Perhaps there was just enough of old-fashioned prejudice in Marjory’s own mind to agree with them a little, and she knew how strong that prejudice was amongst this class. But somehow the protest thus made against her proceedings roused in her again the fastidious and fanciful disgust which only occurred to her mind after she had thrown her whole heart into this effort.
“Well,” she said, somewhat coldly, “if what I do is unsuccessful, you can then take it back into your hands. We can only adopt the means we think best. It is not my place to interfere at all; all my friends have told me as much.”
“Oh, dinna say that!” said Isabell, with appealing eyes. They all fought over this patient, unresisting creature. To all of them it was a secondary matter—to her it was life and death. In the pause that ensued she was driven almost to despair. All that her imagination could conceive she had already done. She had told her tale, she had opened her heart, she had thrown herself upon their sympathy, she had appealed to them by every argument in her power. The only thing yet remaining to her she did now. With a sudden movement, which was almost too much for her weakness, she lifted the infant by her side, and thrust it, without any warning, into Marjory’s arms. Partly it was a simple artifice to prevent the possibility of a refusal, and partly it was the hurry of weakness which made this act so rapid. “This is—his bairn,” said poor Isabell, falling back upon her pillow, and closing her pale eyelids. The tears stole softly out from under those lids, the hectic colour faded from her face. She turned her head aside, as if to avoid seeing the failure of her last experiment. And the others stood looking on with keen interest, with feelings vaguely quickened, with a sense of reality in the whole matter such as they had never felt before.
Marjory was disconcerted more than she could say. She was not used to young children. She had almost a repugnance to this morsel of humanity suddenly thrust into her arms—this creature, which should have come into the world amid the clamour of rejoicing, which should have been its mother’s pride, the hope of an old family, the inheritor of wealth and influence, and a kind of power. At the present moment it was its mother’s shame; it was the shame of the dead man who had made no provision for it in this world, who had allowed it to be supplanted in his heedlessness, and made its future insecure; and over the child’s existence a certain cloud of shame must always hover: legitimate indeed, but legitimate only by that expedient to make guilt less guilty—making only a hairbreadth escape from humiliation and ignominy. The baby was fast asleep; it was warm and downy like a little nestling taken suddenly out of the nest. Even the rapid movement did not disturb its utter calm. It lay on Marjory’s lap, among the circle of agitated spectators, rapt in an absolute tranquillity which went to the heart of these women. The old mother began to weep. Agnes stood by with hungry eyes, ready to snatch the child from the stranger, who was as closely related to it as she, but who was an interloper, having nothing to do with it, she felt; while Marjory sat still, without touching it, with the long white dress streaming over her black one, looking into its sleeping face. Another scene came over her with a flood of recollection, mingling itself somehow in this one, giving to it an added effect. Once before an infant like this had been placed in her arms by a dying mother. The child was Milly, who since then had been as her own child to the elder sister; and the tears rushed all at once like a stream in flood to Marjory’s eyes as she recognised the likeness. It was as if Milly had been sent back again into babyhood; little rings of soft golden hair clustered about the baby head, the little face was waxen in its paleness, but every feature was like Milly. She kissed it with an enthusiasm which carried away all her repugnance.
“I will bring Milly to see you to-morrow,” she cried, hastily; and then as she looked other likenesses stole upon her. A shadow of her father’s face before suffering bowed him down, and of both “the boys,” in those nursery days which came up so clear and fresh like a picture before her. Both the boys! Charlie most, perhaps, whose own child was not like him. Marjory’s tears began to fall heavily on the little white nightdress made by poor Isabell’s failing fingers with all the nicety which love could suggest. She forgot how all three were watching her eagerly, waiting for every word she said. She held the child close as it lay in serenest sleep, unconscious of her scrutiny, its pearly little hands spread out in that ease of perfect repose which denotes at the same time perfect health and comfort. “He is a true Heriot,” she cried, “God bless him!”
“And God bless you!” said pale Isabell, from her bed, with a gleam of joy over her worn face, which looked like sunshine. Agnes walked away with a trembling thrill of jealousy and keen displeasure. But the mother drew nearer.
“If the bairn is provided for, it will aye be something,” she said.
Who could have divined what a strange little scene was going on in the dim cottage room, where so many different emotions surrounded that one passive and peaceful thing which slept through all—the little creature, possessing nothing in life but the soft, almost noiseless breath which rose and fell, regular, measured, unbroken, like a soft strain in music? Certainly the other group approaching the cottage thought nothing of it as they straggled across the rocks, each taking his own way, and occupied with his or her own thoughts. They reached the door just when Marjory had risen and was replacing the sleeping baby in the warm nest from which he had been taken. She was stooping over the homely bed. Nothing could be poorer or more humble; but Marjory had forgotten all this. Her pride and pangs of revulsion had all gone from her; so had any doubts or difficulties that had ever crossed her mind.
“You must live, you must live, Isabell!” she was saying, scarcely aware of what she said.
And the poor young mother lay back upon her pillows with the countenance of one beatified. She shook her head quietly, but a wavering light had come into her face like the far-off glimmer of some lamp of hope that flickered somewhere in the distance. She had given herself up to death with that gentle resignation which is peculiar to the young and the poor; but she was young, and perhaps a voice powerful enough, the voice of a great joy, might yet call her back from the dangerous brink.