 Book 3, Chapter 10, of Robert Falconer by George MacDonald. Before many months had passed, without the slightest approach to any formal recognition, I found myself one of the Church of Labor of which Falconer was clearly the bishop. As he is the subject, or rather the object of my book, I will now record a fact which may serve to set forth his views more clearly. I gained the knowledge of some of the circumstances, not merely from the friendly confidences of Miss St. John and Falconer, but from being a kind of Scotch cousin of Lady Janet Gordon, whom I had taken an opportunity of acquainting with the relation. She was old-fashioned enough to acknowledge it, even with some eagerness. The ancient clan feeling is good in this, that it opens a channel whose very existence is a justification for the flow of simply human feelings along all possible levels of social position, and I would there were more of it. Only something better is coming instead of it, a recognition of the infinite brotherhood in Christ. All other relations, all attempts by churches, by associations, by secret societies, of free masons and others, are good merely as they tend to destroy themselves in the wider truth, as they teach men to be dissatisfied with their limitations. But I wonder, for I mentioned Lady Janet now merely to account for some of the information I possess concerning Lady Georgina Beterton, I met her once at my so-called cousins, whom she patronized as a dear old thing. To my mind, she was worth twenty of her, though she was wrinkled and scottishly sententious. A sweet old bat was another epitaph of Lady Georgina's. But she came to see her, notwithstanding, and did not refuse to share in her nice little dinners, and least of all, when Falconer was of the party, who had been so much taken with Lady Janet's behavior to the marquee of Borsad, just recorded that he positively cultivated her acquaintance thereafter. Lady Georgina was of an old family, an aged family indeed, so old in fact that some envious people profess to think it decrepit with age. This however may well be questioned if any argument bearing on the point may be drawn from the person of Lady Georgina. She was at least as tall as Mary St. John and very handsome, only with somewhat masculine features and expression. She had very sloping shoulders and a long neck, which took its finest curves when she was talking to inferiors. Condescension was her forte. Of the admiration of the men, she had more than enough, although either they were afraid to go farther or she was hard to please. She had never contemplated anything admirable long enough to comprehend it. She had never looked up to man or woman with anything like reverence. She saw too quickly and too keenly into the foibles of all who came near her to care to look farther for their virtues. If she had ever been humbled and thence taught to look up, she might by this time have been a grand woman worthy of a great man's worship. She patronized Miss St. John considerably to her amusement and nothing to her indignation. Of course she could not understand her. She had a vague notion of how she spent her time and believing a certain amount of fanaticism essential to religion, wondered how so sensible and ladylike a person as Miss St. John could go in for it. Meeting Falconer at Lady Janitz, she was taken with him. Possibly she recognized in him a strength that would have made him her master if he had cared for such a distinction. But nothing she could say attracted more than a passing attention on his part. Anna was out of her sphere and her influences were powerless to reach him. At length she began to have a glimmering of the relation of labor between Miss St. John and him and applied to the former for some enlightenment. But Miss St. John was far from explicit, for she had no desire for such assistance as Lady Georgina's. What motives next led her to seek the interview I am now about to record I cannot satisfactorily explain, but I will hazard a conjecture to you, although I doubt if she understood them thoroughly herself. She was, if not blasé, at least enouye, and begun to miss excitement and feel blindly about her for something to make life interesting. She was gifted with far more capacity than had ever been exercised and was of a large enough nature to have grown sooner weary of trifles than most women of her class. She might have been an artist, but she drew like a young lady. She might have been a prophetess, and Byron was her greatest poet. It is no wonder that she wanted something she had not got. Since she had been foiled in her attempt on Miss St. John, which she attributed to jealousy, she had in quite another circle heard strange, wonderful, even romantic stories about Falconer and his doings among the poor. A new world seemed to open before her longing gaze, a world, or a calenture, a mirage, for which she crossed the wandering fields of barren foam to reach the green grass that did wave on the far shore, the douless desert to reach the fair water that did line leagues beyond its pictured sweetness. But I think mingled with whatever motives she may have had, there must have been some desire to be a nobler that is a more useful woman than she had been. She had not any superabundance of feminine delicacy, though she had plenty of good breeding, and she trusted to her position in society to cover the eccentricity of her present undertaking. One morning after breakfast she called upon Falconer, and accustomed to visits from all sorts of people, Mrs. Ashton showed her into his sitting room without even asking her name. She found him at his piano, apologized in her fashionable drawl for interrupting his music, and accepted his offer of a chair without a shade of embarrassment. Falconer seated himself and sat waiting. I fear the step I have taken will appear strange to you, Mr. Falconer. Indeed it appears strange to myself. I am afraid it may appear stranger still. It is easy for me to leave all judgment in the matter to yourself, I beg your pardon. I know we have met, but for the moment I cannot recall your name. Lady Georgina Bederton, drawl the visitor carelessly, hiding whatever annoyance she may have felt. Falconer bowed, Lady Georgina resumed. Of course it only affects myself, and I am willing to take the risk, notwithstanding the natural desire to stand well in the opinion of anyone with whom even my boldness could venture such a step. A smile intended to be playful covered the retreat of the sentence. Falconer bowed again, Lady Georgina had yet again to resume. From the little I have seen and the much I have heard of you, excuse me, Mr. Falconer, I cannot help thinking that you know more of the secret of life than other people. If indeed it has any secret, life certainly is no burden to me, return Falconer, if that implies the possession of any secret which is not common property, I fear it also involves a natural doubt whether such secret be communicable. Of course, I mean only some secret everybody ought to know. I do not misunderstand you. I want to live. You know the world, Mr. Falconer. I need not tell you what kind of life a girl like myself leads. I am not old, but the gilding is worn off. Life looks bare, ugly, uninteresting. I ask you to tell me whether there is any reality in it or not, whether its past glow was only guilt. Whether the best that can be done is to get through with it as fast as possible. Surely your ladyship must know some persons whose very countenances prove that they have found a reality at the heart of life. Yes, but none whose judgment I could trust. I cannot tell how soon they may find reason to change their minds on the subject. Their satisfaction may only be that they have not tried to rub the varnish off the gilding so much as I, and therefore the gilding itself still shines a little in their eyes. If it be only gilding, it is better it should be rubbed off. But I am unwilling to think it is. I am not willing to sign a bond of farewell to hope. Life seemed good once. It is bad enough that it seems such no longer without consenting that it must and shall be so. Allow me to add for my own sake that I speak from the bitterness of no chagrin. I have had all I ever cared or condescended to wish for. I never had anything worth the name of a disappointment in my life. I cannot congratulate you upon that, said Falconer seriously. But if there be a truth or a heart in life, assurance of the fact can only spring from harmony with that truth. It is not to be known saved by absolute contact with it, and the sole guide in the direction of it must be duty. I can imagine no other possible conductor. We must do before we can know. Yes, yes, replied Lady Georgina hastily in a tone that implied, of course, of course, we know all about that. But where at once with the fine instinct belonging to her mental organization, that she was thus shutting the door against all further communication, she added instantly, but what is one's duty? There is the question. The thing that lies next to you, of course, you are and must remain the sole judge of that. Another cannot help you. But that is just what I do not know. I interrupted Lady Georgina to remark, for I too have been a pupil of Falconer, but I believe she must have suspected what her duty was, but would not look firmly at her own suspicion. She added, I want direction, but the same moment she proceeded to indicate the direction in which she wanted to be directed, for she went on. You know that nowadays there are so many modes in which to employ one's time and money, though one does not know which to choose. The lower strata of society, you know, Mr. Falconer, so many channels. I want the advice of a man of experience, as to the best investment, if I may use the expression. I do not mean of money only, but of time as well. I am not fitted to give advice in such a matter. Mr. Falconer, I assure you I am not. I subscribe to no society myself, not one. Excuse me, but I can hardly believe the rumors I hear of you. People will talk, you know, are all inventions. They say you are forever borrowing amongst the poor. Excuse the phrase. I excuse or accept it, whichever you please. Whatever I do, I am my own steward. Then you are just the person to help me. I have a fortune, not very limited, at my own disposal. A gentleman who is his own steward would find his labors merely facilitated by administering for another as well. Such labors I mean. I must beg to be excused, Lady Georgina. I am accountable only for my own, and of that I have quite as much as I can properly manage. It is far more difficult to use money for others than to spend it for yourself. Ah, said Lady Georgina thoughtfully, and cast an involuntary glance round the untidy room with its horsehair furniture, its ragged array of books on the wall, its side table littered with pamphlets he never read, with pipes he smoked by chance turns. He saw the glance and understood it. I am accustomed, he said, to being such sad places for human beings to live in, that I sometimes think even this dingy old room an absolute palace of comfort. But, he added, checking himself, as it were, I do not see in the least how your proposal would facilitate an answer to your question. You seem hardly inclined to do me justice, said Lady Georgina, with, for the first time a perceptible, the slight shadow crossing the disk of her resolution. I only meant it, she went on, as a step towards a further proposal, which I think you will allow looks at least in the direction you have been indicating. She paused. May I beg of you to state the proposal, said Falconer. But Lady Georgina was apparently in some little difficulty as to the proper form in which to express her object. At last it appeared in the cloak of a question. Do you require no assistance in your efforts for the elevation of the lower classes? She asked. I don't make any such efforts, said Falconer. Some of my Lady readers will probably be remarking to themselves how disagreeable of him I can't endure the man. If they knew how Falconer had to beware of the forwardness and annoyance of well-meaning women, they would not dislike him so much. But Falconer could be indifferent to much dislike, and therein I know some men that envy him. When he saw, however, that Lady Georgina was trying to swallow a lump in her throat, he hastened to add, I have only relations with individuals, none with classes. Lady Georgina gathered her failing courage. Then there is more hope for me, she said. Surely there are things a woman might be useful in that a man cannot do so well, especially if she would do as she was told, Mr. Falconer. He looked at her, inquiring of her whole person, what new men abode in the feign. She misunderstood the look. I could dress very differently, you know. I will be a sister of charity if you like. And wear uniform, as if the God of another world wanted to make prosely lights or traders in this. No, Lady Georgina, it was not of a dress so easily altered that I was thinking. It was of the habit, the dress of mind, of thought, of feeling. When you laid aside your beautiful dress, could you avoid putting on the garment of condescension, the most un-Christian virtue attributed to deity or saint? Could you, I must be playing with you, Lady Georgina, for this has nothing to do with the forms of so-called society. Could your temper endure the mortifications of low opposition and misrepresentation of motive and end, which avoid intrusion, as you might, would yet force themselves on your perception? Could you be rudely, imputantly, thwarted by the very persons for whom you were spending your strength and means, and show no resentment? Could you make allowances for them, as for your own brothers and sisters, your own children? Lady Georgina was silent. I shall seem to glorify myself, but at that risk I must put the reality before you. Could you endure the ugliness, both moral and physical, which you must meet at every turn? Could you look upon loathesomeness, not merely without turning away and disgust, and thus wounding the very heart you would heal, but without losing your belief in the fatherhood of God by losing your faith in the actual blood relationship to yourself, of these wretched beings? Could you believe in the immortal essence hidden under all this garbage, God at the root of it all? How would the delicate senses you probably inherit receive the intrusions from which they could not protect themselves? Would you be in no danger finding personal refuge in the horrid fancy that these are but the slimy borders of humanity where it slides into you, and is one with bestiality? I could show you one fearful baboon-like woman whose very face makes my nerves shudder. Could you believe that woman might one day become beautiful as yourself, and therefore minister to her? Would you not be tempted for the sake of your own comfort, if not for the pride of your own humanity to believe that, like untimely blossoms, these must fall from off the bowels of the tree of life and come to nothing at all? A theory that may do for the preacher, but will not do for the worker. Him it would paralyze, or still worse, infinitely worse, that they were doomed from their birth to endless ages of a damnation. Filthy is that in which you now found them and must probably leave them. If you could come to this, you had better withhold your hand. For no desire for the betterment of the masses, as they are stupidly called, can make up for a lack of faith in the individual. If you cannot hope for them in your heart, your hands cannot reach them to do them good. They will only hurt them. Lady Georgina was still silent. Falconer's eloquence had perhaps made her ashamed. I want you to sit down and count the cost before you do any mischief by beginning what you are unfit for. Last week I was compelled more than once to leave the house where my duty led me, and to sit down upon a stone in the street, so ill that I was in danger of being led away as intoxicated. Only the policeman happened to know me. Twice I went back to the room I'd left, crowded with human animals, and one of them at least dying. It was all I could do, and I have tolerable nerve and tolerable experience. A mist was gathering over Lady Georgina's eyes. She confessed it afterwards to Miss St. John. And through the mist he looked larger than human. And then the time you must spend before you can lay hold upon them at all. That is with the personal relation, which alone is of any real influence. Our Savior himself had to be 30 years in the world before he had footing enough in it to justify him in beginning to teach publicly. He had been laying the needful foundations all the time. Not under any circumstances could I consent to make use of you before you had brought yourself into genuine relations with some of them first. Do you count societies then of no use whatever Lady Georgina asked more to break the awkwardness of her prolonged silence than for any other reason. In as far as any of the persons they employ fulfill the conditions of which I have spoken they are useful. That is just in as far as they come into genuine human relations with those whom they would help. In as far as their servants are incapable of this the societies are hurtful. The chief good which societies might effect would be the procuring of simple justice for the poor. That is what they need at the hands of the nation and what they do not receive. But though few can have the knowledge of the poor I have many could do something if they would only set about it simply and not be too anxious to convert them if they would only be their friends after a common sense fashion. I know say a hundred wretched men and women far better than a man in general knows him with whom he claims an ordinary intimacy. I know many more by sight whose names in the natural course of events I shall probably know soon. I know many of their relations to each other and they talk about each other to me as if I were one of themselves which I hope in God I am. I have been amongst them a good many years now and shall probably spend my life amongst them. When I went first I was repeatedly robbed. Now I should hardly fear to carry another man's property. Two years ago I had my purse taken but next morning it was returned I do not know by whom. In fact it was put into my pocket again every coin as far as I could judge as it left me. I seldom pretend to teach them only now and then drop a word of advice but possibly before I die I may speak to them in public. At present I avoid all attempted organization of any sort and as far as I see him likely of all things to avoid it. What I want is first to be their friend and then to be at length recognized as such. It is only in rare cases that I seek the acquaintance of any of them. I let it come naturally. I bide my time. I must never do I offer assistance. I wait till they ask it and then often refuse the sort they want. The worst thing you can do for them is to attempt to save them from the natural consequences of wrong. You may sometimes help them out of them but it is right to do many things for them when you know them which it would not be right to do for them until you know them. I am amongst them. They know me. Their children know me and something is always occurring that makes this or that one come to me. Once I have a footing I seldom lose it. So you see unless my labor I am content to do the thing that lies next to me. I wait advance. You have had no training, no blundering to fit you for such work. There are many other modes of being useful but none in which I could undertake to direct you. I am not in the habit of talking so much about my ways but that is of no consequence. I think I am right in doing so in this instance. I cannot misunderstand you faltered Lady Georgina. Falconer was silent without looking up from the floor on which her eyes had rested all the time he spoke. Lady Georgina said at last then what is my next duty? What is the thing that lies nearest to me? That I repeat belongs to your everyday history. No one can answer that question but yourself. Your next duty is just to determine what your next duty is. Is there nothing you neglect? Is there nothing you know you ought not to do? You would know your duty if you thought in earnest about it and were not ambitious of great things. Ah then, responded Lady Georgina with an abandoned sigh. I suppose it is something very common place which will make life more dreary than ever. That cannot help me. It will if it be as dreary as reading the newspapers to an old deaf aunt. It will soon lead you to something more. Your duty will begin to comfort you at once but will at length open the unknown fountain of life in your heart. Lady Georgina lifted up her head in despair, looked at Falconer through eyes full of tears and said vehemently, Mr. Falconer, you can have no conception how wretched a life like mine is and the futility of everything is embittered by the consciousness that it is from no superiority to such things that I do not care for them. It is from superiority to such things that you do not care for them. You are not made for such things. They cannot fill your heart. It has whole regions with which they have no relation. The very thought of music makes me feel ill. I used to be passionately fond of it. I presume you got so far in it that you asked is there nothing more, concluding there was nothing more and yet needing more, you turned from it with disappointment. It is the same she went on hurriedly with painting, modeling, reading. Whatever I have tried, I am sick of them all. They do nothing for me. How can you enjoy music, Lady Georgina, if you are not in harmony with the heart and source of music? How do you mean? Until the human heart knows the divine heart, it must sigh and complain like a petulant child who flings his toys from him because his mother is not at home. When his mother comes back to him, he finds his toys are good still. When we find him in our hearts, we shall find him in everything, and music will be deep enough then, Lady Georgina. It is this that the Brahmin and the Platonists seek. It is this that the mystic and the anchorite cyphor, towards this the teaching of the greatest of men would lead us. Lord Bacon himself says nothing can fail much less extend the soul of man but God and the contemplation of God. It is life you want. If you will look in your New Testament and find out all that our Lord says about life, you will find the only cure for your malady. I know what such talk looks like, but depend upon it. What I am talking about is something very different from what you fancy it. Anyhow, to this you must come one day or other. But how am I to gain this indescribable good with so many seek and so few find? Those are not my words, said Falconer emphatically. I should have said which so few yet seek, but so many shall at length find. Do not quarrel with my foolish words, but tell me how I am to find it, for I suppose there must be something in what so many good people assert. You thought I could give you help. Yes, that is why I came to you. Just so, I cannot give you help. Go and ask it of one who can. Speak more plainly. Well then, if there be a God, he must hear you if you call to him. If there be a Father, he will listen to his child. He will teach you everything. But I don't know what I want. He does. Ask him to tell you what you want. It all comes back to the old story. If he then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? But I wish you would read your New Testament. The Gospels, I mean. You are not in the least fit to understand the Epistles yet. Read the story of our Savior, as if you had never read it before. He, at least, was a man who seemed to have that secret of life, after the knowledge of which your heart is longing. Lady Georgina rose. Her eyes were again full of tears. Falconer, too, was moved. She held out her hand to him, and without another word, left the room. She never came there again. Her manner towards Falconer was thereafter much altered. People said she was in love with him. If she was, it did her no harm. Her whole character certainly was changed. She sought the friendship of Miss St. John, who came at length to like her so much that she took her with her in some of her walks among the poor. By degrees, she began to do something herself after a quiet, modest fashion. But within a few years, probably while so engaged, she caught a fever from which she did not recover. It was not till after her death that Falconer told any one of the interview he had had with her, and by that time I had the honor of being very intimate with him. When she knew that she was dying, she sent for him. Mary St. John was with her. She left him together. When he came out, he was weeping. Chapter 10 Book 3 Chapter 11 Of Robert Falconer by George Macdonald This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George Macdonald Chapter 11 The Suicide Falconer lived on and labored on in London. Wherever he found a man fitted for the work, he placed him in such office as the flurry already occupied. At the same time, he went more into society and gained the friendship of many influential people. Besides the use he made of this to carry out plans for individual rescue, it enabled him to bestow himself for the first in chief good, which he believed it was in the power of the government to affect for the class amongst which he labored. As I have shown, he did not believe in any positive good being affected saved through individual contact, through faith in a word, faith in the human helper, which might become a stepping stone through the chaotic misery towards faith in the Lord and in his Father. All that association could do as such was only in his judgment to remove obstructions from the way of individual growth and education, to put better conditions within reach, first of all to provide that the people should be able, if they would, to live decently. He had no notion of domestic inspection or of offering prizes for cleanliness and order. He knew that misery and wretchedness are the right and best condition of those who live so that misery and wretchedness are the natural consequences of their life. But there are always to be the possibility of emerging from these and as things were over the whole country for many who would if they could, it was impossible to breathe the fresh air to be clean, to live like human beings. And he saw this difficulty ever on the increase through the capacity of the holders of small house property and the utter wickedness of railway companies who pulled down every house that stood in their way and did nothing to provide room for those who were thus ejected. Most probably from a wretched place, but only to be driven into a more wretched still. To provide suitable dwellings for the poor, he considered the most pressing of all necessary reforms. His own fortune was not sufficient for doing much in this way, but he said about doing what he could by purchasing houses in which the poor lived and putting them into the hands of persons whom he could trust and who were immediately responsible to him for their proceedings. They had to make them fit for human abodes and let them to those who desired better accommodation, giving the preference to those already tenants so long as they paid their reasonable rent, which he considered far more necessary for them to do than for him to have done. One day he met by appointment the owner of a small block of which he contemplated the purchase. They were in a dreadfully dilapidated condition, a shame that belonged more to the owner than the inhabitants. The man wanted to sell the houses or at least was willing to sell them. But put an exorbitant price upon them. Falconer expostulated, I know the whole of the rent that these houses could bring you in, he said, without making any deduction for vacancies and defocations. What you ask is twice as much as they would fetch if the full rent were certain. The poor wretch looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken down clergyman in rusty black with a netcloth of whitey brown. I admit it, he said, in good English and a rather educated tone. Your arguments are indisputable. I confess besides that so far short does the yield come of the amount on paper that it would pay me to give them away. But it's the funeral, sir, that make it worth my while. I'm an undertaker, as you may judge, for my costume. I count back rent in the burying. People may cheat their landlord, but they can't cheat the undertaker. They must be buried. That's the one indispensable, ain't it, sir? Falconer had let him run on that he might have the measure of him. Now he was prepared with his reply. You've told me your profession, he said. I'll tell you mine. I am a lawyer. If you don't let me have the houses for five hundred, which is the full market value, I'll prosecute you. I'll take a good penny from the profits of your coffins to put those houses in a state to satisfy the inspector. The wretched creature was struck dumb, Falconer resumed. You're the sort of man that ought to be kept to your pound of filthy flesh. I know what I say, and I'll do it. The law cost me nothing. You won't find it so. The undertaker sold the houses, and no longer in that quarter killed the people he wanted to bury. I give this as a specimen of the kind of thing Falconer did, but he took none of the business part in his own hands. On the same principle on which Paul the Apostle said it was unmeet for him to leave the preaching of the word in order to serve tables. Not that the thing was beneath him, but that it was not his work so long as he could be doing more important service still. Defuri was one of his chief supports. The whole nature of the man mellowed under the son of Falconer and over the work that Falconer gave him to do. His daughter recovered and devoted herself to the same labor that had rescued her. Miss St. John was her superior. By degrees without any laws or regulations, a little company was gathered, not of ladies and gentlemen, but of men and women who aided each other and without once meeting as a whole, labored not the less as one body in the work of the Lord, bound in one by bonds that had nothing to do with cobweb committee meetings or public dinners, chairman or wine flush subscriptions. They worked like the leaven of which the Lord spoke. But Defuri, like almost everyone in the community, I believe, had his own private schemes subserving the general good. He knew the best man of his own class and his own trade and with them his superior intellectual gifts gave him influence. To them he told the story of Falconer's behavior to him, of Falconer's own need, and of his hungry hearted search. An enthusiasm of help seized upon the man. To Adier's superior is such a rousing gladness. Was anything of this in St. Paul's mind when he spoke of our being fellow workers with God? I only put the question. Each one of these had his own trustworthy acquaintances or neighbors, rather, for like finds out like all the world through as well as over. And to them he told the story of Falconer and his father so that in the region of London it became known that the man who loved the poor was himself needy and looked to the poor for their help. Without them he could not be made perfect. Some of my readers may be inclined to say that it was dishonorable and Falconer to have occasioned the publishing of his father's disgrace. Such may recall to their minds that concealment is no law of the universe. That, on the contrary, the Lord of the universe said once, there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed. Was the disgrace of Andrew Falconer greater because a thousand men knew it instead of forty who could not help knowing it? Hope lies in light and knowledge. Andrew would be none the worse that honest men knew of his vice. They would be the first to honor him if he should overcome it. If he would not, the disgrace was just and would fall upon his son only in sorrow, not in dishonor. The grace of God, the making of humanity by his beautiful hand, no heart, is such that disgrace clings to no man after repentance, any more than the feet defiled with the mud of the world come yet defiled from the bath. Even the things that proceed out of the man and do terribly defile him can be cast off like the pollution of the leper by a grace that goes deeper than they, and the man who says I have sinned, I will sin no more is even by the voice of his brothers crowned as a conqueror and by their hearts loved as one who has suffered and overcome. Blessing on the God-born human heart, let the hands of God, not of Satan, loose upon sin. God only can rule the dogs of the devil, let them hunted to the earth, let them drag forth the demon egg to the feet of the man who loved the people while he let the devil take their swine, and do not talk about disgrace from a thing being known when the disgrace is that the thing should exist. One night I was returning home from some poor attempts of my own. I had now become a pupil of Falconer for a considerable time, but having my own livelihood to make I could not do so much as I would. It was late, nearly twelve o'clock as I passed through the region there were seven dials. Here and there stood three or four brutal-looking men, and now and then a squalid woman with a starving baby in her arms in the light of the gin shops. The babies were the saddest to see. Nursery plants already in training for the places these men and women now held. Then the Philip Hopper's grave, or perhaps a perpetual cell, say rather for the awful spaces of silence where the railway director can no longer be guilty of a worse sin than housebreaking, and his miserable brother will have no need of the shelter of which he deprived him. Now and then a flaunting woman wavered past, a nightshade, as our old dramatist would have called her. I could hardly keep down an evil disgust that would have conquered my pity when a scanty white dress would stop beneath the lamp, and the gay dirty bonnet turning round reveal a painted face from which shown little more than an animal intelligence, not brightened by the gin she had been drinking. Vague noises of strife and a drunken wrath flitted around me as I passed an alley or an opening door let out its evil secret. Once I thought I heard the dull thud of a blow on the head. The noisome vapors were fit for any of Swedenborg's hells. There were few sounds, but the very quiet seemed infernal. The night was hot and sultry. A skinned cat, possibly still alive, fell on the street before me. Under one of the gas lamps lay something long. It was a tress of dark hair torn perhaps from some woman's head. She had beautiful hair, at least. Once I heard the cry of murder, but where, in that chaos of humanity, rider left before behind me, I could not even guess. Home to such regions, from gorgeous stage scenery and dresses, from splendid mere beladen casinos, from singing halls and places of private and prolonged revelry, trail the daughters of men at all hours from midnight to morning. Next day they drink hellfire that they may forget. Sleep brings an hour or two of oblivion, hardly of peace, but they must awake, worn and miserable, and the waking brings no hope. Their only known help lies in the gin shop. What can be done with them? But the secrets God keeps must be as good as those he tells. But no sights of the night ever affected me so much as walking through this same Saint Giles on a summer Sunday morning when church goers were in church. Oh, the faces that creep out into the sunshine then, and haunt their doors, some of them but skins drawn over skulls, living desks heads, grotesque in their hideousness. I was not very far from falconers abode. My mind was oppressed with sad thoughts and a sense of helplessness. I began to wonder what falconer might at that moment be about. I had not seen him for a long time, a whole fortnight. He might be at home, I would go and see, and if there were light in his windows, I would ring his bell. I went. There was light in his windows. He opened the door himself and welcomed me. I went up with him and we began to talk. I told him of my sad thoughts and my feelings of helplessness. He that believeth shall not make haste, he said. There is plenty of time. You must not imagine that the result depends on you or that a single human soul can be lost because you may fail. The question, as far as you are concerned, is whether you are to be honored in having a hand in the work that God is doing and will do whether you help him or not. Some will be honored. Shall it be me? And this honor gained excludes no one. There is work and there is bread in his house enough and despair. It shows no faith in God to make frantic efforts or frantic lamentations. Besides, we ought to teach ourselves to see as much as we may, the good that is in the condition of the poor. Teach me to see that, then, I said. Show me something. The best thing is their kindness to each other. There is an absolute divinity in their self-denial for those who are poorer than themselves. I know one man and woman, married people, who pawned their very furniture and wearing apparel to procure cod liver oil for a girl dying in consumption. She was not even a relative, only an acquaintance of former years. They had found her destitute and taken her to their own poor home. There are fathers and mothers who will work hard all the morning and when dinner time comes, don't want any, that there may be enough for the children or half enough more likely. Children will take the bread out of their own mouths to put in that of their sick brother or to stick in the fist of baby crying for a crust, giving only a queer little, helpless grin, half of hungry sympathy, half of pleasure as they see it disappear. The marvel to me is that the children turn out so well as they do, but that applies to the children in all ranks of life. Have you ever watched a group of poor children, half a dozen of them, with babies in their arms? I have, a little, and have seen such a strange mixture of carelessness and devotion. Yes, I was once stopped in the street by a child of ten, with face absolutely swollen with weeping, asking me to go and see baby, who was very ill. She had dropped him four times that morning, but had no idea that could have done him any harm. The carelessness is ignorance. Their form of it is not half so shocking as that of the mother who will tremble at the slightest sign of suffering in her child, but will hear him lie against his brother without the smallest discomfort. We shall all find a fear someday that we have differed from each other, where we have done best, only in mode, perhaps not even in degree. A grinding tradesman takes advantage of the oversupplied labor to get his work done at starvation prices. I owe him love and have never thought of paying my debt except in boundless indignation. I wish I had your faith and courage, Mr. Falconer, I said. You are in a fair way of having far more he returned. You are not so old as I am, by long way, but I fear you are getting out of spirits. It's tomorrow a hard day with you. I have next to nothing to do tomorrow. Then when you come to me in the evening, we will go out together. Of course, I was only too glad to accept the proposal. It was a blowing moonlit night. The gas lights flickered and wavered in the gusts of wind. It was cold, very cold, for the season. Even Falconer buttoned his coat over his chest. He got a few paces in advance of me sometimes when I saw him towering black and tall and somewhat gaunt, like a walking shadow. The wind increased in violence. It was a northeaster laden with dust and a sense of frozen Siberian steps. We had to stoop and head it at the corners of streets. Not many people were out and those who were seemed to be hurrying home. A few little provision shops and a few inferior butcher stalls were still open. They're great jets of gas which looked as if they must poison. The meat were flaming fierce and horizontal, roaring like fiery flags and a non-dying into a blue hiss. Discordant singing more like the howling of wild beasts came from the corner houses which blazed like the gates of hell. Their doors were ever on the swing and the hot odors of death rushed out and the cold blast of life rushed in. We paused a little before one of them. Over the door upon the sign was in very deed the name death. There were ragged women within who took their half-dead babies from their bear called cheerless bosoms and gave them of the poison of which they themselves drank renewed despair in the name of comfort. They say that most of the gin consumed in London is drunk by women and that the little clay-colored baby faces make a grimace or two and sank to sleep on thin, tawny breasts of the mothers who, having gathered courage from the essence of despair, faced a scowling night once more and with bare necks and hopeless hearts went wither. Where do they hell go when the gin-hells close their yawning jaws? Where do they lie down at night? They vanish like unlawfully risen corpses in the graves of cellars and garrets in the charnel vaults of pester-furiously crowded lodging houses in the prisons of police stations under dry arches within boardings or they make vain attempts to rest the night out upon doorsteps or curb stones. All their lifelong man denies them the one right in the soil which yet is so much theirs that once that life is over he can no longer deny it the right of room to lie down. Space itself is not allowed to be theirs by any right of existence. The voice of the night guardian commanding them to move on is as the howling of a death hound hunting them out of the air into their graves. In St. James's we came upon a group around the gates of a great house. Visitors were coming and going and it was a show to be had for nothing by those who had nothing to pay. All the children with clothes too ragged the whole pockets for their chilled hands that stared at the childless duchess descending from her lordly carriage. All the wan faces once lovely is theirs it may be the gazed meager and pinched and hungry on the young maidens in rose color and blue tripping lightly through the avenue of their eager eyes. Not yet too envious of unattainable felicity to gaze with admiring sympathy on those who seem to them the angels the goddesses of their kind. Oh God I thought but dare not speak and thou couldst make all these girls so lovely. Thou couldst give them all the gracious garments of rose and blue and white if thou wouldst. Why should these not be like those? They are hungry even and wan and torn. These two are thy children. There is wealth enough in thy minds and in thy green fields room enough in thy starry spaces oh God. But a voice the echo of falconers teaching awoke in my heart because I would have these more blessed than those and those more blessed with them for they are all my children. By the mall we came into Whitehall and So to Westminster Bridge. Falconer had changed this mine and would cross it once. The present bridge was not then finished and the old bridge alongside of it was still in use for pedestrians. We went upon it to reach the other side. It sent a rose high above the other for the line of the new bridge ran like a cord across the arc of the old. Through chance gaps in the boarding between we looked down on the new portion which was as yet used by carriages alone. The moon had throughout the evening alternately shown in brilliance from amidst a lake of blue sky and then overwhelmed in billowy heaps of wind tormented clouds. As we stood on the apex of the bridge looking at the night the dark river and the massive human effort about us the clouds gathered and closed and tumbled upon her in crowded layers. The wind howled through the arches beneath swept along the board of fences and whistled in their holes. The gas lights blew hither and thither and were perplexed to live at all. We were standing at a spot where some shorter pieces had been used in the boarding and although I could not see over them falconer whose head rose more than half a foot above mine was looking on the other bridge below. Suddenly he grasped the top with his great hands and his huge frame was over it in an instant. I was on the top of the boarding the same moment and saw him prostrate some 12 feet below. He was up the next instant and running with huge paces diagonally towards the surrey side. He had seen the figure of a woman come flying along from the Westminster side without bonnet or shawl. When she came under the spot where we stood she had turned across at an obtuse angle towards the other side of the bridge and falconer convinced that she meant to throw herself into the river went over as I have related. She had all but scrambled over the fence for there was no parapet yet by the help of the great being that ran along to support it when he caught her by our garments. So poor and thin were those garments that if she had not been poor and thin too she would have dropped from them into the darkness below. He took her in his arms lifted her down upon the bridge and stood as if protecting her from a pursuing death. I had managed to find an easier mode of descent and now stood a little away from them. Poor girl poor girl he said as if to himself was this the only way left. Then he spoke tenderly to her what he said I could not hear I only heard the tone. Oh sir she cried in piteous entreaty do not let me go why should a wretched creature like me be forced to live it's no good to you sir do let me go. Come here he said drawing her close to the fence stand up again on the beam look down she obeyed in a kind of mechanical way but as he talked and she kept looking down on the dark mystery beneath flowing past with every now and then a dull vengeful glitter continuous forceful slow he felt her shudder in his still clasping arm look he said how it crawls along black and slimy how silent and yet how fierce is that a nice place to go to down there would there be any rest there do you think tumbled about among filth and creeping things and slugs that feed on the dead among drowned women like yourself drifting by and murdered men and strangled babies is that the door by which you would like to go out of the world it's no worse she faltered not so bad as what I should leave behind if this were the only way out of it I would not keep you from it I would say poor thing there is no help she must go but there is another way there is no other way sir if you knew all she said tell me then I cannot I dare not please I would rather go she looked from the mirror glimpses I could get of her somewhere about five and twenty making due allowance for the wear of suffering so evident even in those glimpses I think she might have been beautiful if the waste of her history could have been restored but she had at least some advantages of education was evident from both her tone and her speech but oh the wild eyes and the tortured lips drawn back from the teeth with an agony of hopelessness as she struggled anew perhaps mistrusting them to escape from the great arms that held her but the river cannot drown you falconer said it can only stop your breath it cannot stop your thinking you will go on thinking thinking all the same drowning people remember in a moment all their past lives all their evil deeds come out before them as if they were doing them all over again so they punch back into the past and all its misery while their bodies are drowning their souls are coming more and more awake that is dreadful she murmured with her great eyes fixed on his and growing steadier in their regard she had ceased to struggle so he had slackened his hold on her and she was leaning back against the fence and then he went on what if instead of closing your eyes as you expected and going to sleep and forgetting everything you should find them come open all at once in the midst of a multitude of eyes all around about you all looking at you all thinking about you all judging you what if you should hear not a tumult of voices and noises from which you could hope to hide but a solemn company talking about you every word clear and plain piercing your heart with what you could not deny and you standing naked and shivering in the midst of them it is too dreadful she cried making a movement as if the very horror of the idea had a fascination to draw her towards the realization of it but she added yielding to falconers renewed grasp they wouldn't be so hard upon me there they would not be so cruel as men are here surely not but all men are not cruel I am not cruel he added forgetting himself for a moment and caressing with his huge hand the wild pale face that glimmered upon him as it were out of the infinite night all but swallowed up in it she drew herself back and falconer instantly removing his hand said look in my face child and see whether you cannot trust me as he uttered the words he took off his hat and stood bareheaded in the moon which now broke out clear from the clouds she did look in him his hair blew about his face he turned it towards the wind and the moon and away from her that she might be undisturbed in her scrutiny but how she judged of him I cannot tell for the next moment he called out in a tone of repressed excitement Gordon Gordon look there above your head on the other bridge I looked and saw gray head peering over the same gap through which falconer had looked a few minutes before I knew something of his personal quest by this time and concluded at once that he thought it was or might be his father I cannot leave the poor thing I dare not he said I understood him and darted off at full speed for the surrey end of the bridge what made me choose that end I do not know but I was right I had some reason to fear that I might be stopped when I reached it as I had no business to be upon the new bridge I therefore managed where the upper bridge sank again towards a level with the lower to scramble back upon it as I did so the tall gray headed man passed me with an uncertain step I did not see his face I followed him a few yards behind he seemed to hear dislike the sound of my footsteps for he quickened his pace I let him increase the distance between us but followed him still he turned down the river I followed he began to double I doubled after him not a turn could he get before me he crossed all the main roads leading to the bridges till he came to the last when he turned toward London Bridge at the other end he went down the stairs into Thames Street and held eastward still it was not difficult to keep up with him for his stride though long was slow he never looked around and I never saw his face but I could not help fancy that his back and his gate and his carriage were very like falconers we were now in a quarter which I knew nothing but as far as I can guess from after knowledge it was one of the worst districts in London lined to the east of Spinal Square it was late and there were not many people about as I passed the court I was accosted thus ain't you got a glass of ale for a poor cove governor I have no coppers I said hastily I'm in a hurry besides I said as I walked on come come he said getting up with me in a moment that ain't a civil answer to give a cove after his loss that ain't got a blessed mag as he spoke he laid his hand rather heavily on my arm he was a lumpy looking individual like a groom who had been discharged from stealing his horse's provender and had not quite worn out the clothes he had brought with him from the opposite side at the same moment another man appeared low in stature pale and marked with the smallpox he advanced upon me at right angles I shook off the hand of the first and I confess would have taken to my heels for more reasons than one but almost before I was clear of him the other came against me and shoved me into one of the low brown entries which abounded I was so eager to follow my chase that I acted foolishly throughout I after emptied my pockets at once but I was unwilling to lose a watch which was an old family piece and a value besides come come I don't carry a barrel of ale in my pocket I said thinking to keep them in good humor I know better now some of these roughs will take all you have in the most good humored way in the world banding chaff with you all the time I had got amongst another set however least the ways you've got as good said a third approaching from the court as villainous looking a fellow as I've ever seen this is hardly the right way to ask for it I said looking out for a chance of bolting but putting my hand in my pocket at the same time I confess again I acted very stupidly throughout the whole affair but it was my first experience it's a way we've got down here anyhow said the third with a brutal laugh look out savory Sam he added to one of them now I don't want to hurt you struck in the first coming near but if you give tongue I'll make cold meat of you and gouge your pockets at my leisure before ever a blue skin can turn the corner two or three more came sliding up with their hands in their pockets what have you got there Slicer said one of them addressing the third who looked like a ticket of leave man we've caught the pig-headed counter-jumper here that didn't know Jim there from a man trap and went by him as if he'd been a bulldog on a long chain he wants to fight Kokum but he won't trouble him we'll help ourselves shout out now as he spoke he made a snatch at my watch chain I forgot myself and hit him the same moment I received a blow on the head and felt the blood running down my face I did not quite lose my senses though for I remember seeing yet another man a tall fellow coming out of the gloom of the court how it came into my mind I do not know and what I said I do not remember but I must have mentioned Falconer's name somehow the man they called Slicer said who's he don't know the words followed which I cannot write what? you devil's guess soon returned an iris voice I had not heard before you don't know long bob you're gone off all that past I heard distinctly but I was in a half faint I suppose for I could no longer see now what the devil in a dice box do you mean since Slicer possessing himself of my watch who is the blasted cove not that I care a flash of damnation a man as a knock you down if he thinks you want it or give you a half crown if he thinks you want it I was one to him only he'll have the choosing which what's the hell's that to me look spry he mustn't lie there all night it's too near the can come along you scotch haddock I was aware of a kick in the side as he spoke I tell you what it is Slicer said one of his voice I had not yet heard if so be this gentleman a friend of long bob you just let him alone I say I opened my eye now and saw the formula tall rather slender man in a big loose dress coat to whom Slicer had turned with the words you say ha ha well I say there's my scotch attic we'll touch him I'll take him home said the tall man advancing towards me I made an attempt to rise but I grew deadly ill fell back and remember nothing more when I came to myself I was lying on a bed in a miserable place a middle-aged woman of degraded countenance but kindly eyes was putting something to my mouth with a teaspoon I knew it by the smell to be gin but I could not yet move they began to talk about me and I lay and listened indeed while I listened I lost for a time all inclination to get up I was so much interested in what I heard he's coming to himself said the woman he'll be all right by and by I wonder what brings the likes of him into the likes of this place it must look a kind of hell to them gentle folks though we managed to live and die in it I suppose said another he's come on some of Mr. Falconer's business that's why jobs took him in charge they say he was after somebody or other they think no friend of Mr. Falconer's would be after another for any mischief said my hostess but who is this Mr. Falconer is long bob and he both the same alias asked a third what Bessie ain't you no better than the cursed slicer who ought to have been hung up to draw this many a year but to be sure you ain't been long in our quarter why every child here about knows Mr. Falconer ask Bobby there who's Mr. Falconer Bobby a child's voice made reply a man with a long long beard that goes about and sometimes grows tired and sits on a doorstep I see him once but he ain't Mr. Falconer nor long bob neither added Bobby in a mysterious tone I know who he is what do you mean Bobby who is he then the child answered very slowly and solemnly he's Jesus Christ the woman burst into a rude laugh well said Bobby in an offended tone slicer's own Tom says so and Polly too we all say so he always pats me on the head and gives me a penny here Bobby began to cry bitterly offended at the way Bessie had received his information after considering him sufficiently important to have his opinion asked true enough said his mother I see him once a sitting on a doorstep looking straighter for him and worn out like and a lot of them chiller standing all about him and staring at him as mum is mice for fear of disturbing of him when I come near he got up with a smile on his face and give each of them a penny all round and walked away some do say he's a bit crazed like but I never saw no sign of that and if anyone ought to know that one's jobs marry and you may believe me when I tell you that he was here night and morning for a week and after that off and on when we was all down in the collar narrow one of us would have come through but for him I made an attempt to rise the woman came to my bedside how does the gentleman feel his self now she asked kindly better thank you I said I'm ashamed of lying like this but I feel very queer and it's no wonder when that double slicer gave you one of his even down blows on the top of your head nobody knows what he carry in his sleeve that he do it with only you got off well young man and that I tell you with the decent cut like that only don't you go trying to get up now don't be in a hurry till your blood comes back like unless still again for a little when I lifted my hand to my head I found it was bandaged up I tried again to rise the woman went to the door and called out job the gentleman's feeling better he'll soon be able to move I think what will you do with him now I'll go and get a cab said job and I heard him go down the stair I raised myself and got on the floor but found I could not stand by the time the cab arrived however I was able to crawl to it when job came I saw the same tall thin man in the long dress coat his head was bound up too I'm sorry to see you two have been hurt for my sake of course I said is it a bad blow oh it ain't over much I got in with a smeller before he came right down with his slugger but I say I hope is how you are a friend of mr falconers for you see we can't afford the likes of this in this quarter for every chance that falls in slices way gentleman has no business here on the contrary I mean to come again soon to thank you all for being so good to me well when you comes next you'd better come with him you know you mean with mr falconer yes who else but are you able to go now for the sooner you're out of this the better quite able just give me your arm he offered it kindly taking a grateful farewell of my hostess I put my hand in my pocket but there was nothing there job led me to the mouth of the court where a cab evidently of a sort with the neighborhood was waiting for us I got in job was shutting the door come along with me job I said I'm going straight to mr falconers he will like to see you especially after your kindness to me well I don't mind if I do look after you a little longer for to tell the truth said job as he opened the door and got in beside me I don't or and above like the look of the horse it's no use trying to rob me over again I said but he gave no reply he only shouted to the cab man to drive to john street telling him the number I can scarcely recall anything more till we reached falconers chambers job got out and rang the bell mrs asked and came down her master was not come home tell mr falconer I said then I'm all right only I couldn't make anything of it tell him growl job that he's got his head broken and won't be out of bed tomorrow that's the way with them fine bread ones they lies a bed when the likes of me must go out what they calls a custom mongering broken head and all you should stay at home for a week if you like job that is if I've got enough to give you a week's earnings I'm not sure though till I look from not a rich man any more than yourself rubbish said job as he got in again I was only felixing the old on bless your heart sir I wouldn't stay in not for nothing not for a bit of a pat on the crown now how home ain't none so nice a place to go snoozing in now how where do you go to governor I told him when I got out and was opening the door leaning on his arm I said I was very glad they hadn't taken my keys slice her north savory Sam neither is none the better view and I hopes you're not much the worse for them said job as he put into my hands my purse and watch count it governor and see if it's all right then pusses is many factored express for the convenience of the fakers take my advice sir and keep a yellow sovereign in your coat tails a flat half crown in your waistcoat and your pants in your breeches you won't lose much know-how then good night sir and I wish you better but I must give you something for plaster I said you'll take a yellow sovereign at least we'll talk about that another day said job and with the second still hardier good night he left me I managed to crawl up to my room and fell on my bed once more fainting but I soon recovered sufficiently to undress and get into it I was furious all night and next day but towards evening began to recover I kept expecting falconer to come and inquire after me but he never came nor did he appear the next day or the next and I began to be very uneasy about him the fourth day I sent for a cab and drove to john street he was at home but mrs astin instead of showing me into his room led me into her kitchen and left me there a minute after falconer came to me the instant I saw him I understood it all I read it in his face he had found his father and chapter 11 book 3 chapter 12 of robert falconer by george mcdonald this libre box recording is in the public domain robert falconer by george mcdonald chapter 12 andrew at last having at length persuaded the woman to go with him falconer made her take his arm and let her off the bridge in parliament street he was looking about for a cab as they walked on when a man he did not know stopped touched his hat and addressed him I'm thinking sir you'll be sore wanted at home the night it would be better to go on it once and let the poor folk look after themselves for a night I'm sorry I did not came you man do you can me find that mr falconer there is money on knows you and praises god god be praised for return falconer why am I wanted at home deed I would rather not say sir hey this last exclamation was addressed to a cab just disappearing down king street from white hall the driver heard turned and in a moment more was by their side you had better go into her and away home and leave the poor lassie to me I'll take good care of her she clung to falconer's arm the man opened the door of the cab falconer put her in told the driver to go to queen square and if you could not make haste to stop the first cab that could god in himself thanked his unknown friend who did not seem quite satisfied and drove off happily miss saint john was at home and there was no delay neither was any explanation of more than six words necessary he jumped again into the cab and drove home fortunately for his mood though in fact it mattered little for any result the horse was fresh and both able and willing when he entered john street he came to observe before reaching his own door that a good many men were about in little quiet groups some 20 or so here and there when he let himself in with his past key there were two men in the entry without stopping to speak he ran up to his own chambers when he got into his sitting room there stood the flurry who simply waved his hand towards the old sofa on it lay an elderly man with his eyes half open and a look almost of idiocy upon his pale puffed face which was damp and shining his breathing was labored but there was no further sign of suffering he lay perfectly still falconer saw it once that he was under the influence of some narcotic probably opium in the same moment the all but conviction darted into his mind that andrew falconer his grandmother's son lay there before him that he was his own father he had no feeling yet he turned to the flurry thank you friend he said i so find time to thank you are we right asked the flurry i don't know i think so answered falconer and without another word the man withdrew his first mood was very strange it seemed as if all the romance had suddenly deserted his life and it lay bare and hopeless he felt nothing no tears rose to the brim of their bottomless wells the only wells that have no bottom for they go into the depths of the infinite soul he sat down in his chair stunned as to the heart and all the finer chords of his nature the man on the horse hair sofa lay breathing that was all the gray hair about the pale ill-shaven face glimmered like a cloud before him what should he do or say when he awaked how approached the far-strain soul however send the cry of father into that fog filled world could he ever have climbed on those knees and kissed those lips in the far off days when the sun and the wind of that northern atmosphere made his childhood blessed beyond dreams the actual that is the present phase of the ever-changing looked the ideal in the face and the mirror that held them both shook and quivered at the discord of the faces reflected a kind of moral cold seemed to radiate from the object before him and chill him to the very bones this could not long be endured he fled from the actual to the source of all the ideal to that savior who the infinite mediator mediates between all hopes and all positions between the most abased actual and the loftiest ideal between the little scoffers saint giles's and his angel that ever beholds the face of the father in heaven he fell on his knees and spoke to god saying that he had made this man that the mark of his fingers was on the man's soul somewhere he prayed to the making spirit to bring the man to his right mind to give him once more the heart of a child to begin him yet again at the beginning then at last all the evil he had done and suffered would but swell his gratitude to him who had delivered him from himself in his own deeds having breathed this out before the god of his life falcon arose strengthened to meet the honorable debased soul when it should at length look forth from the dull smeared windows of those ill-used eyes he felt his pulse there was no danger from the narcotic the coma would pass away meantime he would get him to bed when he began to undress him a new reverence arose which overcame all disgust at the state in which he found him at length one sad little fact about his dress revealing the poverty-stricken attempt of a man to preserve the shadow of decency called back the waters of the far ebbed ocean of his feelings at the break of a pin the heart's blood will flow at the side of a pin it was robert burst into tears and wept like a child the deadly cold was banished from his heart and he not only loved but knew that he loved felt the love that was there everything then about the worn body and shabby garments of the man smote upon the heart of his son and through his very poverty he was sacred in his eyes the human heart awakened to the filial reversing thus the ordinary process of nature who by means of the filial when her plans are unbroken awakes the human and he reproach themselves bitterly for his hardness as he now judged his late mental condition unfairly I think he soon had him safe in bed unconscious of the helping hands that had been busy about him in the heedless sleep unconscious of the radiant planet of love that had been fooling him around in its atmosphere of affection but while he thus ministered a new question arose in his mind to meet with its own new God given answer what if this should not be the man after all if this love had been spent in mistake and did not belong to him at all the answer was that he was a man love robert had given he could not would not withdraw the man who had been for a moment as his father he could not cease to regard with devotion at least he was a man with the divine soul he might at least be somebody's father where love had found a moment's rest for the soul of its foot there it must build its nest when he got him safe in bed he sat down beside him to think what he would do next his sleep gave him very needful leisure to think he could determine nothing not even how to find out if he was indeed his father if he approached the subject without guile the man might be fearful and cunning might have reasons for being so and for striving to conceal the truth but this was the first thing to make sure of because if it was he all the hold he had upon him laying his knowing it for certain he could not think he had had little sleep the night before he must not sleep this night he dragged his bath into a sitting room and refreshed his faculties with plenty of cold water then lighted his pipe and went on thinking not without prayer to that power whose candle is the understanding of man all at once he saw how to begin he went again into the chamber and looked at the man and handled him and knew by his art that a waking of some sort was nigh then he went to a corner of his sitting room and from beneath the table drew out a long box and from the box lifted double sandy's old wife tuned the somewhat neglected strings and laid the instrument on the table when keeping constant watch over the sleeping man he judged that length that his soul had come near enough to the surface of the ocean of sleep to communicate with the outer world through that bubble his body which had floated upon its waves all the night unconscious he put his chair just outside the chamber door which opened from his sitting room and began to play gently softly far away for a while he extemperized only thinking of rothadin and the grandmother and the bleach green and the hills and the waste old factory and his mother's portrait and letters as he dreamed on his dream got louder and he hoped was waking a more and more vivid dream in the mind of the sleeper for who can tell thought falconer what mysterious sympathies of blood and childhood experience there may be between me and that man such it may be that my utterance on the violin will wake in his soul the very visions of which my soul is full while i play each with its own nebulous atmosphere of dream light around it for music wakes its own feeling and feeling wakes thought or rather when perfected blossoms into thought thought radiant of music as those lilies that shine phosphorescent in the july nights he played more and more forcefully growing in hope but he had been led astray in some measure by the fullness of his expectation strange to tell doctor as he was he had forgotten one important factor in his calculation how the man would awake from his artificial sleep he had not reckoned of how the limb back of his brain would be left discolored with vile deposit when the fumes of the narcotics should have settled and given up its central spaces to the faintness of desertion robert was very keen of hearing indeed he possessed all his senses keener than any other man i have known he heard him toss on his bed then he broke into a growl and damned the meowing which he said the strings could never have learned anywhere but in a cat's belly but robert was used to bad language and there are some bad things which seem that there they are it is of the greatest consequence to get used to it gave him no doubt a pang of disappointment to hear such an echo to his music from the soul which he had hoped especially fitted to respond in harmonious unison with the whale of his violin but not for even this moment did he lose his presence of mind he instantly moderated the tone of the instrument and gradually drew the sound away once more into the distance of hearing but he did not therefore let it die through various changes that floated in the thin ether of the soul changes delicate as when the wind leaves the harp of the reeds by a river's brink and falls are ringing at the heather bells or playing with the dry silvery pods of honesty that hang in the poor man's garden till it lengthed your near once more bearing on its wings the whale of red flodden the flowers of the forest listening through the melody for sounds of a far different kind robert was aware that those sounds had ceased the growling was still he heard no more turnings to and fro how it was operating he could not tell further than that there must be some measure of soothing in its influence he ceased quiet and listened again for a few moments there was no sound then he heard the half articulate murmuring of one whose organs had been all but overcome by the beneficent paralysis of sleep but whose feeble will would compel them to utterance he was nearly asleep again was it a fact or fancy of robert's eager heart did the man really say play that again father it's bonnie that i i like it the floors of the forest play away i've had a fright some dream i thought i was in the ill place i do time no whale but your fiddle eye did me good play away father all the night through till the dawn of the gray morning falconer watched a sleeping man all but certain that he was indeed his father eternities of thought passed through his mind as he watched this time by the couch as he hoped of a new birth he was about to see what could be done by one man strengthened by all the aids that love and devotion could give for the redemption of his fellow as through the darkness of the night and a sluggish fog to aid it the light of a pure heaven made it slow irresistible way his hope grew that a thwart the fog of an evil life the darkness that might be felt the light of the spirit of god would yet penetrate the heart of the sinner and shake the wickedness out of it deeper and yet deeper grew his compassion and his sympathy in prospect of the tortures the man must go through before the will that he had sunk into a deeper sleep than any into which opium could sink his bodily being would shake off its deathly lethargy and arise torn with struggling pain to behold the light of a new spiritual mourning all that he could do he was prepared to do regardless of entreaty regardless of torture anger and hate with the inexorable justice of love the law that will not must not dares not yield strong with an awful tenderness a wisdom that cannot be turned aside to redeem the lost soul of his father and he strengthened his heart for the conflict by saying that if he would do thus for his father what would not god do for his child had he not proved already if there was any truth in the grand story of the world's redemption through that obedience unto the death that his devotion was entire and would leave nothing undone that could be done to lift this sheep out of the pit into whose darkness and filth he had fallen out of the sweet Sabbath of the universe he removed all his clothes searched the pockets found in them one poor shilling and a few coppers a black cutty pipe a box of snuff a screw of pigtail a knife with the buckhorn handle and one broken blade and a pond ticket for a keyed flute on the proceeds of which he was now sleeping a sleep how dearly purchased when he might have had it free as the gift of god's gentle darkness then he destroyed the garments committing them to the fire as the hoped farewell to the state of which they were the symbols and signs he found himself perplexed however by the abeyance of some of the usual symptoms of the habit of opium and concluded that his poor father was in the habit of using stimulants as well as narcotics and that the action of the one interfered with the action of the other he called his housekeeper she did not know whom her master supposed his guest to be and regarded him only as one of the many objects of his kindness he told her to get some tea ready as the patient would most likely wake with the headache he instructed her to wait upon him as a matter of course and explain nothing he had resolved to pass for the doctor as indeed he was and he told her that if he should be at all troublesome he would be with her at once she must keep the room dark he would have his own breakfast now and if the patient remained quiet would sleep on the sofa he woke murmuring and evidently suffered from headache and nausea mrs. Aston took him some tea he refused it with an oath more of discomfort than a real nature and was too unwell to show any curiosity about the person who had offered it probably he was accustomed to so many changes of abode and to so many bewilderments of the brain that he did not care to inquire where he was or who waited upon him but happily for the heart's desire of falconer the debauchery of his father had at length reached one of many crises he had caught cold before the flurry and his comrades found him he was now ill feverish and oppressed through the whole of the following week they nursed and waited upon him without his asking a single question as to where he was or who they were during all which time falconer saw no one but the flurry and the many poor fellows who called to inquire after him and the result of their supposed success he never left the house but either watched by the bedside or waited in the next room often would the patient get out of bed driven by the longing for drink or for opium nine him through all the hallucinations of delirium but he was weak and therefore manageable if in any lucid moments he thought where he was he no doubt supposed that he was in a hospital and probably had sense enough to understand that it was of no use to attempt to get his own way there he was soon much worn in his limbs trembled greatly it was absolutely necessary to give him stimulants or he would have died but robert reduced them gradually as he recovered strength but there was an infinite work to be done beyond even curing him of his evil habits to keep him from strong drink and opium even till the craving after them was gone would be but the capturing of the nearest outwork of the enemy's castle he must be made such that even if the longing should return with tenfold force and all the means for its gratification should lie within the reach of his outstretched hand he would not touch them god only was able to do that for him he would do all that he knew how to do and god would not fail of his part for this he had raised him up to this he had called him for this work he had educated him made him a physician given him money time the love and aid of his fellows and beyond all a rich energy of hope and faith in his heart and boldening him to attempt whatever his hand found to do and chapter 12 book 3 chapter 13 of robert falconer by george mcdonald this lever box recording is in the public domain robert falconer by george mcdonald chapter 13 andrew rebels as andrew falconer grew better the longing of his mind after former excitement and former oblivion roused and kept alive the longing of his body until it length his thoughts dwelt upon nothing but his diseased cravings his whole imagination naturally not a feeble one was concentrated on the delights in store for him as soon as he was well enough to be his own master as he phrased it once more he soon began to see that if he was in a hospital it must be a private one and at last he resolute as he was both from character and illness made up his mind to demand his liberty he sat by his bedroom fire one afternoon for he needed much artificial warmth the shades of evening were thickening the air he had just had one of his frequent meals and was gazing as he often did into the glowing coals robert had come in and after a little talk was sitting silent at the opposite corner of the chimney piece doctor said andrew seizing the opportunity you've been very kind to me and i don't know how to thank you but it is time i was going i'm quite well now would you kindly order the nurse to bring me my clothes tomorrow morning and i will go this he said with the quavering voice of one who speaks because he has made up his mind to speak a certain something i believe a vague minusqueous form of conscience made him wriggle and shift uneasily upon his chair as he spoke no no said robert you are not fit to go make yourself comfortable my dear sir there is no reason why you should go there is something i don't understand about it i want to go it would ruin my character as a professional man to let a patient in your condition leave the house the weather is unfavorable i cannot i must not consent where am i i don't understand it i want to understand it your friends wish your friends wish you to remain where you are for the present i have no friends you have one at least who puts his house here at your service there's something about it i don't like do you suppose i am incapable of taking care of myself i do indeed answered his son with firmness then you are quite mistaken said andrew angrily i'm quite well enough to go and have a right to judge for myself it is very kind of you but i'm in a free country i believe no doubt all honest men are free in this country but he saw that his father winced and said no more andrew resumed after a pause in which he had been rousing his feeble drink exhausted anger i tell you i will not be treated like a child i demanded my clothes and my liberty do you know where you were found that night you were brought here no what has that to do with it i was ill you know that as well as i you are ill now because you were lying then on the wet ground under a railway arch utterly incapable from the effects of opium or drink or both you would have been taken to the police station and would probably have been dead long before now if you had not been brought here he was silent for some time then he broke out i tell you i will go i do not choose to live on charity i will not i demand my clothes i tell you it is of no use when you are well enough to go out you shall go out but not now where am i who are you he looked at robert with a keen front of glance in which were mingled bewilderment and suspicion i'm your best friend at present he started out fiercely and yet feebly for a thought of terror had crossed him you do not mean i am in a madhouse robert made no reply he left him to suppose what he pleased andrew took it for granted that he was in a private asylum sank back in his chair and from that moment was quiet as a lamb but it was easy to see that he was constantly contriving how to escape this mental occupation however was excellent for his recovery and robert dropped no hint of his suspicion nor were many precautions necessary in consequence for he never left the house without having to flurry there who was a man of determination nerve and now that he ate and drank of considerable strength as he grew better the stimulants given him in the form of medicine at length ceased in their place robert substituted other restoratives which prevented him from missing the stimulants so much and at length got his system into a tolerably healthy condition though at his age and after so long indulgence it could hardly be expected ever to recover its tone he did all he could to provide him with healthy amusement played backgammon droughts and cribbets with him brought him sir walters and other novels to read and often played on his violin to which he listened with great delight at times of depression which of course were frequent the flowers of the forest made the old man weep falconer put yet more soul into the sounds than he had ever put into them before he tried to make the old man talk of his childhood asking him about the place of his birth the kind of country how he had been brought up his family and many questions of the sort his answers were vague and often contradictory indeed the moment the subject was approached he looked suspicious and cunning he said his name was john mckinnon and robert although his belief was strengthened by a hundred little circumstances had as yet received no proof that he was andrew falconer remembering the pond ticket and finding that he could play on the flute he brought him a beautiful instrument in fact a silver one the side of which made the old man's eyes sparkle he put it to his lips with trembling hands blew a note or two burst into the tears of weakness and laid it down but he soon took it up again and evidently found both pleasure in the tones and sadness in the memories they awakened at length robert brought a tailor and had him dressed like a gentleman a change which pleased him much the next step was to take him out every day for a drive upon which his health began to improve more rapidly he ate better grew more lively and began to tell tales of his adventures of the truth of which robert was not always certain but never showed any doubt he knew only too well that the use of opium is especially destructive to the conscience some of his stories he believed more readily than others from the fact that he suddenly stopped in them as if they were leading him into regions of confession which must be avoided resuming with matter that did not well connect itself with what had gone before at length he took him out walking and he comported himself with perfect propriety but one day as they were going along a quiet street robert met an acquaintance and stopped to speak with him after a few moments chat he turned and found that his father whom he had supposed to be standing beside him had vanished a glance at the other side of the street showed the probable refuge a public house filled but not overwhelmed with dismay although he knew that months might be lost in this moment robert darted in he was there with a glass of whiskey in his hand trembling now more from eagerness than weakness he struck it from his hold but he had already swallowed one glass and he turned in a rage he was a tall and naturally powerful man almost as strongly built as his son with long arms like his which were dangerous even yet in such a moment of fact his strength and real excitement robert could not lift his arm even to defend himself from his father although he had judged it necessary i believe he would not in the cause of his redemption have hesitated to knock him down as he had often served others whom he would rather a thousand times have borne on his shoulders he received his father's blow on the cheek for one moment it made him dizzy for it was well delivered but when the barkeeper jumped across the counter and approached with his fist doubled that was another matter he measured his length on the floor and falconer seized his father who was making for the street and notwithstanding his struggles and fierce efforts to strike again held him secure and himself scatheless and bore him out of the house a crowd gathers in a moment in london speeding to a fray as the vultures to carry in on the heels of the population of the neighboring news came to policemen and at the same moment out came the bar man to the assistance of andrew the falconer was as well known to the police as if he had a ticket of leave and a good deal better well call a four-wheel cab he said to one of them i'm all right the man started at once falconer turned to the other tell that man in the apron he said that i'll make him all dereparation but he oughtn't to be in such a hurry to metal he gave me no time but to strike hard yes sir answered the policeman obediently the crowd thought he must be a great man amongst the detectives but the barkeeper vowed he would summons him for the assault you may if you like said falconer when i think of it you shall do so you know where i live he said turning to the policeman no sir i don't i only know you well enough put your hand in my coat pocket then and you'll find a card case the other there help yourself he said this with his arms around andrew's who had ceased to cry out when he saw the police do you want to give this gentleman in charge sir no it's a little private affair of my own this hadn't you better let him go sir and we'll find him for you when you want him no he may give me in charge if he likes or if you should want him you will find him at my house then pinioning his prisoner still more tightly in his arms he leaned forward and whispered in his ear will you go home quietly or give me in charge there is no other way andrew falconer he sees struggling through all the flush of the contest his face grew pale his arms dropped by his side robert let him go and he stood there without offering to move the cab came up the policeman got out andrew stepped in of his own accord and robert followed you see it's all right he said here give the barman a sovereign if he wants more let me know he deserved all he got but i was wrong john street his father did not speak a word or ask a question all the way home evidently he thought it's safer to be silent but the drink he had taken there not enough to intoxicate him was more than enough to bring back the old longing with the doubled force he paced about the room the rest of the day like a wild beast in a cage and in the middle of the night got up and dressed and would have crept through the room in which robert lay in the hope of getting out but robert slept too anxiously for that the captain did not make the slightest noise but his very presence was enough to wake his son he started at a bound from his couch and his father retreated in dismay to his chamber and chapter 13 book three chapter 14 of robert falconer by george mcdonald this libre vox recording is in the public domain robert falconer by george mcdonald chapter 14 the brown letter at length of time arrived when robert would make a further attempt although with the fear and trembling to quiet which he had to seek the higher aid his father had recovered his attempt to rush anew upon destruction he was gentler and more thoughtful and would again sit for an hour at a time gazing into the fire from the expression of his countenance upon such occasions robert hoped that his visions were not of the evil days but of those of its innocence one evening when he was in one of these moods he had just had his tea the gas was lighted and he was sitting as i have described robert began to play in the next room hoping the music would sink into his heart and do something to prepare the way for what was to follow just as he had played over the flowers of the forest for the third time his housekeeper entered the room and receiving permission from her master went through into andrew's chamber and presented a packet which he said and said truly for she was not in the secret had been left for him he received it with evident surprise mingled with some consternation looked at the address looked at the seal laid it on the table and gazed again with troubled looks into the fire he had had no correspondence for many years falconer had peeped in when the woman entered but the moment she retired he could watch him no longer he went on playing a slow lingering voluntary such as the wind plays of an amber autumn evening on the alien harp of its pines he played so gently that he must hear if his father should speak for what seemed hours though it was but half an hour he went on playing at length he heard a stifled sob he rose and peeped again into the room the gray head was bad between the hands and the gaunt frame was shaken with sobs on the table lay the portraits of himself and his wife and the faded brown letter so many years folded in silence and darkness lay open beside them he had known the seal with the bush of rushes and the gaelic motto he had gently torn the paper from around it and had read the letter from the grave know from the land beyond the land of light where human love is glorified not then did falconer read the sacred words of his mother but afterwards his father put them into his hands i will give them as nearly as i can remember them for the letter is not in my possession my beloved andrew i can hardly write for i am at the point of death i love you still love you as dearly as before you left me will you ever see this i will try to send it you i will leave it behind me that it may come into your hands when and how it may please god you may be an old man before you read these words and may have almost forgotten your young wife oh if i could take your head on my bosom where it used to lie and without saying a word think all that i am thinking into your heart oh my love my love will you have had enough of the world and its ways by the time this reaches you or will you be dead like me when this is found in the eyes of your son only my darling little robert read the words oh andrew andrew my heart is bleeding not altogether for myself not altogether for you but both for you and for me shall i never never be able to let out the sea of my love that swells till my heart is like to break with its longing after you my own andrew so i never never see you again that is the terrible thought the only thought almost that makes me shrink from dying if i should go to sleep as some think and not even dream about you as i dream and weep every night now if i should only wake in the crowd of the resurrection and not know where to find you oh andrew i feel as if i should lose my reason when i think that you may be on the left hand of the judge and i can no longer say my love because you do not cannot anymore love god i will tell you the dream i had about you last night which i think was what makes me write this letter i was standing in a great crowd of people and i saw the empty graves about us on every side we were waiting for the great white throne to appear in the clouds and as soon as i knew that i cried andrew andrew for i could not help it and the people did not heed me and i cried out and ran about everywhere looking for you at last i came to a great gulf when i looked down into it i could see nothing but a blue deep like the blue of the sky under my feet it was not so wide but that i could see across it but it was oh so terribly deep all at once as i stood trembling on the very edge i saw you on the other side looking towards me and stretching out your arms as if you wanted me you were old and much changed but i knew you at once and i gave a cry that i thought all the universe must have heard you heard me i could see that and i was in a terrible agony to get to you but there was no way for if i fell into the gulf i should go down forever it was so deep something made me look away and i saw a man coming quietly along the same side of the gulf on the edge towards me and when he came near to me i saw that he was dressed in a gown down to his feet and that his feet were bare and had a hole in each of them so i knew who it was andrew and i fell down and kissed his feet and lifted up my hands and i looked into his face oh such a face and i tried to pray but all i could say was oh lord andrew andrew then he smiled and said daughter be of good cheer do you want to go to him and i said yes lord then he said and so do i come and he took my hand and led me over the edge of the precipice and i was not afraid and i did not sink but walked upon the air to go to you but when i got to you it was too much to bear and when i thought i had you in my arms at last i walked crying as i never cried before not even when i found that you had left me to die without you oh andrew what if the dream should come true but if it should not come true i dare not think of that andrew i couldn't be happy in heaven without you it may be very wicked but i do not feel as if it were and i can't help it if it is but dear husband come to me again come back like the prodigal in the new testament god will forgive you everything don't touch drink again my dear love i know it was the drink that made you do as you did you could never have done it it was the drink that drove you to do it you didn't know what you were doing and then you were shamed and thought i would be angry and could not bear to come back to me uh if you were to come in at the door as i write you would see whether or not i was proud to have my andrew again but i would not be nice for you to look at now you used to think me pretty you said beautiful so long ago but i am so thin now and my face so white and i almost frightened myself when i look in the glass and before you get this i shall be all gone to dust either know nothing about you or trying to praise god and always forgetting where i am in my psalm longing so for you to come i'm afraid i love you too much to be fit to go to heaven then perhaps god will send me to the other place all for love of you andrew and i do believe i should like that better but i don't think he will if he is anything like the man i saw in my dream but i'm growing so faint that i can hardly write i never felt like this before but that dream has given me strength to die because i hope you will come to oh my andrew do do repent and turn to god and he will forgive you believe in jesus and he will save you and bring me to you across the deep place but i must make haste i can hardly see and i must not leave this letter open for anybody but you to read after i'm dead goodbye andrew i love you all the same i am my dearest husband your affectionate wife age falconer then followed the date it was within a week of her death the letter was feebly written every stroke seeming more feeble by the contrasted strength of the words when falconer read it afterwards in the midst of the emotions it aroused the strange lovely feelings of such a bond between him and a beautiful ghost far away somewhere in god's universe who had carried him in her lost body and nursed him at her breast in the midst of it all he could not help wondering he told me to find the forms and words so like what he would have written himself it seems so long ago when that faded discolored paper with the gilt edges and the pale brown ink and folded in the large sheet and sealed with the curious wax must have been written and here were its words so fresh so new not withered like the rose leaves that scented the paper from the work box where he had found it but as fresh as if just shaken from the rose trees of the heart's garden it was no wonder that andrew falconer should be sitting with his head in his hands when robert looked in on him for he had read this letter when robert saw how he sat he withdrew and took his violin again and played all the tunes of the old country he could think of recalling dual sanny's workshop that he might recall the music he had learned there no one who understands the bit and bridle of the association of ideas as it is called in the skeleton language of mental philosophy wherewith the father god holds fast the souls of his children to the very last that we see of them at least and doubtless to endless ages beyond will snare a falconer's notion of making gods violin a ministering spirit in the process of conversion there is a well authenticated story of a convicts having been greatly reformed for a time by going in one of his colonies into a church where the matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to which he had gone when a boy with his mother I suppose it was not the matting that so far converted him it was not to the music of his violin that falconer looked for aid but to the memories of childhood the mysteries of the kingdom of innocence which that could recall those memories which are yet the fountain light of all our day are yet a master light of all our scene for an hour he did not venture to go near him when he entered the room he found him sitting in the same place no longer weeping but gazing into the fire with the sad countenance the expression of which showed falconer at once that the soul had come out of its cave of obscuration and drawn near to the surface of life he had not seen him look so much like one clothed and in his right mind before he knew well that nothing could be built upon this that this very emotion did but expose him the more to the besetting sin that in this mood he would drink even if he knew that he would in consequence be in danger of murdering the wife whose letter had made him weep but it was progress notwithstanding he looked up at robert as he entered and then dropped his eyes again he regarded him perhaps as a presence doubtful whether of angel or devil even as the daemonics regarded the lord of life who had come to set them free bewildered he must have been to find himself towards the close of a long life of debauchery wickedness and the growing pains of hell caught in a net of old times old feelings old truths now robert had carefully avoided every indication that might disclose him to be a scotchman even nor was there the least sign of suspicion in andrew's manner the only solution of the mystery that could have presented itself to him was that his friends were at the root of it probably his son of whom he knew absolutely nothing his mother could not be alive still of his wife's relatives there had never been one who would have taken any trouble about him after her death hardly even before it john lamie was the only person except dr. anderson his friendship he could suppose capable of this development the latter was the more likely person but he would be too much for him yet he was not going to be treated like a child he said to himself as often as the devil got uppermost my reader must understand that andrew had never been a man of resolution he had been willful and headstrong and these qualities in children especially are often mistaken for resolution and generally go under the name of strength of will there never was a greater mistake the mistake indeed is only excusable from the fact that extremes meet and that this disposition is so opposite to the other that it looks to the careless i most like it he never resisted his own impulses or the enticements of evil companions kept within certain bounds at home after he had begun to go wrong by the weight of opinion he rushed into all accesses when abroad upon business till at length the vessel of his fortune went to pieces and he was a wave on the waters of the world but in feeling he had never been vulgar however much so in action there was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its very feebleness he could not sense so much against it as if it had been strong for many years he had fits of shame and of grief without repentance for repentance is the active the divine part the turning again but taking more steadily both to strong drink and opium he was at the time when the flurry found him only the dull ghost of andrew falconer walking in a dream of its lost carcass end chapter 14