One after one the pitiable company issued from its paradise, and each stumbled away, too far gone for leave-taking.Most of them passed Gibbie where he stood, but he took no heed; his father was always the last--and the least capable.But, often as he left her door, never did it close behind him until with her own eyes Mistress Croale had seen Gibbie dart like an imp out of the court--to take him in charge, and, all the weary way home, hover, not very like a guardian angel, but not the less one in truth, around the unstable equilibrium of his father's tall and swaying form.And thereupon commenced a series of marvellous gymnastics on the part of wee Gibbie.Imagine a small boy with a gigantic top, which, six times his own size, he keeps erect on its peg, not by whipping it round, but by running round it himself, unfailingly applying, at the very spot and at the very moment, the precise measure of impact necessary to counterbalance its perpetual tendency to fall in one direction or another, so that the two have all the air of a single invention--such an invention as one might meet with in an ancient clock, contrived when men had time to mingle play with earnest--and you will have in your mind's eye a real likeness of Sir George attended, any midnight in the week, by his son Gilbert.Home the big one staggered, reeled, gyrated, and tumbled; round and round him went the little one, now behind, now before, now on this side, now on that, his feet never more than touching the ground but dancing about like those of a prize-fighter, his little arms up and his hands well forward, like flying buttresses.And such indeed they were--buttresses which flew and flew all about a universally leaning tower.They propped it here, they propped it there; with wonderful judgment and skill and graduation of force they applied themselves, and with perfect success.Not once, for the last year and a half, during which time wee Gibbie had been the nightly guide of Sir George's homeward steps, had the self-disabled mass fallen prostrate in the gutter, there to snore out the night.
The first special difficulty, that of turning the corner of Jink Lane and the Widdiehill, successfully overcome, the twain went reeling and revolving along the street, much like a whirlwind that had half forgotten the laws of gyration, until at length it spun into the court, and up to the foot of the outside stair over the baronet's workshop.Then commenced the real struggle of the evening for Gibbie--and for his father too, though the latter was aware of it only in the momentary and evanescent flashes of such enlightenment as made him just capable of yielding to the pushes and pulls of the former.All up the outside and the two inside stairs, his waking and sleeping were as the alternate tictac of a pendulum;but Gibbie stuck to his business like a man, and his resolution and perseverance were at length, as always, crowned with victory.
The house in which lords and ladies had often reposed was now filled with very humble folk, who were all asleep when Gibbie and his father entered; but the noise they made in ascending caused no great disturbance of their rest; for, if any of them were roused for a moment, it was but to recognize at once the cause of the tumult, and with the remark, "It's only wee Gibbie luggin' hame Sir George," to turn on the other side and fall asleep again.
Arrived at last at the garret door, which stood wide open, Gibbie had small need of light in the nearly pitch darkness of the place, for there was positively nothing to stumble over or against between the door and the ancient four-post bed, which was all of his father's house that remained to Sir George.With heavy shuffling feet the drunkard lumbered laboriously bedward; and the bare posts and crazy frame groaned and creaked as he fell upon the oat-chaff that lay waiting him in place of the vanished luxury of feathers.
Wee Gibbie flew at his legs, nor rested until, the one after the other, he had got them on the bed; if then they were not very comfortably deposited, he knew that, in his first turn, their owner would get them all right.
And now rose the culmen of Gibbie's day! its cycle, rounded through regions of banishment, returned to its nodus of bliss.In triumph he spread over his sleeping father his dead mother's old plaid of Gordon tartan, all the bedding they had, and without a moment's further delay--no shoes even to put off--crept under it, and nestled close upon the bosom of his unconscious parent.A victory more!
another day ended with success! his father safe, and all his own!
the canopy of the darkness and the plaid over them, as if they were the one only two in the universe! his father unable to leave him--his for whole dark hours to come! It was Gibbie's paradise now! His heaven was his father's bosom, to which he clung as no infant yet ever clung to his mother's.He never thought to pity himself that the embrace was all on his side, that no answering pressure came back from the prostrate form.He never said to himself, "My father is a drunkard, but I must make the best of it;he is all I have!" He clung to his one possession--only clung: this was his father--all in all to him.What must be the bliss of such a heart--of any heart, when it comes to know that there is a father of fathers, yea, a father of fatherhood! a father who never slumbers nor sleeps, but holds all the sleeping in his ever waking bosom--a bosom whose wakefulness is the sole fountain of their slumber!
The conscious bliss of the child was of short duration, for in a few minutes he was fast asleep; but for the gain of those few minutes only, the day had been well spent.