Robert Falconer by George MacDonald (page 11)

that the end of my journey was already accomplished.’

Mysie put her hand in his.

‘You have saved me, Mr. Falconer.’

‘For Ericson’s sake, who was dying and could not,’ returned Falconer.

‘Ah!’ said Mysie, her large eyes opening with wonder. It was evident she had had no suspicion of his attachment to her.

‘But,’ said Falconer, ‘there was another in it, without whom I could have done nothing.’

‘Who was that?’

‘George Moray.’

‘Did he know me then?’

‘No. Fortunately not. You would not have looked at him then. It was all done for love of me. He is the truest fellow in the world, and altogether worthy of you, Miss Hamilton. I will tell you the whole story some day, lest he should not do himself justice.’

‘Ah, that reminds me. Hamilton sounds strange in your voice. You suspected me of having changed my name to hide my history?’

It was so, and Falconer’s silence acknowledged the fact.

‘Lady Janet brought me home, and told my father all. When he died a few years after, she took me to live with her, and never rested till she had brought me acquainted with Sir John Hamilton, in favour of whom my father had renounced his claim to some disputed estates. Sir John had lost his only son, and he had no daughter. He was a kind-hearted old man, rather like my own father. He took to me, as they say, and made me change my name to his, leaving me the property that might have been my father’s, on condition that whoever I married should take the same name. I don’t think your friend will mind making the exchange,’ said Mysie in conclusion, as the door opened and Shargar came in.

‘Robert, ye’re a’ gait (everywhere)!’ he exclaimed as he entered. Then, stopping to ask no questions, ‘Ye see I’m to hae a name o’ my ain efter a’,’ he said, with a face which looked even handsome in the light of his gladness.

Robert shook hands with him, and wished him joy heartily.

‘Wha wad hae thocht it, Shargar,’ he added, ‘that day ‘at ye pat bonnets for hose upo’ Black Geordie’s huves?’

The butler announced the Marquis of Boarshead. Mysie’s eyes flashed. She rose from her seat, and advanced to meet the marquis, who entered behind the servant. He bowed and held out his hand. Mysie retreated one step, and stood.

‘Your lordship has no right to force yourself upon me. You must have seen that I had no wish to renew the acquaintance I was unhappy enough to form–now, thank God, many years ago.’

‘Forgive me, Miss Hamilton. One word in private,’ said the marquis.

‘Not a word,’ returned Mysie.

‘Before these gentlemen, then, whom I have not the honour of knowing, I offer you my hand.’

‘To accept that offer would be to wrong myself even more than your lordship has done.’

She went back to where Moray was standing, and stood beside him. The evil spirit in the marquis looked out at its windows.

‘You are aware, madam,’ he said, ‘that your reputation is in the hand I offer you?’

‘The worse for it, my lord,’ returned Mysie, with a scornful smile. ‘But your lordship’s brother will protect it.’

‘My brother!’ said the marquis. ‘What do you mean? I have no brother!’

‘Ye hae mair brithers than ye ken o’, Lord Sandy, and I’m ane o’ them,’ said Shargar.

‘You are either a liar or a bastard, then,’ said the marquis, who had not been brought up in a school of which either self-restraint or respect for women were prominent characteristics.

Falconer forgot himself for a moment, and made a stride forward.

‘Dinna hit him, Robert,’ cried Shargar. ‘He ance gae me a shillin’, an’ it helpit, as ye ken, to haud me alive to face him this day.–No liar, my lord, but a bastard, thank heaven.’ Then, with a laugh, he instantly added, ‘Gin I had been ain brither to you, my lord, God only knows what a rascal I micht hae been.’

‘By God, you shall answer for your damned insolence,’ said the marquis, and, lifting his riding-whip from the table where he had laid it, he approached his brother.

Mysie rang the bell.

‘Haud yer han’, Sandy,’ cried Shargar. ‘I hae faced mair fearsome foes than you. But I hae some faimily-feelin’, though ye hae nane: I wadna willin’ly strike my brither.’

As he spoke, he retreated a little. The marquis came on with raised whip. But Falconer stepped between, laid one of his great hands on the marquis’s chest, and flung him to the other end of the room, where he fell over an ottoman. The same moment the servant entered.

‘Ask your mistress to oblige me by coming to the drawing-room,’ said Mysie.

The marquis had risen, but had not recovered his presence of mind when Lady Janet entered. She looked inquiringly from one to the other.

‘Please, Lady Janet, will you ask the Marquis of Boarshead to leave the house,’ said Mysie.

‘With all my hert,’ answered Lady Janet; ‘and the mair that he’s a kin’ o’ a cousin o’ my ain. Gang yer wa’s, Sandy. Ye’re no fit company for decent fowk; an’ that ye wad ken yersel’, gin ye had ony idea left o’ what decency means.’

Without heeding her, the marquis went up to Falconer.

‘Your card, sir.’

Lady Janet followed him.

”Deed ye s’ get nae cairds here,’ she said, pushing him aside. ‘So you allow your friends to insult me in your own house as they please, cousin Janet?’ said the marquis, who probably felt her opposition the most formidable of all.

”Deed they canna say waur o’ ye nor I think. Gang awa’, an’ repent. Consider yer gray hairs, man.’

This was the severest blow he had yet received. He left the room, ‘swearing at large.’

Falconer followed him; but what came of it nobody ever heard.

Major and Miss Hamilton were married within three months, and went out to India together, taking Nancy Kennedy with them.

CHAPTER X.

A NEOPHYTE.

Before many months had passed, without the slightest approach to any formal recognition, I found myself one of the church of labour of which Falconer was clearly the bishop. As he is the subject, or rather object of my book, I will now record a fact which may serve to set forth his views more clearly. I gained a knowledge of some of the circumstances, not merely from the friendly confidences of Miss St. John and Falconer, but from being a kind of a Scotch cousin of Lady Janet Gordon, whom I had taken an opportunity of acquainting with the relation. She was old-fashioned enough to acknowledge it even with some eagerness. The ancient clan-feeling is good in this, that it opens a channel whose very existence is a justification for the flow of simply human feelings along all possible levels of social position. And I would there were more of it. Only something better is coming instead of it–a recognition of the infinite brotherhood in Christ. All other relations, all attempts by churches, by associations, by secret societies–of Freemasons and others, are good merely as they tend to destroy themselves in the wider truth; as they teach men to be dissatisfied with their limitations. But I wander; for I mentioned Lady Janet now, merely to account for some of the information I possess concerning Lady Georgina Betterton.

I met her once at my so-called cousin’s, whom she patronized as a dear old thing. To my mind, she was worth twenty of her, though she was wrinkled and Scottishly sententious. ‘A sweet old bat,’ was another epithet of Lady Georgina’s. But she came to see her, notwithstanding, and did not refuse to share in her nice little dinners, and least of all, when Falconer was of the party, who had been so much taken with Lady Janet’s behaviour to the Marquis of Boarshead, just recorded, that he positively cultivated her acquaintance thereafter.

Lady Georgina was of an old family–an aged family, indeed; so old, in fact, that some envious people professed to think it decrepit with age. This, however, may well be questioned if any argument bearing on the point may be drawn from the person of Lady Georgina. She was at least as tall as Mary St. John, and very handsome–only with somewhat masculine features and expression. She had very sloping shoulders and a long neck, which took its finest curves when she was talking to inferiors: condescension was her forte. Of the admiration of the men, she had had more than enough, although either they were afraid to go farther, or she was hard to please.

She had never contemplated anything admirable long enough to comprehend it; she had never looked up to man or woman with anything like reverence; she saw too quickly and too keenly into the foibles of all who came near her to care to look farther for their virtues. If she had ever been humbled, and thence taught to look up, she might by this time have been a grand woman, worthy of a great man’s worship. She patronized Miss St. John, considerably to her amusement, and nothing to her indignation. Of course she could not understand her. She had a vague notion of how she spent her time; and believing a certain amount of fanaticism essential to religion, wondered how so sensible and ladylike a person as Miss St. John could go in for it.

Meeting Falconer at Lady Janet’s, she was taken with him. Possibly she recognized in him a strength that would have made him her master, if he had cared for such a distinction; but nothing she could say attracted more than a passing attention on his part. Falconer was out of her sphere, and her influences were powerless to reach him.

At length she began to have a glimmering of the relation of labour between Miss St. John and him, and applied to the former for some enlightenment. But Miss St. John was far from explicit, for she had no desire for such assistance as Lady Georgina’s. What motives next led her to seek the interview I am now about to record, I cannot satisfactorily explain, but I will hazard a conjecture or two, although I doubt if she understood them thoroughly herself.

She was, if not blasée, at least ennuyée, and began to miss excitement, and feel blindly about her for something to make life interesting. She was gifted with far more capacity than had ever been exercised, and was of a large enough nature to have grown sooner weary of trifles than most women of her class. She might have been an artist, but she drew like a young lady; she might have been a prophetess, and Byron was her greatest poet. It is no wonder that she wanted something she had not got.

Since she had been foiled in her attempt on Miss St. John, which she attributed to jealousy, she had, in quite another circle, heard strange, wonderful, even romantic stories about Falconer and his doings among the poor. A new world seemed to open before her longing gaze–a world, or a calenture, a mirage? for would she cross the ‘wandering fields of barren foam,’ to reach the green grass that did wave on the far shore? the dewless desert to reach the fair water that did lie leagues beyond its pictured sweetness? But I think, mingled with whatever motives she may have had, there must have been some desire to be a nobler, that is a more useful woman than she had been.

She had not any superabundance of feminine delicacy, though she had plenty of good-breeding, and she trusted to her position in society to cover the eccentricity of her present undertaking.

One morning after breakfast she called upon Falconer; and accustomed to visits from all sorts of people, Mrs. Ashton showed her into his sitting-room without even asking her name. She found him at his piano, apologized, in her fashionable drawl, for interrupting his music, and accepted his offer of a chair without a shade of embarrassment. Falconer seated himself and sat waiting.

‘I fear the step I have taken will appear strange to you, Mr. Falconer. Indeed it appears strange to myself. I am afraid it may appear stranger still.’

‘It is easy for me to leave all judgment in the matter to yourself, Miss–I beg your pardon; I know we have met; but for the moment I cannot recall your name.’

‘Lady Georgina Betterton,’ drawled the visitor carelessly, hiding whatever annoyance she may have felt.

Falconer bowed. Lady Georgina resumed.

‘Of course it only affects myself; and I am willing to take the risk, notwithstanding the natural desire to stand well in the opinion of any one with whom even my boldness could venture such a step.’

A smile, intended to be playful, covered the retreat of the sentence. Falconer bowed again. Lady Georgina had yet again to resume.

‘From the little I have seen, and the much I have heard of you–excuse me, Mr. Falconer–I cannot help thinking that you know more of the secret of life than other people–if indeed it has any secret.’

‘Life certainly is no burden to me,’ returned Falconer. ‘If that implies the possession of any secret which is not common property, I fear it also involves a natural doubt whether such secret be communicable.’

‘Of course I mean only some secret everybody ought to know.’

‘I do not misunderstand you.’

‘I want to live. You know the world, Mr. Falconer. I need not tell you what kind of life a girl like myself leads. I am not old, but the gilding is worn off. Life looks bare, ugly, uninteresting. I ask you to tell me whether there is any reality in it or not; whether its past glow was only gilt; whether the best that can be done is to get through with it as fast as possible?’

‘Surely your ladyship must know some persons whose very countenances prove that they have found a reality at the heart of life.’

‘Yes. But none whose judgment I could trust. I cannot tell how soon they may find reason to change their minds on the subject. Their satisfaction may only be that they have not tried to rub the varnish off the gilding so much as I, and therefore the gilding itself still shines a little in their eyes.’

‘If it be only gilding, it is better it should be rubbed off.’

‘But I am unwilling to think it is. I am not willing to sign a bond of farewell to hope. Life seemed good once. It is bad enough that it seems such no longer, without consenting that it must and shall be so. Allow me to add, for my own sake, that I speak from the bitterness of no chagrin. I have had all I ever cared–or condescended to wish for. I never had anything worth the name of a disappointment in my life.’

‘I cannot congratulate you upon that,’ said Falconer, seriously. ‘But if there be a truth or a heart in life, assurance of the fact can only spring from harmony with that truth. It is not to be known save by absolute contact with it; and the sole guide in the direction of it must be duty: I can imagine no other possible conductor. We must do before we can know.’

‘Yes, yes,’ replied Lady Georgina, hastily, in a tone that implied, ‘Of course, of course: we know all about that.’ But aware at once, with the fine instinct belonging to her mental organization, that she was thus shutting the door against all further communication, she added instantly: ‘But what is one’s duty? There is the question.’

‘The thing that lies next you, of course. You are, and must remain, the sole judge of that. Another cannot help you.’

‘But that is just what I do not know.’

I interrupt Lady Georgina to remark–for I too have been a pupil of Falconer–that I believe she must have suspected what her duty was, and would not look firmly at her own suspicion. She added:

‘I want direction.’

But the same moment she proceeded to indicate the direction in which she wanted to be directed; for she went on:

‘You know that now-a-days there are so many modes in which to employ one’s time and money that one does not know which to choose. The lower strata of society, you know, Mr. Falconer–so many channels! I want the advice of a man of experience, as to the best investment, if I may use the expression: I do not mean of money only, but of time as well.’

‘I am not fitted to give advice in such a matter.’

‘Mr. Falconer!’

‘I assure you I am not. I subscribe to no society myself–not one.’

‘Excuse me, but I can hardly believe the rumours I hear of you–people will talk, you know–are all inventions. They say you are for ever burrowing amongst the poor. Excuse the phrase.’

‘I excuse or accept it, whichever you please. Whatever I do, I am my own steward.’

‘Then you are just the person to help me! I have a fortune, not very limited, at my own disposal: a gentleman who is his own steward, would find his labours merely facilitated by administering for another as well–such labours, I mean.’

‘I must beg to be excused, Lady Georgina. I am accountable only for my own, and of that I have quite as much as I can properly manage. It is far more difficult to use money for others than to spend it for yourself.’

‘Ah!’ said Lady Georgina, thoughtfully, and cast an involuntary glance round the untidy room, with its horse-hair furniture, its ragged array of books on the wall, its side-table littered with pamphlets he never read, with papers he never printed, with pipes he smoked by chance turns. He saw the glance and understood it.

‘I am accustomed,’ he said, ‘to be in such sad places for human beings to live in, that I sometimes think even this dingy old room an absolute palace of comfort.–But,’ he added, checking himself, as it were, ‘I do not see in the least how your proposal would facilitate an answer to your question.’

‘You seem hardly inclined to do me justice,’ said Lady Georgina, with, for the first time, a perceptible, though slight shadow crossing the disc of her resolution. ‘I only meant it,’ she went on, ‘as a step towards a further proposal, which I think you will allow looks at least in the direction you have been indicating.’

She paused.

‘May I beg of you to state the proposal?’ said Falconer.

But Lady Georgina was apparently in some little difficulty as to the proper form in which to express her object. At last it appeared in the cloak of a question.

‘Do you require no assistance in your efforts for the elevation of the lower classes?’ she asked.

‘I don’t make any such efforts,’ said Falconer.

Some of my lady-readers will probably be remarking to themselves, ‘How disagreeable of him! I can’t endure the man.’ If they knew how Falconer had to beware of the forwardness and annoyance of well-meaning women, they would not dislike him so much. But Falconer could be indifferent to much dislike, and therein I know some men that envy him.

When he saw, however, that Lady Georgina was trying to swallow a lump in her throat, he hastened to add,

‘I have only relations with individuals–none with classes.’

Lady Georgina gathered her failing courage. ‘Then there is the more hope for me,’ she said. ‘Surely there are things a woman might be useful in that a man cannot do so well–especially if she would do as she was told, Mr. Falconer?’

He looked at her, inquiring of her whole person what numen abode in the fane. She misunderstood the look.

‘I could dress very differently, you know. I will be a sister of charity, if you like.’

‘And wear a uniform?–as if the god of another world wanted to make proselytes or traitors in this! No, Lady Georgina, it was not of a dress so easily altered that I was thinking; it was of the habit, the dress of mind, of thought, of feeling. When you laid aside your beautiful dress, could you avoid putting on the garment of condescension, the most unchristian virtue attributed to Deity or saint? Could you–I must be plain with you, Lady Georgina, for this has nothing to do with the forms of so-called society–could your temper endure the mortifications of low opposition and misrepresentation of motive and end–which, avoid intrusion as you might, would yet force themselves on your perception? Could you be rudely, impudently thwarted by the very persons for whom you were spending your strength and means, and show no resentment? Could you make allowances for them as for your own brothers and sisters, your own children?’

Lady Georgina was silent.

‘I shall seem to glorify myself, but at that risk I must put the reality before you.–Could you endure the ugliness both moral and physical which you must meet at every turn? Could you look upon loathsomeness, not merely without turning away in disgust, and thus wounding the very heart you would heal, but without losing your belief in the Fatherhood of God, by losing your faith in the actual blood-relationship to yourself of these wretched beings? Could you believe in the immortal essence hidden under all this garbage–God at the root of it all? How would the delicate senses you probably inherit receive the intrusions from which they could not protect themselves? Would you be in no danger of finding personal refuge in the horrid fancy, that these are but the slimy borders of humanity where it slides into, and is one with bestiality? I could show you one fearful baboon-like woman, whose very face makes my nerves shudder: could you believe that woman might one day become a lady, beautiful as yourself, and therefore minister to her? Would you not be tempted, for the sake of your own comfort, if not for the pride of your own humanity, to believe that, like untimely blossoms, these must fall from off the boughs of the tree of life, and come to nothing at all–a theory that may do for the preacher, but will not do for the worker: him it would paralyze?–or, still worse, infinitely worse, that they were doomed, from their birth, to endless ages of a damnation, filthy as that in which you now found them, and must probably leave them? If you could come to this, you had better withhold your hand; for no desire for the betterment of the masses, as they are stupidly called, can make up for a lack of faith in the individual. If you cannot hope for them in your heart, your hands cannot reach them to do them good. They will only hurt them.’

Lady Georgina was still silent. Falconer’s eloquence had perhaps made her ashamed.

‘I want you to sit down and count the cost, before you do any mischief by beginning what you are unfit for. Last week I was compelled more than once to leave the house where my duty led me, and to sit down upon a stone in the street, so ill that I was in danger of being led away as intoxicated, only the policeman happened to know me. Twice I went back to the room I had left, crowded with human animals, and one of them at least dying. It was all I could do, and I have tolerable nerve and tolerable experience.’

A mist was gathering over Lady Georgina’s eyes. She confessed it afterwards to Miss St. John. And through the mist he looked larger than human.

‘And then the time you must spend before you can lay hold upon them at all, that is with the personal relation which alone is of any real influence! Our Saviour himself had to be thirty years in the world before he had footing enough in it to justify him in beginning to teach publicly: he had been laying the needful foundations all the time. Not under any circumstances could I consent to make use of you before you had brought yourself into genuine relations with some of them first.’

‘Do you count societies, then, of no use whatever?’ Lady Georgina asked, more to break the awkwardness of her prolonged silence than for any other reason.

‘In as far as any of the persons they employ fulfil the conditions of which I have spoken, they are useful–that is, just in as far as they come into genuine human relations with those whom they would help. In as far as their servants are incapable of this, the societies are hurtful. The chief good which societies might effect would be the procuring of simple justice for the poor. That is what they need at the hands of the nation, and what they do not receive. But though few can have the knowledge of the poor I have, many could do something, if they would only set about it simply, and not be too anxious to convert them; if they would only be their friends after a common-sense fashion. I know, say, a hundred wretched men and women far better than a man in general knows him with whom he claims an ordinary intimacy. I know many more by sight whose names in the natural course of events I shall probably know soon. I know many of their relations to each other, and they talk about each other to me as if I were one of themselves, which I hope in God I am. I have been amongst them a good many years now, and shall probably spend my life amongst them. When I went first, I was repeatedly robbed; now I should hardly fear to carry another man’s property. Two years ago I had my purse taken, but next morning it was returned, I do not know by whom: in fact it was put into my pocket again–every coin, as far as I could judge, as it left me. I seldom pretend to teach them–only now and then drop a word of advice. But possibly, before I die, I may speak to them in public. At present I avoid all attempt at organization of any sort, and as far as I see, am likely of all things to avoid it. What I want is first to be their friend, and then to be at length recognized as such. It is only in rare cases that I seek the acquaintance of any of them: I let it come naturally. I bide my time. Almost never do I offer assistance. I wait till they ask it, and then often refuse the sort they want. The worst thing you can do for them is to attempt to save them from the natural consequences of wrong: you may sometimes help them out of them. But it is right to do many things for them when you know them, which it would not be right to do for them until you know them. I am amongst them; they know me; their children know me; and something is always occurring that makes this or that one come to me. Once I have a footing, I seldom lose it. So you see, in this my labour I am content to do the thing that lies next me. I wait events. You have had no training, no blundering to fit you for such work. There are many other modes of being useful; but none in which I could undertake to direct you. I am not in the habit of talking so much about my ways–but that is of no consequence. I think I am right in doing so in this instance.’

‘I cannot misunderstand you,’ faltered Lady Georgina.

Falconer was silent. Without looking up from the floor on which her eyes had rested all the time he spoke, Lady Georgina said at last,

‘Then what is my next duty? What is the thing that lies nearest to me?’

‘That, I repeat, belongs to your every-day history. No one can answer that question but yourself. Your next duty is just to determine what your next duty is.–Is there nothing you neglect? Is there nothing you know you ought not to do?–You would know your duty, if you thought in earnest about it, and were not ambitious of great things.’

‘Ah then,’ responded Lady Georgina, with an abandoning sigh, ‘I suppose it is something very commonplace, which will make life more dreary than ever. That cannot help me.’

‘It will, if it be as dreary as reading the newspapers to an old deaf aunt. It will soon lead you to something more. Your duty will begin to comfort you at once, but will at length open the unknown fountain of life in your heart.’

Lady Georgina lifted up her head in despair, looked at Falconer through eyes full of tears, and said vehemently,

‘Mr. Falconer, you can have no conception how wretched a life like mine is. And the futility of everything is embittered by the consciousness that it is from no superiority to such things that I do not care for them.’

‘It is from superiority to such things that you do not care for them. You were not made for such things. They cannot fill your heart. It has whole regions with which they have no relation.’

‘The very thought of music makes me feel ill. I used to be passionately fond of it.’

‘I presume you got so far in it that you asked, “Is there nothing more?” Concluding there was nothing more, and yet needing more, you turned from it with disappointment?’

‘It is the same,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘with painting, modelling, reading–whatever I have tried. I am sick of them all. They do nothing for me.’

‘How can you enjoy music, Lady Georgina, if you are not in harmony with the heart and source of music?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Until the human heart knows the divine heart, it must sigh and complain like a petulant child, who flings his toys from him because his mother is not at home. When his mother comes back to him he finds his toys are good still. When we find Him in our own hearts, we shall find him in everything, and music will be deep enough then, Lady Georgina. It is this that the Brahmin and the Platonist seek; it is this that the mystic and the anchorite sigh for; towards this the teaching of the greatest of men would lead us: Lord Bacon himself says, “Nothing can fill, much less extend the soul of man, but God, and the contemplation of God.” It is Life you want. If you will look in your New Testament, and find out all that our Lord says about Life, you will find the only cure for your malady. I know what such talk looks like; but depend upon it, what I am talking about is something very different from what you fancy it. Anyhow to this you must come, one day or other.’

‘But how am I to gain this indescribable good, which so many seek, and so few find?’

‘Those are not my words,’ said Falconer emphatically. ‘I should have said–“which so few yet seek; but so many shall at length find.”‘

‘Do not quarrel with my foolish words, but tell me how I am to find it; for I suppose there must be something in what so many good people assert.’

‘You thought I could give you help?’

‘Yes. That is why I came to you.’

‘Just so. I cannot give you help. Go and ask it of one who can.’

‘Speak more plainly.’

‘Well then: if there be a God, he must hear you if you call to him. If there be a father, he will listen to his child. He will teach you everything.’

‘But I don’t know what I want.’

‘He does: ask him to tell you what you want. It all comes back to the old story: “If ye then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the holy Spirit to them that ask him!” But I wish you would read your New Testament–the Gospels I mean: you are not in the least fit to understand the Epistles yet. Read the story of our Saviour as if you had never read it before. He at least was a man who seemed to have that secret of life after the knowledge of which your heart is longing.’

Lady Georgina rose. Her eyes were again full of tears. Falconer too was moved. She held out her hand to him, and without another word left the room. She never came there again.

Her manner towards Falconer was thereafter much altered. People said she was in love with him: if she was, it did her no harm. Her whole character certainly was changed. She sought the friendship of Miss St. John, who came at length to like her so much, that she took her with her in some of her walks among the poor. By degrees she began to do something herself after a quiet modest fashion. But within a few years, probably while so engaged, she caught a fever from which she did not recover. It was not till after her death that Falconer told any one of the interview he had had with her. And by that time I had the honour of being very intimate with him. When she knew that she was dying, she sent for him. Mary St. John was with her. She left them together. When he came out, he was weeping.

CHAPTER XI.

THE SUICIDE.

Falconer lived on and laboured on in London. Wherever he found a man fitted for the work, he placed him in such office as De Fleuri already occupied. At the same time he went more into society, and gained the friendship of many influential people. Besides the use he made of this to carry out plans for individual rescue, it enabled him to bestir himself for the first and chief good which he believed it was in the power of the government to effect for the class amongst which he laboured. As I have shown, he did not believe in any positive good being effected save through individual contact–through faith, in a word–faith in the human helper–which might become a stepping-stone through the chaotic misery towards faith in the Lord and in his Father. All that association could do, as such, was only, in his judgment, to remove obstructions from the way of individual growth and education–to put better conditions within reach–first of all, to provide that the people should be able, if they would, to live decently. He had no notion of domestic inspection, or of offering prizes for cleanliness and order. He knew that misery and wretchedness are the right and best condition of those who live so that misery and wretchedness are the natural consequences of their life. But there ought always to be the possibility of emerging from these; and as things were, over the whole country, for many who would if they could, it was impossible to breathe fresh air, to be clean, to live like human beings. And he saw this difficulty ever on the increase, through the rapacity of the holders of small house-property, and the utter wickedness of railway companies, who pulled down every house that stood in their way, and did nothing to provide room for those who were thus ejected–most probably from a wretched place, but only, to be driven into a more wretched still. To provide suitable dwellings for the poor he considered the most pressing of all necessary reforms. His own fortune was not sufficient for doing much in this way, but he set about doing what he could by purchasing houses in which the poor lived, and putting them into the hands of persons whom he could trust, and who were immediately responsible to him for their proceedings: they had to make them fit for human abodes, and let them to those who desired better accommodation, giving the preference to those already tenants, so long as they paid their reasonable rent, which he considered far more necessary for them to do than for him to have done.

One day he met by appointment the owner of a small block, of which he contemplated the purchase. They were in a dreadfully dilapidated condition, a shame that belonged more to the owner than the inhabitants. The man wanted to sell the houses, or at least was willing to sell them, but put an exorbitant price upon them. Falconer expostulated.

‘I know the whole of the rent these houses could bring you in,’ he said, ‘without making any deduction for vacancies and defalcations: what you ask is twice as much as they would fetch if the full rent were certain.’

The poor wretch looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with a neck-cloth of whitey-brown.

‘I admit it,’ he said in good English, and a rather educated tone. ‘Your arguments are indisputable. I confess besides that so far short does the yield come of the amount on paper, that it would pay me to give them away. But it’s the funerals, sir, that make it worth my while. I’m an undertaker, as you may judge from my costume. I count back-rent in the burying. People may cheat their landlord, but they can’t cheat the undertaker. They must be buried. That’s the one indispensable–ain’t it, sir?’

Falconer had let him run on that he might have the measure of him. Now he was prepared with his reply.

‘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,