“And was there no one came the way?” he asked. “Was I not worth it, do you think?” she replied, yet smiling in her tears. “Oh, Gilian, not this old woman, mind you, but the woman I was. And yet—and yet, it is true, no one came; or if they came, they never came that I wanted.” “And he?” said Gilian.
She paused and sighed, her thin little hands, so white for all their toil in that hard barracks, playing upon her lap. “He never had the chance. My father’s parlour had no welcome, a soldier’s household left no vacant hours for an only daughter’s gallivanting. I had to be content to look at him—the one I mean—from the window, see him in the church or passing up and down the street. They had up Dr. Brash at me—I mind his horn specs, and him looking at my tongue and ordering a phlebotomy. What I wanted was the open air, a chance of youth, and a dance on the green. Instead of that it was always ‘Hof Mary!’ and ‘Here, Mary,’ and ‘What are you wasting your time for, Mary?’” She was all in a tremble, moist no more with tears, but red and troubled at her eyes. “And then—then—then he married her. If he had taken any one else it would not have seemed so hard. I think I hated her for it. It was long before I discovered they were chief, for my brothers that were out and in kept it from me for their own reasons, and they never kent my feeling. But when she was cried and married and kirked, each time it was a dagger at my heart. Amn’t I the stupid old cailleach, my dear, to be talking of such a thing? But oh! to see them on the street together; to see him coming home on his furloughs—I am sure I could not be but unfond of her then! I mind once I wished her dead, that maybe he might—he might see something in me still. That was when Nan was born and—”
“What,” cried Gilian, “and was he Nan’s father? I—I did not know.”
She turned upon him an old face spoiled by the memories of the moment. “Who else would it be, my dear?” said she, as if that settled it. “And you are the first in the world I mentioned it to. He has never seen me close in the face to guess it for himself, before or since. It might have happened if I wished, after, but that was the punishment I gave myself for my unholy thought about my friend his wife.”
“Ah, little Auntie, little Auntie,” said he in Gaelic “Little Auntie, little Auntie!” No more than that, and yet his person was stormy with grief for her old sorrow. He put his arm about her neck now—surely never Highland lad did that before in their position, and tenderly, as if he had practised it for years, he pressed her to his breast and side.
“And is it all by now but a recollection?” said he softly.
“All by long syne,” said she, dashing the tears from her face and clearing herself from that unusual embrace. “Sometimes I’ll be thinking it was better as it was, for I see many wives and husbands, and the dead fire they sit at is less cheery than one made but never lighted. You mustn’t be laughing at an old lady, Gilian.”
“I would never be doing that, God knows,” he answered solemnly.
“And I am sure you would not, my dear,” she said, looking trustfully at him; “though sometimes I must be laughing at myself for such a folly. Lads and lasses have spoken to me about their courtships and their trials, and they never knew that I had anything but an old maid’s notion of the thing. And that’s the way with yourself, is it not, Gilian? Will you tell me now?”
Still he hung hesitating.