MR GRAHAM.
When Malcolm at length reached his lodging, he found there a letter
from Miss Horn, containing the much desired information as to where
the schoolmaster was to be found in the London wilderness. It was
now getting rather late, and the dusk of a spring night had begun to
gather; but little more than the breadth of the Regent’s Park lay
between him and his best friend--his only one in London-- and he set
out immediately for Camden Town.
The relation between him and his late schoolmaster was indeed of the
strongest and closest. Long before Malcolm was born, and ever since,
had Alexander Graham loved Malcolm’s mother; but not until within the
last few months had he learned that Malcolm was the son of Griselda
Campbell. The discovery was to the schoolmaster like the bursting out
of a known flower on an unknown plant. He knew then, not why he had
loved the boy, for he loved every one of his pupils more or less, but
why he had loved him with such a peculiar tone of affection.
It was a lovely evening. There had been rain in the afternoon as
Malcolm walked home from the Pool, but before the sun set, it had
cleared up; and as he went through the park towards the dingy suburb,
the first heralds of the returning youth of the year met him from all
sides in the guise of odours--not yet those of flowers, but the more
ethereal if less sweet, scents of buds and grass, and ever pure earth
moistened with the waters of heaven. And to his surprise he found that
his sojourn in a great city, although as yet so brief, had already made
the open earth with its corn and grass more dear to him and wonderful.
But when he left the park, and crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary
region of dwellings crowded and commonplace as the thoughts of a
worshipper of Mammon, houses upon houses, here and there shepherded by
a tall spire, it was hard to believe that the spring was indeed _coming
slowly up this way_.
After not a few inquiries, he found himself at a stationer’s shop, a
poor little place, and learned that Mr Graham lodged over it, and was
then at home.
He was shown up into a shabby room, with an iron bedstead, a chest of
drawers daubed with sickly paint, a table with a stained red cover, a
few bookshelves in a recess over the wash-stand, and two chairs seated
with hair-cloth. On one of these, by the side of a small fire in a
neglected grate, sat the schoolmaster reading his Plato. On the table
beside him lay his Greek New Testament, and an old edition of George
Herbert. He looked up as the door opened, and, notwithstanding his
strange dress, recognising at once his friend and pupil, rose hastily,
and welcomed him with hand and eyes and countenance, but without word
spoken. For a few moments the two stood silent, holding each the
other’s hand, and gazing each in the other’s eyes, then sat down, still
speechless, one on each side of the fire.
They looked at each other and smiled, and again a minute passed. Then
the schoolmaster rose, rang the bell, and when it was answered by a
rather careworn young woman, requested her to bring tea.
“I’m sorry I cannot give you cakes or fresh butter, my lord,” he said
with a smile, and they were the first words spoken. “The former is not
to be had, and the latter is beyond my means. But what I have will
content one who is able to count that abundance which many would count
privation.”
He spoke in the choice word, measured phrase, and stately speech which
Wordsworth says “grave livers do in Scotland use,” but under it all
rang a tone of humour, as if he knew the form of his utterance too
important for the subject-matter of it, and would gently amuse with it
both his visitor and himself.
He was a man of middle height, but so thin that notwithstanding a
slight stoop in the shoulders, he looked rather tall; much on the young
side of fifty, but apparently a good way on the other, partly from
the little hair he had being grey. He had sandy-coloured whiskers,
and a shaven chin. Except his large sweetly closed mouth, and rather
long upper lip, there was nothing very notable in his features. At
ordinary moments, indeed, there was nothing in his appearance other
than insignificant to the ordinary observer. His eyes were of a pale
quiet blue, but when he smiled they sparkled and throbbed with light.
He wore the same old black tail-coat he had worn last in his school at
Portlossie, but the white neckcloth he had always been seen in there
had given place to a black one: that was the sole change in the aspect
of the man.
About Portlossie he had been greatly respected, notwithstanding the
rumour that he was a “stickit minister,” that is, one who had failed
in the attempt to preach; and when the presbytery dismissed him on the
charge of heresy, there had been many tears on the part of his pupils,
and much childish defiance of his unenviable successor.
Few words passed between the two men until they had had their tea,
and then followed a long talk, Malcolm first explaining his present
position, and then answering many questions of the master as to how
things had gone since he left. Next followed anxious questions on
Malcolm’s side as to how his friend found himself in the prison of
London.
“I do miss the air, and the laverocks (_skylarks_), and the gowans,”
he confessed; “but I have them all in my mind, and at my age a man
ought to be able to satisfy himself with the idea of a thing in his
soul. Of outer things that have contributed to his inward growth, the
memory alone may then well be enough. The sights which, when I lie down
to sleep, rise before that inward eye Wordsworth calls the bliss of
solitude, have upon me power almost of a spiritual vision, so purely
radiant are they of that which dwells in them, the divine thought which
is their substance, their _hypostasis_. My boy! I doubt if you can tell
what it is to know the presence of the living God in and about you.”
“I houp I hae a bit notion o’ ’t, sir,” said Malcolm.
“But believe me that in any case, however much a man may have of it,
he may have it endlessly more. Since I left the cottage where I hoped
to end my days under the shadow of the house of your ancestors, since
I came into this region of bricks and smoke, and the crowded tokens
too plain of want and care, I have found a reality in the things I had
been trying to teach you at Portlossie, such as I had before imagined
only in my best moments. And more still: I am now far better able to
understand how it must have been with our Lord when he was trying to
teach the men and women of Palestine to have faith in God. Depend upon
it, we get our best use of life in learning by the facts of its ebb and
flow to understand the Son of Man. And again, when we understand Him,
then only do we understand our life and ourselves. Never can we know
the majesty of the will of God concerning us except by understanding
Jesus and the work the Father gave Him to do. Now, nothing is of a more
heavenly delight than to enter into a dusky room in the house of your
friend, and there, with a blow of the heavenly rod, draw light from
the dark wall--open a window, a fountain of the eternal light, and
let in the truth which is the life of the world. Joyously would a man
spend his life, right joyously even if the road led to the gallows,
in showing the grandest he sees--the splendid purities of the divine
religion--the mountain top up to which the voice of God is ever calling
his children. Yes, I can understand even how a man might live, like the
good hermits of old, in triumphant meditation upon such all-satisfying
truths, and let the waves of the world’s time wash by him in unheeded
flow until his cell changed to his tomb, and his spirit soared free.
But to spend your time in giving little lessons when you have great
ones to give; in teaching the multiplication table the morning after
you made at midnight a grand discovery upon the very summits of the
moonlit mountain range of the mathematics; in enforcing the old law,
_Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself_, when you know in your own
heart that not a soul can ever learn to keep it without first learning
to fulfil an infinitely greater one--_to love his neighbour even as
Christ hath loved him_ --then indeed one may well grow disheartened,
and feel as if he were not in the place prepared for, and at the work
required of him. But it is just then that he must go back to school
himself and learn not only the patience of God who keeps the whole
dull obstinate world alive, while generation after generation is born
and vanishes, and of the mighty multitude only one here and there
rises up from the fetters of humanity into the freedom of the sons of
God--and yet goes on teaching the whole, and bringing every man who
will but turn his ear a little towards the voice that calls him, nearer
and nearer to the second birth--of sonship and liberty--not only this
divine patience must he learn, but the divine insight as well, which
in every form spies the reflex of the truth it cannot contain, and
in every lowliest lesson sees the highest drawn nearer, and the soul
growing alive unto God.”