Kirsteen did not seclude herself for long. While the girls were still
whispering to each other, not without some awe, of the sudden shock
which she had evidently received, of her deathlike look, her struggle to
maintain her composure, her rejection of all inquiries, she had returned
among them, had taken up the silk again, and resumed what she was doing.
There was scarcely a word said after Kirsteen came back. The young women
all bent over their sewing, and their needles flew through their work.
The presence among them of this one tragic face, perfectly colourless,
self-commanded, silent, wrapped in an abstraction which nobody could
penetrate, had the strangest impressive effect upon them. They did not
dare to speak even to each other, but signed to each other for things
they wanted, and worked like so many machines, fearing even to turn
their eyes towards her. Miss Jean, quite unable to control herself after
this mysterious blow which she had given without knowing, had retired to
the parlour, where she sat alone and cried, she knew not why. Oh, if she
had but held her tongue, if she had not been so ready to go and read the
news to them! Kirsteen, so busy as she was, might never have seen it,
might never have known. Miss Jean read the paragraph over and over
again, till she could have repeated it by heart. She found lower down a
list of the names of those who had been killed and wounded, but this
brought no enlightenment to her, for she did not know Drumcarro, or the
names of the neighbours near. She had to lay it away as an insoluble
mystery, not able to comprehend how, from so few details as there were,
and without even hearing any name, Kirsteen should have at once been
killed, as it were, by this mysterious blow. How did she know who he
was, the poor gentleman who had died with the white handkerchief pressed
to his dying lips? It was a very touching incident, Miss Jean had
herself thought. No doubt, she had said to herself, there was a story
under it. She had shed a sudden, quick-springing tear over the poor
young man on the field of battle, and then, in her desire to communicate
the touching tale, had hurried to the work-room without further
thought--how, she asked herself, could she have known that it would hurt
any one? What meaning was there in it that Kirsteen alone could know?
It was late when the workwomen, who lived out of doors, went away. They
had gone through a long and tiring day, with no amusement of any sort,
or reading or talk to brighten it. But somehow they had not felt it
so--they all felt as if they had been acting their parts in a tragedy,
as if the poor young officer on the Indian plains had held some
relationship to themselves. The silence which nobody enjoined, which
nature herself exacted from them, burst into a tumult of low-breathed
talk the moment they left the house. They discussed her looks, the awful
whiteness of her face, the shock of that sudden, unsoftened
communication, without asking, as Miss Jean did, how she could have
known. Miss Jean heard their voices, first low and awe-stricken, rising
in eagerness and loudness as they got further from the house. But it was
not till some time later that Kirsteen came in. She had been at work in
a violent, absorbed, passionate way, doing with incredible swiftness and
determination everything her hand had found to do. She had an air of
great weariness, the exhaustion which means excitement and not repose,
when she came in. She threw a glance round the room looking for the
paper, which Miss Jean had put carefully out of sight. Kirsteen went to
the table and turned over everything that was on it, groping in a sort
of blind way.
“You are looking for something, my dear?”
“Yes--where is it?”
“What might ye be looking for?” said Miss Jean, trembling very much, and
with the tears coming to her eyes.
“Where is it?” Kirsteen said. She was perfectly still and quiet, her
voice low, her face very white, her eyes cast down. It was evident that
she felt no need of explanation, nor power of giving one. There was but
one thing for her in the world, and that was the paper with the
news--which at the first hearing had gone like a stone to the bottom of
her heart, like a sword piercing through and through.
Miss Jean had no power to resist or to pretend that she did not
understand. She rose, trembling, and unlocked her escritoire and brought
the paper out, fumbling in the depths of a pigeon-hole in which she had
buried it, that it might never be seen more. She was very tremulous, her
face drawn, her eyes full of moisture. “I canna think how you could make
anything out of that,” she said almost querulously in the excess of her
feeling. “There’s nothing, nothing in that, to say who it was. No person
could divine. It might be somebody you never heard of.”
It is possible that after the utter and undoubting convictions of the
first moment such a thought might have come to Kirsteen’s mind too. She
put out her hand for the paper. Miss Jean kept on talking in a fretful
tone. “You’ve had no tea, not a thing since two o’clock, and now it’s
eleven at night--you’ve had no rest--work, work, as if your bread
depended on it; and it’s no such thing. I suppose you think you’re made
of something different from the ordinary, no mere flesh and blood.”
Kirsteen paid no attention. She did not hear, the words were as a vague
accompaniment, like the sound of wheels and faint voices and footsteps
out of doors. She opened the paper with steady nervous hands that did
not tremble, and read over again every word. Then she turned to the list
“Casualties.” Casualties! Accidents!--was that a word to use for the
list of the dead? When she had read it her hands dropped on her knee
with the paper held in them, and from her colourless lips there came a
faint sound, inarticulate, hoarse, the knell of hope. There had not been
any hope in her heart: but to say that and to know that hope is over,
are two things. In the one there was still a possibility--the other was
death itself. Oh, the possibility had been very faint, very feeble! She
had worked on all day, struggled on to preserve it, not asking for
conviction. Sometimes to know the worst is what we desire. Sometimes we
would prefer to put it from us, not to make sure, for a little. But
there it was: no further doubt, “Captain Drummond;” his name and no
other. “Will ye wait till I come back?” He was standing by her, saying
it--and lying there--with the handkerchief. It was all past, the whole
story, as if it had happened a hundred years ago.
“Miss Kirsteen--most likely you are making yourself miserable about
nothing. How can ye tell by a story like that who it is? Oh, my bonny
dear, I am asking no questions, but to see you like that just breaks my
heart.”
Kirsteen smiled in spite of herself at the idea of any heart being
broken but her own, of any one being miserable who had not known him,
who had never seen him, who did not even know his name. She said nothing
for a few moments and then she spoke with a voice quite tuneless and
flat, but steady. “Miss Jean--I will have to go for a day or two--to
the Highlands.”
“Certainly, my dear--whenever ye please,” said Miss Jean, though not
without a catching of her breath; for who would look after the work,
with herself so much out of the use of it, and the season still so
_throng_?
“Not to leave you--with so much in hand--why should I?” said Kirsteen,
“it’s not as if it was for anybody but me. But so soon as can be: just
the time to go and to come back.”
“Oh, my dear young lady--whenever ye please, and for as long as ye
please: but ye will come back?”
Kirsteen smiled again faintly. “Oh, yes, I will come back--there will be
nothing more, no fighting nor battles--nothing to stop me--and
nobody--to wait for me”--she added, “as I would have been content to
wait--I was very content--just to think he was coming--some time. But
that’s over--just an old story. It is time to shut up the house and go
to our beds.”
“Oh, my darlin’ bairn! Dinna shut it all up like that. Tell me about
it--or if you will not tell me, oh, dear Miss Kirsteen, let the tears
flow!”
“My eyes are dry and so is my throat, Miss Jean, I cannot speak--I
cannot cry--I’m not one for telling---- Good-night--I will just go away
to my bed.”
She lighted her candle which threw a strange new light upon her
colourless face, and the rings of hair upon her milk-white forehead out
of which nothing could take the colour. Kirsteen’s face even now had
not the meekness and patience of a saint, but her hair was like an
aureole round her wan countenance. She was going out of the room without
saying any more, when she suddenly bethought herself, and coming back
went up to Miss Jean, and kissed her--a very unusual ceremony between
these two shy Scotswomen. The old lady coloured to the edge of her grey
hair with pleasure and surprise. “Oh, Miss Kirsteen,” she said--
“You are very kind--you are just a mother. You are like my Marg’ret,”
Kirsteen said. That name brought a rush of tears to her eyes for the
first time. Marg’ret alone in all the world would know--Marg’ret would
not need to be told. If she could lay her head on Marg’ret’s shoulder
then her heart might break in peace. She had to bind it up now with
bands of iron--for there was nobody in the world save him and her and
Marg’ret that knew.
The workroom continued very _throng_ for ten days or so longer, and
during this time Kirsteen worked like two women. She had never been so
inventive, so full of new combinations. With her white face, and without
a smile, she stood over Lady Chatty, that grand lay-figure and
advertising medium for the mantua-maker, and made her glorious with
beautiful garments--beautiful according to the fashion of the time and
all that Kirsteen knew: for no genius (in dress) can over-step these
limits. Lady Chatty, full of affection and kindness, soon discovered the
something which was wrong. She put her hands on either side of
Kirsteen’s face and compelled her friend to look at her. “What ails
you, Kirsteen? Oh, what ails you?” “Nothing,” Kirsteen said. “Oh, don’t
tell me it is nothing. You look as if you had died and it was the ghost
of Kirsteen that was here.” Kirsteen smiled up on the beautiful face
looking so anxiously into hers, and said, “Maybe that is just true,” but
would say no more. And the business in the workroom was done with a sort
of passion by everybody there. They had heard that as soon as the press
was over Miss Kirsteen was going away. They did not exchange any
exhortations, but by one consent they addressed themselves to their work
with an unspoken thought that the sooner they were done the sooner she
would be released. It was partly that the sight of her became
intolerable to these emotional spectators, who had each a private vision
of her own of the tragedy. Had Kirsteen wept and raved and got over it
they would have wept with her and consoled her; but the anguish which
did not weep, which said nothing, was more than they could bear. They
were all silent round the long table, bending over their work, working
as some one of them said, “as if it were a large mourning order and all
for sum ’un of one’s own.” And the season was just at its end--Kirsteen
held her place till the last great ball was over, and then she went
away.
No difficulty now about paying for the coach or procuring her seat. She
was no longer afraid of any danger on the road, or of the world unknown.
The whirl of progress through the great country, through the towns and
villages, across the long level plains of England, no longer filled her
with that vague mystery and ecstasy of being which belonged to her first
journey. The movement, it was true, gave a certain solace to her pain.
The complete silence in which no one could ask her a question, fenced
off as that was by the surrounding of incessant sound, the tramp of the
horses, the jar of the wheels, the murmurs of the voices, was a relief
to her from the daily intercourse of ordinary life. After she got to
Glasgow she had to think over her further route. She had no desire to
reveal herself, to let any one know she had come. Her mission was almost
a secret one; to make it known would have gone against all the
sanctities of memory; therefore, Kirsteen would not even give herself
the pleasure of seeing Marg’ret, of sending for her at some wayside
corner, or in some village as she had once thought of doing. She drove
from Glasgow in postchaises where it was possible, in country gigs or
carts, where no better could be had, avoiding all the places where she
might be recognized. She embarked in a smack upon the Clyde and sat
forlorn upon the deck watching the hills and islands drifting by, as if
they were part of a much prolonged and almost endless dream. It was
July, the brightest month of the year, and the weather was one blaze of
brightness, as if to mock Kirsteen whose heart was sick of the sunshine.
There was nothing but sunshine everywhere, over the hills, bringing out
the glistening of a hundred burns over their slopes, and making the
lochs and the great river into shimmering paths of gold. It made her
heart sick to see it all so bright, and him lying far away with that
handkerchief to his lips.
And at last Kirsteen came in the gloaming, at the softened hour, the
hour most full of love and longing, to his mother’s gate.