Robert Falconer

‘Are ye seein’ a vraith, Robert?’ he said. ‘What gars ye leuk like that, man?’

‘Oh!’ answered Robert, recovering himself, ‘I thought I saw some one I knew. But I’m not sure. I’ll tell you afterwards. We’ve been talking too earnestly. People are beginning to look at us.’

So saying, he moved away towards the group of which the marquis still formed one. As he drew near he saw a piano behind Miss Hamilton. A sudden impulse seized him, and he yielded to it. He made his way to the piano, and seating himself, began to play very softly—so softly that the sounds could scarcely be heard beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the instrument. There was no change on the storm of talk that filled the room. But in a few minutes a face white as a shroud was turned round upon him from the group in front, like the moon dawning out of a cloud. He stopped at once, saying to himself, ‘I was right;’ and rising, mingled again with the crowd. A few minutes after, he saw Shargar leading Miss Hamilton out of the room, and Lady Janet following. He did not intend to wait his return, but got near the door, that he might slip out when he should re-enter. But Shargar did not return. For, the moment she reached the fresh air, Miss Hamilton was so much better that Lady Janet, whose heart was as young towards young people as if she had never had the unfortunate love affair tradition assigned her, asked him to see them home, and he followed them into her carriage. Falconer left a few minutes after, anxious for quiet that he might make up his mind as to what he ought to do. Before he had walked home, he had resolved on the next step. But not wishing to see Shargar yet, and at the same time wanting to have a night’s rest, he went home only to change his clothes, and betook himself to a hotel in Covent Garden.

He was at Lady Janet’s door by ten o’clock the next morning, and sent in his card to Miss Hamilton. He was shown into the drawing-room, where she came to him.

‘May I presume on old acquaintance?’ he asked, holding out his hand.

She looked in his face quietly, took his hand, pressed it warmly, and said,

‘No one has so good a right, Mr. Falconer. Do sit down.’

He placed a chair for her, and obeyed.

After a moment’s silence on both sides:

‘Are you aware, Miss—?’ he said and hesitated.

‘Miss Hamilton,’ she said with a smile. ‘I was Miss Lindsay when you knew me so many years ago. I will explain presently.’

Then with an air of expectation she awaited the finish of his sentence.

‘Are you aware, Miss Hamilton, that I am Major Moray’s oldest friend?’

‘I am quite aware of it, and delighted to know it. He told me so last night.’

Somewhat dismayed at this answer, Falconer resumed,

‘Did Major Moray likewise communicate with you concerning his own history?’

‘He did. He told me all.’

Falconer was again silent for some moments.

‘Shall I be presuming too far if I venture to conclude that my friend will not continue his visits?’

‘On the contrary,’ she answered, with the same delicate blush that in old times used to overspread the lovely whiteness of her face, ‘I expect him within half-an-hour.’

‘Then there is no time to be lost,’ thought Falconer.

‘Without presuming to express any opinion of my own,’ he said quietly, ‘a social code far less severe than that which prevails in England, would take for granted that an impassable barrier existed between Major Moray and Miss Hamilton.’

‘Do not suppose, Mr. Falconer, that I could not meet Major Moray’s honesty with equal openness on my side.’

Falconer, for the first time almost in his life, was incapable of speech from bewilderment. But Miss Hamilton did not in the least enjoy his perplexity, and made haste to rescue both him and herself. With a blush that was now deep as any rose, she resumed,

‘But I owe you equal frankness, Mr. Falconer. There is no barrier between Major Moray and myself but the foolish—no, wicked—indiscretion of an otherwise innocent and ignorant girl. Listen, Mr. Falconer: under the necessity of the circumstances you will not misjudge me if I compel myself to speak calmly. This, I trust, will be my final penance. I thought Lord Rothie was going to marry me. To do him justice, he never said so. Make what excuse for my folly you can. I was lost in a mist of vain imaginations. I had had no mother to teach me anything, Mr. Falconer, and my father never suspected the necessity of teaching me anything. I was very ill on the passage to Antwerp, and when I began to recover a little, I found myself beginning to doubt both my own conduct and his lordship’s intentions. Possibly the fact that he was not quite so kind to me in my illness as I had expected, and that I felt hurt in consequence, aided the doubt. Then the thought of my father returning and finding that I had left him, came and burned in my heart like fire. But what was I to do? I had never been out of Aberdeen before. I did not know even a word of French. I was altogether in Lord Rothie’s power. I thought I loved him, but it was not much of love that sea-sickness could get the better of. With a heart full of despair I went on shore. The captain slipped a note into my hand. I put it in my pocket, but pulled it out with my handkerchief in the street. Lord Rothie picked it up. I begged him to give it me, but he read it, and then tore it in pieces. I entered the hotel, as wretched as girl could well be. I began to dislike him. But during dinner he was so kind and attentive that I tried to persuade myself that my fears were fanciful. After dinner he took me out. On the stairs we met a lady whose speech was Scotch. Her maid called her Lady Janet. She looked kindly at me as I passed. I thought she could read my face. I remembered afterwards that Lord Rothie turned his head away when we met her. We went into the cathedral. We were standing under that curious dome, and I was looking up at its strange lights, when down came a rain of bell-notes on the roof over my head. Before the first tune was over, I seemed to expect the second, and then the third, without thinking how I could know what was coming; but when they ended with the ballad of the Witch Lady, and I lifted up my head and saw that I was not by my father’s fireside, but in Antwerp Cathedral with Lord Rothie, despair filled me with a half-insane resolution. Happily Lord Rothie was at some little distance talking to a priest about one of Rubens’s pictures. I slipped unseen behind the nearest pillar, and then flew from the church. How I got to the hotel I do not know, but I did reach it. ‘Lady Janet,’ was all I could say. The waiter knew the name, and led me to her room. I threw myself on my knees, and begged her to save me. She assured me no one should touch me. I gasped ‘Lord Rothie,’ and fainted. When I came to myself—but I need not tell you all the particulars. Lady Janet did take care of me. Till last night I never saw Lord Rothie again. I did not acknowledge him, but he persisted in talking to me, behave as I would, and I saw well enough that he knew me.’

Falconer took her hand and kissed it.

‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘That spire was indeed the haunt of angels as I fancied while I played upon those bells.’

‘I knew it was you—that is, I was sure of it when I came to think about it; but at the time I took it for a direct message from heaven, which nobody heard but myself.’

‘It was such none the less that I was sent to deliver it,’ said Falconer. ‘I little thought during my imprisonment because of it, 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.’