‘I have seen Ailie and—Mr. John,’ she said, raising her eyes to his face. (It seemed to her, as she spoke, that there was another step on the road, and that she could hear it pause at the cottage-door; and in her trouble she betook herself to craft, as was natural.) ‘But you must not ask me about them,’ she said; ‘it was more—than I could bear. It—brought everything back. It is that, I suppose, that has made me so foolish to-day.’
‘It can never be foolish to remember what is past,’ said the Dominie, reassured. ‘Don’t drive the thought from you, as silly folk tell you. The past is precious; sometimes it is all that is left to us. You are young, and you have your child; but I doubt if you will ever have such a treasure as yon year. Isabel, my dear, I’ve seen you a bairn, though you were my friend’s wife. Think on him still. There are few such seen in this life.’
‘I know that well,’ said Isabel, glad, poor child, in unconscious hypocrisy to secure thus a pretence for her too ready tears.
‘Aye, think upon him!’ said the Dominie. ‘You’re bonnie and young, and may get the offer of many a man; but, perhaps, never another like him—most likely never another like him. You should be proud of the past. You have had one of the best men that ever was born; and if you had been an angel out of Heaven, he could not have set you up higher, or made more of you. Isabel, sometimes you must think of that!’
‘Oh, I think of it!’ said Isabel, with streaming eyes. And the Dominie drew his large hand over the great caves that lay under his eyebrows; his heavy eyelids were wet, and the muscles quivering about his mouth. He did not attempt to explain to her, nor even to himself, why he was so much in earnest, why he addressed her in so solemn a strain. It seemed natural. As for Isabel, she wanted no explanation; she was neither offended, nor even surprised. The very atmosphere around her spoke to her as plainly as he had spoken. At such a crisis it was but natural that everyone should be moved, even stocks and stones if that could be.
‘And now I must go away,’ he said, rising, with a smile gleaming out under the unshed tear. ‘It’s the hour of the bairns’ dinner, and a kind of necessity was upon me to come and see you. No; I’ll take nothing. The afternoon school is not so long. God bless you, Isabel! and guide you aright—in——’
He broke off in the middle of the sentence, as if (she thought) there was something he could not trust himself to say—and went away without looking round, or adding any ordinary farewell. But his agitation did not wound or even surprise Isabel. She dried her own wet eyes when he was gone, and tried to throw herself back, as he had told her, into ‘yon year’—the year of her marriage—when she had been worshipped like something divine, and guarded as the apple of her husband’s eyes. ‘You should be proud of the past,’ her Mentor had said. And Isabel had strained at it, trying with all her might to bring it back to her mind; but could not. Her imagination rushed instead to that meeting on the hill-side under Ardnamore, to every word, every look, every tone of that strange interview. Oh, how bitter it was, to be unable to control her thoughts, or turn them as she would, or keep them to matters which her mind could approve. They escaped from her with a leap to go to him; and with a guilty pang at her heart, Isabel felt that the bitter was not so poignant, not so irresistible as the sweet.
Baby Margaret woke, and began to cry from the inner room, while her mother sat lost in this struggle. Isabel rose with the alacrity of custom to take the child; but Jean rushed suddenly in before her, and had the infant in her arms before the mother could reach it. Jean was pale, and her eyes all a-glow with excitement. ‘Na, na,’ she said, holding the child fast, ‘leave her with me. There’s ane coming up the brae, Isabel, that ye’ll have to see.’
‘Give me my bairn,’ said the poor young mother with a cry; and then she sank trembling in a chair, her very limbs failing under her. Half defiant, half sympathetic, Jean stood before her with the baby in her arms.
‘It’s no fit she should be here. You’ll have to see him, and to say what’s to be. But, oh, Isabel, dinna forget that you have a bairn!’ said Jean, with sudden tears.