Sir Gibbie, George MacDonald [fun to read .TXT] 📗

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 tap 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