Having at length persuaded the woman to go with him, Falconer made her take his arm, and led her off the bridge. In Parliament Street he was looking about for a cab as they walked on, when a man he did not know, stopped, touched his hat, and addressed him.
'I'm thinkin', sir, ye'll be sair wantit at hame the nicht. It wad be better to gang at ance, an' lat the puir fowk luik efter themsels for ae nicht.'
'I'm sorry I dinna ken ye, man. Do ye ken me?'
'Fine that, Mr. Falconer. There's mony ane kens you and praises God.'
'God be praised!' returned Falconer. 'Why am I wanted at home?'
''Deed I wad raither not say, sir.—Hey!'
This last exclamation was addressed to a cab just disappearing down King Street from Whitehall. The driver heard, turned, and in a moment more was by their side.
'Ye had better gang into her an' awa' hame, and lea' the poor lassie to me. I'll tak guid care o' her.'
She clung to Falconer's arm. The man opened the door of the cab. Falconer put her in, told the driver to go to Queen Square, and if he could not make haste, to stop the first cab that could, got in himself, thanked his unknown friend, who did not seem quite satisfied, and drove off.
Happily Miss St. John was at home, and there was no delay. Neither was any explanation of more than six words necessary. He jumped again into the cab and drove home. Fortunately for his mood, though in fact it mattered little for any result, the horse was fresh, and both able and willing.
When he entered John Street, he came to observe before reaching his own door that a good many men were about in little quiet groups—some twenty or so, here and there. When he let himself in with his pass-key, there were two men in the entry. Without stopping to speak, he ran up to his own chambers. When he got into his sitting-room, there stood De Fleuri, who simply waved his hand towards the old sofa. On it lay an elderly man, with his eyes half open, and a look almost of idiocy upon his pale, puffed face, which was damp and shining. His breathing was laboured, but there was no further sign of suffering. He lay perfectly still. Falconer saw at once that he was under the influence of some narcotic, probably opium; and the same moment the all but conviction darted into his mind that Andrew Falconer, his grandmother's son, lay there before him. That he was his own father he had no feeling yet. He turned to De Fleuri.
'Thank you, friend,' he said. 'I shall find time to thank you.'
'Are we right?' asked De Fleuri.
'I don't know. I think so,' answered Falconer; and without another word the man withdrew.
His first mood was very strange. It seemed as if all the romance had suddenly deserted his life, and it lay bare and hopeless. He felt nothing. No tears rose to the brim of their bottomless wells—the only wells that have no bottom, for they go into the depths of the infinite soul. He sat down in his chair, stunned as to the heart and all the finer chords of his nature. The man on the horsehair sofa lay breathing—that was all. The gray hair about the pale ill-shaven face glimmered like a cloud before him. What should he do or say when he awaked? How approach this far-estranged soul? How ever send the cry of father into that fog-filled world? Could he ever have climbed on those knees and kissed those lips, in the far-off days when the sun and the wind of that northern atmosphere made his childhood blessed beyond dreams? The actual—that is the present phase of the ever-changing—looked the ideal in the face; and the mirror that held them both, shook and quivered at the discord of the faces reflected. A kind of moral cold seemed to radiate from the object before him, and chill him to the very bones. This could not long be endured. He fled from the actual to the source of all the ideal—to that Saviour who, the infinite mediator, mediates between all hopes and all positions; between the most debased actual and the loftiest ideal; between the little scoffer of St. Giles's and his angel that ever beholds the face of the Father in heaven. He fell on his knees, and spoke to God, saying that he had made this man; that the mark of his fingers was on the man's soul somewhere. He prayed to the making Spirit to bring the man to his right mind, to give him once more the heart of a child, to begin him yet again at the beginning. Then at last, all the evil he had done and suffered would but swell his gratitude to Him who had delivered him from himself and his own deeds. Having breathed this out before the God of his life, Falconer rose, strengthened to meet the honourable debased soul when it should at length look forth from the dull smeared windows of those ill-used eyes.
He felt his pulse. There was no danger from the narcotic. The coma would pass away. Meantime he would get him to bed. When he began to undress him a new reverence arose which overcame all disgust at the state in which he found him. At length one sad little fact about his dress, revealing the poverty-stricken attempt of a man to preserve the shadow of decency, called back the waters of the far-ebbed ocean of his feelings. At the prick of a pin the heart's blood will flow: at the sight of—a pin it was—Robert burst into tears, and wept like a child; the deadly cold was banished from his heart, and he not only loved, but knew that he loved—felt the love that was there. Everything then about the worn body and shabby garments of the man smote upon the heart of his son, and through his very poverty he was sacred in his eyes. The human heart awakened the filial—reversing thus the ordinary process of Nature, who by means of the filial, when her plans are unbroken, awakes the human; and he reproached himself bitterly for his hardness, as he now judged his late mental condition—unfairly, I think. He soon had him safe in bed, unconscious of the helping hands that had been busy about him in his heedless sleep; unconscious of the radiant planet of love that had been folding him round in its atmosphere of affection.
But while he thus ministered, a new question arose in his mind—to meet with its own new, God-given answer. What if this should not be the man after all?—if this love had been spent in mistake, and did not belong to him at all? The answer was, that he was a man. The love Robert had given he could not, would not withdraw. The man who had been for a moment as his father he could not cease to regard with devotion. At least he was a man with a divine soul. He might at least be somebody's father. Where love had found a moment's rest for the sole of its foot, there it must build its nest.
When he had got him safe in bed, he sat down beside him to think what he would do next. This sleep gave him very needful leisure to think. He could determine nothing—not even how to find out if he was indeed his father. If he approached the subject without guile, the man might be fearful and cunning—might have reasons for being so, and for striving to conceal the truth. But this was the first thing to make sure of, because, if it was he, all the hold he had upon him lay in his knowing it for certain. He could not think. He had had little sleep the night before. He must not sleep this night. He dragged his bath into his sitting-room, and refreshed his faculties with plenty of cold water, then lighted his pipe and went on thinking—not without prayer to that Power whose candle is the understanding of man. All at once he saw how to begin. He went again into the chamber, and looked at the man, and handled him, and knew by his art that a waking of some sort was nigh. Then he went to a corner of his sitting-room, and from beneath the table drew out a long box, and from the box lifted Dooble Sandy's auld wife, tuned the somewhat neglected strings, and laid the instrument on the table.
When, keeping constant watch over the sleeping man, he judged at length that his soul had come near enough to the surface of the ocean of sleep to communicate with the outer world through that bubble his body, which had floated upon its waves all the night unconscious, he put his chair just outside the chamber door, which opened from his sitting-room, and began to play gently, softly, far away. For a while he extemporized only, thinking of Rothieden, and the grandmother, and the bleach-green, and the hills, and the waste old factory, and his mother's portrait and letters. As he dreamed on, his dream got louder, and, he hoped, was waking a more and more vivid dream in the mind of the sleeper. 'For who can tell,' thought Falconer, 'what mysterious sympathies of blood and childhood's experience there may be between me and that man?—such, it may be, that my utterance on the violin will wake in his soul the very visions of which my soul is full while I play, each with its own nebulous atmosphere of dream-light around it.' For music wakes its own feeling, and feeling wakes thought, or rather, when perfected, blossoms into thought, thought radiant of music as those lilies that shine phosphorescent in the July nights. He played more and more forcefully, growing in hope. But he had been led astray in some measure by the fulness of his expectation. Strange to tell, doctor as he was, he had forgotten one important factor in his calculation: how the man would awake from his artificial sleep. He had not reckoned of how the limbeck of his brain would be left discoloured with vile deposit, when the fumes of the narcotic should have settled and given up its central spaces to the faintness of desertion.
Robert was very keen of hearing. Indeed he possessed all his senses keener than any other man I have known. He heard him toss on his bed. Then he broke into a growl, and damned the miauling, which, he said, the strings could never have learned anywhere but in a cat's belly. But Robert was used to bad language; and there are some bad things which, seeing that there they are, it is of the greatest consequence to get used to. It gave him, no doubt, a pang of disappointment to hear such an echo to his music from the soul which he had hoped especially fitted to respond in harmonious unison with the wail of his violin. But not for even this moment did he lose his presence of mind. He instantly moderated the tone of the instrument, and gradually drew the sound away once more into the distance of hearing. But he did not therefore let it die. Through various changes it floated in the thin æther of the soul, changes delicate as when the wind leaves the harp of the reeds by a river's brink, and falls a-ringing at the heather bells, or playing with the dry silvery pods of honesty that hang in the poor man's garden, till at length it drew nearer once more, bearing on its wings the wail of red Flodden, the Flowers of the Forest. Listening through the melody for sounds of a far different kind, Robert was aware that those sounds had ceased; the growling was still; he heard no more turnings to and fro. How it was operating he could not tell, further than that there must be some measure of soothing in its influence. He ceased quite, and listened again. For a few moments there was no sound. Then he heard the half-articulate murmuring of one whose organs have been all but overcome by the beneficent paralysis of sleep, but whose feeble will would compel them to utterance. He was nearly asleep again. Was it a fact, or a fancy of Robert's eager heart? Did the man really say,
'Play that again, father. It's bonnie, that! I aye likit the Flooers o' the Forest. Play awa'. I hae had a frichtsome dream. I thocht I was i' the ill place. I doobt I'm no weel. But yer fiddle aye did me gude. Play awa', father!'
All the night through, till the dawn of the gray morning, Falconer watched the sleeping man, all but certain that he was indeed his father. Eternities of thought passed through his mind as he watched—this time by the couch, as he hoped, of a new birth. He was about to see what could be done by one man, strengthened by all the aids that love and devotion could give, for the redemption of his fellow. As through the darkness of the night and a sluggish fog to aid it, the light of a pure heaven made its slow irresistible way, his hope grew that athwart the fog of an evil life, the darkness that might be felt, the light of the Spirit of God would yet penetrate the heart of the sinner, and shake the wickedness out of it. Deeper and yet deeper grew his compassion and his sympathy, in prospect of the tortures the man must go through, before the will that he had sunk into a deeper sleep than any into which opium could sink his bodily being, would shake off its deathly lethargy, and arise, torn with struggling pain, to behold the light of a new spiritual morning. All that he could do he was prepared to do, regardless of entreaty, regardless of torture, anger, and hate, with the inexorable justice of love, the law that will not, must not, dares not yield—strong with an awful tenderness, a wisdom that cannot be turned aside, to redeem the lost soul of his father. And he strengthened his heart for the conflict by saying that if he would do thus for his father, what would not God do for his child? Had He not proved already, if there was any truth in the grand story of the world's redemption through that obedience unto the death, that his devotion was entire, and would leave nothing undone that could be done to lift this sheep out of the pit into whose darkness and filth he had fallen out of the sweet Sabbath of the universe?
He removed all his clothes, searched the pockets, found in them one poor shilling and a few coppers, a black cutty pipe, a box of snuff, a screw of pigtail, a knife with a buckhorn handle and one broken blade, and a pawn-ticket for a keyed flute, on the proceeds of which he was now sleeping—a sleep how dearly purchased, when he might have had it free, as the gift of God's gentle darkness! Then he destroyed the garments, committing them to the fire as the hoped farewell to the state of which they were the symbols and signs.
He found himself perplexed, however, by the absence of some of the usual symptoms of the habit of opium, and concluded that his poor father was in the habit of using stimulants as well as narcotics, and that the action of the one interfered with the action of the other.
He called his housekeeper. She did not know whom her master supposed his guest to be, and regarded him only as one of the many objects of his kindness. He told her to get some tea ready, as the patient would most likely wake with a headache. He instructed her to wait upon him as a matter of course, and explain nothing. He had resolved to pass for the doctor, as indeed he was; and he told her that if he should be at all troublesome, he would be with her at once. She must keep the room dark. He would have his own breakfast now; and if the patient remained quiet, would sleep on the sofa.
He woke murmuring, and evidently suffered from headache and nausea. Mrs. Ashton took him some tea. He refused it with an oath—more of discomfort than of ill-nature—and was too unwell to show any curiosity about the person who had offered it. Probably he was accustomed to so many changes of abode, and to so many bewilderments of the brain, that he did not care to inquire where he was or who waited upon him. But happily for the heart's desire of Falconer, the debauchery of his father had at length reached one of many crises. He had caught cold before De Fleuri and his comrades found him. He was now ill—feverish and oppressed. Through the whole of the following week they nursed and waited upon him without his asking a single question as to where he was or who they were; during all which time Falconer saw no one but De Fleuri and the many poor fellows who called to inquire after him and the result of their supposed success. He never left the house, but either watched by the bedside, or waited in the next room. Often would the patient get out of bed, driven by the longing for drink or for opium, gnawing him through all the hallucinations of delirium; but he was weak, and therefore manageable. If in any lucid moments he thought where he was, he no doubt supposed that he was in a hospital, and probably had sense enough to understand that it was of no use to attempt to get his own way there. He was soon much worn, and his limbs trembled greatly. It was absolutely necessary to give him stimulants, or he would have died, but Robert reduced them gradually as he recovered strength.
But there was an infinite work to be done beyond even curing him of his evil habits. To keep him from strong drink and opium, even till the craving after them was gone, would be but the capturing of the merest outwork of the enemy's castle. He must be made such that, even if the longing should return with tenfold force, and all the means for its gratification should lie within the reach of his outstretched hand, he would not touch them. God only was able to do that for him. He would do all that he knew how to do, and God would not fail of his part. For this he had raised him up; to this he had called him; for this work he had educated him, made him a physician, given him money, time, the love and aid of his fellows, and, beyond all, a rich energy of hope and faith in his heart, emboldening him to attempt whatever his hand found to do.
As Andrew Falconer grew better, the longing of his mind after former excitement and former oblivion, roused and kept alive the longing of his body, until at length his thoughts dwelt upon nothing but his diseased cravings. His whole imagination, naturally not a feeble one, was concentrated on the delights in store for him as soon as he was well enough to be his own master, as he phrased it, once more. He soon began to see that, if he was in a hospital, it must be a private one, and at last, irresolute as he was both from character and illness, made up his mind to demand his liberty. He sat by his bedroom fire one afternoon, for he needed much artificial warmth. The shades of evening were thickening the air. He had just had one of his frequent meals, and was gazing, as he often did, into the glowing coals. Robert had come in, and after a little talk was sitting silent at the opposite corner of the chimney-piece.
'Doctor,' said Andrew, seizing the opportunity, 'you've been very kind to me, and I don't know how to thank you, but it is time I was going. I am quite well now. Would you kindly order the nurse to bring me my clothes to-morrow morning, and I will go.'
This he said with the quavering voice of one who speaks because he has made up his mind to speak. A certain something, I believe a vague molluscous form of conscience, made him wriggle and shift uneasily upon his chair as he spoke.
'No, no,' said Robert, 'you are not fit to go. Make yourself comfortable, my dear sir. There is no reason why you should go.'
'There is something I don't understand about it. I want to go.'
'It would ruin my character as a professional man to let a patient in your condition leave the house. The weather is unfavourable. I cannot—I must not consent.'
'Where am I? I don't understand it. I want to understand it.'
'Your friends wish you to remain where you are for the present.'
'I have no friends.'
'You have one, at least, who puts his house here at your service.'
'There's something about it I don't like. Do you suppose I am incapable of taking care of myself?'
'I do indeed,' answered his son with firmness.
'Then you are quite mistaken,' said Andrew, angrily. 'I am quite well enough to go, and have a right to judge for myself. It is very kind of you, but I am in a free country, I believe.'
'No doubt. All honest men are free in this country. But—'
He saw that his father winced, and said no more. Andrew resumed, after a pause in which he had been rousing his feeble drink-exhausted anger,
'I tell you I will not be treated like a child. I demand my clothes and my liberty.'
'Do you know where you were found that night you were brought here?'
'No. But what has that to do with it? I was ill. You know that as well as I.'
'You are ill now because you were lying then on the wet ground under a railway-arch—utterly incapable from the effects of opium, or drink, or both. You would have been taken to the police-station, and would probably have been dead long before now, if you had not been brought here.'
He was silent for some time. Then he broke out,
'I tell you I will go. I do not choose to live on charity. I will not. I demand my clothes.'
'I tell you it is of no use. When you are well enough to go out you shall go out, but not now.'
'Where am I? Who are you?'
He looked at Robert with a keen, furtive glance, in which were mingled bewilderment and suspicion.
'I am your best friend at present.'
He started up—fiercely and yet feebly, for a thought of terror had crossed him.
'You do not mean I am in a madhouse?'
Robert made no reply. He left him to suppose what he pleased. Andrew took it for granted that he was in a private asylum, sank back in his chair, and from that moment was quiet as a lamb. But it was easy to see that he was constantly contriving how to escape. This mental occupation, however, was excellent for his recovery; and Robert dropped no hint of his suspicion. Nor were many precautions necessary in consequence; for he never left the house without having De Fleuri there, who was a man of determination, nerve, and, now that he ate and drank, of considerable strength.
As he grew better, the stimulants given him in the form of medicine at length ceased. In their place Robert substituted other restoratives, which prevented him from missing the stimulants so much, and at length got his system into a tolerably healthy condition, though at his age, and after so long indulgence, it could hardly be expected ever to recover its tone.
He did all he could to provide him with healthy amusement—played backgammon, draughts, and cribbage with him, brought him Sir Walter's and other novels to read, and often played on his violin, to which he listened with great delight. At times of depression, which of course were frequent, the Flowers of the Forest made the old man weep. Falconer put yet more soul into the sounds than he had ever put into them before. He tried to make the old man talk of his childhood, asking him about the place of his birth, the kind of country, how he had been brought up, his family, and many questions of the sort. His answers were vague, and often contradictory. Indeed, the moment the subject was approached, he looked suspicious and cunning. He said his name was John Mackinnon, and Robert, although his belief was strengthened by a hundred little circumstances, had as yet received no proof that he was Andrew Falconer. Remembering the pawn-ticket, and finding that he could play on the flute, he brought him a beautiful instrument—in fact a silver one—the sight of which made the old man's eyes sparkle. He put it to his lips with trembling hands, blew a note or two, burst into the tears of weakness, and laid it down. But he soon took it up again, and evidently found both pleasure in the tones and sadness in the memories they awakened. At length Robert brought a tailor, and had him dressed like a gentleman—a change which pleased him much. The next step was to take him out every day for a drive, upon which his health began to improve more rapidly. He ate better, grew more lively, and began to tell tales of his adventures, of the truth of which Robert was not always certain, but never showed any doubt. He knew only too well that the use of opium is especially destructive to the conscience. Some of his stories he believed more readily than others, from the fact that he suddenly stopped in them, as if they were leading him into regions of confession which must be avoided, resuming with matter that did not well connect itself with what had gone before. At length he took him out walking, and he comported himself with perfect propriety.
But one day as they were going along a quiet street, Robert met an acquaintance, and stopped to speak with him. After a few moments' chat he turned, and found that his father, whom he had supposed to be standing beside him, had vanished. A glance at the other side of the street showed the probable refuge—a public-house. Filled but not overwhelmed with dismay, although he knew that months might be lost in this one moment, Robert darted in. He was there, with a glass of whisky in his hand, trembling now more from eagerness than weakness. He struck it from his hold. But he had already swallowed one glass, and he turned in a rage. He was a tall and naturally powerful man—almost as strongly built as his son, with long arms like his, which were dangerous even yet in such a moment of factitious strength and real excitement. Robert could not lift his arm even to defend himself from his father, although, had he judged it necessary, I believe he would not, in the cause of his redemption, have hesitated to knock him down, as he had often served others whom he would rather a thousand times have borne on his shoulders. He received his father's blow on the cheek. For one moment it made him dizzy, for it was well delivered. But when the bar-keeper jumped across the counter and approached with his fist doubled, that was another matter. He measured his length on the floor, and Falconer seized his father, who was making for the street, and notwithstanding his struggles and fierce efforts to strike again, held him secure and himself scathless, and bore him out of the house.
A crowd gathers in a moment in London, speeding to a fray as the vultures to carrion. On the heels of the population of the neighbouring mews came two policemen, and at the same moment out came the barman to the assistance of Andrew. But Falconer was as well known to the police as if he had a ticket-of-leave, and a good deal better.
'Call a four-wheel cab,' he said to one of them. 'I'm all right.'
The man started at once. Falconer turned to the other.
'Tell that man in the apron,' he said, 'that I'll make him all due reparation. But he oughtn't to be in such a hurry to meddle. He gave me no time but to strike hard.'
'Yes, sir,' answered the policeman obediently. The crowd thought he must be a great man amongst the detectives; but the bar-keeper vowed he would 'summons' him for the assault.
'You may, if you like,' said Falconer. 'When I think of it, you shall do so. You know where I live?' he said, turning to the policeman.
'No, sir, I don't. I only know you well enough.'
'Put your hand in my coat-pocket, then, and you'll find a card-case. The other. There! Help yourself.'
He said this with his arms round Andrew's, who had ceased to cry out when he saw the police.
'Do you want to give this gentleman in charge, sir?'
'No. It is a little private affair of my own, this.'
'Hadn't you better let him go, sir, and we'll find him for you when you want him?'
'No. He may give me in charge if he likes. Or if you should want him, you will find him at my house.'
Then pinioning his prisoner still more tightly in his arms, he leaned forward, and whispered in his ear,
'Will you go home quietly, or give me in charge? There is no other way, Andrew Falconer.'
He ceased struggling. Through all the flush of the contest his face grew pale. His arms dropped by his side. Robert let him go, and he stood there without offering to move. The cab came up; the policeman got out; Andrew stepped in of his own accord, and Robert followed.
'You see it's all right,' he said. 'Here, give the barman a sovereign. If he wants more, let me know. He deserved all he got, but I was wrong. John Street.'
His father did not speak a word, or ask a question all the way home. Evidently he thought it safer to be silent. But the drink he had taken, though not enough to intoxicate him, was more than enough to bring back the old longing with redoubled force. He paced about the room the rest of the day like a wild beast in a cage, and in the middle of the night, got up and dressed, and would have crept through the room in which Robert lay, in the hope of getting out. But Robert slept too anxiously for that. The captive did not make the slightest noise, but his very presence was enough to wake his son. He started at a bound from his couch, and his father retreated in dismay to his chamber.
At length the time arrived when Robert would make a further attempt, although with a fear and trembling to quiet which he had to seek the higher aid. His father had recovered his attempt to rush anew upon destruction. He was gentler and more thoughtful, and would again sit for an hour at a time gazing into the fire. From the expression of his countenance upon such occasions, Robert hoped that his visions were not of the evil days, but of those of his innocence.
One evening when he was in one of these moods—he had just had his tea, the gas was lighted, and he was sitting as I have described—Robert began to play in the next room, hoping that the music would sink into his heart, and do something to prepare the way for what was to follow. Just as he had played over the Flowers of the Forest for the third time, his housekeeper entered the room, and receiving permission from her master, went through into Andrew's chamber, and presented a packet, which she said, and said truly, for she was not in the secret, had been left for him. He received it with evident surprise, mingled with some consternation, looked at the address, looked at the seal, laid it on the table, and gazed again with troubled looks into the fire. He had had no correspondence for many years. Falconer had peeped in when the woman entered, but the moment she retired he could watch him no longer. He went on playing a slow, lingering voluntary, such as the wind plays, of an amber autumn evening, on the æolian harp of its pines. He played so gently that he must hear if his father should speak.
For what seemed hours, though it was but half-an-hour, he went on playing. At length he heard a stifled sob. He rose, and peeped again into the room. The gray head was bowed between the hands, and the gaunt frame was shaken with sobs. On the table lay the portraits of himself and his wife; and the faded brown letter, so many years folded in silence and darkness, lay open beside them. He had known the seal, with the bush of rushes and the Gaelic motto. He had gently torn the paper from around it, and had read the letter from the grave—no, from the land beyond, the land of light, where human love is glorified. Not then did Falconer read the sacred words of his mother; but afterwards his father put them into his hands. I will give them as nearly as I can remember them, for the letter is not in my possession.
'My beloved Andrew, I can hardly write, for I am at the point of death. I love you still—love you as dearly as before you left me. Will you ever see this? I will try to send it to you. I will leave it behind me, that it may come into your hands when and how it may please God. You may be an old man before you read these words, and may have almost forgotten your young wife. Oh! if I could take your head on my bosom where it used to lie, and without saying a word, think all that I am thinking into your heart. Oh! my love, my love! will you have had enough of the world and its ways by the time this reaches you? Or will you be dead, like me, when this is found, and the eyes of your son only, my darling little Robert, read the words? Oh, Andrew, Andrew! my heart is bleeding, not altogether for myself, not altogether for you, but both for you and for me. Shall I never, never be able to let out the sea of my love that swells till my heart is like to break with its longing after you, my own Andrew? Shall I never, never see you again? That is the terrible thought—the only thought almost that makes me shrink from dying. If I should go to sleep, as some think, and not even dream about you, as I dream and weep every night now! If I should only wake in the crowd of the resurrection, and not know where to find you! Oh, Andrew, I feel as if I should lose my reason when I think that you may be on the left hand of the Judge, and I can no longer say my love, because you do not, cannot any more love God. I will tell you the dream I had about you last night, which I think was what makes me write this letter. I was standing in a great crowd of people, and I saw the empty graves about us on every side. We were waiting for the great white throne to appear in the clouds. And as soon as I knew that, I cried, “Andrew, Andrew!” for I could not help it. And the people did not heed me; and I cried out and ran about everywhere, looking for you. At last I came to a great gulf. When I looked down into it, I could see nothing but a blue deep, like the blue of the sky, under my feet. It was not so wide but that I could see across it, but it was oh! so terribly deep. All at once, as I stood trembling on the very edge, I saw you on the other side, looking towards me, and stretching out your arms as if you wanted me. You were old and much changed, but I knew you at once, and I gave a cry that I thought all the universe must have heard. You heard me. I could see that. And I was in a terrible agony to get to you. But there was no way, for if I fell into the gulf I should go down for ever, it was so deep. Something made me look away, and I saw a man coming quietly along the same side of the gulf, on the edge, towards me. And when he came nearer to me, I saw that he was dressed in a gown down to his feet, and that his feet were bare and had a hole in each of them. So I knew who it was, Andrew. And I fell down and kissed his feet, and lifted up my hands, and looked into his face—oh, such a face! And I tried to pray. But all I could say was, “O Lord, Andrew, Andrew!” Then he smiled, and said, “Daughter, be of good cheer. Do you want to go to him?” And I said, “Yes, Lord.” Then he said, “And so do I. Come.” And he took my hand and led me over the edge of the precipice; and I was not afraid, and I did not sink, but walked upon the air to go to you. But when I got to you, it was too much to bear; and when I thought I had you in my arms at last, I awoke, crying as I never cried before, not even when I found that you had left me to die without you. Oh, Andrew, what if the dream should come true! But if it should not come true! I dare not think of that, Andrew. I couldn't be happy in heaven without you. It may be very wicked, but I do not feel as if it were, and I can't help it if it is. But, dear husband, come to me again. Come back, like the prodigal in the New Testament. God will forgive you everything. Don't touch drink again, my dear love. I know it was the drink that made you do as you did. You could never have done it. It was the drink that drove you to do it. You didn't know what you were doing. And then you were ashamed, and thought I would be angry, and could not bear to come back to me. Ah, if you were to come in at the door, as I write, you would see whether or not I was proud to have my Andrew again. But I would not be nice for you to look at now. You used to think me pretty—you said beautiful—so long ago. But I am so thin now, and my face so white, that I almost frighten myself when I look in the glass. And before you get this I shall be all gone to dust, either knowing nothing about you, or trying to praise God, and always forgetting where I am in my psalm, longing so for you to come. I am afraid I love you too much to be fit to go to heaven. Then, perhaps, God will send me to the other place, all for love of you, Andrew. And I do believe I should like that better. But I don't think he will, if he is anything like the man I saw in my dream. But I am growing so faint that I can hardly write. I never felt like this before. But that dream has given me strength to die, because I hope you will come too. Oh, my dear Andrew, do, do repent and turn to God, and he will forgive you. Believe in Jesus, and he will save you, and bring me to you across the deep place. But I must make haste. I can hardly see. And I must not leave this letter open for anybody but you to read after I am dead. Good-bye, Andrew. I love you all the same. I am, my dearest Husband, your affectionate Wife,
'H. FALCONER.'
Then followed the date. It was within a week of her death. The letter was feebly written, every stroke seeming more feeble by the contrasted strength of the words. When Falconer read it afterwards, in the midst of the emotions it aroused—the strange lovely feelings of such a bond between him and a beautiful ghost, far away somewhere in God's universe, who had carried him in her lost body, and nursed him at her breasts—in the midst of it all, he could not help wondering, he told me, to find the forms and words so like what he would have written himself. It seemed so long ago when that faded, discoloured paper, with the gilt edges, and the pale brown ink, and folded in the large sheet, and sealed with the curious wax, must have been written; and here were its words so fresh, so new! not withered like the rose-leaves that scented the paper from the work-box where he had found it, but as fresh as if just shaken from the rose-trees of the heart's garden. It was no wonder that Andrew Falconer should be sitting with his head in his hands when Robert looked in on him, for he had read this letter.
When Robert saw how he sat, he withdrew, and took his violin again, and played all the tunes of the old country he could think of, recalling Dooble Sandy's workshop, that he might recall the music he had learnt there.
No one who understands the bit and bridle of the association of ideas, as it is called in the skeleton language of mental philosophy, wherewith the Father-God holds fast the souls of his children—to the very last that we see of them, at least, and doubtless to endless ages beyond—will sneer at Falconer's notion of making God's violin a ministering spirit in the process of conversion. There is a well-authenticated story of a convict's having been greatly reformed for a time, by going, in one of the colonies, into a church, where the matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to which he had gone when a boy—with his mother, I suppose. It was not the matting that so far converted him: it was not to the music of his violin that Falconer looked for aid, but to the memories of childhood, the mysteries of the kingdom of innocence which that could recall—those memories which
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,Are yet a master light of all our seeing.
For an hour he did not venture to go near him. When he entered the room he found him sitting in the same place, no longer weeping, but gazing into the fire with a sad countenance, the expression of which showed Falconer at once that the soul had come out of its cave of obscuration, and drawn nearer to the surface of life. He had not seen him look so much like one 'clothed, and in his right mind,' before. He knew well that nothing could be built upon this; that this very emotion did but expose him the more to the besetting sin; that in this mood he would drink, even if he knew that he would in consequence be in danger of murdering the wife whose letter had made him weep. But it was progress, notwithstanding. He looked up at Robert as he entered, and then dropped his eyes again. He regarded him perhaps as a presence doubtful whether of angel or devil, even as the demoniacs regarded the Lord of Life who had come to set them free. Bewildered he must have been to find himself, towards the close of a long life of debauchery, wickedness, and the growing pains of hell, caught in a net of old times, old feelings, old truths.
Now Robert had carefully avoided every indication that might disclose him to be a Scotchman even, nor was there the least sign of suspicion in Andrew's manner. The only solution of the mystery that could have presented itself to him was, that his friends were at the root of it—probably his son, of whom he knew absolutely nothing. His mother could not be alive still. Of his wife's relatives there had never been one who would have taken any trouble about him after her death, hardly even before it. John Lammie was the only person, except Dr. Anderson, whose friendship he could suppose capable of this development. The latter was the more likely person. But he would be too much for him yet; he was not going to be treated like a child, he said to himself, as often as the devil got uppermost.
My reader must understand that Andrew had never been a man of resolution. He had been wilful and headstrong; and these qualities, in children especially, are often mistaken for resolution, and generally go under the name of strength of will. There never was a greater mistake. The mistake, indeed, is only excusable from the fact that extremes meet, and that this disposition is so opposite to the other, that it looks to the careless eye most like it. He never resisted his own impulses, or the enticements of evil companions. Kept within certain bounds at home, after he had begun to go wrong, by the weight of opinion, he rushed into all excesses when abroad upon business, till at length the vessel of his fortune went to pieces, and he was a waif on the waters of the world. But in feeling he had never been vulgar, however much so in action. There was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its very feebleness. He could not sin so much against it as if it had been strong. For many years he had fits of shame, and of grief without repentance; for repentance is the active, the divine part—the turning again; but taking more steadily both to strong drink and opium, he was at the time when De Fleuri found him only the dull ghost of Andrew Falconer walking in a dream of its lost carcass.
Once more Falconer retired, but not to take his violin. He could play no more. Hope and love were swelling within him. He could not rest. Was it a sign from heaven that the hour for speech had arrived? He paced up and down the room. He kneeled and prayed for guidance and help. Something within urged him to try the rusted lock of his father's heart. Without any formed resolution, without any conscious volition, he found himself again in his room. There the old man still sat, with his back to the door, and his gaze fixed on the fire, which had sunk low in the grate. Robert went round in front of him, kneeled on the rug before him, and said the one word,
'Father!'
Andrew started violently, raised his hand, which trembled as with a palsy, to his head, and stared wildly at Robert. But he did not speak. Robert repeated the one great word. Then Andrew spoke, and said in a trembling, hardly audible voice,
'Are you my son?—my boy Robert, sir?'
'I am. I am. Oh, father, I have longed for you by day, and dreamed about you by night, ever since I saw that other boys had fathers, and I had none. Years and years of my life—I hardly know how many—have been spent in searching for you. And now I have found you!'
The great tall man, in the prime of life and strength, laid his big head down on the old man's knee, as if he had been a little child. His father said nothing, but laid his hand on the head. For some moments the two remained thus, motionless and silent. Andrew was the first to speak. And his words were the voice of the spirit that striveth with man.
'What am I to do, Robert?'
No other words, not even those of passionate sorrow, or overflowing affection, could have been half so precious in the ears of Robert. When a man once asks what he is to do, there is hope for him. Robert answered instantly,
'You must come home to your mother.'
'My mother!' Andrew exclaimed. 'You don't mean to say she's alive?'
'I heard from her yesterday—in her own hand, too,' said Robert.
'I daren't. I daren't,' murmured Andrew.
'You must, father,' returned Robert. 'It is a long way, but I will make the journey easy for you. She knows I have found you. She is waiting and longing for you. She has hardly thought of anything but you ever since she lost you. She is only waiting to see you, and then she will go home, she says. I wrote to her and said, “Grannie, I have found your Andrew.” And she wrote back to me and said, “God be praised. I shall die in peace.”'
A silence followed.
'Will she forgive me?' said Andrew.
'She loves you more than her own soul,' answered Robert. 'She loves you as much as I do. She loves you as God loves you.'
'God can't love me,' said Andrews, feebly. 'He would never have left me if he had loved me.'
'He has never left you from the very first. You would not take his way, father, and he just let you try your own. But long before that he had begun to get me ready to go after you. He put such love to you in my heart, and gave me such teaching and such training, that I have found you at last. And now I have found you, I will hold you. You cannot escape—you will not want to escape any more, father?'
Andrew made no reply to this appeal. It sounded like imprisonment for life, I suppose. But thought was moving in him. After a long pause, during which the son's heart was hungering for a word whereon to hang a further hope, the old man spoke again, muttering as if he were only speaking his thoughts unconsciously.
'Where's the use? There's no forgiveness for me. My mother is going to heaven. I must go to hell. No. It's no good. Better leave it as it is. I daren't see her. It would kill me to see her.'
'It will kill her not to see you; and that will be one sin more on your conscience, father.'
Andrew got up and walked about the room. And Robert only then arose from his knees.
'And there's my mother,' he said.
Andrew did not reply; but Robert saw when he turned next towards the light, that the sweat was standing in beads on his forehead.
'Father,' he said, going up to him.
The old man stopped in his walk, turned, and faced his son.
'Father,' repeated Robert, 'you've got to repent; and God won't let you off; and you needn't think it. You'll have to repent some day.'
'In hell, Robert,' said Andrew, looking him full in the eyes, as he had never looked at him before. It seemed as if even so much acknowledgment of the truth had already made him bolder and honester.
'Yes. Either on earth or in hell. Would it not be better on earth?'
'But it will be no use in hell,' he murmured.
In those few words lay the germ of the preference for hell of poor souls, enfeebled by wickedness. They will not have to do anything there—only to moan and cry and suffer for ever, they think. It is effort, the out-going of the living will that they dread. The sorrow, the remorse of repentance, they do not so much regard: it is the action it involves; it is the having to turn, be different, and do differently, that they shrink from; and they have been taught to believe that this will not be required of them there—in that awful refuge of the will-less. I do not say they think thus: I only say their dim, vague, feeble feelings are such as, if they grew into thought, would take this form. But tell them that the fire of God without and within them will compel them to bethink themselves; that the vision of an open door beyond the smoke and the flames will ever urge them to call up the ice-bound will, that it may obey; that the torturing spirit of God in them will keep their consciences awake, not to remind them of what they ought to have done, but to tell them what they must do now, and hell will no longer fascinate them. Tell them that there is no refuge from the compelling Love of God, save that Love itself—that He is in hell too, and that if they make their bed in hell they shall not escape him, and then, perhaps, they will have some true presentiment of the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched.
'Father, it will be of use in hell,' said Robert. 'God will give you no rest even there. You will have to repent some day, I do believe—if not now under the sunshine of heaven, then in the torture of the awful world where there is no light but that of the conscience. Would it not be better and easier to repent now, with your wife waiting for you in heaven, and your mother waiting for you on earth?'
Will it be credible to my reader, that Andrew interrupted his son with the words,
'Robert, it is dreadful to hear you talk like that. Why, you don't believe in the Bible!'
His words will be startling to one who has never heard the lips of a hoary old sinner drivel out religion. To me they are not so startling as the words of Christian women and bishops of the Church of England, when they say that the doctrine of the everlasting happiness of the righteous stands or falls with the doctrine of the hopeless damnation of the wicked. Can it be that to such the word is everything, the spirit nothing? No. It is only that the devil is playing a very wicked prank, not with them, but in them: they are pluming themselves on being selfish after a godly sort.
'I do believe the Bible, father,' returned Robert, 'and have ordered my life by it. If I had not believed the Bible, I fear I should never have looked for you. But I won't dispute about it. I only say I believe that you will be compelled to repent some day, and that now is the best time. Then, you will not only have to repent, but to repent that you did not repent now. And I tell you, father, that you shall go to my grandmother.'