Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotte of auld!"All the time she sang she looked steadfastly before her, her knees straight, her hands upon her knee, her head cast back and up.The expression was admirable throughout, for had she not learned it from the lips and under the criticism of the author? When it was done, she turned upon Archie a face softly bright, and eyes gently suffused and shining in the twilight, and his heart rose and went out to her with boundless pity and sympathy.His question was answered.She was a human being tuned to a sense of the tragedy of life; there were pathos and music and a great heart 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 flee upon a victory.They were but commonplaces that remained to be exchanged, but the low, moved voices in which they passed made them sacred in the memory.In the falling greyness of the evening he watched her figure winding through the morass, saw it turn a last time and wave a hand, and then pass through the Slap; and it seemed to him as if something went along with her out of the deepest of his heart.And something surely had come, and come to dwell there.He had retained from childhood a picture, now half obliterated by the passage of time and the multitude of fresh impressions, of his mother telling him, with the fluttered earnestness of her voice, and often with dropping tears, the tale of the "Praying Weaver," on the very scene of his brief tragedy and long repose.And now there was a companion piece; and he beheld, and he should behold for ever, Christina perched on the same tomb, in the grey colours of the evening, gracious, dainty, perfect as a flower, and she also singing-"Of old, unhappy far off things, And battles long ago,"of their common ancestors now dead, of their rude wars composed, their weapons buried with them, and of these strange changelings, their descendants, who lingered a little in their places, and would soon be gone also, and perhaps sung of by others at the gloaming hour.By one of the unconscious arts of tenderness the two women were enshrined together in his memory.Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into his eyes indifferently at the thought of either; and the girl, from being something merely bright and shapely, was caught up into the zone of things serious as life and death and his dead mother.So that in all ways and on either side, Fate played his game artfully with this poor pair of children.The generations were prepared, the pangs were made ready, before the curtain rose on the dark drama.
In the same moment of time that she disappeared from Archie, there opened before Kirstie's eyes the cup-like hollow in which the farm lay.
She saw, some five hundred feet below her, the house making itself bright with candles, and this was a broad hint to her to hurry.For they were only kindled on a Sabbath night with a view to that family worship which rounded in the incomparable tedium of the day and brought on the relaxation of supper.Already she knew that Robert must be within-sides at the head of the table, "waling the portions"; for it was Robert in his quality of family priest and judge, not the gifted Gilbert, who officiated.She made good time accordingly down the steep ascent, and came up to the door panting as the three younger brothers, all roused at last from slumber, stood together in the cool and the dark of the evening with a fry of nephews and nieces about them, chatting and awaiting the expected signal.She stood back; she had no mind to direct attention to her late arrival or to her labouring breath.
"Kirstie, ye have shaved it this time, my lass?" said Clem."Whaur were ye?""O, just taking a dander by mysel'," said Kirstie.
And the talk continued on the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, 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 did ye begin to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott?" he whispered slyly.
She looked down; she was one blush."I maun have forgotten to change them," said she; and went into prayers in her turn with a troubled mind, between anxiety as to whether Dand should have observed her yellow stockings at church, and should thus detect her in a palpable falsehood, and shame that she had already made good his prophecy.She remembered the words of it, how it was to be when she had gotten a jo, and that that would be for good and evil."Will I have gotten my jo now?" she thought with a secret rapture.
And all through prayers, where it was her principal business to conceal the pink stockings from the eyes of the indifferent Mrs.Hob - and all through supper, as she made a feint of eating and sat at the table radiant and constrained - and again when she had left them and come into her chamber, and was alone with her sleeping niece, and could at last lay aside the armour of society - the same words sounded within her, the same profound note of happiness, of a world all changed and renewed, of a day that had been passed in Paradise, and of a night that was to be heaven opened.All night she seemed to be conveyed smoothly upon a shallow 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 profound unconsciousness, it was to catch again the rainbow thought with her first moment of awaking.
