A day or two passed in idleness, not unlike the honeymoon idleness of Ranza Bay. Stapylton lounged out and saw the steamer come and go, and lounged back again with nothing to occupy him, sometimes lavishing caresses upon his wife, sometimes sullen to her, complaining of the delay and the time he was losing, and of being buried alive in ‘such a hole as this.’

One morning, about a week after their establishment at Kilcranion, a message came to Isabel from Janet Macfarlane, begging her to go to Ailie. It was while they were seated at breakfast that the message arrived. ‘Eelin,’ the ‘lass’ who had been witness of the first meeting between Mrs. Lothian and her former lover, was Janet’s messenger. ‘Eh, mem, there’s word frae Ardnamore,’ said the young woman; ‘you’ll have heard of a’ that’s come and gone. Eh, I would have brought ye the paper if I had thought ye didna ken. He’s joined thae radicals that are ay plotting; and it was some awful plan to blow up the king. And Ardnamore he’s been blown up himself instead, and it’s no thought he’ll live. And there’s been letters. You wouldna have thought the mistress was that taken up with him, when he was here; but she’s ta’en her bed, and we dinna ken what to do. And auld Janet—I’m meaning Mrs. Macfarlane—has awfu’ confidence in you. If you were to come, she thinks maybe Ailie—eh, Gude forgive me, I’m meaning the mistress—would mind what you would say.’

‘If you’ll wait a little, Helen,’ said Isabel, ‘I will see what I can do.’ She went back to her husband with a little excitement. ‘You never told me,’ she said, ‘that there was something in the papers about Mr. John. And now they say he is dying, and I am sent for to Ailie. Poor Ailie! she scarcely said good-bye to him when he went away; and she will feel it now. Horace, will you get the gig and drive me over the hill, or must I wait for the boat?’

‘Neither the one nor the other!’ he said. ‘Why should you go to every Ailie in the country-side when they send{283} for you? Nonsense! You have no official position now, Isabel. You are my wife, and I won’t have you go!’

‘But, Horace, I must!’ said Isabel, quite unsuspicious that this was the voice of authority. ‘Poor Ailie! I had to do with her marriage, though I did not wish it—and I was there when he went away. And I am Margaret’s sister. There is nobody she will speak to like me. I will stay as short a time as possible, but I could not refuse to go.’

‘By Jove! but you shall refuse to go,’ he said, ‘when I say it. If that is what you think your duty, it is not my view. Tell the woman I’ll see her at Jericho first! My wife trotting about the country to every fool that sends for her! No, no. Don’t say anything, Isabel. I tell you, you shan’t go.’

She stood gazing at him with amazement so complete that there was no room for any other feeling. Obedience after this fashion had never so much as entered into Isabel’s conception of the duties of a wife. Her mind was incapable of grasping this strangest new idea. ‘I am sorry you don’t like it,’ she said; ‘but, Horace, you know—I can’t refuse.’

‘I don’t know anything of the sort,’ he said; ‘you shall refuse. Here, Jenny, Mary—whatever your name is—Mrs. Stapylton can’t come. Do you hear? Tell your mistress, or whoever it was that sent you; she has got something else to do than dance attendance on the parish now. Mrs. Stapylton is not going; do you hear? Now, take yourself off and shut the door!’

‘If the leddy will tell me herself,’ said Eelin, standing her ground. C?sarism of this description was unknown on Loch Diarmid, and naturally the very sight of a rampant husband awoke the spirit of the female messenger. ‘Oh, mistress,’ she added, turning with sudden softening to Isabel, who sat dumb with crimson cheeks and downcast eyes, ‘dinna forsake us in our trouble. There is no one on a’ the Loch that can be of any help to us but you.’

‘Go ben to the kitchen and get a cup of tea after your long walk,’ said Isabel; ‘and I will come and speak to you, Helen. Go now and sit down and rest.’

Her voice was very low, she did not raise her eyes; but the woman understood and had compassion, and obeyed her without a word. A sudden harsh assumption of authority is a dangerous matter in any relationship, and perhaps most dangerous of all in that difficult transition from the love-dream to the ordinary conditions of life. Isabel’s proud and delicate spirit had never yet received so strange a shock. She sat dumb for the{284} moment, quivering so painfully with the blow that she was unable to speak.

‘You may say what you like to her besides,’ said Stapylton; ‘but this you must just make up your mind to say, my love—that you shan’t go.’

There was a certain air of smiling insolence in the young man’s face. He was making his first experiment in the matter of sovereignty—beginning as he meant to end, he would have said.

‘Is this how it is to be?’ said Isabel, with quivering lips. ‘I—don’t understand. It never came into my mind before. Oh, Horace, is this how it is to be between us? It could never be any pleasure to me to do what you don’t like; but is it to be you who are to judge always, and never me?’

‘Didn’t you promise to obey me, you little rebel?’ he said, still with artificial playfulness; ‘and, of course, I mean to be obeyed. You may trust me not to give up my right.’

‘But not as a baby obeys,’ said Isabel, in a voice which was scarcely audible.

He got up with a laugh which jarred on all her excited nerves.

‘I don’t mind how you make it out,’ he said; ‘but I mean you to do what I like, and for this once you had better make up your mind. You shan’t go!’

It was at this moment—moved by what evil suggestion it is impossible to tell—that Nelly Spence, who had gradually been growing to a fever point of indignation at the little notice taken of her baby, suddenly opened the door of the room in which such a momentous discussion was going on. They both turned round, and for a moment nothing was visible; then little Margaret, staggering in her first baby run, came swift and unsteady through the open door, her attendant appearing behind her, stretching out sheltering arms. ‘She’s walking!’ said Nelly, with a shriek of delight. And Isabel, for the moment forgetting all her wounds, gave a cry of instinctive joy, and, turning round, held out her arms. Stapylton turned away with an oath. He went to the window, turning his back on the scene—so pretty a scene!—the young mother melting into a sudden transport out of her first hard passage of beginning life; the young nurse, half frantic with exultation, the little fairy creature rushing into the arms held out for it. Never was happy household yet, in which such a moment does not detach itself from the blank of years like a picture—sweet, evanescent, innocent delight! But here the bonds of nature were twisted awry. Isabel took her child into her arms with a throb of happiness, and then signed{285} to its nurse to go away, and turned round with a deeper pang of pain. It banished even her own humiliation out of her mind. She gazed wistfully at her husband, not knowing whether to speak to him or remain silent—longing to say, ‘I will be your slave, only tolerate my child.’

‘Do you want to drive me mad with that man’s child?’ he said, turning round upon her with a look of hatred and horror which struck her with consternation; and then went out of the room, out of the house, without another word. She saw him go rapidly past the window while she still sat thunderstruck, holding her baby. Poor Isabel! And this conflict was to last all her life.

She did not know how long she sat thus silent, with a thousand thoughts passing through her mind. She was not thinking; she was stunned, and incapable of any mental action. Her thoughts came and went independently, presenting their arguments before her like so many unseen pleaders. Little Margaret slid from her arms to the floor, and sat there playing with anything that came to hand, gurgling with sweet rills of laughter, sweet murmurs, and those attempts at words which mothers know how to translate. But she took no notice. Slowly the invisible advocates delivered their pleas, and set forth all their reasonings. There rose before her a vision of what must be done, of what it was impossible to do. She was his wife; she had counted the cost and taken the risk, and now the forfeit was required of her. The time had been when she was little Margaret’s mother before all; but she had willingly, consciously, taken up another responsibility. She was his wife. Life must be transformed, must be so arranged that it should be practicable with him and not another. Isabel took the baby up from the floor and pressed it to her heart with a despair which could find no words. Thus it must be. She had drawn her lot with her eyes open, knowing she must pay some hard price for it, though not this price. The decision to be made was so bitter and so terrible that it quenched down even her impetuous, passionate nature. She could not be angry as she would have been had the occasion been less trivial. She was beyond anger. There was in her whole being the silence of despair.

The whole day passed over her in a hush like that which comes before a storm. She framed the softest message she could, and sent Eelin back with it, declaring that it was impossible she could come. And she occupied her mind with schemes for her baby’s comfort, and for keeping some trace of her own recollection before the child when they should be parted, perhaps for ever and ever. For ever and ever—that was most likely—with{286} the great ocean between them, and life more bitter than any ocean. Jean would be good to the child she knew, and Miss Catherine would keep a watchful eye on her—and—— Only the mother would have no part—no part in little Margaret’s life. She could not shed any more tears, they were all dried up, scorched up out of her eyes; but she sat all day by herself, and thought, and thought. Yes, this was how it must be. Her own life was decided and settled by her own deed; and Isabel would not say even to herself what a prospect she felt to be before her. But to expose Margaret to the hatred of the man who ought to stand to her in the place of a father, to make her little life subject to such storms, to give her no happy home, full of love and tender freedom, but a nook on suffrance in the house of ‘another family’—better let the mother’s heart break once for all, and the child be happy, caressed, above all criticism. Thus it must be.

When Stapylton returned that eveni............