Books: Robert Falconer

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Mrs. Falconer saw that he still went away as he had been wont, and
instituted 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 God's 'feastful friends.'

Night after night he returned to the parlour cold to the very heart.
God was not to be found, he said then. He said afterwards that
even then 'God 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 shine 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 God. It was all in vain. Ever a voice
within him--surely the voice of that God 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 God, 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 God was with him--the spirit
of the Father groaning with the spirit of the boy in intercession
that could not be uttered. If God had come to him then and
comforted him with the assurance of individual favour--but the very
supposition is a taking of his name in vain--had Robert found
comfort in the fancied assurance that God 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 God 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
God, 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 God, yes, a peculiar relation, differing from the
relation between every other man and God! But this very
individuality and peculiarity can only be founded on the broadest
truths of the Godhood 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 fashion 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 God
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
Sallust 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 shining 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 passionless
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 brass 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 damnation 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
apron, 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 apron. Through all its accumulated 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 apron 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 tither,' he went on, looking down on the violin at his
feet as if it had been something dead in its youth--'an' frae the
tither 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 hell, 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 God's judgments!'

'Nae upo' fiddles,' returned Robert.

Mr. Innes sat and said nothing, with difficulty concealing his
amusement at this passage 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
assert 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 God 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 God, 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 desertit by God 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.'

'Considerin' 'at I'm at sae muckle expense wi' ye baith, it wadna
hae been ill-contrived to hae brocht the siller to me, an' latten me
du wi' 't as I thocht fit.--Gang na awa', laddie,' she added, as she
saw Robert about to leave the room.

'I'll be back in a minute, grannie,' returned Robert.

'He's a fine lad, that!' said Mr. Innes; 'an' guid 'll come o' 'm,
and that 'll be heard tell o'.'

'Gin he had but the grace o' God, there wadna be muckle to compleen
o',' acquiesced his grandmother.

'There's time eneuch for that, Mrs. Faukner. Ye canna get auld
heids upo' young shoothers, ye ken.'

''Deed for that maitter, ye may get mony an auld heid upo' auld
shoothers, and nae a spark o' grace in 't to lat it see hoo to lay
itsel' doon i' the grave.'

Robert returned before Mr. Innes had made up his mind as to whether
the old lady intended a personal rebuke.

'Hae, grannie,' he said, going up to her, and putting the two
sovereigns in her white palm.

He had found some difficulty in making Shargar give up his, else he
would have returned sooner.

'What's this o' 't, laddie?' said Mrs. Falconer. 'Hoots! I'm nae
gaein' to tak yer siller. Lat the puir soutar-craturs hae 't. But
dinna gie them mair nor a shillin' or twa at ance--jist to haud them
in life. They deserve nae mair. But they maunna sterve. And jist
ye tell them, laddie, at gin they spen' ae saxpence o' 't upo'
whusky, they s' get nae mair.'

'Ay, ay, grannie,' responded Robert, with a glimmer of gladness in
his heart. 'And what aboot the fiddlin', grannie?' he added, half
playfully, hoping for some kind concession therein as well.

But he had gone too far. She vouchsafed no reply, and her face grew
stern with offence. It was one thing to give bread to eat, another
to give music and gladness. No music but that which sprung from
effectual calling and the perseverance of the saints could be lawful
in a world that was under the wrath and curse of God. Robert waited
in vain for a reply.

'Gang yer wa's,' she said at length. 'Mr. Innes and me has some
business to mak an en' o', an' we want nae assistance.'

Robert rejoined Shargar, who was still bemoaning the loss of his
sovereign. His face brightened when he saw its well-known yellow
shine once more, but darkened again as soon as Robert told him to
what service it was now devoted.

'It's my ain,' he said, with a suppressed expostulatory growl.

Robert threw the coin on the floor.

'Tak yer filthy lucre!' he exclaimed with contempt, and turned to
leave Shargar alone in the garret with his sovereign.

'Bob!' Shargar almost screamed, 'tak it, or I'll cut my throat.'

This was his constant threat when he was thoroughly in earnest.

'Cut it, an' hae dune wi' 't,' said Robert cruelly.

Shargar burst out crying.

'Len' me yer knife, than, Bob,' he sobbed, holding out his hand.

Robert burst into a roar of laughter, caught up the sovereign from
the floor, sped with it to the baker's, who refused to change it
because he had no knowledge of anything representing the sum of
twenty shillings except a pound-note, succeeded in getting silver
for it at the bank, and then ran to the soutar's.

After he left the parlour, the discussion of his fate was resumed
and finally settled between his grandmother and the school-master.
The former, in regard of the boy's determination to befriend the
shoemaker in the matter of music as well as of money, would now have
sent him at once to the grammar-school in Old Aberdeen, to prepare
for the competition in the month of November; but the latter
persuaded her that if the boy gave his whole attention to Latin till
the next summer, and then went to the grammar-school for three
months or so, he would have an excellent chance of success. As to
the violin, the school-master said, wisely enough:

'He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar; and gin ye kep (intercept) him
upo' the shore-road, he'll tak to the hill-road; an' I s' warran' a
braw lad like Robert 'll get mony a ane in Ebberdeen 'll be ready
eneuch to gie him a lift wi' the fiddle, and maybe tak him into waur
company nor the puir bed-ridden soutar; an' wi' you an' me to hing
on to the tail o' 'im like, he canna gang ower the scar (cliff)
afore he learns wit.'

'Hm!' was the old lady's comprehensive response.

It was further arranged that Robert should be informed of their
conclusion, and so roused to effort in anticipation of the trial
upon which his course in life must depend.

Nothing could have been better for Robert than the prospect of a
college education. But his first thought at the news was not of the
delights of learning nor of the honourable course that would ensue,
but of Eric Ericson, the poverty-stricken, friendless descendant of
yarls and sea-rovers. He would see him--the only man that
understood him! Not until the passion of this thought had abated,
did he begin to perceive the other advantages before him. But so
practical and thorough was he in all his proposals and means, that
ere half-an-hour was gone, he had begun to go over his Rudiments
again. He now wrote a version, or translation from English into
Latin, five times a week, and read Caeser, Virgil, or Tacitus, every
day. He gained permission from his grandmother to remove his bed to
his own garret, and there, from the bedstead at which he no longer
kneeled, he would often rise at four in the morning, even when the
snow lay a foot thick on the skylight, kindle his lamp by means of a
tinder-box and a splinter of wood dipped in sulphur, and sitting
down in the keen cold, turn half a page of Addison into something as
near Ciceronian Latin as he could effect. This would take him from
an hour and a half to two hours, when he would tumble again into
bed, blue and stiff, and sleep till it was time to get up and go to
the morning school before breakfast. His health was excellent, else
it could never have stood such treatment.

CHAPTER III.

'THE END CROWNS ALL'.

His sole relaxation almost lay in the visit he paid every evening to
the soutar and his wife. Their home was a wretched place; but
notwithstanding the poverty in which they were now sunk, Robert soon
began to see a change, like the dawning of light, an alba, as the
Italians call the dawn, in the appearance of something white here
and there about the room. Robert's visits had set the poor woman
trying to make the place look decent. It soon became at least
clean, and there is a very real sense in which cleanliness is next
to godliness. If the people who want to do good among the poor
would give up patronizing them, would cease from trying to convert
them before they have gained the smallest personal influence with
them, would visit them as those who have just as good a right to be
here as they have, it would be all the better for both, perhaps
chiefly for themselves.

For the first week or so, Alexander, unable either to work or play,
and deprived of his usual consolation of drink, was very testy and
unmanageable. If Robert, who strove to do his best, in the hope of
alleviating the poor fellow's sufferings--chiefly those of the
mind--happened to mistake the time or to draw a false note from the
violin, Sandy would swear as if he had been the Grand Turk and
Robert one of his slaves. But Robert was too vexed with himself,
when he gave occasion to such an outburst, to mind the outburst
itself. And invariably when such had taken place, the shoemaker
would ask forgiveness before he went. Holding out his left hand,
from which nothing could efface the stains of rosin and lamp-black
and heel-ball, save the sweet cleansing of mother-earth, he would
say,