Sir Gibbie Ch 8 Featured Book Tale Teller Kids Reading Age 15 #greatbooks #classics #teens

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter eight of Sir Gibbey. 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 Mark hisssong Sir Gibbey by George mac Donald, Chapter
eight Sambo. No one was so sorry for the death

(00:25):
of Sir George, or had so many kind words to
say in memory of him. As Mistress Crowl Neither was
her sorrow only because she had lost so good a customer,
or even because she had liked the man. I believe
it was much enhanced by a vague doubt that, after all,
she was to blame for his death in vain she

(00:45):
said to herself, and said truly that it would have
been far worse for him and Gibbey too, had he
gone elsewhere for his dream. She could not get the
account settled with her conscience. She tried to relieve herself
by being kinder than before to the boy, but she
was greatly hindered in this by the fact that after
his father's death she could not get him inside her door.

(01:08):
That his father was not there, would not be there
at night, made the place dreadful to him. This addition
to the trouble of mind she already had on account
of the nature of her business, was the cause, I
believe why after Sir George's death she went down the
hill with accelerated speed. She sipped more frequently from her
own bottle, soon came to tasting with her customers, and

(01:32):
after that her descent was rapid. She no longer refused
drink to women, though for a time she always gave
it under protest. She winked at card playing. She grew
generally more lax in her administration, and by degrees a
mist of evil fame began to gather about her house. Thereupon,

(01:53):
her enemy, as she considered him, the Reverend Clement Sclater,
felt himself justified in moving more energetically for the withdrawal
of her license, which with the support of outrage neighbors,
he found no difficulty in effecting. She therefore flitted to
another parish and opened a worse house in a worse
region of the city, on the river bank, namely, some

(02:15):
little distance above the quay, not too far to be
within easy range of sailors and the people employed about
the vessels loading or discharging cargo. It pretended to be
only a lodging house, and had no license for the
sale of strong dream. But nevertheless, one way and another
a great deal was drunk in the house, and as

(02:35):
always card playing and sometimes worse, things were going on,
getting more vigorous. Ever, as the daylight waan, frequent quarrels
and occasional bloodshed was the consequence. For some time, however,
nothing very serious brought the place immediately within the conscious
skin of the magistrates. In the second winter after his

(02:56):
father's death, Gibbey wandering everywhere about the city, and under
Lucky Kroll in the neighborhood of her new abode. Down
there she was mistress no longer, but with a familiarity
scarcely removed from contempt, was both mentioned and addressed as
Lucky Kroll, the repugnance which had hitherto kept Gibbey from her,

(03:16):
having been altogether to her place, and not to herself.
He had once accompanied her home, and after that went
often to the house. He was considerably surprised when first
he heard words from her mouth for using which she
had formerly been in the habit of severely reproving her guests.
But he always took things as he found them, and
when ere long he had to hear such occasionally addressed

(03:38):
to himself when she happened to be more out of
temper than usual. He never therefore questioned her friendship. What
more than anything else attracted him to her house, however,
was the jolly manners and open hearted kindness most of
the sailors who frequented it, with almost all of whom
he was a favorite. And it soon came about that

(03:59):
when his ministration to the incapable whereover, he would spend
the rest of the night more frequently there than anywhere else,
until at last he gave up in a great measure
his guardianship of the drunk in the streets for that
of those who were certainly in much more danger of
mishap at lucky crawls. Scarcely a night passed when he

(04:19):
was not present at one or more of those quarrels
of which the place was a hot bed, And as
he never by any chance took apart or favored one
side more than another, but confined himself to an impartial
distribution of such peacemaking blandishments. As the ever springing fountain
of his affection took instinctive shape in the wee baronet

(04:40):
came to be regarded by the better sort of the
rough fellows, almost as the very identical sweet little chair
sitting perched up aloft, whose department in the saving business
of the universe it was to take care of the
life of poor jay. I do not say that he
was always successful in his endeavors aid Atonement, But beyond

(05:00):
a doubt, Lucky Croll's house was a good deal less
of a hell through the haunting presence of the child.
He was not shocked by the things he saw, even
when he liked them. Least he regarded the doing of them,
much as he looked upon his father's drunkenness as a
pitiful necessity that overtook men, one from which there was
no escape, and which caused a great need for Gibbey's

(05:25):
evil language and coarse behavior alike passed over him without
leaving the smallest stain upon heart or conscience, desire or will.
No one could doubt it who considered the clarity of
his face and eyes, in which the occasional but not
frequent expression of keenness and promptitude scarcely even ruffled the

(05:45):
prevailing look of unclouded heavenly babyhood. If any one thinks
I am unfaithful to human fact and overcharge the description
of this child, I, on my side doubt the extent
of the experience of that man or woman. I admit
to child a rarity, but a rarity in the right direction,
and therefore a being with whom humanity is the greater

(06:08):
need to be made acquainted. I admit that the best
things are the commonest, but the highest types, and the
best combinations of them are the rarest. There is more
love in the world than anything else. For instance, but
the best love and the individual in whom love is supreme,
are the rarest of all things. That for which humanity

(06:29):
is the strongest claim upon its workmen is the representation
of its own best. But the loudest demand of the
present day is for the representation of that grade of
humanity of which men see the most, that type of
things which can never have been, but that it might pass.
The demand marks the commonest, narrownest, low leveled satisfaction of

(06:50):
the age. It loves its own, not that which might
be and ought to be its own, not its better self,
infinitely higher than its present, for the sake of whose
approach it exists I do not think that the age
is worse in this respect than those which have preceded it,
but that vulgarity and a certain vile contentment swelling to

(07:12):
self admiration have become more vocal than hitherto. Just as unbelief,
which I think in reality less prevailing than in former ages,
has become largely more articulate, and thereby more loud and peremptory.
But whatever the demand of the age, I insist that
that which ought to be presented to its beholding is

(07:32):
the common good, uncommonly developed, and that not because of
its rarity, but because it is truer to humanity. Shall
I admit those conditions, those facts to be true exponents
of humanity, which, except they be changed, purified, or abandoned,
must soon cause that humanity to seize from its very name,

(07:53):
must destroy its very being. To make the admission would
be to assert that a house may be divided against itself,
and yet stand it is the noble, not the failure
from the noble, that is the true human And if
I must show the failure, let it ever be with
an eye to the final possible yay imperative success. But

(08:16):
in our day a man who will accept any oddity
of idiosyncratic development in manners, tastes, or habits, will refuse
not only as improbable, but as inconsistent with human nature.
The representation of a man trying to be merely as
noble as is absolutely essential to his being, except indeed

(08:36):
he be at the same time represented as failing utterly
in the attempt, and compelled to fall back upon the
imperfections of humanity and acknowledge them as its laws. Its improbability,
judged by the experience of most men, I admit its unreality.
In fact, I deny and its absolute unity with the

(08:58):
true idea of humanity. I believe and assert. It is
hardly necessary for me now to remark, seeing my narrative
must already have suggested it, that what kept Gibbey pure
and honest was the rarely developed, ever active love of
his kind. The human face was the one attraction to
him in the universe. In deep fact, it is so

(09:20):
to every one, I state, but the commonest reality and creation.
Only in Gibbey the fact had come to the surface.
The common thing was his and uncommon degree and potency.
Gibby knew no music except the voice of man and
woman at least no other had as yet affected him.
To be sure, he had never heard much drunken sea songs.

(09:43):
He heard every night almost and now and then on
Sundays he ran through his zone of psalm singing, But
neither of those could well be called music. There hung
a cage bird here and there at a door in
the poorer streets. But Gibbey's love embraced the lower creation also,
and too tenderly for the enjoyment of its melody. The

(10:05):
human bird loved liberty too dearly to gather anything but
pain from the song of the little feathered brother who
had lost it, and to whom he could not minister.
As to the drunkard. In general, he ran from the
presence of such a prisoner, but sometimes he would stop
and try to comfort the nken little freedom disrobed of
its space, And on one occasion was caught in the

(10:28):
very act of delivering a canary that hung outside a
little shop. Any other than we Gibby would have been
heartily cuffed for the offense, But the owner of the
bird only smiled at the would be liberator, and hung
the cage a couple of feet higher on the wall.
With such a passion of affection, then finding vent and
constant action. Is it any wonder Gibbey's heart and hands

(10:51):
should be too full for evil to occupy them even
a little. One night in the spring, entering Lucky Kroll's
common reym, he saw there for the first time a
Negro sailor, whom the rest called Sambo, and was at
once taken with his big, dark, radiant eyes and his
white teeth, continually uncovering themselves in good humored smiles. Sambo

(11:16):
had left the vessel in which he had arrived, was
waiting for another, and had taken up his quarters at
Lucky Kroll's Gibbey's advances. He met instantly, and in a
few days a strong mutual affection had sprung up between them.
To Gibbey, Sambo's speedily became absolutely loving and tender, and

(11:36):
Gibbey made him full return of devotion. The Negro was
a man of immense muscular power, like not a few
of his race, and like most of them, not easily
provoked inheriting not a little of their hard learned. Long
suffering he bore even with those who treated him with
far worse than the ordinary superciliousness of white to black,

(11:59):
and when the rudest of city boys mocked him, only
showed his teeth by way of smile. The ill conditioned
among Lucky Kroll's customers and lodgers were constantly taking advantage
of his good nature and presuming upon his forbearance. But
so long as they confined themselves to mere insolence or
even bare face cheating, he endured with marvelous temper. It

(12:24):
was possible, however, to go too far, even with him.
One night, Sambo was looking on at a game of
cards in which all the rest in the room were engaged,
happening to laugh. At some turn it took one of them,
a Malay, who was losing, was offended and abused him.
Others objected to his having fun without risking money and

(12:46):
required him to join in the game. This, for some
reason or other, he declined, and when the whole party
at length insisted, positively refused. Thereupon they all took umbridge,
nor did most of them make many steps of the
ascent from displeasure to indignation, wrath, revenge, and then ensued around.

(13:09):
Gibbey had been sitting all the time on his friend's knee,
every now and then stroking his black face, in which,
as insult followed insult, the sunny blood kept slowly rising,
making the balls of his eyes and his teeth looked
still whiter. At length, a savage from Greenock threw a
tumbler at him. Sambo quick as a lizard, covered his

(13:30):
face with his arm. The tumbler, falling from it, struck
Gibby on the head, not severely, but hard enough to
make him utter a little cry. At that sound, the
latent fierceness came wide awake, and sambo gently as a
nursing mother. He set Gibby down in a corner behind him,
then with one rush, sent every jack of the company

(13:51):
sprawling on the floor, with the table and bottles and
glasses on top of them. At the vision of their plight,
his good humor instantly reach turned. He burst into a great,
hearty laugh, and proceeded at once to lift the table
from off them. That affected, he caught up Gibbey in
his arms and carried him with him to bed. In

(14:13):
the middle of the night, Gibbey half woke, and, finding
himself alone, sought his father's bosom. Then, and the confusion
between sleeping and waking imagined his father's death come again.
Presently he remembered it was in Sambo's arms he fell asleep,
But where he was now he could not tell certainly.

(14:35):
He was not in bed groping. He pushed a door,
and a glimmer of light came in. He was in
a closet of the room in which Sambo slept, and
something was to do about his bed. He rose softly
and peeped down. There stood several men, and a struggle
was going on, nearly noiseless. Gibbey was half dazed and

(14:57):
could not understand, but he had little anxiety about Sambo,
in whose prowess he had a triumphant confidence. Suddenly came
the sound of a great gush, and the group parted
from the bed and vanished. Gibby darted towards it. The words, oh,
Lord Jesus came to his ears, and he heard no more.

(15:18):
They were poor Sambos, last in this world. The light
of a street lamp fell upon the bed. The blood
was welling in great thick throbs out of his huge
black throat. They had bent his head back, and the
gash gaped wide. For some moments Gibby stood in ghastly terror.

(15:39):
No sound except a low gurgle came to his ears,
and the horror of the stillness of her masterdom. He
never could recall what came next. When he knew himself again,
he was in the street, running like the wind. He
knew not whither. It was not that he dreaded, and
he hurt to himself. Horror, not fear, was behind him.

(16:02):
His next recollection of himself was in the first of
the morning, on the lofty chain bridge over the river Dower.
Before him lay He knew not what, only escape from
what was behind. His faith in men seemed ruined. The
city his home was frightful to him. Whirls and curses

(16:22):
and blows he had been used to, and amidst them
life could be lived if he did not consciously weave
them into his theories. He unconsciously wrapped them up in
his confidence and was at peace. But the last night
had revealed something unknown before. It was as if the
darkness had been cloven, and through the cleft he saw

(16:42):
into hell a thing had been done that could not
be undone, and he thought it must be what people
called murder. And Sambo was such a good man. He
was almost as good a man as Gibbey's father, and
now he would not breathe any more. Was he gone
where Gibbey's father was gone. Was it the good men

(17:04):
that stopped breathing and grew cold? But it was those
wicked men that had deaded Samba. And with that his
first vague perception of evil and wrong in the world
began to dawn. He lifted his head from gazing down
on the dark river. A man was approaching the bridge.
He came from the awful city. Perhaps he wanted him.

(17:27):
He fled along the bridge like a low flying water burnt.
If another man had appeared at the other end, he
would have got through between the rods and thrown himself
into the river. But there was no one to oppose
his escape, And after following the road a little way
up the river, he turned aside into a thicket of
shrubs on the nearly precipitous bank, and sat down to

(17:49):
recover the breath he had lost, more from dismay than exertion.
The light grew all at once. He descried far down
the river the steeples of the city alas Alas. There
lay poor black Sambo, so dear to wee, Sir Gibbey,
motionless and covered with blood. He had two red mouths now,

(18:11):
but was not able to speak a word with either.
They would carry him to a churchyard and lay him
in a hole to lie there forever, and never would
all the good people be laid into holes and leave
Gibbee quite alone, sitting and brooding. Thus he fell into
a dreamy state, and which brokenly. From here and there

(18:32):
pictures of his former life grew out upon his memory.
Suddenly plainer than all the rest, came the last time
he stood under Mistress Kroll's window, waiting to help his
father home. The same instant, back to the ear of
his mind came his father's two words, as he had
heard them through the window, whoop our side, up, our side.

(18:56):
Here he was upon our side, a little way up
to he would go farther up. He rose and went on,
while the great river kept flowing the other way, dark
and terrible, down to the very door, inside which lay
Sambo with the huge gape in his big throat. Meantime,
the murder came to the knowledge of the police, Mistress

(19:18):
Kroll herself giving the information, and all in the house
were arrested. In the course of their examination, it came
out that we, sir Gibee had gone to bed with
the murdered man, and was now nowhere to be found.
Either they had murdered him too or carried him off.
The news spread and the whole city was in commotion

(19:39):
about his fate. It was credible enough the persons capable
of committing such a crime on such an inoffensive person,
as the testimony showed poor Sambo, would be capable also
of throwing the life of a child after that of
the man. To protect their own, the city was searched
from end to end, from side to side, and from
cellar to guarant not a trace of him was to

(20:02):
be found. But indeed Gibby had always been easier to
find than to trace, for he had no belongings of
any sort to betray him. No one dreamed of his
having fled straight to the country, and search was confined
to the city. The murderers were at length discovered, tried,
and executed. They protested their innocence with regard to the child,

(20:25):
and therein nothing appeared against them beyond the fact that
he was missing. The result, so far as concerned Gibbey,
was that the talk of the city, where almost every
one knew him, was turned in his absence. Upon his history,
and from the confused mass of hearsay that reached him,
mister Sklayder set himself to discover and verify the facts.

(20:46):
For this purpose he burrowed about in the neighborhoods Gibbey
had chiefly frequented, and was so far successful as to
satisfy himself that Gibbey, if he was alive, was Sir
Gilbert Gambreth, Baronet, But his own law was able to
assure him that not an inch of property remained anywhere
attached to the title. There were indeed relations of the

(21:07):
boy's mother who were of some small consequence in a
neighboring county. Also one in business in Glasgow or its neighborhood,
reported wealthy, but these had entirely disowned her because of
her marriage. All mister Schlader discovered, besides, was in a
lumber room next the garret in which Sir George died

(21:27):
a box of papers, a glance at whose contents showed
that they must at least prove a great deal of
which she was already certain from other sources. A few
of them had to do with the house in which
they were found, still known as the Old House of
galbrid but most of them referred to property in land,
and many were of ancient date. If the property were

(21:50):
in the hands of descendants of the original stock, the
papers would be of value in their eyes, and in
any case it would be well to see to their safety.
Mister Slader therefore had the chest removed to the garret
of the manse, where it stood thereafter, little regarded, but
able to answer for more than itself. End of Chapter eight.