Robert Falconer Part 21

Then he turned again, and looking down upon Robert like a sorrowful eagle from a crag over its harried nest, said,

'If I only knew that G.o.d was as good as--that woman, I should die content.'

Robert heard words of blasphemy from the mouth of an angel, but his respect for Ericson compelled a reply.

'What woman, Mr. Ericson?' he asked.

'I mean Miss Letty, of course.'

'But surely ye dinna think G.o.d's nae as guid as she is? Surely he's as good as he can be. He is good, ye ken.'

'Oh, yes. They say so. And then they tell you something about him that isn't good, and go on calling him good all the same. But calling anybody good doesn't make him good, you know.'

'Then ye dinna believe 'at G.o.d is good, Mr. Ericson?' said Robert, choking with a strange mingling of horror and hope.

'I didn't say that, my boy. But to know that G.o.d was good, and fair, and kind--heartily, I mean, not half-ways, and with ifs and buts--my boy, there would be nothing left to be miserable about.'

In a momentary flash of thought, Robert wondered whether this might not be his old friend, the repentant angel, sent to earth as a man, that he might have a share in the redemption, and work out his own salvation.

And from this very moment the thoughts about G.o.d that had hitherto been moving in formless solution in his mind began slowly to crystallize.

The next day, Eric Ericson, not without a piece in ae pouch and money in another, took his way home, if home it could be called where neither father, mother, brother, nor sister awaited his return. For a season Robert saw him no more.

As often as his name was mentioned, Miss Letty's eyes would grow hazy, and as often she would make some comical remark.

'Puir fallow!' she would say, 'he was ower lang-leggit for this warld.'

Or again:

'Ay, he was a braw chield. But he canna live. His feet's ower sma'.'

Or yet again:

'Saw ye ever sic a gowk, to mak sic a wark aboot sittin' doon an' haein'

his feet washed, as gin that cost a body onything!'

CHAPTER XVI. MR. LAMMIE'S FARM.

One of the first warm mornings in the beginning of summer, the boy woke early, and lay awake, as was his custom, thinking. The sun, in all the indescribable purity of its morning light, had kindled a spot of brilliance just about where his grannie's head must be lying asleep in its sad thoughts, on the opposite side of the part.i.tion.

He lay looking at the light. There came a gentle tapping at his window.

A long streamer of honeysuckle, not yet in blossom, but alive with the life of the summer, was blown by the air of the morning against his window-pane, as if calling him to get up and look out. He did get up and look out.

But he started back in such haste that he fell against the side of his bed. Within a few yards of his window, bending over a bush, was the loveliest face he had ever seen--the only face, in fact, he had ever yet felt to be beautiful. For the window looked directly into the garden of the next house: its honeysuckle tapped at his window, its sweet-peas grew against his window-sill. It was the face of the angel of that night; but how different when illuminated by the morning sun from then, when lighted up by a chamber-candle! The first thought that came to him was the half-ludicrous, all-fantastic idea of the shoemaker about his grandfather's violin being a woman. A vaguest dream-vision of her having escaped from his grandmother's aumrie (store-closet), and wandering free amidst the wind and among the flowers, crossed his mind before he had recovered sufficiently from his surprise to prevent Fancy from cutting any more of those too ridiculous capers in which she indulged at will in sleep, and as often besides as she can get away from the spectacles of old Grannie Judgment.

But the music of her revelation was not that of the violin; and Robert vaguely felt this, though he searched no further for a fitting instrument to represent her. If he had heard the organ indeed!--but he knew no instrument save the violin: the piano he had only heard through the window. For a few moments her face brooded over the bush, and her long, finely-modelled fingers travelled about it as if they were creating a flower upon it--probably they were a.s.sisting the birth or blowing of some beauty--and then she raised herself with a lingering look, and vanished from the field of the window.

But ever after this, when the evening grew dark, Robert would steal out of the house, leaving his book open by his grannie's lamp, that its patient expansion might seem to say, 'He will come back presently,' and dart round the corner with quick quiet step, to hear if Miss St. John was playing. If she was not, he would return to the Sabbath stillness of the parlour, where his grandmother sat meditating or reading, and Shargar sat brooding over the freedom of the old days ere Mrs. Falconer had begun to reclaim him. There he would seat himself once more at his book--to rise again ere another hour had gone by, and hearken yet again at her window whether the stream might not be flowing now. If he found her at her instrument he would stand listening in earnest delight, until the fear of being missed drove him in: this secret too might be discovered, and this enchantress too sent, by the decree of his grandmother, into the limbo of vanities. Thus strangely did his evening life oscillate between the two peaceful negations of grannie's parlour and the vital gladness of the unknown lady's window. And skilfully did he manage his retreats and returns, curtailing his absences with such moderation that, for a long time, they awoke no suspicion in the mind of his grandmother.

I suspect myself that the old lady thought he had gone to his prayers in the garret. And I believe she thought that he was praying for his dead father; with which most papistical, and, therefore, most unchristian observance, she yet dared not interfere, because she expected Robert to defend himself triumphantly with the simple a.s.sertion that he did not believe his father was dead. Possibly the mother was not sorry that her poor son should be prayed for, in case he might be alive after all, though she could no longer do so herself--not merely dared not, but persuaded herself that she would not. Robert, however, was convinced enough, and hopeless enough, by this time, and had even less temptation to break the twentieth commandment by praying for the dead, than his grandmother had; for with all his imaginative outgoings after his father, his love to him was as yet, compared to that father's mother's, 'as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.'

Shargar would glance up at him with a queer look as he came in from these excursions, drop his head over his task again, look busy and miserable, and all would glide on as before.

When the first really summer weather came, Mr. Lammie one day paid Mrs. Falconer a second visit. He had not been able to get over the remembrance of the desolation in which he had left her. But he could do nothing for her, he thought, till it was warm weather. He was accompanied by his daughter, a woman approaching the further verge of youth, bulky and florid, and as full of tenderness as her large frame could hold. After much, and, for a long time, apparently useless persuasion, they at last believed they had prevailed upon her to pay them a visit for a fortnight. But she had only retreated within another of her defences.

'I canna leave thae twa laddies alane. They wad be up to a' mischeef.'

'There's Betty to luik efter them,' suggested Miss Lammie.

'Betty!' returned Mrs. Falconer, with scorn. 'Betty's naething but a bairn hersel'--muckler and waur faured (worse favoured).'

'But what for shouldna ye fess the lads wi' ye?' suggested Mr. Lammie.

'I hae no richt to burden you wi' them.'

'Weel, I hae aften wonnert what gart ye burden yersel' wi' that Shargar, as I understan' they ca' him,' said Mr. Lammie.

'Jist naething but a bit o' greed,' returned the old lady, with the nearest approach to a smile that had shown itself upon her face since Mr. Lammie's last visit.

'I dinna understan' that, Mistress Faukner,' said Miss Lammie.

'I'm sae sure o' haein' 't back again, ye ken,--wi' interest,' returned Mrs. Falconer.

'Hoo's that? His father winna con ye ony thanks for haudin' him in life.'

'He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, ye ken, Miss Lammie.'

'Atweel, gin ye like to lippen to that bank, nae doobt ae way or anither it'll gang to yer acc.o.o.nt,' said Miss Lammie.

'It wad ill become us, ony gait,' said her father, 'nae to gie him shelter for your sake, Mrs. Faukner, no to mention ither names, sin'

it's yer wull to mak the puir lad ane o' the family.--They say his ain mither's run awa' an' left him.'

''Deed she's dune that.'

'Can ye mak onything o' 'im?'

'He's douce eneuch. An' Robert says he does nae that ill at the schuil.'

'Weel, jist fess him wi' ye. We'll hae some place or ither to put him intil, gin it suld be only a shak'-doon upo' the flure.'

'Na, na. There's the schuilin'--what's to be dune wi' that?'

'They can gang i' the mornin', and get their denner wi' Betty here; and syne come hame to their fower-hoors (four o'clock tea) whan the schule's ower i' the efternune. 'Deed, mem, ye maun jist come for the sake o' the auld frien'ship atween the faimilies.'

'Weel, gin it maun be sae, it maun be sae,' yielded Mrs. Falconer, with a sigh.

She had not left her own house for a single night for ten years. Nor is it likely she would have now given in, for immovableness was one of the most marked of her characteristics, had she not been so broken by mental suffering, that she did not care much about anything, least of all about herself.