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Having finished his letter, he began to look abroad over the smooth water, and the land smooth as the water. He saw tall poplars, the spires of the forest, and rows of round-headed dumpy trees, like domes. And he saw that all the buildings like churches, had either spires like poplars, or low round domes like those other trees. The domes gave an eastern aspect to the country. The spire of Antwerp cathedral especially had the poplar for its model. The pinnacles which rose from the base of each successive start of its narrowing height were just the clinging, upright branches of the poplar—a lovely instance of Art following Nature’s suggestion.
CHAPTER XXIII. ROBERT FINDS A NEW INSTRUMENT
At length the vessel lay alongside the quay, and as Mysie stepped from its side the skipper found an opportunity of giving her Robert’s letter. It was the poorest of chances, but Robert could think of no other. She started on receiving it, but regarding the skipper’s significant gestures put it quietly away. She looked anything but happy, for her illness had deprived her of courage, and probably roused her conscience. Robert followed the pair, saw them enter The Great Labourer—what could the name mean? could it mean The Good Shepherd?—and turned away helpless, objectless indeed, for he had done all that he could, and that all was of no potency. A world of innocence and beauty was about to be hurled from its orbit of light into the blackness of outer chaos; he knew it, and was unable to speak word or do deed that should frustrate the power of a devil who so loved himself that he counted it an honour to a girl to have him for her ruin. Her after life had no significance for him, save as a trophy of his victory. He never perceived that such victory was not yielded to him; that he gained it by putting on the garments of light; that if his inward form had appeared in its own ugliness, not one of the women whose admiration he had secured would not have turned from him as from the monster of an old tale.
Robert wandered about till he was so weary that his head ached with weariness. At length he came upon the open space before the cathedral, whence the poplar-spire rose aloft into a blue sky flecked with white clouds. It was near sunset, and he could not see the sun, but the upper half of the spire shone glorious in its radiance. From the top his eye sank to the base. In the base was a little door half open. Might not that be the lowly narrow entrance through the shadow up to the sun-filled air? He drew near with a kind of tremor, for never before had he gazed upon visible grandeur growing out of the human soul, in the majesty of everlastingness—a tree of the Lord’s planting. Where had been but an empty space of air and light and darkness, had risen, and had stood for ages, a mighty wonder awful to the eye, solid to the hand. He peeped through the opening of the door: there was the foot of a stair—marvellous as the ladder of Jacob’s dream—turning away towards the unknown. He pushed the door and entered. A man appeared and barred his advance. Robert put his hand in his pocket and drew out some silver. The man took one piece—looked at it—turned it over—put it in his pocket, and led the way up the stair. Robert followed and followed and followed.
He came out of stone walls upon an airy platform whence the spire ascended heavenwards. His conductor led upward still, and he followed, winding within a spiral network of stone, through which all the world looked in. Another platform, and yet another spire springing from its basement. Still up they went, and at length stood on a circle of stone surrounding like a coronet the last base of the spire which lifted its apex untrodden. Then Robert turned and looked below. He grasped the stones before him. The loneliness was awful.
There was nothing between him and the roofs of the houses, four hundred feet below, but the spot where he stood. The whole city, with its red roofs, lay under him. He stood uplifted on the genius of the builder, and the town beneath him was a toy. The all but featureless flat spread forty miles on every side, and the roofs of the largest buildings below were as dovecots. But the space between was alive with awe—so vast, so real!
He turned and descended, winding through the network of stone which was all between him and space. The object of the architect must have been to melt away the material from before the eyes of the spirit. He hung in the air in a cloud of stone. As he came in his descent within the ornaments of one of the basements, he found himself looking through two thicknesses of stone lace on the nearing city. Down there was the beast of prey and his victim; but for the moment he was above the region of sorrow. His weariness and his headache had vanished utterly. With his mind tossed on its own speechless delight, he was slowly descending still, when he saw on his left hand a door ajar. He would look what mystery lay within. A push opened it. He discovered only a little chamber lined with wood. In the centre stood something—a bench-like piece of furniture, plain and worn. He advanced a step; peered over the top of it; saw keys, white and black; saw pedals below: it was an organ! Two strides brought him in front of it. A wooden stool, polished and hollowed with centuries of use, was before it. But where was the bellows? That might be down hundreds of steps below, for he was half-way only to the ground. He seated himself musingly, and struck, as he thought, a dumb chord. Responded, up in the air, far overhead, a mighty booming clang. Startled, almost frightened, even as if Mary St. John had said she loved him, Robert sprung from the stool, and, without knowing why, moved only by the chastity of delight, flung the door to the post. It banged and clicked. Almost mad with the joy of the titanic instrument, he seated himself again at the keys, and plunged into a tempest of clanging harmony. One hundred bells hang in that tower of wonder, an instrument for a city, nay, for a kingdom. Often had Robert dreamed that he was the galvanic centre of a thunder-cloud of harmony, flashing off from every finger the willed lightning tone: such was the unexpected scale of this instrument—so far aloft in the sunny air rang the responsive notes, that his dream appeared almost realized. The music, like a fountain bursting upwards, drew him up and bore him aloft. From the resounding cone of bells overhead he no longer heard their tones proceed, but saw level-winged forms of light speeding off with a message to the nations. It was only his roused phantasy; but a sweet tone is nevertheless a messenger of God; and a right harmony and sequence of such tones is a little gospel.
At length he found himself following, till that moment unconsciously, the chain of tunes he well remembered having played on his violin the night he went first with Ericson to see Mysie, ending with his strange chant about the witch lady and the dead man’s hand.
Ere he had finished the last, his passion had begun to fold its wings, and he grew dimly aware of a beating at the door of the solitary chamber in which he sat. He knew nothing of the enormity of which he was guilty—presenting unsought the city of Antwerp with a glorious phantasia. He did not know that only upon grand, solemn, world-wide occasions, such as a king’s birthday or a ball at the Hôtel de Ville, was such music on the card. When he flung the door to, it had closed with a spring lock, and for the last quarter of an hour three gens-d’arme, commanded by the sacristan of the tower, had been thundering thereat. He waited only to finish the last notes of the wild Orcadian chant, and opened the door. He was seized by the collar, dragged down the stair into the street, and through a crowd of wondering faces—poor unconscious dreamer! it will not do to think on the house-top even, and you had been dreaming very loud indeed in the church spire—away to the bureau of the police.
CHAPTER XXIV. DEATH
I need not recount the proceedings of the Belgian police; how they interrogated Robert concerning a letter from Mary St. John which they found in an inner pocket; how they looked doubtful over a copy of Horace that lay in his coat, and put evidently a momentous question about some algebraical calculations on the fly-leaf of it. Fortunately or unfortunately—I do not know which—Robert did not understand a word they said to him. He was locked up, and left to fret for nearly a week; though what he could have done had he been at liberty, he knew as little as I know. At last, long after it was useless to make any inquiry about Miss Lindsay, he was set at liberty. He could just pay for a steerage passage to London, whence he wrote to Dr. Anderson for a supply, and was in Aberdeen a few days after.
This was Robert’s first cosmopolitan experience. He confided the whole affair to the doctor, who approved of all, saying it could have been of no use, but he had done right. He advised him to go home at once, for he had had letters inquiring after him. Ericson was growing steadily worse—in fact, he feared Robert might not see him alive.
If this news struck Robert to the heart, his pain was yet not without some poor alleviation:—he need not tell Ericson about Mysie, but might leave him to find out the truth when, free of a dying body, he would be better able to bear it. That very night he set off on foot for Rothieden. There was no coach from Aberdeen till eight the following morning, and before that he would be there.
It was a dreary journey without Ericson. Every turn of the road reminded him of him. And Ericson too was going a lonely unknown way.
Did ever two go together upon that way? Might not two die together and not lose hold of each other all the time, even when the sense of the clasping hands was gone, and the soul had withdrawn itself from the touch? Happy they who prefer the will of God to their own even in this, and would, as the best friend, have him near who can be near—him who made the fourth in the fiery furnace! Fable or fact, reader, I do not care. The One I mean is, and in him I hope.
Very weary was Robert when he walked into his grandmother’s house.
Betty came out of the kitchen at the sound of his entrance.
‘Is Mr. Ericson—?’
‘Na; he’s nae deid,’ she answered. ‘He’ll maybe live a day or twa, they say.’
‘Thank God!’ said Robert, and went to his grandmother.
‘Eh, laddie!’ said Mrs. Falconer, the first greetings over, ‘ane ‘s ta’en an’ anither ‘s left! but what for ‘s mair nor I can faddom. There’s that fine young man, Maister Ericson, at deith’s door; an’ here am I, an auld runklet wife, left to cry upo’ deith, an’ he winna hear me.’
‘Cry upo’ God, grannie, an’ no upo’ deith,’ said Robert, catching at the word as his grandmother herself might have done. He had no such unfair habit when I knew him, and always spoke to one’s meaning, not one’s words. But then he had a wonderful gift of knowing what one’s meaning was.
He did not sit down, but, tired as he was, went straight to The Boar’s Head. He met no one in the archway, and walked up to Ericson’s room. When he opened the door, he found the large screen on the other side, and hearing a painful cough, lingered behind it, for he could not control his feelings sufficiently. Then he heard a voice—Ericson’s voice; but oh, how changed!—He had no idea that he ought not to listen.
‘Mary,’ the voice said, ‘do not look like that. I am not suffering. It is only my body. Your arm round me makes me so strong! Let me lay my head on your shoulder.’
A brief pause followed.
‘But, Eric,’ said Mary’s voice, ‘there is one that loves you better than I do.’
‘If there is,’ returned Ericson, feebly, ‘he has sent his angel to deliver me.’
‘But you do believe in him, Eric?’
The voice expressed anxiety no less than love.
‘I am going to see. There is no other way. When I find him, I shall believe in him. I shall love him with all my heart, I know. I love the thought of him now.’
‘But that’s not himself, my—darling!’ she said.
‘No. But I cannot love himself till I find him. Perhaps there is no Jesus.’
‘Oh, don’t say that. I can’t bear to hear you talk so,’
‘But, dear heart, if you’re so sure of him, do you think he would turn me away because I don’t do what I can’t do? I would if I could with all my heart. If I were to say I believed in him, and then didn’t trust him, I could understand it. But when it’s only that I’m not sure about what I never saw, or had enough of proof to satisfy me of, how can he be vexed at that? You seem to me to do him great wrong, Mary. Would you now banish me for ever, if I should, when my brain is wrapped in the clouds of death, forget you along with everything else for a moment?’
‘No, no, no. Don’t talk like that, Eric, dear. There may be reasons, you know.’
‘I know what they say well enough. But I expect Him, if there is a Him, to be better even than you, my beautiful—and I don’t know a fault in you, but that you believe in a God you can’t trust. If I believed in a God, wouldn’t I trust him just? And I do hope in him. We’ll see, my darling. When we meet again I think you’ll say I was right.’
Robert stood like one turned into marble. Deep called unto deep in his soul. The waves and the billows went over him.
Mary St. John answered not a word. I think she must have been conscience-stricken. Surely the Son of Man saw nearly as much faith in Ericson as in her. Only she clung to the word as a bond that the Lord had given her: she would rather have his bond.
Ericson had another fit of coughing. Robert heard the rustling of ministration. But in a moment the dying man again took up the word. He seemed almost as anxious about Mary’s faith as she was about his.
‘There’s Robert,’ he said: ‘I do believe that boy would die for me, and I never did anything to deserve it. Now Jesus Christ must be as good as Robert at least. I think he must be a great deal better, if he’s Jesus Christ at all. Now Robert might be hurt if I didn’t believe in him. But I’ve never seen Jesus Christ. It’s all in an old book, over which the people that say they believe in it the most, fight like dogs and cats. I beg your pardon, my Mary; but they do, though the words are ugly.’
‘Ah! but if you had tried it as I’ve tried it, you would know better, Eric.’
‘I think I should, dear. But it’s too late now. I must just go and see. There’s no other way left.’
The terrible cough came again. As soon as the fit was over, with a grand despair in his heart, Robert went from behind the screen.
Ericson was on a couch. His head lay on Mary St. John’s bosom. Neither saw him.
‘Perhaps,’ said Ericson, panting with death, ‘a kiss in heaven may be as good as being married on earth, Mary.’
She saw Robert and did not answer. Then Eric saw him. He smiled; but Mary grew very pale.
Robert came forward, stooped and kissed Ericson’s forehead, kneeled and kissed Mary’s hand, rose and went out.
From that moment they were both dead to him. Dead, I say—not lost, not estranged, but dead—that is, awful and holy. He wept for Eric. He did not weep for Mary yet. But he found a time.
Ericson died two days after.
Here endeth Robert’s youth.
CHAPTER XXV. IN MEMORIAM
In memory of Eric Ericson, I add a chapter of sonnets gathered from his papers, almost desiring that those only should read them who turn to the book a second time. How his papers came into my possession, will be explained afterwards.
Tumultuous rushing o’er the outstretched plains; A wildered maze of comets and of suns; The blood of changeless God that ever runs With quick diastole up the immortal veins; A phantom host that moves and works in chains; A monstrous fiction which, collapsing, stuns The mind to stupor and amaze at once; A tragedy which that man best explains Who rushes blindly on his wild career With trampling hoofs and sound of mailed war, Who will not nurse a life to win a tear, But is extinguished like a falling star:— Such will at times this life appear to me, Until I learn to read more perfectly. HOM. IL. v. 403 If thou art tempted by a thought of ill, Crave not too soon for victory, nor deem Thou art a coward if thy safety seem To spring too little from a righteous will: For there is nightmare on thee, nor until Thy soul hath caught the morning’s early gleam Seek thou to analyze the monstrous dream By painful introversion; rather fill Thine eye with forms thou knowest to be truth: But see thou cherish higher hope than this; A hope hereafter that thou shalt be fit Calm-eyed to face distortion, and to sit Transparent among other forms of youth Who own no impulse save to God and bliss. And must I ever wake, gray dawn, to know Thee standing sadly by me like a ghost? I am perplexed with thee, that thou shouldst cost This Earth another turning: all aglow Thou shouldst have reached me, with a purple show Along far-mountain tops: and I would post Over the breadth of seas though I were lost In the hot phantom-chase for life, if so Thou camest ever with this numbing sense Of chilly distance and unlovely light; Waking this gnawing soul anew to fight With its perpetual load: I drive thee hence— I have another mountain-range from whence Bursteh a sun unutterably bright. GALILEO ‘And yet it moves!’ Ah, Truth, where wert thou then, When all for thee they racked each piteous limb? Wert though in Heaven, and busy with thy hymn, When those poor hands convulsed that held thy pen? Art thou a phantom that deceivest men To their undoing? or dost thou watch him Pale, cold, and silent in his dungeon dim? And wilt thou ever speak to him again? ‘It moves, it moves! Alas, my flesh was weak; That was a hideous dream! I’ll cry aloud How the green bulk wheels sunward day by day! Ah me! ah me! perchance my heart was proud That I alone should know that word to speak; And now, sweet Truth, shine upon these, I pray.’ If thou wouldst live the Truth in very deed, Thou hast thy joy, but thou hast more of pain. Others will live in peace, and thou be fain To bargain with despair, and in thy need To make thy meal upon the scantiest weed. These palaces, for thee they stand in vain; Thine is a ruinous hut; and oft the rain Shall drench thee in the midnight; yea the speed Of earth outstrip thee pilgrim, while thy feet Move slowly up the heights. Yet will there come Through the time-rents about thy moving cell, An arrow for despair, and oft the hum Of far-off populous realms where spirits dwell. TO * * * * Speak, Prophet of the Lord! We may not start To find thee with us in thine ancient dress, Haggard and pale from some bleak wilderness, Empty of all save God and thy loud heart: Nor with like rugged message quick to dart Into the hideous fiction mean and base: But yet, O prophet man, we need not less, But more of earnest; though it is thy part To deal in other words, if thou wouldst smite The living Mammon, seated, not as then In bestial quiescence grimly dight, But thrice as much an idol-god as when He stared at his own feet from morn to night.8 THE WATCHER From out a windy cleft there comes a gaze Of eyes unearthly which go to and fro Upon the people’s tumult, for below The nations smite each other: no amaze Troubles their liquid rolling, or affrays Their deep-set contemplation: steadily glow Those ever holier eye-balls, for they grow Liker unto the eyes of one that prays. And if those clasped hands tremble, comes a power As of the might of worlds, and they are holden Blessing above us in the sunrise golden; And they will be uplifted till that hour Of terrible rolling which shall rise and shake This conscious nightmare from us and we wake. THE BELOVED DISCIPLE I One do I see and twelve; but second there Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one; Not from thy nobler port, for there are none More quiet-featured; some there are who bear Their message on their brows, while others wear A look of large commission, nor will shun The fiery trial, so their work is done: But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer— Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips Seem like the porches of the spirit land; For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by, Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye Burns with a vision and apocalypse Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand. II A Boanerges too! Upon my heart It lay a heavy hour: features like thine Should glow with other message than the shine Of the earth-burrowing levin, and the start That cleaveth horrid gulfs. Awful and swart A moment stoodest thou, but less divine— Brawny and clad in ruin!—till with mine Thy heart made answering signals, and apart Beamed forth thy two rapt eye-balls doubly clear, And twice as strong because thou didst thy duty, And though affianced to immortal Beauty, Hiddest not weakly underneath her veil The pest of Sin and Death which maketh pale: Henceforward be thy spirit doubly dear.9 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY There is not any weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are, We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour. And I when I encounter on my road A human soul that looketh black and grim, Shall I more ceremonious be than God? Shall I refuse to watch one hour with him Who once beside our deepest woe did bud A patient watching flower about the brim. ‘Tis not the violent hands alone that bring The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom Although to these full oft the yawning tomb Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting, A more immortal agony, will cling To the half-fashioned sin which would assume Fair Virtue’s garb. The eye that sows the gloom With quiet seeds of Death henceforth to spring What time the sun of passion burning fierce Breaks through the kindly cloud of circumstance; The bitter word, and the unkindly glance, The crust and canker coming with the years, Are liker Death than arrows, and the lance Which through the living heart at once doth pierce. SPOKEN OF SEVERAL PHILOSOPHERS I pray you, all ye men, who put your trust In moulds and systems and well-tackled gear, Holding that Nature lives from year to year In one continual round because she must— Set me not down, I pray you, in the dust Of all these centuries, like a pot of beer, A pewter-pot disconsolately clear, Which holds a potful, as is right and just. I will grow clamorous—by the rood, I will, If thus ye use me like a pewter pot. Good friend, thou art a toper and a sot— I will not be the lead to hold thy swill, Nor any lead: I will arise and spill Thy silly beverage, spill it piping hot. Nature, to him no message dost thou bear, Who in thy beauty findeth not the power To gird himself more strongly for the hour Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear To him who knows thy secret, and in shower And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a secret bower Where he may rest until the heavens are fair! Not with the rest of slumber, but the trance Of onward movement steady and serene, Where oft in struggle and in contest keen His eyes will opened be, and all the dance Of life break on him, and a wide expanse Roll upward through the void, sunny and green. TO JUNE Ah, truant, thou art here again, I see! For in a season of such wretched weather I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, Although I could not choose but fancy thee Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather Thy bashful awkwardness, as doubtful whether Thou shouldst be seen in such a company Of ugly runaways, unshapely heaps Of ruffian vapour, broken from restraint Of their slim prison in the ocean deeps. But yet I may not, chide: fall to thy books, Fall to immediately without complaint— There they are lying, hills and vales and brooks. WRITTEN ABOUT THE LONGEST DAY Summer, sweet Summer, many-fingered Summer! We hold thee very dear, as well we may: It is the kernel of the year to-day— All hail to thee! Thou art a welcome corner! If every insect were a fairy drummer, And I a fifer that could deftly play, We’d give the old Earth such a roundelay That she would cast all thought of labour from her Ah! what is this upon my window-pane? Some sulky drooping cloud comes pouting up, Stamping its glittering feet along the plain! Well, I will let that idle fancy drop. Oh, how the spouts are bubbling with the rain! And all the earth shines like a silver cup! ON A MIDGE Whence do ye come, ye creature? Each of you Is perfect as an angel; wings and eyes Stupendous in their beauty—gorgeous dyes In feathery fields of purple and of blue! Would God I saw a moment as ye do! I would become a molecule in size, Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view The pearly secret which each tiny fly, Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs, Hides in its little breast eternally From you, ye prickly grim philosophers, With all your theories that sound so high: Hark to the buzz a moment, my good sirs! ON A WATERFALL Here stands a giant stone from whose far top Comes down the sounding water. Let me gaze Till every sense of man and human ways Is wrecked and quenched for ever, and I drop Into the whirl of time, and without stop Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze My strength returns when I behold thy prop Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack Surely thy strength is human, and like me Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back! And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black— A breezy tuft of grass which I can see Waving serenely from a sunlit crack! Above my head the great pine-branches tower Backwards and forwards each to the other bends, Beckoning the tempest-cloud which hither wends Like a slow-laboured thought, heavy with power; Hark to the patter of the coming shower! Let me be silent while the Almighty sends His thunder-word along; but when it ends I will arise and fashion from the hour Words of stupendous import, fit to guard High thoughts and purposes, which I may wave, When the temptation cometh close and hard, Like fiery brands betwixt me and the grave Of meaner things—to which I am a slave If evermore I keep not watch and ward. I do remember how when very young, I saw the great sea first, and heard its swell As I drew nearer, caught within the spell Of its vast size and its mysterious tongue. How the floor trembled, and the dark boat swung With a man in it, and a great wave fell Within a stone’s cast! Words may never tell The passion of the moment, when I flung All childish records by, and felt arise A thing that died no more! An awful power I claimed with trembling hands and eager eyes, Mine, mine for ever, an immortal dower.— The noise of waters soundeth to this hour, When I look seaward through the quiet skies. ON THE SOURCE OF THE ARVE Hear’st thou the dash of water loud and hoarse With its perpetual tidings upward climb, Struggling against the wind? Oh, how sublime! For not in vain from its portentous source, Thy heart, wild stream, hath yearned for its full force, But from thine ice-toothed caverns dark as time At last thou issuest, dancing to the rhyme Of thy outvolleying freedom! Lo, thy course Lies straight before thee as the arrow flies, Right to the ocean-plains. Away, away! Thy parent waits thee, and her sunset dyes Are ruffled for thy coming, and the gray Of all her glittering borders flashes high Against the glittering rocks: oh, haste, and fly!