When they began to recover, they would quarrel fiercely; and at last they became a nuisance to the whole street.Little did the whisky-hating old lady know to what god she had really offered up that violin--if the consequences of the holocaust can be admitted as indicating the power which had accepted it.
But now began to appear in Robert the first signs of a practical outcome of such truth as his grandmother had taught him, operating upon the necessities of a simple and earnest nature.Reality, however lapt in vanity, or even in falsehood, cannot lose its power.
It is--the other is not.She had taught him to look up--that there was a God.He would put it to the test.Not that he doubted it yet:
he only doubted whether there was a hearing God.But was not that worse? It was, I think.For it is of far more consequence what kind of a God, than whether a God or no.Let not my reader suppose I think it possible there could be other than a perfect God--perfect--even to the vision of his creatures, the faith that supplies the lack of vision being yet faithful to that vision.Ispeak from Robert's point of outlook.But, indeed, whether better or worse is no great matter, so long as he would see it or what there was.He had no comfort, and, without reasoning about it, he felt that life ought to have comfort--from which point he began to conclude that the only thing left was to try whether the God in whom his grandmother believed might not help him.If the God would but hear him, it was all he had yet learned to require of his Godhood.
And that must ever be the first thing to require.More demands would come, and greater answers he would find.But now--if God would but hear him! If he spoke to him but one kind word, it would be the very soul of comfort; he could no more be lonely.A fountain of glad imaginations gushed up in his heart at the thought.What if, from the cold winter of his life, he had but to open the door of his garret-room, and, kneeling by the bare bedstead, enter into the summer of God's presence! What if God spoke to him face to face!
He had so spoken to Moses.He sought him from no fear of the future, but from present desolation; and if God came near to him, it would not be with storm and tempest, but with the voice of a friend.
And surely, if there was a God at all, that is, not a power greater than man, but a power by whose power man was, he must hear the voice of the creature whom he had made, a voice that came crying out of the very need which he had created.Younger people than Robert are capable of such divine metaphysics.Hence he continued to disappear from his grandmother's parlour at much the same hour as before.In the cold, desolate garret, he knelt and cried out into that which lay beyond the thought that cried, the unknowable infinite, after the God that may be known as surely as a little child knows his mysterious mother.And from behind him, the pale-blue, star-crowded sky shone upon his head, through the window that looked upwards only.
Mrs.Falconer saw that he still went away as he had been wont, and instituted observations, the result of which was the knowledge that he went to his own room.Her heart smote her, and she saw that the boy looked sad and troubled.There was scarce room in her heart for increase of love, but much for increase of kindness, and she did increase it.In truth, he needed the smallest crumb of comfort that might drop from the table of God's 'feastful friends.'
Night after night he returned to the parlour cold to the very heart.
God was not to be found, he said then.He said afterwards that even then 'God was with him though he knew it not.'
For the very first night, the moment that he knelt and cried, 'OFather in heaven, hear me, and let thy face shine upon me'--like a flash of burning fire the words shot from the door of his heart: 'Idinna care for him to love me, gin he doesna love ilka body;' and no more prayer went from the desolate boy that night, although he knelt an hour of agony in the freezing dark.Loyal to what he had been taught, he struggled hard to reduce his rebellious will to what he supposed to be the will of God.It was all in vain.Ever a voice within him--surely the voice of that God who he thought was not hearing--told him that what he wanted was the love belonging to his human nature, his human needs--not the preference of a court-favourite.He had a dim consciousness that he would be a traitor to his race if he accepted a love, even from God, given him as an exception from his kind.But he did not care to have such a love.It was not what his heart yearned for.It was not love.He could not love such a love.Yet he strove against it all--fought for religion against right as he could; struggled to reduce his rebellious feelings, to love that which was unlovely, to choose that which was abhorrent, until nature almost gave way under the effort.
Often would he sink moaning on the floor, or stretch himself like a corpse, save that it was face downwards, on the boards of the bedstead.Night after night he returned to the battle, but with no permanent success.What a success that would have been! Night after night he came pale and worn from the conflict, found his grandmother and Shargar composed, and in the quietness of despair sat down beside them to his Latin version.
He little thought, that every night, at the moment when he stirred to leave the upper room, a pale-faced, red-eyed figure rose from its seat on the top of the stair by the door, and sped with long-legged noiselessness to resume its seat by the grandmother before he should enter.Shargar saw that Robert was unhappy, and the nearest he could come to the sharing of his unhappiness was to take his place outside the door within which he had retreated.Little, too, did Shargar, on his part, think that Robert, without knowing it, was pleading for him inside--pleading for him and for all his race in the weeping that would not be comforted.
