Robert Falconer. George MacDonald
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haena seen ye for a lang time, Mr. Lammie. Gae butt the hoose, lads. Or I’m thinkin’ it maun be schule-time. Sit ye doon, Mr. Lammie, and lat’s hear yer news.’
‘I cam frae Aberdeen last nicht, Mistress Faukner,’ he began.
‘Ye haena been hame sin’ syne?’ she rejoined.
‘Na. I sleepit at The Boar’s Heid.’
‘What for did ye that? What gart ye be at that expense, whan ye kent I had a bed i’ the ga’le-room?’
‘Weel, ye see, they’re auld frien’s o’ mine, and I like to gang to them whan I’m i’ the gait o’ ‘t.’
‘Weel, they’re a fine faimily, the Miss Napers. And, I wat, sin’ they maun sell drink, they du ‘t wi’ discretion. That’s weel kent.’
Possibly Mr. Lammie, remembering what then occurred, may have thought the discretion a little in excess of the drink, but he had other matters to occupy him now. For a few moments both were silent.
‘There’s been some ill news, they tell me, Mrs. Faukner,’ he said at length, when the silence had grown painful.
‘Humph!’ returned the old lady, her face becoming stony with the effort to suppress all emotion. ‘Nae aboot Anerew?’
‘’Deed is ‘t, mem. An’ ill news, I’m sorry to say.’
‘Is he ta’en?’
‘Ay is he—by a jyler that winna tyne the grup.’
‘He’s no deid, John Lammie? Dinna say ‘t.’
‘I maun say ‘t, Mrs. Faukner. I had it frae Dr. Anderson, yer ain cousin. He hintit at it afore, but his last letter leaves nae room to doobt upo’ the subjeck. I’m unco sorry to be the beirer o’ sic ill news, Mrs. Faukner, but I had nae chice.’
‘Ohone! Ohone! the day o’ grace is by at last! My puir Anerew!’ exclaimed Mrs. Falconer, and sat dumb thereafter.
Mr. Lammie tried to comfort her with some of the usual comfortless commonplaces. She neither wept nor replied, but sat with stony face staring into her lap, till, seeing that she was as one that heareth not, he rose and left her alone with her grief. A few minutes after he was gone, she rang the bell, and told Betty in her usual voice to send Robert to her.
‘He’s gane to the schule, mem.’
‘Rin efter him, an’ tell him to come hame.’
When Robert appeared, wondering what his grandmother could want with him, she said:
‘Close the door, Robert. I canna lat ye gang to the schule the day. We maun lea’ him oot noo.’
‘Lea’ wha oot, grannie?’
‘Him, him—Anerew. Yer father, laddie. I think my hert ‘ll brak.’
‘Lea’ him oot o’ what, grannie? I dinna unnerstan’ ye.’
‘Lea’ him oot o’ oor prayers, laddie, and I canna bide it.’
‘What for that?’
‘He’s deid.’
‘Are ye sure?’
‘Ay, ower sure—ower sure, laddie.’
‘Weel, I dinna believe ‘t.’
‘What for that?’
‘’Cause I winna believe ‘t. I’m no bund to believe ‘t, am I?’
‘What’s the gude o’ that? What for no believe ‘t? Dr. Anderson’s sent hame word o’ ‘t to John Lammie. Och hone! och hone!’
‘I tell ye I winna believe ‘t, grannie, ‘cep’ God himsel’ tells me. As lang ‘s I dinna believe ‘at he’s deid, I can keep him i’ my prayers. I’m no gaein’ to lea’ him oot, I tell ye, grannie.’
‘Weel, laddie, I canna argue wi’ ye. I hae nae hert til ‘t. I doobt I maun greit! Come awa’.’
She took him by the hand and rose, then let him go again, saying,
‘Sneck the door, laddie.’
Robert bolted the door, and his grandmother again taking his hand, led him to the usual corner. There they knelt down together, and the old woman’s prayer was one great and bitter cry for submission to the divine will. She rose a little strengthened, if not comforted, saying,
‘Ye maun pray yer lane, laddie. But oh be a guid lad, for ye’re a’ that I hae left; and gin ye gang wrang tu, ye’ll bring doon my gray hairs wi’ sorrow to the grave. They’re gray eneuch, and they’re near eneuch to the grave, but gin ye turn oot weel, I’ll maybe haud up my heid a bit yet. But O Anerew! my son! my son! Would God I had died for thee!’
And the words of her brother in grief, the king of Israel, opened the floodgates of her heart, and she wept. Robert left her weeping, and closed the door quietly as if his dead father had been lying in the room.
He took his way up to his own garret, closed that door too, and sat down upon the floor, with his back against the empty bedstead.
There were no more castles to build now. It was all very well to say that he would not believe the news and would pray for his father, but he did believe them—enough at least to spoil the praying. His favourite employment, seated there, had hitherto been to imagine how he would grow a great man, and set out to seek his father, and find him, and stand by him, and be his son and servant. Oh! to have the man stroke his head and pat his cheek, and love him! One moment he imagined himself his indignant defender, the next he would be climbing on his knee, as if he were still a little child, and laying his head on his shoulder. For he had had no fondling his life long, and his heart yearned for it. But all this was gone now. A dreary time lay before him, with nobody to please, nobody to serve; with nobody to praise him. Grannie never praised him. She must have thought praise something wicked. And his father was in misery, for ever and ever! Only somehow that thought was not quite thinkable. It was more the vanishing of hope from his own life than a sense of his father’s fate that oppressed him.
He cast his eyes, as in a hungry despair, around the empty room—or, rather, I should have said, in that faintness which makes food at once essential and loathsome; for despair has no proper hunger in it. The room seemed as empty as his life. There was nothing for his eyes to rest upon but those bundles and bundles of dust-browned papers on the shelves before him. What were they all about? He understood that they were his father’s: now that he was dead, it would be no sacrilege to look at them. Nobody cared about them. He would see at least what they were. It would be something to do in this dreariness.
Bills and receipts, and everything ephemeral—to feel the interest of which, a man must be a poet indeed—was all that met his view. Bundle after bundle he tried, with no better success. But as he drew near the middle of the second shelf, upon which they lay several rows deep, he saw something dark behind, hurriedly displaced the packets between, and drew forth a small workbox. His heart beat like that of the prince in the fairy-tale, when he comes to the door of the Sleeping Beauty. This at least must have been hers. It was a common little thing, probably a childish possession, and kept to hold trifles worth more than they looked to be. He opened it with bated breath. The first thing he saw was a half-finished reel of cotton—a pirn, he called it. Beside it was a gold thimble. He lifted the tray. A lovely face in miniature, with dark hair and blue eyes, lay looking earnestly upward. At the lid of this coffin those eyes had looked for so many years! The picture was set all round with pearls in an oval ring. How Robert knew them to be pearls he could not tell, for he did not know that he had ever seen any pearls before, but he knew they were pearls, and that pearls had something to do with the New Jerusalem. But the sadness of it all at length overpowered him, and he burst out crying. For it was awfully sad that his mother’s portrait should be in his own mother’s box.
He took a bit of red tape off a bundle of the papers, put it through the eye of the setting, and hung the picture round his neck, inside his clothes, for grannie must not see it. She would take that away as she had taken his fiddle. He had a nameless something now for which he had been longing for years.
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