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MR. SCLATER.
It may be remembered that, upon Gibbie's disappearance from the
city, great interest was felt in his fate, and such questions
started about the boy himself as moved the Rev. Clement Sclater to
gather all the information at which he could arrive concerning his
family and history. That done, he proceeded to attempt interesting
in his unknown fortunes those relatives of his mother whose
existence and residences he had discovered. In this, however, he
had met with no success. At the house where she was born, there was
now no one but a second cousin, to whom her brother, dying
unmarried, had left the small estate of the Withrops, along with the
family contempt for her husband, and for her because of him,
inasmuch as, by marrying him, she had brought disgrace upon herself,
and upon all her people. So said the cousin to Mr. Sclater, but
seemed himself nowise humbled by the disgrace he recognized, indeed
almost claimed. As to the orphan, he said, to speak honestly (as he
did at least that once), the more entirely he disappeared, the
better he would consider it -- not that personally he was the least
concerned in the matter; only if, according to the Scripture, there
were two more generations yet upon which had to be visited the sins
of Sir George and Lady Galbraith, the greater the obscurity in which
they remained, the less would be the scandal. The brother who had
taken to business, was the senior partner in a large ship-building
firm at Greenock. This man, William Fuller Withrop by name -- Wilful
Withrop the neighbours had nicknamed him -- was a bachelor, and
reputed rich. Mr. Sclater did not hear of him what roused very
brilliant hopes. He was one who would demand more reason than
reasonable for the most reasonable of actions that involved parting
with money; yet he had been known to do a liberal thing for a public
object. Waste was so wicked that any other moral risk was
preferable. Of the three, he would waste mind and body rather than
estate. Man was made neither to rejoice nor to mourn, but to
possess. To leave no stone unturned, however, Mr. Sclater wrote to
Mr. Withrop. The answer he received was, that, as the sister,
concerning whose child he had applied to him, had never been
anything but a trouble to the family; as he had no associations with
her memory save those of misery and disgrace; as, before he left
home, her name had long ceased to be mentioned among them; and as
her own father had deliberately and absolutely disowned her because
of her obstinate disobedience and wilfulness, it could hardly be
expected of him, and indeed would ill become him, to show any lively
interest in her offspring. Still, although he could not honestly
pretend to the smallest concern about him, he had, from pure
curiosity, made inquiry of correspondents with regard to the boy;
from which the resulting, knowledge was, that he was little better
than an idiot, whose character, education, and manners, had been
picked up in the streets. Nothing, he was satisfied, could be done
for such a child, which would not make him more miserable, as well
as more wicked, than he was already. Therefore, &c., &c., &c.
Thus failing, Mr. Sclater said to himself he had done all that could
be required of him -- and he had indeed taken trouble. Nor could
anything be asserted, he said further to himself, as his duty in
respect of this child, that was not equally his duty in respect of
every little wanderer in the streets of his parish. That a child's
ancestors had been favoured above others, and had so misused their
advantages that their last representative was left in abject
poverty, could hardly be a reason why that child, born, in more than
probability, with the same evil propensities which had ruined them,
should be made an elect object of favour. Who was he, Clement
Sclater, to intrude upon the divine prerogative, and presume to act
on the doctrine of election! Was a child with a Sir to his name,
anything more in the eyes of God than a child without a name at all?
Would any title -- even that of Earl or Duke, be recognized in the
kingdom of heaven? His relatives ought to do something: they
failing, of whom could further requisition be made? There were
vessels to honour and vessels to dishonour: to which class this one
belonged, let God in his time reveal. A duty could not be passed
on. It could not become the duty of the minister of a parish, just
because those who ought and could, would not, to spend time and
money, to the neglect of his calling, in hunting up a boy whom he
would not know what to do with if he had him, a boy whose home had
been with the dregs of society.
In justice to Mr. Sclater, it must be mentioned that he did not know
Gibbie, even by sight. There remains room, however, for the
question, whether, if Mr. Sclater had not been the man to change his
course as he did afterwards, he would not have acted differently
from the first.
One morning, as he sat at breakfast with his wife, late Mrs.
Bonniman, and cast, as is, I fear, the rude habit of not a few
husbands, not a few stolen glances, as he ate, over the morning
paper, his eye fell upon a paragraph announcing the sudden death of
the well-known William Fuller Withrop, of the eminent ship-building
firm of Withrop and Playtell, of Greenock. Until he came to the end
of the paragraph, his cup of coffee hung suspended in mid air. Then
down it went untasted, he jumped from his seat, and hurried from the
room. For the said paragraph ended with the remark, that the not
unfrequent incapacity of the ablest of business men for looking the
inevitable in the face with coolness sufficient to the making of a
will, was not only a curious fact, but in the individual case a
pity, where two hundred thousand pounds was concerned. Had the
writer been a little more philosophical still, he might have seen
that the faculty for making money by no means involves judgment in
the destination of it, and that the money may do its part for good
and evil without, just as well as with, a will at the back of it.
But though this was the occasion, it remains to ask what was the
cause of the minister's precipitancy. Why should Clement Sclater
thereupon spring from his chair in such a state of excitement that
he set his cup of coffee down upon its side instead of its bottom,
to the detriment of the tablecloth, and of something besides, more
unquestionably the personal property of his wife? Why was it that,
heedless of her questions, backed although they were both by just
anger and lawful curiosity, he ran straight from the room and the
house, nor stayed until, at one and the same moment, his foot was on
the top step of his lawyer's door, and his hand upon its bell? No
doubt it was somebody's business, and perhaps it might be Mr.
Sclater's, to find the heirs of men who died intestate; but what
made it so indubitably, so emphatically, so individually, so
pressingly Mr. Sclater's, that he forgot breakfast, tablecloth,
wife, and sermon, all together, that he might see to this boy's
rights? Surely if they were rights, they could be in no such
imminent danger as this haste seemed to signify. Was it only that
he might be the first in the race to right him? -- and if so, then
again, why? Was it a certainty indisputable, that any boy, whether
such an idle tramp as the minister supposed this one to be or not,
would be redeemed by the heirship to the hugest of fortunes? Had
it, some time before this, become at length easier for a rich boy to
enter into the kingdom of heaven? Or was it that, with all his
honesty, all his religion, all his churchism, all his protestantism,
and his habitual appeal to the word of God, the minister was yet a
most reverential worshipper of Mammon, -- not the old god mentioned in
the New Testament, of course, but a thoroughly respectable modern
Mammon, decently dressed, perusing a subscription list! No doubt
justice ought to be done, and the young man over at Roughrigs was
sure to be putting in a false claim, but where were the lawyers,
whose business it was? There was no need of a clergyman to remind
them of their duty where the picking of such a carcase was
concerned. Had Mr. Sclater ever conceived the smallest admiration
or love for the boy, I would not have made these reflections; but,
in his ignorance of him and indifference concerning him, he believed
there would at least be trouble in proving him of approximately
sound mind and decent intellect. What, then, I repeat and leave it,
did all this excitement on the part of one of the iron pillars of
the church indicate?
From his lawyer he would have gone at once to Mistress
Croale -- indeed I think he would have gone to her first, to warn her
against imparting what information concerning Gibbie she might
possess to any other than himself, but he had not an idea where she
might even be heard of. He had cleansed his own parish, as he
thought, by pulling up the tare, contrary to commandment, and
throwing it into his neighbours, where it had taken root, and grown
a worse tare than before; until at length, she who had been so
careful over the manners and morals of her drunkards, was a drunkard
herself and a wanderer, with the reputation of being a far worse
woman than she really was. For some years now she had made her
living, one poor enough, by hawking small household necessities; and
not unfrequently where she appeared, the housewives bought of her
because her eyes, and her nose, and an undefined sense of evil in
her presence, made them shrink from the danger of offending her.
But the real cause of the bad impression she made was, that she was
sorely troubled with what is, by huge discourtesy, called a bad
conscience -- being in reality a conscience doing its duty so well
that it makes the whole house uncomfortable.
On her next return to the Daurfoot, as the part of the city was
called where now she was most at home, she heard the astounding and
welcome news that Gibbie had fallen heir to a large property, and
that the reward of one hundred pounds -- a modest sum indeed, but
where was the good of wasting money, thought Mr. Sclater -- had been
proclaimed by tuck of drum, to any one giving such information as
should lead to the discovery of Sir Gilbert Galbraith, commonly
known as wee Sir Gibbie. A description of him was added, and the
stray was so kenspeckle, that Mistress Croale saw the necessity of
haste to any hope of advantage. She had nothing to guide her beyond
the fact of Sir George's habit, in his cups, of referring to the
property on Daurside, and the assurance that with the said habit
Gibbie must have been as familiar as herself. With this initiative,
as she must begin somewhere, and could prosecute her business
anywhere, she filled her basket and set out at once for Daurside.
There, after a good deal of wandering hither and thither, and a
search whose fruitlessness she probably owed to too great caution,
she made the desired discovery unexpectedly and marvellously, and
left behind her in the valley the reputation of having been on more
familiar terms with the flood and the causes of it, than was
possible to any but one who kept company worse than human.
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