Books: Robert Falconer

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He kneeled and sent forth one cry after the Father, arose, and
turned towards the shelves, removed some of the bundles of letters,
and drew out his mother's little box.

There lay the miniature, still and open-eyed as he had left it.
There too lay the bit of paper, brown and dry, with the hymn and
the few words of sorrow written thereon. He looked at the portrait,
but did not open the folded paper. Then first he thought whether
there might not be something more in the box: what he had taken for
the bottom seemed to be a tray. He lifted it by two little ears of
ribbon, and there, underneath, lay a letter addressed to his father,
in the same old-fashioned handwriting as the hymn. It was sealed
with brown wax, full of spangles, impressed with a bush of
something--he could not tell whether rushes or reeds or flags. Of
course he dared not open it. His holy mother's words to his erring
father must be sacred even from the eyes of their son. But what
other or fitter messenger than himself could bear it to its
destination? It was for this that he had been guided to it.

For years he had regarded the finding of his father as the first
duty of his manhood: it was as if his mother had now given her
sanction to the quest, with this letter to carry to the husband who,
however he might have erred, was yet dear to her. He replaced it in
the box, but the box no more on the forsaken shelf with its dreary
barricade of soulless records. He carried it with him, and laid it
in the bottom of his box, which henceforth he kept carefully locked:
there lay as it were the pledge of his father's salvation, and his
mother's redemption from an eternal grief.

He turned to his equation: it had cleared itself up; he worked it
out in five minutes. Betty came to tell him that the dinner was
ready, and he went down, peaceful and hopeful, to his grandmother.

While at home he never worked in the evenings: it was bad enough to
have to do so at college. Hence nature had a chance with him again.
Blessings on the wintry blasts that broke into the first youth of
Summer! They made him feel what summer was! Blessings on the
cheerless days of rain, and even of sleet and hail, that would shove
the reluctant year back into January. The fair face of Spring, with
her tears dropping upon her quenchless smiles, peeped in suppressed
triumph from behind the growing corn and the budding sallows on the
river-bank. Nay, even when the snow came once more in defiance of
calendars, it was but a background from which the near genesis
should 'stick fiery off.'

In general he had a lonely walk after his lesson with Miss St. John
was over: there was no one at Rothieden to whom his heart and
intellect both were sufficiently drawn to make a close friendship
possible. He had companions, however: Ericson had left his papers
with him. The influence of these led him into yet closer sympathy
with Nature and all her moods; a sympathy which, even in the stony
heart of London, he not only did not lose but never ceased to feel.
Even there a breath of wind would not only breathe upon him, it
would breathe into him; and a sunset seen from the Strand was lovely
as if it had hung over rainbow seas. On his way home he would often
go into one of the shops where the neighbours congregated in the
evenings, and hold a little talk; and although, with Miss St. John
filling his heart, his friend's poems his imagination, and geometry
and algebra his intellect, great was the contrast between his own
inner mood and the words by which he kept up human relations with
his townsfolk, yet in after years he counted it one of the greatest
blessings of a lowly birth and education that he knew hearts and
feelings which to understand one must have been young amongst them.
He would not have had a chance of knowing such as these if he had
been the son of Dr. Anderson and born in Aberdeen.

CHAPTER XIX.

ROBERT MEDIATES.

One lovely evening in the first of the summer Miss St. John had
dismissed him earlier than usual, and he had wandered out for a
walk. After a round of a couple of miles, he returned by a
fir-wood, through which went a pathway. He had heard Mary St. John
say that she was going to see the wife of a labourer who lived at
the end of this path. In the heart of the trees it was growing very
dusky; but when he came to a spot where they stood away from each
other a little space, and the blue sky looked in from above with one
cloud floating in it from which the rose of the sunset was fading,
he seated himself on a little mound of moss that had gathered over
an ancient stump by the footpath, and drew out his friend's papers.
Absorbed in his reading, he was not aware of an approach till the
rustle of silk startled him. He lifted up his eyes, and saw Miss
St. John a few yards from him on the pathway. He rose.

'It's almost too dark to read now, isn't it, Robert?' she said.

'Ah!' said. Robert, 'I know this writing so well that I could read
it by moonlight. I wish I might read some of it to you. You would
like it.'

'May I ask whose it is, then? Poetry, too!'

'It's Mr. Ericson's. But I'm feared he wouldna like me to read it
to anybody but myself. And yet--'

'I don't think he would mind me,' returned Miss St. John. 'I do know
him a little. It is not as if I were quite a stranger, you know.
Did he tell you not?'

'No. But then he never thought of such a thing. I don't know if
it's fair, for they are carelessly written, and there are words and
lines here and there that I am sure he would alter if he cared for
them ae hair.'

'Then if he doesn't care for them, he won't mind my hearing them.
There!' she said, seating herself on the stump. 'You sit down on
the grass and read me--one at least.'

'You'll remember they were never intended to be read?' urged Robert,
not knowing what he was doing, and so fulfilling his destiny.

'I will be as jealous of his honour as ever you can wish,' answered
Miss St. John gaily.

Robert laid himself on the grass at her feet, and read:--

MY TWO GENIUSES.

One is a slow and melancholy maid:
I know not if she cometh from the skies,
Or from the sleepy gulfs, but she will rise
Often before me in the twilight shade
Holding a bunch of poppies, and a blade
Of springing wheat: prostrate my body lies
Before her on the turf, the while she ties
A fillet of the weed about my head;
And in the gaps of sleep I seem to hear
A gentle rustle like the stir of corn,
And words like odours thronging to my ear:
'Lie still, beloved, still until the morn;
Lie still with me upon this rolling sphere,
Still till the judgment--thou art faint and worn.'

The other meets me in the public throng:
Her hair streams backward from her loose attire;
She hath a trumpet and an eye of fire;
She points me downward steadily and long--
'There is thy grave--arise, my son, be strong!
Hands are upon thy crown; awake, aspire
To immortality; heed not the lyre
Of the enchantress, nor her poppy-song;
But in the stillness of the summer calm,
Tremble for what is godlike in thy being.
Listen awhile, and thou shalt hear the psalm
Of victory sung by creatures past thy seeing;
And from far battle-fields there comes the neighing
Of dreadful onset, though the air is balm.'

Maid with the poppies, must I let thee go?
Alas! I may not; thou art likewise dear;
I am but human, and thou hast a tear,
When she hath nought but splendour, and the glow
Of a wild energy that mocks the flow
Of the poor sympathies which keep us here.
Lay past thy poppies, and come twice as near,
And I will teach thee, and thou too shalt grow;
And thou shalt walk with me in open day
Through the rough thoroughfares with quiet grace;
And the wild-visaged maid shall lead the way,
Timing her footsteps to a gentler pace,
As her great orbs turn ever on thy face,
Drinking in draughts of loving help alway.

Miss St. John did not speak.

'War ye able to follow him?' asked Robert.

'Quite, I assure you,' she answered, with a tremulousness in her
voice which delighted Robert as evidence of his friend's success.

'But they're nae a' so easy to follow, I can tell ye, mem. Just
hearken to this,' he said, with some excitement.

When the storm was proudest,
And the wind was loudest,
I heard the hollow caverns drinking down below;
When the stars were bright,
And the ground was white,
I heard the grasses springing underneath the snow.

Many voices spake--
The river to the lake,
The iron-ribbed sky was talking to the sea;
And every starry spark
Made music with the dark,
And said how bright and beautiful everything must be.

'That line, mem,' remarked Robert, ''s only jist scrattit in, as gin
he had no intention o' leavin' 't, an' only set it there to keep
room for anither. But we'll jist gang on wi' the lave o' 't. I
ouchtna to hae interruppit it.'

When the sun was setting,
All the clouds were getting
Beautiful and silvery in the rising moon;
Beneath the leafless trees
Wrangling in the breeze,
I could hardly see them for the leaves of June.

When the day had ended,
And the night descended,
I heard the sound of streams that I heard not through the day
And every peak afar,
Was ready for a star,
And they climbed and rolled around until the morning gray.

Then slumber soft and holy
Came down upon me slowly;
And I went I know not whither, and I lived I know not how;
My glory had been banished,
For when I woke it vanished,
But I waited on it's coming, and I am waiting now.

'There!' said Robert, ending, 'can ye mak onything o' that, Miss St.
John?'

'I don't say I can in words,' she answered; 'but I think I could put
it all into music.'

'But surely ye maun hae some notion o' what it's aboot afore you can
do that.'

'Yes; but I have some notion of what it's about, I think. Just lend
it to me; and by the time we have our next lesson, you will see
whether I'm not able to show you I understand it. I shall take good
care of it,' she added, with a smile, seeing Robert's reluctance to
part with it. 'It doesn't matter my having it, you know, now that
you've read it to me, I want to make you do it justice.--But it's
quite time I were going home. Besides, I really don't think you can
see to read any more.'

'Weel, it's better no to try, though I hae them maistly upo' my
tongue: I might blunder, and that wad blaud them.--Will you let me
go home with you?' he added, in pure tremulous English.

'Certainly, if you like,' she answered; and they walked towards the
town.

Robert opened the fountain of his love for Ericson, and let it gush
like a river from a hillside. He talked on and on about him, with
admiration, gratitude, devotion. And Miss St. John was glad of the
veil of the twilight over her face as she listened, for the boy's
enthusiasm trembled through her as the wind through an Æolian harp.
Poor Robert! He did not know, I say, what he was doing, and so was
fulfilling his sacred destiny.

'Bring your manuscripts when you come next,' she said, as they
walked along--gently adding, 'I admire your friend's verses very
much, and should like to hear more of them.'

'I'll be sure an' do that,' answered Robert, in delight that he had
found one to sympathize with him in his worship of Ericson, and that
one his other idol.

When they reached the town, Miss St. John, calling to mind its
natural propensity to gossip, especially on the evening of a
market-day, when the shopkeepers, their labours over, would be
standing in a speculative mood at their doors, surrounded by groups
of friends and neighbours, felt shy of showing herself on the square
with Robert, and proposed that they should part, giving as a
by-the-bye reason that she had a little shopping to do as she went
home. Too simple to suspect the real reason, but with a heart that
delighted in obedience, Robert bade her good-night at once, and took
another way.

As he passed the door of Merson the haberdasher's shop, there stood
William MacGregor, the weaver, looking at nothing and doing nothing.
We have seen something of him before: he was a remarkable compound
of good nature and bad temper. People were generally afraid of him,
because he had a biting satire at his command, amounting even to
wit, which found vent in verse--not altogether despicable even from
a literary point of view. The only person he, on his part, was
afraid of, was his own wife; for upon her, from lack of
apprehension, his keenest irony fell, as he said, like water on a
duck's back, and in respect of her he had, therefore, no weapon of
offence to strike terror withal. Her dulness was her defence. He
liked Robert. When he saw him, he wakened up, laid hold of him by
the button, and drew him in.

'Come in, lad,' he said, 'an' tak a pinch. I'm waitin' for Merson.'
As he spoke he took from his pocket his mull, made of the end of a
ram's horn, and presented it to Robert, who accepted the pledge of
friendship. While he was partaking, MacGregor drew himself with
some effort upon the counter, saying in a half-comical,
half-admonitory tone,

'Weel, and hoo's the mathematics, Robert?'

'Thrivin',' answered Robert, falling into his humour.

'Weel, that's verra weel. Duv ye min', Robert, hoo, whan ye was
aboot the age o' aucht year aul', ye cam to me ance at my shop aboot
something yer gran'mither, honest woman, wantit, an' I, by way o'
takin' my fun o' ye, said to ye, "Robert, ye hae grown desperate;
ye're a man clean; ye hae gotten the breeks on." An' says ye, "Ay,
Mr. MacGregor, I want naething noo but a watch an' a wife"?'

'I doobt I've forgotten a' aboot it, Mr. MacGregor,' answered
Robert. 'But I've made some progress, accordin' to your story, for
Dr. Anderson, afore I cam hame, gae me a watch. An' a fine crater
it is, for it aye does its best, an' sae I excuse its shortcomin's.'

'There's just ae thing, an' nae anither,' returned the manufacturer,
'that I cannot excuse in a watch. Gin a watch gangs ower fest, ye
fin' 't oot. Gin she gangs ower slow, ye fin' 't oot, an' ye can
aye calculate upo' 't correck eneuch for maitters sublunairy, as Mr.
Maccleary says. An' gin a watch stops a'thegither, ye ken it's
failin', an' ye ken whaur it sticks, an' a' 'at ye say 's "Tut, tut,
de'il hae 't for a watch!" But there's ae thing that God nor man
canna bide in a watch, an' that's whan it stan's still for a
bittock, an' syne gangs on again. Ay, ay! tic, tic, tic! wi' a fair
face and a leein' hert. It wad gar ye believe it was a' richt, and
time for anither tum'ler, whan it's twal o'clock, an' the kirkyaird
fowk thinkin' aboot risin'. Fegs, I had a watch o' my father's, an'
I regairdit it wi' a reverence mair like a human bein': the second
time it played me that pliskie, I dang oot its guts upo' the
loupin'-on-stane at the door o' the chop. But lat the watch sit:
whaur's the wife? Ye canna be a man yet wantin' the wife--by yer
ain statement.'

'The watch cam unsoucht, Mr. MacGregor, an' I'm thinkin' sae maun
the wife,' answered Robert, laughing.

'Preserve me for ane frae a wife that comes unsoucht,' returned the
weaver. 'But, my lad, there may be some wives that winna come whan
they are soucht. Preserve me frae them too!--Noo, maybe ye dinna
ken what I mean--but tak ye tent what ye're aboot. Dinna ye think
'at ilka bonnie lass 'at may like to haud a wark wi' ye 's jist
ready to mairry ye aff han' whan ye say, "Noo, my dawtie."--An' ae
word mair, Robert: Young men, especially braw lads like yersel', 's
unco ready to fa' in love wi' women fit to be their mithers. An'
sae ye see--'

He was interrupted by the entrance of a girl. She had a shawl over
her head, notwithstanding it was summer weather, and crept in
hesitatingly, as if she were not quite at one with herself as to her
coming purchase. Approaching a boy behind the counter on the
opposite side of the shop, she asked for something, and he proceeded
to serve her. Robert could not help thinking, from the one glimpse
of her face he had got through the dusk, that he had seen her
before. Suddenly the vision of an earthen floor with a pool of
brown sunlight upon it, bare feet, brown hair, and soft eyes,
mingled with a musk odour wafted from Arabian fairyland, rose before
him: it was Jessie Hewson.

'I ken that lassie,' he said, and moved to get down from the counter
on which he too had seated himself.

'Na, na,' whispered the manufacturer, laying, like the Ancient
Mariner, a brown skinny hand of restraint upon Robert's arm--'na,
na, never heed her. Ye maunna speyk to ilka lass 'at ye ken.--Poor
thing! she's been doin' something wrang, to gang slinkin' aboot i'
the gloamin' like a baukie (bat), wi' her plaid ower her heid.
Dinna fash wi' her.'

'Nonsense!' returned Robert, with indignation. 'What for shouldna I
speik till her? She's a decent lassie--a dochter o' James Hewson,
the cottar at Bodyfauld. I ken her fine.'

He said this in a whisper; but the girl seemed to hear it, for she
left the shop with a perturbation which the dimness of the late
twilight could not conceal. Robert hesitated no longer, but
followed her, heedless of the louder expostulations of MacGregor.
She was speeding away down the street, but he took longer strides
than she, and was almost up with her, when she drew her shawl closer
about her head, and increased her pace.

'Jessie!' said Robert, in a tone of expostulation. But she made no
answer. Her head sunk lower on her bosom, and she hurried yet
faster. He gave a long stride or two and laid his hand on her
shoulder. She stood still, trembling.

'Jessie, dinna ye ken me--Robert Faukner? Dinna be feart at me.
What's the maitter wi' ye, 'at ye winna speik till a body? Hoo's
a' the fowk at hame?'

She burst out crying, cast one look into Robert's face, and fled.
What a change was in that face? The peach-colour was gone from her
cheek; it was pale and thin. Her eyes were hollow, with dark
shadows under them, the shadows of a sad sunset. A foreboding of
the truth arose in his heart, and the tears rushed up into his eyes.
The next moment the eidolon of Mary St. John, moving gracious and
strong, clothed in worship and the dignity which is its own defence,
appeared beside that of Jessie Hewson, her bowed head shaken with
sobs, and her weak limbs urged to ungraceful flight. As if walking
in the vision of an eternal truth, he went straight to Captain
Forsyth's door.

'I want to speak to Miss St. John, Isie,' said Robert.

'She'll be doon in a minit.'

'But isna yer mistress i' the drawin'-room?--I dinna want to see
her.'

'Ow, weel,' said the girl, who was almost fresh from the country,
'jist rin up the stair, an' chap at the door o' her room.'

With the simplicity of a child, for what a girl told him to do must
be right, Robert sped up the stair, his heart going like a
fire-engine. He had never approached Mary's room from this side,
but instinct or something else led him straight to her door. He
knocked.

'Come in,' she said, never doubting it was the maid, and Robert
entered.

She was brushing her hair by the light of a chamber candle. Robert
was seized with awe, and his limbs trembled. He could have kneeled
before her--not to beg forgiveness, he did not think of that--but to
worship, as a man may worship a woman. It is only a strong, pure
heart like Robert's that ever can feel all the inroad of the divine
mystery of womanhood. But he did not kneel. He had a duty to
perform. A flush rose in Miss St. John's face, and sank away,
leaving it pale. It was not that she thought once of her own
condition, with her hair loose on her shoulders, but, able only to
conjecture what had brought him thither, she could not but regard
Robert's presence with dismay. She stood with her ivory brush in
her right hand uplifted, and a great handful of hair in her left.
She was soon relieved, however, although what with his contemplated
intercession, the dim vision of Mary's lovely face between the
masses of her hair, and the lavender odour that filled the
room--perhaps also a faint suspicion of impropriety sufficient to
give force to the rest--Robert was thrown back into the abyss of his
mother-tongue, and out of this abyss talked like a Behemoth.

'Robert!' said Mary, in a tone which, had he not been so eager after
his end, he might have interpreted as one of displeasure.

'Ye maun hearken till me, mem.--Whan I was oot at Bodyfauld,' he
began methodically, and Mary, bewildered, gave one hasty brush to
her handful of hair and again stood still: she could imagine no
connection between this meeting and their late parting--'Whan I was
was oot at Bodyfauld ae simmer, I grew acquant wi' a bonnie lassie
there, the dochter o' Jeames Hewson, an honest cottar, wi'
Shakspeare an' the Arabian Nichts upo' a skelf i' the hoose wi' 'im.
I gaed in ae day whan I wasna weel; an' she jist ministert to me,
as nane ever did but yersel', mem. An' she was that kin' an'
mither-like to the wee bit greitin' bairnie 'at she had to tak care
o' 'cause her mither was oot wi' the lave shearin'! Her face was
jist like a simmer day, an' weel I likit the luik o' the lassie!--I
met her again the nicht. Ye never saw sic a change. A white face,
an' nothing but greitin' to come oot o' her. She ran frae me as gin
I had been the de'il himsel'. An' the thocht o' you, sae bonnie an'
straucht an' gran', cam ower me.'

Yielding to a masterful impulse, Robert did kneel now. As if
sinner, and not mediator, he pressed the hem of her garment to his
lips.

'Dinna be angry at me, Miss St. John,' he pleaded, 'but be mercifu'
to the lassie. Wha's to help her that can no more luik a man i' the
face, but the clear-e'ed lass that wad luik the sun himsel' oot o'
the lift gin he daured to say a word against her. It's ae woman
that can uphaud anither. Ye ken what I mean, an' I needna say
mair.'

He rose and turned to leave the room.

Bewildered and doubtful, Miss St. John did not know what to answer,
but felt that she must make some reply.

'You haven't told me where to find the girl, or what you want me to
do with her.'

'I'll fin' oot whaur she bides,' he said, moving again towards the
door.

'But what am I to do with her, Robert?'

'That's your pairt. Ye maun fin' oot what to do wi' her. I canna
tell ye that. But gin I was you, I wad gie her a kiss to begin wi'.
She's nane o' yer brazen-faced hizzies, yon. A kiss wad be the
savin' o' her.'

'But you may be--. But I have nothing to go upon. She would resent
my interference.'

'She's past resentin' onything. She was gaein' aboot the toon like
ane o' the deid 'at hae naething to say to onybody, an' naebody
onything to say to them. Gin she gangs on like that she'll no be
alive lang.'

That night Jessie Hewson disappeared. A mile or two up the river
under a high bank, from which the main current had receded, lay an
awful, swampy place--full of reeds, except in the middle where was
one round space full of dark water and mud. Near this Jessie Hewson
was seen about an hour after Robert had thus pled for her with his
angel.

The event made a deep impression upon Robert. The last time that he
saw them, James and his wife were as cheerful as usual, and gave him
a hearty welcome. Jessie was in service, and doing well, they said.
The next time he opened the door of the cottage it was like the
entrance to a haunted tomb. Not a smile was in the place. James's
cheeriness was all gone. He was sitting at the table with his head
leaning on his hand. His Bible was open before him, but he was not
reading a word. His wife was moving listlessly about. They looked
just as Jessie had looked that night--as if they had died long ago,
but somehow or other could not get into their graves and be at rest.
The child Jessie had nursed with such care was toddling about,
looking rueful with loss. George had gone to America, and the whole
of that family's joy had vanished from the earth.

The subject was not resumed between Miss St. John and Robert. The
next time he saw her, he knew by her pale troubled face that she had
heard the report that filled the town; and she knew by his silence
that it had indeed reference to the same girl of whom he had spoken
to her. The music would not go right that evening. Mary was
distraite, and Robert was troubled. It was a week or two before
there came a change. When the turn did come, over his being love
rushed up like a spring-tide from the ocean of the Infinite.

He was accompanying her piano with his violin. He made blunders,
and her playing was out of heart. They stopped as by consent, and a
moment's silence followed. All at once she broke out with something
Robert had never heard before. He soon found that it was a fantasy
upon Ericson's poem. Ever through a troubled harmony ran a silver
thread of melody from far away. It was the caverns drinking from
the tempest overhead, the grasses growing under the snow, the stars
making music with the dark, the streams filling the night with the
sounds the day had quenched, the whispering call of the dreams left
behind in 'the fields of sleep,'--in a word, the central life
pulsing in aeonian peace through the outer ephemeral storms. At
length her voice took up the theme. The silvery thread became song,
and through all the opposing, supporting harmonies she led it to the
solution of a close in which the only sorrow was in the music
itself, for its very life is an 'endless ending.' She found Robert
kneeling by her side. As she turned from the instrument his head
drooped over her knee. She laid her hand on his clustering curls,
bethought herself, and left the room. Robert wandered out as in a
dream. At midnight he found himself on a solitary hill-top, seated
in the heather, with a few tiny fir-trees about him, and the sounds
of a wind, ethereal as the stars overhead, flowing through their
branches: he heard the sound of it, but it did not touch him.