PETER SIMON.
This man was not a native of the district, but had for some two
years now been a dweller in it. Report said he was the son of a
small tradesman in a city at no great distance, but, to those who
knew him, he made no secret of the fact, that he had been found by
such a man, a child of a few months, lying on a pavement of that
city, one stormy, desolate Christmas-eve, when it was now dark,
with the wind blowing bitterly from the north, and the said
tradesman seemingly the one inhabitant of the coldest city in
Scotland who dared face it. He had just closed his shop, had
carried home to one of his customers a forgotten order, and was
returning to his wife and a childless hearth, when he all but
stumbled over the infant. Before stooping to lift him, he looked
all about to see if there was nobody to do it instead. There was
not a human being, or even what comes next to one, a dog in sight,
and the wind was blowing like a blast from a frozen hell. There was
no help for it: he must take up the child! He did, and carried it
home, grumbling all the way. What right had the morsel to be lying
there, a trap and a gin for his character, in the dark and the
cold? What would his wife say? And what would the neighbours think?
All the way home he grumbled.
[Illustration: HE CARRIED IT HOME.]
What happened there, how his wife received him with his burden, how
she scolded and he grumbled, how it needed but the one day--the
Christmas Day, in which nothing could well be done--to reconcile
them to the gift, and how they brought him up, blessing the day
when they found him, would be a story fit to make the truehearted
of my readers both laugh and cry; but I have not room or time for
it.
Of course, as they were in poor circumstances, hardly able indeed,
not merely to make both ends meet, but to bring them far enough
round the parcel of their necessities to let them see each other,
their friends called their behaviour in refusing to hand over the
brat to the parish authorities--which they felt as a reflection
upon all who in similar circumstances would have done so--utter
folly. But when the moon-struck pair was foolish enough to say they
did not know that he might not have been sent them instead of the
still-born child that had hitherto been all their offspring, this
was entirely too much for the nerves of the neighbours in
general--that peculiar people always better acquainted with one’s
affairs, down to his faults and up to his duties, than he is
himself. It was rank superstition! It was a flying in the face of
Providence! How could they expect to prosper, when they acted with
so little foresight, rendering the struggle for existence severer
still! They did not reckon what strength the additional motive,
what heart the new love, what uplifting the hope of help from on
high, kindled by their righteous deed, might give them--for God
likes far better to help people from the inside than from the
outside. They did not think that this might be just the fresh sting
of life that the fainting pair required. To mark their disapproval,
some of them immediately withdrew what little custom they had given
them: one who had given them none, promised them the whole of hers,
the moment they sent the child away; while others, with equal
inconsistency, doubled theirs, and did what they could to send them
fresh customers: they were a pair of good-natured fools, but they
ought not to be let starve! From that time they began to get on a
little better. And still as the boy grew, and wanted more, they had
the little more. For it so happened that the boy turned out to be
one of God’s creatures, and it looked as if the Maker of him, who
happened also to be the ruler of the world, was not altogether
displeased with those who had taken him to their hearts, instead of
leaving him to the parish. The child was the light of the house and
of the shop, a beauty to the eyes, and a joy in the heart of both.
But perhaps the best proof that they had done right, lay in the
fact that they began to love each other better from the very next
day after they took him in, for, to tell the truth, one cause of
their not getting on well, had been that they did not pull well
together. Thus we can explain the improvement in their
circumstances by reference to merest “natural causes,” without
having recourse to the distasteful idea that a power in the land of
superstition, with a weakness called a special providence, was
interested in the matter.
But foolishness such as theirs is apt to increase with years; and
so they sent the foundling to the grammar-school, and thence to
college--not a very difficult affair in that city. At college he
did not greatly distinguish himself, for his special gifts, though
peculiar enough, were not of a kind to _distinguish_ a man much,
either in that city or in this world. But he grew and prospered
nevertheless, and became a master in one of the schools. His father
and mother, as he called them, would gladly have made a minister of
him, but of that he would never hear. He lived with them till they
died, always bringing home to them his salary, minus only the
little that he spent on books. His life, his devotion and loving
gratitude, so wrought upon them, that the kingdom of heaven opened
its doors to them, and they were the happiest old couple in that
city. Of course this was all an accident, for the kingdom of heaven
being but a dream, the dignity of natural cause can scarcely
consent to work to the end of delusion; but the good natured pair
were foolish enough to look upon their miserable foundling as a
divine messenger, an angel entertained not for long unawares, and
the cause of all the good luck that followed his entrance. They
never spent a penny of his salary, but added to it, and saved it
up, and when they went, very strangely left all they had to this
same angel of a beggar, instead of to their own relations, who
would have been very glad of it, for they had a good deal more of
their own.
The foundling did not care to live longer in any city, but sought a
place as librarian, and was successful. In the family of an English
lord he lived many years, and when time’s changes rendered it
necessary he should depart, he retired to the cottage on the
Warlock. There he was now living the quietest of quiet lives,
cultivating the acquaintance of but a few--chiefly that of the
laird, James Gracie, and the minister of the parish. Among the
people of the neighbourhood he was regarded as “no a’ thegither
there.” This judgment possibly arose in part from the fact that he
not unfrequently wandered about the fields from morning to night,
and sometimes from night to morning. Then he never drank anything
worthy of the name of drink--seldom anything but water or milk!
That he never ate animal food was not so notable where many never
did so from one year’s end to another’s. As he was no propagandist,
few had any notion of his opinions, beyond a general impression
that they were unsound.
Cosmo had heard some of the peculiarities attributed to him, and
was filled with curious expectation as to the manner of man he was
about to meet, for, oddly enough, he had never yet seen him except
at a distance; but anxiety, not untinged with awe, was mingled with
his curiosity.
Mr. Simon’s cottage was some distance up the valley, at an angle
where it turned westward. It stood on the left bank of the Warlock,
at the foot of a small cliff that sheltered it from the north,
while in front the stream came galloping down to it from the
sunset. The immediate bank between the cottage and the water was
rocky and dry, but the ground on which the cottage stood was soil
washed from the hills. There Mr. Simon had a little garden for
flowers and vegetables, with a summer seat in which he smoked his
pipe of an evening--for, however inconsistent the habit may seem
with the rest of the man, smoke he did: slowly and gently and
broodingly did the man smoke, thinking a great deal more than he
smoked, and making his one pipe last a long time. His garden was
full of flowers, but of the most ordinary kinds; rarity was no
recommendation to him. Some may think that herein he was unlike
himself, seeing his opinions were of the rarest; but in truth never
once did Peter Simon, all his life, adopt an opinion because of its
strangeness. He never _adopted_ an opinion at all; he believed--he
loved what seemed to him true: how it looked to others he concerned
himself little.
The cottage was of stone and lime, nowise the less thoroughly built
that the stones were unhewn. It was _harled_, that is rough-cast, and
shone very white both in sun and moon. It contained but two rooms
and a closet between, with one under the thatch for the old woman
who kept house for him. Altogether it was a very ordinary, and not
very promising abode.
But when they were shown _ben_ to the parlour, Cosmo was struck with
nothing less than astonishment: the walls from floor to ceiling
were covered with books. Not a square foot all over was vacant.
Even the chimney-piece was absorbed, assimilated, turned into a
book-shelf, and so obliterated. Mr. Simon’s pipe lay on the hob;
and there was not another spot where it could have lain. There was
not a shelf, a cupboard to be seen. Books, books everywhere, and
nothing but books! Even the door that led to the closet where he
slept, was covered over, and, like the mantleshelf, obliterated
with books. They were but about twelve hundred in all; to the eyes
of Cosmo it seemed a mighty library--a treasure-house for a royal
sage.
There was no one in the room when they entered, and Cosmo was yet
staring in mute astonishment, when suddenly Mr. Simon was
addressing his father. But the door had not opened, and how he came
in seemed inexplicable. To the eyes of the boy the small man before
him assumed gigantic proportions.
But he was in truth below the middle height, somewhat
round-shouldered, with long arms, and small, well-shaped hands. His
hair was plentiful, grizzled, and cut short. His head was large and
his forehead wide, with overhanging brows; his eyes were small,
dark, and brilliant; his nose had a certain look of decision--but a
nose is a creature beyond description; his mouth was large, and his
chin strong; his complexion dark, and his skin rugged. The only
_fine_ features about him were his two ears, which were delicate
enough for a lady. His face was not at first sight particularly
attractive; indeed it was rather gloomy--till he smiled, not a
moment after; for that smile was the true interpreter of the mouth,
and, through the mouth, of the face, which was never the same as
before to one that had seen it. After a word or two about the book
he had borrowed, the laird took his departure, saying the sooner he
left master and pupil to themselves the better. Mr. Simon
acquiesced with a smile, and presently Cosmo was facing his near
future, not without some anxiety.