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

blessed eternity of five or six weeks, he would tip the whole with a piece of wood, to which grass, quantum suff., might be added from the happy fields.

Upon this occasion the dragon was a monster one. With a little help from Shargar, he had laid the skeleton of a six-foot specimen, and had carried the body to a satisfactory completion.

The tail was still growing, having as yet only sixteen joints, when Mr. Lammie called with an invitation for the boys to spend their holidays with him. It was fortunate for Robert that he was in the room when Mr. Lammie presented his petition, otherwise he would never have heard of it till the day of departure arrived, and would thus have lost all the delights of anticipation. In frantic effort to control his ecstasy, he sped to the garret, and with trembling hands tied the second joint of the day to the tail of the dragon-the first time he had ever broken the law of its accretion. Once broken, that law was henceforth an object of scorn, and the tail grew with frightful rapidity. It was indeed a great dragon. And none of the paltry fields about Rothieden should be honoured with its first flight, but from Bodyfauld should the majestic child of earth ascend into the regions of upper air.

My reader may here be tempted to remind me that Robert had been only too glad to return to Rothieden from his former visit. But I must in my turn remind him that the circumstances were changed. In the first place, the fiddle was substituted for grannie; and in the second, the dragon for the school.

The making of this dragon was a happy thing for Shargar, and a yet happier thing for Robert, in that it introduced again for a time some community of interest between them. Shargar was happier than he had been for many a day because Robert used him; and Robert was yet happier than Shargar in that his conscience, which had reproached him for his neglect of him, was now silent. But not even his dragon had turned aside his attentions from his violin; and many were the consultations between the boys as to how best she might be transported to Bodyfauld, where endless opportunities of holding communion with her would not be wanting. The difficulty was only how to get her clear of Rothieden.

The play commenced on a Saturday; but not till the Monday were they to be set at liberty. Wearily the hours of mental labour and bodily torpidity which the Scotch called the Sabbath passed away, and at length the millennial morning dawned. Robert and Shargar were up before the sun. But strenuous were the efforts they made to suppress all indications of excitement, lest grannie, fearing the immoral influence of gladness, should give orders to delay their departure for an awfully indefinite period, which might be an hour, a day, or even a week. Horrible conception! Their behaviour was so decorous that not even a hinted threat escaped the lips of Mrs. Falconer.

They set out three hours before noon, carrying the great kite, and Robert's school bag, of green baize, full of sundries: a cart from Bodyfauld was to fetch their luggage later in the day. As soon as they were clear of the houses, Shargar lay down behind a dyke with the kite, and Robert set off at full speed for Dooble Sanny's shop, making a half-circuit of the town to avoid the chance of being seen by grannie or Betty. Having given due warning before, he found the brown-paper parcel ready for him, and carried it off in fearful triumph. He joined Shargar in safety, and they set out on their journey as rich and happy a pair of tramps as ever tramped, having six weeks of their own in their pockets to spend and not spare.

A hearty welcome awaited them, and they were soon revelling in the glories of the place, the first instalment of which was in the shape of curds and cream, with oatcake and butter, as much as they liked. After this they would 'e'en to it like French falconers' with their kite, for the wind had been blowing bravely all the morning, having business to do with the harvest. The season of stubble not yet arrived, they were limited to the pasturage and moorland, which, however, large as their kite was, were spacious enough. Slowly the great-headed creature arose from the hands of Shargar, and ascended about twenty feet, when, as if seized with a sudden fit of wrath or fierce indignation, it turned right round and dashed itself with headlong fury to the earth, as if sooner than submit to such influences a moment longer it would beat out its brains at once.

'It hasna half tail eneuch,' cried Robert. 'It's queer 'at things winna gang up ohn hauden them doon. Pu' a guid han'fu' o' clover, Shargar. She's had her fa', an' noo she'll gang up a' richt. She's nane the waur o' 't.'

Upon the next attempt, the kite rose triumphantly. But just as it reached the length of the string it shot into a faster current of air, and Robert found himself first dragged along in spite of his efforts, and then lifted from his feet. After carrying him a few yards, the dragon broke its string, dropped him in a ditch, and, drifting away, went fluttering and waggling downwards in the distance.

'Luik whaur she gangs, Shargar,' cried Robert, from the ditch.

Experience coming to his aid, Shargar took landmarks of the direction in which it went; and ere long they found it with its tail entangled in the topmost branches of a hawthorn tree, and its head beating the ground at its foot. It was at once agreed that they would not fly it again till they got some stronger string.

Having heard the adventure, Mr. Lammie produced a shilling from the pocket of his corduroys, and gave it to Robert to spend upon the needful string. He resolved to go to the town the next morning and make a grand purchase of the same. During the afternoon he roamed about the farm with his hands in his pockets, revolving if not many memories, yet many questions, while Shargar followed like a pup at the heels of Miss Lammie, to whom, during his former visit, he had become greatly attached.

In the evening, resolved to make a confidant of Mr. Lammie, and indeed to cast himself upon the kindness of the household generally, Robert went up to his room to release his violin from its prison of brown paper. What was his dismay to find-not his bonny leddy, but her poor cousin, the soutar's auld wife! It was too bad. Dooble Sanny indeed!

He first stared, then went into a rage, and then came out of it to go into a resolution. He replaced the unwelcome fiddle in the parcel, and came down-stairs gloomy and still wrathful, but silent. The evening passed over, and the inhabitants of the farmhouse went early to bed. Robert tossed about fuming on his. He had not undressed.

About eleven o'clock, after all had been still for more than an hour, he took his shoes in one hand and the brown parcel in the other, and descending the stairs like a thief, undid the quiet wooden bar that secured the door, and let himself out. All was darkness, for the moon was not yet up, and he felt a strange sensation of ghostliness in himself-awake and out of doors, when he ought to be asleep and unconscious in bed. He had never been out so late before, and felt as if walking in the region of the dead, existing when and where he had no business to exist. For it was the time Nature kept for her own quiet, and having once put her children to bed-hidden them away with the world wiped out of them-enclosed them in her ebony box, as George Herbert says-she did not expect to have her hours of undress and meditation intruded upon by a venturesome school-boy. Yet she let him pass. He put on his shoes and hurried to the road. He heard a horse stamp in the stable, and saw a cat dart across the corn-yard as he went through. Those were all the signs of life about the place.

It was a cloudy night and still. Nothing was to be heard but his own footsteps. The cattle in the fields were all asleep. The larch and spruce trees on the top of the hill by the foot of which his road wound were still as clouds. He could just see the sky through their stems. It was washed with the faintest of light, for the moon, far below, was yet climbing towards the horizon. A star or two sparkled where the clouds broke, but so little light was there, that, until he had passed the moorland on the hill, he could not get the horror of moss-holes, and deep springs covered with treacherous green, out of his head. But he never thought of turning. When the fears of the way at length fell back and allowed his own thoughts to rise, the sense of a presence, or of something that might grow to a presence, was the first to awake in him. The stillness seemed to be thinking all around his head. But the way grew so dark, where it lay through a corner of the pine-wood, that he had to feel the edge of the road with his foot to make sure that he was keeping upon it, and the sense of the silence vanished. Then he passed a farm, and the motions of horses came through the dark, and a doubtful crow from a young inexperienced cock, who did not yet know the moon from the sun. Then a sleepy low in his ear startled him, and made him quicken his pace involuntarily.

By the time he reached Rothieden all the lights were out, and this was just what he wanted.

The economy of Dooble Sanny's abode was this: the outer door was always left on the latch at night, because several families lived in the house; the soutar's workshop opened from the passage, close to the outer door, therefore its door was locked; but the key hung on a nail just inside the soutar's bedroom. All this Robert knew.

Arrived at the house, he lifted the latch, closed the door behind him, took off his shoes once more, like a housebreaker, as indeed he was, although a righteous one, and felt his way to and up the stair to the bedroom. There was a sound of snoring within. The door was a little ajar. He reached the key and descended, his heart beating more and more wildly as he approached the realization of his hopes. Gently as he could he turned it in the lock. In a moment more he had his hands on the spot where the shoemaker always laid his violin. But his heart sank within him: there was no violin there. A blank of dismay held him both motionless and thoughtless; nor had he recovered his senses before he heard footsteps, which he well knew, approaching in the street. He slunk at once into a corner. Elshender entered, feeling his way carefully, and muttering at his wife. He was tipsy, most likely, but