“I’m here, father,” said Mary in her mild voice.
“Oh, ay, you’re there,” said the inconsistent head of the house, “for you’re just nobody, and never had two ideas in your head,” he continued in a lower tone. “Now, Robbie, my man, take your glass, there is no saying when you will get another. It’s just second nature to a Scotsman, but it’s as well for you to be out of the way of it; for though it’s the most wholesome drink, it’s very seductive and you’re much better without it at your age. It’s like the strange woman that you’re warned against in Scripture.”
“Drumcarro!” said Aunt Eelen. “Oh fie! before ladies.”
“Ladies or no ladies I cannot let the occasion pass without a word of warning,” said the father. “Ye will have every temptation put before ye, my lad; not drink perhaps, for the climate will not stand it, but other things, that are worse.”
“I’m thinking, Christina,” said the old lady, “that now your goodman has begun his moralities it may be as well for us to go, for you know where that begins and you never can tell where it may end; a man has cognizance of many things that cannot enter into the experience of you and me. Mind you what your father says, Robbie, but it’s not intended for your mother and me.”
CHAPTER III.
Kirsteen hurried out of the room, out of the fumes of the toddy and the atmosphere of the half-festive, half-doleful occasion which made a not altogether unpleasant excitement in the monotony of the home life. She gazed in at the open door of the parlour, and saw the three younger children gathered in the firelight upon the hearthrug munching their apples, and the sweets with which they had been allowed to fill their pockets. The firelight made still more ruddy the red heads and freckled faces of the boys, and lit up Jeanie, who sat on a footstool a little higher than her brothers, in her more delicate tints. Kirsteen was much attached to her younger sister, who promised to be the beauty of the family, and thought her like an angel, especially as seen through the dew of her wet eyes. “Dinna make a noise,” she said; “be awfu’ quiet or you’ll be sent to your beds;” and then closed the door softly and stole through the dark passage towards the principal entrance. There was no light save a ruddy gleam from the kitchen in the depths of that dark passage which traversed the whole breadth of the house, and that which shone through the crevices of the dining-room door. She had to find her way groping, but she was very well used to this exercise, and knew exactly where the hall-table and the heavy wooden chairs on each side stood. The outer door stood half open according to the habit of the country where there were no burglars to fear, and little to tempt them, and a perfect capacity of self-defence inside. There was a full moon that night, but it had not yet risen, though the sky was full of a misty light which preceded that event. A faint shadow of the group of trees outside was thrown upon the doorway; they were birches slender and graceful, with their leaves half blown away by the October gales; those that remained were yellow with the first touches of the frost, and in themselves gave forth a certain light. Kirsteen stole out to a bench that stood against the wall, and sat down in a corner. She was not afraid of cold with her uncovered head and bare arms. All the moods of the elements were familiar to the Highland girl. She thought it mild, almost warm: there was no wind, the yellow birches perceptible in their faint colour stood up like a group of long-limbed youths dangling their long locks in the dim light: the further landscape was but faintly visible, the shoulder of the hill against the sky, and a single gleam of the burn deep down among the trees.
She sat pressing herself into the corner of the seat, and the long pent-up tears poured forth. They had been getting too much for her, like a stream shut in by artificial barriers, and now came with a flood, like the same stream in spate and carrying every obstruction away. It was almost a pleasure to see (if there had been any one to do so) the good heart with which Kirsteen wept: she made no noise, but the tears poured forth in a great shower, relieving her head and her heart. They were very heavy, but they were not bitter. They meant a great deal of emotion and stirring up of her whole being, but though her feelings were very poignant they were not without pleasure. She had never felt so elevated above herself, above every dull circumstance that surrounded her. She had been very sorry and had shed tears plentifully when the other boys went away. But this was not the same. She perhaps did not confess to herself, yet she knew very well that it was not altogether for Robbie. Robbie had his share, but there was another now. For years Kirsteen and Ronald Drummond had been good friends. When he went away before she had felt a secret pang, and had been very eager to hear the news of the battles and that he was safe: but something had changed this friendship during the last summer while he had been at home. Not a word had been said: there was no love-making; they were both too shy to enter upon any revelation of feeling, nor was there any opportunity for explanations, since they were always surrounded by companions, always in the midst of a wandering, easy-minded party which had no respect for any one’s privacy. But Kirsteen when she marked her brother’s handkerchiefs with her hair had fully intended that Ronald should see it, and be struck with the similarity of the initials and ask for or take one of them at least. Her heart beat high when this happened according to her prevision; and when he stooped and whispered, “Will ye wait for me, Kirsteen, till I come back?” the answering whisper, “That I will!” had come from the bottom of her heart. She had scarcely been aware of what was said in the hurry of the moment. But it had come back to her, every syllable and every tone as soon as it was all over. Their spirits had floated together in that one moment, which was only a moment, yet enough to decide the course of two lives. They were too much bound by the laws of their youthful existence to think of breaking any observance in order to expand these utterances, or make assurance sure. That Ronald should spend his last evening at home with his mother and sister, that Kirsteen should be present at Robbie’s parting supper, was as the laws of the Medes and the Persians to these two. No emergency could be imagined of sufficient weight to interfere with such necessities of life. And there was something in their simple absolutism of youthful feeling which was better expressed in the momentary conjunction, in the sudden words so brief and pregnant, than in hours of lovers’ talk, of which both boy and girl would have thought shame. “Will ye wait for me till I come back?” What more could have been said in volumes? and “That I will!” out of the fervour of a simple heart? Kirsteen thought it all over again and again. He seemed to stand by her side bending a little over her with a look half smile, half tears in his eyes; and she was aware again of the flash of the sweet discovery, the gold thread of the little letters put to his lips, and then the question, “Will ye wait?” Wait! for a hundred years, for all the unfathomed depths of life, through long absence and silence, each invisible to the other. “That I will!” She said it over and over again to herself.
In those days there was no thought of the constant communications we have now, no weekly mails, no rapid courses overland, no telegraph for an emergency. When a young man went away he went for good—away; every trace of him obliterated as if he had not been. It was a four months’ voyage to India round by the Cape. Within the course of the year his mother might hope to hear that he had arrived. And if an Indian letter had come even at that long interval for a girl in another family, what a host of questions would she not have had to go through! “A letter for Kirsteen! Who’s writing to Kirsteen? What is he writing to her about? What is the meaning of it all? I must know what that means!” such would have been the inquiries that would have surged up in a moment, making poor Kirsteen the object of everybody’s curious gaze and of every kind of investigation. She never dreamed of any such possibility. Robbie, when he wrote home, which he would no doubt do in time, might mention the companion of his voyage; Agnes Drummond might say “There’s a letter from our Ronald.” These were the only communications that Kirsteen could hope for. She was very well aware of the fact, and raised no thought of rebellion against it. When she gave that promise she meant waiting for interminable years—waiting without a glimpse or a word. Nor did this depress her spirits: rather it gave a more elevating ideal form to the visionary bond. All romance was in it, all the poetry of life. He would be as if he were dead to her for years and years. Silence would fall between them like the grave. And yet all the time she would be waiting for him and he would be coming to her.