'You've told me your profession,' he said: 'I'll tell you mine. I am a

lawyer. If you don't let me have those houses for five hundred, which is

the full market value, I'll prosecute you. It'll take a good penny from

the profits of your coffins to put those houses in a state to satisfy

the inspector.'

The wretched creature was struck dumb. Falconer resumed.

'You're the sort of man that ought to be kept to your pound of filthy

flesh. I know what I say; and I'll do it. The law costs me nothing. You

won't find it so.'

The undertaker sold the houses, and no longer in that quarter killed the

people he wanted to bury.

I give this as a specimen of the kind of thing Falconer did. But he took

none of the business part in his own hands, on the same principle on

which Paul the Apostle said it was unmeet for him to leave the preaching

of the word in order to serve tables--not that the thing was beneath

him, but that it was not his work so long as he could be doing more

important service still.

De Fleuri was one of his chief supports. The whole nature of the man

mellowed under the sun of Falconer, and over the work that Falconer

gave him to do. His daughter recovered, and devoted herself to the same

labour that had rescued her. Miss St. John was her superior. By degrees,

without any laws or regulations, a little company was gathered, not of

ladies and gentlemen, but of men and women, who aided each other, and

without once meeting as a whole, laboured not the less as one body in

the work of the Lord, bound in one by bonds that had nothing to do with

cobweb committee meetings or public dinners, chairmen or wine-flushed

subscriptions. They worked like the leaven of which the Lord spoke.

But De Fleuri, like almost every one in the community I believe, had his

own private schemes subserving the general good. He knew the best men of

his own class and his own trade, and with them his superior intellectual

gifts gave him influence. To them he told the story of Falconer's

behaviour to him, of Falconer's own need, and of his hungry-hearted

search. An enthusiasm of help seized upon the men. To aid your superior

is such a rousing gladness!--Was anything of this in St. Paul's mind

when he spoke of our being fellow-workers with God? I only put the

question.--Each one of these had his own trustworthy acquaintances, or

neighbours, rather--for like finds out like all the world through, as

well as over--and to them he told the story of Falconer and his father,

so that in all that region of London it became known that the man who

loved the poor was himself needy, and looked to the poor for their help.

Without them he could not be made perfect.

Some of my readers may be inclined to say that it was dishonourable in

Falconer to have occasioned the publishing of his father's disgrace.

Such may recall to their minds that concealment is no law of the

universe; that, on the contrary, the Lord of the Universe said once:

'There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed.' Was the disgrace

of Andrew Falconer greater because a thousand men knew it, instead of

forty, who could not help knowing it? Hope lies in light and knowledge.

Andrew would be none the worse that honest men knew of his vice: they

would be the first to honour him if he should overcome it. If he would

not--the disgrace was just, and would fall upon his son only in sorrow,

not in dishonour. The grace of God--the making of humanity by his

beautiful hand--no, heart--is such, that disgrace clings to no man after

repentance, any more than the feet defiled with the mud of the world

come yet defiled from the bath. Even the things that proceed out of the

man, and do terribly defile him, can be cast off like the pollution of

the leper by a grace that goes deeper than they; and the man who

says, 'I have sinned: I will sin no more,' is even by the voice of his

brothers crowned as a conqueror, and by their hearts loved as one who

has suffered and overcome. Blessing on the God-born human heart! Let the

hounds of God, not of Satan, loose upon sin;--God only can rule the dogs

of the devil;--let them hunt it to the earth; let them drag forth the

demoniac to the feet of the Man who loved the people while he let the

devil take their swine; and do not talk about disgrace from a thing

being known when the disgrace is that the thing should exist.

One night I was returning home from some poor attempts of my own. I had

now been a pupil of Falconer for a considerable time, but having my own

livelihood to make, I could not do so much as I would.

It was late, nearly twelve o'clock, as I passed through the region of

Seven Dials. Here and there stood three or four brutal-looking men, and

now and then a squalid woman with a starveling baby in her arms, in

the light of the gin-shops. The babies were the saddest to

see--nursery-plants already in training for the places these men and

women now held, then to fill a pauper's grave, or perhaps a perpetual

cell--say rather, for the awful spaces of silence, where the railway

director can no longer be guilty of a worse sin than house-breaking,

and his miserable brother will have no need of the shelter of which

he deprived him. Now and then a flaunting woman wavered past--a

night-shade, as our old dramatists would have called her. I could hardly

keep down an evil disgust that would have conquered my pity, when a

scanty white dress would stop beneath a lamp, and the gay dirty bonnet,

turning round, reveal a painted face, from which shone little more than

an animal intelligence, not brightened by the gin she had been drinking.

Vague noises of strife and of drunken wrath flitted around me as I

passed an alley, or an opening door let out its evil secret. Once I

thought I heard the dull thud of a blow on the head. The noisome vapours

were fit for any of Swedenborg's hells. There were few sounds, but the

very quiet seemed infernal. The night was hot and sultry. A skinned cat,

possibly still alive, fell on the street before me. Under one of the

gas-lamps lay something long: it was a tress of dark hair, torn perhaps

from some woman's head: she had beautiful hair at least. Once I heard

the cry of murder, but where, in that chaos of humanity, right or left,

before or behind me, I could not even guess. Home to such regions,

from gorgeous stage-scenery and dresses, from splendid, mirror-beladen

casinos, from singing-halls, and places of private and prolonged

revelry, trail the daughters of men at all hours from midnight till

morning. Next day they drink hell-fire that they may forget. Sleep

brings an hour or two of oblivion, hardly of peace; but they must wake,

worn and miserable, and the waking brings no hope: their only known help

lies in the gin-shop. What can be done with them? But the secrets God

keeps must be as good as those he tells.

But no sights of the night ever affected me so much as walking through

this same St. Giles's on a summer Sunday morning, when church-goers

were in church. Oh! the faces that creep out into the sunshine then,

and haunt their doors! Some of them but skins drawn over skulls, living

Death's-heads, grotesque in their hideousness.

I was not very far from Falconer's abode. My mind was oppressed with sad

thoughts and a sense of helplessness. I began to wonder what Falconer

might at that moment be about. I had not seen him for a long time--a

whole fortnight. He might be at home: I would go and see, and if there

were light in his windows I would ring his bell.

I went. There was light in his windows. He opened the door himself, and

welcomed me. I went up with him, and we began to talk. I told him of my

sad thoughts, and my feelings of helplessness.

'He that believeth shall not make haste,' he said. 'There is plenty of

time. You must not imagine that the result depends on you, or that a

single human soul can be lost because you may fail. The question, as

far as you are concerned, is, whether you are to be honoured in having a

hand in the work that God is doing, and will do, whether you help him

or not. Some will be honoured: shall it be me? And this honour gained

excludes no one: there is work, as there is bread in his house, enough

and to spare. It shows no faith in God to make frantic efforts or

frantic lamentations. Besides, we ought to teach ourselves to see, as

much as we may, the good that is in the condition of the poor.'

'Teach me to see that, then,' I said. 'Show me something.'

'The best thing is their kindness to each other. There is an absolute

divinity in their self-denial for those who are poorer than themselves.

I know one man and woman, married people, who pawned their very

furniture and wearing apparel to procure cod-liver oil for a girl dying

in consumption. She was not even a relative, only an acquaintance of

former years. They had found her destitute and taken her to their own

poor home. There are fathers and mothers who will work hard all the

morning, and when dinner-time comes “don't want any,” that there may be

enough for their children--or half enough, more likely. Children will

take the bread out of their own mouths to put in that of their sick

brother, or to stick in the fist of baby crying for a crust--giving only

a queer little helpless grin, half of hungry sympathy, half of pleasure,

as they see it disappear. The marvel to me is that the children turn

out so well as they do; but that applies to the children in all ranks

of life. Have you ever watched a group of poor children, half-a-dozen of

them with babies in their arms?'

'I have, a little, and have seen such a strange mixture of carelessness

and devotion.'

'Yes. I was once stopped in the street by a child of ten, with face

absolutely swollen with weeping, asking me to go and see baby who was

very ill. She had dropped him four times that morning, but had no idea

that could have done him any harm. The carelessness is ignorance.

Their form of it is not half so shocking as that of the mother who will

tremble at the slightest sign of suffering in her child, but will hear

him lie against his brother without the smallest discomfort. Ah! we

shall all find, I fear, some day, that we have differed from each other,

where we have done best, only in mode--perhaps not even in degree. A

grinding tradesman takes advantage of the over supply of labour to

get his work done at starvation prices: I owe him love, and have never

thought of paying my debt except in boundless indignation.'

'I wish I had your faith and courage, Mr. Falconer,' I said.

'You are in a fair way of having far more,' he returned. 'You are not so

old as I am, by a long way. But I fear you are getting out of spirits.

Is to-morrow a hard day with you?'

'I have next to nothing to do to-morrow.'

'Then will you come to me in the evening? We will go out together.'

Of course I was only too glad to accept the proposal. But our talk did

not end here. The morning began to shine before I rose to leave him; and

before I reached my abode it was broad daylight. But what a different

heart I carried within me! And what a different London it was outside of

me! The scent of the hayfields came on the hardly-moving air. It was a

strange morning--a new day of unknown history--in whose young light the

very streets were transformed, looking clear and clean, and wondrously

transparent in perspective, with unknown shadows lying in unexpected

nooks, with projection and recess, line and bend, as I had never seen

them before. The light was coming as if for the first time since the

city sprang into being--as if a thousand years had rolled over it in

darkness and lamplight, and now, now, after the prayers and longings of

ages, the sun of God was ascending the awful east, and the spirit-voice

had gone forth: 'Arise, shine, for thy light is come.'

It was a well-behaved, proper London through which I walked home. Here

and there, it is true, a debauched-looking man, with pale face, and

red sleepy eyes, or a weary, withered girl, like a half-moon in the

daylight, straggled somewhither. But they looked strange to the London

of the morning. They were not of it. Alas for those who creep to their

dens, like the wild beasts when the sun arises, because the light has

shaken them out of the world. All the horrid phantasms of the Valley of

the Shadow of Death that had risen from the pit with the vaporous night

had sunk to escape the arrows of the sun, once more into its bottomless

depth. If any horrid deed was doing now, how much more horrid in the

awful still light of this first hour of a summer morn! How many evil

passions now lay sunk under the holy waves of sleep! How many heartaches

were gnawing only in dreams, to wake with the brain, and gnaw in earnest

again! And over all brooded the love of the Lord Christ, who is Lord

over all blessed for ever, and shall yet cast death and hell into the

lake of fire--the holy purifying Fate.

I got through my sole engagement--a very dreary one, for surely never

were there stupider young people in the whole region of rank than those

to whom duty and necessity sent me on the Wednesday mornings of that

London season--even with some enjoyment. For the lessons Falconer had

been giving me clung to me and grew on me until I said thus to myself:

'Am I to believe only for the poor, and not for the rich? Am I not to

bear with conceit even, hard as it is to teach? for is not this conceit

itself the measure as the consequence of incapacity and ignorance? They

cannot help being born stupid, any more than some of those children in

St. Giles's can help being born preternaturally, unhealthily clever.

I am going with my friend this evening: that hope is enough to make

me strong for one day at least.' So I set myself to my task, and that

morning wiled the first gleam of intelligent delight out of the eyes

of one poor little washed-out ladyship. I could have kissed her from

positive thankfulness.

The day did wear over. The evening did come. I was with my friend--for

friend I could call him none the less and all the more that I worshipped

him.

'I have business in Westminster,' he said, 'and then on the other side

of the water.'

'I am more and more astonished at your knowledge of London, Mr.

Falconer,' I said. 'You must have a great faculty for places.'

'I think rather the contrary,' he answered. 'But there is no end to

the growth of a faculty, if one only uses it--especially when his whole

nature is interested in its efficiency, and makes demands upon it.

The will applies to the intellect; the intellect communicates its

necessities to the brain; the brain bestirs itself, and grows more

active; the eyes lend their aid; the memory tries not to be behind; and

at length you have a man gifted in localities.'

'How is it that people generally can live in such quiet ignorance of the

regions that surround them, and the kind of humanity so near them?' I

said after a pause.

'It does seem strange. It is as if a man should not know who were in his

own house. Would-be civilization has for the very centre of its citadel,

for the citizens of its innermost city, for the heart around which

the gay and fashionable, the learned, the artistic, the virtuous, the

religious are gathered, a people some of whom are barbarous, some cruel,

many miserable, many unhappy, save for brief moments not of hope, but

of defiance, distilled in the alembic of the brain from gin: what better

life could steam up from such a Phlegethon! Look there: “Cream of the

Valley!” As if the mocking serpent must with sweet words of Paradise

deepen the horrors of the hellish compound, to which so many of our

brothers and sisters made in the image of God, fly as to their only

Saviour from the misery of feeling alive.'

'How is it that the civilized people of London do not make a

simultaneous inroad upon the haunts of the demons and drive them out?'

'It is a mercy they do not. They would only do infinite mischief. The

best notion civilization seems to have is--not to drive out the demons,

but to drive out the possessed; to take from them the poor refuges they

have, and crowd them into deeper and more fetid hells--to make room for

what?--more and more temples in which Mammon may be worshipped. The

good people on the other hand invade them with foolish tracts, that lie

against God; or give their money to build churches, where there is

as yet no people that will go to them. Why, the other day, a young

clergyman bored me, and would have been boring me till now, I think, if

I would have let him, to part with a block of my houses, where I know

every man, woman, and child, and keep them in comparative comfort and

cleanliness and decency, to say no more, that he might pull them down

and build a church upon the site--not quite five minutes' walk from the

church where he now officiates.'

It was a blowing, moon-lit night. The gaslights flickered and wavered in

the gusts of wind. It was cold, very cold for the season. Even Falconer

buttoned his coat over his chest. He got a few paces in advance of me

sometimes, when I saw him towering black and tall and somewhat gaunt,

like a walking shadow. The wind increased in violence. It was a

north-easter, laden with dust, and a sense of frozen Siberian steppes.

We had to stoop and head it at the corners of streets. Not many people

were out, and those who were, seemed to be hurrying home. A few little

provision-shops, and a few inferior butchers' stalls were still open.

Their great jets of gas, which looked as if they must poison the meat,

were flaming fierce and horizontal, roaring like fiery flags, and anon

dying into a blue hiss. Discordant singing, more like the howling of

wild beasts, came from the corner houses, which blazed like the gates

of hell. Their doors were ever on the swing, and the hot odours of death

rushed out, and the cold blast of life rushed in. We paused a little

before one of them--over the door, upon the sign, was in very deed the

name Death. There were ragged women within who took their half-dead

babies from their bare, cold, cheerless bosoms, and gave them of the

poison of which they themselves drank renewed despair in the name of

comfort. They say that most of the gin consumed in London is drunk by

women. And the little clay-coloured baby-faces made a grimace or two,

and sank to sleep on the thin tawny breasts of the mothers, who having

gathered courage from the essence of despair, faced the scowling night

once more, and with bare necks and hopeless hearts went--whither? Where

do they all go when the gin-hells close their yawning jaws? Where do

they lie down at night? They vanish like unlawfully risen corpses in

the graves of cellars and garrets, in the charnel-vaults of

pestiferously-crowded lodging-houses, in the prisons of police-stations,

under dry arches, within hoardings; or they make vain attempts to rest

the night out upon door-steps or curbstones. All their life long man

denies them the one right in the soil which yet is so much theirs, that

once that life is over, he can no longer deny it--the right of room

to lie down. Space itself is not allowed to be theirs by any right of

existence: the voice of the night-guardian commanding them to move on,

is as the howling of a death-hound hunting them out of the air into

their graves.

In St. James's we came upon a group around the gates of a great house.

Visitors were coming and going, and it was a show to be had for nothing

by those who had nothing to pay. Oh! the children with clothes too

ragged to hold pockets for their chilled hands, that stared at the

childless duchess descending from her lordly carriage! Oh! the wan

faces, once lovely as theirs, it may be, that gazed meagre and pinched

and hungry on the young maidens in rose-colour and blue, tripping

lightly through the avenue of their eager eyes--not yet too envious of

unattainable felicity to gaze with admiring sympathy on those who seemed

to them the angels, the goddesses of their kind. 'O God!' I thought, but

dared not speak, 'and thou couldst make all these girls so lovely! Thou

couldst give them all the gracious garments of rose and blue and white

if thou wouldst! Why should these not be like those? They are hungry

even, and wan and torn. These too are thy children. There is wealth

enough in thy mines and in thy green fields, room enough in thy starry

spaces, O God!' But a voice--the echo of Falconer's teaching, awoke in

my heart--'Because I would have these more blessed than those, and those

more blessed with them, for they are all my children.'

By the Mall we came into Whitehall, and so to Westminster Bridge.

Falconer had changed his mind, and would cross at once. The present

bridge was not then finished, and the old bridge alongside of it was

still in use for pedestrians. We went upon it to reach the other side.

Its centre rose high above the other, for the line of the new bridge

ran like a chord across the arc of the old. Through chance gaps in the

boarding between, we looked down on the new portion which was as

yet used by carriages alone. The moon had, throughout the evening,

alternately shone in brilliance from amidst a lake of blue sky, and been

overwhelmed in billowy heaps of wind-tormented clouds. As we stood on

the apex of the bridge, looking at the night, the dark river, and

the mass of human effort about us, the clouds gathered and closed and

tumbled upon her in crowded layers. The wind howled through the arches

beneath, swept along the boarded fences, and whistled in their holes.

The gas-lights blew hither and thither, and were perplexed to live at

all.

We were standing at a spot where some shorter pieces had been used in

the hoarding; and, although I could not see over them, Falconer, whose

head rose more than half a foot above mine, was looking on the other

bridge below. Suddenly he grasped the top with his great hands, and his

huge frame was over it in an instant. I was on the top of the hoarding

the same moment, and saw him prostrate some twelve feet below. He was

up the next instant, and running with huge paces diagonally towards the

Surrey side. He had seen the figure of a woman come flying along from

the Westminster side, without bonnet or shawl. When she came under the

spot where we stood, she had turned across at an obtuse angle towards

the other side of the bridge, and Falconer, convinced that she meant to

throw herself into the river, went over as I have related. She had all

but scrambled over the fence--for there was no parapet yet--by the help

of the great beam that ran along to support it, when he caught her by

her garments. So poor and thin were those garments, that if she had

not been poor and thin too, she would have dropped from them into

the darkness below. He took her in his arms, lifted her down upon the

bridge, and stood as if protecting her from a pursuing death. I had

managed to find an easier mode of descent, and now stood a little way

from them.

'Poor girl! poor girl!' he said, as if to himself: 'was this the only

way left?'

Then he spoke tenderly to her. What he said I could not hear--I only

heard the tone.

'O sir!' she cried, in piteous entreaty, 'do let me go. Why should a

wretched creature like me be forced to live? It's no good to you, sir.

Do let me go.'

'Come here,' he said, drawing her close to the fence. 'Stand up again on

the beam. Look down.'

She obeyed, in a mechanical kind of way. But as he talked, and she kept

looking down on the dark mystery beneath, flowing past with every now

and then a dull vengeful glitter--continuous, forceful, slow, he felt

her shudder in his still clasping arm.

'Look,' he said, 'how it crawls along--black and slimy! how silent and

yet how fierce! Is that a nice place to go to down there? Would there

be any rest there, do you think, tumbled about among filth and creeping

things, and slugs that feed on the dead; among drowned women like

yourself drifting by, and murdered men, and strangled babies? Is that

the door by which you would like to go out of the world?'

'It's no worse,' she faltered, '--not so bad as what I should leave

behind.'

'If this were the only way out of it, I would not keep you from it. I

would say, “Poor thing! there is no help: she must go.” But there is

another way.'

'There is no other way, sir--if you knew all,' she said.

'Tell me, then.'

'I cannot. I dare not. Please--I would rather go.'

She looked, from the mere glimpses I could get of her, somewhere about

five-and-twenty, making due allowance for the wear of suffering so

evident even in those glimpses. I think she might have been beautiful if

the waste of her history could have been restored. That she had had at

least some advantages of education, was evident from both her tone and

her speech. But oh, the wild eyes, and the tortured lips, drawn back

from the teeth with an agony of hopelessness, as she struggled anew,

perhaps mistrusting them, to escape from the great arms that held her!

'But the river cannot drown you,' Falconer said. 'It can only stop your

breath. It cannot stop your thinking. You will go on thinking, thinking,

all the same. Drowning people remember in a moment all their past lives.

All their evil deeds come up before them, as if they were doing them all

over again. So they plunge back into the past and all its misery. While

their bodies are drowning, their souls are coming more and more awake.'

'That is dreadful,' she murmured, with her great eyes fixed on his, and

growing steadier in their regard. She had ceased to struggle, so he had

slackened his hold of her, and she was leaning back against the fence.

'And then,' he went on, 'what if, instead of closing your eyes, as you

expected, and going to sleep, and forgetting everything, you should

find them come open all at once, in the midst of a multitude of eyes all

round about you, all looking at you, all thinking about you, all judging

you? What if you should hear, not a tumult of voices and noises,

from which you could hope to hide, but a solemn company talking about

you--every word clear and plain, piercing your heart with what you could

not deny,--and you standing naked and shivering in the midst of them?'

'It is too dreadful!' she cried, making a movement as if the very horror

of the idea had a fascination to draw her towards the realization of it.

'But,' she added, yielding to Falconer's renewed grasp, 'they wouldn't

be so hard upon me there. They would not be so cruel as men are here.'

'Surely not. But all men are not cruel. I am not cruel,' he added,

forgetting himself for a moment, and caressing with his huge hand the

wild pale face that glimmered upon him as it were out of the infinite

night--all but swallowed up in it.

She drew herself back, and Falconer, instantly removing his hand, said,

'Look in my face, child, and see whether you cannot trust me.'

As he uttered the words, he took off his hat, and stood bare-headed in

the moon, which now broke out clear from the clouds. She did look at

him. His hair blew about his face. He turned it towards the wind and the

moon, and away from her, that she might be undisturbed in her scrutiny.

But how she judged of him, I cannot tell; for the next moment he called

out in a tone of repressed excitement,

'Gordon, Gordon, look there--above your head, on the other bridge.'

I looked and saw a gray head peering over the same gap through which

Falconer had looked a few minutes before. I knew something of his

personal quest by this time, and concluded at once that he thought it

was or might be his father.

'I cannot leave the poor thing--I dare not,' he said.

I understood him, and darted off at full speed for the Surrey end of the

bridge. What made me choose that end, I do not know; but I was right.

I had some reason to fear that I might be stopped when I reached it, as

I had no business to be upon the new bridge. I therefore managed, where

the upper bridge sank again towards a level with the lower, to scramble

back upon it. As I did so the tall gray-headed man passed me with an

uncertain step. I did not see his face. I followed him a few yards

behind. He seemed to hear and dislike the sound of my footsteps, for

he quickened his pace. I let him increase the distance between us, but

followed him still. He turned down the river. I followed. He began

to double. I doubled after him. Not a turn could he get before me. He

crossed all the main roads leading to the bridges till he came to the

last--when he turned toward London Bridge. At the other end, he went

down the stairs into Thames Street, and held eastward still. It was not

difficult to keep up with him, for his stride though long was slow.

He never looked round, and I never saw his face; but I could not help

fancying that his back and his gait and his carriage were very like

Falconer's.

We were now in a quarter of which I knew nothing, but as far as I can

guess from after knowledge, it was one of the worst districts in London,

lying to the east of Spital Square. It was late, and there were not many

people about.

As I passed a court, I was accosted thus:

''Ain't you got a glass of ale for a poor cove, gov'nor?'

'I have no coppers,' I said hastily. 'I am in a hurry besides,' I added

as I walked on.

'Come, come!' he said, getting up with me in a moment, 'that ain't a

civil answer to give a cove after his lush, that 'ain't got a blessed

mag.'

As he spoke he laid his hand rather heavily on my arm. He was a

lumpy-looking individual, like a groom who had been discharged for

stealing his horse's provender, and had not quite worn out the clothes

he had brought with him. From the opposite side at the same moment,

another man appeared, low in stature, pale, and marked with the

small-pox.

He advanced upon me at right angles. I shook off the hand of the first,

and I confess would have taken to my heels, for more reasons than one,

but almost before I was clear of him, the other came against me, and

shoved me into one of the low-browed entries which abounded.

I was so eager to follow my chase that I acted foolishly throughout. I

ought to have emptied my pockets at once; but I was unwilling to lose a

watch which was an old family piece, and of value besides.

'Come, come! I don't carry a barrel of ale in my pocket,' I said,

thinking to keep them in good-humour. I know better now. Some of these

roughs will take all you have in the most good-humoured way in the

world, bandying chaff with you all the time. I had got amongst another

set, however.

'Leastways you've got as good,' said a third, approaching from the

court, as villanous-looking a fellow as I have ever seen.

'This is hardly the right way to ask for it,' I said, looking out for a

chance of bolting, but putting my hand in my pocket at the same time. I

confess again I acted very stupidly throughout the whole affair, but it

was my first experience.

'It's a way we've got down here, anyhow,' said the third with a brutal

laugh. 'Look out, Savoury Sam,' he added to one of them.

'Now I don't want to hurt you,' struck in the first, coming nearer, 'but

if you gives tongue, I'll make cold meat of you, and gouge your pockets

at my leisure, before ever a blueskin can turn the corner.'

Two or three more came sidling up with their hands in their pockets.

'What have you got there, Slicer?' said one of them, addressing the

third, who looked like a ticket-of-leave man.

'We've cotched a pig-headed counter-jumper here, that didn't know Jim

there from a man-trap, and went by him as if he'd been a bull-dog on

a long-chain. He wants to fight cocum. But we won't trouble him. We'll

help ourselves. Shell out now.'

As he spoke he made a snatch at my watch-chain. I forgot myself and hit

him. The same moment I received a blow on the head, and felt the blood

running down my face. I did not quite lose my senses, though, for I

remember seeing yet another man--a tall fellow, coming out of the gloom

of the court. How it came into my mind, I do not know, and what I said I

do not remember, but I must have mentioned Falconer's name somehow.

The man they called Slicer, said,

'Who's he? Don't know the--.'

Words followed which I cannot write.

'What! you devil's gossoon!' returned an Irish voice I had not heard

before. 'You don't know Long Bob, you gonnof!'

All that passed I heard distinctly, but I was in a half faint, I

suppose, for I could no longer see.

'Now what the devil in a dice-box do you mean?' said Slicer, possessing

himself of my watch. 'Who is the blasted cove?--not that I care a flash

of damnation.'

'A man as 'll knock you down if he thinks you want it, or give you a

half-a-crown if he thinks you want it--all's one to him, only he'll have

the choosing which.'

'What the hell's that to me? Look spry. He mustn't lie there all night.

It's too near the ken. Come along, you Scotch haddock.'

I was aware of a kick in the side as he spoke.

'I tell you what it is, Slicer,' said one whose voice I had not yet

heard, 'if so be this gentleman's a friend of Long Bob, you just let him

alone, I say.'

I opened my eyes now, and saw before me a tall rather slender man in a

big loose dress-coat, to whom Slicer had turned with the words,

'You say! Ha! ha! Well, I say--There's my Scotch haddock! who'll touch

him?'

'I'll take him home,' said the tall man, advancing towards me. I made an

attempt to rise. But I grew deadly ill, fell back, and remember nothing

more.

When I came to myself I was lying on a bed in a miserable place. A

middle-aged woman of degraded countenance, but kindly eyes, was putting

something to my mouth with a teaspoon: I knew it by the smell to be gin.

But I could not yet move. They began to talk about me, and I lay and

listened. Indeed, while I listened, I lost for a time all inclination to

get up, I was so much interested in what I heard.

'He's comin' to hisself,' said the woman. 'He'll be all right by and by.

I wonder what brings the likes of him into the likes of this place. It

must look a kind of hell to them gentle-folks, though we manage to live

and die in it.'

'I suppose,' said another, 'he's come on some of Mr. Falconer's

business.'

'That's why Job's took him in charge. They say he was after somebody or

other, they think.--No friend of Mr. Falconer's would be after another

for any mischief,' said my hostess.

'But who is this Mr. Falconer?--Is Long Bob and he both the same alias?'

asked a third.

'Why, Bessy, ain't you no better than that damned Slicer, who ought to

ha' been hung up to dry this many a year? But to be sure you 'ain't been

long in our quarter. Why, every child hereabouts knows Mr. Falconer. Ask

Bobby there.'

'Who's Mr. Falconer, Bobby?'

A child's voice made reply,

'A man with a long, long beard, that goes about, and sometimes grows

tired and sits on a door-step. I see him once. But he ain't Mr.

Falconer, nor Long Bob neither,' added Bobby in a mysterious tone. 'I

know who he is.'

'What do you mean, Bobby? Who is he, then?'

The child answered very slowly and solemnly,

'He's Jesus Christ.'

The woman burst into a rude laugh.

'Well,' said Bobby in an offended tone, 'Slicer's own Tom says so, and

Polly too. We all says so. He allus pats me on the head, and gives me a

penny.'

Here Bobby began to cry, bitterly offended at the way Bessy had received

his information, after considering him sufficiently important to have

his opinion asked.

'True enough,' said his mother. 'I see him once a-sittin' on a

door-step, lookin' straight afore him, and worn-out like, an' a lot o'

them childer standin' all about him, an' starin' at him as mum as mice,

for fear of disturbin' of him. When I come near, he got up with a smile

on his face, and give each on 'em a penny all round, and walked away.

Some do say he's a bit crazed like; but I never saw no sign o' that; and

if any one ought to know, that one's Job's Mary; and you may believe me

when I tell you that he was here night an' mornin' for a week, and after

that off and on, when we was all down in the cholerer. Ne'er a one of us

would ha' come through but for him.'

I made an attempt to rise. The woman came to my bedside.

'How does the gentleman feel hisself now?' she asked kindly.

'Better, thank you,' I said. 'I am ashamed of lying like this, but I

feel very queer.'

'And it's no wonder, when that devil Slicer give you one o' his even

down blows on the top o' your head. Nobody knows what he carry in his

sleeve that he do it with--only you've got off well, young man, and that

I tell you, with a decent cut like that. Only don't you go tryin' to get

up now. Don't be in a hurry till your blood comes back like.'

I lay still again for a little. When I lifted my hand to my head, I

found it was bandaged up. I tried again to rise. The woman went to the

door, and called out,

'Job, the gentleman's feelin' better. He'll soon be able to move, I

think. What will you do with him now?'

'I'll go and get a cab,' said Job; and I heard him go down a stair.

I raised myself, and got on the floor, but found I could not stand. By

the time the cab arrived, however, I was able to crawl to it. When Job

came, I saw the same tall thin man in the long dress coat. His head was

bound up too.

'I am sorry to see you too have been hurt--for my sake, of course,' I

said. 'Is it a bad blow?'

'Oh! it ain't over much. I got in with a smeller afore he came right

down with his slogger. But I say, I hope as how you are a friend of

Mr. Falconer's, for you see we can't afford the likes of this in this

quarter for every chance that falls in Slicer's way. Gentlemen has no

business here.'

'On the contrary, I mean to come again soon, to thank you all for being

so good to me.'

'Well, when you comes next, you'd better come with him, you know.'

'You mean with Mr. Falconer?'

'Yes, who else? But are you able to go now? for the sooner you're out of

this the better.'

'Quite able. Just give me your arm.'

He offered it kindly. Taking a grateful farewell of my hostess, I put my

hand in my pocket, but there was nothing there. Job led me to the mouth

of the court, where a cab, evidently of a sort with the neighbourhood,

was waiting for us. I got in. Job was shutting the door.

'Come along with me, Job,' I said. 'I'm going straight to Mr.

Falconer's. He will like to see you, especially after your kindness to

me.'

'Well, I don't mind if I do look arter you a little longer; for to tell

the truth,' said Job, as he opened the door, and got in beside me, 'I

don't over and above like the look of the--horse.'

'It's no use trying to rob me over again,' I said; but he gave no reply.

He only shouted to the cabman to drive to John Street, telling him the

number.

I can scarcely recall anything more till we reached Falconer's chambers.

Job got out and rang the bell. Mrs. Ashton came down. Her master was not

come home.

'Tell Mr. Falconer,' I said, 'that I'm all right, only I couldn't make

anything of it.'

'Tell him,' growled Job, 'that he's got his head broken, and won't be

out o' bed to-morrow. That's the way with them fine-bred ones. They lies

a-bed when the likes o' me must go out what they calls a-custamongering,

broken head and all.'

'You shall stay at home for a week if you like, Job--that is if I've got

enough to give you a week's earnings. I'm not sure though till I look,

for I'm not a rich man any more than yourself.'

'Rubbish!' said Job as he got in again; 'I was only flummuxing the old

un. Bless your heart, sir, I wouldn't stay in--not for nothink. Not for

a bit of a pat on the crown, nohow. Home ain't none so nice a place to

go snoozing in--nohow. Where do you go to, gov'nor?'

I told him. When I got out, and was opening the door, leaning on his

arm, I said I was very glad they hadn't taken my keys.

'Slicer nor Savoury Sam neither's none the better o' you, and I hopes

you're not much the worse for them,' said Job, as he put into my hands

my purse and watch. 'Count it, gov'nor, and see if it's all right. Them

pusses is mannyfactered express for the convenience o' the fakers. Take

my advice, sir, and keep a yellow dump (sovereign) in yer coat-tails, a

flatch yenork (half-crown) in yer waistcoat, and yer yeneps (pence) in

yer breeches. You won't lose much nohow then. Good-night, sir, and I

wish you better.'

'But I must give you something for plaster,' I said. 'You'll take a

yellow dump, at least?'

'We'll talk about that another day,' said Job; and with a second still

heartier good-night, he left me. I managed to crawl up to my room, and

fell on my bed once more fainting. But I soon recovered sufficiently

to undress and get into it. I was feverish all night and next day, but

towards evening begun to recover.

I kept expecting Falconer to come and inquire after me; but he never

came. Nor did he appear the next day or the next, and I began to be very

uneasy about him. The fourth day I sent for a cab, and drove to John

Street. He was at home, but Mrs. Ashton, instead of showing me into his

room, led me into her kitchen, and left me there.

A minute after, Falconer came to me. The instant I saw him I understood

it all. I read it in his face: he had found his father.

CHAPTER XII. ANDREW AT LAST.

Having at length persuaded the woman to go with him, Falconer made her

take his arm, and led her off the bridge. In Parliament Street he was

looking about for a cab as they walked on, when a man he did not know,

stopped, touched his hat, and addressed him.

'I'm thinkin', sir, ye'll be sair wantit at hame the nicht. It wad be

better to gang at ance, an' lat the puir fowk luik efter themsels for ae

nicht.'

'I'm sorry I dinna ken ye, man. Do ye ken me?'

'Fine that, Mr. Falconer. There's mony ane kens you and praises God.'

'God be praised!' returned Falconer. 'Why am I wanted at home?'

''Deed I wad raither not say, sir.--Hey!'

This last exclamation was addressed to a cab just disappearing down King

Street from Whitehall. The driver heard, turned, and in a moment more

was by their side.

'Ye had better gang into her an' awa' hame, and lea' the poor lassie to

me. I'll tak guid care o' her.'

She clung to Falconer's arm. The man opened the door of the cab.

Falconer put her in, told the driver to go to Queen Square, and if he

could not make haste, to stop the first cab that could, got in himself,

thanked his unknown friend, who did not seem quite satisfied, and drove

off.

Happily Miss St. John was at home, and there was no delay. Neither was

any explanation of more than six words necessary. He jumped again into

the cab and drove home. Fortunately for his mood, though in fact it

mattered little for any result, the horse was fresh, and both able and

willing.

When he entered John Street, he came to observe before reaching his own

door that a good many men were about in little quiet groups--some twenty

or so, here and there. When he let himself in with his pass-key, there

were two men in the entry. Without stopping to speak, he ran up to his

own chambers. When he got into his sitting-room, there stood De Fleuri,

who simply waved his hand towards the old sofa. On it lay an elderly

man, with his eyes half open, and a look almost of idiocy upon his pale,

puffed face, which was damp and shining. His breathing was laboured, but

there was no further sign of suffering. He lay perfectly still. Falconer

saw at once that he was under the influence of some narcotic, probably

opium; and the same moment the all but conviction darted into his mind

that Andrew Falconer, his grandmother's son, lay there before him. That

he was his own father he had no feeling yet. He turned to De Fleuri.

'Thank you, friend,' he said. 'I shall find time to thank you.'

'Are we right?' asked De Fleuri.

'I don't know. I think so,' answered Falconer; and without another word

the man withdrew.

His first mood was very strange. It seemed as if all the romance had

suddenly deserted his life, and it lay bare and hopeless. He felt

nothing. No tears rose to the brim of their bottomless wells--the only

wells that have no bottom, for they go into the depths of the infinite

soul. He sat down in his chair, stunned as to the heart and all

the finer chords of his nature. The man on the horsehair sofa lay

breathing--that was all. The gray hair about the pale ill-shaven face

glimmered like a cloud before him. What should he do or say when he

awaked? How approach this far-estranged soul? How ever send the cry of

father into that fog-filled world? Could he ever have climbed on those

knees and kissed those lips, in the far-off days when the sun and the

wind of that northern atmosphere made his childhood blessed

beyond dreams? The actual--that is the present phase of the

ever-changing--looked the ideal in the face; and the mirror that held

them both, shook and quivered at the discord of the faces reflected.

A kind of moral cold seemed to radiate from the object before him, and

chill him to the very bones. This could not long be endured. He fled

from the actual to the source of all the ideal--to that Saviour who, the

infinite mediator, mediates between all hopes and all positions; between

the most debased actual and the loftiest ideal; between the little

scoffer of St. Giles's and his angel that ever beholds the face of the

Father in heaven. He fell on his knees, and spoke to God, saying that

he had made this man; that the mark of his fingers was on the man's soul

somewhere. He prayed to the making Spirit to bring the man to his right

mind, to give him once more the heart of a child, to begin him yet again

at the beginning. Then at last, all the evil he had done and suffered

would but swell his gratitude to Him who had delivered him from himself

and his own deeds. Having breathed this out before the God of his life,

Falconer rose, strengthened to meet the honourable debased soul when

it should at length look forth from the dull smeared windows of those

ill-used eyes.

He felt his pulse. There was no danger from the narcotic. The coma would

pass away. Meantime he would get him to bed. When he began to undress

him a new reverence arose which overcame all disgust at the state in

which he found him. At length one sad little fact about his dress,

revealing the poverty-stricken attempt of a man to preserve the shadow

of decency, called back the waters of the far-ebbed ocean of his

feelings. At the prick of a pin the heart's blood will flow: at the

sight of--a pin it was--Robert burst into tears, and wept like a child;

the deadly cold was banished from his heart, and he not only loved, but

knew that he loved--felt the love that was there. Everything then about

the worn body and shabby garments of the man smote upon the heart of his

son, and through his very poverty he was sacred in his eyes. The human

heart awakened the filial--reversing thus the ordinary process of

Nature, who by means of the filial, when her plans are unbroken, awakes

the human; and he reproached himself bitterly for his hardness, as he

now judged his late mental condition--unfairly, I think. He soon had him

safe in bed, unconscious of the helping hands that had been busy about

him in his heedless sleep; unconscious of the radiant planet of love

that had been folding him round in its atmosphere of affection.

But while he thus ministered, a new question arose in his mind--to meet

with its own new, God-given answer. What if this should not be the man

after all?--if this love had been spent in mistake, and did not belong

to him at all? The answer was, that he was a man. The love Robert had

given he could not, would not withdraw. The man who had been for a

moment as his father he could not cease to regard with devotion. At

least he was a man with a divine soul. He might at least be somebody's

father. Where love had found a moment's rest for the sole of its foot,

there it must build its nest.

When he had got him safe in bed, he sat down beside him to think what

he would do next. This sleep gave him very needful leisure to think. He

could determine nothing--not even how to find out if he was indeed his

father. If he approached the subject without guile, the man might be

fearful and cunning--might have reasons for being so, and for striving

to conceal the truth. But this was the first thing to make sure of,

because, if it was he, all the hold he had upon him lay in his knowing

it for certain. He could not think. He had had little sleep the night

before. He must not sleep this night. He dragged his bath into his

sitting-room, and refreshed his faculties with plenty of cold water,

then lighted his pipe and went on thinking--not without prayer to that

Power whose candle is the understanding of man. All at once he saw how

to begin. He went again into the chamber, and looked at the man, and

handled him, and knew by his art that a waking of some sort was nigh.

Then he went to a corner of his sitting-room, and from beneath the table

drew out a long box, and from the box lifted Dooble Sandy's auld wife,

tuned the somewhat neglected strings, and laid the instrument on the

table.

When, keeping constant watch over the sleeping man, he judged at length

that his soul had come near enough to the surface of the ocean of sleep

to communicate with the outer world through that bubble his body, which

had floated upon its waves all the night unconscious, he put his chair

just outside the chamber door, which opened from his sitting-room, and

began to play gently, softly, far away. For a while he extemporized

only, thinking of Rothieden, and the grandmother, and the bleach-green,

and the hills, and the waste old factory, and his mother's portrait

and letters. As he dreamed on, his dream got louder, and, he hoped, was

waking a more and more vivid dream in the mind of the sleeper. 'For who

can tell,' thought Falconer, 'what mysterious sympathies of blood and

childhood's experience there may be between me and that man?--such, it

may be, that my utterance on the violin will wake in his soul the

very visions of which my soul is full while I play, each with its own

nebulous atmosphere of dream-light around it.' For music wakes its own

feeling, and feeling wakes thought, or rather, when perfected, blossoms

into thought, thought radiant of music as those lilies that shine

phosphorescent in the July nights. He played more and more forcefully,

growing in hope. But he had been led astray in some measure by the

fulness of his expectation. Strange to tell, doctor as he was, he had

forgotten one important factor in his calculation: how the man would

awake from his artificial sleep. He had not reckoned of how the limbeck

of his brain would be left discoloured with vile deposit, when the fumes

of the narcotic should have settled and given up its central spaces to

the faintness of desertion.

Robert was very keen of hearing. Indeed he possessed all his senses

keener than any other man I have known. He heard him toss on his bed.

Then he broke into a growl, and damned the miauling, which, he said,

the strings could never have learned anywhere but in a cat's belly. But

Robert was used to bad language; and there are some bad things which,

seeing that there they are, it is of the greatest consequence to get

used to. It gave him, no doubt, a pang of disappointment to hear such an

echo to his music from the soul which he had hoped especially fitted to

respond in harmonious unison with the wail of his violin. But not

for even this moment did he lose his presence of mind. He instantly

moderated the tone of the instrument, and gradually drew the sound away

once more into the distance of hearing. But he did not therefore let it

die. Through various changes it floated in the thin æther of the soul,

changes delicate as when the wind leaves the harp of the reeds by a

river's brink, and falls a-ringing at the heather bells, or playing with

the dry silvery pods of honesty that hang in the poor man's garden, till

at length it drew nearer once more, bearing on its wings the wail of

red Flodden, the Flowers of the Forest. Listening through the melody for

sounds of a far different kind, Robert was aware that those sounds had

ceased; the growling was still; he heard no more turnings to and fro.

How it was operating he could not tell, further than that there must be

some measure of soothing in its influence. He ceased quite, and

listened again. For a few moments there was no sound. Then he heard the

half-articulate murmuring of one whose organs have been all but overcome

by the beneficent paralysis of sleep, but whose feeble will would compel

them to utterance. He was nearly asleep again. Was it a fact, or a fancy

of Robert's eager heart? Did the man really say,

'Play that again, father. It's bonnie, that! I aye likit the Flooers o'

the Forest. Play awa'. I hae had a frichtsome dream. I thocht I was i'

the ill place. I doobt I'm no weel. But yer fiddle aye did me gude. Play

awa', father!'

All the night through, till the dawn of the gray morning, Falconer

watched the sleeping man, all but certain that he was indeed his father.

Eternities of thought passed through his mind as he watched--this time

by the couch, as he hoped, of a new birth. He was about to see what

could be done by one man, strengthened by all the aids that love and

devotion could give, for the redemption of his fellow. As through the

darkness of the night and a sluggish fog to aid it, the light of a pure

heaven made its slow irresistible way, his hope grew that athwart the

fog of an evil life, the darkness that might be felt, the light of the

Spirit of God would yet penetrate the heart of the sinner, and shake the

wickedness out of it. Deeper and yet deeper grew his compassion and his

sympathy, in prospect of the tortures the man must go through, before

the will that he had sunk into a deeper sleep than any into which opium

could sink his bodily being, would shake off its deathly lethargy, and

arise, torn with struggling pain, to behold the light of a new spiritual

morning. All that he could do he was prepared to do, regardless of

entreaty, regardless of torture, anger, and hate, with the inexorable

justice of love, the law that will not, must not, dares not

yield--strong with an awful tenderness, a wisdom that cannot be turned

aside, to redeem the lost soul of his father. And he strengthened

his heart for the conflict by saying that if he would do thus for his

father, what would not God do for his child? Had He not proved already,

if there was any truth in the grand story of the world's redemption

through that obedience unto the death, that his devotion was entire, and

would leave nothing undone that could be done to lift this sheep out

of the pit into whose darkness and filth he had fallen out of the sweet

Sabbath of the universe?

He removed all his clothes, searched the pockets, found in them one poor

shilling and a few coppers, a black cutty pipe, a box of snuff, a screw

of pigtail, a knife with a buckhorn handle and one broken blade, and

a pawn-ticket for a keyed flute, on the proceeds of which he was now

sleeping--a sleep how dearly purchased, when he might have had it free,

as the gift of God's gentle darkness! Then he destroyed the garments,

committing them to the fire as the hoped farewell to the state of which

they were the symbols and signs.

He found himself perplexed, however, by the absence of some of the usual

symptoms of the habit of opium, and concluded that his poor father was

in the habit of using stimulants as well as narcotics, and that the

action of the one interfered with the action of the other.

He called his housekeeper. She did not know whom her master supposed

his guest to be, and regarded him only as one of the many objects of his

kindness. He told her to get some tea ready, as the patient would most

likely wake with a headache. He instructed her to wait upon him as a

matter of course, and explain nothing. He had resolved to pass for the

doctor, as indeed he was; and he told her that if he should be at all

troublesome, he would be with her at once. She must keep the room dark.

He would have his own breakfast now; and if the patient remained quiet,

would sleep on the sofa.

He woke murmuring, and evidently suffered from headache and nausea. Mrs.

Ashton took him some tea. He refused it with an oath--more of discomfort

than of ill-nature--and was too unwell to show any curiosity about the

person who had offered it. Probably he was accustomed to so many changes

of abode, and to so many bewilderments of the brain, that he did not

care to inquire where he was or who waited upon him. But happily for the

heart's desire of Falconer, the debauchery of his father had at length

reached one of many crises. He had caught cold before De Fleuri and his

comrades found him. He was now ill--feverish and oppressed. Through the

whole of the following week they nursed and waited upon him without his

asking a single question as to where he was or who they were; during all

which time Falconer saw no one but De Fleuri and the many poor fellows

who called to inquire after him and the result of their supposed

success. He never left the house, but either watched by the bedside, or

waited in the next room. Often would the patient get out of bed, driven

by the longing for drink or for opium, gnawing him through all the

hallucinations of delirium; but he was weak, and therefore manageable.

If in any lucid moments he thought where he was, he no doubt supposed

that he was in a hospital, and probably had sense enough to understand

that it was of no use to attempt to get his own way there. He was soon

much worn, and his limbs trembled greatly. It was absolutely necessary

to give him stimulants, or he would have died, but Robert reduced them

gradually as he recovered strength.

But there was an infinite work to be done beyond even curing him of

his evil habits. To keep him from strong drink and opium, even till the

craving after them was gone, would be but the capturing of the merest

outwork of the enemy's castle. He must be made such that, even if the

longing should return with tenfold force, and all the means for its

gratification should lie within the reach of his outstretched hand, he

would not touch them. God only was able to do that for him. He would do

all that he knew how to do, and God would not fail of his part. For this

he had raised him up; to this he had called him; for this work he had

educated him, made him a physician, given him money, time, the love and

aid of his fellows, and, beyond all, a rich energy of hope and faith in

his heart, emboldening him to attempt whatever his hand found to do.

CHAPTER XIII. ANDREW REBELS.

As Andrew Falconer grew better, the longing of his mind after former

excitement and former oblivion, roused and kept alive the longing of his

body, until at length his thoughts dwelt upon nothing but his diseased

cravings. His whole imagination, naturally not a feeble one, was

concentrated on the delights in store for him as soon as he was well

enough to be his own master, as he phrased it, once more. He soon began

to see that, if he was in a hospital, it must be a private one, and at

last, irresolute as he was both from character and illness, made up his

mind to demand his liberty. He sat by his bedroom fire one afternoon,

for he needed much artificial warmth. The shades of evening were

thickening the air. He had just had one of his frequent meals, and was

gazing, as he often did, into the glowing coals. Robert had come in,

and after a little talk was sitting silent at the opposite corner of the

chimney-piece.

'Doctor,' said Andrew, seizing the opportunity, 'you've been very kind

to me, and I don't know how to thank you, but it is time I was going.

I am quite well now. Would you kindly order the nurse to bring me my

clothes to-morrow morning, and I will go.'

This he said with the quavering voice of one who speaks because he

has made up his mind to speak. A certain something, I believe a vague

molluscous form of conscience, made him wriggle and shift uneasily upon

his chair as he spoke.

'No, no,' said Robert, 'you are not fit to go. Make yourself

comfortable, my dear sir. There is no reason why you should go.'

'There is something I don't understand about it. I want to go.'

'It would ruin my character as a professional man to let a patient in

your condition leave the house. The weather is unfavourable. I cannot--I

must not consent.'

'Where am I? I don't understand it. I want to understand it.'

'Your friends wish you to remain where you are for the present.'

'I have no friends.'

'You have one, at least, who puts his house here at your service.'

'There's something about it I don't like. Do you suppose I am incapable

of taking care of myself?'

'I do indeed,' answered his son with firmness.

'Then you are quite mistaken,' said Andrew, angrily. 'I am quite well

enough to go, and have a right to judge for myself. It is very kind of

you, but I am in a free country, I believe.'

'No doubt. All honest men are free in this country. But--'

He saw that his father winced, and said no more. Andrew resumed, after a

pause in which he had been rousing his feeble drink-exhausted anger,

'I tell you I will not be treated like a child. I demand my clothes and

my liberty.'

'Do you know where you were found that night you were brought here?'

'No. But what has that to do with it? I was ill. You know that as well

as I.'

'You are ill now because you were lying then on the wet ground under a

railway-arch--utterly incapable from the effects of opium, or drink,

or both. You would have been taken to the police-station, and would

probably have been dead long before now, if you had not been brought

here.'

He was silent for some time. Then he broke out,

'I tell you I will go. I do not choose to live on charity. I will not. I

demand my clothes.'

'I tell you it is of no use. When you are well enough to go out you

shall go out, but not now.'

'Where am I? Who are you?'

He looked at Robert with a keen, furtive glance, in which were mingled

bewilderment and suspicion.

'I am your best friend at present.'

He started up--fiercely and yet feebly, for a thought of terror had

crossed him.

'You do not mean I am in a madhouse?'

Robert made no reply. He left him to suppose what he pleased. Andrew

took it for granted that he was in a private asylum, sank back in his

chair, and from that moment was quiet as a lamb. But it was easy to see

that he was constantly contriving how to escape. This mental occupation,

however, was excellent for his recovery; and Robert dropped no hint of

his suspicion. Nor were many precautions necessary in consequence; for

he never left the house without having De Fleuri there, who was a man

of determination, nerve, and, now that he ate and drank, of considerable

strength.

As he grew better, the stimulants given him in the form of medicine at

length ceased. In their place Robert substituted other restoratives,

which prevented him from missing the stimulants so much, and at length

got his system into a tolerably healthy condition, though at his age,

and after so long indulgence, it could hardly be expected ever to

recover its tone.

He did all he could to provide him with healthy amusement--played

backgammon, draughts, and cribbage with him, brought him Sir Walter's

and other novels to read, and often played on his violin, to which he

listened with great delight. At times of depression, which of course

were frequent, the Flowers of the Forest made the old man weep. Falconer

put yet more soul into the sounds than he had ever put into them before.

He tried to make the old man talk of his childhood, asking him about the

place of his birth, the kind of country, how he had been brought up,

his family, and many questions of the sort. His answers were vague, and

often contradictory. Indeed, the moment the subject was approached, he

looked suspicious and cunning. He said his name was John Mackinnon,

and Robert, although his belief was strengthened by a hundred little

circumstances, had as yet received no proof that he was Andrew Falconer.

Remembering the pawn-ticket, and finding that he could play on the

flute, he brought him a beautiful instrument--in fact a silver one--the

sight of which made the old man's eyes sparkle. He put it to his lips

with trembling hands, blew a note or two, burst into the tears of

weakness, and laid it down. But he soon took it up again, and evidently

found both pleasure in the tones and sadness in the memories they

awakened. At length Robert brought a tailor, and had him dressed like

a gentleman--a change which pleased him much. The next step was to take

him out every day for a drive, upon which his health began to improve

more rapidly. He ate better, grew more lively, and began to tell tales

of his adventures, of the truth of which Robert was not always certain,

but never showed any doubt. He knew only too well that the use of opium

is especially destructive to the conscience. Some of his stories he

believed more readily than others, from the fact that he suddenly

stopped in them, as if they were leading him into regions of confession

which must be avoided, resuming with matter that did not well connect

itself with what had gone before. At length he took him out walking, and

he comported himself with perfect propriety.

But one day as they were going along a quiet street, Robert met an

acquaintance, and stopped to speak with him. After a few moments'

chat he turned, and found that his father, whom he had supposed to be

standing beside him, had vanished. A glance at the other side of the

street showed the probable refuge--a public-house. Filled but not

overwhelmed with dismay, although he knew that months might be lost in

this one moment, Robert darted in. He was there, with a glass of whisky

in his hand, trembling now more from eagerness than weakness. He struck

it from his hold. But he had already swallowed one glass, and he turned

in a rage. He was a tall and naturally powerful man--almost as strongly

built as his son, with long arms like his, which were dangerous even

yet in such a moment of factitious strength and real excitement. Robert

could not lift his arm even to defend himself from his father, although,

had he judged it necessary, I believe he would not, in the cause of his

redemption, have hesitated to knock him down, as he had often served

others whom he would rather a thousand times have borne on his

shoulders. He received his father's blow on the cheek. For one moment

it made him dizzy, for it was well delivered. But when the bar-keeper

jumped across the counter and approached with his fist doubled, that was

another matter. He measured his length on the floor, and Falconer seized

his father, who was making for the street, and notwithstanding his

struggles and fierce efforts to strike again, held him secure and

himself scathless, and bore him out of the house.

A crowd gathers in a moment in London, speeding to a fray as the

vultures to carrion. On the heels of the population of the neighbouring

mews came two policemen, and at the same moment out came the barman to

the assistance of Andrew. But Falconer was as well known to the police

as if he had a ticket-of-leave, and a good deal better.

'Call a four-wheel cab,' he said to one of them. 'I'm all right.'

The man started at once. Falconer turned to the other.

'Tell that man in the apron,' he said, 'that I'll make him all due

reparation. But he oughtn't to be in such a hurry to meddle. He gave me

no time but to strike hard.'

'Yes, sir,' answered the policeman obediently. The crowd thought he must

be a great man amongst the detectives; but the bar-keeper vowed he would

'summons' him for the assault.

'You may, if you like,' said Falconer. 'When I think of it, you shall do

so. You know where I live?' he said, turning to the policeman.

'No, sir, I don't. I only know you well enough.'

'Put your hand in my coat-pocket, then, and you'll find a card-case. The

other. There! Help yourself.'

He said this with his arms round Andrew's, who had ceased to cry out

when he saw the police.

'Do you want to give this gentleman in charge, sir?'

'No. It is a little private affair of my own, this.'

'Hadn't you better let him go, sir, and we'll find him for you when you

want him?'

'No. He may give me in charge if he likes. Or if you should want him,

you will find him at my house.'

Then pinioning his prisoner still more tightly in his arms, he leaned

forward, and whispered in his ear,

'Will you go home quietly, or give me in charge? There is no other way,

Andrew Falconer.'

He ceased struggling. Through all the flush of the contest his face

grew pale. His arms dropped by his side. Robert let him go, and he stood

there without offering to move. The cab came up; the policeman got out;

Andrew stepped in of his own accord, and Robert followed.

'You see it's all right,' he said. 'Here, give the barman a sovereign.

If he wants more, let me know. He deserved all he got, but I was wrong.

John Street.'

His father did not speak a word, or ask a question all the way home.

Evidently he thought it safer to be silent. But the drink he had taken,

though not enough to intoxicate him, was more than enough to bring back

the old longing with redoubled force. He paced about the room the rest

of the day like a wild beast in a cage, and in the middle of the night,

got up and dressed, and would have crept through the room in which

Robert lay, in the hope of getting out. But Robert slept too anxiously

for that. The captive did not make the slightest noise, but his very

presence was enough to wake his son. He started at a bound from his

couch, and his father retreated in dismay to his chamber.

CHAPTER XIV. THE BROWN LETTER.

At length the time arrived when Robert would make a further attempt,

although with a fear and trembling to quiet which he had to seek the

higher aid. His father had recovered his attempt to rush anew upon

destruction. He was gentler and more thoughtful, and would again sit

for an hour at a time gazing into the fire. From the expression of his

countenance upon such occasions, Robert hoped that his visions were not

of the evil days, but of those of his innocence.

One evening when he was in one of these moods--he had just had his tea,

the gas was lighted, and he was sitting as I have described--Robert

began to play in the next room, hoping that the music would sink into

his heart, and do something to prepare the way for what was to follow.

Just as he had played over the Flowers of the Forest for the third time,

his housekeeper entered the room, and receiving permission from her

master, went through into Andrew's chamber, and presented a packet,

which she said, and said truly, for she was not in the secret, had been

left for him. He received it with evident surprise, mingled with some

consternation, looked at the address, looked at the seal, laid it on the

table, and gazed again with troubled looks into the fire. He had had

no correspondence for many years. Falconer had peeped in when the woman

entered, but the moment she retired he could watch him no longer. He

went on playing a slow, lingering voluntary, such as the wind plays, of

an amber autumn evening, on the æolian harp of its pines. He played so

gently that he must hear if his father should speak.

For what seemed hours, though it was but half-an-hour, he went on

playing. At length he heard a stifled sob. He rose, and peeped again

into the room. The gray head was bowed between the hands, and the gaunt

frame was shaken with sobs. On the table lay the portraits of himself

and his wife; and the faded brown letter, so many years folded in

silence and darkness, lay open beside them. He had known the seal, with

the bush of rushes and the Gaelic motto. He had gently torn the paper

from around it, and had read the letter from the grave--no, from the

land beyond, the land of light, where human love is glorified. Not then

did Falconer read the sacred words of his mother; but afterwards his

father put them into his hands. I will give them as nearly as I can

remember them, for the letter is not in my possession.

'My beloved Andrew, I can hardly write, for I am at the point of death.

I love you still--love you as dearly as before you left me. Will you

ever see this? I will try to send it to you. I will leave it behind me,

that it may come into your hands when and how it may please God. You may

be an old man before you read these words, and may have almost forgotten

your young wife. Oh! if I could take your head on my bosom where it used

to lie, and without saying a word, think all that I am thinking into

your heart. Oh! my love, my love! will you have had enough of the world

and its ways by the time this reaches you? Or will you be dead, like

me, when this is found, and the eyes of your son only, my darling little

Robert, read the words? Oh, Andrew, Andrew! my heart is bleeding, not

altogether for myself, not altogether for you, but both for you and

for me. Shall I never, never be able to let out the sea of my love that

swells till my heart is like to break with its longing after you, my

own Andrew? Shall I never, never see you again? That is the terrible

thought--the only thought almost that makes me shrink from dying. If I

should go to sleep, as some think, and not even dream about you, as I

dream and weep every night now! If I should only wake in the crowd of

the resurrection, and not know where to find you! Oh, Andrew, I feel as

if I should lose my reason when I think that you may be on the left

hand of the Judge, and I can no longer say my love, because you do not,

cannot any more love God. I will tell you the dream I had about you last

night, which I think was what makes me write this letter. I was standing

in a great crowd of people, and I saw the empty graves about us on

every side. We were waiting for the great white throne to appear in the

clouds. And as soon as I knew that, I cried, “Andrew, Andrew!” for I

could not help it. And the people did not heed me; and I cried out and

ran about everywhere, looking for you. At last I came to a great gulf.

When I looked down into it, I could see nothing but a blue deep, like

the blue of the sky, under my feet. It was not so wide but that I could

see across it, but it was oh! so terribly deep. All at once, as I stood

trembling on the very edge, I saw you on the other side, looking towards

me, and stretching out your arms as if you wanted me. You were old and

much changed, but I knew you at once, and I gave a cry that I thought

all the universe must have heard. You heard me. I could see that. And

I was in a terrible agony to get to you. But there was no way, for if I

fell into the gulf I should go down for ever, it was so deep. Something

made me look away, and I saw a man coming quietly along the same side of

the gulf, on the edge, towards me. And when he came nearer to me, I saw

that he was dressed in a gown down to his feet, and that his feet were

bare and had a hole in each of them. So I knew who it was, Andrew. And

I fell down and kissed his feet, and lifted up my hands, and looked into

his face--oh, such a face! And I tried to pray. But all I could say was,

“O Lord, Andrew, Andrew!” Then he smiled, and said, “Daughter, be of

good cheer. Do you want to go to him?” And I said, “Yes, Lord.” Then he

said, “And so do I. Come.” And he took my hand and led me over the edge

of the precipice; and I was not afraid, and I did not sink, but walked

upon the air to go to you. But when I got to you, it was too much to

bear; and when I thought I had you in my arms at last, I awoke, crying

as I never cried before, not even when I found that you had left me to

die without you. Oh, Andrew, what if the dream should come true! But if

it should not come true! I dare not think of that, Andrew. I couldn't be

happy in heaven without you. It may be very wicked, but I do not feel as

if it were, and I can't help it if it is. But, dear husband, come to

me again. Come back, like the prodigal in the New Testament. God will

forgive you everything. Don't touch drink again, my dear love. I know it

was the drink that made you do as you did. You could never have done it.

It was the drink that drove you to do it. You didn't know what you were

doing. And then you were ashamed, and thought I would be angry, and

could not bear to come back to me. Ah, if you were to come in at the

door, as I write, you would see whether or not I was proud to have my

Andrew again. But I would not be nice for you to look at now. You used

to think me pretty--you said beautiful--so long ago. But I am so thin

now, and my face so white, that I almost frighten myself when I look in

the glass. And before you get this I shall be all gone to dust,

either knowing nothing about you, or trying to praise God, and always

forgetting where I am in my psalm, longing so for you to come. I am

afraid I love you too much to be fit to go to heaven. Then, perhaps, God

will send me to the other place, all for love of you, Andrew. And I do

believe I should like that better. But I don't think he will, if he is

anything like the man I saw in my dream. But I am growing so faint that

I can hardly write. I never felt like this before. But that dream has

given me strength to die, because I hope you will come too. Oh, my dear

Andrew, do, do repent and turn to God, and he will forgive you. Believe

in Jesus, and he will save you, and bring me to you across the deep

place. But I must make haste. I can hardly see. And I must not leave

this letter open for anybody but you to read after I am dead. Good-bye,

Andrew. I love you all the same. I am, my dearest Husband, your

affectionate Wife,

'H. FALCONER.'

Then followed the date. It was within a week of her death. The letter

was feebly written, every stroke seeming more feeble by the contrasted

strength of the words. When Falconer read it afterwards, in the midst

of the emotions it aroused--the strange lovely feelings of such a bond

between him and a beautiful ghost, far away somewhere in God's universe,

who had carried him in her lost body, and nursed him at her breasts--in

the midst of it all, he could not help wondering, he told me, to find

the forms and words so like what he would have written himself. It

seemed so long ago when that faded, discoloured paper, with the gilt

edges, and the pale brown ink, and folded in the large sheet, and sealed

with the curious wax, must have been written; and here were its words so

fresh, so new! not withered like the rose-leaves that scented the paper

from the work-box where he had found it, but as fresh as if just shaken

from the rose-trees of the heart's garden. It was no wonder that Andrew

Falconer should be sitting with his head in his hands when Robert looked

in on him, for he had read this letter.

When Robert saw how he sat, he withdrew, and took his violin again, and

played all the tunes of the old country he could think of, recalling

Dooble Sandy's workshop, that he might recall the music he had learnt

there.

No one who understands the bit and bridle of the association of ideas,

as it is called in the skeleton language of mental philosophy, wherewith

the Father-God holds fast the souls of his children--to the very

last that we see of them, at least, and doubtless to endless ages

beyond--will sneer at Falconer's notion of making God's violin

a ministering spirit in the process of conversion. There is a

well-authenticated story of a convict's having been greatly reformed

for a time, by going, in one of the colonies, into a church, where the

matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to

which he had gone when a boy--with his mother, I suppose. It was not the

matting that so far converted him: it was not to the music of his violin

that Falconer looked for aid, but to the memories of childhood, the

mysteries of the kingdom of innocence which that could recall--those

memories which

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,

Are yet a master light of all our seeing.

For an hour he did not venture to go near him. When he entered the room

he found him sitting in the same place, no longer weeping, but gazing

into the fire with a sad countenance, the expression of which showed

Falconer at once that the soul had come out of its cave of obscuration,

and drawn nearer to the surface of life. He had not seen him look so

much like one 'clothed, and in his right mind,' before. He knew well

that nothing could be built upon this; that this very emotion did but

expose him the more to the besetting sin; that in this mood he would

drink, even if he knew that he would in consequence be in danger of

murdering the wife whose letter had made him weep. But it was progress,

notwithstanding. He looked up at Robert as he entered, and then dropped

his eyes again. He regarded him perhaps as a presence doubtful whether

of angel or devil, even as the demoniacs regarded the Lord of Life who

had come to set them free. Bewildered he must have been to find himself,

towards the close of a long life of debauchery, wickedness, and the

growing pains of hell, caught in a net of old times, old feelings, old

truths.

Now Robert had carefully avoided every indication that might disclose

him to be a Scotchman even, nor was there the least sign of suspicion

in Andrew's manner. The only solution of the mystery that could have

presented itself to him was, that his friends were at the root of

it--probably his son, of whom he knew absolutely nothing. His mother

could not be alive still. Of his wife's relatives there had never been

one who would have taken any trouble about him after her death, hardly

even before it. John Lammie was the only person, except Dr. Anderson,

whose friendship he could suppose capable of this development. The

latter was the more likely person. But he would be too much for him

yet; he was not going to be treated like a child, he said to himself, as

often as the devil got uppermost.

My reader must understand that Andrew had never been a man of

resolution. He had been wilful and headstrong; and these qualities, in

children especially, are often mistaken for resolution, and generally go

under the name of strength of will. There never was a greater mistake.

The mistake, indeed, is only excusable from the fact that extremes meet,

and that this disposition is so opposite to the other, that it looks to

the careless eye most like it. He never resisted his own impulses, or

the enticements of evil companions. Kept within certain bounds at home,

after he had begun to go wrong, by the weight of opinion, he rushed into

all excesses when abroad upon business, till at length the vessel of his

fortune went to pieces, and he was a waif on the waters of the world.

But in feeling he had never been vulgar, however much so in action.

There was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its

very feebleness. He could not sin so much against it as if it had

been strong. For many years he had fits of shame, and of grief without

repentance; for repentance is the active, the divine part--the turning

again; but taking more steadily both to strong drink and opium, he

was at the time when De Fleuri found him only the dull ghost of Andrew

Falconer walking in a dream of its lost carcass.

CHAPTER XV. FATHER AND SON.

Once more Falconer retired, but not to take his violin. He could play no

more. Hope and love were swelling within him. He could not rest. Was it

a sign from heaven that the hour for speech had arrived? He paced up and

down the room. He kneeled and prayed for guidance and help. Something

within urged him to try the rusted lock of his father's heart. Without

any formed resolution, without any conscious volition, he found himself

again in his room. There the old man still sat, with his back to the

door, and his gaze fixed on the fire, which had sunk low in the grate.

Robert went round in front of him, kneeled on the rug before him, and

said the one word,

'Father!'

Andrew started violently, raised his hand, which trembled as with a

palsy, to his head, and stared wildly at Robert. But he did not speak.

Robert repeated the one great word. Then Andrew spoke, and said in a

trembling, hardly audible voice,

'Are you my son?--my boy Robert, sir?'

'I am. I am. Oh, father, I have longed for you by day, and dreamed about

you by night, ever since I saw that other boys had fathers, and I had

none. Years and years of my life--I hardly know how many--have been

spent in searching for you. And now I have found you!'

The great tall man, in the prime of life and strength, laid his big head

down on the old man's knee, as if he had been a little child. His father

said nothing, but laid his hand on the head. For some moments the two

remained thus, motionless and silent. Andrew was the first to speak. And

his words were the voice of the spirit that striveth with man.

'What am I to do, Robert?'

No other words, not even those of passionate sorrow, or overflowing

affection, could have been half so precious in the ears of Robert. When

a man once asks what he is to do, there is hope for him. Robert answered

instantly,

'You must come home to your mother.'

'My mother!' Andrew exclaimed. 'You don't mean to say she's alive?'

'I heard from her yesterday--in her own hand, too,' said Robert.

'I daren't. I daren't,' murmured Andrew.

'You must, father,' returned Robert. 'It is a long way, but I will make

the journey easy for you. She knows I have found you. She is waiting and

longing for you. She has hardly thought of anything but you ever since

she lost you. She is only waiting to see you, and then she will go home,

she says. I wrote to her and said, “Grannie, I have found your Andrew.”

And she wrote back to me and said, “God be praised. I shall die in

peace.”'

A silence followed.

'Will she forgive me?' said Andrew.

'She loves you more than her own soul,' answered Robert. 'She loves you

as much as I do. She loves you as God loves you.'

'God can't love me,' said Andrews, feebly. 'He would never have left me

if he had loved me.'

'He has never left you from the very first. You would not take his way,

father, and he just let you try your own. But long before that he had

begun to get me ready to go after you. He put such love to you in my

heart, and gave me such teaching and such training, that I have found

you at last. And now I have found you, I will hold you. You cannot

escape--you will not want to escape any more, father?'

Andrew made no reply to this appeal. It sounded like imprisonment for

life, I suppose. But thought was moving in him. After a long pause,

during which the son's heart was hungering for a word whereon to hang

a further hope, the old man spoke again, muttering as if he were only

speaking his thoughts unconsciously.

'Where's the use? There's no forgiveness for me. My mother is going to

heaven. I must go to hell. No. It's no good. Better leave it as it is. I

daren't see her. It would kill me to see her.'

'It will kill her not to see you; and that will be one sin more on your

conscience, father.'

Andrew got up and walked about the room. And Robert only then arose from

his knees.

'And there's my mother,' he said.

Andrew did not reply; but Robert saw when he turned next towards the

light, that the sweat was standing in beads on his forehead.

'Father,' he said, going up to him.

The old man stopped in his walk, turned, and faced his son.

'Father,' repeated Robert, 'you've got to repent; and God won't let you

off; and you needn't think it. You'll have to repent some day.'

'In hell, Robert,' said Andrew, looking him full in the eyes, as he had

never looked at him before. It seemed as if even so much acknowledgment

of the truth had already made him bolder and honester.

'Yes. Either on earth or in hell. Would it not be better on earth?'

'But it will be no use in hell,' he murmured.

In those few words lay the germ of the preference for hell of poor

souls, enfeebled by wickedness. They will not have to do anything

there--only to moan and cry and suffer for ever, they think. It is

effort, the out-going of the living will that they dread. The sorrow,

the remorse of repentance, they do not so much regard: it is the action

it involves; it is the having to turn, be different, and do differently,

that they shrink from; and they have been taught to believe that

this will not be required of them there--in that awful refuge of the

will-less. I do not say they think thus: I only say their dim, vague,

feeble feelings are such as, if they grew into thought, would take this

form. But tell them that the fire of God without and within them will

compel them to bethink themselves; that the vision of an open door

beyond the smoke and the flames will ever urge them to call up the

ice-bound will, that it may obey; that the torturing spirit of God in

them will keep their consciences awake, not to remind them of what they

ought to have done, but to tell them what they must do now, and hell

will no longer fascinate them. Tell them that there is no refuge from

the compelling Love of God, save that Love itself--that He is in hell

too, and that if they make their bed in hell they shall not escape him,

and then, perhaps, they will have some true presentiment of the worm

that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched.

'Father, it will be of use in hell,' said Robert. 'God will give you no

rest even there. You will have to repent some day, I do believe--if not

now under the sunshine of heaven, then in the torture of the awful world

where there is no light but that of the conscience. Would it not be

better and easier to repent now, with your wife waiting for you in

heaven, and your mother waiting for you on earth?'

Will it be credible to my reader, that Andrew interrupted his son with

the words,

'Robert, it is dreadful to hear you talk like that. Why, you don't

believe in the Bible!'

His words will be startling to one who has never heard the lips of a

hoary old sinner drivel out religion. To me they are not so startling as

the words of Christian women and bishops of the Church of England, when

they say that the doctrine of the everlasting happiness of the righteous

stands or falls with the doctrine of the hopeless damnation of the

wicked. Can it be that to such the word is everything, the spirit

nothing? No. It is only that the devil is playing a very wicked prank,

not with them, but in them: they are pluming themselves on being selfish

after a godly sort.

'I do believe the Bible, father,' returned Robert, 'and have ordered my

life by it. If I had not believed the Bible, I fear I should never have

looked for you. But I won't dispute about it. I only say I believe that

you will be compelled to repent some day, and that now is the best time.

Then, you will not only have to repent, but to repent that you did

not repent now. And I tell you, father, that you shall go to my

grandmother.'

CHAPTER XVI. CHANGE OF SCENE.

But various reasons combined to induce Falconer to postpone yet for a

period their journey to the North. Not merely did his father require an

unremitting watchfulness, which it would be difficult to keep up in his

native place amongst old friends and acquaintances, but his health was

more broken than he had at first supposed, and change of air and scene

without excitement was most desirable. He was anxious too that the

change his mother must see in him should be as little as possible

attributable to other causes than those that years bring with them. To

this was added that his own health had begun to suffer from the watching

and anxiety he had gone through, and for his father's sake, as well as

for the labour which yet lay before him, he would keep that as sound

as he might. He wrote to his grandmother and explained the matter. She

begged him to do as he thought best, for she was so happy that she did

not care if she should never see Andrew in this world: it was enough to

die in the hope of meeting him in the other. But she had no reason to

fear that death was at hand; for, although much more frail, she felt as

well as ever.

By this time Falconer had introduced me to his father. I found him in

some things very like his son; in others, very different. His manners

were more polished; his pleasure in pleasing much greater: his humanity

had blossomed too easily, and then run to seed. Alas, to no seed

that could bear fruit! There was a weak expression about his mouth--a

wavering interrogation: it was so different from the firmly-closed

portals whence issued the golden speech of his son! He had a sly,

sidelong look at times, whether of doubt or cunning, I could not always

determine. His eyes, unlike his son's, were of a light blue, and

hazy both in texture and expression. His hands were long-fingered and

tremulous. He gave your hand a sharp squeeze, and the same instant

abandoned it with indifference. I soon began to discover in him a

tendency to patronize any one who showed him a particle of respect

as distinguished from common-place civility. But under all outward

appearances it seemed to me that there was a change going on: at least

being very willing to believe it, I found nothing to render belief

impossible.

He was very fond of the flute his son had given him, and on that

sweetest and most expressionless of instruments he played exquisitely.

One evening when I called to see them, Falconer said,

'We are going out of town for a few weeks, Gordon: will you go with us?'

'I am afraid I can't.'

'Why? You have no teaching at present, and your writing you can do as

well in the country as in town.'

'That is true; but still I don't see how I can. I am too poor for one

thing.'

'Between you and me that is nonsense.'

'Well, I withdraw that,' I said. 'But there is so much to be done,

specially as you will be away, and Miss St John is at the Lakes.'

'That is all very true; but you need a change. I have seen for some

weeks that you are failing. Mind, it is our best work that He wants,

not the dregs of our exhaustion. I hope you are not of the mind of our

friend Mr. Watts, the curate of St. Gregory's.'

'I thought you had a high opinion of Mr. Watts,' I returned.

'So I have. I hope it is not necessary to agree with a man in everything

before we can have a high opinion of him.'

'Of course not. But what is it you hope I am not of his opinion in?'

'He seems ambitious of killing himself with work--of wearing himself out

in the service of his master--and as quickly as possible. A good deal of

that kind of thing is a mere holding of the axe to the grindstone, not a

lifting of it up against thick trees. Only he won't be convinced till it

comes to the helve. I met him the other day; he was looking as white as

his surplice. I took upon me to read him a lecture on the holiness of

holidays. “I can't leave my poor,” he said. “Do you think God can't do

without you?” I asked. “Is he so weak that he cannot spare the help of

a weary man? But I think he must prefer quality to quantity, and for

healthy work you must be healthy yourself. How can you be the visible

sign of the Christ-present amongst men, if you inhabit an exhausted,

irritable brain? Go to God's infirmary and rest a while. Bring back

health from the country to those that cannot go to it. If on the way it

be transmuted into spiritual forms, so much the better. A little more of

God will make up for a good deal less of you.”'

'What did he say to that?'

'He said our Lord died doing the will of his Father. I told him--“Yes,

when his time was come, not sooner. Besides, he often avoided both

speech and action.” “Yes,” he answered, “but he could tell when, and we

cannot.” “Therefore,” I rejoined, “you ought to accept your exhaustion

as a token that your absence will be the best thing for your people.

If there were no God, then perhaps you ought to work till you drop down

dead--I don't know.”'

'Is he gone yet?'

'No. He won't go. I couldn't persuade him.'

'When do you go?'

'To-morrow.'

'I shall be ready, if you really mean it.'

'That's an if worthy only of a courtier. There may be much virtue in an

if, as Touchstone says, for the taking up of a quarrel; but that if is

bad enough to breed one,' said Falconer, laughing. 'Be at the Paddington

Station at noon to-morrow. To tell the whole truth, I want you to help

me with my father.'

This last was said at the door as he showed me out.

In the afternoon we were nearing Bristol. It was a lovely day in

October. Andrew had been enjoying himself; but it was evidently rather

the pleasure of travelling in a first-class carriage like a gentleman

than any delight in the beauty of heaven and earth. The country was in

the rich sombre dress of decay.

'Is it not remarkable,' said my friend to me, 'that the older I grow, I

find autumn affecting me the more like spring?'

'I am thankful to say,' interposed Andrew, with a smile in which was

mingled a shade of superiority, 'that no change of the seasons ever

affects me.'

'Are you sure you are right in being thankful for that, father?' asked

his son.

His father gazed at him for a moment, seemed to bethink himself after

some feeble fashion or other, and rejoined,

'Well, I must confess I did feel a touch of the rheumatism this

morning.'

How I pitied Falconer! Would he ever see of the travail of his soul

in this man? But he only smiled a deep sweet smile, and seemed to be

thinking divine things in that great head of his.

At Bristol we went on board a small steamer, and at night were landed at

a little village on the coast of North Devon. The hotel to which we went

was on the steep bank of a tumultuous little river, which tumbled past

its foundation of rock, like a troop of watery horses galloping by with

ever-dissolving limbs. The elder Falconer retired almost as soon as we

had had supper. My friend and I lighted our pipes, and sat by the open

window, for although the autumn was so far advanced, the air here was

very mild. For some time we only listened to the sound of the waters.

'There are three things,' said Falconer at last, taking his pipe out

of his mouth with a smile, 'that give a peculiarly perfect feeling of

abandonment: the laughter of a child; a snake lying across a fallen

branch; and the rush of a stream like this beneath us, whose only

thought is to get to the sea.'

We did not talk much that night, however, but went soon to bed. None of

us slept well. We agreed in the morning that the noise of the stream

had been too much for us all, and that the place felt close and torpid.

Andrew complained that the ceaseless sound wearied him, and Robert that

he felt the aimless endlessness of it more than was good for him.

I confess it irritated me like an anodyne unable to soothe. We were

clearly all in want of something different. The air between the hills

clung to them, hot and moveless. We would climb those hills, and breathe

the air that flitted about over their craggy tops.

As soon as we had breakfasted, we set out. It was soon evident that

Andrew could not ascend the steep road. We returned and got a carriage.

When we reached the top, it was like a resurrection, like a dawning

of hope out of despair. The cool friendly wind blew on our faces, and

breathed strength into our frames. Before us lay the ocean, the visible

type of the invisible, and the vessels with their white sails moved

about over it like the thoughts of men feebly searching the unknown.

Even Andrew Falconer spread out his arms to the wind, and breathed deep,

filling his great chest full.

'I feel like a boy again,' he said.

His son strode to his side, and laid his arm over his shoulders.

'So do I, father,' he returned; 'but it is because I have got you.'

The old man turned and looked at him with a tenderness I had never seen

on his face before. As soon as I saw that, I no longer doubted that he

could be saved.

We found rooms in a farm-house on the topmost height.

'These are poor little hills, Falconer,' I said. 'Yet they help one like

mountains.'

'The whole question is,' he returned, 'whether they are high enough to

lift you out of the dirt. Here we are in the airs of heaven--that is all

we need.'

'They make me think how often, amongst the country people of Scotland, I

have wondered at the clay-feet upon which a golden head of wisdom stood!

What poor needs, what humble aims, what a narrow basement generally, was

sufficient to support the statues of pure-eyed Faith and white-handed

Hope.'

'Yes,' said Falconer: 'he who is faithful over a few things is a lord of

cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey, or

teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The faithfulness is all.'

After an early dinner we went out for a walk, but we did not go far

before we sat down upon the grass. Falconer laid himself at full length

and gazed upwards.

'When I look like this into the blue sky,' he said, after a moment's

silence, 'it seems so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious

tenderness, that I could lie for centuries, and wait for the dawning of

the face of God out of the awful loving-kindness.'

I had never heard Falconer talk of his own present feelings in this

manner; but glancing at the face of his father with a sense of his

unfitness to hear such a lofty utterance, I saw at once that it was for

his sake that he had thus spoken. The old man had thrown himself back

too, and was gazing into the sky, puzzling himself, I could see, to

comprehend what his son could mean. I fear he concluded, for the time,

that Robert was not gifted with the amount of common-sense belonging

of right to the Falconer family, and that much religion had made him

a dreamer. Still, I thought I could see a kind of awe pass like a

spiritual shadow across his face as he gazed into the blue gulfs over

him. No one can detect the first beginnings of any life, and those

of spiritual emotion must more than any lie beyond our ken: there is

infinite room for hope. Falconer said no more. We betook ourselves early

within doors, and he read King Lear to us, expounding the

spiritual history of the poor old king after a fashion I had never

conceived--showing us how the said history was all compressed, as far as

human eye could see of it, into the few months that elapsed between

his abdication and his death; how in that short time he had to learn

everything that he ought to have been learning all his life; and how,

because he had put it off so long, the lessons that had then to be given

him were awfully severe.

I thought what a change it was for the old man to lift his head into the

air of thought and life, out of the sloughs of misery in which he had

been wallowing for years.

CHAPTER XVII. IN THE COUNTRY.

The next morning Falconer, who knew the country, took us out for a

drive. We passed through lanes and gates out upon all open moor, where

he stopped the carriage, and led us a few yards on one side. Suddenly,

hundreds of feet below us, down what seemed an almost precipitous

descent, we saw the wood-embosomed, stream-trodden valley we had left

the day before. Enough had been cleft and scooped seawards out of

the lofty table-land to give room for a few little conical hills with

curious peaks of bare rock. At the bases of these hills flowed noisily

two or three streams, which joined in one, and trotted out to sea over

rocks and stones. The hills and the sides of the great cleft were half

of them green with grass, and half of them robed in the autumnal foliage

of thick woods. By the streams and in the woods nestled pretty houses;

and away at the mouth of the valley and the stream lay the village. All

around, on our level, stretched farm and moorland.

When Andrew Falconer stood so unexpectedly on the verge of the steep

descent, he trembled and started back with fright. His son made him sit

down a little way off, where yet we could see into the valley. The sun

was hot, the air clear and mild, and the sea broke its blue floor into

innumerable sparkles of radiance. We sat for a while in silence.

'Are you sure,' I said, in the hope of setting my friend talking, 'that

there is no horrid pool down there? no half-trampled thicket, with

broken pottery and shreds of tin lying about? no dead carcass, or dirty

cottage, with miserable wife and greedy children? When I was a child,

I knew a lovely place that I could not half enjoy, because, although

hidden from my view, an ugly stagnation, half mud, half water, lay in a

certain spot below me. When I had to pass it, I used to creep by with a

kind of dull terror, mingled with hopeless disgust, and I have never got

over the feeling.'

'You remind me much of a friend of mine of whom I have spoken to you

before,' said Falconer, 'Eric Ericson. I have shown you many of his

verses, but I don't think I ever showed you one little poem containing

an expression of the same feeling. I think I can repeat it.

'Some men there are who cannot spare

A single tear until they feel

The last cold pressure, and the heel

Is stamped upon the outmost layer.

And, waking, some will sigh to think

The clouds have borrowed winter's wing--

Sad winter when the grasses spring

No more about the fountain's brink.

And some would call me coward-fool:

I lay a claim to better blood;

But yet a heap of idle mud

Hath power to make me sorrowful.

I sat thinking over the verses, for I found the feeling a little

difficult to follow, although the last stanza was plain enough. Falconer

resumed.

'I think this is as likely as any place,' he said, 'to be free of such

physical blots. For the moral I cannot say. But I have learned, I hope,

not to be too fastidious--I mean so as to be unjust to the whole because

of the part. The impression made by a whole is just as true as the

result of an analysis, and is greater and more valuable in every

respect. If we rejoice in the beauty of the whole, the other is

sufficiently forgotten. For moral ugliness, it ceases to distress

in proportion as we labour to remove it, and regard it in its true

relations to all that surrounds it. There is an old legend which I dare

say you know. The Saviour and his disciples were walking along the way,

when they came upon a dead dog. The disciples did not conceal their

disgust. The Saviour said: “How white its teeth are!”'

'That is very beautiful,' I rejoined. 'Thank God for that. It is true,

whether invented or not. But,' I added, 'it does not quite answer to the

question about which we have been talking. The Lord got rid of the pain

of the ugliness by finding the beautiful in it.'

'It does correspond, however, I think, in principle,' returned Falconer;

'only it goes much farther, making the exceptional beauty hallow

the general ugliness--which is the true way, for beauty is life, and

therefore infinitely deeper and more powerful than ugliness which is

death. “A dram of sweet,” says Spenser, “is worth a pound of sour.”'

It was so delightful to hear him talk--for what he said was not only

far finer than my record of it, but the whole man spoke as well as his

mouth--that I sought to start him again.

'I wish,' I said, 'that I could see things as you do--in great masses

of harmonious unity. I am only able to see a truth sparkling here and

there, and to try to lay hold of it. When I aim at more, I am like

Noah's dove, without a place to rest the sole of my foot.'

'That is the only way to begin. Leave the large vision to itself, and

look well after your sparkles. You will find them grow and gather and

unite, until you are afloat on a sea of radiance--with cloud shadows no

doubt.'

'And yet,' I resumed, 'I never seem to have room.'

'That is just why.'

'But I feel that I cannot find it. I know that if I fly to that bounding

cape on the far horizon there, I shall only find a place--a place to

want another in. There is no fortunate island out on that sea.'

'I fancy,' said Falconer, 'that until a man loves space, he will never

be at peace in a place. At least so I have found it. I am content if you

but give me room. All space to me throbs with being and life; and the

loveliest spot on the earth seems but the compression of space till

the meaning shines out of it, as the fire flies out of the air when you

drive it close together. To seek place after place for freedom, is a

constant effort to flee from space, and a vain one, for you are ever

haunted by the need of it, and therefore when you seek most to escape

it, fancy that you love it and want it.'

'You are getting too mystical for me now,' I said. 'I am not able to

follow you.'

'I fear I was on the point of losing myself. At all events I can go no

further now. And indeed I fear I have been but skirting the Limbo of

Vanities.'

He rose, for we could both see that this talk was not in the least

interesting to our companion. We got again into the carriage, which,

by Falconer's orders, was turned and driven in the opposite direction,

still at no great distance from the lofty edge of the heights that rose

above the shore.

We came at length to a lane bounded with stone walls, every stone of

which had its moss and every chink its fern. The lane grew more and

more grassy; the walls vanished; and the track faded away into a narrow

winding valley, formed by the many meeting curves of opposing hills.

They were green to the top with sheep-grass, and spotted here and there

with patches of fern, great stones, and tall withered foxgloves. The

air was sweet and healthful, and Andrew evidently enjoyed it because

it reminded him again of his boyhood. The only sound we heard was the

tinkle of a few tender sheep-bells, and now and then the tremulous

bleating of a sheep. With a gentle winding, the valley led us into a

more open portion of itself, where the old man paused with a look of

astonished pleasure.

Before us, seaward, rose a rampart against the sky, like the turreted

and embattled wall of a huge eastern city, built of loose stones piled

high, and divided by great peaky rocks. In the centre rose above them

all one solitary curiously-shaped mass, one of the oddest peaks of the

Himmalays in miniature. From its top on the further side was a sheer

descent to the waters far below the level of the valley from which it

immediately rose. It was altogether a strange freaky fantastic place,

not without its grandeur. It looked like the remains of a frolic of

the Titans, or rather as if reared by the boys and girls, while their

fathers and mothers 'lay stretched out huge in length,' and in breadth

too, upon the slopes around, and laughed thunderously at the sportive

invention of their sons and daughters. Falconer helped his father up to

the edge of the rampart that he might look over. Again he started back,

'afraid of that which was high,' for the lowly valley was yet at a great

height above the diminished waves. On the outside of the rampart ran a

narrow path whence the green hill-side went down steep to the sea.

The gulls were screaming far below us; we could see the little flying

streaks of white. Beyond was the great ocean. A murmurous sound came up

from its shore.

We descended and seated ourselves on the short springy grass of a little

mound at the foot of one of the hills, where it sank slowly, like the

dying gush of a wave, into the hollowest centre of the little vale.

'Everything tends to the cone-shape here,' said Falconer,--'the oddest

and at the same time most wonderful of mathematical figures.'

'Is it not strange,' I said, 'that oddity and wonder should come so

near?'

'They often do in the human world as well,' returned he. 'Therefore it

is not strange that Shelley should have been so fond of this place.

It is told of him that repeated sketches of the spot were found on the

covers of his letters. I know nothing more like Shelley's poetry than

this valley--wildly fantastic and yet beautiful--as if a huge genius

were playing at grandeur, and producing little models of great things.

But there is one grand thing I want to show you a little further on.'

We rose, and walked out of the valley on the other side, along the lofty

coast. When we reached a certain point, Falconer stood and requested us

to look as far as we could, along the cliffs to the face of the last of

them.

'What do you see?' he asked.

'A perpendicular rock, going right down into the blue waters,' I

answered.

'Look at it: what is the outline of it like? Whose face is it?'

'Shakspere's, by all that is grand!' I cried.

'So it is,' said Andrew.

'Right. Now I'll tell you what I would do. If I were very rich, and

there were no poor people in the country, I would give a commission to

some great sculptor to attack that rock and work out its suggestion.

Then, if I had any money left, we should find one for Bacon, and one for

Chaucer, and one for Milton; and, as we are about it, we may fancy as

many more as we like; so that from the bounding rocks of our island, the

memorial faces of our great brothers should look abroad over the seas

into the infinite sky beyond.'

'Well, now,' said the elder, 'I think it is grander as it is.'

'You are quite right, father,' said Robert. 'And so with many of our

fancies for perfecting God's mighty sketches, which he only can finish.'

Again we seated ourselves and looked out over the waves.

'I have never yet heard,' I said, 'how you managed with that poor girl

that wanted to drown herself--on Westminster Bridge, I mean--that night,

you remember.'

'Miss St. John has got her in her own house at present. She has given

her those two children we picked up at the door of the public-house to

take care of. Poor little darlings! they are bringing back the life in

her heart already. There is actually a little colour in her cheek--the

dawn, I trust, of the eternal life. That is Miss St. John's way.

As often as she gets hold of a poor hopeless woman, she gives her

a motherless child. It is wonderful what the childless woman and

motherless child do for each other.'

'I was much amused the other day with the lecture one of the police

magistrates gave a poor creature who was brought before him for

attempting to drown herself. He did give her a sovereign out of the poor

box, though.'

'Well, that might just tide her over the shoal of self-destruction,'

said Falconer. 'But I cannot help doubting whether any one has a right

to prevent a suicide from carrying out his purpose, who is not prepared

to do a good deal more for him than that. What would you think of the

man who snatched the loaf from a hungry thief, threw it back into the

baker's cart, and walked away to his club-dinner? Harsh words of rebuke,

and the threat of severe punishment upon a second attempt--what are

they to the wretch weary of life? To some of them the kindest punishment

would be to hang them for it. It is something else than punishment

that they need. If the comfortable alderman had but “a feeling of their

afflictions,” felt in himself for a moment how miserable he must be,

what a waste of despair must be in his heart, before he would do it

himself, before the awful river would appear to him a refuge from the

upper air, he would change his tone. I fear he regards suicide chiefly

as a burglarious entrance into the premises of the respectable firm of

Vension, Port, & Co.'

'But you mustn't be too hard upon him, Falconer; for if his God is

his belly, how can he regard suicide as other than the most awful

sacrilege?'

'Of course not. His well-fed divinity gives him one great commandment:

“Thou shalt love thyself with all thy heart. The great breach is to hurt

thyself--worst of all to send thyself away from the land of luncheons

and dinners, to the country of thought and vision.” But, alas! he

does not reflect on the fact that the god Belial does not feed all his

votaries; that he has his elect; that the altar of his inner-temple

too often smokes with no sacrifice of which his poor meagre priests may

partake. They must uphold the Divinity which has been good to them, and

not suffer his worship to fall into disrepute.'

'Really, Robert,' said his father, 'I am afraid to think what you

will come to. You will end in denying there is a God at all. You don't

believe in hell, and now you justify suicide. Really--I must say--to say

the least of it--I have not been accustomed to hear such things.'

The poor old man looked feebly righteous at his wicked son. I verily

believe he was concerned for his eternal fate. Falconer gave a pleased

glance at me, and for a moment said nothing. Then he began, with a kind

of logical composure:

'In the first place, father, I do not believe in such a God as some

people say they believe in. Their God is but an idol of the heathen,

modified with a few Christian qualities. For hell, I don't believe there

is any escape from it but by leaving hellish things behind. For suicide,

I do not believe it is wicked because it hurts yourself, but I do

believe it is very wicked. I only want to put it on its own right

footing.'

'And pray what do you consider its right footing?'

'My dear father, I recognize no duty as owing to a man's self. There is

and can be no such thing. I am and can be under no obligation to myself.

The whole thing is a fiction, and of evil invention. It comes from the

upper circles of the hell of selfishness. Or, perhaps, it may with some

be merely a form of metaphysical mistake; but an untruth it is. Then for

the duty we do owe to other people: how can we expect the men or women

who have found life to end, as it seems to them, in a dunghill of

misery--how can we expect such to understand any obligation to live for

the sake of the general others, to no individual of whom, possibly, do

they bear an endurable relation? What remains?--The grandest, noblest

duty from which all other duty springs: the duty to the possible God.

Mind, I say possible God, for I judge it the first of my duties towards

my neighbour to regard his duty from his position, not from mine.'

'But,' said I, 'how would you bring that duty to bear on the mind of a

suicide?'

'I think some of the tempted could understand it, though I fear not

one of those could who judge them hardly, and talk sententiously of the

wrong done to a society which has done next to nothing for her, by the

poor, starved, refused, husband-tortured wretch perhaps, who hurries at

last to the might of the filthy flowing river which, the one thread

of hope in the web of despair, crawls through the city of death. What

should I say to him? I should say: “God liveth: thou art not thine own

but his. Bear thy hunger, thy horror in his name. I in his name will

help thee out of them, as I may. To go before he calleth thee, is to say

'Thou forgettest,' unto him who numbereth the hairs of thy head. Stand

out in the cold and the sleet and the hail of this world, O son of man,

till thy Father open the door and call thee. Yea, even if thou knowest

him not, stand and wait, lest there should be, after all, such a loving

and tender one, who, for the sake of a good with which thou wilt be

all-content, and without which thou never couldst be content, permits

thee there to stand--for a time--long to his sympathizing as well as to

thy suffering heart.”'

Here Falconer paused, and when he spoke again it was from the

ordinary level of conversation. Indeed I fancied that he was a little

uncomfortable at the excitement into which his feelings had borne him.

'Not many of them could understand this, I dare say: but I think most of

them could feel it without understanding it. Certainly the “belly with

good capon lined” will neither understand nor feel it. Suicide is a sin

against God, I repeat, not a crime over which human laws have any hold.

In regard to such, man has a duty alone--that, namely, of making it

possible for every man to live. And where the dread of death is not

sufficient to deter, what can the threat of punishment do? Or what great

thing is gained if it should succeed? What agonies a man must have gone

through in whom neither the horror of falling into such a river, nor

of the knife in the flesh instinct with life, can extinguish the vague

longing to wrap up his weariness in an endless sleep!'

'But,' I remarked, 'you would, I fear, encourage the trade in suicide.

Your kindness would be terribly abused. What would you do with the

pretended suicides?'

'Whip them, for trifling with and trading upon the feelings of their

kind.'

'Then you would drive them to suicide in earnest.'

'Then they might be worth something, which they were not before.'

'We are a great deal too humane for that now-a-days, I fear. We don't

like hurting people.'

'No. We are infested with a philanthropy which is the offspring of our

mammon-worship. But surely our tender mercies are cruel. We don't like

to hang people, however unfit they may be to live amongst their fellows.

A weakling pity will petition for the life of the worst murderer--but

for what? To keep him alive in a confinement as like their notion of

hell as they dare to make it--namely, a place whence all the sweet

visitings of the grace of God are withdrawn, and the man has not a

chance, so to speak, of growing better. In this hell of theirs they will

even pamper his beastly body.'

'They have the chaplain to visit them.'

'I pity the chaplain, cut off in his labours from all the aids which

God's world alone can give for the teaching of these men. Human

beings have not the right to inflict such cruel punishment upon their

fellow-man. It springs from a cowardly shrinking from responsibility,

and from mistrust of the mercy of God;--perhaps first of all from an

over-valuing of the mere life of the body. Hanging is tenderness itself

to such a punishment.'

'I think you are hardly fair, though, Falconer. It is the fear of

sending them to hell that prevents them from hanging them.'

'Yes. You are right, I dare say. They are not of David's mind, who would

rather fall into the hands of God than of men. They think their hell is

not so hard as his, and may be better for them. But I must not, as you

say, forget that they do believe their everlasting fate hangs upon their

hands, for if God once gets his hold of them by death, they are lost for

ever.'

'But the chaplain may awake them to a sense of their sins.'

'I do not think it is likely that talk will do what the discipline of

life has not done. It seems to me, on the contrary, that the clergyman

has no commission to rouse people to a sense of their sins. That is not

his work. He is far more likely to harden them by any attempt in that

direction. Every man does feel his sins, though he often does not know

it. To turn his attention away from what he does feel by trying to rouse

in him feelings which are impossible to him in his present condition, is

to do him a great wrong. The clergyman has the message of salvation,

not of sin, to give. Whatever oppression is on a man, whatever trouble,

whatever conscious something that comes between him and the blessedness

of life, is his sin; for whatever is not of faith is sin; and from all

this He came to save us. Salvation alone can rouse in us a sense of our

sinfulness. One must have got on a good way before he can be sorry for

his sins. There is no condition of sorrow laid down as necessary to

forgiveness. Repentance does not mean sorrow: it means turning away from

the sins. Every man can do that, more or less. And that every man must

do. The sorrow will come afterwards, all in good time. Jesus offers to

take us out of our own hands into his, if we will only obey him.'

The eyes of the old man were fixed on his son as he spoke. He did seem

to be thinking. I could almost fancy that a glimmer of something like

hope shone in his eyes.

It was time to go home, and we were nearly silent all the way.

The next morning was so wet that we could not go out, and had to amuse

ourselves as we best might in-doors. But Falconer's resources never

failed. He gave us this day story after story about the poor people he

had known. I could see that his object was often to get some truth into

his father's mind without exposing it to rejection by addressing it

directly to himself; and few subjects could be more fitted for affording

such opportunity than his experiences among the poor.

The afternoon was still rainy and misty. In the evening I sought to lead

the conversation towards the gospel-story; and then Falconer talked as

I never heard him talk before. No little circumstance in the narratives

appeared to have escaped him. He had thought about everything, as it

seemed to me. He had looked under the surface everywhere, and found

truth--mines of it--under all the upper soil of the story. The deeper he

dug the richer seemed the ore. This was combined with the most pictorial

apprehension of every outward event, which he treated as if it had been

described to him by the lips of an eye-witness. The whole thing lived in

his words and thoughts.

'When anything looks strange, you must look the deeper,' he would say.

At the close of one of our fits of talk, he rose and went to the window.

'Come here,' he said, after looking for a moment.

All day a dropping cloud had filled the space below, so that the hills

on the opposite side of the valley were hidden, and the whole of the

sea, near as it was. But when we went to the window we found that a

great change had silently taken place. The mist continued to veil the

sky, and it clung to the tops of the hills; but, like the rising curtain

of a stage, it had rolled half-way up from their bases, revealing a

great part of the sea and shore, and half of a cliff on the opposite

side of the valley: this, in itself of a deep red, was now smitten by

the rays of the setting sun, and glowed over the waters a splendour of

carmine. As we gazed, the vaporous curtain sank upon the shore, and the

sun sank under the waves, and the sad gray evening closed in the weeping

night, and clouds and darkness swathed the weary earth. For doubtless

the earth needs its night as well as the creatures that live thereon.

In the morning the rain had ceased, but the clouds remained. But they

were high in the heavens now, and, like a departing sorrow, revealed the

outline and form which had appeared before as an enveloping vapour of

universal and shapeless evil. The mist was now far enough off to be seen

and thought about. It was clouds now--no longer mist and rain. And I

thought how at length the evils of the world would float away, and we

should see what it was that made it so hard for us to believe and be at

peace.

In the afternoon the sky had partially cleared, but clouds hid the sun

as he sank towards the west. We walked out. A cold autumnal wind blew,

not only from the twilight of the dying day, but from the twilight

of the dying season. A sorrowful hopeless wind it seemed, full of

the odours of dead leaves--those memories of green woods, and of damp

earth--the bare graves of the flowers. Would the summer ever come again?

We were pacing in silence along a terraced walk which overhung the shore

far below. More here than from the hilltop we seemed to look immediately

into space, not even a parapet intervening betwixt us and the ocean.

The sound of a mournful lyric, never yet sung, was in my brain; it drew

nearer to my mental grasp; but ere it alighted, its wings were gone,

and it fell dead on my consciousness. Its meaning was this: 'Welcome,

Requiem of Nature. Let me share in thy Requiescat. Blow, wind of

mournful memories. Let us moan together. No one taketh from us the joy

of our sorrow. We may mourn as we will.'