Part 91 (1/2)

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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 cla.s.s, 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 gra.s.s. 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s, 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 carca.s.s, 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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.ses 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.