Books: Robert Falconer

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The gig and the cart reached the road together. One of the men who
had accompanied the cart took the gig; and they were left on the
road-side with Robert's trunk and box--the latter a present from
Miss Lammie.

Their places had been secured, and the guard knew where he had to
take them up. Long before the coach appeared, the notes of his
horn, as like the colour of his red coat as the blindest of men
could imagine, came echoing from the side of the heathery, stony
hill under which they stood, so that Robert turned wondering, as if
the chariot of his desires had been coming over the top of
Drumsnaig, to carry him into a heaven where all labour was delight.
But round the corner in front came the four-in-hand red mail
instead. She pulled up gallantly; the wheelers lay on their hind
quarters, and the leaders parted theirs from the pole; the boxes
were hoisted up; Mr. Lammie climbed, and Robert scrambled to his
seat; the horn blew; the coachman spake oracularly; the horses
obeyed; and away went the gorgeous symbol of sovereignty careering
through the submissive region. Nor did Robert's delight abate
during the journey--certainly not when he saw the blue line of the
sea in the distance, a marvel and yet a fact.

Mrs. Falconer had consulted the Misses Napier, who had many
acquaintances in Aberdeen, as to a place proper for Robert, and
suitable to her means. Upon this point Miss Letty, not without a
certain touch of design, as may appear in the course of my story,
had been able to satisfy her. In a small house of two floors and a
garret, in the old town, Mr. Lammie took leave of Robert.

It was from a garret window still, but a storm-window now that
Robert looked--eastward across fields and sand-hills, to the blue
expanse of waters--not blue like southern seas, but slaty blue, like
the eyes of northmen. It was rather dreary; the sun was shining
from overhead now, casting short shadows and much heat; the dew was
gone up, and the lark had come down; he was alone; the end of his
journey was come, and was not anything very remarkable. His
landlady interrupted his gaze to know what he would have for dinner,
but he declined to use any discretion in the matter. When she left
the room he did not return to the window, but sat down upon his box.
His eye fell upon the other, a big wooden cube. Of its contents he
knew nothing. He would amuse himself by making inquisition. It was
nailed up. He borrowed a screwdriver and opened it. At the top lay
a linen bag full of oatmeal; underneath that was a thick layer of
oat-cake; underneath that two cheeses, a pound of butter, and six
pots of jam, which ought to have tasted of roses, for it came from
the old garden where the roses lived in such sweet companionship
with the currant bushes; underneath that, &c.; and underneath, &c.,
a box which strangely recalled Shargar's garret, and one of the
closets therein. With beating heart he opened it, and lo, to his
marvel, and the restoration of all the fair day, there was the
violin which Dooble Sanny had left him when he forsook her for--some
one or other of the queer instruments of Fra Angelico's angels?

In a flutter of delight he sat down on his trunk again and played
the most mournful of tunes. Two white pigeons, which had been
talking to each other in the heat on the roof, came one on each side
of the window and peeped into the room; and out between them, as he
played, Robert saw the sea, and the blue sky above it. Is it any
wonder that, instead of turning to the lying pages and contorted
sentences of the Livy which he had already unpacked from his box, he
forgot all about school, and college, and bursary, and went on
playing till his landlady brought up his dinner, which he swallowed
hastily that he might return to the spells of his enchantress!

CHAPTER V.

THE COMPETITION.

I could linger with gladness even over this part of my hero's
history. If the school work, was dry it was thorough. If that
academy had no sweetly shadowing trees; if it did stand within a
parallelogram of low stone walls, containing a roughly-gravelled
court; if all the region about suggested hot stones and sand--beyond
still was the sea and the sky; and that court, morning and
afternoon, was filled with the shouts of eager boys, kicking the
football with mad rushings to and fro, and sometimes with wounds and
faintings--fit symbol of the equally resultless ambition with which
many of them would follow the game of life in the years to come.
Shock-headed Highland colts, and rough Lowland steers as many of
them were, out of that group, out of the roughest of them, would
emerge in time a few gentlemen--not of the type of your trim,
self-contained, clerical exquisite--but large-hearted, courteous
gentlemen, for whom a man may thank God. And if the master was stern
and hard, he was true; if the pupils feared him, they yet cared to
please him; if there might be found not a few more widely-read
scholars than he, it would be hard to find a better teacher.

Robert leaned to the collar and laboured, not greatly moved by
ambition, but much by the hope of the bursary and the college life
in the near distance. Not unfrequently he would rush into the thick
of the football game, fight like a maniac for one short burst, and
then retire and look on. He oftener regarded than mingled. He
seldom joined his fellows after school hours, for his work lay both
upon his conscience and his hopes; but if he formed no very deep
friendships amongst them, at least he made no enemies, for he was
not selfish, and in virtue of the Celtic blood in him was invariably
courteous. His habits were in some things altogether irregular. He
never went out for a walk; but sometimes, looking up from his Virgil
or his Latin version, and seeing the blue expanse in the distance
breaking into white under the viewless wing of the summer wind, he
would fling down his dictionary or his pen, rush from his garret,
and fly in a straight line, like a sea-gull weary of lake and river,
down to the waste shore of the great deep. This was all that stood
for the Arabian Nights of moon-blossomed marvel; all the rest was
Aberdeen days of Latin and labour.

Slowly the hours went, and yet the dreaded, hoped-for day came
quickly. The quadrangle of the stone-crowned college grew more
awful in its silence and emptiness every time Robert passed it; and
the professors' houses looked like the sentry-boxes of the angels of
learning, soon to come forth and judge the feeble mortals who dared
present a claim to their recognition. October faded softly by, with
its keen fresh mornings, and cold memorial green-horizoned evenings,
whose stars fell like the stray blossoms of a more heavenly world,
from some ghostly wind of space that had caught them up on its awful
shoreless sweep. November came, 'chill and drear,' with its
heartless, hopeless nothingness; but as if to mock the poor
competitors, rose, after three days of Scotch mist, in a lovely
'halcyon day' of 'St. Martin's summer,' through whose long shadows
anxious young faces gathered in the quadrangle, or under the arcade,
each with his Ainsworth's Dictionary, the sole book allowed, under
his arm. But when the sacrist appeared and unlocked the public
school, and the black-gowned professors walked into the room, and
the door was left open for the candidates to follow, then indeed a
great awe fell upon the assembly, and the lads crept into their
seats as if to a trial for life before a bench of the incorruptible.
They took their places; a portion of Robertson's History of
Scotland was given them to turn into Latin; and soon there was
nothing to be heard in the assembly but the turning of the leaves of
dictionaries, and the scratching of pens constructing the first
rough copy of the Latinized theme.

It was done. Four weary hours, nearly five, one or two of which
passed like minutes, the others as if each minute had been an hour,
went by, and Robert, in a kind of desperation, after a final reading
of the Latin, gave in his paper, and left the room. When he got
home, he asked his landlady to get him some tea. Till it was ready
he would take his violin. But even the violin had grown dull, and
would not speak freely. He returned to the torture--took out his
first copy, and went over it once more. Horror of horrors! a
maxie!--that is a maximus error. Mary Queen of Scots had been left
so far behind in the beginning of the paper, that she forgot the
rights of her sex in the middle of it, and in the accusative of a
future participle passive--I do not know if more modern grammarians
have a different name for the growth--had submitted to be dum, and
her rightful dam was henceforth and for ever debarred.

He rose, rushed out of the house, down through the garden, across
two fields and a wide road, across the links, and so to the moaning
lip of the sea--for it was moaning that night. From the last
bulwark of the sandhills he dropped upon the wet sands, and there he
paced up and down--how long, God only, who was watching him,
knew--with the low limitless form of the murmuring lip lying out and
out into the sinking sky like the life that lay low and hopeless
before him, for the want at most of twenty pounds a year (that was
the highest bursary then) to lift him into a region of possible
well-being. Suddenly a strange phenomenon appeared within him. The
subject hitherto became the object to a new birth of consciousness.
He began to look at himself. 'There's a sair bit in there,' he
said, as if his own bosom had been that of another mortal. 'What's
to be dune wi' 't? I doobt it maun bide it. Weel, the crater had
better bide it quaietly, and no cry oot. Lie doon, an' hand yer
tongue. Soror tua haud meretrix est, ye brute!' He burst out
laughing, after a doubtful and ululant fashion, I dare say; but he
went home, took up his auld wife, and played 'Tullochgorum' some
fifty times over, with extemporized variations.

The next day he had to translate a passage from Tacitus; after
executing which somewhat heartlessly, he did not open a Latin book
for a whole week. The very sight of one was disgusting to him. He
wandered about the New Town, along Union Street, and up and down the
stairs that led to the lower parts, haunted the quay, watched the
vessels, learned their forms, their parts and capacities, made
friends with a certain Dutch captain whom he heard playing the
violin in his cabin, and on the whole, notwithstanding the wretched
prospect before him, contrived to spend the week with considerable
enjoyment. Nor does an occasional episode of lounging hurt a life
with any true claims to the epic form.

The day of decision at length arrived. Again the black-robed powers
assembled, and again the hoping, fearing lads--some of them not
lads, men, and mere boys--gathered to hear their fate. Name after
name was called out;--a twenty pound bursary to the first, one of
seventeen to the next, three or four of fifteen and fourteen, and so
on, for about twenty, and still no Robert Falconer. At last,
lagging wearily in the rear, he heard his name, went up listlessly,
and was awarded five pounds. He crept home, wrote to his
grandmother, and awaited her reply. It was not long in coming; for
although the carrier was generally the medium of communication, Miss
Letty had contrived to send the answer by coach. It was to the
effect that his grandmother was sorry that he had not been more
successful, but that Mr. Innes thought it would be quite worth while
to try again, and he must therefore come home for another year.

This was mortifying enough, though not so bad as it might have been.
Robert began to pack his box. But before he had finished it he
shut the lid and sat upon it. To meet Miss St. John thus disgraced,
was more than he could bear. If he remained, he had a chance of
winning prizes at the end of the session, and that would more than
repair his honour. The five pound bursars were privileged in paying
half fees; and if he could only get some teaching, he could manage.
But who would employ a bejan when a magistrand might be had for
next to nothing? Besides, who would recommend him? The thought of
Dr. Anderson flashed into his mind, and he rushed from the house
without even knowing where he lived.

CHAPTER VI.

DR. ANDERSON AGAIN.

At the Post-office he procured the desired information at once. Dr.
Anderson lived in Union Street, towards the western end of it.

Away went Robert to find the house. That was easy. What a grand
house of smooth granite and wide approach it was! The great door
was opened by a man-servant, who looked at the country boy from head
to foot.

'Is the doctor in?' asked Robert.

'Yes.'

'I wad like to see him.'

'Wha will I say wants him?'

'Say the laddie he saw at Bodyfauld.'

The man left Robert in the hall, which was spread with tiger and
leopard skins, and had a bright fire burning in a large stove.
Returning presently, he led him through noiseless swing-doors
covered with cloth into a large library. Never had Robert conceived
such luxury. What with Turkey carpet, crimson curtains,
easy-chairs, grandly-bound books and morocco-covered writing-table,
it seemed the very ideal of comfort. But Robert liked the grandeur
too much to be abashed by it.

'Sit ye doon there,' said the servant, 'and the doctor 'ill be wi'
ye in ae minute.'

He was hardly out of the room before a door opened in the middle of
the books, and the doctor appeared in a long dressing-gown. He
looked inquiringly at Robert for one moment, then made two long
strides like a pair of eager compasses, holding out his hand.

'I'm Robert Faukner,' said the boy. 'Ye'll min', maybe, doctor, 'at
ye war verra kin' to me ance, and tellt me lots o' stories--at
Bodyfauld, ye ken.'

'I'm very glad to see you, Robert,' said Dr. Anderson. 'Of course I
remember you perfectly; but my servant did not bring your name, and
I did not know but it might be the other boy--I forget his name.'

'Ye mean Shargar, sir. It's no him.'

'I can see that,' said the doctor, laughing, 'although you are
altered. You have grown quite a man! I am very glad to see you,'
he repeated, shaking hands with him again. 'When did you come to
town?'

'I hae been at the grammer school i' the auld toon for the last
three months,' said Robert.

'Three months!' exclaimed Dr. Anderson. 'And never came to see me
till now! That was too bad of you, Robert.'

'Weel, ye see, sir, I didna ken better. An' I had a heap to do, an'
a' for naething, efter a'. But gin I had kent 'at ye wad like to
see me, I wad hae likit weel to come to ye.'

'I have been away most of the summer,' said the doctor; 'but I have
been at home for the last month. You haven't had your dinner, have
you?'

'Weel, I dinna exackly ken what to say, sir. Ye see, I wasna that
sharp-set the day, sae I had jist a mou'fu' o' breid and cheese.
I'm turnin' hungry, noo, I maun confess.'

The doctor rang the bell.

'You must stop and dine with me.--Johnston,' he continued, as his
servant entered, 'tell the cook that I have a gentleman to dinner
with me to-day, and she must be liberal.'

'Guidsake, sir!' said Robert, 'dinna set the woman agen me.'

He had no intention of saying anything humorous, but Dr. Anderson
laughed heartily.

'Come into my room till dinner-time,' he said, opening the door by
which he had entered.

To Robert's astonishment, he found himself in a room bare as that of
the poorest cottage. A small square window, small as the window in
John Hewson's, looked out upon a garden neatly kept, but now 'having
no adorning but cleanliness.' The place was just the benn end of a
cottage. The walls were whitewashed, the ceiling was of bare
boards, and the floor was sprinkled with a little white sand. The
table and chairs were of common deal, white and clean, save that the
former was spotted with ink. A greater contrast to the soft, large,
richly-coloured room they had left could hardly be imagined. A few
bookshelves on the wall were filled with old books. A fire blazed
cheerily in the little grate. A bed with snow-white coverlet stood
in a recess.

'This is the nicest room in the house, Robert,' said the doctor.
'When I was a student like you--'

Robert shook his head,

'I'm nae student yet,' he said; but the doctor went on:

'I had the benn end of my father's cottage to study in, for he
treated me like a stranger-gentleman when I came home from college.
The father respected the son for whose advantage he was working
like a slave from morning till night. My heart is sometimes sore
with the gratitude I feel to him. Though he's been dead for thirty
years--would you believe it, Robert?--well, I can't talk more about
him now. I made this room as like my father's benn end as I could,
and I am happier here than anywhere in the world.'

By this time Robert was perfectly at home. Before the dinner was
ready he had not only told Dr. Anderson his present difficulty, but
his whole story as far back as he could remember. The good man
listened eagerly, gazed at the boy with more and more of interest,
which deepened till his eyes glistened as he gazed, and when a
ludicrous passage intervened, welcomed the laughter as an excuse for
wiping them. When dinner was announced, he rose without a word and
led the way to the dining-room. Robert followed, and they sat down
to a meal simple enough for such a house, but which to Robert seemed
a feast followed by a banquet. For after they had done eating--on
the doctor's part a very meagre performance--they retired to his
room again, and then Robert found the table covered with a snowy
cloth, and wine and fruits arranged upon it.

It was far into the night before he rose to go home. As he passed
through a thick rain of pin-point drops, he felt that although those
cold granite houses, with glimmering dead face, stood like rows of
sepulchres, he was in reality walking through an avenue of homes.
Wet to the skin long before he reached Mrs. Fyvie's in the auld
toon, he was notwithstanding as warm as the under side of a bird's
wing. For he had to sit down and write to his grandmother informing
her that Dr. Anderson had employed him to copy for the printers a
book of his upon the Medical Boards of India, and that as he was
going to pay him for that and other work at a rate which would
secure him ten shillings a week, it would be a pity to lose a year
for the chance of getting a bursary next winter.

The doctor did want the manuscript copied; and he knew that the only
chance of getting Mrs. Falconer's consent to Robert's receiving any
assistance from him, was to make some business arrangement of the
sort. He wrote to her the same night, and after mentioning the
unexpected pleasure of Robert's visit, not only explained the
advantage to himself of the arrangement he had proposed, but set
forth the greater advantage to Robert, inasmuch as he would thus be
able in some measure to keep a hold of him. He judged that although
Mrs. Falconer had no great opinion of his religion, she would yet
consider his influence rather on the side of good than otherwise in
the case of a boy else abandoned to his own resources.

The end of it all was that his grandmother yielded, and Robert was
straightway a Bejan, or Yellow-beak.

Three days had he been clothed in the red gown of the Aberdeen
student, and had attended the Humanity and Greek class-rooms. On
the evening of the third day he was seated at his table preparing
his Virgil for the next, when he found himself growing very weary,
and no wonder, for, except the walk of a few hundred yards to and
from the college, he had had no open air for those three days. It
was raining in a persistent November fashion, and he thought of the
sea, away through the dark and the rain, tossing uneasily. Should
he pay it a visit? He sat for a moment,

This way and that dividing the swift mind,4

when his eye fell on his violin. He had been so full of his new
position and its requirements, that he had not touched it since the
session opened. Now it was just what he wanted. He caught it up
eagerly, and began to play. The power of the music seized upon him,
and he went on playing, forgetful of everything else, till a string
broke. It was all too short for further use. Regardless of the
rain or the depth of darkness to be traversed before he could find a
music-shop, he caught up his cap, and went to rush from the house.

His door opened immediately on the top step of the stair, without
any landing. There was a door opposite, to which likewise a few
steps led immediately up. The stairs from the two doors united a
little below. So near were the doors that one might stride across
the fork. The opposite door was open, and in it stood Eric Ericson.

CHAPTER VII.

ERIC ERICSON.

Robert sprang across the dividing chasm, clasped Ericson's hand in
both of his, looked up into his face, and stood speechless. Ericson
returned the salute with a still kindness--tender and still. His
face was like a gray morning sky of summer from whose level
cloud-fields rain will fall before noon.

'So it was you,' he said, 'playing the violin so well?'

'I was doin' my best,' answered Robert. 'But eh! Mr. Ericson, I wad
hae dune better gin I had kent ye was hearkenin'.'

'You couldn't do better than your best,' returned Eric, smiling.

'Ay, but yer best micht aye grow better, ye ken,' persisted Robert.

'Come into my room,' said Ericson. 'This is Friday night, and there
is nothing but chapel to-morrow. So we'll have talk instead of
work.'

In another moment they were seated by a tiny coal fire in a room one
side of which was the slope of the roof, with a large, low skylight
in it looking seawards. The sound of the distant waves, unheard in
Robert's room, beat upon the drum of the skylight, through all the
world of mist that lay between it and them--dimly, vaguely--but ever
and again with a swell of gathered force, that made the distant
tumult doubtful no more.

'I am sorry I have nothing to offer you,' said Ericson.

'You remind me of Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate of the
temple,' returned Robert, attempting to speak English like the
Northerner, but breaking down as his heart got the better of him.
'Eh! Mr. Ericson, gin ye kent what it is to me to see the face o'
ye, ye wadna speyk like that. Jist lat me sit an' leuk at ye. I
want nae mair.'

A smile broke up the cold, sad, gray light of the young eagle-face.
Stern at once and gentle when in repose, its smile was as the
summer of some lovely land where neither the heat nor the sun shall
smite them. The youth laid his hand upon the boy's head, then
withdrew it hastily, and the smile vanished like the sun behind a
cloud. Robert saw it, and as if he had been David before Saul, rose
instinctively and said,

'I'll gang for my fiddle.--Hoots! I hae broken ane o' the strings.
We maun bide till the morn. But I want nae fiddle mysel' whan I
hear the great water oot there.'

'You're young yet, my boy, or you might hear voices in that water--!
I've lived in the sound of it all my days. When I can't rest at
night, I hear a moaning and crying in the dark, and I lie and listen
till I can't tell whether I'm a man or some God-forsaken sea in the
sunless north.'

'Sometimes I believe in naething but my fiddle,' answered Robert.

'Yes, yes. But when it comes into you, my boy! You won't hear much
music in the cry of the sea after that. As long as you've got it at
arm's length, it's all very well. It's interesting then, and you
can talk to your fiddle about it, and make poetry about it,' said
Ericson, with a smile of self-contempt. 'But as soon as the real
earnest comes that is all over. The sea-moan is the cry of a
tortured world then. Its hollow bed is the cup of the world's pain,
ever rolling from side to side and dashing over its lip. Of all
that might be, ought to be, nothing to be had!--I could get music
out of it once. Look here. I could trifle like that once.'

He half rose, then dropped on his chair. But Robert's believing
eyes justified confidence, and Ericson had never had any one to talk
to. He rose again, opened a cupboard at his side, took out some
papers, threw them on the table, and, taking his hat, walked towards
the door.

'Which of your strings is broken?' he asked.

'The third,' answered Robert.

'I will get you one,' said Ericson; and before Robert could reply he
was down the stair. Robert heard him cough, then the door shut, and
he was gone in the rain and fog.

Bewildered, unhappy, ready to fly after him, yet irresolute, Robert
almost mechanically turned over the papers upon the little deal
table. He was soon arrested by the following verses, headed

A NOONDAY MELODY.

Everything goes to its rest;
The hills are asleep in the noon;
And life is as still in its nest
As the moon when she looks on a moon
In the depths of a calm river's breast
As it steals through a midnight in June.

The streams have forgotten the sea
In the dream of their musical sound;
The sunlight is thick on the tree,
And the shadows lie warm on the ground--
So still, you may watch them and see
Every breath that awakens around.