ADRIFT.
Gibbie was now without a home. He had had a whole city for his
dwelling, every street of which had been to him as another hall in his
own house, every lane as a passage from one set of rooms to another,
every court as a closet, every house as a safe, guarding the only
possessions he had, the only possessions he knew how to value--his
fellow-mortals, radiant with faces, and friendly with hands and
tongues. Great as was his delight in freedom, a delight he revelled
in from morning to night, and sometimes from night to morning, he
had never had a notion of it that reached beyond the city, he never
longed for larger space, for wider outlook. Space and outlook he had
skyward--and seaward when he would, but even into these regions he had
never yet desired to go. His world was the world of men; the presence
of many was his greater room; his people themselves were his world.
He had no idea of freedom in dissociation with human faces and voices
and eyes. But now he had left all these, and as he ran from them, a
red pall seemed settling down behind him, wrapping up and hiding away
his country, his home. For the first time in his life, the fatherless,
motherless, brotherless, sisterless stray of the streets felt himself
alone. The sensation was an awful one. He had lost so many, and had
not one left! That gash in Sambo’s black throat had slain “a whole
cityful.” His loneliness grew upon him, until again he darted aside
from the road into the bush, this time to hide from the Spectre of
the Desert--the No Man. Deprived of human countenances, the face of
creation was a mask without eyes, and liberty a mere negation. Not that
Gibbie had ever thought about liberty; he had only enjoyed: not that he
had ever thought about human faces; he had only loved them, and lived
upon their smiles. “Gibbie wadna need to gang to haiven,” said Mysie,
the baker’s daughter, to her mother one night, as they walked home from
a merry-making. “What for that, lassie?” returned her mother. “Cause
he wad be meeserable whaur there was nae drunk fowk,” answered Mysie.
And now it seemed to the poor, shocked, heart-wounded creature, as if
the human face were just the one thing he could no more look upon. One
haunted him, the black one, with the white, staring eyes, the mouth in
its throat, and the white grinning teeth.
It was a cold, fresh morning, cloudy and changeful, towards the end
of April. It had rained, and would rain again; it might snow. Heavy
undefined clouds, with saffron breaks and borders, hung about the
east, but what was going to happen there--at least he did not think;
he did not know east from west, and I doubt whether, although he had
often seen the sun set, he had ever seen him rise. Yet even to him,
city-creature as he was, it was plain _something_ was going to happen
there. And happen it did presently, and that with a splendour that
for a moment blinded Gibbie. For just at the horizon there was a long
horizontal slip of blue sky, and through that crack the topmost arc of
the rising sun shot suddenly a thousand arrows of radiance into the
brain of the boy. But the too-much light scorched there a blackness
instantly; and to the soul of Gibbie it was the blackness of the room
from which he had fled, and upon it out came the white eyeballs and the
brilliant teeth of his dead Sambo, and the red burst from his throat
that answered the knife of the Malay. He shrieked, and struck with
his hands against the sun from which came the terrible vision. Had he
been a common child, his reason would have given way; but one result
of the overflow of his love was, that he had never yet known fear for
himself. His sweet confident face, innocent eyes, and caressing ways,
had almost always drawn a response more or less in kind; and that
certain some should not repel him, was a fuller response from them than
gifts from others. Except now and then, rarely, a street boy a little
bigger than himself, no one had ever hurt him, and the hurt upon these
occasions had not gone very deep, for the child was brave and hardy. So
now it was not fear, but the loss of old confidence, a sickness coming
over the heart and brain of his love, that unnerved him. It was not
the horrid cruelty to his friend, and his own grievous loss thereby,
but the recoil of his loving endeavour that, jarring him out of every
groove of thought, every socket of habit, every joint of action, cast
him from the city, and made of him a wanderer indeed, not a wanderer in
a strange country, but a wanderer in a strange world.
To no traveller could one land well be so different from another,
as to Gibbie the country was from the town. He had seen bushes and
trees before, but only over garden walls, or in one or two of the
churchyards. He had looked from the quay across to the bare shore on
the other side, with its sandy hills, and its tall lighthouse on the
top of the great rocks that bordered the sea; but, so looking, he had
beheld space as one looking from this world into the face of the moon,
as a child looks upon vastness and possible dangers from his nurse’s
arms where it cannot come near him; for houses backed the quay all
along; the city was behind him, and spread forth her protecting arms.
He had, once or twice, run out along the pier, which shot far into the
immensity of the sea, like a causeway to another world--a stormy thread
of granite, beaten upon both sides by the waves of the German Ocean;
but it was with the sea and not the country he then made the small
acquaintance--and that not without terror. The sea was as different
from the city as the air into which he had looked up at night--too
different to compare against it and feel the contrast; on neither could
he set foot; in neither could he be required to live and act--as now in
this waste of enterable and pervious extent.
Its own horror drove the vision away, and Gibbie saw the world
again--saw, but did not love it. The sun seemed but to have looked up
to mock him and go down again, for he had crossed the crack, and was
behind a thick mass of cloud; a cold damp wind, spotted with sparkles
of rain, blew fitfully from the east; the low bushes among which he
sat, sent forth a chill sighing all about him, as they sifted the wind
into sound; the smell of the damp earth was strange to him--he did not
know the freshness, the new birth of which it breathed; below him the
gloomy river, here deep, smooth, moody, sullen, there puckered with the
grey ripples of a shallow laughter under the cold breeze, went flowing
heedless to the city. There only was--or had been, friendliness,
comfort, home! This was emptiness--the abode of things, not beings.
Yet never once did Gibbie think of returning to the city. He rose and
wandered up the wide road along the river bank, farther and farther
from it--his only guide the words of his father, “_Up Daurside_;” his
sole comfort the feeling of having once more to do with his father
so long departed, some relation still with the paradise of his old
world. Along cultivated fields and copses on the one side, and on the
other a steep descent to the river, covered here and there with trees,
but mostly with rough grass and bushes and stones, he followed the
king’s highway. There were buttercups and plenty of daisies within
his sight--primroses, too, on the slope beneath; but he did not know
flowers, and his was not now the mood for discovering what they were.
The exercise revived him, and he began to be hungry. But how could
there be anything to eat in the desert, inhospitable succession of
trees and fields and hedges, through which the road wound endlessly
along, like a dead street, having neither houses nor paving stones?
Hunger, however, was far less enfeebling to Gibbie than to one
accustomed to regular meals, and he was in no anxiety about either when
or what he should eat.
The morning advanced, and by-and-by he began to meet a fellow-creature
now and then upon the road; but at sight of everyone a feeling rose in
him such as he had never had towards human being before: they seemed
somehow of a different kind from those in the town, and they did not
look friendly as they passed. He did not know that he presented to them
a very different countenance from that which his fellow-citizens had
always seen him wear; for the mingled and conflicting emotions of his
spirit had sent out upon it an expression which, accompanied by the
misery of his garments, might well, to the superficial or inexperienced
observer, convey the idea that he was a fugitive and guilty. He was
so uncomfortable at length from the way the people he met scrutinized
him that, when he saw anyone coming, he would instantly turn aside and
take the covert of thicket, or hedge, or stone wall, until the bearer
of eyes had passed. His accustomed trot, which he kept up for several
hours, made him look the more suspicious; but his feet, hardened from
very infancy as they were, soon found the difference between the smooth
flags and the sharp stones of the road, and before noon he was walking
at quite a sober, although still active, pace. Doubtless it slackened
the sooner that he knew no goal, no end to his wandering. _Up Daurside_
was the one vague notion he had of his calling, his destiny, and with
his short, quick step, his progress was considerable; he passed house
after house, farm after farm; but, never in the way of asking for
anything, though as little in the way of refusing, he went nearer none
of them than the road led him. Besides, the houses were very unlike
those in the city, and not at all attractive to him. He came at length
to a field, sloping to the road, which was covered with leaves like
some he had often seen in the market. They drew him; and as there
was but a low and imperfect hedge between, he got over, and found it
was a crop of small yellow turnips. He gathered as many as he could
carry, and ate them as he went along. Happily no agricultural person
encountered him for some distance, though Gibbie knew no special cause
to congratulate himself upon that, having not the slightest conscience
of offence in what he did. His notions of property were all associated
with well-known visible or neighbouring owners, and in the city he
would never have dreamed of touching anything that was not given him,
except it lay plainly a lost thing. But here, where everything was so
different, and he saw none of the signs of ownership to which he was
accustomed, the idea of property did not come to him; here everything
looked lost, or on the same category with the chips and parings and
crusts that were thrown out in the city, and became common property.
Besides, the love which had hitherto rendered covetousness impossible,
had here no object whose presence might have suggested a doubt, to
supply in a measure the lack of knowledge; hunger, instead, was busy
in his world. I trust there were few farmers along the road who would
have found fault with him for taking one or two; but none, I suspect,
would have liked to see him with all the turnips he could carry, eating
them like a very rabbit: they were too near a city to look upon such a
spectacle with indifference. Gibbie made no attempt to hide his spoil;
whatever could have given birth to the sense that caution would be
necessary, would have prevented him from taking it. While yet busy he
came upon a little girl feeding a cow by the roadside. She saw how he
ate the turnips, and offered him a bit of oatmeal bannock. He received
it gladly, and with beaming eyes offered her a turnip. She refused
it with some indignation. Gibbie, disappointed, but not ungrateful,
resumed his tramp, eating his bannock. He came soon after to a little
stream that ran into the great river. For a few moments he eyed it
very doubtfully, thinking it must, like the kennels along the sides of
the streets, be far too dirty to drink of; but the way it sparkled and
sang--most unscientific reasons--soon satisfied him, and he drank and
was refreshed. He had still two turnips left, but, after the bannock,
he did not seem to want them, and stowed them in the ends of the
sleeves of his jacket, folded back into great cuffs.
All day the cold spring weather continued, with more of the past
winter in it than of the coming summer. The sun would shine out for a
few moments, with a grey, weary, old light, then retreat as if he had
tried, but really could not. Once came a slight fall of snow, which,
however, melted the moment it touched the earth. The wind kept blowing
cheerlessly by fits, and the world seemed growing tired of the same
thing over again so often. At length the air began to grow dusk: then,
first, fears of the darkness, to Gibbie utterly unknown before, and
only born of the preceding night, began to make him aware of their
existence in the human world. They seemed to rise up from his lonely
heart; they seemed to descend upon him out of the thickening air; they
seemed to catch at his breath, and gather behind him as he went. But,
happily, before it was quite dark, and while yet he could distinguish
between objects, he came to the gate of a farmyard; it waked in him
the hope of finding some place where he could sleep warmer than in the
road, and he clambered over it. Nearest of the buildings to the gate,
stood an open shed, and he could see the shafts of carts projecting
from it: perhaps in one of those carts, or under it, he might find
a place that would serve him to sleep in: he did not yet know what
facilities for repose the country affords. But just as he entered
the shed, he spied at the farther corner of it, outside, a wooden
structure, like a small house, and through the arched door of it saw
the floor covered with nice-looking straw. He suspected it to be a
dog’s kennel; and presently the chain lying beside it, with a collar
at the end, satisfied him it was. The dog was absent, and it looked
altogether enticing! He crept in, got under as much of the straw as he
could heap over him, and fell fast asleep.
In a few minutes, as it seemed to him, he was roused by the great
voice of a dog in conversation with a boy: the boy seemed, by the
sound of the chain, to be fastening the collar on the dog’s neck,
and presently left him. The dog, which had been on the rampage the
whole afternoon, immediately turned to creep in and rest till supper
time, presenting to Gibbie, who had drawn himself up at the back of
the kennel, the intelligent countenance of a large Newfoundland. Now
Gibbie had been honoured with the acquaintance of many dogs, and the
friendship of most of them, for a lover of humanity can hardly fail to
be a lover of caninity. Even among dogs, however, there are ungracious
individuals, and Gibbie had once or twice been bitten by quadrupedal
worshippers of the respectable. Hence, with the sight of the owner of
the dwelling, it dawned upon him that he must be startled to find a
stranger in his house, and might, regarding him as an intruder rather
than a guest, worry him before he had time to explain himself. He
darted forward therefore to get out, but had scarcely reached the door,
when the dog put in his nose, ready to follow with all he was and had.
Gibbie, thereupon, began a loud barking, as much as to say--“Here I
am: please do nothing without reflection.” The dog started back in
extreme astonishment, his ears erect, and a keen look of question on
his sagacious visage: what strange animal, speaking like, and yet so
unlike, an orthodox dog, could have got into his very chamber? Gibbie,
amused at the dog’s fright, and assured by his looks that he was both a
good-natured and reasonable animal, burst into a fit of merry laughter
as loud as his previous barking, and a good deal more musical. The dog
evidently liked it better, and took it as a challenge to play: after
a series of sharp bursts of barking, his eyes flashing straight in at
the door, and his ears lifted up like two plumes on the top of them,
he darted into the kennel, and began poking his nose into his visitor.
Gibbie fell to patting and kissing and hugging him as if he had been a
human--as who can tell but he was?--glad of any companion that belonged
to the region of the light; and they were friends at once. Mankind had
disappointed him, but here was a dog! Gibbie was not the one to refuse
mercies which yet he would not have been content to pray for. Both were
tired, however, for both had been active that day, and a few minutes
of mingled wrestling and endearment, to which, perhaps, the narrowness
of their play-ground gave a speedier conclusion, contented both, after
which they lay side by side in peace, Gibbie with his head on the dog’s
back, and the dog every now and then turning his head over his shoulder
to lick Gibbie’s face.
Again he was waked by approaching steps, and the same moment the dog
darted from under him, and with much rattle out of the kennel, in front
of which he stood and whined expectant. It was not quite dark, for the
clouds had drifted away, and the stars were shining, so that, when he
put out his head, he was able to see the dim form of a woman setting
down something before the dog--into which he instantly plunged his
nose, and began gobbling. The sound stirred up all the latent hunger in
Gibbie, and he leaped out, eager to have a share. A large wooden bowl
was on the ground, and the half of its contents of porridge and milk
was already gone; for the poor dog had not yet had experience enough
to be perfect in hospitality, and had forgotten his guest’s wants in
his own: it was plain that, if Gibbie was to have any, he must lose no
time in considering the means. Had he had a long nose and mouth all
in one like him, he would have plunged them in beside the dog’s; but
the flatness of his mouth causing the necessity, in the case of such
an attempt, of bringing the whole of his face into contact with the
food, there was not room in the dish for the two to feed together after
the same fashion, so that he was driven to the sole other possible
expedient, that of making a spoon of his hand. The dog neither growled
nor pushed away the spoon, but instantly began to gobble twice as fast
as before, and presently was licking the bottom of the dish. Gibbie’s
hand, therefore, made but few journeys to his mouth, but what it
carried him was good food--better than any he had had that day. When
all was gone he crept again into the kennel; the dog followed, and soon
they were both fast asleep in each other’s arms and legs.
Gibbie woke at sunrise and went out. His host came after him, and
stood wagging his tail and looking wistfully up in his face. Gibbie
understood him, and, as the sole return he could make for his
hospitality, undid his collar. Instantly he rushed off, his back going
like a serpent, cleared the gate at a bound, and scouring madly across
a field, vanished from his sight; whereupon Gibbie too set out to
continue his journey up Daurside.
This day was warmer; the spring had come a step nearer; the dog had
been a comforter to him, and the horror had begun to assuage; he began
to grow aware of the things about him, and to open his eyes to them.
Once he saw a primrose in a little dell, and left the road to look
at it. But as he went, he set his foot in the water of a chalybeate
spring, which was trickling through the grass, and dyeing the ground
red about it: filled with horror he fled, and for some time dared never
go near a primrose. And still upon his right hand was the great river,
flowing down towards the home he had left; now through low meadows,
now through upshouldered fields of wheat and oats, now through rocky
heights covered with the graceful silver-barked birch, the mountain
ash, and the fir. Every time Gibbie, having lost sight of it by some
turn of the road or some interposing eminence, caught its gleam afresh,
his first feeling was that it was hurrying to the city, where the dead
man lay, to tell where Gibbie was. Why he, who had from infancy done
just as he pleased, should now have begun to dread interference with
his liberty, he could not himself have told. Perhaps the fear was but
the shadow of his new-born aversion to the place where he had seen
those best-loved countenances change so suddenly and terribly--cease to
smile, but not cease to stare.
That second day he fared better, too, than the first; for he came on a
family of mongrel gipsies, who fed him well out of their kettle, and,
taken with his looks, thought to keep him for begging purposes. But now
that Gibbie’s confidence in human nature had been so rudely shaken,
he had already begun, with analysis unconscious, to read the human
countenance, questioning it; and he thought he saw something that would
hurt, in the eyes of two of the men and one of the women. Therefore, in
the middle of the night, he slipped silently out of the tent of rags,
in which he had lain down with the gipsy children, and ere the mothers
woke, was a mile up the river.
But I must not attempt the detail of this part of his journey. It
is enough that he got through it. He met with some adventures, and
suffered a good deal from hunger and cold. Had he not been hardy as
well as fearless he must have died. But, now from this quarter, now
from that, he got all that was needful for one of God’s birds. Once
he found in a hedge the nest of an errant and secretive hen, and
recognizing the eggs as food authorized by the shop windows and market
of the city, soon qualified himself to have an opinion of their worth.
Another time he came upon a girl milking a cow in a shed, and his
astonishment at the marvels of the process was such, that he forgot
even the hunger that was rendering him faint. He had often seen cows in
the city, but had never suspected what they were capable of. When the
girl caught sight of him, staring with open mouth, she was taken with
such a fit of laughter, that the cow, which was ill-tempered, kicked
out, and overturned the pail. Now because of her troublesomeness this
cow was not milked beside the rest, and the shed where she stood was
used for farm-implements only. The floor of it was the earth, beaten
hard, and worn into hollows. When the milk settled in one of these,
Gibbie saw that it was lost to the girl, and found to him: undeterred
by the astounding nature of the spring from which he had just seen
it flow, he threw himself down, and drank like a calf. Her laughter
ended, the girl was troubled: she would be scolded for her clumsiness
in allowing Hawkie to kick over the pail, but the eagerness of the boy
after the milk troubled her more. She told him to wait, and running to
the house, returned with two large pieces of oatcake, which she gave
him.
Thus, one way and another, food came to Gibbie. Drink was to be had
in almost any hollow. Sleep was scattered everywhere over the world.
For warmth, only motion and a seasoned skin were necessary: the latter
Gibbie had; the former, already a habit learned in the streets, had now
become almost a passion.