If it was strange to sit at that window looking out over the world unknown, and feel herself an inmate of the little house so different from everything she had ever seen, the guest and companion of the old woman whose very name she had never heard till a few days before, it was still more strange to be in the thronged and noisy streets full of people, more people than Kirsteen had supposed to be in the world, under the glaring of the lights that seemed to her to mock the very day itself, though they were few enough in comparison with the blaze of illumination to which we are now accustomed—going through the strange town in the strange night to see Anne. That was the climax of all the strangeness. Anne, whose name was never named at home, whom everybody remembered all the more intensely because it was forbidden to refer to her. Anne, who had gone away from her father’s house in the night leaving the candle flaring out in the socket and the chill wind blowing in through the open door. That scene had always been associated in Kirsteen’s mind with her sister’s name, and something of the flicker of the dying candle was in the blowing about of the lights along the long range of the Trongate, above that babel of noises and ever shifting phantasmagoria of a great city. She could not make any reply to the old woman who walked beside her, full of stories and talk, pointing out to her a church or a building here and there. Kirsteen went through a little pantomime of attention, looking where she was told to look, but seeing nothing, only a confused panorama of crowded dark outlines and wind-blown lights, and nothing that she could understand.
At length they struck into a long line of monotonous street where there were no shops and no wayfarers, but some lamps which flickered wildly, more and more like the dying candle. Mrs. Macgregor told her the name of the street, and explained its length and beauty, and how it had been built, and that it was a very genteel street, where some of the bailies and a number of the ministers lived. “The houses are dear,” she said, “and no doubt it was a fight for Dr. Dewar to keep up a house in such a genteel place. But they external things are of great consequence to a doctor,” she added. Kirsteen was dazed and overawed by the line of the grim houses looming between her and the dark sky, and by the flaring of the wild lights, and the long stretch of darkness which the scanty unavailing lamps did not suffice to make visible. And her heart began to beat violently when her guide stopped at a door which opened invisibly from above at their summons and clanged behind them, and revealed a dark stair with another windy lamp faintly lighting it, a stair in much better order than the dreadful one where Mrs. Macgregor was herself living, but looking like a gloomy cleft in the dark walls. Now that she had come so far, Kirsteen would fain have turned back or delayed the visit to which she seemed to be driven reluctantly by some impulse that was not her own. Was it not an aggravation of her own rebellion that she should thus come secretly to the former rebel, she who had been discarded by the family and shut out from its records? She shrank from the sight of the house in which poor Anne had found refuge, and of the husband who was a common person, not one of their own kind. Drumcarro at his fiercest could not have recoiled more from a common person than his runaway daughter, whose object it was to establish herself with a mantua-maker in London. But Kirsteen felt her own position unspeakably higher than that of her sister.
She followed her companion tremulously into the little dark vestibule. “Oh, ay, the mistress is in: where would she be but in, and hearing the bairns say their bits of lessons?” said an active little maid who admitted them, pointing to the glow of ruddy firelight which proceeded from an inner door. And before she was aware Kirsteen found herself in the midst of a curious and touching scene. She had not heard anything about children, so that the sight so unexpected of two little things seated on the hearth-rug, as she remembered herself to have sat in her early days under Anne’s instructions, gave her a little shock of surprise and quick-springing kindness. They were two little roundabout creatures of three and four, with little round rosy faces faintly reddened by the flickering light, which shone in the soft glow, their hair half-flaxen, half-golden. Their chubby hands were crossed in their laps. Their mother knelt in front of them, herself so girlish still, her soft yellow hair matured into brown, her face and figure fuller than of old, teaching them with one hand raised. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” she was saying: “Dentle Desus, meet and mild,” said the little pupils: “listen to a little child.” There was no lamp or candle in the room: nothing but the firelight. The two dark figures in their outdoor dresses stood behind in the shadow, while all the light concentrated in this family group. The mother was so absorbed in her teaching that she continued without noticing their entrance.
“You are not saying it right, Dunny; and Kirsty, my pet, you must try and say it like me—Gentle Jesus.”
“Dentle Desus,” said the little ones with assured and smiling incorrectness incapable of amendment. Kirsteen saw them through a mist of tears. The name of the baby on the hearth had completed the moving effect of old recollections and of the familiarity of the voice and action of the young mother. The voice had a plaintive tone in it, as so many voices of Scotchwomen have. She stood behind in the background, the rays of the fire taking a hundred prismatic tints as she looked at them through the tears upon her eyelashes. Her heart was entirely melted, forgetful of everything but that this was Anne, the gentle elder sister who had taught her childhood too.
“I have brought a young leddy to see you, Mrs. Dewar,” said the old woman. Anne sprang up to her feet at the sound of the voice.
“I did not hear anybody come in,” she said. “I was hearing them their hymn to say to their papa to-morrow. Is it you, Mrs. Macgregor? You’re kind to come out this cold night. Dunny, tell Janet she must put ye to your bed, for I’m busy with friends.”
“Na,” said the old lady, “we’ll not interrupt. I’m going ben to say a word to Janet mysel’. And she’ll no interrupt you putting your bairns to their bed.”
She drew Kirsteen forward into the influence of the firelight, and herself left the room, leaving the sisters together. Anne stood for a little gazing curiously at the silent figure. She was puzzled and at a loss; the black silk spencer, the beaver bonnet, were common enough articles of dress, and the big veil that hung like a cloud over Kirsteen’s bonnet kept the face in the shade. “Do I know ye?” she said going timidly forward. Then with a cry, “Is it Kirsteen?”
The little children sat still on the hearth-rug with their little fat hands crossed in their laps; they were not concerned by the convulsions that might go on over their heads. They laughed at the glancing firelight and at each other in one of those still moments of babyhood which come now and then in the midst of the most riotous periods; they had wandered off to the edge of the country from whence they came. When the two sisters fell down on their knees by the side of the little ones, the mother showing her treasures, the young aunt making acquaintance with them, the rosy little faces continued to smile serenely upon the tears and suppressed passion. “This is Kirsty that I called after you, Kirsteen.” “But oh, ye mean for my mother, Anne?” “Kirsty, me!” said little three-year-old, beating her breast to identify the small person named. “She’s Kistina; I’m Duncan,” said the little boy who was a whole year older, but did not generally take the lead in society. “They are like two little birdies in a nest,” said Kirsteen; “oh! the bonny little heads like gold—and us never to know.”
“Will I send them to Janet, or will ye help me to put them to their bed?” said the proud mother. For a moment she remembered nothing but the delight of exhibiting their little round limbs, their delightful gambols, for so soon as the children rose from that momentary abstraction they became riotous again and filled the room with their “flichterin’ noise and glee.” “I never light the candles till David comes in,” Anne said apologetically. “What do I want with more light? For the bairns are just all I can think of; they will not let me sew my seam, they are just a woman’s work at that restless age.” She went on with little complaints which were boasts as Kirsteen looked on and wondered at the skilled and careful manipulation of her sister’s well-accustomed hands. 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. Generally the coming on of motherhood is gradual, and sisters and friends grow into a sort of amateur share in it. But to come suddenly from the image of Anne who had left the house-door open and the candle dying in the socket, to Anne the cheerful mother kissing the rosy limbs and round faces, her pretty hair pulled by the baby hands, her proud little plaints of the boy that was “rude” and the girl that was “very stirring,” was the most curious revelation to Kirsteen. It brought a little blush and uneasiness along with affection and pleasure, her shy maidenhood shrinking even while warm sympathy filled her heart.
When the children were in bed, the sisters returned to the parlour, where Kirsteen was installed in the warmest corner by the fire. “Would you like the candles lighted? I aye leave it till David comes home: he says I sit like a hoodie crow in the dark,” said Anne. There was a soft tone in her voice which told that David was a theme as sweet to her as the children; but Kirsteen could not bring herself to ask any questions about the doctor who was a common person, and one who had no right ever to have intruded himself into the Douglases’ august race. Anne continued for a time to give further details of the children, how they were “a little disposed to take the cold,” and about the troubles there had been with their teeth, all happily surmounted, thanks to David’s constant care. “If ye ever have little bairns, Kirsteen, ye will know what a comfort it is to have a doctor in the house.”
“I don’t know about the bairns, but I am sure I never will have the doctor,” said Kirsteen in haste and unwarily, not thinking what she said.
“And what for no?” said Anne, holding herself very erect “Ye speak like an ignorant person, like one of them that has a prejudice against doctors. There’s no greater mistake.”
“I was meaning no such thing,” cried Kirsteen eagerly.
“Well, ye spoke like it,” said Anne. “And where would we all be without doctors? It’s them that watches over failing folk, and gives back fathers and mothers to their families, and snatches our bonny darlings out of the jaws of death. Eh! if ye knew as much about doctors as I know about them,” she cried with a panting breath.
“I am sorry if I said anything that was not ceevil,” said Kirsteen; “it was without meaning. Doctors have never done anything for my mother,” she added with an impulse of self-justification.
“And whose blame is that? I know what David ordered her—and who ever tried to get it for her? He would have taken her to his own house, and nursed her as if she had been his own mother,” cried Anne with heat.
Kirsteen with difficulty suppressed the indignation that rose to her lips. “Him presume to consider my mother as if she were his own!” Kirsteen cried within herself. “He was a bonny one!” And there fell a little silence between the two sisters seated on opposite sides of the fire.
After a while Anne spoke again, hesitating, bending across the lively blaze. “Were ye, maybe, coming,” she said with an effort, “to tell me—to bring me a—message?”
Kirsteen saw by the dancing light her sister’s eyes full of tears. She had thought she was occupied only by the babies and the changed life, but when she saw the beseeching look in Anne’s eyes, the quivering of her mouth, the eager hope that this visit meant an overture of reunion, Kirsteen’s heart was sore.
“Alack,” she said, “I have no message. I am just like you, Annie. I have left my home and all in it. I’m a wanderer on the face of the earth.”
“Kirsteen!” Anne sprang to her sister and clasped her in her arms. “Oh, my bonny woman! Oh, my Kirsty!” She pressed Kirsteen’s head to her breast in a rapture of sympathetic feeling. “Oh, I’m sorry and I’m glad. I canna tell ye all my feelings. Have ye brought him with you? Where is he, and who is he, Kirsteen?”
Kirsteen disengaged herself almost roughly and with great though suppressed offence from her sister’s arms. “If ye think there is any he in the maitter, ye are greatly mistaken,” she said. “If ye think I would take such a step for such a motive.”
Anne drew back wounded too. “Ye need not speak so stern—I did it myself, and I would not be the one to blame you. And if there’s a better reason I don’t know what it is. What reason can a young lass have to leave her hame, except that there’s one she likes better, and that she’s bid to follow, forsaking her father and mother, in the very Scripture itself?”
Mrs. Dr. Dewar returned to her seat—throwing back her head with an indignant sense of the highest warrant for her own conduct. But when she resumed her seat, Anne began to say softly: “I thought you had come to me with maybe a word of kindness. I thought that maybe my mother—was yearning for a sight of me as me for her—and to see my bairns. Oh, it would do her heart good to see the bairns! It would add on years to her life. What are ye all thinking of that ye cannot see that she’s dwining and pining for a pleasant house and a cheerful life? David said it before—and he was most willing to be at all the charges—but they would not listen to him, and no doubt it’s a great deal worse now.”
“If you are meaning my mother, she is no worse,” said Kirsteen. “She is just about the same. Robbie has gone away to India like the rest; and she just bore it as well as could be expected. I have not heard,” said the girl, feeling the corners of her mouth quiver and a choking in her throat, “how she’s borne this.”
Both of them had the feeling that their own departure must have affected the invalid more strongly than any other.
“But she has not heard about your children, Anne. She would have said something.”
Anne’s lips were quivering too. She was much wounded by this assertion. She shook her head. “My mother’s no one,” she said, “that tells everything—especially what’s nearest to her heart. Ye may be sure she knows—but she wouldna maybe be ready to speak of it to young lassies like you.”
Kirsteen thought this argument feeble, but she said nothing in reply.
“And so Robbie’s away,” said Anne. “He was just a bit laddie that I put to his bed like my own. Eh, but time goes fast, when ye hear of them growing up that ye can mind when they were born. I tell David our own will just be men and women before we think.” This thought brought a smile to her face, and much softening of the disappointment. “Oh, but I would like my mother to see them!” she said.
Kirsteen reflected a little bitterly that this was all Anne thought of, that her curiosity about her sister had dropped at once, and that the children and the wish that her mother should see them—which was nothing but pride—was all that occupied Anne’s thoughts. And there ensued another pause; they sat on either side of the fire with divided hearts, Anne altogether absorbed in her own thoughts of the past and present, of her old girlish life which had been full of small oppressions, and of her present happiness, and the prosperous and elevated position of a woman with a good man and bairns of her own, which was her proud and delightful consciousness, and which only wanted to be seen and recognized by her mother to make it perfect. Kirsteen on her side felt this superiority as an offence. She knew that her mother had “got over” Anne’s departure, and was not at all taken up by imaginations concerning her and her possible children—though she could not but recognize the possibility that her own flight might have a much more serious effect, and she sat by her sister’s hearth with a jealous, proud sensation of being very lonely, and cut away from everything. She said to herself that it was foolish, nay, wrong to have come, and that it was not for her to have thus encouraged the bringing down of her father’s house. There was no such thing she proudly felt in her own case.
Suddenly Anne rose up, and lifting two candlesticks from the mantelpiece placed them on the table. “I hear David’s step,” she said with a beaming face.
“Then I will just be going,” said Kirsteen.
“Why should ye go? Will ye no wait and see my husband? Maybe you think Dr. Dewar is not good enough to have the honour of meeting with the like of you. I can tell you my husband is as well respected as any in Glasgow, and his name is a kent name where the Douglases’ was never heard.”
“That can scarcely be in Scotland,” cried Kirsteen proudly, “not even in Glasgow. Fare ye well, Anne. I’m glad to have seen ye.” She paused for a moment with a shake in her voice and added hurriedly, “and the bairns.”
“Oh, Kirsteen!” cried Anne rushing to her side. “Oh, Kirsteen, bide! Oh, bide and see him! Ye will never be sorry to have made friends with my man.”
“Who is that, Anne,” said a voice behind them, “that ye are imploring in such a pitiful tone to bide? Is it some unfriend of mine?”
“No unfriend, Dr. Dewar,” said Kirsteen, turning round upon him, “but a stranger that has little to do here.”
“It is one of your sisters, Anne!”
“It’s Kirsteen,” cried Anne with wet eyes. “Oh, David, make her stay.”
Dr. Dewar was a man of whose appearance his wife had reason to be proud. None of the long-descended Douglases were equal to him either in physical power or in good looks. He was tall and strong, he had fine hands—a physician’s hands full of delicacy yet force, good feet, all the signs that are supposed to represent race—though he was of no family whatever, the son of a shopkeeper, not fit to appear in the same room in which ladies and gentlemen were. Kirsteen had stopped short at sight of him, and there can be no doubt that she had been much surprised. In former times she had indeed seen him as her mother’s doctor, but she had scarcely noticed the visitor, who was of no interest to a girl of her age. And his rough country dress had not been imposing like the black suit which now gave dignity and the air of a gentleman which Kirsteen had expected to find entirely wanting in her sister’s husband. His somewhat pale face, large featured, rose with a sort of distinction from the ample many-folded white neck-cloth—appropriate title!—which enveloped his throat. He looked at the visitor with good-humoured scrutiny, shading his eyes from the scanty light of the candles. “My wife is so economical about her lights,” he said, “that I can never see who is here, though I would fain make myself agreeable to Anne’s friends. Certainly, my dear, I will do what is in me to make your sister bide. I would fain hope it is a sign of amity to see ye here to-night, Miss Kirsteen?”
“No,” said Kirsteen, “it is not a sign of amity. It was only that I was in Glasgow, and thought I would like to see her—at least,” she added, “I will not take to myself a credit I don’t deserve. It was Mrs. Macgregor put it into my head.”
“Well, well,” said Dr. Dewar, “so long as you are here we will not quarrel about how it was. It will have been a great pleasure to Anne to see you. Are the bairns gone to their beds, my dear?”
“They’re scarcely sleeping yet,” said Anne smiling at her husband with tender triumph. “Go ben,” she said putting one of the candlesticks into his hand, “and see them; for I know that’s what has brought ye in so soon—not for me but the weans.”
“For both,” he said pressing her hand like a lover as he took the candle from it. Anne was full of silent exultation, for she had remarked Kirsteen’s little start of surprise and noticed that she said nothing more of going away. “Well?” she said eagerly, when he had disappeared.
“Well,”—said Kirsteen, “I never heard that Dr. Dewar was not a very personable man, and well-spoken. It will maybe be best for me to be getting home, before it’s very late.”
“Will ye no stay, Kirsteen, and break bread in my house? You might do that and say nothing about it. It would be no harm to hide an innocent thing that was just an act of kindness, when you get home. If I am never to get more from my own family,” cried Anne, “but to be banished and disowned as if I were an ill woman, surely a sister that is young and should have some kind thought in her heart, might do that. Ye need say nothing of it when you get home.”
“I will maybe never get home more,” said Kirsteen overcome at last by the feeling of kindred and the need of sympathy.
“Oh, lassie,” cried Anne, “what have ye done? What have ye done?—And where are ye going?—If ye have left your home ye shall bide here. It’s my right to take care of you, if ye have nobody else to take care of ye, no Jean Macgregor, though she’s very respectable, but me your elder sister. And that will be the first thing David will say.”
“I am much obliged to you,” said Kirsteen, “but you must not trouble your head about me. I’m going to London—to friends I have there.”
“To London!” cried Anne. There was more wonder in her tone than would be expressed now if America had been the girl’s destination. “And you have friends there!”
Kirsteen made a lofty sign of assent. She would not risk herself by entering into any explanations. “It’s a long journey,” she said, “and a person never can tell if they will ever win back. If you are really meaning what you say, and that I will not be in your way nor the doctor’s I will thankfully bide and take a cup of tea with ye—for it’s not like being among strangers when I can take your hand—and give a kiss to your little bairns before I go.”
Anne came quickly across the room and took her sister in her arms, and cried a little upon her shoulder. “I’m real happy,” she said sobbing; “ye see the bairns, what darlin’s they are—and there never was a better man than my man; but eh! I just yearn sometimes for a sight of home, and my poor mother. If she is weakly, poor body, and cannot stand against the troubles of this world, still she’s just my mother, and I would rather have a touch of her hand than all the siller in Glasgow—and eh, what she would give to see the bairns!”
Kirsteen, who was herself very tremulous, here sang in a broken voice, for she too had begun to realize that she might never again see her mother, a snatch of her favourite song:
“No, I’ll not say that,” said Anne. “I’ll not be so untrue to my true love—but oh, my poor minnie! how is she, Kirsteen? Tell me everything, and about Marg’ret and the laddies and all.”
When Dr. Dewar entered he found the two sisters seated close together, clinging to each other, laughing and crying in a breath, over the domestic story which Kirsteen was telling. The sole candle twinkled on the table kindly like a friendly spectator, the fire blazed and crackled cheerfully, the room in the doctor’s eyes looked like the home of comfort and happy life. He was pleased that one of Anne’s family should see how well off she was. It was the best way he felt sure to bring them to acknowledge her, which was a thing he professed to be wholly indifferent to. But in his heart he was very proud of having married a Douglas, and he would have received any notice from Drumcarro with a joy perhaps more natural to the breeding of his original station than dignified. He felt the superiority of his wife’s race in a manner which never occurred to Anne herself, and was more proud of his children on account of the “good Douglas blood” in their veins. “Not that I hold with such nonsense,” he would say with a laugh of pretended disdain. “But there are many that do.” It was not a very serious weakness, but it was a weakness. His face beamed as he came in: though Kirsteen had said that her presence was not a sign of amity he could not but feel that it was, and a great one. For certainly the laird’s opposition must be greatly modified before he would permit his daughter to come here.
“Well,” he said, making them both start, “I see I was not wanted to persuade her to bide. I am very glad to see you in my house, Miss Kirsteen. Ye will be able to tell them at home that Anne is not the victim of an ogre in human form, as they must think, but well enough content with her bargain, eh, wife?” He had come up to them, and touched his wife’s cheek caressingly with his hand. “Come, come,” he said, “Anne, ye must not greet, but smile at news from home.”
“If I am greetin’ it’s for pleasure,” said Anne, “to hear about my mother and all of them and to see my bonny Kirsteen.”
“She has grown up a fine girl,” said the doctor looking at her with a professional glance and approving the youthful vigour and spirit which were perhaps more conspicuous in Kirsteen than delicacy of form and grace. Her indignation under this inspection may be supposed. She got up hastily freeing herself from Anne’s hold.
“I must not be late,” she said, “there’s Mrs. Macgregor waiting.”
“Tell the lass to bring the tea, Anne—if your sister is with friends—”
“I’m telling her that her place is here,” cried Anne; “it is no friends, it is just old Jean Macgregor who is very respectable, but not the person for Kirsteen. And we have a spare room,” she added with pride. “The doctor will hear of none of your concealed beds or dark closets to sleep in. He insists on having a spare room for a friend. And where is there such a friend as your own sister? We will send Jean to bring your things, Kirsteen.”
Kirsteen put a stern negation upon this proposal. “Besides,” she said, “it would be no advantage, for I am going on to London without delay.”
“To London?” cried the doctor. “That’s a long journey for ye by yourself. Are you really going alone?”
“I’m told,” said Kirsteen composedly, “that the guards are very attentive, and that nobody meddles with one that respects herself. I have no fear.”
“Well, perhaps there is no fear—not what ye can call fear; for, as you say, a woman is her own best protector, and few men are such fools as to go too far when there’s no response. But, my dear young lady, it’s a long journey and a weary journey; I wonder that Drumcarro trusted you to go alone; he might have spared a maid, if not a man to go with ye.” The doctor’s weakness led him to enhance the importance of Drumcarro as if it were a simple matter to send a maid or a man.
“Oh, but Kirsteen says,” Anne began, remembering the strange avowal, which she did not at all understand, that her sister had made. Kirsteen took the words out of her mouth.
“It’s not as if I were coming back to-day or to-morrow,” she said quickly, “and to send any person with me would have been—not possible—I will just keep myself to myself and nobody will harm me.”
“I am sure of that,” said the doctor cheerfully. “I would not like to be the man that spoke a word displeasing to ye with those eyes of yours. Oh, I’m not complaining; for no doubt ye have heard much harm of me and little good—but ye have given me a look or two, Miss Kirsteen. Does not this speak for me?” he added, raising Anne’s face which glowed with pleasure and affection under his touch—“and yon?” pointing to the open door of the room in which the babies slept.
Kirsteen was much confused by this appeal. “It was far from my mind to say anything unceevil,” she said, “and in your own house.”
“Oh, never mind my own house, it’s your house when you’re in it. And I would like ye to say whatever comes into your head, for at the end, do what you will, my bonny lass, you and me are bound to be friends. Now come, wifie, and give us our tea.”
The dining-room in Dr. Dewar’s house was more dignified than the parlour. It was used as his consulting room in the morning, and Kirsteen was impressed by the large mahogany furniture, the huge sideboard, heavy table, and other substantial articles, things which told of comfort and continuance, not to be lightly lifted about or transferred from one place to another. And nothing could be more kind than the doctor who disarmed her at every turn, and took away every excuse for unfriendliness. After the dreadful experiences of her journey, and the forlorn sense she had of being cut off from everything she cared for, this cordial reception ended by altogether overcoming Kirsteen’s prejudices, and the talk became as cheerful over the tea as if the young adventurer had indeed been a visitor, received with delight in her sister’s house. She went away at last with the old woman greatly against Anne’s will who tried every entreaty and remonstrance in vain. “Surely ye like me better than Jean Macgregor!” she said. “Oh, Kirsteen, it’s far from kind—and the spare room at your disposition, and the kindest welcome—I will let you give the bairns their bath in the morning. Ye shall have them as long as you please,” she said with the wildest generosity. It was Dr. Dewar himself who interrupted these entreaties.
“My dear,” he said, “Kirsteen has a great deal of sense, she knows very well what she’s doing. If there is a difficulty arisen at home as I’m led to conclude, it will just make matters worse if she’s known to be living here.”
“I was not thinking of that,” cried Kirsteen, feeling the ungenerosity of her motives.
“It may be well that ye should. I would not have you anger your father, neither would Anne for any pleasure of hers. She is in a different position,” said the doctor. “She’s a married woman, and her father cannot in the nature of things be her chief object. But Kirsteen, my dear, is but a girl in her father’s house, and whatever her heart may say she must not defy him by letting it be known that she’s living here. But to-morrow is the Sabbath-day. The coach does not go, even if she were so far left to herself as to wish it; and it could not be ill taken that you should go to the kirk together and spend the day together. And then if ye must go, I will engage a place in the coach for ye and see ye off on Monday morning.”
“Oh, I must go, and I almost grudge the Sabbath-day,” said Kirsteen. “I am so restless till I’m there. But I must not give you all that trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. I’ll go with ye as far as the coach-office. I wish I was not so busy,” said Dr. Dewar with a delightful sense of his own consequence and popularity, and of the good impression it would make. “I would convoy ye to London myself. But a doctor is never at his own disposition,” he added, with a shake of his head.
The Sunday which followed was strange yet delightful to Kirsteen. It was like the last day of a sailor on shore before setting forth upon the unknown, but rather of a sailor like Columbus trusting himself absolutely to the sea and the winds, not knowing what awaited him, than the well-guided mariners of modern days with charts for every coast and lighthouses at every turn. Kirsteen looked
All was strange to her even here, but how much stranger, dark, undeciphered, unknown was that world upon the edge of which she stood, and where there was absolutely nothing to guide her as to what she should encounter! Kirsteen was not quite sure whether she could understand the language which was spoken in London; the ways of the people she was sure she would not understand. Somewhere in the darkness that great city lay as the western world lay before its discoverer. Kirsteen formed an image to herself of something blazing into the night full of incomprehensible voices and things; and she had all the shrinking yet eagerness of a first explorer not knowing what horrors there might be to encounter, but not his faith in everything good. The Sunday came like a strange dream into the midst of this eagerness yet alarm. She was almost impatient of the interruption, yet was happy in it with the strangest troubled happiness; though it was so real it was bewildering too, it was a glimpse of paradise on the edge of the dark, yet unreal in its pleasure as that vast unknown was unreal. She played with the children, and she heard them say their prayers, the two little voices chiming together, the two cherub faces lifted up, while father and mother sat adoring. It was like something she had seen in a dream—where she was herself present, and yet not present, noting what every one did. For up to this time everything had been familiar in her life—there had been no strangeness, no new views of the relationship of events with which she was too well acquainted to have any room for flights of fancy.
And then this moment of pause, this curious, amusing, beautiful day passed over, and she found herself in the dark of the wintry morning in the street all full of commotion where the coach was preparing to start. She found her brother-in-law (things had changed so that she had actually begun to think of him as her brother-in-law) in waiting for her to put her in her place. Kirsteen’s chief sensation in all that crowded, flaring, incomprehensible scene, with the smoky lamps blazing, and the horses pawing and champing, and every one shouting to every one else about, was shame of her bundle and fear lest the well-dressed, carefully-brushed doctor should perceive with what a small provision it was that she was going forth into the unknown. No hope of blinding his eyes with the statement that she was going to friends in London if he saw what her baggage consisted of. He put her, to her surprise, into a comfortable corner in the interior of the coach, covering her up with a shawl which he said Anne had sent. “But I was going on the outside,” said Kirsteen. “Ye canna do that,” he said hastily. “You would get your death of cold, besides there was no place.” “Then there is more money to pay,” she said, feeling for her purse, but with a secret pang, for she was aware how very little money was there. “Nothing at all,” he said waving it away, “they are just the same price, or very little difference. Good-bye, Kirsteen, and a good journey to you. A doctor’s never at his own disposition.” “But the money, I know it’s more money.” “I have not another moment,” cried the doctor darting away. Was it possible that she was in debt to Dr. Dewar? She had almost sprung after him when Mrs. Macgregor appeared carrying the bundle and put it on Kirsteen’s knee. “Here is your bundle, Miss Kirsteen; and here’s a little snack for you in a basket.” Thank heaven he had not seen the bundle, but had he paid money for her? Was she in debt to Anne’s husband, that common person? There was no time, however, to protest or send after him. With a clatter upon the stones, as if a house were falling, and a sound on the trumpet like the day of judgment, the coach quivered, moved, and finally got under way.
It was dark again on the second afternoon when Kirsteen, all dizzy, feverish, and bewildered, attained once more, so to speak, to solid ground, after so much that had flown past her, endless, monotonous whirling in inconceivable flats and levels through night and through day. She put her foot upon the pavement timidly, and gave a frightened glance about her, knowing herself to be in London—that fabulous place of which she had never been sure whether it were not altogether a fairy tale. The journey had been like a dream, but of a different kind. She had seemed to herself to be sitting still as in an island in the seas and seeing the wastes of earth sweep past her, field pursuing field. There were hills too, but little ones, not much worthy the attention, and they too went coursing after each other, with all the sheep upon them and the trees and villages at their feet. There were pauses in the dream in which a great deal of commotion went on, and horses champed, and men shouted, and the coach swayed to and fro; but she formed to herself no definite idea of anything that was going on. People came to the coach door and spoke of dinner and supper, but Kirsteen was too shy to eat, though now and then she stepped down, feeling that she was stiffening into stone. And then the long night came, through which went the same roll and jar and jolt of the coach, and now and then a feverish interval of noise and distraction breaking the doze into which she had fallen. She was too much agitated, too unassured, too conscious of the break with all her former life and habits which she was making to enjoy the journey or the sight of so many new places or the novelty in everything. And yet there was a certain wild pleasure in the rush through the night, even in the languor of weariness that crept over her and betrayed her into sleep, and the strange awakening to feel that it was no dream but that still, even while she slept, the fields and hedges were flying past and the journey going on. The second day, however, was one long bewilderment and confusion to Kirsteen, who was altogether unaccustomed to the kind of fatigue involved in travelling; and when she was set down finally in the midst of all the lights and commotion, the passengers tumbling down from above and from behind, the little crowd of people awaiting their friends, the ostlers, the coachmen, the porters with the luggage, her bewilderment reached its climax. She was pushed about by men running to and fro, getting out boxes and bags and every kind of package, and by the loiterers who had gathered to see the coach come in, and by the people who had not found their friends, some of whom came and peered into her face, as if she might perhaps be the person for whom they looked. Kirsteen at length managed to get out of the crowd, and stood in a corner waiting till the din should be over, observing with all the keenness that was left in her till she found some one whose face she could trust. She found at last a man who was “a decent-like man,” whom she thought she could venture to address, and, going up to him, asked if he could direct her to Miss Jean Brown’s, the mantua-maker? “I have got the address in my pocket,” she said, “but perhaps ye will know.” “No, miss,” said the decent-like man, “there’s a many Browns. I think I knows half a hundred.” “She is a person from Ayrshire,” said Kirsteen. “They don’t put up where they comes from, not commonly,” said her friend, with a grin, “but if you ’as a letter, miss, I advise you to look at it.” Kirsteen had doubts about betraying the whereabouts of her pocket in this strange place, but another glance assured her that he was an unusually decent-like man; and, besides, what could she do? She took out cautiously the letter with Miss Jean Brown’s address. “Chapel Street, Mayfair, will that be near hand?” she said.
“Bless you, that’s the West End, that is—it’s miles and miles away.”
Kirsteen’s heart sank so that she could have cried—miles and miles!—after her long jolting in the coach. The tears came to her eyes. But after a moment she recovered herself, feeling the utter futility of yielding to any weakness now. “Could you direct me the way to go?” she said, “for I’m a stranger in London.” To see her standing there, with her bundle in her hand and her cloak on her arm, making this very unnecessary explanation was a pathetic sight. The decent-like man was touched—perhaps he had daughters of his own.
“I might find the way,” he said, “for I’m a Londoner born, but a stranger like you, fresh from the country, as anybody can see, and ready to believe whatever is told you—no, no! The thing you’ve got to do, miss, is to take a coach—”
“A coach!” said Kirsteen in horror. “Is London such a big place, then, that it wants a coach to go from one part to another?”
“It’s a hackney coach, if you have ever heard of such a thing,” said the man. “I’ll call one for you if you please. It is the best thing to do. You could never find your way by night even though you might in the day.”
Kirsteen hesitated for a moment. “It will cost a great deal,” she said, looking wistfully from the yard into the crowded street, with its flaring lamps, and the hoarse cries that came from it. She shrank back to the side of her new friend as she gazed, feeling more than ever like a shipwrecked mariner, not knowing among what kind of savages she might fall. “Oh, will ye tell me what to do?” she said, with a quite unjustifiable faith in the decent-like man.
However, it is sometimes good to trust, and the result of Kirsteen’s confidence was that she soon found herself in a hackney coach, driving, a very forlorn wayfarer indeed, through what seemed to be an endless succession of streets. She had asked her friend humbly whether he would take it amiss if she offered him a shilling for his kindness, and he had taken a load off her mind by accepting the coin with much readiness, but in return had filled her with confusion by asking where was her luggage? “Oh, it will be quite right when I get there,” Kirsteen had said, deeply blushing, and feeling that both the coachman and her acquaintance of the yard must think very poorly of her. And then that long drive began. Every corner that was turned, and there were she thought a hundred, Kirsteen felt that now at last she must have reached her journey’s end; and on each such occasion her heart gave a wild throb, for how could she tell how Miss Jean would receive her, or if there would be rest for her at last? And then there would come a respite, another long ramble between lines of dark houses with muffled lights in the windows, and then another corner and another leap of her pulses. She thought hours must have elapsed before at last, with a jar that shook her from head to foot, the lumbering vehicle came to a stop. Kirsteen stepped out almost speechless with excitement and gave something, she could scarcely tell what, to the coachman; and then even this conductor of a moment, whose face she could scarcely see in the dark, clambered up on his box and trotted away, leaving her alone. She thought, with a pang, that he might have waited just a moment to see whether they would let her in. It would only have been kind—and what could she do in that dreadful case if they did not? And what was she to Miss Jean Brown that they should let her in? Her loneliness and helplessness, and the very little thread of possibility that there was between her and despair, came over Kirsteen like a sudden blight as she stood outside the unknown door in the dark street. She began to tremble and shiver, though she tried with all her might to subdue herself. But she was very tired—she had eaten scarcely anything for two days. And this great gloomy town which had swallowed her little existence seemed so dark and terrible. There was no light to show either knocker or bell, and she stood groping, almost ready to give up the attempt and sit down upon the steps and be found dead there, as she had heard poor girls often were in London. She had come to this pitch of desperation when her hand suddenly touched something that proved to be a bell. Immediately her heart stood still, with a new and keener excitement. She waited clinging to the railing, holding her breath.
It seemed a long time before there was any response. Finally a door opened, not the door at which Kirsteen stood, but one below, and a faint light shone out upon a little area into which stepped a figure half visible. “Who is there? And what may you be wanting?” said a voice.
“I was wanting to speak to Miss Jean Brown,” Kirsteen said.
“Miss Brown never sees anybody at this hour. Ye can come to-morrow if ye want to see her.”
“Oh,” cried Kirsteen, her voice shrill with trouble, “but I cannot wait till to-morrow! It’s very urgent. It’s one from her sister in Scotland. Oh, if ye have any peety ask her—just ask her!—for I cannot wait.”
Another figure now came out below, and there was a short consultation. “Are ye the new lass from the Hielands?” said another voice.
Even at this forlorn moment the heart of Kirsteen Douglas rose up against this indignity. “I am from the Hielands,” she said: then anxiety and wretchedness got the better of her pride. “Yes, yes,” she cried, “I am anything ye please; but let me in, oh, let me in, if ye would not have me die!”
“Who is that at the front door? Can ye not open the front door? Is there not a woman in the house that has her hearing but me that am the mistress of it?” cried a new voice within; a vigorous footstep came thumping along the passage, the door was suddenly thrown open, and Kirsteen found herself in front of a flaring candle which dazzled her eyes, held up by a woman in a rustling silk dress half covered by a large white muslin apron. Perhaps the white apron made the most of the resemblance, but the worn-out girl was not in a condition to discriminate. She stumbled into the house without asking another question, and crying “Oh, Miss Jean!” half fell at the feet of Marg’ret’s sister, feeling as if all her cares were over and her haven reached.
“Yes, I am just Miss Jean,” said the mistress of the house, holding her candle so as to throw its full light on Kirsteen’s face. “But who are you? I dinna ken ye. You’re from the auld country, that’s easy to be seen; but I canna take in every Scots lass that comes with Miss Jean in her mouth. Who are ye, lassie? But ye’re no a common lass. The Lord keep us, ye’ll never be my sister Marg’ret’s young leddy from Drumcarro?”
Miss Jean put down her candle hastily on a table, and took Kirsteen’s hands. “You’re cauld and you’re in a tremble, and ye dinna say a word. Come in, come in to the fire, and tell me, bairn, if it’s you.”
Then there followed a few moments or minutes in which Kirsteen did not know what happened. But the clouds cleared away and she found herself in a room full of warm firelight, seated in a great chair, and herself saying (as if it was another person), “I thought I had got home and that it was Marg’ret.”
“But you called me Miss Jean.”
“Ah,” said Kirsteen, now fully aware what she was saying and no longer feeling like another person. “I knew it was Miss Jean, but it was my Marg’ret too. It was maybe this,” she said, touching the white apron, “but it was mostly your kind, kind eyne.”
“I’m feared you’re a flatterer,” said Miss Jean; “my eyne might be once worth taking notice of, but not now. But you’re just worn out, and famishing, and cauld and tired. Eh, to think a Miss Douglas of Drumcarro should come to my house like this, and nobody to meet you, or receive you, or pay you any attention! It was just an inspiration that I went to the door myself. But your room will be ready in a moment, and ye shall have some supper and a cup of tea.” She paused a moment and cast a glance round. “Did you bring your—luggage with ye?” she said.
Kirsteen laughed, but blushed a little. “I have nothing but my bundle; I came away in such a hurry—and on my feet.”
Miss Jean blushed far more than Kirsteen did. She “thought shame for the servants.” “We must say ye left it at the office and it’s coming to-morrow,” she said anxiously. And then care and warmth and a sense of well-being and comfort and rest so enveloped Kirsteen that she remembered little more. There was a coming and going of various faces into the light, a bustle of preparation, Miss Jean’s keys taken out and brought back, consultations about the spare room, and the well-aired sheets, through all of which she sat happy and passive, seeing and hearing everything once more as if she were another person. The dark seas seemed to have been traversed, the unknown depths fathomed, and paradise attained. Perhaps the blazing fire, the fragrant tea, the little hasty meal, were not very paradisaical elements; but even these creature comforts acquire a sentiment after a long tedious journey, especially when the tired traveller retains all the quick sensations of youth, and is delivered from the horrible exaggerated terrors of inexperience as well as the mere fatigue of body and soul.
The journey over and the end attained! This was the thought that came to Kirsteen’s mind as she opened her eyes upon the morning—not so tired, she reflected, as she had been at the inn at Arrochar, at Mrs. Macfarlane’s, after her first day’s walk. Was that a year ago? she asked herself. The adventures by the way, the long lines of loch and hill, the villages and the silent kirks which had seemed to make her safer whenever she saw them, the great flaring dark image of Glasgow, relieved by the sight of Anne and her babies, and the green with the bleaching, the whirl of the long unbroken journey, rattling, jolting, rolling, hour after hour through day and night—the strange passage in the dark through unknown London, and finally this little room in which she opened her eyes, lying still and closing them again to enjoy the sensation of rest, then opening them to see the yellow fog of the morning like a veil against the two small windows already shrouded by curtains, to which Kirsteen was unaccustomed and which seemed to shut out all air and light—if that could be called light that pressed upon the panes with a yellow solidity just touched by a wintry sun. Were all her journeyings over, and had she reached the new world in which she was to live?
Her bundle had been carefully opened, her linen laid out in a drawer half open to show her where to find it, her second gown hung carefully up, shaken out of its creases by a skilful hand. Miss Jean herself had done this, still “thinking shame for the servants” of the new-comer’s scant possessions. It was already known all through the house that a distinguished visitor, Miss Douglas of Drumcarro, had arrived, a visitor of whose name Miss Jean was very proud, though a little mystified by her arrival, and wondering much to know what such a phenomenon as the arrival of a girl of good family unattended in London and at her house might mean. She was proud to give the needed hospitality, but why it should be to her, and not to any of her “grand connections,” that Kirsteen had come, mystified the dressmaker. And Marg’ret in her letter had given no explanation; “Miss Kirsteen will tell you everything herself,” was all she had said. The seamstresses down below, and the servants still lower down who had mistaken the young lady for a new lass, were all in much excitement discussing the strange event. It was probably some story with love in it, the young women thought, and were all eager for a glimpse of the new-comer or for any contribution to her history.
She was nearly dressed when Miss Jean came with a gentle tap at the door. “I was thinking you would perhaps like your breakfast in bed, my dear young lady. You have had a dreadful journey. From Glasgow in two days and cramped up in the coach the whole time. But bless me, you are already dressed,” she added, scanning the gown in which Kirsteen had just clothed herself, from head to foot, or rather from hem to throat. Miss Jean looked it all over, and gave it a twitch here and there, and smoothed the shoulders with her hand. “It’s not ill made for the country,” she said, “and fits you well enough, but these little puffed sleeves are out of fashion for morning dress. You must let me put you in the mode, Miss Douglas, before ye are seen in the world.”
Miss Jean herself wore a stuff gown, crossed over upon the bosom, and open at the neck which was covered with a neckerchief of voluminous white net, underneath the gown. She wore a brown front with little curls, and a close cap tied under her chin for morning wear, with a large and long muslin apron trimmed round with muslin work and lace. She had a large and ruddy countenance with eyes like Marg’ret’s, kind and soft. Kirsteen was surprised to find, however, how little in the morning was the resemblance which she had thought so great in the night. Marg’ret, though the virtual mistress of the house at home, never changed the dress and aspect of a servant woman for anything more becoming the housekeeper. But Miss Jean was more imposing than many of the country ladies, with a large gold watch like a small warming-pan hooked to her side, and her handkerchief fastened by a brooch of real pearls. To have this personage addressing her so respectfully, looking forward to her entry into the grand world, overwhelmed the girl who already she felt owed her so much.
“Oh,” she said, “Miss Jean—I have not come to London to be seen in the world. I’m just a poor runaway from home. I promised Marg’ret I would tell you everything. Nothing can change the Douglas blood. We have that, but we have little more; and all my father thinks of is to push on the boys and restore the old family. The lassies are just left to shift for themselves.”
“That is often the case, my dear young lady. Ye must just marry, and do as well for yourselves in that way.”
“We are three of us at home, and we can do nothing, and what does it matter being a Douglas if ye have no siller? I’ve come away, not to see the world, but to make my fortune, Miss Jean.”
Miss Jean threw up her hands in dismay. “Bless the bairn, to make her fortune!” she cried.
“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.”
“I will not be a young lass for ever, Miss Jean.”
“No,” said the dressmaker shaking her head, “ye may be sure of that, my dear lamb. That’s just the one thing that never happens. But ye’ll be married, and happy, and bairns at your knee, before your youth’s past, for that,” she said, with a sigh, “I’m thinking, my dear, is the best way. I was never one that had much to do with the men. There’s some does it and some not. Look at Marg’ret and me, ne’er had such a thought; but now we’re getting old both the one and the other, and who will we have to lay our heads in the grave?—not one belonging to us. We’re just as the auld Queen said, dry trees.”
“Not Marg’ret,” cried Kirsteen, “not while one of us is to the fore! I am not wishing to lay her head in the grave, but for love and faithfulness she will never lack as long as there is a Douglas to the fore.”
“It’s a real pleasure to me,” said Miss Jean, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, “to hear ye speak. And well I know Marg’ret would want before you wanted, any one of the family. So it’s on both sides, and a grand thing to see a faithful servant so respected. Now, Miss Douglas—”
“My name is Kirsteen.”
“Well, Miss Kirsteen. You’ll just take a good rest, and look about you, and see the follies of London before ye think anything more about making your fortune. Eh, to hear those bairns speak! Ye would think it was the easiest thing in the world to make a fortune. Ye would think ye had but to put forth your hand and take it. That’s just my nephew John’s opinion, that has got a small place in an office in Fleet Street, and is thinking what grand things he’ll have in the show the year he’s Lord Mayor. He was not satisfied at all with the last one,” said Miss Jean with a hearty laugh. “‘Auntie,’ says he, ‘it shall be very different when it comes to my turn.’ And the laddie has fifteen shillings a week, and to fend for himself! But, my dear,” she said, smoothing Kirsteen’s shoulder once more, and giving a twitch to the one line in her gown which did not hang as Miss Jean approved, “by the time we have put ye into the last fashion, and ye’ve been at a grand party or two, ye’ll have changed your tune.”
“Who will bid me to grand parties?” said Kirsteen; but Miss Jean had disappeared and did not hear. It gave Kirsteen a little pang to think there was nobody who could interfere, no “grand connections” such as the mantua-maker supposed, to call her to the world, a pang not so much for herself as for the mortification involved in Miss Jean’s discovery of the fact. As for grand parties Kirsteen had found out that they were a delusion. The ball at the Castle had filled her with dreams of pleasure, but yet nothing but harm had come of it. She had been neglected while there, and received none of the homage which every girl is taught to expect, and she had found only Glendochart, whose suit had cost her her home and everything that had been dear. A tear stole to Kirsteen’s eye as she made this reflection, but it never fell, so quickly did her heart rise to the excitement of the novelty around her. She said to herself that even if there was no Glendochart she would not now go back. She would stay and work and make her fortune, and make Jeanie an heiress, and get every dainty that London could provide to send to her mother. She would buy a carriage for her mother, and easy couches and down pillows and everything that heart could desire; and then when he came back—the tear rose again, but only to make brighter the triumphant smile in Kirsteen’s eyes. Let the others go to grand parties if they could (Mary would like it) but as for her, she would make her fortune, and be a help to every one that bore her name. She knelt down by her bedside to say her prayers, her heart so throbbing with purpose and anticipation that she could scarcely go through these devout little forms which had been the liturgy of her childhood. “Oh, that I may make my fortune and help them all,” was the real petition of her heart. To suggest anything so worldly to her Maker would have been blasphemy according to the creed which Kirsteen had been taught, but this was the breath of intense aspiration that carried up the little innocent petitions. She rose from her knees in a thrill of purpose and feeling. “They shall not be shamed as they think, they shall be thankful there was Kirsteen among the lassies, as well as seven sons to make Drumcarro great again. Oh, maybe not Drumcarro but the old Douglas country!” Kirsteen said to herself. And so went down stairs glowing to see what the new sphere was in which she was to conquer the world. And then when he came back!
Kirsteen was quite unacquainted with the kind of house, tall and straight and thin, in which, as in the fashionable quarter, Miss Jean had established herself. The thread of narrow street filled with a foggy smoky air through which the red morning sun struggled—the blank line of houses opposite, and the dreary wall of the church or chapel which gave it its name seemed to her petty and dingy and small beyond description, all the more that Miss Jean evidently expected her visitor to be impressed with the fashionable character of the locality. “The rooms were a great deal bigger where we were, near Russell Square,” she said, “and more convenient for the work; but fashion is just everything, and this is where all my leddies live. You could not be expected to go back to Bloomsbury having once got foot in Mayfair.” Naturally Kirsteen was quite incapable of contradicting this axiom, which everybody in the work-room considered incontrovertible. The work-room was a long room built out at the back of the house, with many windows, and walls which had no decoration except a few plates of the fashions pinned to them, as being particularly lovely. A long table ran down the middle at which were seated a number of young women, every one of whom to Kirsteen’s inexperienced perceptions was infinitely more fashionable, more imposing than her highest conception of herself had ever come to; and they spoke fine English, with an accent which was to be sure not so easily understood as her own, but had an air of refinement which impressed Kirsteen much. Were they all gentlewomen, come like herself to make their fortunes? She made a timid question on this subject to Miss Jean which was answered almost indignantly, “Gentlewomen! Not one of them—havering, glaikit lassies!” was the reply.
“They speak such fine English,” said Kirsteen.
Miss Jean kept her word and took her to see all the “ferlies”—London Bridge, and the Exchange, and the Guildhall, with Gog and Magog guarding the liberties of the city, and to take a walk in the park which was just like the country, and where a glass of new milk warm from the cow was given her as a treat. And she was taken to see the coaches come in with the news from the Continent about Boney’s escape and the progress that adventurer was making, and the orders to the troops that were to crush him. Kirsteen thanked God that neither her brother nor him were in the King’s army, but away in India where, indeed, there was fighting going on continually though nobody knew much about it. And she likewise saw Westminster and St. Paul’s, both of which overawed her but did not connect themselves with any idea of worship; her little kirk at home, and the respectable meeting-house at Glasgow to which she had gone with Anne, being all she knew of in that way. She maintained her composure wonderfully through all these sight-seeings, showing no transport either of admiration or wonder, something to the disappointment of Miss Jean. This was not owing to want of interest, however, but partly to a Scotch shyness of expressing herself, and the strong national objection to demonstration or rhapsodies of any kind—and partly to the high tension in which her mind was—a sort of exaltation which went beyond any tangible object, and even made most things a little disappointing, not so splendid as imagination had suggested. The one thing that did overcome Kirsteen’s composure was the extent of the streets, tedious, insignificant, and unlovely but endless, going on and on to the end of all things, and of the crowd, which she did not admire in itself, which was often dirty, noisy, and made her shrink, but which also was endless, abounding everywhere. You left it in Fleet Street only to find it again in Piccadilly, Kirsteen thought, gaping at the coaches before the White Horse Cellar just as it had gaped at her own coach where she arrived, which was, she was told, far away in the city. Where did the people come from? Where did they disappear to? Did they live anywhere or sleep in bed, were they always about the streets day and night? This was one of the things that made her more indifferent to the sights; for her eyes were always wandering away after the people about whom she did not like to ask questions. She saw the Prince Regent riding out accompanied by his gentlemen, “the grandest gentlemen in the land,” Miss Jean explained, telling Kirsteen a name here and there which were completely unknown to the Highland girl—who did not admire her future sovereign. In this way a week passed, Kirsteen vainly attempting to be suffered to do something more than sit in the parlour and read a book (it was the Ladies’ Museum, a magazine of the time in many volumes, and containing beautiful prints of the fashions, which was the chief literature at Miss Brown’s), or walk out whenever business permitted Miss Jean an hour of freedom—which was generally in the morning—to see the sights. One day her patience could bear it no longer: she burst forth—
“Miss Jean, Miss Jean, I would rather see no more ferlies. I take you out and spend your time and give a great deal of trouble when all I want is to learn my work, and put to my hand.”
“To make your fortune?” said Miss Jean.
“Perhaps at the end—but to learn first,” said Kirsteen pausing with a deep passing colour, the colour of pride—“my trade.”
“Your trade! What would your father say, good gentleman, if he heard you say such words?—Or your mother, poor lady, that has so little health?”
“I’ve left both father and mother,” cried Kirsteen, “but not to come upon others—and ye cannot tear me from my purpose whatever may be said. There’s reasons why I will never go back to Drumcarro, till—I will tell you some day, I cannot now. But I’m here to work and not to be a cumberer of the ground. I want to learn to be a mantua-maker to support myself and help—other folk. Miss Jean, if you will not have me I’ll have to ask some other person. 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.
“Lord keep us! I can weel believe that to look at you,” said Miss Jean.