|
|
|
Prev
| Next
| Contents
THE ANGEL UNAWARES.
Although Betty seemed to hold little communication with the outer
world, she yet contrived somehow or other to bring home what gossip
was going to the ears of her mistress, who had very few visitors;
for, while her neighbours held Mrs. Falconer in great and evident
respect, she was not the sort of person to sit down and have a news
with. There was a certain sedate self-contained dignity about her
which the common mind felt to be chilling and repellant; and from
any gossip of a personal nature--what Betty brought her always
excepted--she would turn away, generally with the words, 'Hoots! I
canna bide clashes.'
On the evening following that of Shargar's introduction to Mrs.
Falconer's house, Betty came home from the butcher's--for it was
Saturday night, and she had gone to fetch the beef for their
Sunday's broth--with the news that the people next door, that is,
round the corner in the next street, had a visitor.
The house in question had been built by Robert's father, and was,
compared with Mrs. Falconer's one-storey house, large and handsome.
Robert had been born, and had spent a few years of his life in it,
but could recall nothing of the facts of those early days. Some
time before the period at which my history commences it had passed
into other hands, and it was now quite strange to him. It had been
bought by a retired naval officer, who lived in it with his
wife--the only Englishwoman in the place, until the arrival, at The
Boar's Head, of the lady so much admired by Dooble Sanny.
Robert was up-stairs when Betty emptied her news-bag, and so heard
nothing of this bit of gossip. He had just assured Shargar that as
soon as his grandmother was asleep he would look about for what he
could find, and carry it up to him in the garret. As yet he had
confined the expenditure out of Shargar's shilling to twopence.
The household always retired early--earlier on Saturday night in
preparation for the Sabbath--and by ten o'clock grannie and Betty
were in bed. Robert, indeed, was in bed too; but he had lain down
in his clothes, waiting for such time as might afford reasonable
hope of his grandmother being asleep, when he might both ease
Shargar's hunger and get to sleep himself. Several times he got up,
resolved to make his attempt; but as often his courage failed and he
lay down again, sure that grannie could not be asleep yet. When the
clock beside him struck eleven, he could bear it no longer, and
finally rose to do his endeavour.
Opening the door of the closet slowly and softly, he crept upon his
hands and knees into the middle of the parlour, feeling very much
like a thief, as, indeed, in a measure he was, though from a
blameless motive. But just as he had accomplished half the distance
to the door, he was arrested and fixed with terror; for a deep sigh
came from grannie's bed, followed by the voice of words. He thought
at first that she had heard him, but he soon found that he was
mistaken. Still, the fear of discovery held him there on all fours,
like a chained animal. A dull red gleam, faint and dull, from the
embers of the fire, was the sole light in the room. Everything so
common to his eyes in the daylight seemed now strange and eerie in
the dying coals, and at what was to the boy the unearthly hour of
the night.
He felt that he ought not to listen to grannie, but terror made him
unable to move.
'Och hone! och hone!' said grannie from the bed. 'I've a sair, sair
hert. I've a sair hert i' my breist, O Lord! thoo knowest. My ain
Anerew! To think o' my bairnie that I cairriet i' my ain body, that
sookit my breists, and leuch i' my face--to think o' 'im bein' a
reprobate! O Lord! cudna he be eleckit yet? Is there nae turnin'
o' thy decrees? Na, na; that wadna do at a'. But while there's
life there's houp. But wha kens whether he be alive or no? Naebody
can tell. Glaidly wad I luik upon 's deid face gin I cud believe
that his sowl wasna amang the lost. But eh! the torments o' that
place! and the reik that gangs up for ever an' ever, smorin'
(smothering) the stars! And my Anerew doon i' the hert o' 't
cryin'! And me no able to win till him! O Lord! I canna say thy
will be done. But dinna lay 't to my chairge; for gin ye was a
mither yersel' ye wadna pit him there. O Lord! I'm verra
ill-fashioned. I beg yer pardon. I'm near oot o' my min'. Forgie
me, O Lord! for I hardly ken what I'm sayin'. He was my ain babe,
my ain Anerew, and ye gae him to me yersel'. And noo he's for the
finger o' scorn to pint at; an ootcast an' a wan'erer frae his ain
country, an' daurna come within sicht o' 't for them 'at wad tak'
the law o' 'm. An' it's a' drink--drink an' ill company! He wad
hae dune weel eneuch gin they wad only hae latten him be. What for
maun men be aye drink-drinkin' at something or ither? I never want
it. Eh! gin I war as young as whan he was born, I wad be up an'
awa' this verra nicht to luik for him. But it's no use me tryin'
't. O God! ance mair I pray thee to turn him frae the error o' 's
ways afore he goes hence an' isna more. And O dinna lat Robert gang
efter him, as he's like eneuch to do. Gie me grace to haud him
ticht, that he may be to the praise o' thy glory for ever an' ever.
Amen.'
Whether it was that the weary woman here fell asleep, or that she
was too exhausted for further speech, Robert heard no more, though
he remained there frozen with horror for some minutes after his
grandmother had ceased. This, then, was the reason why she would
never speak about his father! She kept all her thoughts about him
for the silence of the night, and loneliness with the God who never
sleeps, but watches the wicked all through the dark. And his father
was one of the wicked! And God was against him! And when he died
he would go to hell! But he was not dead yet: Robert was sure of
that. And when he grew a man, he would go and seek him, and beg him
on his knees to repent and come back to God, who would forgive him
then, and take him to heaven when he died. And there he would be
good, and good people would love him.
Something like this passed through the boy's mind ere he moved to
creep from the room, for his was one of those natures which are
active in the generation of hope. He had almost forgotten what he
came there for; and had it not been that he had promised Shargar, he
would have crept back to his bed and left him to bear his hunger as
best he could. But now, first his right hand, then his left knee,
like any other quadruped, he crawled to the door, rose only to his
knees to open it, took almost a minute to the operation, then
dropped and crawled again, till he had passed out, turned, and drawn
the door to, leaving it slightly ajar. Then it struck him awfully
that the same terrible passage must be gone through again. But he
rose to his feet, for he had no shoes on, and there was little
danger of making any noise, although it was pitch dark--he knew the
house so well. With gathering courage, he felt his way to the
kitchen, and there groped about; but he could find nothing beyond a
few quarters of oat-cake, which, with a mug of water, he proceeded
to carry up to Shargar in the garret.
When he reached the kitchen door, he was struck with amazement and
for a moment with fresh fear. A light was shining into the transe
from the stair which went up at right angles from the end of it. He
knew it could not be grannie, and he heard Betty snoring in her own
den, which opened from the kitchen. He thought it must be Shargar
who had grown impatient; but how he had got hold of a light he could
not think. As soon as he turned the corner, however, the doubt was
changed into mystery. At the top of the broad low stair stood a
woman-form with a candle in her hand, gazing about her as if
wondering which way to go. The light fell full upon her face, the
beauty of which was such that, with her dress, which was
white--being, in fact, a nightgown--and her hair, which was hanging
loose about her shoulders and down to her waist, it led Robert at
once to the conclusion (his reasoning faculties already shaken by
the events of the night) that she was an angel come down to comfort
his grannie; and he kneeled involuntarily at the foot of the stair,
and gazed up at her, with the cakes in one hand, and the mug of
water in the other, like a meat-and-drink offering. Whether he had
closed his eyes or bowed his head, he could not say; but he became
suddenly aware that the angel had vanished--he knew not when, how,
or whither. This for a time confirmed his assurance that it was an
angel. And although he was undeceived before long, the impression
made upon him that night was never effaced. But, indeed, whatever
Falconer heard or saw was something more to him than it would have
been to anybody else.
Elated, though awed, by the vision, he felt his way up the stair in
the new darkness, as if walking in a holy dream, trod as if upon
sacred ground as he crossed the landing where the angel had
stood--went up and up, and found Shargar wide awake with expectant
hunger. He, too, had caught a glimmer of the light. But Robert did
not tell him what he had seen. That was too sacred a subject to
enter upon with Shargar, and he was intent enough upon his supper
not to be inquisitive.
Robert left him to finish it at his leisure, and returned to cross
his grandmother's room once more, half expecting to find the angel
standing by her bedside. But all was dark and still. Creeping back
as he had come, he heard her quiet, though deep, breathing, and his
mind was at ease about her for the night. What if the angel he had
surprised had only come to appear to grannie in her sleep? Why not?
There were such stories in the Bible, and grannie was certainly as
good as some of the people in the Bible that saw angels--Sarah, for
instance. And if the angels came to see grannie, why should they
not have some care over his father as well? It might be--who could
tell?
It is perhaps necessary to explain Robert's vision. The angel was
the owner of the boxes he had seen at The Bear's Head. Looking
around her room before going to bed, she had seen a trap in the
floor near the wall, and raising it, had discovered a few steps of a
stair leading down to a door. Curiosity naturally led her to
examine it. The key was in the lock. It opened outwards, and there
she found herself, to her surprise, in the heart of another
dwelling, of lowlier aspect. She never saw Robert; for while he
approached with shoeless feet, she had been glancing through the
open door of the gable-room, and when he knelt, the light which she
held in her hand had, I presume, hidden him from her. He, on his
part, had not observed that the moveless door stood open at last.
I have already said that the house adjoining had been built by
Robert's father. The lady's room was that which he had occupied
with his wife, and in it Robert had been born. The door, with its
trap-stair, was a natural invention for uniting the levels of the
two houses, and a desirable one in not a few of the forms which the
weather assumed in that region. When the larger house passed into
other hands, it had never entered the minds of the simple people who
occupied the contiguous dwellings, to build up the doorway between.
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|
|
|