ROBBIE went away next morning very early, before the October day was fairly afloat in the skies. They had no carriage at Drumcarro except “the gig,” and it was perched up in this high conveyance, looking very red with tears and blue with cold, that the household, all standing round the door, saw the last of the boy mounted beside his father, with a large portmanteau standing uncomfortably between them. His other baggage had been sent off in the cart in the middle of the night, Jock as a great favour accompanying the carter, to the great envy and wrath of Jamie, who thought it hard that he should miss such a “ploy,” and could see no reason why his brother should be preferred because he was two years older. Jamie stood at the horse’s head looking as like a groom as he could make himself, while his father made believe to hold in the steady honest mare who knew the way as well as he did, and was as little troubled by any superfluous fun or friskiness. Mrs. Douglas had remained in bed dissolved in tears, and her boy had taken his leave of her in those congenial circumstances. “Be a good lad, Robbie, and sometimes think upon your poor mother, that will never live to see you again.” “Oh, mother, but I’ll be back long before that,” he cried vaguely, doing his best to behave like a man, but breaking out in a great burst of a sob, as she fell back weeping upon her pillows. The girls at the door were in different developments of sorrow, Mary using her handkerchief with demonstration, Kirsteen with her eyes lucid and large with unshed tears, through which everything took an enlarged, uncertain outline, and little Jeanie by turns crying and laughing as her attention was distracted from Robbie going away to Jamie standing with his little legs wide apart at the mare’s respectable head. Robbie was not at all sorry to go away, his heart was throbbing with excitement and anticipation of all the novelties before him; but he was only eighteen, and it was also full for the moment of softer emotions. Marg’ret stood behind the girls, taller than any of them, with her apron to her eyes. She was the last person upon whom his look rested as his father called out, “Stand away from her head,” as if honest Mally had been a hunter, and with a friendly touch of the whip stirred the mare into motion. Robbie looked back at the gray house, the yellow birches waving in the winds, the hillside beyond, and the group round the door, and waved his hand and could not speak. But he was not sorry to go away. It was the aim of all his breeding, the end looked forward to for many years. “It’s me the next,” said Jock, who was waiting at Inveralton, from which place by fishing-smack and coach Robbie was to pursue his way to Glasgow and the world. Travellers had but few facilities in those days: the rough fishing boat across the often angry loch; the coach that in October did not run “every lawful day,” but only at intervals; the absence of all comfortable accommodation would grievously affect the young men nowadays who set out in a sleeping carriage from the depths of the Highlands to take their berths in a P. and O. Robbie thought of none of these luxuries, which were not yet invented. His parting from his father and brother was not emotional: all that had been got over when the group about the doors had waved their last good-bye. He was more anxious about the portmanteaux, upon which he looked with honest pride, and which contained among many other things the defective half-dozen of handkerchiefs. Ronald Drummond met him at the side of the loch with his boxes, which contained a more ample outfit than Robbie’s, and the sword-case which had been in the Peninsula, a distinction which drew all eyes. “It’s me the next,” Jock shouted as a parting salutation, as the brown sail was hoisted, and the boat, redolent of herrings, carried the two adventurers away.
“Weel,” said Marg’ret, “the laddie’s gane, and good go with him. It’s ane less to think of and fend for. And we must just all go back to our work. Whoever comes or whoever goes, I have aye my dinner to think of, and the clean clothes to be put into the drawers, and the stockings to darn a’ the same.”
“If you’ll put an iron to the fire, Marg’ret, I’ll come and do the collars,” said Mary, “he was always so particular, poor Robbie. There will be no fyke now with trying to please him.”
“I cannot settle to work,” said Kirsteen, “and I will not. I’m not just a machine for darning stockings. I wish I was Robbie going out into the world.”
“Oh, Kirsteen, come and see the rabbits he gave me,” said Jeanie. “He would not trust one of them to the boys, but gave them to me. Come and take them some lettuce leaves. It will keep us in mind of Robbie.” There was perhaps some danger that the recollection of the brother departed would not last very long. So many had gone before him and there were still others to go.
But Kirsteen avoided Jeanie and the rabbits and suddenly remembered something she had to get at the “merchant’s,” which was a full mile off—worsted for her mother’s knitting and needles for herself, who was always, to the reprobation of the elder members of the family, losing her needles. She was glad to represent to herself that this errand was a necessity, for a house without needles how can that be? and poor mother would be more dependent than ever on everything being right for her work, on this melancholy day. It was still quite early, about nine o’clock, and it was with a compunction that Kirsteen gave herself the indulgence of this walk. A morning away from work seemed to her almost an outrage upon life, only to be excused by the circumstances and the necessity of the errand. She walked along the familiar road not noting where she went, her thoughts far away, following the travellers, her mind full of an agitation which was scarcely sorrowful, a sort of exaltation over all that was common and ordinary. The air and the motion were good for her, they were in harmony with that condition of suppressed excitement in which from the depths of her being everything seemed bubbling up. Kirsteen’s soul was like one of the clear pools of the river by which she walked, into which some clear, silvery, living thing had leaped and lived. Henceforward it was no more silent, no longer without motion. The air displaced came up in shining globules to the surface, dimpling over the water, a stir was in it from time to time, a flash, a shimmering of all the ripples. Her mind, her heart were like the pool—no longer mirroring the sky above and the pathway ferns and grasses on the edge, but something that had an independent life. She roamed along without being able to tell, had any one asked her, where she was. The road was a beautiful road by the side of a mountain stream, which was only called the burn, but which was big enough for trout or even now and then salmon—which ran now along the side of the bill, now diving deep down into a ravine, now half hid with big overreaching banks, now flinging forth upon a bit of open country, flowing deep among the rocks, chattering over the shallows, sometimes bass sometimes treble, an unaccountable, unreasonable, changeable stream. Red rowan-tree berries hung over it reflecting their colour in the water. The heather on the hill came in deep russet tones of glory defeated, and the withered bracken with tints of gold, all gaining a double brilliancy from the liquid medium that returned their image. To all these things Kirsteen was so well accustomed that perhaps she did not at any time stop to note them as a stranger might have done. But to-day she did not know what was about her; she was walking in more beautiful landscapes, in the land of imagination, by the river of love, in the country of the heart. The pays du tendre which was ridiculous when all the fine ladies and gentlemen postured about in their high-heeled shoes is not absurd when a fresh and simple maiden crosses its boundary. She went down the glen to the merchant’s and chose her wool, and bought her needles, and said a few words to the women at their doors, and shed a few more tears when they were sorry for her about her brother’s going away, without ever leaving that visionary country, and came back from the village more deeply lost in it than ever, and hearing the whisper of last night in every motion of the branches and every song of the burns. “Will ye wait for me, Kirsteen?” though it was only this morning that he went away, and years and years must pass before he came back—“Ay, that I will! That I will.”
She had nearly reached home again, coming back from the merchant’s—for even her reverie and the charm of it could not keep Kirsteen’s step slow, or subdue its airy, skimming tread—when she came up to the carter with his cart who had carried Robbie’s luggage to Inveralton. She stopped to speak to him, and walked along by his side timing her steps to those of his heavy, slow tread and the movement of the laborious, patient horse. “Did you see him, Duncan?” she said.
“Oh, ay, I saw him—and they got away fine in James Macgregor’s boat; and a quick wind that would carry them over the loch in two or three minutes.”
“And how was he looking, Duncan?”
“’Deed, Miss Kirsteen, very weel: he’s gaun to see the world—ye canna expect a young boy like that to maen and graen. I have something here for you.”
“Something for me!” She thought perhaps it was something that had been put into the gig by mistake, and was not excited, for what should there be for her? She watched with a little amusement Duncan’s conflict with the different coats which had preserved his person from the night cold. He went on talking while he struggled.
“The other laddie, Jock, I left to come home with the maister in the gig. He thought it was fine—but I wouldna wonder if he was regretting Duncan and the cart—afore now. Here it is at last, and a fecht to get it. It is a book from Maister Ronald that you gave him a loan of—or something o’ that kind—if I could but mind what gentles say—”
“Gave him—a loan of—?” cried Kirsteen, breathless. She had to turn away her head not to exhibit to Duncan the overwhelming blush which she felt to cover her from head to foot. “Oh, yes,” she added after a moment, taking the little parcel from his hand, “I—mind.”
Let us hope that to both of them the little fiction was forgiven. A loan of—she had nothing to lend, nor had he ever borrowed from her. It was a small paper parcel, as if it contained a little book. Kirsteen never could tell how she succeeded in walking beside the carter for a few steps further, and asking him sedately about his wife and the bairns. Her heart was beating in her ears as if it would burst through. It was like a bird straining at its bonds, eager to fly away.
Then she found herself at home where she had flown like the wind, having informed Duncan that she was “in a great hurry”—but in the passage, on the way to her own room, she met Mary, who was coming from the kitchen with a number of shining white collars in her arms which she had been ironing.
“Where have you been?” said Mary. “My mother has been yammering for you. Is this an hour of the day to go stravaighing for pleasure about the roads?”
Mary pronounced the last word “rods,” though she prided herself on being very correct in her speech.
“Me—I have been to the merchant’s for my mother’s fingering for her stockings,” Kirsteen said breathlessly.
“It was wheeling she wanted,” said Mary with exasperating calm; “that’s just like you, running for one thing when it’s another that’s wanted. Is that it in that small parcel like a book?”
“No, that’s not it,” said Kirsteen, clasping the little parcel closer and closer.
“It’s some poetry-book you’ve had out with you to read,” said her sister, as if the acme of wrong-doing had been reached. “I would not have thought it of you, Kirsteen, to be reading poetry about the rods, the very morning that Robbie’s gone away. And when my mother is so ill she cannot lift her head.”
“I’ve been reading no poetry,” cried Kirsteen, with the most poignant sense of injury. “Let me pass, Mary, I’m going up the stair.”
But it was Marg’ret now who interposed, coming out at the sound of the altercation. She said, “Miss Kirsteen, I’m making some beef-tea for the mistress. Come in like a dear and warm your hands, and ye can carry it up. It will save me another trail up and down these stairs.”
Kirsteen stood for a moment obstructed on both sides with a sense of contrariety which was almost intolerable. Tears of vexation rose to her eyes. “Can I not have a moment to myself?” she cried.
“To read your poetry!” Mary called after her in her mild little exasperating voice.
“Whist, whist, my lamb, say nothing,” said Marg’ret. “Your mother canna bide to have a talking. Never you mind what she says, think upon the mistress that’s lying up there, wanting to hear everything and canna—wanting to be in the middle of everything and no equal to it. It was no that I grudge going up the stairs, but just to keep a’ things quiet. And what’s that you’ve gotten in your hand?”
“It’s just a small parcel,” said Kirsteen, covering it with her fingers. “It’s just a—something I was buying—”
“Not sweeties,” said Marg’ret solemnly; “the bairns had more than plenty last night—”
“Never you mind what it is,” said Kirsteen with a burst of impatience, thrusting it into her pocket. “Give me the beef-tea and I’ll take it up stairs.”
Mrs. Douglas lay concealed behind her curtains, her face almost in a fluid state with constant weeping. “Oh, set it down upon the table,” she said. “Do they think there’s comfort in tea when a woman has parted with her bairn? And where have ye been, Kirsteen? just when I was in want of ye most; just when my head was sorest, and my heart like to break—Robbie gone, and Mary so taken up with herself, and you—out of the way—”
“I’m very sorry, mother,” said poor Kirsteen. “I ran down to the merchant’s to get you your yarn for your knitting. I thought you would like to have it ready.”
Mrs. Douglas rocked her head back and forward on her pillow. “Do I look like a person that’s thinking of yarn or of stockings, with my head aching and my heart breaking? And none of you can match a colour. Are you sure it’s the same? Most likely I will just have to send Marg’ret to change it. What’s that bulging out your pocket? You will tear every pocket you have with parcels in it as if ye were a lad and not a lass.”
“It’s only a very small thing,” said Kirsteen.
“If that’s the yarn ye should never let them twist it up so tight. It takes the softness all out of it. Where are ye going the moment you’ve come back? Am I to have nobody near me, and me both ill in body, and sore, sore distrest in mind? Oh, Kirsteen, I thought ye had a truer heart.”
“Mother, my heart’s true,” cried the girl, “and there’s nothing in the world I would not do to please you. But let me go and put away my things, let me go for a moment, just for a moment. I’ll be back again before you’ve missed me.”
“You’re not always so tidy to put away your things,” said the invalid; “sit down there by my bedside, and tell me how my bonnie lad looked at the last. Did he keep up his heart? And was your father kind to him? And did you see that he had his keys right, and the list of all his packages? Eh, me, to think I have to lie here and could not see my laddie away.”
“But, mother, you have never done it,” said Kirsteen, “to any of the boys—and Robbie never expected—”
“You need not mind me,” said Mrs. Douglas, “of the waik creature I’ve always been. Aye in my bed or laid up, never good for anything. If you’ll lift me up a little, Kirsteen, I might maybe try to swallow the beef tea; for eh! I have much, much need of support on such a doleful day. Now another pillow behind my back, and put the tray here; I cannot bear the sight of food, but I must not let my strength run down. Where are you going now, you restless thing? Just stay still where you are; for I cannot do without you, Kirsteen. Kirsteen, do you hear me? The doctor says I’m never to be left by myself.”
It was not till a long time after that Kirsteen was free. Her eager expectation had fallen into an aching sense of suspense, a dull pang that affected both mind and body. Instead of the rapid flight to her room full of anticipation in which she had been arrested in entering the house, she went soberly, prepared for any disenchantment. The room was shared with her younger sister Jeanie, and it seemed quite probable that even a moment’s solitude might be denied her. When she found it empty, however, and had closed the door upon herself and her secret, it was with trembling hands that she opened the little parcel. It might be the handkerchief sent back to her, it might be some other plain intimation that he had changed his mind. But when the covering was undone, Kirsteen’s heart leaped up again to that sudden passion of joy and content which she had first known yesterday. The parcel contained the little Testament which Ronald had carried to church many a Sunday, a small book bound in blue morocco, a little bent and worn with use. On the flyleaf were his initials R. D., the letters of the handkerchief, and underneath C. D. freshly written. He had made rather clumsily, poor fellow, with a pencil, a sort of Runic knot of twisted lines to link the two names together. That was all. Nowadays the young lover would at least have added a letter; seventy years ago he had not thought of it. Kirsteen’s heart gave a bound in her breast, and out of weariness and contradiction and all the depressing influences of the morning, swam suddenly into another world: a delicious atmosphere of perfect visionary bliss. Never were public betrothals more certain, seldom so sweet. With a timid movement, blushing at herself, she touched with her lips the letters on the title-page.