Robert Falconer

‘Never mind me, sir. It’s no more than you told me to expect. You knowed him better than I did. Leastways I’m an honest woman.’

‘Stick to that, Sarah; and be good-tempered.’

‘I’ll have a try anyhow, sir. But there’s a poor cretur a dyin’ up-stairs; and I’m afeard it’ll go hard with her, for she throwed a Bible out o’ window this very morning, sir.’

‘Would she like to see me? I’m afraid not.’

‘She’s got Lilywhite, what’s a sort of a reader, readin’ that same Bible to her now.’

‘There can be no great harm in just looking in,’ he said, turning to me.

‘I shall be happy to follow you—anywhere,’ I returned.

‘She’s awful ill, sir; cholerer or summat,’ said Sarah, as she led the way up the creaking stair.

We half entered the room softly. Two or three women sat by the chimney, and another by a low bed, covered with a torn patchwork counterpane, spelling out a chapter in the Bible. We paused for a moment to hear what she was reading. Had the book been opened by chance, or by design? It was the story of David and Bathsheba. Moans came from the bed, but the candle in a bottle, by which the woman was reading, was so placed that we could not see the sufferer.

We stood still and did not interrupt the reading.

‘Ha! ha! ha!’ laughed a coarse voice from the side of the chimney: ‘the saint, you see, was no better than some of the rest of us!’

‘I think he was a good deal worse just then,’ said Falconer, stepping forward.

‘Gracious! there’s Mr. Falconer,’ said another woman, rising, and speaking in a flattering tone.

‘Then,’ remarked the former speaker, ‘there’s a chance for old Moll and me yet. King David was a saint, wasn’t he? Ha! ha!’

‘Yes, and you might be one too, if you were as sorry for your faults as he was for his.’

‘Sorry, indeed! I’ll be damned if I be sorry. What have I to be sorry for? Where’s the harm in turning an honest penny? I ha’ took no man’s wife, nor murdered himself neither. There’s yer saints! He was a rum ‘un. Ha! ha!’

Falconer approached her, bent down and whispered something no one could hear but herself. She gave a smothered cry, and was silent.

‘Give me the book,’ he said, turning towards the bed. ‘I’ll read you something better than that. I’ll read about some one that never did anything wrong.’

‘I don’t believe there never was no sich a man,’ said the previous reader, as she handed him the book, grudgingly.

‘Not Jesus Christ himself?’ said Falconer.

‘Oh! I didn’t know as you meant him.’

‘Of course I meant him. There never was another.’

‘I have heard tell—p’raps it was yourself, sir—as how he didn’t come down upon us over hard after all, bless him!’

Falconer sat down on the side of the bed, and read the story of Simon the Pharisee and the woman that was a sinner. When he ceased, the silence that followed was broken by a sob from somewhere in the room. The sick woman stopped her moaning, and said,

‘Turn down the leaf there, please, sir. Lilywhite will read it to me when you’re gone.’

The some one sobbed again. It was a young slender girl, with a face disfigured by the small-pox, and, save for the tearful look it wore, poor and expressionless. Falconer said something gentle to her.

‘Will he ever come again?’ she sobbed.

‘Who?’ asked Falconer.

‘Him—Jesus Christ. I’ve heard tell, I think, that he was to come again some day.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because—’ she said, with a fresh burst of tears, which rendered the words that followed unintelligible. But she recovered herself in a few moments, and, as if finishing her sentence, put her hand up to her poor, thin, colourless hair, and said,

‘My hair ain’t long enough to wipe his feet.’

‘Do you know what he would say to you, my girl?’ Falconer asked.

‘No. What would he say to me? He would speak to me, would he?’

‘He would say: Thy sins are forgiven thee.’

‘Would he, though? Would he?’ she cried, starting up. ‘Take me to him—take me to him. Oh! I forgot. He’s dead. But he will come again, won’t he? He was crucified four times, you know, and he must ha’ come four times for that. Would they crucify him again, sir?’

‘No, they wouldn’t crucify him now—in England at least. They would only laugh at him, shake their heads at what he told them, as much as to say it wasn’t true, and sneer and mock at him in some of the newspapers.’

‘Oh dear! I’ve been very wicked.’

‘But you won’t be so any more.’

‘No, no, no. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.’

She talked hurriedly, almost wildly. The coarse old woman tapped her forehead with her finger. Falconer took the girl’s hand.

‘What is your name?’ he said.

‘Nell.’

‘What more?’

‘Nothing more.’

‘Well, Nelly,’ said Falconer.

‘How kind of you to call me Nelly!’ interrupted the poor girl. ‘They always calls me Nell, just.’

‘Nelly,’ repeated Falconer, ‘I will send a lady here to-morrow to take you away with her, if you like, and tell you how you must do to find Jesus.—People always find him that want to find him.’

The elderly woman with the rough voice, who had not spoken since he whispered to her, now interposed with a kind of cowed fierceness.

‘Don’t go putting humbug into my child’s head now, Mr. Falconer—‘ticing her away from her home. Everybody knows my Nell’s been an idiot since ever she was born. Poor child!’

‘I ain’t your child,’ cried the girl, passionately. ‘I ain’t nobody’s child.’

‘You are God’s child,’ said Falconer, who stood looking on with his eyes shining, but otherwise in a state of absolute composure.

‘Am I? Am I? You won’t forget to send for me, sir?’

‘That I won’t,’ he answered.

She turned instantly towards the woman, and snapped her fingers in her face.

‘I don’t care that for you,’ she cried. ‘You dare to touch me now, and I’ll bite you.’

‘Come, come, Nelly, you mustn’t be rude,’ said Falconer.

‘No, sir, I won’t no more, leastways to nobody but she. It’s she makes me do all the wicked things, it is.’

She snapped her fingers in her face again, and then burst out crying.

‘She will leave you alone now, I think,’ said Falconer. ‘She knows it will be quite as well for her not to cross me.’

This he said very significantly, as he turned to the door, where he bade them a general good-night. When we reached the street, I was too bewildered to offer any remark. Falconer was the first to speak.

‘It always comes back upon me, as if I had never known it before, that women like some of those were of the first to understand our Lord.’

‘Some of them wouldn’t have understood him any more than the Pharisee, though.’

‘I’m not so sure of that. Of course there are great differences. There are good and bad amongst them as in every class. But one thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.’

‘I am afraid you will not get society to agree with you,’ I said, foolishly.

‘I have no wish that society should agree with me; for if it did, it would be sure to do so upon the worst of principles. It is better that society should be cruel, than that it should call the horrible thing a trifle: it would know nothing between.’

Through the city—though it was only when we crossed one of the main thoroughfares that I knew where we were—we came into the region of Bethnal Green. From house to house till it grew very late, Falconer went, and I went with him. I will not linger on this part of our wanderings. Where I saw only dreadful darkness, Falconer always would see some glimmer of light. All the people into whose houses we went knew him. They were all in the depths of poverty. Many of them were respectable. With some of them he had long talks in private, while I waited near. At length he said,

‘I think we had better be going home, Mr. Gordon. You must be tired.’

‘I am, rather,’ I answered. ‘But it doesn’t matter, for I have nothing to do to-morrow.’

‘We shall get a cab, I dare say, before we go far.’

‘Not for me. I am not so tired, but that I would rather walk,’ I said.

‘Very well,’ he returned. ‘Where do you live?’

I told him.

‘I will take you the nearest way.’

‘You know London marvellously.’

‘Pretty well now,’ he answered.

We were somewhere near Leather Lane about one o’clock. Suddenly we came upon two tiny children standing on the pavement, one on each side of the door of a public-house. They could not have been more than two and three. They were sobbing a little—not much. The tiny creatures stood there awfully awake in sleeping London, while even their own playmates were far off in the fairyland of dreams.

‘This is the kind of thing,’ I said, ‘that makes me doubt whether there be a God in heaven.’

‘That is only because he is down here,’ answered Falconer, ‘taking such good care of us all that you can’t see him. There is not a gin-palace, or yet lower hell in London, in which a man or woman can be out of God. The whole being love, there is nothing for you to set it against and judge it by. So you are driven to fancies.’

The house was closed, but there was light above the door. We went up to the children, and spoke to them, but all we could make out was that mammie was in there. One of them could not speak at all. Falconer knocked at the door. A good-natured-looking Irishwoman opened it a little way and peeped out.

‘Here are two children crying at your door, ma’am,’ said Falconer.

‘Och, the darlin’s! they want their mother.’

‘Do you know her, then?’

‘True for you, and I do. She’s a mighty dacent woman in her way when the drink’s out uv her, and very kind to the childher; but oncet she smells the dhrop o’ gin, her head’s gone intirely. The purty craytures have waked up, an’ she not come home, and they’ve run out to look after her.’

Falconer stood a moment as if thinking what would be best. The shriek of a woman rang through the night.

‘There she is!’ said the Irishwoman. ‘For God’s sake don’t let her get a hould o’ the darlints. She’s ravin’ mad. I seen her try to kill them oncet.’

The shrieks came nearer and nearer, and after a few moments the woman appeared in the moonlight, tossing her arms over her head, and screaming with a despair for which she yet sought a defiant expression. Her head was uncovered, and her hair flying in tangles; her sleeves were torn, and her gaunt arms looked awful in the moonlight. She stood in the middle of the street, crying again and again, with shrill laughter between, ‘Nobody cares for me, and I care for nobody! Ha! ha! ha!’

‘Mammie! mammie!’ cried the elder of the children, and ran towards her.

The woman heard, and rushed like a fury towards the child. Falconer too ran, and caught up the child. The woman gave a howl and rushed towards the other. I caught up that one. With a last shriek, she dashed her head against the wall of the public-house, dropped on the pavement, and lay still.

Falconer set the child down, lifted the wasted form in his arms, and carried it into the house. The face was blue as that of a strangled corpse. She was dead.

‘Was she a married woman?’ Falconer asked.

‘It’s myself can’t tell you sir,’ the Irishwoman answered. ‘I never saw any boy with her.’

‘Do you know where she lived?’

‘No, sir. Somewhere not far off, though. The children will know.’

But they stood staring at their mother, and we could get nothing out of them. They would not move from the corpse.

‘I think we may appropriate this treasure-trove,’ said Falconer, turning at last to me; and as he spoke, he took the eldest in his arms. Then, turning to the woman, he gave her a card, saying, ‘If any inquiry is made about them, there is my address.—Will you take the other, Mr. Gordon?’

I obeyed. The children cried no more. After traversing a few streets, we found a cab, and drove to a house in Queen Square, Bloomsbury.

Falconer got out at the door of a large house, and rung the bell; then got the children out, and dismissed the cab. There we stood in the middle of the night, in a silent, empty square, each with a child in his arms. In a few minutes we heard the bolts being withdrawn. The door opened, and a tall graceful form wrapped in a dressing-gown, appeared.

‘I have brought you two babies, Miss St. John,’ said Falconer. ‘Can you take them?’

‘To be sure I can,’ she answered, and turned to lead the way. ‘Bring them in.’

We followed her into a little back room. She put down her candle, and went straight to the cupboard, whence she brought a sponge-cake, from which she cut a large piece for each of the children.

‘What a mercy they are, Robert,—those little gates in the face! Red Lane leads direct to the heart,’ she said, smiling, as if she rejoiced in the idea of taming the little wild angelets. ‘Don’t you stop. You are tired enough, I am sure. I will wake my maid, and we’ll get them washed and put to bed at once.’

She was closing the door, when Falconer turned.

‘Oh! Miss St. John,’ he said, ‘I was forgetting. Could you go down to No. 13 in Soap Lane—you know it, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Quite well.’

‘Ask for a girl called Nell—a plain, pock-marked young girl—and take her away with you.’

‘When shall I go?’

‘To-morrow morning. But I shall be in. Don’t go till you see me. Good-night.’

We took our leave without more ado.

‘What a lady-like woman to be the matron of an asylum!’ I said.

Falconer gave a little laugh.

‘That is no asylum. It is a private house.’

‘And the lady?’

‘Is a lady of private means,’ he answered, ‘who prefers Bloomsbury to Belgravia, because it is easier to do noble work in it. Her heaven is on the confines of hell.’

‘What will she do with those children?’

‘Kiss them and wash them and put them to bed.’

‘And after that?’

‘Give them bread and milk in the morning.’

‘And after that?’

‘Oh! there’s time enough. We’ll see. There’s only one thing she won’t do.’

‘What is that?’

‘Turn them out again.’

A pause followed, I cogitating.

‘Are you a society, then?’ I asked at length.

‘No. At least we don’t use the word. And certainly no other society would acknowledge us.’

‘What are you, then?’

‘Why should we be anything, so long as we do our work?’

‘Don’t you think there is some affectation in refusing a name?’

‘Yes, if the name belongs to you? Not otherwise.’

‘Do you lay claim to no epithet of any sort?’

‘We are a church, if you like. There!’

‘Who is your clergyman?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Where do you meet?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘What are your rules, then?’

‘We have none.’

‘What makes you a church?’

‘Divine Service.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘The sort of thing you have seen to-night.’

‘What is your creed?’

‘Christ Jesus.’

‘But what do you believe about him?’

‘What we can. We count any belief in him—the smallest—better than any belief about him—the greatest—or about anything else besides. But we exclude no one.’

‘How do you manage without?’

‘By admitting no one.’

‘I cannot understand you.’

‘Well, then: we are an undefined company of people, who have grown into human relations with each other naturally, through one attractive force—love for human beings, regarding them as human beings only in virtue of the divine in them.’

‘But you must have some rules,’ I insisted.

‘None whatever. They would cause us only trouble. We have nothing to take us from our work. Those that are most in earnest, draw most together; those that are on the outskirts have only to do nothing, and they are free of us. But we do sometimes ask people to help us—not with money.’

‘But who are the we?’

‘Why you, if you will do anything, and I and Miss St. John and twenty others—and a great many more I don’t know, for every one is a centre to others. It is our work that binds us together.’

‘Then when that stops you drop to pieces.’

‘Yes, thank God. We shall then die. There will be no corporate body—which means a bodied body, or an unsouled body, left behind to simulate life, and corrupt, and work no end of disease. We go to ashes at once, and leave no corpse for a ghoul to inhabit and make a vampire of. When our spirit is dead, our body is vanished.’

‘Then you won’t last long.’

‘Then we oughtn’t to last long.’

‘But the work of the world could not go on so.’

‘We are not the life of the world. God is. And when we fail, he can and will send out more and better labourers into his harvest-field. It is a divine accident by which we are thus associated.’

‘But surely the church must be otherwise constituted.’

‘My dear sir, you forget: I said we were a church, not the church.’

‘Do you belong to the Church of England?’

‘Yes, some of us. Why should we not? In as much as she has faithfully preserved the holy records and traditions, our obligations to her are infinite. And to leave her would be to quarrel, and start a thousand vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them, for which life is too serious in my eyes. I have no time for that.’

‘Then you count the Church of England the Church?’

‘Of England, yes; of the universe, no: that is constituted just like ours, with the living working Lord for the heart of it.’

‘Will you take me for a member?’

‘No.’

‘Will you not, if—?’

‘You may make yourself one if you will. I will not speak a word to gain you. I have shown you work. Do something, and you are of Christ’s Church.’

We were almost at the door of my lodging, and I was getting very weary in body, and indeed in mind, though I hope not in heart. Before we separated, I ventured to say,

‘Will you tell me why you invited me to come and see you? Forgive my presumption, but you seemed to seek acquaintance with me, although you did make me address you first.’

He laughed gently, and answered in the words of the ancient mariner:—

     ‘The moment that his face I see,     I know the man that must hear me:     To him my tale I teach.’

Without another word, he shook hands with me, and left me. Weary as I was, I stood in the street until I could hear his footsteps no longer.

CHAPTER IX. THE BROTHERS

One day, as Falconer sat at a late breakfast, Shargar burst into his room. Falconer had not even known that he was coming home, for he had outstripped the letter he had sent. He had his arm in a sling, which accounted for his leave.

‘Shargar!’ cried Falconer, starting up in delight.

‘Major Shargar, if you please. Give me all my honours, Robert,’ said Moray, presenting his left hand.

‘I congratulate you, my boy. Well, this is delightful! But you are wounded.’

‘Bullet—broken—that’s all. It’s nearly right again. I’ll tell you about it by and by. I am too full of something else to talk about trifles of that sort. I want you to help me.’

He then rushed into the announcement that he had fallen desperately in love with a lady who had come on board with her maid at Malta, where she had been spending the winter. She was not very young, about his own age, but very beautiful, and of enchanting address. How she could have remained so long unmarried he could not think. It could not be but that she had had many offers. She was an heiress, too, but that Shargar felt to be a disadvantage for him. All the progress he could yet boast of was that his attentions had not been, so far as he could judge, disagreeable to her. Robert thought even less of the latter fact than Shargar himself, for he did not believe there were many women to whom Shargar’s attentions would be disagreeable: they must always be simple and manly. What was more to the point, she had given him her address in London, and he was going to call upon her the next day. She was on a visit to Lady Janet Gordon, an elderly spinster, who lived in Park-street.

‘Are you quite sure she’s not an adventuress, Shargar?’

‘It’s o’ no mainner o’ use to tell ye what I’m sure or no sure o’, Robert, in sic a case. But I’ll manage, somehoo, ‘at ye sall see her yersel’, an’ syne I’ll speir back yer ain queston at ye.’

‘Weel, hae ye tauld her a’ aboot yersel’?’

‘No!’ answered Shargar, growing suddenly pale. ‘I never thocht aboot that. But I had no richt, for a’ that passed, to intrude mysel’ upo’ her to that extent.’

‘Weel, I reckon ye’re richt. Yer wounds an’ yer medals ought to weigh weel against a’ that. There’s this comfort in ‘t, that gin she bena richt weel worthy o’ ye, auld frien’, she winna tak ye.’

Shargar did not seem to see the comfort of it. He was depressed for the remainder of the day. In the morning he was in wild spirits again. Just before he started, however, he said, with an expression of tremulous anxiety,

‘Oucht I to tell her a’ at ance—already—aboot—aboot my mither?’

‘I dinna say that. Maybe it wad be equally fair to her and to yersel’ to lat her ken ye a bit better afore ye do that.—We’ll think that ower.—Whan ye gang doon the stair, ye’ll see a bit brougham at the door waitin’ for ye. Gie the coachman ony orders ye like. He’s your servant as lang ‘s ye’re in London. Commit yer way to the Lord, my boy.’

Though Shargar did not say much, he felt strengthened by Robert’s truth to meet his fate with something of composure. But it was not to be decided that day. Therein lay some comfort.

He returned in high spirits still. He had been graciously received both by Miss Hamilton and her hostess—a kind-hearted old lady, who spoke Scotch with the pure tone of a gentlewoman, he said—a treat not to be had once in a twelvemonth. She had asked him to go to dinner in the evening, and to bring his friend with him. Robert, however, begged him to make his excuse, as he had an engagement in—a very different sort of place.

When Shargar returned, Robert had not come in. He was too excited to go to bed, and waited for him. It was two o’clock before he came home. Shargar told him there was to be a large party at Lady Patterdale’s the next evening but one, and Lady Janet had promised to procure him an invitation.

The next morning Robert went to see Mary St. John, and asked if she knew anything of Lady Patterdale, and whether she could get him an invitation. Miss St. John did not know her, but she thought she could manage it for him. He told her all about Shargar, for whose sake he wished to see Miss Hamilton before consenting to be introduced to her. Miss St. John set out at once, and Falconer received a card the next day. When the evening came, he allowed Shargar to set out alone in his brougham, and followed an hour later in a hansom.

When he reached the house, the rooms were tolerably filled, and as several parties had arrived just before him, he managed to enter without being announced. After a little while he caught sight of Shargar. He stood alone, almost in a corner, with a strange, rather raised expression in his eyes. Falconer could not see the object to which they were directed. Certainly, their look was not that of love. He made his way up to him and laid his hand on his arm. Shargar betrayed no little astonishment when he saw him.

‘You here, Robert!’ he said.

‘Yes, I’m here. Have you seen her yet? Is she here?’

‘Wha do ye think ‘s speakin’ till her this verra minute? Look there!’ Shargar said in a low voice, suppressed yet more to hide his excitement.

Following his directions, Robert saw, amidst a little group of gentlemen surrounding a seated lady, of whose face he could not get a peep, a handsome elderly man, who looked more fashionable than his years justified, and whose countenance had an expression which he felt repulsive. He thought he had seen him before, but Shargar gave him no time to come to a conclusion of himself.

‘It’s my brither Sandy, as sure ‘s deith!’ he said; ‘and he’s been hingin’ aboot her ever sin’ she cam in. But I dinna think she likes him a’thegither by the leuk o’ her.’

‘What for dinna ye gang up till her yersel’, man? I wadna stan’ that gin ‘twas me.’

‘I’m feared ‘at he ken me. He’s terrible gleg. A’ the Morays are gleg, and yon marquis has an ee like a hawk.’

‘What does ‘t maitter? Ye hae dune naething to be ashamed o’ like him.’

‘Ay; but it’s this. I wadna hae her hear the trowth aboot me frae that boar’s mou’ o’ his first. I wad hae her hear ‘t frae my ain, an’ syne she canna think I meant to tak her in.’

At this moment there was a movement in the group. Shargar, receiving no reply, looked round at Robert. It was now Shargar’s turn to be surprised at his expression.