'Is it not remarkable,' said my friend to me, 'that the older Igrow, I find autumn affecting me the more like spring?'
'I am thankful to say,' interposed Andrew, with a smile in which was mingled a shade of superiority, 'that no change of the seasons ever affects me.'
'Are you sure you are right in being thankful for that, father?'
asked his son.
His father gazed at him for a moment, seemed to bethink himself after some feeble fashion or other, and rejoined,'Well, I must confess I did feel a touch of the rheumatism this morning.'
How I pitied Falconer! Would he ever see of the travail of his soul in this man? But he only smiled a deep sweet smile, and seemed to be thinking divine things in that great head of his.
At Bristol we went on board a small steamer, and at night were landed at a little village on the coast of North Devon.The hotel to which we went was on the steep bank of a tumultuous little river, which tumbled past its foundation of rock, like a troop of watery horses galloping by with ever-dissolving limbs.The elder Falconer retired almost as soon as we had had supper.My friend and Ilighted our pipes, and sat by the open window, for although the autumn was so far advanced, the air here was very mild.For some time we only listened to the sound of the waters.
'There are three things,' said Falconer at last, taking his pipe out of his mouth with a smile, 'that give a peculiarly perfect feeling of abandonment: the laughter of a child; a snake lying across a fallen branch; and the rush of a stream like this beneath us, whose only thought is to get to the sea.'
We did not talk much that night, however, but went soon to bed.
None of us slept well.We agreed in the morning that the noise of the stream had been too much for us all, and that the place felt close and torpid.Andrew complained that the ceaseless sound wearied him, and Robert that he felt the aimless endlessness of it more than was good for him.I confess it irritated me like an anodyne unable to soothe.We were clearly all in want of something different.The air between the hills clung to them, hot and moveless.We would climb those hills, and breathe the air that flitted about over their craggy tops.
As soon as we had breakfasted, we set out.It was soon evident that Andrew could not ascend the steep road.We returned and got a carriage.When we reached the top, it was like a resurrection, like a dawning of hope out of despair.The cool friendly wind blew on our faces, and breathed strength into our frames.Before us lay the ocean, the visible type of the invisible, and the vessels with their white sails moved about over it like the thoughts of men feebly searching the unknown.Even Andrew Falconer spread out his arms to the wind, and breathed deep, filling his great chest full.
'I feel like a boy again,' he said.
His son strode to his side, and laid his arm over his shoulders.
'So do I, father,' he returned; 'but it is because I have got you.'
The old man turned and looked at him with a tenderness I had never seen on his face before.As soon as I saw that, I no longer doubted that he could be saved.
We found rooms in a farm-house on the topmost height.
'These are poor little hills, Falconer,' I said.'Yet they help one like mountains.'
'The whole question is,' he returned, 'whether they are high enough to lift you out of the dirt.Here we are in the airs of heaven--that is all we need.'
'They make me think how often, amongst the country people of Scotland, I have wondered at the clay-feet upon which a golden head of wisdom stood! What poor needs, what humble aims, what a narrow basement generally, was sufficient to support the statues of pure-eyed Faith and white-handed Hope,'
'Yes,' said Falconer: 'he who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities.It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey, or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful.The faithfulness is all.'
After an early dinner we went out for a walk, but we did not go far before we sat down upon the grass.Falconer laid himself at full length and gazed upwards.
'When I look like this into the blue sky,' he said, after a moment's silence, 'it seems so deep, so peaceful, so full of a mysterious tenderness, that I could lie for centuries, and wait for the dawning of the face of God out of the awful loving-kindness.'
I had never heard Falconer talk of his own present feelings in this manner; but glancing at the face of his father with a sense of his unfitness to hear such a lofty utterance, I saw at once that it was for his sake that he had thus spoken.The old man had thrown himself back too, and was gazing into the sky, puzzling himself, Icould see, to comprehend what his son could mean.I fear he concluded, for the time, that Robert was not gifted with the amount of common-sense belonging of right to the Falconer family, and that much religion had made him a dreamer.Still, I thought I could see a kind of awe pass like a spiritual shadow across his face as he gazed into the blue gulfs over him.No one can detect the first beginnings of any life, and those of spiritual emotion must more than any lie beyond our ken: there is infinite room for hope.
Falconer said no more.We betook ourselves early within doors, and he read King Lear to us, expounding the spiritual history of the poor old king after a fashion I had never conceived--showing us how the said history was all compressed, as far as human eye could see of it, into the few months that elapsed between his abdication and his death; how in that short time he had to learn everything that he ought to have been learning all his life; and how, because he had put it off so long, the lessons that had then to be given him were awfully severe.
I thought what a change it was for the old man to lift his head into the air of thought and life, out of the sloughs of misery in which he had been wallowing for years.