PRIVATE INTERVIEWS.
The winter passed slowly away.Robert and Shargar went to school together, and learned their lessons together at Mrs.Falconer's table.Shargar soon learned to behave with tolerable propriety; was obedient, as far as eye-service went; looked as queer as ever; did what he pleased, which was nowise very wicked, the moment he was out of the old lady's sight; was well fed and well cared for; and when he was asked how he was, gave the invariable answer: 'Middlin'.' He was not very happy.
There was little communication in words between the two boys, for the one had not much to say, and the pondering fits of the other grew rather than relaxed in frequency and intensity.Yet amongst chance acquaintances in the town Robert had the character of a wag, of which he was totally unaware himself.Indeed, although he had more than the ordinary share of humour, I suspect it was not so much his fun as his earnest that got him the character; for he would say such altogether unheard-of and strange things, that the only way they were capable of accounting for him was as a humorist.
'Eh!' he said once to Elshender, during a pause common to a thunder-storm and a lesson on the violin 'eh! wadna ye like to be up in that clood wi' a spaud, turnin' ower the divots and catchin' the flashes lyin' aneath them like lang reid fiery worms?'
'Ay, man, but gin ye luik up to the cloods that gait, ye'll never be muckle o' a fiddler.'
This was merely an outbreak of that insolence of advice so often shown to the young from no vantage-ground but that of age and faithlessness, reminding one of the 'jigging fool' who interfered between Brutus and Cassius on the sole ground that he had seen more years than they.As if ever a fiddler that did not look up to the clouds would be anything but a catgut-scraper! Even Elshender's fiddle was the one angel that held back the heavy curtain of his gross nature, and let the sky shine through.He ought to have been set fiddling every Sunday morning, and from his fiddling dragged straight to church.It was the only thing man could have done for his conversion, for then his heart was open, But I fear the prayers would have closed it before the sermon came.He should rather have been compelled to take his fiddle to church with him, and have a gentle scrape at it in the pauses of the service; only there are no such pauses in the service, alas! And Dooble Sanny, though not too religious to get drunk occasionally, was a great deal too religious to play his fiddle on the Sabbath: he would not willingly anger the powers above; but it was sometimes a sore temptation, especially after he got possession of old Mr.Falconer's wonderful instrument.
'Hoots, man!' he would say to Robert; 'dinna han'le, her as gin she war an egg-box.Tak haud o' her as gin she war a leevin' crater.
Ye maun jist straik her canny, an' wile the music oot o' her; for she's like ither women: gin ye be rouch wi' her, ye winna get a word oot o' her.An' dinna han'le her that gait.She canna bide to be contred an' pu'd this gait and that gait.--Come to me, my bonny leddy.Ye'll tell me yer story, winna ye, my dauty (pet)?'
And with every gesture as if he were humouring a shy and invalid girl, he would, as he said, wile the music out of her in sobs and wailing, till the instrument, gathering courage in his embrace, grew gently merry in its confidence, and broke at last into airy laughter.He always spoke, and apparently thought, of his violin as a woman, just as a sailor does of his craft.But there was nothing about him, except his love for music and its instruments, to suggest other than a most uncivilized nature.That which was fine in him was constantly checked and held down by the gross; the merely animal overpowered the spiritual; and it was only upon occasion that his heavenly companion, the violin, could raise him a few feet above the mire and the clay.She never succeeded in setting his feet on a rock; while, on the contrary, he often dragged her with him into the mire of questionable company and circumstances.Worthy Mr.Falconer would have been horrified to see his umquhile modest companion in such society as that into which she was now introduced at times.
But nevertheless the soutar was a good and patient teacher; and although it took Robert rather more than a fortnight to redeem his pledge to Shargar, he did make progress.It could not, however, be rapid, seeing that an hour at a time, two evenings in the week, was all that he could give to the violin.Even with this moderation, the risk of his absence exciting his grandmother's suspicion and inquiry was far from small.
And now, were those really faded old memories of his grandfather and his merry kindness, all so different from the solemn benevolence of his grandmother, which seemed to revive in his bosom with the revivification of the violin? The instrument had surely laid up a story in its hollow breast, had been dreaming over it all the time it lay hidden away in the closet, and was now telling out its dreams about the old times in the ear of the listening boy.To him also it began to assume something of that mystery and life which had such a softening, and, for the moment at least, elevating influence on his master.
At length the love of the violin had grown upon him so, that he could not but cast about how he might enjoy more of its company.It would not do, for many reasons, to go oftener to the shoemaker's, especially now that the days were getting longer.Nor was that what he wanted.He wanted opportunity for practice.He wanted to be alone with the creature, to see if she would not say something more to him than she had ever said yet.Wafts and odours of melodies began to steal upon him ere he was aware in the half lights between sleeping and waking: if he could only entice them to creep out of the violin, and once 'bless his humble ears' with the bodily hearing of them! Perhaps he might--who could tell? But how? But where?