Robert Falconer

In the morning bloody prints were discovered on the stair, and traced to the door of his room. Miss Lammie entered in some alarm, and found him fast asleep on his bed, still dressed, with a brown-paper parcel in his arms, and one of his feet evidently enough the source of the frightful stain. She was too kind to wake him, and inquiry was postponed till they met at breakfast, to which he descended bare-footed, save for a handkerchief on the injured foot.

‘Robert, my lad,’ said Mr. Lammie, kindly, ‘hoo cam ye by that bluidy fut?’

Robert began the story, and, guided by a few questions from his host, at length told the tale of the violin from beginning to end, omitting only his adventure in the factory. Many a guffaw from Mr. Lammie greeted its progress, and Miss Lammie laughed till the tears rolled unheeded down her cheeks, especially when Shargar, emboldened by the admiration Robert had awakened, imparted his private share in the comedy, namely, the entombment of Boston in a fifth-fold state; for the Lammies were none of the unco guid to be censorious upon such exploits. The whole business advanced the boys in favour at Bodyfauld; and the entreaties of Robert that nothing should reach his grandmother’s ears were entirely unnecessary.

After breakfast Miss Lammie dressed the wounded foot. But what was to be done for shoes, for Robert’s Sunday pair had been left at home? Under ordinary circumstances it would have been no great hardship to him to go barefoot for the rest of the autumn, but the cut was rather a serious one. So his feet were cased in a pair of Mr. Lammie’s Sunday boots, which, from their size, made it so difficult for him to get along, that he did not go far from the doors, but revelled in the company of his violin in the corn-yard amongst last year’s ricks, in the barn, and in the hayloft, playing all the tunes he knew, and trying over one or two more from a very dirty old book of Scotch airs, which his teacher had lent him.

In the evening, as they sat together after supper, Mr. Lammie said,

‘Weel, Robert, hoo’s the fiddle?’

‘Fine, I thank ye, sir,’ answered Robert.

‘Lat’s hear what ye can do wi’ ‘t.’

Robert fetched the instrument and complied.

‘That’s no that ill,’ remarked the farmer. ‘But eh! man, ye suld hae heard yer gran’father han’le the bow. That was something to hear—ance in a body’s life. Ye wad hae jist thoucht the strings had been drawn frae his ain inside, he kent them sae weel, and han’led them sae fine. He jist fan’ (felt) them like wi’ ‘s fingers throu’ the bow an’ the horsehair an’ a’, an’ a’ the time he was drawin’ the soun’ like the sowl frae them, an’ they jist did onything ‘at he likit. Eh! to hear him play the Flooers o’ the Forest wad hae garred ye greit.’

‘Cud my father play?’ asked Robert.

‘Ay, weel eneuch for him. He could do onything he likit to try, better nor middlin’. I never saw sic a man. He played upo’ the bagpipes, an’ the flute, an’ the bugle, an’ I kenna what a’; but a’thegither they cam’ na within sicht o’ his father upo’ the auld fiddle. Lat’s hae a luik at her.’

He took the instrument in his hands reverently, turned it over and over, and said,

‘Ay, ay; it’s the same auld mill, an’ I wat it grun’ (ground) bonny meal.—That sma’ crater noo ‘ill be worth a hunner poun’, I s’ warran’,’ he added, as he restored it carefully into Robert’s hands, to whom it was honey and spice to hear his bonny lady paid her due honours. ‘Can ye play the Flooers o’ the Forest, no?’ he added yet again.

‘Ay can I,’ answered Robert, with some pride, and laid the bow on the violin, and played the air through without blundering a single note.

‘Weel, that’s verra weel,’ said Mr. Lammie. ‘But it’s nae mair like as yer gran’father played it, than gin there war twa sawyers at it, ane at ilka lug o’ the bow, wi’ the fiddle atween them in a saw-pit.’

Robert’s heart sank within him; but Mr. Lammie went on:

‘To hear the bow croudin’ (cooing), and wailin’, an’ greitin’ ower the strings, wad hae jist garred ye see the lands o’ braid Scotlan’ wi’ a’ the lasses greitin’ for the lads that lay upo’ reid Flodden side; lasses to cut, and lasses to gether, and lasses to bin’, and lasses to stook, and lasses to lead, and no a lad amo’ them a’. It’s just the murnin’ o’ women, doin’ men’s wark as weel ‘s their ain, for the men that suld hae been there to du ‘t; and I s’ warran’ ye, no a word to the orra (exceptional, over-all) lad that didna gang wi’ the lave (rest).’

Robert had not hitherto understood it—this wail of a pastoral and ploughing people over those who had left their side to return no more from the field of battle. But Mr. Lammie’s description of his grandfather’s rendering laid hold of his heart.

‘I wad raither be grutten for nor kissed,’ said he, simply.

‘Haud ye to that, my lad,’ returned Mr. Lammie. ‘Lat the lasses greit for ye gin they like; but haud oot ower frae the kissin’. I wadna mell wi’ ‘t.’

‘Hoot, father, dinna put sic nonsense i’ the bairns’ heids,’ said Miss Lammie.

‘Whilk ‘s the nonsense, Aggy?’ asked her father, slily. ‘But I doobt,’ he added, ‘he’ll never play the Flooers o’ the Forest as it suld be playt, till he’s had a taste o’ the kissin’, lass.’

‘Weel, it’s a queer instructor o’ yowth, ‘at says an’ onsays i’ the same breith.’

‘Never ye min’. I haena contradickit mysel’ yet; for I hae said naething. But, Robert, my man, ye maun pit mair sowl into yer fiddlin’. Ye canna play the fiddle till ye can gar ‘t greit. It’s unco ready to that o’ ‘ts ain sel’; an’ it’s my opingon that there’s no anither instrument but the fiddle fit to play the Flooers o’ the Forest upo’, for that very rizzon, in a’ his Maijesty’s dominions.—My father playt the fiddle, but no like your gran’father.’

Robert was silent. He spent the whole of the next morning in reiterated attempts to alter his style of playing the air in question, but in vain—as far at least as any satisfaction to himself was the result. He laid the instrument down in despair, and sat for an hour disconsolate upon the bedside. His visit had not as yet been at all so fertile in pleasure as he had anticipated. He could not fly his kite; he could not walk; he had lost his shoes; Mr. Lammie had not approved of his playing; and, although he had his will of the fiddle, he could not get his will out of it. He could never play so as to please Miss St. John. Nothing but manly pride kept him from crying. He was sorely disappointed and dissatisfied; and the world might be dreary even at Bodyfauld.

Few men can wait upon the bright day in the midst of the dull one. Nor can many men even wait for it.

CHAPTER XX. JESSIE HEWSON

The wound on Robert’s foot festered, and had not yet healed when the sickle was first put to the barley. He hobbled out, however, to the reapers, for he could not bear to be left alone with his violin, so dreadfully oppressive was the knowledge that he could not use it after its nature. He began to think whether his incapacity was not a judgment upon him for taking it away from the soutar, who could do so much more with it, and to whom, consequently, it was so much more valuable. The pain in his foot, likewise, had been very depressing; and but for the kindness of his friends, especially of Miss Lammie, he would have been altogether ‘a weary wight forlorn.’

Shargar was happier than ever he had been in his life. His white face hung on Miss Lammie’s looks, and haunted her steps from spence (store-room, as in Devonshire) to milk-house, and from milk-house to chessel, surmounted by the glory of his red hair, which a farm-servant declared he had once mistaken for a fun-buss (whin-bush) on fire. This day she had gone to the field to see the first handful of barley cut, and Shargar was there, of course.

It was a glorious day of blue and gold, with just wind enough to set the barley-heads a-talking. But, whether from the heat of the sun, or the pain of his foot operating on the general discouragement under which he laboured, Robert turned faint all at once, and dragged himself away to a cottage on the edge of the field.

It was the dwelling of a cottar, whose family had been settled upon the farm of Bodyfauld from time immemorial. They were, indeed, like other cottars, a kind of feudal dependents, occupying an acre or two of the land, in return for which they performed certain stipulated labour, called cottar-wark. The greater part of the family was employed in the work of the farm, at the regular wages.

Alas for Scotland that such families are now to seek! Would that the parliaments of our country held such a proportion of noble-minded men as was once to be found in the clay huts on a hill-side, or grouped about a central farm, huts whose wretched look would move the pity of many a man as inferior to their occupants as a King Charles’s lap-dog is to a shepherd’s colley. The utensils of their life were mean enough: the life itself was often elixir vitae—a true family life, looking up to the high, divine life. But well for the world that such life has been scattered over it, east and west, the seed of fresh growth in new lands. Out of offence to the individual, God brings good to the whole; for he pets no nation, but trains it for the perfect globular life of all nations—of his world—of his universe. As he makes families mingle, to redeem each from its family selfishness, so will he make nations mingle, and love and correct and reform and develop each other, till the planet-world shall go singing through space one harmony to the God of the whole earth. The excellence must vanish from one portion, that it may be diffused through the whole. The seed ripens on one favoured mound, and is scattered over the plain. We console ourselves with the higher thought, that if Scotland is worse, the world is better. Yea, even they by whom the offence came, and who have first to reap the woe of that offence, because they did the will of God to satisfy their own avarice in laying land to land and house to house, shall not reap their punishment in having their own will, and standing therefore alone in the earth when the good of their evil deeds returns upon it; but the tears of men that ascended to heaven in the heat of their burning dwellings shall descend in the dew of blessing even on the hearts of them that kindled the fire.—‘Something too much of this.’

Robert lifted the latch, and walked into the cottage. It was not quite so strange to him as it would be to most of my readers; still, he had not been in such a place before. A girl who was stooping by the small peat fire on the hearth looked up, and seeing that he was lame, came across the heights and hollows of the clay floor to meet him. Robert spoke so faintly that she could not hear.

‘What’s yer wull?’ she asked; then, changing her tone,—‘Eh! ye’re no weel,’ she said. ‘Come in to the fire. Tak a haud o’ me, and come yer wa’s butt.’

She was a pretty, indeed graceful girl of about eighteen, with the elasticity rather than undulation of movement which distinguishes the peasant from the city girl. She led him to the chimla-lug (the ear of the chimney), carefully levelled a wooden chair to the inequalities of the floor, and said,

‘Sit ye doon. Will I fess a drappy o’ milk?’

‘Gie me a drink o’ water, gin ye please,’ said Robert.

She brought it. He drank, and felt better. A baby woke in a cradle on the other side of the fire, and began to cry. The girl went and took him up; and then Robert saw what she was like. Light-brown hair clustered about a delicately-coloured face and hazel eyes. Later in the harvest her cheeks would be ruddy—now they were peach-coloured. A white neck rose above a pink print jacket, called a wrapper; and the rest of her visible dress was a blue petticoat. She ended in pretty, brown bare feet. Robert liked her, and began to talk. If his imagination had not been already filled, he would have fallen in love with her, I dare say, at once; for, except Miss St. John, he had never seen anything he thought so beautiful. The baby cried now and then.

‘What ails the bairnie?’ he asked.

‘Ow, it’s jist cuttin’ its teeth. Gin it greits muckle, I maun jist tak it oot to my mither. She’ll sune quaiet it. Are ye haudin’ better?’

‘Hoot, ay. I’m a’ richt noo. Is yer mither shearin’?’

‘Na. She’s gatherin’. The shearin’ ‘s some sair wark for her e’en noo. I suld hae been shearin’, but my mither wad fain hae a day o’ the hairst. She thocht it wud du her gude. But I s’ warran’ a day o’ ‘t ‘ll sair (satisfy) her, and I s’ be at it the morn. She’s been unco dowie (ailing) a’ the summer; and sae has the bairnie.’

‘Ye maun hae had a sair time o’ ‘t, than.’

‘Ay, some. But I aye got some sleep. I jist tuik the towie (string) into the bed wi’ me, and whan the bairnie grat, I waukit, an’ rockit it till ‘t fell asleep again. But whiles naething wad du but tak him till ‘s mammie.’

All the time she was hushing and fondling the child, who went on fretting when not actually crying.

‘Is he yer brither, than?’ asked Robert.

‘Ay, what ither? I maun tak him, I see. But ye can sit there as lang ‘s ye like; and gin ye gang afore I come back, jist turn the key ‘i the door to lat onybody ken that there’s naebody i’ the hoose.’

Robert thanked her, and remained in the shadow by the chimney, which was formed of two smoke-browned planks fastened up the wall, one on each side, and an inverted wooden funnel above to conduct the smoke through the roof. He sat for some time gloomily gazing at a spot of sunlight which burned on the brown clay floor. All was still as death. And he felt the white-washed walls even more desolate than if they had been smoke-begrimed.

Looking about him, he found over his head something which he did not understand. It was as big as the stump of a great tree. Apparently it belonged to the structure of the cottage, but he could not, in the imperfect light, and the dazzling of the sun-spot at which he had been staring, make out what it was, or how it came to be up there—unsupported as far as he could see. He rose to examine it, lifted a bit of tarpaulin which hung before it, and found a rickety box, suspended by a rope from a great nail in the wall. It had two shelves in it full of books.