KIRSTEEN did not seclude herself for long. While the girls were still whispering to each other, not without some awe, of the sudden shock which she had evidently received, of her deathlike look, her struggle to maintain her composure, her rejection of all inquiries, she had returned among them, had taken up the silk again, and resumed what she was doing. There was scarcely a word said after Kirsteen came back. The young women all bent over their sewing, and their needles flew through their work. The presence among them of this one tragic face, perfectly colourless, self-commanded, silent, wrapped in an abstraction which nobody could penetrate, had the strangest impressive effect upon them. They did not dare to speak even to each other, but signed to each other for things they wanted, and worked like so many machines, fearing even to turn their eyes towards her. Miss Jean, quite unable to control herself after this mysterious blow which she had given without knowing, had retired to the parlour, where she sat alone and cried, she knew not why. Oh, if she had but held her tongue, if she had not been so ready to go and read the news to them! Kirsteen, so busy as she was, might never have seen it, might never have known. Miss Jean read the paragraph over and over again, till she could have repeated it by heart. She found lower down a list of the names of those who had been killed and wounded, but this brought no enlightenment to her, for she did not know Drumcarro, or the names of the neighbours near. She had to lay it away as an insoluble mystery, not able to comprehend how, from so few details as there were, and without even hearing any name, Kirsteen should have at once been killed, as it were, by this mysterious blow. How did she know who he was, the poor gentleman who had died with the white handkerchief pressed to his dying lips? It was a very touching incident, Miss Jean had herself thought. No doubt, she had said to herself, there was a story under it. She had shed a sudden, quick-springing tear over the poor young man on the field of battle, and then, in her desire to communicate the touching tale, had hurried to the work-room without further thought—how, she asked herself, could she have known that it would hurt any one? What meaning was there in it that Kirsteen alone could know?
It was late when the workwomen, who lived out of doors, went away. They had gone through a long and tiring day, with no amusement of any sort, or reading or talk to brighten it. But somehow they had not felt it so—they all felt as if they had been acting their parts in a tragedy, as if the poor young officer on the Indian plains had held some relationship to themselves. The silence which nobody enjoined, which nature herself exacted from them, burst into a tumult of low-breathed talk the moment they left the house. They discussed her looks, the awful whiteness of her face, the shock of that sudden, unsoftened communication, without asking, as Miss Jean did, how she could have known. Miss Jean heard their voices, first low and awe-stricken, rising in eagerness and loudness as they got further from the house. But it was not till some time later that Kirsteen came in. She had been at work in a violent, absorbed, passionate way, doing with incredible swiftness and determination everything her hand had found to do. She had an air of great weariness, the exhaustion which means excitement and not repose, when she came in. She threw a glance round the room looking for the paper, which Miss Jean had put carefully out of sight. Kirsteen went to the table and turned over everything that was on it, groping in a sort of blind way.
“You are looking for something, my dear?”
“Yes—where is it?”
“What might ye be looking for?” said Miss Jean, trembling very much, and with the tears coming to her eyes.
“Where is it?” Kirsteen said. She was perfectly still and quiet, her voice low, her face very white, her eyes cast down. It was evident that she felt no need of explanation, nor power of giving one. There was but one thing for her in the world, and that was the paper with the news—which at the first hearing had gone like a stone to the bottom of her heart, like a sword piercing through and through.
Miss Jean had no power to resist or to pretend that she did not understand. She rose, trembling, and unlocked her escritoire and brought the paper out, fumbling in the depths of a pigeon-hole in which she had buried it, that it might never be seen more. She was very tremulous, her face drawn, her eyes full of moisture. “I canna think how you could make anything out of that,” she said almost querulously in the excess of her feeling. “There’s nothing, nothing in that, to say who it was. No person could divine. It might be somebody you never heard of.”
It is possible that after the utter and undoubting convictions of the first moment such a thought might have come to Kirsteen’s mind too. She put out her hand for the paper. Miss Jean kept on talking in a fretful tone. “You’ve had no tea, not a thing since two o’clock, and now it’s eleven at night—you’ve had no rest—work, work, as if your bread depended on it; and it’s no such thing. I suppose you think you’re made of something different from the ordinary, no mere flesh and blood.”
Kirsteen paid no attention. She did not hear, the words were as a vague accompaniment, like the sound of wheels and faint voices and footsteps out of doors. She opened the paper with steady nervous hands that did not tremble, and read over again every word. Then she turned to the list “Casualties.” Casualties! Accidents!—was that a word to use for the list of the dead? When she had read it her hands dropped on her knee with the paper held in them, and from her colourless lips there came a faint sound, inarticulate, hoarse, the knell of hope. There had not been any hope in her heart: but to say that and to know that hope is over, are two things. In the one there was still a possibility—the other was death itself. Oh, the possibility had been very faint, very feeble! She had worked on all day, struggled on to preserve it, not asking for conviction. Sometimes to know the worst is what we desire. Sometimes we would prefer to put it from us, not to make sure, for a little. But there it was: no further doubt, “Captain Drummond;” his name and no other. “Will ye wait till I come back?” He was standing by her, saying it—and lying there—with the handkerchief. It was all past, the whole story, as if it had happened a hundred years ago.
“Miss Kirsteen—most likely you are making yourself miserable about nothing. How can ye tell by a story like that who it is? Oh, my bonny dear, I am asking no questions, but to see you like that just breaks my heart.”
Kirsteen smiled in spite of herself at the idea of any heart being broken but her own, of any one being miserable who had not known him, who had never seen him, who did not even know his name. She said nothing for a few moments and then she spoke with a voice quite tuneless and flat, but steady. “Miss Jean—I will have to go for a day or two—to the Highlands.”
“Certainly, my dear—whenever ye please,” said Miss Jean, though not without a catching of her breath; for who would look after the work, with herself so much out of the use of it, and the season still so throng?
“Not to leave you—with so much in hand—why should I?” said Kirsteen, “it’s not as if it was for anybody but me. But so soon as can be: just the time to go and to come back.”
“Oh, my dear young lady—whenever ye please, and for as long as ye please: but ye will come back?”
Kirsteen smiled again faintly. “Oh, yes, I will come back—there will be nothing more, no fighting nor battles—nothing to stop me—and nobody—to wait for me”—she added, “as I would have been content to wait—I was very content—just to think he was coming—some time. But that’s over—just an old story. It is time to shut up the house and go to our beds.”
“Oh, my darlin’ bairn! Dinna shut it all up like that. Tell me about it—or if you will not tell me, oh, dear Miss Kirsteen, let the tears flow!”
“My eyes are dry and so is my throat, Miss Jean, I cannot speak—I cannot cry—I’m not one for telling—— Good-night—I will just go away to my bed.”
She lighted her candle which threw a strange new light upon her colourless face, and the rings of hair upon her milk-white forehead out of which nothing could take the colour. Kirsteen’s face even now had not the meekness and patience of a saint, but her hair was like an aureole round her wan countenance. She was going out of the room without saying any more, when she suddenly bethought herself, and coming back went up to Miss Jean, and kissed her—a very unusual ceremony between these two shy Scotswomen. The old lady coloured to the edge of her grey hair with pleasure and surprise. “Oh, Miss Kirsteen,” she said—
“You are very kind—you are just a mother. You are like my Marg’ret,” Kirsteen said. That name brought a rush of tears to her eyes for the first time. Marg’ret alone in all the world would know—Marg’ret would not need to be told. If she could lay her head on Marg’ret’s shoulder then her heart might break in peace. She had to bind it up now with bands of iron—for there was nobody in the world save him and her and Marg’ret that knew.
The workroom continued very throng for ten days or so longer, and during this time Kirsteen worked like two women. She had never been so inventive, so full of new combinations. With her white face, and without a smile, she stood over Lady Chatty, that grand lay-figure and advertising medium for the mantua-maker, and made her glorious with beautiful garments—beautiful according to the fashion of the time and all that Kirsteen knew: for no genius (in dress) can over-step these limits. Lady Chatty, full of affection and kindness, soon discovered the something which was wrong. She put her hands on either side of Kirsteen’s face and compelled her friend to look at her. “What ails you, Kirsteen? Oh, what ails you?” “Nothing,” Kirsteen said. “Oh, don’t tell me it is nothing. You look as if you had died and it was the ghost of Kirsteen that was here.” Kirsteen smiled up on the beautiful face looking so anxiously into hers, and said, “Maybe that is just true,” but would say no more. And the business in the workroom was done with a sort of passion by everybody there. They had heard that as soon as the press was over Miss Kirsteen was going away. They did not exchange any exhortations, but by one consent they addressed themselves to their work with an unspoken thought that the sooner they were done the sooner she would be released. It was partly that the sight of her became intolerable to these emotional spectators, who had each a private vision of her own of the tragedy. Had Kirsteen wept and raved and got over it they would have wept with her and consoled her; but the anguish which did not weep, which said nothing, was more than they could bear. They were all silent round the long table, bending over their work, working as some one of them said, “as if it were a large mourning order and all for sum ’un of one’s own.” And the season was just at its end—Kirsteen held her place till the last great ball was over, and then she went away.
No difficulty now about paying for the coach or procuring her seat. She was no longer afraid of any danger on the road, or of the world unknown. The whirl of progress through the great country, through the towns and villages, across the long level plains of England, no longer filled her with that vague mystery and ecstasy of being which belonged to her first journey. The movement, it was true, gave a certain solace to her pain. The complete silence in which no one could ask her a question, fenced off as that was by the surrounding of incessant sound, the tramp of the horses, the jar of the wheels, the murmurs of the voices, was a relief to her from the daily intercourse of ordinary life. After she got to Glasgow she had to think over her further route. She had no desire to reveal herself, to let any one know she had come. Her mission was almost a secret one; to make it known would have gone against all the sanctities of memory; therefore, Kirsteen would not even give herself the pleasure of seeing Marg’ret, of sending for her at some wayside corner, or in some village as she had once thought of doing. She drove from Glasgow in postchaises where it was possible, in country gigs or carts, where no better could be had, avoiding all the places where she might be recognized. She embarked in a smack upon the Clyde and sat forlorn upon the deck watching the hills and islands drifting by, as if they were part of a much prolonged and almost endless dream. It was July, the brightest month of the year, and the weather was one blaze of brightness, as if to mock Kirsteen whose heart was sick of the sunshine. There was nothing but sunshine everywhere, over the hills, bringing out the glistening of a hundred burns over their slopes, and making the lochs and the great river into shimmering paths of gold. It made her heart sick to see it all so bright, and him lying far away with that handkerchief to his lips.
And at last Kirsteen came in the gloaming, at the softened hour, the hour most full of love and longing, to his mother’s gate.