 Book 3, Chapter 15, of Robert Falconer, by George MacDonald. Once more Falconer retired, but not to take his vial in. He could play no more. Hope and love were swelling within him. He could not rest. Was it aside 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 form 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. Andrews 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 Andrews spoke and said in a trembling, hardly audible voice. Are you my son, my boy Robert, sir? I am, I am. O 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 strived 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 asked 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 dare not. I dare not, murmured Andrew. You must, Father, return, 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, Granny, I have found you, 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 much as God loves you. God can't love me, said Andrew Febly. 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 had 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 hungry 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 is the use? There's no forgiveness for me. My mother is going to heaven. I must go to hell. No, it's no good. But leave it as it is. I dare not 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 around 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 someday. 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 acknowledgement 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, and feebled by wickedness. They will not have to do anything there, only to moan and cry and suffer forever, they think. It is effort, the outgoing 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 willless. 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, with that and within them, will compel them to rethink themselves. That the vision of an open door beyond the smoke and the flames will ever urge them to call up the icebound will, that it may obey. That the torturing spirit of God in them will keep their conscience 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 pre-sentiment 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. Book 3, Chapter 16 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 4, Chapter 16 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald Chapter 16, Change of Scene But various reasons combine to induce Falconer to postpone yet for a period their journey to the North. Not merely did his father require an unremitting watchfulness, which it would be difficult to keep up in his native place amongst old friends and acquaintances, but his health was more broken than he had at first supposed, and change of air and scene with that excitement was most desirable. He was anxious, too, that the change his mother must see in him should be as little as possible attributable to other causes than those that years bring with them. To this was added that his own health had begun to suffer from the watching and anxiety he had gone through, and for his father's sake as well as for the labor which he had laid before him, he would keep that as sound as he might. He wrote to his grandmother and explained the matter. She begged him to do as he thought best, for she was so happy that she did not care if she should never see Andrew in this world. It was enough to die in the hope of meeting him and the other. But she had no reason to fear that death was at hand, for although much more frail, she felt as well as ever. By this time Falconer had introduced me to his father. I found him in some things very like his son, in others very different. His manners were more polished, his pleasure and pleasing much greater. His humanity had blossomed too easily, and then run to seed, a last to no seed that could bear fruit. There was a weak expression about his mouth, a wavering interrogation. It was so different from the firmly closed portals once issued the golden speech of his son. He had a sly, side-long look at times, whether of doubt or cunning I could not always determine. His eyes, unlike his sons, were of a light blue and hazy, both in texture and expression. His hands were long fingered and tremulous. He gave your hand a sharp squeeze, and the same instant abandoned it with indifference. As soon began to discover in him a tendency to patronize anyone who showed him a particle of respect as distinguished from commonplace civility. But under all outward appearance it seemed to me that there was a change going on. At least being very willing to believe it, I found nothing to render belief impossible. He was very fond of the fluid his son had given him, and on that sweetest and most expressiveness of instruments he played exquisitely. One evening when I called to see them, Falconer said, We are going out of town for a few weeks, Gordon. Will you go with us? I am afraid I can't. Why? You have no teaching at present, and your writing you can do as well in the country as in town. That is true, but still I don't see how I can. I am too poor for one thing. Between you and me that is nonsense. Well, I withdraw that, I said, but there is so much to be done, especially as he will be away and Miss St. John is at the lakes. That is all very true, but you need a change. I have seen for some weeks that you are failing. Mind it is our best work that he wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I hope you are not of the mind of our friend, Mr. Watts, the Curate of St. Gregory's. I thought you had a high opinion of Mr. Watts, I returned. So I have. I hope it is not necessary to agree with the man in everything before we can have a high opinion of him. Of course not, but what is it you hope I am not of his opinion in? He seems ambitious of killing himself with work, of wearing himself out in the service of his master, and as quickly as possible. A good deal of that kind of thing is a mere holding of the axe to the grindstone, not a lifting of it up against the trees. Only he won't be convinced till it comes to the hell. I met him the other day, he was looking as wide as the surplus. I took upon me to read him a lecture on the holiness of holidays. I can't believe my poor he said. Do you think God can't do without you? I asked. Is he so weak that he cannot spare the help of a weary man? But I think you must prefer quality to quantity, and for healthy work you must be healthy yourself. How can you be the visible sign of the Christ present amongst men if you inhabit an exhausted, irritable brain? Go to God's infirmary and rest awhile. Bring back health from the country to those that cannot go for it. If on the way it be transmuted into spiritual form, so much the better. A little more of God will make up for a good deal less of you. What did he say to that? He said our Lord died doing the will of his father. I told him, yes, when his time was come, not sooner. Besides, he often avoided both speech and action. Yes, he answered, but he could tell when and we cannot. Therefore I rejoined. You ought to accept your exhaustion as a token that your absence will be the best thing for your people. If there were no God, then perhaps you ought to work till you drop down dead. I don't know. Is he gone yet? No, he won't go. I couldn't persuade him. When do you go? Tomorrow. I shall be ready, if you really mean it. That's an if. We're the only of a quartier. There may be much virtue in an if, as Touchstone says, for the taking up of a quarrel. But that if is as bad enough to breed one, said Falconer, laughing. Be at the Paddington Station at noon tomorrow to tell the whole truth. I want you to help with my father. This lass was set at the door as he showed me out. In the afternoon we were nearing Bristol. It was a lovely day in October. Andrew had been enjoying himself, but it was evidently rather the pleasure of traveling in the first-class carriage like a gentleman, than any delight in the beauty of heaven and earth. The country was in the rich somber dress of decay. Is it not remarkable, said my friend to me, that the older I grow, I find autumn affecting me more like spring? I am thankful to say, interposed Andrew with the smile, in which was mingled a shade of superiority, that no change of the seasons ever affects me. Are you sure you are right in being thankful for that father, as the son? His father gazed at him for a moment, seemed to be thinking himself after some feeble fashion or other and rejoined. While I must confess, I did feel a touch of the rheumatism this morning. How I pitted Falconer, would he ever see of the travail of his soul in this man? But he only smiled a deep sweet smile and seemed to be thinking divine things in that great head of his. At Bristol we went on board a small steamer and at night were landed at a little village on the coast of North Devon. The hotel to which we went was on the steep bank of a tumultuous little river, which tumbled past its foundation of rock, like a troop of watery horses galloping by with ever-desolving limbs. The other Falconer retired almost as soon as we had had supper. My friend and I lighted up pipes and sat by the open window, for although the autumn was so far advanced, the air here was very mild. For some time we only listened to the sound of the waters. There are three things that Falconer at last, taking his pipe out of his mouth with a smile, would give a peculiarly perfect feeling of abandonment. The laughter of a child, a snake lying across a fallen branch, and the rust of a stream like this beneath us whose only thought is to get to the sea. We did not talk much that night, however, but went soon to bed. None of us slept well. We agreed in the morning that the noise of the stream had been too much for us all, and that the place felt close and torpid. Andrew complained that the ceaseless sound wearied him, and Robert that he felt the aimless endlessness of it more than was good for him. I confess it irritated me like an anodyne, unable to soothe. We were clearly all in want of something different. The air between the hills clung to them, hot and moveless. We would climb those hills and breathe the air that flitted about over their craggy tops. As soon as we had had breakfast we set out. It was soon evident that Andrew could not ascend the steep road. We returned and got a carriage. When we reached the top it was like a resurrection, like a dawning of hope out of despair. The cool, friendly wind blew on our faces and breathed strength into our frames. Before us lay the ocean, the visible type of the invisible, and the vessels with their white sails moved about over it like the thoughts of men, feebly searching the unknown. Even Andrew Falconer spread out his arms to the wind and breathed deep, filling his great chest full. I feel like a boy again, he said. His son strode to his side and laid his arm over his shoulders. So do I, Father, he returned. But it is because I have got you. The old man turned and looked at him with the tenderness I had never seen on his face before. As soon as I saw that, I no longer doubted that he could be saved. We found rooms in a farmhouse on the topmost height. These are poor little hills, Falconer, I said, yet they helped one like mountains. The whole question is, he returned, whether they are high enough to lift you out of the dirt. Here we are in the airs of heaven. That is all we need. They make me think how often amongst the country people of Scotland I have wandered at the clay feet upon which a golden head of wisdom stood. What poor needs, what humble aims, what a narrow basement generally was sufficient to support the statues of pure-eyed faith and white-handed hope. Yes, said Falconer, he who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The faithfulness is all. After an early dinner, we went out for a walk, but we did not go far before we sat down upon the grass. Falconer laid himself at full length and gazed upwards. When I looked like this into the blue sky, he said, after a moment's silence. It seemed so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious tenderness, that I could lie for centuries and wait for the dawning of the face of God out of the awful loving-kindness. I had never heard Falconer talk of his own present feelings in this manner, but glancing at the face of his father with the sense of his unfitness to hear such a lofty utterance, I saw at once that it was for his sake that he had thus spoken. The old man had thrown himself back too and was gazing into the sky puzzling himself, I could see, to comprehend what his son could mean. I fear he concluded for the time that Robert was not gifted with the amount of common sense belonging of right to the Falconer family and that much religion had made him a dreamer. Still, I thought I could see a kind of awe pass like a spiritual shadow across his face, as he gazed into the blue gulfs over him. No one can detect the first beginnings of any life, and those of spiritual emotion must more than any lie beyond our knowledge. There is infinite room for hope. Falconer said no more. We betook ourselves early within doors, and he read King Lear to us, expounding the spiritual history of the poor old king after a fashion I had never conceived, showing us how the said history was all compressed, as far as human eye could see of it, into the few months that elapsed between his abdication and his death, how in that short time he had to learn everything that he ought to have been learning all his life, and how because he had put it off so long the lessons that had then to be given him were awfully severe. I thought what a change it was for the old man to lift his head into the air of thought and life out of the sloths of misery in which he had been wallowing for years. And Chapter 16, Book 3, Chapter 17 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George McDonald. Chapter 17. In the Country The next morning, Falconer, who knew the country, took us out for a drive. We passed through lanes and gates out upon an open moor, where he stopped the carriage and led us a few yards on one side. Suddenly, hundreds of feet below us, down what seemed an almost precipitous descent, we saw the wood embossed, streamed, trodden valley we had left the day before. Enough had been cleft and scooped seawards out of the lofty table land to give room for a few little conical hills, with curious peaks of bare rock. At the bases of these hills flowed noisily two or three streams, which joined in one and trotted out to sea over rocks and stones. The hills and the sides of the great cleft were half of them green with grass and half of them robed in the autumnal foliage of thick woods. By the streams and in the woods, nestled pretty houses, and away at the mouth of the valley and the stream lay the village. All around, on our level, stretched farm and moorland. When Andrew Falconer stood so unexpectedly on the verge of this steep descent, he trembled and started back with fright. His son made him sit down a little way off, where, yet, we could see into the valley. The sun was hot, the air clear and mild, and the sea broke its blue floor into innumerable sparkles of radiance. We sat for a while in silence. Are you sure, I said, in the hope of setting my friend talking, that there is no horrid pool down there, no half trampled ticket, with broken pottery and shreds of tin dying about, no dead carcass or dirty cottage with miserable wife and greedy children? When I was a child, I knew a lovely place that I could not half enjoy, because, although hidden from my view, an ugly stagnation half mud, half water lay in a certain spot below me. When I had to pass it, I used to creep by with a kind of dull tear mingled with hopeless disgust, and I have never got over the feeling. You remind me much of a friend of mine, of whom I have spoken to you before, said Falkner. Eric Erickson. I have shown you many of his verses, but I don't think I ever showed you one little poem containing an expression of the same feeling. I think I can repeat it. Some men there are who cannot spare a single tear until they feel the last cold pressure, and the heel is stamped upon the outmost layer. And waking some will sigh to think, the clouds have borrowed winter's wing, sad winter when the grasses spring, no more about the fountains brink, and some would call me coward fool, I lay acclaimed to better blood, but yet a heap of idle mud hath power to make me sorrowful. I sat thinking over the verses for I found the feeling a little difficult to follow, although the last stanza was plain enough. Falkner resumed. I think this is as likely as any place, he said, to be free of such physical blots. For the moral I cannot say, but I have learned, I hope, not to be too fastidious. I mean so as to be unjust to the hope because of the part. The impression made by Hall is just as true as the result of an analysis, and is greater and more valuable in every respect. If we rejoice in the beauty of the whole, the other is sufficiently forgotten. For moral ugliness it ceases to distress in proportion as we labor to remove it, and regard it in its true relations to all that surrounds it. There is an old legend which I dare say you know. The Savior and His disciples were walking along the way when they came upon a dead dog. The disciples did not conceal their disgust. The Savior said how wide its teeth are. That is very beautiful I rejoined, thank God for that. It is true whether invented or not. But, I added, it does not quite answer to the question about which we have been talking. The Lord got rid of the pain of the ugliness by finding the beautiful in it. It does correspond however I think in principle return Falkner, only it goes much farther, making the exceptional beauty hallow the general ugliness, which is the true way, for beauty is life and therefore infinitely deeper and more powerful than ugliness which is death. A dram of sweet, says Spencer, is worth a pound of sour. It was so delightful to hear him talk for what he said was not only far finer than my record of it, but the whole man spoke as well as his mouth. That I sought to start him again. I wish I said that I could see things as you do in great masses of harmonious unity. I am only able to see a truth sparkling here and there and to try to lay hold of it. When I aim at more I am like Noah's dove without a place to rest the soul of my foot. That is the only way to begin. Leave the large vision to itself and look well after your sparkles. You will find them grow and gather and unite until you are afloat on a sea of radiance, with cloud shadows no doubt. And yet I resumed I never seemed to have room. That is just why. But I feel that I cannot find it. I know that if I fly to that bounding cape on the far horizon there, I shall only find a place, a place to want another in. There is no fortunate island out on that sea. I fancy, said Falconer, that until a man loves space he will never be at peace in a place. At least so I have found it. I am content if you but give me room. All space to me thrives with being in life, and the loveliest spot on the earth seems but the compression of space till the meaning shines out of it, as the fire flies out of the air when you drive it close together. To seek place after place for freedom is a constant effort to flee from space, and a vain one, for you are ever haunted by the need of it, and therefore when you seek most to escape it fancy that you love it and want it. You are getting too mystical for me now, I said. I am not able to follow you. I fear I was on the point of losing myself. At all events I can go no further now, and indeed I fear I have been but skirting the limbo of vanities. He rose, for we could both see that this talk was not in the least interesting to our companion. We got again into the carriage, which, by Falconer's orders, was turned and driven in the opposite direction, still at no great distance from the lofty edge of the heights that rose above the shore. We came at length to a lane bounded with stone walls, every stone of which had its moss and every chinket's fern. The lane grew more and more grassy, the walls vanished, and the track faded away into a narrow winding valley formed by the many meeting curves of opposing hills. They were green to the top with sheepgrass and spotted here and there with patches of fern, great stones and tall withered foxgloves. The air was sweet and beautiful, and Andrew evidently enjoyed it because it reminded him again of his boyhood. The only sound we heard was the tinkle of a few tender sheep bells, and now and then the tremulous bleeding of a sheep. With a gentle winding the valley led us into a more open portion of itself, where the old man paused with the look of astonished pleasure. Before us, seaward, rose a rampart against the sky, like the turreted and embattled wall of a huge eastern city, built of loose stones piled high and divided by great peaky rocks. In the center rose above them all one solitary, curiously shaped mass, one of the oddest peaks of the Himalayas in miniature. From its top, on the further side was a sheer descent to the waters far below the level of the valley, from which it immediately rose. It was altogether a strange freaky fantastic place, not without its grandeur. It looked like the remains of a frolic of the Titans, or rather, as if reared by the boys and girls while their fathers and mothers lay stretched out huge in length. And in breath, too, upon the slopes, around, and laughed thunderously at the sport of invention of their sons and daughters, Thakur helped his father up to the edge of the rampart that he might look over. Again he started back, afraid of that which was high, for the lowly valley was yet at a great height above the diminished waves. On the outside of the rampart ran a narrow path once the green hillside went down steep to the sea. The gulls were screaming far below us. We could see the little flying streaks of white. Beyond was the great ocean. A murmured sound came up from its shore. We descended and seated ourselves on the short springy grass of a little mound at the foot of one of the hills, where it sank slowly like the dying gush of a wave into the hollowest center of the little veil. Everything tensed to the cone shaped here, said Falconer, the oddest and at the same time most wonderful of mathematical figures. Is it not strange, I said, that oddity and wonder should come so near? They often do in the human world as well, returned he. Therefore, it is not strange that Shelly should have been so fond of this place. It is told of him that repeated sketches of this spot were found on the covers of his letters. I know nothing more like Shelly's poetry than this valley, while fantastic and yet beautiful, as if a huge genius were playing at grandeur and producing little models of great things. But there is one grand thing I want to show you a little further on. We rose and walked out of the valleys on the other side along the lofty coast. When we reached a certain point, Falconer stood and requested us to look as far as we could along the cliffs to the face of the last of them. What do you see? he asked. A perpendicular rock going right down into the blue waters, I answered. Look at it. What is the outline of it like? Whose face is it? Shakespeare's, by all that is grand, I cried. So it is, said Andrew. Right, now I'll tell you what I would do. If I were very rich and there were no poor people in the country, I would give a commission to some great sculptor to attack that rock and work out its suggestion. Then if I had any money left, we should find one for bacon and one for Chaucer and one for Milton. And as we are about it, we may fancy as many more as we like so that from the bounding rocks of our island, the memorial faces of our great brothers should look abroad over the seas into the infinite sky beyond. Well now, said the elder, I think it is grander as it is. You are quite right, father, said Robert. And so with many of our fancies for perfecting God's mighty sketches, which he only can finish. Again, we seated ourselves and looked out over the waves. I have never yet heard, I said, how you managed with that poor girl that wanted to drown herself on Westminster Bridge, I mean, that night you remember? Miss St. John has got her in her own house at present. She has given her those two children we picked up at the door of the public house to take care of. Poor little darlings, they are bringing back the life in her heart already. There is actually a little color in her cheek, the Donna trust of the eternal life. That is Miss St. John's way. As often as she gets hold of a poor, hopeless woman, she gives her a motherless child. It is wonderful what the childless woman and the motherless child do for each other. I was much amused the other day with the lecture one of the police magistrates gave a poor creature who was brought before him for attempting to drown herself. He did give her a sovereign out of the poor box, though. Well, that might just tide her over the shoal of self-destruction, said Falconer, but I cannot help doubting whether anyone has a right to prevent a suicide from carrying out his purpose, who is not prepared to do a good deal more for him than that. What would you think of the man who snatched the loaf from a hungry thief, threw it back into the baker's cart and walked away to his club dinner? Harsh words of rebuke and the threat of severe punishment upon a second attempt. What are they to the wretch weary of life? To some of them, the kindest punishment would be to hang them for it. It is something else than punishment that they need. If the comfortable alderman had but a feeling of their afflictions felt in himself for a moment how miserable he must be, what a waste of despair must be in his heart before he would do it himself, before the awful river would appear to him a refuge from the upper air, he would change his tone. I fear he regards suicide chiefly as a burglarious entrance into the premises of the respectable firm of venison port and company. But you mustn't be too hard upon him Falconer, for if his God is his belly, how can he regard suicide as other than the most awful sacrilege? Of course not. His well-fed divinity gives him one great commandment, that shall love thyself with all thy heart. The great breach is to hurt thyself, worst of all, to send thyself away from the land of luncheons and dinners to the country of thought and vision. But alas, he does not reflect on the fact that the good Belial does not feed all his votaries, that he has his elect, that the altar of his inner table too often smokes with no sacrifice, of which his poor meager priests may partake. They must uphold the divinity which has been good to them and not suffer a source at the fall into disrepute. Really Robert said his father, I am afraid to think what you will come to, you will end in denying there is a God at all. You don't believe in hell and now you justify suicide. Really I must say, to say the least of it, I have not been accustomed to hear such things. The poor old man looked feebly righteous at his wicked son. I barely believe he was concerned for his eternal fate. Falconer gave a pleased glance at me and for a moment said nothing. Then he began with the kind of logical composure. In the first place, father, I do not believe in such a God as some people say they believe in. Their God is but an idol of the heathen, modified with a few Christian qualities. For hell, I don't believe there is any escape from it, but by leaving hellish things behind. For suicide, I do not believe it is wicked because it hurts yourself, but I do believe it is very wicked. I only want to put it on its own right footing. And pray, what do you consider its right footing? My dear father, I recognize no duty is owing to a man's self. There is and can be no such thing. I am and can be under no obligation to myself. The whole thing is a fiction and of evil invention. It comes from the upper circles of the hell of selfishness. Or perhaps it may with some be merely a form of metaphysical mistake, but in untruth it is. Then for the duty we do owe to other people. How can we expect the men or women who have found life to end, as it seems to them in a dunghill of misery? How can we expect such to understand any obligation to live for the sake of the general others, to know individual of whom possibly do they bear an indurable relation? What remains, the grandest noblest duty, from which all other duty springs, the duty to the possible God? Mind I say possible God, for I judge it the first of my duties towards my neighbor to regard his duty from his position, not from mine. But, said I, how would you bring that duty to bear on the mind of a suicide? I think some of the tempted could understand it, though I fear not one of those could who judge them hardly, and talk sententiously of the wrong done to a society, which is done next to nothing for him by the poor, starved, refused, husband tortured wretch, perhaps, who hurries at last to the night of the filthy flowing river, which, the one thread of hope in the web of despair, crawls through the city of death. What should I say to him? I should say, God liveth, thou art not thine own, but his. Bear thy hunger, thy horror in his name. I in his name will help thee out of them, as I may. To go before he calleth thee is to say thou forgettest, unto him who numbereth the hairs of thy head. Stand out in the cold in the sleep and the hail of this world. O son of man, tell thy father open the door and call thee. Yea, even if thou knowest him not, stand and wait, lest there should be, after all, such a loving and tender one, who for the sake of a good, with which thou wilt be all content, and without which thou never couldst be content, permits thee there to stand for a time, long to his sympathizing, as well as to thy suffering heart. Here falconer paused, and when he spoke again it was from the ordinary level of conversation. Indeed, I fancy that he was a little uncomfortable at the excitement into which his feelings had borne him. Not many of them could understand this, I dare say, but I think most of them could feel it without understanding it. Certainly the belly with good cape unlined will neither understand nor feel it. Suicide is a sin against God. I repeat, not a crime over which human laws have any hold. In regard to such, man has a duty alone. That, namely, of making it possible for every man to live. And where the dread of death is not sufficient to deter, what can the threat of punishment do? Or what great thing is gained if it should succeed? What agonies a man must have gone through, in whom neither the horror of falling into such a river, nor the knife in the flesh instinct with life, can extinguish the vague longing to wrap up his weariness in an endless sleep? But, I remarked, you would, I fear, encourage the trade in suicide. Your kindness would be terribly abused. What would you do with the pretended suicides? Whip them for trifling with and trading upon the feelings of their kind. Then you would drive them to suicide in earnest. Then they might be worth something which they were not before. We are a great deal too humane for that nowadays, I fear. We don't like hurting people. No, we are infested with the philanthropy which is the offspring of our mammon worship. But surely our tender mercies are cruel. We don't like to hang people, however unfit they may be to live amongst their fellows. A weakling pity will petition for the life of the worst murderer. But for what? To keep them alive in a confinement, as like their notion of hell, as they dare to make it, namely a place once all the sweet visitings of the grace of God are withdrawn, and the man has not a chance so to speak of growing better. In this hell of theirs they will even paper his beastly body. They have the chaplain to visit them. I pity the chaplain cut off in his labors from all the aids which God's world alone can give for the teachings of these men. Human beings have not the right to inflict such cruel punishment upon their fellow man. It springs from a cowardly shrinking from responsibility and from mistrust of the mercy of God. Perhaps first of all from an overvaluing of the mere life of the body. Hanging is tenderness itself to such a punishment. I think you are hardly fair though, Falconer. It is the fear of sending them to hell that prevents them from hanging them. Yes, you are right, I dare say. They are not of David's mind who would rather fall in the hands of God than of men. They think their hell is not so hard as he is and may be better for them. But I must not, as you say, forget that they do believe their everlasting fate hangs upon their hands, for if God once gets his hold of them by death they are lost forever. But the chaplain may awake them to a sense of their sins. I do not think it is likely that talk will do what the discipline of life has not done. It seems to me on the contrary that the clergyman has no commission to rouse people to a sense of their sins. That is not his work. He is far more likely to harden them by any attempt in that direction. Every man does feel his sins, though he often does not know it. To turn his attention away from what he does feel by trying to rouse in him feelings which are impossible to him in the present condition is to do him a great wrong. The clergyman has the message of salvation, not of sin, to give. Whatever oppression is on a man, whatever trouble, whatever conscious, something that comes between him and the blessedness of life is his sin. For whatever is not of faith is sin, and from all this he came to save us. Salvation alone can rouse in us a sense of our sinfulness. One must have God on a good way before he can be sorry for his sins. There is no condition of sorrow laid down as necessary to forgiveness. Repentance does not mean sorrow, it means turning away from the sins. Every man can do that more or less, and that every man must do. The sorrow will come afterwards, all in good time. Jesus offers to take us out of our own hands into his, if we will only obey him. The eyes of the old man were fixed on his son as he spoke. He did seem to be thinking, I could almost fancy that a glimmer of something like hope shone in his eyes. It was time to go home, and we were nearly silent all the way. The next morning was so wet that we could not go out and had to amuse ourselves as we best might indoors. The falconer's resources never failed. He gave us this day story after story about the poor people he had known. I could see that his object was often to get some truths into his father's mind without exposing it to rejection by addressing it directly to himself, and few subjects could be more fitted for affording such opportunity than his experiences among the poor. The afternoon was still rainy and misty. In the evening I sought to lead the conversation towards the gospel story, and then falconer talked as I never heard him talk before. No little circumstance in the narratives appeared to have escaped him. He had thought about everything as it seemed to me. He had looked under the surface everywhere and found truth, minds of it, under all the upper soil of the story. The deeper he dug, the richer seemed the oar. This was combined with the most pictorial apprehension of every outward event, which he treated as if it had been described to him by the lips of an eyewitness. The whole thing lived in his words and thoughts. When anything looked strange he must look the deeper, he would say, at the close of one of our fits of talk he rose and went to the window. Come here, he said, after looking for a moment. All day a drooping cloud had filled the space below so that the hills on the opposite side of the valley were hidden and the hull of the sea near as it was. But when we went to the window we found that a great change had silently taken place. The mist continued to veil the sky and it clung to the tops of the hills. But like the rising curtain of a stage, it had rolled halfway up from their bases revealing a great part of the sea and shore, and half of a cliff on the opposite side of the valley. This in itself of a deep red was now smitten by the rays of the setting sun and glowed over the waters a splendor of Carmine. As we gazed the vaporous curtain sank upon the shore and the sun sank under the waves and the sad gray evening closed in the weeping night and clouds and darkness swathed through the weary earth. For doubtless the earth needs its night as well as the creatures that live thereon. In the morning the rain had ceased but the clouds remained but they were high in the heavens now like a departing sorrow revealed the outline and form which had appeared before as an enveloping vapor of universal and shapeless evil. The mist was now far enough off to be seen and thought about. It was clouds now no longer mist and rain and I thought how it length the evils of the world would float away and we should see what it was that made it so hard for us to believe and be at peace. In the afternoon the sky had partially cleared but clouds hid the sun as he sank towards the west. We walked out a cold a tunnel wind blew not only from the twilight of the dying day but from the twilight of the dying season a sorrowful hopeless wind it seemed full of the odors of dead leaves those memories of green woods and of damp earth the bare graves of the flowers. Would the summer ever come again? We were pacing in silence along a terraced walk which overhung the shore far below. More here than from the hilltop we seemed to look immediately into space not even a parapet intervening betwixt us in the ocean. The sound of a mournful lyric never yet sung was in my brain it drew near to my mental grasp but air delighted its wings were gone and it fell dead on my consciousness its meaning was this welcome requiem of nature let me share in thy requiskot blow a wind of mournful memories let us moan together no one take it from us the joy of our sorrow we may mourn as we will but while i brooded thus behold a wonder the mass about the sinking sun broke up and drifted away in cloudy bergs as have scattered on the diverging currents of solar radiance that burst from the gates of the west and streamed east and north and south over the heavens and over the sea to the north these masses built a cloudy bridge across the sky from horizon to horizon and beneath it shone the rosy sailed ships floating stately through their triumphal arch up the channel to their home other clouds floated stately two in the upper sea over our heads with dense forms staining into vaporous edges some were of a dull angry red some of as exquisite a primrose hue as ever the flower itself bore on its bosom and batwicks their edges beamed out the sweetest purest most melting most transparent blue the heavenly blue which is the symbol of the spirit as red is of the heart i think i never saw blue to satisfy me before some of these clouds through shadows of mini shaded purple upon the green sea and from one of the shadows so dark and so far out upon the glooming horizon that it looked like an island arose as from a pier a wonder structure of dim fairy colors a multitude of rainbow ends side by side that would have spanned the heavens with a gorgeous arch but failed from the very grandeur of the idea and grew up only a few degrees against the clouded west i stood wrapped the two falconers were at some distance before me walking arm in arm they stood and gazed likewise it was as if god had said to the heavens in the earth and the cord of the seven colors come for e come for e my people and i said to my soul let the tempest rave in the world let sorrow well like a seabird in the midst thereof and let the heart respond to her shivering cry but the vault of heaven encloses the tempest and the shrieking bird and the echoing heart and the son of god's countenance ken with one glance from above changed the wildest winter day into the summer evening compact of poet streams my companions were walking up over the hill i could see that falconer was earnestly speaking in his father's ear the old man's head was bent towards the earth i kept away they made a turn from home i still followed at a distance the evening began to grow dark the autumn wind met us again colder stronger yet more laden with the odors of death and the frosts of the coming winter but it no longer blew us from the charnel house of the past it blew from the stars through the chinks of the unopened door on the other side of the cephalcher it was a wind of the worlds not a wind of the leaves it told of the march of the spheres and the rest of the throne of god we were going on into the universe home to the house of our father mighty adventure sacred repose and as i followed the pair one great star throbbed and radiated over my head and chapter 17 book 3 chapter 18 of robert falconer by george mcdonald this libre box recording is in the public domain robert falconer by george mcdonald chapter 18 three generations the next week i went back to my work leaving the father and son alone together before i left i could see plainly enough that the bonds were being drawn closer between them a whole month passed before they returned to london the winter then had set in with unusual severity but it seemed to bring only health to the two men when i saw andrew next there was certainly a marked change upon him light had banished the haziness from his eye and his step was a good deal firmer i can hardly speak of more than the physical improvement for i saw very little of him now still i did think i could perceive more of judgment in his face as if he sometimes weighed things in his mind but it was plain that robert continued very careful not to let him a moment out of his knowledge he busied him with the various sites of london for andrew although he knew all its miseries well had never yet been inside wet smith's ter abbey if he could only trust him enough to get him something to do but what was he fit for to try him he proposed once that he should write some account of what he had seen and learned in his wanderings but the evident distress with which he shrunk from the proposal was grateful to the eyes and heart of his son it was almost the end of the year when a letter arrived from john lambie informing robert that his grandmother had caught a violent cold and that although the special symptoms had disappeared it was evident her strength was sinking fast and that she would not recover he read the letter to his father we must go and see her robert my boy said andrew it was the first time that he had shown the smallest desire to visit her falcon arose with glad heart and proceeded at once to make arrangements for their journey it was a cold powdery afternoon in january with the snow thick on the ground save for the little winds had blown the crown of the street bear before mrs falconers house a post chase with four horses swept weirdly around the corner and pulled up at her door betty opened it and revealed an old withered face very sorrowful and yet expectant falconers feeling i dare not andrew's i cannot attempt to describe as they step from the chase and entered betty led the way without a word into the little parlor robert went next with long quiet strides and andrew followed with gray bowed head grainy was not in her chair the door switched during the day concealed the bed in which she slept were open and there lay the aged woman with her eyes closed the room was as it had always been only there seemed a filmy shadow in it that had not been there before she's dean sir whispered betty i is she a han robert took his father's hand and led him towards the bed they grew nice softly and bent over the withered but not even yet very wrinkled face the smooth white soft hands lay on the sheet which was folded back over her bosom she was asleep or rather she slumbered but the soul of the child began to grow in the withered heart of the old man as he regarded his older mother and as it grew it forced the tears to his eyes and the word to his lips mother he said and her eyelids rose at once he stooped to kiss her with the tears rolling down his face the light of heaven broke and flashed from her aged countenance she lifted her weak hands took his head and held it to her bosom eh the bonnie gray head she said and burst into a passion of weeping she had kept some tears for the last now she would spend all that her griefs had left her but there came a pause in her sobs though not in her weeping and then she spoke i knew it all the time oh lord i knew it all the time he's come home my andrew my andrew i'm as happy as a baron oh lord oh lord and she burst again into sobs and entered paradise in radiant weeping her hands sank away from his head and when her son gazed in her face he saw that she was dead she had never looked at robert the two men turned towards each other robert put out his arms his father laid his head on his bosom and went on weeping robert held into his heart when she'll a man dare to say that god has done all he can and chapter 18 book three chapter 19 of robert falconer by george mcdonald this libre box recording is in the public domain robert falconer by george mcdonald chapter 19 the whole story the men laid their mother's body with those of the generations that had gone before her beneath the long grass in their country churchyard near rothadin the dreary place one accustomed to trim cemeteries and sentimental lease would call it to falconer's mind so friendly to the forsaken dust because it lapped it in sweet oblivion they returned to the dreary house and after a simple meal such as both had used to partake of in their boyhood they sat by the fire andrew and his mother's chair robert in the same chair in which he had learned his salust and written his versions andrew sat for a while gazing into the fire and robert sat watching his face where in the last few months a little feeble fatherhood had begun to dawn it was their father that grainy used to sit every day sometimes looking in the fire for hours thinking about you i know robert said at length andrew stirred uneasily in his chair how do you know that he asked if there was one thing i could be sure of it was when grainy was thinking about you father who wouldn't have known it father when her lips were pressed together as if she had some dreadful pain to bear and her eyes were looking away through the fire so far away and i would speak to her three times before she would answer she lived only to think about god and you father god and you came very close together in her mind since ever i can remember almost the thought of you was just the one thing in this house then robert began at the beginning of his memory and told his father all that he could remember when he came to speak about his solitary musings in the garret he said and long before he reached this part he had relapsed into his mother tongue come and look at the place father i want to see it again myself he rose his father yielded and followed him robert got a candle in the kitchen and the two big men climbed a little narrow stair and stood in the little sky of the house where the heads almost touched the ceiling i sat upon the floor there said robert and thought and thought what i would do to get you father and what i would do with you when i have gotten you i would grate while's cause other laddies had a father and i had none and there's where i found mama's box with the letter in it her own picker granny gave me that one of you and there's where i used to kneel down and pray to god and he's heard my prayers and granny's prayers and here you are with me at last instead of thinking about i have your own self come father i want to say a word of thanks to god for hearing my prayer he took the old man's hand let him do the bedside and kneeled with him there my reader can hardly avoid thinking it was a poor sad triumph that robert had after all how the dreams of the boy had dwindled and settling down into the reality he had his father it was true but what a father and how little he had him but this was not the end and robert always believed that the end must be the greater and proportion to the distance it was removed to give time for its true fulfillment and when he prayed aloud beside his father i doubt not that his thanksgiving and his hope were equal the prayer over he took his father's hand and let him down again to the little parlor and they took their seats again by the fire and robert began again and again and went on with his story not omitting the parts belonging to mary saint john and eric erickson when he came to tell how he had encountered him in the deserted factory look here father here's the mark of the cut he said parting the thick hair on the top of his head his father hit his face in his hands it was not muckl of a blow that you give to me father he went on but i fell against the grade and that was what did it and i never told anybody naven miss saint john who plastered it up who i had gotten it and i did not mean to say on a thing about it but i wanted to tell you a queer dream such a queer dream it guard me dream the same night as he told the dream his father suddenly grew attentive and before he had finished looked almost scared but he said nothing when he came to relate his grandmother's behavior after having discovered that the papers relating to the factory were gone he hit his face in his hands once more he told him how granny had mourned and wept over him from the time when he heard her praying aloud as he crept through her room at night to their last talk together after dr anderson's death he set forth as he could in the simplest language the agony of her soul over her lost son he told him then about erickson and dr anderson and how good they had been to him at last of dr anderson's request that he would do something for him in india will you go on with me father he asked i'll never leave you again robert my boy he answered i have been a bad man and a bad father and now i give myself up to you to make the best of me you can i dare not leave you robert pray to god to take care of you father he'll do anything for you if you'll only let him i will robert i wasn't myself dreadful miserable for a while robert resumed for i could not see or hear god at all but god heard me and luke me ken that he was there and that all was right i was just like when a barney awakens up and cries with thinking it's alone and through the mark comes the word of the mother of it saying i'm here crater did not great and i came to believe that he would make you a good man at last oh father it's been my dream walking and sleeping to have you back to me and granny and mama and the father of us all and jesus christ that's done the only thing for us and knew you mount pray to god father you will pray to god to hold the grip of you will not you father i will i will robert but i've been an awful sinner i believe i was the death of your mother laddie some fount of memory was open some tide of old tenderness gussed up in his heart at some window of the past the face of his dead wife looked in the old man broke into a great cry and sobbed and wept bitterly robert said no more but wept with him henceforth the father clung to his son like a child the heart of falconer turned to his father in heaven with speechless thanksgiving the ideal of his dream was beginning to dawn and his life was newborn it did not take robert long to arrange his grandmother's little affairs he had already made up his mind about her house and furniture he rang the bell one morning for betty have you on a cellar laid up betty i i have 15 pound in the savings bank and what do you think of doing i'll get a bit roomy and take in washing well i'll tell you what i would like you to do you know mistress el schender find that and a very decent body she is well if you like you can hold this hoose and all that's in it just as it is till the day of your death and you'll i keep it in order and the gale room ready for me at any time it may happen to come in upon you in one of a night's quarters but i would like you if you have any objections to take mistress el schender divide with you she's turning some frail new and i'm under great obligation to her sandy you know i will that he learned to you to fiddle robert i homely beg your pardon sir mr robert ne offense betty i assure you you have been odd good to me and i think you hardly betty could not stand this her apron went up to her eyes eh sir she sobbed he was i a good lad except when i speak of muckledrum betty she laughed and sobbed together wheel you'll take mistress el schender and will not you i'll do that sir and i'll try to do my best with her she can help you you know with your washing and stitch like she's a hard working woman sir she would do that wheel and when you're in only one to sell her just write to me and if only things should happen to me you know write to mr gordon a friend of mine there's his address in london yes sir but you are kind god bless you for all she could bear no more and left the room crying everything settled at rotha den he returned to body fall the most welcome greeting he had ever received in his life lay in the shine of his father's eyes when he entered the room where he sat with miss lammy the next day they left for london and chapter 19 book three chapter 20 of robert falconer by george mcdonald this libre box recording is in the public domain robert falconer by george mcdonald chapter 20 the vanishing they came to see me the very evening of their arrival as to andrew's progress there could be no longer any doubt although it was necessary for conviction on the point was to have seen him before and to see him now the very grasp of his hand was changed but not yet would robert leave him alone it will naturally occur to my reader that his goodness was not much yet it was not it may have been greater than we could be sure of though but if anyone objected such a conversion even if it were perfected was poor in as much as the man's free will was intermitted with i answer the development of the free will was the one object hitherto it was not free i asked the man who says so where would your free will have been if at some period of your life you could have had everything you wanted if he says it is no blur in a man to do with less help i answer andrew was not noble was he therefore to be forsaken the prodigal was not left without the help of the swine and their house at once to keep him alive and discuss them with the life is the less help a man has from god the better according to you the grandest thing of all would be for a man sunk in the absolute abysses of sensuality all at once to resolve to be pure as the imperian and be so without help from god or man it is the thing possible as well might a hyena say i will be a man and become one that would be to create andrew must be kept from the evil long enough to let him at least see the good before he was let alone but when would we be let alone for a man to be fit to be let alone is for a man not to need god but to be able to live without him our hearts cry out to have god is to live we want god without him no life of ours is worth living we are not then even human for that is but the lower form of the divine we are immortal eternal phyllis so father with thyself then only all is well more i hardly believe that i cannot understand the boundaries of will and inspiration that what god will do for us at last is infinitely beyond any greatness we could gain even if we could will ourselves from the lowest we could be into the highest we can imagine it is essential divine life we want and there is grand truth however incomplete or perverted in the aspiration of the brahmin he is wrong but he wants something right if the man had the power in his pollution to will himself into the right without god the fact that he was in that pollution with such power must damn him there forever and if god must help air a man can be saved can the help of man go too far towards the same end let god solve the mystery for he made it one thing is sure we are his and he will do his part which is no part but the all in all if man could do what in his wildest self worship he can imagine the grand result would be that he would be his own god which is the hell of hells for some time i had to give falconer what aid i could in being with his father while he arranged matters and prospect of their voyage to india sometimes he took him with him when he went amongst his people as he called the poor he visited sometimes when he wanted to go alone i was to take him to miss st john who would play and sing as i had never heard anyone player sing before andrew on such occasions carried his flute with him and the result of the two was something exquisite how miss st john did let herself out to please the old man and pleased he was i think her kindness did more than anything else to make him feel like a gentleman again and in his condition that was much at length falconer would sometimes leave him with miss st john till he or i should go for him he knew she could keep him safe he knew that she would keep him if necessary one evening i went to see falconer i found him alone it was one of these occasions i'm very glad you have come gordon he said i was wanting to see you i have got things nearly ready now next month or at latest the one after we shall sail and i have some business with you which had better be arranged at once no one knows what is going to happen the man who believes the least in chance knows as little as the man who believes in it the most my will is in the hands of dobson i have left you everything i was dumb have you any objection he said a little anxiously am i able to fulfill the conditions i faltered i have burdened you with no conditions he returned i don't believe in conditions i know your heart and mind now i trust you perfectly i am unworthy of it that is for me to judge will you have no trustees not one what do you want me to do with your property you know well enough keep it going the right way i will always think what you would like no do not think what is right and where there is no right or wrong playing in itself then think what is best you may see good reason to change some of my plans you may be wrong but you must do what you see right not what i see or might see right but there is no need to talk so seriously about it i said you will manage it yourself for many years yet make me your steward if you like during your absence i will not object to that you do not object to the other i hope no then so let it be the other of course i have been alluring myself taking good care not to trust myself only with the arranging of these matters i think you will find them all right but supposing you should not return you have compelled me to make this supposition of course go on what am i to do with the money in the prospect of following you ah that is the one point on which i want a word although i do not think it is necessary i want to entail the property how by word of mouth he answered laughing you must look out for a right man as i have done get him to know your ways and ideas and if you find him worthy that is a grand wide word our lord gave it to his disciples leave it all to him in the same way i have left it to you trusting to the spirit of truth that is in him the spirit of god you can copy my will as far as it will apply for you may have one way or another lost the half of it by that time but by word of mouth you must make the same condition with him as i have made with you that is with regard to his leaving it and the conditions on which he leaves it adding the words that it made to send us and purport to him and he must do the same he broke into a quiet laugh i knew well enough what he meant but he added that means of course for as long as there is any are you sure you are doing right falconer i said quite it is better to endow one man who will work as the father works than a hundred charities but it is time i went to fetch my father will you go with me this was all that passed between us on the subject save that on our way he told me to move to his rooms and occupy them until he returned my papers he added i commit to your discretion on our way back from queen square he joked and talked merrily andrew joined in robert showed himself delighted with every attempt at gady or wit that andrew made when we reached the house something that had occurred on the way made him turn to martin chesowitz and he read mrs gamp's best to our great enjoyment i went down with the two to southampton to see them on board the steamer i stayed with them there until she sailed it was a lovely morning in the end of april when at last i made them farewell on the quarter deck my heart was full i took his hand and kissed it he put his arms around me and laid his cheek to mine i was strong to bear the parting the great iran steamer went down in the middle of the atlantic and i have not yet seen my friend again the end and chapter 20 and robert falconer by george mcdonald