George MacDonald - Robert Falconer

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 assisting 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 assertion 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 accoont,’ 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.

Innumerable were the instructions in propriety of behaviour which she gave the boys in prospect of this visit. The probability being that they would behave just as well as at home, these instructions were considerably unnecessary, for Mrs. Falconer was a strict enforcer of all social rules. Scarcely less unnecessary were the directions she gave as to the conduct of Betty, who received them all in erect submission, with her hands under her apron. She ought to have been a young girl instead of an elderly woman, if there was any propriety in the way her mistress spoke to her. It proved at least her own belief in the description she had given of her to Miss Lammie.

‘Noo, Betty, ye maun be dooce. An’ dinna stan’ at the door i’ the gloamin’. An’ dinna stan’ claikin’ an’ jawin’ wi’ the ither lasses whan ye gang to the wall for watter. An’ whan ye gang intil a chop, dinna hae them sayin’ ahint yer back, as sune’s yer oot again, “She’s her ain mistress by way o’,” or sic like. An’ min’ ye hae worship wi’ yersel’, whan I’m nae here to hae ‘t wi’ ye. Ye can come benn to the parlour gin ye like. An’ there’s my muckle Testament. And dinna gie the lads a’ thing they want. Gie them plenty to ait, but no ower muckle. Fowk suld aye lea’ aff wi’ an eppiteet.’

Mr. Lammie brought his gig at last, and took grannie away to Bodyfauld. When the boys returned from school at the dinner-hour, it was to exult in a freedom which Robert had never imagined before. But even he could not know what a relief it was to Shargar to eat without the awfully calm eyes of Mrs. Falconer watching, as it seemed to him, the progress of every mouthful down that capacious throat of his. The old lady would have been shocked to learn how the imagination of the ill-mothered lad interpreted her care over him, but she would not have been surprised to know that the two were merry in her absence. She knew that, in some of her own moods, it would be a relief to think that that awful eye of God was not upon her. But she little thought that even in the lawless proceedings about to follow, her Robert, who now felt such a relief in her absence, would be walking straight on, though blindly, towards a sunrise of faith, in which he would know that for the eye of his God to turn away from him for one moment would be the horror of the outer darkness.