To fill her odorous lamp with deeds of light,And hope that reaps not shame.
And if one must choose between the how and the what, let me have the what, come of the how what may. I know of a man so sensitive, that he shuts his ears to his sister's griefs, because it spoils his digestion to think of them.
One evening Robert was sitting by the table in Ericson's room. Dr. Anderson had not called that day, and he did not expect to see him now, for he had never come so late. He was quite at his ease, therefore, and busy with two things at once, when the doctor opened the door and walked in. I think it is possible that he came up quietly with some design of surprising him. He found him with a stocking on one hand, a darning needle in the other, and a Greek book open before him. Taking no apparent notice of him, he walked up to the bedside, and Robert put away his work. After his interview with his patient was over, the doctor signed to him to follow him to the next room. There Shargar lay on the rug already snoring. It was a cold night in December, but he lay in his under-clothing, with a single blanket round him.
'Good training for a soldier,' said the doctor; 'and so was your work a minute ago, Robert.'
'Ay,' answered Robert, colouring a little; 'I was readin' a bit o' the Anabasis.'
The doctor smiled a far-off sly smile.
'I think it was rather the Katabasis, if one might venture to judge from the direction of your labours.'
'Weel,' answered Robert, 'what wad ye hae me do? Wad ye hae me lat Mr. Ericson gang wi' holes i' the heels o' 's hose, whan I can mak them a' snod, an' learn my Greek at the same time? Hoots, doctor! dinna lauch at me. I was doin' nae ill. A body may please themsel's—whiles surely, ohn sinned.'
'But it's such waste of time! Why don't you buy him new ones?'
''Deed that's easier said than dune. I hae eneuch ado wi' my siller as 'tis; an' gin it warna for you, doctor, I do not ken what wad come o' 's; for ye see I hae no richt to come upo' my grannie for ither fowk. There wad be nae en' to that.'
'But I could lend you the money to buy him some stockings.'
'An' whan wad I be able to pay ye, do ye think, doctor? In anither warl' maybe, whaur the currency micht be sae different there wad be no possibility o' reckonin' the rate o' exchange. Na, na.'
'But I will give you the money if you like.'
'Na, na. You hae dune eneuch already, an' mony thanks. Siller's no sae easy come by to be wastit, as lang's a darn 'll do. Forbye, gin ye began wi' his claes, ye wadna ken whaur to haud; for it wad jist be the new claith upo' the auld garment: ye micht as weel new cleed him at ance.'
'And why not if I choose, Mr. Falconer?'
'Speir ye that at him, an' see what ye'll get—a luik 'at wad fess a corbie (carrion crow) frae the lift (sky). I wadna hae ye try that. Some fowk's poverty maun be han'let jist like a sair place, doctor. He canna weel compleen o' a bit darnin'.—He canna tak that ill,' repeated Robert, in a tone that showed he yet felt some anxiety on the subject; 'but new anes! I wadna like to be by whan he fand that oot. Maybe he micht tak them frae a wuman; but frae a man body!—na, na; I maun jist darn awa'. But I'll mak them dacent eneuch afore I hae dune wi' them. A fiddler has fingers.'
The doctor smiled a pleased smile; but when he got into his carriage, again he laughed heartily.
The evening deepened into night. Robert thought Ericson was asleep. But he spoke.
'Who is that at the street door?' he said.
They were at the top of the house, and there was no window to the street. But Ericson's senses were preternaturally acute, as is often the case in such illnesses.
'I dinna hear onybody,' answered Robert.
'There was somebody,' returned Ericson.
From that moment he began to be restless, and was more feverish than usual throughout the night.
Up to this time he had spoken little, was depressed with a suffering to which he could give no name—not pain, he said—but such that he could rouse no mental effort to meet it: his endurance was passive altogether. This night his brain was more affected. He did not rave, but often wandered; never spoke nonsense, but many words that would have seemed nonsense to ordinary people: to Robert they seemed inspired. His imagination, which was greater than any other of his fine faculties, was so roused that he talked in verse—probably verse composed before and now recalled. He would even pray sometimes in measured lines, and go on murmuring petitions, till the words of the murmur became undistinguishable, and he fell asleep. But even in his sleep he would speak; and Robert would listen in awe; for such words, falling from such a man, were to him as dim breaks of coloured light from the rainbow walls of the heavenly city.
'If God were thinking me,' said Ericson, 'ah! But if he be only dreaming me, I shall go mad.'
Ericson's outside was like his own northern clime—dark, gentle, and clear, with gray-blue seas, and a sun that seems to shine out of the past, and know nothing of the future. But within glowed a volcanic angel of aspiration, fluttering his half-grown wings, and ever reaching towards the heights whence all things are visible, and where all passions are safe because true, that is divine. Iceland herself has her Hecla.
Robert listened with keenest ear. A mist of great meaning hung about the words his friend had spoken. He might speak more. For some minutes he listened in vain, and was turning at last towards his book in hopelessness, when he did speak yet again: Robert's ear soon detected the rhythmic motion of his speech.
'Come in the glory of thine excellence;Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light;And let the shimmer of thy chariot wheelsBurn through the cracks of night.—So slowly, Lord,To lift myself to thee with hands of toil,Climbing the slippery cliff of unheard prayer!Lift up a hand among my idle days—One beckoning finger. I will cast asideThe clogs of earthly circumstance, and runUp the broad highways where the countless worldsSit ripening in the summer of thy love.'
Breathless for fear of losing a word, Robert yet remembered that he had seen something like these words in the papers Ericson had given him to read on the night when his illness began. When he had fallen asleep and silent, he searched and found the poem from which I give the following extracts. He had not looked at the papers since that night.
A PRAYER.
O Lord, my God, how longShall my poor heart pant for a boundless joy?How long, O mighty Spirit, shall I hearThe murmur of Truth's crystal waters slideFrom the deep caverns of their endless being,But my lips taste not, and the grosser airChoke each pure inspiration of thy will?I would be a wind,Whose smallest atom is a viewless wing,All busy with the pulsing life that throbsTo do thy bidding; yea, or the meanest thingThat has relation to a changeless truthCould I but be instinct with thee—each thoughtThe lightning of a pure intelligence,And every act as the loud thunder-clapOf currents warring for a vacuum.Lord, clothe me with thy truth as with a robe.Purge me with sorrow. I will bend my head,And let the nations of thy waves pass over,Bathing me in thy consecrated strength.And let the many-voiced and silver windsPass through my frame with their clear influence.O save me—I am blind; lo! thwarting shapesWall up the void before, and thrusting outLean arms of unshaped expectation, beckonDown to the night of all unholy thoughts.I have seenUnholy shapes lop off my shining thoughts,Which I had thought nursed in thine emerald light;And they have lent me leathern wings of fear,Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust;And Godhead with its crown of many stars,Its pinnacles of flaming holiness,And voice of leaves in the green summer-time,Has seemed the shadowed image of a self.Then my soul blackened; and I rose to findAnd grasp my doom, and cleave the arching deepsOf desolation.O Lord, my soul is a forgotten well;Clad round with its own rank luxuriance;A fountain a kind sunbeam searches for,Sinking the lustre of its arrowy fingerThrough the long grass its own strange virtue5Hath blinded up its crystal eye withal:Make me a broad strong river coming downWith shouts from its high hills, whose rocky heartsThrob forth the joy of their stabilityIn watery pulses from their inmost deeps,And I shall be a vein upon thy world,Circling perpetual from the parent deep.O First and Last, O glorious all in all,In vain my faltering human tongue would seekTo shape the vesture of the boundless thought,Summing all causes in one burning word;Give me the spirit's living tongue of fire,Whose only voice is in an attitudeOf keenest tension, bent back on itselfWith a strong upward force; even as thy bowOf bended colour stands against the north,And, in an attitude to spring to heaven,Lays hold of the kindled hills.Most mighty One,Confirm and multiply my thoughts of good;Help me to wall each sacred treasure roundWith the firm battlements of special action.Alas my holy, happy thoughts of theeMake not perpetual nest within my soul,But like strange birds of dazzling colours stoopThe trailing glories of their sunward speed,For one glad moment filling my blasted boughsWith the sunshine of their wings.Make me a forestOf gladdest life, wherein perpetual springLifts up her leafy tresses in the wind.Lo! now I seeThy trembling starlight sit among my pines,And thy young moon slide down my arching boughsWith a soft sound of restless eloquence.And I can feel a joy as when thy hostsOf trampling winds, gathering in maddened bands,Roar upward through the blue and flashing dayRound my still depths of uncleft solitude.Hear me, O Lord,When the black night draws down upon my soul,And voices of temptation darken downThe misty wind, slamming thy starry doors,With bitter jests. 'Thou fool!' they seem to say'Thou hast no seed of goodness in thee; allThy nature hath been stung right through and through.Thy sin hath blasted thee, and made thee old.Thou hadst a will, but thou hast killed it—dead—And with the fulsome garniture of lifeBuilt out the loathsome corpse. Thou art a childOf night and death, even lower than a worm.Gather the skirts up of thy shadowy self,And with what resolution thou hast left,Fall on the damned spikes of doom.'O take me like a child,If thou hast made me for thyself, my God,And lead me up thy hills. I shall not fearSo thou wilt make me pure, and beat back sinWith the terrors of thine eye.Lord hast thou sentThy moons to mock us with perpetual hope?Lighted within our breasts the love of love,To make us ripen for despair, my God?Oh, dost thou hold each individual soulStrung clear upon thy flaming rods of purpose?Or does thine inextinguishable willStand on the steeps of night with lifted hand,Filling the yawning wells of monstrous spaceWith mixing thought—drinking up single lifeAs in a cup? and from the rending foldsOf glimmering purpose, the gloom do all thy navied starsSlide through the gloom with mystic melody,Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul,Hung like a dew-drop in thy grassy ways,Drawn up again into the rack of change,Even through the lustre which created it?O mighty one, thou wilt not smite me throughWith scorching wrath, because my spirit standsBewildered in thy circling mysteries.
Here came the passage Robert had heard him repeat, and then the following paragraph:
Lord, thy strange mysteries come thickening downUpon my head like snow-flakes, shutting outThe happy upper fields with chilly vapour.Shall I content my soul with a weak senseOf safety? or feed my ravenous hunger withSore-purged hopes, that are not hopes, but fearsClad in white raiment?I know not but some thin and vaporous fog,Fed with the rank excesses of the soul,Mocks the devouring hunger of my lifeWith satisfaction: lo! the noxious gasFeeds the lank ribs of gaunt and ghastly deathWith double emptiness, like a balloon,Borne by its lightness o'er the shining lands,A wonder and a laughter.The creeds lie in the hollow of men's heartsLike festering pools glassing their own corruption:The slimy eyes stare up with dull approval,And answer not when thy bright starry feetMove on the watery floors.O wilt thou hear me when I cry to thee?I am a child lost in a mighty forest;The air is thick with voices, and strange handsReach through the dusk and pluck me by the skirts.There is a voice which sounds like words from home,But, as I stumble on to reach it, seemsTo leap from rock to rock. Oh! if it isWilling obliquity of sense, descend,Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand,And lead me homeward through the shadows.Let me not by my wilful acts of prideBlock up the windows of thy truth, and growA wasted, withered thing, that stumbles onDown to the grave with folded hands of slothAnd leaden confidence.
There was more of it, as my type indicates. Full of faults, I have given so much to my reader, just as it stood upon Ericson's blotted papers, the utterance of a true soul 'crying for the light.' But I give also another of his poems, which Robert read at the same time, revealing another of his moods when some one of the clouds of holy doubt and questioning love which so often darkened his sky, did at length
Turn forth her silver lining on the night:
SONG.
They are blind and they are dead:We will wake them as we go;There are words have not been said;There are sounds they do not know.We will pipe and we will sing—With the music and the spring,Set their hearts a wondering.They are tired of what is old:We will give it voices new;For the half hath not been toldOf the Beautiful and True.Drowsy eyelids shut and sleeping!Heavy eyes oppressed with weeping!Flashes through the lashes leaping!Ye that have a pleasant voice,Hither come without delay;Ye will never have a choiceLike to that ye have to-day:Round the wide world we will go,Singing through the frost and snow,Till the daisies are in blow.Ye that cannot pipe or sing,Ye must also come with speed;Ye must come and with you bringWeighty words and weightier deed:Helping hands and loving eyes,These will make them truly wise—Then will be our Paradise.
As Robert read, the sweetness of the rhythm seized upon him, and, almost unconsciously, he read the last stanza aloud. Looking up from the paper with a sigh of wonder and delight—there was the pale face of Ericson gazing at him from the bed! He had risen on one arm, looking like a dead man called to life against his will, who found the world he had left already stranger to him than the one into which he had but peeped.
'Yes,' he murmured; 'I could say that once. It's all gone now. Our world is but our moods.'
He fell back on his pillow. After a little, he murmured again:
'I might fool myself with faith again. So it is better not. I would not be fooled. To believe the false and be happy is the very belly of misery. To believe the true and be miserable, is to be true—and miserable. If there is no God, let me know it. I will not be fooled. I will not believe in a God that does not exist. Better be miserable because I am, and cannot help it.—O God!'
Yet in his misery, he cried upon God.
These words came upon Robert with such a shock of sympathy, that they destroyed his consciousness for the moment, and when he thought about them, he almost doubted if he had heard them. He rose and approached the bed. Ericson lay with his eyes closed, and his face contorted as by inward pain. Robert put a spoonful of wine to his lips. He swallowed it, opened his eyes, gazed at the boy as if he did not know him, closed them again, and lay still.
Some people take comfort from the true eyes of a dog—and a precious thing to the loving heart is the love of even a dumb animal.6What comfort then must not such a boy as Robert have been to such a man as Ericson! Often and often when he was lying asleep as Robert thought, he was watching the face of his watcher. When the human soul is not yet able to receive the vision of the God-man, God sometimes—might I not say always?—reveals himself, or at least gives himself, in some human being whose face, whose hands are the ministering angels of his unacknowledged presence, to keep alive the fire of love on the altar of the heart, until God hath provided the sacrifice—that is, until the soul is strong enough to draw it from the concealing thicket. Here were two, each thinking that God had forsaken him, or was not to be found by him, and each the very love of God, commissioned to tend the other's heart. In each was he present to the other. The one thought himself the happiest of mortals in waiting upon his big brother, whose least smile was joy enough for one day; the other wondered at the unconscious goodness of the boy, and while he gazed at his ruddy-brown face, believed in God.
For some time after Ericson was taken ill, he was too depressed and miserable to ask how he was cared for. But by slow degrees it dawned upon him that a heart deep and gracious, like that of a woman, watched over him. True, Robert was uncouth, but his uncouthness was that of a half-fledged angel. The heart of the man and the heart of the boy were drawn close together. Long before Ericson was well he loved Robert enough to be willing to be indebted to him, and would lie pondering—not how to repay him, but how to return his kindness.
How much Robert's ambition to stand well in the eyes of Miss St. John contributed to his progress I can only imagine; but certainly his ministrations to Ericson did not interfere with his Latin and Greek. I venture to think that they advanced them, for difficulty adds to result, as the ramming of the powder sends the bullet the further. I have heard, indeed, that when a carrier wants to help his horse up hill, he sets a boy on his back.
Ericson made little direct acknowledgment to Robert: his tones, his gestures, his looks, all thanked him; but he shrunk from words, with the maidenly shamefacedness that belongs to true feeling. He would even assume the authoritative, and send him away to his studies, but Robert knew how to hold his own. The relation of elder brother and younger was already established between them. Shargar likewise took his share in the love and the fellowship, worshipping in that he believed.
The presence at the street door of which Ericson's over-acute sense had been aware on a past evening, was that of Mr. Lindsay, walking home with bowed back and bowed head from the college library, where he was privileged to sit after hours as long as he pleased over books too big to be comfortably carried home to his cottage. He had called to inquire after Ericson, whose acquaintance he had made in the library, and cultivated until almost any Friday evening Ericson was to be found seated by Mr. Lindsay's parlour fire.
As he entered the room that same evening, a young girl raised herself from a low seat by the fire to meet him. There was a faint rosy flush on her cheek, and she held a volume in her hand as she approached her father. They did not kiss: kisses were not a legal tender in Scotland then: possibly there has been a depreciation in the value of them since they were.
'I've been to ask after Mr. Ericson,' said Mr. Lindsay.
'And how is he?' asked the girl.
'Very poorly indeed,' answered her father.
'I am sorry. You'll miss him, papa.'
'Yes, my dear. Tell Jenny to bring my lamp.'
'Won't you have your tea first, papa?'
'Oh yes, if it's ready.'
'The kettle has been boiling for a long time, but I wouldn't make the tea till you came in.'
Mr. Lindsay was an hour later than usual, but Mysie was quite unaware of that: she had been absorbed in her book, too much absorbed even to ring for better light than the fire afforded. When her father went to put off his long, bifurcated greatcoat, she returned to her seat by the fire, and forgot to make the tea. It was a warm, snug room, full of dark, old-fashioned, spider-legged furniture; low-pitched, with a bay-window, open like an ear to the cries of the German Ocean at night, and like an eye during the day to look out upon its wide expanse. This ear or eye was now curtained with dark crimson, and the room, in the firelight, with the young girl for a soul to it, affected one like an ancient book in which he reads his own latest thought.
Mysie was nothing over the middle height—delicately-fashioned, at once slender and round, with extremities neat as buds. Her complexion was fair, and her face pale, except when a flush, like that of a white rose, overspread it. Her cheek was lovelily curved, and her face rather short. But at first one could see nothing for her eyes. They were the largest eyes; and their motion reminded one of those of Sordello in the Purgatorio:
E nel muover degli occhi onesta e tarda:
they seemed too large to move otherwise than with a slow turning like that of the heavens. At first they looked black, but if one ventured inquiry, which was as dangerous as to gaze from the battlements of Elsinore, he found them a not very dark brown. In her face, however, especially when flushed, they had all the effect of what Milton describes as
Quel sereno fulgor d'amabil nero.
A wise observer would have been a little troubled in regarding her mouth. The sadness of a morbid sensibility hovered about it—the sign of an imagination wrought upon from the centre of self. Her lips were neither thin nor compressed—they closed lightly, and were richly curved; but there was a mobility almost tremulous about the upper lip that gave sign of the possibility of such an oscillation of feeling as might cause the whole fabric of her nature to rock dangerously.
The moment her father re-entered, she started from her stool on the rug, and proceeded to make the tea. Her father took no notice of her neglect, but drew a chair to the table, helped himself to a piece of oat-cake, hastily loaded it with as much butter as it could well carry, and while eating it forgot it and everything else in the absorption of a volume he had brought in with him from his study, in which he was tracing out some genealogical thread of which he fancied he had got a hold. Mysie was very active now, and lost the expression of far-off-ness which had hitherto characterized her countenance; till, having poured out the tea, she too plunged at once into her novel, and, like her father, forgot everything and everybody near her.
Mr. Lindsay was a mild, gentle man, whose face and hair seemed to have grown gray together. He was very tall, and stooped much. He had a mouth of much sensibility, and clear blue eyes, whose light was rarely shed upon any one within reach except his daughter—they were so constantly bent downwards, either on the road as he walked, or on his book as he sat. He had been educated for the church, but had never risen above the position of a parish school-master. He had little or no impulse to utterance, was shy, genial, and, save in reading, indolent. Ten years before this point of my history he had been taken up by an active lawyer in Edinburgh, from information accidentally supplied by Mr. Lindsay himself, as the next heir to a property to which claim was laid by the head of a county family of wealth. Probabilities were altogether in his favour, when he gave up the contest upon the offer of a comfortable annuity from the disputant. To leave his schooling and his possible estate together, and sit down comfortably by his own fireside, with the means of buying books, and within reach of a good old library—that of King's College by preference—was to him the sum of all that was desirable. The income offered him was such that he had no doubt of laying aside enough for his only child, Mysie; but both were so ill-fitted for saving, he from looking into the past, she from looking into—what shall I call it? I can only think of negatives—what was neither past, present, nor future, neither material nor eternal, neither imaginative in any true sense, nor actual in any sense, that up to the present hour there was nothing in the bank, and only the money for impending needs in the house. He could not be called a man of learning; he was only a great bookworm; for his reading lay all in the nebulous regions of history. Old family records, wherever he could lay hold upon them, were his favourite dishes; old, musty books, that looked as if they knew something everybody else had forgotten, made his eyes gleam, and his white taper-fingered hand tremble with eagerness. With such a book in his grasp he saw something ever beckoning him on, a dimly precious discovery, a wonderful fact just the shape of some missing fragment in the mosaic of one of his pictures of the past. To tell the truth, however, his discoveries seldom rounded themselves into pictures, though many fragments of the minutely dissected map would find their places, whereupon he rejoiced like a mild giant refreshed with soda-water. But I have already said more about him than his place justifies; therefore, although I could gladly linger over the portrait, I will leave it. He had taught his daughter next to nothing. Being his child, he had the vague feeling that she inherited his wisdom, and that what he knew she knew. So she sat reading novels, generally trashy ones, while he knew no more of what was passing in her mind than of what the Admirable Crichton might, at the moment, be disputing with the angels.
I would not have my reader suppose that Mysie's mind was corrupted. It was so simple and childlike, leaning to what was pure, and looking up to what was noble, that anything directly bad in the books she happened—for it was all haphazard—to read, glided over her as a black cloud may glide over a landscape, leaving it sunny as before.
I cannot therefore say, however, that she was nothing the worse. If the darkening of the sun keep the fruits of the earth from growing, the earth is surely the worse, though it be blackened by no deposit of smoke. And where good things do not grow, the wild and possibly noxious will grow more freely. There may be no harm in the yellow tanzie—there is much beauty in the red poppy; but they are not good for food. The result in Mysie's case would be this—not that she would call evil good and good evil, but that she would take the beautiful for the true and the outer shows of goodness for goodness itself—not the worst result, but bad enough, and involving an awful amount of suffering and possibly of defilement. He who thinks to climb the hill of happiness thus, will find himself floundering in the blackest bog that lies at the foot of its precipices. I say he, not she, advisedly. All will acknowledge it of the woman: it is as true of the man, though he may get out easier. Will he? I say, checking myself. I doubt it much. In the world's eye, yes; but in God's? Let the question remain unanswered.
When he had eaten his toast, and drunk his tea, apparently without any enjoyment, Mr. Lindsay rose with his book in his hand, and withdrew to his study.
He had not long left the room when Mysie was startled by a loud knock at the back door, which opened on a lane, leading along the top of the hill. But she had almost forgotten it again, when the door of the room opened, and a gentleman entered without any announcement—for Jenny had never heard of the custom. When she saw him, Mysie started from her seat, and stood in visible embarrassment. The colour went and came on her lovely face, and her eyelids grew very heavy. She had never seen the visitor before: whether he had ever seen her before, I cannot certainly say. She felt herself trembling in his presence, while he advanced with perfect composure. He was a man no longer young, but in the full strength and show of manhood—the Baron of Rothie. Since the time of my first description of him, he had grown a moustache, which improved his countenance greatly, by concealing his upper lip with its tusky curves. On a girl like Mysie, with an imagination so cultivated, and with no opportunity of comparing its fancies with reality, such a man would make an instant impression.
'I beg your pardon, Miss—Lindsay, I presume?—for intruding upon you so abruptly. I expected to see your father—not one of the graces.'
She blushed all the colour of her blood now. The baron was quite enough like the hero of whom she had just been reading to admit of her imagination jumbling the two. Her book fell. He lifted it and laid it on the table. She could not speak even to thank him. Poor Mysie was scarcely more than sixteen.
'May I wait here till your father is informed of my visit?' he asked.
Her only answer was to drop again upon her low stool.
Now Jenny had left it to Mysie to acquaint her father with the fact of the baron's presence; but before she had time to think of the necessity of doing something, he had managed to draw her into conversation. He was as great a hypocrite as ever walked the earth, although he flattered himself that he was none, because he never pretended to cultivate that which he despised—namely, religion. But he was a hypocrite nevertheless; for the falser he knew himself, the more honour he judged it to persuade women of his truth.
It is unnecessary to record the slight, graceful, marrowless talk into which he drew Mysie, and by which he both bewildered and bewitched her. But at length she rose, admonished by her inborn divinity, to seek her father. As she passed him, the baron took her hand and kissed it. She might well tremble. Even such contact was terrible. Why? Because there was no love in it. When the sense of beauty which God had given him that he might worship, awoke in Lord Rothie, he did not worship, but devoured, that he might, as he thought, possess! The poison of asps was under those lips. His kiss was as a kiss from the grave's mouth, for his throat was an open sepulchre. This was all in the past, reader. Baron Rothie was a foam-flake of the court of the Prince Regent. There are no such men now-a-days! It is a shame to speak of such, and therefore they are not! Decency has gone so far to abolish virtue. Would to God that a writer could be decent and honest! St. Paul counted it a shame to speak of some things, and yet he did speak of them—because those to whom he spoke did them.
Lord Rothie had, in five minutes, so deeply interested Mr. Lindsay in a question of genealogy, that he begged his lordship to call again in a few days, when he hoped to have some result of research to communicate.
One of the antiquarian's weaknesses, cause and result both of his favourite pursuits, was an excessive reverence for rank. Had its claims been founded on mediated revelation, he could not have honoured it more. Hence when he communicated to his daughter the name of their visitor, it was 'with bated breath and whispering humbleness,' which deepened greatly the impression made upon her by the presence and conversation of the baron. Mysie was in danger.
Shargar was late that evening, for he had a job that detained him. As he handed over his money to Robert, he said,
'I saw Black Geordie the nicht again, stan'in' at a back door, an' Jock Mitchell, upo' Reid Rorie, haudin' him.'
'Wha's Jock Mitchell?' asked Robert.
'My brither Sandy's ill-faured groom,' answered Shargar. 'Whatever mischeef Sandy's up till, Jock comes in i' the heid or tail o' 't.'
'I wonner what he's up till noo.'
'Faith! nae guid. But I aye like waur to meet Sandy by himsel' upo' that reekit deevil o' his. Man, it's awfu' whan Black Geordie turns the white o' 's ee, an' the white o' 's teeth upo' ye. It's a' the white 'at there is about 'im.'
'Wasna yer brither i' the airmy, Shargar?'
'Ow, 'deed ay. They tell me he was at Watterloo. He's a cornel, or something like that.'
'Wha tellt ye a' that?'
'My mither whiles,' answered Shargar.
Ericson was recovering slowly. He could sit up in bed the greater part of the day, and talk about getting out of it. He was able to give Robert an occasional help with his Greek, and to listen with pleasure to his violin. The night-watching grew less needful, and Ericson would have dispensed with it willingly, but Robert would not yet consent.
But Ericson had seasons of great depression, during which he could not away with music, or listen to the words of the New Testament. During one of these Robert had begun to read a chapter to him, in the faint hope that he might draw some comfort from it.
'Shut the book,' he said. 'If it were the word of God to men, it would have brought its own proof with it.'
'Are ye sure it hasna?' asked Robert.
'No,' answered Ericson. 'But why should a fellow that would give his life—that's not much, but it's all I've got—to believe in God, not be able? Only I confess that God in the New Testament wouldn't satisfy me. There's no help. I must just die, and go and see.—She'll be left without anybody. 'What does it matter? She would not mind a word I said. And the God they talk about will just let her take her own way. He always does.'
He had closed his eyes and forgotten that Robert heard him. He opened them now, and fixed them on him with an expression that seemed to ask, 'Have I been saying anything I ought not?'
Robert knelt by the bedside, and said, slowly, with strongly repressed emotion,
'Mr. Ericson, I sweir by God, gin there be ane, that gin ye dee, I'll tak up what ye lea' ahin' ye. Gin there be onybody ye want luikit efter, I'll luik efter her. I'll do what I can for her to the best o' my abeelity, sae help me God—aye savin' what I maun do for my ain father, gin he be in life, to fess (bring) him back to the richt gait, gin there be a richt gait. Sae ye can think aboot whether there's onything ye wad like to lippen till me.'
A something grew in Ericson's eyes as Robert spoke. Before he had finished, they beamed on the boy.
'I think there must be a God somewhere after all,' he said, half soliloquizing. 'I should be sorry you hadn't a God, Robert. Why should I wish it for your sake? How could I want one for myself if there never was one? If a God had nothing to do with my making, why should I feel that nobody but God can set things right? Ah! but he must be such a God as I could imagine—altogether, absolutely true and good. If we came out of nothing, we could not invent the idea of a God—could we, Robert? Nothing would be our God. If we come from God, nothing is more natural, nothing so natural, as to want him, and when we haven't got him, to try to find him.—What if he should be in us after all, and working in us this way? just this very way of crying out after him?'
'Mr. Ericson,' cried Robert, 'dinna say ony mair 'at ye dinna believe in God. Ye duv believe in 'im—mair, I'm thinkin', nor onybody 'at I ken, 'cep', maybe, my grannie—only hers is a some queer kin' o' a God to believe in. I dinna think I cud ever manage to believe in him mysel'.'
Ericson sighed and was silent. Robert remained kneeling by his bedside, happier, clearer-headed, and more hopeful than he had ever been. What if all was right at the heart of things—right, even as a man, if he could understand, would say was right; right, so that a man who understood in part could believe it to be ten times more right than he did understand! Vaguely, dimly, yet joyfully, Robert saw something like this in the possibility of things. His heart was full, and the tears filled his eyes. Ericson spoke again.
'I have felt like that often for a few moments,' he said; 'but always something would come and blow it away. I remember one spring morning—but if you will bring me that bundle of papers, I will show you what, if I can find it, will let you understand—'
Robert rose, went to the cupboard, and brought the pile of loose leaves. Ericson turned them over, and, Robert was glad to see, now and then sorted them a little. At length he drew out a sheet, carelessly written, carelessly corrected, and hard to read.
'It is not finished, or likely to be,' he said, as he put the paper in Robert's hand.
'Won't you read it to me yourself, Mr. Ericson?' suggested Robert.
'I would sooner put it in the fire,' he answered—'it's fate, anyhow. I don't know why I haven't burnt them all long ago. Rubbish, and diseased rubbish! Read it yourself, or leave it.'
Eagerly Robert took it, and read. The following was the best he could make of it:
Oh that a wind would callFrom the depths of the leafless wood!Oh that a voice would fallOn the ear of my solitude!Far away is the sea,With its sound and its spirit-tone:Over it white clouds flee,But I am alone, alone.Straight and steady and tallThe trees stand on their feet;Fast by the old stone wallThe moss grows green and sweet;But my heart is full of fears,For the sun shines far away;And they look in my face through tears,And the light of a dying day.My heart was glad last night,As I pressed it with my palm;Its throb was airy and lightAs it sang some spirit-psalm;But it died away in my breastAs I wandered forth to-day—As a bird sat dead on its nest,While others sang on the spray.O weary heart of mine,Is there ever a truth for thee?Will ever a sun outshineBut the sun that shines on me?Away, away through the airThe clouds and the leaves are blown;And my heart hath need of prayer,For it sitteth alone, alone.
And Robert looked with sad reverence at Ericson,—nor ever thought that there was one who, in the face of the fact, and in recognition of it, had dared say, 'Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father.' The sparrow does fall—but he who sees it is yet the Father.
And we know only the fall, and not the sparrow.
The next day was Sunday. Robert sat, after breakfast, by his friend's bed.
'You haven't been to church for a long time, Robert: wouldn't you like to go to-day?' said Ericson.
'I dinna want to lea' you, Mr. Ericson; I can bide wi' ye a' day the day, an' that's better nor goin' to a' the kirks in Aberdeen.'
'I should like you to go to-day, though; and see if, after all, there may not be a message for us. If the church be the house of God, as they call it, there should be, now and then at least, some sign of a pillar of fire about it, some indication of the presence of God whose house it is. I wish you would go and see. I haven't been to church for a long time, except to the college-chapel, and I never saw anything more than a fog there.'
'Michtna the fog be the torn-edge like, o' the cloody pillar?' suggested Robert.
'Very likely,' assented Ericson; 'for, whatever truth there may be in Christianity, I'm pretty sure the mass of our clergy have never got beyond Judaism. They hang on about the skirts of that cloud for ever.'
'Ye see, they think as lang 's they see the fog, they hae a grup o' something. But they canna get a grup o' the glory that excelleth, for it's not to luik at, but to lat ye see a' thing.'
Ericson regarded him with some surprise. Robert hastened to be honest.
'It's no that I ken onything aboot it, Mr. Ericson. I was only bletherin' (talking nonsense)—rizzonin' frae the twa symbols o' the cloud an' the fire—kennin' nothing aboot the thing itsel'. I'll awa' to the kirk, an' see what it's like. Will I gie ye a buik afore I gang?'
'No, thank you. I'll just lie quiet till you come back—if I can.'
Robert instructed Shargar to watch for the slightest sound from the sick-room, and went to church.
As he approached the granite cathedral, the only one in the world, I presume, its stern solidity, so like the country and its men, laid hold of his imagination for the first time. No doubt the necessity imposed by the unyielding material had its share, and that a large one, in the character of the building: whence else that simplest of west windows, seven lofty, narrow slits of light, parted by granite shafts of equal width, filling the space between the corner buttresses of the nave, and reaching from door to roof? whence else the absence of tracery in the windows—except the severely gracious curves into which the mullions divide?—But this cause could not have determined those towers, so strong that they might have borne their granite weight soaring aloft, yet content with the depth of their foundation, and aspiring not. The whole aspect of the building is an outcome, an absolute blossom of the northern nature.
There is but the nave of the church remaining. About 1680, more than a century after the Reformation, the great tower fell, destroying the choir, chancel, and transept, which have never been rebuilt. May the reviving faith of the nation in its own history, and God at the heart of it, lead to the restoration of this grand old monument of the belief of their fathers. Deformed as the interior then was with galleries, and with Gavin Dunbar's flat ceiling, an awe fell upon Robert as he entered it. When in after years he looked down from between the pillars of the gallery, that creeps round the church through the thickness of the wall, like an artery, and recalled the service of this Sunday morning, he felt more strongly than ever that such a faith had not reared that cathedral. The service was like the church only as a dead body is like a man. There was no fervour in it, no aspiration. The great central tower was gone.
That morning prayers and sermon were philosophically dull, and respectable as any after-dinner speech. Nor could it well be otherwise: one of the favourite sayings of its minister was, that a clergyman is nothing but a moral policeman. As such, however, he more resembled one of Dogberry's watch. He could not even preach hell with any vigour; for as a gentleman he recoiled from the vulgarity of the doctrine, yielding only a few feeble words on the subject as a sop to the Cerberus that watches over the dues of the Bible—quite unaware that his notion of the doctrine had been drawn from the Æneid, and not from the Bible.
'Well, have you got anything, Robert?' asked Ericson, as he entered his room.
'Nothing,' answered Robert.
'What was the sermon about?'
'It was all to prove that God is a benevolent being.'
'Not a devil, that is,' answered Ericson. 'Small consolation that.'
'Sma' eneuch,' responded Robert. 'I cudna help thinkin' I kent mony a tyke (dog) that God had made wi' mair o' what I wad ca' the divine natur' in him nor a' that Dr. Soulis made oot to be in God himsel'. He had no ill intentions wi' us—it amuntit to that. He wasna ill-willy, as the bairns say. But the doctor had some sair wark, I thoucht, to mak that oot, seein' we war a' the children o' wrath, accordin' to him, born in sin, and inheritin' the guilt o' Adam's first trespass. I dinna think Dr. Soulis cud say that God had dune the best he cud for 's. But he never tried to say onything like that. He jist made oot that he was a verra respectable kin' o' a God, though maybe no a'thing we micht wuss. We oucht to be thankfu' that he gae's a wee blink o' a chance o' no bein' brunt to a' eternity, wi' nae chance ava. I dinna say that he said that, but that's what it a' seemed to me to come till. He said a hantle aboot the care o' Providence, but a' the gude that he did seemed to me to be but a haudin' aff o' something ill that he had made as weel. Ye wad hae thocht the deevil had made the warl', and syne God had pitten us intil 't, and jist gied a bit wag o' 's han' whiles to haud the deevil aff o' 's whan he was like to destroy the breed a'thegither. For the grace that he spak aboot, that was less nor the nature an' the providence. I cud see unco little o' grace intil 't.'
Here Ericson broke in—fearful, apparently, lest his boyfriend should be actually about to deny the God in whom he did not himself believe.
'Robert,' he said solemnly, 'one thing is certain: if there be a God at all, he is not like that. If there be a God at all, we shall know him by his perfection—his grand perfect truth, fairness, love—a love to make life an absolute good—not a mere accommodation of difficulties, not a mere preponderance of the balance on the side of well-being. Love only could have been able to create. But they don't seem jealous for the glory of God, those men. They don't mind a speck, or even a blot, here and there upon him. The world doesn't make them miserable. They can get over the misery of their fellow-men without being troubled about them, or about the God that could let such things be.7They represent a God who does wonderfully well, on the whole, after a middling fashion. I want a God who loves perfectly. He may kill; he may torture even; but if it be for love's sake, Lord, here am I. Do with me as thou wilt.'
Had Ericson forgotten that he had no proof of such a God? The next moment the intellectual demon was awake.
'But what's the good of it all?' he said. 'I don't even know that there is anything outside of me.'
'Ye ken that I'm here, Mr. Ericson,' suggested Robert.
'I know nothing of the sort. You may be another phantom—only clearer.'
'Ye speik to me as gin ye thocht me somebody.'
'So does the man to his phantoms, and you call him mad. It is but a yielding to the pressure of constant suggestion. I do not know—I cannot know if there is anything outside of me.'
'But gin there warna, there wad be naebody for ye to love, Mr. Ericson.'
'Of course not.'
'Nor naebody to love you, Mr. Ericson.'
'Of course not.'
'Syne ye wad be yer ain God, Mr. Ericson.'
'Yes. That would follow.'
'I canna imagine a waur hell—closed in amo' naething—wi' naething a' aboot ye, luikin' something a' the time—kennin' 'at it 's a' a lee, and nae able to win clear o' 't.'
'It is hell, my boy, or anything worse you can call it.'
'What for suld ye believe that, than, Mr. Ericson? I wadna believe sic an ill thing as that. I dinna think I cud believe 't, gin ye war to pruv 't to me.'
'I don't believe it. Nobody could prove that either, even if it were so. I am only miserable that I can't prove the contrary.'
'Suppose there war a God, Mr. Ericson, do ye think ye bude (behoved) to be able to pruv that? Do ye think God cud stan' to be pruved as gin he war something sma' eneuch to be turned roon' and roon', and luikit at upo' ilka side? Gin there war a God, wadna it jist be sae—that we cudna prove him to be, I mean?'
'Perhaps. That is something. I have often thought of that. But then you can't prove anything about it.'
'I canna help thinkin' o' what Mr. Innes said to me ance. I was but a laddie, but I never forgot it. I plaguit him sair wi' wantin' to unnerstan' ilka thing afore I wad gang on wi' my questons (sums). Says he, ae day, “Robert, my man, gin ye will aye unnerstan' afore ye du as ye're tellt, ye'll never unnerstan' onything. But gin ye du the thing I tell ye, ye'll be i' the mids o' 't afore ye ken 'at ye're gaein' intil 't.” I jist thocht I wad try him. It was at lang division that I boglet maist. Weel, I gaed on, and I cud du the thing weel eneuch, ohn made ae mistak. And aye I thocht the maister was wrang, for I never kent the rizzon o' a' that beginnin' at the wrang en', an' takin' doon an' substrackin', an' a' that. Ye wad hardly believe me, Mr. Ericson: it was only this verra day, as I was sittin' i' the kirk—it was a lang psalm they war singin'—that ane wi' the foxes i' the tail o' 't—lang division came into my heid again; and first aye bit glimmerin' o' licht cam in, and syne anither, an' afore the psalm was dune I saw throu' the haill process o' 't. But ye see, gin I hadna dune as I was tauld, and learnt a' aboot hoo it was dune aforehan', I wad hae had naething to gang rizzonin' aboot, an' wad hae fun' oot naething.'
'That's good, Robert. But when a man is dying for food, he can't wait.'
'He micht try to get up and luik, though. He needna bide in 's bed till somebody comes an' sweirs till him 'at he saw a haddie (haddock) i' the press.'
'I have been looking, Robert—for years.'
'Maybe, like me, only for the rizzon o' 't, Mr. Ericson—gin ye'll forgie my impidence.'
'But what's to be done in this case, Robert? Where's the work that you can do in order to understand? Where's your long division, man?'
'Ye're ayont me noo. I canna tell that, Mr. Ericson. It canna be gaein' to the kirk, surely. Maybe it micht be sayin' yer prayers and readin' yer Bible.'
Ericson did not reply, and the conversation dropped. Is it strange that neither of these disciples should have thought of turning to the story of Jesus, finding some word that he had spoken, and beginning to do that as a first step towards a knowledge of the doctrine that Jesus was the incarnate God, come to visit his people—a very unlikely thing to man's wisdom, yet an idea that has notwithstanding ascended above man's horizon, and shown itself the grandest idea in his firmament?
In the evening Ericson asked again for his papers, from which he handed Robert the following poem:—
WORDS IN THE NIGHT.