‘Now,’ said Miss Catherine, when it approached the end of June, and Edinburgh, like other towns, began to empty itself of its prisoners. ‘Now, minister, you may go your ways, and settle down in your parish. I am going to take her home.’
‘Home!’ said Mr. Lothian; ‘to the Glebe?’ and his countenance fell. For, to come and go a dozen times a day to Miss Catherine’s lodgings, and to see her young companion constantly under the shelter of her presence, without awaking Isabel’s susceptibilities or seeming to seek her, was very different from going to visit her in her own cottage, putting her on her guard by the very act.
‘Yes, to the Glebe!’ said Miss Catherine. ‘Don’t look at me as if you thought me an old witch. Maybe I am an old witch. No, she is not coming to my house. I{162} mean to plunge her back into her own—to Jean Campbell and the bairns; and then if you cannot make something of the situation, it will be your fault and not mine.’
Mr. Lothian paused, and mused over this last wile. He smiled a little, and then he shook his head. ‘It might be good for me,’ he said; ‘but it would be cruel to her.’
‘Go away with your nonsense!’ said Miss Catherine; ‘I hope I know the world and what I’m speaking of; but men are fools. I have given her all the change that was good for her here, and she has had just a taste of what life is, a flavour to linger in her thoughts. And now she shall know the cold plunge of the home-coming. Do you think I don’t know it will give her pain? But how can I help that? It will show her what she wants, and where she is to get it; and if she does not make up her mind that it is to be found in the Manse parlour, I tell you again it will be your fault and not mine.’
‘My bonnie young darling!’ said the minister, moved to unusual tenderness; ‘but I feel as if we were cheating her, conspiring and taking advantage of her innocence. If it could be done at less cost—— ’
‘Go away and mind your own affairs,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘leave Isabel to me. Am not I seeking her good? and must I hesitate because my physic has an ill taste? Not I. Go home with your scruples and see what you’ll make of it. And you need not take advantage of my work if you have any objections. It’s in your own hand.’
Upon which the minister went away, shaking his head more and more. ‘You know my scruples will yield but too soon if Isabel is the price held out before me,’ he said. And he obeyed his general and went away; but foolishly freighted himself in the very teeth of Miss Catherine’s plans, with everything he could think of to lessen the dreariness and change the aspect of the Glebe Cottage. He sent a great box before him when he arrived at Loch Diarmid, which was on Saturday; and on the Monday he hastened up to the cottage, and unpacked the case with his own hands, and took from it pictures and bookshelves, and books to fill them, ‘a whole plenishing,’ as it appeared to Jean. ‘What is this all for?’ she said, looking at the arrivals with a sceptical eye.
‘It is that Isabel may not think too much of the past when she comes back—that there may be something new to cheer her,’ said the minister, somewhat struck by a sudden consciousness that his motives were not much more noble or innocent than those of his ally and fellow-conspirator. Jean stood and looked on while he hung the pictures and put up the shelves, very critically, and with her own thoughts.{163}
‘Then Isabel is coming back,’ she said, ‘and I’m glad of it; among all your grandeur she was like to forget her home. And by all I can see you mean her to stay, or you would not spend good siller and time fitting up all this nonsense to please her e’e.’
‘It is to comfort her heart, if that may be,’ said the minister; ‘that coming back may not be more than she can bear.’
Jean was offended, and tossed her head with an impatience she did not attempt to conceal. ‘I’m no one for forgetting them that’s dead and gone,’ she said, ‘nor changing the place they’ve been in. For my part I would keep a’ thing the same. It’s like running away from God’s hand, to run away from the thought of a bereavement. And I would rather mind upon our Margaret than look at a’ your bonnie pictures; and so, if she’s no spoilt, would Isabel.’
On the Saturday of Mr. Lothian’s return to Loch Diarmid, Miss Catherine intimated her intention to Isabel. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘the summer is wearing on. I would not say a word about it if I did not see how much better you are. But I think, now that you are able to bear it, we should be thinking of home.’
And in a moment the chill which the minister had foreseen fell upon Isabel. It came upon her like a sudden frost, suddenly quenching the light out of her eyes. She said ‘Yes?’ not so much in acquiescence as with a sudden wistful question as to when and how this change was to come.
‘I was thinking of the end of the week,’ said Miss Catherine steadily, ‘if that would be agreeable to you.’
‘Anything would be agreeable to me,’ said Isabel, with a little rush of tears to her eyes—‘whatever pleases you. It has been so kind, oh! so kind of you——’
‘You are not to speak to me of kindness,’ said the old lady. ‘It was a pleasure to myself. But now, God be thanked! you’re well and strong; and bonnie Loch Diarmid will be in all its beauty. Are you not wearying to get home?’
‘Oh, yes. I shall be glad——’ faltered Isabel. But it took the colour from her cheek, and silenced all the little cheerful strain of talk which by degrees had developed in her. ‘You have stayed away all this time for me,’ she said, feeling this a subject on which she could more easily enlarge.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Catherine, without hesitation; ‘I don’t pretend to deny it, my dear. It has been for you. And I am very glad I came. You are a different creature. But all the same it will be a great pleasure to get home.’
Isabel said nothing more. Oh, why was not the{164} minister there to take her part? He would have read the sudden dullness in her eye, the change upon her voice. She sat for the rest of the day quenched out, making attempts to speak now and then, but failing utterly; trying to smile and to talk as Miss Catherine did about the proposed return. Oh! how the girl envied Miss Catherine! The old woman was as lonely as the young one. She had her duties, it was true; but no one to make Loch Diarmid pleasant to her. And yet how pleased she was to go back to all the tedium! Was it only because she was old and Isabel young?
‘You’ll feel the change, my dear,’ said Miss Catherine the day after, as they sat together alone. ‘It will be a trial to you going home.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Isabel, eagerly; and then she made an effort and said, very low, ‘It will bring everything to my mind—but, then, it was never out of my mind; it will be as if it had all happened over again——’
‘It would have been the same sooner or later,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘It has to be got over. And now, I hope, you are able to bear it. And when you weary, my dear, you can come to me. I will always be glad to see you—when I have the time.’
‘Thank you,’ said Isabel, feeling her heart sink in her breast. Glad to see her—when she had time! After having been a mother to her, and her companion for so long, opening up all her various stores of experience and knowledge on Isabel’s behalf, feeding her with legend and tale. And now that was over, too—and Jean Campbell and Jean Campbell’s bairns were all the companions she should have in the dim future. Oh, for Margaret! Oh, for the love that was gone! Oh, for—— Isabel knew not what she would have said. Anything that would have warded off from her the blank that was about to come.
‘It will not be cheerful for you, Isabel,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘but you have a stout heart, and you must not forget it is your duty. This has been very pleasant for the time. It is cheery to see new people and new places. But home is ay home.’
‘Yes,’ assented Isabel, feeling in her heart that she was the most abandoned of sinners not to be able to feel any rapture at the thought.
‘And there is no saying when we may have another such holiday,’ said Miss Catherine, cheerfully. Isabel could make no reply. The full force of the change rushed upon her. The sounds in the street seemed to grow melodious as she thought how short a time she would have it in her power to listen to them. And it seemed to her that her friend was quite unaware of the{165} tumult which this intimation had raised in her breast. Had Isabel known how cunningly Miss Catherine had contrived it, how she had been working up to this climax, and kept the ‘cold plunge’ as her most effectual weapon, the girl’s mind would have risen up in arms against such cruelty. Miss Catherine left her seated, melancholy, over some work, with every line in her face turned downwards, and the new life gone out of her, and retired to her own room that she might be able to chuckle unrestrained over her success. ‘She’ll marry him, if he ask her, in six weeks,’ Miss Catherine said to herself.
Left to herself, Isabel cried—not altogether because she was going home—because she was so wicked as not to be glad at going home—because her badness of heart was such that she regretted her holiday life with all its indulgences. When she returned to the Glebe, should she be able, she asked herself, to resist the movements of her own feelings, to think as little of Stapylton as he did of her, to keep from longing and looking and listening till the suspense brought on another fever? What should she do to occupy herself? to keep off such a humbling absorption in one thought? There was but one bright spot in all the monotonous landscape: the minister would stand by her, whatever happened to her. Night or day she could trust to his sympathy. He would come to her when she called him, stand by her, be her support, her counsellor, her guide. She thought not of him, but of herself, with youth’s spontaneous, unintentional selfishness. It did not occur to her to think of him. But so far already Miss Catherine’s spells had wrought.
They arrived at Loch Diarmid at the end of the ensuing week; and were met, not only by Mr. Lothian and by the carriage and servants from Lochhead, but also by Jean Campbell, eager to see her charge, and rapturous over the change in her appearance. From the moment in which they left the steamer. Miss Catherine began to carry out her remorseless policy. She kissed Isabel as soon as she had stepped ashore, and took leave of her.
‘You’ll come and see me, my dear, whenever you have time,’ she said; ‘but you’ve a good long walk to the Glebe, and I will not hinder you now.’ And Isabel, standing still by her stepmother’s side, waiting till Jean had arranged to have someone sent after them with the boxes, watched her friend drive away with an undescribable sinking at her heart. Miss Catherine compelled the minister to enter the carriage with her. She pulled him by the sleeve, and whispered in his ear, and resorted to violent measures to bring him, as she called it, to himself. ‘Go with her now, and you show her her own power, and{166} you’ll spoil all,’ she said; and the bewildered man yielded. The carriage flashed away, while Isabel stood, not able to believe her eyes, on the little pier. The summer evening light was sweet upon the Loch, glancing down aslant on the braes, which were golden with the setting sun; and the labourers were going home, and all the soft sounds of repose and domestic reunion were in the air. Jean was busy with the man on the pier about the luggage. Since Isabel had left that same spot nearly three months before, nobody of Jean’s appearance or manners had come near her, except as an attendant; and it would be difficult to explain the sudden sense of desertion, the cruel solitude, and mortification and falling back upon herself, with which the girl looked after her friend.
Her friend! Had it been love for her at all which had moved Miss Catherine, or only pity, and a disagreeable duty, from which she was glad to be relieved. Was there anyone in the world who cared for Isabel—for herself? They had been sorry when she was ill; they had pitied her. Even the minister—he was gone too, with Miss Catherine, leaving her in the first moment of her return all by herself. Tears flooded to Isabel’s eyes, and these were driven back by pride, and rushed to her heart again, filling it with a silent bitterness beyond all expression. It was a kind o............