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-lassie,”--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 casement, 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 Saturday 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.
Gibbie and he seldom talked about Ginevra. She was generally
_understood_ between them--only referred to upon needful occasion:
they had no right to talk about her, any more than to intrude on her
presence unseasonably.
Donal went to Mr. Sclater’s church because Mr. Sclater required it,
in virtue of the position he assumed as his benefactor. Mr. Sclater
in the pulpit was a trial to Donal, but it consoled him to be near
Gibbie, also that he had found a seat in the opposite gallery, whence
he could see Ginevra when her place happened to be not far from the
door of one of the school-pews. He did not get much benefit from Mr.
Sclater’s sermons: I confess he did not attend very closely to his
preaching--often directed against doctrinal errors of which, except
from himself, not one of his congregation had ever heard, or was likely
ever to hear. But I cannot say he would have been better employed in
listening, for there was generally something going on in his mind that
had to go on, and make way for more. I have said _generally_, for
I must except the times when his thoughts turned upon the preacher
himself, and took forms such as the following. But it might be a lesson
to some preachers to know that a decent lad like Donal may be making
some such verses about one of them while he is preaching. I have known
not a few humble men in the pulpit of whom rather than write such a
thing Donal would have lost the writing hand.
’Twas a sair sair day ’twas my hap till
Come under yer soon’, Mr. Sclater;
But things maun he putten a stap till,
An’ sae maun ye, seener or later!
For to hear ye rowtin’ an’ scornin’,
Is no to hark to the river;
An’ to sit here till brak trowth’s mornin’,
Wad be to be lost for ever.
I confess I have taken a liberty, and changed one word for another
in the last line. He did not show these verses to Gibbie; or indeed
ever find much fault with the preacher in his hearing; for he knew
that while he was himself more open-minded to the nonsense of the
professional gentleman, Gibbie was more open-hearted towards the merits
of the man, with whom he was far too closely associated on week-days
not to feel affection for him; while, on the other hand, Gibbie made
neither head nor tail of his sermons, not having been instructed in
the theological mess that goes with so many for a theriac of the very
essentials of religion; and therefore, for anything he knew, they might
be very wise and good. At first he took refuge from the sermon in his
New Testament; but when, for the third time, the beautiful hand of
the ministerial spouse appeared between him and the book, and gently
withdrew it, he saw that his reading was an offence in her eyes, and
contented himself thereafter with thinking: listening to the absolutely
unintelligible he found impossible. What a delight it would have been
to the boy to hear Christ preached such as he showed himself, such as
in no small measure he had learned him--instead of such as Mr. Sclater
saw him reflected from the tenth or twentieth distorting mirror! They
who speak against the Son of Man oppose mere distortions and mistakes
of him, having never beheld, neither being now capable of beholding,
him; but those who have transmitted to them these false impressions,
those, namely, who preach him without being themselves devoted to him,
and those who preach him having derived their notions of him from other
scources than himself, have to bear the blame that they have such
excuses for not seeking to know him. He submits to be mis-preached, as
he submitted to be lied against while visibly walking the world, but
his truth will appear at length to all: until then, until he is known
as he is, our salvation tarrieth.
Mrs. Sclater showed herself sincere, after her kind, to Donal as well
as to Gibbie. She had by no means ceased to grow, and already was
slowly bettering under the influences of the New Testament in Gibbie,
notwithstanding she had removed the letter of it from her public
table. She told Gibbie that he must talk to Donal about his dress
and his speech. That he was a lad of no common gifts was plain, she
said, but were he ever so “talented” he could do little in the world,
certainly would never raise himself, so long as he dressed and spoke
ridiculously. The wisest and best of men would be utterly disregarded,
she said, if he did not look and speak like other people. Gibbie
thought with himself this could hardly hold, for there was John the
Baptist; he answered her, however, that Donal could speak very good
English if he chose, but that the affected tone and would-be-fine
pronunciation of Fergus Duff had given him the notion that to speak
anything but his mother-tongue would be unmanly and false. As to his
dress, Donal was poor, Gibbie said, and could not give up wearing any
clothes so long as there was any wear in them. “If you had seen me
once!” he added, with a merry laugh to finish for his fingers.
Mrs. Sclater spoke to her husband, who said to Gibbie that, if he chose
to provide Donal with suitable garments, he would advance him the
money:--that was the way he took credit for every little sum he handed
his ward, but in his accounts was correct to a farthing.
Gibbie would thereupon have dragged Donal at once to the tailor; but
Donal was obstinate.
“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 can_not_ mak my moo’,” he would say, “to speyk onything but the
naitral 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 MacPholp 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 fowks. 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 sangie 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’ haiven’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 chiel!” 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.