DR. DEWAR was a man of whose appearance his wife had reason to be proud. None of the long-descended Douglases were equal to him either in physical power or in good looks. He was tall and strong, he had fine hands—a physician’s hands full of delicacy yet force, good feet, all the signs that are supposed to represent race—though he was of no family whatever, the son of a shopkeeper, not fit to appear in the same room in which ladies and gentlemen were. Kirsteen had stopped short at sight of him, and there can be no doubt that she had been much surprised. In former times she had indeed seen him as her mother’s doctor, but she had scarcely noticed the visitor, who was of no interest to a girl of her age. And his rough country dress had not been imposing like the black suit which now gave dignity and the air of a gentleman which Kirsteen had expected to find entirely wanting in her sister’s husband. His somewhat pale face, large featured, rose with a sort of distinction from the ample many-folded white neck-cloth—appropriate title!—which enveloped his throat. He looked at the visitor with good-humoured scrutiny, shading his eyes from the scanty light of the candles. “My wife is so economical about her lights,” he said, “that I can never see who is here, though I would fain make myself agreeable to Anne’s friends. Certainly, my dear, I will do what is in me to make your sister bide. I would fain hope it is a sign of amity to see ye here to-night, Miss Kirsteen?”
“No,” said Kirsteen, “it is not a sign of amity. It was only that I was in Glasgow, and thought I would like to see her—at least,” she added, “I will not take to myself a credit I don’t deserve. It was Mrs. Macgregor put it into my head.”
“Well, well,” said Dr. Dewar, “so long as you are here we will not quarrel about how it was. It will have been a great pleasure to Anne to see you. Are the bairns gone to their beds, my dear?”
“They’re scarcely sleeping yet,” said Anne smiling at her husband with tender triumph. “Go ben,” she said putting one of the candlesticks into his hand, “and see them; for I know that’s what has brought ye in so soon—not for me but the weans.”
“For both,” he said pressing her hand like a lover as he took the candle from it. Anne was full of silent exultation, for she had remarked Kirsteen’s little start of surprise and noticed that she said nothing more of going away. “Well?” she said eagerly, when he had disappeared.
“Well,”—said Kirsteen, “I never heard that Dr. Dewar was not a very personable man, and well-spoken. It will maybe be best for me to be getting home, before it’s very late.”
“Will ye no stay, Kirsteen, and break bread in my house? You might do that and say nothing about it. It would be no harm to hide an innocent thing that was just an act of kindness, when you get home. If I am never to get more from my own family,” cried Anne, “but to be banished and disowned as if I were an ill woman, surely a sister that is young and should have some kind thought in her heart, might do that. Ye need say nothing of it when you get home.”
“I will maybe never get home more,” said Kirsteen overcome at last by the feeling of kindred and the need of sympathy.
“Oh, lassie,” cried Anne, “what have ye done? What have ye done?—And where are ye going?—If ye have left your home ye shall bide here. It’s my right to take care of you, if ye have nobody else to take care of ye, no Jean Macgregor, though she’s very respectable, but me your elder sister. And that will be the first thing David will say.”
“I am much obliged to you,” said Kirsteen, “but you must not trouble your head about me. I’m going to London—to friends I have there.”
“To London!” cried Anne. There was more wonder in her tone than would be expressed now if America had been the girl’s destination. “And you have friends there!”
Kirsteen made a lofty sign of assent. She would not risk herself by entering into any explanations. “It’s a long journey,” she said, “and a person never can tell if they will ever win back. If you are really meaning what you say, and that I will not be in your way nor the doctor’s I will thankfully bide and take a cup of tea with ye—for it’s not like being among strangers when I can take your hand—and give a kiss to your little bairns before I go.”
Anne came quickly across the room and took her sister in her arms, and cried a little upon her shoulder. “I’m real happy,” she said sobbing; “ye see the bairns, what darlin’s they are—and there never was a better man than my man; but eh! I just yearn sometimes for a sight of home, and my poor mother. If she is weakly, poor body, and cannot stand against the troubles of this world, still she’s just my mother, and I would rather have a touch of her hand than all the siller in Glasgow—and eh, what she would give to see the bairns!”
Kirsteen, who was herself very tremulous, here sang in a broken voice, for she too had begun to realize that she might never again see her mother, a snatch of her favourite song:
“True loves ye may get many an ane
But minnie ne’er anither.”
“No, I’ll not say that,” said Anne. “I’ll not be so untrue to my true love—but oh, my poor minnie! how is she, Kirsteen? Tell me everything, and about Marg’ret and the laddies and all.”
When Dr. Dewar entered he found the two sisters seated close together, clinging to each other, laughing and crying in a breath, over the domestic story which Kirsteen was telling. The sole candle twinkled on the table kindly like a friendly spectator, the fire blazed and crackled cheerfully, the room in the doctor’s eyes looked like the home of comfort and happy life. He was pleased that one of Anne’s family should see how well off she was. It was the best way he felt sure to bring them to acknowledge her, which was a thing he professed to be wholly indifferent to. But in his heart he was very proud of having married a Douglas, and he would have received any notice from Drumcarro with a joy perhaps more natural to the breeding of his original station than dignified. He felt the superiority of his wife’s race in a manner which never occurred to Anne herself, and was more proud of his children on account of the “good Douglas blood” in their veins. “Not that I hold with such nonsense,” he would say with a laugh of pretended disdain. “But there are many that do.” It was not a very serious weakness, but it was a weakness. His face beamed as he came in: though Kirsteen had said that her presence was not a sign of amity he could not but feel that it was, and a great one. For certainly the laird’s opposition must be greatly modified before he would permit his daughter to come here.
“Well,” he said, making them both start, “I see I was not wanted to persuade her to bide. I am very glad to see you in my house, Miss Kirsteen. Ye will be able to tell them at home that Anne is not the victim of an ogre in human form, as they must think, but well enough content with her bargain, eh, wife?” He had come up to them, and touched his wife’s cheek caressingly with his hand. “Come, come,” he said, “Anne, ye must not greet, but smile at news from home.”
“If I am greetin’ it’s for pleasure,” said Anne, “to hear about my mother and all of them and to see my bonny Kirsteen.”
“She has grown up a fine girl,” said the doctor looking at her with a professional glance and approving the youthful vigour and spirit which were perhaps more conspicuous in Kirsteen than delicacy of form and grace. Her indignation under this inspection may be supposed. She got up hastily freeing herself from Anne’s hold.
“I must not be late,” she said, “there’s Mrs. Macgregor waiting.”
“Tell the lass to bring the tea, Anne—if your sister is with friends—”
“I’m telling her that her place is here,” cried Anne; “it is no friends, it is just old Jean Macgregor who is very respectable, but not the person for Kirsteen. And we have a spare room,” she added with pride. “The doctor will hear of none of your concealed beds or dark closets to sleep in. He insists on having a spare room for a friend. And where is there such a friend as your own sister? We will send Jean to bring your things, Kirsteen.”
Kirsteen put a stern negation upon this proposal. “Besides,” she said, “it would be no advantage, for I am going on to London without delay.”
“To London?” cried the doctor. “That’s a long journey for ye by yourself. Are you really going alone?”
“I’m told,” said Kirsteen composedly, “that the guards are very attentive, and that nobody meddles with one that respects herself. I have no fear.”
“Well, perhaps there is no fear—not what ye can call fear; for, as you say, a woman is her own best protector, and few men are such fools as to go too far when there’s no response. But, my dear young lady, it’s a long journey and a weary journey; I wonder that Drumcarro trusted you to go alone; he might have spared a maid, if not a man to go with ye.” The doctor’s weakness led him to enhance the importance of Drumcarro as if it were a simple matter to send a maid or a man.
“Oh, but Kirsteen says,” Anne began, remembering the strange avowal, which she did not at all understand, that her sister had made. Kirsteen took the words out of her mouth.
“It’s not as if I were coming back to-day or to-morrow,” she said quickly, “and to send any person with me would have been—not possible—I will just keep myself to myself and nobody will harm me.”
“I am sure of that,” said the doctor cheerfully. “I would not like to be the man that spoke a word displeasing to ye with those eyes of yours. Oh, I’m not complaining; for no doubt ye have heard much harm of me and little good—but ye have given me a look or two, Miss Kirsteen. Does not this speak for me?” he added, raising Anne’s face which glowed with pleasure and affection under his touch—“and yon?” pointing to the open door of the room in which the babies slept.
Kirsteen was much confused by this appeal. “It was far from my mind to say anything unceevil,” she said, “and in your own house.”
“Oh, never mind my own house, it’s your house when you’re in it. And I would like ye to say whatever comes into your head, for at the end, do what you will, my bonny lass, you and me are bound to be friends. Now come, wifie, and give us our tea.”
The dining-room in Dr. Dewar’s house was more dignified than the parlour. It was used as his consulting room in the morning, and Kirsteen was impressed by the large mahogany furniture, the huge sideboard, heavy table, and other substantial articles, things which told of comfort and continuance, not to be lightly lifted about or transferred from one place to another. And nothing could be more kind than the doctor who disarmed her at every turn, and took away every excuse for unfriendliness. After the dreadful experiences of her journey, and the forlorn sense she had of being cut off from everything she cared for, this cordial reception ended by altogether overcoming Kirsteen’s prejudices, and the talk became as cheerful over the tea as if the young adventurer had indeed been a visitor, received with delight in her sister’s house. She went away at last with the old woman greatly against Anne’s will who tried every entreaty and remonstrance in vain. “Surely ye like me better than Jean Macgregor!” she said. “Oh, Kirsteen, it’s far from kind—and the spare room at your disposition, and the kindest welcome—I will let you give the bairns their bath in the morning. Ye shall have them as long as you please,” she said with the wildest generosity. It was Dr. Dewar himself who interrupted these entreaties.
“My dear,” he said, “Kirsteen has a great deal of sense, she knows very well what she’s doing. If there is a difficulty arisen at home as I’m led to conclude, it will just make matters worse if she’s known to be living here.”
“I was not thinking of that,” cried Kirsteen, feeling the ungenerosity of her motives.
“It may be well that ye should. I would not have you anger your father, neither would Anne for any pleasure of hers. She is in a different position,” said the doctor. “She’s a married woman, and her father cannot in the nature of things be her chief object. But Kirsteen, my dear, is but a girl in her father’s house, and whatever her heart may say she must not defy him by letting it be known that she’s living here. But to-morrow is the Sabbath-day. The coach does not go, even if she were so far left to herself as to wish it; and it could not be ill taken that you should go to the kirk together and spend the day together. And then if ye must go, I will engage a place in the coach for ye and see ye off on Monday morning.”
“Oh, I must go, and I almost grudge the Sabbath-day,” said Kirsteen. “I am so restless till I’m there. But I must not give you all that trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. I’ll go with ye as far as the coach-office. I wish I was not so busy,” said Dr. Dewar with a delightful sense of his own consequence and popularity, and of the good impression it would make. “I would convoy ye to London myself. But a doctor is never at his own disposition,” he added, with a shake of his head.
The Sunday which followed was strange yet delightful to Kirsteen. It was like the last day of a sailor on shore before setting forth upon the unknown, but rather of a sailor like Columbus trusting himself absolutely to the sea and the winds, not knowing what awaited him, than the well-guided mariners of modern days with charts for every coast and lighthouses at every turn. Kirsteen looked
“On land and sea and shore,
As she might never see them more.”
All was strange to her even here, but how much stranger, dark, undeciphered, unknown was that world upon the edge of which she stood, and where there was absolutely nothing to guide her as to what she should encounter! Kirsteen was not quite sure whether she could understand the language which was spoken in London; the ways of the people she was sure she would not understand. Somewhere in the darkness that great city lay as the western world lay before its discoverer. Kirsteen formed an image to herself of something blazing into the night full of incomprehensible voices and things; and she had all the shrinking yet eagerness of a first explorer not knowing what horrors there might be to encounter, but not his faith in everything good. The Sunday came like a strange dream into the midst of this eagerness yet alarm. She was almost impatient of the interruption, yet was happy in it with the strangest troubled happiness; though it was so real it was bewildering too, it was a glimpse of paradise on the edge of the dark, yet unreal in its pleasure as that vast unknown was unreal. She played with the children, and she heard them say their prayers, the two little voices chiming together, the two cherub faces lifted up, while father and mother sat adoring. It was like something she had seen in a dream—where she was herself present, and yet not present, noting what every one did. For up to this time everything had been familiar in her life—there had been no strangeness, no new views of the relationship of events with which she was too well acquainted to have any room for flights of fancy.
And then this moment of pause, this curious, amusing, beautiful day passed over, and she found herself in the dark of the wintry morning in the street all full of commotion where the coach was preparing to start. She found her brother-in-law (things had changed so that she had actually begun to think of him as her brother-in-law) in waiting for her to put her in her place. Kirsteen’s chief sensation in all that crowded, flaring, incomprehensible scene, with the smoky lamps blazing, and the horses pawing and champing, and every one shouting to every one else about, was shame of her bundle and fear lest the well-dressed, carefully-brushed doctor should perceive with what a small provision it was that she was going forth into the unknown. No hope of blinding his eyes with the statement that she was going to friends in London if he saw what her baggage consisted of. He put her, to her surprise, into a comfortable corner in the interior of the coach, covering her up with a shawl which he said Anne had sent. “But I was going on the outside,” said Kirsteen. “Ye canna do that,” he said hastily. “You would get your death of cold, besides there was no place.” “Then there is more money to pay,” she said, feeling for her purse, but with a secret pang, for she was aware how very little money was there. “Nothing at all,” he said waving it away, “they are just the same price, or very little difference. Good-bye, Kirsteen, and a good journey to you. A doctor’s never at his own disposition.” “But the money, I know it’s more money.” “I have not another moment,” cried the doctor darting away. Was it possible that she was in debt to Dr. Dewar? She had almost sprung after him when Mrs. Macgregor appeared carrying the bundle and put it on Kirsteen’s knee. “Here is your bundle, Miss Kirsteen; and here’s a little snack for you in a basket.” Thank heaven he had not seen the bundle, but had he paid money for her? Was she in debt to Anne’s husband, that common person? There was no time, however, to protest or send after him. With a clatter upon the stones, as if a house were falling, and a sound on the trumpet like the day of judgment, the coach quivered, moved, and finally got under way.