All the time, she felt in her dim suffering as if not she but those at home suffered: she had deserted them in trouble, and do what she might she would never get back to them! She could, she thought, if she but put forth the needful energy, but the last self-exhaustive effort never would come!
Where was the dog? He had left her! he was nowhere near her! She tried to call him, but the storm choked every sound in her very throat. He would never have left her to save himself! He who makes the dogs must be at least as faithful as they! So she was not left comfortless!
Then she heard, or thought she heard the church-bell, and that may have had something to do with the strange dream out of which she came gradually to herself.
CHAPTER XXV
KIRSTY’S DREAM
Her dream was this:—
She sat at the communion-table in her own parish-church, with many others, none of whom she knew. A man with piercing eyes went along the table, examining the faces of all to see if they were fit to partake. When he came to Kirsty, he looked at her for a moment sharply, then said, ‘That woman is dead. She has been in the snow all night. Lay her in the vault under the church.’ She rose to go because she was dead, and hands were laid upon her to guide her as she went. They brought her out of the church into the snow and wind, and turned away to leave her. But she remonstrated: ‘The man with the eyes,’ she said, ‘gave the order that I should be taken to the vault of the church!’—‘Very well,’ answered a voice, ‘there is the vault! creep into it.’ She saw an opening in the ground, at the foot of the wall of the church, and getting down on her hands and knees, crept through it, and with difficulty got into the vault. There all was still. She heard the wind raving, but it sounded afar off. Who had guided her thither? One of Steenie’s storm-angels, or the Shepherd of the sheep? It was all one, for the storm-angels were his sheep-dogs! She had been bewildered by the terrible beating of the snow-wind, but her own wandering was another’s guiding! Beyond the turmoil of life and unutterably glad, she fell asleep, and the dream left her. In a little while, however, it came again.
She was lying, she thought, on the stone-floor of the church-vault, and wondered whether the examiner, notwithstanding the shining of his eyes, might not have made a mistake: perhaps she was not so very dead! Perhaps she was not quite unfit to eat of the bread of life after all! She moved herself a little; then tried to rise, but failed; tried again and again, and at last succeeded. All was dark around her, but something seemed present that was known to her—whether man, or woman, or beast, or thing, she could not tell. At last she recognised it; it was a familiar odour, a peculiar smell, of the kind we call earthy:—it was the air of her own earth-house, in days that seemed far away! Perhaps she was in it now! Then her box of matches might be there too! She felt about and found it. With trembling hands she struck one, and proceeded to light her lamp.
It burned up. Something seized her by the heart.
A little farther in, stretched on the floor, lay a human form on its face. She knew at once that it was Steenie’s. The feet were toward her, and between her and them a pair of shoes: he was dead!—he had got rid of his feet!—he was gone after Phemy—gone to the bonny man! She knelt, and turned the body over. Her heart was like a stone. She raised his head on her arm: it was plain he was dead. A small stream of blood had flowed from his mouth, and made a little pool, not yet quite frozen. Kirsty’s heart seemed about to break from her bosom to go after him; then the eternal seemed to descend upon her like a waking sleep, a clear consciousness of peace. It was for a moment as if she saw the Father at the heart of the universe, with all his children about his knees: her pain and sorrow and weakness were gone; she wept glad tears over the brother called so soon from the nursery to the great presence chamber. ‘Eh, bonny man!’ she cried; ‘is ’t possible to expec ower muckle frae your father and mine!’
She sat down beside what was left of Steenie, and ate of the oatcake, and drank of the milk she had carried forgotten until now.