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From The St. James' Magazine.

ISABELL CARR.

terly jealous of preference, would under such circumstances have savagely married, loved,

By the Author of "Margaret Maitland," etc., etc. hated, and cursed her, with a sullen con

PART II.-CHAPTER I.

sciousness of injury amid his selfish passion; and Bell would have felt herself no delicate martyr, but a perjured soul-a woman selfsoiled and desecrated. Such was the plain aspect matters took to her unsophisticated mind. To adopt this revolting expedient never once occurred to her. Nothing, not even filial duty, could excuse or justify such a falsehood. Bell's thoughts indeed could scarcely be called deliberations. She pondered painfully what she should do in the event of being turned from her father's door. She never even accepted as possible the idea that she might change her mind in respect to her unwelcome lover, or be induced to marry one man while her heart was occupied with another. That piece of wrong-doing, so often justified and called by dainty names, was inconceivable and impossible to Bell.

THE three days passed in an agony of deliberation and self-counsel. Bell had no friend to go to for advice. The only woman near at hand whom she could have consulted was Marget, whose perplexed advices would have thrown little light upon the subject; and Bell, the only child of her mother, had been too much accustomed to depend on that sole and closest counsellor to be able to turn to other aids when she was no longer at hand. Though a greater part of the inhabitants of the parish were Carrs, the household of Whinnyrig had no relative nearer than distant cousins, and Andrew Carr was too ungenial and self-willed a man to have kept up any warm degree of friendship with the scattered branches of his race. Bell was alone in the kindly countryside, though every But the three days passed, and Andrew "neighbor" at kirk and market knew her, Carr still asked no more questions of his and hailed with friendly greetings the moth- daughter. They took their meals together erless young woman. She had to take coun- with very little conversation. Simple dosel of her own heart as she went, active but mestic references now and then, communisilent-her presence no longer betraying it- cations about the milk and butter, served as self, as it once did, in involuntary, uncon- a thread of human intercourse to make their scious songs and laughter-about the little life tolerable; but conversation, which is alfarmyard. She attended to the "beasts" ways scant in their class, was next to unand the house, made her father's dinner, and known, except in moments of passion or ele"suppered" her cows, and darned her stock-vated feeling, in the silent house of the ings, with an ache in her heart and a throb Dumfriesshire farmer. This peculiarity, the of painful thought in her mind. Pondering result in the present as in many other cases over and over again, no light came over that of a higher tone of mind than usual, and a dark matter. Bell's character was not with- fastidious reserve in the expression of sentiout a capacity of sacrifice; but it did not oc- ment which is almost peculiar to the Scotch cur to her to sacrifice her honest heart and character, made it more difficult to enter true love to her father's arbitrary mandate. upon subjects of interest beyond the everyThat was simply impossible to the straight-day routine, and was an absolute protection forward imagination of the country girl. to Bell in her loneliness. She knew, and Willie might be forgetful-might be dead; her father knew, that when that matter was she might never so much as hear his name returned to and the ice once broken, the again; but the casuistry of a romantic con- very excess of reserve in both their minds tract, by which a bride of higher education would overthrow all ordinary boundaries, and more refined habits of thought might and no compromise be possible. And perhave been beguiled-the idea of confiding to haps the old man, when he had once exher future husband the fact that she had no pressed what was in his mind, was glad to heart to give him, or of resigning herself to leave the matter, and suffer time to work his love for her father's sake, was out of the what persuasion or force might not accomquestion to her plain, simple understanding. plish. At all events, he did not hold to his Jamie Lowther would have comprehended word so far as this limit of time was conno such compact-Jamie Lowther, indiffer-cerned. The subject was tacitly dropped, ent to any refinement of affection, yet bit- though never forgotten. Both were invol

and painful gaze of a poor man's daughter, anxiously concerned lest there should not always be enough to satisfy all claims. This new fear, first suggested by Marget Brown, rejected, reconsidered, trembled over for many an hour since, added an additional pang of pain and uncertainty to all Bell's embarrassments. She watched the tone of James Lowther's address to her father-the manner of Andrew Carr's response. Dread pictures of dismal rural bankruptcy arose upon her troubled mind. She would not leave the old man, whatever she might suffer. So she sat, agitated but silent, often roused to the wildest impatience, yet always restraining herself-perceiving with intolerable indignation and offence that her suitor began to take courage, and to look upon her with a certain satisfied glance of ownership, and that both her father and he were confident in their power of overcoming her opposition. She perceived all this, and did not take it meekly, patience not being a prominent quality in this young woman's character; but at the same time it is not to be denied that her heart and strength rallied to the struggle with a certain rising flush of resistance and pugnacity. She retreated into dreams and visions, as she sat by the clear wistful window, with all the evening light glimmering and changing outside-not visions such as she had once indulged in, of the absent sailor coming, indignant in all the force of truth and virtue, to clear his reputation and claim his bride. Such dreams had long proved themselves vain. Bell closed her lips tight when Willie's neverspoken name came to them involuntarily in irrestrainable appeals from her heart, and turned aside to cogitate painful plans of household thrift and labor, of butter-making, and all the uses of the "milkness," which had not been put to full profit in past days. If her father was indeed in the power of Jamie Lowther, what a triumph to set him clear of those toils, and restore that independence which was life and breath to the stern old man! With a certain stern satisfaction, which proved her share in her father's temper, Bell betook herself to labor through the day and plans by night. They might turn her evening rest into a species of torture for her high spirit and lively tem

untarily aware that neither had changed, of a possible heiress, but with the more keen and that when the inevitable moment came a final struggle must ensue : but, with some touch of natural feeling or tenderness unusual to his character, Andrew Carr deferred that hour. He sat in his arm-chair within the glow of the red peat-fire through the long summer evenings-sat and talked slowly at intervals with James Lowther, who frequented the place almost as regularly as the evening came, and whom Bell, seated by the window, mending or making, with the dark moss gleaming before her in the wistful distance, and all the changing glories of the summer-evening sky above, steadily refused to notice. They were a singular group, all self-concentrated and individualized by the wonderful reserve which enveloped them, and by the passions which lay hidden, yet not imperceptible, behind that veil. Of the three, Bell suffered most, in the tedious and galling restraint to which she was subjected. The very vivacity of her feminine perceptions told against her in contrast with the steadier persistence of her companions. She was ready to have flung up her weapons and fled from the field with womanish impatience, while they stood obstinately to their point, secure of overcoming her. In the silence of the homely room, all reddened with the glow of the peat-fire, yet with the calm, cool evening light coming sweetly in through the uncurtained window, a close observer might have heard, through the tedious, dropping talk, the loud heart-beats of the humble heroine, whose female temper and constancy were being tried to desperation, and to whom the very presence of this lover, not to speak of his lowering, fiery looks of love and resentment, was intolerable. But Bell could not help herself-could not run away, as her impulse was, from that stake. The want of "a woman-body about the house" had made itself pathetically apparent to Bell in various ways since her return. Her homely practical eyes saw, as clearly as if but cattle and housewifery had been before them, that the lonely household could not go on long under the old man's stern but failing sway, and that his speculations and his parsimonies had become alike wayward and uncertain, and would soon wear out, if they had not already worn out, the slender substance painfully gathered through a toiling lifetime, which Bell did not contemplate with the eyes per-they might take what little comfort

there was in it out of her toilsome courageous life, but they could neither overcome Bell's resolution nor drive her from her post. In this indomitable spirit she hardened herself against the perpetual persecution; and it was thus, in an activity that admitted little leisure, and with a firmness that knew no wavering, that the summer passed away.

CHAPTER II.

self, with a certain scornful indifference to him in the midst of her displeasure which did not fail to strike the disconcerted wooer, in freeing herself from the brambles. The motion was trifling in itself, but it exasperated Lowther. His love and rage boiled over in a sudden explosion,

"Eh, woman! if I didna like ye ower weel for ony man's comfort, I would hate ye like murder!" cried Jamie. "To see you stand"THE auld man's weel eneuch," said ing there dauring me, with your hands James Lowther, in his deep voice, with his among the bramble-bushes, and no condehead bent, and his eyes gleaming up from scending so muckle as a glance to see the under his heavy eyebrows. "He's-weel, mischief you and the likes of you can do he's your faither, Bell. Maist women would in a man's heart! But I wouldna bid ye gie a man a blink of kindness for pleasuring gang ower far!" said the baffled lover, lifttheir kin—but there's nae pleasing you. I ing his thundery eyebrows to emit a glare of dinna gang a' the gate to Whinnyrig, night passionate light out of eyes full of mingled after night, for a twa-handed crack wi' An- fondness and fury. "I'm in that condition, drew Carr. A' the parish kens that, if you with a' I've come through, that I'm as like dinna; and if I am never to get word or look to do ye an injury as a pleasure. Nicht after o' you-" nicht ye've seen me sit, and never spent a word on me. I'm no as patient as Job, and he never was in love with a thrawart lass that I ever heard o'. It's best for yourself, if ye kent a', that ye dinna drive a man ower far."

"Ye never shall, and that ye ken-mair than what's ceevil," cried Bell, the words bursting from her in spite of herself.

"Ceevil!" cried the baffled lover, with a muttered oath : "if I sought ceevility I could gang other places; there's leddies in this countryside, though ye mayna think it, that wouldna object to Broomlees-but a man canna resist his fortune. It's you I want, though you're but a servant lass, and your faither a ruined man-and it's you I'll have, for a' your ceevility and unceevility, whether you will or no. So, Bell, it's nae use struggling; it's far mair suitable for me and better for you to make up your mind." "Never! if it was my last breath!" cried Bell, with all the intensity of passion.

The two stood in the midst of the calmest Sabbatical landscape; distant chimes of church-bells in the air, and all the hushed tranquillity of an autumn afternoon-a Sunday afternoon-the crown of dreamy, meditative quiet brooding over the scene. They were on the borders of the moor, on a byroad which wound through an old plantation towards the kirk-going path. Bell had been on her way to church when her solitude was suddenly intruded upon by her desperate lover. She stood now arrested-half by his presence, half by the long shoots of brambles which encumbered the way and caught at her black dress. As she confronted him, indignant and determined, she occupied her

"A woman may be driven ower far as weel as a man," answered Bell indignantly; "I want naething to say to you, Jamie Lowther; I'm just a servant lass, as you say, and nae match for a grand gentleman like young Broomlees. I ask nae service at your hands but just to let me be-and as for injury—”

"I would take time to think ower that!" cried the exasperated lover; "there's no anither fool in the countryside would let you off as I do. Here am I, that might be maister and mair, coming about Whinnyrig like a ploughman lad, with my hat in my hand, aye looking for a pleasant word, when I might turn ye a' to the door, and take the bread out o' your mouths, and bring ye to your knees, Bell Carr-ay, and will, if ye dinna mend."

Bell lifted her eyes steadily upon him, growing pale, but not wavering. "Maybe ye ken what you mean yoursel';" she said, with a subdued but defiant voice; "it's past my finding out. I never yet heard that love and ill-will could live thegether; and as for bringing me to my knees, ye'll do mony a greater thing, Jamie Lowther, before ye'll do that!"

"If you kent what I can do, you would

take mony a thought before you daured me to it," said Lowther, fiercely. "I can do you and yours mair mischief than a' your friends can mend."

"Dinna speak to me!" cried Bell, roused entirely beyond her self-control. "Do I no ken what you can do already? You can slander an honest lad and break an innocent lassie's heart. You can send them away ower land and seas that ye're no worthy to be named beside. Ye can make them desolate that never harmed nor minted harm at you. You've done your warst lang, lang ere now, Jamie Lowther, and what you can do mair is as little matter to me as this bram'le thorn. Say or do as you like, the warst's done; and those that have borne the warst are free of fear. Since you've made me ower late for the kirk, I'm gaun hame."

he went lingeringly away, and to spend hours in the darkness, framing the plans of his revenge-that revenge which was at once to punish and subdue the object of all his thoughts-to bring Bell Carr to her knees and to his heart.

For, with the inconsiderateness of passion, Lowther did not perceive how unlikely these two results were, and how unaccordant with each other. He had a certain power over the fortunes of this defiant, resisting girl. He did not concern himself with any unnecessary metaphysics concerning the effect of a father's ruin upon his daughter's heart. He was not seeking her heart; he wanted herself-however, he could have her, whether she would or not, as he himself expressed it. When the little household was desolate and friendless, then Bell would be but too glad Saying which, Bell turned majestically to marry him, he concluded, with a common back, and threaded her way firmly and swiftly coarseness not confined to any one class of through the narrow paths, all slippery with men. He pondered how he was to do it with the spiky leaflets of fir which lay in heaps, a fierce satisfaction. He loved her, yet he the growth of successive years. Prepared to would not spare her a single sting of the oppose her onward progress, Lowther was punishment he had in store. He cursed her quite disconcerted by this sudden return. at the height of his passion, and vowed she He stood gazing after her with a blank look should suffer for all her freaks and haughtiof mortification and disappointment, taken ness. But in the midst of all his schemes by surprise-then made a few hurried steps of revengeful love, that strange element of in pursuit-then paused, thinking better of ignorance ran through the elaborate but, it. He watched till her figure, elastic yet abortive scheme. He knew nothing of the substantial, had reached the rising slope creature he pursued with such unrelenting which led to Whinnyrig. Then he turned fondness. The idea of her standing at bay, back, and went away in the opposite direc- refusing to yield, despising him the more for tion, with troubled looks and a heart ill at his power and the use he made of it, did not ease. He could not defend himself from enter into his comprehension. He laid all his those continued rebuffs by the simple but plans on a small scale, as any tyrant might difficult expedient of withdrawing his unwel- have laid them on a great scale-calculating come attentions, and leaving the unwilling everything with the utmost nicety except the object of his affections at rest. He would one thing which by a touch could upset all make her as uneasy as himself, and destroy other calculations-that human heart, wonher peace, as she had destroyed his. That derfullest agency, which will answer to no was the only expedient which occurred to abstract rule, but has to be considered him; and, secure of having increased Bell's through complex shades of individuality, inunhappiness, however little he might have comprehensible to lovers as to kings. lightened his own, he went home, gloomily pondering extreme measures; but only to return, when the early autumn twilight fell, to linger about the open door from which the firelight shone, to be asked in as usual by Andrew Carr's gruff voice-to sit in sight of that silent figure, in every movement of which he could trace a swell of indignation and resentment not yet calmed down-to find even the ordinary "good-night" denied him when

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE.

796

CHAPTER III.

IT may be supposed that this Sabbath evening contained little comfort for poor Bell, in the seclusion of her chamber and of her heart. When the evening prayers were over, and her father had gone to his early rest, Bell, glad yet terrified to be alone, stood by her own little attic window and leaned out to court the night breeze which sighed round the lonely house. There was

downfalls; yet Nature always, true, but short-sighted, makes her infallible appeal to that one sure hope-God will deliver! Bell bent her hot eyes into her hands and leaned against the rough edge of the thatch which, somehow, by the prick of natural contact, gave a certain ease to her thoughts. There was the only hope! Something might yet occur to prevent the approaching overthrow

no moon visible, but the subdued lightness | She turned from her own view of the matter in the air told that somewhere in the clouded with a mournful outbreak of love and awe firmament that hidden light was shining, and and pity. "The auld man! oh, the auld the wind sighed out pathetic admonitions of man!" cried Bell to herself, wringing her the coming rain. Bell leant out, looking sadly hands in an agony. Would he die of it, in upon the familiar landscape-the long stretch the passionate despair of sublimated pride of the moon falling blank into the darkness, and poverty? Would he live heartbroken the trees of the little plantation in which that shamed, in the dismal woe of old age? interview had taken place bending and sway- Once more Bell wrung her hands. It was ing in the breeze; the little cottage of Rob- too dreadful to speculate upon. She turned ert Brown, all shut up and silent in the earlyaway from that picture with a suppressed conclusion of the day of rest—all the children | sob of excitement and terror. Andrew Carr safe asleep, and the laborious pair making had been a just man all his life-severe but up the waste and toil of the week in the ad- just, wronging no man, serving God after ditional repose which crowned with an exter- his fashion. Feeling the intolerableness of nal benediction the spiritual quiet of the this misery, Bell caught with a sobbing panic weekly holiday: and, above the stillness of at the protection of Heaven; though we all the cottage, the dark farmhouse all shut up know how seldom Providence affords these and silent too, so far as appeared, with those miraculous protections-how often God, in wistful young eyes gazing out into the dark- the calm of that Divine composure which ness upon that indefinite cloud of ruin which knows of no better blessings than earthly in drew nearer and nearer-ruin hard to be un-reserve for his servants, permits the heaviest derstood or identified, yet coming with a slow inevitable progress. Bell's heart beat loud in her troubled breast. That unformed shadowy presence darkly approaching roused mingled terrors and resistance and an overwhelming excitement in her mind. It seemed impossible to go quietly to rest and rise quietly to labor while every hour brought ruin and shame nearer to the devoted house. What if one sat and watched and forestalled-Providence itself might interpose ! its coming, presenting always a dumb front of defiance to the misfortune which should crush neither heart nor spirit! Alas! it might crush neither spirit nor heart in her own young indomitable bosom; but what of the old man, struck to the soul in that profound pride of his-the only passion which had outlived all the dulling influences of age! Bell shuddered, and withdrew from the thought as it came before her. She clasped her hands tight, and drew a long, sighing breath. She thought of the cows taken from the byer and the sheep from the hill-of Robert Brown's cart, with his furniture and his children, going sadly down the brae, and all the household gods of Whinnyrig turned outside to the cold daylight and pitiless eyes of country purchasers. The shame of it was quite enough to wring the heart of the country girl on her own account; but she could go forth erect and undaunted, too young and brave to be overcome even by such a misfortune. It was hard, but not fatal to Bell.

When Bell lifted her head, a pale gleam of light from the hidden moon was slanting with a mystic whiteness over the dark moor. In that track of light moved the figure of a man. She watched, with a certain wild thrill-half of curiosity, half of fright. Was it some wandering stranger merely, late out, unaware of the habitudes of the country, in the sacred calm of Sabbath night? Was it Jamie Lowther, whom love and revenge forbade to rest! She watched, with her heart beating louder and louder. The figure drew nearer, with lingering, uncertain steps-disappeared in the plantation, while Bell stood breathless-came out again into the pale, luminous darkness, slowly ascending the brae. No dog barked nor creature stirred about Whinnyrig. Did these footsteps wake no sound in the still dim world that breathed about the lonely wayfarer? O Heaven! it was not Jamie Lowther, with his fiery love and hate-it was no stranger belated on that moor. It

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