‘They can gang i’ the mornin’, and get their denner wi’ Betty here; and syne come hame to their fower-hoors (four o’clock tea) whan the schule’s ower i’ the efternune. ‘Deed, mem, ye maun jist come for the sake o’ the auld frien’ship atween the faimilies.’
‘Weel, gin it maun be sae, it maun be sae,’ yielded Mrs. Falconer, with a sigh.
She had not left her own house for a single night for ten years. Nor is it likely she would have now given in, for immovableness was one of the most marked of her characteristics, had she not been so broken by mental suffering, that she did not care much about anything, least of all about herself.
Innumerable were the instructions in propriety of behaviour which she gave the boys in prospect of this visit. The probability being that they would behave just as well as at home, these instructions were considerably unnecessary, for Mrs. Falconer was a strict enforcer of all social rules. Scarcely less unnecessary were the directions she gave as to the conduct of Betty, who received them all in erect submission, with her hands under her apron. She ought to have been a young girl instead of an elderly woman, if there was any propriety in the way her mistress spoke to her. It proved at least her own belief in the description she had given of her to Miss Lammie.
‘Noo, Betty, ye maun be dooce. An’ dinna stan’ at the door i’ the gloamin’. An’ dinna stan’ claikin’ an’ jawin’ wi’ the ither lasses whan ye gang to the wall for watter. An’ whan ye gang intil a chop, dinna hae them sayin’ ahint yer back, as sune’s yer oot again, “She’s her ain mistress by way o’,” or sic like. An’ min’ ye hae worship wi’ yersel’, whan I’m nae here to hae ‘t wi’ ye. Ye can come benn to the parlour gin ye like. An’ there’s my muckle Testament. And dinna gie the lads a’ thing they want. Gie them plenty to ait, but no ower muckle. Fowk suld aye lea’ aff wi’ an eppiteet.’
Mr. Lammie brought his gig at last, and took grannie away to Bodyfauld. When the boys returned from school at the dinner-hour, it was to exult in a freedom which Robert had never imagined before. But even he could not know what a relief it was to Shargar to eat without the awfully calm eyes of Mrs. Falconer watching, as it seemed to him, the progress of every mouthful down that capacious throat of his. The old lady would have been shocked to learn how the imagination of the ill-mothered lad interpreted her care over him, but she would not have been surprised to know that the two were merry in her absence. She knew that, in some of her own moods, it would be a relief to think that that awful eye of God was not upon her. But she little thought that even in the lawless proceedings about to follow, her Robert, who now felt such a relief in her absence, would be walking straight on, though blindly, towards a sunrise of faith, in which he would know that for the eye of his God to turn away from him for one moment would be the horror of the outer darkness.
Merriment, however, was not in Robert’s thoughts, and still less was mischief. For the latter, whatever his grandmother might think, he had no capacity. The world was already too serious, and was soon to be too beautiful for mischief. After that, it would be too sad, and then, finally, until death, too solemn glad. The moment he heard of his grandmother’s intended visit, one wild hope and desire and intent had arisen within him.
When Betty came to the parlour door to lay the cloth for their dinner, she found it locked.
‘Open the door!’ she cried, but cried in vain. From impatience she passed to passion; but it was of no avail: there came no more response than from the shrine of the deaf Baal. For to the boys it was an opportunity not at any risk to be lost. Dull Betty never suspected what they were about. They were ranging the place like two tiger-cats whose whelps had been carried off in their absence—questing, with nose to earth and tail in air, for the scent of their enemy. My simile has carried me too far: it was only a dead old gentleman’s violin that a couple of boys was after—but with what eagerness, and, on the part of Robert, what alternations of hope and fear! And Shargar was always the reflex of Robert, so far as Shargar could reflect Robert. Sometimes Robert would stop, stand still in the middle of the room, cast a mathematical glance of survey over its cubic contents, and then dart off in another inwardly suggested direction of search. Shargar, on the other hand, appeared to rummage blindly without a notion of casting the illumination of thought upon the field of search. Yet to him fell the success. When hope was growing dim, after an hour and a half of vain endeavour, a scream of utter discordance heralded the resurrection of the lady of harmony. Taught by his experience of his wild mother’s habits to guess at those of douce Mrs. Falconer, Shargar had found the instrument in her bed at the foot, between the feathers and the mattress. For one happy moment Shargar was the benefactor, and Robert the grateful recipient of favour. Nor, I do believe, was this thread of the still thickening cable that bound them ever forgotten: broken it could not be.
Robert drew the recovered treasure from its concealment, opened the case with trembling eagerness, and was stooping, with one hand on the neck of the violin, and the other on the bow, to lift them from it, when Shargar stopped him.
His success had given him such dignity, that for once he dared to act from himself.
‘Betty ‘ll hear ye,’ he said.
‘What care I for Betty? She daurna tell. I ken hoo to manage her.’
‘But wadna ‘t be better ‘at she didna ken?’
‘She’s sure to fin’ oot whan she mak’s the bed. She turns ‘t ower and ower jist like a muckle tyke (dog) worryin’ a rottan (rat).’
‘De’il a bit o’ her s’ be a hair wiser! Ye dinna play tunes upo’ the boxie, man.’
Robert caught at the idea. He lifted the ‘bonny leddy’ from her coffin; and while he was absorbed in the contemplation of her risen beauty, Shargar laid his hands on Boston’s Four-fold State, the torment of his life on the Sunday evenings which it was his turn to spend with Mrs. Falconer, and threw it as an offering to the powers of Hades into the case, which he then buried carefully, with the feather-bed for mould, the blankets for sod, and the counterpane studiously arranged for stone, over it. He took heed, however, not to let Robert know of the substitution of Boston for the fiddle, because he knew Robert could not tell a lie. Therefore, when he murmured over the volume some of its own words which he had read the preceding Sunday, it was in a quite inaudible whisper: ‘Now is it good for nothing but to cumber the ground, and furnish fuel for Tophet.’
Robert must now hide the violin better than his grannie had done, while at the same time it was a more delicate necessity, seeing it had lost its shell, and he shrunk from putting her in the power of the shoemaker again. It cost him much trouble to fix on the place that was least unsuitable. First he put it into the well of the clock-case, but instantly bethought him what the awful consequence would be if one of the weights should fall from the gradual decay of its cord. He had heard of such a thing happening. Then he would put it into his own place of dreams and meditations. But what if Betty should take a fancy to change her bed? or some friend of his grannie’s should come to spend the night? How would the bonny leddy like it? What a risk she would run! If he put her under the bed, the mice would get at her strings—nay, perhaps, knaw a hole right through her beautiful body. On the top of the clock, the brass eagle with outspread wings might scratch her, and there was not space to conceal her. At length he concluded—wrapped her in a piece of paper, and placed her on the top of the chintz tester of his bed, where there was just room between it and the ceiling: that would serve till he bore her to some better sanctuary. In the meantime she was safe, and the boy was the blessedest boy in creation.
These things done, they were just in the humour to have a lark with Betty. So they unbolted the door, rang the bell, and when Betty appeared, red-faced and wrathful, asked her very gravely and politely whether they were not going to have some dinner before they went back to school: they had now but twenty minutes left. Betty was so dumfoundered with their impudence that she could not say a word. She did make haste with the dinner, though, and revealed her indignation only in her manner of putting the things on the table. As the boys left her, Robert contented himself with the single hint:
‘Betty, Bodyfauld ‘s i’ the perris o’ Kettledrum. Min’ ye that.’
Betty glowered and