ROBERT FALCONER, page 42
One do I see and twelve; but second there
Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one;
Not from thy nobler port, for there are none
More quiet-featured; some there are who bear
Their message on their brows, while others wear
A look of large commission, nor will shun
The fiery trial, so their work is done:
But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer —
Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips
Seem like the porches of the spirit land;
For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by,
Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye
Burns with a vision and apocalypse
Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand.
II
A Boanerges too! Upon my heart
It lay a heavy hour: features like thine
Should glow with other message than the shine
Of the earth-burrowing levin, and the start
That cleaveth horrid gulfs. Awful and swart
A moment stoodest thou, but less divine —
Brawny and clad in ruin! — till with mine
Thy heart made answering signals, and apart
Beamed forth thy two rapt eye-balls doubly clear,
And twice as strong because thou didst thy duty,
And though affianced to immortal Beauty,
Hiddest not weakly underneath her veil
The pest of Sin and Death which maketh pale:
Henceforward be thy spirit doubly dear. 9
THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.
There is not any weed but hath its shower,
There is not any pool but hath its star;
And black and muddy though the waters are,
We may not miss the glory of a flower,
And winter moons will give them magic power
To spin in cylinders of diamond spar;
And everything hath beauty near and far,
And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour.
And I when I encounter on my road
A human soul that looketh black and grim,
Shall I more ceremonious be than God?
Shall I refuse to watch one hour with him
Who once beside our deepest woe did bud
A patient watching flower about the brim.
’Tis not the violent hands alone that bring
The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom
Although to these full oft the yawning tomb
Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting,
A more immortal agony, will cling
To the half-fashioned sin which would assume
Fair Virtue’s garb. The eye that sows the gloom
With quiet seeds of Death henceforth to spring
What time the sun of passion burning fierce
Breaks through the kindly cloud of circumstance;
The bitter word, and the unkindly glance,
The crust and canker coming with the years,
Are liker Death than arrows, and the lance
Which through the living heart at once doth pierce.
SPOKEN OF SEVERAL PHILOSOPHERS.
I pray you, all ye men, who put your trust
In moulds and systems and well-tackled gear,
Holding that Nature lives from year to year
In one continual round because she must —
Set me not down, I pray you, in the dust
Of all these centuries, like a pot of beer,
A pewter-pot disconsolately clear,
Which holds a potful, as is right and just.
I will grow clamorous — by the rood, I will,
If thus ye use me like a pewter pot.
Good friend, thou art a toper and a sot —
I will not be the lead to hold thy swill,
Nor any lead: I will arise and spill
Thy silly beverage, spill it piping hot.
Nature, to him no message dost thou bear,
Who in thy beauty findeth not the power
To gird himself more strongly for the hour
Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare
The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear
To him who knows thy secret, and in shower
And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a secret bower
Where he may rest until the heavens are fair!
Not with the rest of slumber, but the trance
Of onward movement steady and serene,
Where oft in struggle and in contest keen
His eyes will opened be, and all the dance
Of life break on him, and a wide expanse
Roll upward through the void, sunny and green.
TO JUNE.
Ah, truant, thou art here again, I see!
For in a season of such wretched weather
I thought that thou hadst left us altogether,
Although I could not choose but fancy thee
Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee
Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather
Thy bashful awkwardness, as doubtful whether
Thou shouldst be seen in such a company
Of ugly runaways, unshapely heaps
Of ruffian vapour, broken from restraint
Of their slim prison in the ocean deeps.
But yet I may not, chide: fall to thy books,
Fall to immediately without complaint —
There they are lying, hills and vales and brooks.
WRITTEN ABOUT THE LONGEST DAY.
Summer, sweet Summer, many-fingered Summer!
We hold thee very dear, as well we may:
It is the kernel of the year to-day —
All hail to thee! Thou art a welcome corner!
If every insect were a fairy drummer,
And I a fifer that could deftly play,
We’d give the old Earth such a roundelay
That she would cast all thought of labour from her
Ah! what is this upon my window-pane?
Some sulky drooping cloud comes pouting up,
Stamping its glittering feet along the plain!
Well, I will let that idle fancy drop.
Oh, how the spouts are bubbling with the rain!
And all the earth shines like a silver cup!
ON A MIDGE.
Whence do ye come, ye creature? Each of you
Is perfect as an angel; wings and eyes
Stupendous in their beauty — gorgeous dyes
In feathery fields of purple and of blue!
Would God I saw a moment as ye do!
I would become a molecule in size,
Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise
Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view
The pearly secret which each tiny fly,
Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs,
Hides in its little breast eternally
From you, ye prickly grim philosophers,
With all your theories that sound so high:
Hark to the buzz a moment, my good sirs!
ON A WATERFALL.
Here stands a giant stone from whose far top
Comes down the sounding water. Let me gaze
Till every sense of man and human ways
Is wrecked and quenched for ever, and I drop
Into the whirl of time, and without stop
Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise
To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze
My strength returns when I behold thy prop
Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack
Surely thy strength is human, and like me
Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back!
And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black —
A breezy tuft of grass which I can see
Waving serenely from a sunlit crack!
Above my head the great pine-branches tower
Backwards and forwards each to the other bends,
Beckoning the tempest-cloud which hither wends
Like a slow-laboured thought, heavy with power;
Hark to the patter of the coming shower!
Let me be silent while the Almighty sends
His thunder-word along; but when it ends
I will arise and fashion from the hour
Words of stupendous import, fit to guard
High thoughts and purposes, which I may wave,
When the temptation cometh close and hard,
Like fiery brands betwixt me and the grave
Of meaner things — to which I am a slave
If evermore I keep not watch and ward.
I do remember how when very young,
I saw the great sea first, and heard its swell
As I drew nearer, caught within the spell
Of its vast size and its mysterious tongue.
How the floor trembled, and the dark boat swung
With a man in it, and a great wave fell
Within a stone’s cast! Words may never tell
The passion of the moment, when I flung
All childish records by, and felt arise
A thing that died no more! An awful power
I claimed with trembling hands and eager eyes,
Mine, mine for ever, an immortal dower. —
The noise of waters soundeth to this hour,
When I look seaward through the quiet skies.
ON THE SOURCE OF THE ARVE.
Hear’st thou the dash of water loud and hoarse
With its perpetual tidings upward climb,
Struggling against the wind? Oh, how sublime!
For not in vain from its portentous source,
Thy heart, wild stream, hath yearned for its full force,
But from thine ice-toothed caverns dark as time
At last thou issuest, dancing to the rhyme
Of thy outvolleying freedom! Lo, thy course
Lies straight before thee as the arrow flies,
Right to the ocean-plains. Away, away!
Thy parent waits thee, and her sunset dyes
Are ruffled for thy coming, and the gray
Of all her glittering borders flashes high
Against the glittering rocks: oh, haste, and fly!
PART III. — HIS MANHOOD.
CHAPTER I. IN THE DESERT.
A life lay behind Robert Falconer, and a life lay before him. He stood on a shoal between.
The life behind him was in its grave. He had covered it over and turned away. But he knew it would rise at night.
The life before him was not yet born; and what should issue from that dull ghastly unrevealing fog on the horizon, he did not care. Thither the tide setting eastward would carry him, and his future must be born. All he cared about was to leave the empty garments of his dead behind him — the sky and the fields, the houses and the gardens which those dead had made alive with their presence. Travel, motion, ever on, ever away, was the sole impulse in his heart. Nor had the thought of finding his father any share in his restlessness.
He told his grandmother that he was going back to Aberdeen. She looked in his face with surprise, but seeing trouble there, asked no questions. As if walking in a dream, he found himself at Dr. Anderson’s door.
‘Why, Robert,’ said the good man, ‘what has brought you back? Ah! I see. Poor Ericson! I am very sorry, my boy. What can I do for you?’
‘I can’t go on with my studies now, sir,’ answered Robert. ‘I have taken a great longing for travel. Will you give me a little money and let me go?’
‘To be sure I will. Where do you want to go?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps as I go I shall find myself wanting to go somewhere. You’re not afraid to trust me, are you, sir?’
‘Not in the least, Robert. I trust you perfectly. You shall do just as you please. — Have you any idea, how much money you will want?’
‘No. Give me what you are willing I should spend: I will go by that.’
‘Come along to the bank then. I will give you enough to start with. Write at once when you want more. Don’t be too saving. Enjoy yourself as well as you can. I shall not grudge it.’
Robert smiled a wan smile at the idea of enjoying himself. His friend saw it, but let it pass. There was no good in persuading a man whose grief was all he had left, that he must ere long part with that too. That would have been in lowest deeps of sorrow to open a yet lower deep of horror. But Robert would have refused, and would have been right in refusing to believe with regard to himself what might be true in regard to most men. He might rise above his grief; he might learn to contain his grief; but lose it, forget it? — never.
He went to bid Shargar farewell. As soon as he had a glimpse of what his friend meant, he burst out in an agony of supplication.
‘Tak me wi’ ye, Robert,’ he cried. ‘Ye’re a gentleman noo. I’ll be yer man. I’ll put on a livery coat, an’ gang wi’ ye. I’ll awa’ to Dr. Anderson. He’s sure to lat me gang.’
‘No, Shargar,’ said Robert, ‘I can’t have you with me. I’ve come into trouble, Shargar, and I must fight it out alone.’
‘Ay, ay; I ken. Puir Mr. Ericson!’
‘There’s nothing the matter with Mr. Ericson. Don’t ask me any questions. I’ve said more to you now than I’ve said to anybody besides.’
‘That is guid o’ you, Robert. But am I never to see ye again?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps we may meet some day.’
‘Perhaps is nae muckle to say, Robert,’ protested Shargar.
‘It’s more than can be said about everything, Shargar,’ returned Robert, sadly.
‘Weel, I maun jist tak it as ‘t comes,’ said Shargar, with a despairing philosophy derived from the days when his mother thrashed him. ‘But, eh! Robert, gin it had only pleased the Almichty to sen’ me into the warl’ in a some respectable kin’ o’ a fashion!’
‘Wi’ a chance a’ gaein’ aboot the country like that curst villain yer brither, I suppose?’ retorted Robert, rousing himself for a moment.
‘Na, na,’ responded Shargar. ‘I’ll stick to my ain mither. She never learned me sic tricks.’
‘Do ye that. Ye canna compleen o’ God. It’s a’ richt as far ‘s ye’re concerned. Gin he dinna something o’ ye yet, it’ll be your wyte, no his, I’m thinkin’.’
They walked to Dr. Anderson’s together, and spent the night there. In the morning Robert got on the coach for Edinburgh.
I cannot, if I would, follow him on his travels. Only at times, when the conversation rose in the dead of night, by some Jacob’s ladder of blessed ascent, into regions where the heart of such a man could open as in its own natural clime, would a few words cause the clouds that enveloped this period of his history to dispart, and grant me a peep into the phantasm of his past. I suspect, however, that much of it left upon his mind no recallable impressions. I suspect that much of it looked to himself in the retrospect like a painful dream, with only certain objects and occurrences standing prominent enough to clear the moonlight mist enwrapping the rest.
What the precise nature of his misery was I shall not even attempt to conjecture. That would be to intrude within the holy place of a human heart. One thing alone I will venture to affirm — that bitterness against either of his friends, whose spirits rushed together and left his outside, had no place in that noble nature. His fate lay behind him, like the birth of Shargar, like the death of Ericson, a decree.
I do not even know in what direction he first went. That he had seen many cities and many countries was apparent from glimpses of ancient streets, of mountain-marvels, of strange constellations, of things in heaven and earth which no one could have seen but himself, called up by the magic of his words. A silent man in company, he talked much when his hour of speech arrived. Seldom, however, did he narrate any incident save in connection with some truth of human nature, or fact of the universe.
I do know that the first thing he always did on reaching any new place was to visit the church with the loftiest spire; but he never looked into the church itself until he had left the earth behind him as far as that church would afford him the possibility of ascent. Breathing the air of its highest region, he found himself vaguely strengthened, yes comforted. One peculiar feeling he had, into which I could enter only upon happy occasion, of the presence of God in the wind. He said the wind up there on the heights of human aspiration always made him long and pray. Asking him one day something about his going to church so seldom, he answered thus:
‘My dear boy, it does me ten times more good to get outside the spire than to go inside the church. The spire is the most essential, and consequently the most neglected part of the building. It symbolizes the aspiration without which no man’s faith can hold its own. But the effort of too many of her priests goes to conceal from the worshippers the fact that there is such a stair, with a door to it out of the church. It looks as if they feared their people would desert them for heaven. But I presume it arises generally from the fact that they know of such an ascent themselves, only by hearsay. The knowledge of God is good, but the church is better!’
‘Could it be,’ I ventured to suggest, ‘that, in order to ascend, they must put off the priests’ garments?’
‘Good, my boy!’ he answered. ‘All are priests up there, and must be clothed in fine linen, clean and white — the righteousness of saints — not the imputed righteousness of another, — that is a lying doctrine — but their own righteousness which God has wrought in them by Christ.’ I never knew a man in whom the inward was so constantly clothed upon by the outward, whose ordinary habits were so symbolic of his spiritual tastes, or whose enjoyment of the sight of his eyes and the hearing of his ears was so much informed by his highest feelings. He regarded all human affairs from the heights of religion, as from their church-spires he looked down on the red roofs of Antwerp, on the black roofs of Cologne, on the gray roofs of Strasburg, or on the brown roofs of Basel — uplifted for the time above them, not in dissociation from them.
On the base of the missing twin-spire at Strasburg, high over the roof of the church, stands a little cottage — how strange its white muslin window-curtains look up there! To the day of his death he cherished the fancy of writing a book in that cottage, with the grand city to which London looks a modern mushroom, its thousand roofs with row upon row of windows in them — often five garret stories, one above the other, and its thickets of multiform chimneys, the thrones and procreant cradles of the storks, marvellous in history, habit, and dignity — all below him.
Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one;
Not from thy nobler port, for there are none
More quiet-featured; some there are who bear
Their message on their brows, while others wear
A look of large commission, nor will shun
The fiery trial, so their work is done:
But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer —
Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips
Seem like the porches of the spirit land;
For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by,
Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye
Burns with a vision and apocalypse
Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand.
II
A Boanerges too! Upon my heart
It lay a heavy hour: features like thine
Should glow with other message than the shine
Of the earth-burrowing levin, and the start
That cleaveth horrid gulfs. Awful and swart
A moment stoodest thou, but less divine —
Brawny and clad in ruin! — till with mine
Thy heart made answering signals, and apart
Beamed forth thy two rapt eye-balls doubly clear,
And twice as strong because thou didst thy duty,
And though affianced to immortal Beauty,
Hiddest not weakly underneath her veil
The pest of Sin and Death which maketh pale:
Henceforward be thy spirit doubly dear. 9
THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.
There is not any weed but hath its shower,
There is not any pool but hath its star;
And black and muddy though the waters are,
We may not miss the glory of a flower,
And winter moons will give them magic power
To spin in cylinders of diamond spar;
And everything hath beauty near and far,
And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour.
And I when I encounter on my road
A human soul that looketh black and grim,
Shall I more ceremonious be than God?
Shall I refuse to watch one hour with him
Who once beside our deepest woe did bud
A patient watching flower about the brim.
’Tis not the violent hands alone that bring
The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom
Although to these full oft the yawning tomb
Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting,
A more immortal agony, will cling
To the half-fashioned sin which would assume
Fair Virtue’s garb. The eye that sows the gloom
With quiet seeds of Death henceforth to spring
What time the sun of passion burning fierce
Breaks through the kindly cloud of circumstance;
The bitter word, and the unkindly glance,
The crust and canker coming with the years,
Are liker Death than arrows, and the lance
Which through the living heart at once doth pierce.
SPOKEN OF SEVERAL PHILOSOPHERS.
I pray you, all ye men, who put your trust
In moulds and systems and well-tackled gear,
Holding that Nature lives from year to year
In one continual round because she must —
Set me not down, I pray you, in the dust
Of all these centuries, like a pot of beer,
A pewter-pot disconsolately clear,
Which holds a potful, as is right and just.
I will grow clamorous — by the rood, I will,
If thus ye use me like a pewter pot.
Good friend, thou art a toper and a sot —
I will not be the lead to hold thy swill,
Nor any lead: I will arise and spill
Thy silly beverage, spill it piping hot.
Nature, to him no message dost thou bear,
Who in thy beauty findeth not the power
To gird himself more strongly for the hour
Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare
The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear
To him who knows thy secret, and in shower
And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a secret bower
Where he may rest until the heavens are fair!
Not with the rest of slumber, but the trance
Of onward movement steady and serene,
Where oft in struggle and in contest keen
His eyes will opened be, and all the dance
Of life break on him, and a wide expanse
Roll upward through the void, sunny and green.
TO JUNE.
Ah, truant, thou art here again, I see!
For in a season of such wretched weather
I thought that thou hadst left us altogether,
Although I could not choose but fancy thee
Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee
Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather
Thy bashful awkwardness, as doubtful whether
Thou shouldst be seen in such a company
Of ugly runaways, unshapely heaps
Of ruffian vapour, broken from restraint
Of their slim prison in the ocean deeps.
But yet I may not, chide: fall to thy books,
Fall to immediately without complaint —
There they are lying, hills and vales and brooks.
WRITTEN ABOUT THE LONGEST DAY.
Summer, sweet Summer, many-fingered Summer!
We hold thee very dear, as well we may:
It is the kernel of the year to-day —
All hail to thee! Thou art a welcome corner!
If every insect were a fairy drummer,
And I a fifer that could deftly play,
We’d give the old Earth such a roundelay
That she would cast all thought of labour from her
Ah! what is this upon my window-pane?
Some sulky drooping cloud comes pouting up,
Stamping its glittering feet along the plain!
Well, I will let that idle fancy drop.
Oh, how the spouts are bubbling with the rain!
And all the earth shines like a silver cup!
ON A MIDGE.
Whence do ye come, ye creature? Each of you
Is perfect as an angel; wings and eyes
Stupendous in their beauty — gorgeous dyes
In feathery fields of purple and of blue!
Would God I saw a moment as ye do!
I would become a molecule in size,
Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise
Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view
The pearly secret which each tiny fly,
Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs,
Hides in its little breast eternally
From you, ye prickly grim philosophers,
With all your theories that sound so high:
Hark to the buzz a moment, my good sirs!
ON A WATERFALL.
Here stands a giant stone from whose far top
Comes down the sounding water. Let me gaze
Till every sense of man and human ways
Is wrecked and quenched for ever, and I drop
Into the whirl of time, and without stop
Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise
To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze
My strength returns when I behold thy prop
Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack
Surely thy strength is human, and like me
Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back!
And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black —
A breezy tuft of grass which I can see
Waving serenely from a sunlit crack!
Above my head the great pine-branches tower
Backwards and forwards each to the other bends,
Beckoning the tempest-cloud which hither wends
Like a slow-laboured thought, heavy with power;
Hark to the patter of the coming shower!
Let me be silent while the Almighty sends
His thunder-word along; but when it ends
I will arise and fashion from the hour
Words of stupendous import, fit to guard
High thoughts and purposes, which I may wave,
When the temptation cometh close and hard,
Like fiery brands betwixt me and the grave
Of meaner things — to which I am a slave
If evermore I keep not watch and ward.
I do remember how when very young,
I saw the great sea first, and heard its swell
As I drew nearer, caught within the spell
Of its vast size and its mysterious tongue.
How the floor trembled, and the dark boat swung
With a man in it, and a great wave fell
Within a stone’s cast! Words may never tell
The passion of the moment, when I flung
All childish records by, and felt arise
A thing that died no more! An awful power
I claimed with trembling hands and eager eyes,
Mine, mine for ever, an immortal dower. —
The noise of waters soundeth to this hour,
When I look seaward through the quiet skies.
ON THE SOURCE OF THE ARVE.
Hear’st thou the dash of water loud and hoarse
With its perpetual tidings upward climb,
Struggling against the wind? Oh, how sublime!
For not in vain from its portentous source,
Thy heart, wild stream, hath yearned for its full force,
But from thine ice-toothed caverns dark as time
At last thou issuest, dancing to the rhyme
Of thy outvolleying freedom! Lo, thy course
Lies straight before thee as the arrow flies,
Right to the ocean-plains. Away, away!
Thy parent waits thee, and her sunset dyes
Are ruffled for thy coming, and the gray
Of all her glittering borders flashes high
Against the glittering rocks: oh, haste, and fly!
PART III. — HIS MANHOOD.
CHAPTER I. IN THE DESERT.
A life lay behind Robert Falconer, and a life lay before him. He stood on a shoal between.
The life behind him was in its grave. He had covered it over and turned away. But he knew it would rise at night.
The life before him was not yet born; and what should issue from that dull ghastly unrevealing fog on the horizon, he did not care. Thither the tide setting eastward would carry him, and his future must be born. All he cared about was to leave the empty garments of his dead behind him — the sky and the fields, the houses and the gardens which those dead had made alive with their presence. Travel, motion, ever on, ever away, was the sole impulse in his heart. Nor had the thought of finding his father any share in his restlessness.
He told his grandmother that he was going back to Aberdeen. She looked in his face with surprise, but seeing trouble there, asked no questions. As if walking in a dream, he found himself at Dr. Anderson’s door.
‘Why, Robert,’ said the good man, ‘what has brought you back? Ah! I see. Poor Ericson! I am very sorry, my boy. What can I do for you?’
‘I can’t go on with my studies now, sir,’ answered Robert. ‘I have taken a great longing for travel. Will you give me a little money and let me go?’
‘To be sure I will. Where do you want to go?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps as I go I shall find myself wanting to go somewhere. You’re not afraid to trust me, are you, sir?’
‘Not in the least, Robert. I trust you perfectly. You shall do just as you please. — Have you any idea, how much money you will want?’
‘No. Give me what you are willing I should spend: I will go by that.’
‘Come along to the bank then. I will give you enough to start with. Write at once when you want more. Don’t be too saving. Enjoy yourself as well as you can. I shall not grudge it.’
Robert smiled a wan smile at the idea of enjoying himself. His friend saw it, but let it pass. There was no good in persuading a man whose grief was all he had left, that he must ere long part with that too. That would have been in lowest deeps of sorrow to open a yet lower deep of horror. But Robert would have refused, and would have been right in refusing to believe with regard to himself what might be true in regard to most men. He might rise above his grief; he might learn to contain his grief; but lose it, forget it? — never.
He went to bid Shargar farewell. As soon as he had a glimpse of what his friend meant, he burst out in an agony of supplication.
‘Tak me wi’ ye, Robert,’ he cried. ‘Ye’re a gentleman noo. I’ll be yer man. I’ll put on a livery coat, an’ gang wi’ ye. I’ll awa’ to Dr. Anderson. He’s sure to lat me gang.’
‘No, Shargar,’ said Robert, ‘I can’t have you with me. I’ve come into trouble, Shargar, and I must fight it out alone.’
‘Ay, ay; I ken. Puir Mr. Ericson!’
‘There’s nothing the matter with Mr. Ericson. Don’t ask me any questions. I’ve said more to you now than I’ve said to anybody besides.’
‘That is guid o’ you, Robert. But am I never to see ye again?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps we may meet some day.’
‘Perhaps is nae muckle to say, Robert,’ protested Shargar.
‘It’s more than can be said about everything, Shargar,’ returned Robert, sadly.
‘Weel, I maun jist tak it as ‘t comes,’ said Shargar, with a despairing philosophy derived from the days when his mother thrashed him. ‘But, eh! Robert, gin it had only pleased the Almichty to sen’ me into the warl’ in a some respectable kin’ o’ a fashion!’
‘Wi’ a chance a’ gaein’ aboot the country like that curst villain yer brither, I suppose?’ retorted Robert, rousing himself for a moment.
‘Na, na,’ responded Shargar. ‘I’ll stick to my ain mither. She never learned me sic tricks.’
‘Do ye that. Ye canna compleen o’ God. It’s a’ richt as far ‘s ye’re concerned. Gin he dinna something o’ ye yet, it’ll be your wyte, no his, I’m thinkin’.’
They walked to Dr. Anderson’s together, and spent the night there. In the morning Robert got on the coach for Edinburgh.
I cannot, if I would, follow him on his travels. Only at times, when the conversation rose in the dead of night, by some Jacob’s ladder of blessed ascent, into regions where the heart of such a man could open as in its own natural clime, would a few words cause the clouds that enveloped this period of his history to dispart, and grant me a peep into the phantasm of his past. I suspect, however, that much of it left upon his mind no recallable impressions. I suspect that much of it looked to himself in the retrospect like a painful dream, with only certain objects and occurrences standing prominent enough to clear the moonlight mist enwrapping the rest.
What the precise nature of his misery was I shall not even attempt to conjecture. That would be to intrude within the holy place of a human heart. One thing alone I will venture to affirm — that bitterness against either of his friends, whose spirits rushed together and left his outside, had no place in that noble nature. His fate lay behind him, like the birth of Shargar, like the death of Ericson, a decree.
I do not even know in what direction he first went. That he had seen many cities and many countries was apparent from glimpses of ancient streets, of mountain-marvels, of strange constellations, of things in heaven and earth which no one could have seen but himself, called up by the magic of his words. A silent man in company, he talked much when his hour of speech arrived. Seldom, however, did he narrate any incident save in connection with some truth of human nature, or fact of the universe.
I do know that the first thing he always did on reaching any new place was to visit the church with the loftiest spire; but he never looked into the church itself until he had left the earth behind him as far as that church would afford him the possibility of ascent. Breathing the air of its highest region, he found himself vaguely strengthened, yes comforted. One peculiar feeling he had, into which I could enter only upon happy occasion, of the presence of God in the wind. He said the wind up there on the heights of human aspiration always made him long and pray. Asking him one day something about his going to church so seldom, he answered thus:
‘My dear boy, it does me ten times more good to get outside the spire than to go inside the church. The spire is the most essential, and consequently the most neglected part of the building. It symbolizes the aspiration without which no man’s faith can hold its own. But the effort of too many of her priests goes to conceal from the worshippers the fact that there is such a stair, with a door to it out of the church. It looks as if they feared their people would desert them for heaven. But I presume it arises generally from the fact that they know of such an ascent themselves, only by hearsay. The knowledge of God is good, but the church is better!’
‘Could it be,’ I ventured to suggest, ‘that, in order to ascend, they must put off the priests’ garments?’
‘Good, my boy!’ he answered. ‘All are priests up there, and must be clothed in fine linen, clean and white — the righteousness of saints — not the imputed righteousness of another, — that is a lying doctrine — but their own righteousness which God has wrought in them by Christ.’ I never knew a man in whom the inward was so constantly clothed upon by the outward, whose ordinary habits were so symbolic of his spiritual tastes, or whose enjoyment of the sight of his eyes and the hearing of his ears was so much informed by his highest feelings. He regarded all human affairs from the heights of religion, as from their church-spires he looked down on the red roofs of Antwerp, on the black roofs of Cologne, on the gray roofs of Strasburg, or on the brown roofs of Basel — uplifted for the time above them, not in dissociation from them.
On the base of the missing twin-spire at Strasburg, high over the roof of the church, stands a little cottage — how strange its white muslin window-curtains look up there! To the day of his death he cherished the fancy of writing a book in that cottage, with the grand city to which London looks a modern mushroom, its thousand roofs with row upon row of windows in them — often five garret stories, one above the other, and its thickets of multiform chimneys, the thrones and procreant cradles of the storks, marvellous in history, habit, and dignity — all below him.
