SHOALS AHEAD.
It had come to be the custom that Gibbie should go to Donal every
Friday afternoon about four o’clock, and remain with him till the same
time on Saturday, which was a holiday with both. One Friday, just after
he was gone, the temptation seized Mrs. Sclater to follow him, and,
paying the lads an unexpected visit, see what they were about.
It was a bright cold afternoon; and in fur tippet and muff, amidst the
snow that lay everywhere on roofs and window-sills and pavements, and
the wind that blew cold as it blows in few places besides, she looked,
with her bright colour and shining eyes, like life itself laughing
at death. But not many of those she met carried the like victory in
their countenances, for the cold was bitter. As she approached the
Widdiehill, she reflected that she had followed Gibbie so quickly, and
walked so fast, that the boys could hardly have had time to settle to
anything, and resolved therefore to make a little round and spend a few
more minutes upon the way. But as, through a neighbouring street, she
was again approaching the Widdiehill, she caught sight of something
which, as she was passing a certain shop, that of a baker known to her
as one of her husband’s parishioners, made her stop and look in through
the glass which formed the upper half of the door. There she saw
Gibbie, seated on the counter, dangling his legs, eating a penny loaf,
and looking as comfortable as possible.--“So soon after luncheon, too!”
said Mrs. Sclater to herself with indignation, reading through the
spectacles of her anger a reflection on her housekeeping. But a second
look revealed, as she had dreaded, far weightier cause for displeasure:
a very pretty girl stood behind the counter, with whose company Gibbie
was evidently much pleased. She was fair of hue, with eyes of gray and
green, and red lips whose smile showed teeth whiter than the whitest
of flour. At the moment she was laughing merrily, and talking gaily to
Gibbie. Clearly they were on the best of terms, and the boy’s bright
countenance, laughter, and eager motions, were making full response to
the girl’s words.
Gibbie had been in the shop two or three times before, but this was the
first time he had seen his old friend, Mysie, of the amethyst ear-ring.
And now one of them had reminded the other of that episode in which
their histories had run together; from that, Mysie had gone on to other
reminiscences of her childhood in which wee Gibbie bore a part, and
he had, as well as he could, replied with others of his, in which she
was concerned. Mysie was a simple, well-behaved girl, and the entrance
of neither father nor mother would have made the least difference in
her behaviour to Sir Gilbert, though doubtless she was more pleased to
have a chat with him than with her father’s apprentice, who could speak
indeed, but looked dull as the dough he worked in, whereas Gibbie,
although dumb, was radiant. But the faces of people talking often look
more meaningful to one outside the talk-circle than they really are,
and Mrs. Sclater, gazing through the glass, found, she imagined, large
justification of displeasure. She opened the door sharply, and stepped
in. Gibbie jumped from his seat on the counter, and, with a smile of
playful roguery, offered it to her; a vivid blush overspread Mysie’s
fair countenance.
“I thought you had gone to see Donal,” said Mrs. Sclater, in the tone
of one deceived, and took no notice of the girl.
Gibbie gave her to understand that Donal would arrive presently, and
they were then going to the point of the pier, that Donal might learn
what the sea was like in a nor’-easter.
“But why did you make your appointment here?” asked the lady.
“Because Mysie and I are old friends,” answered the boy on his fingers.
Then first Mrs. Sclater turned to the girl: having got over her first
indignation, she spoke gently and with a frankness natural to her.
“Sir Gilbert tells me you are old friends,” she said.
Thereupon Mysie told her the story of the ear-ring, which had
introduced their present conversation, and added several other little
recollections, in one of which she was drawn into a description, half
pathetic, half humorous, of the forlorn appearance of wee Gibbie, as
he ran about in his truncated trousers. Mrs. Slater was more annoyed,
however, than interested, for, in view of the young baronet’s future,
she would have had all such things forgotten; but Gibbie was full of
delight in the vivid recollections thus brought him of some of the less
painful portions of his past, and appreciated every graphic word that
fell from the girl’s pretty lips.
Mrs. Sclater took good care not to leave until Donal came. Then the
boys, having asked her if she would not go with them, which invitation
she declined with smiling thanks, took their departure and went to
pay their visit to the German Ocean, leaving her with Mysie--which
they certainly would not have done, could they have foreseen how the
well-meaning lady--nine-tenths of the mischiefs in the world are
well-meant--would hurt the feelings of the gentle-conditioned girl.
For a long time after, as often as Gibbie entered the shop, Mysie left
it and her mother came--a result altogether as Mrs. Sclater would have
had it. But hardly anybody was ever in less danger of falling in love
than Gibbie; and the thing would not have been worth recording, but for
the new direction it caused in Mrs. Sclater’s thoughts: measures, she
judged, must be taken.
Gladly as she would have centred Gibbie’s boyish affections in herself,
she was too conscientious and experienced not to regard the danger
of any special effort in that direction, and began therefore to cast
about in her mind what could be done to protect him from one at least
of the natural consequences of his early familiarity with things
unseemly--exposure, namely, to the risk of forming low alliances--the
more imminent that it was much too late to attempt any restriction of
his liberty, so as to keep him from roaming the city at his pleasure.
Recalling what her husband had told her of the odd meeting between
the boy and a young lady at Miss Kimble’s school--some relation, she
thought he had said--also the desire to see her again which Gibbie, on
more than one occasion, had shown, she thought whether she could turn
the acquaintance to account. She did not much like Miss Kimble, chiefly
because of her affectations--which, by the way, were caricatures of her
own; but she knew her very well, and there was no reason why she should
not ask her to come and spend the evening, and bring two or three of
the elder girls with her: a little familiarity with the looks, manners,
and dress of refined girls of his own age, would be the best antidote
to his taste for low society, from that of bakers’ daughters downwards.
It was Mrs. Sclater’s own doing that Gibbie had not again spoken to
Ginevra. Nowise abashed at the thought of the grenadier or her array
of doves, he would have gone, the very next day after meeting them in
the street, to call upon her: it was some good, he thought, of being
a rich instead of a poor boy, that, having lost thereby those whom he
loved best, he had come where he could at least see Miss Galbraith;
but Mrs. Sclater had pretended not to understand where he wanted to
go, and used other artifices besides--well-meant, of course--to keep
him to herself until she should better understand him. After that,
he had seen Ginevra more than once at church, but had had no chance
of speaking to her. For, in the sudden dispersion of its agglomerate
particles, a Scotch congregation is--or was in Gibbie’s time--very
like the well-known vitreous drop called a Prince Rupert’s tear, in
which the mutually repellent particles are held together by a strongly
contracted homogeneous layer--to separate with explosion the instant
the tough skin is broken and vibration introduced; and as Mrs. Sclater
generally sat in her dignity to the last, and Gibbie sat with her,
only once was he out in time to catch a glimpse of the ultimate rank
of the retreating girls. He was just starting to pursue them, when
Mrs. Sclater, perceiving his intention, detained him by requesting
the support of his arm--a way she had, pretending to be weary, or to
have given her ankle a twist, when she wanted to keep him by her side.
Another time he had followed them close enough to see which turn they
took out of Daur-street; but that was all he had learned, and when the
severity of the winter arrived, and the snow lay deep, sometimes for
weeks together, the chances of meeting them were few. The first time
the boys went out together, that when they failed to find Mistress
Croale’s garret, they made an excursion in search of the girls’ school,
but had been equally unsuccessful in that; and although they never
after went for a walk without contriving to pass through some part
of the region in which they thought it must lie, they had never yet
even discovered a house upon which they could agree as presenting
probabilities.
Mr. Galbraith did not take Miss Kimble into his confidence with respect
to his reasons for so hurriedly placing his daughter under her care:
he was far too reticent, too proud, and too much hurt for that. Hence,
when Mrs. Sclater’s invitation arrived, the schoolmistress was aware of
no reason why Miss Galbraith should not be one of the girls to go with
her, especially as there was her cousin, Sir Gilbert, whom she herself
would like to meet again, in the hope of removing the bad impression
which, in the discharge of her duty, she feared she must have made upon
him.
One day, then, at luncheon, Mrs. Sclater told Gibbie that some ladies
were coming to tea, and they were going to have supper instead of
dinner. He must put on his best clothes, she said. He did as she
desired, was duly inspected, approved on the whole, and finished off
by a few deft fingers at his necktie, and a gentle push or two from
the loveliest of hands against his hair-thatch, and was seated in the
drawing-room with Mrs. Sclater when the ladies arrived. Ginevra and
he shook hands, she with the sweetest of rose-flushes, he with the
radiance of delighted surprise. But, a moment after, when Mrs. Sclater
and her guests had seated themselves, Gibbie, their only gentleman,
for Mr. Sclater had not yet made his appearance, had vanished from the
room. Tea was not brought until some time after, when Mr. Sclater came
home, and then Mrs. Sclater sent Jane to find Sir Gilbert; but she
returned to say he was not in the house. The lady’s heart sank, her
countenance fell, and all was gloom: her project had miscarried! he was
gone! who could tell whither?--perhaps to the baker’s daughter, or to
the horrid woman Croale!
The case was however very much otherwise. The moment Gibbie ended his
greetings, he had darted off to tell Donal: it was not his custom to
enjoy alone anything sharable.
The news that Ginevra was at that moment seated in Mrs. Sclater’s
house, at that moment, as his eagerness had misunderstood Gibbie’s,
expecting his arrival, raised such a commotion in Donal’s atmosphere,
that for a time it was but a huddle of small whirlwinds. His heart
was beating like the trample of a trotting horse. He never thought
of inquiring whether Gibbie had been commissioned by Mrs. Sclater to
invite him, or reflected that his studies were not half over for the
night. An instant before the arrival of the blessed fact, he had been
absorbed in a rather abstruse metaphysico-mathematical question; now
not the metaphysics of the universe would have appeared to him worth a
moment’s meditation. He went pacing up and down the room, and seemed
lost to everything. Gibbie shook him at length, and told him, by two
signs, that he must put on his Sunday clothes. Then first shyness, like
the shroud of northern myth that lies in wait in a man’s path, leaped
up, and wrapped itself around him. It was very well to receive ladies
in a meadow, quite another thing to walk into their company in a grand
room, such as, before entering Mrs. Sclater’s, he had never beheld even
in Fairyland or the Arabian Nights. He knew the ways of the one, and
not the ways of the other. Chairs ornate were doubtless poor things to
daisied banks, yet the other day he had hardly brought himself to sit
on one of Mrs. Sclater’s! It was a moment of awful seeming. But what
would he not face to see once more the lovely lady-girl! He bethought
himself that he was no longer a cowherd but a student, and that such
feelings were unworthy of one who would walk level with his fellows.
He rushed to the labours of his toilette, performed severe ablutions,
endued his best shirt--coarse, but sweet from the fresh breezes of
Glashgar, a pair of trousers of buff-coloured fustian stamped over with
a black pattern, an olive-green waistcoat, a blue tailcoat with lappets
behind, and a pair of well-polished shoes, the soles of which in honour
of Sunday were studded with small instead of large knobs of iron, set
a tall beaver hat, which no brushing would make smooth, on the back
of his head, stuffed a silk hankerchief, crimson and yellow, in his
pocket, and declared himself ready.
Now Gibbie, although he would not have looked so well in his woolly
coat in Mrs. Sclater’s drawing-room as on the rocks of Glashgar, would
have looked better in almost any other than the evening dress, now,
alas! nearly European. Mr. Sclater, on the other hand, would have
looked worse in any other because being less commonplace, it would have
been less like himself; and so long as the commonplace conventional so
greatly outnumber the simply individual, it is perhaps well the present
fashion should hold. But Donal could hardly have put on any clothes
that would have made him look worse, either in respect of himself or
of the surroundings of social life, than those he now wore. Neither of
the boys, however, had begun to think about dress in relation either to
custom or to fitness, and it was with complete satisfaction that Gibbie
carried off Donal to present to the guest of his guardians.
Donal’s preparations had taken a long time, and before they reached the
house, tea was over and gone. They had had some music; and Mrs. Sclater
was now talking kindly to two of the school-girls, who, seated erect on
the sofa, were looking upon her elegance with awe and envy. Ginevra,
was looking at the pictures of an annual. Mr. Sclater was making Miss
Kimble agreeable to herself. He had a certain gift of talk--depending
in a great measure on the assurance of being listened to, an assurance
which is, alas! nowise the less hurtful to many a clergyman out of the
pulpit, that he may be equally aware no one heeds him in it.