Some time after this, when everything connected with this incident was
over, Kirsteen received one morning a visitor, very different from the
usual frequenters of the house. The subsequent mails had brought no
further details of Ronald’s fate, at least to her. His mother had done
everything of which a woman’s magnanimity was capable in giving her that
sacred relic; but to make further communication of the further news that
came in fragments from one correspondent and another was not in either
of their thoughts. Information was not what these women thought of. They
had no habit of learning every detail as we have now. The event came
like a bombshell upon them, shattering their hearts and hopes--and that
was all, they looked for no more. It was accordingly with no
expectations of any kind that Kirsteen received the visitor who was
Major Gordon, the young Waterloo man whom his mother had brought to
honour the little gathering at Miss Jean’s house. He had been in India
since all the fighting had ceased in Europe, for his living and fortune
depended upon active service, and India meant increased pay and
increased opportunities under the liberal sway of the Company, without
any derogation from the pretensions of the King’s officers who thought
more of themselves than the leaders of the Company’s troops. Major
Gordon was a brave officer, and had been in as much fighting as any man
of his years could boast. But he was somewhat shy when he called on
Kirsteen, and stood with his hat in his hand moving from one foot to
another as if he had not been a perfect master of his drill. He said
that his mother had thought he had better call to see Miss Douglas after
his return--that he had been so fortunate as to meet Colonel Douglas in
India, who was hoping soon to have a furlough home--and that he hoped he
saw Miss Douglas well and Miss Brown too, who had always been so kind to
his mother. Kirsteen in her black gown was a somewhat imposing figure,
and the thought that this visitor had come straight from India took the
colour, which had begun to come back, from her cheek. A black dress was
not then, as in our days, the commonest of feminine garments--and his
eyes seemed to take an expression of anxiety as they returned again and
again to her, which Kirsteen did not understand. He told her that he
had come home with his regiment sooner than he had expected, for that
India was now the only place in which a soldier could push his fortune.
“Or lose his life,” she said.
“One may lose one’s life anywhere--but to vegetate without the means of
doing anything, without being able to take a step of any kind--to
settle--to marry,” said the young soldier with a slight blush and
laugh--“to take a place of one’s own.”
“Oh,” said Kirsteen, “to live and do well will be enough to make your
mother happy--and others that belong to you--if you think of them that
have been left lying on many a field--”
“I acknowledge that,” he said, “many and many a better man than I--but
to die a soldier’s death is always what one looks forward to--better
than living an idle life and cumbering the ground.”
“You will not do that,” said Kirsteen with a smile. She might have been
his mother’s contemporary instead of his own, so far remote did she feel
from all such agitation as was expressed in the young man’s awkwardness
and earnestness. It did not occur to Kirsteen as it might have done to
an ordinary young woman of her age that these agitations could have any
reference to herself. She smiled upon him as over a long blank of
years--“You are not one that will ever stay still long enough to cumber
the ground.”
“Miss Douglas,” he said, “I have seen several of your family--I feel a
great interest. Will you forgive me if I take a liberty? You are in
mourning?”
The light faded altogether out of Kirsteen’s face. She made a little
pause for a moment clasping her hands. “Not for any of my family,” she
said. He begged her a thousand pardons, brightening up in a moment. She
fell back into the pale shadows; he roused up to pleasant brightness of
life. These two different moods do not understand each other. They are
almost antagonistic without some special bond of sympathy. He went on
after a moment--
“I saw much of your family--in Argyllshire--before I went to India. You
will perhaps remember that Glendochart invited me for the
shooting--which was very kind.”
Kirsteen’s attention flagged. She assented merely with a bow.
“I have been three years in India,” said the young man. “She was nearly
seventeen when I saw her last.”
“Who was nearly seventeen?”
“Oh, Miss Douglas, forgive me!--your lovely little sister--a flower that
seemed born to blush unseen.”
The light came back to Kirsteen’s face. “Jeanie!” she said with a little
flush of pleasure, “is she so bonny? I always thought she would be
so--but it’s long, long since I have seen her.”
“Bonny is not the word,” said the young soldier, “though bonny is a very
bonny word. She is--she is--I wish,” he cried, breaking off abruptly
with a nervous laugh, “that I could show you her picture--in my heart.”
“Is that so?” Kirsteen raised her head and looked at him with a
searching glance from head to foot: the young man instinctively squared
himself, drawing up his head as under inspection. “Ye are well to look
at, Major Gordon--but I cannot see into your heart.”
“No,” he said, “and how can I tell you what I think of her? It’s not her
beauty--she’s just as sweet as the flowers. I wish I had the tongue of
Robbie Burns--or some of those new poets that would wile a bird from the
trees--“ and he began to murmur some words that were not so familiar to
the ear as they have come to be since then.
“She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.
“The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend.
Nor shall she fail to see
E’en in the motions of the storm
Grace that shall mould the maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.
“The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face,”
The major paused a moment, and then he added, with a rising colour,
another verse--
“Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, ‘A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown:
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.’”
Kirsteen, though she was in London where everything that is new should
be best known, had little acquaintance with the new poets. She had heard
part of the _Ancient Mariner_, which was to her like a great piece of
music, thrilling her being, but imperfectly understanded of her
intelligence. She had heard much of Byron, who was raved of by every
apprentice, and whom consequently this high aristocrat in verse, as in
all other things, held in a certain scorn. She listened surprised to the
lines which Gordon stammered forth somewhat shamefacedly, finding
himself embarked in a kind of recitation, which he had not intended.
“Who said it?--they are very bonny words. I am much beholden to him,
whoever he is, for such a bonny picture of my little sister--if it is
not yourself?”
“I!” cried the major. “Oh, be not profane! It is one Wordsworth that
lives on the Borders--but she is like that.”
“I can well believe it,” said Kirsteen; “nevertheless, if it was Jeanie
he was meaning, though it may be all true, it did not need that to make
a lady of my sister,” she said with an ineffable visionary pride.
The major did not argue, or make any stand for his part, though he had
all the enthusiasm of an early member of the sect. He would have indeed
sacrificed Wordsworth and all the poets without a thought at the shrine
he was approaching. “That is, alas, what daunts me,” he said. “How am I,
a poor man, to make your father hear me? He will want, and well I know
how justly, what I have not to give.”
“I am no authority as to what my father will do, Major Gordon. You may
have heard why I, a Douglas, and not the least proud of the family, am
here.”
“But she adores you, Miss Kirsteen!”
“Does she that? My bonny Jeanie! And well I wot she is the dearest thing
to me.” Kirsteen paused with a flood of pleasure and anguish inundating
her heart. The visions of the past rose up before her. Ah, why had the
image of the little sister come so persistently into all her dreams of a
future that was never to be? Because, she said to herself, putting down
that climbing sorrow, it was a life that was never to be--and Jeanie was
the consolation that remained.
“Major Gordon,” she said, “if it may so be that Jeanie’s happiness is
bound up in yours, all that I can do will be too little. But what is
there that I can do? She is in the hands of her parents; and I that have
broken my bonds, and am a rebel, having nothing to say.”
“It will not last like that between them and you.”
“It has lasted for six years. My father is a dour man and does not
change. If Alexander were to come back, that is the next in the family
to my father--”
“He is coming, he is coming--when men in India speak of two or three
years they think it is nothing--but it’s an eternity to me.”
“And sometimes it is an eternity,” Kirsteen said solemnly. She asked
then suddenly, without intending it, if he had ever been at Ahmednugger
where the battle was.
“I was in the battle,” he said simply. “I had my orders home, but I was
there. It was a kind of chance, no one expected it.”
Major Gordon was much surprised when Miss Douglas, who was so reserved
and dignified, caught him by the arm and made him sit down by her side.
She was as white as the cambric kerchief on her neck. She said with a
little moan, “Oh, not a chance, not a chance, but God’s grace, I must
think that. And tell me all ye know. Oh, tell me all ye know!” He began
to say (with astonishment, and so startled that it was difficult to put
his recollections in order) that it had all been caused by a mistake,
that no one knew how strong the native powers were, and that on the
British side all might have been lost, but Kirsteen stopped him with an
imperative movement of her hand. “Begin,” she said, “where it began, and
tell me who was there and all. Oh, tell me everything--for I have heard
nothing--except that so it was.” Her intent face, her trembling clasped
hands, the tragic eagerness with which she set herself down to listen,
overwhelmed the young soldier who knew nothing of her connection with
that fatal field. With a rapid review and calculation he made out to
himself that no Douglas had been there. It was then some one else in
whom she was interested: he looked at her again and her black dress, her
composed gravity as of one whose life was set apart, and an indefinable
change that he had remarked without comprehending it, showed him, as by
a sudden revelation, that whoever it was in whom Kirsteen was interested
he was dead. But who was it? And how was he to give her dead hero the
place her heart would crave for, if he did not know who that was?
He began however as best he could his story of the fight. As was made
very apparent afterwards, Major Gordon had a soldier’s skill in the
arrangement of his tale. He made the listener see the movements of the
troops, the gradually growing alarm, the scouts coming in with news, the
officers anxious and harassed gathering to their rapid council, the bold
advice that was first received with a sort of horror, then adopted. “We
should all have been cut to pieces but for that--not one would have
escaped to tell the tale; but he did not live to get the benefit
himself, poor fellow. His name was Drummond, a Peninsula man who had
seen a great deal of fighting. He and I were old friends. We had gone
through many a hot moment together. His plan was adopted after a great
deal of discussion. And by the blessing of God it saved many a man’s
life--but not his own!”
He gave a start as he looked up at her, for Kirsteen’s countenance was
transfigured. Her paleness glowed as if with a light behind, though
there was not a particle of colour in her face. He had found the way to
her heart without knowing, without meaning it, his testimony all the
more prized and valuable for that. He went on with details which I
cannot repeat, setting all the field before her. And then with his voice
trembling he told her the end. How he had seen his friend fall, and then
the little story of the handkerchief. “None of us knew what it meant,”
he said, “for Drummond never was one to talk much of himself, but we
were all sure there was some story. He lay there on the field with that
white thing on his lips. It was hard--to take it out of his hand.”
The major’s voice was a little strained. A man cannot cry like a girl,
but he had to stop and swallow something that was in his throat. Then to
his great surprise Miss Douglas rose and without a word went out of the
room. He asked himself in his astonishment had he been wrong after all?
Had he been talking of some one for whom she did not care, leaving out
the name she wanted to hear? He sat wondering, listening while her steps
went up stairs to a room above. Then he heard her coming down again. She
came back into the room with a silver box in her hand, and opening it
without a word took out something wrapped in a piece of faded silk. The
young soldier felt his heart in his throat, an intolerable overwhelming
pang of sympathy taking all voice and utterance from him. He knew the
little handkerchief which he had taken from Ronald’s dead hand. She did
not say a word, but looked at him with a faint mournful smile and that
transfiguration on her face. Then putting back her treasure locked it
away again in its shrine, and gave him her hand.
“Now,” she said after some time, speaking with difficulty, “you know,
and there will be no need of words between you and me. I will never
forget what you have told me. It’s been like a bit of God’s word, all
new. And ye will never doubt that if I can serve ye, it’s in my heart to
do--whatever a woman can do. Oh,” cried Kirsteen, “take the blessing of
God from a heartbroken woman and go away, Major Gordon! He was but
Captain--never more, and he’s lying yonder and you standing here. Oh,
go! and let me see ye no more.”
When the rapture of sorrow that was in her had softened again, Kirsteen
sent many messages to the young officer by his mother; but she could not
endure the sight of him at that time. Everything she could do--with
Jeanie or any one--but not to see him, not to see him, he who had come
home living and loving and promoted and with everything that had not
come to the other. She could not bear that.