Isabelwent out again on her way home with a mingled feeling of relief and bewilderment. She was not nourishing one single thought of herself or her own affairs as she threaded the winding way; and perhaps it was for this reason that the sight of the figure, advancingto meet her as she turned the corner, came upon her with such startling suddenness. Two steps brought her from the solitude of the road immediately in front of him, and these two steps marked the immensely greater revulsion from unselfish solicitude for another to the sudden wild return of her own life into her passive soul, which seemed no actor, but only a spectator of the change. She came round the corner lightly and swiftly with dreaming eyes, looking into the air, which was vacant of everything but the trees and the reflections of sky and water, and all the sweetness of the time—and suddenly looked full into the face of Horace Stapylton, so near to her that he seemed to have sprung from some hiding-place, or dropped from the sky! Had there been even a minute’s interval to prepare her for his appearance, it would have been different. But he came upon her all at once without even a sound of his step on the mossy, grassy path. She stood still and gave a low cry. Her heart gave a leap as to her lips. A sudden colour rushed over her face, and with a pang as sudden, the sense of having betrayed herself rushed after the first thrill of emotion into her heart.
‘Isabel!’ he said, making one rapid step towards her, and taking her hand in his. He would never have ventured to do it, but for her self-betrayal. He had not been taken by surprise. He gazed at her with eyes that shone and glowed with unconcealed feeling. Isabel grew as suddenly pale as she felt the warm pressure of his hand. She drew herself away, and stepped aside, and made him a little formal bow.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, ‘Mr. Stapylton; I did not know you were there. It was—the surprise——’
‘And then when you recollect, and get over the surprise, you drive me away,’ he said, looking as he had looked in the old days, when he had a lover’s right to her attention, and dared complain and quarrel with her. ‘Why should you drive me away? Why may we not be friends?’
‘Mr. Stapylton, you mistake,’ she said, with confusion; ‘I was not thinking—there is no reason. I was startled to see you—I mean, to see anyone. The road is so lonely here.’
‘There was a time,’ he said, turning with her as she made a movement to go on—‘there was a time when it would have been no surprise to you to meet me anywhere, wherever I knew you to be.’
‘But times change,’ she said, breathlessly, and then, with eagerness to change the subject, made the best plunge she could into general conversation. ‘I have been seeing Mrs. Diarmid, at Ardnamore.’
‘That was Ailie; was it not?’
‘Yes, it was Ailie,’ she said, regaining a little courage. ‘She married Mr. John. Not caring for him, perhaps—that is—I mean—not at first.’
‘People do such things,’ he said, not looking at her, ‘every day.’
‘And she has come back,’ said Isabel, who was too much agitated to think that he meant to launch any passing arrow at herself, ‘and I do not understand what ails her. She is no longer a prophet; but that is not all. She sits and never looks at you, never speaks; and she says God has deceived her; and her husband has gone away.’
‘They must be a strange couple,’ said Stapylton, bringing that subject to a sudden close. Perhaps it was her evident agitation, the tremor with which she recognised him in her surprise, that made him so bold; but he was impatient, it was clear, of ordinary conversation. ‘I can’t call you by your new name,’ he said, suddenly. ‘When I saw you the other day, with that old woman by your side—and that—child—in your arms——’
‘Mr. Stapylton, you are not to speak to me so!’
‘When I saw you,’ he repeated, with a certain hurry and sweep of passion, which she could not stand against, ‘it shook me like an earthquake. Yes, Isabel—I have been like you, trying not to think. Don’t try now to make me believe you are quite calm talking of other things. You can’t forget three years ago—I know you don’t forget——’
‘I have nothing to be ashamed of—in—three years ago,’ said Isabel, trembling, and with all the colour rushing to her face.
‘And I have,’ he said. ‘Ah, I acknowledge that; I would confess it on my knees if you would listen. Ashamed—bitterly ashamed! To think of all that might have been prevented—all the harm that might have been spared—if I had not been such a coward and a fool.’
There was self-reproach in his voice; and Isabel felt a tender compunction seize her, felt her strength stolen from her. If going away from her had made him desperate, should not she be the first to forgive?
‘Indeed I do not blame you,’ she said softly; ‘it has turned out—for the best.’
‘For the best!’ he cried passionately; ‘at least, you cannot expect me to grant that. Your very dress which you wear forhim—your very name—everything—how can I stand here and look at you and bear it—I who never changed in my heart?’
‘Mr. Stapylton,’ said Isabel, ‘you have nothing to dowith me now. You are a stranger, and we were not speaking of your heart. That has nothing—nothing to do with me. I must go home to my baby. I beg of you not to come any further, but to let me go.’
‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘look at me, don’t turn your eyes away from me: I am not a stranger; you could not make me so were you ever so cruel; the time will never be when we shall have nothing to do with each other, you and I—only look at me! What reason can there be why we should part now?’
‘Oh, Mr. Stapylton, let me go,’ she said, shrinking aside from him, not venturing to raise her eyes. She dared not look at him as he begged her to do. She knew that her eyes would have betrayed her—that the beating in her temples and the throbbing in her ears would have found some expression in every look she could turn upon him. Never for all these years had her heart beat as it was beating now. She had been a wife and a widow and a mother, and yet the sound of Horace Stapylton’s voice moved her more deeply than all the events of her own life had done. She hated herself for it, but yet it was so. Her heart went out to him past all her power of restraint. And though her face flushed with bitter shame, and her heart ached with self-reproach, yet she could not help it. The only safeguard she had was in flight. ‘Let me go,’ she repeated, keeping her eyes on the ground, and keeping as far apart from him as the narrow path would permit.
‘Yes, if you hate me altogether,’ he said, with vehemence. ‘If you do, I might have spared myself—much, very much, that can’t be undone. If you hate me, I will let you go!’
The sound of his voice went to her heart. She was free to pass, yet she could not refrain from one glance at him. He was trembling; his face was as pale as death, and drawn together with tragic force of passion. And Isabel could not bear this dreadful expression on the face of the man she had once loved.
‘Oh, it is not that I hate you!’ she cried, out of the depths of her heart.
‘Then you love me!’ he said, wildly seizing her hand. ‘Between us there can be no alternative. Oh, Isabel, I have bought you dear! Never send me away again.’
‘Oh, let me go!’ she repeated, with such a struggle going on within as her whole past life had not experienced. She, Mr. Lothian’s wife, to stand here with a man—any man, be he whom he might, kissing her hand! She, little Margaret’s mother! She could not bear it. She snatched her hand from him, and covered her face with it, and sank down on the grassy bank whereshe stood. What else could she do but weep her heart out, words being impossible? She could say no more; she could not dare to look at him again. The struggle had come to such a point that there was nothing left for her but the unspeakable utterance of tears.
And she was grateful to him that he took no advantage of her weakness. He did not even take her hand again, or take her into his arms as he might have done, but stood looking at her, with something she did not understand in his eyes. How it was she saw the look in his face, through her passionate tears, she herself could not have explained. But she was conscious of it, and of a certain compassion and awe mingled in the eagerness of his gaze, which kept him standing apart, with a delicacy which had never appeared in him before.
‘Isabel,’ he said, hoarsely; ‘though you are cruel to me, I will not be hard upon you. I love you the same as ever—and you love me; all that has come between us is past. Don’t let us so much as speak of that—it is all over, my darling; there is no obstacle between us now. No, I will not press you further. I would not vex you for all the world. I will come to you to the old place or to your own house, my dear, if that is better. And after all it has cost us, Isabel—oh, Isabel! may we not be happy at last?’
‘Horace, let me be!’ she cried, rising to her feet and holding out her hands to him as with an appeal for mercy.
‘I can never let you be,’ he cried, seizing her hands and putting down his face upon them for one moment. She felt that his eyes were wet and his lips dry and quivering, and their positions seemed reversed all at once—and it was she who yearned over him, longing to console him and give some comfort to his heart.
‘Oh, Horace,’ she said, ‘you are going away—you said you were going away? and you’ll forget. I could not live if I thought it grieved you and made your heart sore. You’ll go away, and you’ll think on me no more! Why should we be so sorry? It has not been appointed that you and me should be together. Bid me farewell; and, oh, go away and mind me no more. But I’ll think of you every night when I say my prayers.’
His answer was such a groan as made her start and shrink; and then he raised a pale, passionate face to her, and drew her to him, holding both her hands.
‘You are to be my wife, Isabel!’ he said.
‘No: oh, no. I amhiswife,’ she said, with a cry half of terror; ‘and my child—my child!’
‘Was it my fault he took you from me?’ he cried. ‘I was absent and did not know. Your child shall be mine,Isabel; and you are mine—say you are mine! We can never more part again.’
‘Oh, Horace! let me go.’
It was the sound of a step on the road which interrupted this strange struggle. He let her hands fall as this sound, and that of a cheerful rural voice singing some homely ditty, fell suddenly into those exclamations of passion, and stopped them as by a spell. When Helen, the ‘lass’ from Ardnamore, came down the road she saw, at first without surprise, Mrs. Lothian walking down before her, with a ‘strange gentleman’ by her side—‘ane of thae English,’ Helen said to herself, reflecting that the young widow had been in London, and consequently might be supposed to be acquainted with that nation in general. Helen’s after reflections, when she came to put this and that together, were of a different character, but for the moment she was not suspicious. She passed them with the ordinary salutation, ‘It’s a fine day,’ taking no note of the tearful dilation of Isabel’s eyes; and, all unconsciously to herself, was Isabel’s guardian and protector. It was like the Stapylton of old that he should have fallen into a moody silence after this interruption. And he left Isabel when they reached the highroad. ‘I will see you again,’ was all he said. To see them thus parting, taking different directions, no one would have thought what a contest of wills had just taken place between them, nor with what an agitated soul Isabel turned along the sunny way by the Loch side, to the home which had once been so still and quiet, where her baby awaited her, and her tranquil, pensive, unexciting life remained waiting to be taken up again as soon as she should return.
Jeanwas looking out in the opposite direction, somewhat anxious for her stepdaughter’s return. She was standing at the cottage-door with Baby Margaret in her arms, straining her eyes along the vacant road, and full of anxiety. She gave a suppressed scream when Isabel came noiselessly up behind her, and, without saying a word, clutched at the child and took it out of her arm.
‘God bless us, I thought it was a ghost!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Isabel, you’re like death. It’s been more than you can bear.’
‘I am tired,’ said Isabel, holding her child close with a vehemence which terrified the little creature; and as she looked at her stepmother, the pallor gave way to asudden, overpowering flush. Her eyes fell before the good woman’s anxious, searching look. She turned away, still holding her child strained to her heart. She could not trust herself to meet Jean’s eyes, or even her baby’s. Could she ever venture to look anyone in the face again?
‘It’s a long walk,’ said Jean, anxiously, following her in, ‘and you’ve come the long way round by the braes; and it’s been too much for you. Oh, Isabel, my bonnie woman! it’s brought everything back to your mind.’
‘It did not need the sight of Ailie to do that,’ said Isabel, scarcely knowing what she said. ‘Do things ever go out of one’s mind?’
And she held her child closer than ever, and hid her face in Margaret’s frock. It did not occur to her that she was betraying herself even by the passionate strain of that embrace. Jean gazed at her alarmed, noting every change in her face, the sudden flush and pallor, the inward-looking eyes, the reluctance to meet her own affectionate, anxious gaze.
‘Was she awfu’ changed?’ she asked.
‘Changed—whom?’ said Isabel, with a little start. She had scarcely uttered the words when she recollected herself. Ailie had been driven entirely out of her mind by the after event; the scene which had made so deep an impression on her before she met Stapylton was half effaced from her very recollection. It rose upon her dimly as she tried to remember. ‘Oh, yes, very much changed,’ she said, and stopped short, unable to revive her own interest in a matter so faint and far away.
‘Do you think she’s happy?’ asked Jean.
Strange to think anyone could be so inquisitive! Why should she be forced to pause and recall an experience so distant? ‘I don’t know,’ said Isabel; ‘how can anybody tell? People are happy sometimes when they ought not to be happy, and miserable when they have no reason to be miserable. Am I the judge?—or how can I tell?’
‘But dear me, Isabel, you were awfu’ anxious about her,’ cried Jean, affronted; ‘and would give nobody any peace till ye had been to see her. And now it seems ye dinna care.’
‘Oh, yes, I care; if you would let me rest and be quiet, and not ask me anything now!’
Half offended, wondering, and disturbed, Jean looked at the speaker. It was very clear that Ailie had but little to do with Isabel’s excitement. This sudden irritation and impatience reminded her of the old times before her stepdaughter had been subdued by the events of life, or had learned to control herself. Mrs. Lothian had not been guilty of those movements of temper and impetuousfeeling which were so lively in Isabel Diarmid. Was it that some other subtle change had come, setting at nought the work of experience, and bringing back the original natural condition of the girl’s restless, vivacious soul? Jean did not ask herself so elaborate a question, but the substance of it was in her mind. She said no more, but went softly about the room, putting in order things which needed no arrangement, and watching secretly her stepdaughter’s looks. Isabel took no notice of what she was doing. As soon as she was left to herself she relieved Baby Margaret from the close strain against her breast which had terrified the child, and began to kiss her passionately and pour forth over her inarticulate murmurs of tenderness. Such an outburst of compunctious caresses was as significant as the other strange appearances in her. ‘As if she had done the innocent bairn some harm,’ Jean said to herself. And what could it mean? Isabel would not let no hand but her own touch her child during the remainder of the day. She made no further comment upon her visit to Ardnamore, but occupied herself wholly with little Margaret, talking to her, caressing her, controlling her baby will—having even, for the first time in her life, a little struggle and contest with the child, who perhaps felt by instinct the state of excitement in which its mother was. Jean looked on without interfering, with curious, grave scrutiny and alarm. When the infant was naughty, and cried, and struggled, she kept behind not to put herself in the way. But many speculations were in her mind, and some of them not far from the truth.
Jean had taken fright, though she could not herself have told why. For one thing, she was aware of Stapylton’s presence in the parish, and thought of him as of a prowling enemy. But it was difficult for her to associate Isabel’s strange abstractions, her passionate devotion to her child, and all the signs of suppressed agitation about her, with the reappearance of her former lover. Jean had passed the period at which people realise vividly such conflicts of the heart. It seemed to her more likely that Isabel’s calm had been disturbed by all the recollections which the sight of Ailie must have brought to her, than that Mr. Lothian’s widow could have been agitated or excited by the appearance of any man under the sun. ‘Yon English lad’ had never been good enough for ‘our Isabel’ in her stepmother’s eyes; and that she could think of him now seemed well-nigh impossible. But yet something was wrong; and as soon as Isabel had left the house, Jean sent her son on an errand across the braes to the Dominie to beg his help and counsel. Jamie was too late to find ‘the Maister.’ He had gone out on one of the long walks with which, now summer had come, he endeavoured to make up to himself for the want of his friend and companion. But, notwithstanding the failure of this messenger, Mr. Galbraith heard the news more distinctly than Jean could have informed him, or than she herself knew. The smithy was still open when he returned home in the twilight, and had as usual a little band collected in it of men, observers upon humanity and critics of its wondrous ways. John Macwhirter himself, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was in front of the group, doing nothing, for it was warm, and it was near even his time for closing. He was rubbing his great hands together, looking meditatively into the summer air; but the observation that fell from his lips was not an original one. ‘Women are queer beings,’ was all that he said.
‘I see nothing queer in it, for my part,’ said Peter Chalmers. ‘He was well known to be after Isabel afore ever she married the minister; and now he’s come back——’
‘Who are ye speaking of, I would like to know?’ the Dominie said, who had entered listlessly, and whom these words had excited in spite of himself.
‘There was nae offence meant,’ said Peter. ‘I ca’ her but as a’ the country-side ca’ed her afore she married the minister. And it was nae secret that ever I heard tell of. I’ve seen them thegither on the braes and on the road. It was kept quiet, I’ve ay heard, out of consideration for Margret; who couldna bide the lad. And syne when Margret died he was sent for hame—and out o’ sight out o’ mind is the way of the world. But now that she’s free, and he’s come back, ye canna crush nature. If they come thegither again, as is to be expected, what’s that to you or me?’
‘Again, I ask, who are ye speaking of?’ said Mr. Galbraith with grim emphasis.
‘Na, na, maister, there’s nae call to be angry,’ said John Macwhirter; ‘he’s a nasty cynical body, but this time it’s true. Naebody thought mair of the auld minister than me—this one could never hold the candle to him; but he wasna just the man for a young lass. And she’s but young for a’ that’s come and gane; and her lad’s come back——’
‘How dare ye say such a word?’ cried the Dominie, enraged. ‘Eh, men, you’re no worthy to be called men, if a lassie like that, made a widow as she was, gets no reverence from ye! Poor bit gentle thing! her only protector gone, and nothing but an infant between her and despair ye may say. I wonder ye don’t think shame?’
‘That’s a’ true, a’ true,’ said the smith; ‘but I ay stick up for justice. If Mrs. Lothian should be glad to see the lad she once likit, is that ony sin? Naebody was blaming her. No, no, maister, ye mustna go beyond nature. He was a good man and a clever man; but ye’re no so simple as to think that a bonnie young lass should be bound a’ her life because she was his wife for a year! Would that be reasonable? I’m no taking one side or another, but as Peter says, “What’s the harm?"’
‘I ask ye what’s the evidence! which is more to the purpose?’ said the Dominie.
‘Weel, nae doubt it’s a slender foundation to build so much on,’ said John. ‘She’s been at Ardnamore the day, and she met him on the road. That’s all about it—nothing ye may say, but casting a seed into the ground. Eelin, the lass at Ardnamore, saw them talking, and she came on and tellt the wives; and the wives they’ve a’ made up their minds how it’s to be—ye canna stop the tongues of a wheen women. And I canna say it’s anything but natural if ye ask me mysel.’
‘It would be hard to tell in what you’re better than the women, making a work about such childish clavers,’ said Mr. Galbraith with disdain.
‘Well we’re mair philosophical,’ said the smith; ‘they’re a’ at her like hens at a grosset, and no a civil word in their heads. I’m an awfu’ man for justice myself. A young lass is but a young lass if she was a widow twenty times over, and nae doubt before he did such a foolish thing the minister counted the cost, and kent weel that his young widow would wed some other man. Lord bless us it’s human nature! She’s no five-and-twenty yet. She’s no an auld wife to be content with her wean? It’s nature, just nature! I’m neither blaming her nor him.’
‘I advise you to say no more about it, philosophical or no,’ said the Dominie; ‘there are lads and lasses enough in the parish without bringing in them that are out of your way. I say nothing for the rest—but, John Macwhirter, there are inklings of understanding about you, and I looked for better at your hand.’
‘I’ve said nae ill I ken of,’ said the smith, half sullen, half abashed. ‘A woman is but a woman if she was a queen. No but what I have a great respect for Mrs. Lothian,’ he added, with some embarrassment. ‘Lord, Peter, if ye say another word, as sure as death ye shall hae a taste of the Loch, to put ye in mind wha ye are.’
‘I’m no conscious I ever forgot who I was,’ said Peter, with a laugh, ‘nor other folk. Respect be to a’ where respect is due; but as ye were saying, John, lads and lasses are ay the same, be it in a cot or in a palace. The Maister himsel canna contradict that.’
‘I’m saying nothing about your lads and lasses,’ said the Dominie, severely; ‘but, lads, ye can have little feeling in your minds, and ye’ve forgotten every lesson ye ever got from me, if ye cannot respect the very name of a woman that never did one of ye harm—that has neither father, nor brother, nor husband, to stand up for her—and that is no more mistress who she shall meet on the common road, or who will speak to her, than you or me. There’s no a man among you but should have been a lone lassie’s defender and guard of honour had ye listened to me!’
With these words Mr. Galbraith started forth into the night, in all the grandeur of indignation, leaving the club of rural gossips much disconcerted. He had taught the most of them all they knew of book-learning, and there were few who had not a certain awe of the Maister who had corrected his youth. There was silence when he went out, followed after an interval by a feeble attempt at a laugh. ‘The Dominie’s mounted his high horse,’ somebody said in the darkness; but there was no immediate echo of the sentiment. And what the Dominie had commenced was accomplished triumphantly by Mrs. Macwhirter, the smith’s wife, who came forward with her baby in her arms, to sound a note of victory over the discomfiture of ‘the men.’
‘Eh, but ye’ve weel deserved it!’ she said, ‘clashing and clavering like a wheen auld wives. That I should say sae! There’s no an auld wife in the country-side that’s a man’s match for an ill tongue. A’ the nasty stories that are ever told in this parish, and mony a parish mair, trace them up, and ye’ll ay find they’ve come frae the smiddy, or the public, wherever there’s men meeting. Eh, lads, I would think shame——’
‘Gang back to your weans!’ said the smith, peremptorily. ‘It’s late, friends, and time we were a’ in our beds. I’ll wish ye good night, for it’s time to shut up the place. Gang back, I say, woman, to your weans.’
And the meeting of the rural convocation was brought to a sudden close.
Themorning rose anxiously over all the personages of this little drama. Isabel, sleepless, fatigued, and unresolved, rose pale to the new day which she felt might bring change incalculable to her life. Jean, who kept hovering about her, watching with keen attention every movement she made, increased Isabel’s suppressed agitation. There was a permanent flush on her face;her eyes were abstracted, and took little note of what was going on. She seemed scarcely aware of the passage of time, and was irritated when she was called upon to sit down at the table and eat, and go through all the ordinary domestic routine. ‘Oh, if you would leave me quiet!’ she exclaimed, half unconsciously, turning away her face from the scrutiny of which she was only half aware.
‘My bonnie woman! you’re no weel?’ said Jean.
‘I am quite well; there is nothing the matter with me. I have—a headache. I don’t feel—able to talk,’ said Isabel, stumbling from one sentence to another. And then she wound up with the plaint of weariness, so familiar in its sound, ‘Oh, if you would let me be!’
Let her alone—leave her to revolve and re-revolve the questions that were rushing through her mind in endless succession without any answer! Poor Jean did her best to answer this prayer. She went and shut herself up in the kitchen with her children, and gave them their dinner. And then she thought the broth was exceptionally good, and that fasting was bad for a headache; so she got up from her own meal and carried a basin of the family soup into the parlour. ‘They’re real good the day,’ she said, wistfully; ‘try a spoonfu’, Isabel.’
Isabel was standing at the window once more looking out. She turned round quickly at the sound of the opening door, and a blaze of momentary anger came across her face. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I could not eat;’ and then sat down suddenly, drawing her work to her. Jean stood in the doorway and gazed, holding always the basin in her hand.
‘Are you looking for somebody?’ she said. ‘Oh, Isabel, if you would but tell me! There’s something wrong, but what it is I canna tell.’
‘There is nothing wrong,’ said Isabel; and for a moment her needle flew through her work, while Jean stood looking at her. Then she roused to impatience again. ‘I said I had a headache; if you would leave me quiet, just for a little while——!’
‘I’ll do that, my bonnie woman,’ said Jean; and withdrew regretfully with her broth. But before she resumed her place at the table another thought struck her. This time it was a glass of wine she carried into the parlour. ‘No to disturb you, Isabel,’ she said; ‘but a young thing like you shouldna fast so lang. I’ve brought you a glass of sherry-wine; it’s no ill to take and it will keep your heart——’
‘I want nothing, thank you,’ said Isabel.
‘But you’ll take it to please me,’ said Jean. Just thena knock at the door made both of them start. Isabel, without speaking, raised her eyes with a dumb, wistful appeal to the only comforter within her reach. And Jean, in her agitation, spilled the wine as she placed it on the table. ‘It’s maybe naebody,’ she said, with sudden comprehension, and with a yearning of her heart over the child about to be exposed to danger and trial.
‘What will I do?’ cried Isabel, clasping her hands.
‘Oh, Isabel, think of the bairn, and the Lord will be a guide to you,’ said Jean, with tears in her eyes. Not a word of explanation had passed between them, but the elder woman came and kissed the younger one with a sudden understanding of the conflict and struggle such as no words could have conveyed to her. Then the knock was repeated, and Jean hurried away to open the door, wiping her hands with her apron. Her own anxieties and jealousies were all quenched in a moment in that rush of genuine sympathy. ‘For she ay likit the lad!’ Jean said to herself, feeling by instinct that poor Isabel had traitors within as well as temptations without.
It was, however, not Stapylton, but the Dominie who stood waiting at the door; and the revulsion of feeling was such that Jean could scarcely be civil to Mr. Galbraith. ‘Oh, aye, she’s ben the house; but she’s no weel the day, and I canna have her vexed,’ said Isabel’s anxious guardian, looking jealously at this new disturber of her repose.
‘I’m sorry she’s not well; but I have not come to vex her,’ said the Dominie. His reception was so strange a one that it was not wonderful if it startled him. When he went into the parlour he met the wistful gaze of Isabel’s dilated, excited eyes; but when she saw it was him, and not another, her look changed in a moment, and she fell into a sudden outburst of tears. Disappointment, relief, a strain of feeling which he could not understand, was in the sudden change which came over her face—and the Dominie, being but a man, was not so quick of apprehension as Jean.
‘I have startled you, my dear,’ he said.
‘Oh, not startled—’ said Isabel; ‘but—my head aches; and—I was not expecting you—and——’
The explanation fell into a broken murmur of words; and she dried her tears hastily with an agitated hand. The Dominie had come with the intention of saying some word of warning; though how it was to be introduced, or what kind of warning it was to be, he could not have told anyone. He had hoped that circumstances might have led to some remark about the strangers in the parish, and that he would have saidsomething which should ‘put her on her guard.’ Such warnings seem so much easier to give when the person to be warned is not present. He sat down by her in her little parlour, and found that, so far as his mission was concerned, he had not a word to say.
‘What would you say to a change of air,’ said the Dominie, ‘if you are not well?’
‘You forget I have just come home.’
‘And so I did,’ he said. ‘But I do not like these mild inland places like the Bridge of Allan. If you were to go to the sea, or to the hills——’
‘I am best at home,’ said Isabel.
And then there was a dead pause. She had taken her work, and was labouring against time, her needle flying through the linen, her head bent down over it. Mr. Galbraith gave a quiet sigh, and felt himself baffled. He did not know how to introduce his subject, and he could not understand the state of suppressed excitement in which she evidently was.
‘There are a great many strangers in the parish just now,’ he said at last, himself making the remark which he had hoped might have come from her, ‘and some that are not strangers altogether. I hear, Mrs. Lothian, that you’ve been at Ardnamore?’
‘Yes, I’ve been at Ardnamore.’
‘And you’ve seen themall?’ asked Mr. Galbraith, with emphasis.
‘I have seen Ailie and—Mr. John,’ she said, raising her eyes to his face. (It seemed to her, as she spoke, that there was another step on the road, and that she could hear it pause at the cottage-door; and in her trouble she betook herself to craft, as was natural.) ‘But you must not ask me about them,’ she said; ‘it was more—than I could bear. It—brought everything back. It is that, I suppose, that has made me so foolish to-day.’
‘It can never be foolish to remember what is past,’ said the Dominie, reassured. ‘Don’t drive the thought from you, as silly folk tell you. The past is precious; sometimes it is all that is left to us. You are young, and you have your child; but I doubt if you will ever have such a treasure as yon year. Isabel, my dear, I’ve seen you a bairn, though you were my friend’s wife. Think on him still. There are few such seen in this life.’
‘I know that well,’ said Isabel, glad, poor child, in unconscious hypocrisy to secure thus a pretence for her too ready tears.
‘Aye, think upon him!’ said the Dominie. ‘You’re bonnie and young, and may get the offer of many aman; but, perhaps, never another like him—most likely never another like him. You should be proud of the past. You have had one of the best men that ever was born; and if you had been an angel out of Heaven, he could not have set you up higher, or made more of you. Isabel, sometimes you must think of that!’
‘Oh, I think of it!’ said Isabel, with streaming eyes. And the Dominie drew his large hand over the great caves that lay under his eyebrows; his heavy eyelids were wet, and the muscles quivering about his mouth. He did not attempt to explain to her, nor even to himself, why he was so much in earnest, why he addressed her in so solemn a strain. It seemed natural. As for Isabel, she wanted no explanation; she was neither offended, nor even surprised. The very atmosphere around her spoke to her as plainly as he had spoken. At such a crisis it was but natural that everyone should be moved, even stocks and stones if that could be.
‘And now I must go away,’ he said, rising, with a smile gleaming out under the unshed tear. ‘It’s the hour of the bairns’ dinner, and a kind of necessity was upon me to come and see you. No; I’ll take nothing. The afternoon school is not so long. God bless you, Isabel! and guide you aright—in——’
He broke off in the middle of the sentence, as if (she thought) there was something he could not trust himself to say—and went away without looking round, or adding any ordinary farewell. But his agitation did not wound or even surprise Isabel. She dried her own wet eyes when he was gone, and tried to throw herself back, as he had told her, into ‘yon year’—the year of her marriage—when she had been worshipped like something divine, and guarded as the apple of her husband’s eyes. ‘You should be proud of the past,’ her Mentor had said. And Isabel had strained at it, trying with all her might to bring it back to her mind; but could not. Her imagination rushed instead to that meeting on the hill-side under Ardnamore, to every word, every look, every tone of that strange interview. Oh, how bitter it was, to be unable to control her thoughts, or turn them as she would, or keep them to matters which her mind could approve. They escaped from her with a leap to go tohim; and with a guilty pang at her heart, Isabel felt that the bitter was not so poignant, not so irresistible as the sweet.
Baby Margaret woke, and began to cry from the inner room, while her mother sat lost in this struggle. Isabel rose with the alacrity of custom to take the child; but Jean rushed suddenly in before her, and had the infant in her arms before the mother could reach it.Jean was pale, and her eyes all a-glow with excitement. ‘Na, na,’ she said, holding the child fast, ‘leave her with me. There’s ane coming up the brae, Isabel, that ye’ll have to see.’
‘Give me my bairn,’ said the poor young mother with a cry; and then she sank trembling in a chair, her very limbs failing under her. Half defiant, half sympathetic, Jean stood before her with the baby in her arms.
‘It’s no fit she should be here. You’ll have to see him, and to say what’s to be. But, oh, Isabel, dinna forget that you have a bairn!’ said Jean, with sudden tears.
‘No till I forget myself,’ said Isabel, not knowing what she said; and then there was a sudden stillness round her, and she became aware that she was face to face with her fate.
She raised her eyes, which were veiled with dreams, yet shining with suppressed excitement, to the face of Stapylton, who stood looking down upon her. The man who had tried to beguile her from her last duty to Margaret—who had wooed her and tempted her, and almost spurned her on the braes—who had written that letter—who had left her for a whole year alone to comfort herself as she might, before she could consent to permit the other truer, generous love to console her in her solitude. All this rushed through her mind as she looked up at him; and at the same moment her heart flew from her like a bird, and took refuge, as it were, in his breast. She had no power to help herself.
‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘I have come to say what you would not let me say yesterday. Why should we keep apart, you and I? I have not come to speak of the past—not a word. Thank Heaven it is over. It shall never be mentioned between us. You were my Isabel when my father sent for me; be my Isabel now.’
‘How can that be?’ she said, under her breath.
‘It can be,’ he answered, bending down over her; and—it was not self-delusion on her part—there was a softness in his voice, a tenderness that had never been there before. For the first time Isabel felt a certainty that he was thinking of her, how to be most gentle to her, how to please and to move her, more than of himself. ‘I might have looked for you on the hills as I used to do,’ he went on, ‘but I thought it was best to come here to your own home. Isabel, there is no time for courting now. We cannot play with the thought, and quarrel, and make friends, as we used to do. Life is more serious nowadays. We must be man and wife!’
‘You are not the judge, Mr. Stapylton,’ she cried, with a touch of her old impatience; ‘it is for me to settle that, and not you.’
‘But you will settle it, Isabel. We are older, we should know our own minds, and the time for the braes is over,’ he said. ‘Isabel! you have never been out of my heart. I tried to forget you at first, and then—but I said there was to be nothing of the past.’
‘You succeeded well,’ said Isabel, ‘in forgetting me. There was a year—a whole year——’
He sat down by her and took her hand. She had given up the contest when she thus upbraided him; and it seemed to her, as he seated himself by her side, that a strange long dream was over, and that all things were again as they had been when the two had met upon the braes.
‘I was not a free man;’ he said: ‘my father was lying dying, and he would not die. Don’t question me of that. Is it not all past? And, my darling, you are mine again.’
‘No; oh no,’ she cried, with a little instinctive shudder, drawing back; ‘there was more—far more, than that.’
‘What more?’ He was pale with the suspense and with eagerness. He stretched out his hand again to claim hers, which she had withdrawn. ‘Yes, there was more,’ he continued, looking fixedly in her face; ‘would to God I could forget the rest!’
A flush of shame rushed over Isabel’s cheeks. At that moment, when he professed for her a constant love which had known no interruption, what could she say of her own marriage; how could she even think of it? Was it not treachery, almost vice? The colour came up like flame over her face. She felt their positions changed at once, and she herself put to the bar.
‘I was alone in the world,’ she said, ‘and I had not heard of you—not a word, for a whole year.’
Now, indeed, he got her hand into his, and triumphed over all her pretence at indifference. She had begun to excuse herself, almost to beg his pardon. ‘We will speak of it no more,’ he said; ‘now my Isabel is mine again we’ll think of it no more.’
‘Oh! hush, hush, I never said that,’ she cried, evading his caress. But he was close by her as in the old days; his voice, so much softened, in her ears—that voice which had first woke echoes in her girl’s heart; his hand holding hers, and her heart melting, yearning to her first love. How could she resist not him only, but herself? She had no heart to say him nay. After this sudden renewal what would become of her if life settled down again in its grey colours, and he disappeared out of it once more for ever? A month ago that subdued life, with her child in it for sunshine, had been very sweet—but now?
And yet, in the very happiness that thus stole over her,there was a grasp and constriction in her throat, as of guilt and pain. She was doing something for which she could never have anything but blame from herself or from others—for which she could not defend herself. Her reason seemed to stand by disapproving, regretful, while the poor heart of her made the plunge. The one was no help to the other. Her unity of being was all torn asunder and made an end of. She did not think this in so many words, but was vaguely, dimly conscious of it, as the happiness stole flooding through her, penetrating every nook and corner. ‘Oh, Horace! do you not feel as if it should not be?’ she said, with one last effort to resist.
‘I feel that it ought to be,’ he said, drawing her close to him. ‘If you wish me to have a hope in the world,—if you would not see me perish; not for your sake, Isabel, that are innocent, but for my sake——’
‘Are you not innocent?’ she said, gazing at him with wonder and alarm in her great, tear-dilated eyes.
He put his head down upon her arm, upon the sleeve of her black dress, and kissed that. He had her hand in his, but it was not her hand which he touched with his trembling lips. And she felt that he trembled. For the first time his heart was so touched that the very frame felt the vibration. It was so different from his composure of old, that it moved Isabel beyond expression. When he answered her with an almost groan, his voice half stifled by his attitude, she leaned over him to catch what he said, as if it had been the most precious utterance. ‘Not innocent like you,’ he said sighing, almost moaning as from a heavy heart. And she melted and yearned over him like a mother over a child.
‘Oh, Horace, if you have done wrong we will set it right!’ she said, unconscious of the vast pledge she took. And thus the contest was ended, and all the struggles of reason made an end of it in one outburst of that enthusiasm of pity and tenderness which raises innocent love to the height of passion. The moment she could escape from him, Isabel rushed to the door without saying a word. She opened it, all radiant yet all tearful, her eyes shining, her face full of soft colour, the lines of her mouth quivering with sobs and smiles. Outside, Jean was walking about, very grave and almost stern, with Baby Margaret lying on her shoulder, hushing, or trying to hush, the child to sleep. But the child had no intention of sleeping; she lay with her head over Jean’s shoulder, and two great grave eyes gazing intent into the summer air in that wonderful abstraction of childhood which is so mysterious and unfathomable. To her excited mother itseemed as if the child already disapproved and protested, and was saddened by the event which she could not understand. Isabel snatched her baby out of her stepmother’s arms, who gazed at her like Margaret, and understood better why this sudden movement was. She felt the momentary chill strike to her heart; but did not stop to realise it. Without saying a word, she returned again into the parlour where Stapylton sat surprised awaiting her. He, too, understood her meaning when she reappeared with her child in her arms. She came up to him with two great tears running over from her brilliant, excited eyes; her mouth quivering so that she could scarcely speak; yet smiling. She held out her baby to him without a word. Perhaps it was that he had not expected, had not thought of this little living evidence of the ineffaceable past. He rose to his feet with a sudden hoarse exclamation. The joy in his face sank into a momentary wildness, almost horror; and he trembled as the child’s unconscious, solemn eyes gazed at him. Another pang and chill came over Isabel; she had thought he would have taken the child from her, and kissed it, and vowed some tender vow of protection and love. But this, too, was momentary, and passed before she had time to realise it. He did not take the child, but he took the mother into his arms, embracing the bewildered baby also without touching her. ‘She shall be my child,’ he said.
His child! Isabel broke away from him, and clasped her baby to her bosom, and sat down apart and cried. Ah, no! For the first time a distinct sense of the claims of the other who was dead and gone, but who was little Margaret’s father, came with a certain sickening pang to her heart. His wife might go from him and be another man’s wife: could his child, too, be another man’s child, and every trace of him disappear from the earth? Ah, no!—once more, no! She said nothing, restrained, even at that moment, by the strange, new, instinctive sense that she must not breathe a word that could suggest prejudice or dislike to the mind of her lover in respect to her child; but in her heart there rose a certain jealousy of him for her dead husband’s sake, a remorse and compunction unspeakable. She had given herself up to him; she had appealed to him, with moving looks and gestures, to take her child too into his heart; and yet her whole being roused into contradiction of his claim, into dumb indignant assertion of the real father’s right, as soon as he responded to her appeal. She sat apart from him, not looking at him, holding little Margaret to her heart and weeping hot tears with a vehemence which Stapylton could not understand. And she could notunderstand it herself; she could do nothing but weep her passion out, already putting restraint upon her tongue, feeling instinctively that her freedom had gone from her, that she dared not say to him in his moment of triumph what sudden thought had arisen in her mind. Thus it was with poor Isabel, in the moment of what might have been her triumph too, when she gave up her heart and her life into the hands of the only man she had ever loved.
Theywere married very shortly after—there being no reason why they should wait. Nobody approved of them nor of their match, nor would have been likely to do so had they waited half a dozen years. Their little world stood round, as it were, and gazed upon them, declaring it washed its hands of all responsibility. Her stepmother went about the house as if she were assisting at a funeral—even little Mary turned reproachful eyes upon her.
‘Poor wee baby! Poor wee Margret!’ she would say, caressing the child. ‘Why is shepoorbaby?’ said Isabel, and little Mary would sigh and shake her head. As for Miss Catherine, she made a formal proposal to take the child under her own care, and leave Mrs. Lothian to ‘her other duties.’
‘A bairn in the house will be an interruption,’ she said. ‘A man with a young wife is often impatient enough of a baby of his own; and ye cannot expect he would be more tender to another man’s child.’
‘She is my child!’ said Isabel, holding her baby tightly strained in her arms.
‘But she is my dear old friend’s child as well,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘and she should not be brought up in ignorance of her father’s very name.’
‘Oh, Miss Catherine, you are hard—hard!’ cried Isabel. ‘If he was your friend, he was my husband, and knew all, and would never, never have judged me like this!’
‘Isabel Diarmid,’ said Miss Catherine, sternly, ‘it’s little more than a year since he was brought home to his house to die, and for a time I thought it was your death-blow too; and now, with your baby in your arms, you are going to wed another man. You should not speak of harsh judgment to me.’
‘But I must,’ said poor Isabel. ‘Oh, Miss Catherine, if you would but think how it all was. Can I put it in words? I was fond—fond of him—and oh! but he was good to me. But you know—the difference; and if youhad said a month since—Heis coming; let us fly away, not to meet him, not to bring back the past—I would have gone to the end of the world. I would be—almost—glad—now——’
‘Of what, Isabel?’ cried Miss Catherine. ‘My dear, my dear, come, and I will go with you, and free you from this man!’
‘I can never be free of him—now!’ she said. ‘To say the words is an offence to me. I would have clung to my old life, to be Mr. Lothian’s widow and little Margaret’s mother, and nothing more; but now that is all past. If that was what you wanted, why did you let me see the one man—the only man——’
Here Isabel stopped, silenced by her sobs and her shame. She was not ashamed to love him, but she was ashamed to say it in words, to disclose the sacred depths of the heart to any strange eye. She bent her crimson tear-wet face over her child. Poor little Margaret! if she could have known the meaning of all those looks of trouble, and passion, and distress, at which she gazed so gravely with profound baby eyes! Miss Catherine rose up and shook out her dress with an agitated movement, as if shaking the very dust from it, according to scriptural injunction; and yet she had been touched, though she would not admit it, by Isabel’s cry.
‘You must judge for yourself,’ she said. ‘All has been said that can be said. I cannot change your heart or settle your life for you, one way or another. You must do as you will. You know what I think, and what a sore blow this is to me; and I can say no more.’
And Miss Catherine swept out of the room and out of the house, leaving poor Isabel with her face hidden and her heart torn asunder.
It did not even strike Isabel as strange that she received no overtures of friendship from his family, nor, indeed, heard of them in any way. Her case seemed too far removed out of the ordinary course of life to leave her any interest in ordinary circumstances. She never thought of his people; all who surrounded herself were hostile or disapproving, and the effect upon her was to make her independent (as she thought) of sympathy. The world was hard upon her, and she turned her back upon the world.
And thus it happened that they were married, without paying any attention to the objections and protestations of Loch Diarmid. It was in the beginning of winter, when little Margaret was nearly a year old. Margaret’s father had been but a year and a half dead, which was the fact that chiefly shocked the parish.
Stapylton took his bride to a pretty sea-side village further down the Clyde where the winter was mild, and where there were no associations to disturb the peace of their beginning. He bore with her in her distress at that temporary parting with her child—he bore with her anxieties about little Margaret and longings after her, in the little interval which he might have claimed as specially his own. He was thoughtful of her every wish, putting aside his own comfort (she thought) for hers. And Isabel found herself, all unawares, wrapt in that dream of happiness which most hearts entertain one time or other, and which so few realise. Out of her doubts she came into a sense of reality which was exquisite to her—and she who had loved her lover without believing in him, grew, with a blessed surprise and delight, which was like Heaven to her, to trust as much as she loved. The change was like that from night into the brightest day. She had reached the heights all radiant with the sun rising, after the valley of the shadow of death.
‘You have been a bride of brides,’ he said to her one day, when a few weeks of this dream had gone. ‘You have never asked me where we were to go, or what we were to do. I wish I could reward you for your trust, my love, and take you to a fine castle, and say you were queen——’
‘It was not that,’ said Isabel, ‘don’t praise me too much. It was because I had so much in my mind I forgot. But, Horace, it is trust now.’
‘And that is all I want,’ he said, ‘and we can settle together where we are to go.’
‘But you have your own home?’ said Isabel.
‘I sold that; did I never tell you? I have no ties but you now,’ he said. ‘I meant to have gone to America—two years ago. Shall we go now? or shall we stay in your own country? or what are we to do?’
‘I have been a fool,’ cried Isabel, ‘to think of nothing all this time. But you must have had plans of your own.’
‘Yes, to disappear out of the world if you would not have me,’ he said; ‘but since I knew you would have me, everything else has gone out of my head.’ And then she clasped his arm with both her hands, and they walked on forgetting everything, even their plans. Oh, how different it was from the tender quiescence with which she had accepted the minister’s love! That had been but a dream and this was life.
They went on together wandering along the beach which was lit up by all the glories of the sunset. She too happy to think of anything; he absorbed in her.
‘Oh, Horace, how different everything is!’ she said. Her heart was full and spoke out of its abundance. ‘If I could have thought this would ever come in those wearydays when I looked for you, and you stayed away from me——’
‘But you forgot me, Isabel.’
‘Did I forget you? Oh, how I wearied for you, Horace!’ There was something like guilt in the confession; but the meaning in her mind was different from his conception of it. The time in which she ‘wearied’ for him had not been that pure, calm, cloistered year of her marriage, when all vain thoughts and wishes had been hushed in the unspeakable quiet. She had not thought of him then. She had been faithful and true as an angel to her father-husband, whose love surrounded her like a dwelling-place, and kept her pure from all the soils of earth. So detached was that period from her life that she did not even remember it while she spoke. It was a vision, a trance, a world apart. But in the other agitated world of her young lonely life it seemed now as if there had been but one thought, and that was him. ‘You left me all that year—all that weary, weary year, after our Margaret was taken from me,’ she said, looking up at him with her tender, shining eyes; ‘and I thought I would break my heart.’
‘And at the end of it—’ he said, ‘shall I remind you, Isabel, how you showed your love to me? or shall we let by-gones be by-gones, and speak of it no more?’
‘How I showed my love for you?’ said innocent Isabel—innocent, heartless, ungrateful—and yet, in her heart, loyal, after their degrees, to all affections. She looked in his face with genuine surprise. And then, all at once, with a scorching blush remembered what he meant.
‘He was so good to me,’ she murmured, with downcast looks; ‘oh, so kind, like my father! What could I do? It was different. Never, never, could he have been—like you.’
Stapylton drew her to his side with a shudder. ‘We’ll speak of it no more,’ he said; ‘I could not trust myself, Isabel; one moment of my life I was in Hell—and it was by seeing you——’
‘Seeing me?’ she said, aghast.
‘With him—more lovely than I ever dreamt of—in London—at the opera. My God! when I think of it,’ said the young man, with a blackness impenetrable to her anxious gaze coming over his face.
‘Oh, Horace! was it you? Oh, was it you? There was something there that made me miserable. Oh, my Horace!’ she said, with pity, and remorse, and terror, clinging to his arm.
‘It was Hell!’ he said, wiping his forehead, upon which great drops of moisture were standing. ‘I had been forgetting as best I could—till then. It was Hell; but this is Heaven,’ he added, after a pause, holding hercloser. Isabel, terrified and appalled, clung to him, gazing, with her wistful eyes, into his face. ‘It is all past now,’ she said, clinging close to him, with her hands clasped on his arm.
‘My darling! and this is Heaven!’
One evening, a week later than the conversation we have just recorded, it happened unfortunately that the cry of a child in one of the cottages awoke the heart of the young mother within her. Her maternity had been slumbering, but was not weakened by absence from her child. ‘If I had but my baby!’ she sighed softly, half to herself, without thinking—as, indeed, she ought to have done—what an interruption such an exclamation must have been to any young man’s love-dream.
He said something—she could not distinguish what; but there was impatience in the tone, and it jarred upon her. He quickened his pace, too, out of the lover’s ramble, drawing her along with him. When Isabel thought of it, she saw, with a new-born power of putting herself in his place, that it was cruel to bring in the baby at that moment; but at first it hurt her, and brought a little pang into her heart.
‘Cannot you be content with me for a little?’ he said; and then there was a pause, and they both turned, by instinct, to their lodgings. It was a winter night; but there are nooks along the coast where the soft west, even in Scotland, cheats the visitor into dreams which would better become the south. The sun was setting behind the Arran hills, lighting up all the horizon with a brilliant wintry glory. The tints were deeper, the gold more dazzling, than in summer; and far away stretched the sea, blue as steel, and brimming over with a rounded fullness, as if it could hold no more. The night air blew somewhat chill in their faces: perhaps it was that alone which made Isabel so cold and so willing to return.
‘If we were to go away there,’ Stapylton said, pointing across the steel-blue glistening water, ‘it would be hard work exposing a baby to such a voyage. Could you make up your mind, Isabel, to leave her at home?’
‘Leave—my child!’ she cried, with a little shriek; and her joy all at once seemed to die suddenly out of her heart.
‘I do not say so,’ said Stapylton; ‘I am only making a suggestion. At her age it would be hard upon her. You could not get milk for her, nor anything. Poor child! If you could trust her to anyone at home——’
‘Oh, Horace, ask me anything but that,’ said Isabel, clinging to his arm.
‘Well, well,’ he said, subduing his impatience, as her quickened senses could discern, by an effort, ‘I am notasking you to do it; I am only suggesting what might be for her good.’
And then they went in, and a change came over the heavens and the earth to Isabel. It was not that he had changed: he was as anxious to be good to her, to save her all annoyance, to make her happy, as ever. It was that a note, which jarred upon the perfect happiness she had begun to rise into, had been struck, as it were, unawares. Her husband was still her lover, still full of fond delight in her, and eager to please her; but a meaning she could not quite fathom, a purpose which was not made clear to her, seemed to be under his love and his fondness—now more, now less clearly visible from that day. He spoke a great deal of America, pointing out all its advantages to her; and Isabel, who had no dear friends to leave behind her, and of whom her neighbours all disapproved, was not disinclined to think of emigration. But then there were the discomforts of the voyage, upon which he insisted with ever-strengthening force of words.
‘I would never hesitate if we were alone; but the child necessitates a maid,’ he said, ‘and the maid brings other troubles in her train.’
‘But I want no maid; I can take care of my child without any help,’ cried Isabel.
‘And if you did that how much should I see of you?’ he said, with an almost sneer. ‘No, Isabel, I don’t want to be disagreeable, but my wife must be my wife, and not a baby’s nurse.’
‘She will soon be walking,’ said the young mother, trying with anxious wiles to recommend her child. ‘She would soon be—a help to me, Horace, instead of a trouble.’
‘You must consider it all well,’ he said; ‘it is not just our—your own pleasure that you must think of; you must remember what you owe to the child. She is too young for a long voyage, Isabel; probably she might fall ill—and die. My dear, I don’t want to frighten you—babies so often do.’
‘Oh, Horace, not with my care!’ cried Isabel. ‘God would protect her by sea as well as by land. The poor women have all their little children with them. What should happen to my darling more than to the rest?’
‘But it does happen to the half of the rest,’ he said, calmly. ‘I don’t want to frighten you, Isabel; but afterwards, if anything were to happen, you would blame me for not telling you. And then if she lived and grew up she might object to be severed from all her friends and her own country. She has her friends, I suppose—her—father’s friends.’
‘She can have no friend so near as her mother,’ said Isabel, in a voice which was scarcely audible.
‘What do you say? Of course you are her mother, my dear; but if she were to grow up to feel herself alone in a family, she—did not belong to, one may say—don’t you think she would reflect upon you for taking her from her home? My darling! I did not mean to vex you; I am only saying what you will think yourself when you look at it calmly and see it in a reasonable light.’
‘Oh, Horace, Horace,’ cried Isabel, clasping her hands, ‘did not you say she should be as your own? You would not take your own child from its mother? You would not leave her behind?’
‘Why should not I,’ he said, ‘if it would be for the child’s good?’
For a moment she looked at him aghast, and then hid her face in her hands. He towered over her in superior virtue condemning her woman’s weakness. ‘If it were for the child’s good. It is not our own pleasure we must think of.’ The sound of these sentiments bewildered Isabel. Was it possible that her eagerness to keep her baby at any cost or risk was but the selfishness of maternity? Could it be that he would actually be so self-denying as to leave even his own child behind him, if it was ‘for its good’? Isabel’s heart protested against such virtue, and yet it silenced her indignant cry.
‘I believe I have strength of mind enough to do it,’ he said, ‘if it was for the child’s good. Drag her out there with you to undergo all the hardships of a long voyage, to be exposed to disease perhaps, to be parted from her own relations and the country in which her property lies. If she had been unprovided for the case might be different.’
There was a shade of bitterness in his voice. Was he angry that little Margaret’s fortune was safe and out of reach, though he himself had taken pains to make all the arrangements? Isabel withdrew her hands from her face, and gazed at him confused by his vehemence. What could it be that he meant?
‘But she is very well provided for,’ he added, with meaning—‘quite a little heiress. And her friends would never be content that her property should go out of the country. I see a thousand difficulties in the way. And if I were you, I would choose the most careful guardian I could get for her, and leave her quietly at home, at least till she knows what is what, and can decide for herself.’
‘Oh, Horace, do you remember she is my child—my only child, that I love more than my life? If I had to leave her I would die!’ cried Isabel; ‘but I cannot leave my baby, it would be worse than leaving my life.’
‘Which shows you don’t make much account of me,’ said Stapylton. And then he went out suddenly and left her, leaving all those suggestions to take form and germinate within her. She threw herself down on the sofa in the little lodging-house parlour, and hid her face in the cushions. It would be too much to investigate what her thoughts were at this dreadful moment. A storm raged within her moving Heaven and earth. A hundred mocking spirits seemed to come round and gibe at her, and laugh at her vague, splendid anticipations. Was the joy over, and the consolation, along with the honeymoon? And were distress, and distrust, and a consuming terror to enter in and take possession so soon?