“True loves I may get many an ane,
But minnie ne’er anither.”
These words kept wandering through her mind involuntarily while the tears fell down, and her mouth quivered with something like a smile. The futile contrast now, to her who could have no true love but one, and no second mother. She went on very softly in the dark, as in a dream, feeling in her face the freshness of the mountain air and the turn of the night towards morning—silently weeping as she walked. The greater of her losses was altogether secret, a thing to be known of none. Neither of her sorrows was for the public eye. Her life, which was so far from this and so different, awaited her with labours and cares unknown to this solitude, and she had much to do with which no loss or sorrow could interfere. She was to be the stand-by of the family, she who had fled from it to find a shelter among strangers. She must not even sit down to weep for her mother. Only thus could she allow herself the indulgence of tears. The darkness was sweet to her, wrapping her round, keeping all her secrets. The heavens did not open to show her any beatitude, the landscape which she loved was all hidden away as if it did not exist. Nor were there any ecstatic thoughts in her heart of reunion or heavenly rapture. There was a long, long weary road stretching before her, years that seemed endless going on and on, through which she must walk, weeping only in the dark, smiling and busy through the day. Kirsteen made up her mind to all that was before her in that solitary walk, going towards her desolate home. In a day or two she would have left it, probably for ever, and gone back to a manifold and many-coloured life. The stand-by of the family! She had always intended this, and now there was consecration on her head.
The lights in Drumcarro shone blurred through the dark, a window here and there with rays of reflection round it hanging suspended in the night, no walls visible, a faint illumination for the dead. Duncan’s wife had come in to help, and a silent, solemn bustle was going on, sad, yet not without an enjoyment in it. Merran went and came up and down stairs with an occasional sniff and sob, and the importance of a great event was in the hushed house. Save for a birth or marriage there had never been so much suppressed excitement in Drumcarro—even Marg’ret was swept by it, and moved about, observing many punctilios, with a tremor of emotion which was not altogether painful. She had put the best sheets upon the bed, and covered the looking-glass with white, and put away everything that belonged to the usages of life. Kirsteen paused for a moment to look at the white, serene face upon the pillows, with all the white, cold surroundings of the death chamber—and then went noiselessly into the room which had been her own, where Jeanie lay fast asleep, exhausted with sorrow and trouble, upon one of the beds. She undressed for the first time since she had left London, and lay down on the other. But she was too tired and overworn to sleep. She lay with wide-open eyes in the dark, thinking over and over all the circumstances through which she found herself again an inmate of her father’s house. It seemed an endless time before the first greyness of dawn crept into the room, carrying with it a whole world of the past, beginning, as it seemed to Kirsteen, a new life of which she but dimly realized the burdens and anxieties. There was her father to think of, how he would receive her now that the protection of her mother’s dying presence was withdrawn. Whether he would allow her to stay—and what she could answer to Jeanie’s cry of distress, “Oh, take me with you!” Anne was a fool and yet she had spoken wisely. The daughter who had herself escaped from home was the last who could take another away. Perhaps the bonds of nature seemed all the stronger now to Kirsteen because she had herself broken them, because even now she shuddered at the thought of being again bound by them. Even when it is but an interval of a few years which has made the change, a woman who has gone out into the world and encountered life is slow to believe that a girl’s troubles can be so heavy as to warrant such a step. They were in her own case she may allow—but how to believe that there is anything in a father’s power tragic enough to make life unbearable for another, or how in Jeanie’s childlike existence such a necessity should arise, made Kirsteen smile with half shame of herself who had set the example, half amazement at her little sister’s exaggerated feelings. It could be nothing surely but fear of her father’s jibes and frowns. Neither of these things alarmed Kirsteen now. And who could be harsh to Jeanie?—not even her father, though she was but a girl!
While the elder sister thought thus, the younger stirred a little and turned towards her. The daylight was still grey but clear enough to make the sweet little countenance visible. Jeanie’s yellow hair was all decently smoothed under her nightcap according to the decorous fashion of the time. And the little frilled cap surrounding her face made her look something between an infant and a nun, unspeakably childlike, innocent and pure to her sister’s admiring eyes. But Jeanie’s face grew agitated and unquiet as the faint light stole over it and the moment of waking approached. She put out her hands and seemed to clutch at something in the air—“I will not go—I will not go—I will go with none but Kirsteen,” she cried in her sleep. Then, her voice growing thick and hurried, “No—no—I’ll not do it—I’ll never go—no, no, no.” Jeanie struggled in her dream as if she were being dragged away struggling with something stronger than herself. Suddenly she woke, and sat up in her bed with a dazed look round her, and trouble in every line of her puckered eyelids. “What is it, Jeanie?” She turned round and saw Kirsteen, with a sudden lightening of her countenance, as if the sun had risen, “Oh, Kirsteen, if you’re there! nobody will meddle with me if you’re there!” “What is it—what is it, Jeanie?” Jeanie looked round again as if still unassured. “I was only dreaming,” she said.
And there was little time for further inquiries since Marg’ret just then came into the room. She was very tender to Jeanie but anxious to get her roused and dressed and sent down stairs, “to give the laddies, poor things, their breakfast.” Marg’ret had restrained herself with a great effort that neither might be disturbed before the time after such a broken night. She herself had not been in bed at all, and felt it quite natural that it should be so, her fatigue going off with the coming of the morning, and a still excitement filling all her veins. The loss of the mistress was perhaps more to Marg’ret than to any one in the house; but Kirsteen too was more to her than any other. She would have a long time to indulge her grief, but not long to hear the story and enter into all the feelings of her child. She had restrained with what was a true self-sacrifice her eagerness and loving curiosity. When she sat down now by Kirsteen’s bedside it was with a sigh of satisfaction and relief. “And now, my own bairn, the pride of my heart!” Marg’ret said.
The conversation lasted a long time. Their letters had been frequent for the habit of the time, once every quarter of a year at the least they had exchanged their good wishes and such information to each other about the other as could be conveyed by “hand o’ write”; but neither of them had any habit of letter-writing, and there was much to be added, to fill in the framework of fact which Kirsteen had communicated from time to time. Everything indeed had to be told from the time of her arrival in London until the present moment. Marg’ret sat crying softly, holding her hands, keeping up a low murmur of commentary. “Eh, but I’m glad my sister Jean had it in her power.” “Eh, but she’s a fortunate woman to have ye!” “Eh, if I had but been there!” she exclaimed at intervals, pride and satisfaction mingled with an envy of her sister which Marg’ret’s better feeling could scarcely overcome. “I am just an ill woman, full of envy and all uncharitableness. I would fain, fain have been the one. I would have held ye up in my arms, and let no harm come near ye! I couldna have seen your bonny fingers spoilt with sewing,” she cried with outbursts of tears. But when Kirsteen came to the story of the last year, Marg’ret listened upon her knees, her head bent down upon the hands which she held clasped in her own, a few sobs bursting from her breast, her lips pressed in a passion of sympathy which had no words upon Kirsteen’s hands. The story was told very briefly in a few words. And then that chapter was closed, and no more was said.
“What is it that ails Jeanie?” asked Kirsteen, after she had come to the end of her tale, and Marg’ret had resumed her seat by the bed. “Tell me what has happened to her; there is something on her mind.”
“Hoots,” said Marg’ret drying her eyes, “there is little on it, but what is on most lassies’ minds—most likely a braw marriage so far as I can see. There is a gentleman that is up in yon lodge on the hill above Glendyer. It’s said to be for the fishing—but first it was said to be for the shooting—and my opinion is it’s neither for the one nor the other, but for our bit bonny Jeanie. It is just what I always said, even to the Laird himself. She is the bonniest creature in all this country from Clyde to the sea.”
“But she would not start in her sleep like that, nor cry and pray to me to take her with me, if that was all. And who is the man?”