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By this time Falconer had introduced me to his father. I found him
in some things very like his son; in others, very different. His
manners were more polished; his pleasure in pleasing much greater:
his humanity had blossomed too easily, and then run to seed. Alas,
to no seed that could bear fruit! There was a weak expression about
his mouth--a wavering interrogation: it was so different from the
firmly-closed portals whence issued the golden speech of his son!
He had a sly, sidelong look at times, whether of doubt or cunning,
I could not always determine. His eyes, unlike his son's, were of a
light blue, and hazy both in texture and expression. His hands were
long-fingered and tremulous. He gave your hand a sharp squeeze, and
the same instant abandoned it with indifference. I soon began to
discover in him a tendency to patronize any one who showed him a
particle of respect as distinguished from common-place civility.
But under all outward appearances it seemed to me that there was a
change going on: at least being very willing to believe it, I found
nothing to render belief impossible.

He was very fond of the flute his son had given him, and on that
sweetest and most expressionless of instruments he played
exquisitely.

One evening when I called to see them, Falconer said,

'We are going out of town for a few weeks, Gordon: will you go with
us?'

'I am afraid I can't.'

'Why? You have no teaching at present, and your writing you can do
as well in the country as in town.'

'That is true; but still I don't see how I can. I am too poor for
one thing.'

'Between you and me that is nonsense.'

'Well, I withdraw that,' I said. 'But there is so much to be done,
specially as you will be away, and Miss St John is at the Lakes.'

'That is all very true; but you need a change. I have seen for some
weeks that you are failing. Mind, it is our best work that He
wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I hope you are not of the
mind of our friend Mr. Watts, the curate of St. Gregory's.'

'I thought you had a high opinion of Mr. Watts,' I returned.

'So I have. I hope it is not necessary to agree with a man in
everything before we can have a high opinion of him.'

'Of course not. But what is it you hope I am not of his opinion
in?'

'He seems ambitious of killing himself with work--of wearing himself
out in the service of his master--and as quickly as possible. A
good deal of that kind of thing is a mere holding of the axe to the
grindstone, not a lifting of it up against thick trees. Only he
won't be convinced till it comes to the helve. I met him the other
day; he was looking as white as his surplice. I took upon me to
read him a lecture on the holiness of holidays. "I can't leave my
poor," he said. "Do you think God can't do without you?" I asked.
"Is he so weak that he cannot spare the help of a weary man? But I
think he must prefer quality to quantity, and for healthy work you
must be healthy yourself. How can you be the visible sign of the
Christ-present amongst men, if you inhabit an exhausted, irritable
brain? Go to God's infirmary and rest a while. Bring back health
from the country to those that cannot go to it. If on the way it be
transmuted into spiritual forms, so much the better. A little more
of God will make up for a good deal less of you.'

'What did he say to that?'

'He said our Lord died doing the will of his Father. I told
him--"Yes, when his time was come, not sooner. Besides, he often
avoided both speech and action." "Yes," he answered, "but he could
tell when, and we cannot." "Therefore," I rejoined, "you ought to
accept your exhaustion as a token that your absence will be the best
thing for your people. If there were no God, then perhaps you ought
to work till you drop down dead--I don't know."'

'Is he gone yet?'

'No. He won't go. I couldn't persuade him.'

'When do you go?'

'To-morrow.'

'I shall be ready, if you really mean it.'

'That's an if worthy only of a courtier. There may be much virtue
in an if, as Touchstone says, for the taking up of a quarrel; but
that if is bad enough to breed one,' said Falconer, laughing. 'Be at
the Paddington Station at noon to-morrow. To tell the whole truth,
I want you to help me with my father.'

This last was said at the door as he showed me out.

In the afternoon we were nearing Bristol. It was a lovely day in
October. Andrew had been enjoying himself; but it was evidently
rather the pleasure of travelling in a first-class carriage like a
gentleman than any delight in the beauty of heaven and earth. The
country was in the rich sombre dress of decay.

'Is it not remarkable,' said my friend to me, 'that the older I
grow, I find autumn affecting me the more like spring?'

'I am thankful to say,' interposed Andrew, with a smile in which was
mingled a shade of superiority, 'that no change of the seasons ever
affects me.'

'Are you sure you are right in being thankful for that, father?'
asked his son.

His father gazed at him for a moment, seemed to bethink himself
after some feeble fashion or other, and rejoined,

'Well, I must confess I did feel a touch of the rheumatism this
morning.'

How I pitied Falconer! Would he ever see of the travail of his soul
in this man? But he only smiled a deep sweet smile, and seemed to
be thinking divine things in that great head of his.

At Bristol we went on board a small steamer, and at night were
landed at a little village on the coast of North Devon. The hotel
to which we went was on the steep bank of a tumultuous little river,
which tumbled past its foundation of rock, like a troop of watery
horses galloping by with ever-dissolving limbs. The elder Falconer
retired almost as soon as we had had supper. My friend and I
lighted our pipes, and sat by the open window, for although the
autumn was so far advanced, the air here was very mild. For some
time we only listened to the sound of the waters.

'There are three things,' said Falconer at last, taking his pipe out
of his mouth with a smile, 'that give a peculiarly perfect feeling
of abandonment: the laughter of a child; a snake lying across a
fallen branch; and the rush of a stream like this beneath us, whose
only thought is to get to the sea.'

We did not talk much that night, however, but went soon to bed.
None of us slept well. We agreed in the morning that the noise of
the stream had been too much for us all, and that the place felt
close and torpid. Andrew complained that the ceaseless sound
wearied him, and Robert that he felt the aimless endlessness of it
more than was good for him. I confess it irritated me like an
anodyne unable to soothe. We were clearly all in want of something
different. The air between the hills clung to them, hot and
moveless. We would climb those hills, and breathe the air that
flitted about over their craggy tops.

As soon as we had breakfasted, we set out. It was soon evident that
Andrew could not ascend the steep road. We returned and got a
carriage. When we reached the top, it was like a resurrection, like
a dawning of hope out of despair. The cool friendly wind blew on
our faces, and breathed strength into our frames. Before us lay the
ocean, the visible type of the invisible, and the vessels with their
white sails moved about over it like the thoughts of men feebly
searching the unknown. Even Andrew Falconer spread out his arms to
the wind, and breathed deep, filling his great chest full.

'I feel like a boy again,' he said.

His son strode to his side, and laid his arm over his shoulders.

'So do I, father,' he returned; 'but it is because I have got you.'

The old man turned and looked at him with a tenderness I had never
seen on his face before. As soon as I saw that, I no longer doubted
that he could be saved.

We found rooms in a farm-house on the topmost height.

'These are poor little hills, Falconer,' I said. 'Yet they help one
like mountains.'

'The whole question is,' he returned, 'whether they are high enough
to lift you out of the dirt. Here we are in the airs of
heaven--that is all we need.'

'They make me think how often, amongst the country people of
Scotland, I have wondered at the clay-feet upon which a golden head
of wisdom stood! What poor needs, what humble aims, what a narrow
basement generally, was sufficient to support the statues of
pure-eyed Faith and white-handed Hope,'

'Yes,' said Falconer: 'he who is faithful over a few things is a
lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in
Westminster Abbey, or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The
faithfulness is all.'

After an early dinner we went out for a walk, but we did not go far
before we sat down upon the grass. Falconer laid himself at full
length and gazed upwards.

'When I look like this into the blue sky,' he said, after a moment's
silence, 'it seems so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious
tenderness, that I could lie for centuries, and wait for the dawning
of the face of God out of the awful loving-kindness.'

I had never heard Falconer talk of his own present feelings in this
manner; but glancing at the face of his father with a sense of his
unfitness to hear such a lofty utterance, I saw at once that it was
for his sake that he had thus spoken. The old man had thrown
himself back too, and was gazing into the sky, puzzling himself, I
could see, to comprehend what his son could mean. I fear he
concluded, for the time, that Robert was not gifted with the amount
of common-sense belonging of right to the Falconer family, and that
much religion had made him a dreamer. Still, I thought I could see
a kind of awe pass like a spiritual shadow across his face as he
gazed into the blue gulfs over him. No one can detect the first
beginnings of any life, and those of spiritual emotion must more
than any lie beyond our ken: there is infinite room for hope.
Falconer said no more. We betook ourselves early within doors, and
he read King Lear to us, expounding the spiritual history of the
poor old king after a fashion I had never conceived--showing us how
the said history was all compressed, as far as human eye could see
of it, into the few months that elapsed between his abdication and
his death; how in that short time he had to learn everything that he
ought to have been learning all his life; and how, because he had
put it off so long, the lessons that had then to be given him were
awfully severe.

I thought what a change it was for the old man to lift his head into
the air of thought and life, out of the sloughs of misery in which
he had been wallowing for years.

CHAPTER XVII.

IN THE COUNTRY.

The next morning Falconer, who knew the country, took us out for a
drive. We passed through lanes and gates out upon all open moor,
where he stopped the carriage, and led us a few yards on one side.
Suddenly, hundreds of feet below us, down what seemed an almost
precipitous descent, we saw the wood-embosomed, stream-trodden
valley we had left the day before. Enough had been cleft and
scooped seawards out of the lofty table-land to give room for a few
little conical hills with curious peaks of bare rock. At the bases
of these hills flowed noisily two or three streams, which joined in
one, and trotted out to sea over rocks and stones. The hills and
the sides of the great cleft were half of them green with grass, and
half of them robed in the autumnal foliage of thick woods. By the
streams and in the woods nestled pretty houses; and away at the
mouth of the valley and the stream lay the village. All around, on
our level, stretched farm and moorland.

When Andrew Falconer stood so unexpectedly on the verge of the steep
descent, he trembled and started back with fright. His son made him
sit down a little way off, where yet we could see into the valley.
The sun was hot, the air clear and mild, and the sea broke its blue
floor into innumerable sparkles of radiance. We sat for a while in
silence.

'Are you sure,' I said, in the hope of setting my friend talking,
'that there is no horrid pool down there? no half-trampled thicket,
with broken pottery and shreds of tin lying about? no dead carcass,
or dirty cottage, with miserable wife and greedy children? When I
was a child, I knew a lovely place that I could not half enjoy,
because, although hidden from my view, an ugly stagnation, half mud,
half water, lay in a certain spot below me. When I had to pass it,
I used to creep by with a kind of dull terror, mingled with hopeless
disgust, and I have never got over the feeling.'

'You remind me much of a friend of mine of whom I have spoken to you
before,' said Falconer, 'Eric Ericson. I have shown you many of his
verses, but I don't think I ever showed you one little poem
containing an expression of the same feeling. I think I can repeat
it.

'Some men there are who cannot spare
A single tear until they feel
The last cold pressure, and the heel
Is stamped upon the outmost layer.

And, waking, some will sigh to think
The clouds have borrowed winter's wing--
Sad winter when the grasses spring
No more about the fountain's brink.

And some would call me coward-fool:
I lay a claim to better blood;
But yet a heap of idle mud
Hath power to make me sorrowful.

I sat thinking over the verses, for I found the feeling a little
difficult to follow, although the last stanza was plain enough.
Falconer resumed.

'I think this is as likely as any place,' he said, 'to be free of
such physical blots. For the moral I cannot say. But I have
learned, I hope, not to be too fastidious--I mean so as to be unjust
to the whole because of the part. The impression made by a whole is
just as true as the result of an analysis, and is greater and more
valuable in every respect. If we rejoice in the beauty of the
whole, the other is sufficiently forgotten. For moral ugliness, it
ceases to distress in proportion as we labour to remove it, and
regard it in its true relations to all that surrounds it. There is
an old legend which I dare say you know. The Saviour and his
disciples were walking along the way, when they came upon a dead
dog. The disciples did not conceal their disgust. The Saviour
said: "How white its teeth are!"'

'That is very beautiful,' I rejoined. 'Thank God for that. It is
true, whether invented or not. But,' I added, 'it does not quite
answer to the question about which we have been talking. The Lord
got rid of the pain of the ugliness by finding the beautiful in it.'

'It does correspond, however, I think, in principle,' returned
Falconer; 'only it goes much farther, making the exceptional beauty
hallow the general ugliness--which is the true way, for beauty is
life, and therefore infinitely deeper and more powerful than
ugliness which is death. "A dram of sweet," says Spenser, 'is worth
a pound of sour."'

It was so delightful to hear him talk--for what he said was not only
far finer than my record of it, but the whole man spoke as well as
his mouth--that I sought to start him again.

'I wish,' I said, 'that I could see things as you do--in great
masses of harmonious unity. I am only able to see a truth sparkling
here and there, and to try to lay hold of it. When I aim at more, I
am like Noah's dove, without a place to rest the sole of my foot.'

'That is the only way to begin. Leave the large vision to itself,
and look well after your sparkles. You will find them grow and
gather and unite, until you are afloat on a sea of radiance--with
cloud shadows no doubt.'

'And yet,' I resumed, 'I never seem to have room.'

'That is just why.'

'But I feel that I cannot find it. I know that if I fly to that
bounding cape on the far horizon there, I shall only find a place--a
place to want another in. There is no fortunate island out on that
sea.'

'I fancy,' said Falconer, 'that until a man loves space, he will
never be at peace in a place. At least so I have found it. I am
content if you but give me room. All space to me throbs with being
and life; and the loveliest spot on the earth seems but the
compression of space till the meaning shines out of it, as the fire
flies out of the air when you drive it close together. To seek
place after place for freedom, is a constant effort to flee from
space, and a vain one, for you are ever haunted by the need of it,
and therefore when you seek most to escape it, fancy that you love
it and want it.'

'You are getting too mystical for me now,' I said. 'I am not able to
follow you.'

'I fear I was on the point of losing myself. At all events I can go
no further now. And indeed I fear I have been but skirting the
Limbo of Vanities.'

He rose, for we could both see that this talk was not in the least
interesting to our companion. We got again into the carriage,
which, by Falconer's orders, was turned and driven in the opposite
direction, still at no great distance from the lofty edge of the
heights that rose above the shore.

We came at length to a lane bounded with stone walls, every stone of
which had its moss and every chink its fern. The lane grew more and
more grassy; the walls vanished; and the track faded away into a
narrow winding valley, formed by the many meeting curves of opposing
hills. They were green to the top with sheep-grass, and spotted
here and there with patches of fern, great stones, and tall withered
foxgloves. The air was sweet and healthful, and Andrew evidently
enjoyed it because it reminded him again of his boyhood. The only
sound we heard was the tinkle of a few tender sheep-bells, and now
and then the tremulous bleating of a sheep. With a gentle winding,
the valley led us into a more open portion of itself, where the old
man paused with a look of astonished pleasure.

Before us, seaward, rose a rampart against the sky, like the
turreted and embattled wall of a huge eastern city, built of loose
stones piled high, and divided by great peaky rocks. In the centre
rose above them all one solitary curiously-shaped mass, one of the
oddest peaks of the Himmalays in miniature. From its top on the
further side was a sheer descent to the waters far below the level
of the valley from which it immediately rose. It was altogether a
strange freaky fantastic place, not without its grandeur. It looked
like the remains of a frolic of the Titans, or rather as if reared
by the boys and girls, while their fathers and mothers 'lay
stretched out huge in length,' and in breadth too, upon the slopes
around, and laughed thunderously at the sportive invention of their
sons and daughters. Falconer helped his father up to the edge of
the rampart that he might look over. Again he started back, 'afraid
of that which was high,' for the lowly valley was yet at a great
height above the diminished waves. On the outside of the rampart
ran a narrow path whence the green hill-side went down steep to the
sea. The gulls were screaming far below us; we could see the little
flying streaks of white. Beyond was the great ocean. A murmurous
sound came up from its shore.

We descended and seated ourselves on the short springy grass of a
little mound at the foot of one of the hills, where it sank slowly,
like the dying gush of a wave, into the hollowest centre of the
little vale.

'Everything tends to the cone-shape here,' said Falconer,--'the
oddest and at the same time most wonderful of mathematical figures.'

'Is it not strange,' I said, 'that oddity and wonder should come so
near?'

'They often do in the human world as well,' returned he. 'Therefore
it is not strange that Shelley should have been so fond of this
place. It is told of him that repeated sketches of the spot were
found on the covers of his letters. I know nothing more like
Shelley's poetry than this valley--wildly fantastic and yet
beautiful--as if a huge genius were playing at grandeur, and
producing little models of great things. But there is one grand
thing I want to show you a little further on.'

We rose, and walked out of the valley on the other side, along the
lofty coast. When we reached a certain point, Falconer stood and
requested us to look as far as we could, along the cliffs to the
face of the last of them.

'What do you see?' he asked.

'A perpendicular rock, going right down into the blue waters,' I
answered.

'Look at it: what is the outline of it like? Whose face is it?'

'Shakspere's, by all that is grand!' I cried.

'So it is,' said Andrew.

'Right. Now I'll tell you what I would do. If I were very rich,
and there were no poor people in the country, I would give a
commission to some great sculptor to attack that rock and work out
its suggestion. Then, it I had any money left, we should find one
for Bacon, and one for Chaucer, and one for Milton; and, as we are
about it, we may fancy as many more as we like; so that from the
bounding rocks of our island, the memorial faces of our great
brothers should look abroad over the seas into the infinite sky
beyond.'

'Well, now,' said the elder, 'I think it is grander as it is.'

'You are quite right, father,' said Robert. 'And so with many of our
fancies for perfecting God's mighty sketches, which he only can
finish.'

Again we seated ourselves and looked out over the waves.

'I have never yet heard,' I said, 'how you managed with that poor
girl that wanted to drown herself--on Westminster Bridge, I
mean--that night, you remember.'

'Miss St. John has got her in her own house at present. She has
given her those two children we picked up at the door of the
public-house to take care of. Poor little darlings! they are
bringing back the life in her heart already. There is actually a
little colour in her cheek--the dawn, I trust, of the eternal life.
That is Miss St. John's way. As often as she gets hold of a poor
hopeless woman, she gives her a motherless child. It is wonderful
what the childless woman and motherless child do for each other.'

'I was much amused the other day with the lecture one of the police
magistrates gave a poor creature who was brought before him for
attempting to drown herself. He did give her a sovereign out of the
poor box, though.'

'Well, that might just tide her over the shoal of self-destruction,'
said Falconer. 'But I cannot help doubting whether any one has a
right to prevent a suicide from carrying out his purpose, who is not
prepared to do a good deal more for him than that. What would you
think of the man who snatched the loaf from a hungry thief, threw it
back into the baker's cart, and walked away to his club-dinner?
Harsh words of rebuke, and the threat of severe punishment upon a
second attempt--what are they to the wretch weary of life? To some
of them the kindest punishment would be to hang them for it. It is
something else than punishment that they need. If the comfortable
alderman had but "a feeling of their afflictions," felt in himself
for a moment how miserable he must be, what a waste of despair must
be in his heart, before he would do it himself, before the awful
river would appear to him a refuge from the upper air, he would
change his tone. I fear he regards suicide chiefly as a burglarious
entrance into the premises of the respectable firm of Vension, Port,
& Co.'

'But you mustn't be too hard upon him, Falconer; for if his God is
his belly, how can he regard suicide as other than the most awful
sacrilege?'

'Of course not. His well-fed divinity gives him one great
commandment: "Thou shalt love thyself with all thy heart. The great
breach is to hurt thyself--worst of all to send thyself away from
the land of luncheons and dinners, to the country of thought and
vision." But, alas! he does not reflect on the fact that the god
Belial does not feed all his votaries; that he has his elect; that
the altar of his inner-temple too often smokes with no sacrifice of
which his poor meagre priests may partake. They must uphold the
Divinity which has been good to them, and not suffer his worship to
fall into disrepute.'

'Really, Robert,' said his father, 'I am afraid to think what you
will come to. You will end in denying there is a God at all. You
don't believe in hell, and now you justify suicide. Really--I must
say--to say the least of it--I have not been accustomed to hear such
things.'

The poor old man looked feebly righteous at his wicked son. I
verily believe he was concerned for his eternal fate. Falconer gave
a pleased glance at me, and for a moment said nothing. Then he
began, with a kind of logical composure:

'In the first place, father, I do not believe in such a God as some
people say they believe in. Their God is but an idol of the
heathen, modified with a few Christian qualities. For hell, I don't
believe there is any escape from it but by leaving hellish things
behind. For suicide, I do not believe it is wicked because it hurts
yourself, but I do believe it is very wicked. I only want to put it
on its own right footing.'

'And pray what do you consider its right footing?'

'My dear father, I recognize no duty as owing to a man's self.
There is and can be no such thing. I am and can be under no
obligation to myself. The whole thing is a fiction, and of evil
invention. It comes from the upper circles of the hell of
selfishness. Or, perhaps, it may with some be merely a form of
metaphysical mistake; but an untruth it is. Then for the duty we do
owe to other people: how can we expect the men or women who have
found life to end, as it seems to them, in a dunghill of misery--how
can we expect such to understand any obligation to live for the sake
of the general others, to no individual of whom, possibly, do they
bear an endurable relation? What remains?--The grandest, noblest
duty from which all other duty springs: the duty to the possible
God. Mind, I say possible God, for I judge it the first of my duties
towards my neighbour to regard his duty from his position, not from
mine.'