THE funeral, according to the dreary custom of the time, did not take place for nearly a week, and in the meantime there was a great subdued bustle in the house of mourning. It was rather the house of what they all called mournings, or murninse, in the plural, than of grief. The mistress lay still and white in her coffin, locked up and shut away, more drearily separated from all living thoughts and ways than had she been in the grave; but the black gowns and bonnets that were intended to “show respect” to her were being manufactured everywhere, in almost every room but hers. Miss Macnab was throned in the parlour as at the time when she came to make the ball dresses, and not less absorbed in the perfection of her art and the fit of every garment, while Kirsteen looked on with something of the suppressed amusement with which a great scholar contemplates the village pedagogue who taught him his first Latin, or an artist the house-painter who first showed him the uses of the brush. How far already had all their thoughts drifted from the dead mother who was the cause of this subdued commotion, and of so much more stir and life than for a long time had been in the house! But yet there were many things that were intimately connected with that poor lady. All her little secrets were disclosed. Mary began almost immediately to clear out the drawers and wardrobes in which her mother’s old dresses and old stores of every kind had accumulated. She turned out the old pockets of which Mrs. Douglas had many, some made in silk to wear outside her gown, some of strong linen to wear below, and which were emptied out with all their countless stores, pathetically insignificant, not without many a critical remark. “There was never anybody like my mother for rubbish in her pockets. It’s just like a clatter of old iron to hear the keys jingling. And what did she ever do with keys?—with everything in Marg’ret’s hand. I cannot tell what to do with these old gowns, unless we give them to the old bodies in the clachan, for they’re past fashion and past wearing, and just rubbitch like all the rest.”
“Could you not let them be? Such as they are, they are part of my mother—at least to me,” said Kirsteen.
“Why would I let them be? Just to gather dust and cumber the earth, and fill presses that there may be need of for living folk. I am not a wasteful person, as maybe in London and among all your heaps of claes you may be tempted to be. They are little more than old rags, and what my mother could mean by keeping them, I cannot divine, but still they might be of use to the old bodies in the clachan. Just bring them all down into the parlour in your arms, Merran, and I’ll sort them there. And ye can clear out the big hanging press; it might be wanted for Miss Jeanie, or when I come over myself on a visit, for there’s very little room for hanging up a good gown in this house.”
Kirsteen left her sister to this congenial occupation, feeling the sight of the old, well-remembered gowns, upon which she had hung in her childhood, a sight too pitiful to be endured. But Mary divided them into bundles, and tied them up in napkins, apportioning to the “poor bodies” about, each her share. “If they will not do for themselves, they’ll make frocks out of them for their grandchildren,” Mary said. She was very thoughtful and considerate of the poor bodies; and she gave Jeanie many lectures upon her duties, now that she was the only one left at home. “I hope you’ll not allow yourself to be led away by anything Kirsteen can say to you. Of course we will be aye glad to see you at Glendochart, but in the meantime your duty is at home. What would my father do without a woman in the house? And what would come of the callants? It may be a little dull for you at first, but you must just never mind that. But don’t let yourself be led away by Kirsteen, who is just wilfulness itself,” said Mary. Jeanie sat very still, and listened, looking wistfully at her mother’s old gowns, but she had nothing to say in reply.
Miss Eelen came over to Drumcarro for the funeral, but not with the intention of following the mournful procession to the grave. This was a thing which was contrary to all Scotch customs—a thing unheard of. The men attired in their “blacks,” with deep white “weepers” on their cuffs, and great hat-bands with flowing ends of crape, formed a long line marching two and two, with pauses now and then to change the bearers along the mournful wintry road. The women sat within, keeping together in one room, and firing off little minute guns in the way of mournful remarks, as they sat solemnly doing nothing, not even looking out to see the object of this lugubrious ceremony carried away to her last rest. Miss Eelen bore the part of a kind of mistress of the ceremonies on this sad occasion. She sat in her weepers and her crape, which was not new like the others’ but kept for such occasions, in the high chair which had been Mrs. Douglas’s, with a white handkerchief in her hand, and said at intervals, “Poor Christina—she was a fine creature. Your mother, my dears, was a real, right-thinking woman. She was from the south, and ignorant of some of our ways, but her meaning was always good. She was very fond of her family, poor body. All those laddies—and not one of them to help to lay her head in the grave, except the two little ones, poor things.”
Kirsteen stood leaning against the window watching through the shutters the mournful black line as it moved away, while Jeanie at her feet, holding by her dress, followed vicariously through her sister’s eyes the progress of the procession. They heard the tramp, recognisable among the others, of the bearers, as they straightened themselves under their burden, and then the sound of the slow, irregular march. “Can ye see it, Kirsteen? Is it away? Is that it passing? Oh, my mother, my mother!” cried Jeanie. She held fast by Kirsteen’s dress, as if there was strength and support in it; and Kirsteen stooped and raised her up when the sound of the measured tramp had died away. “Now,” she said, “all is gone—the very last. And the time is come when we must begin our common lives again.”
“She was indeed a fine creature,” said Miss Eelen with a little flourish of her handkerchief. “I mind when she came first here, a delicate bit thing, that never looked as if she would live.”
“She was always delicate,” said Mary taking up the response.
“And think of all the bairns she had—a fine stirring family.”
“Fourteen of us,” said Mary.
“Eleven living, and all a credit—that is to say—but I name no names,” said Miss Eelen.
“It is perhaps better not,” said Mary.
Kirsteen whispered in her little sister’s ear that she could bear this no longer, and taking Jeanie’s hand rose to leave the room. She was stopped by Mary’s reproving voice—“Where are ye taking Jeanie, Kirsteen? Ye are not going out on the day of my mother’s funeral?”
“At least leave the innocent bairn,” said Miss Eelen in a voice of solemn command. “A day like this should be like a Lord’s day in a house.”
“Or worse,” Mary added with tremendous seriousness—“for the Sabbath comes once in a week, but your mother’s funeral but once in a lifetime.”
The words came surging back into Kirsteen’s mind again—
“True loves I may get many an ane,
But minnie ne’er anither.”
Her heart felt as if it must burst, and yet it was something like a laugh that broke from her, as she was thus reproached for levity. “I am not likely to forget that,” she said. Jeanie clung to her as she left the others to their antiphone. The sound of the familiar linn seemed to have come back to dominate all sounds as before, when she stole out at the back of the house, Jeanie always following. It was a grey mild wintry day, a day such as is consolatory to the overwrought spirit. The two sisters seated themselves on the fallen trunk of a tree on the bank near the head of the linn. The softened rush of the water with no storm and but little wind in the air filled the atmosphere with a soothing hush of sound. Jeanie laid her head upon her sister’s knee, hiding her face, and sobbing softly like a child in its mother’s lap when the storm of woe is overpast; Kirsteen who had no tears at her command save those that welled quietly into her eyes from time to time without observation, smoothed tenderly with one hand the girl’s soft and beautiful hair.
“Just sob out all your heart,” she said, “my little Jeanie—it will do you good.”
“Oh, Kirsteen, it is not all for her, but for me too that am so forlorn.”
“Jeanie, my dear, it’s a hard thing to say, but soon ye will not be so forlorn. We will all go back to our common work, and your heart will maybe not be light again for many a long day; but the sun will begin to shine again.”
“Kirsteen,” said Jeanie raising her head, “you are my sister next to me, and I am a woman grown. There is not such a long, long way between us; but you speak as if it was a hundred years.”
“It is more I think,” said Kirsteen; “for you will have all that life can give, and I will have nothing, except maybe you, and being a stand-by for the family as my mother said.”
“Why should you not too have all that life can give?”
Kirsteen smiled and shook her head. “It is too long a story; and I would rather speak about you, Jeanie. To-morrow I am going away.”
Jeanie seized Kirsteen’s hands and held them fast. “I will be no trouble,” she said. “I will do whatever you please, but take me with you, Kirsteen.”
“I cannot, Jeanie. It would be to steal you away; I dare not do it. If I have been right or wrong in what I did for myself I cannot always tell; but for you, I dare not take it upon me. You heard what Anne said—and it was true.”
“Kirsteen,” said Jeanie raising her face to her sister. “I have more cause than you. Oh, listen to me, Kirsteen; would you like to see shame at Drumcarro? Would you like to see the name you all think so much of rolled in the dust? Oh, hear what I’m saying, Kirsteen! I have more cause than you.”
“Jeanie, my dear! my dear!”
“Kirsteen, there is one that is here, and they all think much of him, and he follows me wherever I go. Kirsteen, are ye listening?” The girl grasped her hands fiercely as if her own had been made of steel. “Kirsteen! It’s not to marry me he is seeking me. Do ye hear what I am saying? It is not—for anything that’s good.”
And Jeanie who had been very pale, hid her face which was blazing with sudden red in Kirsteen’s lap, and sobbed as if her heart would burst.
Kirsteen caught her in her arms, held her to her breast, murmured over her every tender word, but profoundly as Jeanie was in earnest, gave no faith to what she said. “What has put that dreadful thought in your mind? Oh, my darling, if there was such a villain in the world it’s not here he would dare to come—with everybody round you to defend you—to our father’s house.”
“Who have I to defend me?” cried Jeanie raising her head. “Jock is away and Jamie is so young; how should he understand? And my father that notices nothing, that thinks it will be a grand marriage and a credit to the family. Even Marg’ret!”—cried the girl with sudden exasperation, “they will none of them understand!”
Kirsteen took her young sister’s face between her hands—“An ill man could have no power but what he got from you. Jeanie, Jeanie, has he got your heart?”
“Oh, how can you tell, you that have never been tried?” cried the girl drawing herself out of her sister’s hold. Little Jeanie had her experience too. “No, he has not got my heart; but he gives me no rest night nor day, he sends me letters—I might put them in the fire. But there’s little to keep you living at Drumcarro—and I read them, I canna help it. And then he’s waiting for me about the door whenever I stir. And his tongue would wile the bird off the tree. And he’s not like the rough men you see, young Glenbowie or the like of that, he’s a fine grand gentleman. And oh, Kirsteen, take me with you! take me away! For my father’s one that will not understand, and Jamie is but a laddie, and even Marg’ret!—And how am I to fight and stand all alone by myself?”
The girl’s eyes were full of tears and her face of trouble. She held fast by Kirsteen’s hand as if by an anchor of salvation. “He has not got my heart,” she said, “but oh, I canna trust my head. He wiles me away. And there’s nobody in the world, nobody else, that is heeding what becomes of me, or where I go, unless it’s maybe you, Kirsteen. Oh, take me with you, Kirsteen! for I cannot trust myself and live here.”
“Jeanie, Jeanie, ye love this man.”
“No,” cried the girl rising to her feet. “No! no! If it was my last word, No! but I’m lone, lone in the house, and nobody to speak a word, and him with his flattering tongue. And oh, Kirsteen, if you will do anything for Jeanie, take her away.”
“There is nothing I would not do for Jeanie,” said the elder sister, drawing her again to her arms. “My dear, there was one I saw in London before I came away.”
“One you saw in London?”
“That had his heart set upon my little sister, one I could serve with my life.”
Jeanie’s agitated face was again covered with a burning blush. She withdrew herself from Kirsteen’s arm. “How can I tell who ye might see in London. It’s far, far from here.”
“And maybe you never thought upon him, though his heart is set on you.”
Jeanie turned from red to pale. She trembled, drawing herself from within her sister’s arm. “How can I tell who it is!” she said with an indignation which made her breathless, “when you never tell me? And there has never been any person—oh, never any person!” Her eyes were unquiet, seeking Kirsteen’s face, then withdrawn hurriedly not to meet her look; her hands were nervously clasping and unclasping in her lap. “Men,” she cried, “never care! I’ve read it in books and I know it’s true. They look at you and they speak and speak, and follow you about, and then when their time is come they go away, and you hear of them no more.”
“Where have you learned all this, my poor little Jeanie,” said Kirsteen tenderly, “for ye seem to have knowledge of things that are beyond me?”
“We learn the things that come our way,” said the girl. Her lips quivered, she was too much agitated to keep still. “Who would that be that you saw in London?” she asked with a forced, almost mocking smile.
“He has been in India since then, and wherever there was fighting. His name is Major Gordon.”
Kirsteen was conscious once more of the grudge in her heart at Gordon’s life and promotion, and the title she had given him; but she had no time for thought. For Jeanie rose up from her side in a passion of mingled feeling, anger and indignation and wistfulness and pain.
“How dared he speak?” she cried. “How dared he name my name? Him! that came when I was but a bairn, and then rode away!”
“Jeanie!”
“Oh! I thought you understood,” cried Jeanie in a kind of frenzy. “I thought you would know, but you’ve aye had peace in your heart though ye think you’re so wise. There has nobody ever come and gone and made ye feel ye were a fool and unwomanly, and all that Marg’ret says. You have never known what it was to have your heart burnt like hot irons on it, and to scorn yourself, and feel that ye were the poorest thing on earth! To let a man think that, and then to see him ride away!”
Scorching tears poured from Jeanie’s eyes. Tears like a fiery torrent, very different from those which had been wept for her mother. She sat down again on the log but turned her back to Kirsteen, covering her face with her hands. “It is just for that,” she said to herself, “just for that that I’m tempted most—just for that!”
“I would have thought,” said Kirsteen, with intense and sorrowful indignation to think that where there was life and love there should be this perversity. “I would have thought that a touch of true love in the heart would save ye for ever and ever from all temptations of the kind.”
“You would have thought!” cried Jeanie scornful in her passion, turning her soft angelic countenance, in which there were so many things unintelligible to her elder sister, all flushed and wild to Kirsteen. “And me that thought you would understand!” she cried.
There was a pause, and Kirsteen’s heart ached with feelings inexpressible. She had never been accused of not understanding before, and it is a reproach which is hard to bear. She sat silent, painfully wondering into what strange places these young feet had wandered where she could not follow. She had expressed the only conviction that was possible to her one-ideaed soul. The touch of true love had been to herself the one and only touch, never to be obliterated by baser contact. She sat gazing wistfully into the dim air, perplexed and troubled, her eyes filling with tears, her heart with heaviness. To be tempted was the one thing which in her austere and spotless womanhood, a widowed maiden, Kirsteen could not understand.
Jeanie had been sobbing passionately by her side for a minute or more, when suddenly she turned and flung herself again upon her sister, once more hiding her face in Kirsteen’s lap. “Oh!” she cried, “take me with you, Kirsteen! Do you not see now that I cannot be left? You’re holy like a saint, but me, I want more, I want something more. Is it not natural to be happy when you’re young—to get what you like, and see what’s bonny and bright, and get out into the world? I’m not one that can be patient and bide at home. Oh, Kirsteen! I cannot just sew my seam, and read my book like good girls—even with my mother here—and now that she’s gone—Kirsteen, Kirsteen! he will wile me away to my shame if you will not save me, you that are the only one.”
She said all this half intelligibly, clasping her arms round her sister, now raising her head with an imploring look, now burying it again on Kirsteen’s shoulder or in her lap. Such an impassioned creature was unlike anything that Kirsteen had ever known before. She soothed her with soft words, saying, “My dear, my darlin’, my bonny Jeanie!” the tears falling from her eyes as she caressed and stilled the excitement of the other. What could she do? How could she take her? How leave her? She who was herself on sufferance allowed to be here by reason of her mother’s death, but bound to go away to-morrow, and with so little likelihood that any one would pay attention to what she said. She dared not steal her little sister away. She dared scarcely plead for her, for more care, for closer guardianship! Alas, was this all that was to come of the post she had undertaken, she who was to be the stand-by of the family? She who from the beginning had thought of Jeanie as the one for whom everything was to be made bright?