IN THE DESERT.
A life lay behind Robert Falconer, and a life lay before him.He stood on a shoal between.
The life behind him was in its grave.He had covered it over and turned away.But he knew it would rise at night.
The life before him was not yet born; and what should issue from that dull ghastly unrevealing fog on the horizon, he did not care.
Thither the tide setting eastward would carry him, and his future must be born.All he cared about was to leave the empty garments of his dead behind him--the sky and the fields, the houses and the gardens which those dead had made alive with their presence.
Travel, motion, ever on, ever away, was the sole impulse in his heart.Nor had the thought of finding his father any share in his restlessness.
He told his grandmother that he was going back to Aberdeen.She looked in his face with surprise, but seeing trouble there, asked no questions.As if walking in a dream, he found himself at Dr.
Anderson's door.
'Why, Robert,' said the good man, 'what has brought you back? Ah!
I see.Poor Ericson! I am very sorry, my boy.What can I do for you?'
'I can't go on with my studies now, sir,' answered Robert.'I have taken a great longing for travel.Will you give me a little money and let me go?'
'To be sure I will.Where do you want to go?'
'I don't know.Perhaps as I go I shall find myself wanting to go somewhere.You're not afraid to trust me, are you, sir?'
'Not in the least, Robert.I trust you perfectly.You shall do just as you please.--Have you any idea, how much money you will want?'
'No.Give me what you are willing I should spend: I will go by that.'
'Come along to the bank then.I will give you enough to start with.
Write at once when you want more.Don't be too saving.Enjoy yourself as well as you can.I shall not grudge it.'
Robert smiled a wan smile at the idea of enjoying himself.His friend saw it, but let it pass.There was no good in persuading a man whose grief was all he had left, that he must ere long part with that too.That would have been in lowest deeps of sorrow to open a yet lower deep of horror.But Robert would have refused, and would have been right in refusing to believe with regard to himself what might be true in regard to most men.He might rise above his grief;he might learn to contain his grief; but lose it, forget it?--never.
He went to bid Shargar farewell.As soon as he had a glimpse of what his friend meant, he burst out in an agony of supplication.
'Tak me wi' ye, Robert,' he cried.'Ye're a gentleman noo.I'll be yer man.I'll put on a livery coat, an' gang wi' ye.I'll awa' to Dr.Anderson.He's sure to lat me gang.'
'No, Shargar,' said Robert, 'I can't have you with me.I've come into trouble, Shargar, and I must fight it out alone.'
'Ay, ay; I ken.Puir Mr.Ericson!'
'There's nothing the matter with Mr.Ericson.Don't ask me any questions.I've said more to you now than I've said to anybody besides.'
'That is guid o' you, Robert.But am I never to see ye again?'
'I don't know.Perhaps we may meet some day.'
'Perhaps is nae muckle to say, Robert,' protested Shargar.
'It's more than can be said about everything, Shargar,' returned Robert, sadly.
'Weel, I maun jist tak it as 't comes,' said Shargar, with a despairing philosophy derived from the days when his mother thrashed him.'But, eh! Robert, gin it had only pleased the Almichty to sen'
me into the warl' in a some respectable kin' o' a fashion!'
'Wi' a chance a' gaein' aboot the country like that curst villain yer brither, I suppose?' retorted Robert, rousing himself for a moment.
'Na, na,' responded Shargar.'I'll stick to my ain mither.She never learned me sic tricks.'
'Do ye that.Ye canna compleen o' God.It's a' richt as far 's ye're concerned.Gin he dinna something o' ye yet, it'll be your wyte, no his, I'm thinkin'.'
They walked to Dr.Anderson's together, and spent the night there.
In the morning Robert got on the coach for Edinburgh.
I cannot, if I would, follow him on his travels.Only at times, when the conversation rose in the dead of night, by some Jacob's ladder of blessed ascent, into regions where the heart of such a man could open as in its own natural clime, would a few words cause the clouds that enveloped this period of his history to dispart, and grant me a peep into the phantasm of his past.I suspect, however, that much of it left upon his mind no recallable impressions.Isuspect that much of it looked to himself in the retrospect like a painful dream, with only certain objects and occurrences standing prominent enough to clear the moonlight mist enwrapping the rest.
What the precise nature of his misery was I shall not even attempt to conjecture.That would be to intrude within the holy place of a human heart.One thing alone I will venture to affirm--that bitterness against either of his friends, whose spirits rushed together and left his outside, had no place in that noble nature.
His fate lay behind him, like the birth of Shargar, like the death of Ericson, a decree.
I do not even know in what direction he first went.That he had seen many cities and many countries was apparent from glimpses of ancient streets, of mountain-marvels, of strange constellations, of things in heaven and earth which no one could have seen but himself, called up by the magic of his words.A silent man in company, he talked much when his hour of speech arrived.Seldom, however, did he narrate any incident save in connection with some truth of human nature, or fact of the universe.
I do know that the first thing he always did on reaching any new place was to visit the church with the loftiest spire; but he never looked into the church itself until he had left the earth behind him as far as that church would afford him the possibility of ascent.