Robert Falconer by George MacDonald (reading fiction TXT) 📕

that had never yet interfered with the safety of his fiddle: Robert heard its faint echo as he laid it gently down. Nor was he too tipsy to lock the door behind him, leaving Robert incarcerated amongst the old boots and leather and rosin.

For one moment only did the boy's heart fail him. The next he was in action, for a happy thought had already struck him. Hastily, that he might forestall sleep in the brain of the soutar, he undid his parcel, and after carefully enveloping his own violin in the paper, took the old wife of the soutar, and proceeded to perform upon her a trick which in a merry moment his master had taught him, and which, not without some feeling of irreverence, he had occasionally practised upon his own bonny lady.

The shoemaker's room was overhead; its thin floor of planks was the ceiling of the workshop. Ere Dooble Sanny was well laid by the side of his sleeping wife, he heard a frightful sound from below, as of some one tearing his beloved violin to pieces. No sound of rending coffin-planks or rising dead would have been so horrible in the ears of the soutar. He sprang from his bed with a haste that shook the crazy tenement to its foundation.

The moment Robert heard that, he put the violin in its place, and took his station by the door-cheek. The soutar came tumbling down the stair, and rushed at the door, but found that he had to go back for the key. When, with uncertain hand, he had opened at length, he went straight to the nest of his treasure, and Robert slipping out noiselessly, was in the next street before Dooble Sanny, having found the fiddle uninjured, and not discovering the substitution, had finished concluding that the whisky and his imagination had played him a very discourteous trick between them, and retired once more to bed. And not till Robert had cut his foot badly with a piece of glass, did he discover that he had left his shoes behind him. He tied it up with his handkerchief, and limped home the three miles, too happy to think of consequences.

Before he had gone far, the moon floated up on the horizon, large, and shaped like the broadside of a barrel. She stared at him in amazement to see him out at such a time of the night. But he grasped his violin and went on. He had no fear now, even when he passed again over the desolate moss, although he saw the stagnant pools glimmering about him in the moonlight. And ever after this he had a fancy for roaming at night. He reached home in safety, found the door as he had left it, and ascended to his bed, triumphant in his fiddle.

In the morning bloody prints were discovered on the stair, and traced to the door of his room. Miss Lammie entered in some alarm, and found him fast asleep on his bed, still dressed, with a brown-paper parcel in his arms, and one of his feet evidently enough the source of the frightful stain. She was too kind to wake him, and inquiry was postponed till they met at breakfast, to which he descended bare-footed, save for a handkerchief on the injured foot.

'Robert, my lad,' said Mr. Lammie, kindly, 'hoo cam ye by that bluidy fut?'

Robert began the story, and, guided by a few questions from his host, at length told the tale of the violin from beginning to end, omitting only his adventure in the factory. Many a guffaw from Mr. Lammie greeted its progress, and Miss Lammie laughed till the tears rolled unheeded down her cheeks, especially when Shargar, emboldened by the admiration Robert had awakened, imparted his private share in the comedy, namely, the entombment of Boston in a fifth-fold state; for the Lammies were none of the unco guid to be censorious upon such exploits. The whole business advanced the boys in favour at Bodyfauld; and the entreaties of Robert that nothing, should reach his grandmother's ears were entirely unnecessary.

After breakfast Miss Lammie dressed the wounded foot. But what was to be done for shoes, for Robert's Sunday pair had been left at home? Under ordinary circumstances it would have been no great hardship to him to go barefoot for the rest of the autumn, but the cut was rather a serious one. So his feet were cased in a pair of Mr. Lammie's Sunday boots, which, from their size, made it so difficult for him to get along, that he did not go far from the doors, but revelled in the company of his violin in the corn-yard amongst last year's ricks, in the barn, and in the hayloft, playing all the tunes he knew, and trying over one or two more from a very dirty old book of Scotch airs, which his teacher had lent him.

In the evening, as they sat together after supper, Mr. Lammie said,

'Weel, Robert, hoo's the fiddle?'

'Fine, I thank ye, sir,' answered Robert.

'Lat's hear what ye can do wi' 't.'

Robert fetched the instrument and complied.

'That's no that ill,' remarked the farmer. 'But eh! man, ye suld hae heard yer gran'father han'le the bow. That was something to hear-ance in a body's life. Ye wad hae jist thoucht the strings had been drawn frae his ain inside, he kent them sae weel, and han'led them sae fine. He jist fan' (felt) them like wi' 's fingers throu' the bow an' the horsehair an' a', an' a' the time he was drawin' the soun' like the sowl frae them, an' they jist did onything 'at he likit. Eh! to hear him play the Flooers o' the Forest wad hae garred ye greit.'

'Cud my father play?' asked Robert.

'Ay, weel eneuch for him. He could do onything he likit to try, better nor middlin'. I never saw sic a man. He played upo' the bagpipes, an' the flute, an' the bugle, an' I kenna what a'; but a'thegither they cam' na within sicht o' his father upo' the auld fiddle. Lat's hae a luik at her.'

He took the instrument in his hands reverently, turned it over and over, and said,

'Ay, ay; it's the same auld mill, an' I wat it grun' (ground) bonny meal.-That sma' crater noo 'ill be worth a hunner poun', I s' warran',' he added, as he restored it carefully into Robert's hands, to whom it was honey and spice to hear his bonny lady paid her due honours. 'Can ye play the Flooers o' the Forest, no?' he added yet again.

'Ay can I,' answered Robert, with some pride, and laid the bow on the violin, and played the air through without blundering a single note.

'Weel, that's verra weel,' said Mr. Lammie. 'But it's nae mair like as yer gran'father played it, than gin there war twa sawyers at it, ane at ilka lug o' the bow, wi' the fiddle atween them in a saw-pit.'

Robert's heart sank within him; but Mr. Lammie went on:

'To hear the bow croudin' (cooing), and wailin', an' greitin' ower the strings, wad hae jist garred ye see the lands o' braid Scotlan' wi' a' the lasses greitin' for the lads that lay upo' reid Flodden side; lasses to cut, and lasses to gether, and lasses to bin', and lasses to stook, and lasses to lead, and no a lad amo' them a'. It's just the murnin' o' women, doin' men's wark as weel 's their ain, for the men that suld hae been there to du 't; and I s' warran' ye, no a word to the orra (exceptional, over-all) lad that didna gang wi' the lave (rest).'

Robert had not hitherto understood it-this wail of a pastoral and ploughing people over those who had left their side to return no more from the field of battle. But Mr. Lammie's description of his grandfather's rendering laid hold of his heart.

'I wad raither be grutten for nor kissed,' said he, simply.

'Haud ye to that, my lad,' returned Mr. Lammie. 'Lat the lasses greit for ye gin they like; but haud oot ower frae the kissin'. I wadna mell wi' 't.'

'Hoot, father, dinna put sic nonsense i' the bairns' heids,' said Miss Lammie.

'Whilk 's the nonsense, Aggy?' asked her father, slily. 'But I doobt,' he added, 'he'll never play the Flooers o' the Forest as it suld be playt, till he's had a taste o' the kissin', lass.'

'Weel, it's a queer instructor o' yowth, 'at says an' onsays i' the same breith.'

'Never ye min'. I haena contradickit mysel' yet; for I hae said naething. But, Robert, my man, ye maun pit mair sowl into yer fiddlin'. Ye canna play the fiddle till ye can gar 't greit. It's unco ready to that o' 'ts ain sel'; an' it's my opingon that there's no anither instrument but the fiddle fit to play the Flooers o' the Forest upo', for that very rizzon, in a' his Maijesty's dominions.-My father playt the fiddle, but no like your gran'father.'

Robert was silent. He spent the whole of the next morning in reiterated attempts to alter his style of playing the air in question, but in vain-as far at least as any satisfaction to himself was the result. He laid the instrument down in despair, and sat for an hour disconsolate upon the bedside. His visit had not as yet been at all so fertile in pleasure as he had anticipated. He could not fly his kite; he could not walk; he had lost his shoes; Mr. Lammie had not approved of his playing; and, although he had his will of the fiddle, he could not get his will out of it. He could never play so as to please Miss St. John. Nothing but manly pride kept him from crying. He was sorely disappointed and dissatisfied; and the world might be dreary even at Bodyfauld.

Few men can wait upon the bright day in the midst of the dull one. Nor can many men even wait for it.


CHAPTER XX.

JESSIE HEWSON.

The wound on Robert's foot festered, and had not yet healed when the sickle was first put to the barley. He hobbled out, however, to the reapers, for he could not bear to be left alone with his violin, so dreadfully oppressive was the knowledge that he could not use it after its nature. He began to think whether his incapacity was not a judgment upon him for taking it away from the soutar, who could do so much more with it, and to whom, consequently, it was so much more valuable. The pain in his foot, likewise, had been very depressing; and but for the kindness of his friends, especially of Miss Lammie, he would have been altogether 'a weary wight forlorn.'

Shargar was happier than ever he had been in his life. His white face hung on Miss Lammie's looks, and haunted her steps from spence (store-room, as in Devonshire) to milk-house, and from milk-house to chessel, surmounted by the glory of his red hair, which a farm-servant declared he had once mistaken for a fun-buss (whin-bush) on fire. This day she had gone to the field to see the first handful of barley cut, and Shargar was there, of course.

It was a glorious day of