‘Say!’ said Miss Catherine. ‘It may be life or death—let him see her first, and tell us what is to be done, and then we will think what to say. Let Jamie go at once—if I am not mistaken there is more here than meets the eye.’
‘I kent they never would ‘gree about that wean,’ said Jean, with her apron to her eyes. ‘Eh, the darling, that I should speak of her so; I ay said there would be dispeace about wee Margaret. It would have been better to have left her with me.’
‘If there had not been dispeace about that, it would have been something else,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘nothing good could have come out of it—nothing good was possible—it was what we all said.’
‘She was well warned,’ said Jean, ‘if onything could be a comfort to remember at sic a time; but, poor thing, it must never be cast up to her now.’
‘And where is her man?’ said Miss Catherine.
This question was repeated over and over again in many a tone of wonder ere many hours had passed. The fact that he did not come to inquire after her all that evening, that no search whatever was made, but the runaway wife suffered to sink into her old home without protestation or appeal, bewildered everybody about. The doctor, and Jean Campbell, and Jenny Spence, and by degrees all the village, and even the parish, grew aghast with wonder. A quarrel about the child was a comprehensible thing, and was received by everybody with many shakings of the head, and declarations of their own foresight. ‘I ay kent how it would be,’ said one after another, and for the first moment it would be vain to say that it was anything less than a sensation of triumph that burst upon the Loch. But when the husband did not appear to make friends, and when it began to be rumoured about the parish that ‘bonnie Isabel’ was lying ill in a fever, altogether alone and deserted by the man for whom she had separated herself from her home and her friends, pity began to take the place of this self-gratulation. This was carrying matters too far. The next day in the afternoon Nelly Spence came over the hill carrying her own bundle and little Margaret’s, and with a scared and agitated face. Her story ran like wildfire round the Loch. She told the tale of the first night of terror till the gossips’ hair stood on end. She told of the exit of both parties in the early morning, of Stapylton’s re-entrance, of his commands to them to keep quiet and wait for their mistress’s return—commands which woke in their minds the frantic thought that he had thrown her into the Loch in the darkness, and that she never would come back. They had been too much frightened, however, by Stapylton’s presence and looks to do more than make furtive little excursions round the house, and furtive questions to the neighbours, none of whom had seen Isabel. He had taken his meals as usual, cursing Nelly’s ‘neebor’ for her bad cookery, and had occupied himself packing all the day long; and at night he had gone away, neither of the terrified women having strength of mind to stop or to interrogate him. It was too late after his departure to take any further steps. They sat up half the night in their terror, still thinking it possible that Isabel might return. That morning they had roused the village and made all sorts of frantic searches for her, and at last had ascertained that she had been seen on her way to the Glebe. Such was the story which Nelly told with unbounded fullness of detail. It left the public in more profound ignorance and wilder wonder than before. He had gone away taking everything with him; he had not even asked for her before his departure, and she was too ill to afford any explanations.
It was when Isabel was just beginning to wake into faint gleams of returning life that the visit was paid her which made so much commotion on the Loch. Everybody had learned by this time that Stapylton had ‘taken it upon him’ to refuse permission to his wife to visit Ailie at Ardnamore. And when Ailie, herself pale as a spirit and so weak that she had to be lifted out of the carriage, passed through the village on her way to the Glebe, the whole population stirred with a hope that now at last the explanation was to come. The cottage was unusually full at the time, of nurses and attendants. Miss Catherine herself rarely left the little parlour where she waited the chances of Isabel’s strange disorder; and Nelly Spence was in charge of little Margaret, and her mother came and went helping Jean to attend upon the patient. It was thus into a little community, with all grades represented, that Ailie came leaning on her mother’s arm. She was worn to a shadow, and so weak that she could scarcely keep upright; over her white dress she wore a large veil of black crape, for she was now a widow. Her appearance was not less extraordinary than before, but her visionary eyes had lost their wildness, and a softened expression had come over her face.
‘I am dying myself,’ she said to Miss Catherine, ‘and I would fain see Isabel before I go. Ye needna fear me now. I would like to tell her just that I’m reconciled in my mind. She has seen my sore trouble. No, I’ll say nothing to disturb her; I’m dying myself, as you may see.’
‘Hoot no, my bonnie woman! hoot no!’ said her mother who supported her; ‘when the bonnie weather comes, and you get your feet on the May gowans—ye see, Miss Catherine, it’s a’ the grief and trouble she’s had, and poor Ardnamore taken from us so sudden at the last.’
But to Miss Catherine there was nothing sublime in the spectacle of the dauntless old woman supporting on her arm the dying creature who ought to have been the support of her old age, and facing the world courageously with her pathetic fictions to the last. To her, Janet was no champion-mother, but a worldly old woman, bent upon elevating the social position of her child. ‘I am not afraid of you, Ailie,’ said Miss Catherine, ‘why should I be? Isabel, poor thing! has her reason, though she’s weak. Sit down, and I’ll ask if she can see you. You are far from strong yourself.’