Sir Gibbie Part 35

silver slippers? An' haith! I sune fan' 'at I cudna hae spoken the word, gien I had daured ever sae stoot. For whan I opened my moo'

to cry till her, I cud dee naething but shot oot a forkit tongue, an' cry sss. Mem, it was dreidfu'! Sae I had jist to tak in my tongue again, an' say naething, for fear o' fleggin' awa' my bonny leddy i' the steel claes. An' she cam an' cam, doon an' doon, an'

on to the bog; an' for a' the weicht o' her airmour she sankna a fit intill 't. An' she cam, an' she stude, an' she luikit at me; an' I hed seen her afore, an' kenned her weel. An' she luikit at me, an'

aye luikit; an' I winna say what was i' the puir worm's hert. But at the last she gae a gret sich, an' a sab, like, an' stude jist as gien she was tryin' sair, but could not mak up her bonny min' to yon 'at was i' the ballant. An' eh! hoo I grippit the buik atween me an' the tree--for there it was--a' as I saw 't afore! An' sae at last she gae a kin' o' a cry, an' turnt an' gaed awa', wi' her heid hingin' doon, an' her swoord trailin', an' never turnt to luik ahint her, but up the brae, an' ower the tap o' the hill, an' doon an'

awa'; an' the brainch wi' the blew berries was the last I saw o' her gaein' doon like the meen ahint the hill. An' jist wi' the fell greitin' I cam to mysel', an' my hert was gaein' like a pump 'at wad fain pit oot a fire.--Noo wasna that a queer-like dream?--I'll no say, mem, but I hae curriet an' kaimbt it up a wee, to gar't tell better."

Ginevra had from the first been absorbed in listening, and her brown eyes seemed to keep growing larger and larger as he went on. Even the girls listened and were silent, looking as if they saw a peac.o.c.k's feather in a turkey's tail. When he ended, the tears rushed from Ginevra's eyes--for bare sympathy--she had no perception of personal intent in the parable; it was long before she saw into the name of the lady-knight, for she had never been told the English of Ginevra; she was the simplest, sweetest of girls, and too young to suspect anything in the heart of a man.

"O Donal!" she said, "I am very sorry for the poor worm; but it was naughty of you to dream such a dream."

"Hoo's that, mem?" returned Donal, a little frightened.

"It was not fair of you," she replied, "to dream a knight of a lady, and then dream her doing such an unknightly thing. I am sure if ladies went out in that way, they would do quite as well, on the whole, as gentlemen."

"I mak nae doobt o' 't, mem: h'aven forbid!" cried Donal; "but ye see dreams is sic senseless things 'at they winna be helpit;--an'

that was hoo I dreemt it."

"Well, well, Donal!" broke in the harsh pompous voice of Mr.

Sclater, who, unknown to the poet, had been standing behind him almost the whole time, "you have given the ladies quite enough of your romancing. That sort of thing, you know, my man, may do very well round the fire in the farm kitchen, but it's not the sort of thing for a drawing-room. Besides, the ladies don't understand your word of mouth; they don't understand such broad Scotch.--Come with me, and I'll show you something you would like to see."

He thought Donal was boring his guests, and at the same time preventing Gibbie from having the pleasure in their society for the sake of which they had been invited.

Donal rose, replying,

"Think ye sae, sir? I thoucht I was in auld Scotlan' still--here as weel's upo' Glashgar. But may be my jography buik's some auld-fashioned.--Didna ye un'erstan' me, mem?" he added, turning to Ginevra.

"Every word, Donal," she answered.

Donal followed his host contented.

Gibbie took his place, and began to teach Ginevra the finger alphabet. The other girls found him far more amusing than Donal--first of all because he could not speak, which was much less objectionable than speaking like Donal--and funny too, though not so funny as Donal's clothes. And then he had such a romantic history!

and was a baronet!

In a few minutes Ginevra knew the letters, and presently she and Gibbie were having a little continuous talk together, a thing they had never had before. It was so slow, however, as to be rather tiring. It was mainly about Donal. But Mrs. Sclater opened the piano, and made a diversion. She played something brilliant, and then sang an Italian song in strillaceous style, revealing to Donal's clownish ignorance a thorough mastery of caterwauling. Then she asked Miss Kimble to play something, who declined, without mentioning that she had neither voice nor ear nor love of music, but said Miss Galbraith should sing--"for once in a way, as a treat.--That little Scotch song you sing now and then, my dear," she added.

Ginevra rose timidly, but without hesitation, and going to the piano, sang, to a simple old Scotch air, to which they had been written, the following verses. Before she ended, the minister, the late herd-boy, and the dumb baronet were grouped crescent-wise behind the music-stool.

I dinna ken what's come ower me!

There's a how whaur ance was a hert; (hollow) I never luik oot afore me, An' a cry winna gar me stert; There's naething nae mair to come ower me, Blaw the win' frae ony airt. (quarter)

For i' yon kirkyaird there's a hillock, A hert whaur ance was a how; An' o' joy there's no left a mealock--(crumb) Deid aiss whaur ance was a low; (ashes)(flame) For i' you kirkyaird, i' the hillock, Lies a seed 'at winna grow.

It's my hert 'at hauds up the wee hillie-- That's hoo there's a how i' my breist; It's awa' doon there wi' my Willie, Gaed wi' him whan he was releast; It's doon i' the green-grown hillie, But I s' be efter it neist.

Come awa', nichts and mornin's, Come ooks, years, a' time's clan; Ye're walcome ayont a' scornin': Tak me till him as fest as ye can.

Come awa', nichts an' mornin's, Ye are wings o' a michty span!

For I ken he's luikin' an' waitin', Luikin' aye doon as I clim': Wad I hae him see me sit greitin', I'stead o' gaein' to him?

I'll step oot like ane sure o' a meetin', I'll traivel an' rin to him.

Three of them knew that the verses were Donal's. If the poet went home feeling more like a fellow in blue coat and fustian trowsers, or a winged genius of the tomb, I leave my reader to judge. Anyhow, he felt he had had enough for one evening, and was able to encounter his work again. Perhaps also, when supper was announced, he reflected that his reception had hardly been such as to justify him in partaking of their food, and that his mother's hospitality to Mr.

Sclater had not been in expectation of return. As they went down the stair, he came last and alone, behind the two whispering school-girls; and when they pa.s.sed on into the dining-room, he spilt out of the house, and ran home to the furniture-shop and his books.

When the ladies took their leave, Gibbie walked with them. And now at last he learned where to find Ginevra.

CHAPTER XLVII.

A LESSON OF WISDOM.

In obedience to the suggestion of his wife, Mr. Sclater did what he could to show Sir Gilbert how mistaken he was in imagining he could fit his actions to the words of our Lord. Shocked as even he would probably have been at such a characterization of his attempt, it amounted practically to this: Do not waste your powers in the endeavour to keep the commandments of our Lord, for it cannot be done, and he knew it could not be done, and never meant it should be done. He pointed out to him, not altogether unfairly, the difficulties, and the causes of mistake, with regard to his words; but said nothing to reveal the spirit and the life of them. Showing more of them to be figures than at first appeared, he made out the meanings of them to be less, not more than the figures, his pictures to be greater than their subjects, his parables larger and more lovely than the truths they represented. In the whole of his lecture, through which ran from beginning to end a tone of reproof, there was not one flash of enthusiasm for our Lord, not a sign that, to his so-called minister, he was a refuge, or a delight--that he who is the joy of his Father's heart, the essential bliss of the universe, was anything to the soul of his creature, who besides had taken upon him to preach his good news, more than a name to call himself by--that the story of the Son of G.o.d was to him anything better than the soap and water wherewith to blow theological bubbles with the tobacco-pipe of his speculative understanding. The tendency of it was simply to the quelling of all true effort after the knowing of him through obedience, the quenching of all devotion to the central good. Doubtless Gibbie, as well as many a wiser man, might now and then make a mistake in the embodiment of his obedience, but even where the action misses the command, it may yet be obedience to him who gave the command, and by obeying one learns how to obey. I hardly know, however, where Gibbie blundered, except it was in failing to recognize the animals before whom he ought not to cast his pearls--in taking it for granted that, because his guardian was a minister, and his wife a minister's wife, they must therefore be the disciples of the Jewish carpenter, the eternal Son of the Father of us all. Had he had more of the wisdom of the serpent, he would not have carried them the New Testament as an ending of strife, the words of the Lord as an enlightening law; he would perhaps have known that to try too hard to make people good, is one way to make them worse; that the only way to make them good is to be good--remembering well the beam and the mote; that the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for being never departs.

But in talking thus to Gibbie, the minister but rippled the air: Gibbie was all the time pondering with himself where he had met the same kind of thing, the same sort of person before. Nothing he said had the slightest effect upon him. He was too familiar with truth to take the yeasty bunghole of a working barrel for a fountain of its waters. The unseen Lord and his reported words were to Gibbie realities, compared with which the very visible Mr. Sclater and his a.s.sured utterance were as the merest seemings of a phantom mood. He had never resolved to keep the words of the Lord: he just kept them; but he knew amongst the rest the Lord's words about the keeping of his words, and about being ashamed of him before men, and it was with a pitiful indignation he heard the minister's wisdom drivel past his ears. What he would have said, and withheld himself from saying, had he been able to speak, I cannot tell; I only know that in such circ.u.mstances the less said the better, for what can be more unprofitable than a discussion where but one of the disputants understands the question, and the other has all the knowledge? It would have been the eloquence of the wise and the prudent against the perfected praise of the suckling.

The effect of it all upon Gibbie was to send him to his room to his prayers, more eager than ever to keep the commandments of him who had said, If ye love me. Comforted then and strengthened, he came down to go to Donal--not to tell him, for to none but Janet could he have made such a communication. But in the middle of his descent he remembered suddenly of what and whom Mr. Sclater had all along been reminding him, and turned aside to Mrs. Sclater to ask her to lend him the Pilgrim's Progress. This, as a matter almost of course, was one of the few books in the cottage on Glashgar--a book beloved of Janet's soul--and he had read it again and again. Mrs. Sclater told him where in her room to find a copy, and presently he had satisfied himself that it was indeed Mr. Worldly Wiseman whom his imagination had, in cloudy fashion, been placing side by side with the talking minister.

Finding his return delayed, Mrs. Sclater went after him, fearing he might be indulging his curiosity amongst her personal possessions.

Peeping in, she saw him seated on the floor beside her little bookcase, lost in reading: she stole behind, and found that what so absorbed him was the conversation between Christian and Worldly--I beg his pardon, he is nothing without his Mr.--between Christian and Mr. Worldly Wiseman.

In the evening, when her husband was telling her what he had said to "the young Pharisee" in the morning, the picture of Gibbie on the floor, with the Pilgrim's Progress and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, flashed back on her mind, and she told him the thing. It stung him, not that Gibbie should perhaps have so paralleled him, but that his wife should so interpret Gibbie. To her, however, he said nothing. Had he been a better man, he would have been convinced by the lesson; as it was, he was only convicted, and instead of repenting was offended grievously. For several days he kept expecting the religious gadfly to come buzzing about him with his sting, that is, his forefinger, stuck in the Pilgrim's Progress, and had a swashing blow ready for him; but Gibbie was beginning to learn a lesson or two, and if he was not yet so wise as some serpents, he had always been more harmless than some doves.

That he had gained nothing for the world was pretty evident to the minister the following Sunday--from the lofty watchtower of the pulpit where he sat throned, while the first psalm was being sung.

His own pew was near one of the side doors, and at that door some who were late kept coming in. Amongst them were a stranger or two, who were at once shown to seats. Before the psalm ended, an old man came in and stood by the door--a poor man in mean garments, with the air of a beggar who had contrived to give himself a Sunday look.

Perhaps he had come hoping to find it warmer in church than at home. There he stood, motionless as the leech-gatherer, leaning on his stick, disregarded of men--it may have been only by innocent accident, I do not know. But just ere the minister must rise for the first prayer, he saw Gibbie, who had heard a feeble cough, cast a glance round, rise as swiftly as noiselessly, open the door of the pew, get out into the pa.s.sage, take the old man by the hand, and lead him to his place beside the satin-robed and sable-m.u.f.fed ministerial consort. Obedient to Gibbie's will, the old man took the seat, with an air both of humility and respect, while happily for Mrs. Sclater's remnant of ruffled composure, there was plenty of room in the pew, so that she could move higher up. The old man, it is true, followed, to make a place for Gibbie, but there was still an interval between them sufficient to afford s.p.a.ce to the hope that none of the evils she dreaded would fall upon her to devour her.

Flushed, angry, uncomfortable, notwithstanding, her face glowed like a bale-fire to the eyes of her husband, and, I fear, spoiled the prayer--but that did not matter much.

While the two thus involuntarily signalled each other, the boy who had brought discomposure into both pulpit and pew, sat peaceful as a summer morning, with the old man beside him quiet in the reverence of being himself revered. And the minister, while he preached from the words, Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall, for the first time in his life began to feel doubtful whether he might not himself be a humbug. There was not much fear of his falling, however, for he had not yet stood on his feet.

Not a word was said to Gibbie concerning the liberty he had taken: the minister and his wife were in too much dread--not of St. James and the "poor man in vile raiment," for they were harmless enough in themselves, but of Gibbie's pointing finger to back them. Three distinct precautions, however, they took; the pew-opener on that side was spoken to; Mrs. Sclater made Gibbie henceforth go into the pew before her; and she removed the New Testament from the drawing-room.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

NEEDFULL ODDS AND ENDS.

It will be plain from what I have told, that Donal's imagination was full of Ginevra, and his was not an economy whose imagination could enjoy itself without calling the heart to share. At the same time, his being in love, if already I may use concerning him that most general and most indefinite of phrases, so far from obstructing his study, was in reality an aid to his thinking and a spur to excellence--not excellence over others, but over himself. There were moments, doubtless, long moments too, in which he forgot Homer and Cicero and differential calculus and chemistry, for "the bonnie lady-la.s.sie,"--that was what he called her to himself; but it was only, on emerging from the reverie, to attack his work with fresh vigour. She was so young, so plainly girlish, that as yet there was no room for dread or jealousy; the feeling in his heart was a kind of gentle angel-worship; and he would have turned from the idea of marrying her, if indeed it had ever presented itself, as an irreverent thought, which he dared not for a moment be guilty of entertaining. It was besides, an idea too absurd to be indulged in by one who, in his wildest imaginations, always, through every Protean embodiment, sought and loved and clung to the real. His chief thought was simply to find favour in the eyes of the girl.

His ideas hovered about her image, but it was continually to burn themselves in incense to her sweet ladyhood. As often as a song came fluttering its wings at his cas.e.m.e.nt, the next thought was Ginevra--and there would be something to give her! I wonder how many loves of the poets have received their offerings in correspondent fervour. I doubt if Ginevra, though she read them with marvel, was capable of appreciating the worth of Donal's. She was hardly yet woman enough to do them justice; for the heart of a girl, in its very sweetness and vagueness, is ready to admire alike the good and the indifferent, if their outer qualities be similar.

It would cause a collapse in many a swelling of poet's heart if, while he heard lovely lips commending his verses, a voice were to whisper in his ear what certain other verses the lady commended also.

On Sat.u.r.day evenings, after Gibbie left him, Donal kept his own private holiday, which consisted in making verses, or rather in setting himself in the position for doing so, when sometimes verses would be the result, sometimes not. When the moon was shining in at the windows of the large room adjoining, he would put out his lamp, open his door, and look from the little chamber, glowing with fire-light, into the strange, eerie, silent waste, crowded with the chaos of dis-created homes. There scores on scores of things, many of them unco, that is uncouth, the first meaning of which is unknown, to his eyes, stood huddled together in the dim light. The light looked weary and faint, as if with having forced its way through the dust of years on the windows; and Donal felt as if gazing from a clear conscious present out into a faded dream.

Sometimes he would leave his nest, and walk up and down among spider-legged tables, tall cabinets, secret-looking bureaus, worked chairs--yielding himself to his fancies. He was one who needed no opium, or such-like demon-help, to set him dreaming; he could dream at his will--only his dreams were brief and of rapid change--probably not more so, after the clock, than those other artificial ones, in which, to speculate on the testimony, the feeling of their length appears to be produced by an infinite and continuous subdivision of the subjective time. Now he was a ghost come back to flit, hovering and gliding about sad old scenes, that had gathered a new and a worse sadness from the drying up of the sorrow which was the heart of them--his doom, to live thus over again the life he had made so little of in the body; his punishment, to haunt the world and pace its streets, unable to influence by the turn of a hair the goings on of its life,--so to learn what a useless being he had been, and repent of his self-embraced insignificance. Now he was a prisoner, pining and longing for life and air and human companionship; that was the sun outside, whose rays shone thus feebly into his dungeon by repeated reflections.

Now he was a prince in disguise, meditating how to appear again and defeat the machinations of his foes, especially of the enchanter who made him seem to the eyes of his subjects that which he was not.

But ever his thoughts would turn again to Ginevra, and ever the poems he devised were devised as in her presence and for her hearing. Sometimes a dread would seize him--as if the strange things were all looking at him, and something was about to happen; then he would stride hastily back to his own room, close the door hurriedly, and sit down by the fire. Once or twice he was startled by the soft entrance of his landlady's grand-daughter, come to search for something in one of the cabinets they had made a repository for small odds and ends of things. Once he told Gibbie that something had looked at him, but he could not tell what or whence or how, and laughed at himself, but persisted in his statement.

He had not yet begun to read his New Testament in the way Gibbie did, but he thought in the direction of light and freedom, and looked towards some goal dimly seen in vague grandeur of betterness.

His condition was rather that of eyeless hunger after growth, than of any conscious aspiration towards less undefined good. He had a large and increasing delight in all forms of the generous, and shrunk instinctively from the base, but had not yet concentrated his efforts towards becoming that which he acknowledged the best, so that he was hardly yet on the straight path to the goal of such oneness with good as alone is a man's peace. I mention these things not with the intent of here developing the character of Donal, but with the desire that my readers should know him such as he then was.