Books: Robert Falconer

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For some time after Ericson was taken ill, he was too depressed and
miserable to ask how he was cared for. But by slow degrees it
dawned upon him that a heart deep and gracious, like that of a
woman, watched over him. True, Robert was uncouth, but his
uncouthness was that of a half-fledged angel. The heart of the man
and the heart of the boy were drawn close together. Long before
Ericson was well he loved Robert enough to be willing to be indebted
to him, and would lie pondering--not how to repay him, but how to
return his kindness.

How much Robert's ambition to stand well in the eyes of Miss St.
John contributed to his progress I can only imagine; but certainly
his ministrations to Ericson did not interfere with his Latin and
Greek. I venture to think that they advanced them, for difficulty
adds to result, as the ramming of the powder sends the bullet the
further. I have heard, indeed, that when a carrier wants to help
his horse up hill, he sets a boy on his back.

Ericson made little direct acknowledgment to Robert: his tones, his
gestures, his looks, all thanked him; but he shrunk from words, with
the maidenly shamefacedness that belongs to true feeling. He would
even assume the authoritative, and send him away to his studies, but
Robert knew how to hold his own. The relation of elder brother and
younger was already established between them. Shargar likewise took
his share in the love and the fellowship, worshipping in that he
believed.

CHAPTER X.

A FATHER AND A DAUGHTER.

The presence at the street door of which Ericson's over-acute sense
had been aware on a past evening, was that of Mr. Lindsay, walking
home with bowed back and bowed head from the college library, where
he was privileged to sit after hours as long as he pleased over
books too big to be comfortably carried home to his cottage. He had
called to inquire after Ericson, whose acquaintance he had made in
the library, and cultivated until almost any Friday evening Ericson
was to be found seated by Mr. Lindsay's parlour fire.

As he entered the room that same evening, a young girl raised
herself from a low seat by the fire to meet him. There was a faint
rosy flush on her cheek, and she held a volume in her hand as she
approached her father. They did not kiss: kisses were not a legal
tender in Scotland then: possibly there has been a depreciation in
the value of them since they were.

'I've been to ask after Mr. Ericson,' said Mr. Lindsay.

'And how is he?' asked the girl.

'Very poorly indeed,' answered her father.

'I am sorry. You'll miss him, papa.'

'Yes, my dear. Tell Jenny to bring my lamp.'

'Won't you have your tea first, papa?'

'Oh yes, if it's ready.'

'The kettle has been boiling for a long time, but I wouldn't make
the tea till you came in.'

Mr. Lindsay was an hour later than usual, but Mysie was quite
unaware of that: she had been absorbed in her book, too much
absorbed even to ring for better light than the fire afforded. When
her father went to put off his long, bifurcated greatcoat, she
returned to her seat by the fire, and forgot to make the tea. It
was a warm, snug room, full of dark, old-fashioned, spider-legged
furniture; low-pitched, with a bay-window, open like an ear to the
cries of the German Ocean at night, and like an eye during the day
to look out upon its wide expanse. This ear or eye was now
curtained with dark crimson, and the room, in the firelight, with
the young girl for a soul to it, affected one like an ancient book
in which he reads his own latest thought.

Mysie was nothing over the middle height--delicately-fashioned, at
once slender and round, with extremities neat as buds. Her
complexion was fair, and her face pale, except when a flush, like
that of a white rose, overspread it. Her cheek was lovelily curved,
and her face rather short. But at first one could see nothing for
her eyes. They were the largest eyes; and their motion reminded one
of those of Sordello in the Purgatorio:

E nel muover degli occhi onesta e tarda:

they seemed too large to move otherwise than with a slow turning
like that of the heavens. At first they looked black, but if one
ventured inquiry, which was as dangerous as to gaze from the
battlements of Elsinore, he found them a not very dark brown. In
her face, however, especially when flushed, they had all the effect
of what Milton describes as

Quel sereno fulgor d'amabil nero.

A wise observer would have been a little troubled in regarding her
mouth. The sadness of a morbid sensibility hovered about it--the
sign of an imagination wrought upon from the centre of self. Her
lips were neither thin nor compressed--they closed lightly, and were
richly curved; but there was a mobility almost tremulous about the
upper lip that gave sign of the possibility of such an oscillation
of feeling as might cause the whole fabric of her nature to rock
dangerously.

The moment her father re-entered, she started from her stool on the
rug, and proceeded to make the tea. Her father took no notice of
her neglect, but drew a chair to the table, helped himself to a
piece of oat-cake, hastily loaded it with as much butter as it could
well carry, and while eating it forgot it and everything else in the
absorption of a volume he had brought in with him from his study, in
which he was tracing out some genealogical thread of which he
fancied he had got a hold. Mysie was very active now, and lost the
expression of far-off-ness which had hitherto characterized her
countenance; till, having poured out the tea, she too plunged at
once into her novel, and, like her father, forgot everything and
everybody near her.

Mr. Lindsay was a mild, gentle man, whose face and hair seemed to
have grown gray together. He was very tall, and stooped much. He
had a mouth of much sensibility, and clear blue eyes, whose light
was rarely shed upon any one within reach except his daughter--they
were so constantly bent downwards, either on the road as he walked,
or on his book as he sat. He had been educated for the church, but
had never risen above the position of a parish school-master. He
had little or no impulse to utterance, was shy, genial, and, save in
reading, indolent. Ten years before this point of my history he had
been taken up by an active lawyer in Edinburgh, from information
accidentally supplied by Mr. Lindsay himself, as the next heir to a
property to which claim was laid by the head of a county family of
wealth. Probabilities were altogether in his favour, when he gave
up the contest upon the offer of a comfortable annuity from the
disputant. To leave his schooling and his possible estate together,
and sit down comfortably by his own fireside, with the means of
buying books, and within reach of a good old library--that of King's
College by preference--was to him the sum of all that was desirable.
The income offered him was such that he had no doubt of laying
aside enough for his only child, Mysie; but both were so ill-fitted
for saving, he from looking into the past, she from looking
into--what shall I call it? I can only think of negatives--what was
neither past, present, nor future, neither material nor eternal,
neither imaginative in any true sense, nor actual in any sense, that
up to the present hour there was nothing in the bank, and only the
money for impending needs in the house. He could not be called a
man of learning; he was only a great bookworm; for his reading lay
all in the nebulous regions of history. Old family records,
wherever he could lay hold upon them, were his favourite dishes;
old, musty books, that looked as if they knew something everybody
else had forgotten, made his eyes gleam, and his white
taper-fingered hand tremble with eagerness. With such a book in his
grasp he saw something ever beckoning him on, a dimly precious
discovery, a wonderful fact just the shape of some missing fragment
in the mosaic of one of his pictures of the past. To tell the
truth, however, his discoveries seldom rounded themselves into
pictures, though many fragments of the minutely dissected map would
find their places, whereupon he rejoiced like a mild giant refreshed
with soda-water. But I have already said more about him than his
place justifies; therefore, although I could gladly linger over the
portrait, I will leave it. He had taught his daughter next to
nothing. Being his child, he had the vague feeling that she
inherited his wisdom, and that what he knew she knew. So she sat
reading novels, generally trashy ones, while he knew no more of what
was passing in her mind than of what the Admirable Crichton might,
at the moment, be disputing with the angels.

I would not have my reader suppose that Mysie's mind was corrupted.
It was so simple and childlike, leaning to what was pure, and
looking up to what was noble, that anything directly bad in the
books she happened--for it was all haphazard--to read, glided over
her as a black cloud may glide over a landscape, leaving it sunny as
before.

I cannot therefore say, however, that she was nothing the worse. If
the darkening of the sun keep the fruits of the earth from growing,
the earth is surely the worse, though it be blackened by no deposit
of smoke. And where good things do not grow, the wild and possibly
noxious will grow more freely. There may be no harm in the yellow
tanzie--there is much beauty in the red poppy; but they are not good
for food. The result in Mysie's case would be this--not that she
would call evil good and good evil, but that she would take the
beautiful for the true and the outer shows of goodness for goodness
itself--not the worst result, but bad enough, and involving an awful
amount of suffering and possibly of defilement. He who thinks to
climb the hill of happiness thus, will find himself floundering in
the blackest bog that lies at the foot of its precipices. I say he,
not she, advisedly. All will acknowledge it of the woman: it is as
true of the man, though he may get out easier. Will he? I say,
checking myself. I doubt it much. In the world's eye, yes; but in
God's? Let the question remain unanswered.

When he had eaten his toast, and drunk his tea, apparently without
any enjoyment, Mr. Lindsay rose with his book in his hand, and
withdrew to his study.

He had not long left the room when Mysie was startled by a loud
knock at the back door, which opened on a lane, leading along the
top of the hill. But she had almost forgotten it again, when the
door of the room opened, and a gentleman entered without any
announcement--for Jenny had never heard of the custom. When she saw
him, Mysie started from her seat, and stood in visible
embarrassment. The colour went and came on her lovely face, and her
eyelids grew very heavy. She had never seen the visitor before:
whether he had ever seen her before, I cannot certainly say. She
felt herself trembling in his presence, while he advanced with
perfect composure. He was a man no longer young, but in the full
strength and show of manhood--the Baron of Rothie. Since the time
of my first description of him, he had grown a moustache, which
improved his countenance greatly, by concealing his upper lip with
its tusky curves. On a girl like Mysie, with an imagination so
cultivated, and with no opportunity of comparing its fancies with
reality, such a man would make an instant impression.

'I beg your pardon, Miss--Lindsay, I presume?--for intruding upon
you so abruptly. I expected to see your father--not one of the
graces.'

She blushed all the colour of her blood now. The baron was quite
enough like the hero of whom she had just been reading to admit of
her imagination jumbling the two. Her book fell. He lifted it and
laid it on the table. She could not speak even to thank him. Poor
Mysie was scarcely more than sixteen.

'May I wait here till your father is informed of my visit?' he
asked.

Her only answer was to drop again upon her low stool.

Now Jenny had left it to Mysie to acquaint her father with the fact
of the baron's presence; but before she had time to think of the
necessity of doing something, he had managed to draw her into
conversation. He was as great a hypocrite as ever walked the earth,
although he flattered himself that he was none, because he never
pretended to cultivate that which he despised--namely, religion.
But he was a hypocrite nevertheless; for the falser he knew
himself, the more honour he judged it to persuade women of his
truth.

It is unnecessary to record the slight, graceful, marrowless talk
into which he drew Mysie, and by which he both bewildered and
bewitched her. But at length she rose, admonished by her inborn
divinity, to seek her father. As she passed him, the baron took her
hand and kissed it. She might well tremble. Even such contact was
terrible. Why? Because there was no love in it. When the sense of
beauty which God had given him that he might worship, awoke in Lord
Rothie, he did not worship, but devoured, that he might, as he
thought, possess! The poison of asps was under those lips. His
kiss was as a kiss from the grave's mouth, for his throat was an
open sepulchre. This was all in the past, reader. Baron Rothie was
a foam-flake of the court of the Prince Regent. There are no such
men now-a-days! It is a shame to speak of such, and therefore they
are not! Decency has gone so far to abolish virtue. Would to God
that a writer could be decent and honest! St. Paul counted it a
shame to speak of some things, and yet he did speak of them--because
those to whom he spoke did them.

Lord Rothie had, in five minutes, so deeply interested Mr. Lindsay
in a question of genealogy, that he begged his lordship to call
again in a few days, when he hoped to have some result of research
to communicate.

One of the antiquarian's weaknesses, cause and result both of his
favourite pursuits, was an excessive reverence for rank. Had its
claims been founded on mediated revelation, he could not have
honoured it more. Hence when he communicated to his daughter the
name of their visitor, it was 'with bated breath and whispering
humbleness,' which deepened greatly the impression made upon her by
the presence and conversation of the baron. Mysie was in danger.

Shargar was late that evening, for he had a job that detained him.
As he handed over his money to Robert, he said,

'I saw Black Geordie the nicht again, stan'in' at a back door, an'
Jock Mitchell, upo' Reid Rorie, haudin' him.'

'Wha's Jock Mitchell?' asked Robert.

'My brither Sandy's ill-faured groom,' answered Shargar. 'Whatever
mischeef Sandy's up till, Jock comes in i' the heid or tail o' 't.'

'I wonner what he's up till noo.'

'Faith! nae guid. But I aye like waur to meet Sandy by himsel' upo'
that reekit deevil o' his. Man, it's awfu' whan Black Geordie turns
the white o' 's ee, an' the white o' 's teeth upo' ye. It's a' the
white 'at there is about 'im.'

'Wasna yer brither i' the airmy, Shargar?'

'Ow, 'deed ay. They tell me he was at Watterloo. He's a cornel, or
something like that.'

'Wha tellt ye a' that?'

'My mither whiles,' answered Shargar.

CHAPTER XI.

ROBERT'S VOW.

Ericson was recovering slowly. He could sit up in bed the greater
part of the day, and talk about getting out of it. He was able to
give Robert an occasional help with his Greek, and to listen with
pleasure to his violin. The night-watching grew less needful, and
Ericson would have dispensed with it willingly, but Robert would not
yet consent.

But Ericson had seasons of great depression, during which he could
not away with music, or listen to the words of the New Testament.
During one of these Robert had begun to read a chapter to him, in
the faint hope that he might draw some comfort from it.

'Shut the book,' he said. 'If it were the word of God to men, it
would have brought its own proof with it.'

'Are ye sure it hasna?' asked Robert.

'No,' answered Ericson. 'But why should a fellow that would give his
life--that's not much, but it's all I've got--to believe in God, not
be able? Only I confess that God in the New Testament wouldn't
satisfy me. There's no help. I must just die, and go and
see.--She'll be left without anybody. 'What does it matter? She
would not mind a word I said. And the God they talk about will just
let her take her own way. He always does.'

He had closed his eyes and forgotten that Robert heard him. He
opened them now, and fixed them on him with an expression that
seemed to ask, 'Have I been saying anything I ought not?'

Robert knelt by the bedside, and said, slowly, with strongly
repressed emotion,

'Mr. Ericson, I sweir by God, gin there be ane, that gin ye dee,
I'll tak up what ye lea' ahin' ye. Gin there be onybody ye want
luikit efter, I'll luik efter her. I'll do what I can for her to
the best o' my abeelity, sae help me God--aye savin' what I maun do
for my ain father, gin he be in life, to fess (bring) him back to
the richt gait, gin there be a richt gait. Sae ye can think aboot
whether there's onything ye wad like to lippen till me.'

A something grew in Ericson's eyes as Robert spoke. Before he had
finished, they beamed on the boy.

'I think there must be a God somewhere after all,' he said, half
soliloquizing. 'I should be sorry you hadn't a God, Robert. Why
should I wish it for your sake? How could I want one for myself if
there never was one? If a God had nothing to do with my making, why
should I feel that nobody but God can set things right? Ah! but he
must be such a God as I could imagine--altogether, absolutely true
and good. If we came out of nothing, we could not invent the idea
of a God--could we, Robert? Nothing would be our God. If we come
from God, nothing is more natural, nothing so natural, as to want
him, and when we haven't got him, to try to find him.--What if he
should be in us after all, and working in us this way? just this
very way of crying out after him?'

'Mr. Ericson,' cried Robert, 'dinna say ony mair 'at ye dinna
believe in God. Ye duv believe in 'im--mair, I'm thinkin', nor
onybody 'at I ken, 'cep', maybe, my grannie--only hers is a some
queer kin' o' a God to believe in. I dinna think I cud ever manage
to believe in him mysel'.'

Ericson sighed and was silent. Robert remained kneeling by his
bedside, happier, clearer-headed, and more hopeful than he had ever
been. What if all was right at the heart of things--right, even as
a man, if he could understand, would say was right; right, so that a
man who understood in part could believe it to be ten times more
right than he did understand! Vaguely, dimly, yet joyfully, Robert
saw something like this in the possibility of things. His heart was
full, and the tears filled his eyes. Ericson spoke again.

'I have felt like that often for a few moments,' he said; 'but
always something would come and blow it away. I remember one spring
morning--but if you will bring me that bundle of papers, I will show
you what, if I can find it, will let you understand--'

Robert rose, went to the cupboard, and brought the pile of loose
leaves. Ericson turned them over, and, Robert was glad to see, now
and then sorted them a little. At length he drew out a sheet,
carelessly written, carelessly corrected, and hard to read.

'It is not finished, or likely to be,' he said, as he put the paper
in Robert's hand.

'Won't you read it to me yourself, Mr. Ericson?' suggested Robert.

'I would sooner put it in the fire,' he answered--'it's fate,
anyhow. I don't know why I haven't burnt them all long ago.
Rubbish, and diseased rubbish! Read it yourself, or leave it.'

Eagerly Robert took it, and read. The following was the best he
could make of it:

Oh that a wind would call
>From the depths of the leafless wood!
Oh that a voice would fall
On the ear of my solitude!
Far away is the sea,
With its sound and its spirit-tone:
Over it white clouds flee,
But I am alone, alone.

Straight and steady and tall
The trees stand on their feet;
Fast by the old stone wall
The moss grows green and sweet;
But my heart is full of fears,
For the sun shines far away;
And they look in my face through tears,
And the light of a dying day.

My heart was glad last night,
As I pressed it with my palm;
Its throb was airy and light
As it sang some spirit-psalm;
But it died away in my breast
As I wandered forth to-day--
As a bird sat dead on its nest,
While others sang on the spray.

O weary heart of mine,
Is there ever a truth for thee?
Will ever a sun outshine
But the sun that shines on me?
Away, away through the air
The clouds and the leaves are blown;
And my heart hath need of prayer,
For it sitteth alone, alone.

And Robert looked with sad reverence at Ericson,--nor ever thought
that there was one who, in the face of the fact, and in recognition
of it, had dared say, 'Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground
without your Father.' The sparrow does fall--but he who sees it is
yet the Father.

And we know only the fall, and not the sparrow.

CHAPTER XII.

THE GRANITE CHURCH.

The next day was Sunday. Robert sat, after breakfast, by his
friend's bed.

'You haven't been to church for a long time, Robert: wouldn't you
like to go to-day?' said Ericson.

'I dinna want to lea' you, Mr. Ericson; I can bide wi' ye a' day the
day, an' that's better nor goin' to a' the kirks in Aberdeen.'

'I should like you to go to-day, though; and see if, after all,
there may not be a message for us. If the church be the house of
God, as they call it, there should be, now and then at least, some
sign of a pillar of fire about it, some indication of the presence
of God whose house it is. I wish you would go and see. I haven't
been to church for a long time, except to the college-chapel, and I
never saw anything more than a fog there.'

'Michtna the fog be the torn-edge like, o' the cloody pillar?'
suggested Robert.

'Very likely,' assented Ericson; 'for, whatever truth there may be
in Christianity, I'm pretty sure the mass of our clergy have never
got beyond Judaism. They hang on about the skirts of that cloud for
ever.'

'Ye see, they think as lang 's they see the fog, they hae a grup o'
something. But they canna get a grup o' the glory that excelleth,
for it's not to luik at, but to lat ye see a' thing.'

Ericson regarded him with some surprise. Robert hastened to be
honest.

'It's no that I ken onything aboot it, Mr. Ericson. I was only
bletherin' (talking nonsense)--rizzonin' frae the twa symbols o' the
cloud an' the fire--kennin' nothing aboot the thing itsel'. I'll
awa' to the kirk, an' see what it's like. Will I gie ye a buik
afore I gang?'

'No, thank you. I'll just lie quiet till you come back--if I can.'

Robert instructed Shargar to watch for the slightest sound from the
sick-room, and went to church.

As he approached the granite cathedral, the only one in the world, I
presume, its stern solidity, so like the country and its men, laid
hold of his imagination for the first time. No doubt the necessity
imposed by the unyielding material had its share, and that a large
one, in the character of the building: whence else that simplest of
west windows, seven lofty, narrow slits of light, parted by granite
shafts of equal width, filling the space between the corner
buttresses of the nave, and reaching from door to roof? whence else
the absence of tracery in the windows--except the severely gracious
curves into which the mullions divide?--But this cause could not
have determined those towers, so strong that they might have borne
their granite weight soaring aloft, yet content with the depth of
their foundation, and aspiring not. The whole aspect of the
building is an outcome, an absolute blossom of the northern nature.

There is but the nave of the church remaining. About 1680, more
than a century after the Reformation, the great tower fell,
destroying the choir, chancel, and transept, which have never been
rebuilt. May the reviving faith of the nation in its own history,
and God at the heart of it, lead to the restoration of this grand
old monument of the belief of their fathers. Deformed as the
interior then was with galleries, and with Gavin Dunbar's flat
ceiling, an awe fell upon Robert as he entered it. When in after
years he looked down from between the pillars of the gallery, that
creeps round the church through the thickness of the wall, like an
artery, and recalled the service of this Sunday morning, he felt
more strongly than ever that such a faith had not reared that
cathedral. The service was like the church only as a dead body is
like a man. There was no fervour in it, no aspiration. The great
central tower was gone.

That morning prayers and sermon were philosophically dull, and
respectable as any after-dinner speech. Nor could it well be
otherwise: one of the favourite sayings of its minister was, that a
clergyman is nothing but a moral policeman. As such, however, he
more resembled one of Dogberry's watch. He could not even preach
hell with any vigour; for as a gentleman he recoiled from the
vulgarity of the doctrine, yielding only a few feeble words on the
subject as a sop to the Cerberus that watches over the dues of the
Bible--quite unaware that his notion of the doctrine had been drawn
from the Æneid, and not from the Bible.