And besides, there had come out the word she had always feared to hear from 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 had not been made to their conjoint future.It had in fact been often touched upon, and from the first had been the sore point.Kirstie had wilfully closed the eye of thought; she would not argue even with herself; gallant, desperate little heart, she had accepted the command of that supreme attraction like the call of fate and marched blindfold on her doom.But Archie, with his masculine sense of responsibility, must reason; he must dwell on some future good, when the present good was all in all to Kirstie; he must talk - and talk lamely, as necessity drove him - of what was to be.Again and again he had touched on marriage; again and again been driven back into indistinctness by a memory of Lord Hermiston.And Kirstie had been swift to understand and quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs.Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future.But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony.She was raised up and dashed down again bleeding.The recurrence of the subject forced her, for however short a time, to open her eyes on what she did not wish to see;and it had invariably ended in another disappointment.So now again, at the mere wind of its coming, at the mere mention of his father's name -who might seem indeed to have accompanied them in their whole moorland courtship, 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 have noticed," pursued the lucid schoolmaster."That is what we have to think of in self-defence.""Auntie Kirstie, indeed! A bitter, thrawn auld maid that's fomented trouble 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 as it'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 and considerate.Had you been there, I promise you you would have grat, my dear! 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 pair of them in a few cold, convincing sentences; he had now been there some time, and he was still staggering round the outworks and undergoing what he 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," cried Archie, 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 have naething to do wi' it! Was this at prayers like? Did ye ca' the grieve into the consultation? Little wonder if a'body's talking, when ye make a'body yer confidants! But as you say, Mr.Weir, - most kindly, most considerately, most truly, I'm sure, - I have naething to do with it.
And I 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 from head to foot, with the barren ecstasy of temper.
Poor Archie stood dumbfounded.She had moved some steps away from him before 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 astonishment that 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 daur ye 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 Idone that ye should lightly me? What have I done? What have I done?
O, what have I done?" and her voice rose upon the third repetition."Ithocht - I thocht - I thocht I was sae happy!" and the first sob broke from her like the paroxy** of some mortal sickness.