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ROBERT FALCONER
ROBERT FALCONER GEORGE MACDONALD Note from electronic text creator: I have compiled a glossary with
definitions of most of the Scottish words found in this work and
placed it at the end of this electronic text. This glossary does
not belong to the original work but is designed to help with the
conversations and references in Broad Scots found in this work. A
further explanation of this list can be found towards the end of
this document preceding the glossary.
Any notes that I have made in the text (e.g. relating to Greek words
in the text) have been enclosed in {} brackets.
TO
THE MEMORY
OF THE MAN WHO
STANDS HIGHEST IN THE ORATORY
OF MY MEMORY
ALEXANDER JOHN SCOTT
I DARING PRESUME TO DEDICATE THIS BOOK.
PART I.--HIS BOYHOOD.
CHAPTER I.
A RECOLLECTION.
Robert Falconer school-boy aged fourteen thought he had never
seen his father; that is thought he had no recollection of having
ever seen him. But the moment when my story begins he had begun to
doubt whether his belief in the matter was correct. And as he went
on thinking he became more and more assured that he had seen his
father somewhere about six years before as near as a thoughtful boy
of his age could judge of the lapse of a period that would form half
of that portion of his existence which was bound into one by the
reticulations of memory.
For there dawned upon his mind the vision of one Sunday afternoon.
Betty had gone to church and he was alone with his grandmother
reading The Pilgrim's Progress to her when just as Christian
knocked at the wicket-gate a tap came to the street door and he
went to open it. There he saw a tall somewhat haggard-looking man
in a shabby black coat (the vision gradually dawned upon him till it
reached the minuteness of all these particulars) his hat pulled
down on to his projecting eyebrows and his shoes very dusty as
with a long journey on foot--it was a hot Sunday he remembered
that--who looked at him very strangely and without a word pushed
him aside and went straight into his grandmother's parlour
shutting the door behind him. He followed not doubting that the
man must have a right to go there but questioning very much his
right to shut him out. When he reached the door however he found
it bolted; and outside he had to stay all alone in the desolate
remainder of the house till Betty came home from church.
He could even recall as he thought about it how drearily the
afternoon had passed. First he had opened the street door and
stood in it. There was nothing alive to be seen except a sparrow
picking up crumbs and he would not stop till he was tired of him.
The Royal Oak down the street to the right had not even a
horseless gig or cart standing before it; and King Charles grinning
awfully in its branches on the signboard was invisible from the
distance at which he stood. In at the other end of the empty
street looked the distant uplands whose waving corn and grass were
likewise invisible and beyond them rose one blue truncated peak in
the distance all of them wearily at rest this weary Sabbath day.
However there was one thing than which this was better and that
was being at church which to this boy at least was the very fifth
essence of dreariness.
He closed the door and went into the kitchen. That was nearly as
bad. The kettle was on the fire to be sure in anticipation of
tea; but the coals under it were black on the top and it made only
faint efforts after immeasurable intervals of silence to break
into a song giving a hum like that of a bee a mile off and then
relapsing into hopeless inactivity. Having just had his dinner he
was not hungry enough to find any resource in the drawer where the
oatcakes lay and unfortunately the old wooden clock in the corner
was going else there would have been some amusement in trying to
torment it into demonstrations of life as he had often done in less
desperate circumstances than the present. At last he went up-stairs
to the very room in which he now was and sat down upon the floor
just as he was sitting now. He had not even brought his Pilgrim's
Progress with him from his grandmother's room. But searching about
in all holes and corners he at length found Klopstock's Messiah
translated into English and took refuge there till Betty came home.
Nor did he go down till she called him to tea when expecting to
join his grandmother and the stranger he found on the contrary
that he was to have his tea with Betty in the kitchen after which
he again took refuge with Klopstock in the garret and remained
there till it grew dark when Betty came in search of him and put
him to bed in the gable-room and not in his usual chamber. In the
morning every trace of the visitor had vanished even to the thorn
stick which he had set down behind the door as he entered.
All this Robert Falconer saw slowly revive on the palimpsest of his
memory as he washed it with the vivifying waters of recollection.
CHAPTER II.
A VISITOR.
It was a very bare little room in which the boy sat but it was his
favourite retreat. Behind the door in a recess stood an empty
bedstead without even a mattress upon it. This was the only piece
of furniture in the room unless some shelves crowded with papers
tied up in bundles and a cupboard in the wall likewise filled with
papers could be called furniture. There was no carpet on the
floor no windows in the walls. The only light came from the door
and from a small skylight in the sloping roof which showed that it
was a garret-room. Nor did much light come from the open door for
there was no window on the walled stair to which it opened; only
opposite the door a few steps led up into another garret larger
but with a lower roof unceiled and perforated with two or three
holes the panes of glass filling which were no larger than the
small blue slates which covered the roof: from these panes a little
dim brown light tumbled into the room where the boy sat on the
floor with his head almost between his knees thinking.
But there was less light than usual in the room now though it was
only half-past two o'clock and the sun would not set for more than
half-an-hour yet; for if Robert had lifted his head and looked up
it would have been at not through the skylight. No sky was to be
seen. A thick covering of snow lay over the glass. A partial thaw
followed by frost had fixed it there--a mass of imperfect cells and
confused crystals. It was a cold place to sit in but the boy had
some faculty for enduring cold when it was the price to be paid for
solitude. And besides when he fell into one of his thinking moods
he forgot for a season cold and everything else but what he was
thinking about--a faculty for which he was to be envied.
If he had gone down the stair which described half the turn of a
screw in its descent and had crossed the landing to which it
brought him he could have entered another bedroom called the gable
or rather ga'le room equally at his service for retirement; but
though carpeted and comfortably furnished and having two windows at
right angles commanding two streets for it was a corner house the
boy preferred the garret-room--he could not tell why. Possibly
windows to the streets were not congenial to the meditations in
which even now as I have said the boy indulged.
These meditations however though sometimes as abstruse if not so
continuous as those of a metaphysician--for boys are not
unfrequently more given to metaphysics than older people are able
or perhaps willing to believe--were not by any means confined to
such subjects: castle-building had its full share in the occupation
of those lonely hours; and for this exercise of the constructive
faculty what he knew or rather what he did not know of his own
history gave him scope enough nor was his brain slow in supplying
him with material corresponding in quantity to the space afforded.
His mother had been dead for so many years that he had only the
vaguest recollections of her tenderness and none of her person.
All he was told of his father was that he had gone abroad. His
grandmother would never talk about him although he was her own son.
When the boy ventured to ask a question about where he was or when
he would return she always replied--'Bairns suld haud their
tongues.' Nor would she vouchsafe another answer to any question
that seemed to her from the farthest distance to bear down upon that
subject. 'Bairns maun learn to haud their tongues' was the sole
variation of which the response admitted. And the boy did learn to
hold his tongue. Perhaps he would have thought less about his
father if he had had brothers or sisters or even if the nature of
his grandmother had been such as to admit of their relationship
being drawn closer--into personal confidence or some measure of
familiarity. How they stood with regard to each other will soon
appear.
Whether the visions vanished from his brain because of the
thickening of his blood with cold or he merely acted from one of
those undefined and inexplicable impulses which occasion not a few
of our actions I cannot tell but all at once Robert started to his
feet and hurried from the room. At the foot of the garret stair
between it and the door of the gable-room already mentioned stood
another door at right angles to both of the existence of which the
boy was scarcely aware simply because he had seen it all his life
and had never seen it open. Turning his back on this last door
which he took for a blind one he went down a short broad stair at
the foot of which was a window. He then turned to the left into a
long flagged passage or transe passed the kitchen door on the one
hand and the double-leaved street door on the other; but instead
of going into the parlour the door of which closed the transe he
stopped at the passage-window on the right and there stood looking
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