OF AGE.
There were no rejoicings upon Gibbie’s attainment of his twenty-first
year. His guardian, believing he alone had acquainted himself with
the date, and desiring in his wisdom to avoid giving him a feeling
of importance, made no allusion to the fact, as would have been most
natural, when they met at breakfast on the morning of the day. But,
urged thereto by Donal, Gibbie had learned the date for himself,
and finding nothing was said, fingered to Mrs. Sclater, “This is my
birthday.”
“I wish you many happy returns,” she answered, with kind
_empressement_. “How old are you to-day?”
“Twenty-one,” he answered--by holding up all his fingers twice and then
a forefinger.
She looked struck, and glanced at her husband, who thereupon, in his
turn, gave utterance to the usual formula of goodwill, and said no
more. Seeing he was about to leave the table, Gibbie, claiming his
attention, spelled on his fingers, very slowly, for Mr. Sclater was
slow at following this mode of communication:
“If you please, sir, I want to be put in possession of my property as
soon as possible.”
“All in good time, Sir Gilbert,” answered the minister, with a superior
smile, for he clung with hard reluctance to the last vestige of his
power.
“But what is good time?” spelled Gibbie with a smile, which, none the
less that it was of genuine friendliness, indicated there might be
difference of opinion on the point.
“Oh! we shall see,” returned the minister coolly. “These are not things
to be done in a hurry,” he added, as if he had been guardian to twenty
wards in chancery before. “We’ll see in a few days what Mr. Torrie
proposes.”
“But I want my money at once,” insisted Gibbie. “I have been waiting
for it, and now it is time, and why should I wait still?”
“To learn patience, if for no other reason, Sir Gilbert,” answered the
minister, with a hard laugh, meant to be jocular. “But indeed such
affairs cannot be managed in a moment. You will have plenty of time to
make a good use of your money, if you should have to wait another year
or two.”
So saying he pushed back his plate and cup, a trick he had, and rose
from the table.
“When will you see Mr. Torrie?” asked Gibbie, rising too, and working
his telegraph with greater rapidity than before.
“By and by,” answered Mr. Sclater, and walked towards the door. But
Gibbie got between him and it.
“Will you go with me to Mr. Torrie to-day?” he asked.
The minister shook his head. Gibbie withdrew, seeming a little
disappointed. Mr. Sclater left the room.
“You don’t understand business, Gilbert,” said Mrs. Sclater.
Gibbie smiled, got his writing-case, and sitting down at the table,
wrote as follows:--
“Dear Mr. Sclater,--As you have never failed in your part, how can you
wish me to fail in mine? I am now the one accountable for this money,
which surely has been idle long enough, and if I leave it still unused,
I shall be doing wrong, and there are things I have to do with it which
ought to be set about immediately. I am sorry to seem importunate, but
if by twelve o’clock you have not gone with me to Mr. Torrie, I will
go to Messrs. Hope & Waver, who will tell me what I ought to do next,
in order to be put in possession. It makes me unhappy to write like
this, but I am not a child any longer, and having a man’s work to do, I
cannot consent to be treated as a child. I will do as I say. I am, dear
Mr. Sclater, your affectionate ward, Gilbert Galbraith.”
He took the letter to the study, and having given it to Mr. Sclater,
withdrew. The minister might have known by this time with what sort of
a youth he had to deal! He came down instantly, put the best face on it
he could, said that if Sir Gilbert was so eager to take up the burden,
he was ready enough to cast it off, and they would go at once to Mr.
Torrie.
With the lawyer, Gibbie insisted on understanding everything, and that
all should be legally arranged as speedily as possible. Mr. Torrie
saw that, if he did not make things plain, or gave the least cause
for doubt, the youth would most likely apply elsewhere for advice,
and therefore took trouble to set the various points, both as to the
property and the proceedings necessary, before him in the clearest
manner.
“Thank you,” said Gibbie, through Mr. Sclater. “Please remember I
am more accountable for this money than you, and am compelled to
understand.”--Janet’s repeated exhortations on the necessity of sending
for the serpent to take care of the dove, had not been lost upon him.
The lawyer being then quite ready to make him an advance of money,
they went with him to the bank, where he wrote his name, and received
a cheque book. As they left the bank, he asked the minister whether he
would allow him to keep his place in his house till the next session,
and was almost startled at finding how his manner to him was changed.
He assured Sir Gilbert, with a deference and respect both painful and
amusing, that he hoped he would always regard his house as one home,
however many besides he might now choose to have.
So now at last Gibbie was free to set about realizing a long-cherished
scheme.
The repairs upon the Auld Hoose o’ Galbraith were now nearly finished.
In consequence of them, some of the tenants had had to leave, and
Gibbie now gave them all notice to quit at their earliest convenience,
taking care, however, to see them provided with fresh quarters, towards
which he could himself do not a little, for several of the houses in
the neighbourhood had been bought for him at the same time with the old
mansion. As soon as it was empty, he set more men to work, and as its
internal arrangements had never been altered, speedily, out of squalid
neglect, caused not a little of old stateliness to reappear. He next
proceeded to furnish at his leisure certain of the rooms, chiefly from
the accumulations of his friend Mistress Murkison. By the time he had
finished, his usual day for going home had arrived: while Janet lived,
the cottage on Glashgar was home. Just as he was leaving, the minister
told him that Glashruach was his. Mrs. Sclater was present, and read in
his eyes what induced her instantly to make the remark: “How could that
man deprive his daughter of the property he had to take her mother’s
name to get!”
“He had misfortunes,” indicated Gibbie, “and could not help it, I
suppose.”
“Yes indeed!” she returned, “--misfortunes so great that they amounted
to little less than swindling. I wonder how many he has brought to
grief besides himself! If he had Glashruach once more he would begin it
all over again.”
“Then I’ll give it to Ginevra,” said Gibbie.
“And let her father coax her out of it, and do another world of
mischief with it!” she rejoined.
Gibbie was silent. Mrs. Sclater was right! To give is not always to
bless. He must think of some way. With plenty to occupy his powers of
devising, he set out.
He would gladly have seen Ginevra before he left, but had no chance. He
had gone to the North church every Sunday for a long time now, neither
for love of Fergus, nor dislike to Mr. Sclater, but for the sake of
seeing his lost friend: had he not lost her when she turned from Donal
to Fergus? Did she not forsake him too when she forsook his Donal? His
heart would rise into his throat at the thought, but only for a moment:
he never pitied himself. Now and then he had from her a sweet sad
smile, but no sign that he might go and see her. Whether he was to see
Donal when he reached Daurside, he could not tell; he had heard nothing
of him since he went; his mother never wrote letters.
“Na, na; I canna,” she would say. “It wad tak a’ the pith oot o’ me to
vreet letters. A’ ’at I hae to say I sen’ the up-road; it’s sure to win
hame ear’ or late.”
Notwithstanding his new power, it was hardly, therefore, with his usual
elation, that he took his seat on the coach. But his reception was the
same as ever. At his mother’s persuasion, Donal, he found, instead
of betaking himself again to bodily labours as he had purposed, had
accepted a situation as tutor offered him by one of the professors. He
had told his mother all his trouble.
“He’ll be a’ the better for ’t i’ the en’,” she said, with a smile of
the deepest sympathy, “though, bein’ my ain, I canna help bein’ wae for
’im. But the Lord was i’ the airthquak, an’ the fire, an’ the win’ that
rave the rocks, though the prophet couldna see ’im. Donal ’ill come oot
o’ this wi’ mair room in ’s hert an’ mair licht in ’s speerit.”
Gibbie took his slate from the _crap o’ the wa’_ and wrote. “If money
could do anything for him, I have plenty now.”
“I ken yer hert, my bairn,” replied Janet; “but na; siller’s but a deid
horse for onything ’at smacks o’ salvation. Na; the puir fallow maun
warstle oot o’ the thicket o’ deid roses as best he can--sair scrattit,
nae doobt. Eh! it’s a fearfu’ an’ won’erfu’ thing that drawin’ o’ hert
to hert, an’ syne a great snap, an’ a stert back, an’ there’s miles
atween them! The Lord alane kens the boddom o’ ’t; but I’m thinkin’
there’s mair intil ’t, an’ a heap mair to come oot o’ ’t ere a’ be
dune, than we hae ony guiss at.”
Gibbie told her that Glashruach was his. Then first the extent of his
wealth seemed to strike his old mother.
“Eh! ye’ll be the laird, wull ye, than? Eh, sirs! To think o’ this
hoose an’ a’ bein’ wee Gibbie’s! Weel, it dings a’. The w’ys o’ the
Lord are to be thoucht upon! He made Dawvid a king, an’ Gibbie he’s
made the laird! Blest be his name.”
“They tell me the mountain is mine,” Gibbie wrote: “your husband shall
be laird of Glashgar if he likes.”
“Na, na,” said Janet, with a loving look. “He’s ower auld for that. He
micht na dee sae easy for ’t.--Eh! please the Lord, I wad fain gang
wi’ him.--An’ what better wad Robert be to be laird? We pey nae rent
as ’tis, an’ he has as mony sheep to lo’e as he can weel ken ane frae
the ither, noo ’at he’s growin’ auld. I ken naething ’at he lacks, but
Gibbie to gang wi’ ’im aboot the hill. A neebour’s laddie comes an’
gangs, to help him, but, eh, says Robert, he’s no Gibbie!--But gien
Glashruach be yer ain, my bonnie man, ye maun gang doon there this
verra nicht, and gie a luik to the burn; for the last time I was there,
I thoucht it was creepin’ in aneth the bank some fearsome like for
what’s left o’ the auld hoose, an’ the suner it’s luikit efter maybe
the better. Eh, Sir Gibbie, but ye sud merry the bonnie leddy, an’ tak
her back till her ain hoose.”
Gibbie gave a great sigh to think of the girl that loved the hill
and the heather and the burns, shut up in the city, and every Sunday
going to the great church--with which in Gibbie’s mind was associated
no sound of glad tidings. To him Glashgar was full of God; the North
church or Mr. Sclater’s church--well, he had tried hard, but had not
succeeded in discovering temple-signs about either.
The next day he sent to the city for an architect; and within a week
masons and quarrymen were at work, some on the hill blasting blue
boulders and red granite, others roughly shaping the stones, and others
laying the foundation of a huge facing and buttressing wall, which was
to slope up from the bed of the Glashburn fifty feet to the foot of the
castle, there to culminate in a narrow terrace with a parapet. Others
again were clearing away what of the ruins stuck to the old house, in
order to leave it, as much as might be, in its original form. There
was no space left for rebuilding, neither was there any between the
two burns for adding afresh. The channel of the second remained dry,
the landslip continuing to choke it, and the stream to fall into the
Glashburn. But Gibbie would not consent that the burn Ginevra had loved
should sing no more as she had heard it sing. Her chamber was gone,
and could not be restored, but another chamber should be built for
her, beneath whose window it should again run: when she was married to
Fergus, and her father could not touch it, the place should be hers.
More masons were gathered, and foundations blasted in the steep rock
that formed the other bank of the burn. The main point in the building
was to be a room for Ginevra. He planned it himself--with a windowed
turret projecting from the wall, making a recess in the room, and
overhanging the stream. The turret he carried a story higher than the
wall, and in the wall placed a stair leading to its top, whence, over
the roof of the ancient part of the house, might be seen the great
Glashgar, and its streams coming down from heaven, and singing as they
came. Then from the middle of the first stair in the old house, the
wall, a yard and a half thick, having been cut through, a solid stone
bridge, with a pointed arch, was to lead across the burn to a like
landing in the new house--a close passage, with an oriel window on
each side, looking up and down the stream, and a steep roof. And while
these works were going on below, two masons, high on the mountain, were
adding to the cottage a warm bedroom for Janet and Robert.
The architect was an honest man, and kept Gibbie’s secret, so that,
although he was constantly about the place, nothing disturbed the
general belief that Glashruach had been bought, and was being made
habitable, by a certain magnate of the county adjoining.