“Yes, I am just Miss Jean,” said the mistress of the house, holding her candle so as to throw its full light on Kirsteen’s face. “But who are you? I dinna ken ye. You’re from the auld country, that’s easy to be seen; but I canna take in every Scots lass that comes with Miss Jean in her mouth. Who are ye, lassie? But ye’re no a common lass. The Lord keep us, ye’ll never be my sister Marg’ret’s young leddy from Drumcarro?”
Miss Jean put down her candle hastily on a table, and took Kirsteen’s hands. “You’re cauld and you’re in a tremble, and ye dinna say a word. Come in, come in to the fire, and tell me, bairn, if it’s you.”
Then there followed a few moments or minutes in which Kirsteen did not know what happened. But the clouds cleared away and she found herself in a room full of warm firelight, seated in a great chair, and herself saying (as if it was another person), “I thought I had got home and that it was Marg’ret.”
“But you called me Miss Jean.”
“Ah,” said Kirsteen, now fully aware what she was saying and no longer feeling like another person. “I knew it was Miss Jean, but it was my Marg’ret too. It was maybe this,” she said, touching the white apron, “but it was mostly your kind, kind eyne.”
“I’m feared you’re a flatterer,” said Miss Jean; “my eyne might be once worth taking notice of, but not now. But you’re just worn out, and famishing, and cauld and tired. Eh, to think a Miss Douglas of Drumcarro should come to my house like this, and nobody to meet you, or receive you, or pay you any attention! It was just an inspiration that I went to the door myself. But your room will be ready in a moment, and ye shall have some supper and a cup of tea.” She paused a moment and cast a glance round. “Did you bring your—luggage with ye?” she said.
Kirsteen laughed, but blushed a little. “I have nothing but my bundle; I came away in such a hurry—and on my feet.”
Miss Jean blushed far more than Kirsteen did. She “thought shame for the servants.” “We must say ye left it at the office and it’s coming to-morrow,” she said anxiously. And then care and warmth and a sense of well-being and comfort and rest so enveloped Kirsteen that she remembered little more. There was a coming and going of various faces into the light, a bustle of preparation, Miss Jean’s keys taken out and brought back, consultations about the spare room, and the well-aired sheets, through all of which she sat happy and passive, seeing and hearing everything once more as if she were another person. The dark seas seemed to have been traversed, the unknown depths fathomed, and paradise attained. Perhaps the blazing fire, the fragrant tea, the little hasty meal, were not very paradisaical elements; but even these creature comforts acquire a sentiment after a long tedious journey, especially when the tired traveller retains all the quick sensations of youth, and is delivered from the horrible exaggerated terrors of inexperience as well as the mere fatigue of body and soul.
CHAPTER XXII.
The journey over and the end attained! This was the thought that came to Kirsteen’s mind as she opened her eyes upon the morning—not so tired, she reflected, as she had been at the inn at Arrochar, at Mrs. Macfarlane’s, after her first day’s walk. Was that a year ago? she asked herself. The adventures by the way, the long lines of loch and hill, the villages and the silent kirks which had seemed to make her safer whenever she saw them, the great flaring dark image of Glasgow, relieved by the sight of Anne and her babies, and the green with the bleaching, the whirl of the long unbroken journey, rattling, jolting, rolling, hour after hour through day and night—the strange passage in the dark through unknown London, and finally this little room in which she opened her eyes, lying still and closing them again to enjoy the sensation of rest, then opening them to see the yellow fog of the morning like a veil against the two small windows already shrouded by curtains, to which Kirsteen was unaccustomed and which seemed to shut out all air and light—if that could be called light that pressed upon the panes with a yellow solidity just touched by a wintry sun. Were all her journeyings over, and had she reached the new world in which she was to live?