‘My dear,’ said the old minister, who with all his sympathy could not let such a speech pass unrebuked, ‘she has her Father in Heaven. She has the Father of the fatherless. You must not build on your youth and strength. Have we not all seen what awful change and overturn may happen in a single day?’
And then Isabel looked up at him with her tear-dilated, smiling eyes. It was cruel to thrust back upon her at such a moment the terrible tragedy in which she had such a part. But even that did not discourage the young mother. Two great tears wrung out of their fountains, as if her heart had been suddenly grasped by some harsh hand, dropped from her eyes. Before they fell she had already turned her head with a little start, that they might not drop upon the child. ‘I’ll live for her,’ she said. ‘Oh I’ll have strength for her—God would never have me leave my baby alone in the world.’ And then the smile came back—an invincible smile, not to be quenched by any discouragement. When she was left alone even, and had no longer that stimulus of self-defence and resistance which came natural to her character, in the silence she still kept her smile. There, where Margaret had died—where she herself had stood up in her white simplicity of maidenhood to be married, she sat by the imperfect light of the fire with her baby asleep on her knees, and defied all fear and sorrow. All the frivolous thoughts of youth had died out of her (so far as she was aware) as much as if she had been Miss Catherine’s age. No longing for any love beyond the one she possessed was in her heart. Her sister, and her husband, whom she could scarcely dissociate now the one from the other, had left her on the way. But did not this make amends—this which no one could take away, which was altogether her own?
‘Has the lassie no heart?’ said the Dominie, as he attended Miss Catherine down the brae. His own was sore for his friend. The minister had been to him a profounder loss than to Isabel; the solace of his life, his companion, the occupation of those evenings which were all that remained to him to enjoy in this world, had all gone with Mr. Lothian. And to think his friend could have thrown away all his love on an insensible woman who could smile over her baby, and forget him so soon! ‘This time twelvemonth he was planning where he was to take her—how he was to please her; and now—— Have women no hearts?’
‘Her heart is full of her child,’ said Miss Catherine, with a touch of personal compunction, for she, too, had been thinking of the baby, and not of its father. ‘You forget—she was fond of him, and grateful to him, but she might have been his daughter. It was not love like—what was thought of in my day.’
‘Or in mine,’ said the Dominie.
What the two old people thought in the pause that followed, it is not for us to expound. Surely the world had changed somehow since ‘my day,’ was colder, less real, less true—and life was growing more and more into such stuff as dreams are made of. But that perhaps was because to both of them—old unwedded, inexperienced souls, the half of life had never been any more than a dream.
‘You must not think ill of Isabel,’ said Miss Catherine, after a pause. ‘Until this hope came to her, she was heart-broken enough, poor bairn! and now she is all for the baby. Had the father been living and well, she would have forgotten his existence in the presence of that child.’
‘And that’s why I ask,’ said the Dominie, with bitterness: ‘Have women no hearts?’
‘Some of us,’ said Miss Catherine; and they walked on together along the head of the Loch without exchanging another word.
But it was not the past which occupied Isabel, as she sat, in the firelight, with her baby on her knee. It was chiefly a soft respite from all pains and cares, the sense of ease, and weakness, and repose in the present. And whether it was feminine insensibility, as the Dominie thought, or absorption in her new treasure, or the want of any real love towards her dead husband, certain it is that no longing for him or for anyone was in her mind. What she had was enough for, and filled her up. To find herself, a shipwrecked creature, tossed from one woe to another, finding calm but to lose it again—disappointed, sorrowful, and bereaved—to have suddenly floated once more into this safe, sure haven, so warm and still and satisfying and full of hope, was such a wonder and blessing as silenced all other thoughts. But for the child, what a desert her life would have been! And with the child, was it not a rich garden, to be filled with flowers and fruits and everything that makes existence lovely? Such were her musings, as she sat by the fire, a soft, weak, helpless woman, tired if she went two or three times across the little room, but, nevertheless, fearless to confront life and all it could do to her, no longer languid or discouraged now that she had, not only herself to care for, but her child.