“WHAT will ye do now?” said Anne.
Once more Kirsteen had left her carriage in the village where so short a time before she had paused on a different mission. Every detail of that journey had been brought back to her by this. The six months had softened a little the burning of that first bitter wound. The calm of acknowledged loss had settled down, deep and still upon her life—but all the breathless excitements of the previous quest, when she knew not whether the only satisfaction possible to her now might be given or not, and saw in anticipation the relic that was to make assurance sure, and felt in her breast the burning of the murderous steel—all these returned to her soul with double and almost intolerable force as she retraced the same road. An ailing and feeble mother not seen for years,—who would not hasten to her bedside, weep over her failing days, and grieve—but not with the grief that crushes the heart—? That anguish is soft, even after a time sweet. It is the course of nature, as we say. The life from which ours came must fade before ours. The light of day is not obliterated by that natural fading. Kirsteen had set out at an hour’s notice, and was prepared to risk any encounter, any hardness or even insult in order to answer her mother’s call. She was not reluctant like Anne, nor did she grudge the trouble and pain. But as she returned in thought to her previous lonely flight into these glens the acuter pang swallowed up the lesser. She had not spoken to her sister for a long time. Her recollections grew more and more keen, as in another twilight, yet so different, she again approached the glimmering loch, the dimly visible hills. Anne’s unsteady grasp upon her arm brought her to herself.
“What must we do? We must just leave the chaise here, it can go no further. To drive to the door would frighten them all, and perhaps betray us. It is not a very long walk.”
“Are ye going to walk? I am not a good walker, Kirsteen. And in the dark by that wild road? I never could get so far—Oh, I’m so used to town ways now—I couldna take such a long, dreadful walk.”
“It would be far better to leave me here. You could send for me if I was really wanted; I’m very tired already, and not fit—oh, not fit for more. You’re younger—and ye always was so strong—not like me.”
“Would you like your bairns to leave ye to die alone—for the sake of a two miles’ walk? Would ye like them to lie down and sleep and rest, and you dying two miles away?”
“Oh, Kirsteen, you are very cruel to me! What can I do for her?” cried Anne. “She will have plenty without me.”
It was no time for controversy, and as Anne trembled so that she could scarcely stand Kirsteen had to consent to take the postchaise on, as far as was practicable without rousing the household at Drumcarro. For herself the chill of the wintry night, the cold freshness in the air, the wild sweep of sound all round her, in the swelling burn, and the rustle of the naked trees and all those inarticulate murmurs of silence which come down from the heights of unseen hills were salutary and sweet. When they paused at last upon the lonely road and stepped out into the blackness of the night with the lantern that was to guide them on their further way, that descent into the indecipherable dark, with all the roaring of wind and stream about them, had indeed something in it that was appalling. Anne, not able even to complain more, clung to Kirsteen’s arm with a terrified grasp, and listened among all the other storms of sound to the rolling of the wheels going back as if her last hope was thus departing from her. She that ought to have been warm and safe at home, putting the children to bed, sitting between the bright fire and the pleasant lamp waiting for David, to think that she should be here in a darkness that might be felt, with the burn on one side rushing like some wild beast in the dark, and the wind lashing the bare branches on the other, and only Kirsteen, a woman like herself, to protect her! A weak woman with a strong husband loses all faith in other women. How could Kirsteen protect her? She shivered with cold and terror clinging to her sister’s arm but without any faith in it, and thinking of nothing but her own terrors and discomfort. Kirsteen on her side felt the stimulus of the cold, the tumult of natural sounds, the need of wary walking, and the responsibility of the burden upon her arm as something that subdued and softened the storm of recollections in her heart.
When they came suddenly upon the house of Drumcarro, almost unexpectedly, although the added roar of the linn coming nearer made them aware that the house could not be far off, Anne broke down altogether. The house was faintly lighted, one or two windows up stairs giving out a faint gleam through the darkness in honour of the approaching event. The house door stood half open, the shutters were not closed in the dining-room. That air of domestic disarray, of the absorption of all thoughts in the tragedy going on up stairs which is habitual to such moments, had stolen into the house. The two wayfarers standing outside, both of them trembling with the strangeness of it, and fear and emotion, could see some one sitting by the fire in the dining-room with a bowed head. They grasped each other’s hands when they saw it was their father. He was sitting by the side of the fire bending forwards, his profile brought out against the dark mantel-piece by the ruddy glow. Even Kirsteen’s stronger frame trembled a little at sight of him, and Anne, no better than a helpless lay figure, hung upon her sister’s arm without power of movement, stifling by force a terrified cry. It would not have reached him in the tumult of natural noises outside, but she became more frightened and helpless still when this cry had burst from her lips. “Oh! come away, come away, I dare not face him,” she said in Kirsteen’s ear. And Kirsteen too was daunted. She abandoned the intention of entering by the open door, which had been her first thought, and softly took the path which led to Marg’ret’s quarters behind. Drumcarro heard the faint click of the latch as she opened the gate. He rose up and listened while they shrank into the shelter of the bushes. Then he came out of the door, and stood there looking out into the darkness with a faint candle showing his own lowering countenance to the watchers outside, but to him nothing. “I thought it might be the doctor,” he said to himself, then went again to his seat by the dull fire. Anne was no more than a bundle upon Kirsteen’s arm. She dragged her as softly as might be to the lighted kitchen behind, and looking in at the uncurtained window had the good fortune to catch Marg’ret’s eye.
“Ye have brought her with ye,” said Marg’ret half reproachfully when Anne had been placed in a chair before the fire.
“She had the same right as I. We have both deserted the old house.”
“Oh, my bonny dear, but not the same. Kirsteen, my lamb—ye’re all well, all well?”
Marg’ret searched with longing eyes the face that had so long been lost to her. Some things she knew, many she divined. She asked no question but looked and saw, and sighed and shook her head. The face was not the girl’s face she knew; but she was not aware that the change in it had come within the last six months, the setting of the mobile lines with a certain fixedness, the mysterious depths that had come into the laughing, flashing, soft, fierce eyes she knew, the eyes that were made of light. Behind the light there was now a deep sea, of which the meanings were hidden and manifold.
“There’s no question of me,” said Kirsteen, meeting her look steadfastly, “but of my mother—”
“She is just herself,” said Marg’ret, “just herself, poor body. The end is coming fast and she has little fear of it. Oh, I think very little fear; but taken up with small things as she always was.”
“Will ye go up? The Laird is about the house: and I am feared he will make some stramash when he sees ye. If ye were to wait till he is in bed? She has not said a word about ye all day, but I’ve seen her as if she was listening. She’ll maybe have had some inkling from the Lord that her bairn was coming. She’s real peaceable and contented,” said Marg’ret, putting her apron to her eyes. “The Almichty is just dealing with her like a petted bairn. She’s no feared—her that aye thought the grasshopper a burden—I ken fine that she has been looking for ye the livelang day.”
“I will just go up,” said Kirsteen again.
“And what am I to do with her?”
“Marg’ret, it’s Anne.”
“I ken weel who it is, Dr. Dewar’s wife; you might just have let her bide with her bairns. What am I to do with her? It’s no her mother she’s thinking o’. The Laird will never thole her in the house. He’ll just take her with his foot like a bundle of claes, which is what she is, and put her to the door.”
“You will take care of her, Marg’ret,” said Kirsteen. There was some justice in Marg’ret’s description. Anne sat huddled up in a chair by the fire holding out her hands to it now and then, moaning a little. She had asked no question as they came in; perhaps she had heard the reply to Kirsteen’s anxious inquiry. She was cold no doubt and miserable, and beyond all afraid. When there was any sound in the house she drew herself together with a shudder. “You will just take care of her, Marg’ret; let her lie down upon your bed, and keep her warm, and when my father has gone to his bed—”
“You will not wait for that yoursel’?”
Kirsteen’s answer was to walk away. She went through the passage with her heart beating, and mounted the dark stair; there were few lights about the house, a solitary miserable candle at the top of the stair waving about in the wind that blew in from the open door, and another placed on a small table near the head of Mrs. Douglas’s bed. The invalid herself was quite in the dark shade with a curtain between her and this light. The whiteness of her worn face on the pillow betrayed where she was but little more. But by the bedside with the gleam of the candle upon her soft, beautiful hair, and her face, which Kirsteen thought was like the face of an angel, stood Jeanie, Jeanie woman-grown, the beauty that all her sisters had expected her to be, radiant in colour and expression. For the first moment the light that seemed to ray from Jeanie was the only thing that Kirsteen saw. It was what she had expected. It gave her almost a pang of sudden exquisite pleasure by her mother’s deathbed.
“Did ye hear somebody, Jeanie, coming up the stair?”
“It will be Merran, mother, with the things for the night.”
“It canna be Merran; I know one foot from another though I’m a little dull, just a little dull in my hearing. Look out and see if your sister’s come.”
“Do you mean Mary, mother?”
“No, I’m not meaning Mary. She’s the one of all my bairns most like me, folk say—the same coloured hair—not like your red heads—and Alexander he was aye a brown-haired laddie. Eh, to think that I will never see one of them again!—and I’m just quite content, not frettin’ at all. They’ll be taken care of—they’ll get wives of their own. When they get wives—or men either—there’s but little room for their mother. But I’m not heeding—I’m just not heeding. I’m quite content. Look out, Jeanie, and see if that was your sister at the door.”
Jeanie turned to do her mother’s bidding and found herself almost face to face with a lady whom she thought at first she had never seen before. She gave a little cry of instinctive alarm.
“Is she there?” said the mother faintly from the bed. “I knew she would be there. Come to the other side, Kirsteen, that I may get the light upon ye, and see it’s you. Ay, it’s just you—my bonny woman!—but you’ve changed, you’ve changed.”
“No, mother—just the same Kirsteen.”
“In one way. I dinna doubt ye, my dear; but ye’ve come through trouble and sorrow. I’m thinking there was something I had to say, but it’s clean gone away out of my mind.” She had put out her hand to Kirsteen, and was smiling faintly upon her from amidst the pillows. “I knew ye were coming—I just heard the coach rattling all the day.”
“But, mother, tell me how you are? That’s the most important thing—you’re easy, at least in no pain?”
“Oh, I’m just very easy. I’m easy about everything. I’m no tormenting myself any more. I aye told ye I would never live to see my boys come back. Ye would not believe me, but ye see it’s true. One thing’s just a great blessing—I’ll be away myself before the next laddie goes.”
“Oh, mother, never mind that; tell me about yourself.”
Mrs. Douglas lay silent for a little while, and then she asked in her soft, small voice, no longer querulous, “Kirsteen, have ye got a man?”
“No, mother.”
“It’s maybe just as well—it’s maybe better. You’ll give an eye to the rest. Ye were always more like a mother than Mary. Give an eye to them. This puir lassie here; she’ll be a wee forlorn when I’m away.”
“Oh, mother!” cried Jeanie, with an outburst of vehement tears.
“There’s something I wanted to tell ye—but it’s gone out of my mind. Eh, when I think how many of ye have lain at my breast, and only the two of ye here; but it’s no matter, it’s no matter. I’ve aye been a complaining creature. Fourteen bairns is a heavy handful, and three of them dead. My first little girlie of all I lost, and then one between you and Robbie, and then—all of you weel in health, and like to live, but just thae three. But that’s plenty to keep a woman’s heart. I have a notion I’ll find them still little things when I win up yonder,” said the dying woman, with a flicker of her feeble hand towards the dim roof. A faint, ineffable smile was upon her face. “She was Alison, after my mother,” she said.
The two daughters, one on each side of the bed, stood and watched while this little monologue went on, Jeanie shaken now and then by convulsive fits of weeping, Kirsteen too much absorbed in her mother for any other sensation.
“So ye have no man?” said Mrs. Douglas again. “It’s maybe just as well; you will be a stand-by for them all, Kirsteen, my bonny woman. I’m thankful there’s one that is not marriet. You will just tell them all when they come hame that I knew I would never see them more, but just wore away at the last very easy, very easy and content. I’m waik, but just bye ordinary comfortable, awfu’ light like, as if I could just mount up on angels’ wings, ye mind, and flee—”
“It’s wings like eagles, mother,” said Jeanie, anxious for accuracy.
“Well, well, there’s little difference. Kirsteen, she’s very young, younger than you were at her age. Ye’ll aye give an eye to Jeanie. She may have need of it when her auld mother’s away. I’ve not been much protection, ye’ll think, but still it’s a loss to a woman bairn. Jeanie’s my youngest and Alison my first-born, and yet Jeanie’s a woman and Alison a little playing bairn at heaven’s gate. Isna that strange?” A little sound of laughter came from the bed. Never was dying so easy, so pleasant and gentle. The sand was ebbing out a grain at a time. Suddenly she roused herself a little, and put out again her hand to Kirsteen. A little change came over her face. “I hear your father’s step coming up the stair. But ye’ll no forsake me, Kirsteen—ye’ll not go away?”
“Never while you want me, mother.”
“It will not be for long,” said the dying woman. Her gratitude was disturbed by a little alarm; she grasped Kirsteen with her shadowy hand, and held her fast.