“I will not bid you ask her, I will just go ben.”
“Oh, Kirsteen!”
She knew the way well, across the outer room, which was not called a hall, to the door on the other side, within which Mrs. Drummond was sitting with her woe. There was nothing but the moonlight in the hall making a broad strip of whiteness as it came in unbroken by the open door. The two black figures passed across it like shadows, the daughter of the house following, the stranger leading. Mrs. Drummond sat by the side of the fire, which was a feeble redness in the grate, unneeded, supposed to add a little cheerfulness, but in its unnatural, untended smouldering making things rather worse than better. Her white widow’s cap was the highest light in the room, which with its dark wainscot and faint candles looked like a cave of gloom. The windows were all closed and curtained, shutting out the lingering light of day. A large Bible was open on the table, and in Mrs. Drummond’s lap lay the knitting with which her fingers were always occupied. But she was neither reading nor working; her white hair was scarcely distinguishable under the whiteness of her cap. Her face rigid with sorrow was grey in comparison. She sat without moving, like marble. Calamity had made her severe and terrible, she who had once been kind. She took no notice at first of the fact that some one had come into the room, believing it to be her gentle Agnes, who was nobody, the helpless handmaiden of this despair.
Kirsteen went round the table to the other side of the fire and stood before his mother, saying nothing. Mrs. Drummond raised her eyelids and perceived her with a faint cry. “Who is this come to disturb me? I gave no leave to anybody to come. I can see nobody. Kirsteen Douglas, what are ye wanting here?”
Kirsteen put out her hands with a gesture of supplication. “It is mine,” she said, “it was for me. It is all I have to keep my heart. You are his mother. And I am nothing to him—but for that—”
“No, you were nothing to him,” said the mother looking at her fixedly.
“Except just this,” cried Kirsteen, roused to the full assertion of her claim, “that it was me he thought upon—yonder—that he had my handkerchief—and took it from his breast—and put it to his mouth.”
“Lassie,” said Mrs. Drummond, “how dare ye tell that like an idle tale and put it into common words? It’s written there,” putting her hand on the Bible, “so that I cannot see the word of God; and it’s written here,” she added, laying it on her breast, “on the bosom that nursed him and the heart that’s broken. What are you, a young thing, that will love again and mairry another man, and have bairns at your breast that are not his.” She broke off here, and said again after a moment abruptly, “‘He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow’—but the Lord took no notice of him nor of me!”
Kirsteen sank down upon her knees before this tearless mourner, “Will I tell ye what I am?” she said. “I am young, and we’re a long-lived race—I will maybe live to be a hundred. No bairn will ever be at my breast—no man will ever take my hand. He said to me, ‘Will ye wait till I come back?’ and I said to him, ‘That I will,’ and he took the little napkin from the table that had R. D. on it for Robbie (but yet I thought on him all the time) in my red hair. My mother said her colour was best, but he said it was like a thread of gold—and he touched my arm and made me look, and he put it to his mouth. And he said, ‘Will ye wait?’ And here we sit forlorn!” said Kirsteen, her voice breaking into a shrill and heart-piercing cry.
There was a long pause. And then the rigid woman in the chair rose up like a marble image, her white cap and pallid countenance awful in the dim room like the face and head-coverings of one who had died. She took her keys from a pocket which hung by her side and went across the room to an old-fashioned cabinet, which lent a little glimmer of inlaid mother-o’-pearl and foreign woods to the dim glimmering wainscot. From this she took a box which she carried back with her to her seat, and unlocking it with a trembling hand, took from it again a little packet wrapped in a piece of faded silk. She held it for a moment as if she would have opened it, then suddenly thrust it into Kirsteen’s hands. “Take it,” she said, “and not another word. But if ye’re ever unfaithful to him send it back to me—or bury it in my grave if I’m not here.”