Robert Falconer by George MacDonald (reading fiction TXT) 📕

still, trembling.

'Jessie, dinna ye ken me-Robert Faukner? Dinna be feart at me. What's the maitter wi' ye, 'at ye winna speik till a body? Hoo's a' the fowk at hame?'

She burst out crying, cast one look into Robert's face, and fled. What a change was in that face? The peach-colour was gone from her cheek; it was pale and thin. Her eyes were hollow, with dark shadows under them, the shadows of a sad sunset. A foreboding of the truth arose in his heart, and the tears rushed up into his eyes. The next moment the eidolon of Mary St. John, moving gracious and strong, clothed in worship and the dignity which is its own defence, appeared beside that of Jessie Hewson, her bowed head shaken with sobs, and her weak limbs urged to ungraceful flight. As if walking in the vision of an eternal truth, he went straight to Captain Forsyth's door.

'I want to speak to Miss St. John, Isie,' said Robert.

'She'll be doon in a minit.'

'But isna yer mistress i' the drawin'-room?-I dinna want to see her.'

'Ow, weel,' said the girl, who was almost fresh from the country, 'jist rin up the stair, an' chap at the door o' her room.'

With the simplicity of a child, for what a girl told him to do must be right, Robert sped up the stair, his heart going like a fire-engine. He had never approached Mary's room from this side, but instinct or something else led him straight to her door. He knocked.

'Come in,' she said, never doubting it was the maid, and Robert entered.

She was brushing her hair by the light of a chamber candle. Robert was seized with awe, and his limbs trembled. He could have kneeled before her-not to beg forgiveness, he did not think of that-but to worship, as a man may worship a woman. It is only a strong, pure heart like Robert's that ever can feel all the inroad of the divine mystery of womanhood. But he did not kneel. He had a duty to perform. A flush rose in Miss St. John's face, and sank away, leaving it pale. It was not that she thought once of her own condition, with her hair loose on her shoulders, but, able only to conjecture what had brought him thither, she could not but regard Robert's presence with dismay. She stood with her ivory brush in her right hand uplifted, and a great handful of hair in her left. She was soon relieved, however, although what with his contemplated intercession, the dim vision of Mary's lovely face between the masses of her hair, and the lavender odour that filled the room-perhaps also a faint suspicion of impropriety sufficient to give force to the rest-Robert was thrown back into the abyss of his mother-tongue, and out of this abyss talked like a Behemoth.

'Robert!' said Mary, in a tone which, had he not been so eager after his end, he might have interpreted as one of displeasure.

'Ye maun hearken till me, mem.-Whan I was oot at Bodyfauld,' he began methodically, and Mary, bewildered, gave one hasty brush to her handful of hair and again stood still: she could imagine no connection between this meeting and their late parting-'Whan I was was oot at Bodyfauld ae simmer, I grew acquant wi' a bonnie lassie there, the dochter o' Jeames Hewson, an honest cottar, wi' Shakspeare an' the Arabian Nichts upo' a skelf i' the hoose wi' 'im. I gaed in ae day whan I wasna weel; an' she jist ministert to me, as nane ever did but yersel', mem. An' she was that kin' an' mither-like to the wee bit greitin' bairnie 'at she had to tak care o' 'cause her mither was oot wi' the lave shearin'! Her face was jist like a simmer day, an' weel I likit the luik o' the lassie!-I met her again the nicht. Ye never saw sic a change. A white face, an' nothing but greitin' to come oot o' her. She ran frae me as gin I had been the de'il himsel'. An' the thocht o' you, sae bonnie an' straucht an' gran', cam ower me.'

Yielding to a masterful impulse, Robert did kneel now. As if sinner, and not mediator, he pressed the hem of her garment to his lips.

'Dinna be angry at me, Miss St. John,' he pleaded, 'but be mercifu' to the lassie. Wha's to help her that can no more luik a man i' the face, but the clear-e'ed lass that wad luik the sun himsel' oot o' the lift gin he daured to say a word against her. It's ae woman that can uphaud anither. Ye ken what I mean, an' I needna say mair.'

He rose and turned to leave the room.

Bewildered and doubtful, Miss St. John did not know what to answer, but felt that she must make some reply.

'You haven't told me where to find the girl, or what you want me to do with her.'

'I'll fin' oot whaur she bides,' he said, moving again towards the door.

'But what am I to do with her, Robert?'

'That's your pairt. Ye maun fin' oot what to do wi' her. I canna tell ye that. But gin I was you, I wad gie her a kiss to begin wi'. She's nane o' yer brazen-faced hizzies, yon. A kiss wad be the savin' o' her.'

'But you may be-. But I have nothing to go upon. She would resent my interference.'

'She's past resentin' onything. She was gaein' aboot the toon like ane o' the deid 'at hae naething to say to onybody, an' naebody onything to say to them. Gin she gangs on like that she'll no be alive lang.'

That night Jessie Hewson disappeared. A mile or two up the river under a high bank, from which the main current had receded, lay an awful, swampy place-full of reeds, except in the middle where was one round space full of dark water and mud. Near this Jessie Hewson was seen about an hour after Robert had thus pled for her with his angel.

The event made a deep impression upon Robert. The last time that he saw them, James and his wife were as cheerful as usual, and gave him a hearty welcome. Jessie was in service, and doing well, they said. The next time he opened the door of the cottage it was like the entrance to a haunted tomb. Not a smile was in the place. James's cheeriness was all gone. He was sitting at the table with his head leaning on his hand. His Bible was open before him, but he was not reading a word. His wife was moving listlessly about. They looked just as Jessie had looked that night-as if they had died long ago, but somehow or other could not get into their graves and be at rest. The child Jessie had nursed with such care was toddling about, looking rueful with loss. George had gone to America, and the whole of that family's joy had vanished from the earth.

The subject was not resumed between Miss St. John and Robert. The next time he saw her, he knew by her pale troubled face that she had heard the report that filled the town; and she knew by his silence that it had indeed reference to the same girl of whom he had spoken to her. The music would not go right that evening. Mary was distraite, and Robert was troubled. It was a week or two before there came a change. When the turn did come, over his being love rushed up like a spring-tide from the ocean of the Infinite.

He was accompanying her piano with his violin. He made blunders, and her playing was out of heart. They stopped as by consent, and a moment's silence followed. All at once she broke out with something Robert had never heard before. He soon found that it was a fantasy upon Ericson's poem. Ever through a troubled harmony ran a silver thread of melody from far away. It was the caverns drinking from the tempest overhead, the grasses growing under the snow, the stars making music with the dark, the streams filling the night with the sounds the day had quenched, the whispering call of the dreams left behind in 'the fields of sleep,'-in a word, the central life pulsing in aeonian peace through the outer ephemeral storms. At length her voice took up the theme. The silvery thread became song, and through all the opposing, supporting harmonies she led it to the solution of a close in which the only sorrow was in the music itself, for its very life is an 'endless ending.' She found Robert kneeling by her side. As she turned from the instrument his head drooped over her knee. She laid her hand on his clustering curls, bethought herself, and left the room. Robert wandered out as in a dream. At midnight he found himself on a solitary hill-top, seated in the heather, with a few tiny fir-trees about him, and the sounds of a wind, ethereal as the stars overhead, flowing through their branches: he heard the sound of it, but it did not touch him.

Where was God?

In him and his question.


CHAPTER XX.

ERICSON LOSES TO WIN.

If Mary St. John had been an ordinary woman, and if, notwithstanding, Robert had been in love with her, he would have done very little in preparation for the coming session. But although she now possessed him, although at times he only knew himself as loving her, there was such a mountain air of calm about her, such an outgoing divinity of peace, such a largely moulded harmony of being, that he could not love her otherwise than grandly. For her sake, weary with loving her, he would yet turn to his work, and, to be worthy of her, or rather, for he never dreamed of being worthy of her, to be worthy of leave to love her, would forget her enough to lay hold of some abstract truth of lines, angles, or symbols. A strange way of being in love, reader? You think so? I would there were more love like it: the world would be centuries nearer its redemption if a millionth part of the love in it were of the sort. All I insist, however, on my reader's believing is, that it showed, in a youth like Robert, not less but more love that he could go against love's sweetness for the sake of love's greatness. Literally, not figuratively, Robert would kiss the place where her foot had trod; but I know that once he rose from such a kiss 'to trace the hyperbola by means of a string.'

It had been arranged between Ericson and Robert, in Miss Napier's parlour, the old lady knitting beside, that Ericson should start, if possible, a week earlier than usual, and spend the difference with Robert at Rothieden. But then the old lady had opened her mouth and spoken. And I firmly believe, though little sign of tenderness passed between them, it was with an elder sister's feeling for Letty's admiration of the 'lan'less laird,' that she said as follows:-

'Dinna ye think,