Robert Falconer by George MacDonald (reading fiction TXT) 📕

violin for the present, and contented herself with assuring Robert that he was heartily welcome to go through the garden as often as he pleased. She accompanied her words with a smile that made Robert feel not only that she was the most beautiful of all princesses in fairy-tales, but that she had presented him with something beyond price in the most self-denying manner. He took off his cap, thanked her with much heartiness, if not with much polish, and hastened to the gate of his grandmother's little garden. A few years later such an encounter might have spoiled his dinner: I have to record no such evil result of the adventure.

With Miss St. John, music was the highest form of human expression, as must often be the case with those whose feeling is much in advance of their thought, and to whom, therefore, may be called mental sensation is the highest known condition. Music to such is poetry in solution, and generates that infinite atmosphere, common to both musician and poet, which the latter fills with shining worlds.-But if my reader wishes to follow out for himself the idea herein suggested, he must be careful to make no confusion between those who feel musically or think poetically, and the musician or the poet. One who can only play the music of others, however exquisitely, is not a musician, any more than one who can read verse to the satisfaction, or even expound it to the enlightenment of the poet himself, is therefore a poet.-When Miss St. John would worship God, it was in music that she found the chariot of fire in which to ascend heavenward. Hence music was the divine thing in the world for her; and to find any one loving music humbly and faithfully was to find a brother or sister believer. But she had been so often disappointed in her expectations from those she took to be such, that of late she had become less sanguine. Still there was something about this boy that roused once more her musical hopes; and, however she may have restrained herself from the full indulgence of them, certain it is that the next day, when she saw Robert pass, this time leisurely, along the top of the garden, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and, allowing him time to reach his den, followed him, in the hope of finding out whether or not he could play. I do not know what proficiency the boy had attained, very likely not much, for a man can feel the music of his own bow, or of his own lines, long before any one else can discover it. He had already made a path, not exactly worn one, but trampled one, through the neglected grass, and Miss St. John had no difficulty in finding his entrance to the factory.

She felt a little eerie, as Robert would have called it, when she passed into the waste silent place; for besides the wasteness and the silence, motionless machines have a look of death about them, at least when they bear such signs of disuse as those that filled these rooms. Hearing no violin, she waited for a while in the ground-floor of the building; but still hearing nothing, she ascended to the first floor. Here, likewise, all was silence. She hesitated, but at length ventured up the next stair, beginning, however, to feel a little troubled as well as eerie, the silence was so obstinately persistent. Was it possible that there was no violin in that brown paper? But that boy could not be a liar. Passing shelves piled-up with stores of old thread, she still went on, led by a curiosity stronger than her gathering fear. At last she came to a little room, the door of which was open, and there she saw Robert lying on the floor with his head in a pool of blood.

Now Mary St. John was both brave and kind; and, therefore, though not insensible to the fact that she too must be in danger where violence had been used to a boy, she set about assisting him at once. His face was deathlike, but she did not think he was dead. She drew him out into the passage, for the room was close, and did all she could to recover him; but for some time he did not even breathe. At last his lips moved, and he murmured,

'Sandy, Sandy, ye've broken my bonnie leddy.'

Then he opened his eyes, and seeing a face to dream about bending in kind consternation over him, closed them again with a smile and a sigh, as if to prolong his dream.

The blood now came fast into his forsaken cheeks, and began to flow again from the wound in his head. The lady bound it up with her handkerchief. After a little he rose, though with difficulty, and stared wildly about him, saying, with imperfect articulation, 'Father! father!' Then he looked at Miss St. John with a kind of dazed inquiry in his eyes, tried several times to speak, and could not.

'Can you walk at all?' asked Miss St. John, supporting him, for she was anxious to leave the place.

'Yes, mem, weel eneuch,' he answered.

'Come along, then. I will help you home.'

'Na, na,' he said, as if he had just recalled something. 'Dinna min' me. Rin hame, mem, or he'll see ye!'

'Who will see me?'

Robert stared more wildly, put his hand to his head, and made no reply. She half led, half supported him down the stair, as far as the first landing, when he cried out in a tone of anguish,

'My bonny leddy!'

'What is it?' asked Miss St. John, thinking he meant her.

'My fiddle! my fiddle! She 'll be a' in bits,' he answered, and turned to go up again.

'Sit down here,' said Miss St. John, 'and I'll fetch it.'

Though not without some tremor, she darted back to the room. Then she turned faint for the first time, but determinedly supporting herself, she looked about, saw a brown-paper parcel on a shelf, took it, and hurried out with a shudder.

Robert stood leaning against the wall. He stretched out his hands eagerly.

'Gie me her. Gie me her.'

'You had better let me carry it. You are not able.'

'Na, na, mem. Ye dinna ken hoo easy she is to hurt.'

'Oh, yes, I do!' returned Miss St. John, smiling, and Robert could not withstand the smile.

'Weel, tak care o' her, as ye wad o' yer ain sel', mem,' he said, yielding.

He was now much better, and before he had been two minutes in the open air, insisted that he was quite well. When they reached Captain Forsyth's garden he again held out his hands for his violin.

'No, no,' said his new friend. 'You wouldn't have Betty see you like that, would you?'

'No, mem; but I'll put in the fiddle at my ain window, and she sanna hae a chance o' seein' 't,' answered Robert, not understanding her; for though he felt a good deal of pain, he had no idea what a dreadful appearance he presented.

'Don't you know that you have a wound on your head?' asked Miss St. John.

'Na! hev I?' said Robert, putting up his hand. 'But I maun gang-there's nae help for 't,' he added.-'Gin I cud only win to my ain room ohn Betty seen me!-Eh! mem, I hae blaudit (spoiled) a' yer bonny goon. That's a sair vex.'

'Never mind it,' returned Miss St. John, smiling. 'It is of no consequence. But you must come with me. I must see what I can do for your head. Poor boy!'

'Eh, mem! but ye are kin'! Gin ye speik like that ye'll gar me greit. Naebody ever spak' to me like that afore. Maybe ye kent my mamma. Ye're sae like her.'

This word mamma was the only remnant of her that lingered in his speech. Had she lived he would have spoken very differently. They were now walking towards the house.

'No, I did not know your mamma. Is she dead?'

'Lang syne, mem. And sae they tell me is yours.'

'Yes; and my father too. Your father is alive, I hope?'

Robert made no answer. Miss St. John turned.

The boy had a strange look, and seemed struggling with something in his throat. She thought he was going to faint again, and hurried him into the drawing-room. Her aunt had not yet left her room, and her uncle was out.

'Sit down,' she said-so kindly-and Robert sat down on the edge of a chair. Then she left the room, but presently returned with a little brandy. 'There,' she said, offering the glass, 'that will do you good.'

'What is 't, mem?'

'Brandy. There's water in it, of course.'

'I daurna touch 't. Grannie cudna bide me to touch 't,'

So determined was he, that Miss St. John was forced to yield. Perhaps she wondered that the boy who would deceive his grandmother about a violin should be so immovable in regarding her pleasure in the matter of a needful medicine. But in this fact I begin to see the very Falconer of my manhood's worship.

'Eh, mem! gin ye wad play something upo' her,' he resumed, pointing to the piano, which, although he had never seen one before, he at once recognized, by some hidden mental operation, as the source of the sweet sounds heard at the window, 'it wad du me mair guid than a haill bottle o' brandy, or whusky either.'

'How do you know that?' asked Miss St. John, proceeding to sponge the wound.

''Cause mony's the time I hae stud oot there i' the street, hearkenin'. Dooble Sanny says 'at ye play jist as gin ye war my gran'father's fiddle hersel', turned into the bonniest cratur ever God made.'

'How did you get such a terrible cut?'

She had removed the hair, and found that the injury was severe.

The boy was silent. She glanced round in his face. He was staring as if he saw nothing, heard nothing. She would try again.

'Did you fall? Or how did you cut your head?'

'Yes, yes, mem, I fell,' he answered, hastily, with an air of relief, and possibly with some tone of gratitude for the suggestion of a true answer.

'What made you fall?'

Utter silence again. She felt a kind of turn-I do not know another word to express what I mean: the boy must have fits, and either could not tell, or was ashamed to tell, what had befallen him. Thereafter she too was silent, and Robert thought she was offended. Possibly he felt a change in the touch of her fingers.

'Mem, I wad like to tell ye,' he said, 'but I daurna.'

'Oh! never mind,' she returned kindly.

'Wad ye promise nae to tell naebody?'

'I don't want to know,' she answered, confirmed in her suspicion, and at the same time ashamed of the alteration of feeling which the discovery had occasioned.

An uncomfortable silence followed, broken by Robert.

'Gin ye binna pleased wi' me, mem,' he said, 'I canna bide ye to gang on wi' siccan a job