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She had begun to teach him to pray so early that the custom reached
beyond the confines of his memory. At first he had had to repeat
the words after her; but soon she made him construct his own
utterances, now and then giving him a suggestion in the form of a
petition when he seemed likely to break down, or putting a phrase
into what she considered more suitable language. But all such
assistance she had given up long ago.

On the present occasion, after she had ended her petitions with
those for Jews and pagans, and especially for the 'Pop' o' Rom',' in
whom with a rare liberality she took the kindest interest, always
praying God to give him a good wife, though she knew perfectly well
the marriage-creed of the priesthood, for her faith in the hearer of
prayer scorned every theory but that in which she had herself been
born and bred, she turned to Robert with the usual 'Noo, Robert!'
and Robert began. But after he had gone on for some time with the
ordinary phrases, he turned all at once into a new track, and
instead of praying in general terms for 'those that would not walk
in the right way,' said,

'O Lord! save my father,' and there paused.

'If it be thy will,' suggested his grandmother.

But Robert continued silent. His grandmother repeated the
subjunctive clause.

'I'm tryin', grandmother,' said Robert, 'but I canna say 't. I
daurna say an if aboot it. It wad be like giein' in till 's
damnation. We maun hae him saved, grannie!'

'Laddie! laddie! haud yer tongue!' said Mrs. Falconer, in a tone of
distressed awe. 'O Lord, forgie 'im. He's young and disna ken
better yet. He canna unnerstan' thy ways, nor, for that maitter,
can I preten' to unnerstan' them mysel'. But thoo art a' licht, and
in thee is no darkness at all. And thy licht comes into oor blin'
een, and mak's them blinner yet. But, O Lord, gin it wad please
thee to hear oor prayer...eh! hoo we wad praise thee! And my Andrew
wad praise thee mair nor ninety and nine o' them 'at need nae
repentance.'

A long pause followed. And then the only words that would come
were: 'For Christ's sake. Amen.'

When she said that God was light, instead of concluding therefrom
that he could not do the deeds of darkness, she was driven, from a
faith in the teaching of Jonathan Edwards as implicit as that of
'any lay papist of Loretto,' to doubt whether the deeds of darkness
were not after all deeds of light, or at least to conclude that
their character depended not on their own nature, but on who did
them.

They rose from their knees, and Mrs. Falconer sat down by her fire,
with her feet on her little wooden stool, and began, as was her wont
in that household twilight, ere the lamp was lighted, to review her
past life, and follow her lost son through all conditions and
circumstances to her imaginable. And when the world to come arose
before her, clad in all the glories which her fancy, chilled by
education and years, could supply, it was but to vanish in the gloom
of the remembrance of him with whom she dared not hope to share its
blessedness. This at least was how Falconer afterwards interpreted
the sudden changes from gladness to gloom which he saw at such times
on her countenance.

But while such a small portion of the universe of thought was
enlightened by the glowworm lamp of the theories she had been
taught, she was not limited for light to that feeble source. While
she walked on her way, the moon, unseen herself behind the clouds,
was illuminating the whole landscape so gently and evenly, that the
glowworm being the only visible point of radiance, to it she
attributed all the light. But she felt bound to go on believing as
she had been taught; for sometimes the most original mind has the
strongest sense of law upon it, and will, in default of a better,
obey a beggarly one--only till the higher law that swallows it up
manifests itself. Obedience was as essential an element of her
creed as of that of any purest-minded monk; neither being
sufficiently impressed with this: that, while obedience is the law
of the kingdom, it is of considerable importance that that which is
obeyed should be in very truth the will of God. It is one thing, and
a good thing, to do for God's sake that which is not his will: it is
another thing, and altogether a better thing--how much better, no
words can tell--to do for God's sake that which is his will. Mrs.
Falconer's submission and obedience led her to accept as the will of
God, lest she should be guilty of opposition to him, that which it
was anything but giving him honour to accept as such. Therefore her
love to God was too like the love of the slave or the dog; too
little like the love of the child, with whose obedience the Father
cannot be satisfied until he cares for his reason as the highest
form of his will. True, the child who most faithfully desires to
know the inward will or reason of the Father, will be the most ready
to obey without it; only for this obedience it is essential that the
apparent command at least be such as he can suppose attributable to
the Father. Of his own self he is bound to judge what is right, as
the Lord said. Had Abraham doubted whether it was in any case right
to slay his son, he would have been justified in doubting whether
God really required it of him, and would have been bound to delay
action until the arrival of more light. True, the will of God can
never be other than good; but I doubt if any man can ever be sure
that a thing is the will of God, save by seeing into its nature and
character, and beholding its goodness. Whatever God does must be
right, but are we sure that we know what he does? That which men
say he does may be very wrong indeed.

This burden she in her turn laid upon Robert--not unkindly, but as
needful for his training towards well-being. Her way with him was
shaped after that which she recognized as God's way with her. 'Speir
nae questons, but gang an' du as ye're tellt.' And it was anything
but a bad lesson for the boy. It was one of the best he could have
had--that of authority. It is a grand thing to obey without asking
questions, so long as there is nothing evil in what is commanded.
Only grannie concealed her reasons without reason; and God makes no
secrets. Hence she seemed more stern and less sympathetic than she
really was.

She sat with her feet on the little wooden stool, and Robert sat
beside her staring into the fire, till they heard the outer door
open, and Shargar and Betty come in from church.

CHAPTER XIII.

ROBERT'S MOTHER.

Early on the following morning, while Mrs. Falconer, Robert, and
Shargar were at breakfast, Mr. Lammie came. He had delayed
communicating the intelligence he had received till he should be
more certain of its truth. Older than Andrew, he had been a great
friend of his father, and likewise of some of Mrs. Falconer's own
family. Therefore he was received with a kindly welcome. But there
was a cloud on his brow which in a moment revealed that his errand
was not a pleasant one.

'I haena seen ye for a lang time, Mr. Lammie. Gae butt the hoose,
lads. Or I'm thinkin' it maun be schule-time. Sit ye doon, Mr.
Lammie, and lat's hear yer news.'

'I cam frae Aberdeen last nicht, Mistress Faukner,' he began.

'Ye haena been hame sin' syne?' she rejoined.

'Na. I sleepit at The Boar's Heid.'

'What for did ye that? What gart ye be at that expense, whan ye
kent I had a bed i' the ga'le-room?'

'Weel, ye see, they're auld frien's o' mine, and I like to gang to
them whan I'm i' the gait o' 't.'

'Weel, they're a fine faimily, the Miss Napers. And, I wat, sin'
they maun sell drink, they du 't wi' discretion. That's weel kent.'

Possibly Mr. Lammie, remembering what then occurred, may have
thought the discretion a little in excess of the drink, but he had
other matters to occupy him now. For a few moments both were
silent.

'There's been some ill news, they tell me, Mrs. Faukner,' he said at
length, when the silence had grown painful.

'Humph!' returned the old lady, her face becoming stony with the
effort to suppress all emotion. 'Nae aboot Anerew?'

''Deed is 't, mem. An' ill news, I'm sorry to say.'

'Is he ta'en?'

'Ay is he--by a jyler that winna tyne the grup.'

'He's no deid, John Lammie? Dinna say 't.'

'I maun say 't, Mrs. Faukner. I had it frae Dr. Anderson, yer ain
cousin. He hintit at it afore, but his last letter leaves nae room
to doobt upo' the subjeck. I'm unco sorry to be the beirer o' sic
ill news, Mrs. Faukner, but I had nae chice.'

'Ohone! Ohone! the day o' grace is by at last! My puir Anerew!'
exclaimed Mrs. Falconer, and sat dumb thereafter.

Mr. Lammie tried to comfort her with some of the usual comfortless
commonplaces. She neither wept nor replied, but sat with stony face
staring into her lap, till, seeing that she was as one that heareth
not, he rose and left her alone with her grief. A few minutes after
he was gone, she rang the bell, and told Betty in her usual voice to
send Robert to her.

'He's gane to the schule, mem.'

'Rin efter him, an' tell him to come hame.'

When Robert appeared, wondering what his grandmother could want with
him, she said:

'Close the door, Robert. I canna lat ye gang to the schule the day.
We maun lea' him oot noo.'

'Lea' wha oot, grannie?'

'Him, him--Anerew. Yer father, laddie. I think my hert 'll brak.'

'Lea' him oot o' what, grannie? I dinna unnerstan' ye.'

'Lea' him oot o' oor prayers, laddie, and I canna bide it.'

'What for that?'

'He's deid.'

'Are ye sure?'

'Ay, ower sure--ower sure, laddie.'

'Weel, I dinna believe 't.'

'What for that?'

''Cause I winna believe 't. I'm no bund to believe 't, am I?'

'What's the gude o' that? What for no believe 't? Dr. Anderson's
sent hame word o' 't to John Lammie. Och hone! och hone!'

'I tell ye I winna believe 't, grannie, 'cep' God himsel' tells me.
As lang 's I dinna believe 'at he's deid, I can keep him i' my
prayers. I'm no gaein' to lea' him oot, I tell ye, grannie.'

'Weel, laddie, I canna argue wi' ye. I hae nae hert til 't. I
doobt I maun greit! Come awa'.'

She took him by the hand and rose, then let him go again, saying,

'Sneck the door, laddie.'

Robert bolted the door, and his grandmother again taking his hand,
led him to the usual corner. There they knelt down together, and
the old woman's prayer was one great and bitter cry for submission
to the divine will. She rose a little strengthened, if not
comforted, saying,

'Ye maun pray yer lane, laddie. But oh be a guid lad, for ye're a'
that I hae left; and gin ye gang wrang tu, ye'll bring doon my gray
hairs wi' sorrow to the grave. They're gray eneuch, and they're
near eneuch to the grave, but gin ye turn oot weel, I'll maybe haud
up my heid a bit yet. But O Anerew! my son! my son! Would God I
had died for thee!'

And the words of her brother in grief, the king of Israel, opened
the floodgates of her heart, and she wept. Robert left her weeping,
and closed the door quietly as if his dead father had been lying in
the room.

He took his way up to his own garret, closed that door too, and sat
down upon the floor, with his back against the empty bedstead.

There were no more castles to build now. It was all very well to
say that he would not believe the news and would pray for his
father, but he did believe them--enough at least to spoil the
praying. His favourite employment, seated there, had hitherto been
to imagine how he would grow a great man, and set out to seek his
father, and find him, and stand by him, and be his son and servant.
Oh! to have the man stroke his head and pat his cheek, and love
him! One moment he imagined himself his indignant defender, the
next he would be climbing on his knee, as if he were still a little
child, and laying his head on his shoulder. For he had had no
fondling his life long, and his heart yearned for it. But all this
was gone now. A dreary time lay before him, with nobody to please,
nobody to serve; with nobody to praise him. Grannie never praised
him. She must have thought praise something wicked. And his father
was in misery, for ever and ever! Only somehow that thought was not
quite thinkable. It was more the vanishing of hope from his own
life than a sense of his father's fate that oppressed him.

He cast his eyes, as in a hungry despair, around the empty room--or,
rather, I should have said, in that faintness which makes food at
once essential and loathsome; for despair has no proper hunger in
it. The room seemed as empty as his life. There was nothing for
his eyes to rest upon but those bundles and bundles of dust-browned
papers on the shelves before him. What were they all about? He
understood that they were his father's: now that he was dead, it
would be no sacrilege to look at them. Nobody cared about them. He
would see at least what they were. It would be something to do in
this dreariness.

Bills and receipts, and everything ephemeral--to feel the interest
of which, a man must be a poet indeed--was all that met his view.
Bundle after bundle he tried, with no better success. But as he
drew near the middle of the second shelf, upon which they lay
several rows deep, he saw something dark behind, hurriedly displaced
the packets between, and drew forth a small workbox. His heart beat
like that of the prince in the fairy-tale, when he comes to the door
of the Sleeping Beauty. This at least must have been hers. It was
a common little thing, probably a childish possession, and kept to
hold trifles worth more than they looked to be. He opened it with
bated breath. The first thing he saw was a half-finished reel of
cotton--a pirn, he called it. Beside it was a gold thimble. He
lifted the tray. A lovely face in miniature, with dark hair and
blue eyes, lay looking earnestly upward. At the lid of this coffin
those eyes had looked for so many years! The picture was set all
round with pearls in an oval ring. How Robert knew them to be
pearls he could not tell, for he did not know that he had ever seen
any pearls before, but he knew they were pearls, and that pearls had
something to do with the New Jerusalem. But the sadness of it all
at length overpowered him, and he burst out crying. For it was
awfully sad that his mother's portrait should be in his own mother's
box.

He took a bit of red tape off a bundle of the papers, put it through
the eye of the setting, and hung the picture round his neck, inside
his clothes, for grannie must not see it. She would take that away
as she had taken his fiddle. He had a nameless something now for
which he had been longing for years.

Looking again in the box, he found a little bit of paper,
discoloured with antiquity, as it seemed to him, though it was not
so old as himself. Unfolding it he found written upon it a
well-known hymn, and at the bottom of the hymn, the words: 'O Lord!
my heart is very sore.'--The treasure upon Robert's bosom was no
longer the symbol of a mother's love, but of a woman's sadness,
which he could not reach to comfort. In that hour, the boy made a
great stride towards manhood. Doubtless his mother's grief had been
the same as grannie's--the fear that she would lose her husband for
ever. The hourly fresh griefs from neglect and wrong did not occur
to him; only the never never more. He looked no farther, took the
portrait from his neck and replaced it with the paper, put the box
back, and walled it up in solitude once more with the dusty bundles.
Then he went down to his grandmother, sadder and more desolate than
ever.

He found her seated in her usual place. Her New Testament, a
large-print octavo, lay on the table beside her unopened; for where
within those boards could she find comfort for a grief like hers?
That it was the will of God might well comfort any suffering of her
own, but would it comfort Andrew? and if there was no comfort for
Andrew, how was Andrew's mother to be comforted?

Yet God had given his first-born to save his brethren: how could he
be pleased that she should dry her tears and be comforted? True,
some awful unknown force of a necessity with which God could not
cope came in to explain it; but this did not make God more kind, for
he knew it all every time he made a man; nor man less sorrowful, for
God would have his very mother forget him, or, worse still, remember
him and be happy.

'Read a chapter till me, laddie,' she said.

Robert opened and read till he came to the words: 'I pray not for
the world.'

'He was o' the world,' said the old woman; 'and gin Christ wadna
pray for him, what for suld I?'

Already, so soon after her son's death, would her theology begin to
harden her heart. The strife which results from believing that the
higher love demands the suppression of the lower, is the most
fearful of all discords, the absolute love slaying love--the house
divided against itself; one moment all given up for the will of Him,
the next the human tenderness rushing back in a flood. Mrs.
Falconer burst into a very agony of weeping. From that day, for
many years, the name of her lost Andrew never passed her lips in the
hearing of her grandson, and certainly in that of no one else.

But in a few weeks she was more cheerful. It is one of the
mysteries of humanity that mothers in her circumstances, and holding
her creed, do regain not merely the faculty of going on with the
business of life, but, in most cases, even cheerfulness. The
infinite Truth, the Love of the universe, supports them beyond their
consciousness, coming to them like sleep from the roots of their
being, and having nothing to do with their opinions or beliefs. And
hence spring those comforting subterfuges of hope to which they all
fly. Not being able to trust the Father entirely, they yet say:
'Who can tell what took place at the last moment? Who can tell
whether God did not please to grant them saving faith at the
eleventh hour?'--that so they might pass from the very gates of
hell, the only place for which their life had fitted them, into the
bosom of love and purity! This God could do for all: this for the
son beloved of his mother perhaps he might do!

O rebellious mother heart! dearer to God than that which beats
laboriously solemn under Genevan gown or Lutheran surplice! if thou
wouldst read by thine own large light, instead of the glimmer from
the phosphorescent brains of theologians, thou mightst even be able
to understand such a simple word as that of the Saviour, when,
wishing his disciples to know that he had a nearer regard for them
as his brethren in holier danger, than those who had not yet
partaken of his light, and therefore praying for them not merely as
human beings, but as the human beings they were, he said to his
Father in their hearing: 'I pray not for the world, but for
them,'--not for the world now, but for them--a meaningless
utterance, if he never prayed for the world; a word of small
meaning, if it was not his very wont and custom to pray for the
world--for men as men. Lord Christ! not alone from the pains of
hell, or of conscience--not alone from the outer darkness of self
and all that is mean and poor and low, do we fly to thee; but from
the anger that arises within us at the wretched words spoken in thy
name, at the degradation of thee and of thy Father in the mouths of
those that claim especially to have found thee, do we seek thy feet.
Pray thou for them also, for they know not what they do.

CHAPTER XIV.

MARY ST. JOHN.

After this, day followed day in calm, dull progress. Robert did not
care for the games through which his school-fellows forgot the
little they had to forget, and had therefore few in any sense his
companions. So he passed his time out of school in the society of
his grandmother and Shargar, except that spent in the garret, and
the few hours a week occupied by the lessons of the shoemaker. For
he went on, though half-heartedly, with those lessons, given now
upon Sandy's redeemed violin which he called his old wife, and made
a little progress even, as we sometimes do when we least think it.

He took more and more to brooding in the garret; and as more
questions presented themselves for solution, he became more anxious
to arrive at the solution, and more uneasy as he failed in
satisfying himself that he had arrived at it; so that his brain,
which needed quiet for the true formation of its substance, as a
cooling liquefaction or an evaporating solution for the just
formation of its crystals, became in danger of settling into an
abnormal arrangement of the cellular deposits.

I believe that even the new-born infant is, in some of his moods,
already grappling with the deepest metaphysical problems, in forms
infinitely too rudimental for the understanding of the grown
philosopher--as far, in fact, removed from his ken on the one side,
that of intelligential beginning, the germinal subjective, as his
abstrusest speculations are from the final solutions of absolute
entity on the other. If this be the case, it is no wonder that at
Robert's age the deepest questions of his coming manhood should be
in active operation, although so surrounded with the yoke of common
belief and the shell of accredited authority, that the embryo faith,
which in minds like his always takes the form of doubt, could not be
defined any more than its existence could be disproved. I have
given a hint at the tendency of his mind already, in the fact that
one of the most definite inquiries to which he had yet turned his
thoughts was, whether God would have mercy upon a repentant devil.
An ordinary puzzle had been--if his father were to marry again, and
it should turn out after all that his mother was not dead, what was
his father to do? But this was over now. A third was, why, when he
came out of church, sunshine always made him miserable, and he felt
better able to be good when it rained or snowed hard. I might
mention the inquiry whether it was not possible somehow to elude the
omniscience of God; but that is a common question with thoughtful
children, and indicates little that is characteristic of the
individual. That he puzzled himself about the perpetual motion may
pass for little likewise; but one thing which is worth mentioning,
for indeed it caused him considerable distress, was, that in reading
the Paradise Lost he could not help sympathizing with Satan, and
feeling--I do not say thinking--that the Almighty was pompous,
scarcely reasonable, and somewhat revengeful.

He was recognized amongst his school-fellows as remarkable for his
love of fair-play; so much so, that he was their constant referee.
Add to this that, notwithstanding his sympathy with Satan, he
almost invariably sided with his master, in regard of any angry
reflection or seditious movement, and even when unjustly punished
himself, the occasional result of a certain backwardness in
self-defence, never showed any resentment--a most improbable
statement, I admit, but nevertheless true--and I think the rest of
his character may be left to the gradual dawn of its historical
manifestation.

He had long ere this discovered who the angel was that had appeared
to him at the top of the stair upon that memorable night; but he
could hardly yet say that he had seen her; for, except one dim
glimpse he had had of her at the window as he passed in the street,
she had not appeared to him save in the vision of that night.
During the whole winter she scarcely left the house, partly from
the state of her health, affected by the sudden change to a northern
climate, partly from the attention required by her aunt, to aid in
nursing whom she had left the warmer south. Indeed, it was only to
return the visits of a few of Mrs. Forsyth's chosen, that she had
crossed the threshold at all; and those visits were paid at a time
when all such half-grown inhabitants as Robert were gathered under
the leathery wing of Mr. Innes.

But long before the winter was over, Rothieden had discovered that
the stranger, the English lady, Mary St. John, outlandish, almost
heathenish as her lovely name sounded in its ears, had a power as
altogether strange and new as her name. For she was not only an
admirable performer on the pianoforte, but such a simple enthusiast
in music, that the man must have had no music or little heart in him
in whom her playing did not move all that there was of the deepest.

Occasionally there would be quite a small crowd gathered at night by
the window of Mrs. Forsyth's drawing-room, which was on the
ground-floor, listening to music such as had never before been heard
in Rothieden. More than once, when Robert had not found Sandy
Elshender at home on the lesson-night, and had gone to seek him, he
had discovered him lying in wait, like a fowler, to catch the sweet
sounds that flew from the opened cage of her instrument. He leaned
against the wall with his ear laid over the edge, and as near the
window as he dared to put it, his rough face, gnarled and blotched,
and hirsute with the stubble of neglected beard--his whole ursine
face transfigured by the passage of the sweet sounds through his
chaotic brain, which they swept like the wind of God, when of old it
moved on the face of the waters that clothed the void and formless
world.