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ERIC ERICSON.
Robert sprang across the dividing chasm, clasped Ericson's hand in
both of his, looked up into his face, and stood speechless. Ericson
returned the salute with a still kindness--tender and still. His
face was like a gray morning sky of summer from whose level
cloud-fields rain will fall before noon.
'So it was you,' he said, 'playing the violin so well?'
'I was doin' my best,' answered Robert. 'But eh! Mr. Ericson, I wad
hae dune better gin I had kent ye was hearkenin'.'
'You couldn't do better than your best,' returned Eric, smiling.
'Ay, but yer best micht aye grow better, ye ken,' persisted Robert.
'Come into my room,' said Ericson. 'This is Friday night, and there
is nothing but chapel to-morrow. So we'll have talk instead of
work.'
In another moment they were seated by a tiny coal fire in a room one
side of which was the slope of the roof, with a large, low skylight
in it looking seawards. The sound of the distant waves, unheard in
Robert's room, beat upon the drum of the skylight, through all the
world of mist that lay between it and them--dimly, vaguely--but ever
and again with a swell of gathered force, that made the distant
tumult doubtful no more.
'I am sorry I have nothing to offer you,' said Ericson.
'You remind me of Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate of the
temple,' returned Robert, attempting to speak English like the
Northerner, but breaking down as his heart got the better of him.
'Eh! Mr. Ericson, gin ye kent what it is to me to see the face o'
ye, ye wadna speyk like that. Jist lat me sit an' leuk at ye. I
want nae mair.'
A smile broke up the cold, sad, gray light of the young eagle-face.
Stern at once and gentle when in repose, its smile was as the
summer of some lovely land where neither the heat nor the sun shall
smite them. The youth laid his hand upon the boy's head, then
withdrew it hastily, and the smile vanished like the sun behind a
cloud. Robert saw it, and as if he had been David before Saul, rose
instinctively and said,
'I'll gang for my fiddle.--Hoots! I hae broken ane o' the strings.
We maun bide till the morn. But I want nae fiddle mysel' whan I
hear the great water oot there.'
'You're young yet, my boy, or you might hear voices in that water--!
I've lived in the sound of it all my days. When I can't rest at
night, I hear a moaning and crying in the dark, and I lie and listen
till I can't tell whether I'm a man or some God-forsaken sea in the
sunless north.'
'Sometimes I believe in naething but my fiddle,' answered Robert.
'Yes, yes. But when it comes into you, my boy! You won't hear much
music in the cry of the sea after that. As long as you've got it at
arm's length, it's all very well. It's interesting then, and you
can talk to your fiddle about it, and make poetry about it,' said
Ericson, with a smile of self-contempt. 'But as soon as the real
earnest comes that is all over. The sea-moan is the cry of a
tortured world then. Its hollow bed is the cup of the world's pain,
ever rolling from side to side and dashing over its lip. Of all
that might be, ought to be, nothing to be had!--I could get music
out of it once. Look here. I could trifle like that once.'
He half rose, then dropped on his chair. But Robert's believing
eyes justified confidence, and Ericson had never had any one to talk
to. He rose again, opened a cupboard at his side, took out some
papers, threw them on the table, and, taking his hat, walked towards
the door.
'Which of your strings is broken?' he asked.
'The third,' answered Robert.
'I will get you one,' said Ericson; and before Robert could reply he
was down the stair. Robert heard him cough, then the door shut, and
he was gone in the rain and fog.
Bewildered, unhappy, ready to fly after him, yet irresolute, Robert
almost mechanically turned over the papers upon the little deal
table. He was soon arrested by the following verses, headed
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