SOME time after this, when everything connected with this incident was over, Kirsteen received one morning a visitor, very different from the usual frequenters of the house. The subsequent mails had brought no further details of Ronald’s fate, at least to her. His mother had done everything of which a woman’s magnanimity was capable in giving her that sacred relic; but to make further communication of the further news that came in fragments from one correspondent and another was not in either of their thoughts. Information was not what these women thought of. They had no habit of learning every detail as we have now. The event came like a bombshell upon them, shattering their hearts and hopes—and that was all, they looked for no more. It was accordingly with no expectations of any kind that Kirsteen received the visitor who was Major Gordon, the young Waterloo man whom his mother had brought to honour the little gathering at Miss Jean’s house. He had been in India since all the fighting had ceased in Europe, for his living and fortune depended upon active service, and India meant increased pay and increased opportunities under the liberal sway of the Company, without any derogation from the pretensions of the King’s officers who thought more of themselves than the leaders of the Company’s troops. Major Gordon was a brave officer, and had been in as much fighting as any man of his years could boast. But he was somewhat shy when he called on Kirsteen, and stood with his hat in his hand moving from one foot to another as if he had not been a perfect master of his drill. He said that his mother had thought he had better call to see Miss Douglas after his return—that he had been so fortunate as to meet Colonel Douglas in India, who was hoping soon to have a furlough home—and that he hoped he saw Miss Douglas well and Miss Brown too, who had always been so kind to his mother. Kirsteen in her black gown was a somewhat imposing figure, and the thought that this visitor had come straight from India took the colour, which had begun to come back, from her cheek. A black dress was not then, as in our days, the commonest of feminine garments—and his eyes seemed to take an expression of anxiety as they returned again and again to her, which Kirsteen did not understand. He told her that he had come home with his regiment sooner than he had expected, for that India was now the only place in which a soldier could push his fortune.
“Or lose his life,” she said.
“One may lose one’s life anywhere—but to vegetate without the means of doing anything, without being able to take a step of any kind—to settle—to marry,” said the young soldier with a slight blush and laugh—“to take a place of one’s own.”
“Oh,” said Kirsteen, “to live and do well will be enough to make your mother happy—and others that belong to you—if you think of them that have been left lying on many a field—”
“I acknowledge that,” he said, “many and many a better man than I—but to die a soldier’s death is always what one looks forward to—better than living an idle life and cumbering the ground.”
“You will not do that,” said Kirsteen with a smile. She might have been his mother’s contemporary instead of his own, so far remote did she feel from all such agitation as was expressed in the young man’s awkwardness and earnestness. It did not occur to Kirsteen as it might have done to an ordinary young woman of her age that these agitations could have any reference to herself. She smiled upon him as over a long blank of years—“You are not one that will ever stay still long enough to cumber the ground.”
“Miss Douglas,” he said, “I have seen several of your family—I feel a great interest. Will you forgive me if I take a liberty? You are in mourning?”
The light faded altogether out of Kirsteen’s face. She made a little pause for a moment clasping her hands. “Not for any of my family,” she said. He begged her a thousand pardons, brightening up in a moment. She fell back into the pale shadows; he roused up to pleasant brightness of life. These two different moods do not understand each other. They are almost antagonistic without some special bond of sympathy. He went on after a moment—
“I saw much of your family—in Argyllshire—before I went to India. You will perhaps remember that Glendochart invited me for the shooting—which was very kind.”
Kirsteen’s attention flagged. She assented merely with a bow.
“I have been three years in India,” said the young man. “She was nearly seventeen when I saw her last.”
“Who was nearly seventeen?”
“Oh, Miss Douglas, forgive me!—your lovely little sister—a flower that seemed born to blush unseen.”
The light came back to Kirsteen’s face. “Jeanie!” she said with a little flush of pleasure, “is she so bonny? I always thought she would be so—but it’s long, long since I have seen her.”
“Bonny is not the word,” said the young soldier, “though bonny is a very bonny word. She is—she is—I wish,” he cried, breaking off abruptly with a nervous laugh, “that I could show you her picture—in my heart.”
“Is that so?” Kirsteen raised her head and looked at him with a searching glance from head to foot: the young man instinctively squared himself, drawing up his head as under inspection. “Ye are well to look at, Major Gordon—but I cannot see into your heart.”
“No,” he said, “and how can I tell you what I think of her? It’s not her beauty—she’s just as sweet as the flowers. I wish I had the tongue of Robbie Burns—or some of those new poets that would wile a bird from the trees—“ and he began to murmur some words that were not so familiar to the ear as they have come to be since then.
“She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
“The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend.
Nor shall she fail to see
E’en in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.
“The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
The major paused a moment, and then he added, with a rising colour, another verse—
“Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, ‘A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown:
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.’”
Kirsteen, though she was in London where everything that is new should be best known, had little acquaintance with the new poets. She had heard part of the Ancient Mariner, which was to her like a great piece of music, thrilling her being, but imperfectly understanded of her intelligence. She had heard much of Byron, who was raved of by every apprentice, and whom consequently this high aristocrat in verse, as in all other things, held in a certain scorn. She listened surprised to the lines which Gordon stammered forth somewhat shamefacedly, finding himself embarked in a kind of recitation, which he had not intended.
“Who said it?—they are very bonny words. I am much beholden to him, whoever he is, for such a bonny picture of my little sister—if it is not yourself?”
“I!” cried the major. “Oh, be not profane! It is one Wordsworth that lives on the Borders—but she is like that.”
“I can well believe it,” said Kirsteen; “nevertheless, if it was Jeanie he was meaning, though it may be all true, it did not need that to make a lady of my sister,” she said with an ineffable visionary pride.
The major did not argue, or make any stand for his part, though he had all the enthusiasm of an early member of the sect. He would have indeed sacrificed Wordsworth and all the poets without a thought at the shrine he was approaching. “That is, alas, what daunts me,” he said. “How am I, a poor man, to make your father hear me? He will want, and well I know how justly, what I have not to give.”
“I am no authority as to what my father will do, Major Gordon. You may have heard why I, a Douglas, and not the least proud of the family, am here.”
“But she adores you, Miss Kirsteen!”
“Does she that? My bonny Jeanie! And well I wot she is the dearest thing to me.” Kirsteen paused with a flood of pleasure and anguish inundating her heart. The visions of the past rose up before her. Ah, why had the image of the little sister come so persistently into all her dreams of a future that was never to be? Because, she said to herself, putting down that climbing sorrow, it was a life that was never to be—and Jeanie was the consolation that remained.
“Major Gordon,” she said, “if it may so be that Jeanie’s happiness is bound up in yours, all that I can do will be too little. But what is there that I can do? She is in the hands of her parents; and I that have broken my bonds, and am a rebel, having nothing to say.”
“It will not last like that between them and you.”
“It has lasted for six years. My father is a dour man and does not change. If Alexander were to come back, that is the next in the family to my father—”
“He is coming, he is coming—when men in India speak of two or three years they think it is nothing—but it’s an eternity to me.”
“And sometimes it is an eternity,” Kirsteen said solemnly. She asked then suddenly, without intending it, if he had ever been at Ahmednugger where the battle was.
“I was in the battle,” he said simply. “I had my orders home, but I was there. It was a kind of chance, no one expected it.”
Major Gordon was much surprised when Miss Douglas, who was so reserved and dignified, caught him by the arm and made him sit down by her side. She was as white as the cambric kerchief on her neck. She said with a little moan, “Oh, not a chance, not a chance, but God’s grace, I must think that. And tell me all ye know. Oh, tell me all ye know!” He began to say (with astonishment, and so startled that it was difficult to put his recollections in order) that it had all been caused by a mistake, that no one knew how strong the native powers were, and that on the British side all might have been lost, but Kirsteen stopped him with an imperative movement of her hand. “Begin,” she said, “where it began, and tell me who was there and all. Oh, tell me everything—for I have heard nothing—except that so it was.” Her intent face, her trembling clasped hands, the tragic eagerness with which she set herself down to listen, overwhelmed the young soldier who knew nothing of her connection with that fatal field. With a rapid review and calculation he made out to himself that no Douglas had been there. It was then some one else in whom she was interested: he looked at her again and her black dress, her composed gravity as of one whose life was set apart, and an indefinable change that he had remarked without comprehending it, showed him, as by a sudden revelation, that whoever it was in whom Kirsteen was interested he was dead. But who was it? And how was he to give her dead hero the place her heart would crave for, if he did not know who that was?
He began however as best he could his story of the fight. As was made very apparent afterwards, Major Gordon had a soldier’s skill in the arrangement of his tale. He made the listener see the movements of the troops, the gradually growing alarm, the scouts coming in with news, the officers anxious and harassed gathering to their rapid council, the bold advice that was first received with a sort of horror, then adopted. “We should all have been cut to pieces but for that—not one would have escaped to tell the tale; but he did not live to get the benefit himself, poor fellow. His name was Drummond, a Peninsula man who had seen a great deal of fighting. He and I were old friends. We had gone through many a hot moment together. His plan was adopted after a great deal of discussion. And by the blessing of God it saved many a man’s life—but not his own!”
He gave a start as he looked up at her, for Kirsteen’s countenance was transfigured. Her paleness glowed as if with a light behind, though there was not a particle of colour in her face. He had found the way to her heart without knowing, without meaning it, his testimony all the more prized and valuable for that. He went on with details which I cannot repeat, setting all the field before her. And then with his voice trembling he told her the end. How he had seen his friend fall, and then the little story of the handkerchief. “None of us knew what it meant,” he said, “for Drummond never was one to talk much of himself, but we were all sure there was some story. He lay there on the field with that white thing on his lips. It was hard—to take it out of his hand.”
The major’s voice was a little strained. A man cannot cry like a girl, but he had to stop and swallow something that was in his throat. Then to his great surprise Miss Douglas rose and without a word went out of the room. He asked himself in his astonishment had he been wrong after all? Had he been talking of some one for whom she did not care, leaving out the name she wanted to hear? He sat wondering, listening while her steps went up stairs to a room above. Then he heard her coming down again. She came back into the room with a silver box in her hand, and opening it without a word took out something wrapped in a piece of faded silk. The young soldier felt his heart in his throat, an intolerable overwhelming pang of sympathy taking all voice and utterance from him. He knew the little handkerchief which he had taken from Ronald’s dead hand. She did not say a word, but looked at him with a faint mournful smile and that transfiguration on her face. Then putting back her treasure locked it away again in its shrine, and gave him her hand.
“Now,” she said after some time, speaking with difficulty, “you know, and there will be no need of words between you and me. I will never forget what you have told me. It’s been like a bit of God’s word, all new. And ye will never doubt that if I can serve ye, it’s in my heart to do—whatever a woman can do. Oh,” cried Kirsteen, “take the blessing of God from a heartbroken woman and go away, Major Gordon! He was but Captain—never more, and he’s lying yonder and you standing here. Oh, go! and let me see ye no more.”
When the rapture of sorrow that was in her had softened again, Kirsteen sent many messages to the young officer by his mother; but she could not endure the sight of him at that time. Everything she could do—with Jeanie or any one—but not to see him, not to see him, he who had come home living and loving and promoted and with everything that had not come to the other. She could not bear that.