Robert Falconer Part 33

And surely, if there was a G.o.d at all, that is, not a power greater than man, but a power by whose power man was, he must hear the voice of the creature whom he had made, a voice that came crying out of the very need which he had created. Younger people than Robert are capable of such divine metaphysics. Hence he continued to disappear from his grandmother's parlour at much the same hour as before. In the cold, desolate garret, he knelt and cried out into that which lay beyond the thought that cried, the unknowable infinite, after the G.o.d that may be known as surely as a little child knows his mysterious mother. And from behind him, the pale-blue, star-crowded sky shone upon his head, through the window that looked upwards only.

Mrs. Falconer saw that he still went away as he had been wont, and inst.i.tuted observations, the result of which was the knowledge that he went to his own room. Her heart smote her, and she saw that the boy looked sad and troubled. There was scarce room in her heart for increase of love, but much for increase of kindness, and she did increase it. In truth, he needed the smallest crumb of comfort that might drop from the table of G.o.d's 'feastful friends.'

Night after night he returned to the parlour cold to the very heart.

G.o.d was not to be found, he said then. He said afterwards that even then 'G.o.d was with him though he knew it not.'

For the very first night, the moment that he knelt and cried, 'O Father in heaven, hear me, and let thy face s.h.i.+ne upon me'--like a flash of burning fire the words shot from the door of his heart: 'I dinna care for him to love me, gin he doesna love ilka body;' and no more prayer went from the desolate boy that night, although he knelt an hour of agony in the freezing dark. Loyal to what he had been taught, he struggled hard to reduce his rebellious will to what he supposed to be the will of G.o.d. It was all in vain. Ever a voice within him--surely the voice of that G.o.d who he thought was not hearing--told him that what he wanted was the love belonging to his human nature, his human needs--not the preference of a court-favourite. He had a dim consciousness that he would be a traitor to his race if he accepted a love, even from G.o.d, given him as an exception from his kind. But he did not care to have such a love. It was not what his heart yearned for. It was not love.

He could not love such a love. Yet he strove against it all--fought for religion against right as he could; struggled to reduce his rebellious feelings, to love that which was unlovely, to choose that which was abhorrent, until nature almost gave way under the effort. Often would he sink moaning on the floor, or stretch himself like a corpse, save that it was face downwards, on the boards of the bedstead. Night after night he returned to the battle, but with no permanent success. What a success that would have been! Night after night he came pale and worn from the conflict, found his grandmother and Shargar composed, and in the quietness of despair sat down beside them to his Latin version.

He little thought, that every night, at the moment when he stirred to leave the upper room, a pale-faced, red-eyed figure rose from its seat on the top of the stair by the door, and sped with long-legged noiselessness to resume its seat by the grandmother before he should enter. Shargar saw that Robert was unhappy, and the nearest he could come to the sharing of his unhappiness was to take his place outside the door within which he had retreated. Little, too, did Shargar, on his part, think that Robert, without knowing it, was pleading for him inside--pleading for him and for all his race in the weeping that would not be comforted.

Robert had not the vaguest fancy that G.o.d was with him--the spirit of the Father groaning with the spirit of the boy in intercession that could not be uttered. If G.o.d had come to him then and comforted him with the a.s.surance of individual favour--but the very supposition is a taking of his name in vain--had Robert found comfort in the fancied a.s.surance that G.o.d was his friend in especial, that some private favour was granted to his prayers, that, indeed, would have been to be left to his own inventions, to bring forth not fruits meet for repentance, but fruits for which repentance alone is meet. But G.o.d was with him, and was indeed victorious in the boy when he rose from his knees, for the last time, as he thought, saying, 'I cannot yield--I will pray no more.'--With a burst of bitter tears he sat down on the bedside till the loudest of the storm was over, then dried his dull eyes, in which the old outlook had withered away, and trod unknowingly in the silent footsteps of Shargar, who was ever one corner in advance of him, down to the dreary lessons and unheeded prayers; but, thank G.o.d, not to the sleepless night, for some griefs bring sleep the sooner.

My reader must not mistake my use of the words especial and private, or suppose that I do not believe in an individual relation between every man and G.o.d, yes, a peculiar relation, differing from the relation between every other man and G.o.d! But this very individuality and peculiarity can only be founded on the broadest truths of the G.o.dhood and the manhood.

Mrs. Falconer, ere she went to sleep, gave thanks that the boys had been at their prayers together. And so, in a very deep sense, they had.

And well they might have been; for Shargar was nearly as desolate as Robert, and would certainly, had his mother claimed him now, have gone on the tramp with her again. Wherein could this civilized life show itself to him better than that to which he had been born? For clothing he cared little, and he had always managed to kill his hunger or thirst, if at longer intervals, then with greater satisfaction. Wherein is the life of that man who merely does his eating and drinking and clothing after a civilized fas.h.i.+on better than that of the gipsy or tramp? If the civilized man is honest to boot, and gives good work in return for the bread or turtle on which he dines, and the gipsy, on the other hand, steals his dinner, I recognize the importance of the difference; but if the rich man plunders the community by exorbitant profits, or speculation with other people's money, while the gipsy adds a fowl or two to the produce of his tinkering; or, once again, if the gipsy is as honest as the honest citizen, which is not so rare a case by any means as people imagine, I return to my question: Wherein, I say, is the warm house, the windows hung with purple, and the table covered with fine linen, more divine than the tent or the blue sky, and the dipping in the dish? Why should not Shargar prefer a life with the mother G.o.d had given him to a life with Mrs. Falconer? Why should he prefer geography to rambling, or Latin to Romany? His purposelessness and his love for Robert alone kept him where he was.

The next evening, having given up his praying, Robert sat with his Sall.u.s.t before him. But the fount of tears began to swell, and the more he tried to keep it down, the more it went on swelling till his throat was filled with a lump of pain. He rose and left the room. But he could not go near the garret. That door too was closed. He opened the house door instead, and went out into the street. There, nothing was to be seen but faint blue air full of moonlight, solid houses, and s.h.i.+ning snow. Bareheaded he wandered round the corner of the house to the window whence first he had heard the sweet sounds of the pianoforte. The fire within lighted up the crimson curtains, but no voice of music came forth. The window was as dumb as the pale, faintly befogged moon overhead, itself seeming but a skylight through which shone the sickly light of the pa.s.sionless world of the dead. Not a form was in the street. The eyes of the houses gleamed here and there upon the snow.

He leaned his elbow on the window-sill behind which stood that sealed fountain of lovely sound, looked up at the moon, careless of her or of aught else in heaven or on earth, and sunk into a reverie, in which nothing was consciously present but a stream of fog-smoke that flowed slowly, listlessly across the face of the moon, like the ghost of a dead cataract. All at once a wailful sound arose in his head. He did not think for some time whether it was born in his brain, or entered it from without. At length he recognized the Flowers of the Forest, played as only the soutar could play it. But alas! the cry responsive to his bow came only from the auld wife--no more from the bonny leddy! Then he remembered that there had been a humble wedding that morning on the opposite side of the way; in the street department of the jollity of which Shargar had taken a small share by firing a bra.s.s cannon, subsequently confiscated by Mrs. Falconer. But this was a strange tune to play at a wedding! The soutar half-way to his goal of drunkenness, had begun to repent for the fiftieth time that year, had with his repentance mingled the memory of the bonny leddy ruthlessly tortured to death for his wrong, and had glided from a strathspey into that sorrowful moaning. The lament interpreted itself to his disconsolate pupil as he had never understood it before, not even in the stubble-field; for it now spoke his own feelings of waste misery, forsaken loneliness. Indeed Robert learned more of music in those few minutes of the foggy winter night and open street, shut out of all doors, with the tones of an ancient grief and lamentation floating through the blotted moonlight over his ever-present sorrow, than he could have learned from many lessons even of Miss St. John. He was cold to the heart, yet went in a little comforted.

Things had gone ill with him. Outside of Paradise, deserted of his angel, in the frost and the snow, the voice of the despised violin once more the source of a sad comfort! But there is no better discipline than an occasional descent from what we count well-being, to a former despised or less happy condition. One of the results of this taste of d.a.m.nation in Robert was, that when he was in bed that night, his heart began to turn gently towards his old master. How much did he not owe him, after all! Had he not acted ill and ungratefully in deserting him?

His own vessel filled to the brim with grief, had he not let the waters of its bitterness overflow into the heart of the soutar? The wail of that violin echoed now in Robert's heart, not for Flodden, not for himself, but for the debased nature that drew forth the plaint. Comrades in misery, why should they part? What right had he to forsake an old friend and benefactor because he himself was unhappy? He would go and see him the very next night. And he would make friends once more with the much 'suffering instrument' he had so wrongfully despised.

CHAPTER II. THE STROKE.

The following night, he left his books on the table, and the house itself behind him, and sped like a grayhound to Dooble Sanny's shop, lifted the latch, and entered.

By the light of a single dip set on a chair, he saw the shoemaker seated on his stool, one hand lying on the lap of his leathern ap.r.o.n, his other hand hanging down by his side, and the fiddle on the ground at his feet.

His wife stood behind him, wiping her eyes with her blue ap.r.o.n. Through all its acc.u.mulated dirt, the face of the soutar looked ghastly, and they were eyes of despair that he lifted to the face of the youth as he stood holding the latch in his hand. Mrs. Alexander moved towards Robert, drew him in, and gently closed the door behind him, resuming her station like a sculptured mourner behind her motionless husband.

'What on airth's the maitter wi' ye, Sandy?' said Robert.

'Eh, Robert!' returned the shoemaker, and a tone of affection tinged the mournfulness with which he uttered the strange words--'eh, Robert! the Almichty will gang his ain gait, and I'm in his grup noo.'

'He's had a stroke,' said his wife, without removing her ap.r.o.n from her eyes.

'I hae gotten my pecks (blows),' resumed the soutar, in a despairing voice, which gave yet more effect to the fantastic eccentricity of conscience which from the midst of so many grave faults chose such a one as especially bringing the divine displeasure upon him: 'I hae gotten my pecks for cryin' doon my ain auld wife to set up your bonny leddy. The tane's gane a' to aise an' stew (ashes and dust), an' frae the t.i.ther,'

he went on, looking down on the violin at his feet as if it had been something dead in its youth--'an' frae the t.i.ther I canna draw a cheep, for my richt han' has forgotten her cunnin'. Man, Robert, I canna lift it frae my side.'

'Ye maun gang to yer bed,' said Robert, greatly concerned.

'Ow, ay, I maun gang to my bed, and syne to the kirkyaird, and syne to h.e.l.l, I ken that weel eneuch. Robert, I lea my fiddle to you. Be guid to the auld wife, man--better nor I hae been. An auld wife's better nor nae fiddle.'

He stooped, lifted the violin with his left hand, gave it to Robert, rose, and made for the door. They helped him up the creaking stair, got him half-undressed, and laid him in his bed. Robert put the violin on the top of a press within sight of the sufferer, left him groaning, and ran for the doctor. Having seen him set out for the patient's dwelling, he ran home to his grandmother.

Now while Robert was absent, occasion had arisen to look for him: unusual occurrence, a visitor had appeared, no less a person than Mr.

Innes, the school-master. Shargar had been banished in consequence from the parlour, and had seated himself outside Robert's room, never doubting that Robert was inside. Presently he heard the bell ring, and then Betty came up the stair, and said Robert was wanted. Thereupon Shargar knocked at the door, and as there was neither voice nor hearing, opened it, and found, with a well-known horror, that he had been watching an empty room. He made no haste to communicate the fact.

Robert might return in a moment, and his absence from the house not be discovered. He sat down on the bedstead and waited. But Betty came up again, and before Shargar could prevent her, walked into the room with her candle in her hand. In vain did Shargar intreat her to go and say that Robert was coming. Betty would not risk the danger of discovery in connivance, and descended to open afresh the fountain of the old lady's anxiety. She did not, however, betray her disquietude to Mr. Innes.

She had asked the school-master to visit her, in order that she might consult him about Robert's future. Mr. Innes expressed a high opinion of the boy's faculties and attainments, and strongly urged that he should be sent to college. Mrs. Falconer inwardly shuddered at the temptations to which this course would expose him; but he must leave home or be apprentice to some trade. She would have chosen the latter, I believe, but for religion towards the boy's parents, who would never have thought of other than a profession for him. While the school-master was dwelling on the argument that he was pretty sure to gain a good bursary, and she would thus be relieved for four years, probably for ever, from further expense on his account, Robert entered.

'Whaur hae ye been, Robert?' asked Mrs. Falconer.

'At Dooble Sanny's,' answered the boy.

'What hae ye been at there?'

'Helpin' him till 's bed.'

'What's come ower him?'

'A stroke.'

'That's what comes o' playin' the fiddle.'

'I never heard o' a stroke comin' frae a fiddle, grannie. It comes oot o' a clood whiles. Gin he had hauden till 's fiddle, he wad hae been playin' her the nicht, in place o' 's airm lyin' at 's side like a lang lingel (ligneul--shoemaker's thread).'

'Hm!' said his grandmother, concealing her indignation at this freedom of speech, 'ye dinna believe in G.o.d's judgments!'

'Nae upo' fiddles,' returned Robert.

Mr. Innes sat and said nothing, with difficulty concealing his amus.e.m.e.nt at this pa.s.sage of arms.

It was but within the last few days that Robert had become capable of speaking thus. His nature had at length arrived at the point of so far casting off the incubus of his grandmother's authority as to a.s.sert some measure of freedom and act openly. His very hopelessness of a hearing in heaven had made him indifferent to things on earth, and therefore bolder. Thus, strange as it may seem, the blessing of G.o.d descended on him in the despair which enabled him to speak out and free his soul from the weight of concealment. But it was not despair alone that gave him strength. On his way home from the shoemaker's he had been thinking what he could do for him; and had resolved, come of it what might, that he would visit him every evening, and try whether he could not comfort him a little by playing upon his violin. So that it was loving-kindness towards man, as well as despair towards G.o.d, that gave him strength to resolve that between him and his grandmother all should be above-board from henceforth.

'Nae upo' fiddles,' Robert had said.

'But upo' them 'at plays them,' returned his grandmother.

'Na; nor upo' them 'at burns them,' retorted Robert--impudently it must be confessed; for every man is open to commit the fault of which he is least capable.

But Mrs. Falconer had too much regard to her own dignity to indulge her feelings. Possibly too her sense of justice, which Falconer always said was stronger than that of any other woman he had ever known, as well as some movement of her conscience interfered. She was silent, and Robert rushed into the breach which his last discharge had effected.

'An' I want to tell ye, grannie, that I mean to gang an' play the fiddle to puir Sanny ilka nicht for the best pairt o' an hoor; an' excep' ye lock the door an' hide the key, I will gang. The puir sinner sanna be desert.i.t by G.o.d an' man baith.'

He scarcely knew what he was saying before it was out of his mouth; and as if to cover it up, he hurried on.

'An' there's mair in 't.--Dr. Anderson gae Shargar an' me a sovereign the piece. An' Dooble Sanny s' hae them, to haud him ohn deid o' hunger an' cauld.'

'What for didna ye tell me 'at Dr. Anderson had gien ye sic a sicht o'

siller? It was ill-faured o' ye--an' him as weel.'

''Cause ye wad hae sent it back till 'im; an' Shargar and me we thocht we wad raither keep it.'