MUTUAL MINISTRATION
In a minute or so the door opened, and Steenie coming one step into the
kitchen, stood and stared with such a face of concern that Kirsty was
obliged to speak. I do not believe he had ever before seen a woman
weeping. He shivered visibly.
‘Phemy’s no that weel,’ she said. ‘Her hert’s sae sair it gars her
greit. She canna help greitin, puir dauty!’
Phemy lifted her face from Kirsty’s bosom, where, like a miserable
child, she had been pressing it hard, and, seeming to have lost in the
depth of her grief all her natural shyness, looked at Steenie with the
most pitiful look ever countenance wore: her rage had turned to
self-commiseration. The cloud of mingled emotion and distress on the
visage of Steenie wavered, shifted, changed, and settled into the
divinest look of pity and protection. Kirsty said she never saw
anything so unmistakably Godlike upon human countenance. Involuntarily
she murmured, ‘Eh, the bonny man!’ He turned away from them, and, his
head bent upon his breast, stood for a time utterly motionless. Even
Phemy, overpowered and stilled by that last look he cast upon her,
gazed at him with involuntary reverence. But only Kirsty knew that the
half-witted had sought and found audience with the Eternal, and was now
in his presence.
He remained in this position, Kirsty thought, about three minutes. Then
he lifted his head, and walked straight from the house, nor turned nor
spoke. Kirsty did not go after him: she feared to tread on holy ground
uninvited. Nor would she leave Phemy until her mother came.
She got up, set the poor girl on the chair, and began to get ready the
mid-day meal, hoping Phemy would help her, and gain some comfort from
activity. Nor was she disappointed. With a childish air of abstraction,
Phemy rose and began, as of old in the house, to busy herself, and
Kirsty felt much relieved.
‘But, oh,’ she said to herself, ‘the sairness o’ that wee herty i’ the
inside o’ her!’
Phemy never spoke, and went about her work mechanically. When at length
Mrs. Barclay came into the kitchen, Kirsty thought it better to leave
them together, and went to find Steenie. She spent the rest of the day
with him. Neither said a word about Phemy, but Steenie’s countenance
shone all the afternoon, and she left him at night in his house on the
Horn, still in the after-glow of the mediation which had irradiated him
in the morning.
When she came home, Kirsty found that her mother had put Phemy to bed.
The poor child had scarcely spoken all day, and seemed to have no life
in her. In the evening an attack of shivering, with other symptoms,
showed she was physically ill. Mrs. Barclay had sent for her father,
but the girl was asleep when he came. Aware that he would not hear a
word casting doubt on his daughter’s discretion, and fearing therefore
that, if she told him how she came to be there, he would take her home
at any risk, where she would not be so well cared for as at the Knowe,
she had told him nothing of what had taken place; and he, thinking her
ailment would prove but a bad cold, had gone back to his books without
seeing her. At Mrs. Barclay’s entreaty he had promised to send the
doctor, but never thought of it again.
Kirsty found her very feverish, breathing with difficulty, and in
considerable pain. She sat by her through the night. She had seen
nothing of illness, but sympathetic insight is the first essential
endowment of a good nurse.
All the night long--and Kirsty knew he was near--Steenie was roving
within sight of the window where the light was burning. He did not know
that Phemy was ill; pity for her heart-ache drew him thither. As soon
as he thought his sister would be up, he went in: the door was never
locked. She heard him, and came to him. The moment he learned Phemy’s
condition, he said he would go for the doctor. Kirsty in vain begged
him to have some breakfast first: he took a piece of oatcake in his
hand and went.
The doctor returned with him, and pronounced the attack pleurisy. Phemy
did not seem to care what became of her. She was ill a long time, and
for a fortnight the doctor came every day.
There was now so much to be done, that Kirsty could seldom go with
Steenie to the hill. Nor did Steenie himself care to go for any time,
and was never a night from the house. When all were in bed, he would
generally coil himself on a bench by the kitchen-fire, at any moment
ready to answer the lightest call of Kirsty, who took pains to make him
feel himself useful, as indeed he was. Although now he slept
considerably better at night and less in the day, he would start to his
feet at the slightest sound, like the dog he had almost ceased to
imagine himself except in his dreams. In carrying messages, or in
following directions, he had always shown himself perfectly
trustworthy.
Slowly, very slowly, Phemy recovered. But long before she was well, his
family saw that the change for the better which had been evident in
Steenie’s mental condition for some time before Phemy’s illness, was
now manifesting itself plainly in his person. The intense compassion
which, that memorable morning, roused his spirit even to the glorifying
of his visage, seemed now settling in his looks and clarifying them.
His eyes appeared to shine less from his brain, and more from his mind;
he stood more erect; and, as encouraging a symptom, perhaps, as any, he
had grown more naturally conscious of his body and its requirements.
Kirsty, coming upon him one morning as he somewhat ruefully regarded
his trowsers, suggested a new suit, and was delighted to see his face
shine up, and hear him declare himself ready to go with her and be
measured for it. She found also soon after, to her joy, that he had for
some time been enlarging with hammer and chisel a certain cavity in one
of the rocks inside his house on the Horn, that he might use it for a
bath.
In all these things she saw evident signs of a new start in the growth
of his spiritual nature; and if she spied danger ahead, she knew that
the God whose presence in him was making him grow, was ahead with the
danger also.
Steenie not only now went attired as befitted David Barclay’s son, but
to an ordinary glance would have appeared nowise remarkable. Kirsty
ceased to look upon him with the pity hitherto colouring all her
devotion; pride had taken its place, which she buttressed with a
massive hope, for Kirsty was a splendid hoper. People in the town,
where now he was oftener seen, would remark on the wonderful change in
him.--‘What’s come to fule Steenie?’ said one of a group he had just
passed. ‘Haith, he’s luikin ’maist like ither fowk!’--‘I’m thinkin the
deevil maun hae gane oot o’ him!’ said another, and several joined in
with their remarks.--‘Nae muckle o’ a deevil was there to gang oot! He
was aye an unco hairmless cratur!’--‘And that saft-hertit til a’ leevin
things!’--‘He was that! I saw him ance face a score o’ laddies to
proteck a poddick they war puttin to torment, whan, the Lord kens,
he had need o’ a’ his wits to tak care o’ himsel!’--‘Aye, jist like
him!’--‘Weel, the Lord taks care o’ him, for he’s ane o’ his ain
innocents!’
Kirsty, before long, began to teach him to sit on a horse, and, after
but a few weeks of her training, he could ride pretty well.
It was many weeks before Phemy was fit to go home. Her father came to
see her now and then, but not very often: he had his duties to attend
to, and his books consoled him.
As soon as Phemy was able to leave her room, Steenie constituted
himself her slave, and was ever within her call. He seemed always to
know when she would prefer having him in sight, and when she would
rather be alone. He would sit for an hour at the other end of the room,
and watch her like a dog without moving. He could have sat so all day,
but, as soon as she was able to move about, nothing could keep Phemy in
one place more than an hour at the utmost. By this time Steenie could
read a little, and his reading was by no means as fruitless as it was
slow; he would sit reading, nor at all lose his labour that, every
other moment when within sight of her, he would look up to see if she
wanted anything. To this mute attendance of love the girl became so
accustomed that she regarded it as her right, nor had ever the spoiled
little creature occasion to imagine that it was not yielded her; and if
at a rare moment she threw him glance or small smile--a crumb from her
table to her dog--Steenie would for one joyous instant see into the
seventh heaven, and all the day after dwell in the fifth or sixth. On
fine clear noontides she would walk a little way with him and Snootie,
and then he would talk to her as he had never done except to Kirsty,
telling her wonderful things about the dog and the sheep, the stars and
the night, the clouds and the moon; but he never spoke to her of the
bonny man. When, on their return, she would say they had had a pleasant
walk together, his delight would be unutterable; but all the time
Steenie had not once ventured a word belonging to any of the deeper
thoughts in which his heart was most at home. Was it that in his own
eyes he was but a worm glorified with the boon of serving an angel? was
it that he felt as if she knew everything of that kind, and he had
nothing to tell her but the things that entered at his eyes and ears?
or was it that a sacred instinct of her incapacity for holy things kept
him silent concerning such? At times he would look terribly sad, and
the mood would last for hours.
Not once since she began to get better, had Phemy alluded to her
faithless lover. In its departure her illness seemed to have carried
with it her unwholesome love for him; and certainly, as if overjoyed at
her deliverance, she had become much more of a child. Kirsty was glad
for her sake, and gladder still that Francie Gordon had done her no
irreparable injury--seemed not even to have left his simulacrum in her
memory and imagination. As her strength returned, she regained the
childish merriment which had always drawn Kirsty, and the more strongly
that she was not herself light-hearted. Kirsty’s rare laugh was indeed
a merry one, but when happiest of all she hardly smiled. Perhaps she
never would laugh her own laugh until she opened her eyes in heaven!
But how can any one laugh his real best laugh before that! Until then
he does not even know his name!
Phemy seemed more pleased to see her father every time he came; and
Kirsty began to hope she would tell him the trouble she had gone
through. But then Kirsty had a perfect faith in her father, and a girl
like Phemy never has! Her father, besides, had never been father enough
to her. He had been invariably kind and trusting, but his books had
been more to his hourly life than his daughter. He had never drawn her
to him, never given her opportunity of coming really near him. No
story, however, ends in this world. The first volume may have been very
dull, and yet the next be full of delight.