Robert Falconer, George MacDonald [beach read .TXT] 📗

purple flame for the outburst of the autumn. The road wound between, now swampy and worn into deep ruts, now sandy and broken with large stones. Down to its edge would come the dwarfed oak, or the mountain ash, or the silver birch, single and small, but lovely and fresh; and now green fields, fenced with walls of earth as green as themselves, or of stones overgrown with moss, would stretch away on both sides, sprinkled with busily-feeding cattle. Now they would pass through a farm-steading, perfumed with the breath of cows, and the odour of burning peat-so fragrant! though not yet so grateful to the inner sense as it would be when encountered in after years and in foreign lands. For the smell of burning and the smell of earth are the deepest underlying sensuous bonds of the earth's unity, and the common brotherhood of them that dwell thereon. Now the scent of the larches would steal from the hill, or the wind would waft the odour of the white clover, beloved of his grandmother, to Robert's nostrils, and he would turn aside to pull her a handful. Then they clomb a high ridge, on the top of which spread a moorland, dreary and desolate, brightened by nothing save 'the canna's hoary beard' waving in the wind, and making it look even more desolate from the sympathy they felt with the forsaken grass. This crossed, they descended between young plantations of firs and rowan-trees and birches, till they reached a warm house on the side of the slope, with farm-offices and ricks of corn and hay all about it, the front overgrown with roses and honeysuckle, and a white-flowering plant unseen of their eyes hitherto, and therefore full of mystery. From the open kitchen door came the smell of something good. But beyond all to Robert was the welcome of Miss Lammie, whose small fat hand closed upon his like a very love-pudding, after partaking of which even his grandmother's stately reception, followed immediately by the words 'Noo be dooce,' could not chill the warmth in his bosom.

I know but one writer whose pen would have been able worthily to set forth the delights of the first few days at Bodyfauld-Jean Paul. Nor would he have disdained to make the gladness of a country school-boy the theme of that pen. Indeed, often has he done so. If the writer has any higher purpose than the amusement of other boys, he will find the life of a country boy richer for his ends than that of a town boy. For example, he has a deeper sense of the marvel of Nature, a tenderer feeling of her feminality. I do not mean that the other cannot develop this sense, but it is generally feeble, and there is consequently less chance of its surviving. As far as my experience goes, town girls and country boys love Nature most. I have known town girls love her as passionately as country boys. Town boys have too many books and pictures. They see Nature in mirrors-invaluable privilege after they know herself, not before. They have greater opportunity of observing human nature; but here also the books are too many and various. They are cleverer than country boys, but they are less profound; their observation may be quicker; their perception is shallower. They know better what to do on an emergency; they know worse how to order their ways. Of course, in this, as in a thousand other matters, Nature will burst out laughing in the face of the would-be philosopher, and bringing forward her town boy, will say, 'Look here!' For the town boys are Nature's boys after all, at least so long as doctrines of self-preservation and ambition have not turned them from children of the kingdom into dirt-worms. But I must stop, for I am getting up to the neck in a bog of discrimination. As if I did not know the nobility of some townspeople, compared with the worldliness of some country folk. I give it up. We are all good and all bad. God mend all. Nothing will do for Jew or Gentile, Frenchman or Englishman, Negro or Circassian, town boy or country boy, but the kingdom of heaven which is within him, and must come thence to the outside of him.

To a boy like Robert the changes of every day, from country to town with the gay morning, from town to country with the sober evening-for country as Rothieden might be to Edinburgh, much more was Bodyfauld country to Rothieden-were a source of boundless delight. Instead of houses, he saw the horizon; instead of streets or walled gardens, he roamed over fields bathed in sunlight and wind. Here it was good to get up before the sun, for then he could see the sun get up. And of all things those evening shadows lengthening out over the grassy wildernesses-for fields of a very moderate size appeared such to an imagination ever ready at the smallest hint to ascend its solemn throne-were a deepening marvel. Town to country is what a ceiling is to a cælum.


CHAPTER XVII.

ADVENTURES.

Grannie's first action every evening, the moment the boys entered the room, was to glance up at the clock, that she might see whether they had arrived in reasonable time. This was not pleasant, because it admonished Robert how impossible it was for him to have a lesson on his own violin so long as the visit to Bodyfauld lasted. If they had only been allowed to sleep at Rothieden, what a universe of freedom would have been theirs! As it was, he had but two hours to himself, pared at both ends, in the middle of the day. Dooble Sanny might have given him a lesson at that time, but he did not dare to carry his instrument through the streets of Rothieden, for the proceeding would be certain to come to his grandmother's ears. Several days passed indeed before he made up his mind as to how he was to reap any immediate benefit from the recovery of the violin. For after he had made up his mind to run the risk of successive mid-day solos in the old factory-he was not prepared to carry the instrument through the streets, or be seen entering the place with it.

But the factory lay at the opposite corner of a quadrangle of gardens, the largest of which belonged to itself; and the corner of this garden touched the corner of Captain Forsyth's, which had formerly belonged to Andrew Falconer: he had had a door made in the walls at the point of junction, so that he could go from his house to his business across his own property: if this door were not locked, and Robert could pass without offence, what a north-west passage it would be for him! The little garden belonging to his grandmother's house had only a slight wooden fence to divide it from the other, and even in this fence there was a little gate: he would only have to run along Captain Forsyth's top walk to reach the door. The blessed thought came to him as he lay in bed at Bodyfauld: he would attempt the passage the very next day.

With his violin in its paper under his arm, he sped like a hare from gate to door, found it not even latched, only pushed to and rusted into such rest as it was dangerous to the hinges to disturb. He opened it, however, without any accident, and passed through; then closing it behind him, took his way more leisurely through the tangled grass of his grandmother's property. When he reached the factory, he judged it prudent to search out a more secret nook, one more full of silence, that is, whence the sounds would be less certain to reach the ears of the passers by, and came upon a small room, near the top, which had been the manager's bedroom, and which, as he judged from what seemed the signs of ancient occupation, a cloak hanging on the wall, and the ashes of a fire lying in the grate, nobody had entered for years: it was the safest place in the world. He undid his instrument carefully, tuned its strings tenderly, and soon found that his former facility, such as it was, had not ebbed away beyond recovery. Hastening back as he came, he was just in time for his dinner, and narrowly escaped encountering Betty in the transe. He had been tempted to leave the instrument, but no one could tell what might happen, and to doubt would be to be miserable with anxiety.

He did the same for several days without interruption-not, however, without observation. When, returning from his fourth visit, he opened the door between the gardens, he started back in dismay, for there stood the beautiful lady.

Robert hesitated for a moment whether to fly or speak. He was a Lowland country boy, and therefore rude of speech, but he was three parts a Celt, and those who know the address of the Irish or of the Highlanders, know how much that involves as to manners and bearing. He advanced the next instant and spoke.

'I beg yer pardon, mem. I thoucht naebody wad see me. I haena dune nae ill.'

'I had not the least suspicion of it, I assure you,' returned Miss St. John. 'But, tell me, what makes you go through here always at the same hour with the same parcel under your arm?'

'Ye winna tell naebody-will ye, mem, gin I tell you?'

Miss St. John, amused, and interested besides in the contrast between the boy's oddly noble face and good bearing on the one hand, and on the other the drawl of his bluntly articulated speech and the coarseness of his tone, both seeming to her in the extreme of provincialism, promised; and Robert, entranced by all the qualities of her voice and speech, and nothing disenchanted by the nearer view of her lovely face, confided in her at once.

'Ye see, mem,' he said, 'I cam' upo' my grandfather's fiddle. But my grandmither thinks the fiddle's no gude. And sae she tuik and she hed it. But I faun't it again. An' I daurna play i' the hoose, though my grannie's i' the country, for Betty hearin' me and tellin' her. And sae I gang to the auld fact'ry there. It belangs to my grannie, and sae does the yaird (garden). An' this hoose and yaird was ance my father's, and sae he had that door throu, they tell me. An' I thocht gin it suld be open, it wad be a fine thing for me, to haud fowk ohn seen me. But it was verra ill-bred to you, mem, I ken, to come throu your yaird ohn speirt leave. I beg yer pardon, mem, an' I'll jist gang back, and roon' by the ro'd. This is my fiddle I hae aneath my airm. We bude to pit back the case o' 't whaur it was afore, i' my grannie's bed, to haud her ohn kent 'at she had tint the grup o' 't.'

Certainly Miss St. John could not have understood the half of the words Robert used, but she understood his story notwithstanding. Herself an enthusiast in music, her sympathies were at once engaged for the awkward boy who was thus trying to steal an entrance into the fairy halls of sound. But she forbore any further allusion to the