IF it was strange to sit at that window looking out over the world unknown, and feel herself an inmate of the little house so different from everything she had ever seen, the guest and companion of the old woman whose very name she had never heard till a few days before, it was still more strange to be in the thronged and noisy streets full of people, more people than Kirsteen had supposed to be in the world, under the glaring of the lights that seemed to her to mock the very day itself, though they were few enough in comparison with the blaze of illumination to which we are now accustomed—going through the strange town in the strange night to see Anne. That was the climax of all the strangeness. Anne, whose name was never named at home, whom everybody remembered all the more intensely because it was forbidden to refer to her. Anne, who had gone away from her father’s house in the night leaving the candle flaring out in the socket and the chill wind blowing in through the open door. That scene had always been associated in Kirsteen’s mind with her sister’s name, and something of the flicker of the dying candle was in the blowing about of the lights along the long range of the Trongate, above that babel of noises and ever shifting phantasmagoria of a great city. She could not make any reply to the old woman who walked beside her, full of stories and talk, pointing out to her a church or a building here and there. Kirsteen went through a little pantomime of attention, looking where she was told to look, but seeing nothing, only a confused panorama of crowded dark outlines and wind-blown lights, and nothing that she could understand.
At length they struck into a long line of monotonous street where there were no shops and no wayfarers, but some lamps which flickered wildly, more and more like the dying candle. Mrs. Macgregor told her the name of the street, and explained its length and beauty, and how it had been built, and that it was a very genteel street, where some of the bailies and a number of the ministers lived. “The houses are dear,” she said, “and no doubt it was a fight for Dr. Dewar to keep up a house in such a genteel place. But they external things are of great consequence to a doctor,” she added. Kirsteen was dazed and overawed by the line of the grim houses looming between her and the dark sky, and by the flaring of the wild lights, and the long stretch of darkness which the scanty unavailing lamps did not suffice to make visible. And her heart began to beat violently when her guide stopped at a door which opened invisibly from above at their summons and clanged behind them, and revealed a dark stair with another windy lamp faintly lighting it, a stair in much better order than the dreadful one where Mrs. Macgregor was herself living, but looking like a gloomy cleft in the dark walls. Now that she had come so far, Kirsteen would fain have turned back or delayed the visit to which she seemed to be driven reluctantly by some impulse that was not her own. Was it not an aggravation of her own rebellion that she should thus come secretly to the former rebel, she who had been discarded by the family and shut out from its records? She shrank from the sight of the house in which poor Anne had found refuge, and of the husband who was a common person, not one of their own kind. Drumcarro at his fiercest could not have recoiled more from a common person than his runaway daughter, whose object it was to establish herself with a mantua-maker in London. But Kirsteen felt her own position unspeakably higher than that of her sister.
She followed her companion tremulously into the little dark vestibule. “Oh, ay, the mistress is in: where would she be but in, and hearing the bairns say their bits of lessons?” said an active little maid who admitted them, pointing to the glow of ruddy firelight which proceeded from an inner door. And before she was aware Kirsteen found herself in the midst of a curious and touching scene. She had not heard anything about children, so that the sight so unexpected of two little things seated on the hearth-rug, as she remembered herself to have sat in her early days under Anne’s instructions, gave her a little shock of surprise and quick-springing kindness. They were two little roundabout creatures of three and four, with little round rosy faces faintly reddened by the flickering light, which shone in the soft glow, their hair half-flaxen, half-golden. Their chubby hands were crossed in their laps. Their mother knelt in front of them, herself so girlish still, her soft yellow hair matured into brown, her face and figure fuller than of old, teaching them with one hand raised. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” she was saying: “Dentle Desus, meet and mild,” said the little pupils: “listen to a little child.” There was no lamp or candle in the room: nothing but the firelight. The two dark figures in their outdoor dresses stood behind in the shadow, while all the light concentrated in this family group. The mother was so absorbed in her teaching that she continued without noticing their entrance.
“You are not saying it right, Dunny; and Kirsty, my pet, you must try and say it like me—Gentle Jesus.”
“Dentle Desus,” said the little ones with assured and smiling incorrectness incapable of amendment. Kirsteen saw them through a mist of tears. The name of the baby on the hearth had completed the moving effect of old recollections and of the familiarity of the voice and action of the young mother. The voice had a plaintive tone in it, as so many voices of Scotchwomen have. She stood behind in the background, the rays of the fire taking a hundred prismatic tints as she looked at them through the tears upon her eyelashes. Her heart was entirely melted, forgetful of everything but that this was Anne, the gentle elder sister who had taught her childhood too.
“I have brought a young leddy to see you, Mrs. Dewar,” said the old woman. Anne sprang up to her feet at the sound of the voice.
“I did not hear anybody come in,” she said. “I was hearing them their hymn to say to their papa to-morrow. Is it you, Mrs. Macgregor? You’re kind to come out this cold night. Dunny, tell Janet she must put ye to your bed, for I’m busy with friends.”
“Na,” said the old lady, “we’ll not interrupt. I’m going ben to say a word to Janet mysel’. And she’ll no interrupt you putting your bairns to their bed.”
She drew Kirsteen forward into the influence of the firelight, and herself left the room, leaving the sisters together. Anne stood for a little gazing curiously at the silent figure. She was puzzled and at a loss; the black silk spencer, the beaver bonnet, were common enough articles of dress, and the big veil that hung like a cloud over Kirsteen’s bonnet kept the face in the shade. “Do I know ye?” she said going timidly forward. Then with a cry, “Is it Kirsteen?”
The little children sat still on the hearth-rug with their little fat hands crossed in their laps; they were not concerned by the convulsions that might go on over their heads. They laughed at the glancing firelight and at each other in one of those still moments of babyhood which come now and then in the midst of the most riotous periods; they had wandered off to the edge of the country from whence they came. When the two sisters fell down on their knees by the side of the little ones, the mother showing her treasures, the young aunt making acquaintance with them, the rosy little faces continued to smile serenely upon the tears and suppressed passion. “This is Kirsty that I called after you, Kirsteen.” “But oh, ye mean for my mother, Anne?” “Kirsty, me!” said little three-year-old, beating her breast to identify the small person named. “She’s Kistina; I’m Duncan,” said the little boy who was a whole year older, but did not generally take the lead in society. “They are like two little birdies in a nest,” said Kirsteen; “oh! the bonny little heads like gold—and us never to know.”
“Will I send them to Janet, or will ye help me to put them to their bed?” said the proud mother. For a moment she remembered nothing but the delight of exhibiting their little round limbs, their delightful gambols, for so soon as the children rose from that momentary abstraction they became riotous again and filled the room with their “flichterin’ noise and glee.” “I never light the candles till David comes in,” Anne said apologetically. “What do I want with more light? For the bairns are just all I can think of; they will not let me sew my seam, they are just a woman’s work at that restless age.” She went on with little complaints which were boasts as Kirsteen looked on and wondered at the skilled and careful manipulation of her sister’s well-accustomed hands. The bedroom to which the group was transferred was like the parlour lighted only by the fire, and the washing and undressing proceeded while Anne went on with the conversation, telling how Dunny was “a rude boy,” and Kirsty a “very stirring little thing,” and “just a handful.” “I have enough to do with them, and with making and mending for them, if I had not another thing on my hands,” said Anne; “they are just a woman’s work.” Kirsteen sat and looked on in the ruddy flickering light with strange thoughts. Generally the coming on of motherhood is gradual, and sisters and friends grow into a sort of amateur share in it. But to come suddenly from the image of Anne who had left the house-door open and the candle dying in the socket, to Anne the cheerful mother kissing the rosy limbs and round faces, her pretty hair pulled by the baby hands, her proud little plaints of the boy that was “rude” and the girl that was “very stirring,” was the most curious revelation to Kirsteen. It brought a little blush and uneasiness along with affection and pleasure, her shy maidenhood shrinking even while warm sympathy filled her heart.
When the children were in bed, the sisters returned to the parlour, where Kirsteen was installed in the warmest corner by the fire. “Would you like the candles lighted? I aye leave it till David comes home: he says I sit like a hoodie crow in the dark,” said Anne. There was a soft tone in her voice which told that David was a theme as sweet to her as the children; but Kirsteen could not bring herself to ask any questions about the doctor who was a common person, and one who had no right ever to have intruded himself into the Douglases’ august race. Anne continued for a time to give further details of the children, how they were “a little disposed to take the cold,” and about the troubles there had been with their teeth, all happily surmounted, thanks to David’s constant care. “If ye ever have little bairns, Kirsteen, ye will know what a comfort it is to have a doctor in the house.”
“I don’t know about the bairns, but I am sure I never will have the doctor,” said Kirsteen in haste and unwarily, not thinking what she said.
“And what for no?” said Anne, holding herself very erect “Ye speak like an ignorant person, like one of them that has a prejudice against doctors. There’s no greater mistake.”
“I was meaning no such thing,” cried Kirsteen eagerly.
“Well, ye spoke like it,” said Anne. “And where would we all be without doctors? It’s them that watches over failing folk, and gives back fathers and mothers to their families, and snatches our bonny darlings out of the jaws of death. Eh! if ye knew as much about doctors as I know about them,” she cried with a panting breath.
“I am sorry if I said anything that was not ceevil,” said Kirsteen; “it was without meaning. Doctors have never done anything for my mother,” she added with an impulse of self-justification.
“And whose blame is that? I know what David ordered her—and who ever tried to get it for her? He would have taken her to his own house, and nursed her as if she had been his own mother,” cried Anne with heat.
Kirsteen with difficulty suppressed the indignation that rose to her lips. “Him presume to consider my mother as if she were his own!” Kirsteen cried within herself. “He was a bonny one!” And there fell a little silence between the two sisters seated on opposite sides of the fire.
After a while Anne spoke again, hesitating, bending across the lively blaze. “Were ye, maybe, coming,” she said with an effort, “to tell me—to bring me a—message?”
Kirsteen saw by the dancing light her sister’s eyes full of tears. She had thought she was occupied only by the babies and the changed life, but when she saw the beseeching look in Anne’s eyes, the quivering of her mouth, the eager hope that this visit meant an overture of reunion, Kirsteen’s heart was sore.
“Alack,” she said, “I have no message. I am just like you, Annie. I have left my home and all in it. I’m a wanderer on the face of the earth.”
“Kirsteen!” Anne sprang to her sister and clasped her in her arms. “Oh, my bonny woman! Oh, my Kirsty!” She pressed Kirsteen’s head to her breast in a rapture of sympathetic feeling. “Oh, I’m sorry and I’m glad. I canna tell ye all my feelings. Have ye brought him with you? Where is he, and who is he, Kirsteen?”
Kirsteen disengaged herself almost roughly and with great though suppressed offence from her sister’s arms. “If ye think there is any he in the maitter, ye are greatly mistaken,” she said. “If ye think I would take such a step for such a motive.”
Anne drew back wounded too. “Ye need not speak so stern—I did it myself, and I would not be the one to blame you. And if there’s a better reason I don’t know what it is. What reason can a young lass have to leave her hame, except that there’s one she likes better, and that she’s bid to follow, forsaking her father and mother, in the very Scripture itself?”
Mrs. Dr. Dewar returned to her seat—throwing back her head with an indignant sense of the highest warrant for her own conduct. But when she resumed her seat, Anne began to say softly: “I thought you had come to me with maybe a word of kindness. I thought that maybe my mother—was yearning for a sight of me as me for her—and to see my bairns. Oh, it would do her heart good to see the bairns! It would add on years to her life. What are ye all thinking of that ye cannot see that she’s dwining and pining for a pleasant house and a cheerful life? David said it before—and he was most willing to be at all the charges—but they would not listen to him, and no doubt it’s a great deal worse now.”
“If you are meaning my mother, she is no worse,” said Kirsteen. “She is just about the same. Robbie has gone away to India like the rest; and she just bore it as well as could be expected. I have not heard,” said the girl, feeling the corners of her mouth quiver and a choking in her throat, “how she’s borne this.”
Both of them had the feeling that their own departure must have affected the invalid more strongly than any other.
“But she has not heard about your children, Anne. She would have said something.”
Anne’s lips were quivering too. She was much wounded by this assertion. She shook her head. “My mother’s no one,” she said, “that tells everything—especially what’s nearest to her heart. Ye may be sure she knows—but she wouldna maybe be ready to speak of it to young lassies like you.”
Kirsteen thought this argument feeble, but she said nothing in reply.
“And so Robbie’s away,” said Anne. “He was just a bit laddie that I put to his bed like my own. Eh, but time goes fast, when ye hear of them growing up that ye can mind when they were born. I tell David our own will just be men and women before we think.” This thought brought a smile to her face, and much softening of the disappointment. “Oh, but I would like my mother to see them!” she said.
Kirsteen reflected a little bitterly that this was all Anne thought of, that her curiosity about her sister had dropped at once, and that the children and the wish that her mother should see them—which was nothing but pride—was all that occupied Anne’s thoughts. And there ensued another pause; they sat on either side of the fire with divided hearts, Anne altogether absorbed in her own thoughts of the past and present, of her old girlish life which had been full of small oppressions, and of her present happiness, and the prosperous and elevated position of a woman with a good man and bairns of her own, which was her proud and delightful consciousness, and which only wanted to be seen and recognized by her mother to make it perfect. Kirsteen on her side felt this superiority as an offence. She knew that her mother had “got over” Anne’s departure, and was not at all taken up by imaginations concerning her and her possible children—though she could not but recognize the possibility that her own flight might have a much more serious effect, and she sat by her sister’s hearth with a jealous, proud sensation of being very lonely, and cut away from everything. She said to herself that it was foolish, nay, wrong to have come, and that it was not for her to have thus encouraged the bringing down of her father’s house. There was no such thing she proudly felt in her own case.
Suddenly Anne rose up, and lifting two candlesticks from the mantelpiece placed them on the table. “I hear David’s step,” she said with a beaming face.
“Then I will just be going,” said Kirsteen.
“Why should ye go? Will ye no wait and see my husband? Maybe you think Dr. Dewar is not good enough to have the honour of meeting with the like of you. I can tell you my husband is as well respected as any in Glasgow, and his name is a kent name where the Douglases’ was never heard.”
“That can scarcely be in Scotland,” cried Kirsteen proudly, “not even in Glasgow. Fare ye well, Anne. I’m glad to have seen ye.” She paused for a moment with a shake in her voice and added hurriedly, “and the bairns.”
“Oh, Kirsteen!” cried Anne rushing to her side. “Oh, Kirsteen, bide! Oh, bide and see him! Ye will never be sorry to have made friends with my man.”
“Who is that, Anne,” said a voice behind them, “that ye are imploring in such a pitiful tone to bide? Is it some unfriend of mine?”
“No unfriend, Dr. Dewar,” said Kirsteen, turning round upon him, “but a stranger that has little to do here.”
“It is one of your sisters, Anne!”
“It’s Kirsteen,” cried Anne with wet eyes. “Oh, David, make her stay.”