“Mother, you hear!” said Isabell. She had forgotten all the others. A glow of gentle contentment stole over her face. The strength of excitement failed her; she sank back upon the pillows, which Marjory stealing in, had raised to support her. “Now I can depart in peace; now I’m clear; now I can go to my man. Oh, God be praised—that sent the decent folk, just in time.”
“Isabell!” cried Agnes, throwing herself on the bed; “you’re no so ill as that? It wasna that I thought you dying; you’re no dying. I bad ye speak because they were here.”
“Ay, ay! and I’ve spoken; and it’s a’ clear. The night’s coming on, I canna see. Mother, you were saying—what was somebody saying? I hear a sound in my ears; it’s the sea, or the wind—or maybe something more.”
“Bell! what is it? oh, my Bell! It’s her heart. Raise her up, to get breath; open the window. She’s aye speaking, speaking. Bell, speak to your mother. My darlin’ it’s a’ clear.”
“It’s voices,” she said, with an effort; “voices—like in the Bible—like the sound—o’ a great multitude; grander than the sea, or the wind. Do ye no hear?—and one that says ‘Isabell!’ among all the angels, and the saved that cry day and night, ‘Honour to the Lamb!’ Oh, hearken. One’s stopped, and it cries ‘Isabell!’ Ay, my man! I’m here—I’m here!”
Then a great silence suddenly fell over the cottage, a stifled sound of feet moving, faint rustling of dresses, tinkling of the glass in which they tried to administer something to revive her, and afterwards low sobs, broken cries, but not another articulate word. The conflict of wills and voices had ended. Without a word, another brief ineffectual struggle took place round the bed—the last struggle with death—vain, passionate, hopeless effort. Isabell did not die all at once; this hard life, which is so bitter to live, so hard to begin, is hard too to end. She could not drop it from her so easily. For hours after they moved about that bed, saying nothing to each other, hiding their faces by times, stopping their ears not to hear the painful thrill of those last breathings, which seemed to shake the cottage. The doctor had time to come all the way from St. Andrews, and look at her, pitiful and helpless, shaking his head, and whispering that she did not suffer, that consciousness was gone and pain. But it was the middle of the night before the last breath died upon poor Isabell’s lips. No one of all the awe-stricken party left the cottage at first. Marjory was with the mother and sister by the bed. Mr. Charles, pale as a ghost, sat in a chair in a corner, looking on with a wondering countenance of sorrow. Had any one suggested it to him, he would have gone away; but he was absorbed like all the rest, and thought of nothing but of the wonderful act that was being accomplished before him. John Macgregor was standing on the threshold outside, his great person heaving with sobs. His wife, crying, but still with her wits about her, prepared with ghastly matter of fact composure to make herself of use. This was the scene upon which Fanshawe arrived, in the early darkening of the summer night. The baby, whom everybody had forgotten, had just awoke with a cry by the side of its insensible mother. Somehow this sudden protest of life against the pre-occupation of all the attendants on the dying, gave a touch almost of humour to the tragic scene. Marjory lifted the infant, and it was into Fanshawe’s arms that she thrust it, scarcely seeing what she did. “Take it to the woman,” she said, turning away from him. Where was he to take it? He held the helpless thing in his arms, no one finding it ludicrous, or even strange, till Jean relieved him of it. And then he went and stood with John Macgregor, not knowing who he was; or what had happened, outside the door. But after all, notwithstanding his ignorance and dismay, it was Fanshawe who brought so much common sense and understanding to the scene as to send Mr. Charles home, and Macgregor, both of whom were in the way. He understood, by instinct, a great deal of what had passed, and though he did not divine who the man was, by whose side he had been standing, yet it was impossible not to perceive that some preceding agitation, in which this man had been more or less involved, had taken place in the humble room, which now the presence of death filled to over-flowing. Fanshawe sent the other men away, and remained himself to see what was to be done. Strangely enough this seemed perfectly natural both to himself and Mr. Charles. He went outside, and sat down on the rocks which hedged in the bit of velvet greensward on which the cottage stood. It was a strange vigil. He watched the last rays of the evening light die out, the revealing of the stars among the clouds, the gleam of living radiance which woke in them from the edges of those masses of vapour; and then gradually, slowly, the pale lightening over the Eastern horizon—the promise of dawn. He sat with the waves plashing up to his very feet, carried by the high tide which came in just about the time he took his place there—then ebbing slowly down among the rocks, further and further off, moving the gleaming, living line ever lower down. The pale variations of sea and sky, the gathering midnight darkness that shut out both, all the mysterious sounds of Night and Nature went on around him; and death was overshadowing behind him, and a silent awe seemed over everything. To watch a whole night so, is such an experience as few forget; and to watch outside as Fanshawe was doing—with all the ghosts of the past and shadows of the future combining to increase the impression, was more wonderful still. And yet he felt it but little, his mind and soul being closed to external impressions by a pre-occupation which is more absorbing than any other on earth.
The faint grey of morning had begun to dawn when all at once he felt a soft touch upon his shoulder, and turned round, saw Marjory standing by him, like a ghost in the dimness.
“All is over;” she said, quietly; and then, “Have you watched with us all night?”
“All night,” he said. “I could do nothing more. Can I do anything now?”
“Take me home,” said Marjory. “I am too weary and sad to go alone. It is all over. She has got away at last. Oh, how hard it is to get rid of life!”