Heather and Snow, George MacDonald [epub e reader TXT] 📗

her candle and he followed. As she showed him the curious place, she gave him the results of her reading about such constructions, telling him who had written concerning them, and what they had written. 'There's mair o' them, I gether,' she said, 'and mair remarkable anes, in oor ain coonty nor in ony ither in Scotlan'. I hae mysel seen nane but this.' Then she told him how Steenie had led the way to its discovery. By the time she ended, Gordon was really interested-chiefly, no doubt, in finding himself possessor of a thing which many men, learned and unlearned, would think worth coming to see.

'Did you find this in it?' he asked, seating himself on her little throne of turf.

'Na; I put that there mysel,' answered Kirsty. 'There was naething intil the place, jist naething ava! There was naething ye cud hae pickit aff o' the flure. Gien it hadna been oot o' the gait o' the win', ye wud hae thoucht it had sweepit it clean. Ye cud hae tellt by naething intil't what ever it was meant for, hoose or byre or barn, kirk or kirkyard. It had been jist a hidy-hole in troubled times, whan the cuintry wud be swarmin wi' stravaguin marauders!'

'What made ye the seat for, Kirsty?' asked Gordon, calling her by her name for the first time, and falling into the mother tongue with a flash of his old manner.

'I come here whiles,' she answered, 'to be my lane and read a bit. It's sae quaiet. Eternity seems itsel to come and hide in 't whiles. I'm tempit whiles to bide a' nicht.'

'Isna 't awfu' cauld?'

'Na, no aften that. It's fine and warm i' the winter. And I can licht a fire whan I like.-But ye hae na yer coat on, Francie! I oucht na to hae latten ye bide sae lang!'

He shivered, rose, and made his way out. Steenie stood in the sunlight waiting for them.

'Why, Steenie,' said Gordon, 'you brought me to see your house: why didn't you come in with me?'

'Na, na! I'm feart for my feet: this is no my hoose!' answered Steenie. 'I'm biggin ane. Kirsty's helpin me: I cudna big a hoose wantin Kirsty! That's what I wud hae ye see, no this ane. This is Kirsty's hoose. It was Kirsty wantit ye to see this ane.-Na, it's no mine,' he added reflectively. 'I ken I maun come til 't some day, but I s' bide oot o' 't as lang's I can. I like the hill a heap better.'

'What does he mean?' asked Francis, turning to Kirsty.

'Ow, he has a heap o' notions o' 's ain!' answered Kirsty, who did not care, especially in his presence, to talk about her brother save to those who loved him.

When Francis turned again, he saw Steenie a good way up the hill.

'Where does he want to take me, Kirsty? Is it far?' he asked.

'Ay, it's a gey bitty; it's nearhan' at the tap o' the Horn, a wee ayont it.'

'Then I think I shall not go,' returned Francis. 'I will come another day.'

'Steenie! Steenie!' cried Kirsty, 'he'll no gang the day. He maun gang hame. He says he'll come anither time. Haud ye awa on to yer hoose; I s' be wi' ye by and by.'

Steenie went up the hill, and Kirsty and Francis walked toward Corbyknowe.

'Has no young man appeared yet to put Steenie's nose out of joint, Kirsty?' asked Gordon.

Kirsty thought the question rude, but answered, with quiet dignity, 'No ane. I never had muckle opinion o' yoong men, and dinna care aboot their company.-But what are ye thinkin o' duin yersel-I mean, whan ye're throu wi' the college?' she continued. 'Ye'll surely be comin hame to tak things intil yer ain han'? My father says whiles he's some feart they're no bein made the maist o'.'

'The property must look after itself, Kirsty. I will be a soldier like my father. If it could do without him when he was in India, it may just as well do without me. As long as my mother lives, she shall do what she likes with it.'

Thus talking, and growing more friendly as they went, they walked slowly back to the house. There Francis mounted his horse and rode away, and for more than two years they saw nothing of him.


CHAPTER XIV

STEENIE'S HOUSE


Steenie seemed always to experience a strange sort of terror while waiting for anyone to come out of the weem, into which he never entered; and it was his repugnance to the place that chiefly moved him to build a house of his own. He may have also calculated on being able, with such a refuge at hand, to be on the hill in all weathers. They still made use of their little hut as before, and Kirsty still kept her library in it, but it was at the root of the Horn, and Steenie loved the peak of it more than any other spot in his narrow world.

I have already said that when, on the occasion of its discovery, Steenie, for the first and the last time, came out of the weem, he fled to the Horn. There he roamed for hours, possessed with the feeling that he had all but lost Kirsty who had taken possession of a house into which he could never accompany her. For himself he would like a house on the very top of the Horn, not one inside it!

Near the top was a little scoop out of the hill, sheltered on all sides except the south, which, the one time I saw it, reminded me strongly of Dante's grembo in the purgatorial hill, where the upward pilgrims had to rest outside the gate, because of the darkness during which no man could go higher. Here, it is true, were no flowers to weave a pattern upon its carpet of green; true also, here were no beautiful angels, in green wings and green garments, poised in the sweet night-air, watchful with their short, pointless, flaming swords against the creeping enemy; but it was, nevertheless, the loveliest carpet of grass and moss, and as to the angels, I find it impossible to imagine, even in the heavenly host, one heart more guardant than that of Kirsty, one truer, or more devoted to its charge. The two were together as the child of earth, his perplexities and terrors ever shot through with flashes of insight and hope, and the fearless, less imaginative, confident angel, appointed to watch and ward and see him safe through the loose-cragged mountain-pass to the sunny vales beyond.

On the northern slope of the hollow, full in the face of the sun, a little family of rocks had fallen together, odd in shapes and positions but of long stable equilibrium, with narrow spaces between them. The sun was throwing his last red rays among these rocks when Steenie the same evening wandered into the little valley. The moment his eyes fell upon them, he said in his heart, 'Yon's the place for a hoose! I'll get Kirsty to big ane, and mebbe she 'll come and bide in 't wi' me whiles!'

In his mind there were for some years two conflicting ideas of refuge, one embodied in the heathery hut with Kirsty, the other typified by the uplifted loneliness, the air and the space of the mountain upon which the bonny man sometimes descended: for the last three years or more the latter idea had had the upper hand: now it seemed possible to have the two kinds of refuge together, where the more material would render the more spiritual easier of attainment! Such were not Steenie's words; indeed he used none concerning the matter; but such were his vague thoughts-feelings rather, not yet thoughts.

The spot had indeed many advantages. For one thing, the group of rocks was the ready skeleton of the house Steenie wanted. Again, if the snow sometimes lay deeper there than in other parts of the hill, there first it began to melt. A third advantage was that, while, as I have said, the valley was protected by higher ground everywhere but on the south, it there afforded a large outlook over the boggy basin and over the hills beyond its immediate rim, to a horizon in which stood some of the loftier peaks of the highland mountains.

When Steenie's soul was able for a season to banish the nameless forms that haunt the dim borders of insanity, he would sit in that valley for hours, regarding the wider-spread valley below him, in which he knew every height and hollow, and, with his exceptionally keen sight, he could descry signs of life where another would have beheld but an everyway dead level. Not a live thing, it seemed almost, could spread wing or wag tail, but Steenie would become thereby aware of its presence. Kirsty, boastful to her parents of the faculty of Steenie, said to her father one day,

'I dinna believe, father, wi' Steenie on the bog, a reid worm cud stick up his heid oot o' 't ohn him seen 't!'

'I'm thinkin that's no sayin over muckle, wuman!' returned David. 'I never jist set mysel to luik, but I dinna think I ever did tak notice o' a worm settin up that heid o' his oot o' a bog. I dinna think it's a sile they care aboot. I kenna what they would get to please them there. It's the yerd they live upo'. Whaur craps winna grow, I doobt gien worms can live.'

Kirsty laughed: she had made herself ridiculous, but the ridicule of some is sweeter than the praise of others.

Steenie set about his house-building at once, and when he had got as far as he could without her, called for help from Kirsty, who never interfered with, and never failed him. Divots he was able to cut, and of them he provided a good quantity, but when it came to moving stones, two pairs of hands were often wanted. Indeed, before the heavier work of 'Steenie's hoosie' was over, the two had to beg the help of more-of their father, and of men from the farm.

During its progress, Phemy Craig paid rather a lengthened visit to Corbyknowe, and often joined the two in their labour on the Horn. She was not very strong, but would carry a good deal in the course of the day; and through this association with Steenie, her dread of him gradually vanished, and they became comrades.

When Steenie's design was at length carried out, they had built up with stone and lime the open spaces between several of the rocks; had cased these curtain-walls outside and lined them inside with softer and warmer walls of fells or divots cut from the green sod of the hill; and had covered in the whole as they found it possible-very irregularly no doubt, but smoothing up all the corners and hollows with turf and heather. This done, one of the men who was a good thatcher, fastened the whole roof down with strong lines, so that the wind should not get under and strip it off. The result was a sort of burrow, consisting of several irregular compartments with open communication-or rather, perhaps, of a single chamber composed of recesses. One small rock they included quite: Steenie would make it serve for a table, and some of its inequalities for shelves. In one of the compartments or recesses, they contrived a fireplace, and in another a tolerably well concealed exit;