Sir Gibbie Ch 4 Featured Books by Tale Teller Kids Reading Age 15 #greatbooks #classics

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter four of Sir Gibby. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Tasha Len Tasha Writes dot WordPress dot com. Sir

(00:22):
Gibby by George mc donald, Chapter four, the Parlor. The
day went on and went out, its short autumnal brightness
quenched in a chilly fog. All along the Whitty Hill.

(00:47):
The gas was a light in the low browed dingy shops.
To the well to do citizen hasting home to the
topmost business of the day, his dinner, these looked the
abodes of unlovely poverty and mean struggle, even to those

(01:09):
behind their counters, in their back parlors and in their
rooms above. Everything about them looked common to most of them,
save the owners. Wearisome. But to yon pale faced student,

(01:29):
gliding in the glow of his red gown through the
gray mist back to his lodging, and peeping in at
every open door as he passes, they are so full
of mystery that gladly would yield all he has gathered
from books for one genuine glance of insight into the

(01:54):
vital movement of the hearts and households, of which those
open shop are the soul outward and visible signs. Each
house is to him a nest of human birds, over
which brood the eternal wings of love and purpose. Only

(02:16):
such different birds are hatched from the same nest. And
what a nest was then the city itself, with its university,
its schools, its churches, its hospitals, its missions, its homes,
its lodging houses, its hotels, its drinking shops, its houses

(02:40):
viler still, its factories, its ships, its great steamers, and
the same humanity busy in all. Here the sickly lady
walking in the panoply of love, unharmed through the horrors
of vicious suffering. There the strong mother cursing her own

(03:05):
child along half a street, with an intensity and vileness
of execration unheard elsewhere. The will of the brooding spirit
must be a grand one, indeed, to enclose so much
of what cannot be its will, and turn all to

(03:26):
its purpose of eternal good. Our knowledge of humanity, how
much more our knowledge of the father of it, is
moving as yet, but in the first elements in his
shed under the stair it had been dark for some time,

(03:47):
too dark for work, that is, and George Galbraith had
lighted a candle. He never felt at liberty to leave
off so long as a man was recognizable in the
street by daylight. But now at last, with a sigh
of relief, he rose. The hour of his redemption was come,

(04:07):
the moment of it at hand. Outwardly calm, he was
within eager as a lover to reach Lucky Kroll's back parlor.
His hand trembled with expectation as he laid from it.
The awl, took from between his knees the great boot

(04:30):
on the toe of which he had been stitching a patch,
lifted the yoke of his leather apron over his head,
and threw it aside, with one hasty glance around, as
if he feared some enemy lurking nearer to prevent his escape.
He caught up a hat which looked as if it

(04:52):
had been brushed with grease, pulled it on his head
with both hands, stepped out, quickly closed the door behind him,
turned the key, left it in the lock, and made
straight for his earthly paradise, But with chastened step all

(05:15):
Mistress Kroll's customers made a point of looking decent in
the street, strove in their very consciousness to carry the
expression of being on their way to their tea, not
their toddy, or if their toddy, then then not that
they desired it, but merely that it was their custom.

(05:37):
Always of an afternoon man had no choice. He must
fill space, he must occupy himself. And if so, why not,
Mistress Krolls the place, and the consumption of whiskey the occupation.
But alas for there would be seeming indifference. Everybody in

(06:01):
the lane, almost in the witty hill, knew every one
of them, and knew him for what he was. Knew
that every drop of toddy he drank was to him
as to a miser, his counted sovereign. Knew that as
the heart for the water, Brooks so thirsted his soul

(06:22):
ever after another tumbler, that he made haste to swallow
the last drops of the present, that he might behold
the plenitude of the next steaming before him. That like
the miser, he always understated the amount of the treasure
he had secured, because the less he acknowledged, the more

(06:44):
he thought he could claim. George was a tall man
of good figure loosened and bowed. His face was well favored,
but not a little wronged by the beard and dirt
of a week, through which it gloomed haggard and white

(07:05):
beneath his projecting black brows. His eyes gleamed doubtful as
a wood fire where white ash dims the glow. He
looked neither to the right nor left, but walked on
with moveless, dull gaze, noting nothing. Yon's his un worst enemy,

(07:27):
said the kindly grocer wife, as he passed her door.
I responded her customer, who kept a shop near by
for old furniture or anything that had been already once possessed.
I daresay, but ay to see that peer neglect bairn
O his renskirn about the turn yon gate. We little

(07:53):
er jacket, but the collar a nehan of the brakes,
but the dupe a woman. It makes a mother's heart.
Sare to luc Pont it's a providence at his mither's wheel,
Awe and cannassie it it would got her turn in
her grave. George was the first arrival at Mistress Kroll's

(08:15):
that night. He opened the door of the shop like
a thief and glided softly in the dim parlor, where
the candles were not yet lit. There was light enough, however,
from the busy little shadows, the colored prints and cases
of stuffed birds on the walls, the full rigid bark
suspended from the center of the ceiling, And chief of

(08:39):
all shows of heaven or Earth, the black bottle on
the table, with the tumblers, each holding its ladle and
its wine glass turned bottom upwards. Nor must I admit
a part without which the rest could not have been
a hole, the kettle of water that sat on the hob,

(09:02):
softly crooning. Compared with the place where George had been
at work all day, this was indeed an earthly paradise.
Nor was the presence and appearance of Mistress Kroll an
insignificant element in the paradiicial character of the place. She
was now in a clean white cap with blue ribbons.

(09:26):
Her hair was neatly divided and drawn back from her forehead.
Every trace of dirt and untidiness had disappeared from her person,
which was one of importance both in size and in bearing.
She wore a gown of some dark stuff with bright
flowers on it, and a black silk apron her face

(09:51):
was composed almost to sadness, and throughout the evening during
which she waited in person upon her custom, she comported
herself with such dignity that her slow step and stately
carriage seemed rather to belong to the assistant at some

(10:11):
religious ceremony than to one who ministered at the orgies
of a few drunken tradespeople. She was seated on the
horsehair sofa in the fire twilight, waiting for customers, when
the face of Galbraith came peering round the door. Cheek,

(10:33):
come all a bin, she said hospitably, and rose. But
as she did so, she added, with a little change
of tone, But I'm thinkin yea mane forgotten, Sir George,
this is Saturday, niche ye kin again it were to
be Sunday mornin' afore ye one to your bed, it

(10:57):
wouldn't be the first time. And ye mishna be up
there eniche to get yourself shaved afore kirk time. She
knew as well as George himself that never, by any
chance did he go to church. But it was her custom,
as I fancy it is that of some other bulwarks

(11:18):
of society, and pillars of the church. For the sake
of example, I presume to make not unfrequent allusion to
certain observances moral, religious, or sanitary, as if they were
laws that everybody kept. Galbrav lifted his hand, black and

(11:39):
embossed with cobbler's wax, and repped it thoughtfully over his chin.
He accepted the fiction offered him. It was but the
well known prolog to a Hebdomadal passage between them. What
if he did not intend going to church the next day?

(12:02):
Was that any reason why he should not look a
little tidier when his hard week's work was over and
his nightly habit was turned into the comparatively harmless indulgence
of a Saturday in short hope of the day of rest.
Behind truth, I didn't admit that it was sitter day,

(12:22):
he answered. I. I had bitten on a clean cirque
and washing my face. But is a just gang ore
to the barbers and get a scrape and maybe some
of them it'll be here or I come back. Mistress
Kroll knew perfectly well that there was no clean shirt

(12:45):
in Georgia's garret. She knew also that the shirt he
then wore, which probably in consideration of her maid's festered
hand she would wash for him herself was one of
her late husband's, which she had given him. But Georgie's
speech was one of those forms of sound words held

(13:06):
fast by all who frequented Mistress Kroll's parlor, and by
herself esteemed at more than their worth. The woman had
a genuine regard for Galbraith. Neither the character nor fate
of the rest gave her a moment's trouble. But in
her secret mind she'd deplored that George should drink so

(13:28):
inordinately and so utterly neglect his child as to let
him spend his life in the streets. She comforted herself, however,
with the reflection that seeing he would drink, he drank
with no bad companions, drink at all events, where what

(13:49):
natural wickedness might be in them was suppressed by the
sternness of her rule. Were he to leave her fold
for a fold in very truth and not a sty
it appeared to her, and wander away to Jock Damsons
or Genie Duke's, he would be drawn into loud and

(14:11):
indecorous talk, probably into quarrel and uproar. In a few
minutes George returned, an odd contrast visible between the upper
and lower halves of his face. Hearing his approach, she
met him at the door. No, sir, George, she said,
just ging up to my room and hair wash and

(14:34):
pit on the sark yo. See land up on the
bed sin. Come down er here your tumbler comfortable. George's
whole soul was bent upon his drink, but he obeyed
as if she had been twice his mother. By the
time he had finished his toilette, the usual company was assembled,

(14:56):
and he appeared amongst them in all the respectability of
a clean and what purity, besides the general adhesiveness of
his trade material would yield to a single ablution long delayed.
They welcomed him all with nod or grin or merry
word in individual fashion. As each sat measuring out his

(15:20):
whisky or pounding out the slow dissolving sugar, or tasting
the mixture with critical soul seated between tongue and palate.
The conversation was for some time very dull, with a
strong tendency to the censorious. For in their circle, not

(15:41):
only were the claims of respectability silently admitted, but the
conduct of this and that man of their acquaintance or
of public note, was pronounced upon with understood reference to
those claims, now with smile of incredulity or pity, now
with headshake, regretful or condemnatory. And this all the time

(16:03):
that each was doing his best to reduce himself to
a condition in which the word conduct could no longer
have meaning in reference to him. All of them, as
did their hostess, addressed Galbraith as Sir George, and he
accepted the title with a certain unassuming dignity, For if

(16:25):
it was not universally known in this city, it was
known to the best lawyers in it that he was
a baronet by direct derivation from the hand of King
James the sixth. The fire burned cheerfully, and the kettle,
making many journeys between it and the table. Things gradually

(16:45):
grew more lively. Stories were told, often without any point,
but not therefore without effect. Reminiscences sorely pulpy and broken
at the edge were offered and accepted with a laughter
in which sober ears might have detected a strangely alien sound.

(17:05):
And adventures were related in which truth was no necessary
element to reception. In the case of the postman, for instance,
who had been dismissed for losing a bag of letters
the week before. Not one of those present believed a
word he said. Yet, as he happened to be endowed

(17:29):
with a small stock of genuine humor, his stories were
regarded with much the same favor as if they had
been authentic. But the revival scarcely reached Sir George. He
said little or nothing, but between his slow gulps of toddy,
sat looking vacantly into his glass. It is true he

(17:52):
smiled absently now and then when the others laughed, but
that was only for manners. Doubtless he was somewhere the
saddest of all visions, the things that might have been
the wretched craving of the lower organs stilled, and something

(18:12):
spared for his brain. I believe the chief joy his
drink gave him lay in the power once more to
feel himself a gentleman. The washed hands, the shaven face,
the clean shirt had something to do with it, no doubt,
But the necromantic whiskey had far more. What faded ghosts

(18:37):
of ancestral dignity and worth and story The evil potion
called up in the mind of Sir George, who himself
hung ready to fall the last, or all but the last,
mildewed fruit of the tree of galbraith Ah. If this

(18:59):
one and that of his ancestors had but lived to
his conscience and with some thought of those that were
to come after him, he would not have transmitted to
poor Sir George. In horrible addition to moral weakness, that
physical proclivity, which had now grown to such a hideous craving.

(19:23):
To the miserable wretch himself, it seemed that he could
no more keep from drinking whiskey than he could from
breathing air. End of Chapter four. Recording by Taischalyn Tasha
Wite's s Dudward Press dot com