“THEN you are going, Kirsteen?”
“I must go, Jeanie. There is no place, and no wish for me here.”
“And I am to bide—alone. Oh, there are plenty of folk in the house. My father to gloom at me, and Marg’ret to make me scones, and take care that I do not wet my feet—as if that was all the danger in the world!—and Jamie to sit at his books and never say a word. And on the other side—oh, the deevil, just the deevil himself aye whispering in my ear.”
“Jeanie, Jeanie! ye must not say such words.”
“It’s like swearing,” said the girl with a scornful laugh, “but it’s true.”
“Jeanie,” said Kirsteen anxiously, “you will say again that I do not understand. But, my dear, I cannot think but you’re terrifying yourself in vain; when true love has once come in, how can the false move ye? It will be no temptation. Oh, no, no. There can be but one; there cannot be two.”
“Where is your one?” said Jeanie. “I know nothing about your one.” She shook her head with a sudden flush of burning and indignant colour, too painful to be called a blush, as if to shake all recollection away. “I have none to take my part,” she said, “but him that says ‘Come.’ And I know that it’s the ill way, and not the good, he’s leading to. But if you leave me here, and leave me alone, that’s the way I’ll go.”
“Oh, Jeanie, my darling, what can I do? I cannot bide—and I cannot steal you away.”
“I will ask no more,” said Jeanie. “You will maybe be sorry after—but then it will be too late.”
Kirsteen put her arms round her young sister, who turned her shoulder towards her, holding off as far away as was possible, with a reluctance and resistance that were almost sullen. “Jeanie,” she said, “if I send you Lewis Gordon instead?”
Jeanie wrenched herself indignantly out of her sister’s arms. “I will never speak nor look at ye again! A man that never said a word to me. What would Lewis Gordon do here? The shooting’s near over, and the fishing’s bad this year. Men that come to the Highlands for sport had better stay at home.”
“Jeanie! if he never spoke it was for poverty and not for want of love; and you were so young.”
“Oh, yes, I was very young—too young to be shamed and made a fool of by him or any man. And if you send him here, Kirsteen, out of pity to save Jeanie—Oh!” the girl cried dashing her clenched hands in the air, “I will—I will—just go headlong and be lost in the darkness, and never be seen more!”
It was true that Kirsteen did not understand. She could only look wistfully at her little sister, in whose young bosom there were tumults unknown to herself. What could she do but soothe and try to subdue her, endeavouring all the time to represent to herself that it was but the impatience of Jeanie’s nature, the hasty temper of a spoilt child, sharpened by offence and misunderstanding of the man whom she really loved. After a time Jeanie yielded to Kirsteen’s caresses and consolations with a sudden recovery of her self-control which was almost more wonderful and alarming than the previous abandon. “It’s no matter,” she said, and recovered her calm with almost an indignant effort. What did it mean? Both the despair and the recovery were mysteries to the more steadfast spirit which knew no such impulses and was ignorant both of the strength and weakness of a passionate superficial nature eager to live and to enjoy, unable to support the tedium and languor of life.
Kirsteen had little more success with Marg’ret to whom she appealed next. “You will look after my poor little Jeanie. Oh, Marg’ret, don’t let her out of your sight, keep her like the apple of your eye.”
“And do you think, Kirsteen, you that are full of sense, that I could keep any grip of her if I did that? Never let her out of my sight! I canna keep her in my sight for an hour.”
“Marg’ret, my heart’s just sick with fear and trouble.”
“Hoot,” said Marg’ret, “there is nae occasion. What should possess the bairn to terrify ye as she seems to do, I canna tell. There’s nae reason for it. A man is none the worse that I can see for bein’ a young lord—maybe he’s none the better; I’m putting forward nae opinion—but to come to Drumcarro with an ill-meaning if he were the greatest of his name—no, no, I’ll never believe that.”
“It is hard to believe, but it’s harder still to think of the Duke’s son coming here for his wife.”
“If it was a king’s son, and the bride was our Jeanie,” Marg’ret cast her head high, “they’re no blate that think themselves above the Douglases, whatever their titles or their honours may be!”
Kirsteen shook her head, but in her heart too that superstition was strong. Insult the Douglases in their own house! She thought again that perhaps all her sophisticated thoughts might be wrong. In London there was a difference unspeakable between the great Duke and the little Highland laird whom nobody had ever heard of—but at home Drumcarro was as good blood as the Duke, and of an older race—and to intend insult to the house of as good a gentleman as himself was surely more than the wildest profligate would dare. She tried to persuade herself of this as she made her preparations for going away, which were very small. While she was doing this Jamie, the only boy now left at home, the one of the family who was studious, and for whom not the usual commission but a writership in India had been obtained, came to her shyly; for to him his sister Kirsteen was little more than a name.
“There was a book,” he said, and then hung his head, unable to get out any more.
“There was a book? Is it something you want, Jamie?”
Jamie explained with many contortions that it was—a book which he wanted much, and which there was no chance of getting nearer than Glasgow, but which Mr. Pyper thought might be found in London if any one would take the trouble. Kirsteen promised eagerly to take that trouble. She laid her hand upon the big boy’s shoulder. He was only eighteen, but already much taller than herself, a large, loosely made, immature man.
“And will ye do something for me?” she said. Jamie, very awkward and shame-faced, pledged himself at once—whatever she wanted.
“I want you to take care of Jeanie,” said Kirsteen; “will ye go with her when she takes a walk, and stand by her whatever happens, and not let her out of your sight?”
“Not let her out of my sight!” cried Jamie, astonished as Marg’ret had been. “But she would soon send me out of the way. She would never be bothered with me.”
“I meant not long out of your sight, Jamie. Oh! just keep a watch. She will be lonely and want kind company. Ye must keep your eye upon her for kindness, and not let her be alone.”
“If you mean I’m to spy upon her, I couldn’t do that, Kirsteen, not for all the books in the world.”
“That is not what I mean,” Kirsteen cried. “Can you not understand, Jamie? I want you to stand by her, to be with her when you can, not to leave her by herself. She’s very lonely—She’s—not happy—She’s—”
Jamie gave an abashed laugh. “She’s sometimes happy enough,” he said, then recollected himself and became grave all at once. “I was meaning, before—“ Presently he recovered again from this momentary cloud, and added, “She’s no wanting me; there are other folk she likes better.”
“Jamie—it is just the other folk that frighten me.”
Jamie made a great effort to consider the matter with the seriousness which he saw to be expected from him. But the effort was vain. He burst into a great laugh, and with heaving shoulders and a face crimson with the struggle swung himself away.
In the meantime, Mary, not without a great deal of satisfaction in the removal of the restraint which Kirsteen’s presence enforced, was preparing officiously for her sister’s journey. The gig which Kirsteen could herself drive, and in which Miss Macnab could be conveyed back to her home, was ordered in time for the further journey to Glasgow which Kirsteen was to make by postchaise. The ease with which she made these arrangements, her indifference to the cost of her journey, her practical contempt of the difficulties which to the country people who had to scheme and plan for a long time before they decided upon any extra expense, had a half sinful appearance, and was very trying to Mary’s sense of innate superiority. “She does not heed what money she spends. It’s come light, gang light,” said the Lady of Glendochart. “I have heard that was the way with persons in business, but I never thought to see it in a sister of mine. I do not doubt,” she added, “that Kirsteen would just order an expensive dinner at an inn if it took her fancy; but I’m saving her the need of that at least, for I’m putting her a chicken in her basket, and some of Marg’ret’s scones and cakes (oat-cakes were meant) to keep her going.” “I am sure, mem, you are very considerate,” said Miss Macnab, to whom this explanation was given. “But I get very little credit for it from Kirsteen,” Mary answered with a sigh.
These preparations to get rid of her, and the disappearance of Jeanie, who had shut herself up in her room and would see nobody, had a great effect upon Kirsteen. She had taken up, with a heroic sense of having something henceforward to live for, her mother’s half-charge, half-statement that she would be the stand-by of the family. All brighter hopes being gone that was enough to keep her heart from sinking, and it was not always she knew that the stand-by of a family received much acknowledgment, thanks or praise. But to find herself forsaken and avoided by her young sister, hurried away by the elder, with a scarcely veiled pleasure in her departure, were painful things to meet with in the beginning of that mission. She went out of the house in the weary hours of waiting before the gig was ready, to lighten if possible the aching of her heart by the soothing influence of the fresh air and natural sounds. The linn was making less than its usual tumult in the benumbing of the frost, the wind was hushed in the trees, the clouds hung low and grey with that look of oppressed and lowering heaviness which precedes snow. The house too—the home which now indeed she felt herself to be leaving for ever, seemed bound in bands of frost and silence. The poor mother so complaining in her life-time, so peaceful in her death, who had wanted for so little while she was there, seemed to have left a blank behind her, quite out of correspondence with the insignificance of her life. There was no one now to call Kirsteen, to have the right of weakness to her service and succour. With a sharp pang Kirsteen recollected that Jeanie had called and she had refused. What could she do but refuse? Yet to have done so troubled her beyond anything else that could have happened. It came upon her now with a sense of failure which was very bitter. Not her mother, but her mother’s child, the little beautiful sister who from her birth had been Kirsteen’s joy,—she had called, and Kirsteen had refused. She went up the hill behind the house and sat down upon a rock, and gazed at the familiar scene. And then this remorse came upon her and seized her. She had failed to Jeanie’s call. She had allowed other notions to come in, thoughts of other people, hesitations, pride, reluctance to be thought to interfere. Was she right to have done so? Was she wrong? Should she have yielded to Jeanie’s instinct instead of what seemed like duty? It was rare to Kirsteen to be in this dilemma. It added to the pang with which she felt herself entirely deserted, with nobody to regret her or to say a kind word. If misfortune should come to Jeanie, if anything should happen, as people say, how deeply, how bitterly would she blame herself who might have helped but refused. And yet again what but this could she do?
The sound of some one coming down the hill, wading among the great bushes of the ling, and over the withered bracken scarcely aroused her; for what did it matter to Kirsteen who came that way? She was still sitting on the rock when a man appeared round the turning of the path; she paid no attention to him till he was quite near. Then her heart suddenly leapt up to her throat; she started, rising from her seat. He on his side recognized her too. He stopped with a low whistle of dismay, then took off his Highland bonnet, less with an air of courtesy than with that of not daring to omit the forms of respect.
“So it is you, Miss Kirsteen?” he said.
“It is me—at my father’s door. It’s more wonderful to see that it’s you, my Lord John.”
“Not so very wonderful either,” he said, “for I may say I am at my father’s door too.”
“You are on the lands of Drumcarro—the Douglas lands, that never belonged to one of your name.”
“You don’t expect me to enter into old feuds,” he said with a laugh; “would you like to have me seized by your men-at-arms, Miss Kirsteen, and plunged into the dungeon below the castle moat?” He paused and looked down at the grey, penurious house standing bare in the wilds. “Unhappily there is neither moat nor castle,” he said again with a laugh.
“There’s more,” said Kirsteen proudly, “for there’s honour and peace, and he that disturbs either will not pass without his reward. Lord John, I would like to know what you are wanting here?”
“You have always treated me in a very lordly way, Miss Kirsteen,” he said. “What if I were to doubt your right to make any such inquiry. I am wanting, as you say, to pay my respects to my kinswoman of Glendochart, and ask for the family, who I hear have been in trouble.”
Kirsteen paused with a look at him to which he answered with a smile and bow. What could she say? To let him know that he was a danger to Jeanie was but to stimulate him in his pursuit, and she could not herself believe it even now.
“Lord John,” she said, “I met you once upon another hillside; you had done me a great service but you did not know who I was—a gentlewoman as good as yourself. But when I bid you as a gentleman to stand by and let me pass, ye did so. You could not stand against me when I said that. I ask you now again, but I ask more. As ye are a gentleman, Lord John, go away from here.”
He shook his head. “The argument served its turn once,” he said; “you must not scorn my intellect so much as to try it again.”
“Go,” she said, putting herself in his way, “those that are dwelling down there are too high for one thing and not high enough for another. Go away, Lord John, if you’re what a gentleman should be. If ye do not, I’ll promise you this that you will repent it all your days.”
He stepped past her amid the heather bushes and short brushwood. “Not even an angel with a flaming sword could bar the road,” he said waving his hand, “on a hillside like this. Farewell, Miss Kirsteen, I’m going about my own affairs and doing no harm to you.”
In a moment he had passed, finding another path for himself among the windings of the heather and bracken. He took off his bonnet again with a mocking salutation as he disappeared down the hill. And Kirsteen felt herself left behind with a sense of mortification and helplessness intolerable to her high and proud spirit. How could she have hoped to stop him? What power had she? But this did not make her feel her failure less. “You will repent it all your days,” she called after him, raising her voice in the vexation of her soul. He turned and lifted his bonnet again with a mocking salutation. That was all. She might have known, she said to herself with angry tears of humiliation in her eyes.
But when Kirsteen came down the hill there was no trace of Lord John. Mary and Jeanie were in the parlour waiting for her to say good-bye. And there was an air of agitation about her younger sister, which Kirsteen in her troubled mind set down to the visit for which no doubt Jeanie had been called from her room. But nothing was said. They accompanied her to the door where the gig was now standing with Miss Macnab already mounted into her seat. There was no time or opportunity for further leave-taking; Jeanie gave her cheek to be kissed with averted eyes; and not even with Marg’ret could Kirsteen speak another word in private. In a few minutes more she had turned her back upon Drumcarro; was it for ever? To her wounded and impatient heart, impatient above all of the sense of utter futility and failure, this seemed the thing most probable. Why should she ever come again, the stand-by of the family? Perhaps if they should want money, and she should have it—but in no other way.
She was roused by the mild voice of the country artist at her elbow. “You will find a great change in everything, Miss Kirsteen, coming back from London?” she said.
Kirsteen did not immediately reply. “I find more change in myself than in anything else,” she said at last, bringing herself back with difficulty from more urgent thoughts.
“That was partly what I was meaning. Ye’ll find a great interest in life in yon muckle London, where there must always be the bonniest new things to see.”
“When your heart’s away,” said Kirsteen, yielding in spite of herself to the natural desire of unburdening her mind a little, “it does not matter much what bonny things there may be to see.”
“That’s true too,” said the dressmaker; “but my experience has aye been, that where we canna have what we want, and eh, how few of us have that advantage! it’s just a great thing to please your e’e, and fill your mind with what e’e can see, and the best ye can see. There’s even pleasure in a new fashion book when ye have little else. And with all the bonny leddies and their court dresses, and just to dress them like a picture.”
Kirsteen looked at this humble artist with a sigh. “Perhaps you were not always so resigned,” she said.
“I’m not saying that I’m resigned. I would just like to see the Queen’s court, and the princesses in their plumes and trains, before everything in the world, but it’s a comfort,” said the mild philosopher, “when ye can make it up to yourself with a bonny person like Miss Jeanie, just to make the line of her gown perfitt, if ainything can ever be called perfitt,” she added piously, “in this imperfitt world.”