Books: Robert Falconer

G >> George MacDonald >> Robert Falconer

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46

'Robert, ye'll jist pit the sweirin' doon wi' the lave (rest), an'
score 't oot a'thegither. I'm an ill-tongued vratch, an' I'm
beginnin' to see 't. But, man, ye're jist behavin' to me like God
himsel', an' gin it warna for you, I wad jist lie here roarin' an'
greitin' an' damnin' frae mornin' to nicht.--Ye will be in the
morn's night--willna ye?' he would always end by asking with some
anxiety.

'Of coorse I will,' Robert would answer.

'Gude nicht, than, gude nicht.--I'll try and get a sicht o' my sins
ance mair,' he added, one evening. 'Gin I could only be a wee bit
sorry for them, I reckon he wad forgie me. Dinna ye think he wad,
Robert?'

'Nae doobt, nae doobt,' answered Robert hurriedly. 'They a' say 'at
gin a man repents the richt gait, he'll forgie him.'

He could not say more than 'They say,' for his own horizon was all
dark, and even in saying this much he felt like a hypocrite. A
terrible waste, heaped thick with the potsherds of hope, lay outside
that door of prayer which he had, as he thought, nailed up for ever.

'An' what is the richt gait?' asked the soutar.

''Deed, that's mair nor I ken, Sandy,' answered Robert mournfully.

'Weel, gin ye dinna ken, what's to come o' me?' said Alexander
anxiously.

'Ye maun speir at himsel',' returned Robert, 'an' jist tell him 'at
ye dinna ken, but ye'll do onything 'at he likes.'

With these words he took his leave hurriedly, somewhat amazed to
find that he had given the soutar the strange advice to try just
what he had tried so unavailingly himself. And stranger still, he
found himself, before he reached home, praying once more in his
heart--both for Dooble Sanny and for himself. From that hour a
faint hope was within him that some day he might try again, though
he dared not yet encounter such effort and agony.

All this time he had never doubted that there was God; nor had he
ventured to say within himself that perhaps God was not good; he had
simply come to the conclusion that for him there was no approach to
the fountain of his being.

In the course of a fortnight or so, when his system had covered over
its craving after whisky, the irritability of the shoemaker almost
vanished. It might have been feared that his conscience would then
likewise relax its activity; but it was not so: it grew yet more
tender. He now began to give Robert some praise, and make
allowances for his faults, and Robert dared more in consequence, and
played with more spirit. I do not say that his style could have
grown fine under such a master, but at least he learned the
difference between slovenliness and accuracy, and between accuracy
and expression, which last is all of original that the best mere
performer can claim.

One evening he was scraping away at Tullochgorum when Mr. Maccleary
walked in. Robert ceased. The minister gave him one searching
glance, and sat down by the bedside. Robert would have left the
room.

'Dinna gang, Robert,' said Sandy, and Robert remained.

The clergyman talked very faithfully as far as the shoemaker was
concerned; though whether he was equally faithful towards God might
be questioned. He was one of those prudent men, who are afraid of
dealing out the truth freely lest it should fall on thorns or stony
places. Hence of course the good ground came in for a scanty share
too. Believing that a certain precise condition of mind was
necessary for its proper reception, he would endeavour to bring
about that condition first. He did not know that the truth makes
its own nest in the ready heart, and that the heart may be ready for
it before the priest can perceive the fact, seeing that the
imposition of hands confers, now-a-days at least, neither love nor
common-sense. He therefore dwelt upon the sins of the soutar,
magnifying them and making them hideous, in the idea that thus he
magnified the law, and made it honourable, while of the special
tenderness of God to the sinner he said not a word. Robert was
offended, he scarcely knew why, with the minister's mode of treating
his friend; and after Mr. Maccleary had taken a far kinder leave of
them than God could approve, if he resembled his representation,
Robert sat still, oppressed with darkness.

'It's a' true,' said the soutar; 'but, man Robert, dinna ye think
the minister was some sair upo' me?'

'I duv think it,' answered Robert.

'Something beirs 't in upo' me 'at he wadna be sae sair upo' me
himsel'. There's something i' the New Testament, some gait, 'at's
pitten 't into my heid; though, faith, I dinna ken whaur to luik for
't. Canna ye help me oot wi' 't, man?'

Robert could think of nothing but the parable of the prodigal son.
Mrs. Alexander got him the New Testament, and he read it. She sat
at the foot of the bed listening.

'There!' cried the soutar, triumphantly, 'I telled ye sae! Not ae
word aboot the puir lad's sins! It was a' a hurry an' a scurry to
get the new shune upo' 'im, an' win at the calfie an' the fiddlin'
an' the dancin'.--O Lord,' he broke out, 'I'm comin' hame as fest 's
I can; but my sins are jist like muckle bauchles (shoes down at
heel) upo' my feet and winna lat me. I expec' nae ring and nae
robe, but I wad fain hae a fiddle i' my grup when the neist prodigal
comes hame; an' gin I dinna fiddle weel, it s' no be my wyte.--Eh,
man! but that is what I ca' gude, an' a' the minister said--honest
man--'s jist blether till 't.--O Lord, I sweir gin ever I win up
again, I'll put in ilka steek (stitch) as gin the shune war for the
feet o' the prodigal himsel'. It sall be gude wark, O Lord. An'
I'll never lat taste o' whusky intil my mou'--nor smell o' whusky
intil my nose, gin sae be 'at I can help it--I sweir 't, O Lord. An'
gin I binna raised up again--'

Here his voice trembled and ceased, and silence endured for a short
minute. Then he called his wife.

'Come here, Bell. Gie me a kiss, my bonny lass. I hae been an ill
man to you.'

'Na, na, Sandy. Ye hae aye been gude to me--better nor I deserved.
Ye hae been naebody's enemy but yer ain.'

'Haud yer tongue. Ye're speykin' waur blethers nor the minister,
honest man! I tell ye I hae been a damned scoon'rel to ye. I haena
even hauden my han's aff o' ye. And eh! ye war a bonny lass whan I
merried ye. I hae blaudit (spoiled) ye a'thegither. But gin I war
up, see gin I wadna gie ye a new goon, an' that wad be something to
make ye like yersel' again. I'm affrontet wi' mysel' 'at I had been
sic a brute o' a man to ye. But ye maun forgie me noo, for I do
believe i' my hert 'at the Lord's forgien me. Gie me anither kiss,
lass. God be praised, and mony thanks to you! Ye micht hae run
awa' frae me lang or noo, an' a'body wad hae said ye did
richt.--Robert, play a spring.'

Absorbed in his own thoughts, Robert began to play The Ewie wi' the
Crookit Horn.

'Hoots! hoots!' cried Sandy angrily. 'What are ye aboot? Nae mair
o' that. I hae dune wi' that. What's i' the heid o' ye, man?'

'What'll I play than, Sandy?' asked Robert meekly.

'Play The Lan' o' the Leal, or My Nannie's awa,', or something o'
that kin'. I'll be leal to ye noo, Bell. An' we winna pree o' the
whusky nae mair, lass.'

'I canna bide the smell o' 't,' cried Bell, sobbing.

Robert struck in with The Lan' o' the Leal. When he had played it
over two or three times, he laid the fiddle in its place, and
departed--able just to see, by the light of the neglected candle,
that Bell sat on the bedside stroking the rosiny hand of her
husband, the rhinoceros-hide of which was yet delicate enough to let
the love through to his heart.

After this the soutar never called his fiddle his auld wife.

Robert walked home with his head sunk on his breast. Dooble Sanny,
the drinking, ranting, swearing soutar, was inside the wicket-gate;
and he was left outside for all his prayers, with the arrows from
the castle of Beelzebub sticking in his back. He would have another
try some day--but not yet--he dared not yet.

Henceforth Robert had more to do in reading the New Testament than
in the fiddle to the soutar, though they never parted without an air
or two. Sandy continued hopeful and generally cheerful, with
alternations which the reading generally fixed on the right side for
the night. Robert never attempted any comments, but left him to
take from the word what nourishment he could. There was no return
of strength to the helpless arm, and his constitution was gradually
yielding.

The rumour got abroad that he was a 'changed character,'--how is not
far to seek, for Mr. Maccleary fancied himself the honoured
instrument of his conversion, whereas paralysis and the New
Testament were the chief agents, and even the violin had more share
in it than the minister. For the spirit of God lies all about the
spirit of man like a mighty sea, ready to rush in at the smallest
chink in the walls that shut him out from his own--walls which even
the tone of a violin afloat on the wind of that spirit is sometimes
enough to rend from battlement to base, as the blast of the rams'
horns rent the walls of Jericho. And now to the day of his death,
the shoemaker had need of nothing. Food, wine, and delicacies were
sent him by many who, while they considered him outside of the
kingdom, would have troubled themselves in no way about him. What
with visits of condolence and flattery, inquiries into his
experience, and long prayers by his bedside, they now did their best
to send him back among the swine. The soutar's humour, however,
aided by his violin, was a strong antidote against these evil
influences.

'I doobt I'm gaein' to dee, Robert,' he said at length one evening
as the lad sat by his bedside.

'Weel, that winna do ye nae ill,' answered Robert, adding with just
a touch of bitterness--'ye needna care aboot that.'

'I do not care aboot the deein' o' 't. But I jist want to live lang
eneuch to lat the Lord ken 'at I'm in doonricht earnest aboot it. I
hae nae chance o' drinkin' as lang's I'm lyin' here.'

'Never ye fash yer heid aboot that. Ye can lippen (trust) that to
him, for it's his ain business. He'll see 'at ye're a' richt.
Dinna ye think 'at he'll lat ye aff.'

'The Lord forbid,' responded the soutar earnestly. 'It maun be a'
pitten richt. It wad be dreidfu' to be latten aff. I wadna hae him
content wi' cobbler's wark.--I hae 't,' he resumed, after a few
minutes' pause; 'the Lord's easy pleased, but ill to saitisfee. I'm
sair pleased wi' your playin', Robert, but it's naething like the
richt thing yet. It does me gude to hear ye, though, for a' that.'

The very next night he found him evidently sinking fast. Robert
took the violin, and was about to play, but the soutar stretched out
his one left hand, and took it from him, laid it across his chest
and his arm over it, for a few moments, as if he were bidding it
farewell, then held it out to Robert, saying,

'Hae, Robert. She's yours.--Death's a sair divorce.--Maybe they 'll
hae an orra3 fiddle whaur I'm gaein', though. Think o' a Rothieden
soutar playin' afore his grace!'

Robert saw that his mind was wandering, and mingled the paltry
honours of earth with the grand simplicities of heaven. He began to
play The Land o' the Leal. For a little while Sandy seemed to follow
and comprehend the tones, but by slow degrees the light departed
from his face. At length his jaw fell, and with a sigh, the body
parted from Dooble Sanny, and he went to God.

His wife closed mouth and eyes without a word, laid the two arms,
equally powerless now, straight by his sides, then seating herself
on the edge of the bed, said,

'Dinna bide, Robert. It's a' ower noo. He's gang hame. Gin I war
only wi' 'im wharever he is!'

She burst into tears, but dried her eyes a moment after, and seeing
that Robert still lingered, said,

'Gang, Robert, an' sen' Mistress Downie to me. Dinna greit--there's
a gude lad; but tak yer fiddle an' gang. Ye can be no more use.'

Robert obeyed. With his violin in his hand, he went home; and, with
his violin still in his hand, walked into his grandmother's parlour.

'Hoo daur ye bring sic a thing into my hoose?' she said, roused by
the apparent defiance of her grandson. 'Hoo daur ye, efter what's
come an' gane?'

''Cause Dooble Sanny's come and gane, grannie, and left naething but
this ahint him. And this ane's mine, whase ever the ither micht be.
His wife's left wi'oot a plack, an' I s' warran' the gude fowk o'
Rothieden winna mak sae muckle o' her noo 'at her man's awa'; for
she never was sic a randy as he was, an' the triumph o' grace in her
's but sma', therefore. Sae I maun mak the best 'at I can o' the
fiddle for her. An' ye maunna touch this ane, grannie; for though
ye way think it richt to burn fiddles, ither fowk disna; and this
has to do wi' ither fowk, grannie; it's no atween you an' me, ye
ken,' Robert went on, fearful lest she might consider herself
divinely commissioned to extirpate the whole race of stringed
instruments,--'for I maun sell 't for her.'

'Tak it oot o' my sicht,' said Mrs. Falconer, and said no more.

He carried the instrument up to his room, laid it on his bed, locked
his door, put the key in his pocket, and descended to the parlour.

'He's deid, is he?' said his grandmother, as he re-entered.

'Ay is he, grannie,' answered Robert. 'He deid a repentant man.'

'An' a believin'?' asked Mrs. Falconer.

'Weel, grannie, I canna say 'at he believed a' thing 'at ever was,
for a body michtna ken a' thing.'

'Toots, laddie! Was 't savin' faith?'

'I dinna richtly ken what ye mean by that; but I'm thinkin' it was
muckle the same kin' o' faith 'at the prodigal had; for they baith
rase an' gaed hame.'

''Deed, maybe ye're richt, laddie,' returned Mrs. Falconer, after a
moment's thought. 'We'll houp the best.'

All the remainder of the evening she sat motionless, with her eyes
fixed on the rug before her, thinking, no doubt, of the repentance
and salvation of the fiddler, and what hope there might yet be for
her own lost son.

The next day being Saturday, Robert set out for Bodyfauld, taking
the violin with him. He went alone, for he was in no mood for
Shargar's company. It was a fine spring day, the woods were
budding, and the fragrance of the larches floated across his way.
There was a lovely sadness in the sky, and in the motions of the
air, and in the scent of the earth--as if they all knew that fine
things were at hand which never could be so beautiful as those that
had gone away. And Robert wondered how it was that everything
should look so different. Even Bodyfauld seemed to have lost its
enchantment, though his friends were as kind as ever. Mr. Lammie
went into a rage at the story of the lost violin, and Miss Lammie
cried from sympathy with Robert's distress at the fate of his bonny
leddy. Then he came to the occasion of his visit, which was to beg
Mr. Lammie, when next he went to Aberdeen, to take the soutar's
fiddle, and get what he could for it, to help his widow.

'Poor Sanny!' said Robert, 'it never cam' intil 's heid to sell her,
nae mair nor gin she had been the auld wife 'at he ca'd her.'

Mr. Lammie undertook the commission; and the next time he saw
Robert, handed him ten pounds as the result of the negotiation. It
was all Robert could do, however, to get the poor woman to take the
money. She looked at it with repugnance, almost as if it had been
the price of blood. But Robert having succeeded in overcoming her
scruples, she did take it, and therewith provide a store of
sweeties, and reels of cotton, and tobacco, for sale in Sanny's
workshop. She certainly did not make money by her merchandise, for
her anxiety to be honest rose to the absurd; but she contrived to
live without being reduced to prey upon her own gingerbread and
rock.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ABERDEEN GARRET.

Miss St. John had long since returned from her visit, but having
heard how much Robert was taken up with his dying friend, she judged
it better to leave her intended proposal of renewing her lessons
alone for the present. Meeting him, however, soon after Alexander's
death, she introduced the subject, and Robert was enraptured at the
prospect of the re-opening of the gates of his paradise. If he did
not inform his grandmother of the fact, neither did he attempt to
conceal it; but she took no notice, thinking probably that the whole
affair would be effectually disposed of by his departure. Till that
period arrived, he had a lesson almost every evening, and Miss St.
John was surprised to find how the boy had grown since the door was
built up. Robert's gratitude grew into a kind of worship.

The evening before his departure for Bodyfauld--whence his
grandmother had arranged that he should start for Aberdeen, in order
that he might have the company of Mr. Lammie, whom business drew
thither about the same time--as he was having his last lesson, Mrs.
Forsyth left the room. Thereupon Robert, who had been dejected all
day at the thought of the separation from Miss St. John, found his
heart beating so violently that he could hardly breathe. Probably
she saw his emotion, for she put her hand on the keys, as if to
cover it by showing him how some movement was to be better effected.
He seized her hand and lifted it to his lips. But when he found
that instead of snatching it away, she yielded it, nay gently
pressed it to his face, he burst into tears, and dropped on his
knees, as if before a goddess.

'Hush, Robert! Don't be foolish,' she said, quietly and tenderly.
'Here is my aunt coming.'

The same moment he was at the piano again, playing My Bonny Lady
Ann, so as to astonish Miss St. John, and himself as well. Then he
rose, bade her a hasty good-night, and hurried away.

A strange conflict arose in his mind at the prospect of leaving the
old place, on every house of whose streets, on every swell of whose
surrounding hills he left the clinging shadows of thought and
feeling. A faintly purpled mist arose, and enwrapped all the past,
changing even his grayest troubles into tales of fairyland, and his
deepest griefs into songs of a sad music. Then he thought of
Shargar, and what was to become of him after he was gone. The lad
was paler and his eyes were redder than ever, for he had been
weeping in secret. He went to his grandmother and begged that
Shargar might accompany him to Bodyfauld.

'He maun bide at hame an' min' his beuks,' she answered; 'for he
winna hae them that muckle langer. He maun be doin' something for
himsel'.'

So the next morning the boys parted--Shargar to school, and Robert
to Bodyfauld--Shargar left behind with his desolation, his sun gone
down in a west that was not even stormy, only gray and hopeless, and
Robert moving towards an east which reflected, like a faint
prophecy, the west behind him tinged with love, death, and music,
but mingled the colours with its own saffron of coming dawn.

When he reached Bodyfauld he marvelled to find that all its glory
had returned. He found Miss Lammie busy among the rich yellow pools
in her dairy, and went out into the garden, now in the height of its
summer. Great cabbage roses hung heavy-headed splendours towards
purple-black heartseases, and thin-filmed silvery pods of honesty;
tall white lilies mingled with the blossoms of currant bushes, and
at their feet the narcissi of old classic legend pressed their
warm-hearted paleness into the plebeian thicket of the many-striped
gardener's garters. It was a lovely type of a commonwealth indeed,
of the garden and kingdom of God. His whole mind was flooded with a
sense of sunny wealth. The farmer's neglected garden blossomed into
higher glory in his soul. The bloom and the richness and the use
were all there; but instead of each flower was a delicate ethereal
sense or feeling about that flower. Of these how gladly would he
have gathered a posy to offer Miss St. John! but, alas! he was no
poet; or rather he had but the half of the poet's inheritance--he
could see: he could not say. But even if he had been full of poetic
speech, he would yet have found that the half of his posy remained
ungathered, for although we have speech enough now to be 'cousin to
the deed,' as Chaucer says it must always be, we have not yet enough
speech to cousin the tenth part of our feelings. Let him who doubts
recall one of his own vain attempts to convey that which made the
oddest of dreams entrancing in loveliness--to convey that aroma of
thought, the conscious absence of which made him a fool in his own
eyes when he spoke such silly words as alone presented themselves
for the service. I can no more describe the emotion aroused in my
mind by a gray cloud parting over a gray stone, by the smell of a
sweetpea, by the sight of one of those long upright pennons of
striped grass with the homely name, than I can tell what the glory
of God is who made these things. The man whose poetry is like
nature in this, that it produces individual, incommunicable moods
and conditions of mind--a sense of elevated, tender, marvellous, and
evanescent existence, must be a poet indeed. Every dawn of such a
feeling is a light-brushed bubble rendering visible for a moment the
dark unknown sea of our being which lies beyond the lights of our
consciousness, and is the stuff and region of our eternal growth.
But think what language must become before it will tell
dreams!--before it will convey the delicate shades of fancy that
come and go in the brain of a child!--before it will let a man know
wherein one face differeth from another face in glory! I suspect,
however, that for such purposes it is rather music than articulation
that is needful--that, with a hope of these finer results, the
language must rather be turned into music than logically extended.

The next morning he awoke at early dawn, hearing the birds at his
window. He rose and went out. The air was clear and fresh as a
new-made soul. Bars of mottled cloud were bent across the eastern
quarter of the sky, which lay like a great ethereal ocean ready for
the launch of the ship of glory that was now gliding towards its
edge. Everything was waiting to conduct him across the far horizon
to the south, where lay the stored-up wonder of his coming life.
The lark sang of something greater than he could tell; the wind got
up, whispered at it, and lay down to sleep again; the sun was at
hand to bathe the world in the light and gladness alone fit to
typify the radiance of Robert's thoughts. The clouds that formed
the shore of the upper sea were already burning from saffron into
gold. A moment more and the first insupportable sting of light
would shoot from behind the edge of that low blue hill, and the
first day of his new life would be begun. He watched, and it came.
The well-spring of day, fresh and exuberant as if now first from
the holy will of the Father of Lights, gushed into the basin of the
world, and the world was more glad than tongue or pen can tell. The
supernal light alone, dawning upon the human heart, can exceed the
marvel of such a sunrise.

And shall life itself be less beautiful than one of its days? Do
not believe it, young brother. Men call the shadow, thrown upon the
universe where their own dusky souls come between it and the eternal
sun, life, and then mourn that it should be less bright than the
hopes of their childhood. Keep thou thy soul translucent, that thou
mayest never see its shadow; at least never abuse thyself with the
philosophy which calls that shadow life. Or, rather would I say,
become thou pure in heart, and thou shalt see God, whose vision
alone is life.

Just as the sun rushed across the horizon he heard the tramp of a
heavy horse in the yard, passing from the stable to the cart that
was to carry his trunk to the turnpike road, three miles off, where
the coach would pass. Then Miss Lammie came and called him to
breakfast, and there sat the farmer in his Sunday suit of black,
already busy. Robert was almost too happy to eat; yet he had not
swallowed two mouthfuls before the sun rose unheeded, the lark sang
unheeded, and the roses sparkled with the dew that bowed yet lower
their heavy heads, all unheeded. By the time they had finished, Mr.
Lammie's gig was at the door, and they mounted and followed the
cart. Not even the recurring doubt and fear that hollowness was at
the heart of it all, for that God could not mean such reinless
gladness, prevented the truth of the present joy from sinking deep
into the lad's heart. In his mind he saw a boat moored to a rock,
with no one on board, heaving on the waters of a rising tide, and
waiting to bear him out on the sea of the unknown. The picture
arose of itself: there was no paradise of the west in his
imagination, as in that of a boy of the sixteenth century, to
authorize its appearance. It rose again and again; the dew
glittered as if the light were its own; the sun shone as he had
never seen him shine before; the very mare that sped them along held
up her head and stepped out as if she felt it the finest of
mornings. Had she also a future, poor old mare? Might there not be
a paradise somewhere? and if in the furthest star instead of
next-door America, why, so much the more might the Atlantis of the
nineteenth century surpass Manoa the golden of the seventeenth!