Part 8 (1/2)

”Are ye stepping west, Hermiston?” said she, giving him his territorial name after the fas.h.i.+on of the country-side.

”I was,” said he, a little hoa.r.s.ely, ”but I think I will be about the end of my stroll now. Are you like me, Miss Christina? The house would not 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 alike for her and him.

”Ay,” she said. ”I couldna bear the roof either. It's a habit of mine to come up here about the gloaming when it's quaiet and caller.”

”It was a habit of my mother's also,” he said gravely. The recollection half startled him as he expressed it. He looked around. ”I have scarce been here since. It's peaceful,” he said, with a long breath.

”It's no like Glasgow,” she replied. ”A weary place, yon Glasgow! But what a day have I had for my homecoming, and what a bonny evening!”

”Indeed, it was a wonderful day,” said Archie. ”I think I will remember it years and years until I come to die. On days like this-I do not know if you feel as I do-but everything appears so brief, and fragile, and exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life. We are here for so short a time; and all the old people before us-Rutherfords of Hermiston, Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap-that were here but a while since riding about and keeping up a great noise in this quiet corner-making love too, 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 understand him; to learn if she were only an animal the colour of flowers, or had a soul in her to keep her sweet. She, on her part, her means well in hand, watched, womanlike, for any opportunity to s.h.i.+ne, to abound in his humour, whatever that might be. The dramatic artist, that lies dormant or only half awake in most human beings, had in her sprung to his feet in a divine fury, and chance had served her well. She looked upon him with a subdued twilight look that became the hour of the day and the train of thought; earnestness shone through her like stars in the purple west; and from the great but controlled upheaval of her whole nature there pa.s.sed into her voice, and rang in her lightest words, a thrill of emotion.

”Have you mind of Dand's song?” she answered. ”I think he'll have been trying 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 no one in this place to hear us, unless the poor old ancient under the stone.”

”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 would carry 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 sinking almost 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 shout.i.t in the ha' and they rout.i.t on the hill, But they're a' quait.i.t noo in the grave.

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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.sed made them sacred in the memory. In the falling greyness of the evening he watched her figure winding through the mora.s.s, saw it turn a last time and wave a hand, and then pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage of time and the mult.i.tude 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.