Mrs. Oliphant

“ An ailing and feeble mother not seen for years,—who would not hasten to her bedside, weep over her failing days, and grieve—but not with the grief that crushes the heart—? That anguish is soft, even after a time sweet. It is the course of nature, as we say. The life from which ours came must fade before ours. The light of day is not obliterated by that natural fading. Kirsteen had set out at an hour’s notice, and was prepared to risk any encounter, any hardness or even insult in order to answer her mother’s call. She was not reluctant like Anne, nor did she grudge the trouble and pain. ”

“ Kirsteen was even pleased with the sense that she herself was Glendochart’s favourite, that he had talked more to her than to any one, perhaps even had come to see her rather than the rest, with the pleasant partiality of an old friend. To be preferred is delightful to everybody, and especially to a girl who has had little petting in her life. It was an exhilarating consciousness, and she took the little jibes that flew about in the family and the laugh of Mary and the shout of the boys with perfect good humour. ”

“ Even Marg’ret, repressing her emotion lest a sob should catch some wakeful ear in the sleeping house, had faded from Kirsteen’s mind when she took the first step into the dark. She knew there were no wild beasts who could devour her, no robbers who would seize her, as she had fancied when a child: she had a trembling sense that God would protect her from ghosts and spiritual evils; but her young soul trembled with fears both physical and spiritual, just as much as when she had wandered out in the dark at six years old. Reason convinces but does not always support the inexperienced spirit. ”

“ Nothing accordingly could exceed the dulness, the monotony of their lives, with no future, no occupation except their work as almost servants in their father’s house, no hope even of those vicissitudes of youth which sometimes in a moment change a young maiden’s life. All was bald and gray about them, everything but the scenery, in which, if there is nothing else, young minds find but an imperfect compensation. Mary indeed had a compensation of another kind in the comfortable apathy of a perfectly dull and stolid character, which had little need of the higher acquirements of life. ”

“ She that ought to have been warm and safe at home, putting the children to bed, sitting between the bright fire and the pleasant lamp waiting for David, to think that she should be here in a darkness that might be felt, with the burn on one side rushing like some wild beast in the dark, and the wind lashing the bare branches on the other, and only Kirsteen, a woman like herself, to protect her! A weak woman with a strong husband loses all faith in other women. ”

“ So what did it matter what Duke or Duchess might say? The postchaise remained unordered; the girl courtesyed to his Grace and her Grace, and stood firm. And by and by that power came in which is of such force in all human things. Duchess and Duke, and Miss Jean, and even Kirsteen herself, carried on by the tide of daily life with its ever new occurrences—forgot; and the little world about settled down calmly as if the present state of affairs was that which had always been. ”

“ And how do you like what you have seen?”
“I like it very well,” said Kirsteen. “It is not like the Hielands; there is no comparison to be made. But for a town it is a very good town—better than Glasgow, which is the only other town I ever saw.”
“Glasgow!” said Miss Jean with disdain. “Glasgow has no more right to be named with London than the big lamp at Hyde Park Corner, which burns just tons of oil, with the little cruse in my kitchen. It’s one of the points on which the Scots are just very foolish. ”

“ Mary said with a sigh. “The one that would do it, that would not think of herself, but just do it, is never the one that has it in her power. I’ve seen the same thing many a time. The wilful one that will please herself, it is her that folk seek—”
Kirsteen’s heart swelled high with mortification and pain. If there was anything that she had desired in her visionary moods it had been to sacrifice herself, to do some great thing for her mother, to be the saving of little Jeanie. ”

“ Miss Jean threw up her hands in dismay. “Bless the bairn, to make her fortune!” she cried.
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“That’s just what I intend,” cried Kirsteen. “I’ll not marry a man to deceive him when I care for nothing but his money. I’ll marry no man, except—and I’ve just come to London to work for my living—and make my fortune, if I can.”
“Whisht, whisht, whisht!” cried Miss Jean, “that’s all very well in a lad,—and there’s just quantities of them goes into the city without a penny and comes out like nabobs in their carriages—but not women, my dear, let alone young lassies like you.” ”

“ But Kirsteen avoided Jeanie and the rabbits and suddenly remembered something she had to get at the “merchant’s,” which was a full mile off—worsted for her mother’s knitting and needles for herself, who was always, to the reprobation of the elder members of the family, losing her needles. She was glad to represent to herself that this errand was a necessity, for a house without needles how can that be? and poor mother would be more dependent than ever on everything being right for her work, on this melancholy day. ”

“ It was no time for controversy, and as Anne trembled so that she could scarcely stand Kirsteen had to consent to take the postchaise on, as far as was practicable without rousing the household at Drumcarro. For herself the chill of the wintry night, the cold freshness in the air, the wild sweep of sound all round her, in the swelling burn, and the rustle of the naked trees and all those inarticulate murmurs of silence which come down from the heights of unseen hills were salutary and sweet. ”

“ She seemed to herself to have been living for a long time in public places—in houses where men could come in to drink or any stranger find a shelter, and almost to have known no other life but that of wandering solitude, continual movement, and the consciousness of having no home or refuge to which she belonged. Kirsteen had never made a day’s journey in her life before that dreadful morning when she set out in the dark, leaving all that was known and comprehensible behind her. ”

“ Would they send and tell Glendochart, poor old gentleman—would they warn him not to come to a distressed house? Or would he be allowed to come and her father say to him: “She is not worthy of a thought. She is no bairn of mine from this day”? “And my mother will go to her bed,” said Kirsteen to herself with a tear or two, yet with the faint gleam of a smile. She could see them all in their different ways—her father raging, her mother weeping, and Mary telling everybody that she was not surprised. ”

“ Lord John! Kirsteen had made no attempt to identify Jeanie’s wooer whom the girl held in such strange terror. Her own heart gave a bound of alarm yet disdain. She asked with her eyes, “Is that the man?” and received from Jeanie an answering look of confusion and trouble. There were no words exchanged between them. Kirsteen shook her head with a gesture which to Jeanie’s eyes expressed not only disapproval but surprise and scorn, and Jeanie let go her hold of her sister’s hand with an impulse of impatience much like that with which she had cried, “I thought you would understand!” ”

“ I cannot be idle any more.”
“Miss Kirsteen, there will be grand connections seeking you out and angry at me that let you have your will—and I will lose customers and make unfriends.”
“I have no grand connections,” said Kirsteen. “You see for yourself nobody has troubled their heads about me. I’m just as lone as the sparrow on the housetop. I’ve left my own folk and Marg’ret, and I have nobody but you in the world. Why should ye stop me? When my heart’s set upon it nobody can stop me,” Kirsteen cried, with a flash of her eyes like the flash in her father’s when his blood was up. ”

“ And her young womanhood was so withdrawn from the usual thoughts and projects of her age that Kirsteen had put on something of the dignified manners of a person much older, although her fresh youthful colour, the milk-white brow and throat, the ruddy hair all curly with vigour and life, showed no premature fading, and her person, which was always beautifully clothed, and fitted to perfection, had improved in slenderness and grace. ”

“ She grew greatly in beauty as her youth matured, the softening influence of this sweet spring of life keeping in check the pride which was so strong in her character, and the perhaps too great independence and self-reliance which her early elevation to authority and influence developed. And everything prospered with Kirsteen. Miss Jean’s business became the most flourishing and important in town. Not only commoners, whom she had so haughtily rejected, but persons of the most exalted pretensions had to cast away their pride and sue for the services of Miss Brown and Miss Kirsteen ”

“ It would be to steal you away; I dare not do it. If I have been right or wrong in what I did for myself I cannot always tell; but for you, I dare not take it upon me. You heard what Anne said—and it was true.”
“Kirsteen,” said Jeanie raising her face to her{v.2-190} sister. “I have more cause than you. Oh, listen to me, Kirsteen; would you like to see shame at Drumcarro? Would you like to see the name you all think so much of rolled in the dust? Oh, hear what I’m saying, Kirsteen! I have more cause than you.” ”

“ It’s just like a clatter of old iron to hear the keys jingling. And what did she ever do with keys?—with everything in Marg’ret’s hand. I cannot tell what to do with these old gowns, unless we give them to the old bodies in the clachan, for they’re past fashion and past wearing, and just rubbitch like all the rest.”
“Could you not let them be? Such as they are, they are part of my mother—at least to me,” said Kirsteen.
“Why would I let them be? Just to gather dust and cumber the earth, and fill presses that there may be need of for living folk. ”

“ I told her so, your Grace, but she would not listen to me,” came to Kirsteen’s ears in her anxiety, while she eluded the touch of Lord John’s hand, and tried to respond to all Lady Chatty’s eager questions. “Oh, Kirsteen, you should hear what Miss Eelen says of you,” said Lady Chatty, “and poor old Glendochart, who is such a nice old man. Why were you so unkind? But I would not marry an old gentleman myself, not if he were a royal duke,” cried the girl, raising her voice a little not without intention. ”

“ Douglas himself went to the ball at the Castle. He was of opinion that when a thing is to be done, it is never so well done as when you do it in your own person, and like most other people of similar sentiments, he trusted nobody. Miss Eelen, as one of the race, was no doubt on the whole in the interests of the family, but Drumcarro felt that even she was not to be trusted with so delicate a matter as the securing of “a man” for Mary or Kirsteen. It was better that he should be on the spot himself to strike when the iron was hot, and let no opportunity slip. ”

“ There has nobody ever come and gone and made ye feel ye were a fool and unwomanly, and all that Marg’ret says. You have never known what it was to have your heart burnt like hot irons on it, and to scorn yourself, and feel that ye were the poorest thing on earth! To let a man think that, and then to see him ride away!”
Scorching tears poured from Jeanie’s eyes. Tears like a fiery torrent, very different from those which had been wept for her mother. She sat down again on the log but turned her back to Kirsteen, covering her face with her hands. ”

“ Kirsteen said.
“No orders—from commoners?” cried Mary in consternation and wrath.
“Just that; we would have all London at our tails, no to speak of persons from the country like yourself—just pursuing us night and day—if we were to relax our rule. And there are many of the nobility,” said Kirsteen turning to Miss Jean with a look of serious consultation, “whom I would wish to be weeded out—for there are titles and titles, and some countesses are just nobodies however much they may think of themselves. ”

“ Kirsteen had not forgotten the secret which was between her and Ronald, or ceased to be sustained by it; but she was young, and the parting, the absence, the silence had begun to tell upon her. He was gone; they were all gone, she said to herself. With everything in the world to sustain the young sufferer, that chill of absence is always a sad one. ”

“ The bedroom to which the group was transferred was like the parlour lighted only by the fire, and the washing and undressing proceeded while Anne went on with the conversation, telling how Dunny was “a rude boy,” and Kirsty a “very stirring little thing,” and “just a handful.” “I have enough to do with them, and with making and mending for them, if I had not another thing on my hands,” said Anne; “they are just a woman’s work.” Kirsteen sat and looked on in the ruddy flickering light with strange thoughts. ”

“ He was a man between fifty and sixty, with a fresh colour and gentle, friendly air, much better dressed and set up than Drumcarro, but yet with something of the look of a man more accustomed to the hill-side and the moor than to the world.
“For gudesake look to my cousin Neil, of Drumcarro; he’s just like a mad bull raging to be in the front of everything. Auld Earl Douglas, our great forbear, was naething to him for pride. He will just shame us all before the Duke and Duchess and their grand visitors, if some one will not interfere.” ”