THE WHOLE STORY.
The men laid their mother's body with those of the generations that had gone before her, beneath the long grass in their country churchyard near Rothieden--a dreary place, one accustomed to trim cemeteries and sentimental wreaths would call it--to Falconer's mind so friendly to the forsaken dust, because it lapt it in sweet oblivion.
They returned to the dreary house, and after a ****** meal such as both had used to partake of in their boyhood, they sat by the fire, Andrew in his mother's chair, Robert in the same chair in which he had learned his Sallust and written his versions.Andrew sat for a while gazing into the fire, and Robert sat watching his face, where in the last few months a little feeble fatherhood had begun to dawn.
'It was there, father, that grannie used to sit, every day, sometimes looking in the fire for hours, thinking about you, Iknow,' Robert said at length.
Andrew stirred uneasily in his chair.
'How do you know that?' he asked.
'If there was one thing I could be sure of, it was when grannie was thinking about you, father.Who wouldn't have known it, father, when her lips were pressed together, as if she had some dreadful pain to bear, and her eyes were looking away through the fire--so far away! and I would speak to her three times before she would answer? She lived only to think about God and you, father.God and you came very close together in her mind.Since ever I can remember, almost, the thought of you was just the one thing in this house.'
Then Robert began at the beginning of his memory, and told his father all that he could remember.When he came to speak about his solitary musings in the garret, he said--and long before he reached this part, he had relapsed into his mother tongue:
'Come and luik at the place, father.I want to see 't again, mysel'.'
He rose.His father yielded and followed him.Robert got a candle in the kitchen, and the two big men climbed the little narrow stair and stood in the little sky of the house, where their heads almost touched the ceiling.
'I sat upo' the flure there,' said Robert, 'an' thoucht and thoucht what I wad du to get ye, father, and what I wad du wi' ye whan I had gotten ye.I wad greit whiles, 'cause ither laddies had a father an' I had nane.An' there's whaur I fand mamma's box wi' the letter in 't and her ain picter: grannie gae me that ane o' you.An'
there's whaur I used to kneel doon an' pray to God.An' he's heard my prayers, and grannie's prayers, and here ye are wi' me at last.
Instead o' thinkin' aboot ye, I hae yer ain sel'.Come, father, Iwant to say a word o' thanks to God, for hearin' my prayer.'
He took the old man's hand, led him to the bedside, and kneeled with him there.
My reader can hardly avoid thinking it was a poor sad triumph that Robert had after all.How the dreams of the boy had dwindled in settling down into the reality! He had his father, it was true, but what a father! And how little he had him!
But this was not the end; and Robert always believed that the end must be the greater in proportion to the distance it was removed, to give time for its true fulfilment.And when he prayed aloud beside his father, I doubt not that his thanksgiving and his hope were equal.
The prayer over, he took his father's hand and led him down again to the little parlour, and they took their seats again by the fire; and Robert began again and went on with his story, not omitting the parts belonging to Mary St.John and Eric Ericson.
When he came to tell how he had encountered him in the deserted factory:
'Luik here, father, here's the mark o' the cut,' he said, parting the thick hair on the top of his head.
His father hid his face in his hands.
'It wasna muckle o' a blow that ye gied me, father,' he went on, 'but I fell against the grate, and that was what did it.And Inever tellt onybody, nae even Miss St.John, wha plaistered it up, hoo I had gotten 't.And I didna mean to say onything aboot it; but I wantit to tell ye a queer dream, sic a queer dream it garred me dream the same nicht.'
As he told the dream, his father suddenly grew attentive, and before he had finished, looked almost scared; but he said nothing.When he came to relate his grandmother's behaviour after having discovered that the papers relating to the factory were gone, he hid his face in his hands once more.He told him how grannie had mourned and wept over him, from the time when he heard her praying aloud as he crept through her room at night to their last talk together after Dr.Anderson's death.He set forth, as he could, in the ******st language, the agony of her soul over her lost son.He told him then about Ericson, and Dr.Anderson, and how good they had been to him, and at last of Dr.Anderson's request that he would do something for him in India.
'Will ye gang wi' me, father?' he asked.
'I'll never leave ye again, Robert, my boy,' he answered.'I have been a bad man, and a bad father, and now I gie mysel' up to you to mak the best o' me ye can.I daurna leave ye, Robert.'
'Pray to God to tak care o' ye, father.He'll do a'thing for ye, gin ye'll only lat him.'
'I will, Robert.'