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

thereby tether the animal, as if it were up there grazing in its own natural region. Then he would lie down by the stake and read The Arabian Nights, every now and then casting a glance upward at the creature alone in the waste air, yet all in his power by the string at his side. Somehow the high-flown dragon was a bond between him and the blue; he seemed nearer to the sky while it flew, or at least the heaven seemed less far away and inaccessible. While he lay there gazing, all at once he would find that his soul was up with the dragon, feeling as it felt, tossing about with it in the torrents of the air. Out at his eyes it would go, traverse the dim stairless space, and sport with the wind-blown monster. Sometimes, to aid his aspiration, he would take a bit of paper, make a hole in it, pass the end of the string through the hole, and send the messenger scudding along the line athwart the depth of the wind. If it stuck by the way, he would get a telescope of Mr. Lammie's, and therewith watch its struggles till it broke loose, then follow it careering up to the kite. Away with each successive paper his imagination would fly, and a sense of air, and height, and freedom settled from his play into his very soul, a germ to sprout hereafter, and enrich the forms of his aspirations. And all his after-memories of kite-flying were mingled with pictures of eastern magnificence, for from the airy height of the dragon his eyes always came down upon the enchanted pages of John Hewson's book.

Sometimes, again, he would throw down his book, and sitting up with his back against the stake, lift his bonny leddy from his side, and play as he had never played in Rothieden, playing to the dragon aloft, to keep him strong in his soaring, and fierce in his battling with the winds of heaven. Then he fancied that the monster swooped and swept in arcs, and swayed curving to and fro, in rhythmic response to the music floating up through the wind.

What a full globated symbolism lay then around the heart of the boy in his book, his violin, his kite!


CHAPTER XXII.

DR. ANDERSON.

One afternoon, as they were sitting at their tea, a footstep in the garden approached the house, and then a figure passed the window. Mr. Lammie started to his feet.

'Bless my sowl, Aggy! that's Anderson!' he cried, and hurried to the door.

His daughter followed. The boys kept their seats. A loud and hearty salutation reached their ears; but the voice of the farmer was all they heard. Presently he returned, bringing with him the tallest and slenderest man Robert had ever seen. He was considerably over six feet, with a small head, and delicate, if not fine features, a gentle look in his blue eyes, and a slow clear voice, which sounded as if it were thinking about every word it uttered. The hot sun of India seemed to have burned out everything self-assertive, leaving him quietly and rather sadly contemplative.

'Come in, come in,' repeated Mr. Lammie, overflowing with glad welcome. 'What'll ye hae? There's a frien' o' yer ain,' he continued, pointing to Robert, 'an' a fine lad.' Then lowering his voice, he added: 'A son o' poor Anerew's, ye ken, doctor.'

The boys rose, and Dr. Anderson, stretching his long arms across the table, shook hands kindly with Robert and Shargar. Then he sat down and began to help himself to the cakes (oat-cake), at which Robert wondered, seeing there was 'white breid' on the table. Miss Lammie presently came in with the teapot and some additional dainties, and the boys took the opportunity of beginning at the beginning again.

Dr. Anderson remained for a few days at Bodyfauld, sending Shargar to Rothieden for some necessaries from The Boar's Head, where he had left his servant and luggage. During this time Mr. Lammie was much occupied with his farm affairs, anxious to get his harvest in as quickly as possible, because a change of weather was to be dreaded; so the doctor was left a good deal to himself. He was fond of wandering about, but, thoughtful as he was, did not object to the companionship which Robert implicitly offered him: before many hours were over, the two were friends.

Various things attracted Robert to the doctor. First, he was a relation of his own, older than himself, the first he had known except his father, and Robert's heart was one of the most dutiful. Second, or perhaps I ought to have put this first, he was the only gentleman, except Eric Ericson, whose acquaintance he had yet made. Third, he was kind to him, and gentle to him, and, above all, respectful to him; and to be respected was a new sensation to Robert altogether. And lastly, he could tell stories of elephants and tiger hunts, and all The Arabian Nights of India. He did not volunteer much talk, but Robert soon found that he could draw him out.

But what attracted the man to the boy?

'Ah! Robert,' said the doctor one day, sadly, 'it's a sore thing to come home after being thirty years away.'

He looked up at the sky, then all around at the hills: the face of Nature alone remained the same. Then his glance fell on Robert, and he saw a pair of black eyes looking up at him, brimful of tears. And thus the man was drawn to the boy.

Robert worshipped Dr. Anderson. As long as he remained their visitor, kite and violin and all were forgotten, and he followed him like a dog. To have such a gentleman for a relation, was grand indeed. What could he do for him? He ministered to him in all manner of trifles-a little to the amusement of Dr. Anderson, but more to his pleasure, for he saw that the boy was both large-hearted and lowly-minded: Dr. Anderson had learned to read character, else he would never have been the honour to his profession that he was.

But all the time Robert could not get him to speak about his father. He steadily avoided the subject.

When he went away, the two boys walked with him to The Boar's Head, caught a glimpse of his Hindoo attendant, much to their wonderment, received from the doctor a sovereign apiece and a kind good-bye, and returned to Bodyfauld.

Dr. Anderson remained a few days longer at Rothieden, and amongst others visited Mrs. Falconer, who was his first cousin. What passed between them Robert never heard, nor did his grandmother even allude to the visit. He went by the mail-coach from Rothieden to Aberdeen, and whether he should ever see him again Robert did not know.

He flew his kite no more for a while, but betook himself to the work of the harvest-field, in which he was now able for a share. But his violin was no longer neglected.

Day after day passed in the delights of labour, broken for Robert by The Arabian Nights and the violin, and for Shargar by attendance upon Miss Lammie, till the fields lay bare of their harvest, and the night-wind of autumn moaned everywhere over the vanished glory of the country, and it was time to go back to school.


CHAPTER XXIII.

AN AUTO DA FÉ.

The morning at length arrived when Robert and Shargar must return to Rothieden. A keen autumnal wind was blowing far-off feathery clouds across a sky of pale blue; the cold freshened the spirits of the boys, and tightened their nerves and muscles, till they were like bow-strings. No doubt the winter was coming, but the sun, although his day's work was short and slack, was still as clear as ever. So gladsome was the world, that the boys received the day as a fresh holiday, and strenuously forgot to-morrow. The wind blew straight from Rothieden, and between sun and wind a bright thought awoke in Robert. The dragon should not be carried-he should fly home.

After they had said farewell, in which Shargar seemed to suffer more than Robert, and had turned the corner of the stable, they heard the good farmer shouting after them,

'There'll be anither hairst neist year, boys,' which wonderfully restored their spirits. When they reached the open road, Robert laid his violin carefully into a broom-bush. Then the tail was unrolled, and the dragon ascended steady as an angel whose work is done. Shargar took the stick at the end of the string, and Robert resumed his violin. But the creature was hard to lead in such a wind; so they made a loop on the string, and passed it round Shargar's chest, and he tugged the dragon home. Robert longed to take his share in the struggle, but he could not trust his violin to Shargar, and so had to walk beside ingloriously. On the way they laid their plans for the accommodation of the dragon. But the violin was the greater difficulty. Robert would not hear of the factory, for reasons best known to himself, and there were serious objections to taking it to Dooble Sanny. It was resolved that the only way was to seize the right moment, and creep upstairs with it before presenting themselves to Mrs. Falconer. Their intended manœuvres with the kite would favour the concealment of this stroke.

Before they entered the town they drew in the kite a little way, and cut off a dozen yards of the string, which Robert put in his pocket, with a stone tied to the end. When they reached the house, Shargar went into the little garden and tied the string of the kite to the paling between that and Captain Forsyth's. Robert opened the street door, and having turned his head on all sides like a thief, darted with his violin up the stairs. Having laid his treasure in one of the presses in Shargar's garret, he went to his own, and from the skylight threw the stone down into the captain's garden, fastening the other end of the string to the bedstead. Escaping as cautiously as he had entered, he passed hurriedly into their neighbour's garden, found the stone, and joined Shargar. The ends were soon united, and the kite let go. It sunk for a moment, then, arrested by the bedstead, towered again to its former 'pride of place,' sailing over Rothieden, grand and unconcerned, in the wastes of air.

But the end of its tether was in Robert's garret. And that was to him a sense of power, a thought of glad mystery. There was henceforth, while the dragon flew, a relation between the desolate little chamber, in that lowly house buried among so many more aspiring abodes, and the unmeasured depths and spaces, the stars, and the unknown heavens. And in the next chamber lay the fiddle free once more,-yet another magical power whereby his spirit could forsake the earth and mount heavenwards.

All that night, all the next day, all the next night, the dragon flew.

Not one smile broke over the face of the old lady as she received them. Was it because she did not know what acts of disobedience, what breaches of the moral law, the two children of possible perdition might