Books: Robert Falconer

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Between Ericson and Robert, as the former recovered his health,
communication from the deeper strata of human need became less
frequent. Ericson had to work hard to recover something of his
leeway; Robert had to work hard that prizes might witness for him to
his grandmother and Miss St. John. To the latter especially, as I
think I have said before, he was anxious to show well, wiping out
the blot, as he considered it, of his all but failure in the matter
of a bursary. For he looked up to her as to a goddess who just came
near enough to the earth to be worshipped by him who dwelt upon it.

The end of the session came nigh. Ericson passed his examinations
with honour. Robert gained the first Greek and third Latin prize.
The evening of the last day arrived, and on the morrow the students
would be gone--some to their homes of comfort and idleness, others
to hard labour in the fields; some to steady reading, perhaps to
school again to prepare for the next session, and others to be
tutors all the summer months, and return to the wintry city as to
freedom and life. Shargar was to remain at the grammar-school.

That last evening Robert sat with Ericson in his room. It was a
cold night--the night of the last day of March. A bitter wind blew
about the house, and dropped spiky hailstones upon the skylight.
The friends were to leave on the morrow, but to leave together; for
they had already sent their boxes, one by the carrier to Rothieden,
the other by a sailing vessel to Wick, and had agreed to walk
together as far as Robert's home, where he was in hopes of inducing
his friend to remain for a few days if he found his grandmother
agreeable to the plan. Shargar was asleep on the rug for the last
time, and Robert had brought his coal-scuttle into Ericson's room to
combine their scanty remains of well-saved fuel in a common glow,
over which they now sat.

'I wonder what my grannie 'ill say to me,' said Robert.

'She'll be very glad to see you, whatever she may say,' remarked
Ericson.

'She'll say "Noo, be dooce," the minute I hae shacken hands wi'
her,' said Robert.

'Robert,' returned Ericson solemnly, 'if I had a grandmother to go
home to, she might box my ears if she liked--I wouldn't care. You
do not know what it is not to have a soul belonging to you on the
face of the earth. It is so cold and so lonely!'

'But you have a cousin, haven't you?' suggested Robert.

Ericson laughed, but good-naturedly.

'Yes,' he answered, 'a little man with a fishy smell, in a blue
tail-coat with brass buttons, and a red and black nightcap.'

'But,' Robert ventured to hint, 'he might go in a kilt and
top-boots, like Satan in my grannie's copy o' the Paradise Lost, for
onything I would care.'

'Yes, but he's just like his looks. The first thing he'll do the
next morning after I go home, will be to take me into his office, or
shop, as he calls it, and get down his books, and show me how many
barrels of herring I owe him, with the price of each. To do him
justice, he only charges me wholesale.'

'What'll he do that for?'

'To urge on me the necessity of diligence, and the choice of a
profession,' answered Ericson, with a smile of mingled sadness and
irresolution. 'He will set forth what a loss the interest of the
money is, even if I should pay the principal; and remind me that
although he has stood my friend, his duty to his own family imposes
limits. And he has at least a couple of thousand pounds in the
county bank. I don't believe he would do anything for me but for
the honour it will be to the family to have a professional man in
it. And yet my father was the making of him.'

'Tell me about your father. What was he?'

'A gentle-minded man, who thought much and said little. He farmed
the property that had been his father's own, and is now leased by my
fishy cousin afore mentioned.'

'And your mother?'

'She died just after I was born, and my father never got over it.'

'And you have no brothers or sisters?'

'No, not one. Thank God for your grandmother, and do all you can to
please her.'

A silence followed, during which Robert's heart swelled and heaved
with devotion to Ericson; for notwithstanding his openness, there
was a certain sad coldness about him that restrained Robert from
letting out all the tide of his love. The silence became painful,
and he broke it abruptly.

'What are you going to be, Mr. Ericson?'

'I wish you could tell me, Robert. What would you have me to be?
Come now.'

Robert thought for a moment.

'Weel, ye canna be a minister, Mr. Ericson, 'cause ye dinna believe
in God, ye ken,' he said simply.

'Don't say that, Robert,' Ericson returned, in a tone of pain with
which no displeasure was mingled. 'But you are right. At best I
only hope in God; I don't believe in him.'

'I'm thinkin' there canna be muckle differ atween houp an' faith,'
said Robert. 'Mony a ane 'at says they believe in God has unco
little houp o' onything frae 's han', I'm thinkin'.'

My reader may have observed a little change for the better in
Robert's speech. Dr. Anderson had urged upon him the necessity of
being able at least to speak English; and he had been trying to
modify the antique Saxon dialect they used at Rothieden with the
newer and more refined English. But even when I knew him, he would
upon occasion, especially when the subject was religion or music,
fall back into the broadest Scotch. It was as if his heart could
not issue freely by any other gate than that of his grandmother
tongue.

Fearful of having his last remark contradicted--for he had an
instinctive desire that it should lie undisturbed where he had cast
it in the field of Ericson's mind, he hurried to another question.

'What for shouldna ye be a doctor?'

'Now you'll think me a fool, Robert, if I tell you why.'

'Far be it frae me to daur think sic a word, Mr. Ericson!' said
Robert devoutly.

'Well, I'll tell you, whether or not,' returned Ericson. 'I could, I
believe, amputate a living limb with considerable coolness; but put
a knife in a dead body I could not.'

'I think I know what you mean. Then you must he a lawyer.'

'A lawyer! O Lord!' said Ericson.

'Why not?' asked Robert, in some wonderment; for he could not
imagine Ericson acting from mere popular prejudice or fancy.

'Just think of spending one's life in an atmosphere of squabbles.
It's all very well when one gets to be a judge and dispense
justice; but--well, it's not for me. I could not do the best for my
clients. And a lawyer has nothing to do with the kingdom of
heaven--only with his clients. He must be a party-man. He must
secure for one so often at the loss of the rest. My duty and my
conscience would always be at strife.'

'Then what will you be, Mr. Ericson?'

'To tell the truth, I would rather be a watchmaker than anything
else I know. I might make one watch that would go right, I suppose,
if I lived long enough. But no one would take an apprentice of my
age. So I suppose I must be a tutor, knocked about from one house
to another, patronized by ex-pupils, and smiled upon as harmless by
mammas and sisters to the end of the chapter. And then something of
a pauper's burial, I suppose. Che sara sara.'

Ericson had sunk into one of his worst moods. But when he saw
Robert looking unhappy, he changed his tone, and would be--what he
could not be--merry.

'But what's the use of talking about it?' he said. 'Get your fiddle,
man, and play The Wind that shakes the Barley.'

'No, Mr. Ericson,' answered Robert; 'I have no heart for the fiddle.
I would rather have some poetry.'

'Oh!--Poetry!' returned Ericson, in a tone of contempt--yet not very
hearty contempt.

'We're gaein' awa', Mr. Ericson,' said Robert; 'an' the Lord 'at we
ken naething aboot alane kens whether we'll ever meet again i' this
place. And sae--'

'True enough, my boy,' interrupted Ericson. 'I have no need to
trouble myself about the future. I believe that is the real secret
of it after all. I shall never want a profession or anything else.'

'What do you mean, Mr. Ericson?' asked Robert, in half-defined
terror.

'I mean, my boy, that I shall not live long. I know that--thank
God!'

'How do you know it?'

'My father died at thirty, and my mother at six-and-twenty, both of
the same disease. But that's not how I know it.'

'How do you know it then?'

Ericson returned no answer. He only said--

'Death will be better than life. One thing I don't like about it
though,' he added, 'is the coming on of unconsciousness. I cannot
bear to lose my consciousness even in sleep. It is such a terrible
thing!'

'I suppose that's ane o' the reasons that we canna be content
withoot a God,' responded Robert. 'It's dreidfu' to think even o'
fa'in' asleep withoot some ane greater an' nearer than the me
watchin' ower 't. But I'm jist sayin' ower again what I hae read in
ane o' your papers, Mr. Ericson. Jist lat me luik.'

Venturing more than he had ever yet ventured, Robert rose and went
to the cupboard where Ericson's papers lay. His friend did not
check him. On the contrary, he took the papers from his hand, and
searched for the poem indicated.

'I'm not in the way of doing this sort of thing, Robert,' he said.

'I know that,' answered Robert.

And Ericson read.

SLEEP.

Oh, is it Death that comes
To have a foretaste of the whole?
To-night the planets and the stars
Will glimmer through my window-bars,
But will not shine upon my soul.

For I shall lie as dead,
Though yet I am above the ground;
All passionless, with scarce a breath,
With hands of rest and eyes of death,
I shall be carried swiftly round.

Or if my life should break
The idle night with doubtful gleams
Through mossy arches will I go,
Through arches ruinous and low,
And chase the true and false in dreams.

Why should I fall asleep?
When I am still upon my bed,
The moon will shine, the winds will rise,
And all around and through the skies
The light clouds travel o'er my head.

O, busy, busy things!
Ye mock me with your ceaseless life;
For all the hidden springs will flow,
And all the blades of grass will grow,
When I have neither peace nor strife.

And all the long night through,
The restless streams will hurry by;
And round the lands, with endless roar,
The white waves fall upon the shore,
And bit by bit devour the dry.

Even thus, but silently,
Eternity, thy tide shall flow--
And side by side with every star
Thy long-drawn swell shall bear me far,
An idle boat with none to row.

My senses fail with sleep;
My heart beats thick; the night is noon;
And faintly through its misty folds
I hear a drowsy clock that holds
Its converse with the waning moon.

Oh, solemn mystery!
That I should be so closely bound
With neither terror nor constraint
Without a murmur of complaint,
And lose myself upon such ground!

'Rubbish!' said Ericson, as he threw down the sheets, disgusted with
his own work, which so often disappoints the writer, especially if
he is by any chance betrayed into reading it aloud.

'Dinna say that, Mr. Ericson,' returned Robert. 'Ye maunna say that.
Ye hae nae richt to lauch at honest wark, whether it be yer ain or
ony ither body's. The poem noo--'

'Don't call it a poem,' interrupted Ericson. 'It's not worthy of the
name.'

'I will ca' 't a poem,' persisted Robert; 'for it's a poem to me,
whatever it may be to you. An' hoo I ken 'at it's a poem is jist
this: it opens my een like music to something I never saw afore.'

'What is that?' asked Ericson, not sorry to be persuaded that there
might after all be some merit in the productions painfully despised
of himself.

'Jist this: it's only whan ye dinna want to fa' asleep 'at it luiks
fearsome to ye. An' maybe the fear o' death comes i' the same way:
we're feared at it 'cause we're no a'thegither ready for 't; but
whan the richt time comes, it'll be as nat'ral as fa'in' asleep whan
we're doonricht sleepy. Gin there be a God to ca' oor Father in
heaven, I'm no thinkin' that he wad to sae mony bonny tunes pit a
scraich for the hinder end. I'm thinkin', gin there be onything in
't ava--ye ken I'm no sayin', for I dinna ken--we maun jist lippen
till him to dee dacent an' bonny, an' nae sic strange awfu' fash
aboot it as some fowk wad mak a religion o' expeckin'.'

Ericson looked at Robert with admiration mingled with something akin
to merriment.

'One would think it was your grandfather holding forth, Robert,' he
said. 'How came you to think of such things at your age?'

'I'm thinkin',' answered Robert, 'ye warna muckle aulder nor mysel'
whan ye took to sic things, Mr. Ericson. But, 'deed, maybe my
luckie-daddie (grandfather) pat them i' my heid, for I had a heap
ado wi' his fiddle for a while. She's deid noo.'

Not understanding him, Ericson began to question, and out came the
story of the violins. They talked on till the last of their coals
was burnt out, and then they went to bed.

Shargar had undertaken to rouse them early, that they might set out
on their long walk with a long day before them. But Robert was
awake before Shargar. The all but soulless light of the dreary
season awoke him, and he rose and looked out. Aurora, as aged now
as her loved Tithonus, peered, gray-haired and desolate, over the
edge of the tossing sea, with hardly enough of light in her dim eyes
to show the broken crests of the waves that rushed shorewards before
the wind of her rising. Such an east wind was the right breath to
issue from such a pale mouth of hopeless revelation as that which
opened with dead lips across the troubled sea on the far horizon.
While he gazed, the east darkened; a cloud of hail rushed against
the window; and Robert retreated to his bed. But ere he had fallen
asleep, Ericson was beside him; and before he was dressed, Ericson
appeared again, with his stick in his hand. They left Shargar still
asleep, and descended the stairs, thinking to leave the house
undisturbed. But Mrs. Fyvie was watching for them, and insisted on
their taking the breakfast she had prepared. They then set out on
their journey of forty miles, with half a loaf in their pockets, and
money enough to get bread and cheese, and a bottle of the poorest
ale, at the far-parted roadside inns.

When Shargar awoke, he wept in desolation, then crept into Robert's
bed, and fell fast asleep again.

CHAPTER XVI.

A STRANGE NIGHT.

The youths had not left the city a mile behind, when a thick
snowstorm came on. It did not last long, however, and they fought
their way through it into a glimpse of sun. To Robert, healthy,
powerful, and except at rare times, hopeful, it added to the
pleasure of the journey to contend with the storm, and there was a
certain steely indifference about Ericson that carried him through.
They trudged on steadily for three hours along a good turnpike
road, with great black masses of cloud sweeping across the sky,
which now sent them a glimmer of sunlight, and now a sharp shower of
hail. The country was very dreary--a succession of undulations
rising into bleak moorlands, and hills whose heather would in autumn
flush the land with glorious purple, but which now looked black and
cheerless, as if no sunshine could ever warm them. Now and then the
moorland would sweep down to the edge of the road, diversified with
dark holes from which peats were dug, and an occasional quarry of
gray granite. At one moment endless pools would be shining in the
sunlight, and the next the hail would be dancing a mad fantastic
dance all about them: they pulled their caps over their brows, bent
their heads, and struggled on.

At length they reached their first stage, and after a meal of bread
and cheese and an offered glass of whisky, started again on their
journey. They did not talk much, for their force was spent on their
progress.

After some consultation whether to keep the road or take a certain
short cut across the moors, which would lead them into it again with
a saving of several miles, the sun shining out with a little
stronger promise than he had yet given, they resolved upon the
latter. But in the middle of the moorland the wind and the hail
came on with increased violence, and they were glad to tack from one
to another of the huge stones that lay about, and take a short
breathing time under the lee of each; so that when they recovered
the road, they had lost as many miles in time and strength as they
had saved in distance. They did not give in, however, but after
another rest and a little more refreshment, started again.

The evening was now growing dusk around them, and the fatigue of the
day was telling so severely on Ericson, that when in the twilight
they heard the blast of a horn behind them, and turning saw the two
flaming eyes of a well-known four-horse coach come fluctuating
towards them, Robert insisted on their getting up and riding the
rest of the way.

'But I can't afford it,' said Ericson.

'But I can,' said Robert.

'I don't doubt it,' returned Ericson. 'But I owe you too much
already.'

'Gin ever we win hame--I mean to the heart o' hame--ye can pay me
there.'

'There will be no need then.'

'Whaur's the need than to mak sic a wark aboot a saxpence or twa
atween this and that? I thocht ye cared for naething that time or
space or sense could grip or measure. Mr. Ericson, ye're no half
sic a philosopher as ye wad set up for.--Hillo!'

Ericson laughed a weary laugh, and as the coach stopped in obedience
to Robert's hail, he scrambled up behind.

The guard knew Robert, was pitiful over the condition of the
travellers, would have put them inside, but that there was a lady
there, and their clothes were wet, got out a great horse-rug and
wrapped Robert in it, put a spare coat of his own, about an inch
thick, upon Ericson, drew out a flask, took a pull at it, handed it
to his new passengers, and blew a vigorous blast on his long horn,
for they were approaching a desolate shed where they had to change
their weary horses for four fresh thorough-breds.

Away they went once more, careering through the gathering darkness.
It was delightful indeed to have to urge one weary leg past the
other no more, but be borne along towards food, fire, and bed. But
their adventures were not so nearly over as they imagined. Once
more the hail fell furiously--huge hailstones, each made of many,
half-melted and welded together into solid lumps of ice. The
coachman could scarcely hold his face to the shower, and the blows
they received on their faces and legs, drove the thin-skinned,
high-spirited horses nearly mad. At length they would face it no
longer. At a turn in the road, where it crossed a brook by a bridge
with a low stone wall, the wind met them right in the face with
redoubled vehemence; the leaders swerved from it, and were just
rising to jump over the parapet, when the coachman, whose hands were
nearly insensible with cold, threw his leg over the reins, and
pulled them up. One of the leaders reared, and fell backwards; one
of the wheelers kicked vigorously; a few moments, and in spite of
the guard at their heads, all was one struggling mass of bodies and
legs, with a broken pole in the midst. The few passengers got down;
and Robert, fearing that yet worse might happen and remembering the
lady, opened the door. He found her quite composed. As he helped
her out,

'What is the matter?' asked the voice dearest to him in the
world--the voice of Miss St. John.

He gave a cry of delight. Wrapped in the horse-cloth, Miss St. John
did not know him.

'What is the matter?' she repeated.

'Ow, naething, mem--naething. Only I doobt we winna get ye hame the
nicht.'

'Is it you, Robert?' she said, gladly recognizing his voice.

'Ay, it's me, and Mr. Ericson. We'll tak care o' ye, mem.'

'But surely we shall get home!'

Robert had heard the crack of the breaking pole.

''Deed, I doobt no.'

'What are we to do, then?'

'Come into the lythe (shelter) o' the bank here, oot o' the gait o'
thae brutes o' horses,' said Robert, taking off his horse-cloth and
wrapping her in it.

The storm hissed and smote all around them. She took Robert's arm.
Followed by Ericson, they left the coach and the struggling horses,
and withdrew to a bank that overhung the road. As soon as they were
out of the wind, Robert, who had made up his mind, said,

'We canna be mony yairds frae the auld hoose o' Bogbonnie. We micht
win throu the nicht there weel eneuch. I'll speir at the gaird, the
minute the horses are clear. We war 'maist ower the brig, I heard
the coachman say.'

'I know quite well where the old house is,' said Ericson. 'I went in
the last time I walked this way.'

'Was the door open?' asked Robert.

'I don't know,' answered Ericson. 'I found one of the windows open
in the basement.'

'We'll get the len' o' ane o' the lanterns, an' gang direckly. It
canna be mair nor the breedth o' a rig or twa frae the burn.'

'I can take you by the road,' said Ericson.

'It will be very cold,' said Miss St. John,--already shivering,
partly from disquietude.

'There's timmer eneuch there to haud 's warm for a twalmonth,' said
Robert.

He went back to the coach. By this time the horses were nearly
extricated. Two of them stood steaming in the lamplight, with their
sides going at twenty bellows' speed. The guard would not let him
have one of the coach lamps, but gave him a small lantern of his
own. When he returned with it, he found Ericson and Miss St. John
talking together.

Ericson led the way, and the others followed.

'Whaur are ye gaein', gentlemen?' asked the guard, as they passed
the coach.

'To the auld hoose,' answered Robert.

'Ye canna do better. I maun bide wi' the coch till the lave gang
back to Drumheid wi' the horses, on' fess anither pole. Faith,
it'll be weel into the mornin' or we win oot o' this. Tak care hoo
ye gang. There's holes i' the auld hoose, I doobt.'

'We'll tak gude care, ye may be sure, Hector,' said Robert, as they
left the bridge.

The house to which Ericson was leading them was in the midst of a
field. There was just light enough to show a huge mass standing in
the dark, without a tree or shelter of any sort. When they reached
it, all that Miss St. John could distinguish was a wide broken stair
leading up to the door, with glimpses of a large, plain, ugly,
square front. The stones of the stair sloped and hung in several
directions; but it was plain to a glance that the place was
dilapidated through extraordinary neglect, rather than by the usual
wear of time. In fact, it belonged only to the beginning of the
preceding century, somewhere in Queen Anne's time. There was a
heavy door to it, but fortunately for Miss St. John, who would not
quite have relished getting in at the window of which Ericson had
spoken, it stood a little ajar. The wind roared in the gap and
echoed in the empty hall into which they now entered. Certainly
Robert was right: there was wood enough to keep them warm; for that
hall, and every room into which they went, from top to bottom of the
huge house, was lined with pine. No paint-brush had ever passed
upon it. Neither was there a spot to be seen upon the grain of the
wood: it was clean as the day when the house was finished, only it
had grown much browner. A close gallery, with window-frames which
had never been glazed, at one story's height, leading across from
the one side of the first floor to the other, looked down into the
great echoing hall, which rose in the centre of the building to the
height of two stories; but this was unrecognizable in the poor light
of the guard's lantern. All the rooms on every floor opened each
into the other;--but why should I give such a minute description,
making my reader expect a ghost story, or at least a nocturnal
adventure? I only want him to feel something of what our party felt
as they entered this desolate building, which, though some hundred
and twenty years old, bore not a single mark upon the smooth floors
or spotless walls to indicate that article of furniture had ever
stood in it, or human being ever inhabited it. There was a strange
and unusual horror about the place--a feeling quite different from
that belonging to an ancient house, however haunted it might be. It
was like a body that had never had a human soul in it. There was no
sense of a human history about it. Miss St. John's feeling of
eeriness rose to the height when, in wandering through the many
rooms in search of one where the windows were less broken, she came
upon one spot in the floor. It was only a hole worn down through
floor after floor, from top to bottom, by the drip of the rains from
the broken roof: it looked like the disease of the desolate place,
and she shuddered.

Here they must pass the night, with the wind roaring awfully through
the echoing emptiness, and every now and then the hail clashing
against what glass remained in the windows. They found one room
with the window well boarded up, for until lately some care had been
taken of the place to keep it from the weather. There Robert left
his companions, who presently heard the sounds of tearing and
breaking below, necessity justifying him in the appropriation of
some of the wood-work for their own behoof. He tore a panel or two
from the walls, and returning with them, lighted a fire on the empty
hearth, where, from the look of the stone and mortar, certainly
never fire had blazed before. The wood was dry as a bone, and burnt
up gloriously.