Robert Falconer

She made him no answer. She dared not say that he expected too much from God. Is it likely that Jesus will say so of any man or woman when he looks for faith in the earth?

Robert went out to see some of his old friends, and when he returned it was time for supper and worship. These were the same as of old: a plate of porridge, and a wooden bowl of milk for the former; a chapter and a hymn, both read, and a prayer from grannie, and then from Robert for the latter. And so they went to bed.

But Robert could not sleep. He rose and dressed himself, went up to the empty garret, looked at the stars through the skylight, knelt and prayed for his father and for all men to the Father of all, then softly descended the stairs, and went out into the street.

CHAPTER VI. SHARGAR’S MOTHER

It was a warm still night in July—moonless but not dark. There is no night there in the summer—only a long ethereal twilight. He walked through the sleeping town so full of memories, all quiet in his mind now—quiet as the air that ever broods over the house where a friend has dwelt. He left the town behind, and walked—through the odours of grass and of clover and of the yellow flowers on the old earthwalls that divided the fields—sweet scents to which the darkness is friendly, and which, mingling with the smell of the earth itself, reach the founts of memory sooner than even words or tones—down to the brink of the river that flowed scarcely murmuring through the night, itself dark and brown as the night from its far-off birthplace in the peaty hills. He crossed the footbridge and turned into the bleachfield. Its houses were desolate, for that trade too had died away. The machinery stood rotting and rusting. The wheel gave no answering motion to the flow of the water that glided away beneath it. The thundering beatles were still. The huge legs of the wauk-mill took no more seven-leagued strides nowhither. The rubbing-boards with their thickly-fluted surfaces no longer frothed the soap from every side, tormenting the web of linen into a brightness to gladden the heart of the housewife whose hands had spun the yarn. The terrible boiler that used to send up from its depths bubbling and boiling spouts and peaks and ridges, lay empty and cold. The little house behind, where its awful furnace used to glow, and which the pungent chlorine used to fill with its fumes, stood open to the wind and the rain: he could see the slow river through its unglazed window beyond. The water still went slipping and sliding through the deserted places, a power whose use had departed. The canal, the delight of his childhood, was nearly choked with weeds; it went flowing over long grasses that drooped into it from its edges, giving a faint gurgle once and again in its flow, as if it feared to speak in the presence of the stars, and escaped silently into the river far below. The grass was no longer mown like a lawn, but was long and deep and thick. He climbed to the place where he had once lain and listened to the sounds of the belt of fir-trees behind him, hearing the voice of Nature that whispered God in his ears, and there he threw himself down once more. All the old things, the old ways, the old glories of childhood—were they gone? No. Over them all, in them all, was God still. There is no past with him. An eternal present, He filled his soul and all that his soul had ever filled. His history was taken up into God: it had not vanished: his life was hid with Christ in God. To the God of the human heart nothing that has ever been a joy, a grief, a passing interest, can ever cease to be what it has been; there is no fading at the breath of time, no passing away of fashion, no dimming of old memories in the heart of him whose being creates time. Falconer’s heart rose up to him as to his own deeper life, his indwelling deepest spirit—above and beyond him as the heavens are above and beyond the earth, and yet nearer and homelier than his own most familiar thought. ‘As the light fills the earth,’ thought he, ‘so God fills what we call life. My sorrows, O God, my hopes, my joys, the upliftings of my life are with thee, my root, my life. Thy comfortings, my perfect God, are strength indeed!’

He rose and looked around him. While he lay, the waning, fading moon had risen, weak and bleared and dull. She brightened and brightened until at last she lighted up the night with a wan, forgetful gleam. ‘So should I feel,’ he thought, ‘about the past on which I am now gazing, were it not that I believe in the God who forgets nothing. That which has been, is.’ His eye fell on something bright in the field beyond. He would see what it was, and crossed the earthen dyke. It shone like a little moon in the grass. By humouring the reflection he reached it. It was only a cutting of white iron, left by some tinker. He walked on over the field, thinking of Shargar’s mother. If he could but find her! He walked on and on. He had no inclination to go home. The solitariness of the night, the uncanniness of the moon, prevents most people from wandering far: Robert had learned long ago to love the night, and to feel at home with every aspect of God’s world. How this peace contrasted with the nights in London streets! this grass with the dark flow of the Thames! these hills and those clouds half melted into moonlight with the lanes blazing with gas! He thought of the child who, taken from London for the first time, sent home the message: ‘Tell mother that it’s dark in the country at night.’ Then his thoughts turned again to Shargar’s mother! Was it not possible, being a wanderer far and wide, that she might be now in Rothieden? Such people have a love for their old haunts, stronger than that of orderly members of society for their old homes. He turned back, and did not know where he was. But the lines of the hill-tops directed him. He hastened to the town, and went straight through the sleeping streets to the back wynd where he had found Shargar sitting on the doorstep. Could he believe his eyes? A feeble light was burning in the shed. Some other poverty-stricken bird of the night, however, might be there, and not she who could perhaps guide him to the goal of his earthly life. He drew near, and peeped in at the broken window. A heap of something lay in a corner, watched only by a long-snuffed candle.

The heap moved, and a voice called out querulously,

‘Is that you, Shargar, ye shochlin deevil?’

Falconer’s heart leaped. He hesitated no longer, but lifted the latch and entered. He took up the candle, snuffed it as he best could, and approached the woman. When the light fell on her face she sat up, staring wildly with eyes that shunned and sought it.

‘Wha are ye that winna lat me dee in peace and quaietness?’

‘I’m Robert Falconer.’

‘Come to speir efter yer ne’er-do-weel o’ a father, I reckon,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he answered.

‘Wha’s that ahin’ ye?’

‘Naebody’s ahin’ me,’ answered Robert.

‘Dinna lee. Wha’s that ahin’ the door?’

‘Naebody. I never tell lees.’

‘Whaur’s Shargar? What for doesna he come till ‘s mither?’

‘He’s hynd awa’ ower the seas—a captain o’ sodgers.’

‘It’s a lee. He’s an ill-faured scoonrel no to come till ‘s mither an’ bid her gude-bye, an’ her gaein’ to hell.’

‘Gin ye speir at Christ, he’ll tak ye oot o’ the verra mou’ o’ hell, wuman.’

‘Christ! wha’s that? Ow, ay! It’s him ‘at they preach aboot i’ the kirks. Na, na. There’s nae gude o’ that. There’s nae time to repent noo. I doobt sic repentance as mine wadna gang for muckle wi’ the likes o’ him.’

‘The likes o’ him ‘s no to be gotten. He cam to save the likes o’ you an’ me.’

‘The likes o’ you an’ me! said ye, laddie? There’s no like atween you and me. He’ll hae naething to say to me, but gang to hell wi’ ye for a bitch.’

‘He never said sic a word in ‘s life. He wad say, “Poor thing! she was ill-used. Ye maunna sin ony mair. Come, and I’ll help ye.” He wad say something like that. He’ll save a body whan she wadna think it.’

‘An’ I hae gien my bonnie bairn to the deevil wi’ my ain han’s! She’ll come to hell efter me to girn at me, an’ set them on me wi’ their reid het taings, and curse me. Och hone! och hone!’

‘Hearken to me,’ said Falconer, with as much authority as he could assume. But she rolled herself over again in the corner, and lay groaning.

‘Tell me whaur she is,’ said Falconer, ‘and I’ll tak her oot o’ their grup, whaever they be.’

She sat up again, and stared at him for a few moments without speaking.

‘I left her wi’ a wuman waur nor mysel’,’ she said at length. ‘God forgie me.’

‘He will forgie ye, gin ye tell me whaur she is.’

‘Do ye think he will? Eh, Maister Faukner! The wuman bides in a coort off o’ Clare Market. I dinna min’ upo’ the name o’ ‘t, though I cud gang till ‘t wi’ my een steekit. Her name’s Widow Walker—an auld rowdie—damn her sowl!’

‘Na, na, ye maunna say that gin ye want to be forgien yersel’. I’ll fin’ her oot. An’ I’m thinkin’ it winna be lang or I hae a grup o’ her. I’m gaein’ back to Lonnon in twa days or three.’

‘Dinna gang till I’m deid. Bide an’ haud the deevil aff o’ me. He has a grup o’ my hert noo, rivin’ at it wi’ his lang nails—as lang ‘s birds’ nebs.’

‘I’ll bide wi’ ye till we see what can be dune for ye. What’s the maitter wi’ ye? I’m a doctor noo.’

There was not a chair or box or stool on which to sit down. He therefore kneeled beside her. He felt her pulse, questioned her, and learned that she had long been suffering from an internal complaint, which had within the last week grown rapidly worse. He saw that there was no hope of her recovery, but while she lived he gave himself to her service as to that of a living soul capable of justice and love. The night was more than warm, but she had fits of shivering. He wrapped his coat round her, and wiped from the poor degraded face the damps of suffering. The woman-heart was alive still, for she took the hand that ministered to her and kissed it with a moan. When the morning came she fell asleep. He crept out and went to his grandmother’s, where he roused Betty, and asked her to get him some peat and coals. Finding his grandmother awake, he told her all, and taking the coals and the peat, carried them to the hut, where he managed, with some difficulty, to light a fire on the hearth; after which he sat on the doorstep till Betty appeared with two men carrying a mattress and some bedding. The noise they made awoke her.

‘Dinna tak me,’ she cried. ‘I winna do ‘t again, an’ I’m deein’, I tell ye I’m deein’, and that’ll clear a’ scores—o’ this side ony gait,’ she added.

They lifted her upon the mattress, and made her more comfortable than perhaps she had ever been in her life. But it was only her illness that made her capable of prizing such comfort. In health, the heather on a hill-side was far more to her taste than bed and blankets. She had a wild, roving, savage nature, and the wind was dearer to her than house-walls. She had come of ancestors—and it was a poor little atom of truth that a soul bred like this woman could have been born capable of entertaining. But she too was eternal—and surely not to be fixed for ever in a bewilderment of sin and ignorance—a wild-eyed soul staring about in hell-fire for want of something it could not understand and had never beheld—by the changeless mandate of the God of love! She was in less pain than during the night, and lay quietly gazing at the fire. Things awful to another would no doubt cross her memory without any accompanying sense of dismay; tender things would return without moving her heart; but Falconer had a hold of her now. Nothing could be done for her body except to render its death as easy as might be; but something might be done for herself. He made no attempt to produce this or that condition of mind in the poor creature. He never made such attempts. ‘How can I tell the next lesson a soul is capable of learning?’ he would say. ‘The Spirit of God is the teacher. My part is to tell the good news. Let that work as it ought, as it can, as it will.’ He knew that pain is with some the only harbinger that can prepare the way for the entrance of kindness: it is not understood till then. In the lulls of her pain he told her about the man Christ Jesus—what he did for the poor creatures who came to him—how kindly he spoke to them—how he cured them. He told her how gentle he was with the sinning women, how he forgave them and told them to do so no more. He left the story without comment to work that faith which alone can redeem from selfishness and bring into contact with all that is living and productive of life, for to believe in him is to lay hold of eternal life: he is the Life—therefore the life of men. She gave him but little encouragement: he did not need it, for he believed in the Life. But her outcries were no longer accompanied with that fierce and dreadful language in which she sought relief at first. He said to himself, ‘What matter if I see no sign? I am doing my part. Who can tell, when the soul is free from the distress of the body, when sights and sounds have vanished from her, and she is silent in the eternal, with the terrible past behind her, and clear to her consciousness, how the words I have spoken to her may yet live and grow in her; how the kindness God has given me to show her may help her to believe in the root of all kindness, in the everlasting love of her Father in heaven? That she can feel at all is as sure a sign of life as the adoration of an ecstatic saint.’

He had no difficulty now in getting from her what information she could give him about his father. It seemed to him of the greatest import, though it amounted only to this, that when he was in London, he used to lodge at the house of an old Scotchwoman of the name of Macallister, who lived in Paradise Gardens, somewhere between Bethnal Green and Spitalfields. Whether he had been in London lately, she did not know; but if anybody could tell him where he was, it would be Mrs. Macallister.

His heart filled with gratitude and hope and the surging desire for the renewal of his London labours. But he could not leave the dying woman till she was beyond the reach of his comfort: he was her keeper now. And ‘he that believeth shall not make haste.’ Labour without perturbation, readiness without hurry, no haste, and no hesitation, was the divine law of his activity.

Shargar’s mother breathed her last holding his hand. They were alone. He kneeled by the bed, and prayed to God, saying,

‘Father, this woman is in thy hands. Take thou care of her, as thou hast taken care of her hitherto. Let the light go up in her soul, that she may love and trust thee, O light, O gladness. I thank thee that thou hast blessed me with this ministration. Now lead me to my father. Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.’

He rose and went to his grandmother and told her all. She put her arms round his neck, and kissed him, and said,

‘God bless ye, my bonny lad. And he will bless ye. He will; he will. Noo gang yer wa’s, and do the wark he gies ye to do. Only min’, it’s no you; it’s him.’

The next morning, the sweet winds of his childhood wooing him to remain yet a day among their fields, he sat on the top of the Aberdeen coach, on his way back to the horrors of court and alley in the terrible London.

CHAPTER VII. THE SILK-WEAVER

When he arrived he made it his first business to find ‘Widow Walker.’ She was evidently one of the worst of her class; and could it have been accomplished without scandal, and without interfering with the quietness upon which he believed that the true effect of his labours in a large measure depended, he would not have scrupled simply to carry off the child. With much difficulty, for the woman was suspicious, he contrived to see her, and was at once reminded of the child he had seen in the cart on the occasion of Shargar’s recognition of his mother. He fancied he saw in her some resemblance to his friend Shargar. The affair ended in his paying the woman a hundred and fifty pounds to give up the girl. Within six months she had drunk herself to death. He took little Nancy Kennedy home with him, and gave her in charge to his housekeeper. She cried a good deal at first, and wanted to go back to Mother Walker, but he had no great trouble with her after a time. She began to take a share in the house-work, and at length to wait upon him. Then Falconer began to see that he must cultivate relations with other people in order to enlarge his means of helping the poor. He nowise abandoned his conviction that whatever good he sought to do or lent himself to aid must be effected entirely by individual influence. He had little faith in societies, regarding them chiefly as a wretched substitute, just better than nothing, for that help which the neighbour is to give to his neighbour. Finding how the unbelief of the best of the poor is occasioned by hopelessness in privation, and the sufferings of those dear to them, he was confident that only the personal communion of friendship could make it possible for them to believe in God. Christians must be in the world as He was in the world; and in proportion as the truth radiated from them, the world would be able to believe in Him. Money he saw to be worse than useless, except as a gracious outcome of human feelings and brotherly love. He always insisted that the Saviour healed only those on whom his humanity had laid hold; that he demanded faith of them in order to make them regard him, that so his personal being might enter into their hearts. Healing without faith in its source would have done them harm instead of good—would have been to them a windfall, not a Godsend; at best the gift of magic, even sometimes the power of Satan casting out Satan. But he must not therefore act as if he were the only one who could render this individual aid, or as if men influencing the poor individually could not aid each other in their individual labours. He soon found, I say, that there were things he could not do without help, and Nancy was his first perplexity. From this he was delivered in a wonderful way.

One afternoon he was prowling about Spitalfields, where he had made many acquaintances amongst the silk-weavers and their families. Hearing a loud voice as he passed down a stair from the visit he had been paying further up the house, he went into the room whence the sound came, for he knew a little of the occupant. He was one De Fleuri, or as the neighbours called him, Diffleery, in whose countenance, after generations of want and debasement, the delicate lines and noble cast of his ancient race were yet emergent. This man had lost his wife and three children, his whole family except a daughter now sick, by a slow-consuming hunger; and he did not believe there was a God that ruled in the earth. But he supported his unbelief by no other argument than a hopeless bitter glance at his empty loom. At this moment he sat silent—a rock against which the noisy waves of a combative Bible-reader were breaking in rude foam. His silence and apparent impassiveness angered the irreverent little worthy. To Falconer’s humour he looked a vulgar bull-terrier barking at a noble, sad-faced staghound. His foolish arguments against infidelity, drawn from Paley’s Natural Theology, and tracts about the inspiration of the Bible, touched the sore-hearted unbelief of the man no nearer than the clangour of negro kettles affects the eclipse of the sun. Falconer stood watching his opportunity. Nor was the eager disputant long in affording him one. Socratic fashion, Falconer asked him a question, and was answered; followed it with another, which, after a little hesitation, was likewise answered; then asked a third, the ready answer to which involved such a flagrant contradiction of the first, that the poor sorrowful weaver burst into a laugh of delight at the discomfiture of his tormentor. After some stammering, and a confused attempt to recover the line of argument, the would-be partizan of Deity roared out, ‘The fool hath said in his heart there is no God;’ and with this triumphant discharge of his swivel, turned and ran down the stairs precipitately.

Both laughed while the sound of his footsteps lasted. Then Falconer said,

‘My. De Fleuri, I believe in God with all my heart, and soul, and strength, and mind; though not in that poor creature’s arguments. I don’t know that your unbelief is not better than his faith.’