CHAPTER IV
DOG-STEENIE
She sat for some time at the foot of the hill, motionless as itself,
save for her hands. The sun shone on in silence, and the blue
butterflies which haunted the little bush of bluebells, that is
harebells, beside her, made no noise; only a stray bee, happy in the
pale heat, made a little music to please itself--and perhaps the
butterflies. Kirsty had an unusual power of sitting still, even with
nothing for her hands to do. On the present occasion, however, her
hands and fingers went faster than usual--not entirely from eagerness
to finish her stocking, but partly from her displeasure with Francis.
At last she broke her 'worset,' drew the end of it through the final
loop, and, drawing it, rose and scanned the side of the hill. Not far
off she spied the fleecy backs of a few feeding sheep, and straightway
sent out on the still air a sweet, strong, musical cry. It was
instantly responded to by a bark from somewhere up the hill. She sat
down, clasped her hands over her knees, and waited.
She had not to wait long. A sound of rushing came through the heather,
and in a moment or two, a fine collie, with long, silky, wavy coat of
black and brown, and one white spot on his face, shot out of the
heather, sprang upon her, and, setting his paws on her shoulders, began
licking her face. She threw her arms round him, and addressed him in
words of fondling rebuke:--
'Ye ill-mennered tyke!' she said; 'what richt hae ye to tak the place
o' yer betters? Gang awa doon wi' ye, and wait. What for sud ye tak
advantage o' your fower legs to his twa, and him the maister o' ye!
But, eh man, ye're a fine doggie, and I canna bide the thoucht 'at yer
langest day maun be sae short, and tak ye awa hame sae lang afore the
lave o' 's!'
While she scolded, she let him caress her as he pleased. Presently he
left her, and going a yard or two away, threw himself on the grass with
such _abandon_ as no animal but a weary dog seems capable of reaching.
He had made haste to be first that he might caress her before his
master came; now he heard him close behind, and knew his opportunity
over.
Stephen came next out of the heather, creeping to Kirsty's feet on
all-fours. He was a gaunt, longbacked lad, who, at certain seasons
undetermined, either imagined himself the animal he imitated, or had
some notion of being required, or, possibly, compelled to behave like a
dog. When the fit was upon him, all the day long he would speak no word
even to his sister, would only bark or give a low growl like the
collie. In this last he succeeded much better than in running like him,
although, indeed, his arms were so long that it was comparatively easy
for him to use them as forelegs. He let his head hang low as he went,
throwing it up to bark, and sinking it yet lower when he growled, which
was seldom, and to those that loved him indicated great trouble. He did
not like Snootie raise himself on his hindlegs to caress his sister,
but gently subsided upon her feet, and there lay panting, his face to
the earth, and his fore-arms crossed beneath his nose.
Kirsty stooped, and stroked and patted him as if he were the dog he
seemed fain to be. Then drawing her feet from under him, she rose, and
going a little way up the hill to the hut, returned presently with a
basin full of rich-looking milk, and _a quarter_ of thick oat-cake,
which she had brought from home in the morning. The milk she set beside
her as she resumed her seat. Then she put her feet again under the
would-be dog, and proceeded to break small pieces from the oat-cake and
throw them to him. He sought every piece eagerly as it fell, but with
his mouth only, never moving either hand, and seemed to eat it with a
satisfaction worthy of his simulated nature. When the oat-cake was
gone, she set the bowl before him, and he drank the milk with care and
neatness, never putting a hand to steady it.
'Now you must have a sleep, Steenie!' said his sister.
She rose, and he crawled slowly after her up the hill on his hands and
knees. All the time he kept his face down, and, his head hanging toward
the earth, his long hair hid it quite. He strongly suggested a great
Skye-terrier.
When they reached the hut, Kirsty went in, and Steenie crept after her.
They had covered the floor of it with heather, the stalks set upright
and close packed, so that, even where the bells were worn off, it still
made a thick long-piled carpet, elastic and warm. When the door was
shut, they were snug there even in winter.
Inside, the hut was about six feet long, and four wide. Its furniture
was a little deal table and one low chair. In the turf of which the
wall consisted, at the farther end from the door, Kirsty had cut out a
small oblong recess to serve as a shelf for her books. The hut was
indeed her library, for in that bole stood, upright with its back to
the room, in proper and tidy fashion, almost every book she could call
her own. They were about a dozen, several with but one board and some
with no title, one or two very old, and all well used. Most of her time
there, when she was not knitting, Kirsty spent in reading and thinking
about what she read; many a minute, even when she was knitting, she
managed to read as well. She had read two of sir Walter's novels, and
several of the Ettrick-shepherd's shorter tales, which the schoolmaster
had lent her; but on her shelf and often in her hands were a Shakspere,
a Milton, and a translation of Klopstock's _Messiah_--which she liked
far better than the _Paradise Lost_, though she did not admire it
nearly so much. Of the latter she would say, 'It's unco gran', but it
never maks my hert grit (_great_), meaning that it never caused her any
emotion. Among her treasures was also a curious old book of
ghost-stories, concerning which the sole remark she was ever heard to
make was, that she would like to know whether they were true: she
thought Steenie could tell, but she would not question him about them.
Ramsay's _Gentle Shepherd was_ there too, which she liked for the good
sense in it. There was a thumbed edition of Burns also, but I do not
think much of the thumbing was Kirsty's, though she had several of his
best poems by heart.
Between the ages of ten and fifteen, Kirsty had gone to the parish
school of the nearest town: it looked a village, but they always called
it _the town_. There a sister of her father lived, and with her she was
welcome to spend the night, so that she was able to go in most
weathers. But when she staid there, her evening was mostly spent at the
schoolmaster's.
Mr. Craig was an elderly man, who had married late, and lost his wife
early. She had left him one child, a delicate, dainty, golden-haired
thing, considerably younger than Kirsty, who cherished for her a love
and protection quite maternal. Kirsty was one of the born mothers, who
are not only of the salt, but are the sugar and shelter of the world. I
doubt if little Phemie would have learned anything but for Kirsty. Not
to the day of her death did her father see in her anything but the
little girl his wife had left him. He spoiled her a good deal, nor ever
set himself to instruct her, leaving it apparently to the tendency of
things to make of her a woman like her mother.
He was a real student and excellent teacher. When first he came as
schoolmaster to Tiltowie, he was a divinity student, but a man so far
of thought original that he saw lions in the way of becoming a
minister. Such men as would be servants of the church before they are
slaves of the church's Master will never be troubled with Mr. Craig's
difficulties. For one thing, his strong poetic nature made it
impossible for him to believe in a dull, prosaic God: when told that
God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, he found himself unable to
imagine them inferior to ours. The natural result was that he remained
a schoolmaster--to the advantage of many a pupil, and very greatly to
the advantage of Kirsty, whose nature was peculiarly open to his
influences. The dominie said he had never had a pupil that gave him
such satisfaction as Kirsty; she seemed to anticipate and catch at
everything he wanted to make hers. There was no knowledge, he declared,
that he could offer her, which the lassie from Corbyknowe would not
take in like her porridge. Best thing of all for her was that,
following his own predilections, he paid far more attention, in his
class for English, to poetry than to prose. Colin Craig was himself no
indifferent poet, and was even a master of the more recondite forms of
verse. If, in some measure led astray by the merit of the form, he was
capable of admiring verse essentially inferior, he yet certainly
admired the better poetry more. He had, besides, the faculty of
perceiving whether what he had written would or would not _convey_ his
thought--a faculty in which even a great poet may be deficient.
In a word, Kirsty learned everything Mr. Craig brought within her
reach; and long after she left school, the Saturday on which she did
not go to see him was a day of disappointment both to the dominie and
to his little Phemie.
When she had once begun to follow a thing, Kirsty would never leave the
trail of it. Her chief business as well as delight was to look after
Steenie, but perfect attention to him left her large opportunity of
pursuing her studies, especially at such seasons in which his peculiar
affection, whatever it really was, required hours of untimely sleep.
For, although at all times he wandered at his will without her, he
invariably wanted to be near her when he slept; while she, satisfied
that so he slept better, had not once at such a time left him. During
summer, and as long before and after as the temperature permitted, the
hut was the place he preferred when his necessity was upon him; and it
was Kirsty's especial delight to sit in it on a warm day, the door open
and her brother asleep on her feet, reading and reading while the sun
went down the sky, to fill the hut as he set with a glory of promise;
after which came the long gloamin, like a life out of which the light
but not the love has vanished, in which she neither worked nor read,
but brooded over many things.
Leaving the door open behind them, Kirsty took a book from the bole,
and seated herself on the low chair; instantly Steenie, who had waited
motionless until she was settled, threw himself across her feet on the
carpet of heather, and in a moment was fast asleep.
There they remained, the one reading, the other sleeping, while the
hours of the warm summer afternoon slipped away, ripples on the ocean
of the lovely, changeless eternity, the consciousness of God. For a
time the watching sister was absorbed in King Lear; then she fell to
wondering whether Cordelia was not unkindly stiff toward her old
father, but perceived at length that, with such sisters listening, she
could not have spoken otherwise. Then she wondered whether there could
be women so bad as Goneril and Regan, concluding that Shakspere must
know better than she. At last she drew her bare feet from under
Steenie, and put them on his back, where the coolness was delightful.
Then first she became aware that the sun was down and the gloamin come,
and that the whole world must be feeling just like her feet. The long
clear twilight, which would last till morning, was about her, the eerie
sleeping day, when the lovely ghosts come out of their graves in the
long grass, and walk about in the cool world, with little ghosty sighs
at sight of the old places, and fancy they are dreaming. Kirsty was
always willing to believe in ghosts: awake in the dark nights she did
not; but in her twilight reveries she grew very nearly a ghost herself.
It was a wonder she could sit so long and not feel worn out; but Kirsty
was exceptionally strong, in absolute health, and specially gifted with
patience. She had so early entertained and so firmly grasped the idea
that she was sent into the world expressly to take care of Steenie,
that devotion to him had grown into a happy habit with her. The waking
mind gave itself up to the sleeping, the orderly to the troubled brain,
the true heart to the heart as true.
