“KIRSTEEN!”
It was Agnes Drummond who made this astonished outcry coming into the old-fashioned drawing-room, where she had been told there was one who wanted a word with her. “Just say there is one that would fain speak a word” had been Kirsteen’s announcement of herself. Agnes was about Kirsteen’s age but she had never left the shelter of her home, nor ever thought for herself or taken any step in life alone—and she was in reality ten years younger than the matured and serious young woman who was her contemporary. She was tall and slim, a willowy girl gliding into the dim room in her deep mourning, like a shadow. Kirsteen was also in black, but without any of those insignia of crape which mark the legitimate mourner. She was standing in front of one of the dim windows, deep set in the thick wall, with small panes and heavy woodwork, intercepting as much light as possible. Agnes recognized Kirsteen rather from something characteristic in her figure and movement than by her face.
“It is just me,” Kirsteen said, with a quick drawing of her breath.
“Have ye come home?” Then Agnes paused, and with something of the importance of a person to whom a great and mournful distinction has come, added, “Ye know what great trouble we are in?”
“It is for that that I came here!”
“You are very kind!” said Agnes with some surprise, and then she added, “We knew that—ye were friends!”
“I am not come,” said Kirsteen, “to talk—for that I cannot do—I have come to ask you, travelling night and day—come to ask you—for the handkerchief he had in his hand!”
A sob escaped her as she spoke, but her eyes were dry.
“The handkerchief! Oh, Kirsteen, what are ye asking? Anything else; my mother will not part with it while she lives, there is upon it,” the girl stopped, struggling with her tears, “a stain—of his blood.”
For some minutes there was no sound in the dark room, but of Agnes’s voice weeping, and from Kirsteen now and then a sob which seemed to rend her breast.
“She must give it to me,” said Kirsteen at last, “for it is mine. He took it out for my sake. Oh, a mother’s dear, dear! she has had him all his days, his name and his memory’s hers, and no one can take him from her. But that’s all I have, for my life. And I will have it, for it is mine!”
“Kirsteen, you need not be violent nor speak like that, for how could my mother give it up—the last thing he ever touched, that he put to his lips?—like a kiss to us—her and me!”
“No,” said Kirsteen, “for none of you. It was mine, his name is marked in the corner in my coarse red hair, that nobody ever thought anything of. He said it was like a thread of gold. He bade me to wait till he came back. Now he’ll never come back—but I’ll wait—till I go to him. Give me my handkerchief with his kiss upon it; there’s nobody has a right to touch it,—for it is mine!”
Agnes in her mild reasoning was no match for this fiery spirit. She could only cry helplessly standing like a ghost among the shadows, but the early moon came in at the window and shone full upon Kirsteen, who was neither ghost nor shadow. The aspect of command that was in her daunted the other. “I will go and ask my mother,” she said.
“Tell her,” said Kirsteen, “that I have come straight from London, travelling night and day. I have scarce tasted bite or sup, nor slept in my bed since the news came. I knew it was him without any name, for I knew that was what he would do. She has many, many a thing to mind her of him, the house he was born in, and his picture and all, and his dear name. And I have nothing but that. And I will have it, for it belongs to me!”
“I will go and ask my mother,” Agnes said.
The moon shone in through the small window, throwing upon Kirsteen’s figure the reflection of the solid wooden frame-work, so that she looked as if she were in a prison looking out upon the outside world through black iron bars. She stood quite still for some time with her white face turned to it looking through those bars to the light. And she never forgot that moment when she stood gazing up into the white orb in the clear summer sky which had looked down upon him lying silent upon the field. It seemed to Kirsteen in the fever of her weariness and exhaustion that she could see that scene, the awful silence, the other dead lying about in dark muffled heaps, and the moon shining upon the handkerchief in his hands. There were faint sounds in the house of doors opening and shutting, and of voices. A sudden cry—which perhaps was from his mother. It would be natural that his mother should resist, that she should wish to keep it. But Kirsteen felt that nothing could stand against herself and her right.
In a few minutes Agnes came back, still crying. “I am sorry,” she said, “to keep you in this dark room, but I’ve told them to bring the candles!”
“The candles are not needed, there’s nothing needed but one thing.”
“Oh, Kirsteen,” said Agnes, “be content with something less than that. My mother says she cannot—oh, she cannot!—give that up.”
“Did ye tell her it was mine, and I’ve come to get my own?”
“Oh, Kirsteen! her heart’s broken!”
“And what is mine? She will get away to him. She will go where he is. But I’m young and we are all dour livers, that will not die—I’ll live—maybe a hundred years,” cried Kirsteen with a hard sob and a wave of her hand as if in demonstration of the hardness of her fate.
Here a maid entered the room bearing two lighted candles which shone upon a rosy tranquil face, the common unconcerned life coming in upon the exaltation of the other. She closed the other windows one by one as if that had been the only thing to do, but, when she approached that at which Kirsteen stood with the bars of shadow upon her, drew back with a frightened look and went away.
This enforced pause made them both a little calmer. “Ye will stay all night,” said Agnes, faltering, “now that you are here. Take off your bonnet, Kirsteen. And ye must take something.”
“Do you think,” said Kirsteen, “that I have come here to eat or to drink—or to bide?—oh, no, oh, no,—but get me the thing I have come for and let me go.”
“How can I get it when my mother will not give it up,” said Agnes overcome, falling into the natural refuge of tears.
“Let me see her,” said Kirsteen.
“She has seen nobody, not even the minister. She will scarcely look at the light. She cannot cry like me. She’s just like stone. He was her only son, and she just moans and says she never believed the Almighty would deal with her so.” Agnes, with the impatience of a patient and gentler nature of this intolerable grief, was relieved to be able to make her plaint. But it did not seem unnatural to Kirsteen that the mother should be like stone.
“When she sees me,” she said, “perhaps the tears will come.”
“Oh, Kirsteen, but I dare not ask her.”
“I will not bid you ask her, I will just go ben.”
“Oh, Kirsteen!”
She knew the way well, across the outer room, which was not called a hall, to the door on the other side, within which Mrs. Drummond was sitting with her woe. There was nothing but the moonlight in the hall making a broad strip of whiteness as it came in unbroken by the open door. The two black figures passed across it like shadows, the daughter of the house following, the stranger leading. Mrs. Drummond sat by the side of the fire, which was a feeble redness in the grate, unneeded, supposed to add a little cheerfulness, but in its unnatural, untended smouldering making things rather worse than better. Her white widow’s cap was the highest light in the room, which with its dark wainscot and faint candles looked like a cave of gloom. The windows were all closed and curtained, shutting out the lingering light of day. A large Bible was open on the table, and in Mrs. Drummond’s lap lay the knitting with which her fingers were always occupied. But she was neither reading nor working; her white hair was scarcely distinguishable under the whiteness of her cap. Her face rigid with sorrow was grey in comparison. She sat without moving, like marble. Calamity had made her severe and terrible, she who had once been kind. She took no notice at first of the fact that some one had come into the room, believing it to be her gentle Agnes, who was nobody, the helpless handmaiden of this despair.
Kirsteen went round the table to the other side of the fire and stood before his mother, saying nothing. Mrs. Drummond raised her eyelids and perceived her with a faint cry. “Who is this come to disturb me? I gave no leave to anybody to come. I can see nobody. Kirsteen Douglas, what are ye wanting here?”
Kirsteen put out her hands with a gesture of supplication. “It is mine,” she said, “it was for me. It is all I have to keep my heart. You are his mother. And I am nothing to him—but for that—”
“No, you were nothing to him,” said the mother looking at her fixedly.
“Except just this,” cried Kirsteen, roused to the full assertion of her claim, “that it was me he thought upon—yonder—that he had my handkerchief—and took it from his breast—and put it to his mouth.”
“Lassie,” said Mrs. Drummond, “how dare ye tell that like an idle tale and put it into common words? It’s written there,” putting her hand on the Bible, “so that I cannot see the word of God; and it’s written here,” she added, laying it on her breast, “on the bosom that nursed him and the heart that’s broken. What are you, a young thing, that will love again and mairry another man, and have bairns at your breast that are not his.” She broke off here, and said again after a moment abruptly, “‘He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow’—but the Lord took no notice of him nor of me!”
Kirsteen sank down upon her knees before this tearless mourner, “Will I tell ye what I am?” she said. “I am young, and we’re a long-lived race—I will maybe live to be a hundred. No bairn will ever be at my breast—no man will ever take my hand. He said to me, ‘Will ye wait till I come back?’ and I said to him, ‘That I will,’ and he took the little napkin from the table that had R. D. on it for Robbie (but yet I thought on him all the time) in my red hair. My mother said her colour was best, but he said it was like a thread of gold—and he touched my arm and made me look, and he put it to his mouth. And he said, ‘Will ye wait?’ And here we sit forlorn!” said Kirsteen, her voice breaking into a shrill and heart-piercing cry.
There was a long pause. And then the rigid woman in the chair rose up like a marble image, her white cap and pallid countenance awful in the dim room like the face and head-coverings of one who had died. She took her keys from a pocket which hung by her side and went across the room to an old-fashioned cabinet, which lent a little glimmer of inlaid mother-o’-pearl and foreign woods to the dim glimmering wainscot. From this she took a box which she carried back with her to her seat, and unlocking it with a trembling hand, took from it again a little packet wrapped in a piece of faded silk. She held it for a moment as if she would have opened it, then suddenly thrust it into Kirsteen’s hands. “Take it,” she said, “and not another word. But if ye’re ever unfaithful to him send it back to me—or bury it in my grave if I’m not here.”
“In yours or in mine,” was all that Kirsteen could say. She put her lips trembling to the hand that had given this treasure: then being hastily dismissed by a gesture of that hand rose from her knees and went away. In a moment more she was outside in the mild delightful summer night, all made up of pleasures which knew no chill, no fading, no sorrow, the young moon softly shining as if for pure joy, the unseen burns softly tinkling, the graceful birch trees waving their feathery branches in the soft air. Such a night! a visionary daylight lingering in the west, against which rose the fantastic majestic outline of the hills—the glen penetrating far into the soft gloom towards the east, caught by a ray of moonlight here and there; the wind upon the face of the wayfarer like a caress—the air all full of love and longing and sweet dreams. Kirsteen passed through it holding her treasure against her breast, a kind of happiness possessing her, her bosom lightened for the moment by reason of the very climax of emotion through which she had passed, the exhaustion of sorrow which at times feels like ease to the worn-out soul. She had a long walk to the village where her postchaise waited for her. The road came out upon the sides of the loch which shone like a sheet of burnished silver in the moonlight. As she approached the village one or two people met her and turned to look back at the unknown figure which it was evident did not “belong.” There was a little commotion in the small village public-house where her carriage was waiting, the horses harnessed and the lamps lighted as she had ordered. A postchaise with an unknown lady in it was a strange occurrence in such a place. The people at the little alehouse were very anxious to see her veil lifted, to know if she would have anything. Just outside the village was the road that led to Drumcarro. Kirsteen did not even remark it as she drove past in the soft darkness. There was no room in her mind for any thought but one.
Posting all through the summer night which so soon expanded into a glorious summer morning, revealing her to herself as a veiled and pallid shadow fit rather for the darkness than the light, Kirsteen reached Glasgow in time to take the coach again for London. Then followed two days more of monotonous, continual motion, with villages and fields whirling past in one long continuous line. She arrived the second night dazed with fatigue and exhaustion in the great gleaming city throwing all its lights abroad to the evening sky, which was now her only home. It had been but a temporary dwelling-place before, to be replaced by a true home, perhaps in her own Highlands, perhaps,—what did it matter?—in the incomprehensible Indian world, when he came back. Now he would never come back; and Kirsteen recognized that this was her established place, and that her life had taken the form and colour which it must now bear to the end. She had accepted it for his sake that she might be faithful to him, and now it was to be for ever, with no break or change. There had sometimes crossed her mind a dread that he would not like it—that the mantua-maker in Mayfair would wound the pride of all the proud Drummonds if not of himself. Now that fear was buried like the rest. There was no one to object any more than to praise. She was independent of all the world, and bound to that work for ever.
It was not till Kirsteen had reached the house, which she recognized as now her permanent resting-place, that she undid out of its case the precious thing she had gone to seek. She bought a little silver casket, a gem of workmanship and grace, though she knew nothing of this but only that it seemed to suit the sacred deposit, and unfolded the little “napkin” to take from it once, like a sacrament, the touch of his dying lips. There was the mark, with her thread of gold shining undimmed, and there, touching the little letters, the stain—and even the traces of his dead fingers where he had grasped it. She folded it up again in his mother’s cover and put with it the little blue Testament with the intertwined initials. The silver casket stood in Kirsteen’s room during her whole life within reach of her hand. But I do not think she opened it often. Why should she? She could not see them more clearly than she did with the eyes of her mind had they been in her hands night and day. And she did not profane her sacred things by touch; they were there—that was enough.
And thus life was over for Kirsteen; and life began. No longer a preparatory chapter, a thing to be given up when the happy moment came—but the only life that was to be vouchsafed to her in this earth so full of the happy and of the unhappy. She was to be neither. The worst had happened to her that could happen. No postscriptal life or new love was possible to her. Her career was determined, with many objects and many affections, but of that first enchantment no more. She took up her work with fresh vigour, and immediately began to make many alterations in the house, and to change the workroom according to her own ideas and re-organize everything. Miss Jean looked on well pleased. She was the nominal head, but Kirsteen was her head, her strength, and soul. She was as well satisfied with all the plannings and alterings as a mother is with things that please and occupy her child. “It takes off her thoughts,” Miss Jean said. She herself was a happy woman. She was like the woman in Scripture whose reproach is taken away, and who becomes a joyful mother of children when all hope is over. She had no need to do anything but to be happy in her child.