CHAPTER IX
AT THE WEAVER'S STONE
It was late in the afternoon when Archie drew near by the hill path tothe Praying Weaver's Stone. The Hags were in shadow. But still, throughthe gate of the Slap, the sun shot a last arrow, which sped far andstraight across the surface of the moss, here and there touching andshining on a tussock, and lighted at length on the gravestone and thesmall figure awaiting him there. The emptiness and solitude of the greatmoors seemed to be concentred there, and Kirstie pointed out by thatfinger of sunshine for the only inhabitant. His first sight of her wasthus excruciatingly sad, like a glimpse of a world from which all light,comfort, and society were on the point of vanishing. And the nextmoment, when she had turned her face to him and the quick smile hadenlightened it, the whole face of nature smiled upon him in her smile ofwelcome. Archie's slow pace was quickened; his legs hasted to her thoughhis heart was hanging back. The girl, upon her side, drew herselftogether slowly and stood up, expectant; she was all languor, her facewas gone white; her arms ached for him, her soul was on tip-toes. But hedeceived her, pausing a few steps away, not less white than herself, andholding up his hand with a gesture of denial.
"No, Christina, not to-day," he said. "To-day I have to talk to youseriously. Sit ye down, please, there where you were. Please!" herepeated.
The revulsion of feeling in Christina's heart was violent. To havelonged and waited these weary hours for him, rehearsing herendearments--to have seen him at last come--to have been ready there,breathless, wholly passive, his to do what he would with--and suddenlyto have found herself confronted with a grey-faced, harshschoolmaster--it was too rude a shock. She could have wept, but pridewithheld her. She sat down on the stone, from which she had arisen, partwith the instinct of obedience, part as though she had been thrustthere. What was this? Why was she rejected? Had she ceased to please?She stood here offering her wares, and he would none of them! And yetthey were all his! His to take and keep, not his to refuse though! Inher quick petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted loveand wounded vanity wrought. The schoolmaster that there is in all men,to the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely inpossession of Archie. He had passed a night of sermons, a day ofreflection; he had come wound up to do his duty; and the set mouth,which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed theexpression of an averted heart. It was the same with his constrainedvoice and embarrassed utterance; and if so--if it was all over--the pangof the thought took away from her the power of thinking.
He stood before her some way off. "Kirstie, there's been too much ofthis. We've seen too much of each other." She looked up quickly and hereyes contracted. "There's no good ever comes of these secret meetings.They're not frank, not honest truly, and I ought to have seen it. Peoplehave begun to talk; and it's not right of me. Do you see?"
"I see somebody will have been talking to ye," she said sullenly.
"They have--more than one of them," replied Archie.
"And whae were they?" she cried. "And what kind o' love do ye ca' that,that's ready to gang round like a whirligig at folk talking? Do ye thinkthey havena talked to me?"
"Have they indeed?" said Archie, with a quick breath. "That is what Ifeared. Who were they? Who has dare----?"
Archie was on the point of losing his temper.
As a matter of fact, not any one had talked to Christina on the matter;and she strenuously repeated her own first question in a panic ofself-defence.
"Ah, well! what does it matter?" he said. "They were good folk thatwished well to us, and the great affair is that there are peopletalking. My dear girl, we have to be wise. We must not wreck our livesat the outset. They may be long and happy yet, and we must see to it,Kirstie, like God's rational creatures and not like fool children. Thereis one thing we must see to before all. You're worth waiting for,Kirstie! worth waiting for a generation; it would be enoughreward."--And here he remembered the schoolmaster again, and veryunwisely took to following wisdom. "The first thing that we must see tois that there shall be no scandal about for my father's sake. That wouldruin all; do ye no see that?"
Kirstie was a little pleased, there had been some show of warmth ofsentiment in what Archie had said last. But the dull irritation stillpersisted in her bosom; with the aboriginal instinct, having sufferedherself, she wished to make Archie suffer.
And besides, there had come out the word she had always feared to hearfrom his lips, the name of his father. It is not to be supposed that,during so many days with a love avowed between them, some reference hadnot been made to their conjoint future. It had in fact been oftentouched upon, and from the first had been the sore point. Kirstie hadwilfully closed the eye of thought; she would not argue even withherself; gallant, desperate little heart, she had accepted the commandof that supreme attraction like the call of fate, and marched blindfoldon her doom. But Archie, with his masculine sense of responsibility,must reason; he must dwell on some future good, when the present goodwas all in all to Kirstie; he must talk--and talk lamely, as necessitydrove him--of what was to be. Again and again he had touched onmarriage; again and again been driven back into indistinctness by amemory of Lord Hermiston. And Kirstie had been swift to understand andquick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up inflame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity andher love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also,to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell ofthese expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-mindedmadness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But theseunfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and hismemory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were welluttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. She was raised up and dashed downagain bleeding. The recurrence of the subject forced her, for howevershort a time, to open her eyes on what she did not wish to see; and ithad invariably ended in another disappointment. So now again, at themere wind of its coming, at the mere mention of his father's name--whomight seem indeed to have accompanied them in their whole moorlandcourtship, an awful figure in a wig with an ironical and bitter smile,present to guilty consciousness--she fled from it head down.
"Ye havena told me yet," she said, "who was it spoke?"
"Your aunt for one," said Archie.
"Auntie Kirstie?" she cried. "And what do I care for my Auntie Kirstie?"
"She cares a great deal for her niece," replied Archie, in kind reproof.
"Troth, and it's the first I've heard of it," retorted the girl.
"The question here is not who it is, but what they say, what they havenoticed," pursued the lucid schoolmaster. "That is what we have to thinkof in self-defence."
"Auntie Kirstie, indeed! A bitter, thrawn auld maid that's fomentedtrouble in the country before I was born, and will be doing it still, Idaur say, when I'm deid! It's in her nature; it's as natural for her asit's for a sheep to eat."
"Pardon me, Kirstie, she was not the only one," interposed Archie. "Ihad two warnings, two sermons, last night, both most kind andconsiderate. Had you been there, I promise you you would have grat, mydear! And they opened my eyes. I saw we were going a wrong way."
"Who was the other one?" Kirstie demanded.
By this time Archie was in the condition of a hunted beast. He had come,braced and resolute; he was to trace out a line of conduct for the pairof them in a few cold, convincing sentences; he had now been there sometime, and he was still staggering round the outworks and undergoing whathe felt to be a savage cross-examination.
"Mr. Frank!" she cried. "What nex', I would like to ken?"
"He spoke most kindly and truly."
"What like did he say?"
"I am not going to tell you; you have nothing to do with that," criedArchie, startled to find he had admitted so much.
"O, I have naething to do with it!" she repeated, springing to her feet."A'body at Hermiston's free to pass their opinions upon me, but I havenaething to do wi' it! Was this at prayers
like? Did ye ca' the grieveinto the consultation? Little wonder if a'body's talking, when ye makea'body yer confidants! But as you say, Mr. Weir, most kindly, mostconsiderately, most truly, I'm sure--I have naething to do with it. AndI think I'll better be going. I'll be wishing you good evening, Mr.Weir." And she made him a stately curtsey, shaking as she did so fromhead to foot, with the barren ecstasy of temper.
Poor Archie stood dumbfounded. She had moved some steps away from himbefore he recovered the gift of articulate speech.
"Kirstie!" he cried. "O, Kirstie woman!"
There was in his voice a ring of appeal, a clang of mere astonishmentthat showed the schoolmaster was vanquished.
She turned round on him. "What do ye Kirstie me for?" she retorted."What have ye to do wi' me? Gang to your ain freends and deave them!"
He could only repeat the appealing "Kirstie!"
"Kirstie, indeed!" cried the girl, her eyes blazing in her white face."My name is Miss Christina Elliott, I would have ye to ken, and I daurye to ca' me out of it. If I canna get love, I'll have respect, Mr.Weir. I'm come of decent people, and I'll have respect. What have I donethat ye should lightly me? What have I done? What have I done? O, whathave I done?" and her voice rose upon the third repetition. "I thocht--Ithocht--I thocht I was sae happy!" and the first sob broke from her likethe paroxysm of some mortal sickness.
Archie ran to her. He took the poor child in his arms, and she nestledto his breast as to a mother's, and clasped him in hands that werestrong like vices. He felt her whole body shaken by the throes ofdistress, and had pity upon her beyond speech. Pity, and at the sametime a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose workshe did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There arose frombefore him the curtains of boyhood, and he saw for the first time theambiguous face of woman as she is. In vain he looked back over theinterview; he saw not where he had offended. It seemed unprovoked, awilful convulsion of brute nature....