ANDREW AT LAST.
Having at length persuaded the woman to go with him, Falconer made her take his arm, and led her off the bridge.In Parliament Street he was looking about for a cab as they walked on, when a man he did not know, stopped, touched his hat, and addressed him.
'I'm thinkin', sir, ye'll be sair wantit at hame the nicht It wad be better to gang at ance, an' lat the puir fowk luik efter themsels for ae nicht.'
'I'm sorry I dinna ken ye, man.Do ye ken me?'
'Fine that, Mr.Falconer.There's mony ane kens you and praises God.'
'God be praised!' returned Falconer.'Why am I wanted at home?'
''Deed I wad raither not say, sir.--Hey!'
This last exclamation was addressed to a cab just disappearing down King Street from Whitehall.The driver heard, turned, and in a moment more was by their side.
'Ye had better gang into her an' awa' hame, and lea' the poor lassie to me.I'll tak guid care o' her.'
She clung to Falconer's arm.The man opened the door of the cab.
Falconer put her in, told the driver to go to Queen Square, and if he could not make haste, to stop the first cab that could, got in himself, thanked his unknown friend, who did not seem quite satisfied, and drove off.
Happily Miss St.John was at home, and there was no delay.Neither was any explanation of more than six words necessary.He jumped again into the cab and drove home.Fortunately for his mood, though in fact it mattered little for any result, the horse was fresh, and both able and willing.
When he entered John Street, he came to observe before reaching his own door that a good many men were about in little quiet groups--some twenty or so, here and there.When he let himself in with his pass-key, there were two men in the entry.Without stopping to speak, he ran up to his own chambers.When he got into his sitting-room, there stood De Fleuri, who simply waved his hand towards the old sofa.On it lay an elderly man, with his eyes half open, and a look almost of idiocy upon his pale, puffed face, which was damp and shining.His breathing was laboured, but there was no further sign of suffering.He lay perfectly still.Falconer saw at once that he was under the influence of some narcotic, probably opium; and the same moment the all but conviction darted into his mind that Andrew Falconer, his grandmother's son, lay there before him.That he was his own father he had no feeling yet.He turned to De Fleuri.
'Thank you, friend,' he said.'I shall find time to thank you.'
'Are we right?' asked De Fleuri.
'I don't know.I think so,' answered Falconer; and without another word the man withdrew.
His first mood was very strange.It seemed as if all the romance had suddenly deserted his life, and it lay bare and hopeless.He felt nothing.No tears rose to the brim of their bottomless wells--the only wells that have no bottom, for they go into the depths of the infinite soul.He sat down in his chair, stunned as to the heart and all the finer chords of his nature.The man on the horsehair sofa lay breathing--that was all.The gray hair about the pale ill-shaven face glimmered like a cloud before him.What should he do or say when he awaked? How approach this far-estranged soul?
How ever send the cry of father into that fog-filled world? Could he ever have climbed on those knees and kissed those lips, in the far-off days when the sun and the wind of that northern atmosphere made his childhood blessed beyond dreams? The actual--that is the present phase of the ever-changing--looked the ideal in the face;and the mirror that held them both, shook and quivered at the discord of the faces reflected.A kind of moral cold seemed to radiate from the object before him, and chill him to the very bones.
This could not long be endured.He fled from the actual to the source of all the ideal--to that Saviour who, the infinite mediator, mediates between all hopes and all positions; between the most debased actual and the loftiest ideal; between the little scoffer of St.Giles's and his angel that ever beholds the face of the Father in heaven.He fell on his knees, and spoke to God, saying that he had made this man; that the mark of his fingers was on the man's soul somewhere.He prayed to the ****** Spirit to bring the man to his right mind, to give him once more the heart of a child, to begin him yet again at the beginning.Then at last, all the evil he had done and suffered would but swell his gratitude to Him who had delivered him from himself and his own deeds.Having breathed this out before the God of his life, Falconer rose, strengthened to meet the honourable debased soul when it should at length look forth from the dull smeared windows of those ill-used eyes.
He felt his pulse.There was no danger from the narcotic.The coma would pass away.Meantime he would get him to bed.When he began to undress him a new reverence arose which overcame all disgust at the state in which he found him.At length one sad little fact about his dress, revealing the poverty-stricken attempt of a man to preserve the shadow of decency, called back the waters of the far-ebbed ocean of his feelings.At the prick of a pin the heart's blood will flow: at the sight of--a pin it was--Robert burst into tears, and wept like a child; the deadly cold was banished from his heart, and he not only loved, but knew that he loved--felt the love that was there.Everything then about the worn body and shabby garments of the man smote upon the heart of his son, and through his very poverty he was sacred in his eyes.The human heart awakened the filial--reversing thus the ordinary process of Nature, who by means of the filial, when her plans are unbroken, awakes the human;and he reproached himself bitterly for his hardness, as he now judged his late mental condition--unfairly, I think.He soon had him safe in bed, unconscious of the helping hands that had been busy about him in his heedless sleep; unconscious of the radiant planet of love that had been folding him round in its atmosphere of affection.