Presently the ladies rose, and when they had left the room, the host asked Gibbie to ring the bell. He obeyed with alacrity, and a servant appeared. She placed the utensils for making and drinking toddy, after Scotch custom, upon the table. A shadow fell upon the soul of Gibbie: for the first time since he ran from the city, he saw the well-known appointments of midnight orgy, associated in his mind with all the horrors from which he had fled. The memory of old nights in the street, as he watched for his father, and then helped him home; of his father's last prayer, drinking and imploring; of his white, motionless face the next morning; of the row at Lucky Croale's, and poor black Sambo's gaping throat--all these terrible things came back upon him, as he stood staring at the tumblers and the wine glasses and the steaming kettle.
"What is the girl thinking of!" exclaimed the minister, who had been talking to his next neighbour, when he heard the door close behind the servant. "She has actually forgotten the whisky!--Sir Gilbert,"he went on, with a glance at the boy, "as you are so good, will you oblige me by bringing the bottle from the sideboard?"Gibbie started at the sound of his name, but did not move from the place. After a moment, the minister, who had resumed the conversation, thinking he had not heard him, looked up. There, between the foot of the table and the sideboard, stood Gibbie as if fixed to the floor gazing out of his blue eyes at the minister--those eyes filmy with gathering tears, the smile utterly faded from his countenance.--Would the Master have drunk out of that bottle? he was thinking with himself. Imagining some chance remark had hurt the boy's pride, and not altogether sorry--it gave hope of the gentleman he wanted to make him--Mr. Sclater spoke again:
"It's just behind you, Sir Gilbert--the whisky bottle--that purple one with the silver top."Gibbie never moved, but his eyes began to run over. A fearful remembrance of the blow he had given him on the head rushed back on Mr. Sclater: could it be the consequence of that? Was the boy paralyzed? He was on the point of hurrying to him, but restrained himself, and rising with deliberation, approached the sideboard. Anearer sight of the boy's face reassured him.
"I beg your pardon, Sir Gilbert," he said; "I thought you would not mind waiting on us as well as on the ladies. It is your own fault, you know.--There," he added, pointing to the table; "take your place, and have a little toddy. It won't hurt you."The eyes of all the guests were by this time fixed on Gibbie. What could be the matter with the curious creature? they wondered. His gentle merriment and quiet delight in waiting upon them, had given a pleasant concussion to the spirits of the party, which had at first threatened to be rather a stiff and dull one; and there now was the boy all at once looking as if he had received a blow, or some cutting insult which he did not know how to resent!
Between the agony of refusing to serve, and the impossibility of putting his hand to unclean ministration, Gibbie had stood as if spell-bound. He would have thought little of such horrors in Lucky Croale's houff, but the sight of the things here terrified him. He felt as a Corinthian Christian must, catching a sight of one of the elders of the church feasting in a temple. But the last words of the minister broke the painful charm. He burst into tears, and darting from the room, not a little to his guardian's relief, hurried to his own.
The guests stared bewildered.
"He'll be gone to the ladies," said their host. "He's an odd creature. Mrs. Sclater understands him better than I do. He's more at home with her."Therewith he proceeded to tell them his history, and whence the interest he had in him, not bringing down his narrative beyond the afternoon of the preceding day.
The next morning, Mrs. Sclater had a talk with him concerning his whim of waiting at table, telling him he must not do so again; it was not the custom for gentlemen to do the things that servants were paid to do; it was not fair to the servants, and so on--happening to end with an utterance of mild wonder at his fancy for such a peculiarity. This exclamation Gibbie took for a question, or at least the expression of a desire to understand the reason of the thing. He went to a side-table, and having stood there a moment or two, returned with a New Testament, in which he pointed out the words, "But I am among you as he that serveth." Giving her just time to read them, he took the book again, and in addition presented the words, "The disciple is not above his master, but every one that is perfect shall be as his master."Mrs. Sclater was as much put out as if he had been guilty of another and worse indiscretion. The idea of anybody ordering his common doings, not to say his oddities, by principles drawn from a source far too sacred to be practically regarded, was too preposterous to have ever become even a notion to her. Henceforth, however, it was a mote to trouble her mind's eye, a mote she did not get rid of until it began to turn to a glimmer of light. I need hardly add that Gibbie waited at her dinner-table no more.
