‘I canna tell,’ said Jean doubtfully, shaking her head. ‘Whiles I hae my doubts. She had ay a craving about the post at first. That’s past. But if she hears a footstep sudden in the road, or maybe a neighbour, coming in for a crack, lifting the latch at the outer door, she gives a start that drives me wild; but she never names him. And there were some words she let drop——’
‘Don’t tell me of words,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘It was her first love, and there’s nothing in this world she’ll not forgive him. That’s it. And now I see what I must do.’
But nothing was done that day, nor for several weeks after. It was, as so often happens, the very crisis of Isabel’s affairs on which they first discussed the question. When she came home that evening she was ill. The spring winds were cold, and she had taken a chill on the wet braes; and for some weeks every symptom which could most afflict her friends made its appearance. It was whispered in the Loch, with much shaking of heads, that the Captain’s Isabel was soon to follow her sister: that she had fallen into ‘a decline;’ that she had never recovered Margaret’s death; and even that the twin sisters had but one life between them according to the common superstition, and that the one could not long outlive the other. These prognostications reached the minister’s ears, moving him to a misery of which the people who caused it had not the remotest conception. On the whole the parish, though deeply grieved, enjoyed talking this matter over; and even Jean Campbell, though her heart, as she said, was breaking, had long consultations with Miss Catherine, and with Jenny Spence, and many other anxious visitors, touching the resemblance between Isabel’s illness and the beginning of Margaret’s. She was rather bent, indeed, on making this out to be the case, although her tears flowed at every suggestion of danger to her remaining charge.
‘Her cough has taken no hold of her; she’ll shake it off,’ said Miss Catherine.
‘I mind when Margaret’s was no more than that,’ Jean would answer, shaking her head. And notwithstanding the profound pain which the thought of any approaching misfortune to Isabel gave them, there was almost a degree of mournful enjoyment in the comparing of notes and exchanges of confidences which took place among the nurses. But the effect was very different upon the minister. The mere thought of danger to her acted upon him like a temptation to blasphemy. In such a case what would remain to him but to curse God and die? Wherever he went, people met him with questions. ‘Have you heard how the Captain’s Isabel is the day?’ ‘Eh, I thought she would gang like her sister.’ ‘Ye see twins, ye never can separate them in life or death.’ Such were the comments he was in the daily habit of hearing; and they stung him so that every day was full of torture—pain which, after the bright dreams he had been indulging in, was doubly hard to bear.
But as it turned out the pain was unnecessary. Isabel had caught cold, her body being susceptible at all points, and her mind unhinged—just such a cold as might, had her constitution been weaker, have ended as Margaret’s had done. Jean was right in her diagnosis—just as Isabel’s illness began Margaret’s had begun: there had been, even to some extent, the same cause. The shock which Mr. John’s love, and the painful interruption of it had given her, had unstrung Margaret’s strength just as Stapylton’s absence had done her sister. But there the resemblance stopped. The elder sister’s constitution was feeble and Isabel’s was strong, and other influences besides that of disappointed love had come in, in Margaret’s case. The shock had struck at all the delicacies of her nature, and made her sick of the life in which such thoughts could be. And her contemplative nature, her visionary heart had taken refuge in heaven; but with Isabel it was not so. Her illness, though it lasted only for a few weeks, looked like an interval of months or years. It put Stapylton at a distance from her. So long as she had lain in her sick room, all expectation of his coming or longing for it had gone out of her heart; and as she recovered the thought came back but dimly to her. She had not forgotten him, but time had gone faster than its wont, and he was further off than she could have supposed—drifted away.
Then Miss Catherine, moved by the urgency of the case as she had scarcely ever before been moved, announced her intention of taking Isabel away for change. As soon as she was able to move, they went to one of the watering-places in which Scotland believes—the Bridge of Allan, and then to Edinburgh. It was not a very long journey, but everything was new to Isabel. It roused her in spite of herself. Youth gained the ascendancy over all the facts which had lessened its brightness. So many new things to see, the bright summer weather, the change and movement—the sight of crowds and novelties, drove things more urgent out of her mind.
And then Mr. Lothian came and paid them frequent visits; so frequent that the parish was moved to its depths, and grumbled at his repeated absence. ‘We might a’ dee for what he cares,’ said the women at the village-doors; and even John Macwhirter, though unused to interfere, gave forth his opinion on the subject: ‘I’m no a man to insist on a call from the minister every other day,’ he said. ‘He’s enough ado with his sermons, if he gives his mind to them as he ought; but he’s an aulder man than me that have half a dozen weans to think of; and a bonnie example that is to his flock, trailing over half the country after a young lass. Lord, if I was like him I would bide. Ye wouldna see me bring wife and bairns on my head at his time of life; and a young wife’s a bonnie handful for an auld man. Ye may gloom, Mr. Galbraith, but you’re no far from the same way of thinking yoursel.’
‘I’m thinking there’s many young lasses in Edinburgh and many things of more importance,’ said the Dominie. ‘Mr. Lothian hasna left the parish for years. And his sermons are running dry, if you’ll take my opinion. No doubt the world’s a wicked place, but it does the best of men good to see it now and again. I wouldna say, John Macwhirter, but even you yourself might take a hint from smiths of more advanced views. And as for a divine——’
‘You’re grand at your jokes,’ said the half-offended blacksmith; ‘but if I were to take hints, as ye call it, in the same kind of style as the minister, I would like to ken what my Margret would say? She would be neither to hand nor to mind.’