Books: Robert Falconer

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Robert was up-stairs when Betty emptied her news-bag, and so heard
nothing of this bit of gossip. He had just assured Shargar that as
soon as his grandmother was asleep he would look about for what he
could find, and carry it up to him in the garret. As yet he had
confined the expenditure out of Shargar's shilling to twopence.

The household always retired early--earlier on Saturday night in
preparation for the Sabbath--and by ten o'clock grannie and Betty
were in bed. Robert, indeed, was in bed too; but he had lain down
in his clothes, waiting for such time as might afford reasonable
hope of his grandmother being asleep, when he might both ease
Shargar's hunger and get to sleep himself. Several times he got up,
resolved to make his attempt; but as often his courage failed and he
lay down again, sure that grannie could not be asleep yet. When the
clock beside him struck eleven, he could bear it no longer, and
finally rose to do his endeavour.

Opening the door of the closet slowly and softly, he crept upon his
hands and knees into the middle of the parlour, feeling very much
like a thief, as, indeed, in a measure he was, though from a
blameless motive. But just as he had accomplished half the distance
to the door, he was arrested and fixed with terror; for a deep sigh
came from grannie's bed, followed by the voice of words. He thought
at first that she had heard him, but he soon found that he was
mistaken. Still, the fear of discovery held him there on all fours,
like a chained animal. A dull red gleam, faint and dull, from the
embers of the fire, was the sole light in the room. Everything so
common to his eyes in the daylight seemed now strange and eerie in
the dying coals, and at what was to the boy the unearthly hour of
the night.

He felt that he ought not to listen to grannie, but terror made him
unable to move.

'Och hone! och hone!' said grannie from the bed. 'I've a sair, sair
hert. I've a sair hert i' my breist, O Lord! thoo knowest. My ain
Anerew! To think o' my bairnie that I cairriet i' my ain body, that
sookit my breists, and leuch i' my face--to think o' 'im bein' a
reprobate! O Lord! cudna he be eleckit yet? Is there nae turnin'
o' thy decrees? Na, na; that wadna do at a'. But while there's
life there's houp. But wha kens whether he be alive or no? Naebody
can tell. Glaidly wad I luik upon 's deid face gin I cud believe
that his sowl wasna amang the lost. But eh! the torments o' that
place! and the reik that gangs up for ever an' ever, smorin'
(smothering) the stars! And my Anerew doon i' the hert o' 't
cryin'! And me no able to win till him! O Lord! I canna say thy
will be done. But dinna lay 't to my chairge; for gin ye was a
mither yersel' ye wadna pit him there. O Lord! I'm verra
ill-fashioned. I beg yer pardon. I'm near oot o' my min'. Forgie
me, O Lord! for I hardly ken what I'm sayin'. He was my ain babe,
my ain Anerew, and ye gae him to me yersel'. And noo he's for the
finger o' scorn to pint at; an ootcast an' a wan'erer frae his ain
country, an' daurna come within sicht o' 't for them 'at wad tak'
the law o' 'm. An' it's a' drink--drink an' ill company! He wad
hae dune weel eneuch gin they wad only hae latten him be. What for
maun men be aye drink-drinkin' at something or ither? I never want
it. Eh! gin I war as young as whan he was born, I wad be up an'
awa' this verra nicht to luik for him. But it's no use me tryin'
't. O God! ance mair I pray thee to turn him frae the error o' 's
ways afore he goes hence an' isna more. And O dinna lat Robert gang
efter him, as he's like eneuch to do. Gie me grace to haud him
ticht, that he may be to the praise o' thy glory for ever an' ever.
Amen.'

Whether it was that the weary woman here fell asleep, or that she
was too exhausted for further speech, Robert heard no more, though
he remained there frozen with horror for some minutes after his
grandmother had ceased. This, then, was the reason why she would
never speak about his father! She kept all her thoughts about him
for the silence of the night, and loneliness with the God who never
sleeps, but watches the wicked all through the dark. And his father
was one of the wicked! And God was against him! And when he died
he would go to hell! But he was not dead yet: Robert was sure of
that. And when he grew a man, he would go and seek him, and beg him
on his knees to repent and come back to God, who would forgive him
then, and take him to heaven when he died. And there he would be
good, and good people would love him.

Something like this passed through the boy's mind ere he moved to
creep from the room, for his was one of those natures which are
active in the generation of hope. He had almost forgotten what he
came there for; and had it not been that he had promised Shargar, he
would have crept back to his bed and left him to bear his hunger as
best he could. But now, first his right hand, then his left knee,
like any other quadruped, he crawled to the door, rose only to his
knees to open it, took almost a minute to the operation, then
dropped and crawled again, till he had passed out, turned, and drawn
the door to, leaving it slightly ajar. Then it struck him awfully
that the same terrible passage must be gone through again. But he
rose to his feet, for he had no shoes on, and there was little
danger of making any noise, although it was pitch dark--he knew the
house so well. With gathering courage, he felt his way to the
kitchen, and there groped about; but he could find nothing beyond a
few quarters of oat-cake, which, with a mug of water, he proceeded
to carry up to Shargar in the garret.

When he reached the kitchen door, he was struck with amazement and
for a moment with fresh fear. A light was shining into the transe
from the stair which went up at right angles from the end of it. He
knew it could not be grannie, and he heard Betty snoring in her own
den, which opened from the kitchen. He thought it must be Shargar
who had grown impatient; but how he had got hold of a light he could
not think. As soon as he turned the corner, however, the doubt was
changed into mystery. At the top of the broad low stair stood a
woman-form with a candle in her hand, gazing about her as if
wondering which way to go. The light fell full upon her face, the
beauty of which was such that, with her dress, which was
white--being, in fact, a nightgown--and her hair, which was hanging
loose about her shoulders and down to her waist, it led Robert at
once to the conclusion (his reasoning faculties already shaken by
the events of the night) that she was an angel come down to comfort
his grannie; and he kneeled involuntarily at the foot of the stair,
and gazed up at her, with the cakes in one hand, and the mug of
water in the other, like a meat-and-drink offering. Whether he had
closed his eyes or bowed his head, he could not say; but he became
suddenly aware that the angel had vanished--he knew not when, how,
or whither. This for a time confirmed his assurance that it was an
angel. And although he was undeceived before long, the impression
made upon him that night was never effaced. But, indeed, whatever
Falconer heard or saw was something more to him than it would have
been to anybody else.

Elated, though awed, by the vision, he felt his way up the stair in
the new darkness, as if walking in a holy dream, trod as if upon
sacred ground as he crossed the landing where the angel had
stood--went up and up, and found Shargar wide awake with expectant
hunger. He, too, had caught a glimmer of the light. But Robert did
not tell him what he had seen. That was too sacred a subject to
enter upon with Shargar, and he was intent enough upon his supper
not to be inquisitive.

Robert left him to finish it at his leisure, and returned to cross
his grandmother's room once more, half expecting to find the angel
standing by her bedside. But all was dark and still. Creeping back
as he had come, he heard her quiet, though deep, breathing, and his
mind was at ease about her for the night. What if the angel he had
surprised had only come to appear to grannie in her sleep? Why not?
There were such stories in the Bible, and grannie was certainly as
good as some of the people in the Bible that saw angels--Sarah, for
instance. And if the angels came to see grannie, why should they
not have some care over his father as well? It might be--who could
tell?

It is perhaps necessary to explain Robert's vision. The angel was
the owner of the boxes he had seen at The Bear's Head. Looking
around her room before going to bed, she had seen a trap in the
floor near the wall, and raising it, had discovered a few steps of a
stair leading down to a door. Curiosity naturally led her to
examine it. The key was in the lock. It opened outwards, and there
she found herself, to her surprise, in the heart of another
dwelling, of lowlier aspect. She never saw Robert; for while he
approached with shoeless feet, she had been glancing through the
open door of the gable-room, and when he knelt, the light which she
held in her hand had, I presume, hidden him from her. He, on his
part, had not observed that the moveless door stood open at last.

I have already said that the house adjoining had been built by
Robert's father. The lady's room was that which he had occupied
with his wife, and in it Robert had been born. The door, with its
trap-stair, was a natural invention for uniting the levels of the
two houses, and a desirable one in not a few of the forms which the
weather assumed in that region. When the larger house passed into
other hands, it had never entered the minds of the simple people who
occupied the contiguous dwellings, to build up the doorway between.

CHAPTER IX.

A DISCOVERY.

The friendship of Robert had gained Shargar the favourable notice of
others of the school-public. These were chiefly of those who came
from the country, ready to follow an example set them by a town boy.
When his desertion was known, moved both by their compassion for
him, and their respect for Robert, they began to give him some
portion of the dinner they brought with them; and never in his life
had Shargar fared so well as for the first week after he had been
cast upon the world. But in proportion as their interest faded with
the novelty, so their appetites reasserted former claims of use and
wont, and Shargar began once more to feel the pangs of hunger. For
all that Robert could manage to procure for him without attracting
the attention he was so anxious to avoid, was little more than
sufficient to keep his hunger alive, Shargar being gifted with a
great appetite, and Robert having no allowance of pocket-money from
his grandmother. The threepence he had been able to spend on him
were what remained of sixpence Mr. Innes had given him for an
exercise which he wrote in blank verse instead of in prose--an
achievement of which the school-master was proud, both from his
reverence for Milton, and from his inability to compose a metrical
line himself. And how and when he should ever possess another penny
was even unimaginable. Shargar's shilling was likewise spent. So
Robert could but go on pocketing instead of eating all that he
dared, watching anxiously for opportunity of evading the eyes of his
grandmother. On her dimness of sight, however, he depended too
confidently after all; for either she was not so blind as he thought
she was, or she made up for the defect of her vision by the keenness
of her observation. She saw enough to cause her considerable
annoyance, though it suggested nothing inconsistent with rectitude
on the part of the boy, further than that there was something
underhand going on. One supposition after another arose in the old
lady's brain, and one after another was dismissed as improbable.
First, she tried to persuade herself that he wanted to take the
provisions to school with him, and eat them there--a proceeding of
which she certainly did not approve, but for the reproof of which
she was unwilling to betray the loopholes of her eyes. Next she
concluded, for half a day, that he must have a pair of rabbits
hidden away in some nook or other--possibly in the little strip of
garden belonging to the house. And so conjecture followed
conjecture for a whole week, during which, strange to say, not even
Betty knew that Shargar slept in the house. For so careful and
watchful were the two boys, that although she could not help
suspecting something from the expression and behaviour of Robert,
what that something might be she could not imagine; nor had she and
her mistress as yet exchanged confidences on the subject. Her
observation coincided with that of her mistress as to the
disappearance of odds and ends of eatables--potatoes, cold porridge,
bits of oat-cake; and even, on one occasion, when Shargar happened
to be especially ravenous, a yellow, or cured and half-dried,
haddock, which the lad devoured raw, vanished from her domain. He
went to school in the morning smelling so strong in consequence,
that they told him he must have been passing the night in Scroggie's
cart, and not on his horse's back this time.

The boys kept their secret well.

One evening, towards the end of the week, Robert, after seeing
Shargar disposed of for the night, proceeded to carry out a project
which had grown in his brain within the last two days in consequence
of an occurrence with which his relation to Shargar had had
something to do. It was this:

The housing of Shargar in the garret had led Robert to make a close
acquaintance with the place. He was familiar with all the outs and
ins of the little room which he considered his own, for that was a
civilized, being a plastered, ceiled, and comparatively well-lighted
little room, but not with the other, which was three times its size,
very badly lighted, and showing the naked couples from roof-tree to
floor. Besides, it contained no end of dark corners, with which his
childish imagination had associated undefined horrors, assuming now
one shape, now another. Also there were several closets in it,
constructed in the angles of the place, and several chests--two of
which he had ventured to peep into. But although he had found them
filled, not with bones, as he had expected, but one with papers, and
one with garments, he had yet dared to carry his researches no
further. One evening, however, when Betty was out, and he had got
hold of her candle, and gone up to keep Shargar company for a few
minutes, a sudden impulse seized him to have a peep into all the
closets. One of them he knew a little about, as containing, amongst
other things, his father's coat with the gilt buttons, and his
great-grandfather's kilt, as well as other garments useful to
Shargar: now he would see what was in the rest. He did not find
anything very interesting, however, till he arrived at the last.
Out of it he drew a long queer-shaped box into the light of Betty's
dip.

'Luik here, Shargar!' he said under his breath, for they never dared
to speak aloud in these precincts--'luik here! What can there be in
this box? Is't a bairnie's coffin, duv ye think? Luik at it.'

In this case Shargar, having roamed the country a good deal more
than Robert, and having been present at some merry-makings with his
mother, of which there were comparatively few in that country-side,
was better informed than his friend.

'Eh! Bob, duvna ye ken what that is? I thocht ye kent a' thing.
That's a fiddle.'

'That's buff an' styte (stuff and nonsense), Shargar. Do ye think I
dinna ken a fiddle whan I see ane, wi' its guts ootside o' 'ts wame,
an' the thoomacks to screw them up wi' an' gar't skirl?'

'Buff an' styte yersel'!' cried Shargar, in indignation, from the
bed. 'Gie's a haud o' 't.'

Robert handed him the case. Shargar undid the hooks in a moment,
and revealed the creature lying in its shell like a boiled bivalve.

'I tellt ye sae!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'Maybe ye'll lippen to
me (trust me) neist time.'

'An' I tellt you,' retorted Robert, with an equivocation altogether
unworthy of his growing honesty. 'I was cocksure that cudna be a
fiddle. There's the fiddle i' the hert o' 't! Losh! I min' noo.
It maun be my grandfather's fiddle 'at I hae heard tell o'.'

'No to ken a fiddle-case!' reflected Shargar, with as much of
contempt as it was possible for him to show.

'I tell ye what, Shargar,' returned Robert, indignantly; 'ye may ken
the box o' a fiddle better nor I do, but de'il hae me gin I dinna
ken the fiddle itsel' raither better nor ye do in a fortnicht frae
this time. I s' tak' it to Dooble Sanny; he can play the fiddle
fine. An' I'll play 't too, or the de'il s' be in't.'

'Eh, man, that 'll be gran'!' cried Shargar, incapable of jealousy.
'We can gang to a' the markets thegither and gaither baubees
(halfpence).'

To this anticipation Robert returned no reply, for, hearing Betty
come in, he judged it time to restore the violin to its case, and
Betty's candle to the kitchen, lest she should invade the upper
regions in search of it. But that very night he managed to have an
interview with Dooble Sanny, the shoemaker, and it was arranged
between them that Robert should bring his violin on the evening at
which my story has now arrived.

Whatever motive he had for seeking to commence the study of music,
it holds even in more important matters that, if the thing pursued
be good, there is a hope of the pursuit purifying the motive. And
Robert no sooner heard the fiddle utter a few mournful sounds in the
hands of the soutar, who was no contemptible performer, than he
longed to establish such a relation between himself and the strange
instrument, that, dumb and deaf as it had been to him hitherto, it
would respond to his touch also, and tell him the secrets of its
queerly-twisted skull, full of sweet sounds instead of brains. From
that moment he would be a musician for music's own sake, and forgot
utterly what had appeared to him, though I doubt if it was, the sole
motive of his desire to learn--namely, the necessity of retaining
his superiority over Shargar.

What added considerably to the excitement of his feelings on the
occasion, was the expression of reverence, almost of awe, with which
the shoemaker took the instrument from its case, and the tenderness
with which he handled it. The fact was that he had not had a violin
in his hands for nearly a year, having been compelled to pawn his
own in order to alleviate the sickness brought on his wife by his
own ill-treatment of her, once that he came home drunk from a
wedding. It was strange to think that such dirty hands should be
able to bring such sounds out of the instrument the moment he got it
safely cuddled under his cheek. So dirty were they, that it was
said Dooble Sanny never required to carry any rosin with him for
fiddler's need, his own fingers having always enough upon them for
one bow at least. Yet the points of those fingers never lost the
delicacy of their touch. Some people thought this was in virtue of
their being washed only once a week--a custom Alexander justified on
the ground that, in a trade like his, it was of no use to wash
oftener, for he would be just as dirty again before night.

The moment he began to play, the face of the soutar grew ecstatic.
He stopped at the very first note, notwithstanding, let fall his
arms, the one with the bow, the other with the violin, at his sides,
and said, with a deep-drawn respiration and lengthened utterance:

'Eh!'

Then after a pause, during which he stood motionless:

'The crater maun be a Cry Moany! Hear till her!' he added, drawing
another long note.

Then, after another pause:

'She's a Straddle Vawrious at least! Hear till her. I never had
sic a combination o' timmer and catgut atween my cleuks (claws)
afore.'

As to its being a Stradivarius, or even a Cremona at all, the
testimony of Dooble Sanny was not worth much on the point. But the
shoemaker's admiration roused in the boy's mind a reverence for the
individual instrument which he never lost.

>From that day the two were friends.

Suddenly the soutar started off at full speed in a strathspey, which
was soon lost in the wail of a Highland psalm-tune, giving place in
its turn to 'Sic a wife as Willie had!' And on he went without
pause, till Robert dared not stop any longer. The fiddle had
bewitched the fiddler.

'Come as aften 's ye like, Robert, gin ye fess this leddy wi' ye,'
said the soutar.

And he stroked the back of the violin tenderly with his open palm.

'But wad ye hae ony objection to lat it lie aside ye, and lat me
come whan I can?'

'Objection, laddie? I wad as sune objeck to lattin' my ain wife lie
aside me.'

'Ay,' said Robert, seized with some anxiety about the violin as he
remembered the fate of the wife, 'but ye ken Elspet comes aff a' the
waur sometimes.'

Softened by the proximity of the wonderful violin, and stung afresh
by the boy's words as his conscience had often stung him before, for
he loved his wife dearly save when the demon of drink possessed him,
the tears rose in Elshender's eyes. He held out the violin to
Robert, saying, with unsteady voice:

'Hae, tak her awa'. I dinna deserve to hae sic a thing i' my hoose.
But hear me, Robert, and lat hearin' be believin'. I never was sae
drunk but I cud tune my fiddle. Mair by token, ance they fand me
lyin' o' my back i' the Corrie, an' the watter, they say, was ower
a' but the mou' o' me; but I was haudin' my fiddle up abune my heid,
and de'il a spark o' watter was upo' her.'

'It's a pity yer wife wasna yer fiddle, than, Sanny,' said Robert,
with more presumption than wit.

''Deed ye're i' the richt, there, Robert. Hae, tak' yer fiddle.'

''Deed no,' returned Robert. 'I maun jist lippen (trust) to ye,
Sanders. I canna bide langer the nicht; but maybe ye'll tell me hoo
to haud her the neist time 'at I come--will ye?'

'That I wull, Robert, come whan ye like. An' gin ye come o' ane 'at
cud play this fiddle as this fiddle deserves to be playt, ye'll do
me credit.'

'Ye min' what that sumph Lumley said to me the ither nicht, Sanders,
aboot my grandfather?'

'Ay, weel eneuch. A dish o' drucken havers!'

'It was true eneuch aboot my great-grandfather, though.'

'No! Was't railly?'

'Ay. He was the best piper in 's regiment at Culloden. Gin they had
a' fouchten as he pipit, there wad hae been anither tale to tell.
And he was toon-piper forby, jist like you, Sanders, efter they
took frae him a' 'at he had.'

'Na! heard ye ever the like o' that! Weel, wha wad hae thocht it?
Faith! we maun hae you fiddle as weel as yer lucky-daiddy
pipit.--But here's the King o' Bashan comin' efter his butes, an'
them no half dune yet!' exclaimed Dooble Sanny, settling in haste to
his awl and his lingel (Fr. ligneul). 'He'll be roarin' mair like a
bull o' the country than the king o' 't.'

As Robert departed, Peter Ogg came in, and as he passed the window,
he heard the shoemaker averring:

'I haena risen frae my stule sin' ane o'clock; but there's a sicht
to be dune to them, Mr. Ogg.'

Indeed, Alexander ab Alexandro, as Mr. Innes facetiously styled him,
was in more ways than one worthy of the name of Dooble. There
seemed to be two natures in the man, which all his music had not yet
been able to blend.

CHAPTER X.

ANOTHER DISCOVERY IN THE GARRET.

Little did Robert dream of the reception that awaited him at home.
Almost as soon as he had left the house, the following events began
to take place.

The mistress's bell rang, and Betty 'gaed benn the hoose to see what
she cud be wantin',' whereupon a conversation ensued.

'Wha was that at the door, Betty?' asked Mrs. Falconer; for Robert
had not shut the door so carefully as he ought, seeing that the
deafness of his grandmother was of much the same faculty as her
blindness.

Had Robert not had a hold of Betty by the forelock of her years, he
would have been unable to steal any liberty at all. Still Betty had
a conscience, and although she would not offend Robert if she could
help it, yet she would not lie.

''Deed, mem, I canna jist distinckly say 'at I heard the door,' she
answered.

'Whaur's Robert?' was her next question.

'He's generally up the stair aboot this hoor, mem--that is, whan
he's no i' the parlour at 's lessons.'

'What gangs he sae muckle up the stair for, Betty, do ye ken? It's
something by ordinar' wi' 'm.'

''Deed I dinna ken, mem. I never tuik it into my heid to gang
considerin' aboot it. He'll hae some ploy o' 's ain, nae doobt.
Laddies will be laddies, ye ken, mem.'

'I doobt, Betty, ye'll be aidin' an' abettin'. An' it disna become
yer years, Betty.'

'My years are no to fin' faut wi', mem. They're weel eneuch.'

'That's naething to the pint, Betty. What's the laddie aboot?'

'Do ye mean whan he gangs up the stair, mem?'

'Ay. Ye ken weel eneuch what I mean.'

'Weel, mem, I tell ye I dinna ken. An' ye never heard me tell ye a
lee sin' ever I was i' yer service, mem.'

'Na, nae doonricht. Ye gang aboot it an' aboot it, an' at last ye
come sae near leein' that gin ye spak anither word, ye wad be at it;
and it jist fleys (frights) me frae speirin' ae ither question at
ye. An' that's hoo ye win oot o' 't. But noo 'at it's aboot my ain
oye (grandson), I'm no gaein' to tyne (lose) him to save a woman o'
your years, wha oucht to ken better; an sae I'll speir at ye, though
ye suld be driven to lee like Sawtan himsel'.--What's he aboot whan
he gangs up the stair? Noo!'