BACK FROM THE GRAVE
When David came in to supper, he said nothing, expecting Kirsty every
moment to appear. Marion was the first to ask what had become of her.
David answered she had left him in the workshop.
‘Bless the bairn! what can she be aboot this time o’ nicht?’ said her
mother.
‘I kenna,’ returned David.
When they had sat eating their supper for ten minutes, vainly expecting
her, David went out to look for her. Returning unsuccessful, he found
that Marion had sought her all over the house with like result. Then
they became uneasy.
Before going to look for her, however, David had begun to suspect her
absence in one way or another connected with the subject of their
conversation in the workshop, to which he had not for the moment meant
to allude. When now he told his wife what had passed, he was a little
surprised to find that immediately she grew calm.
‘Ow, than, she’ll be wi’ Steenie!’ she said.
Nor did her patience fail, but revived that of her husband. They could
not, however, go to bed, but sat by the fire, saying a word or two now
and then. The slow minutes passed, and neither of them moved save David
once to put on peats.
The house-door flew open suddenly, and they heard Kirsty cry, ‘Mother,
mother!’ but when they hastened to the door, no one was there. They
heard the door of her room close, however, and Marion went up the
stair. By the time she reached it, Kirsty was in a thick petticoat and
buttoned-up cloth-jacket, had a pair of shoes on her bare feet, and was
glowing a ‘celestial rosy-red.’ David stood where he was, and in half a
minute Kirsty came in three leaps down the stair to him, to say that
Francie was lying in the weem. In less than a minute the old soldier
was out with the stable-lantern, harnessing one of the horses, the
oldest in the stable, good at standing, and not a bad walker. He called
for no help, yet was round at the door so speedily as to astonish even
Kirsty, who stood with her mother in the entrance by a pile of bedding.
They put a mattress in the bottom of the cart, and plenty of blankets.
Kirsty got in, lay down and covered herself up, to make the rough
ambulance warm, and David drove off. They soon reached the _weem_ and
entered it.
The moment Kirsty had lighted the candle,
‘Lassie,’ cried David, ‘there’s been a wuman here!’
‘It luiks like it,’ answered Kirsty: ‘I was here mysel, father!’
‘Ay, ay! of coorse, but here’s claes--wuman’s claes! Whaur cam they
frae? Wha’s claes can they be?’
‘Wha’s but mine?’ returned Kirsty, as she stooped to remove from his
face the garment that covered his head.
‘The Lord preserve ’s!--to the verra stockins upo’ the han’s o’ ’m!’
‘I had no dreid, father, o’ the Lord seein me as he made me!’
‘Lassie,’ cried David, with heartfelt admiration, ‘ye sud hae been
dother til a field-mershall.’
‘I wudna be dother til a king!’ returned Kirsty. ‘Gien I hed to be born
again, I wudna be born ’cep it was to Dauvid Barclay.’
‘My ain lassie!’ murmured her father. ‘But, eh,’ he added, interrupting
his own thoughts, ‘we maun haud oor tongues till we’ve dune the thing
we’re sent to du!’
They bent at once to their task.
David was a strong man still, and Kirsty was as good at a lift as most
men. They had no difficulty in raising Gordon between them, David
taking his head and Kirsty his feet, but it was not without difficulty
they got him through the passage. In the cart they covered him so that,
had he been a new-born baby, he could have taken no harm except it were
by suffocation, and then, Kirsty sitting with his head in her lap, they
drove home as fast as the old horse could step out.
In the meantime Marion had got her best room ready, and warm. When they
reached it, Francie was certainly still alive, and they made haste to
lay him in the hot feather-bed. In about an hour they thought he
swallowed a little milk. Neither Kirsty nor her parents went to bed
that night, and by one or other of them the patient was constantly
attended.
Kirsty took the first watch, and was satisfied that his breathing grew
more regular, and by and by stronger. After a while it became like that
of one in a troubled sleep. He moved his head a little, and murmured
like one dreaming painfully. She called her father, and told him he was
saying words she could not understand. He took her place and sat near
him, when presently his soldier-ears, still sharp, heard indications of
a hot siege. Once he started up on his elbow, and put his hand to the
side of his head. For a moment he looked wildly awake, then sank back
and went to sleep again.
As Marion was by him in the morning, all at once he spoke again, and
more plainly.
‘Go away, mother!’ he said. ‘I am not mad. I am only troubled in my
mind. I will tell my father you killed me.’
Marion tried to rouse him, telling him his mother should not come near
him. He did not seem to understand, but apparently her words soothed
him, for he went to sleep once more.
He was gaunt and ghastly to look at. The scar on his face, which Kirsty
had taken for the mark of her whip, but which was left by the splinter
that woke him, remained red and disfiguring. But the worst of his look
was in his eyes, whose glances wandered about uneasy and searching. It
was clear all was not right with his brain. I doubt if any other of his
tenants would have recognized him.
For a good many days he was like one awake yet dreaming, always
dreading something, invariably starting when the door opened, and when
quietest would lie gazing at the one by his bedside as if puzzled. He
took in general what food they brought him, but at times refused it
quite. They never left him alone for more than a moment.
So far were they from giving him up to his mother, that the mere idea
of letting her know he was with them never entered the mind of one of
them. To the doctor, whom at once they had called in, there was no need
to explain the right by which they constituted themselves his
guardians: anyone would have judged it better for him to be with them
than with her. David said to himself that when Francie wanted to leave
them he should go; but he had sought refuge with them, and he should
have it: nothing should make him give him up except legal compulsion.