‘But if it was to make any—dispeace. I’m meaning no offence. She’s well and safe, and ye can trust her with me. My bonnie woman! you must not do that in haste that you’ll repent o’ before the day’s done.’
‘How should I repent of it?’ she said, hastily, but would not yield. She had made up her mind entirely how it was to be done. She would say not a word to her husband, but take it for granted as a thing inevitable. Even, if she saw that to be expedient, she would cover up her baby under her cloak, until the trajet was accomplished. In one way or other, howsoever she might be baffled, she had determined to take the child with her. All that Jean, who saw the practical difficulties better than she did, could succeed in settling was that Jenny Spence’s eldest daughter, at present ‘out of a place,’ whom little Margaret knew, should go with her to Kilcranion, to take care of her, and relieve the young mother from constant attention to the child. Jean sent off her boy instantly to warn Nelly Spence that she must make ready. ‘If she goes by the afternoon boat, she’ll be at the house as soon as you,’ said Jean; and when that was fairly accomplished, it was, as she said, a weight off her mind.
Meanwhile, Isabel sat sunk in a quiet which was almost stupor; the past days had been very agitating days. And now the stillness and the soft sleep of the child, and the embracing of the old kindly house which seemed to stretch its arms round her with a forgiving calm, and Jean’s kindly accustomed ministrations lulled her very soul within her. The good things she had lost came back and floated round her, bringing something of their own peace into her heart; and all that was disturbing and novel had passed away for a moment like a dream. She felt as if she could have slept like the baby.
‘Sleep, my darling, if ye can,’ said Jean, compassionately, ‘you’ve been doing more than you were able—it’s the cold air, and then the fire—— ’
‘No, no,’ said Isabel, rousing up. ‘Instead of that, if you will pack up her things, I’ll take little Margaret out for a walk, while the sun is so warm on the braes.’
‘Weel, weel,’ said Jean, ‘ye’ll come to nae harm there now.’ Not now, all the harm was over and done. ‘And that she’s no happy is written in her face,’ Jean continued, as she watched her straying out into the sunshine, with a spark of natural wonder that she should take that way of spending the short day. But she was mollified when she saw that Isabel crossed the road to the spot on the hill where it had been Margaret’s custom to pray. ‘And she’ll maybe get good there, poor thing, so ill as she has done for herself,’ the sympathetic woman said to herself, looking out from the door. She had watched wilful Isabel so often taking her wayward course from that door; sometimes to meet her ‘lad,’ as in the old times upon the braes; sometimes demure and stately to join Miss Catherine in some long longed-for pleasure; then leaning on her husband’s arm, the serene minister’s wife; then mournful in her widow’s weeds. ‘I understood a’ but this,’ Jean said, meditatively, to herself. ‘But that she’s no happy is written in her face.’
The child was now awake, smiling upon her, after the first momentary blank of forgetfulness, and had made her heart leap by saying, or stammering, ‘Mamma,’ the accomplishment which all this time Jean had been labouring to teach her. Little Margaret danced and babbled in her mother’s arms, and stretched out her hands to the running burn and to the bare branches of the other Margaret’s rowan-tree, when Isabel paused beneath it. She had meant to bring her great trouble out with her there, and to ask God’s counsel, when she left the cottage; but the baby’s mirth beguiled the poor young mother. She sat down on the grassy seat, and forgot everything, and played with her child. What good would thinking do her? What good (she had almost said, and stopped herself with a pang of reproach) would prayer do her? Oh, if she could but pray! and then, in her agitation, she caught at the momentary delight that was nearest to her, and played with her baby, and on the edge of the precipice forgot her terror. Then, as softer and softer thoughts gained her mind, Isabel rose up again, and, half stealthily, went past her own door and up the hill-side to the spot where she had so often met her lover under the little birch-tree. The grass and the heather were heavy with wintry moisture, but she was unaware of it. And again her head grew giddy, and everything looked to her like a dream. Was it Stapylton’s wife who was standing there under the tree, where he had been so fond and so cruel? Was this his child in her arms? Was her life one and indivisible, or a thing of shreds and patches, broken into fragments? She stood and grew giddy with the thought, looking over the wintry braes, while little Margaret caught at the drooping branches of the birch, and laughed at the shower of dewy spray which they scattered over her. Her baby laugh seemed to her mother to wake echoes all over earth and Heaven—echoes that reached the churchyard, where they were lying who would have defended the child—which might reach the child’s enemy on the road miles away, and put evil thoughts in his mind against the innocent, unconscious creature. And her child’s enemy was her own lover and husband—could such a misery be?
She was standing thus as in a dream, when a voice in her ear made her start, and spring aside in mortal terror. She could not have told what she was afraid of. Something—anything—ghosts in the daylight; and what she saw was not unlike a ghost. It was Ailie in her white dress, with a shawl over her head—Ailie, who had fallen as entirely out of Isabel’s self-absorbed musings as if she had never been.
‘What are you doing here, Isabel Diarmid?’ she said, ‘your courting’s past, and you’re married to another man. You have chosen this world, and you’re satisfied. What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, Ailie! you frighten me,’ said Isabel, holding her child fast in her arms.