all!’ said Isabel under her breath. When she was in movement she was not conscious how weary she was; but as she stood thus, with the child holding out its arms to her, with the old home wooing her, with a possibility, it might be, of escape and flight thus presenting itself before her, her limbs ached, her heart failed. But no, no; that which had to be done could be done only by herself.
‘I must be going now,’ she said, faintly. ‘Don’t ask me any questions. Let me kiss her once again. Oh, you’ve been a kind woman to Margaret and me! Promise me that you’ll never—never forsake my little bairn!’
‘Isabel, dinna break my heart. How could I forsake her, the darling, that was born into my very arms?’
‘And you’ll never let her out of your sight?’ said Isabel. She was gone again before Jean could say another word. When she rushed, with the child in her arms, to the door, the young mother was already almost out of call, speeding up the hill-side like a shadow. The sun had set even beyond the western hills, and had been out of sight here at the Glebe for three-quarters of an hour. ‘Though it’s longer light on the other side of the hill, it’ll be dark night before she gets home,’ said Jean to herself. ‘Oh, did I no ay say it was to her destruction she was taking that English lad?’ She stood and watched as long as the retreating figure was visible, with thoughts of rushing after her, of appealing to Miss Catherine or the Dominie, or someone who could aid. ‘But wha can interfere between man and wife?’ Jean said to herself, with homely wisdom, shaking her head as she went back to her fireside with the child who had been thus suddenly dropped into her arms. ‘My wee pet! at least she may be easy in her mind about you,’ she said, with tears, kissing the little creature, who could give no explanation; and thus accepted the mystery on which, for this night at least, it appeared no light could be thrown.
Isabel had reached the middle of her homeward course before she awoke to any sort of consciousness of what was before her. Was it on such another night as this—darker still, more cloudy and stormy—that one man had struck another down, and wrenched from his breast that little token of innocent affection and tragic misery? O God! could it be? Then she saw herself at the opera,with that fatal eye upon her; she recalled the sense of something malign regarding her, of which she had been conscious in the Manse garden the night before the minister’s death. These recollections and impressions came one by one, each thrusting her through with a sharper and a sharper dart. She tried to escape from them—to think what she ought to do. Something there was that must be done. She was going back to him—her husband, her husband’s slayer—to him who had dared to take her into his arms, knowing the awful ghost that stood between them. Isabel hid her face, as if some accusing eye had looked at her, and cried aloud, in the agony of her shame. How was she polluted!—she who was Margaret’s mother and the minister’s wife! He had come to her with that blood on his hand, knowing his own guilt, and plucked her like a flower—taken her in spite of herself—made her his, to bear his name, and bound her to him for ever and ever. She writhed upon that sword as she sat and rocked herself on the dark wayside. It seemed to her as if some cruel, avenging angel—as if God Himself—had put the bitter weapon through her heart, and held it there, despite her struggles, keeping her to a sense of the deepness of her misery, preventing her from thinking rather what she must do. What was she to do? Oh, if she could only think of that question, instead of writhing and aching, and stabbing herself through and through with this!
But the night grew darker, and the wind moaned louder, and Isabel started with a thrill of natural terror. She stood on the highest point of the road, feeling that there was still a choice before her, for one wild moment. She might turn, and fly back to the Glebe even now. She might shut fast the doors, and send for her friends, and barricade herself from the approach of the murderer; her husband’s murderer—that was what he was! She stood with her breath coming in sobs against the wind, all alone in Heaven and earth, to make her decision. Oh! she could so easily gather a body-guard to defend her!—friends that would hold her fast, and her baby, and keep her from all fear. What need had she to go back, to see his dreadful murderer’s face—to be touched by the hands which—— Isabel turned and made a rush downwards on the side of Loch Diarmid to her safe and silent home. Then she paused, and painfully retraced her steps. Her heart was gashed and cut in two by that awful sword, which God would not withdraw for a moment. She was the wife at once of the slayer and the slain. God help her! If she sent for her friends to avenge her husband, would not that be to kill her husband? Kill her husband! She walked up and downlike a wild creature on the top of the hill. The clouds seemed to be drooping over her, so near they rolled in their great, tumultuous waves; big drops of rain fell from their skirts, like something cast at her out of the heavens. The storm was rising from Loch Diarmid as if to hunt her before it down to the gloomy shores of Loch Goil. Over there, in the west, there was a pale glimmer that seemed to direct her—where? To him who, no doubt, was now waiting for her—the man whose name she bore—whose wife she was; her first love—her worst enemy. Was she to devote herself to him, loathing him as she did? Was she to denounce him, loving him as she did? What, oh! what—was there no counsel in Heaven or earth?—was she to do?
When she arrived at the house Isabel was drenched with the torrent of rain which had swept her before it down the dark slope of the hill. The blast had been so violent, and the feverish strength of excitement was so great in her, that she had made up for all the time she had lost on the summit by the swiftness of the descent. And when she reached home she found that her husband had not yet returned. ‘The boat’s no in yet,’ said the maid from the kitchen; ‘and, oh! mem, but you’re wet; you’ll have time to change your wet things afore the maister can be back.’
‘And where’s the bairn?’ said Nelly, open-mouthed.
‘You must pack up all her things,’ said Isabel, collecting all her powers, ‘and take them on to the Glebe. I left her at the Glebe with—Mrs Diarmid. If it is too late to-night go to-morrow morning. I don’t think I shall have her here again.’
The maids were in a panic, alarmed for her sanity. They looked at her with suspicious looks. ‘Mrs. Stapylton,’ said Nelly, with an effort for breath, ‘you’re sure you ken what you’re saying. Oh! dinna be angry, if you’reyoursel. You’re sure you’ve done the wean no harm?’
‘Me! harm my darling!’ said Isabel, incredulous that the fear could be real; and then a blaze of momentary indignation came to her aid. ‘Go to your work both of you,’ she said; ‘and don’t take it upon you to criticise what I do. Stand aside, Nelly, I am going upstairs.’
They let her pass them with momentary bewilderment, not knowing what to do. ‘But I’ll tell him as soon as he comes in,’ said the elder woman; ‘a man ought to know.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the kind,’ said Nelly, who had a spirit. ‘She’s mair like a living creature now, and no so like a ghost. Bide, and let him find out for himself.’
‘But, woman, the bairn!’
‘Never you mind the bairn. She’s safe in the Glebe, I dinna doubt, with Jean. They’ve had some quarrel about her,’ said Nelly, with precocious insight, ‘and this is the upshot. Let us haud our tongues, and see what will come o’ ‘t. Eh, woman! a’body said ill would come o’ ‘t; and ye see it was true.’
‘As she has made her bed so must she lie,’ said the other, sententiously; and she went back to her kitchen to see after the dinner, which was being prepared all the same, whatever tragedies might come to pass. Nelly stole upstairs after Isabel; but dared not follow her to her room, much as she longed to do so; and lights began to be visible in the windows, and everything was made ready for the husband’s coming home.
Isabel had come to herself; her thoughts had lulled as the wind lulled, for no reason she knew of—perhaps out of weariness. When she went into her room she perceived the desk standing open, the pocket-book lying on the floor; and had so much possession of herself as to put them away, restoring the book to its place and closing the desk. She could do this with a certain calm, feeling as if her discovery had been made years ago, and since then she had had time to face the idea and accustom herself to it. She took off her wet gown, and dressed herself as usual. All this she did mechanically, in a sudden hush, scarcely thinking, scarcely feeling anything. When she heard his step coming to the door there rose within her a tempest just as sudden. Should she go down to meet him, or let him come here? Should she wait till he assailed her, or should she announce her awful discovery at once? None of these questions could Isabel answer for herself. She had to act mechanically, not knowing in one moment what she would do the next. He came in with an angry inquiry about ‘your mistress,’ which she could hear where she was. His voice was louder than usual; his very step betrayed irritation. But what was his irritation now to her? It even struck her with a curious sense of wonder that he could take the trouble to be moved by trifling causes to trifling passion—he who, as he and she knew—— Mechanically still, and quite suddenly, as if some spring had been touched in her of which she was unconscious, she went down, and went into the room. He had placed himself with his back to the fire, full of wrath, which was evidently ready to burst forth the moment she entered. The table was spread for dinner. An air of homely comfort was about the place; the light was dim, to be sure—but it was as much as they were used to; and the candles brightened the white-covered table with its gleams of reflection, and the ruddy, quivering firelight filled theroom. All these calm details of ordinary life encircled the two at this dreadful moment with that hypocrisy of nature which cloaks over the fiercest passion; and in the kitchen the dinner was preparing, not without much serious anxiety on the part of the maid lest the fish should be spoiled; for Stapylton was ‘very particular’ about his dinner, and prompt to wrath when anything impaired its perfection.
‘Well,’ he said, when Isabel came into the room, ‘I hope you have something to say for yourself. What did you mean by sending me such a message to-day? I wonder if you are mad, or if it is only pride and obstinacy. No answer? How dared you, when I had sent you my directions, send back such a message to me?’
‘Because I was stunned,’ she said, ‘and did not know what I was saying. Let us not speak of it till you have eaten. Wait till then. I have much—much—to say.’
‘Much to say!—a great deal too much I don’t doubt,’ he said; ‘if you think this sort of thing will do for me, you are mistaken, Isabel. You may as well know at once. I am not the man to be trifled with. My wife must obey me—do you understand? I can’t have two wills in my house. My wife must obey me!’ he went on, striking his hand against the table. ‘I have borne as much of your self-will as I mean to bear. My wife must have no will but mine.’
Isabel looked at him as from some height of knowledge, feeling no movement of anger, no irritation at his words. Oh! to think he should be occupied about matters so trifling at a moment so terrible! To get his wife to obey him! Could he care for that, when this life was over, blasted in a moment, and nothing remained for either of them but a blank existence of despair? Her heart bled for him, making himself angry thus at the merest trifles, not knowing what was to come.
‘The dinner is coming,’ she said, wondering at herself that she could form the words, ‘and the woman will be in the room. Would you wait till it is over? And you must want food and support,’ she added, with an ineffable pity. It was not the pity of love. It was the compassion with which she might have fortified a criminal with food and wine, before telling him the awful news of his approaching execution—a human sentiment of pity for a weak creature in unconscious peril, about to be strained to the utmost, and unaware of it. He gave her an angry look, to see what she meant, but could not divine it, so wrapt was she in the unconscious elevation and tragic seriousness of the crisis. He did not know whata crisis it was. And he could not understand the strange superiority of her calm.
‘And then the inconsistency of it,’ he said, moodily placing himself at the head of the table. ‘You pretend to want me to stay, and when I begin to entertain the idea, and was actually in treaty for some land, you step in, in your perversity, and break it off by disobeying my orders. What did you mean by it? What reason could you have? By Jove! if I had gone off at once and never come near you again, it would have served you right.’
Oh! if he had done so, Isabel murmured within herself; but the servant was in the room, the dinner being placed on the table, and nothing more was practicable. She sat there happily concealed by the cover of the dish placed before her, and made motions as though she were eating, and listened to all his grumbling over the indifferent meal. The fish was spoiled; the meat was badly roasted; the vegetables were uneatable. ‘If you would give a little more attention to this sort of thing, and waste less time over that precious baby, it would be more to the purpose,’ he said, ‘that woman is an idiot; so are all these Scotch women; and, by Jove! I was the greatest idiot of all to come and settle myself down here.’ Isabel made no answer. That he should be on such a brink, and yet be disturbed by the arrangement of the grasses on the edge of the precipice! She had no inclination to reply to him, or to take offence. She gazed at him across the table wistfully, with a compassion that was almost tender, and yet felt she could not go to him, could not touch him, or bear his touch, not for all the world.
Then there came the moment when the table was cleared and the door closed, and they sat looking at each other with the two candles lighting the little white space between them. There was perfect quiet in the house. The maids were in the kitchen, frightened, not knowing what might happen, with the door shut between them and their master and mistress. Outside, the little world was hushed; not a sound, except an occasional blast of rain on the windows, or melancholy splash of the Loch on the beach, breaking the utter silence; still as the grave, which seemed to rise up between the two as they looked at each other in the pause before the storm.
‘Well?’ said Stapylton.
Isabel had made no preparation of what she was to say. She did not know what words would come to her lips. She felt herself passive, not so much an actor as the spectator of this scene. The only thing she had done was to bring down with her, wrapped in her handkerchief, the little secret drawer of his desk containing the awfultoken she had found. When he looked across at her, demanding with contemptuous defiance her apology or explanation, she gazed back at him for a moment without a word to say. Words would not come to her aid. She took up her enclosure and unfolded it with trembling hands. She began to tremble over all her frame, even to her lips, which refused to move articulately. He sat looking on unsuspicious, surprised, and scornful, while she fumbled with the handkerchief. Then she rose up and held it out to him. Her face was as pale as death; her eyes dilated; her hands, in both of which she held it, shaking wildly. ‘Look what I found!’ she cried, with her eyes fixed upon him. They were the only things steady about her. Her voice was inarticulate; her arms powerless. All her life had retreated into her eyes.
He sprang up to his feet at the same moment, and swore a great oath, bending over the table to see what it was. Then he fell back in his chair again, as pale as she was, trembling as she did. He was taken by surprise. ‘Good God, Isabel!’ he said, ‘Good God, Isabel!’ stumbling at the words almost as she did, ‘what do you mean?’
‘Look, and see!’ cried Isabel, with her lips suddenly opened, ‘look and see! oh, man! was there no other woman in the world that you should make me vile and make me miserable? Was there no other spot in the world, that you should come to shed blood here? You had eaten his bread and drunk his cup. You had taken my heart’s love and the flower of my youth. Could you not have been content? We were thinking you no harm, doing you no harm—and ye came and killed my man, my blessed man! And even that was enough. What harm was I doing you, a lone creature with my bairn, that you should come again and pollute me, and put his blood on me? Oh, look and see! Ye took me to your arms with that horror in your mind. How dared you do it, Horace Stapylton? How dared you put yourself with that blood upon you, between the dead and me?’
He had recoiled and shrunk away from her, pushing back his chair. He had been so taken by surprise that his very wits failed him. ‘For God’s sake, don’t scream at me,’ he cried, with a thrill of terror. ‘Do you know they are listening? For God’s sake, woman, speak low, whatever you have to say.’
Then she gave a sudden low cry, and sank back into her seat. She had not said it to herself. She had never permitted herself to think it; and yet at the bottom of her heart there had been a hope that he would deny, that somehow he might be able to disprove even what that silent witness said. But he had not attempted todeny it—it was all true, true! And she lived and he lived, withthatbetween them. She could not stand, her limbs failed her; but she kept her hand upon that terrible evidence of his guilt, and kept looking at him with her dilated eyes.
‘Well,’ he said, getting up after a terrible pause, ‘so this is your story—this is what you have made up. You think you can ruin me with it—perhaps you think you can kill me. But it is all a mistake. Throw it into the fire—that is the wisest thing that can be done both for you and me.’
‘Not yet,’ said Isabel, under her breath.
‘Not yet! Do it of your own will, that will be wisest. Don’t drive me to compel you to do it,’ he said, pacing up and down; and then he came to a sudden pause before her. ‘One word, Isabel, before things go too far. You know what accusation you are bringing against me? You can’t prove it.Thatis no proof. Do you understand what I say? And more, it is not true.’
‘Oh!’ she said, clasping her hands, ‘say it is not true! Say you found it—or bought it—or—Horace, say it was not you!’
He paused a moment, gazing at her with an evident struggle going on in his mind whether to seek his own safety or to gratify his feelings. ‘I neither bought it nor found it,’ he said at last, under his breath, with a glance of fury in his eyes; and then he added with a sudden shudder, ‘but what killed him was the fall from his horse.’
‘And you—oh, tell me a lie rather—tell me a lie! You!’ cried Isabel, ‘struck an old man, a defenceless man, when he was down——?’
‘Who told you that?’ he cried, sharply. And then with another flash of fury, ‘How much more evil had he done to me?’ he exclaimed, throwing himself into his chair again with great drops of moisture standing like beads upon his forehead. And there was a pause like a lull in a storm.
Then the gust rose again, menacing and sudden. ‘You think I am making a confession,’ he said, ‘but I am doing nothing of the sort. You cannot harm me. I am safe, at least from the wife of my bosom. You can’t bear witness against your husband, though you had ten thousand proofs. Thank the law for that. If all this passion were not a pretence to start with! Was there ever a woman that quarrelled with her lover for anything he could do for her sake?’
‘Formysake!’ said Isabel, with a low cry of horror.
‘Yes, for what else? for your beauty and your love? Did I know what a cold-blooded phantom you were? Iswore to have you when I saw you by his side! Curse him! And I have had you. Do what you will, you can’t alter that—you are my wife now, and not his.’
‘Oh, don’t make me loathe myself more than I do,’ she cried, wildly. ‘Don’t make me more hateful than I am to myself.’
‘But it is true,’ he said, once more approaching her; ‘you are mine, and you are harmless against me. I have had my desire, and I have disarmed my enemy. And look here, Isabel, you may as well hear reason,’ he added, coming up to her and grasping her shoulder, ‘you need not think of putting it into other hands. If I didthatfor your sake, what do you think I should be capable of for my own?’
She looked up and their eyes met, and they gazed at each other for one awful moment—he like a tiger ready to spring—she pale and resolute as an image of death.
‘Of killing me,’ she said, never turning her eyes from him, ‘as you would kill a fly.’
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘you are right—as I would kill a fly; if you put me in danger, or threaten my life.’
The voices of both had sunk into absolute calm. The anxious servants in the kitchen concluded that the storm was over. ‘They’re talking as quiet as you and me,’ Nelly Spence said, with a sigh of relief, as she came back from an anxious vigil at the door. While the husband stood by his wife’s chair, with his hand on her shoulder, speaking to her in a voice as quiet and subdued as if the words had been the tenderest words of love.
‘It is well you should know what you have to expect,’ he said. ‘Submit, and I will forgive all this, and take you back to my heart. Shudder if you please, but my arms are the only ones open to you now; I will take you back, notwithstanding that you mean to betray me; but if you keep your own way, Isabel, understand that I will crush you like a fly.’
She kept looking at him, undaunted, not moving a hair-breadth back, nor changing her position. Her shrinking youth, her womanly tremor, all extinguished in an emergency more terrible than any death.
‘Would I care?’ she said softly, as if to herself; ‘now that life itself is dead and gone? You cannot frighten me now.’
‘Like a fly!’ he repeated, as if he liked the image, closing his hand as if upon it; ‘you, and that child you make your idol. Ah, I touch you now!’
‘She is safe out of your reach,’ said Isabel, though not without a tremble. And he, too, started slightly. The duel was to the death, and his opponent was unencumbered, free to beard him to the last extremity.
‘What do you want?’ he asked abruptly, seating himself in front of her. ‘In all this I suppose you mean something. What do you want of me now?’
Then it rushed upon Isabel in a moment what she ought to say.
‘You are in danger,’ she said; ‘you were seen that night. At any moment they might remember it was you. And I know. And never more—never, never more can you and me be as we have been. Never more! Sooner, I would die!’
The shudder in her voice thrilled him with wild irritation; but he gave no sign of it, waiting for what she had to say.
‘What I want of you is, that you should leave me,’ she went on. ‘Leave me—that is all! Go where you were going when we met. Hear me out! I will give you everything I can give you; all I have you shall have; but save yourself, Horace, and go.’
‘Is it for me you are thinking?’ he said; and suddenly his heart melted, and he tried to take her hand.
‘Let me be! oh, let me be!’ cried Isabel, shrinking from him. ‘It is for you, too. How could we live and face each other, now I know? I would speak; it would burn out my heart, till, sleeping or waking, I would speak. And—they—would remember it was you. But never will I breathe your name when you are gone. Never will I say a word—never one word of blame. And I will—forgive you!’ she said, with a sudden cry.
She was capable of no more.
The servants, hearing no sound that alarmed them, began to move about in the house going to bed. The sound of the door being locked, and the shutters closed, roused the two from their deadly argument. After a while, one of the women came in to close the windows for the night, and see if anything more was wanted. This sudden breaking in of the ordinary and commonplace intensified beyond all power of description the tragic misery of the scene. It might have lasted through the whole night but for that. It might have led to any horrible conclusion. Isabel rose and went up to him, while the maid barred and bolted, and made all fast. ‘I have said all I have to say,’ she whispered in his ear with white, quivering lips. ‘Now, it is in your hands.’
It never occurred to him that these were her last words. When he looked up from his moody reverie and found her gone, it did not even strike him as strange. He followed her upstairs slowly after an interval of thought. The room was empty, a light burning, his pocket-book lying on the table, and all traces of his wife gone. The house was all silent, dark, and motionless. Then forthe first time horror and fear came over him. He did not dare make a commotion in that stillness, or call for her to come back to him. Whatever might happen, the woman whom he had loved after his fashion had disappeared for ever out of Stapylton’s life.
Thenight 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 andscorn, 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 fornow? 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 saidto 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 theirown 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 nowat 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 bemysister 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 withMargaret, 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 thatyonwas 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 bemysister. 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.
Isabel’srecovery was slow and tedious. The strain, both of body and mind, had been so great, and her spirit was so broken, that it was often in doubt whether the uncertain balance would be for death or life.
The parish had waited, after the first flash of wonder was over, with patience scarcely to be looked for, for the explanation which might be expected on her recovery. And the little circle round her had specially cherished this hope, as was natural. Miss Catherine, in her higher degree, and Jean Campbell and her friends, waited withcalm, knowing that the revelation must first be made to them. ‘Don’t weary yourself, my dear,’ said the former. ‘I will wait your own time.’ But Isabel made no reply to this insinuated question. She ignored their wonder with a silent resolution which it was difficult to make any head against. ‘When you have anything to say to me, you know I am always at your service, Isabel,’ Miss Catherine added, a week after she had first signified her readiness to listen. ‘Thank you,’ Isabel had said, faintly; but she said nothing more. Then Jean made an attempt in her own way.
‘My bonnie woman,’ said Jean, ‘eh, it’s pleasant to see ye in your ain house again, as I never thought to see you! But you’ll no bide? I canna expect it, I ken that. And, oh! how we’ll miss you, the bairns and me.’
‘I mean to stay if you will let me,’ said Isabel, whose pale cheek always flushed when this subject was propounded. ‘Margaret and me.’
‘Let you!’ cried Jean: ‘and dearly welcome. As if it wasna your own house and hers, the bonnie lamb! But it’s mair than I could expect that you should stay.’
Isabel made no answer. She treated Jean’s artful address as a mere remark, and no question. Her face would be a shade sadder; her eye more languid all the evening after—but that was all.
Perhaps, of all the eager, curious people about her, the one most difficult to silence was the Dominie, who had taken to coming across the braes every evening while Isabel was so ill, and now found it difficult to give up the habit. He would sit opposite to her in the little parlour while the spring evening lengthened, and watch her words and her looks with an inquisition which he could not restrain. ‘It’s like old times to have ye back,’ the Dominie would say: and a faint smile would be Isabel’s answer. She was always at work now—reading much—trying to teach herself a variety of new accomplishments, labouring at a dozen different pursuits with a pathetic earnestness that went to her visitor’s heart.
‘What do you want with all these books?’ he said, as he sat at the parlour window looking out upon the darkling Loch.
‘To learn,’ she said. They were some of the minister’s old Italian books, of which he had been so fond.
‘To learn!—what for? It’s an accomplishment will be of little use to you,’ said the Dominie; ‘unless it isthereyou are going when you leave here.’
‘It is for Margaret,’ said Isabel, with a quivering lip—‘I would like her to learn when she is old enough what her father knew.’
‘Ah, that’s a good thought,’ said the Dominie, taken by surprise; and then he added, ‘But you cannot give your life to little Margaret—nor carry such things about with you through the world.’
‘I will have time enough here,’ she said, under her breath.
‘But, my dear!—we cannot expect you will be here all your life—that would be good for us, but ill for you.’
‘And why should it be ill for me?’
‘Isabel! I must go back to your old name,’ said the Dominie; ‘I cannot call you by that lad’s name. Are you another man’s wife, or are ye no?’
And then the self-sustained creature, who had resisted so many attempts to penetrate her secret, fell into a passion of sudden tears.
‘I am his wife,’ she cried, ‘but I will never see him again. Call me Isabel, or call me by my good man’s name; and ask me no more.’
Strong as the Dominie’s curiosity was, he could not persist in face of this appeal and of the tears which accompanied it; but he carried the news to Miss Catherine, who day by day became more perplexed and more anxious to know the real state of affairs. His partial success inspired the old lady. Next day she went up to the Glebe, determined to show no mercy.
‘Isabel,’ she said, solemnly, ‘it’s time, for your own sake, that your friends should know. I am not speaking of the world. You may keep silence as you please for them that’s outside, but your friends should know. I saw ye married with my own eyes; there could be nothing wrong about that?’
‘There was nothing wrong,’ said Isabel.
‘Then, my dear, tell us—tell me—whatiswrong? Has he gone to America, as they all say?’
‘So far as I know,’ was the answer, spoken so low that the inquisitor could scarcely hear.
‘And do you mean to go after him, Isabel?’
A shudder ran through her frame. ‘Oh no, no—never more!’ she cried, hiding her face in her hands. If it was longing or loathing, Miss Catherine could not tell, but she thought it was the former. Whatever it is, she is fond of him still, was what she said in her heart.
‘Is not that giving up your duty?’ Miss Catherine continued, pitiless. ‘Isabel, there is no love lost between him and me; but I could not counsel you to abandon your duty for all that.’
‘Oh, ask me no more questions,’ cried Isabel, with a gesture of despair; and that was all that could be torn from her whatever anyone might say.
When she was well enough to go so far, she made a secret pilgrimage to her husband’s grave. The whole parish knew of it before the week was out, and drew its conclusions; but nobody suspected why it was that she sat so long, wrapt in musing and solitude, in that spot where the minister and Margaret slept side by side. ‘God grant her her wits, puir thing!’ said one of the village gossips. ‘There she sat among the grass; and every bit weed that caught her eye, and the moss on the tombstone, all cleared away. You would have said it was a gardener in a garden at his work.’ Some thought it was penitence for her sin against him, and some that it was a compunctious regret for her ‘good man.’ Nobody knew that Isabel had buried in her husband’s grave something more than her grief and remorse for her infidelity—another token more awful than anything so trifling could be supposed to be. She worked at it unseen with her slender, trembling fingers, making a place for it deep under the sod, and there hid the innocent present of her first affection—the little brooch, which had been plucked from the dead man—the fatal sign which had made her existence a desolation, and rent asunder her heart and her life.
And common life crept up round her, like the rising tide on the beach, and set her softly afloat in the old habits, the old routine, the current of the past. Little Margaret rose once more to be the chief object, and occupation, and interest of the quiet days. Within the first year there came a claim upon her, of which her lawyer informed Isabel, and which oozed out through the district after a while by those invisible channels which make everybody’s secrets known. It was a bill drawn upon her from a far distant corner of America, which she paid without hesitation, though it cost her many sacrifices. The same thing was repeated several times within the course of a dozen years; and then there came a letter to her, in a strange handwriting——
No one had mentioned her legal name for a long time before that. She saw only those who called her Isabel. But after the coming of this letter, it happened to her by chance to encounter the old Laird, Miss Catherine’s brother, come upon a rare visit to his own country. ‘So this is Isabel,’ he said to her kindly, patting her head as if she had been but still a child. ‘Mrs—Mrs—— I forget the name.’
‘Lothian,’ she said, distinctly, before the servants, as was afterwards remembered. And from that hour was called by her old name.
And little Margaret lived and grew. A woman cannot be utterly wretched, whatever tragedies may have happened in her life, so long as she has a woman-child to make her live anew. She was even happy in her way, developing into a hundred gracious forms of being, which Stapylton’s wife could never have known; and had her life after life was over, like the most of us—the one, an existence brief and full with sorrow and joy in it, and a crowd of events; the other, long, tranquil, with no facts at all to speak of, marking the passage of the years—nothing to tell: but yet, perhaps, the life that bulks most largely in the records in the skies.
THE END
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