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A crowd gathers in a moment in London, speeding to a fray as the
vultures to carrion. On the heels of the population of the
neighbouring mews came two policemen, and at the same moment out
came the barman to the assistance of Andrew. But Falconer was as
well known to the police as if he had a ticket-of-leave, and a good
deal better.

'Call a four-wheel cab,' he said to one of them. 'I'm all right.'

The man started at once. Falconer turned to the other.

'Tell that man in the apron,' he said, 'that I'll make him all due
reparation. But he oughtn't to be in such a hurry to meddle. He
gave me no time but to strike hard.'

'Yes, sir,' answered the policeman obediently. The crowd thought he
must be a great man amongst the detectives; but the bar-keeper vowed
he would 'summons' him for the assault.

'You may, if you like,' said Falconer. 'When I think of it, you
shall do so. You know where I live?' he said, turning to the
policeman.

'No, sir, I don't. I only know you well enough.'

'Put your hand in my coat-pocket, then, and you'll find a card-case.
The other. There! Help yourself.'

He said this with his arms round Andrew's, who had ceased to cry out
when he saw the police.

'Do you want to give this gentleman in charge, sir?'

'No. It is a little private affair of my own, this.'

'Hadn't you better let him go, sir, and we'll find him for you when
you want him?'

'No. He may give me in charge if he likes. Or if you should want
him, you will find him at my house.'

Then pinioning his prisoner still more tightly in his arms, he
leaned forward, and whispered in his ear,

'Will you go home quietly, or give me in charge? There is no other
way, Andrew Falconer.'

He ceased struggling. Through all the flush of the contest his face
grew pale. His arms dropped by his side. Robert let him go, and he
stood there without offering to move. The cab came up; the
policeman got out; Andrew stepped in of his own accord, and Robert
followed.

'You see it's all right,' he said. 'Here, give the barman a
sovereign. If he wants more, let me know. He deserved all he got,
but I was wrong. John Street.'

His father did not speak a word, or ask a question all the way home.
Evidently he thought it safer to be silent. But the drink he had
taken, though not enough to intoxicate him, was more than enough to
bring back the old longing with redoubled force. He paced about the
room the rest of the day like a wild beast in a cage, and in the
middle of the night, got up and dressed, and would have crept
through the room in which Robert lay, in the hope of getting out.
But Robert slept too anxiously for that. The captive did not make
the slightest noise, but his very presence was enough to wake his
son. He started at a bound from his couch, and his father retreated
in dismay to his chamber.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BROWN LETTER.

At length the time arrived when Robert would make a further attempt,
although with a fear and trembling to quiet which he had to seek the
higher aid. His father had recovered his attempt to rush anew upon
destruction. He was gentler and more thoughtful, and would again
sit for an hour at a time gazing into the fire. From the expression
of his countenance upon such occasions, Robert hoped that his
visions were not of the evil days, but of those of his innocence.

One evening when he was in one of these moods--he had just had his
tea, the gas was lighted, and he was sitting as I have
described--Robert began to play in the next room, hoping that the
music would sink into his heart, and do something to prepare the way
for what was to follow. Just as he had played over the Flowers of
the Forest for the third time, his housekeeper entered the room, and
receiving permission from her master, went through into Andrew's
chamber, and presented a packet, which she said, and said truly, for
she was not in the secret, had been left for him. He received it
with evident surprise, mingled with some consternation, looked at
the address, looked at the seal, laid it on the table, and gazed
again with troubled looks into the fire. He had had no
correspondence for many years. Falconer had peeped in when the
woman entered, but the moment she retired he could watch him no
longer. He went on playing a slow, lingering voluntary, such as the
wind plays, of an amber autumn evening, on the æolian harp of its
pines. He played so gently that he must hear if his father should
speak.

For what seemed hours, though it was but half-an-hour, he went on
playing. At length he heard a stifled sob. He rose, and peeped
again into the room. The gray head was bowed between the hands, and
the gaunt frame was shaken with sobs. On the table lay the
portraits of himself and his wife; and the faded brown letter, so
many years folded in silence and darkness, lay open beside them. He
had known the seal, with the bush of rushes and the Gaelic motto.
He had gently torn the paper from around it, and had read the
letter from the grave--no, from the land beyond, the land of light,
where human love is glorified. Not then did Falconer read the
sacred words of his mother; but afterwards his father put them into
his hands. I will give them as nearly as I can remember them, for
the letter is not in my possession.

'My beloved Andrew, I can hardly write, for I am at the point of
death. I love you still--love you as dearly as before you left me.
Will you ever see this? I will try to send it to you. I will
leave it behind me, that it may come into your hands when and how it
may please God. You may be an old man before you read these words,
and may have almost forgotten your young wife. Oh! if I could take
your head on my bosom where it used to lie, and without saying a
word, think all that I am thinking into your heart. Oh! my love, my
love! will you have had enough of the world and its ways by the time
this reaches you? Or will you be dead, like me, when this is found,
and the eyes of your son only, my darling little Robert, read the
words? Oh, Andrew, Andrew! my heart is bleeding, not altogether for
myself, not altogether for you, but both for you and for me. Shall
I never, never be able to let out the sea of my love that swells
till my heart is like to break with its longing after you, my own
Andrew? Shall I never, never see you again? That is the terrible
thought--the only thought almost that makes me shrink from dying.
If I should go to sleep, as some think, and not even dream about
you, as I dream and weep every night now! If I should only wake in
the crowd of the resurrection, and not know where to find you! Oh,
Andrew, I feel as if I should lose my reason when I think that you
may be on the left hand of the Judge, and I can no longer say my
love, because you do not, cannot any more love God. I will tell you
the dream I had about you last night, which I think was what makes
me write this letter. I was standing in a great crowd of people,
and I saw the empty graves about us on every side. We were waiting
for the great white throne to appear in the clouds. And as soon as
I knew that, I cried, "Andrew, Andrew!" for I could not help it.
And the people did not heed me; and I cried out and ran about
everywhere, looking for you. At last I came to a great gulf. When
I looked down into it, I could see nothing but a blue deep, like the
blue of the sky, under my feet. It was not so wide but that I could
see across it, but it was oh! so terribly deep. All at once, as I
stood trembling on the very edge, I saw you on the other side,
looking towards me, and stretching out your arms as if you wanted
me. You were old and much changed, but I knew you at once, and I
gave a cry that I thought all the universe must have heard. You
heard me. I could see that. And I was in a terrible agony to get
to you. But there was no way, for if I fell into the gulf I should
go down for ever, it was so deep. Something made me look away, and
I saw a man coming quietly along the same side of the gulf, on the
edge, towards me. And when he came nearer to me, I saw that he was
dressed in a gown down to his feet, and that his feet were bare and
had a hole in each of them. So I knew who it was, Andrew. And I
fell down and kissed his feet, and lifted up my hands, and looked
into his face--oh, such a face! And I tried to pray. But all I
could say was, "O Lord, Andrew, Andrew!" Then he smiled, and said,
"Daughter, be of good cheer. Do you want to go to him?" And I
said, "Yes, Lord." Then he said, "And so do I. Come." And he took my
hand and led me over the edge of the precipice; and I was not
afraid, and I did not sink, but walked upon the air to go to you.
But when I got to you, it was too much to bear; and when I thought
I had you in my arms at last, I awoke, crying as I never cried
before, not even when I found that you had left me to die without
you. Oh, Andrew, what if the dream should come true! But if it
should not come true! I dare not think of that, Andrew. I couldn't
be happy in heaven without you. It may be very wicked, but I do not
feel as if it were, and I can't help it if it is. But, dear
husband, come to me again. Come back, like the prodigal in the New
Testament. God will forgive you everything. Don't touch drink
again, my dear love. I know it was the drink that made you do as
you did. You could never have done it. It was the drink that drove
you to do it. You didn't know what you were doing. And then you
were ashamed, and thought I would be angry, and could not bear to
come back to me. Ah, if you were to come in at the door, as I
write, you would see whether or not I was proud to have my Andrew
again. But I would not be nice for you to look at now. You used to
think me pretty--you said beautiful--so long ago. But I am so thin
now, and my face so white, that I almost frighten myself when I look
in the glass. And before you get this I shall be all gone to dust,
either knowing nothing about you, or trying to praise God, and
always forgetting where I am in my psalm, longing so for you to
come. I am afraid I love you too much to be fit to go to heaven.
Then, perhaps, God will send me to the other place, all for love of
you, Andrew. And I do believe I should like that better. But I
don't think he will, if he is anything like the man I saw in my
dream. But I am growing so faint that I can hardly write. I never
felt like this before. But that dream has given me strength to die,
because I hope you will come too. Oh, my dear Andrew, do, do repent
and turn to God, and he will forgive you. Believe in Jesus, and he
will save you, and bring me to you across the deep place. But I
must make haste. I can hardly see. And I must not leave this
letter open for anybody but you to read after I am dead. Good-bye,
Andrew. I love you all the same. I am, my dearest Husband, your
affectionate Wife,

'H. FALCONER.'

Then followed the date. It was within a week of her death. The
letter was feebly written, every stroke seeming more feeble by the
contrasted strength of the words. When Falconer read it afterwards,
in the midst of the emotions it aroused--the strange lovely feelings
of such a bond between him and a beautiful ghost, far away somewhere
in God's universe, who had carried him in her lost body, and nursed
him at her breasts--in the midst of it all, he could not help
wondering, he told me, to find the forms and words so like what he
would have written himself. It seemed so long ago when that faded,
discoloured paper, with the gilt edges, and the pale brown ink, and
folded in the large sheet, and sealed with the curious wax, must
have been written; and here were its words so fresh, so new! not
withered like the rose-leaves that scented the paper from the
work-box where he had found it, but as fresh as if just shaken from
the rose-trees of the heart's garden. It was no wonder that Andrew
Falconer should be sitting with his head in his hands when Robert
looked in on him, for he had read this letter.

When Robert saw how he sat, he withdrew, and took his violin again,
and played all the tunes of the old country he could think of,
recalling Dooble Sandy's workshop, that he might recall the music he
had learnt there.

No one who understands the bit and bridle of the association of
ideas, as it is called in the skeleton language of mental
philosophy, wherewith the Father-God holds fast the souls of his
children--to the very last that we see of them, at least, and
doubtless to endless ages beyond--will sneer at Falconer's notion of
making God's violin a ministering spirit in the process of
conversion. There is a well-authenticated story of a convict's
having been greatly reformed for a time, by going, in one of the
colonies, into a church, where the matting along the aisle was of
the same pattern as that in the church to which he had gone when a
boy--with his mother, I suppose. It was not the matting that so far
converted him: it was not to the music of his violin that Falconer
looked for aid, but to the memories of childhood, the mysteries of
the kingdom of innocence which that could recall--those memories
which

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing.

For an hour he did not venture to go near him. When he entered the
room he found him sitting in the same place, no longer weeping, but
gazing into the fire with a sad countenance, the expression of which
showed Falconer at once that the soul had come out of its cave of
obscuration, and drawn nearer to the surface of life. He had not
seen him look so much like one 'clothed, and in his right mind,'
before. He knew well that nothing could be built upon this; that
this very emotion did but expose him the more to the besetting sin;
that in this mood he would drink, even if he knew that he would in
consequence be in danger of murdering the wife whose letter had made
him weep. But it was progress, notwithstanding. He looked up at
Robert as he entered, and then dropped his eyes again. He regarded
him perhaps as a presence doubtful whether of angel or devil, even
as the demoniacs regarded the Lord of Life who had come to set them
free. Bewildered he must have been to find himself, towards the
close of a long life of debauchery, wickedness, and the growing
pains of hell, caught in a net of old times, old feelings, old
truths.

Now Robert had carefully avoided every indication that might
disclose him to be a Scotchman even, nor was there the least sign of
suspicion in Andrew's manner. The only solution of the mystery that
could have presented itself to him was, that his friends were at the
root of it--probably his son, of whom he knew absolutely nothing.
His mother could not be alive still. Of his wife's relatives there
had never been one who would have taken any trouble about him after
her death, hardly even before it. John Lammie was the only person,
except Dr. Anderson, whose friendship he could suppose capable of
this development. The latter was the more likely person. But he
would be too much for him yet; he was not going to be treated like a
child, he said to himself, as often as the devil got uppermost.

My reader must understand that Andrew had never been a man of
resolution. He had been wilful and headstrong; and these qualities,
in children especially, are often mistaken for resolution, and
generally go under the name of strength of will. There never was a
greater mistake. The mistake, indeed, is only excusable from the
fact that extremes meet, and that this disposition is so opposite to
the other, that it looks to the careless eye most like it. He never
resisted his own impulses, or the enticements of evil companions.
Kept within certain bounds at home, after he had begun to go wrong,
by the weight of opinion, he rushed into all excesses when abroad
upon business, till at length the vessel of his fortune went to
pieces, and he was a waif on the waters of the world. But in
feeling he had never been vulgar, however much so in action. There
was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its very
feebleness. He could not sin so much against it as if it had been
strong. For many years he had fits of shame, and of grief without
repentance; for repentance is the active, the divine part--the
turning again; but taking more steadily both to strong drink and
opium, he was at the time when De Fleuri found him only the dull
ghost of Andrew Falconer walking in a dream of its lost carcass.

CHAPTER XV.

FATHER AND SON.

Once more Falconer retired, but not to take his violin. He could
play no more. Hope and love were swelling within him. He could not
rest. Was it a sign from heaven that the hour for speech had
arrived? He paced up and down the room. He kneeled and prayed for
guidance and help. Something within urged him to try the rusted
lock of his father's heart. Without any formed resolution, without
any conscious volition, he found himself again in his room. There
the old man still sat, with his back to the door, and his gaze fixed
on the fire, which had sunk low in the grate. Robert went round in
front of him, kneeled on the rug before him, and said the one word,

'Father!'

Andrew started violently, raised his hand, which trembled as with a
palsy, to his head, and stared wildly at Robert. But he did not
speak. Robert repeated the one great word. Then Andrew spoke, and
said in a trembling, hardly audible voice,

'Are you my son?--my boy Robert, sir?'

'I am. I am. Oh, father, I have longed for you by day, and dreamed
about you by night, ever since I saw that other boys had fathers,
and I had none. Years and years of my life--I hardly know how
many--have been spent in searching for you. And now I have found
you!'

The great tall man, in the prime of life and strength, laid his big
head down on the old man's knee, as if he had been a little child.
His father said nothing, but laid his hand on the head. For some
moments the two remained thus, motionless and silent. Andrew was
the first to speak. And his words were the voice of the spirit that
striveth with man.

'What am I to do, Robert?'

No other words, not even those of passionate sorrow, or overflowing
affection, could have been half so precious in the ears of Robert.
When a man once asks what he is to do, there is hope for him.
Robert answered instantly,

'You must come home to your mother.'

'My mother!' Andrew exclaimed. 'You don't mean to say she's alive?'

'I heard from her yesterday--in her own hand, too,' said Robert.

'I daren't. I daren't,' murmured Andrew.

'You must, father,' returned Robert. 'It is a long way, but I will
make the journey easy for you. She knows I have found you. She is
waiting and longing for you. She has hardly thought of anything but
you ever since she lost you. She is only waiting to see you, and
then she will go home, she says. I wrote to her and said, "Grannie,
I have found your Andrew." And she wrote back to me and said, "God
be praised. I shall die in peace."'

A silence followed.

'Will she forgive me?' said Andrew.

'She loves you more than her own soul,' answered Robert. 'She loves
you as much as I do. She loves you as God loves you.'

'God can't love me,' said Andrews, feebly. 'He would never have left
me if he had loved me.'

'He has never left you from the very first. You would not take his
way, father, and he just let you try your own. But long before that
he had begun to get me ready to go after you. He put such love to
you in my heart, and gave me such teaching and such training, that I
have found you at last. And now I have found you, I will hold you.
You cannot escape--you will not want to escape any more, father?'

Andrew made no reply to this appeal. It sounded like imprisonment
for life, I suppose. But thought was moving in him. After a long
pause, during which the son's heart was hungering for a word whereon
to hang a further hope, the old man spoke again, muttering as if he
were only speaking his thoughts unconsciously.

'Where's the use? There's no forgiveness for me. My mother is
going to heaven. I must go to hell. No. It's no good. Better
leave it as it is. I daren't see her. It would kill me to see
her.'

'It will kill her not to see you; and that will be one sin more on
your conscience, father.'

Andrew got up and walked about the room. And Robert only then arose
from his knees.

'And there's my mother,' he said.

Andrew did not reply; but Robert saw when he turned next towards the
light, that the sweat was standing in beads on his forehead.

'Father,' he said, going up to him.

The old man stopped in his walk, turned, and faced his son.

'Father,' repeated Robert, 'you've go to repent; and God won't let
you off; and you needn't think it. You'll have to repent some day.'

'In hell, Robert,' said Andrew, looking him full in the eyes, as he
had never looked at him before. It seemed as if even so much
acknowledgment of the truth had already made him bolder and
honester.

'Yes. Either on earth or in hell. Would it not be better on earth?'

'But it will be no use in hell,' he murmured.

In those few words lay the germ of the preference for hell of poor
souls, enfeebled by wickedness. They will not have to do anything
there--only to moan and cry and suffer for ever, they think. It is
effort, the out-going of the living will that they dread. The
sorrow, the remorse of repentance, they do not so much regard: it is
the action it involves; it is the having to turn, be different, and
do differently, that they shrink from; and they have been taught to
believe that this will not be required of them there--in that awful
refuge of the will-less. I do not say they think thus: I only say
their dim, vague, feeble feelings are such as, if they grew into
thought, would take this form. But tell them that the fire of God
without and within them will compel them to bethink themselves; that
the vision of an open door beyond the smoke and the flames will ever
urge them to call up the ice-bound will, that it may obey; that the
torturing spirit of God in them will keep their consciences awake,
not to remind them of what they ought to have done, but to tell them
what they must do now, and hell will no longer fascinate them. Tell
them that there is no refuge from the compelling Love of God, save
that Love itself--that He is in hell too, and that if they make
their bed in hell they shall not escape him, and then, perhaps, they
will have some true presentiment of the worm that dieth not and the
fire that is not quenched.

'Father, it will be of use in hell,' said Robert. 'God will give you
no rest even there. You will have to repent some day, I do
believe--if not now under the sunshine of heaven, then in the
torture of the awful world where there is no light but that of the
conscience. Would it not be better and easier to repent now, with
your wife waiting for you in heaven, and your mother waiting for you
on earth?'

Will it be credible to my reader, that Andrew interrupted his son
with the words,

'Robert, it is dreadful to hear you talk like that. Why, you don't
believe in the Bible!'

His words will be startling to one who has never heard the lips of a
hoary old sinner drivel out religion. To me they are not so
startling as the words of Christian women and bishops of the Church
of England, when they say that the doctrine of the everlasting
happiness of the righteous stands or falls with the doctrine of the
hopeless damnation of the wicked. Can it be that to such the word
is everything, the spirit nothing? No. It is only that the devil is
playing a very wicked prank, not with them, but in them: they are
pluming themselves on being selfish after a godly sort.

'I do believe the Bible, father,' returned Robert, 'and have ordered
my life by it. If I had not believed the Bible, I fear I should
never have looked for you. But I won't dispute about it. I only
say I believe that you will be compelled to repent some day, and
that now is the best time. Then, you will not only have to repent,
but to repent that you did not repent now. And I tell you, father,
that you shall go to my grandmother.'

CHAPTER XVI.

CHANGE OF SCENE.

But various reasons combined to induce Falconer to postpone yet for
a period their journey to the North. Not merely did his father
require an unremitting watchfulness, which it would be difficult to
keep up in his native place amongst old friends and acquaintances,
but his health was more broken than he had at first supposed, and
change of air and scene without excitement was most desirable. He
was anxious too that the change his mother must see in him should be
as little as possible attributable to other causes than those that
years bring with them. To this was added that his own health had
begun to suffer from the watching and anxiety he had gone through,
and for his father's sake, as well as for the labour which yet lay
before him, he would keep that as sound as he might. He wrote to
his grandmother and explained the matter. She begged him to do as
he thought best, for she was so happy that she did not care if she
should never see Andrew in this world: it was enough to die in the
hope of meeting him in the other. But she had no reason to fear
that death was at hand; for, although much more frail, she felt as
well as ever.