Kirstie had many causes of distress. More and more as we grow old—and
yet more and more as we grow old and are women, frozen by the fear of
age—we come to rely on the voice as the single outlet of the soul. Only
thus, in the curtailment of our means, can we relieve the straitened cry
of the passion within us; only thus, in the bitter and sensitive shyness
of advancing years, can we maintain relations with those vivacious
figures of the young that still show before us and tend daily to become
no more than the moving wall-paper of life. Talk is the last link, the
last relation. But with the end of the conversation, when the voice
stops and the bright face of the listener is turned away, solitude falls
again on the bruised heart. Kirstie had lost her “cannie hour at e’en”;
she could no more wander with Archie, a ghost if you will, but a happy
ghost, in fields Elysian. And to her it was as if the whole world had
fallen silent; to him, but an unremarkable change of amusements. And she
raged to know it. The effervescency of her passionate and irritable
nature rose within her at times to bursting point.
This is the price paid by age for unseasonable ardours of feeling. It
must have been so for Kirstie at any time when the occasion chanced; but
it so fell out that she was deprived of this delight in the hour when she
had most need of it, when she had most to say, most to ask, and when she
trembled to recognise her sovereignty not merely in abeyance but
annulled. For, with the clairvoyance of a genuine love, she had pierced
the mystery that had so long embarrassed Frank. She was conscious, even
before it was carried out, even on that Sunday night when it began, of an
invasion of her rights; and a voice told her the invader’s name. Since
then, by arts, by accident, by small things observed, and by the general
drift of Archie’s humour, she had passed beyond all possibility of doubt.
With a sense of justice that Lord Hermiston might have envied, she had
that day in church considered and admitted the attractions of the younger
Kirstie; and with the profound humanity and sentimentality of her nature,
she had recognised the coming of fate. Not thus would she have chosen.
She had seen, in imagination, Archie wedded to some tall, powerful, and
rosy heroine of the golden locks, made in her own image, for whom she
would have strewed the bride-bed with delight; and now she could have
wept to see the ambition falsified. But the gods had pronounced, and her
doom was otherwise.
She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged with feverish thoughts.
There were dangerous matters pending, a battle was toward, over the fate
of which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and
disloyalty to either side. Now she was reincarnated in her niece, and
now in Archie. Now she saw, through the girl’s eyes, the youth on his
knees to her, heard his persuasive instances with a deadly weakness, and
received his overmastering caresses. Anon, with a revulsion, her temper
raged to see such utmost favours of fortune and love squandered on a brat
of a girl, one of her own house, using her own name—a deadly
ingredient—and that “didna ken her ain mind an’ was as black’s your hat.”
Now she trembled lest her deity should plead in vain, loving the idea of
success for him like a triumph of nature; anon, with returning loyalty to
her own family and sex, she trembled for Kirstie and the credit of the
Elliotts. And again she had a vision of herself, the day over for her
old-world tales and local gossip, bidding farewell to her last link with
life and brightness and love; and behind and beyond, she saw but the
blank butt-end where she must crawl to die. Had she then come to the
lees? she, so great, so beautiful, with a heart as fresh as a girl’s and
strong as womanhood? It could not be, and yet it was so; and for a
moment her bed was horrible to her as the sides of the grave. And she
looked forward over a waste of hours, and saw herself go on to rage, and
tremble, and be softened, and rage again, until the day came and the
labours of the day must be renewed.
Suddenly she heard feet on the stairs—his feet, and soon after the sound
of a window-sash flung open. She sat up with her heart beating. He had
gone to his room alone, and he had not gone to bed. She might again have
one of her night cracks; and at the entrancing prospect, a change came
over her mind; with the approach of this hope of pleasure, all the baser
metal became immediately obliterated from her thoughts. She rose, all
woman, and all the best of woman, tender, pitiful, hating the wrong,
loyal to her own sex—and all the weakest of that dear miscellany,
nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly flattering, hopes
that she would have died sooner than have acknowledged. She tore off her
nightcap, and her hair fell about her shoulders in profusion. Undying
coquetry awoke. By the faint light of her nocturnal rush, she stood
before the looking-glass, carried her shapely arms above her head, and
gathered up the treasures of her tresses. She was never backward to
admire herself; that kind of modesty was a stranger to her nature; and
she paused, struck with a pleased wonder at the sight. “Ye daft auld
wife!” she said, answering a thought that was not; and she blushed with
the innocent consciousness of a child. Hastily she did up the massive
and shining coils, hastily donned a wrapper, and with the rushlight in
her hand, stole into the hall. Below stairs she heard the clock ticking
the deliberate seconds, and Frank jingling with the decanters in the
dining-room. Aversion rose in her, bitter and momentary. “Nesty,
tippling puggy!” she thought; and the next moment she had knocked
guardedly at Archie’s door and was bidden enter.
Archie had been looking out into the ancient blackness, pierced here and
there with a rayless star; taking the sweet air of the moors and the
night into his bosom deeply; seeking, perhaps finding, peace after the
manner of the unhappy. He turned round as she came in, and showed her a
pale face against the window-frame.
“Is that you, Kirstie?” he asked. “Come in!”
“It’s unco late, my dear,” said Kirstie, affecting unwillingness.
“No, no,” he answered, “not at all. Come in, if you want a crack. I am
not sleepy, God knows!”
She advanced, took a chair by the toilet table and the candle, and set
the rushlight at her foot. Something—it might be in the comparative
disorder of her dress, it might be the emotion that now welled in her
bosom—had touched her with a wand of transformation, and she seemed young
with the youth of goddesses.
“Mr. Erchie,” she began, “what’s this that’s come to ye?”
“I am not aware of anything that has come,” said Archie, and blushed, and
repented bitterly that he had let her in.
“O, my dear, that’ll no dae!” said Kirstie. “It’s ill to blend the eyes
of love. O, Mr. Erchie, tak a thocht ere it’s ower late. Ye shouldna be
impatient o’ the braws o’ life, they’ll a’ come in their saison, like the
sun and the rain. Ye’re young yet; ye’ve mony cantie years afore ye.
See and dinna wreck yersel’ at the outset like sae mony ithers! Hae
patience—they telled me aye that was the owercome o’ life—hae patience,
there’s a braw day coming yet. Gude kens it never cam to me; and here I
am, wi’ nayther man nor bairn to ca’ my ain, wearying a’ folks wi’ my ill
tongue, and you just the first, Mr. Erchie!”
“I have a difficulty in knowing what you mean,” said Archie.
“Weel, and I’ll tell ye,” she said. “It’s just this, that I’m feared.
I’m feared for ye, my dear. Remember, your faither is a hard man,
reaping where he hasna sowed and gaithering where he hasna strawed. It’s
easy speakin’, but mind! Ye’ll have to look in the gurly face o’m, where
it’s ill to look, and vain to look for mercy. Ye mind me o’ a bonny ship
pitten oot into the black and gowsty seas—ye’re a’ safe still, sittin’
quait and crackin’ wi’ Kirstie in your lown chalmer; but whaur will ye be
the morn, and in whatten horror o’ the fearsome tempest, cryin’ on the
hills to cover ye?”
“Why, Kirstie, you’re very enigmatical to-night—and very eloquent,”
Archie put in.
“And, my dear Mr. Erchie,” she continued, with a change of voice, “ye
mauna think that I canna sympathise wi’ ye. Ye mauna think that I havena
been young mysel’. Lang syne, when I was a bit lassie, no twenty yet—”
She paused and sighed. “Clean and caller, wi’ a fit like the hinney
bee,” she continned. “I was aye big and buirdly, ye maun understand; a
bonny figure o’ a woman, though I say it that suldna—built to rear
bairns—braw bairns they suld hae been, and grand I would hae likit it!
But I was young, dear, wi’ the bonny glint o’ youth in my e’en, and
little I dreamed I’d ever be tellin’ ye this, an auld, lanely, rudas
wife! Weel, Mr. Erchie, there was a lad cam’ courtin’ me, as was but
naetural. Mony had come before, and I would nane o’ them. But this yin
had a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and the bees frae the
foxglove bells. Deary me, but it’s lang syne! Folk have dee’d sinsyne
and been buried, and are forgotten, and bairns been born and got merrit
and got bairns o’ their ain. Sinsyne woods have been plantit, and have
grawn up and are bonny trees, and the joes sit in their shadow, and
sinsyne auld estates have changed hands, and there have been wars and
rumours of wars on the face of the earth. And here I’m still—like an
auld droopit craw—lookin’ on and craikin’! But, Mr. Erchie, do ye no
think that I have mind o’ it a’ still? I was dwalling then in my
faither’s house; and it’s a curious thing that we were whiles trysted in
the Deil’s Hags. And do ye no think that I have mind of the bonny simmer
days, the lang miles o’ the bluid-red heather, the cryin’ of the whaups,
and the lad and the lassie that was trysted? Do ye no think that I mind
how the hilly sweetness ran about my hairt? Ay, Mr. Erchie, I ken the
way o’ it—fine do I ken the way—how the grace o’ God takes them, like
Paul of Tarsus, when they think it least, and drives the pair o’ them
into a land which is like a dream, and the world and the folks in’t’ are
nae mair than clouds to the puir lassie, and heeven nae mair than
windle-straes, if she can but pleesure him! Until Tam dee’d—that was my
story,” she broke off to say, “he dee’d, and I wasna at the buryin’. But
while he was here, I could take care o’ mysel’. And can yon puir
lassie?”
Kirstie, her eyes shining with unshed tears, stretched out her hand
towards him appealingly; the bright and the dull gold of her hair flashed
and smouldered in the coils behind her comely head, like the rays of an
eternal youth; the pure colour had risen in her face; and Archie was
abashed alike by her beauty and her story. He came towards her slowly
from the window, took up her hand in his and kissed it.
“Kirstie,” he said hoarsely, “you have misjudged me sorely. I have
always thought of her, I wouldna harm her for the universe, my woman!”
“Eh, lad, and that’s easy sayin’,” cried Kirstie, “but it’s nane sae easy
doin’! Man, do ye no comprehend that it’s God’s wull we should be
blendit and glamoured, and have nae command over our ain members at a
time like that? My bairn,” she cried, still holding his hand, “think o’
the puir lass! have pity upon her, Erchie! and O, be wise for twa! Think
o’ the risk she rins! I have seen ye, and what’s to prevent ithers! I
saw ye once in the Hags, in my ain howl, and I was wae to see ye there—in
pairt for the omen, for I think there’s a weird on the place—and in pairt
for pure nakit envy and bitterness o’ hairt. It’s strange ye should
forgather there tae! God! but yon puir, thrawn, auld Covenanter’s seen a
heap o’ human natur since he lookit his last on the musket barrels, if he
never saw nane afore,” she added, with a kind of wonder in her eyes.
“I swear by my honour I have done her no wrong,” said Archie. “I swear
by my honour and the redemption of my soul that there shall none be done
her. I have heard of this before. I have been foolish, Kirstie, not
unkind, and, above all, not base.”
“There’s my bairn!” said Kirstie, rising. “I’ll can trust ye noo, I’ll
can gang to my bed wi’ an easy hairt.” And then she saw in a flash how
barren had been her triumph. Archie had promised to spare the girl, and
he would keep it; but who had promised to spare Archie? What was to be
the end of it? Over a maze of difficulties she glanced, and saw, at the
end of every passage, the flinty countenance of Hermiston. And a kind of
horror fell upon her at what she had done. She wore a tragic mask.
“Erchie, the Lord peety you, dear, and peety me! I have buildit on this
foundation”—laying her hand heavily on his shoulder—“and buildit hie, and
pit my hairt in the buildin’ of it. If the hale hypothec were to fa’, I
think, laddie, I would dee! Excuse a daft wife that loves ye, and that
kenned your mither. And for His name’s sake keep yersel’ frae inordinate
desires; haud your heart in baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh;
dinna send it up like a hairn’s kite into the collieshangic o’ the wunds!
Mind, Maister Erchie dear, that this life’s a’ disappointment, and a
mouthfu’ o’ mools is the appointed end.”
“Ay, but Kirstie, my woman, you’re asking me ower much at last,” said
Archie, profoundly moved, and lapsing into the broad Scots. “Ye’re
asking what nae man can grant ye, what only the Lord of heaven can grant
ye if He see fit. Ay! And can even He! I can promise ye what I shall
do, and you can depend on that. But how I shall feel—my woman, that is
long past thinking of!”
They were both standing by now opposite each other. The face of Archie
wore the wretched semblance of a smile; hers was convulsed for a moment.
“Promise me ae thing,” she cried in a sharp voice. “Promise me ye’ll
never do naething without telling me.”
“No, Kirstie, I canna promise ye that,” he replied. “I have promised
enough, God kens!”
“May the blessing of God lift and rest upon ye dear!” she said.
“God bless ye, my old friend,” said he.