‘But, O Ailie! you’ll never do it; you must not do it--if you don’t love him!’ said Isabel.
She shrank and hesitated to say the word. It seemed to her a kind of blasphemy.
‘Could I have said it to Margaret?’ she asked herself. And was not Ailie, too, like Margaret, a dedicated virgin, above such suggestions of this common earth?
‘Oh, whisht!’ said Ailie, with a wild, sudden flush of colour flaming over her face. ‘Whatever the Lord’s will may be, I am His handmaid to do it. But, eh! how I’m punished now! I wouldna let your Margaret be. I would bid her back to earth when she was at Heaven’s door--no thinking what was waiting for myself. Though I’m no murmuring against the Lord.’
And then there was a moment of silence, on the one side full of eager revolt and determination to oppose; on the other of that stunned submission which comes after a great blow.
‘Oh, no--no! it cannot be,’ cried Isabel, clasping in her arms the girl for whom, up to this moment, she had felt so little sympathy. ‘I will never believe it is God’s meaning. If you did not love him you would hate him. How could you help it? It cannot be--it must not be!’
‘Whisht--whisht!’ said Ailie, with a faint momentary smile, ‘you’re ay so earnest. Oh, if ye would come with us, Isabel, for _her_ sake, and put yourself on the Lord’s side. Whisht!--What’s God’s doing can never harm His servants. I’m no rebelling now, that’s a’ past. The worst is I canna see my work, nor what remains for me in this world,’ she added, with a piteous gentleness, ‘for the spirit of prophecy is ta’en from me as would be fit, when I’m under another, and no free in my ain power. Or, maybe, it’s my een that are blinded,’ she said, putting her hand up to them with a close pressure, as if they ached. But it was not because they ached. It was because they were full to overflowing with a stinging salt moisture. She would not yield to that common mode of relief. ‘Why should I greet when the Lord’s will is manifest?’ she said, all at once. ‘It would more suit me to greet if I knew not what that was.’
‘But it cannot be God’s will and you so sore--sore against it,’ cried eager Isabel, ‘in your heart.’
‘I’m no such a rebel,’ cried Ailie, with a start. ‘Oh, I’m no so ill as you think--me that am set to be a sign to His people. Now it’s all past,’ she added, raising herself up. ‘And, Isabel, though you dinna understand, you’ve been real good to me, and I’ll never forget it. Oh, will ye no come and open your heart now to the Lord, as long as the day of visitation lasts? I canna bide to think that Margret’s sister should be on the world’s side, and no on the Lord’s.’