CHAPTER XLII
The morning came so much wished for, in a blaze of wintry sunshine befitting such a joyful day. Kilcranion was a village on the other side of the hills from Loch Diarmid, which lived upon the summer visitors to ‘the saut-water,’ and shut up its houses all the winter through, so that Stapylton had been hailed as an angel of light, when he offered to take one of them, and had every difficulty smoothed out of his way. He was to go there when he had taken Isabel to the Glebe, and complete the necessary arrangements about the house, and would come for her, he said, in the evening to take her home.
Her heart beat so loudly when once more the steamer carried her up Loch Diarmid, that the very power of speech seemed to forsake her. This time there was no kind, homely face looking out from the pier to welcome her. No one knew she was coming. The village folk gave her a gruff ‘good-day’ as she passed, with a look towards her husband, half of scorn, half of disgust. There was no sign of life in the windows of the House, as they passed Lochhead together. People on the road stared at her, and then turned round and stared again, disapproving of her, unfriendly to him. Isabel had known it all, and believed that she had accepted it, half in scorn, half in resignation; but she felt the difference when it was thus brought before her. And Stapylton’s face had clouded over the moment they set foot on the shores of Loch Diarmid. A sullen shadow came over him. He walked with his eyes cast down, saying little to her, taking no notice of anything around.
‘I hate the place!’ he said, with angry energy; ‘if you had taken my feelings into consideration you would never have asked me to come back.’
‘Oh, Horace!’ cried poor Isabel, faltering, ‘let me get my baby, and let us go wherever you like! I will never more ask you to come back.’
‘Always that baby!’ he said, with something that sounded like an oath; and thus all the flutter of joy was stilled in her heart as they went up the hill.
But when she entered the familiar house, and, rushing in all eager and breathless, found herself by the side of the homely cradle in which little Margaret was sleeping, the young mother’s heart felt ready to burst with delight and misery. She fell softly on her knees beside it, and worshipped. Soft tears gushed to her eyes, a soft transport filled her. ‘Oh, my baby, my darling!’ she cried, putting down her head upon the little coverlet, with other inarticulate cries, like the cooings of a dove. When she recollected herself, and looked up with a sudden pang of terror, she caught her husband’s eye bent upon her with that look of incredulity which goes to a woman’s heart. He thought it was a piece of acting for his benefit. He did not believe in the reality of any such overflowing of the heart over an unresponsive child. He would have been, indeed, more offended had he thought it real, than he was by the supposed simulation. The one would have proved his wife to be capable of loving something else as well as she did himself; the other was but the homage of weakness to power. ‘You think you can take me in with all this,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘It is very good acting, Isabel; but I know better than that.’
‘Acting?’ she said, rising slowly to her feet, with wonder so great that it almost overwhelmed the pain.
‘Yes,’ he said, taking her into his arms. ‘Do you think I don’t know that not for all the babies in the world would you risk parting with me?’
She gave a little cry, which he did not understand; and all the sages in the world could not have explained to Horace Stapylton the nature of those tears which his wife shed on his shoulder, with her face buried in her hands; the anguish—the despair of ever understanding, he her, or she him; the sudden fiery indignation, the bitter disappointment, the struggle of love with love, and blame and pity. Oh, that he whom she loved could feel so! Oh, that he could be so little, so—— and then she stopped herself even in her thoughts, and moaned aloud.