“They said at last that the air of some sunnier country would heal him of his trouble, and I prepared for the journey; anxiously I pleaded with Isabel to go with us, that he might have the comfort of her presence. Her kindred would not let her—she thought it not needful herself, neither did he: they would meet again, he said, so soon in health and gladness. I turned away from him—my heart was bursting. I kent they would never meet again—I kent that I took him away to die.
“Alison, I saw the parting of the two. I saw the sick hope in Isabel Balfour’s face, and the wan courage in Sholto’s—their hearts misgave them at that moment. There is a shadow of fear upon all partings, and it was deepened upon theirs. As for me, my sky could not well be darker—it was not fear with me, but a deadly knowledge. I kent they would never meet again.
“And so I went away with him—guarding the young man that had been so strong and healthful, from every blast of wind, as ye would guard a sick bairn. I went with him to Italy—to France—syne when he got no stronger—I took him away to that sunny island in the sea, where so many are sent to die. His doom was upon him—the light was in his eye more glorious than ever, the hectic was burning on his cheek. What was the soft air and the beautiful days, in comparison with the might of death. He died. I saw him laid in the cold earth of a foreign country, far away from the grave of his fathers, and turned in my desolation to come back to my own country, my lane.
“Alison! you do not ken the blackness of darkness, the shadow of that terrible wing of death. Think of it—think of my desolate journey—think of my first parting with my one brother. Could ye have borne a woe like that?”
Alice was weeping—she had forgot herself and Lewis for the moment. Her gentle heart could not fathom the stern depths of suffering, which still swelled in Mrs. Catherine’s larger spirit, but she recognized the sovereignty of grief, and answered with her tears:
“And there was the bride to come home to—the desolate bride, that had been dreaming vain dreams of pleasantness and hope to come. A year before you would have thought that if ever there were two fated to a bountiful and gladsome lot, it was Sholto Douglas and his trysted bride. Now, she was stricken down in her first agony, and he was lying in his stranger grave.
“Know you, Alison, that there are woes like that wherever there are living men?—that there is some shadow on every lot, how fair soever, may be its beginning?—that even the like of you, in your youth and smiles, have a weird to watch and weep through, every one of you for her own self, and not another?”
Alice looked up—the tears stealing over her cheeks, the “hysterica passio” swelling up in its “climbing sorrow” in her tightened breast. Her blue eyes looked fearfully and anxiously in Mrs. Catherine’s face. This most sad history, Alice felt, was the preface of some personal evil to herself, some misfortune to Lewis. She could not speak—she only looked imploringly in sad fear and wonder into the face of her kinswoman.
“My poor bairn!” said Mrs. Catherine, “you can think how Isabel mourned in her dark solitude? ye can feel for Isabel?”
Alice started up, all her gay hopes and girlish happiness floating away before that blast, as such light things will float, and threw herself unconsciously at Mrs. Catherine’s feet, kneeling there in incoherent grief and terror, and burying her fair head in the lap of her kinswoman: “What is it—what is it? I will bear it—tell me what it is.”