Sir Gibbie

"Na, na," he said; "the claes is guid eneuch for him 'at weirs them. Ye dee eneuch for me, Sir Gilbert, a'ready; an' though I wad be obleeged to you as I wad to my mither hersel', to cleed me gien I warna dacent, I winna tak your siller nor naebody ither's to gang fine. Na, na; I'll weir the claes oot, an' we s' dee better wi' the neist. An' for that bonnie wuman, Mistress Scletter, ye can tell her, 'at by the time I hae onything to say to the warl', it winna be my claes 'at'll haud fowk ohn hearkent; an' gien she considers them 'at I hae noo, ower sair a disgrace till her gran' rooms, she maun jist no inveet me, an' I'll no come; for I canna presently help them. But the neist session, whan I hae better, for I'm sure to get wark eneuch in atween, I'll come an' shaw mysel', an' syne she can dee as she likes."

This high tone of liberty, so free from offence either given or taken, was thoroughly appreciated by both Mr. and Mrs. Sclater, and they did not cease to invite him. A little talk with the latter soon convinced him that there was neither assumption nor lack of patriotism in speaking the language of the people among whom he found himself; and as he made her his model in the pursuit of the accomplishment, he very soon spoke a good deal better English than Mr. Sclater. But with Gibbie, and even with the dainty Ginevra, he could not yet bring himself to talk anything but his mother-tongue.

"I cannot mak my moo'," he would say, "to speyk onything but the nat'ral tongue o' poetry till sic a bonnie cratur as Miss Galbraith; an' for yersel', Gibbie—man! I wad be ill willin' to bigg a stane wa' atween me an' the bonnie days whan Angus Mac Pholp was the deil we did fear, an' Hornie the deil we didna.—Losh, man! what wad come o' me gien I hed to say my prayers in English! I doobt gien 't wad come oot prayin' at a'!"

I am well aware that most Scotch people of that date tried to say their prayers in English, but not so Janet or Robert, and not so had they taught their children. I fancy not a little unreality was thus in their case avoided.

"What will you do when you are a minister?" asked Gibbie on his fingers.

"Me a minnister?" echoed Donal. "Me a minnister!" he repeated. "Losh, man! gien I can save my ain sowl, it'll be a' 'at I'm fit for, ohn lo'dent it wi' a haill congregation o' ither fowk's. Na, na; gien I can be a schuilmaister, an' help the bairnies to be guid, as my mither taucht mysel', an' hae time to read, an' a feow shillin's to buy buiks aboot Aigypt an' the Holy Lan', an' a full an' complete edition o' Plato, an' a Greek Lexicon—a guid ane, an' a Jamieson's Dictionar', haith, I'll be a hawpy man! An' gien I dinna like the schuilmaisterin', I can jist tak to the wark again, whilk I cudna dee sae weel gien I had tried the preachin': fowk wad ca' me a stickit minister! Or maybe they'll gie me the sheep to luik efter upo' Glashgar, whan they're ower muckle for my father, an' that wad weel content me. Only I wad hae to bigg a bit mair to the hoosie, to haud my buiks: I maun hae buiks. I wad get the newspapers whiles, but no aften, for they're a sair loss o' precious time. Ye see they tell ye things afore they're sure, an' ye hae to spen' yer time the day readin' what ye'll hae to spen' yer time the morn readin' oot again; an' ye may as weel bide till the thing's sattled a wee. I wad jist lat them fecht things oot 'at thoucht they saw hoo they oucht to gang; an' I wad gie them guid mutton to haud them up to their dreary wark, an' maybe a sangy noo an' than 'at wad help them to drap it a'thegither."

"But wouldn't you like to have a wife, Donal, and children, like your father and mother?" spelt Gibbie.

"Na, na; nae wife for me, Gibbie!" answered the philosopher. "Wha wad hae aither a pure schuilmaister or a shepherd?—'cep' it was maybe some lass like my sister Nicie, 'at wadna ken Euclid frae her hose, or Burns frae a mill-dam, or conic sections frae the hole i' the great peeramid."

"I don't like to hear you talk like that, Donal," said Gibbie. "What do you say to mother?"

"The mither's no to be said aboot," answerd Donal. "She's ane by hersel', no ane like ither fowk. Ye wadna think waur o' the angel Gabriel 'at he hedna jist read Homer clean throu', wad ye?"

"If I did," answered Gibbie, "he would only tell me there was time enough for that."

When they met on a Friday evening, and it was fine, they would rove the streets, Gibbie taking Donal to the places he knew so well in his childhood, and enjoying it the more that he could now tell him so much better what he remembered. The only place he did not take him to was Jink Lane, with the house that had been Mistress Croale's. He did take him to the court in the Widdiehill, and show him the Auld Hoose o' Galbraith, and the place under the stair where his father had worked. The shed was now gone; the neighbours had by degrees carried it away for firewood. The house was occupied still as then by a number of poor people, and the door was never locked, day or night, any more than when Gibbie used to bring his father home. He took Donal to the garret where they had slept—one could hardly say lived, and where his father died. The door stood open, and the place was just as they had left it. A year or two after, Gibbie learned how it came to be thus untenanted: it was said to be haunted. Every Sunday Sir George was heard at work, making boots for his wee Gibbie from morning to night; after which, when it was dark, came dreadful sounds of supplication, as of a soul praying in hell-fire. For a while the house was almost deserted in consequence.

"Gien I was you, Sir Gilbert," said Donal, who now and then remembered Mrs. Sclater's request—they had come down, and looking at the outside of the house, had espied a half-obliterated stone-carving of the Galbraith arms—"Gien I was you, Sir Gilbert, I wad gar Maister Scletter keep a sherp luik oot for the first chance o' buyin' back this hoose. It wad be a great peety it sud gang to waur afore ye get it. Eh! sic tales as this hoose cud tell!"

"How am I to do that, Donal? Mr. Sclater would not mind me. The money's not mine yet, you know," said Gibbie.

"The siller is yours, Gibbie," answered Donal; "it's yours as the kingdom o' h'aven's yours; it's only 'at ye canna jist lay yer han's upo' 't yet. The seener ye lat that Maister Scletter ken 'at ye ken what ye're aboot, the better. An' believe me, whan he comes to un'erstan' 'at ye want that hoose koft, he'll no be a day ohn gane to somebody or anither aboot it."

Donal was right, for within a month the house was bought, and certain necessary repairs commenced.

Sometimes on those evenings they took tea with Mistress Croale, and it was a proud time with her when they went. That night at least the whisky bottle did not make its appearance.

Mrs. Sclater continued to invite young ladies to the house for Gibbie's sake, and when she gave a party, she took care there should be a proportion of young people in it; but Gibbie, although of course kind and polite to all, did not much enjoy these gatherings. It began to trouble him a little that he seemed to care less for his kind than before; but it was only a seeming, and the cause of it was this: he was now capable of perceiving facts in nature and character which prevented real contact, and must make advances towards it appear as offensive as they were useless. But he did not love the less that he had to content himself, until the kingdom should come nearer, with loving at a more conscious distance; by loving kindness and truth he continued doing all he could to bring the kingdom whose end is unity. Hence he had come to restrain his manner—nothing could have constrained his manners, which now from the conventional point of view were irreproachable; but if he did not so often execute a wild dance, or stand upon one leg, the glow in his eyes had deepened, and his response to any advance was as ready and thorough, as frank and sweet as ever; his eagerness was replaced by a stillness from which his eyes took all coldness, and his smile was as the sun breaking out in a gray day of summer, and turning all from doves to peacocks. In this matter there was one thing worthy of note common to Donal and him, who had had the same divine teaching from Janet: their manners to all classes were the same, they showed the same respect to the poor, the same ease with the rich.

I must confess, however, that before the session was over, Donal found it required all his strength of mind to continue to go to Mrs. Sclater's little parties—from kindness she never asked him to her larger ones; and the more to his praise it was that he did not refuse one of her invitations. The cause was this: one bright Sunday morning in February, coming out of his room to go to church, and walking down the path through the furniture in a dreamy mood, he suddenly saw a person meeting him straight in the face. "Sic a queer-like chield!" he remarked inwardly, stepped on one side to let him pass—and perceived it was himself reflected from head to foot in a large mirror, which had been placed while he was out the night before. The courage with which he persisted, after such a painful enlightenment, in going into company in those same garments, was right admirable and enviable; but no one knew of it until its exercise was long over.

The little pocket-money Mr. Sclater allowed Gibbie, was chiefly spent at the shop of a certain secondhand bookseller, nearly opposite Mistress Murkison's. The books they bought were carried to Donal's room, there to be considered by Gibbie Donal's, and by Donal Gibbie's. Among the rest was a reprint of Marlow's Faust, the daring in the one grand passage of which both awed and delighted them; there were also some of the Ettrick Shepherd's eerie stories, alone in their kind; and above all there was a miniature copy of Shelley, whose verse did much for the music of Donal's, while yet he could not quite appreciate the truth for the iridescence of it: he said it seemed to him to have been all composed in a balloon. I have mentioned only works of imagination, but it must not be supposed they had not a relish for stronger food: the books more severe came afterwards, when they had liberty to choose their own labours; now they had plenty of the harder work provided for them.

Somewhere about this time Fergus Duff received his license to preach, and set himself to acquire what his soul thirsted after—a reputation, namely, for eloquence. This was all the flood-mark that remained of the waters of verse with which he had at one time so plentifully inundated his soul. He was the same as man he had been as youth—handsome, plausible, occupied with himself, determined to succeed, not determined to labour. Praise was the very necessity of his existence, but he had the instinct not to display his beggarly hunger—which reached even to the approbation of such to whom he held himself vastly superior. He seemed generous, and was niggardly, by turns; cultivated suavity; indulged in floridity both of manners and speech; and signed his name so as nobody could read it, though his handwriting was plain enough.

In the spring, summer, and autumn, Donal laboured all day with his body, and in the evening as much as he could with his mind. Lover of Nature as he was, however, more alive indeed than before to the delights of the country, and the genial companionship of terrene sights and sounds, scents and motions, he could not help longing for the winter and the city, that his soul might be freer to follow its paths. And yet what a season some of the labours of the field afforded him for thought! To the student who cannot think without books, the easiest of such labours are a dull burden, or a distress; but for the man in whom the wells have been unsealed, in whom the waters are flowing, the labour mingles gently and genially with the thought, and the plough he holds with his hands lays open to the sun and the air more soils than one. Mr. Sclater without his books would speedily have sunk into the mere shrewd farmer; Donal, never opening a book, would have followed theories and made verses to the end of his days.

Every Saturday, as before, he went to see his father and mother. Janet kept fresh and lively, although age told on her, she said, more rapidly since Gibbie went away.

"But gien the Lord lat auld age wither me up," she said, "he'll luik efter the cracks himsel'."

Six weeks of every summer between Donal's sessions, while the minister and his wife took their holiday, Gibbie spent with Robert and Janet. It was a blessed time for them all. He led then just the life of the former days, with Robert and Oscar and the sheep, and Janet and her cow and the New Testament—only he had a good many more things to think about now, and more ways of thinking about them. With his own hands he built a neat little porch to the cottage door, with close sides and a second door to keep the wind off: Donal and he carried up the timber and the mortar. But although he tried hard to make Janet say what he could do for her more, he could not bring her to reveal any desire that belonged to this world—except, indeed, for two or three trifles for her husband's warmth and convenience.

"The sicht o' my Lord's face," she said once, when he was pressing her, "is a' 'at I want, Sir Gibbie. For this life it jist blecks me to think o' onything I wad hae or wad lowse. This boady o' mine's growin' some heavy-like, I maun confess, but I wadna hae't ta'en aff o' me afore the time. It wad be an ill thing for the seed to be shal't ower sune."

They almost always called him Sir Gibbie, and he never objected, or seemed either annoyed or amused at it; he took it just as the name that was his, the same way as his hair or his hands were his; he had been called wee Sir Gibbie for so long.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE HOUSELESS

The minister kept Gibbie hard at work, and by the time Donal's last winter came, Gibbie was ready for college also. To please Mr. Sclater he competed for a bursary, and gained a tolerably good one, but declined accepting it. His guardian was annoyed, he could not see why he should refuse what he had "earned." Gibbie asked him whether it was the design of the founder of those bursaries that rich boys should have them. Were they not for the like of Donal? Whereupon Mr. Sclater could not help remembering what a difference it would have made to him in his early struggles, if some rich bursar above him had yielded a place—and held his peace.

Daur-street being too far from Elphinstone College for a student to live there, Mr. Sclater consented to Gibbie's lodging with Donal, but would have insisted on their taking rooms in some part of the town—more suitable to the young baronet's position, he said; but as there was another room to be had at Mistress Murkison's, Gibbie insisted that one who had shown them so much kindness must not be forsaken; and by this time he seldom found difficulty in having his way with his guardian. Both he and his wife had come to understand him better, and nobody could understand Gibbie better without also understanding better all that was good and true and right: although they hardly knew the fact themselves, the standard of both of them had been heightened by not a few degrees since Gibbie came to them; and although he soon ceased to take direct notice of what in their conduct distressed him, I cannot help thinking it was not amiss that he uttered himself as he did at the first; knowing a little his ways of thinking they came to feel his judgment unexpressed. For Mrs. Sclater, when she bethought herself that she had said or done something he must count worldly, the very silence of the dumb boy was a reproof to her.

One night the youths had been out for a long walk and came back to the city late, after the shops were shut. Only here and there a light glimmered in some low-browed little place, probably used in part by the family. Not a soul was visible in the dingy region through which they now approached their lodging, when round a corner, moving like a shadow, came, soft-pacing, a ghostly woman in rags, with a white, worn face, and the largest black eyes, it seemed to the youths that they had ever seen—an apparition of awe and grief and wonder. To compare a great thing to a small, she was to their eyes as a ruined, desecrated shrine to the eyes of the saint's own peculiar worshipper. I may compare her to what I please, great or small—to a sapphire set in tin, to an angel with draggled feathers; for far beyond all comparison is that temple of the holy ghost in the desert—a woman in wretchedness and rags. She carried her puny baby rolled hard in the corner of her scrap of black shawl. To the youths a sea of trouble looked out of those wild eyes. As she drew near them, she hesitated, half-stopped, and put out a hand from under the shawl—stretched out no arm, held out only a hand from the wrist, white against the night. Donal had no money. Gibbie had a shilling. The hand closed upon it, a gleam crossed the sad face, and a murmur of thanks fluttered from the thin lips as she walked on her way. The youths breathed deep, and felt a little relieved, but only a little. The thought of the woman wandering in the dark and the fog and the night, was a sickness at their hearts. Was it impossible to gather such under the wings of any night-brooding hen? That Gibbie had gone through so much of the same kind of thing himself, and had found it endurable enough, did not make her case a whit the less pitiful in his eyes, and indeed it was widely, sadly different from his. Along the deserted street, which looked to Donal like a waterless canal banked by mounds of death, and lighted by phosphorescent grave-damps, they followed her with their eyes, the one living thing, fading away from lamp to lamp; and when they could see her no farther, followed her with their feet; they could not bear to lose sight of her. But they kept just on the verge of vision, for they did not want her to know the espial of their love. Suddenly she disappeared, and keeping their eyes on the spot as well as they could, they found when they reached it a little shop, with a red curtain, half torn down, across the glass door of it. A dim oil lamp was burning within. It looked like a rag-shop, dirty and dreadful. There she stood, while a woman with a bloated face, looking to Donal like a feeder of hell-swine, took from some secret hole underneath, a bottle which seemed to Gibbie the very one his father used to drink from. He would have rushed in and dashed it from her hand, but Donal withheld him.

"Hoots!" he said, "we canna follow her a' nicht; an' gien we did, what better wad she be i' the mornin'? Lat her be, puir thing!"

She received the whisky in a broken tea-cup, swallowed some of it eagerly, then, to the horror of the youths, put some of it into the mouth of her child from her own. Draining the last drops from the cup, she set it quietly down, turned, and without a word spoken, for she had paid beforehand, came out, her face looking just as white and thin as before, but having another expression in the eyes of it. At the sight Donal's wisdom forsook him.

"Eh, wuman," he cried, "yon wasna what ye hed the shillin' for!"

"Ye said naething," answered the poor creature, humbly, and walked on, hanging her head, and pressing her baby to her bosom.

The boys looked at each other.

"That wasna the gait yer shillin' sud hae gane, Gibbie," said Donal. "It's clear it winna dee to gie shillin's to sic like as her. Wha kens but the hunger an' the caul', an' the want o' whisky may be the wuman's evil things here, 'at she may 'scape the hellfire o' the Rich Man hereafter?"

He stopped, for Gibbie was weeping. The woman and her child he would have taken to his very heart, and could do nothing for them. Love seemed helpless, for money was useless. It set him thinking much, and the result appeared. From that hour the case of the homeless haunted his heart and brain and imagination; and as his natural affections found themselves repelled and chilled in what is called Society, they took refuge more and more with the houseless and hungry and shivering. Through them, also, he now, for the first time, began to find grave and troublous questions mingling with his faith and hope; so that already he began to be rewarded for his love: to the true heart every doubt is a door. I will not follow and describe the opening of these doors to Gibbie, but, as what he discovered found always its first utterance in action, wait until I can show the result.

For the time the youths were again a little relieved about the woman: following her still, to a yet more wretched part of the city, they saw her knock at a door, pay something, and be admitted. It looked a dreadful refuge, but she was at least under cover, and shelter, in such a climate as ours in winter, must be the first rudimentary notion of salvation. No longer haunted with the idea of her wandering all night about the comfortless streets, "like a ghost awake in Memphis," Donal said, they went home. But it was long before they got to sleep, and in the morning their first words were about the woman.

"Gien only we hed my mither here!" said Donal.

"Mightn't you try Mr. Sclater?" suggested Gibbie.

Donal answered with a great roar of laughter.

"He wad tell her she oucht to tak shame till hersel'," he said, "an' I'm thinkin' she's lang brunt a' her stock o' that firin'. He wud tell her she sud work for her livin', an' maybe there isna ae turn the puir thing can dee 'at onybody wad gie her a bawbee for a day o'!—But what say ye to takin' advice o' Miss Galbraith?"

It was strange how, with the marked distinctions between them, Donal and Gibbie would every now and then, like the daughters of the Vicar of Wakefield, seem to change places and parts.

"God can make praise-pipes of babes and sucklings," answered Gibbie; "but it does not follow that they can give advice. Don't you remember your mother saying that the stripling David was enough to kill a braggart giant, but a sore-tried man was wanted to rule the people?"

It ended in their going to Mistress Croale. They did not lay bare to her their perplexities, but they asked her to find out who the woman was, and see if anything could be done for her. They said to themselves she would know the condition of such a woman, and what would be moving in her mind, after the experience she had herself had, better at least than the minister or his lady-wife. Nor were they disappointed. To be thus taken into counsel revived for Mistress Croale the time of her dignity while yet she shepherded her little flock of drunkards. She undertook the task with hearty good will, and carried it out with some success. Its reaction on herself to her own good was remarkable. There can be no better auxiliary against our own sins than to help our neighbour in the encounter with his. Merely to contemplate our neighbour will recoil upon us in quite another way: we shall see his faults so black, that we will not consent to believe ours so bad, and will immediately begin to excuse, which is the same as to cherish them, instead of casting them from us with abhorrence.

One day early in the session, as the youths were approaching the gate of Miss Kimble's school, a thin, care-worn man, in shabby clothes, came out, and walked along meeting them. Every now and then he bowed his shoulders, as if something invisible had leaped upon them from behind, and as often seemed to throw it off and with effort walk erect. It was the laird. They lifted their caps, but in return he only stared, or rather tried to stare, for his eyes seemed able to fix themselves on nothing. He was now at length a thoroughly ruined man, and had come to the city to end his days in a cottage belonging to his daughter. Already Mr. Sclater, who was unweariedly on the watch over the material interests of his ward, had, through his lawyer, and without permitting his name to appear, purchased the whole of the Glashruach property. For the present, however, he kept Sir Gilbert in ignorance of the fact.

CHAPTER L

A WALK