A	>>	B	>>	C	>>	D	>>	E
F	>>	G	>>	H	>>	I	>>	J
K	>>	L	>>	M	>>	N	>>	O
P	>>	R	>>	S	>>	T	>>	U
V	>>	W	>>			X	>>	Z

Ryan, Kirstin, Linda and Rick Trapp - "The Call of the Wild, by Jack London"

A. H. Japp - "Robert Louis Stevenson, A Record, An Estimate, A Memorial"

those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an - "Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen"

Mary Roberts Rinehart - "The Street of Seven Stars"

Sir Gibbie

G >> George MacDonald >> Sir Gibbie




Breathless with eager interest, Gibbie watched his father's hands,
and just as the darkness closed in, the boot was finished. His
father rose, and Gibbie, glowing with delight, sprang upon the seat
he had left, while his father knelt upon the floor to try upon the
unaccustomed foot the result from which he had just drawn the last.
Ah, pity! pity! But even Gibbie might by this time have learned to
foresee it! three times already had the same thing happened: the
boot would not go on the foot. The real cause of the failure it
were useless to inquire. Sir George said that, Sunday being the
only day he could give to the boots, before he could finish them,
Gibbie's feet had always outgrown the measure. But it may be Sir
George was not so good a maker as cobbler. That he meant honestly
by the boy I am sure, and not the less sure for the confession I am
forced to make, that on each occasion when he thus failed to fit
him, he sold the boots the next day at a fair price to a ready-made
shop, and drank the proceeds. A stranger thing still was, that,
although Gibbie had never yet worn boot or shoe, his father's
conscience was greatly relieved by the knowledge that he spent his
Sundays in making boots for him. Had he been an ordinary child, and
given him trouble, he would possibly have hated him; as it was, he
had a great though sadly inoperative affection for the boy, which
was an endless good to them both.

After many bootless trials, bootless the feet must remain, and
George, laying the failure down in despair, rose from his knees, and
left Gibbie seated on the chest more like a king discrowned, than a
beggar unshod. And like a king the little beggar bore his pain. He
heaved one sigh, and a slow moisture gathered in his eyes, but it
did not overflow. One minute only he sat and hugged his
desolation--then, missing his father, jumped off the box to find
him.

He sat on the edge of the bed, looking infinitely more disconsolate
than Gibbie felt, his head and hands hanging down, a picture of
utter dejection. Gibbie bounded to him, climbed on the bed, and
nearly strangled him in the sharp embrace of his little arms. Sir
George took him on his knees and kissed him, and the tears rose in
his dull eyes. He got up with him, carried him to the box, placed
him on it once more, and fetched a piece of brown paper from under
the bed. From this he tore carefully several slips, with which he
then proceeded to take a most thoughtful measurement of the baffling
foot. He was far more to be pitied than Gibbie, who would not have
worn the boots an hour had they been the best fit in shoedom. The
solos of his feet were very nearly equal in resistance to leather,
and at least until the snow and hard frost came, he was better
without boots.

But now the darkness had fallen, and his joy was at the door. But
he was always too much ashamed to begin to drink before the child:
he hated to uncork the bottle before him. What followed was in
regular Sunday routine.

"Gang ower to Mistress Croale's, Gibbie," he said, "wi' my
compliments."

Away ran Gibbie, nothing loath, and at his knock was admitted.
Mistress Croale sat in the parlour, taking her tea, and expecting
him. She was always kind to the child. She could not help feeling
that no small part of what ought to be spent on him came to her; and
on Sundays, therefore, partly for his sake, partly for her own, she
always gave him his tea--nominally tea, really blue city-milk--with
as much dry bread as he could eat, and a bit of buttered toast from
her plate to finish off with. As he ate, he stood at the other side
of the table; he looked so miserable in her eyes that, even before
her servant, she was ashamed to have him sit with her; but Gibbie
was quite content, never thought of sitting, and ate in gladness,
every now and then looking up with loving, grateful eyes, which must
have gone right to the woman's heart, had it not been for a vague
sense she had of being all the time his enemy--and that although she
spent much time in persuading herself that she did her best both for
his father and him.

When he returned, greatly refreshed, and the boots all but
forgotten, he found his father, as he knew he would, already started
on the business of the evening. He had drawn the chest, the only
seat in the room, to the side of the bed, against which he leaned
his back. A penny candle was burning in a stone blacking bottle on
the chimney piece, and on the floor beside the chest stood the
bottle of whisky, a jug of water, a stoneware mug, and a wineglass.

There was no fire and no kettle, whence his drinking was sad, as
became the Scotch Sabbath in distinction from the Jewish. There,
however, was the drink, and thereby his soul could live--yea, expand
her mouldy wings! Gibbie was far from shocked; it was all right,
all in the order of things, and he went up to his father with
radiant countenance. Sir George put forth his hands and took him
between his knees. An evil wind now swelled his sails, but the
cargo of the crazy human hull was not therefore evil.

"Gibbie," he said, solemnly, "never ye drink a drap o' whusky.
Never ye rax oot the han' to the boatle. Never ye drink anything
but watter, caller watter, my man."

As he said the words, he stretched out his own hand to the mug,
lifted it to his lips, and swallowed a great gulp.

"Dinna do't, I tell ye, Gibbie," he repeated.

Gibbie shook his head with positive repudiation.

"That's richt, my man," responded his father with satisfaction.
"Gien ever I see ye pree (taste) the boatle, I'll warstle frae my
grave an' fleg ye oot o' the sma' wuts ye hae, my man."

Here followed another gulp from the mug.

The threat had conveyed nothing to Gibbie. Even had he understood,
it would have carried anything but terror to his father-worshipping
heart.

"Gibbie," resumed Sir George, after a brief pause, "div ye ken what
fowk'll ca' ye whan I'm deid?"

Gibbie again shook his head--with expression this time of mere
ignorance.

"They'll ca' ye Sir Gibbie Galbraith, my man," said his father, "an'
richtly, for it'll be no nickname, though some may lauch 'cause yer
father was a sutor, an' mair 'at, for a' that, ye haena a shee to
yer fut yersel', puir fallow! Heedna ye what they say, Gibbie.
Min' 'at ye're Sir Gibbie, an' hae the honour o' the faimily to
haud up, my man--an' that ye can not dee an' drink. This cursit
drink's been the ruin o' a' the Galbraiths as far back as I ken.
'Maist the only thing I can min' o' my gran'father--a big bonny man,
wi' lang white hair--twise as big's me, Gibbie--is seein' him deid
drunk i' the gutter o' the pump. He drank 'maist a' thing there
was, Gibbie--lan's an' lordship, till there was hardly an accre left
upo' haill Daurside to come to my father--'maist naething but a
wheen sma' hooses. He was a guid man, my father; but his father
learnt him to drink afore he was 'maist oot o' 's coaties, an' gae
him nae schuilin'; an' gien he red himsel' o' a' 'at was left, it
was sma' won'er--only, ye see, Gibbie, what was to come o' me? I
pit it till ye, Gibbie--what was to come o' me?--Gien a kin' neiper,
'at kent what it was to drink, an' sae had a fallow-feelin', hadna
ta'en an' learnt me my trade, the Lord kens what wad hae come o' you
an' me, Gibbie, my man!--Gang to yer bed, noo, an' lea' me to my ain
thouchts; no' 'at they're aye the best o' company, laddie.--But
whiles they're no that ill," he concluded, with a weak smile, as
some reflex of himself not quite unsatisfactory gloomed faintly in
the besmeared mirror of his uncertain consciousness.

Gibbie obeyed, and getting under the Gordon tartan, lay and looked
out, like a weasel from its hole, at his father's back. For half an
hour or so Sir George went on drinking. All at once he started to
his feet, and turning towards the bed a white face distorted with
agony, kneeled down on the box and groaned out:

"O God, the pains o' hell hae gotten haud upo' me. O Lord, I'm i'
the grup o' Sawtan. The deevil o' drink has me by the hause. I
doobt, O Lord, ye're gauin' to damn me dreidfu'. What guid that'll
do ye, O Lord, I dinna ken, but I doobtna ye'll dee what's richt,
only I wuss I hed never crossed ye i' yer wull. I kenna what I'm to
dee, or what's to be deene wi' me, or whaur ony help's to come frae.
I hae tried an' tried to maister the drink, but I was aye whumled.
For ye see, Lord, kennin' a' thing as ye dee, 'at until I hae a
drap i' my skin, I canna even think; I canna min' the sangs I used
to sing, or the prayers my mither learnt me sittin' upo' her lap.
Till I hae swallowed a mou'fu' or twa, things luik sae awfu'-like
'at I'm fit to cut my thro't; an' syne ance I'm begun, there's nae
mair thoucht o' endeevourin' to behaud (withhold) till I canna drink
a drap mair. O God, what garred ye mak things 'at wad mak whusky,
whan ye kenned it wad mak sic a beast o' me?

He paused, stretched down his hand to the floor, lifted the mug, and
drank a huge mouthful; then with a cough that sounded apologetic,
set it down, and recommenced:

"O Lord, I doobt there's nae houp for me, for the verra river o' the
watter o' life wadna be guid to me wantin' a drap frae the boatle
intil 't. It's the w'y wi' a' hiz 'at drinks. It's no 'at we're
drunkards, Lord--ow na! it's no that, Lord; it's only 'at we canna
dee wantin' the drink. We're sair drinkers, I maun confess, but no
jist drunkards, Lord. I'm no drunk the noo; I ken what I'm sayin',
an' it's sair trowth, but I cudna hae prayt a word to yer lordship
gien I hadna had a jooggy or twa first. O Lord, deliver me frae the
pooer o' Sawtan.--O Lord! O Lord! I canna help mysel'. Dinna sen'
me to the ill place. Ye loot the deils gang intil the swine, lat me
tee."

With this frightful petition, his utterance began to grow
indistinct. Then he fell forward upon the bed, groaning, and his
voice died gradually away. Gibbie had listened to all he said, but
the awe of hearing his father talk to one unseen, made his soul very
still, and when he ceased he fell asleep.

Alas for the human soul inhabiting a drink-fouled brain! It is a
human soul still, and wretched in the midst of all that whisky can
do for it. From the pit of hell it cries out. So long as there is
that which can sin, it is a man. And the prayer of misery carries
its own justification, when the sober petitions of the
self-righteous and the unkind are rejected. He who forgives not is
not forgiven, and the prayer of the Pharisee is as the weary beating
of the surf of hell, while the cry of a soul out of its fire sets
the heart-strings of love trembling. There are sins which men must
leave behind them, and sins which they must carry with them.
Society scouts the drunkard because he is loathsome, and it matters
nothing whether society be right or wrong, while it cherishes in its
very bosom vices which are, to the God-born thing we call the soul,
yet worse poisons. Drunkards and sinners, hard as it may be for
them to enter into the kingdom of heaven, must yet be easier to save
than the man whose position, reputation, money, engross his heart
and his care, who seeks the praise of men and not the praise of God.
When I am more of a Christian, I shall have learnt to be sorrier for
the man whose end is money or social standing than for the drunkard.
But now my heart, recoiling from the one, is sore for the
other--for the agony, the helplessness, the degradation, the
nightmare struggle, the wrongs and cruelties committed, the duties
neglected, the sickening ruin of mind and heart. So often, too, the
drunkard is originally a style of man immeasurably nobler than the
money-maker! Compare a Coleridge, Samuel Taylor or Hartley,
with--no; that man has not yet passed to his account. God has in
his universe furnaces for the refining of gold, as well as for the
burning of chaff and tares and fruitless branches; and, however they
may have offended, it is the elder brother who is the judge of all
the younger ones.

Gibbie slept some time. When he woke, it was pitch dark, and he was
not lying on his father's bosom, He felt about with his hands till
he found his father's head. Then he got up and tried to rouse him,
and failing to get him on to the bed. But in that too he was sadly
unsuccessful: what with the darkness and the weight of him, the
result of the boy's best endeavour was, that Sir George half
slipped, half rolled down upon the box, and from that to the floor.
Assured then of his own helplessness, wee Gibbie dragged the
miserable bolster from the bed, and got it under his father's head;
then covered him with the plaid, and creeping under it, laid himself
on his father's bosom, where soon he slept again.

He woke very cold, and getting up, turned heels-over-head several
times to warm himself, but quietly, for his father was still asleep.
The room was no longer dark, for the moon was shining through the
skylight. When he had got himself a little warmer, he turned to
have a look at his father. The pale light shone full upon his face,
and it was that, Gibbie thought, which made him look so strange. He
darted to him, and stared aghast: he had never seen him look like
that before, even when most drunk! He threw himself upon him: his
face was dreadfully cold. He pulled and shook him in fear--he could
not have told of what, but he would not wake. He was gone to see
what God could do for him there, for whom nothing more could be done
here.

But Gibbie did not know anything about death, and went on trying to
wake him. At last he observed that, although his mouth was wide
open, the breath did not come from it. Thereupon his heart began to
fail him. But when he lifted an eyelid, and saw what was under it,
the house rang with the despairing shriek of the little orphan.




CHAPTER VII.

THE TOWN-SPARROW.

"This, too, will pass," is a Persian word: I should like it better
if it were "This, too, shall pass."

Gibbie's agony passed, for God is not the God of the dead but of the
living. Through the immortal essence in him, life became again
life, and he ran about the streets as before. Some may think that
wee Sir Gibbie--as many now called him, some knowing the truth, and
others in kindly mockery--would get on all the better for the loss
of such a father; but it was not so. In his father he had lost his
Paradise, and was now a creature expelled. He was not so much to be
pitied as many a child dismissed by sudden decree from a home to a
school; but the streets and the people and the shops, the horses and
the dogs, even the penny-loaves though he was hungry, had lost half
their precious delight, when his father was no longer in the
accessible background, the heart of the blissful city. As to food
and clothing, he did neither much better nor any worse than before:
people were kind as usual, and kindness was to Gibbie the very milk
of mother Nature. Whose the hand that proffered it, or what the
form it took, he cared no more than a stray kitten cares whether the
milk set down to it be in a blue saucer or a white. But he always
made the right return. The first thing a kindness deserves is
acceptance, the next is transmission: Gibbie gave both, without
thinking much about either. For he never had taken, and indeed
never learned to take, a thought about what he should eat or what he
should drink, or wherewithal he should be clothed--a fault rendering
him, in the eyes of the economist of this world, utterly unworthy of
a place in it. There is a world, however, and one pretty closely
mixed up with this, though it never shows itself to one who has no
place in it, the birds of whose air have neither storehouse nor
barn, but are just such thoughtless cherubs--thoughtless for
themselves, that is--as wee Sir Gibbie. It would be useless to
attempt convincing the mere economist that this great city was a
little better, a little happier, a little merrier, for the presence
in it of the child, because he would not, even if convinced of the
fact, recognize the gain; but I venture the assertion to him, that
the conduct of not one of its inhabitants was the worse for the
example of Gibbie's apparent idleness; and that not one of the poor
women who now and then presented the small baronet with a penny, or
a bit of bread, or a scrap of meat, or a pair of old trousers--shoes
nobody gave him, and he neither desired nor needed any--ever felt
the poorer for the gift, or complained that she should be so taxed.

Positively or negatively, then, everybody was good to him, and
Gibbie felt it; but what could make up for the loss of his Paradise,
the bosom of a father? Drunken father as he was, I know of nothing
that can or ought to make up for such a loss, except that which can
restore it--the bosom of the Father of fathers.

He roamed the streets, as all his life before, the whole of the day,
and part of the night; he took what was given him, and picked up
what he found. There were some who would gladly have brought him
within the bounds of an ordered life; he soon drove them to despair,
however, for the streets had been his nursery, and nothing could
keep him out of them. But the sparrow and the rook are just as
respectable in reality, though not in the eyes of the hen-wife, as
the egg-laying fowl, or the dirt-gobbling duck; and, however
Gibbie's habits might shock the ladies of Mr. Sclater's congregation
who sought to civilize him, the boy was no more about mischief in
the streets at midnight, than they were in their beds. They
collected enough for his behoof to board him for a year with an old
woman who kept a school, and they did get him to sleep one night in
her house. But in the morning, when she would not let him run out,
brought him into the school-room, her kitchen, and began to teach
him to write, Gibbie failed to see the good of it. He must have
space, change, adventure, air, or life was not worth the name to
him. Above all he must see friendly faces, and that of the old dame
was not such. But he desired to be friendly with her, and once, as
she leaned over him, put up his hand--not a very clean one, I am
bound to give her the advantage of my confessing--to stroke her
cheek: she pushed him roughly away, rose in indignation upon her
crutch, and lifted her cane to chastise him for the insult. A class
of urchins, to Gibbie's eyes at least looking unhappy, were at the
moment blundering through the twenty-third psalm. Ever after, even
when now Sir Gilbert more than understood the great song, the words,
"thy rod and thy staff," like the spell of a necromancer would still
call up the figure of the dame irate, in her horn spectacles and her
black-ribboned cap, leaning with one arm on her crutch, and with the
other uplifting what was with her no mere symbol of authority. Like
a shell from a mortar, he departed from the house. She hobbled to
the door after him, but his diminutive figure many yards away, his
little bare legs misty with swiftness as he ran, was the last she
ever saw of him, and her pupils had a bad time of it the rest of the
day. He never even entered the street again in which she lived.
Thus, after one night's brief interval of respectability, he was
again a rover of the city, a flitting insect that lighted here and
there, and spread wings of departure the moment a fresh desire
awoke.

It would be difficult to say where he slept. In summer anywhere; in
winter where he could find warmth. Like animals better clad than
he, yet like him able to endure cold, he revelled in mere heat when
he could come by it. Sometimes he stood at the back of a baker's
oven, for he knew all the haunts of heat about the city; sometimes
he buried himself in the sids (husks of oats) lying ready to feed
the kiln of a meal-mill; sometimes he lay by the furnace of the
steam-engine of the water-works. One man employed there, when his
time was at night, always made a bed for Gibbie: he had lost his own
only child, and this one of nobody's was a comfort to him.

Even those who looked upon wandering as wicked, only scolded into
the sweet upturned face, pouring gall into a cup of wine too full to
receive a drop of it--and did not hand him over to the police.
Useless verily that would have been, for the police would as soon
have thought of taking up a town sparrow as Gibbie, and would only
have laughed at the idea. They knew Gibbie's merits better than any
of those good people imagined his faults. It requires either wisdom
or large experience to know that a child is not necessarily wicked
even if born and brought up in a far viler entourage than was
Gibbie.

The merits the police recognized in him were mainly two--neither of
small consequence in their eyes; the first, the negative, yet more
important one, that of utter harmlessness; the second, and positive
one--a passion and power for rendering help, taking notable shape
chiefly in two ways, upon both of which I have already more than
touched. The first was the peculiar faculty now pretty generally
known--his great gift, some, his great luck, others called it--for
finding things lost. It was no wonder the town crier had sought his
acquaintance, and when secured, had cultivated it--neither a
difficult task; for the boy, ever since he could remember, had been
in the habit, as often as he saw the crier, or heard his tuck of
drum in the distance, of joining him and following, until he had
acquainted himself with all particulars concerning everything
proclaimed as missing. The moment he had mastered the facts
announced, he would dart away to search, and not unfrequently to
return with the thing sought. But it was not by any means only
things sought that he found. He continued to come upon things of
which he had no simulacrum in his phantasy. These, having no longer
a father to carry them to, he now, their owners unknown, took to the
crier, who always pretended to receive them with a suspicion which
Gibbie understood as little as the other really felt, and at once
advertised them by drum and cry. What became of them after that,
Gibbie never knew. If they did not find their owners, neither did
they find their way back to Gibbie; if their owners were found, the
crier never communicated with him on the subject. Plainly he
regarded Gibbie as the favoured jackal, whose privilege it was to
hunt for the crier, the royal lion of the city forest. But he spoke
kindly to him, as well he might, and now and then gave him a penny.

The second of the positive merits by which Gibbie found acceptance
in the eyes of the police, was a yet more peculiar one, growing out
of his love for his father, and his experience in the exercise of
that love. It was, however, unintelligible to them, and so
remained, except on the theory commonly adopted with regard to
Gibbie, namely, that he wasna a' there. Not the less was it to them
a satisfactory whim of his, seeing it mitigated their trouble as
guardians of the nightly peace and safety. It was indeed the main
cause of his being, like themselves, so much in the street at night:
seldom did Gibbie seek his lair--I cannot call it couch--before the
lengthening hours of the morning. If the finding, of things was a
gift, this other peculiarity was a passion--and a right human
passion--absolutely possessing the child: it was, to play the
guardian angel to drunk folk. If such a distressed human craft hove
in sight, he would instantly bear down upon and hover about him,
until resolved as to his real condition. If he was in such distress
as to require assistance, he never left him till he saw him safe
within his own door. The police asserted that wee Sir Gibbie not
only knew every drunkard in the city, and where he lived, but where
he generally got drunk as well. That one was in no danger of taking
the wrong turning, upon whom Gibbie was in attendance, to determine,
by a shove on this side or that, the direction in which the
hesitating, uncertain mass of stultified humanity was to go. He
seemed a visible embodiment of that special providence which is said
to watch over drunk people and children, only here a child was the
guardian of the drunkard, and in this branch of his mission, was
well known to all who, without qualifying themselves for coming
under his cherubic cognizance, were in the habit of now and then
returning home late. He was least known to those to whom he
rendered most assistance. Rarely had he thanks for it, never
halfpence, but not unfrequently blows and abuse. For the last he
cared nothing; the former, owing to his great agility, seldom
visited him with any directness. A certain reporter of humorous
scandal, after his third tumbler, would occasionally give a graphic
description of what, coming from a supper-party, he once saw about
two o'clock in the morning. In the great street of the city, he
overhauled a huge galleon, which proved, he declared, to be the
provost himself, not exactly water-logged, and yet not very buoyant,
but carrying a good deal of sail. He might possibly have escaped
very particular notice, he said, but for the assiduous attendance
upon him of an absurd little cock-boat, in the person of wee
Gibbie--the two reminding him right ludicrously of the story of the
Spanish Armada. Round and round the bulky provost gyrated the tiny
baronet, like a little hero of the ring, pitching into him, only
with open-handed pushes, not with blows, now on this side and now on
that--not after such fashion of sustentation as might have sufficed
with a man of ordinary size, but throwing all his force now against
the provost's bulging bows, now against his over-leaning quarter,
encountering him now as he lurched, now as he heeled, until at
length he landed him high, though certainly not dry, on the top of
his own steps. The moment the butler opened the door, and the heavy
hulk rolled into dock, Gibbie darted off as if he had been the
wicked one tormenting the righteous, and in danger of being caught
by a pair of holy tongs. Whether the tale was true or not, I do not
know: with after-dinner humourists there is reason for caution.
Gibbie was not offered the post of henchman to the provost, and
rarely could have had the chance of claiming salvage for so
distinguished a vessel, seeing he generally cruised in waters where
such craft seldom sailed. Though almost nothing could now have
induced him to go down Jink Lane, yet about the time the company at
Mistress Croale's would be breaking up, he would on most nights be
lying in wait a short distance down the Widdiehill, ready to
minister to that one of his father's old comrades who might prove
most in need of his assistance; and if he showed him no gratitude,
Gibbie had not been trained in a school where he was taught to
expect or even to wish for any.

Copyright (c) 2007. fullstories.net. All rights reserved.