Sir Gibbie Part 38

"Ow ay! but there's true and there's fause personification; an' it's no ilka poet 'at kens the differ. Ow, I ken! ye'll be doon upo' me wi' yer Byron,"--Fergus shook his head as at a false impeachment, but Donal went on--"but even a poet canna mak lees poetry. An' a man 'at in ane o' his gran'est verses cud haiver aboot the birth o'

a yoong airthquack!--losh! to think o' 't growin' an auld airthquack!--haith, to me it's no up till a deuk-quack!--sic a poet micht weel, I grant ye, be he ever sic a guid poet whan he tuik heed to what he said, he micht weel, I say, blether nonsense aboot the sea warrin' again' the rocks, an' sic stuff."

"But don't you see them?" said Fergus, pointing to a great billow that fell back at the moment, and lay churning in the gulf beneath them. "Are they not in fact wasting the rocks away by slow degrees?"

"What comes o' yer seemile than, anent the vainity o' their endeevour? But that's no what I'm carin' aboot. What I mainteen is, 'at though they div weir awa' the rocks, that's nae mair their design nor it's the design o' a yewky owse to kill the tree whan he rubs. .h.i.t's skin an' his ain aff thegither."

"Tut! n.o.body ever means, when he personifies the powers of nature, that they know what they are about."

"The mair necessar' till attreebute till them naething but their rale design."

"If they don't know what they are about, how can you be so foolish as talk of their design?"

"Ilka thing has a design,--an' gien it dinna ken't itsel', that's jist whaur yer true an' lawfu' personification comes in. There's no rizon 'at a poet sudna attreebute till a thing as a conscious design that which lies at the verra heart o' 'ts bein', the design for which it's there. That an' no ither sud determine the personification ye gie a thing--for that's the trowth o' the thing.

Eh, man, Fergus! the jaws is fechtin' wi' nae rocks. They're jist at their pairt in a gran' cleansin' hermony. They're at their hoosemaid's wark, day an' nicht, to haud the warl' clean, an' gran'

an' bonnie they sing at it. Gien I was you, I wadna tell fowk any sic nonsense as yon; I wad tell them 'at ilk ane 'at disna dee his wark i' the warl', an' dee 't the richt gait, 's no the worth o' a minnin, no to say a whaul, for ilk ane o' thae wee craturs dis the wull o' him 'at made 'im wi' ilka whisk o' his bit tailie, fa'in' in wi' a' the jabble o' the jaws again' the rocks, for it's a' ae thing--an' a' to haud the muckle sea clean. An' sae whan I lie i'

my bed, an' a' at ance there comes a wee soughie o' win' i' my face, an' I luik up an' see it was naething but the wings o' a flittin'

flee, I think wi' mysel' hoo a' the curses are but blessin's 'at ye dinna see intill, an' hoo ilka midge, an' flee, an' muckle dronin'

thing 'at gangs aboot singin' ba.s.s, no to mention the doos an' the mairtins an' the craws an' the kites an' the oolets an' the muckle aigles an' the b.u.t.terflees, is a' jist haudin' the air gauin' 'at ilka defilin' thing may be weel turnt ower, an' brunt clean. That's the best I got oot o' my cheemistry last session. An' fain wad I haud air an' watter in motion aboot me, an' sae serve my en'--whether by waggin' wi' my wings or whiskin' wi' my tail. Eh!

it's jist won'erfu'. Its a' ae gran' consort.i.t confusion o' hermony an' order; an' what maks the confusion is only jist 'at a' thing's workin' an' naething sits idle. But awa! wi' the nonsense o' ae thing worryin' an' fechtin' at anither!--no till ye come to beasts an' fowk, an' syne ye hae eneuch o' 't."

All the time Fergus had been poking the point of his stick into the ground, a smile of superiority curling his lip.

"I hope, ladies, our wits are not quite swept away in this flood of Doric," he said.

"You have a poor opinion of the stability of our brains, Mr. Duff,"

said Mrs. Sclater.

"I was only judging by myself," he replied, a little put out. "I can't say I understood our friend here. Did you?"

"Perfectly," answered Mrs. Sclater.

At that moment came a thunderous wave with a great bowff into the hollow at the end of the gully on whose edge they stood.

"There's your housemaid's broom, Donal!" said Ginevra.

They all laughed.

"Everything depends on how you look at a thing," said Fergus, and said no more--inwardly resolving, however, to omit from his sermon a certain sentence about the idle waves dashing themselves to ruin on the rocks they would destroy, and to work in something instead about the winds of the winter tossing the snow. A pause followed.

"Well, this is Sat.u.r.day, and tomorrow is my work-day, you know, ladies," he said. "If you would oblige me with your address, Miss Galbraith, I should do myself the honour of calling on Mr.

Galbraith."

Ginevra told him where they lived, but added she was afraid he must not expect to see her father, for he had been out of health lately, and would see n.o.body.

"At all events I shall give myself the chance," he rejoined, and bidding the ladies good-bye, and nodding to the youths, turned and walked away.

For some time there was silence. At length Donal spoke.

"Poor Fergus!" he said with a little sigh. "He's a good-natured creature, and was a great help to me; but when I think of him a preacher, I seem to see an Egyptian priest standing on the threshold of the great door at Ipsambul, blowing with all his might to keep out the Libyan desert; and the four great stone G.o.ds, sitting behind the altar, far back in the gloom, laughing at him."

Then Ginevra asked him something which led to a good deal of talk about the true and false in poetry, and made Mrs. Sclater feel it was not for nothing she had befriended the lad from the hills in the strange garments. And she began to think whether her husband might not be brought to take a higher view of his calling.

On Monday Fergus went to pay his visit to Mr. Galbraith. As Ginevra had said, her father did not appear, but Fergus was far from disappointed. He had taken it into his head that Miss Galbraith sided with him when that ill-bred fellow made his rude, not to say ungrateful, attack upon him, and was much pleased to have a talk with her. Ginevra thought it would not be right to cherish against him the memory of the one sin of his youth in her eyes, but she could not like him. She did not know why, but the truth was, she felt, without being able to identify, his unreality: she thought it was because, both in manners and in dress, so far as the custom of his calling would permit, he was that unpleasant phenomenon, a fine gentleman. She had never heard him preach, or she would have liked him still less; for he was an orator wilful and prepense, choice of long words, fond of climaxes, and always aware of the points at which he must wave his arm, throw forward his hands, wipe his eyes with the finest of large cambric handkerchiefs. As it was, she was heartily tired of him before he went, and when he was gone, found, as she sat with her father, that she could not recall a word he had said. As to what had made the fellow stay so long, she was therefore positively unable to give her father an answer; the consequence of which was, that, the next time he called, Mr.

Galbraith, much to her relief, stood the brunt of his approach, and received him. The ice thus broken, his ingratiating manners, and the full-blown respect he showed Mr. Galbraith, enabling the weak man to feel himself, as of old, every inch a laird, so won upon him that, when he took his leave, he gave him a cordial invitation to repeat his visit.

He did so, in the evening this time, and remembering a predilection of the laird's, begged for a game of backgammon. The result of his policy was, that, of many weeks that followed, every Monday evening at least he spent with the laird. Ginevra was so grateful to him for his attention to her father, and his efforts to draw him out of his gloom, that she came gradually to let a little light of favour shine upon him. And if the heart of Fergus Duff was drawn to her, that is not to be counted to him a fault--neither that, his heart thus drawn, he should wish to marry her. Had she been still heiress of Glashruach, he dared not have dreamed of such a thing, but, noting the humble condition to which they were reduced, the growing familiarity of the father, and the friendliness of the daughter, he grew very hopeful, and more anxious than ever to secure the presentation to the North church, which was in the gift of the city.

He could easily have got a rich wife, but he was more greedy of distinction than of money, and to marry the daughter of the man to whom he had been accustomed in childhood to look up as the greatest in the known world, was in his eyes like a patent of n.o.bility, would be a ratification of his fitness to mingle with the choice of the land.

CHAPTER LI.

THE NORTH CHURCH.

It was a cold night in March, cloudy and blowing. Every human body was turned into a fortress for bare defence of life. There was no snow on the ground, but it seemed as if there must be snow everywhere else. There was snow in the clouds overhead, and there was snow in the mind of man beneath. The very air felt like the quarry out of which the snow had been dug which was being ground above. The wind felt black, the sky was black, and the lamps were blowing about as if they wanted to escape for the darkness was after them. It was the Sunday following the induction of Fergus, and this was the meteoric condition through which Donal and Gibbie pa.s.sed on their way to the North church, to hear him preach in the pulpit that was now his own.

The people had been gathering since long before the hour, and the youths could find only standing room near the door. Cold as was the weather, and keen as blew the wind into the church every time a door was opened, the instant it was shut again it was warm, for the place was crowded from the very height of the great steep-sloping galleries, at the back of which the people were standing on the window sills, down to the double swing-doors, which were constantly cracking open as if the house was literally too full to hold the congregation. The aisles also were crowded with people standing, all eager yet solemn, with granite faces and live eyes. One who did not know better might well have imagined them gathered in hunger after good tidings from the kingdom of truth and hope, whereby they might hasten the coming of that kingdom in their souls and the souls they loved. But it was hardly that; it was indeed a long way from it, and no such thing: the eagerness was, in the ma.s.s, doubtless with exceptions, to hear the new preacher, the pyrotechnist of human logic and eloquence, who was about to burn his halfpenny blue lights over the abyss of truth, and throw his yelping crackers into it.

The eyes of the young men went wandering over the crowd, looking for any of their few acquaintances, but below they mostly fell of course on the backs of heads. There was, however, no mistaking either Ginevra's bonnet or the occiput perched like a capital on the long neck of her father. They sat a good way in front, about the middle of the great church. At the sight of them Gibbie's face brightened, Donal's turned pale as death. For, only the last week but one, he had heard of the frequent visits of the young preacher to the cottage, and of the favour in which he was held by both father and daughter; and his state of mind since, had not, with all his philosophy to rectify and support it, been an enviable one. That he could not for a moment regard himself as a fit husband for the lady-la.s.s, or dream of exposing himself or her to the insult which the offer of himself as a son-in-law would bring on them both from the laird, was not a reflection to render the thought of such a bag of wind as Fergus Duff marrying her, one whit the less horribly unendurable. Had the laird been in the same social position as before, Donal would have had no fear of his accepting Fergus; but misfortune alters many relations. Fergus's father was a man of considerable property, Fergus himself almost a man of influence, and already in possession of a comfortable income: it was possible to imagine that the impoverished Thomas Galbraith, late of Glashruach, Esq., might contrive to swallow what annoyance there could not but in any case be in wedding his daughter to the son of John Duff, late his own tenant of the Mains. Altogether Donal's thoughts were not of the kind to put him in fit mood--I do not say to gather benefit from the prophesying of Fergus, but to give fair play to the peddler who now rose to display his loaded calico and beggarly shoddy over the book-board of the pulpit. But the congregation listened rapt.

I dare not say there was no divine reality concerned in his utterance, for Gibbie saw many a glimmer through the rents in his logic, and the thin-worn patches of his philosophy; but it was not such glimmers that fettered the regards of the audience, but the noisy flow and false eloquence of the preacher. In proportion to the falsehood in us are we exposed to the falsehood in others. The false plays upon the false without discord; comes to the false, and is welcomed as the true; there is no jar, for the false to the false look the true; darkness takes darkness for light, and great is the darkness. I will not attempt an account of the sermon; even admirably rendered, it would be worthless as the best of copies of a bad wall-paper. There was in it, to be sure, such a glowing description of the city of G.o.d as might have served to attract thither all the diamond-merchants of Amsterdam; but why a Christian should care to go to such a place, let him tell who knows; while, on the other hand, the audience appeared equally interested in his equiponderating description of the place of misery. Not once {did he even} attempt to give, or indeed could have given, the feeblest idea, to a single soul present, of the one terror of the universe--the peril of being cast from the arms of essential Love and Life into the bosom of living Death. For this teacher of men knew nothing whatever but by hearsay, had not in himself experienced one of the joys or one of the horrors he endeavoured to embody.

Gibbie was not at home listening to such a sermon; he was distressed, and said afterwards to Donal he would far rather be subjected to Mr. Sclater's isms than Fergus's ations. It caused him pain too to see Donal look so scornful, so contemptuous even; while it added to Donal's unrest, and swelled his evil mood, to see Mr.

Galbraith absorbed. For Ginevra's bonnet, it did not once move--but then it was not set at an angle to indicate either eyes upturned in listening, or cast down in emotion. Donal would have sacrificed not a few songs, the only wealth he possessed, for one peep round the corner of that bonnet. He had become painfully aware, that, much as he had seen of Ginevra, he knew scarcely anything of her thoughts; he had always talked so much more to her than she to him, that now, when he longed to know, he could not even guess what she might be thinking, or what effect such "an arrangement" of red and yellow would have upon her imagination and judgment. She could not think or receive what was not true, he felt sure, but she might easily enough attribute truth where it did not exist.

At length the rockets, Roman candles, and squibs were all burnt out, the would-be "eternal blazon" was over, and the preacher sunk back exhausted in his seat. The people sang; a prayer, fit pendent to such a sermon, followed, and the congregation was dismissed--it could not be with much additional strength to meet the sorrows, temptations, sophisms, commonplaces, disappointments, dulnesses, stupidities, and general devilries of the week, although not a few paid the preacher welcome compliments on his "gran' discoorse."

The young men were out among the first, and going round to another door, in the church-yard, by which they judged Ginevra and her father must issue, there stood waiting. The night was utterly changed. The wind had gone about, and the vapours were high in heaven, broken all into cloud-ma.s.ses of sombre grandeur. Now from behind, now upon their sides, they were made glorious by the full moon, while through their rents appeared the sky and the ever marvellous stars. Gibbie's eyes went climbing up the spire that shot skyward over their heads. Around its point the clouds and the moon seemed to gather, grouping themselves in grand carelessness; and he thought of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven; to us mere heaps of watery vapour, ever ready to fall, drowning the earth in rain, or burying it in snow, to angel-feet they might be solid ma.s.ses whereon to tread attendant upon him, who, although with his word he ruled winds and seas, loved to be waited on by the mult.i.tude of his own! He was yet gazing, forgetful of the human tide about him, watching the glory dominant over storm, when his companion pinched his arm: he looked, and was aware that Fergus, m.u.f.fled to the eyes, was standing beside them. He seemed not to see them, and they were nowise inclined to attract his attention, but gazed motionless on the church door, an unsealed fountain of souls.

What a curious thing it is to watch an issuing crowd of faces for one loved one--all so unattractive, provoking, blamable, as they come rolling round corners, dividing, and flowing away--not one of them the right one! But at last out she did come--Ginevra, like a daisy among mown gra.s.s! It was really she!--but with her father.

She saw Donal, glanced from him to Gibbie, cast down her sweet eyes, and made no sign. Fergus had already advanced and addressed the laird.

"Ah, Mr. Duff!" said Mr. Galbraith; "excuse me, but would you oblige me by giving your arm to my daughter? I see a friend waiting to speak to me. I shall overtake you in a moment."

Fergus murmured his pleasure, and Ginevra and he moved away together. The youths for a moment watched the father. He dawdled--evidently wanted to speak to no one. They then followed the two, walking some yards behind them. Every other moment Fergus would bend his head towards Ginevra; once or twice they saw the little bonnet turn upwards in response or question. Poor Donal was burning with lawless and foolish indignation: why should the minister m.u.f.fle himself up like an old woman in the crowd, and take off the great handkerchief when talking with the lady? When the youths reached the street where the cottage stood, they turned the corner after them, and walked quickly up to them where they stood at the gate waiting for it to be opened.

"Sic a gran' nicht!" said Donal, after the usual greetings. "Sir Gibbie an' me 's haein' a dauner wi' the mune. Ye wad think she had licht eneuch to haud the cloods aff o' her, wad ye no, mem? But na!

they'll be upon her, an' I'm feart there's ae unco black ane yon'er--dinna ye see 't--wi' a straik o' white, aboot the thrapple o' 't?--There--dinna ye see 't?" he went on pointing to the clouds about the moon, "--that ane, I'm doobtin', 'ill hae the better o'

her or lang--tak her intill 'ts airms, an' bray a' the licht oot o'

her. Guid nicht, mem.--Guid nicht, Fergus. You ministers sudna mak yersels sae like cloods. Ye sud be cled in white an' gowd, an' a'

colours o' stanes, like the new Jerooslem ye tell sic tales aboot, an' syne naebody wad mistak the news ye bring."

Therewith Donal walked on, doubtless for the moment a little relieved. But before they had walked far, he broke down altogether.

"Gibbie," he said, "yon rascal's gauin' to merry the leddy-la.s.s! an'

it drives me mad to think it. Gien I cud but ance see an' speyk till her--ance--jist ance! Lord! what 'll come o' a' the gowans upo' the Mains, an' the heather upo' Glashgar!"

He burst out crying, but instantly dashed away his tears with indignation at his weakness.

"I maun dree my weird," (undergo my doom), he said, and said no more.