Heather and Snow - George MacDonald (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

mistress, whom she amused with her little airs, and pleased with her winning manners. She was now about fourteen, a half-blown beauty of the red and white, gold and blue kind. She had long been a vain little thing, approving of her own looks in the glass, and taking much interest in setting them off, but so simple as to make no attempt at concealing her self-satisfaction. Her pleased contemplation of this or that portion of her person, and the frantic attempts she was sometimes espied making to get a sight of her back, especially when she wore a new frock, were indeed more amusing than hopeful, but her vanity was not yet so pronounced as to overshadow her better qualities, and Kirsty had not thought it well to take notice of it, although, being more than anyone else a mother to her, she was already a little anxious on the score of it, and the rather that her aunt, like her father, neither saw nor imagined fault in her.

That the child had no mother, drew to her the heart of the girl whose mother was her strength and joy; while gratitude to the child's father, who, in opening for her some doors of wisdom and more of knowledge, had put her under eternal obligations, moved her to make what return she could. It deepened her sense of debt to Phemy that the schoolmaster did not do for his daughter anything like what he had years long been doing for his pupil, whence she almost felt as if she had diverted to her own use much that rightly belonged to Phemy. At the same time she knew very well that had she never existed the relation between the father and the daughter would have been the same. The child of his dearly loved wife, the schoolmaster was utterly content with his Phemy; for he felt as if she knew everything her mother knew, had the same inward laws of being and the same disposition, and was simply, like her, perfect.

That she should ever do anything wrong was an idea inconceivable to him. Nor was there much chance of his discovering it if she did. When not at work, he was constantly reading. Most people close a book without having gained from it a single germ of thought; Mr. Craig seldom opened one without falling directly into a brown study over something suggested by it. But I believe that, even when thus absorbed, Phemy was never far from his thought. At the same time, like many Scots, while she was his one joy, he seldom showed her sign of affection, seldom made her feel, and never sought to make her feel how he loved her. His love was taken by him for understood by her, and was to her almost as if it did not exist.

That his child required to be taught had scarcely occurred to the man who could not have lived without learning, or enjoyed life without teaching-as witness the eagerness with which he would help Kirsty along any path of knowledge in which he knew how to walk. The love of knowledge had grown in him to a possessing passion, paralyzing in a measure those powers of his life sacred to life-that is, to God and his neighbour.

Kirsty could not do nearly what she would to make up for his neglect. For one thing, the child did not take to learning, and though she loved Kirsty and often tried to please her, would not keep on doing anything without being more frequently reminded of her duty than the distance between their two abodes permitted. Kirsty had her to the farm as often as the schoolmaster would consent to her absence, and kept her as long as he went on forgetting it; while Phemy was always glad to go to Corbyknowe, and always glad to get away again. For Mrs. Barclay thought it her part to teach her household matters, and lessons of that sort Phemy relished worse than some of a more intellectual nature. If left with her, the moment Kirsty appeared again, the child would fling from her whatever might be in her hand, and flee as to her deliverer from bondage and hard labour. Then would Kirsty always insist on her finishing what she had been at, and Phemy would obey, with the protest of silent tears, and the airs of a much injured mortal. Had Kirsty been backed by the child's father, she might have made something of her; but it grew more and more painful to think of her future, when her self-constituted guardian should have lost what influence she had over her.

Phemy was rather afraid of Steenie. Her sunny nature shrank from the shadow, as of a wall, in which Steenie appeared to her always to stand. From any little attention he would offer her, she, although never rude to him, would involuntarily recoil, and he soon learned to leave her undismayed. That the child's repugnance troubled him, though he never spoke of it, Kirsty saw quite plainly, for she could read his face like a book, and heard him sigh when even his mother did not. Her eyes were constantly regarding him, like sheep feeding on the pasture of his face:-I think I have used a figure of sir Philip Sidney's. But say rather-the thoughts that strayed over his face were the sheep to which all her life she had been the devoted shepherdess.

At Corbyknowe things went on as hitherto. Kirsty was in no danger of tiring of the even flow of her life. Steenie's unselfish solitude of soul made him every day dearer to her. Books she sought in every accessible, and found occasionally in an unhopeful quarter. She had no thought of distinguishing herself, no smallest ambition of becoming learned; her soul was athirst to understand, and what she understood found its way from her mind into her life. Much to the advantage of her thinking were her keen power and constant practice of observation. I utterly refuse the notion that we cannot think without words, but certainly the more forms we have ready to embody our thoughts, the farther we shall be able to carry our thinking. Richly endowed, Kirsty required the more mental food, and was the more able to use it when she found it. To such of the neighbours as had no knowledge of any diligence save that of the hands, she seemed to lead an idle life; but indeed even Kirsty's hands were far from idle. When not with Steenie she was almost always at her mother's call, who, from the fear that she might grow up incapable of managing a house, often required a good deal of her. But the mother did not fail to note with what alacrity she would lay her book aside, sometimes even dropping it in her eagerness to answer her summons. Dismissed for the moment, she would at once take her book again and the seat nearest to it: she could read anywhere, and gave herself none of the student-airs that make some young people so pitifully unpleasant. At the same time solitude was preferable for study, and Kirsty was always glad to find herself with her books in the little hut, Steenie asleep on the heather carpet on her feet, and the assurance that there no one would interrupt her.

It was not wonderful that, in the sweet absence of selfish cares, her mind full of worthy thoughts, and her heart going out in tenderness, her face should go on growing in beauty and refinement. She was not yet arrived at physical full growth, and the forms of her person being therefore in a process of change were the more easily modelled after her spiritual nature. She seemed almost already one that would not die, but live for ever, and continue to inherit the earth. Neither her father nor her mother could have imagined anything better to be made of her.

Steenie had not changed his habits, neither seemed to grow at all more like other people. He was now indeed seldom so much depressed as formerly, but he showed no sign of less dependence on Kirsty.


CHAPTER XII

THE EARTH-HOUSE


About a year after Francis Gordon went to Edinburgh, Kirsty and Steenie made a discovery.

Between Corbyknowe and the Horn, on whose sides David Barclay had a right of pasturage for the few sheep to which Steenie and Snootie were the shepherds, was a small glen, through which, on its way to join the little river with the kelpie-pot, ran a brook, along whose banks lay two narrow breadths of nice grass. The brother and sister always crossed this brook when they wanted to go straight to the top of the hill.

One morning, having each taken the necessary run and jump, they had began to climb on the other side, when Kirsty, who was a few paces before him, turned at an exclamation from Steenie.

'It's a' the weicht o' my muckle feet!' he cried, as he dragged one of the troublesome members out of a hole. 'Losh, I dinna ken hoo far it michtna hae gane doon gien I hadna gotten a haud o' 't in time and pu'd it oot!'

How much of humour, how much of silliness, and how much of truth were wrapt up together in some of the things he said, it was impossible to determine. I believe Kirsty came pretty near knowing, but even she was not always sure where wilful oddity and where misapprehension was at the root of a remark.

'Gien ye set yer fit upon a hole,' said Kirsty, 'what can the puir thing du but gang doon intil 't? Ye maunna be oonrizzonable wi' the craturs, Steenie! Ye maun be fair til them.'

'But there was nae hole!' returned Steenie. 'There cudna hae been. There's the hole noo! My fit made it, and there it'll hae to bide! It's a some fearsome thing, divna ye think, 'at what aiven the fit o' a body dis, bides? What for disna the hole gang awa whan the fit lifts? Luik ye there! Ye see thae twa stanes stan'in up by themsels, and there's the hole-atween the twa! There cudna hae been a hole there afore the weicht o' my fit cam doon upo' the spot and ca'd it throuw! I gaed in maist til my knee!'

'Lat's luik!' said Kirsty, and proceeded to examine the place.

She thought at first it must be the burrow of some animal, but the similarity in shape of the projecting stones suggesting that their position might not be fortuitous, she would look a little farther, and began to pull away the heather about the mouth of the opening. Steenie set himself, with might and main, to help her. Kirsty was much the stronger of the two, but Steenie always did his best to second her in anything that required exertion.

They soon spied the lump of sod and heather which Steenie's heavy foot had driven down, and when they had pulled that out, they saw that the hole went deeper still, seeming a very large burrow indeed-therefore a little fearsome. Having widened the mouth of it by clearing away a thick growth of roots from its sides, and taken out a quantity of soft earth, they perceived that it went sloping into the ground still farther. With growing curiosity they leant down into it, lying on the edge, and reaching with their hands removed the loose earth as low as they could. This done, the descent showed itself about two feet square, as far down as they had cleared it, beyond which a little way it was lost in the dark.

What were they to do next? There was yet greater inducement to