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JANET.
Once away, Gibbie had no thought of returning. Up Daurside was the
sole propulsive force whose existence he recognized. But when he
lifted his head from drinking at the stream, which was one of some
size, and, greatly refreshed, looked up its channel, a longing
seized him to know whence came the water of life which had thus
restored him to bliss -- how a burn first appears upon the earth. He
thought it might come from the foot of a great conical mountain
which seemed but a little way off. He would follow it up and see.
So away he went, yielding at once, as was his wont, to the first
desire that came. He had not trotted far along the bank, however,
before, at a sharp turn it took, he saw that its course was a much
longer one than he had imagined, for it turned from the mountain,
and led up among the roots of other hills; while here in front of
him, direct from the mountain, as it seemed, came down a smaller
stream, and tumbled noisily into this. The larger burn would lead
him too far from the Daur; he would follow the smaller one. He
found a wide shallow place, crossed the larger, and went up the side
of the smaller.
Doubly free after his imprisonment of the morning, Gibbie sped
joyously along. Already nature, her largeness, her openness, her
loveliness, her changefulness, her oneness in change, had begun to
heal the child's heart, and comfort him in his disappointment with
his kind. The stream he was now ascending ran along a claw of the
mountain, which claw was covered with almost a forest of pine,
protecting little colonies of less hardy timber. Its heavy green
was varied with the pale delicate fringes of the fresh foliage of
the larches, filling the air with aromatic breath. In the midst of
their soft tufts, each tuft buttoned with a brown spot, hung the
rich brown knobs and tassels of last year's cones. But the trees
were all on the opposite side of the stream, and appeared to be
mostly on the other side of a wall. Where Gibbie was, the
mountain-root was chiefly of rock, interspersed with heather.
A little way up the stream, he came to a bridge over it, closed at
the farther end by iron gates between pillars, each surmounted by a
wolf's head in stone. Over the gate on each side leaned a
rowan-tree, with trunk and branches aged and gnarled amidst their
fresh foliage. He crossed the burn to look through the gate, and
pressed his face between the bars to get a better sight of a tame
rabbit that had got out of its hutch. It sat, like a Druid white
with age, in the midst of a gravel drive, much overgrown with moss,
that led through a young larch wood, with here and there an ancient
tree, lonely amidst the youth of its companions. Suddenly from the
wood a large spaniel came bounding upon the rabbit. Gibbie gave a
shriek, and the rabbit made one white flash into the wood, with the
dog after him. He turned away sad at heart.
"Ilka cratur 'at can," he said to himself, "ates ilka cratur 'at
canna!"
It was his first generalization, but not many years passed before he
supplemented it with a conclusion:
"But the man 'at wad be a man, he maunna."
Resuming his journey of investigation, he trotted along the bank of
the burn, farther and farther up, until he could trot no more, but
must go clambering over great stones, or sinking to the knees in
bog, patches of it red with iron, from which he would turn away with
a shudder. Sometimes he walked in the water, along the bed of the
burn itself; sometimes he had to scramble up its steep side, to pass
one of the many little cataracts of its descent. Here and there a
small silver birch, or a mountain-ash, or a stunted fir-tree,
looking like a wizard child, hung over the stream. Its banks were
mainly of rock and heather, but now and then a small patch of
cultivation intervened. Gibbie had no thought that he was gradually
leaving the abodes of men behind him; he knew no reason why in
ascending things should change, and be no longer as in plainer ways.
For what he knew, there might be farm after farm, up and up for
ever, to the gates of heaven. But it would no longer have troubled
him greatly to leave all houses behind him for a season. A great
purple foxglove could do much now -- just at this phase of his story,
to make him forget -- not the human face divine, but the loss of it.
A lark aloft in the blue, from whose heart, as from a fountain
whose roots were lost in the air, its natural source, issued, not a
stream, but an ever spreading lake of song, was now more to him than
the memory of any human voice he had ever heard, except his father's
and Sambo's. But he was not yet quite out and away from the
dwellings of his kind.
I may as well now make the attempt to give some idea of Gibbie's
appearance, as he showed after so long wandering. Of dress he had
hardly enough left to carry the name. Shoes, of course, he had
none. Of the shape of trousers there remained nothing, except the
division before and behind in the short petticoat to which they were
reduced; and those rudimentary divisions were lost in the multitude
of rents of equal apparent significance. He had never, so far as he
knew, had a shirt upon his body; and his sole other garment was a
jacket, so much too large for him, that to retain the use of his
hands he had folded back the sleeves quite to his elbows. Thus
reversed they became pockets, the only ones he had, and in them he
stowed whatever provisions were given him of which he could not make
immediate use -- porridge and sowens and mashed potatoes included:
they served him, in fact, like the first of the stomachs of those
animals which have more than one -- concerning which animals, by the
way, I should much like to know what they were in "Pythagoras'
time." His head had plentiful protection in his own natural
crop -- had never either had or required any other. That would have
been of the gold order, had not a great part of its colour been
sunburnt, rained, and frozen out of it. All ways it pointed, as if
surcharged with electric fluid, crowning him with a wildness which
was in amusing contrast with the placidity of his countenance.
Perhaps the resulting queerness in the expression of the little
vagrant, a look as if he had been hunted till his body and soul were
nearly ruffled asunder, and had already parted company in aim and
interest, might have been the first thing to strike a careless
observer. But if the heart was not a careless one, the eye would
look again and discover a stronger stillness than mere placidity -- a
sort of live peace abiding in that weather-beaten little face under
its wild crown of human herbage. The features of it were
well-shaped, and not smaller than proportioned to the small whole of
his person. His eyes -- partly, perhaps, because there was so little
flesh upon his bones -- were large, and in repose had much of a soft
animal expression: there was not in them the look of You and I know.
Frequently, too, when occasion roused the needful instinct, they
had a sharp expression of outlook and readiness, which, without a
trace of fierceness or greed, was yet equally animal. Only all the
time there was present something else, beyond characterization:
behind them something seemed to lie asleep. His hands and feet were
small and childishly dainty, his whole body well-shaped and well put
together -- of which the style of his dress rather quashed the
evidence.
Such was Gibbie to the eye, as he rose from Daurside to the last
cultivated ground on the borders of the burn, and the highest
dwelling on the mountain. It was the abode of a cottar, and was a
dependency of the farm he had just left. The cottar was an old man
of seventy; his wife was nearly sixty. They had reared stalwart
sons and shapely daughters, now at service here and there in the
valleys below -- all ready to see God in nature, and recognize Him in
providence. They belong to a class now, I fear, extinct, but once,
if my love prejudice not my judgment too far, the glory and strength
of Scotland: their little acres are now swallowed up in the larger
farms.
It was a very humble dwelling, built of turf upon a foundation of
stones, and roofed with turf and straw -- warm, and nearly impervious
to the searching airs of the mountain-side. One little window of a
foot and a half square looked out on the universe. At one end stood
a stack of peat, half as big as the cottage itself, All around it
were huge rocks, some of them peaks whose masses went down to the
very central fires, others only fragments that had rolled from
above. Here and there a thin crop was growing in patches amongst
them, the red grey stone lifting its baldness in spots numberless
through the soft waving green. A few of the commonest flowers grew
about the door, but there was no garden. The door-step was live
rock, and a huge projecting rock behind formed the back and a
portion of one of the end walls. This latter rock had been the
attraction to the site, because of a hollow in it, which now served
as a dairy. For up there with them lived the last cow of the
valley -- the cow that breathed the loftiest air on all Daurside -- a
good cow, and gifted in feeding well upon little. Facing the broad
south, and leaning against the hill, as against the bosom of God,
sheltering it from the north and east, the cottage looked so
high-humble, so still, so confident, that it drew Gibbie with the
spell of heart-likeness. He knocked at the old, weather-beaten,
shrunk and rent, but well patched door. A voice, alive with the
soft vibrations of thought and feeling, answered,
"Come yer wa's in, whae'er ye be."
Gibbie pulled the string that came through a hole in the door, so
lifting the latch, and entered.
A woman sat on a creepie, her face turned over her shoulder to see
who came. It was a grey face, with good simple features and clear
grey eyes. The plentiful hair that grew low on her forehead, was
half grey, mostly covered by a white cap with frills. A clean
wrapper and apron, both of blue print, over a blue winsey petticoat,
blue stockings, and strong shoes completed her dress. A book lay on
her lap: always when she had finished her morning's work, and made
her house tidy, she sat down to have her comfort, as she called it.
The moment she saw Gibbie she rose. Had he been the angel Gabriel,
come to tell her she was wanted at the throne, her attention could
not have been more immediate or thorough. She was rather a little
woman, and carried herself straight and light.
"Eh, ye puir ootcast!" she said, in the pitying voice of a mother,
"hoo cam ye here sic a hicht? Cratur, ye hae left the warl' ahin'
ye. What wad ye hae here? I hae naething."
Receiving no answer but one of the child's betwitching smiles, she
stood for a moment regarding him, not in mere silence, but with a
look of dumbness. She was a mother. One who is mother only to her
own children is not a mother; she is only a woman who has borne
children. But here was one of God's mothers.
Loneliness and silence, and constant homely familiarity with the
vast simplicities of nature, assist much in the development of the
deeper and more wonderful faculties of perception. The perceptions
themselves may take this or that shape according to the
education -- may even embody themselves fantastically, yet be no less
perceptions. Now the very moment before Gibbie entered, she had
been reading the words of the Lord: "Inasmuch as ye have done it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto
me"; and with her heart full of them, she lifted her eyes and saw
Gibbie. For one moment, with the quick flashing response of the
childlike imagination of the Celt, she fancied she saw the Lord
himself. Another woman might have made a more serious mistake, and
seen there only a child. Often had Janet pondered, as she sat alone
on the great mountain, while Robert was with the sheep, or she lay
awake by his side at night, with the wind howling about the cottage,
whether the Lord might not sometimes take a lonely walk to look
after such solitary sheep of his flock as they, and let them know he
had not lost sight of them, for all the ups and downs of the hills.
There stood the child, and whether he was the Lord or not, he was
evidently hungry. Ah! who could tell but the Lord was actually
hungry in every one of his hungering little ones!
In the mean time -- only it was but thought-time, not
clock-time -- Gibbie stood motionless in the middle of the floor,
smiling his innocent smile, asking for nothing, hinting at nothing,
but resting his wild calm eyes, with a sense of safety and
mother-presence, upon the grey thoughtful face of the gazing woman.
Her awe deepened; it seemed to descend upon her and fold her in as
with a mantle. Involuntarily she bowed her head, and stepping to
him took him by the hand, and led him to the stool she had left.
There she made him sit, while she brought forward her table, white
with scrubbing, took from a hole in the wall and set upon it a
platter of oatcakes, carried a wooden bowl to her dairy in the rock
through a whitewashed door, and bringing it back filled, half with
cream half with milk, set that also on the table. Then she placed a
chair before it, and said --
"Sit ye doon, an' tak. Gin ye war the Lord himsel', my bonny man,
an' ye may be for oucht I ken, for ye luik puir an' despised eneuch,
I cud gie nae better, for it's a' I hae to offer ye -- 'cep it micht
be an egg," she added, correcting herself, and turned and went out.
Presently she came back with a look of success, carrying two eggs,
which, having raked out a quantity, she buried in the hot ashes of
the peats, and left in front of the hearth to roast, while Gibbie
went on eating the thick oatcake, sweet and substantial, and
drinking such milk as the wildest imagination of town-boy could
never suggest. It was indeed angels' food -- food such as would have
pleased the Lord himself after a hard day with axe and saw and
plane, so good and simple and strong was it. Janet resumed her seat
on the low three-legged stool, and took her knitting that he might
feel neither that he was watched as he ate, nor that she was waiting
for him to finish. Every other moment she gave a glance at the
stranger she had taken in; but never a word he spoke, and the sense
of mystery grew upon her.
Presently came a great bounce and scramble; the latch jumped up, the
door flew open, and after a moment's pause, in came a sheep dog -- a
splendid thorough-bred collie, carrying in his mouth a tiny,
long-legged lamb, which he dropped half dead in the woman's lap. It
was a late lamb, born of a mother which had been sold from the hill,
but had found her way back from a great distance, in order that her
coming young one might have the privilege of being yeaned on the
same spot where she had herself awaked to existence. Another
moment, and her mba-a was heard approaching the door. She trotted
in, and going up to Janet, stood contemplating the consequences of
her maternal ambition. Her udder was full, but the lamb was too
weak to suck. Janet rose, and going to the side of the room, opened
the door of what might have seemed an old press, but was a bed.
Folding back the counterpane, she laid the lamb in the bed, and
covered it over. Then she got a caup, a wooden dish like a large
saucer, and into it milked the ewe. Next she carried the caup to
the bed; but what means she there used to enable the lamb to drink,
the boy could not see, though his busy eyes and loving heart would
gladly have taken in all.
In the mean time the collie, having done his duty by the lamb, and
perhaps forgotten it, sat on his tail, and stared with his two brave
trusting eyes at the little beggar that sat in the master's chair,
and ate of the fat of the land. Oscar was a gentleman, and had
never gone to school, therefore neither fancied nor had been taught
that rags make an essential distinction, and ought to be barked at.
Gibbie was a stranger, and therefore as a stranger Oscar gave him
welcome -- now and then stooping to lick the little brown feet that
had wandered so far.
Like all wild creatures, Gibbie ate fast, and had finished
everything set before him ere the woman had done feeding the lamb.
Without a notion of the rudeness of it, his heart full of gentle
gratitude, he rose and left the cottage. When Janet turned from her
shepherding, there sat Oscar looking up at the empty chair.
"What's come o' the laddie?" she said to the dog, who answered with
a low whine, half-regretful, half-interrogative. It may be he was
only asking, like Esau, if there was no residuum of blessing for him
also; but perhaps he too was puzzled what to conclude about the boy.
Janet hastened to the door, but already Gibbie's nimble feet
refreshed to the point of every toe with the food he had just
swallowed, had borne him far up the hill, behind the cottage, so
that she could not get a glimpse of him. Thoughtfully she returned,
and thoughtfully removed the remnants of the meal. She would then
have resumed her Bible, but her hospitality had rendered it
necessary that she should put on her girdle -- not a cincture of
leather upon her body, but a disc of iron on the fire, to bake
thereon cakes ere her husband's return. It was a simple enough
process, for the oat-meal wanted nothing but water and fire; but her
joints had not yet got rid of the winter's rheumatism, and the
labour of the baking was the hardest part of the sacrifice of her
hospitality. To many it is easy to give what they have, but the
offering of weariness and pain is never easy. They are indeed a
true salt to salt sacrifices withal. That it was the last of her
meal till her youngest boy should bring her a bag on his back from
the mill the next Saturday, made no point in her trouble.
When at last she had done, and put the things away, and swept up the
hearth, she milked the ewe, sent her out to nibble, took her Bible,
and sat down once more to read. The lamb lay at her feet, with his
little head projecting from the folds of her new flannel petticoat;
and every time her eye fell from the book upon the lamb, she felt as
if somehow the lamb was the boy that had eaten of her bread and
drunk of her milk. After she had read a while, there came a change,
and the lamb seemed the Lord himself, both lamb and shepherd, who
had come to claim her hospitality. Then, divinely invaded with the
dread lest in the fancy she should forget the reality, she kneeled
down and prayed to the friend of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, to
come as he had said, and sup with her indeed.
Not for years and years had Janet been to church; she had long been
unable to walk so far; and having no book but the best, and no help
to understand it but the highest, her faith was simple, strong,
real, all-pervading. Day by day she pored over the great gospel -- I
mean just the good news according to Matthew and Mark and Luke and
John -- until she had grown to be one of the noble ladies of the
kingdom of heaven -- one of those who inherit the earth, and are
ripening to see God. For the Master, and his mind in hers, was her
teacher. She had little or no theology save what he taught her, or
rather, what he is. And of any other than that, the less the
better; for no theology, except the Theou logos, {compilers
note: spelled in Greek: Theta, Epsilon, Omicron, Upsilon;
Lambda, Omicron with stress, Gamma, Omicron, Sigma} is worth the
learning, no other being true. To know him is to know God. And he
only who obeys him, does or can know him; he who obeys him cannot
fail to know him. To Janet, Jesus Christ was no object of so-called
theological speculation, but a living man, who somehow or other
heard her when she called to him, and sent her the help she needed.
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