 Book 1, Chapter 23 of Robert Falconer by George Macdonald. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George Macdonald, Chapter 23 in Ato De Fay. The morning at length arrived when Robert and Shargar must return to Rathodon. The keen autumnal wind was blowing far-off feathery clouds across the sky of pale blue. The cold, fresh in the spirits of the boys, and tightened their nerves and muscles till they were like bow strings. No doubt the winter was coming, but the sun, although his day's work was short and slack, was still as clear as ever. So gladsome was the world that the boys received the day as a fresh holiday and strenuously forgot tomorrow. The wind blew straight from Rathodon, and between sun and wind a bright thought awoke in Robert. The dragon should not be carried. He should fly home. After they had said farewell in which Shargar seemed to suffer more than Robert, and had turned the corner of the stables, they heard the good farmer shouting after them, they'll be another harsh, nastier boys, which wonderfully restored their spirits. When they reached the open road, Robert laid his violin carefully into a broom-bush. Then the tail was unrolled, and the dragon ascended steady as an angel whose work is done. Shargar took the stick at the end of the string, and Robert resumed his violin. But the creature was hard to lead in such a wind, so they made a loop on the string and passed it round Shargar's chest, and he tugged the dragon home. Robert longed to take his share in the struggle, but he could not trust his violin to Shargar, and so had to walk beside him gloriously. On the way, they laid their plans for the accommodation of the dragon. But the violin was the greater difficulty. Robert would not hear of the factory for reasons best known to himself, and there were serious objections to taking it to Dewil's sanny. It was resolved that the only way was to seize the right moment and creep upstairs with it before presenting themselves to Mrs. Falconer. Their intended maneuvers with the kite would favor the concealment of this stroke. Before they entered the town, they drew in the kite a little way and cut off a dozen yards of the string, which Robert put in his pocket with the stone tied to the end. When they reached the house, Shargar went into the little garden and tied the string of the kite to the pailing between that and Captain Forsythe. Robert opened the street door, and having turned his head on all sides like a thief, darted with his violin up the stairs. Having laid his treasure in one of the presses in Shargar's garret, he went to his own and from the skylight threw the stone down into the captain's garden, fastening the other end of the string to the bedstead. Escaping as cautiously as he had entered, he passed hurriedly into the neighbor's garden, found the stone, and joined Shargar. The ends were soon united, and the kite let go. It sunk for a moment, then, arrested by the bedstead, towered again to its former pride of place, sailing over Rotherdon grand and unconcerned in the waste of air. But the end of its tether was in Robert's garret, and that was to him a sense of power, a thought of glad mystery. There was henceforth, while the dragon flew, a relation between the desolate little chamber in that lowly house, buried among so many more aspiring abodes, and the unmeasured depths and spaces, the stars, and the unknown heavens. And in the next chamber lay the fiddle, free once more, yet another tragical power whereby his spirit could forsake the earth and mount heavenwards. All that night, all the next day, all the next night, the dragon flew. Not one smile broke over the face of the old lady as she received them. Was it because she did not know what acts of disobedience, what breaches of the moral law the two children of possible perdition might have committed while they were beyond her care, and she must not run the risk of smiling upon iniquity? I think it was rather that there was no smile in her religion, which, while it developed the power of a darkened conscience, overlaid and half-smothered all the lovelier impulses of her grand nature. How could she smile? Did not the world lie under the wrath and curse of God? Was not her own son in hell forever? Had not the blood of the Son of God been shed for him in vain? Had not God meant that it should be in vain? For by the gift of his spirit could he not have enabled him to accept the offered pardon? And for anything she knew was not Robert going after him, to the place of misery? How could she smile? Newell be quiet, she said, the moment she had shaken hands with them, with her cold hands so clean and soft and smooth, with the volcanic heart of love her outside was always so still and cold, snow on the mountainsides hot, vain covering lava within. For her highest duty was submission to the will of God, ah, she had only known the God who claimed her submission, but there is time enough for every heart to know him. Newell be quiet, she repeated, and sit down and tell me about the folk at bodyfall. I hope you thank it them, or ye left, for their muck o' kindness to ye. The boys were silent. Did not ye thank them? No, Granny, I did not think that we did. Well, that was ill far to ye, ah, that the heart is deceitful of boon the thing, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Come away, come away. Robert fessened the door, and she led them to the corner for prayer, and poured forth a confession of sin for them, and for herself, such as left little that could have been added by her own profligate son had he joined in the prayer. Either there are no degrees in guilt, or the Scotch language was equal only to the confession of children and holy women, and could provide no more awful words for the contrition of the prodigal or the hypocrite. But the words did little harm, for Robert's mind was full of the kite and the violin, and was probably nearer God thereby than if he had been trying to feel as wicked as his grandmother told God that he was. Shargar was even more divinely employed at the time than either. For though he had not had the manners to thank his benefactor, his heart had all the way home been full of tender thoughts of mislammy's kindness, and now, instead of confessing sins that were not his, he was loving her over and over, and wishing to be back with her instead of with this awfully good woman, in whose presence there was no peace, for all the atmosphere of silence and calm in which she sat. Confession over, and the boys at liberty again, a new anxiety sees them. Granny must find out that Robert's shoes were missing, and what account was to be given of the misfortune, for Robert would not, or could not lie. In the midst of their discussion, a bright idea flashed upon Shargar, which, however, he kept to himself. He would steal them, and bring them home in triumph, emulating thus Robert's exploit in delivering his bonny lady. The shoemaker sat behind his door to be out of the drought. Shargar might see a great part of the workshop without being seen, and he could pick Robert's shoes from among a hundred. Probably they lay just where Robert had laid them. For double Sandy paid attention to any job only in proportion to the persecution accompanying it. So the next day, Shargar contrived to slip out of school just as the riding lesson began, for he had great skill in conveying himself unseen, and with his book bags slunk barefooted into the shoemaker's entry. The shop door was a little way open, and the red eyes of Shargar had only the corner next it to go, peering about in. But there he saw the shoes. He got down on his hands and knees, and crept nearer. Yes, they were beyond a doubt Robert's shoes. He made a long arm like a beast of prey, seized them, and losing his presence of mind upon possession, drew them too hastily towards him. The shoemaker saw them as they vanished through the door, and darted after them. Shargar was off at full speed, and Sandy followed with Hugh and cry. Every idle person in the street joined in the pursuit, and all who were too busy or too responsible to run crowded the doors and windows. Shargar made instinctively for his mother's old lair, but befinking himself when he reached the door he turned, and knowing nowhere else to go, fled in terror to Mrs. Falconer's, still however holding fast by the shoes, for they were Robert's. As Robert came home from school wondering what could have become of his companion, he saw proud about his grandmother's door, and pushing his way through it in some dismay, found Buble, Sandy, and Shargar confronting each other before the stern justice of Mrs. Falconer. You're a lair, the shoemaker was painting out. I had not had a pair of Shoen or Roberts in my hands this three month. That Shoen, let me see them there. Here's Robert himself. Are they Shoen or his new Robert? I are they, you made them yourself. Who came they in my shop, then? Spare me more questions, nor is it worth answering, said Robert, with the look meant to be significant. They're my Shoen, and I'll keep them. Abelence ye did not, I can, what Shoen ye have, or what they came into ye. Before did not Shargar come, and spare after them, then, in place of making a thief of themself that gate. You may hold your tongue, return Robert, with yet more significance. I was I an idiot, said Shargar, in a polygetic reflection, looking awfully white, and afraid to lift an eye to Mrs. Falconer, yet reassured a little by Robert's presence. Some glimmering seemed now to have dawned upon the Shoemaker, for he began to prepare a retreat. Meantime Mrs. Falconer sat silent, allowing no word that passed to escape her. She wanted to be at the bottom of the mysterious affair, and therefore held her peace. We, and I'm sure Robert, ye never tell to me about the Shoen, said Alexander. I'd just take them back with me, and do what wanted to them, and I'm sorry that I have given ye this trouble, Mistress Falconer, but it was all that fool's white there. I did not even can it was him till we were near high in the hoost. Let me see the Shoen, said Mrs. Falconer, speaking almost for the first time. What's the matter with them? Examining the Shoes, she saw they were in a perfectly sound state, and this confirmed her suspicion that there was more in the affair than had yet come out. Had she taken the straightforward measure of examining Robert, she would soon have arrived at the truth. But she had such a dread of causing a lie to be told that she would adopt any roundabout way, rather than ask a plain question of a suspected culprit. So she laid the Shoes down beside her, saying to the Shoemaker, there's nothing amiss with the Shoen, you can leave them. Thereupon Alexander went away, and Robert and Shargar would have given more than their dinner to follow him. For any neither asked any questions, however, nor made a single remark on what had passed. Dinner was served in Eden, and the boys returned to their afternoon school. No sooner was she certain that they were safe under the schoolmaster's eye than the old lady put on her black silk bonnet and her black woolen shawl, took her green cotton umbrella, which served her for a staff, and refusing Betty's proffered assistance, set out for dual Saini's shop. As she drew near, she heard the sound of his violin. When she entered, he laid his old wife carefully aside and stood in an expectant attitude. Mr. El Shender, I want to be at the bottom of this, said Mrs. Falconer. Well, ma'am, gone to the bottom of it, returned dual Saini, dropping on his stool, and taking his stone upon his lap and stroking it as if it had been some quadrupedal pet. Full of rough but real politeness to women when in good humor, he lost all his manners along with his temper upon the slightest provocation, and her tone irritated him. Who came Robert Shun to be in your shop? Somebody bud till have brought them, ma'am, in all my experience, and that's no small, I never can't pair a Shun go on, on a pair of feet in the wane of them. Oh, it's what kind of gates that to spake to the body, whose feet was inside the Shun. Devil a bit un-canned, ma'am. Do not swear whatever you do. Devil but I will swear, ma'am, and given you anger me, I'll just swear awful. I'm sure I have no woes to anger you, man. Cannot you help a body to win at the bottom of a thing on angered and sworn? Well, I cannot what brought the Shun as I tell ye already. But they wanted name Menden. I might have meant them and forgotten it, ma'am. No, you're lean. Given you go on at that gate, ma'am, I will not spake a word of trouth from this moment forth. Just tell me what you can about the Shun, and I'll no say another word. Well, ma'am, I'll tell you the trouth. The devil brought them in on day in long tains, and says he a shender man lie shunned for poor Robbie Faulkner, and double sold them for the life of he, for that old lucky many of his ill soon have him dune our gate, and the groaned is hot in the new, and I did not want to be our sore upon him, for he's a fine shield, and I'll make a fine fiddler given he live long enough. Mrs. Faulkner left the shop without another word, but with an awful suspicion, which the last heedless words of the shoemaker had aroused in her bosom, she left him bursting with laughter over his lapstone. He caught up his fiddle and played the devils in the women, lustily and with expression, but he little thought what he had done. As soon as she reached her own room, she went straight to her bed and disinterred the bonnie-letties coffin. She was gone, and in her stead, horror of horrors, lay in the unhallowed chest, that body of divinity known as Boston's fourfold state. Vaccation, anger, disappointment, and grief possessed themselves of the old woman's mind. She ranged the house like the questing beast of the round table, but failed in finding the violin before the return of the boys. Not a word did she say all that evening, and their oppressed hearts foreboded ill. They felt that there was thunder in the clouds, a sleeping storm in the air, but how or when it would break they had no idea. Robert came home to dinner the next day a few minutes before Shargar, as he entered his grandmother's parlor, a strange odor greeted his sense. A moment more in he stood, rooted with horror, and his hair began to rise on his head. His violin lay on its back on the fire, and a yellow tongue of flame was licking the red lips of a hole in its belly. All its strings were shriveled up, save one. Which burst as he gazed, and besides stern as a druidist sat his grandmother in her chair. Seeing her eyes with grim satisfaction on the detestable sacrifice, at length the rigidity of Robert's whole being relaxed in an involuntary howl like that of a wild beast, and he turned and rushed from the house in a helpless agony of horror. Where he was going he knew not, only a blind instinct of modesty drove him to hide his passion from the eyes of men. From her window Miss St. John saw him tearing like one demented along the top walk of the captain's garden, and watched for his return. He came far sooner than she expected. Before he arrived at the factory Robert began to hear strange sounds in the desolate place. When he reached the upper floor he found men with ax and hammer destroying the old woodwork, breaking the old gennies, pitching the balls of lead into baskets, and throwing the spools into crates. Was there nothing but destruction in the world? There most horrible his bonny-leady dying of and here the temple of his refuge torn to pieces by unhallowed hands. What could it mean? Was his grandmother's vengeance here too? But he did not care. He only felt like the dove sent from the ark that there was no rest for the soul of his foot, that there was no place to hide his head in his agony, that he was naked to the universe and like a heartless wild thing hunted till its brain is of no more use. He turned and rushed back again upon his track. At one end was the burning idol, at the other the desecrated temple. No sooner had he entered the captain's garden than Miss St. John met him. What is the matter with you Robert? She asked kindly. Oh ma'am, gassed Robert and burst into a very storm of weeping. It was long before he could speak. He cowered before Miss St. John as if conscious of an unfriendly presence and seeking to shelter himself by her tall figure from his grandmother's eyes. For who could tell but at the moment she might be gazing upon him from some window or even from the blue vault above. There was no escaping her. She was the all seen eye personified, the eye of the god of the theologians of his country, always searching at the evil and refusing to acknowledge the good. Yet so gentle and faithful was the heart of Robert that he never thought of her as cruel. He took it for granted that somehow or other she must be right, only what a terrible thing such righteousness was. He stood and wept before the lady. Her heart was sore for the despairing boy. She drew him to a little summer seat. He entered with her and sat down weeping still. She did her best to soothe him. At last, sorely interrupted by sobs, he managed to let her know the fate of his bonny lady. But when he came to the words, she's burning in there upon granny's fire. He broke out once more with that wild howl of despair and then ashamed of himself, ceased weeping altogether though he could not help the intrusion of certain chokes and sobs upon his otherwise even the low and sad speech. Knowing nothing of Mrs. Falconer's character, Miss St. John set her down as a cruel and heartless as well as a tyrannical and bigoted old woman and took the mental position of enmity towards her. In a gush of motherly indignation, she kissed Robert on the forehead. From that prism, he arose a king. He dried his eyes, not another sob even broke from him. He gave one look but no word of gratitude to Miss St. John, made her goodbye and walked composedly into his grandmother's parlor, where the neck of the violin yet lay upon the fire only half consumed. The rest had vanished utterly. What are they doing, doing at the factory, granny? He asked. What's what doing, laddie? Returned his grandmother curtly. They're taking it doing. Taking what doing? She returned with raised voice. Taking doing the horse. The old woman rose. Robert, you may have spite in your heart for what I have done this morning, but I could do no other. And it's an ill thing to take such ammons of me as given I had done wrong. By garing me trial at your grandfather's property was to go on the gate of his old, useless, ill-mannered scratch of a fiddle. She was the bonniest fiddle in the country's side, granny, and she never gave a scratch in her life except when she was handled in a manner unbecoming. But we say no more about her, for she's gone and no by a fair death on one's own straw either. She had no blood to cry for vengeance, but the snapping of her strings and the cracking of her bones may have made a cry to go on far enough, notwithstanding. The old woman seemed, for one moment, rebuked under her grandson's eloquence. He had made a great stride towards manhood since the morning. The fiddle's my own, she said, in a defensive tone, and so is the factory, she added, as if she had not quite reassured herself concerning it. The fiddle's yours named more, granny, and for the factory you would not believe me, go on and see yourself. Therewith Robert retreated to his garret. When he opened the door of it, the first thing he saw was the string of his kite, which, strange to tell, so steady had been the wind, was still up in the air, still tugging at the bed post. Whether it was from the stinging thought that the true sky-sore, the violin, having been devoured by the jaws of the fire-devil, there was no longer any significance in the outward invisible sign of the dragon, or from a dim feeling that the time of kites was gone by and manhood on the threshold, I cannot tell. But he drew his knife from his pocket, and with one down stroke cut the string in twain. Away went the dragon free like a prodigal to his ruin, and with the dragon afar into the past flew the childhood of Robert Falconer. He made one remorseless dart after the string as it swept out of the skylight, but it was gone beyond remedy, and nevermore save in twilight dreams did he lay hold on his childhood again. But he knew better and better as the years rolled on that he approached the deeper and holier childhood of which that had been but the feeble and necessarily vanishing type. As the kites sank in the distance, Mrs. Falconer issued from the house and went down the street towards the factory. Before she came back the cloth was laid for dinner, and Robert and Shargar were both in the parlor awaiting her return. She entered heated and dismayed, went into Robert's bedroom and shut the door hastily. They heard her open the old bureau, in a moment after she came out with a more luminous expression upon her face than Robert had ever seen it bear. It was as still as ever, but there was a strange light in her eyes, which was not confined to her eyes but shown in a measure from her colorless forehead and cheeks as well. It was long before Robert was able to interpret that change in her look, and that increase of kindness towards himself and Shargar, apparently such a contrast with the Holocaust of the morning. Had they both been Benjamin's, they could not have been more abundant platefuls than she gave them that day. And when they left her to return to school, instead of the usual, no be quiet, she said in gentle, almost loving tones, no be good lads, both to thee. The conclusion at which Falconer did arrive was that his grandmother had hurried home to see whether the tidal deeds of the factory were still in her possession and had found that they were gone, taken doubtless by her son Andrew. At whatever period he had appropriated them, he must have parted with them but recently, and the hope rose luminous that her son had not yet passed into the region where all life dies, death lives. Terrible consolation, terrible creed, which made the hope that he was still on this side of the grave working wickedness, light up the face of the mother and open her hand in kindness. Is it suffering or is it wickedness that is the awful thing? Ah, but they are both combined in the other world. And in this world too, I answer, only according to Mrs. Falconer's creed, in the other world God, for the sake of the suffering, renders the wickedness eternal. The old factory was in part pulled down, and out of its remains a granary constructed, nor did the old lady interpose a word to arrest the alienation of her property. And Chapter 23, Book 1, Chapter 24 of Robert Falconer by George Macdonald. This Libra Vox recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George Macdonald. Chapter 24, Boot for Bale. Mary St. John was the orphan daughter of an English clergyman who had left her money enough to make her at least independent. Mrs. Forsythe, hearing that her niece was left alone in the world, had concluded that her society would be a pleasure to herself and a relief to the housekeeping. Even before her father's death, Miss St. John, having met with a disappointment and concluded herself dead to the world, had been looking about for some way of doing good. The prospect of retirement, therefore, and of being useful to her sick aunt had drawn her northward. She was now about six and twenty, filled with two passions, one for justice, the other for music. Her griefs had not made her selfish, nor had her music degenerated into sentiment. The gentle style of the instruction she had received had never begotten a diseased self-consciousness, and if her religion lacked something of the intensity without which a character like hers could not be evenly balanced, its force was not spent on the combating of unholy doubts and selfish fears, but rose on the wings of her music in gentle thanksgiving. Tears had changed her bright-hued hopes into a dove-colored submission, through which her mind was passing towards a rainbow dawn, such as she had never dreamed of. To her as yet the Book of Common Prayer contained all the prayers that human heart had need to offer. What things lay beyond its scope must lie beyond the scope of religion. All such things must be parted with one day, and if they had been taken from her very soon, she was the sooner free from the painful necessity of watching lest earthly love should remove any of the old landmarks dividing what was gods from what was only man's. She had now retired within the pale of religion and left the rest of her being, as she thought, to dull forgetfulness a prey. She had little comfort in the society of her aunt. Indeed, she felt strongly tempted to return again to England the same month and seek a divine service elsewhere. But it was not at all so easy then as it is now for a woman to find the opportunity of being helpful in the world of suffering. Mrs. Forsythe was one of those women who got their own way by the very visa-nursha of their silliness. No argument could tell upon her. She was so incapable of seeing anything noble that her perfect satisfaction with everything she herself thought, said, or did, remained unchallenged. She had just illness enough to swell her feeling of importance. She looked down upon Mrs. Falconer from such an immeasurable height that she could not be indignant with her for anything. She only vowed safe to laugh now and then at her oddities, holding no further communication with her than a condescending bend of the neck when they happened to meet, which was not once a year. But indeed she would have patronized the angel Gabriel if she had had a chance, and no doubt giving him a hint or two upon the proper way of praising God. For the rest she was good-tempered, looked comfortable, and quarreled with nobody but her rough, honest, old bear of a husband, whom, in his 70th year, she was always trying to teach good manners with the frequent result of a storm of swearing. But now Mary St. John was thoroughly interested in the strange boy whose growing musical opinions were ever being clipped by the shears of unsympathetic age and craved religion. And the idea of doing something for him to make up for the injustice of his grandmother awoke in her a slight glow of that interest in life, which she sought only in doing good. But although ere long she came to love the boy very truly, and although Chargard's life was bound up in the favor of Robert, yet neither stupid angel nor foot-following dog ever loved the lad with the love of that old grandmother who would for him have given herself to the fire to which she had doomed his greatest delight. For some days Robert worked hard at his lessons, for he had nothing else to do. Life was very gloomy now, if he could only go to sea or away to keep sheep on the stormy mountains, if there were only some war going on that he might list, any fighting with the elements or with the oppressors of the nations would make life worth having a man worth being. But God did not heed, he leaned over the world, a dark care and immovable faith, bearing down with the weight of the presence of all aspirations, all budding delights of children and young persons, almost crouched before him and upholded his glory with the sacrificial death of every impulse, every admiration, every lightness of heart, every bubble of laughter, or, which to a mind like Robert's was as bad, if he did not punish for those things, it was because they came not within the sphere of his condescension, were not worth his notice. Of sympathy could be no question. But his gloom did not last long. When souls like Robert's have been ill-taught about God, the true God will not let them gaze too long upon the Moloch which men have set up to represent him. He will turn away their minds from that which men call him and fill them with some of his own lovely thoughts or words, such as made by degrees prepare the way for the vision of the Father. One afternoon Robert was passing the shoemaker's shop. He had never gone near him since his return, but now almost mechanically he went in at the open door. We'll Robert, you are a stranger. But what's the matter with you? Faith, you on was an ill-pliskey you played me to break into my shop and steal the money lady. Sandy, said Robert solemnly, you did not care what you have done by that trick you played me. Do not ever mention her again in my hearing. The old witch has not gotten a grip of her again, cried the shoemaker, starting half up an alarm. She came here to me with the shoen, but I reckon I sorted her. I will not spare what you said, returned Robert. It's no matter new. And the tears rose to his eyes, his bonny lady. The Lord guides us, exclaimed the shoemaker. What is the matter with the bonny lady? There's no bonny lady on him more. I saw her burnt to death before my very own eye. The shoemaker sprang to his feet and caught up his parent knife. For God's sake, say it, you're lean, he cried. I wish I were lean, returned Robert. The shoemaker uttered a horrible oath and swore. I'll murder the old, the epitaph he ended with, is too ugly to write. There are to say such a word in a breath with my granny, cried Robert, snatching up the lapstone. And I'll brain you upon your own shop floor. Sandy threw the knife on his stool and sat down beside it. Robert dropped the lapstone. Sandy took it up and burst into tears, which, before they were half down his face, turned into tar with the blackness of the same. I'm an awful sinner, he said, and vengeance has overtaken me. Go on out to my shop. I was not worthy of her. Go on out, I say, or I'll kill you. Robert went. Close by the door he met Miss St. John. He pulled off his cap and would have passed her, but she stopped him. I am going for a walk a little way, she said. Will you go with me? She had come out in the hope of finding him, for she had seen him go off the street. That I will, returned Robert, and they walked on together. When they were beyond the last house Miss St. John said, Would you like to play on the piano, Robert? Ah, ma'am, said Robert with a deep suspiration. Then after a pause. But do you think I could? There's no fear of that. Let me see your hands. There's some black, I doubt, ma'am, he remarked, rubbing them hard upon his trousers before he showed them, for I was the most con with the brains of Duel Sanny with his own lapstone. He's an ill-tongued shield, but, ma'am, you should hear him play upon the fiddle. He's great in his iron wood, even new for the bonny lady. Not discouraged by her inspection of his hands, black as they were, Miss St. John continued. But what would your grandmother say? She asked. She mount can nothing aborted, ma'am. I can not tell her anything. She would grit and pray awful, and lock me up, I'd our say. You see, she thinks all kind of music, except song singing, comes of the devil himself. And I cannot believe that. For I, when I see only thing by ordinary bonny such like as the moon was last night, it eye-guards me grave from my burnt fiddle. Well, you must come to me every day for half an hour at least, and I will give you a lesson on my piano. But you can't learn by that, and my aunt could never bear to hear you practicing. So I'll tell you what you must do. I have a small piano in my room. Do you know there is a door from your house into my room? I, said Robert, that was was my father as a four-year uncle bought it. My father built it. Is it long since your father died? I did not can. Where did he die? I did not can. Do you remember it? No, ma'am. Well, if you will come to my room, you shall practice there. I shall be downstairs with my aunt. But perhaps I may look up now and then to see how you are getting on. I will leave the door unlocked so that you can come in when you like. If I don't want you, I will lock the door. You understand. You mustn't be handling things, you know. Deed, ma'am, you may trust to me. But I'm just feared to let you hear me lay a finger upon the piano. For it's a little I could do with my fiddle. And for the piano, I'm feared I'll just disgust you. If you really want to learn, there will be no fear of that, return, Miss St. John. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, she added half to herself in a somewhat doubtful tone. Deed, no, ma'am. You're just an angel unawares. For I most think sometimes that my granny'll drive me mad. For there's nothing to read but good books and nothing to sing but psalms. And there's no phone about the host but Betty. And poor Chargard's near hand demented with it. And we mount prey till her, whether we will or no. And there's no comfort in the place but plenty to eat. And that could not be good for anybody. She locks floors, though, and would like me to gar them grow. But I did not care about it. It takes such a time before they come to anything. Then Miss St. John inquired about Chargard and began to feel rather differently towards the old lady when she had heard the story. But how she laughed at the tale and how lighthearted Robert went home are neither to be told. The next Sunday, the first time for many years, Google Sandy was at church with his wife. Though how much good he got by going would be a serious question to discuss. And Chapter 24. Book 1, Chapter 25 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald. This Libra Box recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George McDonald. Chapter 25. The Gates of Paradise. Robert had his first lesson the next Saturday afternoon. Eager and undismayed by the presence of Mrs. Forsythe, good-natured and contemptuous. For had he not a protecting angel by him, he hearkened for every word of Miss St. John, combated every fault and undermined every awkwardness with earnest patience. Nothing delighted Robert so much as to give himself up to one greater. His mistress was stirrly pleased and even Mrs. Forsythe gave him two of her soft fingertips to do something or other with. Robert did not know what and let them go. About eight o'clock that same evening, his hearth beating like a captured birds, he crept from Granny's parlor past the kitchen and up the low stair to the mysterious door. He had been trying for an hour to summon up courage to rise, feeling as if his grandmother must suspect where he was going. Arrived at the barrier, twice his courage failed him, twice he turned and sped back to the parlor. A third time he made the essay, a third time stood at the wondrous door, so long as blank as a wall to his careless eyes, now like the door of the magic sesame that led to the treasure cave of Alibaba. He laid his hand on the knob with druid, thought he heard someone in the trans, rushed up the garret stair and stood listening, hastened down and with a sudden influx of determination, opened the door, saw that the trap was raised, closed the door, behind him, and standing with his head on the level of the floor, gazed into the paradise of Miss St. John's room. To have one peep into such a room was a kind of salvation to the half-starved nature of the boy. All before him was elegance, richness, mystery, womanhood radiated from everything, a fire blazed in the chimney, a rug of long white wool lay before it. A little way off stood the piano. Mornaments sparkled and shone upon the dressing table. The door of a wardrobe had swung a little open and discovered the somber shimmer of a black silk dress. Something gorgeously red, a china crepe shawl hung glowing beyond it. He dared not gaze any longer. He had already been guilty of an immodesty. He hastened to ascend and seated himself at the piano. Let my reader aid me for a moment with his imagination, reflecting what it was to a boy like Robert and in Robert's misery, to open a door in his own meager dwelling and gaze into such a room, free to him. If he will aid me so, then let him aid himself by thinking that the house of his own soul has such a door into the infinite beauty, whether he has yet found it or not. Just think, Robert said to himself, of me in such a place. It's a palace. It's a fairy palace. And that angel of all lady bides here and sleeps there. I wonder given she ever dreams about anything as bonny as herself. Then his thoughts took another turn. I wonder if the room was anything like this when my momma sleep it in it. I could not have been born in such a grand place, but my momma might have wheeled lying here. The face of the miniature and the sad words written below the hymn came back upon him, and he bowed his head upon his hands. He was sitting thus when Miss St. John came behind him and heard him murmur the one word, momma. She laid her hand on his shoulder. He started and rose. I beg your pardon, ma'am. I have no business to be here except to play, but I could not help thinking about my mother, for I was born in this room, ma'am. Will I go on away again? He turned towards the door. No, no, said Miss St. John. I only came to see if you were here. I cannot stop now, but tomorrow you must tell me about your mother. Sit down and don't lose any more time. Your grandmother will miss you. And then what would come of it? Thus was the rough diamond of a Scotch boy, rude in speech but full of delicate thought, gathered under the modeling influence of the finished, refined, tender, sweet-tongued and sweet-thoughted Englishwoman, who, if she had been less of a woman, would have been repelled by his uncouthness, if she had been less of a lady, would have mistaken his commonness for vulgarity. But she was just like the type of woman kind, a virgin mother. She saw the nobility of his nature through its homely garments, and had been indeed sent to carry on the work from which his mother had been too early taken away. There's just one thing, ma'am, that vexes me away, and I did not can what to think about it, said Robert, as Miss St. John was leaving the room. Maybe you could bide a minute till I tell you. Yes, I can. What is it? I'm near hand sure that when I leave the parlor, Granny will think I'm away to my prayers, and so she'll think better of me nor I deserve, and I cannot bide that. What should make you suppose that she will think so? Folk knows what one another's a bullet, you know, ma'am. Then she'll know you are not at your prayers. Nay, for sometimes I did go on to my prayers for a while like, but near for long, for I'm near like one of them, at he would care to hear saying a long screed of a prayer till him. I have but a thing to pray about. And what's that, Robert? One of his silences had seized him. He looked confused and turned away. Never mind, said Miss St. John, anxious to relieve him and establish a comfortable relation between them. You will tell me another time. I don't know, ma'am, answered Robert, with what most people would think in excess of honesty, but Miss St. John made a better conjecture as to his apparent closeness. At all events, she said, don't mind what your granny may think, so long as you have no wish to make her think it. Good night. Had she been indeed an angel from heaven, Robert could not have worshipped her more. And why should he? Was she last God's messenger that she had beautiful arms instead of less beautiful wings? He practiced his scales till his unaccustomed fingers were stiff. Then shut the piano with reverence and departed carefully, peeping into the disenchanted region without the gates to see that no enemy lay and wait for him as he passed beyond them. He closed the door gently and in one moment the rich lovely room and the beautiful lady were behind him. And before him the bears stared between two whitewashed walls and the long flagged trance that led to a silent grandmother seated in her armchair, gazing into the red coals. For somehow Granny's fire always glowed and never blazed, with her round-toed shoes pointed at them from the top of her little wooden stool. He traversed the stair and the trance, entered the parlor, and sat down to his open book as though nothing had happened. But his grandmother saw the light in his face and did think he had just come from his prayers, and she blessed God that he had put into her heart to burn the fiddle. The next night Robert took with him the miniature of his mother and showed it to Miss St. John, who saw at once that whatever might be his present surroundings, his mother must have been a lady. A certain fancied resemblance in it to her own mother likewise drew her heart to the boy. Then Robert took from his pocket the gold thimble and said, This thimble was my mama's. Will you take it, ma'am? For you can't it's of no use to me. Miss St. John hesitated for a moment. I will keep it for you if you like, she said, for she could not bear to refuse it. Nam, ma'am, I want you to keep it to yourself, for I'm sure my mama would have liked it you to have it better nor any other body. Well, I will use it sometime for your sake, but mind I will not take it from you, I will only keep it for you. Will, will, ma'am, if you'll keep it till I spare for it, that'll do will enough, answered Robert with a smile. He labored diligently and his progress corresponded to his labor. It was more than intellect that guided him. Falconer had genius for whatever he cared for. Meantime, the love he bore his teacher and the influence of her beauty began to mold him in his kind and degree after her likeness so that he grew nice in his person and dress and smoothed the roughness and moderated the broadness of his speech with the amenities of the English, which she made so sweet upon her tongue. He became still more obedient to his grandmother and more diligent at school, gathered to himself golden opinions without knowing it, and was gradually developing into a rustic gentleman. Nor did the piano absorb all his faculties. Every divine influence tends to the rounded perfection of the whole. His love of nature grew more rapidly. Hitherto it was only in summer that he had felt the presence of a power in her and yet above her. In winter now the sky was true and deep, though the world was waste and sad, and the tones of the wind that roared at night about the goddess haunted house and moaned in the chimneys of the lowly dwelling that nestled against it, while carmenes within him, which already he tried to spell out falteringly, Miss St. John began to find that he put expressions of his own into the simple thing she gave him to play, and even dreamed a little at his own will when alone with the passive instrument. Little did Mrs. Falconer think into what a seventh heaven of a cursed music she had driven her boy. But not yet did he tell his friend, much as he loved and much as he trusted her, the little he knew of his mother's sorrows and his father's sins, or who's the hand that had struck him when she found him lying in the waste factory. For a time almost all his trouble about God went from him, nor do I think that this was only because he rarely thought of him at all. God gave him of himself in Miss St. John, but words dropped now and then from off the shelves where his old difficulties lay, and they fell like seeds upon the heart of Miss St. John, took root in rows and thoughts, in the heart of a true woman the talk of a child even will take life. One evening Robert rose from the table, not unwatched of his grandmother, and sped swiftly and silently through the dark, as was his custom, to enter the chamber of enchantment. Never before had his hand failed to alight, sure as a lark on its nest, upon the brass handle of the door that admitted him to his paradise. It missed it now and fell on something damp and rough and repellent instead. Horrible but true suspicion. While he was at school that day, his grandmother moved by what doubt or by what certainty she never revealed, had had the doorway walled up. He felt the place all over. It was to his hands the living tomb of his mother's vicar on earth. He returned to his book, Pale as Death, but said never a word. The next day the stones were plastered over. Thus the door of bliss vanished from the earth, and neither the boy nor his grandmother ever said that it had been. And the door is not opened. The remainder of that winter was dreary indeed. Every time Robert went up the stair to his garret, he passed the door of a tomb. With that gray mortar, Mary St. John was walled up, like the nun he had read of in the Marmion. She had lent him. He might have rung the bell at the street door and been admitted into the temple of his goddess. But a certain vague terror of his granny, combined with equally vague qualms of conscience for having deceived her, and the approach in the far distance of a ghastly suspicion that violins, pianos, moonlight, and lovely women were distasteful to the overruling fate and obnoxious to the vengeance stored in the gray cloud of his providence drove him from the awful entrance of the temple of his ices. Nor did Miss St. John dare to make any advances to the dreadful old lady. She would wait. For Mrs. Forsythe, she cared nothing about the whole affair. It only gave her fresh opportunity for smiling condescensions about poor Mrs. Falconer. So paradise was over and gone. But though the loss of Miss St. John and the piano was the last blow, his sorrow did not rest there, but returned to brood over his bonny laddie. She was scattered to the winds. Would any of her ashes ever rise in the corn and moan in the ripening wind of autumn? Might not some atoms of the bonny laddie creep into the pines on the hill whose soft and soul-like sounds had taught him to play the flowers of the forest on those strings which, like the nerves of an amputated limb, yet thrilled through his being? Or might not some particle find its way by winds and waters to sycamore forest of idly? There creep up through the channels of its life to some finely rounded curve of noble trees on the side that ever looked sunwards and be chosen once again by the violent hunter to be wrought into a new and fame-gathering instrument. Could it be that his bonny laddie had learned her wondrous music in those forests from the shine of the sun and the sign of the winds through the sycamores and pines? For Robert knew that the broad-leaved sycamore and the sharp needle-leaved pine had each its share in the violin. Only as the wild innocence of human nature, uncorrupted by wrong, untapped by suffering, is to that nature struggling out of darkness into light. Such and so different is the living wood, with its sweetest tones of obedient impulse, answering only to the wind which blows where it listed. To that wood, chosen, separated, individualized, tortured into strange, almost vital shape, after a law to us nearly unknown, strung with strings from animal organizations, and put into the hands of man to utter the feelings of a soul that has passed through a like history. This Robert could not yet think, and had to grow able to think it by being himself made an instrument of God's music. What he could think was that the glorious mystery of his bonny laddie was gone forever, and alas, she had no soul. Here was an eternal sorrow. He could never meet her again. His affections, which must live forever, were set upon that which had passed away. But the child that weeps because his mutilated doll will not rise from the dead, so yet find relief from his sorrow, a true relief both human and divine. He shall know that that which in the doll made him love the doll has not passed away, and Robert must yet be comforted for the loss of his bonny laddie. If she had had a soul, nothing but her own self could ever satisfy him. As she had no soul, another body might take her place, nor occasion reproach of inconstancy. But in the meantime, the sheers of fate having cut the string of the sky-soring kite of his imagination, had left him with the stick in his hand, and thus the rest of that winter was dreary enough. The glow was out of his heart, the glow was out of the world. The bleak, kindless wind was hissing through those pines that clothed the hill above body-fall, and over the dead garden, where in the summertime the rose had looked down so lovingly on the heart's ease. If he had stood once more at Gloming in the Barley Stepple, not even the whale of Flaudenfield would have found him there, but a keen sense of personal misery and hopeless cold. Was the summer a lie? Not so. The winter restrains that the summer may have the needful time to do its work. Well, for the winter is but the sleep of summer. Now, in the winter of his discontent and in nature finding no help, Robert was driven inwards into his garret, into his soul. There the door of his paradise being walled up, he began vaguely, blindly, to knock again other doors, sometimes against stone walls and rocks, taking them for doors as travel worn, and hence, brain-sick men have done in a desert of mountains. A door, out or in, he must find or perish. It fell, too, that Miss St. John went to visit some friends who lived in a coast town twenty miles off, and a season of heavy snow followed by frost setting in. She was absent for six weeks, during which time, without a single care to trouble him from without, Robert was in the very desert of desolation. His spirit sank fearfully. He would pass his old music master in the street with scarce recognition, as if the bond of their relation had been utterly broken, had vanished in the smoke of the martyred violin, and all their affection had gone into the dust heap of the past. Google Saney's character did not improve. He took more and more whiskey, his bouts of drinking alternating as before with fits of hopeless repentance. His work was more neglected than ever, and his wife, having no money to spend, even upon necessaries, applied in desperation to her husband's bottle for comfort. This comfort, to do him justice, he never grudged her, and sometimes before midday they would both be drunk, a condition expedited by the lack of food. When they began to recover, they would quarrel fiercely, and at last they became a nuisance to the whole street. Little did the whiskey-hating old lady know to what God she had really offered up that violin, if the consequences of the Holocaust can be admitted as indicating the power which had accepted it. But now began to appear in Robert the first signs of a practical outcome of such truth as his grandmother had taught him, operating upon the necessities of a simple and earnest nature. Reality, however, lapped in vanity or even in falsehood, cannot lose its power. It is. The other is not. She had taught him to look up, that there was a God. He would put it to the test. Not that he doubted it yet. He only doubted whether there was a hearing God. But was not that worse? It was, I think. For it is a far more consequence what kind of a God than whether a God or not. Let not my readers suppose, I think, if possible, there could be other than a perfect God. Perfect, even to the vision of his creatures, the faith that supplies the lack of vision being yet faithful to that vision. I speak from Robert's point of outlook, but indeed, whether better or worse is no great matter so long as he would see it or what there was. He had no comfort and without reasoning about it, he felt that life ought to have comfort. From which point he began to conclude that the only thing left was to try whether the God in whom his mother believed might not help him. If the God would but hear him, it was all he had yet learned to require of his Godhood. And that must ever be the first thing to require. More demands would come and greater answers he would find, but now, if God would but hear him. If he spoke to him, but one kind word, it would be the very soul of comfort. He could know more bologna, the fountain of glad imaginations gushed up in his heart at the thought. What if, from the cold winter of his life, he had but to open the door of his garret room and kneeling by the bare bedstead, enter into the summer of God's presence? What if God spoke to him face to face? He had so spoken to Moses, he sought him from no fear of the future, but from present desolation. And if God came near to him, it would not be with storm and tempest, but with the voice of a friend. And surely if there was a God at all, that is not a power greater than man, but a power by whose power man was, he must hear the voice of the creature whom he had made, a voice that came crying out of the very need which he had created. Younger people than Robert are capable of such divine metaphysics. Hence, he continued to disappear from his grandmother's parlor much the same hour as before. In the cold desolate garret, he knelt and cried out into that which lay beyond the thought that cried, the unknowable infinite after the God that may be known as surely as a little child knows his mysterious mother. And from behind him, the pale blue star-crowded sky shone upon his head through the window that looked upward only. Mrs. Falconer saw that he still went away as he had been want and instituted observations, the result of which was the knowledge that he went to his own room. Her heart smothered her, and she saw that the boy looked sad and troubled. There was scarce room in her heart for increase of love, but much for increase of kindness, and she did increase it. In truth, he needed the smallest crumb of comfort that might drop from the table of God's feastful friends. Night after night, he returned to the parlor, cold in the very heart. God was not to be found, he said then. He said afterwards that even then God was with him, though he knew it not. For the very first night, the moment that he knelt and cried, O Father in heaven, hear me, and let thy face shine upon me. Like a flash of burning fire, the words shot from the door of his heart. I did not care for him to love me if he does not love Elk a body. And no more prayer went from the desolate boy that night, although he knelt an hour of agony in the freezing dark. Loyal to what he had been taught, he struggled hard to reduce his rebellious will to what he's supposed to be the will of God. It was all in vain. Ever a voice within him, surely the voice of that God who he thought was not hearing, told him that what he wanted was the love belonging to his human nature, his human needs, not the preference of a court favorite. He had a dim consciousness that he would be a traitor to his race if he accepted a love even from God, given him as an exception from his kind. But he did not care to have such a love. It was not what his heart yearned for, it was not love. He could not love such a love, yet he strove against it all, fought for religion against right as he could, struggled to reduce his rebellious feelings, to love that which was unlovely, to choose that which was abhorrent, until nature almost gave way under the effort. Often would he sink moaning on the floor, stretch himself like a corpse, save that it was face downwards, on the boards of the bedstead. Night after night he returned to the battle but with no permanent success. What a success would have been. Night after night he came pale and worn from the conflict, found his grandmother and Shargar composed and in the quietness of despair sat down beside them to his Latin version. He little thought that every night, at the moment, when he stirred to leave the upper room, a pale-faced, red-eyed figure rose from its seat on the top of the stair by the door, and sped with long-legged noiselessness to resume its seat by the grandmother before he should enter. Shargar saw that Robert was unhappy, and the nearest he could come to the sharing of his unhappiness was to take his place outside the door within which he had retreated. Little too did Shargar on his part think that Robert, without knowing it, was pleading for him inside, pleading for him and for all his race in the weeping that would not be comforted. Robert had not the vaguest fancy that God was with him, the spirit of the father groaning with the spirit of the boy in intercession that could not be uttered. If God had come to him then, it comforted him with the assurance of individual favor, but the very supposition is a taking of his name in vain. Had Robert found comfort in the fancy assurance that God was his friend in a special, that some private favor was granted to his prayers, that indeed would have been to be left to his own inventions, to bring forth not fruits, meat for repentance, but fruits for which repentance alone is meat. But God was with him, and was indeed victorious in the boy when he rose from his knees for the last time as he thought, saying, I cannot yield, I will pray no more. With the burst of bitter tears he sat down on the bedside till the lattice of the storm was over, then dried his dull eyes in which the old outlook had withered away, and trod unknowingly in the silent footsteps of Shagar, who was ever one corner in advance of him, down to the dreary lessons and unheeded prayers. But thank God not to the sleepless night, for some grief springs sleep the sooner. My reader must not mistake my use of the words as special and private, or suppose that I do not believe in an individual relation between every man and God, yes a peculiar relation differing from the relation between every other man and God, but this very individuality and peculiarity can only be founded on the broadest truths of the Godhood and the manhood. Mrs. Falconer, as she went to sleep, gave thanks that the boys had been at their prayers together, and so in a very deep sense they had. And while they might have been, for Shagar was nearly as desolate as Robert, and would certainly had his mother claimed him now have gone on the tramp with her again. Wherein could this civilized life show itself to him better than that to which he had been born? For clothing he cared little, and he had always managed to kill his hunger or thirst, if at longer intervals, than with greater satisfaction. Wherein is the life of that man who merely does his eating and drinking and clothing after a civilized fashion better than that of the gypsy or tramp? If the civilized man is honest to boot and gives good work in return for the bread or turtle on which he dines, and the gypsy on the other hand steals his dinner, I recognize the importance of the difference, but if the rich man plunders the community by exorbitant profits or speculation with other people's money, while the gypsy adds a foul or two to the produce of his tinkering, or once again if the gypsy is as honest as the honest citizen, which is not so rare a case by any means as people imagine, I return to my question. Wherein, I say, are the warm house, the windows hung with purple and the table covered with fine linen, more divine than the tent or the blue sky and the dipping in the dish? Why should not Shargar prefer a life with the mother God had given him to a life with Mrs. Falconer? Why should he prefer geography to rambling or Latin to Romani? His purposelessness and his love for Robert alone kept him where he was. The next evening, having given up his praying, Robert sat with his salust before him. But the fount of tears began to swell, and the more he tried to keep it down, the more it went on swell until his throat was filled with a lump of pain. He rose and left the room. But he could not go near the garret. That door too was closed. He opened the house door instead and went out into the street. There nothing was to be seen, but faint blue air full of moonlight, solid houses and shining snow. Bareheaded, he wandered around the corner of the house to the window whence first he had heard the sweet sounds of the piano forte. Fire within lighted up the crimson curtain, but no voice of music came forth. The window was as dumb as the pale, faintly befogged moon overhead, itself seeming by the skylight through which shone the sickly light of the passingless world of the dead. Not a form was in the street. The eyes of the houses gleamed here and there upon the snow. He leaned his elbow on the window sill behind which stood that sealed fountain of lovely sound, looked up at the moon, careless of her or of ought else in heaven or on earth, and sunk into a reverie in which nothing was consciously present but a stream of fog smoke that flowed slowly, listlessly across the face of the moon, like the ghost of a dead cataract. All at once a waleful sound arose in his head. He did not think for some time whether it was born in his brain or entered it from without. At length he recognized the flowers of the forest, played as only the shoemaker could play it. But alas, the cry responsive to his bow came only from the old wife, no more from the bonny laddie. Then he remembered that there had been a humble wedding that morning on the opposite side of the way. In the street department of the jollity of which Shargar had taken a small share by firing a brass cannon subsequently confiscated by Mrs. Falconer. But this was a strange tune to play at a wedding. The shoemaker, halfway to his goal of drunkenness, had begun to repent for the fiftieth time that year. Had with his repentance mingled the memory of the bonny lady, ruthlessly tortured to death for his wrong, and had glided from a strapped spee into that sorrowful moaning. The lament interpreted itself to his disconsolate pupil as he had never understood it before, not even in the stubble field, for it now spoke his own feelings of waste, misery, forsaken loneliness. Indeed, Robert learned more of music in those few minutes of the foggy winter night and open street, shut out of all doors, with the tones of an ancient grief and lamentation floating through the blotted moonlight over his ever-present sorrow. Then he could have learned from many lessons, even of Miss St. John. He was cold to the heart, yet went in a little comforted. Things had gone ill with him, outside of paradise, deserted of his angel. In the frost and the snow, the voice of the despised violin once more the source of a sad comfort. But there is no better discipline than an occasional descent from that we count well-being, to a former despised or less happy condition. One of the results of this taste of damnation in Robert was that, when he was in bed that night, his heart began to turn gently towards his old master. How much did he not owe him after all? Had he not acted ill and ungratefully in deserting him, his own vessel filled the brim with grief, had he not let the waters of its bitterness overflow into the heart of the shoemaker? The wail of that violin echoed now in Robert's heart, not for flotting, not for himself, but for the debased nature that drew forth the playing. Comrades in misery, why should they part? What right had he to forsake an old friend and benefactor, because he himself was unhappy? He would go and see him the very next night, and he would make friends once more with the much-suffering instrument he had so wrongfully despised. And Chapter 1 The following night he left his books on the table, and the house itself behind him, and sped like a greyhound to double-sandy shop, lifted the latch and entered. By the light of a single dip set on a chair, he saw the shoemaker seated on his stool, one hand lying on the lap of his leather apron, the other hand hanging down by his side, and the fiddle on the ground at his feet. His wife stood behind him, wiping her eyes with her blue apron. Through all its accumulated dirt, the face of the shoemaker looked ghastly, and they were eyes of despair that he lifted to the face of the youth, as he stood holding the latch in his hand. Mrs. Alexander moved towards Robert, drew him in, and gently closed the door behind him, resuming her station like a sculptured mourner behind her motionless husband. What thought arse the matter with thee, Sandy? said Robert. Ah, Robert, returned the shoemaker, and a tone of affection tinged the mournfulness with which he uttered the strange words. Ah, Robert, the Almighty will go on his own gate, and I am in his group now. He's had a stroke, said his wife, without removing her apron from her eyes. I have gotten my blows, resumed the shoemaker, in a despairing voice, which gave yet more effort to the fantastic eccentricity of conscience, which, from the midst of so many grave faults, chose such a one as especially bringing the divine displeasure upon him. I have gotten my blows for crying, doing my own old wife to set up your bonny lady. The one's gone all to ashes and dust, and from the other he went on looking down on the violin at his feet, as if it had been something dead in its youth, and from the other I cannot draw sound. For my right hand has forgotten her conon. Man, Robert, I cannot lift it from my side. You mount go on to your bed, said Robert, greatly concerned. Oh, I, I mount go on to my bed, and sign to the courtyard, and sign to hell. Can that wheelen off? Robert, I leave my fiddle to you. Be good to the old wife, man, better nor I have been, an old wife's better nor nay fiddle. He stooped, lifted the violin with his left hand, gave it to Robert, rose, and made for the door. They helped him up the creaking stair, got him half undressed, and laid him in his bed. Robert put the violin on the top of a press, within sight of the sufferer, left him groaning, and ran for the doctor. Having seen him set out for the patient's dwelling, he ran home to his grandmother. Now, while Robert was absent, occasion had arisen to look for him. Unusual occurrence, a visitor had appeared, no less a person than Mr. Ennis, the schoolmaster. Sargar had been banished in consequence from the parlor, and had seated himself outside Robert's room, never doubting that Robert was inside. Presently he heard the bell ring, and Betty came up the stair, and said Robert was wanted. Thereupon Sargar knocked at the door, and as there was neither voice nor hearing, opened it, and found with the well-known horror that he had been watching an empty room. He made no haste to communicate the fact. Robert might return in a moment, and his absence from the house not be discovered. He sat down on the bedstead, and waited. But Betty came up again, and before Sargar could prevent her, walked into the room with her candle in her hand. In vain did Sargar entreat her to go and say that Robert was coming. Betty would not risk the danger of discovery and connivance, and descended to open afresh the fountain of the old lady's anxiety. She did not, however, betray her disquietude to Mr. Ennis. She had asked the schoolmaster to visit her in order that she might consult him about Robert's future. Mr. Ennis expressed a high opinion of the boy's faculties and attainments, and strongly urged that he should be sent to college. Mrs. Faulkner inwardly shuttered at the temptation to which this course would expose him. But he must leave home or be apprenticed to some trade. She would have chosen the latter, I believe, but for religion towards the boy's parents, who would never have thought of other than a profession for him. While the schoolmaster was dwelling on the argument that he was pretty sure to gain a good bursary, and she would thus be relieved for four years, probably forever, from further expense on his account, Robert entered. Or have you been, Robert? asked Mrs. Faulkner. At double Sannies answered the boy. What have you been at there? Helping him till his bed? What come over him? A stroke? That's what comes of playing the fiddle. I never heard of a stroke coming from a fiddle, Granny. It comes from a clued wiles. If he had holden till his fiddle, he would have been playing her the night, in place of arm lying at his side and shoemaker's thread. Said his grandmother, concealing her indignation at this freedom of speech. He did not believe in God's judgments. Not upon fiddles, returned Robert. Mr. Ennis sat and said nothing, with difficulty concealing his amusement at the passage of arms. It was within the last few days that Robert had become capable of speaking thus. His nature had at length arrived at the point of so far casting off the incubus of his grandmother's authority as to assert some measure of freedom and act openly. His very hopelessness of a hearing in heaven had made him indifferent to things on earth and therefore bolder. Thus, strange as it may seem, the blessing of God descended on him in the despair which enabled him to speak out and free his soul from the weight of concealment. But it was not despair alone that gave him strength. On his way home from the shoemaker's, he had been thinking what he could do for him, and had resolved, come of it what might, that he would visit him every evening and try whether he could not comfort him a little by playing upon his violin, so that it was loving kindness towards man as well as despair towards God that gave him strength to resolve that between him and his grandmother all should be above bored from henceforth. Not upon fiddles, Robert had said, but upon them at plays them returned his grandmother. Nay, nor upon them at burns them, returned Robert impudently. It must be confessed, for every man is open to commit the fault of which he is the least capable. But Mrs. Faulkner had too much regard to her own dignity to indulge her feelings, possibly to her sense of justice which Faulkner always said was stronger than that of any other woman he had ever known, as well as some movement of her conscience interfered. She was silent, and Robert rushed into the breach, which his last discharge had affected. And I want to tell you, Granny, that I mean to go on and play the fiddle, the poor sanny Ilkenite, for the best part of an war, and accept he lock the door and hide the key, I will go on. The poor sinner shall not be deserted by God and man both. He scarcely knew what he was saying before it was out of his mouth, and as if to cover it up, he hurried on. And there's more in it, Dr. Anderson gave Shargar and Mia sovereign the peace, and double sanny had them to hold him on dead of hunger and cold. Before did not you tell me, had Dr. Anderson had given you such a sight of silver, it was ill far to be, and him as well. Because you would have sent it back to him, and Shargar and Mia thought we would rather keep it. Considering that I'm at same muckle expense with you both, it would not have been Ilken tribe to have brought the silver to me, and let me do with it as I thought fit. Go on now away, laddie, she added, as she saw Robert about to leave the room. I'll be back in a minute, Granny, returned Robert. He's a fine lad, that said Mr. Ennis, and good will come of him, and that'll be heard, tell of. If he had but the grace of God, there would not be muckle to complain of, acquiesced his grandmother. There's time enough for that, Mrs. Falconer. You cannot get old heads upon young shoulders, you can. Deed for that matter, you may get money and old head upon old shoulders, and there's spark of grace in it, to let it see who to lay itself down in the grave. Robert returned before Mr. Ennis had made up his mind as to whether the old lady intended a personal rebuke. Hey, Granny, he said, going up to her and putting the two sovereigns in her white palm. He had found some difficulty in making Shargar give up his, else he would have returned sooner. What's this of it, laddie, said Mrs. Falconer? I'm not going to take your cellar. Let the poor she-maker creatures have it, but do not give them more nor a shelling or two at once, just to hold them in life. They deserve have more, but they might not starve. And just ye tell them, laddie, as if they spend a six pence of it upon whiskey, that's getting any more. I, I, Granny, responded Robert with a glimmer of gladness in his heart, and would have brought the fiddle in, Granny, he added half playfully, hoping for some kind concession therein as well. But he had gone too far. She vowed safe no reply, and her face grew stern with the fence. It was one thing to give bread to eat, another to give music in gladness. No music but that which sprung from effectual calling, and the perseverance of the saints could be lawful in a world that was under the wrath and curse of God. Robert waited in vain for a reply. Go on your ways, she said at length. Mr. Innes and me have some business to make, and, and of, and we want nay assistance. Robert rejoined Shargar, who was still bemoaning the loss of his sovereign. His face brightened when he saw its well-known yellow shine once more, but darkened again as soon as Robert told him to what service it was now devoted. It's my own, he said, with a suppressed expository growl. Robert threw the coin on the floor. Take your filthy looker, he exclaimed with contempt, and turned to lose Shargar alone in the garret with his sovereign. Pop! Shargar almost screamed, Take it, or I'll cut my throat. This was his constant threat when he was thoroughly in earnest. Cut it, and have done with it, said Robert cruelly. Shargar burst out crying. Lend me your knife, then, Bob, he saw, holding out his hand. Robert burst into a roar of laughter, caught up the sovereign from the floor, sped with it to the bakers who refused to change it because he had no knowledge of anything representing the sum of twenty shillings except a pound note, succeeded in getting silver for it at the bank, and then ran to the shoemakers. After he left the parlor, the discussion of his fate was resumed, and finally settled between his grandmother and the schoolmaster. The former, in regard of the boy's determination to befriend the shoemaker in the matter of music, as well as of money, would now have sent him at once to the grammar school in old Aberdeen to prepare for the competition in the month of November, but the latter persuaded her that if the boy gave his whole attention to Latin until the next summer, and then went to the grammar school for three months or so, he would have an excellent chance of success. As to the violin the schoolmaster said, wisely enough, he that willed to cupar, mount to cupar, and if he intercept him upon the shore road he'll take to the hill road, and as warrant a bra lad like Robert to get money on on in Aberdeen, he'll be ready enough to give him a lift with the fiddle and maybe take him into war company nor the poor bed ridden shoemaker, and will you on me to hang on to the tail of him like he cannot go on or the cliff before he learns wit? Hmm, was the old lady's comprehensive response. It was further arranged that Robert should be informed of their conclusion, and so rouse to effort in anticipation of the trial upon which his course in life must depend. Nothing could have been better for Robert than the prospect of a college education, but his first thought at the news was not of the delights of learning nor of the honorable course that would ensue, but of Eric Erickson, the poverty-stricken friendless descendant of Yarls and sea rovers, he would see him, the only man that understood him, not until the passion of this thought had abated, and he began to perceive the other advantages before him. But so practical and thorough was he in all his proposals and means, that ere half an hour was gone, he had begun to go over his rudiments again. He now wrote a version or translation from English into Latin, five times a week, and read Caesar Virgil or Tacitus every day. He gained permission from his grandmother to remove his bed to his own garret, and there from the bedstead at which he no longer kneeled, he would often rise at four in the morning. Even when the snow lay a foot-thick on the skylight kindle, his lamp by means of a tender box and a splinter of wood, dipped in a sulfur and sitting down in the keen cold turned half a page of Addison into something as near Ciceronian Latin as he could affect. This would take him from an hour and a half to two hours when he would tumble again into bed, blue and stiff, and sleep till it was time to get up and go to the morning school before breakfast. His health was excellent, else it could never have stood such treatment. And Book Two, Chapter Two. Book Two, Chapter Three of Robert Falconer by George McDonald. This Libra Box recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George McDonald. Chapter Three. The End Crowns All. His sole relaxation almost lay in the visit he paid every evening to the shoemaker and his wife. Their home was a wretched place, but not with standing the poverty in which they were now sunk. Robert soon began to see a change, like the dawning of light, an alba, as the Italians called the dawn, in the appearance of something white here and there about the room. Robert's visits had set the poor woman trying to make the place look decent. It soon became at least clean, and there is a very real sense in which cleanliness is next to godliness. If the people who want to do good among the poor would give up patronizing them, would cease from trying to convert them before they had gained the smallest personal influence with them, would visit them as those who have just as good a right to be here as they have, it would be all the better for both, perhaps chiefly for themselves. For the first week or so, Alexander, unable either to work or play, and deprived of his usual consolation of drink, was very testy and unmanageable. If Robert, who strove to do his best in the hope of alleviating the poor fellow's sufferings, chiefly those of the mind, happened to mistake the time or to draw a false note from the violin, Sandy would swear as if he had been the grand Turk and Robert one of his slaves. But Robert was too vexed with himself when he gave occasion to such an outburst to mind the outburst itself, and invariably when such a taken place the shoemaker would ask forgiveness before he went. Holding out his left hand from which nothing could have faced the stains of rosin and lamp black and heel ball, saved the sweet cleansing of mother earth, he would say, Robert, you'll just pit the swearing doing with the rest and squirt with altogether. I'm an ill-tongued wretch, and I'm beginning to see it. But, man, you're just behaving to me like God himself, and if it were not for you, I would just lie here roaring and grating and damning from morning to night. You will be in the morn's night, will not ye? He would always end by asking with some anxiety. Of course I will, Robert would answer. Good night, then. Good night. I'll try and set the sight of my sins once more, he added one evening. If I could only be a wee bit sorry for them, I reckon he would forgive me. Do not ye think ye will, Robert? Ne do it, ne do it, answered Robert hurriedly. They all say, and if a man repents the right gate, he'll forgive him. He could not say more than they say, for his own horizon was all dark, and even in saying this much, he felt like a hypocrite. A terrible waste he'd thick with the potchards of hope lay outside that door of prayer, which he had, as he thought, nailed up forever. And what is the right gate? asked the shoemaker. Dee, that's more nor I know, Sandy, answered Robert monthly. We'll, if ye do not know, what's the come of me? said Alexander anxiously. Ye mouth's spare it himself, returned Robert, and just tell him that ye do not know, but ye'll do any thing that he likes. With these words, he took his leave hurriedly, somewhat amazed to find that he had given the shoemaker the strange advice to try just what he had tried so unavailingly himself. And, stranger still, he found himself before he reached home, praying once more in his heart, both for double sanny, and for himself. From that hour a faint hope was within him that someday he might try again, though he dared not yet encounter such effort and agony. All this time, he had never doubted that there was a God, nor had he ventured to say within himself that perhaps God was not good. He had simply come to the conclusion that for him there was no approach to the fountain of his being. In the course of a fortnight or so, when his system had covered over its craving after whiskey, the irritability of the shoemaker almost vanished. It might have been feared that his conscience would then likewise relax its activity, but it was not so. It grew yet more tender. He now began to give Robert some praise and make allowances for his faults, and Robert dared more inconsequence and played with more spirit. I do not say that his style could have grown fine under such a master, but at least he learned the difference between slovenliness and accuracy, and between accuracy and expression, which last is all of original that the best mere performer can claim. One evening he was scraping away at Tolak Goram when Mr. McCleary walked in. Robert ceased. The minister gave him one searching glance and sat down by the bedside. Robert would have left the room. Do not go on, Robert, said Sandy, and Robert remained. The clergyman talked very faithfully as far as the shoemaker was concerned, though whether he was equally faithful towards God might be questioned. He was one of those prudent men who are afraid of dealing out the truth freely, lest it should fall on thorns or stony places. Hence, of course, the good ground came in for a scanty share too. Believing that a certain precise condition of mind was necessary for its proper reception, he would endeavor to bring about that condition first. He did not know that the truth makes its own nest in the ready heart, and that the heart may be ready for it before the priest can perceive the fact, seeing that the imposition of hands confers nowadays at least neither love nor common sense. He therefore dwelt upon the sins of the shoemaker, magnified them, and making them hideous in the idea that thus he magnified the law and made it honorable. While of the special tenderness of God to the sinner, he said not a word. Robert was offended. He scarcely knew what. With the minister's mode of treating his friend, and after Mr. McCleary had taken a far kinder leave of them, then God could approve. If he resembled his representation, Robert sat still, oppressed with darkness. It's all true, said the shoemaker, but man, Robert, did not you think the minister was some sore upon me? I do think it, answered Robert. Something bears it in upon me, at he would not be so sore upon me himself. There is something in the New Testament, some thought at spitting it into my head. Though faith, I did not know where to look for it. Can I help you with it, man? Robert could think of nothing but the parable of the prodigal son. Mrs. Alexander got him the New Testament, and he read it. She sat at the foot of the bed listening. There, cried the shoemaker triumphantly. I tell you so, not a word of both the poor's lad's sins. It was all a hurry and a scurry to get the new shoe in the pond in, and when at the cafe and the fiddling and the dancing. Oh Lord, he broke out. I'm coming home as fast as I can, but my sins are just like shoes down at heel upon my feet, and will not let me. I expect ne ring and ne robe, but I would fan have a fiddle in my group when the nest prodigal comes home. And if I did not fiddle will, it's no be my white. Ah, man. But that is what I call good on, the minister said. Honest man, just leather till it. Oh Lord, I swear if ever I went up again, I'll put in ilk a stitch as if the shoe were for the feet of the prodigal himself. It shall be good work, oh Lord, and I'll never let taste the whiskey into my mouth, nor smell a whiskey into my nose. If so be it, I can help it. I swear, it, oh Lord, and if I've been not raised up again, hear his voice trembled and ceased, and silenced and seeded for a short minute. Then he called his wife. Come here, bell. Give me a kiss, my bonny last. I have been an ill man to you. Ne ne, Sandy, you have I been good to me, better nor I deserve. You have been nobody's enemy but your own. Hold your tongue, your spakin' warblathers nor the minister, honest man. I tell you I have been a scoundrel to you. I have not ever holdin' my hands off of you, and eh, you were a bonny last when I married ye. I have spoiled ye all together, but if I were up, see if I would not give ye a new gun, and that would be something to make ye like yourself again. I'm affronted with myself, and I have been such a brute of a man to ye. But ye now forgive me, new, for I do believe in my heart at the Lord's forgiving me. Give me another kiss, last. God be praised and money thanks to you. You might have run away from me long or new, and anybody would have said you did right. Robert, play a spring. Absorbed in his own thoughts, Robert began to play the e-way with the crooked horn. Hoots, hoots, cried Sandy angrily. What are ye of boot? Name more of that, I have done with that. What's in the head of ye, man? What'll I play then, Sandy? asked Robert Meekly. Play the land of the leal, or my name is away, or something of that kind. I'll be leal to ye new bell, and ye will not pray of the wasky nor more lass. I cannot buy the smell of it, cried Bell sobbing. Robert struck in with the land of the leal. When he had played it over two or three times, he laid the fiddle in its place and departed, able just to see by the light of the neglected candle that Bell sat on the bedside stroking the rosy hand of her husband, the rhinoceros hide of which was yet delicate enough to let the love through to his heart. After this, the shoemaker never called his fiddle his old wife. Robert walked home with his head sunk on his breast. Due to Sandy, the drinking, ranting, swearing shoemaker was inside the wicked gate, and he was left outside, for all his prayers with the arrows from the castle of Bells above sticking in his back. He would have another try some day, but not yet. He dared not. Henceforth Robert had more to do in reading the New Testament than in playing the fiddle to the shoemaker, though they never parted without an error or two. Sandy continued hopeful and generally cheerful, with alternations which the reading generally fixed on the right side for the night. Robert never attempted any comments, but left him to take from the word what nourishment he could. There was no return of strength to the helpless arm, and his constitution was gradually yielding. The rumor got abroad that he was a changed character. How is not far to seek, for Mr. McLeary fancied himself the honored instrument of his conversion, whereas paralysis and the New Testament were the chief agents, and even the violin had more share in it than the minister. For the Spirit of God lies all about the Spirit of Man like a mighty sea, ready to rush in at the smallest chink in the walls that shut him out from his own. Walls which even the tone of a violin afloat on the wind of that Spirit is sometimes enough to rent from battlement to base, as the blast of the ramshorns rent the walls of Jericho. And now to the day of his death the shoemaker had need of nothing. Food, wine, and delicacies were sent him by many who, while they considered him outside of the kingdom, would have troubled themselves in no way about him. But with visits of condolence and flattery, increased into his experience and long prayers by his bedside, they now did their best to send him back among the swan. The shoemaker's humor, however, aided by his violin was a strong antidote against these evil influences. I'd go time gone to be, Robert, he said at length one evening as the lad sat by his bedside. Well, that will not do you nail, answered Robert, adding which is the touch of bitterness. You need not care about that. I do not care about the Dean of it, but I just want to live long enough to let the Lord know that I'm in due and right earnest about it. I have no chance of drinking as long as I'm lying here. Never you fret your head about that. You can trust that to him, for it's his own business. He'll see it you're all right. Not you think it he'll let you off. The Lord forbid, responded the shoemaker, honestly, it might be a pit in right. It would be dreadful to be lotten off. I would not have him content with Cobbler's work. I have it, he resumed, after a few minutes' pause. The Lord's easy pleas, but ill the satisfy. I'm so pleased with your playing, Robert, but it's nothing like the rake thing yet. It does me good to hear you, though, for all that. The very next night, he found him evidently sinking fast. Robert took the violin and was about to play, but the shoemaker stretched out his one left hand, and took it from him, made it across his chest and his arm over it for a few moments, as if he were bidding it fair well, then held it out to Robert, saying, Ha, Robert, she's yours. That's a sore divorce. Maybe they'll have an extra fiddle where I'm going, though. Think of all Rothedon's shoemaker playing the four his grace. Robert saw that his mind was wandering and mingled the paltry honors of earth with the grand simplicities of heaven. He began to play the landel de Lille. For a little while, Sandy seemed to follow and comprehend the tones, but by slow degrees the light departed from his face. At length his jaw fell, and with the sigh the body parted from dual Sandy, and he went to God. His wife closed mouth and eyes without a word, laid the two arms equally powerless now, straight by his sides, then seating herself on the edge of the bed said, Do not bide, Robert. It's all over now. He's gone home, if I were only with them wherever he is. She burst into tears, but dried her eyes among it after and seen that Robert still lingered and said, Go on, Robert, and send Mistress Downey to me. Do not grieve. There's a good lad. But take your fiddle and go on. He can be no more use. Robert obeyed. With his violin in his hand he went home, and with his violin still in his hand walked into his grandmother's parlor. Hodari brings such a thing into my horse, she said, roused by the apparent defiance of her grandson. Hodari, after what's come and gone. His dual Sandy's come and gone, Granny, and left nothing but this behind him, and this one's mine, whatever the other might be. His wife's left with a plaque, and eyes warrant the good folk of Rothedon will not make Saint Macaulam her new at her man's away. For she never was such a randy as he was, and the triumph of grace in hers but small therefore. So I now make the best at I can of the fiddle for her, and you may not touch this one, Granny, for though you may think it right to burn fiddles, other folk does not, and this has to do with other folk, Granny. It's no between you and me, you know. Robert went on, fearful as she might consider herself divinely commissioned to extirpate the whole race of stringed instruments. For I now sell it for her. Take an oath of my side, said Mrs. Falconer, and said no more. He carried the instrument up to his room, laid it on his bed, locked his door, put the key in his pocket, and descended to the parlor. His dad, is he, said his grandmother, as he re-entered. I, he is, Granny, answered Robert. He died a repentant man. And a believing, asked Mrs. Falconer. Weal, Granny, I cannot say, at he believed the thing I'd ever was, for a body might not know I'd think. Puts, laddie, was it save and faith? I did not rightly know what you mean by that, but I'm thinking it was muckled the same kind of faith that the prodigal had, for they both turned and go'd home. E, maybe you're right, laddie, returned Mrs. Falconer after a moment's thought. We'll hope the best. All the remainder of the evening, she sat motionless with her eyes fixed on the rug, before her, thinking, no doubt of the repentance and salvation of the fiddler, and what hope there might yet be for her own lost son. The next day being Saturday, Robert set out for bodyfall, taking the violin with him. He went alone, for he was in no mood for Shargar's company. It was a fine spring day. The woods were budding, and the fragrance of the larches floated across his way. There was a lovely sadness in the sky, and in the motions of the air, and in the scent of the earth, as if they all knew that fine things were at hand, which never could be so beautiful as those that had gone away. And Robert wondered how it was that everything should look so different. Even body faults seemed to have lost its enchantment, though his friends were as kind as ever. Mr. Lambie went into a rage at the story of the lost violin, and Ms. Lambie cried from sympathy with Robert's distress at the fate of his bonny lady. Then he came to the occasion of his visit, which was to beg Mr. Lambie when next he went to Aberdeen to take the shoemaker's fiddle and get what he could for it to help his widow. Poor Sandy, said Robert, it never came into his head to sell her, nor more nor if she had been the old wife that he called her. Mr. Lambie undertook the commission, and the next time he saw Robert handed in 10 pounds as the result of the negotiation. It was all Robert could do, however, to get the poor woman to take the money. She looked at it with repugnance, almost as if it had been the price of blood. But Robert, having succeeded in overcoming her scruples, she did take it, and therewith provide a store of sweeties and reels of cotton and tobacco for sale in Sandy's workshop. She certainly did not make money by her merchandise, for her anxiety to be honest rose to the absurd, but she contrived to live without being reduced to prey upon her own gingerbread and rock. And Chapter 3