CHAPTER VI
A LEAF FROM CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK
Archie was sedulous at church. Sunday after Sunday he sat down and stoodup with that small company, heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping likean ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to studyhis moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined togetherin prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act ofbenediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish inproportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much biggerthan a footstool. There sat Archie, an apparent prince, the onlyundeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish, takinghis ease in the only pew, for no other in the kirk had doors. Thence hemight command an undisturbed view of that congregation of solid plaidedmen, strapping wives and daughters, oppressed children, and uneasysheep-dogs. It was strange how Archie missed the look of race; exceptthe dogs, with their refined foxy faces and inimitably curling tails,there was no one present with the least claim to gentility. TheCauldstaneslap party was scarcely an exception; Dandie perhaps, as heamused himself making verses through the interminable burden of theservice, stood out a little by the glow in his eye and a certainsuperior animation of face and alertness of body; but even Dandieslouched like a rustic. The rest of the congregation, like so manysheep, oppressed him with a sense of hob-nailed routine, day followingday--of physical labour in the open air, oatmeal porridge, peas bannock,the somnolent fireside in the evening, and the night-long nasal slumbersin a box-bed. Yet he knew many of them to be shrewd and humorous, menof character, notable women, making a bustle in the world and radiatingan influence from their low-browed doors. He knew besides they were likeother men; below the crust of custom, rapture found a way; he had heardthem beat the timbrel before Bacchus--had heard them shout and carouseover their whisky-toddy; and not the most Dutch-bottomed and severefaces among them all, not even the solemn elders themselves, but werecapable of singular gambols at the voice of love. Men drawing near to anend of life's adventurous journey--maids thrilling with fear andcuriosity on the threshold of entrance--women who had borne and perhapsburied children, who could remember the clinging of the small dead handsand the patter of the little feet now silent--he marvelled that amongall those faces there should be no face of expectation, none that wasmobile, none into which the rhythm and poetry of life had entered. "Ofor a live face," he thought; and at times he had a memory of LadyFlora; and at times he would study the living gallery before him withdespair, and would see himself go on to waste his days in that joyless,pastoral place, and death come to him, and his grave be dug under therowans, and the Spirit of the Earth laugh out in a thunder-peal at thehuge fiasco.
On this particular Sunday, there was no doubt but that the spring hadcome at last. It was warm, with a latent shiver in the air that made thewarmth only the more welcome. The shallows of the stream glittered andtinkled among bunches of primrose. Vagrant scents of the earth arrestedArchie by the way with moments of ethereal intoxication. The grey,Quakerish dale was still only awakened in places and patches from thesobriety of its winter colouring; and he wondered at its beauty; anessential beauty of the old earth it seemed to him, not resident inparticulars but breathing to him from the whole. He surprised himself bya sudden impulse to write poetry--he did so sometimes, loose, gallopingoctosyllabics in the vein of Scott--and when he had taken his place on aboulder, near some fairy falls and shaded by a whip of a tree that wasalready radiant with new leaves, it still more surprised him that heshould find nothing to write. His heart perhaps beat in time to somevast indwelling rhythm of the universe. By the time he came to a cornerof the valley and could see the kirk, he had so lingered by the way thatthe first psalm was finishing. The nasal psalmody, full of turns andtrills and graceless graces, seemed the essential voice of the kirkitself upraised in thanksgiving. "Everything's alive," he said; andagain cries it aloud, "thank God, everything's alive!" He lingered yet awhile in the kirkyard. A tuft of primroses was blooming hard by the legof an old, black table tombstone, and he stopped to contemplate therandom apologue. They stood forth on the cold earth with a trenchancy ofcontrast; and he was struck with a sense of incompleteness in the day,the season, and the beauty that surrounded him--the chill there was inthe warmth, the gross black clods about the opening primroses, the dampearthy smell that was everywhere intermingled with the scents. The voiceof the aged Torrance within rose in an ecstasy. And he wondered ifTorrance also felt in his old bones the joyous influence of the springmorning; Torrance, or the shadow of what once was Torrance, that mustcome so soon to lie outside here in the sun and rain with all hisrheumatisms, while a new minister stood in his room and thundered fromhis own familiar pulpit? The pity of it, and something of the chill ofthe grave, shook him for a moment as he made haste to enter.
He went up the aisle reverently, and took his place in the pew withlowered eyes, for he feared he had already offended the kind oldgentleman in the pulpit, and was sedulous to offend no further. He couldnot follow the prayer, not even the heads of it. Brightnesses of azure,clouds of fragrance, a tinkle of falling water and singing birds, roselike exhalations from some deeper, aboriginal memory, that was not his,but belonged to the flesh on his bones. His body remembered; and itseemed to him that his body was in no way gross, but ethereal andperishable like a strain of music; and he felt for it an exquisitetenderness as for a child, an innocent, full of beautiful instincts anddestined to an early death. And he felt for old Torrance--of the manysupplications, of the few days--a pity that was near to tears. Theprayer ended. Right over him was a tablet in the wall, the only ornamentin the roughly masoned chapel--for it was no more; the tabletcommemorated, I was about to say the virtues, but rather the existenceof a former Rutherford of Hermiston; and Archie, under that trophy ofhis long descent and local greatness, leaned back in the pew andcontemplated vacancy with the shadow of a smile between playful and sad,that became him strangely. Dandie's sister, sitting by the side of Clemin her new Glasgow finery, chose that moment to observe the young laird.Aware of the stir of his entrance, the little formalist had kept hereyes fastened and her face prettily composed during the prayer. It wasnot hypocrisy, there was no one further from a hypocrite. The girl hadbeen taught to behave: to look up, to look down, to look unconscious, tolook seriously impressed in church, and in every conjuncture to look herbest. That was the game of female life, and she played it frankly.Archie was the one person in church who was of interest, who wassomebody new, reputed eccentric, known to be young, and a laird, andstill unseen by Christina. Small wonder that, as she stood there in herattitude of pretty decency, her mind should run upon him! If he spared aglance in her direction, he should know she was a well-behaved younglady who had been to Glasgow. In reason he must admire her clothes, andit was possible that he should think her pretty. At that her heart beatthe least thing in the world; and she proceeded, by way of a corrective,to call up and dismiss a series of fancied pictures of the young man whoshould now, by rights, be looking at her. She settled on the plainest ofthem--a pink short young man with a dish face and no figure, at whoseadmiration she could afford to smile; but for all that, theconsciousness of his gaze (which was really fixed on Torrance and hismittens) kept her in something of a flutter till the word Amen. Eventhen, she was far too well-bred to gratify her curiosity with anyimpatience. She resumed her seat languidly--this was a Glasgowtouch--she composed her dress, rearranged her nosegay of primroses,looked first in front, then behind upon the other side, and at lastallowed her eyes to move, without hurry, in the direction of theHermiston pew. For a moment they were riveted. Next she had plucked hergaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated flight.Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy;the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutablehalf-smile, attracted and repelled her like a chasm. "I wonder, will Ihave met my fate?" she thought, and her heart swelled.
Torrance was got some way into his first exposition, positing a deeplayer of texts as he went along
, laying the foundations of hisdiscourse, which was to deal with a nice point in divinity, beforeArchie suffered his eyes to wander. They fell first of all on Clem,looking insupportably prosperous, and patronising Torrance with thefavour of a modified attention, as of one who was used to better thingsin Glasgow. Though he had never before set eyes on him, Archie had nodifficulty in identifying him, and no hesitation in pronouncing himvulgar, the worst of the family. Clem was leaning lazily forward whenArchie first saw him. Presently he leaned nonchalantly back; and thatdeadly instrument, the maiden, was suddenly unmasked in profile. Thoughnot quite in the front of the fashion (had anybody cared!), certainartful Glasgow mantua-makers, and her own inherent taste, had arrayedher to great advantage. Her accoutrement was, indeed, a cause ofheart-burning, and almost of scandal, in that infinitesimal kirkcompany. Mrs. Hob had said her say at Cauldstaneslap. "Daftlike!" shehad pronounced it. "A jaiket that'll no meet! Whaur's the sense of ajaiket that'll no button upon you, if it should come to be weet? Whatdo ye ca' thir things? Demmy brokens, d'ye say? They'll be brokens wi' avengeance or ye can win back! Weel, I have naething to do wi' it--it'sno good taste." Clem, whose purse had thus metamorphosed his sister, andwho was not insensible to the advertisement, had come to the rescue witha "Hoot, woman! What do you ken of good taste that has never been to theceety?" And Hob, looking on the girl with pleased smiles, as she timidlydisplayed her finery in the midst of the dark kitchen, had thus endedthe dispute: "The cutty looks weel," he had said, "and it's no very likerain. Wear them the day, hizzie; but it's no a thing to make a practiceo'." In the breasts of her rivals, coming to the kirk very conscious ofwhite under-linen, and their faces splendid with much soap, the sight ofthe toilet had raised a storm of varying emotion, from the mereunenvious admiration that was expressed in a long-drawn "Eh!" to theangrier feeling that found vent in an emphatic "Set her up!" Her frockwas of straw-coloured jaconet muslin, cut low at the bosom and short atthe ankle, so as to display her _demi-broquins_ of Regency violet,crossing with many straps upon a yellow cobweb stocking. According tothe pretty fashion in which our grandmothers did not hesitate to appear,and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of ourgreat-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of bothbreasts, and in the nook between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it.Here, too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay ofprimroses. She wore on her shoulders--or rather, on her back and not hershoulders, which it scarcely passed--a French coat of sarsenet, tied infront with Margate braces, and of the same colour with her violet shoes.About her face clustered a disorder of dark ringlets, a little garlandof yellow French roses surmounted her brow, and the whole was crowned bya village hat of chipped straw. Amongst all the rosy and all theweathered faces that surrounded her in church, she glowed like an openflower--girl and raiment, and the cairngorm that caught the daylightand returned it in a fiery flash, and the threads of bronze and goldthat played in her hair.
Archie was attracted by the bright thing like a child. He looked at heragain and yet again, and their looks crossed. The lip was lifted fromher little teeth. He saw the red blood work vividly under her tawnyskin. Her eye, which was great as a stag's, struck and held his gaze. Heknew who she must be--Kirstie, she of the harsh diminutive, hishousekeeper's niece, the sister of the rustic prophet, Gib--and he foundin her the answer to his wishes.
Christina felt the shock of their encountering glances, and seemed torise, clothed in smiles, into a region of the vague and bright. But thegratification was not more exquisite than it was brief. She looked awayabruptly, and immediately began to blame herself for that abruptness.She knew what she should have done, too late--turned slowly with hernose in the air. And meantime his look was not removed, but continued toplay upon her like a battery of cannon constantly aimed, and now seemedto isolate her alone with him, and now seemed to uplift her, as on apillory, before the congregation. For Archie continued to drink her inwith his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a mountain,and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable. In the cleftof her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale florets ofprimrose fascinated him. He saw the breasts heave, and the flowers shakewith the heaving, and marvelled what should so much discompose the girl.And Christina was conscious of his gaze--saw it, perhaps, with thedainty plaything of an ear that peeped among her ringlets; she wasconscious of changing colour, conscious of her unsteady breath. Like acreature tracked, run down, surrounded, she sought in a dozen ways togive herself a countenance. She used her handkerchief--it was a reallyfine one--then she desisted in a panic: "He would only think I was toowarm." She took to reading in the metrical psalms, and then rememberedit was sermon-time. Last she put a "sugar-bool" in her mouth, and thenext moment repented of the step. It was such a homely-like thing! Mr.Archie would never be eating sweeties in kirk; and, with a palpableeffort, she swallowed it whole, and her colour flamed high. At thissignal of distress Archie awoke to a sense of his ill-behaviour. Whathad he been doing? He had been exquisitely rude in church to the nieceof his housekeeper; he had stared like a lackey and a libertine at abeautiful and modest girl. It was possible, it was even likely, he wouldbe presented to her after service in the kirkyard, and then how was heto look? And there was no excuse. He had marked the tokens of her shame,of her increasing indignation, and he was such a fool that he had notunderstood them. Shame bowed him down, and he looked resolutely at Mr.Torrance: who little supposed, good, worthy man, as he continued toexpound justification by faith, what was his true business: to play thepart of derivative to a pair of children at the old game of falling inlove.
Christina was greatly relieved at first. It seemed to her that she wasclothed again. She looked back on what had passed. All would have beenright if she had not blushed, a silly fool! There was nothing to blushat, if she _had_ taken a sugar-bool. Mrs. MacTaggart, the elder's wifein St. Enoch's, took them often. And if he had looked at her, what wasmore natural than that a young gentleman should look at the best-dressedgirl in church? And at the same time, she knew far otherwise, she knewthere was nothing casual or ordinary in the look, and valued herself onits memory like a decoration. Well, it was a blessing he had foundsomething else to look at! And presently she began to have otherthoughts. It was necessary, she fancied, that she should put herselfright by a repetition of the incident, better managed. If the wish wasfather to the thought, she did not know or she would not recognise it.It was simply as a manoeuvre of propriety, as something called for tolessen the significance of what had gone before, that she should asecond time meet his eyes, and this time without blushing. And at thememory of the blush, she blushed again, and became one general blushburning from head to foot. Was ever anything so indelicate, so forward,done by a girl before? And here she was, making an exhibition of herselfbefore the congregation about nothing! She stole a glance upon herneighbours, and behold! they were steadily indifferent, and Clem hadgone to sleep. And still the one idea was becoming more and more potentwith her, that in common prudence she must look again before the serviceended. Something of the same sort was going forward in the mind ofArchie, as he struggled with the load of penitence. So it chanced that,in the flutter of the moment when the last psalm was given out, andTorrance was reading the verse, and the leaves of every psalm-book inchurch were rustling under busy fingers, two stealthy glances were sentout like antennae among the pews and on the indifferent and absorbedoccupants, and drew timidly nearer to the straight line between Archieand Christina. They met, they lingered together for the least fractionof time, and that was enough. A charge as of electricity passed throughChristina, and behold! the leaf of her psalm-book was torn across.
Archie was outside by the gate of the graveyard, conversing with Hob andthe minister and shaking hands all round with the scatteringcongregation, when Clem and Christina were brought up to be presented.The laird took off his hat and bowed to her with grace and respect.Christina made her Glasgow curtsey to the laird, and went on again upthe road for Hermiston and Caul
dstaneslap, walking fast, breathinghurriedly with a heightened colour, and in this strange frame of mind,that when she was alone she seemed in high happiness, and when any oneaddressed her she resented it like a contradiction. A part of the wayshe had the company of some neighbour girls and a loutish young man;never had they seemed so insipid, never had she made herself sodisagreeable. But these struck aside to their various destinations orwere out-walked and left behind; and when she had driven off with sharpwords the proffered convoy of some of her nephews and nieces, she wasfree to go on alone up Hermiston brae, walking on air, dwellingintoxicated among clouds of happiness. Near to the summit she heardsteps behind her, a man's steps, light and very rapid. She knew the footat once and walked the faster. "If it's me he's wanting, he can run forit," she thought, smiling.
Archie overtook her like a man whose mind was made up.
"Miss Kirstie," he began.
"Miss Christina, if you please, Mr. Weir," she interrupted. "I cannabear the contraction."
"You forget it has a friendly sound for me. Your aunt is an old friendof mine, and a very good one. I hope we shall see much of you atHermiston?"
"My aunt and my sister-in-law doesna agree very well. Not that I havemuch ado with it. But still when I'm stopping in the house, if I was tobe visiting my aunt, it would not look considerate-like."
"I am sorry," said Archie.
"I thank you kindly, Mr. Weir," she said. "I whiles think myself it's agreat peety."
"Ah, I am sure your voice would always be for peace!" he cried.
"I wouldna be too sure of that," she said. "I have my days like otherfolk, I suppose."
"Do you know, in our old kirk, among our good old grey dames, you madean effect like sunshine."
"Ah, but that would be my Glasgow clothes!"
"I did not think I was so much under the influence of pretty frocks."
She smiled with a half look at him. "There's more than you!" she said."But you see I'm only Cinderella. I'll have to put all these things byin my trunk; next Sunday I'll be as grey as the rest. They're Glasgowclothes, you see, and it would never do to make a practice of it. Itwould seem terrible conspicuous."
By that they were come to the place where their ways severed. The oldgrey moors were all about them; in the midst a few sheep wandered; andthey could see on the one hand the straggling caravan scaling the braesin front of them for Cauldstaneslap, and on the other, the contingentfrom Hermiston bending off and beginning to disappear by detachmentsinto the policy gate. It was in these circumstances that they turned tosay farewell, and deliberately exchanged a glance as they shook hands.All passed as it should, genteelly; and in Christina's mind, as shemounted the first steep ascent for Cauldstaneslap, a gratifying sense oftriumph prevailed over the recollection of minor lapses and mistakes.She had kilted her gown, as she did usually at that rugged pass; butwhen she spied Archie still standing and gazing after her, the skirtscame down again as if by enchantment. Here was a piece of nicety forthat upland parish, where the matrons marched with their coats kilted inthe rain, and the lasses walked barefoot to kirk through the dust ofsummer, and went bravely down by the burn-side, and sat on stones tomake a public toilet before entering! It was perhaps an air wafted fromGlasgow; or perhaps it marked a stage of that dizziness of gratifiedvanity, in which the instinctive act passed unperceived. He was lookingafter! She unloaded her bosom of a prodigious sigh that was allpleasure, and betook herself to run. When she had overtaken thestragglers of her family, she caught up the niece whom she had sorecently repulsed, and kissed and slapped her, and drove her away again,and ran after her with pretty cries and laughter. Perhaps she thoughtthe laird might still be looking! But it chanced the little scene cameunder the view of eyes less favourable; for she overtook Mrs. Hobmarching with Clem and Dand.
"You're shurely fey, lass!" quoth Dandie.
"Think shame to yersel', miss!" said the strident Mrs. Hob. "Is this thegait to guide yersel' on the way hame frae kirk? You're shurely nosponsible the day! And anyway I would mind my guid claes."
"Hoot!" said Christina, and went on before them, head in air, treadingthe rough track with the tread of a wild doe.
She was in love with herself, her destiny, the air of the hills, thebenediction of the sun. All the way home, she continued under theintoxication of these sky-scraping spirits. At table she could talkfreely of young Hermiston; gave her opinion of him off-hand and with aloud voice, that he was a handsome young gentleman, real well-manneredand sensible-like, but it was a pity he looked doleful. Only--the momentafter--a memory of his eyes in church embarrassed her. But for thisinconsiderable check, all through meal-time she had a good appetite, andshe kept them laughing at table, until Gib (who had returned before themfrom Crossmichael and his separative worship) reproved the whole of themfor their levity.
Singing "in to herself" as she went, her mind still in the turmoil of aglad confusion, she rose and tripped upstairs to a little loft, lightedby four panes in the gable, where she slept with one of her nieces. Theniece, who followed her, presuming on "Auntie's" high spirits, wasflounced out of the apartment with small ceremony, and retired, smartingand half tearful, to bury her woes in the byre among the hay. Stillhumming, Christina divested herself of her finery, and put her treasuresone by one in her great green trunk. The last of these was thepsalm-book; it was a fine piece, the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinctold-faced type, on paper that had begun to grow foxy in thewarehouse--not by service--and she was used to wrap it in a handkerchiefevery Sunday after its period of service was over, and bury it end-wiseat the head of her trunk. As she now took it in hand the book fell openwhere the leaf was torn, and she stood and gazed upon that evidence ofher bygone discomposure. There returned again the vision of the twobrown eyes staring at her, intent and bright, out of that dark cornerof the kirk. The whole appearance and attitude, the smile, the suggestedgesture of young Hermiston came before her in a flash at the sight ofthe torn page. "I was surely fey!" she said, echoing the words ofDandie, and at the suggested doom her high spirits deserted her. Sheflung herself prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm-bookin her hands for hours, for the more part in a mere stupor ofunconsenting pleasure and unreasoning fear. The fear was superstitious;there came up again and again in her memory Dandie's ill-omened words,and a hundred grisly and black tales out of the immediate neighbourhoodread her a commentary on their force. The pleasure was never realised.You might say the joints of her body thought and remembered, and weregladdened, but her essential self, in the immediate theatre ofconsciousness, talked feverishly of something else, like a nervousperson at a fire. The image that she most complacently dwelt on was thatof Miss Christina in her character of the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap,carrying all before her in the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle,and the yellow cobweb stockings. Archie's image, on the other hand, whenit presented itself was never welcomed--far less welcomed with anyardour, and it was exposed at times to merciless criticism. In the longvague dialogues she held in her mind, often with imaginary, often withunrealised interlocutors, Archie, if he were referred to at all, came infor savage handling. He was described as "looking like a stirk,""staring like a caulf," "a face like a ghaist's." "Do you call thatmanners?" she said; or, "I soon put him in his place." "'_MissChristina, if you please, Mr. Weir!_' says I, and just flyped up myskirt tails." With gabble like this she would entertain herself longwhiles together, and then her eye would perhaps fall on the torn leaf,and the eyes of Archie would appear again from the darkness of the wall,and the voluble words deserted her, and she would lie still and stupid,and think upon nothing with devotion, and be sometimes raised by a quietsigh. Had a doctor of medicine come into that loft, he would havediagnosed a healthy, well-developed, eminently vivacious lass lying onher face in a fit of the sulks; not one who had just contracted, or wasjust contracting, a mortal sickness of the mind which should yet carryher towards death and despair. Had it been a doctor of psychology, hemight have been pardoned for divining in the girl a passion of
childishvanity, self-love _in excelsis_, and no more. It is to be understoodthat I have been painting chaos and describing the inarticulate. Everylineament that appears is too precise, almost every word used toostrong. Take a finger-post in the mountains on a day of rolling mists; Ihave but copied the names that appear upon the pointers, the names ofdefinite and famous cities far distant, and now perhaps basking insunshine; but Christina remained all these hours, as it were, at thefoot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in mutable andblinding wreaths of haze.
The day was growing late and the sunbeams long and level, when she satsuddenly up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and put by that psalm-bookwhich had already played a part so decisive in the first chapter of herlove-story. In the absence of the mesmerist's eye, we are told nowadaysthat the head of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be steadfastlyregarded. So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might elsehave been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominouswords of Dandie--heard, not heeded, and still remembered--had lent toher thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that ideaof Fate--a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure,lawless, and august--moving undissuadably in the affairs of Christianmen. Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rareand seems so simple and violent, like a disruption of life's tissue, maybe decomposed into a sequence of accidents happily concurring.
She put on a grey frock and a pink kerchief, looked at herself a momentwith approval in the small square of glass that served her for a toiletmirror, and went softly downstairs through the sleeping house thatresounded with the sound of afternoon snoring. Just outside the door,Dandie was sitting with a book in his hand, not reading, only honouringthe Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind. She came near him and stoodstill.
"I'm for off up the muirs, Dandie," she said.
There was something unusually soft in her tones that made him look up.She was pale, her eyes dark and bright; no trace remained of the levityof the morning.
"Ay, lass? Ye'll have yer ups and downs like me, I'm thinkin'," heobserved.
"What for do ye say that?" she asked.
"O, for naething," says Dand. "Only I think ye're mair like me than thelave of them. Ye've mair of the poetic temper, tho' Guid kens littleenough of the poetic taalent. It's an ill gift at the best. Look atyoursel'. At denner you were all sunshine and flowers and laughter, andnow you're like the star of evening on a lake."
She drank in this hackneyed compliment like wine, and it glowed in herveins.
"But I'm saying, Dand"--she came nearer him--"I'm for the muirs. I musthave a braith of air. If Clem was to be speiring for me, try and quaiethim, will ye no?"
"What way?" said Dandie. "I ken but the ae way, and that's leein'. I'llsay ye had a sair heed, if ye like."
"But I havena," she objected.
"I daursay no," he returned. "I said I would say ye had; and if ye liketo nay-say me when ye come back, it'll no mateerially maitter, for mychara'ter's clean gane a'ready past reca'."
"O, Dand, are ye a leear?" she asked, lingering.
"Folks say sae," replied the bard.
"Wha says sae?" she pursued.
"Them that should ken the best," he responded. "The lassies, for ane."
"But, Dand, you would never lee to me?" she asked.
"I'll leave that for your pairt of it, ye girzie," said he. "Ye'll leeto me fast eneuch, when ye hae gotten a jo. I'm tellin' ye and it'strue; when you have a jo, Miss Kirstie, it'll be for guid and ill. Iken: I was made that way mysel', but the deil was in my luck! Here, gangawa' wi' ye to your muirs, and let me be; I'm in an hour ofinspiraution, ye upsetting tawpie!"
But she clung to her brother's neighbourhood, she knew not why.
"Will ye no gie's a kiss, Dand?" she said. "I aye likit ye fine."
He kissed her and considered her a moment; he found something strange inher. But he was a libertine through and through, nourished equalcontempt and suspicion of all womankind, and paid his way among themhabitually with idle compliments.
"Gae wa' wi' ye!" said he. "Ye're a dentie baby, and be content wi'that!"
That was Dandie's way; a kiss and a comfit to Jenny--a bawbee and myblessing to Jill--and good-night to the whole clan of ye, my dears! Whenanything approached the serious, it became a matter for men, he boththought and said. Women, when they did not absorb, were only children tobe shoo'd away. Merely in his character of connoisseur, however, Dandleglanced carelessly after his sister as she crossed the meadow. "Thebrat's no that bad!" he thought with surprise, for though he had justbeen paying her compliments, he had not really looked at her. "Hey!what's yon?" For the grey dress was cut with short sleeves and skirts,and displayed her trim strong legs clad in pink stockings of the sameshade as the kerchief she wore round her shoulders, and that shimmeredas she went. This was not her way in undress; he knew her ways and theways of the whole sex in the country-side, no one better; when they didnot go barefoot, they wore stout "rig and furrow" woollen hose of aninvisible blue mostly, when they were not black outright; and Dandie,at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a silkhandkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they matched--then thewhole outfit was a present of Clem's, a costly present, and notsomething to be worn through bog and briar, or on a late afternoon ofSunday. He whistled. "My denty May, either your heid's fair turned, orthere's some ongoings!" he observed, and dismissed the subject.
She went slowly at first, but ever straighter and faster for theCauldstaneslap, a pass among the hills to which the farm owed its name.The Slap opened like a doorway between two rounded hillocks; and throughthis ran the short cut to Hermiston. Immediately on the other side itwent down through the Deil's Hags, a considerable marshy hollow of thehill tops, full of springs, and crouching junipers, and pools where theblack peat-water slumbered. There was no view from here. A man mighthave sat upon the Praying Weaver's Stone a half-century, and seen nonebut the Cauldstaneslap children twice in the twenty-four hours on theirway to the school and back again, an occasional shepherd, the irruptionof a clan of sheep, or the birds who haunted about the springs, drinkingand shrilly piping. So, when she had once passed the Slap, Kirstie wasreceived into seclusion. She looked back a last time at the farm. Itstill lay deserted except for the figure of Dandie, who was now seen tobe scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration having cometo him at last. Thence she passed rapidly through the morass, and cameto the farther end of it, where a sluggish burn discharges, and the pathfor Hermiston accompanies it on the beginning of its downward way. Fromthis corner a wide view was opened to her of the whole stretch of braesupon the other side, still sallow and in places rusty with the winter,with the path marked boldly, here and there by the burn-side a tuft ofbirches, and--two miles off as the crow flies--from its enclosures andyoung plantations, the windows of Hermiston glittering in the westernsun.
Here she sat down and waited, and looked for a long time at thesefar-away bright panes of glass. It amused her to have so extended aview, she thought. It amused her to see the house of Hermiston--to see"folk"; and there was an indistinguishable human unit, perhaps thegardener, visibly sauntering on the gravel paths.
By the time the sun was down and all the easterly braes lay plunged inclear shadow, she was aware of another figure coming up the path at amost unequal rate of approach, now half running, now pausing and seemingto hesitate. She watched him at first with a total suspension ofthought. She held her thought as a person holds his breathing. Then sheconsented to recognise him. "He'll no be coming here, he canna be; it'sno possible." And there began to grow upon her a subdued chokingsuspense. He _was_ coming; his hesitations had quite ceased, his stepgrew firm and swift; no doubt remained; and the question loomed upbefore her instant: what was she to do? It was all very well to say thather brother was a laird himself; it was all very well to speak of casualintermarriages and to count cousinship, like Auntie Kirstie. Thedifference in their social station was trenchant; propriety, prudence,all that
she had ever learned, all that she knew, bade her flee. But onthe other hand the cup of life now offered to her was too enchanting.For one moment, she saw the question clearly, and definitely made herchoice. She stood up and showed herself an instant in the gap relievedupon the sky line; and the next, fled trembling and sat down glowingwith excitement on the Weaver's Stone. She shut her eyes, seeking,praying for composure. Her hand shook in her lap, and her mind was fullof incongruous and futile speeches. What was there to make a work about?She could take care of herself, she supposed! There was no harm inseeing the laird. It was the best thing that could happen. She wouldmark a proper distance to him once and for all. Gradually the wheels ofher nature ceased to go round so madly, and she sat in passiveexpectation, a quiet, solitary figure in the midst of the grey moss. Ihave said she was no hypocrite, but here I am at fault. She neveradmitted to herself that she had come up the hill to look for Archie.And perhaps after all she did not know, perhaps came as a stone falls.For the steps of love in the young, and especially in girls, areinstinctive and unconscious.
In the meantime Archie was drawing rapidly near, and he at least wasconsciously seeking her neighbourhood. The afternoon had turned to ashesin his mouth; the memory of the girl had kept him from reading and drawnhim as with cords; and at last, as the cool of the evening began to comeon, he had taken his hat and set forth, with a smothered ejaculation, bythe moor path to Cauldstaneslap. He had no hope to find her, he took theoff chance without expectation of result and to relieve his uneasiness.The greater was his surprise, as he surmounted the slope and came intothe hollow of the Deil's Hags, to see there, like an answer to hiswishes, the little womanly figure in the grey dress and the pinkkerchief sitting little, and low, and lost, and acutely solitary, inthese desolate surroundings and on the weather-beaten stone of the deadweaver. Those things that still smacked of winter were all rusty abouther, and those things that already relished of the spring had put forththe tender and lively colours of the season. Even in the unchanging faceof the death-stone, changes were to be remarked; and in the channeledlettering, the moss began to renew itself in jewels of green. By anafterthought that was a stroke of art, she had turned up over her headthe back of the kerchief; so that it now framed becomingly her vivaciousand yet pensive face. Her feet were gathered under her on the one side,and she leaned on her bare arm, which showed out strong and round,tapered to a slim wrist, and shimmered in the fading light.
Young Hermiston was struck with a certain chill. He was reminded that henow dealt in serious matters of life and death. This was a grown womanhe was approaching, endowed with her mysterious potencies andattractions, the treasury of the continued race, and he was neitherbetter nor worse than the average of his sex and age. He had a certaindelicacy which had preserved him hitherto unspotted, and which (hadeither of them guessed it) made him a more dangerous companion when hisheart should be really stirred. His throat was dry as he came near; butthe appealing sweetness of her smile stood between them like a guardianangel.
For she turned to him and smiled, though without rising. There was ashade in this cavalier greeting that neither of them perceived; neitherhe, who simply thought it gracious and charming as herself; nor yet she,who did not observe (quick as she was) the difference between rising tomeet the laird, and remaining seated to receive the expected admirer.
"Are ye stepping west, Hermiston?" said she, giving him his territorialname after the fashion of the countryside.
"I was," said he, a little hoarsely, "but I think I will be about theend of my stroll now. Are you like me, Miss Christina? The house wouldnot hold me. I came here seeking air."
He took his seat at the other end of the tombstone and studied her,wondering what was she. There was infinite import in the question alikefor her and him.
"Ay," said she. "I couldna bear the roof either. It's a habit of mine tocome up here about the gloaming when it's quaiet and caller."
"It was a habit of my mother's also," he said gravely. The recollectionhalf startled him as he expressed it. He looked around. "I have scarcebeen here since. It's peaceful," he said, with a long breath.
"It's no like Glasgow," she replied. "A weary place, yon Glasgow! Butwhat a day have I had for my hame-coming, and what a bonny evening!"
"Indeed, it was a wonderful day," said Archie. "I think I will rememberit years and years until I come to die. On days like this--I do not knowif you feel as I do--but everything appears so brief, and fragile, andexquisite, that I am afraid to touch life. We are here for so short atime; and all the old people before us--Rutherfords of Hermiston,Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap--that were here but a while since ridingabout and keeping up a great noise in this quiet corner--making lovetoo, and marrying--why, where are they now? It's deadly commonplace,but, after all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths."
He was sounding her, semi-consciously, to see if she could understandhim; to learn if she were only an animal the colour of flowers, or had asoul in her to keep her sweet. She, on her part, her means well in hand,watched, woman-like, for any opportunity to shine, to abound in hishumour, whatever that might be. The dramatic artist, that lies dormantor only half awake in most human beings, had in her sprung to his feetin a divine fury, and chance had served her well. She looked upon himwith a subdued twilight look that became the hour of the day and thetrain of thought; earnestness shone through her like stars in the purplewest; and from the great but controlled upheaval of her whole naturethere passed into her voice, and ran in her lightest words, a thrill ofemotion.
"Have you mind of Dand's song?" she answered. "I think he'll have beentrying to say what you have been thinking."
"No, I never heard it," he said. "Repeat it to me, can you?"
"It's nothing wanting the tune," said Kirstie.
"Then sing it me," said he.
"On the Lord's Day? That would never do, Mr. Weir!"
"I am afraid I am not so strict a keeper of the Sabbath, and there is noone in this place to hear us unless the poor old ancient under thestone."
"No that I'm thinking that really," she said. "By my way of thinking,it's just as serious as a psalm. Will I sooth it to ye, then?"
"If you please," said he, and, drawing near to her on the tombstone,prepared to listen.
She sat up as if to sing. "I'll only can sooth it to ye," she explained."I wouldna like to sing out loud on the Sabbath. I think the birds wouldcarry news of it to Gilbert," and she smiled. "It's about the Elliotts,"she continued, "and I think there's few bonnier bits in the book-poets,though Dand has never got printed yet."
And she began, in the low, clear tones of her half voice, now sinkingalmost to a whisper, now rising to a particular note which was her best,and which Archie learned to wait for with growing emotion:--
"O they rade in the rain, in the days that are gane, In the rain and the wind and the lave, They shoutit in the ha' and they routit on the hill, But they're a' quaitit noo in the grave. Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts of auld!"
All the time she sang she looked steadfastly before her, her kneesstraight, her hands upon her knee, head cast back and up. The expressionwas admirable throughout, for had she not learned it from the lips andunder the criticism of the author? When it was done, she turned uponArchie a face softly bright, and eyes gently suffused and shining in thetwilight, and his heart rose and went out to her with boundless pity andsympathy. His question was answered. She was a human being tuned to asense of the tragedy of life; there were pathos and music and a greatheart in the girl.
He arose instinctively, she also; for she saw she had gained a point,and scored the impression deeper, and she had wit enough left to fleeupon a victory. They were but commonplaces that remained to beexchanged, but the low, moved voices in which they passed made themsacred in the memory. In the falling greyness of the evening he watchedher figure winding through the morass, saw it turn a last time and wavea hand, and then pass through the Slap; and it seemed to him as ifsomething wen
t along with her out of the deepest of his heart. Andsomething surely had come, and come to dwell there. He had retained fromchildhood a picture, now half obliterated by the passage of time and themultitude of fresh impressions, of his mother telling him, with thefluttered earnestness of her voice, and often with dropping tears, thetale of the "Praying Weaver," on the very scene of his brief tragedy andlong repose. And now there was a companion piece; and he beheld, and heshould behold for ever, Christina perched on the same tomb, in the greycolours of the evening, gracious, dainty, perfect as a flower, and shealso singing--
"Of old, unhappy far off things, And battles long ago,"
of their common ancestors now dead, of their rude wars composed, theirweapons buried with them, and of these strange changelings, theirdescendants, who lingered a little in their places, and would soon begone also, and perhaps sung of by others at the gloaming hour. By one ofthe unconscious arts of tenderness the two women were enshrined togetherin his memory. Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into his eyesindifferently at the thought of either; and the girl, from beingsomething merely bright and shapely, was caught up into the zone ofthings serious as life and death and his dead mother. So that in allways and on either side, Fate played his game artfully with this poorpair of children. The generations were prepared, the pangs were madeready, before the curtain rose on the dark drama.
In the same moment of time that she disappeared from Archie, thereopened before Kirstie's eyes the cup-like hollow in which the farm lay.She saw, some five hundred feet below her, the house making itselfbright with candles, and this was a broad hint to her to hurry. For theywere only kindled on a Sabbath night with a view to that family worshipwhich rounded in the incomparable tedium of the day and brought on therelaxation of supper. Already she knew that Robert must be withinsidesat the head of the table, "waling the portions"; for it was Robert inhis quality of family priest and judge, not the gifted Gilbert, whoofficiated. She made good time accordingly down the steep ascent, andcame up to the door panting as the three younger brothers, all roused atlast from slumber, stood together in the cool and the dark of theevening with a fry of nephews and nieces about them, chatting andawaiting the expected signal. She stood back; she had no mind to directattention to her late arrival or to her labouring breath.
"Kirstie, ye have shaved it this time, my lass," said Clem. "Whaur wereye?"
"O, just taking a dander by mysel'," said Kirstie.
And the talk continued on the subject of the American War, withoutfurther reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of thedusk, thrilling with happiness and the sense of guilt.
The signal was given, and the brothers began to go in one after another,amid the jostle and throng of Hob's children.
Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught Kirstie by the arm. "When didye begin to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott?" he whispered slily.
She looked down; she was one blush. "I maun have forgotten to changethem," said she; and went in to prayers in her turn with a troubledmind, between anxiety as to whether Dand should have observed her yellowstockings at church, and should thus detect her in a palpable falsehood,and shame that she had already made good his prophecy. She rememberedthe words of it, how it was to be when she had gotten a jo, and thatthat would be for good and evil. "Will I have gotten my jo now?" shethought with a secret rapture.
And all through prayers, where it was her principal business to concealthe pink stockings from the eyes of the indifferent Mrs. Hob--and allthrough supper, as she made a feint of eating and sat at the tableradiant and constrained--and again when she had left them and come intoher chamber, and was alone with her sleeping niece, and could at lastlay aside the armour of society--the same words sounded within her, thesame profound note of happiness, of a world all changed and renewed, ofa day that had been passed in Paradise, and of a night that was to beheaven opened. All night she seemed to be conveyed smoothly upon ashallow stream of sleep and waking, and through the bowers of Beulah;all night she cherished to her heart that exquisite hope; and if,towards morning, she forgot it a while in a more profoundunconsciousness, it was to catch again the rainbow thought with herfirst moment of awaking.