‘I should like to go home,’ she whispered to her husband. ‘Who is that always staring? And the music makes me dizzy. I should like to go home.’
‘Staring, my darling! There are so many people staring,’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘and I am not surprised,’ he added, looking down upon her with fond admiration. The speech and the movement brought him forward to the front of the box. He took no notice of anything else, having his whole attention fixed upon his wife; but she saw a sudden movement below, and the direction of the opera-glasses change a little, as if the gaze was turned on her husband. The sensation to her was as if some dangerous being in a mask were watching them. And everything was so unreal—those people on the stage going through what was supposed to be the business of life in music, and the spectators periodically rousing themselves to a little paroxysm of frenzy, according to Isabel’s opinion. She had never seen anything so unreal and so strange; and it might be some enemy who was watching them for anything she knew——
But she sat out the performance bravely, trying to conceal her first impressions, now and then carriedaway by a splendid outburst of melody, but still keeping close to her text that Lucy Ashton could not have had the heart. ‘How could she have remembered to sing like that, if her heart was breaking?’ said Isabel; and there was a painful pang in her own which she could not explain. She seemed to see those glasses before her even on the way out, gazing at her from behind a pillar. They were before her eyes all the way home, and withdrew her attention even from Lady Mary’s lamentations over her want of musical taste. ‘But I see it is because you are not used to it,’ Lady Mary said at last. ‘Half a dozen more evenings would make you think so differently. Oh, Mr. Lothian, stay a little longer, and let us educate your wife!’
‘It would take a longer time than we can spare,’ said the minister, only half pleased with the suggestion; and Isabel gave a little shudder in her corner. She was thinking of that opera-glass, and of the high crest of hair rising behind it, and the air of the half-seen figure. Could it be——? Whom could it be? It was the only unsuccessful attempt at pleasure she had made since they went to town.
TheLoch was in full beauty when the minister and his wife returned home. It was a clear, lovely summer night, with stretches of daffodil sky over the blue hills towards the west, and a pale young moon glimpsing at herself in the water. The flowers were all bright in the Manse garden, the villagers nodding pleasant recognition, the Loch all cheerful with boats skimming like seabirds over the water. ‘This is worth London twenty times over,’ Mr. Lothian said. ‘Are you glad or sorry, Isabel, to come home?’
‘Glad,’ she said, standing by his side, looking out well pleased on the scene she knew so well. ‘But I am glad we went, too. Seeing things makes people experienced; it is like growing old. But you should not laugh at everything I say.’
‘It is not at you, my dear,’ said the minister; ‘but do not get old on my account, my darling. I like my bonnie Isabel to be young.’
‘I should like to be thirty,’ she said, with a soft laugh; ‘then I would be nearer you.’
‘You could be no nearer me,’ he said, drawing her close to him, ‘my bonnie darling! Remember always that I could not be happier, Isabel. I have the desire of my heart.’
Why this little scene should have taken so solemn a tone, neither could tell. One moment they had laughed, and the very next moment he was making this little confession of supreme happiness as if for her comfort when he should be away from her. But he was not going away from her; neither was there any possibility of estrangement in their future. There was no passion in Isabel’s mind to make her exacting or difficult. She held up her soft cheek to him, and he kissed her as if she had been his daughter.
‘If we were behaving as the people do in your favourite opera,’ said the minister, ‘we would sing a duet of felicity. My dear, you’ve got a pretty, sweet little voice. I think you must learn to sing.’
‘Oh, don’t speak of that opera,’ said Isabel; ‘I hated it. The men singing about everything—even their dinner! And Lucy Ashton——’
‘My dear, it was not Lucy Ashton; it was Lucia di Lammermoor.’
‘I know; but it was meant to be all one,’ said Isabel. ‘Lucy sing like yon! Oh, they cannot tell what it is to be in despair.’
‘My darling, and how should you know?’ said the minister, looking at her with his admiring smile.
‘I don’t think I know; but I can divine,’ said Isabel; and her eyes seemed to deepen so, that her husband gazing into them could not make out their meaning. But he saw a little shudder, quite slight and momentary, pass over her. And his first thought was that she must be ill.
‘Come in,’ he said; ‘it is growing cold. How is it we have twice become so serious this pleasant night, after coming home?’
‘It is that opera; I never like to think of it,’ said Isabel, and shivered again, and went in, her husband following. It was very childish of her; and yet somehow she felt just as she had felt at the opera, as if someone were watching them—looking at their tranquil life with unkindly eyes.
Next day, Mr. Lothian stayed at home, going no further than the village to see the wives and ask after the men; and in the evening came Mr. Galbraith to resume with delight his long-interrupted ‘cracks.’ Instead of the fire they sat at the open window, Isabel gliding out and in cutting flowers, and looking after her garden. ‘There is some comfort in this—now we have got our pleasant nights back again,’ said the Dominie. ‘You saw many fine things in London, but I’ll be bound you saw nothing so bonnie as the Loch, and that young moon.’
‘No,’ said Isabel; ‘nothing but streets, and churches, and ladies riding. Yet I am glad to have gone; now I will never feel ignorant when you speak. It was as good as jumping ten years.’
‘All her thought is to make herself thirty,’ said the minister, with a laugh of happiness; ‘but I tell her, Galbraith, I like her best as she is. Sometimes I think I am too happy,’ he went on as she flitted out into the garden; ‘I have everything I can desire.’
‘I never knew the feeling myself,’ said the Dominie; ‘but they say it is of kin to melancholy. No more to wish for. I cannot say I wish for much myself; but that’s no out of satisfaction, but out of despair.’
‘Despair is a hard word,’ said the minister.
‘Oh, aye; far too hard a word. I’ve not vigour enough left to nourish a passion. It’s more a sense of the impossibility of any change, and a kind of content; and, minister, I’m free to acknowledge it—I thought you were but an old fool, setting your heart on a young thing; but I see now you were a wise man.’
‘A happy one at least,’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘but it would be harder now to leave this life than ever it was before.’
‘Well, well, there’s little likelihood,’ said the Dominie, with some impatience; ‘let us be thankful—you are as likely to live till a hundred as any man I know.’
But just then Isabel came hastily up and brushed past them almost running, as if in fear.
‘I thought I saw a man in the garden,’ she said, shedding, for the first time for ever so long, a few hasty tears.
‘My darling,’ cried the minister, starting up, ‘where?’
‘Oh, down among the trees,’ she said, ‘down there—outside the garden wall. I saw the branches stir—and I thought——’
‘But, my dear, any man that likes may be on the other side of the wall,’ said her husband: ‘why should that frighten you?’
And then Isabel dried her tears. ‘It was very foolish,’ she said, ‘I know it might be anybody; but it gave me a fright—as if he were going to jump over the wall and come in to us here.’
‘And if he had?’ said the minister, smiling—till Isabel smiled too, seeing the absurdity of her alarm. But she watched anxiously when Mr. Lothian and the Dominie made the round of the garden. Of course, there was no man to be seen, and they went in and closed the windows, and talked very comfortably for an hour before they separated, with no more interest or solemnity. Mr. Lothian had to attend a meeting of Presbytery next day. This pleasant evening was the end of his holiday: and such a holiday as it had been—a poem in his life.
Next morning he rode away from the Manse door, looking, his wife thought, a very picture of what a man of ‘his years’ ought to be. She had smoothed down the cambric ruffles in which she took so much interest with her own hand, and put the gold pin carefully into the clean, well-starched, daintily-crimped folds. There was not a spot upon him, nor upon the glossy hide of the horse, which was a recent acquisition, and, in the opinion of the neighbourhood, ‘too spirity a beast’ for the minister. ‘I shall be back as soon as I can,’ he said, as he turned from the door; ‘but I may be obliged to stop and dine somewhere, so don’t be alarmed, my dear, if I am late.’ And he took off his hat to his darling, and rode away saluting her as if she had been the Queen. All this adoration and tender respect had their effect upon Isabel, though she was not conscious of it. She went in and put away some of the things from the breakfast-table, the little silver tea-caddy, the pretty crystal dishes for the butter and jam, things too dainty to be touched by the hands of the servants, and put the room into more delicate order, moving about in her summer morning-dress, like a bit of light in the solid mahogany-furnished dining-room. And then she went and gave her orders for the dinner, which for that day was to be something which would not spoil by waiting, and which could be eaten cold on the morrow, if Mr. Lothian was not back in time. ‘The minister may stop to dine with the Presbytery,’ his wife said; and lingered a little in the clean, bright kitchen, hearing some scraps of news from Kirstin, and arranging about various things that had to be done. ‘If Janet gets her work finished soon, we might put up the curtains in the spare room, not to lose the day,’ said the mistress of the Manse, ‘as the minister is away.’ It was a day of leisure, with no special point in it, a day for odd little pieces of business, and the sweet silent leisure which breaks so pleasantly into the routine of a settled life.
It was about dusk in the long summer evening, when, listening for her husband’s return, and growing a little weary of her solitude, Isabel heard someone ride past the Manse gate, and a few minutes after the Dominie came in to tell her that Mr. Lothian had just passed—that he had been sent for by someone who was sick up towards Kilcranion, but did not expect to be long. ‘He dined at Maryburgh,’ the Dominie said, ‘and here’s some parcels he threw to me as he passed. If you’ll put on your hat, Mrs. Lothian, it’s a bonnie night—we might take a stroll among the heather, and meet him as he comes home?’
He had called her Mrs. Lothian scrupulously ever sinceher marriage. Isabel went out with him, well pleased, into the soft night, which was musical with the rustle of the trees, and the splash of the water on the shore, and the voices from the village.
‘But I think it will rain,’ she said, looking up to the sky.
‘And that’s true,’ said the Dominie, turning sharp round, as a sudden blast, for which he was unprepared, came in his face. Clouds had been gathering overhead during all the evening, but now it came down all at once, with an evident intention of continuing for the rest of the night. They stood for a moment uncertain, hearing, as Isabel long remembered, the sound of the horse’s hoofs carrying her husband over the hill in the stillness of the night.
‘And nobody could run after him now with a plaid or a cloak,’ she said, throwing her gown over her head, as was the fashion of the country, to shield her from the rain.
‘He would be a clever runner that would make up to them,’ said Mr. Galbraith; ‘but after sixteen years at Loch Diarmid, a drop or two, more or less, will do him no harm.’
And then they went back into the dining-room where the lamp was lighted. The lamp did not give a very brilliant light when there was no fire to help it, and the room had a dusky look, as rooms will have of summer evenings after all the light and gladness of the day.
‘I think I will light the fire,’ said Isabel. ‘He’ll be cold, and he likes to see it. Here,’ she added, with a little pride in her London experience, ‘it is never too warm for a fire.’
‘All the better,’ said the Dominie, stretching his hands over the cheerful, crackling blaze, when Isabel had lifted away the ornaments on the hearth, and set light to the fire, which, in conformity with the necessities of the climate, was laid ready below. ‘A fire is a kind of Christian creature, and keeps a lonely man company; but, if I were you, Mrs. Lothian, considering the long day he’s had, and a wetting at the end of it, I would have ben the kettle too.’
‘And so I will,’ said Isabel, who was nowise shocked by the suggestion. The kettle was brought accordingly, and placed on the hob, where the old man contemplated it with much satisfaction; and she opened her press, and brought out the silver liqueur-stand which had been Mr. Galbraith’s present to her on her marriage, and the silver sugar-basin, and the toddy ladles, and all that was necessary. She was so pleased with her pretty silver things that it was a pleasure to her to have to take themout, and see them reflecting the light on the table; and the fire began to brighten up all the dark corners of the room, and to glance upon her pretty hair, which reflected it, and her ornaments, which made little gleams about her as she went and came.
‘And a lucky man he is to have such a home-coming,’ the Dominie said, half to himself, with a growl which he intended for a sigh. And Isabel smiled without taking any further notice, seeing herself pass in the glass on the mantelpiece with all the reflections about her, and all the ruddy light dancing about the room; better than a bachelor-den with two men over the fire; there could not be much doubt about that. And she made all her preparations, and had her tea-tray brought in and placed at one end of the table, and bent her ear through all her activity to hear her husband come home.
While the entire household was thus engaged, both servants and mistress preparing for the master’s arrival, it was the Dominie who first noticed that the little fire they had made for him was beginning to burn out, and the kettle to puff away all its contents in steam. He made a little joke over it, and had both renewed, but began to feel uneasy in his heart. The night had grown very dark all at once, and the rain would drive right in the horse’s face as it came down the brae. ‘And such a spirity beast!’ Mr. Galbraith glanced out from the window when Isabel was not looking, and saw that the Loch had got up in a white foam, and that the sky was growing blacker and blacker. Just then the sound of the horse’s hoofs was heard again. It approached, dashing furiously down the hill, and echoed past the house towards the stable which was at the back.
‘There he is at last!’ said Isabel cheerfully, not noting in the easiness of her mind the precipitate gallop, or that there was anything out of the ordinary in her husband dismounting at the stable-door.
‘It will be for the wet,’ the Dominie said, feeling a sudden pang of alarm. ‘I’ll go and see, with your permission——’
It seemed to Isabel that he was never coming back, and that her husband took the most unreasonable time to make his appearance. ‘He’ll be telling David about the horse,’ she said to herself. ‘He is so particular to make the poor beast comfortable.’ Then she poked up the fire to make it blaze, and drew his easy chair to its side. ‘He’ll be taking off his wet things,’ she went on half-aloud, accounting to herself for his delay; ‘He’ll be warming himself at the kitchen fire—but why not here? He’ll have gone upstairs to change.’ At last she ran out to the door, losing patience. The Dominie met hercoming back. She could not imagine what was the matter with him. If he could have been drinking—and if there had been time for him to intoxicate himself—that might have explained the glazed look in his eye, and the imbecile smile about his lips.
‘It was not him at all,’ said the Dominie, with a jaunty air, which made her wonder again—‘Could he have taken a dram in the kitchen?’ ‘It was all a mistake. It was someone riding post-haste to Maryburgh—somebody from—Kilcranion, I suppose. You do not think the minister would come down upon us at a breakneck gallop like that?’
‘But it went to the stable-door,’ said Isabel, astonished, but not yet roused to alarm.
‘No, no, nothing of the kind. Sounds are deceiving in the night. It’s a man and horse away to Maryburgh. Ye can hear them echoing down the road now,’ he said, throwing the windows suddenly open. A gust of wind and rain suddenly came in, and he closed it again hurriedly, with a nervous haste, which made the identification of any sound impossible. ‘There’s a storm brewing,’ he said, ‘but we’ll draw to the fire, and be all the cosier within.’
And with a curious gallantry, which took Isabel entirely by surprise, he placed a chair by the fire for her, and made her sit down. Then he resumed his own, and held his hands, which she could see were trembling, over the blaze. ‘I think I’ll go and look if I can see him,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Don’t you stir, Mrs. Lothian. It’s no a night for you to put your bonnie head out of doors. Promise me you’ll no stir!’
Isabel could make no answer in her amaze. And he went away, closing the door carefully after him, and left her, beginning to hear her heart beat, and wondering what it could mean. No doubt, had her love been of a more passionate description, it would have taken fright before now. But it was so difficult to realise that anything could happen to the husband-father—the man who had encountered all the risks of country life unharmed as long as she could remember. She asked herself, what could be the matter with the Dominie?—and then she wondered what ailed the Diarmids of Glencorrie, where Mr. Lothian had gone, that they should have sent for him so late. And then she listened intently in the silence, till her heart fluttered up in her ears, and she could hear nothing else. She sat, it seemed to her for a long time, over the fire, waiting and wondering, and then she heard the kitchen-door open and shut, and a sound as of voices. By this time alarm had begun to take possession of her—not terror so muchas uneasiness, wonder—a sense that in this night, which was so dark, and through which the wind began to howl, something—anything might happen. This only—but it worked sharply upon Isabel. She sprang up and ran to the door, and out into the hall. There she caught a glimpse for one moment of her maids, and the Dominie, and the gardener, all clustered about a drenched figure, with a face as pale as death, which she recognised to be her stepmother, Jean Campbell. When they heard her, they fell apart, with looks of fright, and Mr. Galbraith advanced towards her. He was pale too, white to the very lips, and pointed to her to go back into the room she had left.
‘My dear,’ he said, taking her hand, leading her in, with gentle force, ‘don’t go there just now. Keep up your courage. He has met with an accident.’
‘An accident!’ said Isabel, rousing at once, ‘oh, Mr. Galbraith, let David get out the old gig—that would help him home.’
‘They’re bringing him home, my dear,’ he said, looking at her wistfully. ‘You must keep up your courage; they are coming.’
‘Let me run and see that his room is ready,’ said Isabel, trying to break from him; ‘he will be wet, and there should be a fire. I like to see to everything myself. Oh, Mr. Galbraith, let me go and see that his room is right!’
‘The women are looking to that,’ he said, with a suppressed groan; ‘my dear, I fear it’s a bad accident. You must summon your courage.’
‘Is he not able to walk?’ said Isabel, her face blanching suddenly as there came to her through the pauses of the wind sounds as of the tramp of men approaching. This time the Dominie groaned aloud. He took both her hands and placed her trembling in the chair she had placed by the fireside forhim.
‘Stay still here,’ he said; ‘you must not go out to—agitate him. I will bring you your stepmother—she will tell you all about it.’ And he rushed away from her once more, closing the door. Oh, what was it? Isabel’s brow began to throb, and her heart jumped wildly against her breast. A bad accident! It would be the new horse that was so ‘spirity.’ Oh, why was she shut in and not to go to him? She could not bear it; she was the fit person to receive him, whatever had happened. And who but herself could see that the room was all right and everything in order? A second time she rose and ran to the door, but once more was met as she opened it, not this time by the Dominie, but by Jean Campbell, who came in, all wet and shivering, with sucha distraught look in her face as Isabel had never seen there before.
‘O my bonnie lamb!’ cried Jean, throwing her arms round and detaining her. ‘No yet, you mustna go yet. O my bonnie woman! You that I thought so safe and free of all trouble! But it canna be, Isabel—it canna be—stay here with me.’
‘I will go,’ said Isabel, struggling with her. ‘I will see what is wrong. If he has hurt himself, he wants me all the more.’
‘He’s feeling nae hurt,’ cried Jean, holding her stepdaughter fast; her pale face working and her eyes straining. ‘He’s in nae pain—O my bonnie Isabel!’
‘What do you mean?’ said Isabel, with inward horror, under her breath.
‘O my lamb!’ Jean answered, clasping her in her arms. The young wife broke out of the embrace with her old petulant impatience. She threw the door wide open, rushing upon the knowledge of her fate. At the very moment when she did so, the men had entered the hall moving slowly with their burden. She stood uttering not a word, like a creature made out of stone. It was not that she was stupified. She recognised the men individually one by one, and through her mind there passed the curious speculation how they could all have been found together at such a time. And they carried—what? Something all covered over with a great grey plaid, stretched out upon a broad plank of the wood which had been lying by the roadside fresh from the sawmill—something which neither moved, nor groaned, nor betrayed the least uneasiness at the unsteady progress of its bearers. She gave a cry, as much of wonder as of misery. What was it? And then Mr. Galbraith tottered to her, staggering like a drunken man, with tears rolling down his grey ashy cheeks. ‘O my child!’ cried the old man, taking her into his arms. She looked him piteously in the face; she could not understand his tears, strange though the sight of them was. She would believe nothing but words. ‘What is it?’ she cried, ‘what does it mean?’
By degrees it was got into her mind—she never knew how; they did not tell her he was dead, though they believed so: but that the doctor had been sent for, and would tell what was to be done. Isabel did not faint—such an escape from the consciousness of evil was not possible to her. She retained all her faculties in an acuteness beyond all previous knowledge.
‘I should be there,’ she said, struggling with them, ‘to do what is wanted. Let me go—nobody shall nurse him but me.’ But she was stopped again by the doctor,who had arrived at once, and who put her back, exchanging a look of pity with the Dominie.
‘You must stay here, Mrs. Lothian,’ he said; ‘I must see him alone, and I’ll come and tell you.’ When he was gone, Isabel walked about the room with the fierce impatience of suspense. ‘You’ll no tell what it is,’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘Oh, tell me what it is. Is it his head or a leg broken, or what is it? Is it only me that must not know?’
And then Jean came to her and took her in her arms; but all that she said was, ‘My bonnie woman! my bonnie lamb!’ words that meant nothing. They waited, it seemed for an hour or more, and then a man’s steps sounded slowly and solemnly on the stair, and the doctor with a troubled face looked in. He did not look at Isabel, eagerly as she was confronting him; but cast an appealing glance over her head at Jean Campbell. ‘Tell her!’ he said, with agitation in his voice. And then the young widow knew.
‘God preserve us!’ the men were saying in the passage, ‘two hours ago he passed, as fine a man as ye could see—and now he’s a heap o’ motionless clay.’
‘There’s been foul play,’ said John Macwhirter. ‘Ye’ll never tell me but there’s been foul play.’
‘But wha could have an ill thought to the minister? He hadna an enemy in the world. Oh, neebors,’ said Andrew White, ‘we’ve lost a God-fearing man.’
‘It maun have been for robbery,’ said another.
‘There’s nae signs of robbery, except the cambric ruffles a’ torn from his shirt and the breastpin he ay wore.’
‘That wasna worth much,’ said Macwhirter, ‘but nae doubt the villain was disturbed and grabbit at the first thing he saw. As ye say, Andrew, he hadna an enemy in the world.’
This conversation the Dominie overheard—the low bass voices of the men sounding strangely concentrated and solemn amid the wailing and tears of the house. Isabel herself had been taken away, capable of no tears as yet. And there was the cheerful kettle singing and steaming, the fire blazing, all the preparations upon the table for the return of the master of the house. And it was thus the minister had come home. The depths of desolation had opened all at once in the mysterious world, and swallowed up this house with all its joys and hopes. But a touch and the whole fairy palace had crumbled into dust and ashes.
Nothinghad occurred on Loch Diarmid for ages which had made so intense a sensation in the district as the death of the minister. The whole country bubbled up and seethed about that one house on the slope—the Manse, peaceablest of habitations, a few days ago so full of quiet happiness, but now shrouded in a veil of horror and woe. Was it accident, or was it murder? At first the opinion of the country-side inclined strongly in favour of the former supposition. The beast was ‘spirity’—too spirity for a man of Mr. Lothian’s age; and the night was stormy and dark; and he had not nor could have any enemy—and he was not robbed. It soon, however, became known that there was an actual witness of the tragedy, whose deposition would set all doubts at rest.
‘I hope she didna do it hersel,’ said the smith, when the tale was discussed. ‘I canna understand Jean Campbell being the one to see it.’
The mind of the district was moved with the profoundest longing for news, however small the scrap might be, that was afforded to it. People sprang up on every side who had seen a man about whom they did not recognise as a person known on the Loch. But, then, unfortunately the differences in their descriptions of him were so great that no individual likeness could be made out. One declared he was a perfect giant, another a little hunchback, one that he was dressed like a gentleman, and another that he was the meanest tramp. Jean Campbell was the only witness who had anything to tell; and her story, indeed, was terribly distinct as to the fact, though wanting in every detail that could identify the criminal. She gave her deposition in the narrative form which is always congenial to the peasant mind, and held by it steadily, though her strong, vigorous frame and rude health were almost worn out by what she had seen.
‘I had been to the mill to ask about my meal,’ said Jean; ‘and then I thought I would step in at the Manse and just ask for Mrs. Lothian, who is my stepdaughter. I heard a horse coming in the distance as I came out on the highroad from the awfu’ lonesome lane that leads to the mill. And glad I was to hear it. “Here’s company coming,” I said to myself. Ye’ll maybe no ken the road. There’s a high bank on one side with trees, and on the other you’re just on the braes, that are whins, and heather, and naething else. I was walking slow on that side to let the horseman come up, for it’s an ill bit of the road, and a man’s company is ay canny.Just afore the horse came up, I was awfu’ frichtened wi’ a rustling on the bank. It was dark, and ye couldna have seen your hand before you; but I could see there was somebody among the trees, and what would he be doing there? I canna think he saw me, for the bank is awful thick with trees, and I was doun among the whin-bushes, and a’ dark round and round. The horse came up, galloping as steady as a rock; but, just as it came to me, there was a blast of branches, and stones and moss came rumbling down the bank, just before the beast’s very feet. He was a very spirity beast, as a’ the parish kens—and he backit, and he reared, and up with his feet in the air, till I was nigh out of my senses with fright. Then there was a whirr first, and I heard a fa’ and a groan. It was an awfu’ thud, and the groan was an awfu’ groan. I think he must have fainted. And I was awfu’ feared myself; but before I could recover the man was down from the brae. There was a break in the clouds for a moment, and I could see him come rumbling down the bank.... No, I canna tell you what like he was. It was just a black shadow on the black trees. He went up to the one that had fallen, and me, thinking nae evil, I took heart, and ran up from where I had been among the whins, and went forward too. The one black spot bent ower the other, as if it had been to lift him—and me, it was on my lips to say, “Lord bless us! I’m here too, and we’ll save the poor man!” And then I saw a motion, and heard it.... Eh, dinna ask me what!—a dull, heavy stroke, and a crack, and another groan. I gave a cry—if he had killed me the next minute I couldna have helped it; and the creature started, and made a grasp at something, and then turned and started a’ round. I gied scream after scream, no able to stop. I had sunk down among the whins, and he couldna see me. And then he began to speel the brae as fast as he had come down. I stood there and cried, and durstna stir. And in a whilie down the lane came Andrew White and his wife and their laddie, with a lantern. And then we saw it was the minister. I was near dead with the fright and the awfu’ feeling myself. For weel I saw he had been murdered there where he lay. The laddie ran to the village for help, and Andrew’s man came down from the mill. And when I came to myself, I took my gown over my head, and ran a’ the way till I got to the Manse.... Me catch the villain! how could I catch him—and him up like a wild-cat into the wood? Na, I thought of Isabel—I’m meaning of Mrs. Lothian, his poor young wife. And that is a’ I can tell you, if ye were to question me till the morn.’
The miller’s testimony corroborated Jean’s. ‘The wife’ had cried upon him, as he was sitting down to his supper, to come and listen to the screams from the brae; and Andrew being no coward, and having bowels of compassion, notwithstanding his gloomy view of religious matters, rushed down immediately with his wife and ‘the laddie.’ He heard a rustling in the wood as he passed, but took no notice, not connecting it, he said, with the accident, and found the minister insensible, and scarcely breathing. He had had a bad fall from his horse, which of itself Andrew thought must have been enough to injure him seriously; and there was besides the fatal blow on the forehead, which had smashed the skull, and extinguished all consciousness and possibility of life. The testimony of the doctor was the only other important point in the evidence. He could not decide whether the other injuries might not have been fatal. That they were very serious, there was no doubt; but it was the blow which had killed Mr. Lothian. As to the man who did it, however, no information could be gathered. He was to Jean but ‘a black shadow’ in the darkness. She could not even tell what was his height, or dress, or anything about him.
The world of Loch Diarmid was thus utterly at sea, both as to the murderer and as to the motive for the crime. The minister had no enemies; for, to be sure, there was a difference between uttering a spiteful comment on his conduct in the smithy or ‘at the doors,’ and murdering him in a lonely road under cover of night. The general explanation of the torn ruffle was, that the murderer dimly perceived some ornament on his victim’s breast, and snatched at it before he was scared by Jean’s cries, which left him no time for further investigation. The poor little brooch, with its setting of pearls, and the two curls of hair intertwined, attained notoriety in the papers, being described elaborately over and over again, in case it should be offered anywhere for sale. But no clue to the murderer was obtained in this way. Then the excitement died out; and ‘at the doors,’ and on the way to church, and in the smithy, and everywhere else where the parish resorted, all thoughts and criticisms began to centre in the presentee.
But while this gradual softening process acted upon the parish at large, the Manse was left like a desolate island in the midst of all the life and sunshine. All at once, mysteriously, as by a stroke of magic, the light had vanished from it; a sort of dumb horror wrapt the house, abstracting it from the community of which it had been for so long a cheerful centre. Grass began to grow on the path from the gate to the door. Except MissCatherine and Jean Campbell, who went and came daily, and messengers with inquiries after Mrs. Lothian, which naturally grew less and less frequent as time went on, nobody visited the house of mourning. Not that there was any lack of popular sympathy for the young widow. There was not a lady in the county who did not make her appearance at the Manse gates, to offer social consolation, or, at least, condolences. But Isabel saw nobody. She was stunned.
Thus the winter closed in again upon the hills, wrapping the closed Manse in all its mists and clouds. While the parish was contending hotly about the presentee, Isabel shut herself up in her house, which was still hers until his appointment should be settled, like the ghost of what she had been. One of the maids was already dismissed, in preparation for the final breaking up. The gardener had gone some time before. And only the sorrowful young mistress, with her widow’s cap on her brown curls, and desolation in her heart, and old Kirstin, who had been the minister’s housekeeper in old days, dwelt alone in the mournful Manse.
Itwas a long time after this—almost Christmas—when Isabel’s baby was born. Even the Glebe Cottage put on a different aspect with the coming of the new life. The grey parlour, which was so full of memories, the room in which Margaret had died, in which Isabel had been married, and which under other circumstances would have been an awful place to return to, in the renewed and deepened gloom, was all a flutter now with the white robes, the baby-paraphernalia, all the scraps of lace and heaps of muslin in which young mothers find so much delight. The place was metamorphosed and knew itself no longer. It was the centre of a hundred sweet consultations, such gossiping, in the true sense of the word, as renews the female soul. Even Miss Catherine was transfigured by the new event. ‘I have gotten a grandchild in my old age,’ she said with tears and smiles as she carried little Margaret into the parlour where one of Mr. Lothian’s old friends stood waiting by the white-covered table to baptise the fatherless child. It was one of many scenes which were heart-breaking in their pathos to the bystanders, but did not somehow bear the same aspect to the principal actor in them. The old clergyman who performed the ceremony broke down in the midst of it. He was a grandfather himself,and had not hesitated a year ago to make many a kindly joke upon Lothian’s infatuation. But the sight of his old comrade’s child, which would have been the crown of his joy, and which he had not even been permitted to know of, was more than the good man could bear. And the Dominie, who was standing by, turned quite round and leaned his grey head upon the wall, and could not suppress the groan which came out of his heart. And Miss Catherine and all the women wept aloud. But Isabel, with her child in her arms, smiled in the midst of all their tears. Her eyes were wet, which made them all the brighter. The excitement of the moment in her weak condition had quickened all the tints of lily and rose in her soft cheeks—the golden life-gleam in her brown hair shone out under her cap like a concealed crown. And she smiled upon them all with a certain wonder at their emotion, facing life and fate and all that could come out of the unknown, tranquil with her treasure in her arms.
‘Poor thing!’ the Dominie said; ‘poor thing!’ laying one hand on the mother’s young head, and looking down from his great height upon the child, his harsh face all working with emotion. He had hard ado not to weep like the women, and to keep down the climbing sorrow which choked him, in his throat.
‘Why poor thing?’ said Isabel softly, looking up to him, ‘why poor thing? She has me.’
‘And you are but a bairn yourself,’ said the Dominie, with his broken groan.
‘I am her mother,’ said Isabel, ‘who had I but Margaret? and Margaret was only my sister. And I am young and strong. She has me!’
‘My dear,’ said the old minister, who with all his sympathy could not let such a speech pass unrebuked, ‘she has her Father in Heaven. She has the Father of the fatherless. You must not build on your youth and strength. Have we not all seen what awful change and overturn may happen in a single day?’
And then Isabel looked up at him with her tear-dilated, smiling eyes. It was cruel to thrust back upon her at such a moment the terrible tragedy in which she had such a part. But even that did not discourage the young mother. Two great tears wrung out of their fountains, as if her heart had been suddenly grasped by some harsh hand, dropped from her eyes. Before they fell she had already turned her head with a little start, that they might not drop upon the child. ‘I’ll live for her,’ she said. ‘Oh I’ll have strength for her—God would never have me leave my baby alone in the world.’ And then the smile came back—an invincible smile, not tobe quenched by any discouragement. When she was left alone even, and had no longer that stimulus of self-defence and resistance which came natural to her character, in the silence she still kept her smile. There, where Margaret had died—where she herself had stood up in her white simplicity of maidenhood to be married, she sat by the imperfect light of the fire with her baby asleep on her knees, and defied all fear and sorrow. All the frivolous thoughts of youth had died out of her (so far as she was aware) as much as if she had been Miss Catherine’s age. No longing for any love beyond the one she possessed was in her heart. Her sister, and her husband, whom she could scarcely dissociate now the one from the other, had left her on the way. But did not this make amends—this which no one could take away, which was altogether her own?
‘Has the lassie no heart?’ said the Dominie, as he attended Miss Catherine down the brae. His own was sore for his friend. The minister had been to him a profounder loss than to Isabel; the solace of his life, his companion, the occupation of those evenings which were all that remained to him to enjoy in this world, had all gone with Mr. Lothian. And to think his friend could have thrown away all his love on an insensible woman who could smile over her baby, and forget him so soon! ‘This time twelvemonth he was planning where he was to take her—how he was to please her; and now—— Have women no hearts?’
‘Her heart is full of her child,’ said Miss Catherine, with a touch of personal compunction, for she, too, had been thinking of the baby, and not of its father. ‘You forget—she was fond of him, and grateful to him, but she might have been his daughter. It was not love like—what was thought of in my day.’
‘Or in mine,’ said the Dominie.
What the two old people thought in the pause that followed, it is not for us to expound. Surely the world had changed somehow since ‘my day,’ was colder, less real, less true—and life was growing more and more into such stuff as dreams are made of. But that perhaps was because to both of them—old unwedded, inexperienced souls, the half of life had never been any more than a dream.
‘You must not think ill of Isabel,’ said Miss Catherine, after a pause. ‘Until this hope came to her, she was heart-broken enough, poor bairn! and now she is all for the baby. Had the father been living and well, she would have forgotten his existence in the presence of that child.’
‘And that’s why I ask,’ said the Dominie, with bitterness: ‘Have women no hearts?’
‘Some of us,’ said Miss Catherine; and they walked on together along the head of the Loch without exchanging another word.
But it was not the past which occupied Isabel, as she sat, in the firelight, with her baby on her knee. It was chiefly a soft respite from all pains and cares, the sense of ease, and weakness, and repose in the present. And whether it was feminine insensibility, as the Dominie thought, or absorption in her new treasure, or the want of any real love towards her dead husband, certain it is that no longing for him or for anyone was in her mind. What she had was enough for, and filled her up. To find herself, a shipwrecked creature, tossed from one woe to another, finding calm but to lose it again—disappointed, sorrowful, and bereaved—to have suddenly floated once more into this safe, sure haven, so warm and still and satisfying and full of hope, was such a wonder and blessing as silenced all other thoughts. But for the child, what a desert her life would have been! And with the child, was it not a rich garden, to be filled with flowers and fruits and everything that makes existence lovely? Such were her musings, as she sat by the fire, a soft, weak, helpless woman, tired if she went two or three times across the little room, but, nevertheless, fearless to confront life and all it could do to her, no longer languid or discouraged now that she had, not only herself to care for, but her child.
‘My bonnie woman!’ said Jean, coming in, ‘you mustna sit there and think. Ye’ve been real brave, and kept up your heart wonderful; but you mustna think, for her sake as well as your ain.’
‘I am not thinking,’ said Isabel, softly, and for the moment there sprung up in her a certain wonder at her own insensibility. Was she really insensible, unfeeling? She was not moved as they expected her to be. Things that she was encouraged to be brave for, as ‘a trial,’ proved no trial to her. Was it that her heart had sunk into coldness? And yet was it not full of love that ran over and filled every crevice of her being, for the baby on her knee?
‘Tell me, was this your feeling whentheywere born?’ she said, with a little movement of her head towards the other part of the house in which Jean’s children were; ‘that nothing mattered any more—that you could bear everything and forget what it was to grieve, and work and toil and never tire—was that your feeling, too?’
‘Eh, I canna mind what was my feeling,’ said Jean, shaking her head, ‘except that I was awfu’ glad it was over. But your father was living, Isabel, and I had noneed to take that thought—and besides, I was different from you.’
‘Ah, my father was living!’ said Isabel, with a little gasp, stopped short by the words, although even then she did not apply them to herself with any feeling that her case was harder than that of her stepmother. If it was harder it was sweeter, too, for her child was all her own.
‘Awfu’ different from you,’ said Jean; ‘ye can sit still and put a’ your bit fancies together, you lady-things that are above common folk; but what I was thinking was, how to get weel and be stirring about the house to keep a’ right for the Captain, and Margaret, and you. My weans were what I loved best, I’ll no deny it—but they werena my first thought; I had to think ofhim, first and the house, and how to please ye a’; and syne took the wee thing to my breast for a comfort. There was ay the work that came first—and maybe when a’s done it is the best way.’
‘You think I’m idle,’ said Isabel, with a faint blush, ‘but you shall see how different it will be. I was thinking we might build something on to the cottage—another room, or perhaps two. We have plenty now; and by the time she grows up——’
‘Oh, Isabel, ye’re like a bairn with a new doll: let the poor infant take a grip of her life before you think of the time when she’ll be grown up. Ye’ll be for a man to her next.’
‘Oh, no, no man,’ said Isabel, with a little shiver; ‘what should my baby want with a man? She’ll be mine as I am hers—my only one, all I have in the world.’
‘You’re little better than two weans together,’ said Jean, looking pitifully down upon the mother and child and drying her eyes. Two-and-twenty, that was the girl’s age, with half a century of life still before her, all its stormier, harder part, the heat of the day and the burden. Could she go through the world as she thought, with no wakening of other feelings in her heart—altogether wrapt in this motherly virginal passion for her child? ‘She’ll be but a young woman still, when the bairn is twenty,’ said Jean to herself from the eminence of her own more advanced age. Such a thing was possible as that the heart thus thrown into one strain should never diverge, nor throb to any other touch. It was possible. But the woman in her experience sighed over it, and dried her eyes with her apron, and softly shook her head.
Thuslife went on for months over Loch Diarmid. The minister’s dreadful end had fallen into gentle forgetfulness. Another minister was now the referee and head and butt of the parish, discussed in the smithy, criticised ‘at the doors.’ And he and his wife had been asked to dinner at the neighbouring country-houses, but not with so much success as had attended thedébutof Isabel—and had called upon Mrs. Lothian, ‘the last minister’s widow,’ as the present female incumbent described her, and had not known very well what to make of the girl in her close cap, smiling over her baby—with her strange surroundings, and curious nondescript position. Mrs. Russell, the new minister’s wife, asked with a good deal of perplexity, ‘Is she a lady? I know she is a great friend of Miss Catherine. But everybody knows Miss Catherine is very odd. Dined at the Marquis’s in London, and went to the opera with Lady Mary! I can scarcely believe that. How could Lady Mary, an unmarried girl, take anybody to the opera? She does everything for that child herself—no nurse, nor anything like a nurse; indeed, I am not sure there was any servant at all. The woman I saw in the kitchen was her stepmother, I hear. Naturally it is not very pleasant for us to have the widow of Mr. Russell’s predecessor in such a position. Of course I would like to be kind to her if I could, but—— And then the way the people speak of her! For one that calls her Mrs. Lothian, there are half a dozen that say just Isabel, or Isabel at the Glebe, or the Captain’s Isabel, or some country name like that. I can tell you it’s very embarrassing for me.’
This little statement, which was made to Mrs. Campbell of Maryburgh, the nearest clergywoman of the district, and to Mrs. Diarmid of Ardgartan, and even to the doctor’s wife in the parish, got into circulation through the malice or amusement of these ladies, and roused a little flutter of indignation on Loch Diarmid, where Isabel’s position was so fully understood, and where she was known beyond all controversy to be a lady born—whereas of Mrs. Russell herself nobody knew anything. But it did not disturb the quiet at the Glebe, where Baby Margaret reigned supreme, shutting out all the outer world with her small presence, her quick coming smiles, the gradual ‘notice’ she took of the external world to which she had come, her first recognition of the devoted vassals about her. Her first little pearly tooth was a greater event than the Reform Bill,which happened somewhere about that time; and it may well be supposed that the first time the small princess visibly indicated her knowledge and preference of her mother was more to Isabel than if the Queen had called upon her, much less Lady Mary. The cottage was all absorbed and wrapt up in the child for that first year of her existence. On the whole, perhaps, it is no great testimony to the female intelligence, that it can thus permit itself to be swallowed up in adoring contemplation and tendance of a helpless, speechless infant, with no intellectual existence at all.
‘I cannot understand you women,’ said the Dominie; ‘if she keeps content it is more than I can fathom. No—if her heart had been dead like the hearts of some—but her heart has never been right awakened; and if there was any word, say of that English lad——’
‘Lord, preserve us!’ cried Miss Catherine, holding up her hands in dismay; ‘you don’t mean to say, Mr. Galbraith, that we’re threatened with him back.’
‘I say only what I hear,’ said the Dominie. ‘They were saying in John Macwhirter’s last night that he had been seen looking at the beasts on Smeaton’s farm; and he should be well known at Smeaton’s farm, if anywhere. There’s a fine breed of cattle to be roupit.’
‘Oh, yes, I know all about that,’ said Miss Catherine, who had endeavoured in vain to secure some of the cattle in question. ‘Archie Smeaton’s a worldly-minded body, and ay hankering after more siller. But to bring that lad back—the only man I have any fear of in the world! No, no, it is you that makes me doubt poor Isabel. With her bairn in her arms there’s no man in the world she would ever look at; we need not fear that.’
The Dominie shook his head. ‘It may be nature,’ he said; ‘you should know better than me—but at three-and-twenty, to give up all your life to an infant, and never seek more in this world, is what I cannot comprehend. If her heart was crushed and dead it might be so, but that is not the case. I am not saying you are right or you are wrong, but it’s very strange to me.’
‘And for one thing, she must not know,’ said Miss Catherine, with an anxious look in her face; ‘neither you nor me will say a word to let her know?’
The Dominie turned away with a grim smile. ‘If that is all your certainty,’ he said, ‘there’s no such great difference between us.’ They exchanged a few more anxious words, standing together half-way up the ascent, and then Miss Catherine continued her walk towards the Glebe.
‘You have heard of something that vexes you,’ said Isabel, when, after all due court had been paid to thelittle princess, Miss Catherine sat wearily down and sank into a kind of abstraction; and then the old lady roused herself up with a guilty start.
‘Me!—no,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘what could I have that would vex me?—except just one thing, Isabel, my dear, if you will promise not to be frightened. There’s measles about. Jenny Spence’s second youngest—the one that was the baby——’
‘But he’s better,’ said Isabel, breathless. ‘It was last month he was ill.’
‘You can never say when they’re better,’ said Miss Catherine, solemnly; ‘and I heard they had it up at the toll on the Kilcranion road; and if one of the Chalmers’ bairns has not the whooping-cough, my ears are not to be trusted. But you must not be frightened. I was thinking if we were to take a week or two at the Bridge of Allan——’
‘Oh, my darling!’ Isabel was saying, with her lips on her baby’s cheek, whom she had seized out of its cradle in her panic. Miss Catherine’s guilty heart smote her, but she was not a woman to be diverted by a mere compunction from pursuing what she felt to be the safe way.
‘My dear, you promised me not to take any panic,’ she said; ‘there is no occasion. You take your walks on the braes, and not through the village; and Margaret has never been so far all her days as the toll-gate. But just to keep you easy, and her clear of all danger, I think you and me, Isabel, might go cannily away to the Bridge of Allan to-morrow. It would do us both good.’
‘You would not say that, if you thought there was no danger,’ said Isabel. ‘Oh, what would I do if anything happened to my darling? Should I take her away to-night?’
‘There is no such hurry as that,’ said Miss Catherine; and then turned to confront Jean Campbell, whom it was more difficult to blind, and with whom it had been impossible to have any private communication. ‘We are going off to the Bridge of Allan,’ she said, with a faint conciliatory smile; ‘we are just making up our minds all at once. A change would do Isabel good; and as for the child, babies are always the better for a change of air.’
‘And there’s measles in the village, and whooping-cough,’ said Isabel, pressing her baby to her heart.
‘No such thing,’ said Jean. ‘Measles!—Jenny Spence’s bairns had them, but they’re all better a month ago; and there’s nae kink-cough I’ve heard of atween this and Maryburgh. Na, if it’s for your pleasure, that’s different. But eh! dinna tempt Providence by getting into a panic when there’s nae trouble near.’
‘I think you’re wrong about the kink-cough,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘There’s one of Peter Chalmers’s boys——’
‘He’s had that cough as long as I can mind,’ said Jean. ‘Na, na, my bonnie woman, dinna you be feared; there’s naething catching in the parish but I’m sure to hear of it. Put down the bairn, and let her sleep.’
‘Well, I am of a different opinion,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘and I’m wearying for a change. I’ll take my maid, Marion, who is very experienced about bairns, and we’ll start in the morning to-morrow with the boat. I cannot stay, Isabel, my dear. Keep up a good heart, and the fine air yonder will make you look like two roses, the baby and you.—— Lord preserve us, woman!’ said Miss Catherine, turning round upon Jean, to whom she had made a sign to follow her, as soon as they were outside the door, ‘could ye not see I had a reason? and was making you signs enough to rouse a whole parish—if she had not been so taken up with the bairn.’
‘Me!—how could I tell?’ said Jean, surprised; ‘and I couldna find it in my heart to put her in such trouble, and it no true.’
‘Nonsense about putting her in trouble!’ said Miss Catherine, energetically. ‘Perhaps you would like better to wring her heart, and bring in another man to her, and turn all her peace to distress once more.’
‘What man?’ asked Jean, seizing with instant penetration the point at question.
‘Yon English lad!’
‘Eh, me!’ said Jean Campbell, ‘blessings on you for a quick thought, and a quicker act. I heard he had been seen over the hill. I’ll swear it’s the kink-cough!’ she added, under her breath; and so the bargain was made.
It was the first night of pain Isabel had spent since her baby was born. It seemed to her as if she ought to get up and fly away with her through the darkness, to escape from so terrible a danger; and she went back a hundred times to the cradle after the little Margaret had been disposed of for the night to listen to her breathing, and look at her little rosebud face, and touch her tiny fingers, and make sure she had not caught anything.
‘The bairn’s as well as ever she was in her life,’ Jean said at last, with a little impatience, as this process went on.
‘But you said there was whooping-cough about,’ said Isabel.
‘I said it might be,’ said Jean, ‘for anything I ken; but, eh, why do you think our bairn should get it, and no other bairn a’ the country round?’
‘Because she is all I have in the world,’ said Isabel, with a sudden fall out of the soft content in which her life had been wrapped.
Jean did not know of the revolution which that moment made. She saw the brown eyes open wide and flash in the soft, domestic light, but had no insight to perceive how Isabel had suddenly stumbled, as it were, against the limits of her lot, and woke up to see that her happiness was as a flower on the edge of a precipice, that all her life was concentrated in this one blossom, against which nature itself, and the winds and the rains, and the summer heats and the autumn chill, were ready to rise up. Most mothers have gone through that same sudden gleam of imagination, and beheld Heaven and earth contending against the child in whose frail ship of life all their venture of happiness was embarked. Isabel saw herself standing as on the brink of a more dreadful destruction than she had ever dreamt of, and her very soul failed within her. It could not last. Before any new influence came in, the Dominie’s words had proved themselves, though in a sense different from anything he understood.
‘Oh, if harm were to come to her!’ cried Isabel, with a sudden, low, stifled cry.
‘Weel, weel,’ said Jean, in her calm voice, ‘that’s what you’re ay thinking as soon as ye hae weans. What if everything should gang against ye? what if trouble should come in a moment, and leave a’ the rest, and strike yours? Ye mustna gie way to that, Isabel. What if the lift were to fa’ and smoor the laverocks? No, no, my bonnie woman! It’s no you nor me that can guard the bairn from whatever’s coming, but just God—if it’s His will.’
‘And if it were not His will?’ said Isabel, driven from despair to despair.
‘Then ye would have to submit,’ said Jean, didactic and almost solemn, ‘as you’ve done before. There’s nae striving against God.’
And then silence fell upon the little grey room, in which the fire flickered cheerfully, and the child slept, and Isabel’s heart beat. It had been beating so quietly up to this moment, and now what wild throbs it gave against her breast! Ah, yes! God’s will had to be submitted to, whatever it was—God’s will, which had carried Margaret, twenty years old, to her bed in the churchyard, and laid the minister in his blood beside her. ‘Oh,’ sighed Isabel, ‘to be with them! to have everything over that must happen! to rest and know that nothing could happen more!’
‘And mony folk would tell ye,’ said Jean, momentarily forgetting her compact with Miss Catherine, ‘that torun away as soon as ye hear of trouble was tempting Providence, as if God couldna smite in the steamboat or the coast, as well as in your ain house. No that I’m of that way of thinking,’ she added, hastily recollecting herself. ‘This change will do the bairn good, and it will do you good, and relieve your mind. Na, Isabel, ye must not take fancies into your head, or think that things are worse than they are. There’s little Margaret the picture of health.’
Isabel turned away, and threw herself down noiselessly on her knees by the side of her child’s cradle. The baby’s breathing was regular and soft; its hand was thrown up over its head, with the unconscious grace of infancy; its attitude full of ease and perfect repose.
She lay all the night through with her child breathing sweetly beside her, debating the question with herself—Should she remain, and put her fate into God’s hands, and perhaps propitiate Him by such an appearance of trust? She did not sleep, but lay in the rustling palpable darkness, sometimes fancying the child’s breathing grew hurried, sometimes that it stopped altogether, and looking all kinds of horrors in the face. She rose from her bed in the same uncertainty; and the day was cold, and Jean wavered, doubting whether such an uncertain and distant danger as that of the ‘English lad’s’ reappearance was sufficient inducement for the immediate sacrifice demanded of her.
‘I doubt it’s an east wind,’ Jean said, as she went into Isabel’s room to call her; ‘I doubt it’s tempting Providence;’ and went about all her arrangements languidly, with no goodwill in them. ‘I’ll put in all her warm winter things,’ she said, as she packed the box for them; ‘ye maun take awfu’ care of cold. Travelling is ay dangerous, and atherage, the bonnie lamb!’
‘Oh, tell me,’ said Isabel, suddenly throwing her arms round her stepmother’s neck. ‘I am distracted, thinking one thing and another. Should I go, or should I stay——?’
Jean paused. She was put on her honour. It was hard to part with the baby, and allow old Marion, Miss Catherine’s maid, to get her hands upon it. But she had given her word. And then ‘another man’ was something too frightful to be contemplated; and Isabel was young, and had once loved Stapylton, or thought she loved him. It was hard upon her stepmother to be obliged to decide; but she did so magnanimously for Isabel’s good.
‘It’s no so cold as I thought,’ she said. ‘The wind’s only in the north. It’s no a warm wind, but it’s no dangerous, like the east; and if you keep her well and keep her warm, and no trust too much to Marion, whoknows nothing about bairns, no doubt a change of air would do her good.’
And after a while Miss Catherine’s carriage came to the door, and took the mother and the child away.