The morning 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;{249} 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 then{250} a 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 said{251} something 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 them all?’ 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 a{252} man; 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 to him; 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.{253} Jean was pale, and her eyes all a-glow with excitement. ............