Mary St. John was the orphan daughter of an English clergyman, who had left her money enough to make her at least independent. Mrs. Forsyth, hearing that her niece was left alone in the world, had concluded that her society would be a pleasure to herself and a relief to the housekeeping. Even before her father's death, Miss St. John, having met with a disappointment, and concluded herself dead to the world, had been looking about for some way of doing good. The prospect of retirement, therefore, and of being useful to her sick aunt, had drawn her northwards.
She was now about six-and-twenty, filled with two passions—one for justice, the other for music. Her griefs had not made her selfish, nor had her music degenerated into sentiment. The gentle style of the instruction she had received had never begotten a diseased self-consciousness; and if her religion lacked something of the intensity without which a character like hers could not be evenly balanced, its force was not spent on the combating of unholy doubts and selfish fears, but rose on the wings of her music in gentle thanksgiving. Tears had changed her bright-hued hopes into a dove-coloured submission, through which her mind was passing towards a rainbow dawn such as she had never dreamed of. To her as yet the Book of Common Prayer contained all the prayers that human heart had need to offer; what things lay beyond its scope must lie beyond the scope of religion. All such things must be parted with one day, and if they had been taken from her very soon, she was the sooner free from the painful necessity of watching lest earthly love should remove any of the old landmarks dividing what was God's from what was only man's. She had now retired within the pale of religion, and left the rest of her being, as she thought, 'to dull forgetfulness a prey.'
She had little comfort in the society of her aunt. Indeed, she felt strongly tempted to return again to England the same month, and seek a divine service elsewhere. But it was not at all so easy then as it is now for a woman to find the opportunity of being helpful in the world of suffering.
Mrs. Forsyth was one of those women who get their own way by the very vis inertiae of their silliness. No argument could tell upon her. She was so incapable of seeing anything noble that her perfect satisfaction with everything she herself thought, said, or did, remained unchallenged. She had just illness enough to swell her feeling of importance. She looked down upon Mrs. Falconer from such an immeasurable height that she could not be indignant with her for anything; she only vouchsafed a laugh now and then at her oddities, holding no further communication with her than a condescending bend of the neck when they happened to meet, which was not once a year. But, indeed, she would have patronized the angel Gabriel, if she had had a chance, and no doubt given him a hint or two upon the proper way of praising God. For the rest, she was good-tempered, looked comfortable, and quarrelled with nobody but her rough honest old bear of a husband, whom, in his seventieth year, she was always trying to teach good manners, with the frequent result of a storm of swearing.
But now Mary St. John was thoroughly interested in the strange boy whose growing musical pinions were ever being clipped by the shears of unsympathetic age and crabbed religion, and the idea of doing something for him to make up for the injustice of his grandmother awoke in her a slight glow of that interest in life which she sought only in doing good. But although ere long she came to love the boy very truly, and although Shargar's life was bound up in the favour of Robert, yet neither stooping angel nor foot-following dog ever loved the lad with the love of that old grandmother, who would for him have given herself to the fire to which she had doomed his greatest delight.
For some days Robert worked hard at his lessons, for he had nothing else to do. Life was very gloomy now. If he could only go to sea, or away to keep sheep on the stormy mountains! If there were only some war going on, that he might list! Any fighting with the elements, or with the oppressors of the nations, would make life worth having, a man worth being. But God did not heed. He leaned over the world, a dark care, an immovable fate, bearing down with the weight of his presence all aspiration, all budding delights of children and young persons: all must crouch before him, and uphold his glory with the sacrificial death of every impulse, every admiration, every lightness of heart, every bubble of laughter. Or—which to a mind like Robert's was as bad—if he did not punish for these things, it was because they came not within the sphere of his condescension, were not worth his notice: of sympathy could be no question.
But this gloom did not last long. When souls like Robert's have been ill-taught about God, the true God will not let them gaze too long upon the Moloch which men have set up to represent him. He will turn away their minds from that which men call him, and fill them with some of his own lovely thoughts or works, such as may by degrees prepare the way for a vision of the Father.
One afternoon Robert was passing the soutar's shop. He had never gone near him since his return. But now, almost mechanically, he went in at the open door.
'Weel, Robert, ye are a stranger. But what's the maitter wi' ye? Faith! yon was an ill plisky ye played me to brak into my chop an' steal the bonnie leddy.'
'Sandy,' said Robert, solemnly, 'ye dinna ken what ye hae dune by that trick ye played me. Dinna ever mention her again i' my hearin'.'
'The auld witch hasna gotten a grup o' her again?' cried the shoemaker, starting half up in alarm. 'She cam here to me aboot the shune, but I reckon I sortit her!'
'I winna speir what ye said,' returned Robert. 'It's no maitter noo.'
And the tears rose to his eyes. His bonny lady!
'The Lord guide 's!' exclaimed the soutar. 'What is the maitter wi' the bonnie leddy?'
'There's nae bonnie leddy ony mair. I saw her brunt to death afore my verra ain een.'
The shoemaker sprang to his feet and caught up his paring knife.
'For God's sake, say 'at yer leein'!' he cried.
'I wish I war leein',' returned Robert.
The soutar uttered a terrible oath, and swore—
'I'll murder the auld—.' The epithet he ended with is too ugly to write.
'Daur to say sic a word in ae breath wi' my grannie,' cried Robert, snatching up the lapstone, 'an' I'll brain ye upo' yer ain shop-flure.'
Sandy threw the knife on his stool, and sat down beside it. Robert dropped the lapstone. Sandy took it up and burst into tears, which before they were half down his face, turned into tar with the blackness of the same.
'I'm an awfu' sinner,' he said, 'and vengeance has owerta'en me. Gang oot o' my chop! I wasna worthy o' her. Gang oot, I say, or I'll kill ye.'
Robert went. Close by the door he met Miss St. John. He pulled off his cap, and would have passed her. But she stopped him.
'I am going for a walk a little way,' she said. 'Will you go with me?'
She had come out in the hope of finding him, for she had seen him go up the street.
'That I wull,' returned Robert, and they walked on together.
When they were beyond the last house, Miss St. John said,
'Would you like to play on the piano, Robert?'
'Eh, mem!' said Robert, with a deep suspiration. Then, after a pause: 'But duv ye think I cud?'
'There's no fear of that. Let me see your hands.'
'They're some black, I doobt, mem,' he remarked, rubbing them hard upon his trowsers before he showed them; 'for I was amaist cawin' oot the brains o' Dooble Sanny wi' his ain lapstane. He's an ill-tongued chield. But eh! mem, ye suld hear him play upo' the fiddle! He's greitin' his een oot e'en noo for the bonnie leddy.'
Not discouraged by her inspection of his hands, black as they were, Miss St. John continued,
'But what would your grandmother say?' she asked.
'She maun ken naething aboot it, mem. I can-not tell her a'thing. She wad greit an' pray awfu', an' lock me up, I daursay. Ye see, she thinks a' kin' o' music 'cep' psalm-singin' comes o' the deevil himsel'. An' I canna believe that. For aye whan I see onything by ordinar bonnie, sic like as the mune was last nicht, it aye gars me greit for my brunt fiddle.'
'Well, you must come to me every day for half-an-hour at least, and I will give you a lesson on my piano. But you can't learn by that. And my aunt could never bear to hear you practising. So I'll tell you what you must do. I have a small piano in my own room. Do you know there is a door from your house into my room?'
'Ay,' said Robert. 'That hoose was my father's afore your uncle bought it. My father biggit it.'
'Is it long since your father died?'
'I dinna ken.'
'Where did he die?'
'I dinna ken.'
'Do you remember it?'
'No, mem.'
'Well, if you will come to my room, you shall practise there. I shall be down-stairs with my aunt. But perhaps I may look up now and then, to see how you are getting on. I will leave the door unlocked, so that you can come in when you like. If I don't want you, I will lock the door. You understand? You mustn't be handling things, you know.'
''Deed, mem, ye may lippen (trust) to me. But I'm jist feared to lat ye hear me lay a finger upo' the piana, for it's little I cud do wi' my fiddle, an', for the piana! I'm feart I'll jist scunner (disgust) ye.'
'If you really want to learn, there will be no fear of that,' returned Miss St. John, guessing at the meaning of the word scunner. 'I don't think I am doing anything wrong,' she added, half to herself, in a somewhat doubtful tone.
''Deed no, mem. Ye're jist an angel unawares. For I maist think sometimes that my grannie 'll drive me wud (mad); for there's naething to read but guid buiks, an' naething to sing but psalms; an' there's nae fun aboot the hoose but Betty; an' puir Shargar's nearhan' dementit wi' 't. An' we maun pray till her whether we will or no. An' there's no comfort i' the place but plenty to ate; an' that canna be guid for onybody. She likes flooers, though, an' wad like me to gar them grow; but I dinna care aboot it: they tak sic a time afore they come to onything.'
Then Miss St. John inquired about Shargar, and began to feel rather differently towards the old lady when she had heard the story. But how she laughed at the tale, and how light-hearted Robert went home, are neither to be told.
The next Sunday, the first time for many years, Dooble Sanny was at church with his wife, though how much good he got by going would be a serious question to discuss.
Robert had his first lesson the next Saturday afternoon. Eager and undismayed by the presence of Mrs. Forsyth, good-natured and contemptuous—for had he not a protecting angel by him?—he hearkened for every word of Miss St. John, combated every fault, and undermined every awkwardness with earnest patience. Nothing delighted Robert so much as to give himself up to one greater. His mistress was thoroughly pleased, and even Mrs. Forsyth gave him two of her soft finger tips to do something or other with—Robert did not know what, and let them go.
About eight o'clock that same evening, his heart beating like a captured bird's, he crept from grannie's parlour, past the kitchen, and up the low stair to the mysterious door. He had been trying for an hour to summon up courage to rise, feeling as if his grandmother must suspect where he was going. Arrived at the barrier, twice his courage failed him; twice he turned and sped back to the parlour. A third time he made the essay, a third time stood at the wondrous door—so long as blank as a wall to his careless eyes, now like the door of the magic Sesame that led to the treasure-cave of Ali Baba. He laid his hand on the knob, withdrew it, thought he heard some one in the transe, rushed up the garret stair, and stood listening, hastened down, and with a sudden influx of determination opened the door, saw that the trap was raised, closed the door behind him, and standing with his head on the level of the floor, gazed into the paradise of Miss St. John's room. To have one peep into such a room was a kind of salvation to the half-starved nature of the boy. All before him was elegance, richness, mystery. Womanhood radiated from everything. A fire blazed in the chimney. A rug of long white wool lay before it. A little way off stood the piano. Ornaments sparkled and shone upon the dressing-table. The door of a wardrobe had swung a little open, and discovered the sombre shimmer of a black silk dress. Something gorgeously red, a China crape shawl, hung glowing beyond it. He dared not gaze any longer. He had already been guilty of an immodesty. He hastened to ascend, and seated himself at the piano.
Let my reader aid me for a moment with his imagination—reflecting what it was to a boy like Robert, and in Robert's misery, to open a door in his own meagre dwelling and gaze into such a room—free to him. If he will aid me so, then let him aid himself by thinking that the house of his own soul has such a door into the infinite beauty, whether he has yet found it or not.
'Just think,' Robert said to himself, 'o' me in sic a place! It's a pailace. It's a fairy pailace. And that angel o' a leddy bides here, and sleeps there! I wonner gin she ever dreams aboot onything as bonny 's hersel'!'
Then his thoughts took another turn.
'I wonner gin the room was onything like this whan my mamma sleepit in 't? I cudna hae been born in sic a gran' place. But my mamma micht hae weel lien here.'
The face of the miniature, and the sad words written below the hymn, came back upon him, and he bowed his head upon his hands. He was sitting thus when Miss St. John came behind him, and heard him murmur the one word Mamma! She laid her hand on his shoulder. He started and rose.
'I beg yer pardon, mem. I hae no business to be here, excep' to play. But I cudna help thinkin' aboot my mother; for I was born in this room, mem. Will I gang awa' again?'
He turned towards the door.
'No, no,' said Miss St. John. 'I only came to see if you were here. I cannot stop now; but to-morrow you must tell me about your mother. Sit down, and don't lose any more time. Your grandmother will miss you. And then what would come of it?'
Thus was this rough diamond of a Scotch boy, rude in speech, but full of delicate thought, gathered under the modelling influences of the finished, refined, tender, sweet-tongued, and sweet-thoughted Englishwoman, who, if she had been less of a woman, would have been repelled by his uncouthness; if she had been less of a lady, would have mistaken his commonness for vulgarity. But she was just, like the type of womankind, a virgin-mother. She saw the nobility of his nature through its homely garments, and had been, indeed, sent to carry on the work from which his mother had been too early taken away.
'There's jist ae thing mem, that vexes me a wee, an' I dinna ken what to think aboot it,' said Robert, as Miss St. John was leaving the room. 'Maybe ye cud bide ae minute till I tell ye.'
'Yes, I can. What is it?'
'I'm nearhan' sure that whan I lea' the parlour, grannie 'ill think I'm awa' to my prayers; and sae she'll think better o' me nor I deserve. An' I canna bide that.'
'What should make you suppose that she will think so?'
'Fowk kens what ane anither's aboot, ye ken, mem.'
'Then she'll know you are not at your prayers.'
'Na. For sometimes I div gang to my prayers for a whilie like, but nae for lang, for I'm nae like ane o' them 'at he wad care to hear sayin' a lang screed o' a prayer till 'im. I hae but ae thing to pray aboot.'
'And what's that, Robert?'
One of his silences had seized him. He looked confused, and turned away.
'Never mind,' said Miss St. John, anxious to relieve him, and establish a comfortable relation between them; 'you will tell me another time.'
'I doobt no, mem,' answered Robert, with what most people would think an excess of honesty.
But Miss St. John made a better conjecture as to his apparent closeness.
'At all events,' she said, 'don't mind what your grannie may think, so long as you have no wish to make her think it. Good-night.'
Had she been indeed an angel from heaven, Robert could not have worshipped her more. And why should he? Was she less God's messenger that she had beautiful arms instead of less beautiful wings?
He practised his scales till his unaccustomed fingers were stiff, then shut the piano with reverence, and departed, carefully peeping into the disenchanted region without the gates to see that no enemy lay in wait for him as he passed beyond them. He closed the door gently; and in one moment the rich lovely room and the beautiful lady were behind him, and before him the bare stair between two white-washed walls, and the long flagged transe that led to his silent grandmother seated in her arm-chair, gazing into the red coals—for somehow grannie's fire always glowed, and never blazed—with her round-toed shoes pointed at them from the top of her little wooden stool. He traversed the stair and the transe, entered the parlour, and sat down to his open book as though nothing had happened. But his grandmother saw the light in his face, and did think he had just come from his prayers. And she blessed God that he had put it into her heart to burn the fiddle.
The next night Robert took with him the miniature of his mother, and showed it to Miss St. John, who saw at once that, whatever might be his present surroundings, his mother must have been a lady. A certain fancied resemblance in it to her own mother likewise drew her heart to the boy. Then Robert took from his pocket the gold thimble, and said,
'This thimmel was my mamma's. Will ye tak it, mem, for ye ken it's o' nae use to me.'
Miss St. John hesitated for a moment.
'I will keep it for you, if you like,' she said, for she could not bear to refuse it.
'Na, mem; I want ye to keep it to yersel'; for I'm sure my mamma wad hae likit you to hae 't better nor ony ither body.'
'Well, I will use it sometimes for your sake. But mind, I will not take it from you; I will only keep it for you.'
'Weel, weel, mem; gin ye'll keep it till I speir for 't, that'll du weel eneuch,' answered Robert, with a smile.
He laboured diligently; and his progress corresponded to his labour. It was more than intellect that guided him: Falconer had genius for whatever he cared for.
Meantime the love he bore his teacher, and the influence of her beauty, began to mould him, in his kind and degree, after her likeness, so that he grew nice in his person and dress, and smoothed the roughness and moderated the broadness of his speech with the amenities of the English which she made so sweet upon her tongue. He became still more obedient to his grandmother, and more diligent at school; gathered to himself golden opinions without knowing it, and was gradually developing into a rustic gentleman.
Nor did the piano absorb all his faculties. Every divine influence tends to the rounded perfection of the whole. His love of Nature grew more rapidly. Hitherto it was only in summer that he had felt the presence of a power in her and yet above her: in winter, now, the sky was true and deep, though the world was waste and sad; and the tones of the wind that roared at night about the goddess-haunted house, and moaned in the chimneys of the lowly dwelling that nestled against it, woke harmonies within him which already he tried to spell out falteringly. Miss St. John began to find that he put expressions of his own into the simple things she gave him to play, and even dreamed a little at his own will when alone with the passive instrument. Little did Mrs. Falconer think into what a seventh heaven of accursed music she had driven her boy.
But not yet did he tell his friend, much as he loved and much as he trusted her, the little he knew of his mother's sorrows and his father's sins, or whose the hand that had struck him when she found him lying in the waste factory.
For a time almost all his trouble about God went from him. Nor do I think that this was only because he rarely thought of him at all: God gave him of himself in Miss St. John. But words dropped now and then from off the shelves where his old difficulties lay, and they fell like seeds upon the heart of Miss St. John, took root, and rose in thoughts: in the heart of a true woman the talk of a child even will take life.
One evening Robert rose from the table, not unwatched of his grandmother, and sped swiftly and silently through the dark, as was his custom, to enter the chamber of enchantment. Never before had his hand failed to alight, sure as a lark on its nest, upon the brass handle of the door that admitted him to his paradise. It missed it now, and fell on something damp, and rough, and repellent instead. Horrible, but true suspicion! While he was at school that day, his grandmother, moved by what doubt or by what certainty she never revealed, had had the doorway walled up. He felt the place all over. It was to his hands the living tomb of his mother's vicar on earth.
He returned to his book, pale as death, but said never a word. The next day the stones were plastered over.
Thus the door of bliss vanished from the earth. And neither the boy nor his grandmother ever said that it had been.
The remainder of that winter was dreary indeed. Every time Robert went up the stair to his garret, he passed the door of a tomb. With that gray mortar Mary St. John was walled up, like the nun he had read of in the Marmion she had lent him. He might have rung the bell at the street door, and been admitted into the temple of his goddess, but a certain vague terror of his grannie, combined with equally vague qualms of conscience for having deceived her, and the approach in the far distance of a ghastly suspicion that violins, pianos, moonlight, and lovely women were distasteful to the over-ruling Fate, and obnoxious to the vengeance stored in the gray cloud of his providence, drove him from the awful entrance of the temple of his Isis.
Nor did Miss St. John dare to make any advances to the dreadful old lady. She would wait. For Mrs. Forsyth, she cared nothing about the whole affair. It only gave her fresh opportunity for smiling condescensions about 'poor Mrs. Falconer.' So Paradise was over and gone.
But though the loss of Miss St. John and the piano was the last blow, his sorrow did not rest there, but returned to brood over his bonny lady. She was scattered to the winds. Would any of her ashes ever rise in the corn, and moan in the ripening wind of autumn? Might not some atoms of the bonny leddy creep into the pines on the hill, whose 'soft and soul-like sounds' had taught him to play the Flowers of the Forest on those strings which, like the nerves of an amputated limb, yet thrilled through his being? Or might not some particle find its way by winds and waters to sycamore forest of Italy, there creep up through the channels of its life to some finely-rounded curve of noble tree, on the side that ever looks sunwards, and be chosen once again by the violin-hunter, to be wrought into a new and fame-gathering instrument?
Could it be that his bonny lady had learned her wondrous music in those forests, from the shine of the sun, and the sighing of the winds through the sycamores and pines? For Robert knew that the broad-leaved sycamore, and the sharp, needle-leaved pine, had each its share in the violin. Only as the wild innocence of human nature, uncorrupted by wrong, untaught by suffering, is to that nature struggling out of darkness into light, such and so different is the living wood, with its sweetest tones of obedient impulse, answering only to the wind which bloweth where it listeth, to that wood, chosen, separated, individualized, tortured into strange, almost vital shape, after a law to us nearly unknown, strung with strings from animal organizations, and put into the hands of man to utter the feelings of a soul that has passed through a like history. This Robert could not yet think, and had to grow able to think it by being himself made an instrument of God's music.
What he could think was that the glorious mystery of his bonny leddy was gone for ever—and alas! she had no soul. Here was an eternal sorrow. He could never meet her again. His affections, which must live for ever, were set upon that which had passed away. But the child that weeps because his mutilated doll will not rise from the dead, shall yet find relief from his sorrow, a true relief, both human and divine. He shall know that that which in the doll made him love the doll, has not passed away. And Robert must yet be comforted for the loss of his bonny leddy. If she had had a soul, nothing but her own self could ever satisfy him. As she had no soul, another body might take her place, nor occasion reproach of inconstancy.
But, in the meantime, the shears of Fate having cut the string of the sky-soaring kite of his imagination, had left him with the stick in his hand. And thus the rest of that winter was dreary enough. The glow was out of his heart; the glow was out of the world. The bleak, kindless wind was hissing through those pines that clothed the hill above Bodyfauld, and over the dead garden, where in the summer time the rose had looked down so lovingly on the heartsease. If he had stood once more at gloaming in that barley-stubble, not even the wail of Flodden-field would have found him there, but a keen sense of personal misery and hopeless cold. Was the summer a lie?
Not so. The winter restrains, that the summer may have the needful time to do its work well; for the winter is but the sleep of summer.
Now in the winter of his discontent, and in Nature finding no help, Robert was driven inwards—into his garret, into his soul. There, the door of his paradise being walled up, he began, vaguely, blindly, to knock against other doors—sometimes against stone-walls and rocks, taking them for doors—as travel-worn, and hence brain-sick men have done in a desert of mountains. A door, out or in, he must find, or perish.
It fell, too, that Miss St. John went to visit some friends who lived in a coast town twenty miles off; and a season of heavy snow followed by frost setting in, she was absent for six weeks, during which time, without a single care to trouble him from without, Robert was in the very desert of desolation. His spirits sank fearfully. He would pass his old music-master in the street with scarce a recognition, as if the bond of their relation had been utterly broken, had vanished in the smoke of the martyred violin, and all their affection had gone into the dust-heap of the past.
Dooble Sanny's character did not improve. He took more and more whisky, his bouts of drinking alternating as before with fits of hopeless repentance. His work was more neglected than ever, and his wife having no money to spend even upon necessaries, applied in desperation to her husband's bottle for comfort. This comfort, to do him justice, he never grudged her; and sometimes before midday they would both be drunk—a condition expedited by the lack of food. When they began to recover, they would quarrel fiercely; and at last they became a nuisance to the whole street. Little did the whisky-hating old lady know to what god she had really offered up that violin—if the consequences of the holocaust can be admitted as indicating the power which had accepted it.
But now began to appear in Robert the first signs of a practical outcome of such truth as his grandmother had taught him, operating upon the necessities of a simple and earnest nature. Reality, however lapt in vanity, or even in falsehood, cannot lose its power. It is—the other is not. She had taught him to look up—that there was a God. He would put it to the test. Not that he doubted it yet: he only doubted whether there was a hearing God. But was not that worse? It was, I think. For it is of far more consequence what kind of a God, than whether a God or no. Let not my reader suppose I think it possible there could be other than a perfect God—perfect—even to the vision of his creatures, the faith that supplies the lack of vision being yet faithful to that vision. I speak from Robert's point of outlook. But, indeed, whether better or worse is no great matter, so long as he would see it or what there was. He had no comfort, and, without reasoning about it, he felt that life ought to have comfort—from which point he began to conclude that the only thing left was to try whether the God in whom his grandmother believed might not help him. If the God would but hear him, it was all he had yet learned to require of his Godhood. And that must ever be the first thing to require. More demands would come, and greater answers he would find. But now—if God would but hear him! If he spoke to him but one kind word, it would be the very soul of comfort; he could no more be lonely. A fountain of glad imaginations gushed up in his heart at the thought. What if, from the cold winter of his life, he had but to open the door of his garret-room, and, kneeling by the bare bedstead, enter into the summer of God's presence! What if God spoke to him face to face! He had so spoken to Moses. He sought him from no fear of the future, but from present desolation; and if God came near to him, it would not be with storm and tempest, but with the voice of a friend. And surely, if there was a God at all, that is, not a power greater than man, but a power by whose power man was, he must hear the voice of the creature whom he had made, a voice that came crying out of the very need which he had created. Younger people than Robert are capable of such divine metaphysics. Hence he continued to disappear from his grandmother's parlour at much the same hour as before. In the cold, desolate garret, he knelt and cried out into that which lay beyond the thought that cried, the unknowable infinite, after the God that may be known as surely as a little child knows his mysterious mother. And from behind him, the pale-blue, star-crowded sky shone upon his head, through the window that looked upwards only.
Mrs. Falconer saw that he still went away as he had been wont, and instituted observations, the result of which was the knowledge that he went to his own room. Her heart smote her, and she saw that the boy looked sad and troubled. There was scarce room in her heart for increase of love, but much for increase of kindness, and she did increase it. In truth, he needed the smallest crumb of comfort that might drop from the table of God's 'feastful friends.'
Night after night he returned to the parlour cold to the very heart. God was not to be found, he said then. He said afterwards that even then 'God was with him though he knew it not.'
For the very first night, the moment that he knelt and cried, 'O Father in heaven, hear me, and let thy face shine upon me'—like a flash of burning fire the words shot from the door of his heart: 'I dinna care for him to love me, gin he doesna love ilka body;' and no more prayer went from the desolate boy that night, although he knelt an hour of agony in the freezing dark. Loyal to what he had been taught, he struggled hard to reduce his rebellious will to what he supposed to be the will of God. It was all in vain. Ever a voice within him—surely the voice of that God who he thought was not hearing—told him that what he wanted was the love belonging to his human nature, his human needs—not the preference of a court-favourite. He had a dim consciousness that he would be a traitor to his race if he accepted a love, even from God, given him as an exception from his kind. But he did not care to have such a love. It was not what his heart yearned for. It was not love. He could not love such a love. Yet he strove against it all—fought for religion against right as he could; struggled to reduce his rebellious feelings, to love that which was unlovely, to choose that which was abhorrent, until nature almost gave way under the effort. Often would he sink moaning on the floor, or stretch himself like a corpse, save that it was face downwards, on the boards of the bedstead. Night after night he returned to the battle, but with no permanent success. What a success that would have been! Night after night he came pale and worn from the conflict, found his grandmother and Shargar composed, and in the quietness of despair sat down beside them to his Latin version.
He little thought, that every night, at the moment when he stirred to leave the upper room, a pale-faced, red-eyed figure rose from its seat on the top of the stair by the door, and sped with long-legged noiselessness to resume its seat by the grandmother before he should enter. Shargar saw that Robert was unhappy, and the nearest he could come to the sharing of his unhappiness was to take his place outside the door within which he had retreated. Little, too, did Shargar, on his part, think that Robert, without knowing it, was pleading for him inside—pleading for him and for all his race in the weeping that would not be comforted.
Robert had not the vaguest fancy that God was with him—the spirit of the Father groaning with the spirit of the boy in intercession that could not be uttered. If God had come to him then and comforted him with the assurance of individual favour—but the very supposition is a taking of his name in vain—had Robert found comfort in the fancied assurance that God was his friend in especial, that some private favour was granted to his prayers, that, indeed, would have been to be left to his own inventions, to bring forth not fruits meet for repentance, but fruits for which repentance alone is meet. But God was with him, and was indeed victorious in the boy when he rose from his knees, for the last time, as he thought, saying, 'I cannot yield—I will pray no more.'—With a burst of bitter tears he sat down on the bedside till the loudest of the storm was over, then dried his dull eyes, in which the old outlook had withered away, and trod unknowingly in the silent footsteps of Shargar, who was ever one corner in advance of him, down to the dreary lessons and unheeded prayers; but, thank God, not to the sleepless night, for some griefs bring sleep the sooner.
My reader must not mistake my use of the words especial and private, or suppose that I do not believe in an individual relation between every man and God, yes, a peculiar relation, differing from the relation between every other man and God! But this very individuality and peculiarity can only be founded on the broadest truths of the Godhood and the manhood.
Mrs. Falconer, ere she went to sleep, gave thanks that the boys had been at their prayers together. And so, in a very deep sense, they had.
And well they might have been; for Shargar was nearly as desolate as Robert, and would certainly, had his mother claimed him now, have gone on the tramp with her again. Wherein could this civilized life show itself to him better than that to which he had been born? For clothing he cared little, and he had always managed to kill his hunger or thirst, if at longer intervals, then with greater satisfaction. Wherein is the life of that man who merely does his eating and drinking and clothing after a civilized fashion better than that of the gipsy or tramp? If the civilized man is honest to boot, and gives good work in return for the bread or turtle on which he dines, and the gipsy, on the other hand, steals his dinner, I recognize the importance of the difference; but if the rich man plunders the community by exorbitant profits, or speculation with other people's money, while the gipsy adds a fowl or two to the produce of his tinkering; or, once again, if the gipsy is as honest as the honest citizen, which is not so rare a case by any means as people imagine, I return to my question: Wherein, I say, is the warm house, the windows hung with purple, and the table covered with fine linen, more divine than the tent or the blue sky, and the dipping in the dish? Why should not Shargar prefer a life with the mother God had given him to a life with Mrs. Falconer? Why should he prefer geography to rambling, or Latin to Romany? His purposelessness and his love for Robert alone kept him where he was.
The next evening, having given up his praying, Robert sat with his Sallust before him. But the fount of tears began to swell, and the more he tried to keep it down, the more it went on swelling till his throat was filled with a lump of pain. He rose and left the room. But he could not go near the garret. That door too was closed. He opened the house door instead, and went out into the street. There, nothing was to be seen but faint blue air full of moonlight, solid houses, and shining snow. Bareheaded he wandered round the corner of the house to the window whence first he had heard the sweet sounds of the pianoforte. The fire within lighted up the crimson curtains, but no voice of music came forth. The window was as dumb as the pale, faintly befogged moon overhead, itself seeming but a skylight through which shone the sickly light of the passionless world of the dead. Not a form was in the street. The eyes of the houses gleamed here and there upon the snow. He leaned his elbow on the window-sill behind which stood that sealed fountain of lovely sound, looked up at the moon, careless of her or of aught else in heaven or on earth, and sunk into a reverie, in which nothing was consciously present but a stream of fog-smoke that flowed slowly, listlessly across the face of the moon, like the ghost of a dead cataract. All at once a wailful sound arose in his head. He did not think for some time whether it was born in his brain, or entered it from without. At length he recognized the Flowers of the Forest, played as only the soutar could play it. But alas! the cry responsive to his bow came only from the auld wife—no more from the bonny leddy! Then he remembered that there had been a humble wedding that morning on the opposite side of the way; in the street department of the jollity of which Shargar had taken a small share by firing a brass cannon, subsequently confiscated by Mrs. Falconer. But this was a strange tune to play at a wedding! The soutar half-way to his goal of drunkenness, had begun to repent for the fiftieth time that year, had with his repentance mingled the memory of the bonny leddy ruthlessly tortured to death for his wrong, and had glided from a strathspey into that sorrowful moaning. The lament interpreted itself to his disconsolate pupil as he had never understood it before, not even in the stubble-field; for it now spoke his own feelings of waste misery, forsaken loneliness. Indeed Robert learned more of music in those few minutes of the foggy winter night and open street, shut out of all doors, with the tones of an ancient grief and lamentation floating through the blotted moonlight over his ever-present sorrow, than he could have learned from many lessons even of Miss St. John. He was cold to the heart, yet went in a little comforted.
Things had gone ill with him. Outside of Paradise, deserted of his angel, in the frost and the snow, the voice of the despised violin once more the source of a sad comfort! But there is no better discipline than an occasional descent from what we count well-being, to a former despised or less happy condition. One of the results of this taste of damnation in Robert was, that when he was in bed that night, his heart began to turn gently towards his old master. How much did he not owe him, after all! Had he not acted ill and ungratefully in deserting him? His own vessel filled to the brim with grief, had he not let the waters of its bitterness overflow into the heart of the soutar? The wail of that violin echoed now in Robert's heart, not for Flodden, not for himself, but for the debased nature that drew forth the plaint. Comrades in misery, why should they part? What right had he to forsake an old friend and benefactor because he himself was unhappy? He would go and see him the very next night. And he would make friends once more with the much 'suffering instrument' he had so wrongfully despised.
The following night, he left his books on the table, and the house itself behind him, and sped like a grayhound to Dooble Sanny's shop, lifted the latch, and entered.
By the light of a single dip set on a chair, he saw the shoemaker seated on his stool, one hand lying on the lap of his leathern apron, his other hand hanging down by his side, and the fiddle on the ground at his feet. His wife stood behind him, wiping her eyes with her blue apron. Through all its accumulated dirt, the face of the soutar looked ghastly, and they were eyes of despair that he lifted to the face of the youth as he stood holding the latch in his hand. Mrs. Alexander moved towards Robert, drew him in, and gently closed the door behind him, resuming her station like a sculptured mourner behind her motionless husband.
'What on airth's the maitter wi' ye, Sandy?' said Robert.
'Eh, Robert!' returned the shoemaker, and a tone of affection tinged the mournfulness with which he uttered the strange words—'eh, Robert! the Almichty will gang his ain gait, and I'm in his grup noo.'
'He's had a stroke,' said his wife, without removing her apron from her eyes.
'I hae gotten my pecks (blows),' resumed the soutar, in a despairing voice, which gave yet more effect to the fantastic eccentricity of conscience which from the midst of so many grave faults chose such a one as especially bringing the divine displeasure upon him: 'I hae gotten my pecks for cryin' doon my ain auld wife to set up your bonny leddy. The tane's gane a' to aise an' stew (ashes and dust), an' frae the tither,' he went on, looking down on the violin at his feet as if it had been something dead in its youth—'an' frae the tither I canna draw a cheep, for my richt han' has forgotten her cunnin'. Man, Robert, I canna lift it frae my side.'
'Ye maun gang to yer bed,' said Robert, greatly concerned.
'Ow, ay, I maun gang to my bed, and syne to the kirkyaird, and syne to hell, I ken that weel eneuch. Robert, I lea my fiddle to you. Be guid to the auld wife, man—better nor I hae been. An auld wife's better nor nae fiddle.'
He stooped, lifted the violin with his left hand, gave it to Robert, rose, and made for the door. They helped him up the creaking stair, got him half-undressed, and laid him in his bed. Robert put the violin on the top of a press within sight of the sufferer, left him groaning, and ran for the doctor. Having seen him set out for the patient's dwelling, he ran home to his grandmother.
Now while Robert was absent, occasion had arisen to look for him: unusual occurrence, a visitor had appeared, no less a person than Mr. Innes, the school-master. Shargar had been banished in consequence from the parlour, and had seated himself outside Robert's room, never doubting that Robert was inside. Presently he heard the bell ring, and then Betty came up the stair, and said Robert was wanted. Thereupon Shargar knocked at the door, and as there was neither voice nor hearing, opened it, and found, with a well-known horror, that he had been watching an empty room. He made no haste to communicate the fact. Robert might return in a moment, and his absence from the house not be discovered. He sat down on the bedstead and waited. But Betty came up again, and before Shargar could prevent her, walked into the room with her candle in her hand. In vain did Shargar intreat her to go and say that Robert was coming. Betty would not risk the danger of discovery in connivance, and descended to open afresh the fountain of the old lady's anxiety. She did not, however, betray her disquietude to Mr. Innes.
She had asked the school-master to visit her, in order that she might consult him about Robert's future. Mr. Innes expressed a high opinion of the boy's faculties and attainments, and strongly urged that he should be sent to college. Mrs. Falconer inwardly shuddered at the temptations to which this course would expose him; but he must leave home or be apprentice to some trade. She would have chosen the latter, I believe, but for religion towards the boy's parents, who would never have thought of other than a profession for him. While the school-master was dwelling on the argument that he was pretty sure to gain a good bursary, and she would thus be relieved for four years, probably for ever, from further expense on his account, Robert entered.
'Whaur hae ye been, Robert?' asked Mrs. Falconer.
'At Dooble Sanny's,' answered the boy.
'What hae ye been at there?'
'Helpin' him till 's bed.'
'What's come ower him?'
'A stroke.'
'That's what comes o' playin' the fiddle.'
'I never heard o' a stroke comin' frae a fiddle, grannie. It comes oot o' a clood whiles. Gin he had hauden till 's fiddle, he wad hae been playin' her the nicht, in place o' 's airm lyin' at 's side like a lang lingel (ligneul—shoemaker's thread).'
'Hm!' said his grandmother, concealing her indignation at this freedom of speech, 'ye dinna believe in God's judgments!'
'Nae upo' fiddles,' returned Robert.
Mr. Innes sat and said nothing, with difficulty concealing his amusement at this passage of arms.
It was but within the last few days that Robert had become capable of speaking thus. His nature had at length arrived at the point of so far casting off the incubus of his grandmother's authority as to assert some measure of freedom and act openly. His very hopelessness of a hearing in heaven had made him indifferent to things on earth, and therefore bolder. Thus, strange as it may seem, the blessing of God descended on him in the despair which enabled him to speak out and free his soul from the weight of concealment. But it was not despair alone that gave him strength. On his way home from the shoemaker's he had been thinking what he could do for him; and had resolved, come of it what might, that he would visit him every evening, and try whether he could not comfort him a little by playing upon his violin. So that it was loving-kindness towards man, as well as despair towards God, that gave him strength to resolve that between him and his grandmother all should be above-board from henceforth.
'Nae upo' fiddles,' Robert had said.
'But upo' them 'at plays them,' returned his grandmother.
'Na; nor upo' them 'at burns them,' retorted Robert—impudently it must be confessed; for every man is open to commit the fault of which he is least capable.
But Mrs. Falconer had too much regard to her own dignity to indulge her feelings. Possibly too her sense of justice, which Falconer always said was stronger than that of any other woman he had ever known, as well as some movement of her conscience interfered. She was silent, and Robert rushed into the breach which his last discharge had effected.
'An' I want to tell ye, grannie, that I mean to gang an' play the fiddle to puir Sanny ilka nicht for the best pairt o' an hoor; an' excep' ye lock the door an' hide the key, I will gang. The puir sinner sanna be desertit by God an' man baith.'
He scarcely knew what he was saying before it was out of his mouth; and as if to cover it up, he hurried on.
'An' there's mair in 't.—Dr. Anderson gae Shargar an' me a sovereign the piece. An' Dooble Sanny s' hae them, to haud him ohn deid o' hunger an' cauld.'
'What for didna ye tell me 'at Dr. Anderson had gien ye sic a sicht o' siller? It was ill-faured o' ye—an' him as weel.'
''Cause ye wad hae sent it back till 'im; an' Shargar and me we thocht we wad raither keep it.'
'Considerin' 'at I'm at sae muckle expense wi' ye baith, it wadna hae been ill-contrived to hae brocht the siller to me, an' latten me du wi' 't as I thocht fit.—Gang na awa', laddie,' she added, as she saw Robert about to leave the room.
'I'll be back in a minute, grannie,' returned Robert.
'He's a fine lad, that!' said Mr. Innes; 'an' guid 'll come o' 'm, and that 'll be heard tell o'.'
'Gin he had but the grace o' God, there wadna be muckle to compleen o',' acquiesced his grandmother.
'There's time eneuch for that, Mrs. Faukner. Ye canna get auld heids upo' young shoothers, ye ken.'
''Deed for that maitter, ye may get mony an auld heid upo' auld shoothers, and nae a spark o' grace in 't to lat it see hoo to lay itsel' doon i' the grave.'
Robert returned before Mr. Innes had made up his mind as to whether the old lady intended a personal rebuke.
'Hae, grannie,' he said, going up to her, and putting the two sovereigns in her white palm.
He had found some difficulty in making Shargar give up his, else he would have returned sooner.
'What's this o' 't, laddie?' said Mrs. Falconer. 'Hoots! I'm nae gaein' to tak yer siller. Lat the puir soutar-craturs hae 't. But dinna gie them mair nor a shillin' or twa at ance—jist to haud them in life. They deserve nae mair. But they maunna sterve. And jist ye tell them, laddie, at gin they spen' ae saxpence o' 't upo' whusky, they s' get nae mair.'
'Ay, ay, grannie,' responded Robert, with a glimmer of gladness in his heart. 'And what aboot the fiddlin', grannie?' he added, half playfully, hoping for some kind concession therein as well.
But he had gone too far. She vouchsafed no reply, and her face grew stern with offence. It was one thing to give bread to eat, another to give music and gladness. No music but that which sprung from effectual calling and the perseverance of the saints could be lawful in a world that was under the wrath and curse of God. Robert waited in vain for a reply.
'Gang yer wa's,' she said at length. 'Mr. Innes and me has some business to mak an en' o', an' we want nae assistance.'
Robert rejoined Shargar, who was still bemoaning the loss of his sovereign. His face brightened when he saw its well-known yellow shine once more, but darkened again as soon as Robert told him to what service it was now devoted.
'It's my ain,' he said, with a suppressed expostulatory growl.
Robert threw the coin on the floor.
'Tak yer filthy lucre!' he exclaimed with contempt, and turned to leave Shargar alone in the garret with his sovereign.
'Bob!' Shargar almost screamed, 'tak it, or I'll cut my throat.'
This was his constant threat when he was thoroughly in earnest.
'Cut it, an' hae dune wi' 't,' said Robert cruelly.
Shargar burst out crying.
'Len' me yer knife, than, Bob,' he sobbed, holding out his hand.
Robert burst into a roar of laughter, caught up the sovereign from the floor, sped with it to the baker's, who refused to change it because he had no knowledge of anything representing the sum of twenty shillings except a pound-note, succeeded in getting silver for it at the bank, and then ran to the soutar's.
After he left the parlour, the discussion of his fate was resumed and finally settled between his grandmother and the school-master. The former, in regard of the boy's determination to befriend the shoemaker in the matter of music as well as of money, would now have sent him at once to the grammar-school in Old Aberdeen, to prepare for the competition in the month of November; but the latter persuaded her that if the boy gave his whole attention to Latin till the next summer, and then went to the grammar-school for three months or so, he would have an excellent chance of success. As to the violin, the school-master said, wisely enough:
'He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar; and gin ye kep (intercept) him upo' the shore-road, he'll tak to the hill-road; an' I s' warran' a braw lad like Robert 'll get mony a ane in Ebberdeen 'll be ready eneuch to gie him a lift wi' the fiddle, and maybe tak him into waur company nor the puir bed-ridden soutar; an' wi' you an' me to hing on to the tail o' 'im like, he canna gang ower the scar (cliff) afore he learns wit.'
'Hm!' was the old lady's comprehensive response.
It was further arranged that Robert should be informed of their conclusion, and so roused to effort in anticipation of the trial upon which his course in life must depend.
Nothing could have been better for Robert than the prospect of a college education. But his first thought at the news was not of the delights of learning nor of the honourable course that would ensue, but of Eric Ericson, the poverty-stricken, friendless descendant of yarls and sea-rovers. He would see him—the only man that understood him! Not until the passion of this thought had abated, did he begin to perceive the other advantages before him. But so practical and thorough was he in all his proposals and means, that ere half-an-hour was gone, he had begun to go over his Rudiments again. He now wrote a version, or translation from English into Latin, five times a week, and read Caeser, Virgil, or Tacitus, every day. He gained permission from his grandmother to remove his bed to his own garret, and there, from the bedstead at which he no longer kneeled, he would often rise at four in the morning, even when the snow lay a foot thick on the skylight, kindle his lamp by means of a tinder-box and a splinter of wood dipped in sulphur, and sitting down in the keen cold, turn half a page of Addison into something as near Ciceronian Latin as he could effect. This would take him from an hour and a half to two hours, when he would tumble again into bed, blue and stiff, and sleep till it was time to get up and go to the morning school before breakfast. His health was excellent, else it could never have stood such treatment.