‘Now,’ said Miss Catherine, when it approached the end of June, and Edinburgh, like other towns, began to empty itself of its prisoners. ‘Now, minister, you may go your ways, and settle down in your parish. I am going to take her home.’
‘Home!’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘to the Glebe?’ and his countenance fell. For, to come and go a dozen times a day to Miss Catherine’s lodgings, and to see her young companion constantly under the shelter of her presence, without awaking Isabel’s susceptibilities or seeming to seek her, was very different from going to visit her in her own cottage, putting her on her guard by the very act.
‘Yes, to the Glebe!’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Don’t look at me as if you thought me an old witch. Maybe I am an old witch. No, she is not coming to my house. Imean to plunge her back into her own—to Jean Campbell and the bairns; and then if you cannot make something of the situation, it will be your fault and not mine.’
Mr. Lothian paused, and mused over this last wile. He smiled a little, and then he shook his head. ‘It might be good for me,’ he said; ‘but it would be cruel to her.’
‘Go away with your nonsense!’ said Miss Catherine; ‘I hope I know the world and what I’m speaking of; but men are fools. I have given her all the change that was good for her here, and she has had just a taste of what life is, a flavour to linger in her thoughts. And now she shall know the cold plunge of the home-coming. Do you think I don’t know it will give her pain? But how can I help that? It will show her what she wants, and where she is to get it; and if she does not make up her mind that it is to be found in the Manse parlour, I tell you again it will be your fault and not mine.’
‘My bonnie young darling!’ said the minister, moved to unusual tenderness; ‘but I feel as if we were cheating her, conspiring and taking advantage of her innocence. If it could be done at less cost—— ’
‘Go away and mind your own affairs,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘leave Isabel to me. Am not I seeking her good? and must I hesitate because my physic has an ill taste? Not I. Go home with your scruples and see what you’ll make of it. And you need not take advantage of my work if you have any objections. It’s in your own hand.’
Upon which the minister went away, shaking his head more and more. ‘You know my scruples will yield but too soon if Isabel is the price held out before me,’ he said. And he obeyed his general and went away; but foolishly freighted himself in the very teeth of Miss Catherine’s plans, with everything he could think of to lessen the dreariness and change the aspect of the Glebe Cottage. He sent a great box before him when he arrived at Loch Diarmid, which was on Saturday; and on the Monday he hastened up to the cottage, and unpacked the case with his own hands, and took from it pictures and bookshelves, and books to fill them, ‘a whole plenishing,’ as it appeared to Jean. ‘What is this all for?’ she said, looking at the arrivals with a sceptical eye.
‘It is that Isabel may not think too much of the past when she comes back—that there may be something new to cheer her,’ said the minister, somewhat struck by a sudden consciousness that his motives were not much more noble or innocent than those of his ally and fellow-conspirator. Jean stood and looked on while he hung the pictures and put up the shelves, very critically, and with her own thoughts.
‘Then Isabel is coming back,’ she said, ‘and I’m glad of it; among all your grandeur she was like to forget her home. And by all I can see you mean her to stay, or you would not spend good siller and time fitting up all this nonsense to please her e’e.’
‘It is to comfort her heart, if that may be,’ said the minister; ‘that coming back may not be more than she can bear.’
Jean was offended, and tossed her head with an impatience she did not attempt to conceal. ‘I’m no one for forgetting them that’s dead and gone,’ she said, ‘nor changing the place they’ve been in. For my part I would keep a’ thing the same. It’s like running away from God’s hand, to run away from the thought of a bereavement. And I would rather mind upon our Margaret than look at a’ your bonnie pictures; and so, if she’s no spoilt, would Isabel.’
On the Saturday of Mr. Lothian’s return to Loch Diarmid, Miss Catherine intimated her intention to Isabel. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘the summer is wearing on. I would not say a word about it if I did not see how much better you are. But I think, now that you are able to bear it, we should be thinking of home.’
And in a moment the chill which the minister had foreseen fell upon Isabel. It came upon her like a sudden frost, suddenly quenching the light out of her eyes. She said ‘Yes?’ not so much in acquiescence as with a sudden wistful question as to when and how this change was to come.
‘I was thinking of the end of the week,’ said Miss Catherine steadily, ‘if that would be agreeable to you.’
‘Anything would be agreeable to me,’ said Isabel, with a little rush of tears to her eyes—‘whatever pleases you. It has been so kind, oh! so kind of you——’
‘You are not to speak to me of kindness,’ said the old lady. ‘It was a pleasure to myself. But now, God be thanked! you’re well and strong; and bonnie Loch Diarmid will be in all its beauty. Are you not wearying to get home?’
‘Oh, yes. I shall be glad——’ faltered Isabel. But it took the colour from her cheek, and silenced all the little cheerful strain of talk which by degrees had developed in her. ‘You have stayed away all this time for me,’ she said, feeling this a subject on which she could more easily enlarge.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Catherine, without hesitation; ‘I don’t pretend to deny it, my dear. It has been for you. And I am very glad I came. You are a different creature. But all the same it will be a great pleasure to get home.’
Isabel said nothing more. Oh, why was not theminister there to take her part? He would have read the sudden dullness in her eye, the change upon her voice. She sat for the rest of the day quenched out, making attempts to speak now and then, but failing utterly; trying to smile and to talk as Miss Catherine did about the proposed return. Oh! how the girl envied Miss Catherine! The old woman was as lonely as the young one. She had her duties, it was true; but no one to make Loch Diarmid pleasant to her. And yet how pleased she was to go back to all the tedium! Was it only because she was old and Isabel young?
‘You’ll feel the change, my dear,’ said Miss Catherine the day after, as they sat together alone. ‘It will be a trial to you going home.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Isabel, eagerly; and then she made an effort and said, very low, ‘It will bring everything to my mind—but, then, it was never out of my mind; it will be as if it had all happened over again——’
‘It would have been the same sooner or later,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘It has to be got over. And now, I hope, you are able to bear it. And when you weary, my dear, you can come to me. I will always be glad to see you—when I have the time.’
‘Thank you,’ said Isabel, feeling her heart sink in her breast. Glad to see her—when she had time! After having been a mother to her, and her companion for so long, opening up all her various stores of experience and knowledge on Isabel’s behalf, feeding her with legend and tale. And now that was over, too—and Jean Campbell and Jean Campbell’s bairns were all the companions she should have in the dim future. Oh, for Margaret! Oh, for the love that was gone! Oh, for—— Isabel knew not what she would have said. Anything that would have warded off from her the blank that was about to come.
‘It will not be cheerful for you, Isabel,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘but you have a stout heart, and you must not forget it is your duty. This has been very pleasant for the time. It is cheery to see new people and new places. But home is ay home.’
‘Yes,’ assented Isabel, feeling in her heart that she was the most abandoned of sinners not to be able to feel any rapture at the thought.
‘And there is no saying when we may have another such holiday,’ said Miss Catherine, cheerfully. Isabel could make no reply. The full force of the change rushed upon her. The sounds in the street seemed to grow melodious as she thought how short a time she would have it in her power to listen to them. And it seemed to her that her friend was quite unaware of thetumult which this intimation had raised in her breast. Had Isabel known how cunningly Miss Catherine had contrived it, how she had been working up to this climax, and kept the ‘cold plunge’ as her most effectual weapon, the girl’s mind would have risen up in arms against such cruelty. Miss Catherine left her seated, melancholy, over some work, with every line in her face turned downwards, and the new life gone out of her, and retired to her own room that she might be able to chuckle unrestrained over her success. ‘She’ll marry him, if he ask her, in six weeks,’ Miss Catherine said to herself.
Left to herself, Isabel cried—not altogether because she was going home—because she was so wicked as not to be glad at going home—because her badness of heart was such that she regretted her holiday life with all its indulgences. When she returned to the Glebe, should she be able, she asked herself, to resist the movements of her own feelings, to think as little of Stapylton as he did of her, to keep from longing and looking and listening till the suspense brought on another fever? What should she do to occupy herself? to keep off such a humbling absorption in one thought? There was but one bright spot in all the monotonous landscape: the minister would stand by her, whatever happened to her. Night or day she could trust to his sympathy. He would come to her when she called him, stand by her, be her support, her counsellor, her guide. She thought not of him, but of herself, with youth’s spontaneous, unintentional selfishness. It did not occur to her to think of him. But so far already Miss Catherine’s spells had wrought.
They arrived at Loch Diarmid at the end of the ensuing week; and were met, not only by Mr. Lothian and by the carriage and servants from Lochhead, but also by Jean Campbell, eager to see her charge, and rapturous over the change in her appearance. From the moment in which they left the steamer. Miss Catherine began to carry out her remorseless policy. She kissed Isabel as soon as she had stepped ashore, and took leave of her.
‘You’ll come and see me, my dear, whenever you have time,’ she said; ‘but you’ve a good long walk to the Glebe, and I will not hinder you now.’ And Isabel, standing still by her stepmother’s side, waiting till Jean had arranged to have someone sent after them with the boxes, watched her friend drive away with an undescribable sinking at her heart. Miss Catherine compelled the minister to enter the carriage with her. She pulled him by the sleeve, and whispered in his ear, and resorted to violent measures to bring him, as she called it, to himself. ‘Go with her now, and you show her her own power, andyou’ll spoil all,’ she said; and the bewildered man yielded. The carriage flashed away, while Isabel stood, not able to believe her eyes, on the little pier. The summer evening light was sweet upon the Loch, glancing down aslant on the braes, which were golden with the setting sun; and the labourers were going home, and all the soft sounds of repose and domestic reunion were in the air. Jean was busy with the man on the pier about the luggage. Since Isabel had left that same spot nearly three months before, nobody of Jean’s appearance or manners had come near her, except as an attendant; and it would be difficult to explain the sudden sense of desertion, the cruel solitude, and mortification and falling back upon herself, with which the girl looked after her friend.
Her friend! Had it been love for her at all which had moved Miss Catherine, or only pity, and a disagreeable duty, from which she was glad to be relieved. Was there anyone in the world who cared for Isabel—for herself? They had been sorry when she was ill; they had pitied her. Even the minister—he was gone too, with Miss Catherine, leaving her in the first moment of her return all by herself. Tears flooded to Isabel’s eyes, and these were driven back by pride, and rushed to her heart again, filling it with a silent bitterness beyond all expression. It was a kind of public affront to her, leaving her there on the pier to make her way home as she could. Even Jean opened her eyes when she returned to the spot where her stepdaughter stood forlorn.
‘They might have taken you with them as far as Lochhead,’ said Jean. ‘Is that the way your grand friends part with you? And the minister, too! I canna understand it. They might have taken you with them as far as Lochhead.’
‘I would rather walk,’ said Isabel, though she had a struggle to enunciate the words; and then the two took the familiar road and went on together, as if it were all a dream.
There was a little consolation in the changed aspect of the little parlour, the engravings on the walls, the little bookshelves, the volumes the minister had chosen. It would not behisfault that he had so left her. And for the first time a sense of pleasure and pride in the watchful, anxious tenderness of her elderly lover came into Isabel’s mind. At that particular moment she was so forlorn that these marks of his thought for her came sweet to her heart. It could not be his fault. As soon as she had taken off her bonnet, she who had come up the road with such languor, feeling a weariness altogether out of proportion with the fatigue she hadundergone, came eager to look at her new treasures. He had consulted her about them all, though she had not known why. She it was who had unwittingly chosen the half-dozen prints which so changed the aspect of the grey walls. He had remembered exactly what she liked, what she had said, shy as her opinions on such subjects always were. Her countenance smoothed out under this influence. Jean, who had been rather contemptuous of the ‘nonsense,’ followed her about while she examined everything with anxious eyes. ‘She’s real weel in her health; but oh, I’m feared she’s changed,’ had been Jean’s first thought as Isabel’s abstracted looks and indifferent answers to all her news chilled her warm delight in her stepdaughter’s return. ‘After a’ your grandeur, you’ll no think much of your ain little house,’ she had even said, with a perceptible taunt as they entered it. And Isabel’s first step, which had been to sit down on Margaret’s sofa, and cry her heart out, had, natural as it was, been a blow to Jean. She had herself become callous to the associations of the place; and she had taken so much trouble to set out the tea there, and brighten it for the home-coming. But when Isabel perceived the change about her, and began to brighten, Jean brightened too.
‘Eh! if I had but thought you would have cared,’ she said. ‘There’s the history o’ the Prodigal up in the garret, a’ painted and grand, no like thae black-and-white things. But I never thought ye would care. Oh, aye, it was just the minister! and a foolish thing it was for a man of his years, climbing up on chairs and hammering away like a working man. But so long as you’re pleased——’
‘Did he do everything himself?’ said Isabel.
‘Oh, ‘deed did he—everything; and would have jumpit into the Loch at the end, if that would have pleased ye. The man’s just infatuate. I think shame to see it—at his time of life.’
‘He is not so old,’ said Isabel.
‘Ye’ve gotten to your English the time you’ve been away,’ said Jean; ‘and nae doubt it’s as it should be, for you that’s a lady born—but it doesna sound so kindly as the auld way. And you’re bonnier than ever;’ she added, walking round her stepdaughter with admiring eyes; ‘and it’s a pleasure to see a gown that fits like that; and you’ve gotten a new way of doing your hair; you’re like some of the Miss Campbells that visited Lochhead, or that English young lady that was living down the Loch. But eh, my bonnie woman, ye’re no like the Captain’s Isabel.’
‘I don’t know that there is any difference,’ said Isabel,touched in spite of herself by the tears that rose in her stepmother’s eyes.
‘Nor me,’ said Jean, putting up her apron. ‘I canna tell what it is, but I see it. Eh, Isabel, I’m an auld fool. I’ve been thinking we might be real happy, now you kent me better. But I see the Glebe’s nae place for you now. You’ll no bide long here.’
‘Where should I go to?’ said Isabel, with a little bitterness; ‘no, you need not be afraid. I am wanted nowhere but in my own house.’
‘You couldna be any place where you would be mair thought of,’ said Jean wistfully, ‘but you’re no to be angry at Miss Catherine either. It was want of thought, maybe, or that she took it into her head that you and me—after being so long parted—would like best to be alone.’
‘Angry! why should I be angry?’ said Isabel. ‘It is not that. I did not think of Miss Catherine. She has been very kind, and I hope I am grateful——’
‘You’re her ain kith and kin. I dinna see the call for gratitude,’ said Jean, with a little heat. ‘And she might have brought ye hame in the carriage, and nae harm done. I never understand your fine folk. But sit down, my lamb, and I’ll pour you out your tea, and ye maun try to mind we would a’ lay down our lives for you, and that you’re in your ain house, and can do as you please.’
Perhaps there was a forlorn satisfaction in that, after all. But when Isabel crept to bed, a few hours later, without any visit from the minister, without any communication from Lochhead, her heart was far from light. She wept in the dark when she laid herself down in her own little bed. It had been a dream, that was all; and now she had come back, and was no longer of consequence to anyone—a Miss Diarmid, companion of Miss Catherine, and favourite of society no longer; but only the Captain’s Isabel, too lowly for the lairds, too high for the peasants. Visions came across her mind of the scenes she had lately taken a part in, of the smiles that had been bestowed upon her, of the interest with which her simple words had been listened to; and now no smiles, no flattering tribute of admiring looks, were to be hers. Miss Catherine had put her back decisively into her own place; and the minister—even the minister! Yes, he was very good to her; he had given her books and pictures to amuse her, as if she had been a solitary child. It was the last little mark, no doubt, of the interest in her which she had attributed to another feeling. But why should Mr. Lothian care for her? Why should Miss Catherine care for her? They had been very kind to her, which is quite a different matter. They had curedher of her illness, and done a great deal to improve her; and now they had put her back softly, but firmly, at once into her own place. No doubt it was best, Isabel thought, turning her face to the wall, that she should know at once how it was to be; but yet it was a strange downfall—and very hard to bear.
She did not go to church on the following Sunday, pleading her fatigue; and with an unexpressed hope that Miss Catherine would have sent to take her along with herself; but Miss Catherine took no notice. She made the proper inquiries of Jean, and was sorry to hear Isabel was tired; but that was all. Mortification, anger, and disappointed affection surged up all together in poor Isabel’s mind. One of those forlorn days, with her veil over her face, she made her way, by the most unfrequented paths she could think of, to her sister’s grave. It was in a corner of the churchyard, out of the way of passers-by; and Isabel threw herself down by it and clasped her arms round the white stone in all the abandonment of her immediate pain, though that pain was not primarily called forth by the loss of Margaret. After she had wept out all her tears, she still retained her position, her soft arms wound about the stone, clinging to it as she might have clung to her sister, her head leaning against it, her dilated, tear-worn eyes gazing sadly into the air at their full strain, though she saw nothing.
She was watched, though she did not know that anyone was near. Mr. Lothian had yielded against his will to Miss Catherine’s peremptory counsels, but he had kept upon the watch wherever Isabel went, finding out her movements by that strange mesmerism of sympathy which conveys our secrets through the air. He had seen her to the grave, though she had not seen him. And when her tears were over, and she sank down into this melancholy embrace of all that was left to her, the man’s heart could bear it no longer. She whom he could scarcely refrain from taking to his protecting arms when she felt but little need of him, how could he stand by and see her clinging to the cold gravestone as to her only refuge? Isabel was too much absorbed, too hopeless of any external consolation, to hear the rustle through the grass as he came to her. He had fallen upon his knees by her side before she roused herself to turn those wistful, strained eyes to him. And then all considerations of what he might or might not do had been driven out of his mind. He put his arms tenderly round her, not even thinking of love, thinking of nothing but her need. ‘My bonnie darling!’ he said with a sob, ‘my precious Isabel! It’s the living you must come to, and not the dead, my dear! my dear!’
‘I have nothing but Margaret in the world,’ said the girl, with sudden, sharp anguish, the fountain of her tears once more opened by this unexpected tenderness. She thought as little of love or lovemaking as he did in the sudden flooding of his heart. Nor was Isabel conscious how he drew her away from the chill stone to his own breast, and held her, letting fall actual tears over her as he had not done twice in his life before.
‘No, no; not there!’ he said, unconscious of his own words, holding her close to him, clasping her fast, and thinking, as men so seldom think, not of himself, but of her. It did not even occur to him how sweet it was to appropriate her thus to himself. It was her want, her absolute need of him, her self-abandonment which he could not bear. ‘Here, my darling,’ the man murmured, with a pathetic abnegation of his own feelings, ‘lean here;’ and so held her upon his bosom, schooling himself to be—if need were—her father instead of her lover—anything to comfort her in the moment of her weakness. When Isabel came to herself, he was gazing upon her, as she leant on his shoulder, as if from an unapproachable distance. She was in his arms, and yet his eyes rested on her with wistful reverence, as though she had been miles away.
‘I did not mean to be so weak and so foolish,’ she said, gathering herself away from him with a vivid blush. ‘I thought I was—alone—I thought——’
‘You thought you had nothing in the world but her that is gone,’ said the minister. ‘Isabel! and yet you know who is the light of my eyes, and the desire of my heart?’
She leant her hand again upon the stone, her tears dried, her heart beating, and visibly a crisis before her, which must affect her whole life.
‘I am old enough to be your father,’ he said, with his voice trembling. ‘I never forget that. I’ve seen you grow up bonnie and bright, and loved you more year after year. And now I feel as if I were taking an advantage of my bonnie darling. Isabel, if your life were bright and full of love it would be different. But you are alone. And never man on earth could love you dearer than I do. Will you let me take care of you, my darling?’ he cried, and took her hands and gazed into her face. ‘Will you come to my house and make it glad? I’ll be young for my Isabel!’ said the minister, with tears in his eyes. And the virgin heart within him came to his face and chased away the years as if by magic. He was kneeling, though he was not aware of it; and his eyes and every line in his countenance were pleading more eloquently than words. But Isabel, in whose heart two rival forceswere struggling, was too much agitated and blinded by her own feelings to see.
‘Oh, Mr. Lothian, let me go home!’ she cried, stumbling to her feet. ‘How can I think of this—how can I answer you here?’
‘You shall answer me where you please,’ he cried, rising with her, and supporting her with his arms. ‘When you please and where you please, my darling! But it is here of all places that I want you to know—Isabel, youknow?—that there is one that loves you above life, above happiness—more than words can say.’
She turned to him for one moment, and gave a sudden, tearful look at his agitated face. ‘I know, I know!’ she cried. ‘Oh, let me go home, now!’
And he drew her hand within his arm, and took her home, saying not another word. All was said that could be said. It was for her to decide now.
Yetthe minister said one more word as he left his love at her own door. He had been debating the question with himself as they crossed the braes, whether he should leave it to her to answer him when she pleased and where she pleased, as he at first said. He took her to her own door without a word more upon this subject of which his heart was full; but ere he left her, he paused a moment, holding her hand in his. ‘Isabel,’ he said, but without looking at her, ‘if I come to-morrow will you give me my answer?’
Isabel made no reply. She gave him an anxious, timid look, and withdrew her hand, yet lingered upon the threshold as if there still might be something to say.
‘I will come to-morrow for my answer,’ he repeated in a more decided tone. And then the cottage-door closed on her, and he went away.
‘Eh, is the minister no coming in?’ said Jean Campbell. ‘Pity me, Isabel, what have ye done to him—him that was for ever in this house, and now he never enters the door?’
‘I have done nothing to him,’ said Isabel. ‘What should I do to him? I have nothing in my power.’
‘Oh, lassie, speak the truth!’ said Jean. ‘You ken weel, and a’ the Loch kens, that you have mair power over him than kith and kin—aye, or the very Presbytery itself. But you’re that perverse, ye’ll listen to nobody; and I doubt but ye’ve been unkind to him, or gibed at him, puir man! and he has nae fault that I ken of but his years.’
‘I don’t think he is very old,’ said Isabel, half under her breath; and she went away into the little parlour which he had decorated for her, and sat down by the window, all alone, without even taking off her bonnet. Never before in her life had she been conscious of having anything so important to think about. Thinking had nothing to do with the matter when Stapylton was concerned. It was nothing but a struggle then between her love and grief—between the lover’s eager wishes on one hand, and all the tender decorums of life, all the claims of the past, on the other. She had struggled, but she had not required to think. But now there had come such an occasion for thought as she had never before known. The question was not one of inclination or any such urgent motive for or against as should have settled it for her, without loss of time; on the contrary, it was of the very nature of those questions which demand the clearest thought. Love, as she had apprehended it once, had floated altogether away, she told herself, out of her life. Of that there was to be no more question, either then or for ever; but yet life would not end because it had been thus divested of its highest beauty. And Isabel knew she was young, and felt that she had a long existence before her. Was she to do nothing for the comfort of that existence—nothing to win it out of the mists and dreams? She sat down breathless, her heart heaving with the agitation through which she had lately passed, her nature all astir and moved by a hundred questionings. She did not love Mr. Lothian. Love was over for her—gone out of her life like a tale that is told; but life had to continue all the same: and what kind of life?
Then she did what, in the circumstances, was a strange thing to do. She went to her room, and took out of the locked drawer, the only one she possessed, Stapylton’s letter, which had lain there for months. But she could not read it there, nor even in the parlour where there were so many signs of the one love and none of the other. She went out, for she was still in her walking dress, carrying the letter in her hand. No, she could not seat herself under the birch-tree on the hill and read it there—the spell of its associations would havebeen toostrong; the very air, the bees among the heather, the rustling of the branches, would have spoken to her of him who had met her so often on that spot. Isabel hesitated for a moment in doubt, and then she crossed the road and ascended the hill opposite the cottage. The place she sought had already grown to be a sacred spot to all the country-side. The burn still ran trickling by, though the sweet thoughts that once accompanied it were still; the rowan hung out its odorous blossoms over the grassy seat.It was Margaret’s little oratory to which her sister went to think over her fate.
And there she read Stapylton’s letter over again. Her own mind had advanced, her manners had changed since she read it last. She had grown used to the delicate, ever thoughtful tenderness of a man who not only loved her, but was full of old-world, chivalrous respect for her womanhood and her youth. Her eyes flashed, her whole heart revolted now, as she read this letter. When she had come to the end she cast it from her like a reptile, and clasped her hands over her face with a sudden thrill of shame that blazed over her like fire. She was ashamed of having inspired, of having received, of having ever reconciled herself to such an address. What could he have thought of her to write to her so?—how could he have dared? Isabel did not know how much her own estimation of herself, and the world, had changed since she read it first. It wrung from her a moaning cry of injury and self-disgust. To think that she should have borne it—that she should have spent her tenderest thoughts on a man who was so confident of his power over her, so insulting in his security! The letter lay white on the grass, and the breeze caught it, turned it contemptuously over, and tossed it to the edge of the burn, where it lay dabbling in the soft little current. It was the first thing that caught Isabel’s eye as she uncovered her face. No, she could not let it float away on the burn to tell the passers-by how little respect her first love had felt for her. She caught it up fiercely and thrust it back into the envelope, as if the paper itself had harmed her.
Then she went silently home, holding Stapylton’s letter in her hand. She did not put it even in her pocket as a thing belonging to her; but held it, wetted by the burn, listlessly in her hand. Yet she put it back once more into the locked drawer. It was one of her possessions still, no more to be parted with than any other legacy of her past life. It was still afternoon, and the broad bright summer sunshine lay over the Loch. Isabel sat down at her parlour window, listless and alone. She was tired with her walk, and had ‘no object,’ as her stepmother said, in going out again. She could not now wander about the braes as she had once done. There was a heap of work lying on the table, domestic mending and making, chiefly for herself; but she could not sit down to that silent occupation at a moment when all the wheels of life were standing still, with an expectant jar and thrill, to await the least movement of her finger. She took a book at first; but her own thoughts and her own situation were more interesting than any book. Then she gazed out, without well knowing what she saw—but bydegrees, her perceptions quickening, became aware that Miss Catherine’s boat, with its bright cushions, was gliding out from the beach opposite Lochhead. It was a boat which could be identified at once from all the coarser forms on the Loch. There were ladies in it—young ladies, as Isabel felt. The boat stood out shining on the silvery sunshiny water, with its shadow as vivid below as was the substance above. That was how life went for the others—a life within Isabel’s reach, so near that she could touch it with her finger. It seemed to her that she could hear their voices and laughter while she sat alone. They were going up Tam-na-hara, the highest hill on Loch Diarmid, to judge by the direction they were taking—a merry party, with the sunshine flooding all round them and their joyful way.
When the boat disappeared, Isabel took up some of the work that lay on her table. Had it even been work for the children there might have been some sort of consolation in it; but it was for herself. She seemed to be shut up in a little round all circling in herself—the grey walls her only surroundings—this homely household her only sphere. At six Jean came to the door and called her to tea. The children were seated at their porridge, Margaret’s chair had been carefully put out of the way, and Isabel sat down on her stepmother’s other side, to the curious composite meal. She was not disposed to listen, but Jean was as little disposed to be silent.
‘Mary’s been complaining of her head,’ she said; ‘I think I’ll no send her to the school the morn; maybe you would give her a bit lesson, Isabel, out of one of your books, as you used to do. There’s measles about the Loch. I dinna like to expose her at the school.’
‘Very well—if she likes,’ said Isabel.
‘Na, we’ll no ask her whatshelikes. Jamie’s been keepit in again the day. If I was Mr. Galbraith, I’d find some means of making a callant work better than ay keeping him in. Losh, I would think shame to be mastered by a wean! And you, ye muckle haverel, why should I be at a’ the trouble, and Isabel at a’ the expense, keeping ye at the school when ye learn nothing? Laddie, ye’ve nae ambition. If Mary had been the lad and you the lass——’
‘I wouldna be a lassie to be the Queen,’ said Jamie in indignation.
‘I can do a’ his lessons better than he can,’ cried little Mary; ‘I never was keepit in in my life. I’m ay dux, and he’s booby—!’
‘Whisht! whisht! and no quarrel,’ said Jean. ‘There’s company at Lochhead, Isabel. Nae doubt that’s the reason Miss Catherine has never been here. But shemight have sent for ye when there were young folk about. I’m no meaning a word against you, my bonnie woman; but you were ay a hasty bit thing, and strangers dinna ken the warm heart that’s wi’ it. It’s vexed me, the minister no coming in. You’ve been taking affronts, Isabel, at them; or some of your pridefu’ ways; they were a’ a great deal mair here in the auld time——’
‘It was for another, and not for me,’ said Isabel, with sudden humiliation.
‘I’m no saying that,’ said Jean; ‘but onyway there’s a change. I have my ain pride, though I’m but a cotter’s daughter myself—and you’ve mair right to it, that are a lady born—but if you’ll no take it amiss, Isabel, a young lass like you shouldna show it to the like of them. They’re no used to it. And though you’ve good blood in your veins, you’re no just the same as Miss Catherine; and it canna be a small thing that’s turned the minister that he wouldna come in.’
‘There might be other reasons for that,’ said Isabel under her breath.
‘What are ye saying? The man has worshipped the very ground ye trod on since you were little older than Mary,’ said Jean seriously; ‘I’m no saying I understand it for my part. He’s aulder than me—and figure me fashing my head about a young lad! But if he wearies at the last it can only have been your blame.’
‘I think it would be best not to speak of such things,’ said Isabel, with some heat, ‘before the bairns.’
‘Maybe you’re right there,’ Jean muttered, after a moment’s pause. And then she resumed, ‘Mary, you’ll get your seam if there’s nae lessons to be learned to-night—unless Isabel gives you some of her poetry—and, Jamie, get you your books. If you’re diligent, maybe Isabel will gie ye a hand. Poor thing!’ she said to herself, as she turned away to put her room in order after the meal, ‘it’s the best thing I can do for her—better than sitting hand idle and no a creature to speak to her. If she were a lass that could go to service, or even that could stir about the house. But her that was never brought up to do anything, and a lady born!’
The next morning, when Isabel was putting her books in order, and wiping the dust from the shelves he had put up for her, and pleading his cause to herself, Miss Catherine suddenly appeared at the Glebe. A more unexpected visitor could scarcely have been, and for the moment Isabel was disposed to be stately and affronted. Miss Catherine paused, almost before she spoke, to look round and observe the change in the room. She shook her head as she kissed Isabel. ‘Poor man!’ she said; ‘poor man! that’s what his wisdom suggested to him. Tomake your own house pleasant and cheery when he should have thought of nothing but tempting you to his.’ This was a sufficient indication of her mission. She sat down steadily with the air of establishing herself for serious work, and pointed Isabel to a seat near her. ‘My dear, sit down; I have a great deal to say to you,’ she said; and the girl’s impatient temper fired at once.
‘Whatever you have to say, Miss Catherine, it can surely be said while I am doing my work,’ she said, turning to her books. But she was held by the glittering eye which her old friend, half-contemptuous of her petulance, fixed upon her, and after a vain attempt to continue her occupation, turned round and dropped into the indicated place. ‘You have not said anything yet,’ said Isabel, but with a feeling that already she was having the worst.
‘I might speak to my housemaid while she was dusting,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘but not to you, Isabel Diarmid. I have come to ask you but one question, my dear. Are you going to be a reasonable creature, and make yourself and an honest man happy? or do you mean to deliver yourself over to weariness and this do-nothing life?’
‘I have plenty to do,’ said Isabel, startled, but without sufficient presence of mind to answer anything but the first natural scrap of self-defence on which she could lay her hand.
‘It is not true, Isabel; you have nothing to do worthy a young woman of good connections by the mother’s side, as you are. And when you have better in your power, and a life that is worth your while, and a man that is fond of you, do you mean to tell me you will throw them all away?’
‘Miss Catherine,’ said Isabel, almost crying, ‘you have been very kind; but I don’t know why you should question me like this. At home I am not so good as you; you don’t care to come to see me or take notice of me. Why should you take any interest in me now?’
‘Well, you may say it is him I take an interest in,’ said Miss Catherine, dryly. ‘If you are affronted, Isabel, as you appear to be, I am come to tell you what will happen if you send him away again as you did before, and take no courage to look into your own heart. Are you happy without him? If it comes to be that he will never pass this road again, never enter this room, nor take more interest in you, will that be a pleasant ending in your eyes?’
Isabel made no answer; she only turned her head away, with flushed cheeks and averted looks.
‘For, don’t deceive yourself,’ said Miss Catherine,‘that would be the result. He may have been weak, but he has always been able to hope; but if you say “No” now, there will be no middle course for him. If he puts himself in your way again, I, for one, will wash my hands of him; and I will never do anything to throw him in your way. Do you understand what I mean?’
‘Yes, I understand,’ cried the girl; ‘but if you think—if you think—I am to be threatened——! Miss Catherine, you have been very kind; but you are not my mother, or my near friend, to meddle with me now.’
‘But Iwillmeddle,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘and for your good. Will you part with him and me, and all that is best near you, for a dream—a delusion—a fancy of your bit foolish heart? Or will you accept a happy life and a good man, and all that heart can desire, when Providence offers them to you, Isabel?—that is what I have come to ask. And I’ll not go till I get my answer. I was fond of your mother, and fond of Margaret, and I am fond of you,’ said the old lady, with softening eyes. ‘My dear, I would give a good year of my life to see you so safe landed. They are gone that would have advised you better than me; but I cannot stand by and let you throw your life away. It would be a happy, good life. You would be like the apple of his eye. He loves you like the men in books—like the men in your poetry you’re so fond of, him and you. If I were as young as you, and my life in my own hands again—— But when I was your age I was a fool; will you be like all the rest of us, and choose your own dream, and let your life go by?’
‘Were the rest like that?’ said Isabel, suddenly rousing up, with white lips and troubled eyes, to gaze at her monitor, who had thus changed her tone all at once.
‘I could tell you stories of that,’ said Miss Catherine, suddenly taking the girl’s hand into her own, ‘and some day I may. But there is no time for that now. Isabel, will you think well, and ponder what I say?’
‘I am dizzy with thinking,’ said Isabel, putting her hand to her head with a certain despair.
‘Then think no more,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘but take what God sends you. He must not find me here; he would never forgive me. Isabel, me, that was your mother’s friend, I bid you make that man happy, and not sin against your own life. He’ll come before I can get away. God bless you, bairn,’ said Miss Catherine, hurriedly kissing her, ‘and don’t forget what I say.’
Miss Catherine’swords had scarcely died out of Isabel’s ear when the minister himself stood at the door.
She was standing where her kinswoman had left her—standing in front of the window, where the light fell full upon her face and figure, her hands held softly together, her eyes full of uncertainty and anxious thought. When Mr. Lothian came in she raised them to him with a dumb entreaty, which went to his heart. He had come to have an answer to his love-suit; and she who had to decide it stood gazing at him, praying him meekly to tell her what to do and what to say!
He came forward at that appeal, and took her hands into his.
‘Isabel,’ he said, with a voice full of emotion, ‘must I leave it over till another time, and come back when you have made up your mind? My darling, you are not to make yourself unhappy for me.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ she said, half-sobbing; ‘I cannot tell what to do. Tell me what to do. It is you that know best.’
And once more she raised her eyes to her lover—humble, beseeching, asking his counsel. Surely never man was in so strange a dilemma before. He made a little pause to master himself; he made an effort to throw off from him his natural interest in his own suit. He looked at her, into her beseeching eyes, to see her heart through them, if that might be. His voice sunk to the lowest passionate tones.
‘Isabel,’ he said, clasping her hand so closely that he hurt her, ‘do you lovehimstill?’
Then there came a cry as of a dumb creature, and big tears rolled up into her eyes.
‘No!’ she said, gazing at him with those two liquid globes—dark, unfathomable seas, in which all his skill and wisdom failed. It seemed to him as if she had, by some craft of nature, veiled the eyes which he might have divined, with the unshed tears which he could not divine.
‘You only can tell,’ he cried, losing such semblance as he had of calm—‘you only can tell! Isabel, do you love him still?’
‘No!’ she repeated, with more energy; ‘no, oh, no—never again!’ and let the tears drop, and looked at him softly, with her eyes unclouded.
‘Then come to me!’ he said, almost with violence, letting her hands fall and holding out his arms to her.
She paused; a flood of colour rushed over her face, that had been so pale. Her eyes fell before his. She held out to him the two hands he had loosed his hold of, and put them into his. It was not such love as he had dreamed. His heart, that was so young and full of fire, ached with the pang of the almost disappointment, though it was better to him than any other satisfaction. She gave herself to him sweetly, gently, with a soft, virginal calm.
‘Yes,’ she said under her breath, ‘if you will take me—this way—if you are content——’
‘My dear, my dear, more than content!’ he cried, his heart beating with love and joy, and disappointment, and mortification, and happiness. She was so gently acquiescent, so calm, so—resigned—yes, that was the word; while he was full of all a young man’s fervour and passion. And yet, at last, she was his, and it was sweet. When he left her he did his best to school himself in the tumult of his emotions. Was it not always so? Could one mortal creature ever fully satisfy another at that supreme moment and junction of two lives? Was there not ever too little or too much—a failure from the perfect dream, the unspeakable union? But she was his all the same—to be cherished, cared for, made happy—she who was so unfriended. About that side of the matter there would be no doubt; and she would consent to his happiness, acquiesce in it, smile with soft wonder at his passion. Well, after all, was not that a woman’s natural part?
Isabel, for her part, was very giddy when it was all over, and felt like a creature in a dream. When she stood up the light seemed to swim away from her eyes, and a blackness came over the world. Something sang and buzzed in her ears; strange colours seemed to creep over the Loch and prismatic reflections. But yet amid all the bewilderment and confusion was a sense of comfort that it was settled at last. She had no more need to question with herself—no effort to make after a decision; a sense of quiet stole into her soul, the storm was over, and she had reached the haven.
That was an exciting day at the Glebe. Miss Catherine returned in the afternoon in the carriage, which was a rare grandeur, and kissed Isabel, and blessed her. She had gained her purpose, and it was no longer needful to shut the girl out from her house and her life. As the first symptom of the great change over, she carried Isabel off in the carriage to join the visitors at Lochhead; and it was Miss Catherine who intimated the great news to Jean, who had been much startled and mystified by the commotion in the house, though without any very clear idea what it meant. It was an intimation not without its importance to Jean, and took away her breath; butshe received it with a stoical concealment of her own individual feelings, with a few tears, and a shower of good wishes. ‘And me that was finding fault with Isabel because the minister wouldna come in!’ she said, with an unsteady laugh.
Meanwhile Isabel, with her head swimming, had gone back to the other sphere for which she had sighed, and found herself the object of a thousand little regards and observations. Miss Catherine, after her neglect, did not seem able to do enough to show her affection; and ere long the minister, now no longer her friend and adviser, but her lover and affianced husband, joined the party. The sight of him had the most curious effect on Isabel; she was immediately covered, as by a shield, from Miss Catherine’s too demonstrative satisfaction, from the overwhelming comments of the others; but for herself her head swam more than ever, and the solid earth seemed to have grown unsteady under her feet. She was in a dream; not such a sweet dream as he was walking about in, his head in the clouds; and not painful either, as one doomed and going to the sacrifice. It was only confusion—a mist which she could not penetrate—something which blurred all the outlines and confounded one object with another. She kept apart, and kept silent, feeling that if she spoke she would be incoherent, and if she moved might totter. It was all so new. When she had time to use herself to ‘what had happened,’ things would be different; such, at least, was what she said to herself.
But things were very little different until the wedding took place, which was a few days after the completion of the year of mourning for her sister. During the interval she scarcely ever regained her balance. She was as composed as usual, and took everything with outward calm; but she did not know what she was doing. The notes of her being were jangled out of tune—not harshly, but vaguely. The effect upon her was not to distort, but to dim everything. The world became vague, and all that was in it. It did not seem to her that she was to begin only a new chapter of existence, but that a new book, mysterious and strange, lay before her, beyond the crisis which she slowly approached. And at last the day came; a September day, early in the month, when the heather had just died out of bloom, and the crack of the sportsman’s gun was heard on the hills. There was no church-going procession, no pretty stream of bridal maidens from the Glebe to the church. The marriage took place in the little grey parlour, with the decorations in it which the bridegroom had put up, and with the associations that were so sacred to both. They stood where Margaret’s sofa had stood, where she had died,and were made man and wife. And when it was done and had become irrevocable the bride woke up with a little cry—the mist vanished from her eyes and she saw things clear—a cloud of interested, smiling faces around her, a man by her side who was her husband—the new life, no longer a matter of the future, but present, had begun.
‘Did you speak, my darling?’ said her new husband, drawing her arm through his, and looking at her with the ineffable satisfaction in his eyes of a man who had attained all his desires, and reached the summit of content.
Isabel gazed up at him, attracted and touched in spite of herself by that wonderful look of happiness, scarcely able to refrain from being glad for him, notwithstanding the sharp and new impression of reality which weighed so strangely on herself. ‘I never thought it would come true,’ she sighed, turning her head away with momentary petulance, and burst into uncontrollable tears.
The bystanders were too much interested in the bride to notice if any cloud passed over the minister’s face. Had there been so, it would have been foolish; for was it not to be expected that a bride the moment she was married should signalise that wonderful event by the most natural sign of emotion? It was but what everyone looked for, an almost duty of her position. The women took her from her husband and kissed and blessed and cried over her in their turn. ‘And nae mother to support her at sic a time,’ the humbler wedding-guests said to each other as they stood about the door. There were two lines of sympathetic gazers all round the post-chaise when it came to take the bridal pair away; fashion was not urgent on that point on Loch Diarmid—but Mr. Lothian, with all the poetry of youth still in him, was eager to carry his love away and have her all to himself. She was very pale and trembled excessively as she was led out of her father’s house; but at last she had fully awakened out of all her dreamings, and felt the force of the change she had made. And Isabel did not turn from, but to, her husband in that dangerous crisis of her being. Whatever might happen, she was conscious that he was her support and comforter. She put her hand into his trustfully, and went away—not happy as he was, yet at peace. Into the long summer stretch of life, the existence without passion, without suffering, that lay before her now all was over; taking farewell—was it for ever?—of the cottage in which she had been born.
Thewedding tour was but a short one; and when the snow appeared on the hills in October, and the early winter began to isolate Loch Diarmid from the rest of the world, Isabel stood by the Manse window, as she had pictured herself standing, and looked for her husband coming home. She had dreamed of it all; and somehow, out of a dream it had come to a reality, and she found herself in the very position she had imagined, still somewhat wistful, but no longer sad, or distracted by any of the doubts of the past. It would be impossible to say how good he was to her, as good as a good man of the most generous and delicate instincts could be to a young creature whom he loved with all his heart, and with a certain touch of compunction and compassion, and a ghost of remorse mingling in his love. He was not, he knew, the kind of man she should have married; he was old enough to be her father; and the consciousness gave to his love a soft delicacy, and reverence, and tenderness, which are rare in the world. Had she been unreasonable he would have made himself a very slave to her caprices; but Isabel was not unreasonable. She was even yet a little timid of expressing her own wishes or opinions.
The aristocracy of Lochshire was not remarkable for any great intellectual qualities any more than other rural aristocracies; neither was it the highest possible school of manners and social grace. But yet it was a great advance to Isabel of the Glebe Cottage, who had no training in the ways of the world. She was a lady born, as Jean Campbell, with pride, had so often asserted; and the gentle blood, or the gentle mind, or both, asserted themselves. Imperceptibly the change crept over Isabel. Mr. Lothian was ‘well connected’ in his own person, and he was well off, having had something to begin upon, and so many years of frugal bachelor life to provide him with means for the gratification of his young wife. And Miss Catherine, proud of herprotégéeand of the match she had made, superintended Isabel’s toilette, and watched over her comings and goings. So that the winter passed away in a pleasant flutter of social occupation, and the new Mrs. Lothian had such share ofsuccésas is agreeable to a young wife setting out upon the world.
But yet, on the whole, what she preferred was the long winter nights when she watched for her husband coming home by the waning twilight, and sat down with him at the table to which her own hands had added whatdecoration was possible. If her eyes did not light up at his approach, they yet smiled softly on him with that serenity which was so new to hasty Isabel. She was glad when he liked his dinner, and listened with a sweet impartial satisfaction while he praised the dishes she had ordered for him, and sometimes helped to prepare, and her own blooming looks. She ‘took his kiss sedately,’ not more moved by it than she was by the whisper into her ear that the tea was ready, of the pretty housemaid, whom she had known all her life. And then the Dominie would stray in and deposit his gaunt length in one of the easy chairs by the drawing-room fire, and the two men would talk of all they knew, and all they had seen, and all they thought, while she sat working between them, saying now and then her half-dozen words, listening with all the fresh curiosity of her age. Her husband would pause now and then to explain to her some special subject of discourse, and Isabel would listen, smiling, looking up from her work. At first she had said, ‘Never mind, I like best to find it out from what you say; I like to hear what Mr. Galbraith thinks, and what you think, and put them together.’ But Mr. Lothian was not satisfied with that. If he had a weakness, it was to instruct his wife, and make her understand everything he was interested in. And he was a little vexed that he could not persuade her, as he said, ‘to take a part.’ But that was a slight—a very slight vexation. And Isabel did not care to take a part. She listened, and she pursued her own thoughts; and sometimes but half heard the talk, thinking of how to plant a new flower-bed as spring was coming, or whether little Mary would not be better for a new frock; or how to arrange the ladies and the gentlemen at the great dinner-party which she was shortly to give in return for the civilities of the Loch. Then she would glance at her husband, who was looking at her with his eyes so full of love. His hair was getting white, it was true; but then his cheek was still like a rose, and was set off by the white hair. And Isabel’s eyes dwelt admiringly on the ruffles which she had hemmed, which she had crimped, and in which she had placed the little pin she had given him when they were married. It was not a very valuable ornament. It was a small oblong brooch, set round with pearls, which she had herself worn with Margaret’s hair in it, as long as she could remember. Now it held a little curl of her own intertwined with Margaret’s, and had been placed on a pin to fit it for its present use. It was the only ornament of the kind the minister ever wore. And it was Isabel herself who had to put it into the delicate cambric every morning.He was so particular about his frills. And she was proud of them, and let no hand touch them but her own.
And when spring came a great idea had developed in Mr. Lothian’s mind. He had been thinking of it all the time, though he had said nothing. It was to take his wife to London, to see everything that could be seen, to go to the theatre, and the opera, and make acquaintance with the big world. It took away Isabel’s breath when the suggestion was made to her. Going to London to her was something like what going to Constantinople would be to a young woman in her position now—only so much more dazzling and splendid to think of. When Jean Campbell heard of it, it brought tears of pride to her eyes. ‘Eh, Isabel, my bonnie woman, ye have a life like a fairy-tale!’ she cried, and such was the effect produced upon the Loch in general by the news of this wonderful project.
‘His young wife has turned his head,’ said John Macwhirter. ‘There’s nae fool like an auld fool, especially when there’s a wife in the case.’
‘If it had been in to the Assembly in May, ane could understand,’ said old Sandy Diarmid, ‘to see the Lord Commissioner and a’ the sights; but London’s a different story. It would suit him better to save his siller for the family, when they come.’
‘But I hear there’s nae word of a family,’ said another gossip, ‘and he has been saving since ever he came to the parish. So long as the pulpit’s well supplied I see nae harm in’t for my part.’
At the village doors the question was still more hotly discussed.
‘Set her up with her trips to London!’ cried one of the neighbours, ‘and her only Duncan Diarmid’s daughter, as we a’ ken, and with nae right to such extravagance.’
‘But by the mother’s side Isabel’s a lady born,’ cried Jenny Spence, ‘and her father was an officer as grand as young Kilcranion, that you think so much of. When ye marry an auld man ye may well expect mair consideration at the least. A’ he can do is but little for bonnie Isabel.’
‘If they were to spend the siller on God’s service it would set them better—and him a minister,’ said Mary White.
And in higher circles there were a good many smiles and gentle jokes about the minister’s uxorious fondness. Even Miss Catherine was not quite sure about such an extravagant notion. But all the criticism did not affect Mr. Lothian. He had made all his plans, and arranged everything without regard to the popular babble. ‘Imean my Isabel to see everything, and have everything I can give her,’ he said. He had lived in that mysterious world himself when he was young. He had been tutor to the Marquis, the tutelary deity of the district, who came to church always when he was on the Loch, and had the minister to dine with him and showed him every sort of attention. London was no such wonder and enigma to him as it was to most of his parishioners. And Isabel, for the first time since her marriage, was moved with an excitement which almost renewed her impetuosity. The thought of going ‘to England’ stirred up all her dormant faculties for pleasure. She made him tell her all about it, where they should go; what the Park was like where the ladies rode; if he was sure it was quite right to go to a theatre—and a hundred other particulars; and when at last the moment came for setting out, the young creature almost threw off her wifely gravity and felt herself a girl again.
They went by sea, which was a somewhat awful experience; but yet, when she had recovered the first frightful consequences of acquaintance with the unsteady waters, even the fact of ‘the voyage’ added something to Isabel’s sense of growing experience and knowledge of life. She walked about the deck, leaning on her husband’s arm as the steamer went up the peaceable Thames, quite recovered from all unpleasant sensations, and full of bright wonder and curiosity. ‘You know everything as if you had lived here all your life,’ she said, in unfeigned admiration for her husband’s cleverness, and hung upon him, asking a thousand questions, pleased with all the novelty about her, proud of his unbounded information, a sweeter picture he thought than all London besides could produce.
‘I was here when I was young like you,’ he said, ‘when everything takes hold of one’s mind—when I did not know I was to be so happy as to bring my bonnie Isabel. I suppose it was before you were born.’
‘And perhaps you were thinking of some other Isabel,’ she said, looking up in his face, with the laughing half-jealousy of the wife, a something more like love and less like simple affection (he thought) than he had seen in her before.
‘Never,’ he said, bending down over the sweet face that was his own, ‘my darling, I never loved woman till I saw you. And when I saw you, you were no woman, but a child. I kept my heart young for you, Isabel.’
She gave him a wondering glance, and then a little flush came over her face, and she turned to ask him a question about something else which struck her on the other side of the river. She had not kept her heart freshfor him. She felt, with a momentary sense of guiltiness, that they were not equal on that point. But her very thoughts were as innocently and simply true to him now as if he had been—her father. Something like this was what Isabel thought, but not with any conscious sense that her love for her husband should have been different.
She was quite happy standing there with her hand drawn closely within his arm, proud of him and of everything about him, from his boundless knowledge down to his spotless ruffles; and felt at the present moment no need of anything else for the happiness of her life.
And Isabel enjoyed all the sights of London with the same proud satisfaction. He could tell her about everything, from Westminster and St. Paul’s down to the old gentlemen riding in the Row, among whom he pointed out to her the Duke and Sir Robert Peel, and at least a dozen more, as if he had known them all his life, she said to herself. He was not so learned in respect to the ladies, it was true. But still to know so much was a great thing. And then it made his wife so independent. She had no need to ask, to consult books, to remain in ignorance of anything. It gave her the sweetest sense of superiority when she met a young country lady in the Row with her husband who was not so clever as the minister, and saw them gaze and gape at the notabilities. ‘Mr. Lothian will tell you who they are,’ said Isabel, proudly. And when her countrywoman confided to her how little she knew about the places she had seen, the gratification of the minister’s wife grew stronger and stronger. ‘Mr. Lothian was here when he was young,’ she said; ‘and I never need to ask anybody but him—he knows everything.’
‘Here when he was young, indeed!’ young Mrs. Diarmid, of Ardgartan, exclaimed to her husband, when they parted company. ‘Here as a tutor, I suppose; but Isabel gives herself as many airs as if he were the Marquis himself.’
‘Well, at least he was the Marquis’s tutor,’ said young Ardgartan; ‘and if she is pleased with her old man, it is very lucky for her.’
And the fact was that Isabel was thoroughly pleased with her old man, and enjoyed her expedition with all her heart. The Marquis asked his old tutor to dinner, and gave Isabel his arm, and placed her by his side with much admiration of her sweet looks. ‘I used to know your father,’ he told her, ‘when I was a lad. What an eye he had! and would tire us all out shooting over the Kilcranion moors.’ This acknowledgment of Captain Duncan as himself in some way received by the local deities, was balm to Isabel’s soul, and opened her shyintelligence to the Marquis, who found her little sayings as piquant as sayings usually are which fall from pretty lips. And the Marchioness offered Mrs. Lothian her box at the Opera to Isabel’s great confusion and perplexity. The young ladies of the house clustered round her, telling her what the music was to be, and how she would enjoy it, and how much they envied her her first opera. ‘You will think you are in Heaven,’ cried one enthusiastic girl. When she left the grand house in Park Lane, with this ecstatic prospect before her, Isabel felt that her life, as the stepmother had said, was indeed like a fairy-tale.
‘But is it so nice as they say?’ she asked her husband, as they went home.
‘To them it is,’ said that man of universal information, ‘for they have been brought up to it. I am not so sure about you; but you must ask me no more questions, for I want you to judge of it for yourself.’
And it was with a sense of responsibility that Isabel set out for this new felicity. She had put on one of her wedding-dresses, the blue one which her husband loved—and had white flowers in her pretty brown hair. Her sense of her present judicial position took from her the pretty girlish excitement into which she had fallen about all the novelties that surrounded her, and restored that soft dignity of the old man’s wife, the look of age she had tried to put on when she first realised Mrs. Lothian’s responsibility. She looked, perhaps, rather more girlish in this state of importance and seriousness than she did in her livelier mood. And there was another reason, too, for unusual dignity. Lady Mary was to go with her under her charge. ‘And I trust to you, Mrs. Lothian, to take care of her,’ the Marchioness had said, with a sense of the joke which was far from being shared by Isabel. It was the first time she had ever acted as chaperone, and her mind was disturbed by the awful question what she should do if anyone approached the young lady who was under her charge. ‘Is she not to speak to anyone?—and am I to keep everybody away?’ she asked her husband, and if possible admired Mr. Lothian’s knowledge more than ever when he instructed her in her easy duties. As for Lady Mary herself, she was quite excited by the prospect of witnessing Isabel’s delight. ‘Oh I wish I were you!’ she cried, ‘I amblasée, you know. I know them all off by heart, and exactly how they will look, and how Grisi will bring out her notes. But you will think you are in Heaven.’ And then they all got into the lordly carriage, with the powdered footmen, and went to this earthly paradise, with no thought of any evil awaiting them, or harm which could enter there.
There were many opera-glasses directed to the box when Isabel in her simplicity and pretty dignity, half-matron half-child, took her seat in it. Lady Mary was no beauty, and the eyes of the world directed themselves to the fresh, new face with a rustle of curiosity and interrogation. Isabel gave one glance round her in acknowledgment of the fine assembly, and the ladies in their pretty dresses, and then turned her face intent upon the stage. The opera wasLucia di Lammermoor. Her companions both watched her with much more interest than they did the scene—Lady Mary with delightful expectation at first, then with a shade of disappointment and surprise: while the minister looked on amused, and yet conscious of the least little shade of anxiety, lest his wife should compromise herself by a total want of susceptibility to the entertainment. Neither of them observed, at first, among the gazers below and around one pair of opera-glasses, which the owner with a sudden start had directed full upon the box at the commencement of the performance, and which remained fixed, held with rigid hands, during the whole of the first act. When the curtain fell, Isabel drew breath and heart, her eyes somewhat strained and dilated with the intense gaze she had been fixing upon the stage.
‘Don’t you feel, then, as ifthiswas all a dream, andthatwas true?’ said Lady Mary, who was a musical enthusiast.
‘I don’t know,’ said Isabel. ‘I don’t understand; if I could see what they all mean.’ She glanced round her and down at the stalls as she spoke, and there she caught a glimpse of—what was it?—a face, a part of a face staring up at her, almost hidden by the black circles of the glasses, but yet with something in its aspect that seemed familiar to her. ‘Do they always stare like that?’ she said, drawing back with the sense of having received a shock, though she could not tell how.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Lady Mary, hastily. ‘No one minds—don’t think of that. But tell me, don’t you feel it—doesn’t it go to your heart?’
‘I think, if there was anything in my heart, I would say it, and not sing it,’ said Isabel. ‘I think they are all mad. Is she Lucy Ashton? But Lucy would not have the heart to sing. Oh, how could she sing when she could scarcely speak?’
‘Oh, don’t you see,’ said Lady Mary, ‘that is just what music is? When you cannot speak, you can burst out in music. You can go to the piano, and say everything that is in your heart—you can sing——’
‘Yes,’ said Isabel, softly; ‘Auld Robin Gray, or that Irish song the poor girl sang when her heart wasbreaking; but all that music, full of shakes, and trills, and great bursts like the organ made on purpose—oh, no; not if her heart was breaking!’
‘But, my dear,’ said the minister, ‘how can you tell? an Italian heart may break in music?’
‘Perhaps an Italian heart, but not Lucy Ashton’s,’ said Isabel, a wave of sudden colour passing over her face. How strange it was, out of this crown of her happy, peaceful existence to look back on the time when she had first read about Lucy Ashton, and understood. She was an uninstructed rustic, and had never heard any music in her life before. This historian says not a word in support of her way of thinking; but such was her ignorant opinion, out of the depths of her reticent Scotch heart, in which there lay so deep a sense of every emotion. It was her ignorance, no doubt, which suggested it. Anyone who had read the ‘Bride of Lammermoor’ to her, with the very least power of characteristic representation, could have played on her as on a delicate instrument; but she did not know how to understand the other form of the poem. It bewildered her. She was not in Heaven, but in the most curious artificial sphere. And then, what was that thing—those two black motionless glasses, fixed upon her from below? Whose was the turn of the head that seemed to appear to her behind them—the aspect of the half-seen figure lost among the crowd? She could not tell; but it all awoke the strangest thrill of uneasiness in her heart.