One evening, a week later than the conversation we have just recorded, it happened unfortunately that the cry of a child in one of the cottages awoke the heart of the young mother within her. Her maternity had been slumbering, but was not weakened by absence from her child. ‘If I had but my baby!’ she sighed softly, half to herself, without thinking—as, indeed, she ought to have done—what an interruption such an exclamation must have been to any young man’s love-dream.
He said something—she could not distinguish what; but there was impatience in the tone, and it jarred upon her. He quickened his pace, too, out of the lover’s ramble, drawing her along with him. When Isabel thought of it, she saw, with a new-born power of putting herself in his place, that it was cruel to bring in the baby at that moment; but at first it hurt her, and brought a little pang into her heart.
‘Cannot you be content with me for a little?’ he said; and then there was a pause, and they both turned, by instinct, to their lodgings. It was a winter night; but there are nooks along the coast where the soft west, even in Scotland, cheats the visitor into dreams which would better become the south. The sun was setting behind the Arran hills, lighting up all the horizon with a brilliant wintry glory. The tints were deeper, the gold more dazzling, than in summer; and far away stretched the sea, blue as steel, and brimming over with a rounded fullness, as if it could hold no more. The night air blew somewhat chill in their faces: perhaps it was that alone which made Isabel so cold and so willing to return.
‘If we were to go away there,’ Stapylton said, pointing across the steel-blue glistening water, ‘it would be hard work exposing a baby to such a voyage. Could you make up your mind, Isabel, to leave her at home?’
‘Leave—my child!’ she cried, with a little shriek; and her joy all at once seemed to die suddenly out of her heart.
‘I do not say so,’ said Stapylton; ‘I am only making a suggestion. At her age it would be hard upon her. You could not get milk for her, nor anything. Poor child! If you could trust her to anyone at home——’
‘Oh, Horace, ask me anything but that,’ said Isabel, clinging to his arm.
‘Well, well,’ he said, subduing his impatience, as her quickened senses could discern, by an effort, ‘I am not asking you to do it; I am only suggesting what might be for her good.’
And then they went in, and a change came over the heavens and the earth to Isabel. It was not that he had changed: he was as anxious to be good to her, to save her all annoyance, to make her happy, as ever. It was that a note, which jarred upon the perfect happiness she had begun to rise into, had been struck, as it were, unawares. Her husband was still her lover, still full of fond delight in her, and eager to please her; but a meaning she could not quite fathom, a purpose which was not made clear to her, seemed to be under his love and his fondness—now more, now less clearly visible from that day. He spoke a great deal of America, pointing out all its advantages to her; and Isabel, who had no dear friends to leave behind her, and of whom her neighbours all disapproved, was not disinclined to think of emigration. But then there were the discomforts of the voyage, upon which he insisted with ever-strengthening force of words.
‘I would never hesitate if we were alone; but the child necessitates a maid,’ he said, ‘and the maid brings other troubles in her train.’