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CHAPTER XXI: MR GRAHAM
When Malcolm at length reached his lodging, he found there a letter
from Miss Horn, containing the much desired information as to where
the schoolmaster was to be found in the London wilderness. It was
now getting rather late, and the dusk of a spring night had begun
to gather; but little more than the breadth of the Regent's Park
lay between him and his best friend--his only one in London--
and he set out immediately for Camden Town.
The relation between him and his late schoolmaster was indeed of
the strongest and closest. Long before Malcolm was born, and ever
since, had Alexander Graham loved Malcolm's mother; but not until
within the last few months had he learned that Malcolm was the son
of Griselda Campbell. The discovery was to the schoolmaster like
the bursting out of a known flower on an unknown plant. He knew
then, not why he had loved the boy, for he loved every one of his
pupils more or less, but why he had loved him with such a peculiar
tone of affection.
It was a lovely evening. There had been rain in the afternoon
as Malcolm walked home from the Pool, but before the sun set it
had cleared up; and as he went through the park towards the dingy
suburb, the first heralds of the returning youth of the year met him
from all sides in the guise of odours--not yet those of flowers,
but the more ethereal if less sweet, scents of buds and grass, and
ever pure earth moistened with the waters of heaven. And to his
surprise he found that his sojourn in a great city, although as yet
so brief, had already made the open earth with its corn and grass
more dear to him and wonderful. But when he left the park, and
crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary region of dwellings crowded
and commonplace as the thoughts of a worshipper of Mammon, houses
upon houses, here and there shepherded by a tall spire, it was hard
to believe that the spring was indeed coming slowly up this way.
After not a few inquiries, he found himself at a stationer's shop,
a poor little place, and learned that Mr Graham lodged over it,
and was then at home.
He was shown up into a shabby room, with an iron bedstead, a chest
of drawers daubed with sickly paint, a table with a stained red
cover, a few bookshelves in a recess over the washstand, and two
chairs seated with haircloth. On one of these, by the side of a
small fire in a neglected grate, sat the schoolmaster reading his
Plato. On the table beside him lay his Greek New Testament, and
an old edition of George Herbert. He looked up as the door opened,
and, notwithstanding his strange dress, recognising at once his
friend and pupil, rose hastily, and welcomed him with hand and
eyes, and countenance, but without word spoken. For a few moments
the two stood silent, holding each the other's hand, and gazing
each in the other's eyes, then sat down, still speechless, one on
each side of the fire.
They looked at each other and smiled, and again a minute passed.
Then the schoolmaster rose, rang the bell, and when it was answered
by a rather careworn young woman, requested her to bring tea.
"I'm sorry I cannot give you cakes or fresh butter, my lord,"
he said with a smile, and they were the first words spoken. "The
former is not to be had, and the latter is beyond my means. But
what I have will content one who is able to count that abundance
which many would count privation."
He spoke in the choice word, measured phrase, and stately speech
which Wordsworth says "grave livers do in Scotland use," but
under it all rang a tone of humour, as if he knew the form of his
utterance too important for the subject matter of it, and would
gently amuse with it both his visitor and himself.
He was a man of middle height, but so thin that notwithstanding a
slight stoop in the shoulders, he looked rather tall; much on the
young side of fifty, but apparently a good way on the other, partly
from the little hair he had being grey. He had sandy coloured
whiskers, and a shaven chin. Except his large sweetly closed mouth,
and rather long upper lip, there was nothing very notable in his
features. At ordinary moments, indeed, there was nothing in his
appearance other than insignificant to the ordinary observer. His
eyes were of a pale quiet blue, but when he smiled they sparkled
and throbbed with light. He wore the same old black tailcoat he had
worn last in his school at Portlossie, but the white neckcloth he
had always been seen in there had given place to a black one: that
was the sole change in the aspect of the man.
About Portlossie he had been greatly respected, notwithstanding
the rumour that he was a "stickit minister," that is, one who had
failed in the attempt to preach; and when the presbytery dismissed
him on the charge of heresy, there had been many tears on the part
of his pupils, and much childish defiance of his unenviable successor.
Few words passed between the two men until they had had their tea,
and then followed a long talk, Malcolm first explaining his present
position, and then answering many questions of the master as to how
things had gone since he left. Next followed anxious questions on
Malcolm's side as to how his friend found himself in the prison of
London.
"I do miss the air, and the laverocks (skylarks), and the gowans,"
he confessed; "but I have them all in my mind, and at my age a man
ought to be able to satisfy himself with the idea of a thing in his
soul. Of outer things that have contributed to his inward growth,
the memory alone may then well be enough. The sights which, when
I lie down to sleep, rise before that inward eye Wordsworth calls
the bliss of solitude, have upon me power almost of a spiritual
vision, so purely radiant are they of that which dwells in them,
the divine thought which is their substance, their hypostasis. My
boy! I doubt if you can tell what it is to know the presence of
the living God in and about you."
"I houp I hae a bit notion o' 't, sir," said Malcolm.
"But believe me that in any case, however much a man may have of
it, he may have it endlessly more. Since I left the cottage where
I hoped to end my days under the shadow of the house of your ancestors,
since I came into this region of bricks and smoke, and the crowded
tokens too plain of want and care, I have found a reality in the
things I had been trying to teach you at Portlossie, such as I had
before imagined only in my best moments. And more still: I am now
far better able to understand how it must have been with our Lord
when he was trying to teach the men and women of Palestine to
have faith in God. Depend upon it, we get our best use of life in
learning by the facts of its ebb and flow to understand the Son of
Man. And again, when we understand Him, then only do we understand
our life and ourselves. Never can we know the majesty of the will
of God concerning us except by understanding Jesus and the work the
Father gave Him to do. Now, nothing is of a more heavenly delight
than to enter into a dusky room in the house of your friend, and
there, with a blow of the heavenly rod, draw light from the dark
wall--open a window, a fountain of the eternal light, and let
in the truth which is the life of the world. Joyously would a man
spend his life, right joyously even if the road led to the gallows,
in showing the grandest he sees--the splendid purities of the
divine religion--the mountain top up to which the voice of God
is ever calling his children. Yes, I can understand even how a man
might live, like the good hermits of old, in triumphant meditation
upon such all satisfying truths, and let the waves of the world's
time wash by him in unheeded flow until his cell changed to his
tomb, and his spirit soared free. But to spend your time in giving
little lessons when you have great ones to give; in teaching the
multiplication table the morning after you made at midnight a grand
discovery upon the very summits of the moonlit mountain range of the
mathematics; in enforcing the old law, Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself when you know in your own heart that not a soul can ever
learn to keep it without first learning to fulfil an infinitely
greater one--to love his neighbour even as Christ hath loved him
--then indeed one may well grow disheartened, and feel as if he
were not in the place prepared for, and at the work required of
him. But it is just then that he must go back to school himself
and learn not only the patience of God who keeps the whole dull
obstinate world alive, while generation after generation is born
and vanishes, and of the mighty multitude only one here and there
rises up from the fetters of humanity into the freedom of the sons
of God--and yet goes on teaching the whole, and bringing every
man who will but turn his ear a little towards the voice that
calls him, nearer and nearer to the second birth--of sonship and
liberty--not only this divine patience must he learn, but the
divine insight as well, which in every form spies the reflex of
the truth it cannot contain, and in every lowliest lesson sees the
highest drawn nearer, and the soul growing alive unto God."
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