DURING the six years which had passed since she left Drumcarro, Kirsteen had heard but little of the home which she had sacrificed perhaps too passionately, too hastily. Marg’ret’s letters indeed were very regular, if few and scanty in detail, but these were conditions natural to the time, and Kirsteen had never expected more. “Your mother is just in her ordinary.” This seemed satisfaction enough to a mind unaccustomed to correspondence, brought up in the philosophy of long silences, of little intercourse, of blank years which went over on all sides in an understood routine, and in which the nearest relations when they met each other, remarked upon the external “ageing” of so many additional years with a placid sense that it must be so. Mary also, dutiful to all the necessities of the family, communicated periodically to Kirsteen the course of events in her own particular family, as well as a more or less vague report of the paternal house. She had by this time three little children in whom, naturally, all her chief interests centred. Old Glendochart had become “papa” to his wife, and was reported as being very hale and hearty for his time of life, and very much taken up with his young family. While “my mother is just in her ordinary,” remained the habitual report, differing only from Marg’ret’s in the pronoun employed. Now and then indeed Mary would open out into a report of the company that had been at Glendochart “for the shooting,” and there was one subject on which she was even eloquent, and that was the beauty of Jeanie, the younger sister in whom her family pride was gratified, as well as perhaps the only bit of romantic and generous feeling which was in Lady Glendochart’s well-regulated bosom. “Our Jeanie!” From her babyhood the sisters had all been proud of her. And Mary was pleased with the distinction she herself had over Kirsteen in having a house to which she could invite Jeanie, and where the praises of the young beauty could delight her ears, ever reflecting back again as she felt an honour upon herself. There was nobody far and near who had not heard of Drumcarro’s lovely daughter. She was the Lily of Loch Fyne. The visitors at the Castle took long rides all about Drumcarro, and the linn had been elevated into one of the sights of the district, all with a view of procuring a glimpse, if possible, of the beautiful Highland girl. And Lord John, Mary had reported, was particularly civil, and a very great admirer, words which were deeply underlined, and which filled Kirsteen with indignation. To think that after all the rebuffs she had herself given him he should endeavour to beguile the guileless Jeanie! Kirsteen had at once written a warning letter to Mary, informing her very decisively that Lord John was not a man to be allowed the enjoyment of Jeanie’s company. “For he can have no right meaning, and is only a useless, idle person,” Kirsteen said. This had produced a warm reply from Mary under a frank received from the Duke, by means of the same Lord John.
“You are very ready with your letters, and a heavy postage to pay,” Mrs. Campbell wrote, aggrieved, “when you have really no news to give us. And as for the warning about Lord John, I hope me and Glendochart have sense enough to take care of Jeanie; and what can you, a mantua-maker in London, know about a young gentleman of such high family, the best of our name? I would advise you, my dear Kirsteen, not to encourage a spirit of envy. For if you never received such attention yourself it is partly the fault of Providence that gave you red hair, and no beauty, and partly your own that cast away all the advantages of your family. But you cannot think that me and Glendochart are likely to go to you for counsel upon affairs of which you can have no experience.”
This letter did not please Kirsteen as may well be supposed. We are all made up of great feelings and of petty ones, and are not always at our best. Kirsteen had a heart of the noblest constancy, and held the contents of her little silver casket above all that the world could give. But at more vulgar moments it sometimes gave her a sting to know that, notwithstanding all her passion of love and faithfulness, prosaic Mary, who had never known a throb of profound feeling in her life, would assume airs of superior importance, and pity the sister who had no man, and would be an old maid all her life. A woman may be capable of taking her part in a tragedy such as Kirsteen’s yet resent the comedy, generally more or less contemptuous, that winds itself about an unmarried woman’s life, and more at that period than now. She was very angry at the neglect of her warning, but this was only an incident and soon dropped into oblivion.
One day, however, late in the year in which she had performed her rapid and melancholy journey, Kirsteen received, “by private hand,” and in the shape of a small brown paper parcel, concealing a letter in many wrappings, news of a very distressing kind. It was supposed in those days of dear postage to be illegal to send a letter by the “private hand,” which most simple country people infinitely preferred as at once surer and cheaper than the post. This, as Marg’ret informed her in the hurried scrawl enclosed, was to be taken by a lad from the village who was going straight to London, and had promised to deliver it at once. It was to tell Kirsteen that her mother was very ill, so ill that Marg’ret had given up all hope. “I have never done so before,” Marg’ret wrote, “so you may trust me that this is not a fright on my part. And she just yammers for Kirsteen night and day—little, little has she ever said till now—she’s full of complaints, poor body, but yet she’s more patient than words can say. Ye must just come without a moment’s delay; and if he will not let you in, I will let you in, for she shall not be crossed in her last wish by any man, if he was three times her husband—so, my dear bairn, just come and let there be no delay.” Kirsteen obeyed this summons, as she was commanded at once. To go so soon again over the same ground, and undertake once more such a wearisome and protracted journey was very unusual, and was thought something dreadful by all who heard of it. “You will feel as if you were always on the road,” Miss Jean said; and she felt an inclination to blame her sister who thought that the pleasure of her dying mistress was worth the great disturbance of Kirsteen’s life which must result. “What good will it do her, a dying woman? It will just disturb her when her mind should be taken up with other things,” said Miss Jean.
But it was perhaps natural that Kirsteen should not take it in the same way. She set off that evening, by the night coach, arriving in Glasgow on the morning of the second day. But this time Kirsteen remembered her kindred, and finding with difficulty the new house of Dr. Dewar, now a fine tall “self-contained” house with a main door and a brass plate upon it, suddenly appeared at the breakfast table where Anne and her doctor presided over a party consisting of two tall children of nine and ten, and two more set up in high chairs to reach the board. Anne was so much absorbed in the feeding of those small creatures that she scarcely observed the stranger whom Dr. Dewar rose with an apology and a little embarrassment to meet, thinking her a patient improperly introduced into the domestic scene. An exclamation “It’s your sister Kirsteen, Anne!” roused the absorbed mother, at that moment holding a spoonful of porridge to the mouth of one of the babies. Anne had developed much since her sister had seen her last. She had become stout, yet not unpleasantly so, but in a manner which suggested the motherly hen whose wings can extend over many chickens. She wore a cap with plaited lace borders tied under her chin, encircling a rosy face, which, though still young, was losing its higher aspect a little in the roundness of comfort and ease. Her soul was absorbed in the little ones, and in domestic cares. She thrust the spoon into the baby’s mouth before she rose with a wondering cry of “Kirsteen!” And all the children stared, knowing nothing of aunts, except some on the side of the doctor who were not of the same kind as the fashionably dressed London lady in her black fur-trimmed pelisse. Kirsteen was still in something of the solemnity of her first mourning. Her natural colour was subdued, she was slighter than ever she had been, graver, more pale. Her hair once so rebellious was smoothed away. She looked many years older, and very grave, serious and imposing. The two elder children looked at each other with mingled pride and alarm. This grand lady! The doctor was the only one who fully retained his wits. He put a chair to the table for the new comer. “You will have arrived this morning by the coach? And the first thing wanting will be a good cup of tea?”
“Yes, I will take the tea thankfully, for it is very cold, but what I have come for is Anne. There will be a postchaise at the door in an hour.”
“Are you going to run away with my wife?” said the doctor with a smile.
“A postchaise!” cried Anne in dismay.
“Anne!—my mother is dying.”
“God save us, Kirsteen!”
“I want you to come with me, take your warmest cloak: there will be no change of clothes necessary that I know of, for we will most likely be back to-morrow.”
“To go with ye?” faltered Anne—“to—to Drumcarro, Kirsteen?” All the blood forsook her face.
“Where else? My mother is there, and she’s dying, and crying for us.”
“Oh, I dare not—I dare not! Oh, I cannot go with ye, Kirsteen! You don’t know, you’ve got great courage—but me, I’m just a coward. Oh, I canna go.”
“My mother is dying,” said Kirsteen, “and crying for you and me. Can we let her go down to her grave without a word? We’ve both left her in her life, and maybe we were to blame; but to leave her to die is more than I can do. Anne, you must come.”
Anne fell back in her chair, her rosy face the colour of ashes, her plump person limp with terror and dismay. “Oh, I canna go. Oh, I canna leave the bairns! Oh, David!” She turned to him with a gasp, terrified by the blazing of Kirsteen’s eyes.
“Well, my dear,” said the doctor, “your sister’s right and ye ought to go. But when ye get there,” he added turning to Kirsteen, “have you any surety that they will let you in? To go all that way for nothing would be little good to your mother: and I will not have my wife insulted with a door steekit in her face—even if it is her father’s door.”
“I have this surety,” said Kirsteen, feeling herself to tower over them though she was not very tall, “that I will see my mother, whoever steeks the door in my face, nor think twice if it was the King himself.”
“The King’s the first gentleman in the country,” said the doctor shrugging his shoulders, “but your father?”
“He is just my father, Dr. Dewar, and Anne’s father, and we will say no more; the question is my mother that never harmed living creature nor said an unkind word. How can ye stop to consider, Anne? Your mother! The more ye cherish your bairns the more ye should mind upon her.”
“I think, my dear,” said the doctor, “that it’s your duty to go. It might pave the way to a reconciliation,” he added, “which would be good for us all and good for the bairns. I think you should go.”
“Oh, David!” was all that Anne said.
Kirsteen stood and looked upon them all with a flash of scorn. Was this the effect of marrying and being happy as people say? The little plump mother with her rosy face no longer capable of responding to any call outside of her own little circle of existence, the babies delving with their spoons into the porridge, covering their faces and pinafores, or holding up little gaping mouths to be fed. It had been a delightful picture which she had come in upon before at an earlier stage, when Anne had wept at her mother’s name, and cried wistfully for a message from home, and longed to show her children. That had all been sweet—but now it was sweet no longer. The prosaic interior, the bondage of all these little necessities, the loosening of all other bonds of older date or wider reach, was this what happiness meant? Sometimes a sudden aperçu of this kind will flash through the mind of one for whom those ties are forbidden and give a consolation, a compensation to the fancy. But the thought only passed as swiftly as a breath through the mind of Kirsteen.
However when the postchaise came to the door, Anne, who had been hurried into her black silk gown and cloak more by pressure of the doctor than by any will of her own, was ready to step into it with her sister. Kirsteen did not quite know how it was done. She would have retired from the conflict and left her sister with the children and their porridge, but Dr. Dewar was of a different mind. He had never given up the hope of having it fully recognized that his wife was one of the old Douglases; and here there seemed to him an opportunity of bringing about that hope. He half led, half followed her, into her room, having himself summoned one of the maids to look after the children. “Ye must just put the best face upon it, Anne; your sister is right. It would be unnatural, and a thing that would be generally blamed if you did not try to see your mother. And as for your father he won’t bite you whatever he does.”
“Oh, David! he’ll just say things that would make you tremble; he’ll take me and put me to the door,” said Anne crying with fright and reluctance.
“Nonsense, woman; and if he does you must just put up with it. You have a good home to come back to, and you will be none the worse, and ye’ll have done your duty; but he’ll maybe be much softened by the circumstances,” said the doctor, “and there is no saying what might happen. It would have a very good effect if it were known you had gone to Drumcarro, and think what a fine thing it would be for the bairns. Take your warmest cloak as your sister said, and my plaid to put over your knees. It will be a very cold journey.”
“Oh,” cried Anne, “I will just be perished, I know. And very likely turned to the door in the cold, and never see my mother at all.”
“Well, ye must just try,” said Dr. Dewar, bringing her out of her room triumphantly, and fully equipped. Anne cried for an hour, sobbing by Kirsteen’s side over her deserted children and home, and with a certainty that everything would go wrong while she was away. “David will get no right dinners, and the two eldest will be late for the school in the morning, and the little bairns neglected all the day. There’s no confidence to be put in servants when the mistress is not there. And most likely I will never get a glimpse of my mother, and my father will put me to the door.”
“Oh, Anne, is that all you think of her that never was hard upon any of us—that always was kind—and suffering so long, weary in body and in soul?”
“You need not instruct me about my mother, Kirsteen. I am the eldest, and I am a mother myself, and who should know if I don’t?” said Anne roused at last. Kirsteen was glad to accept the position of inferiority thus allotted to her on all sides. She was neither mother nor wife, nor ever would be so. The others took a higher position than hers. She acquiesced without a word, with a faint smile, and was thankful to be allowed to sit silent listening to Anne’s querulous murmurs, and still more thankful when in the unusual movement and silence Mrs. Dewar dropped to sleep. The journey was doubly sad to her who had so lately travelled along the same road in the first force of her passionate misery. That seemed to be long, long ago, as if a dull subduing lifetime had passed between. The dreadful thing was to think of the long life to come, which might go on and on for so many years.