Chapter VI. A Sunday’s Dinner

To the great discomposure of Hugh, Sunday was inevitable, and he had to set out for Salem Chapel. He found it a neat little Noah’s Ark of a place, built in the shape of a cathedral, and consequently sharing in the general disadvantages to which dwarfs of all kinds are subjected, absurdity included. He was shown to Mr. Appleditch’s pew. That worthy man received him in sleek black clothes, with white neck-cloth, and Sunday face composed of an absurd mixture of stupidity and sanctity. He stood up, and Mrs. Appleditch stood up, and Master Appleditch stood up, and Hugh saw that the ceremony of the place required that he should force his way between the front of the pew and the person of each of the human beings occupying it, till he reached the top, where there was room for him to sit down. No other recognition was taken till after service.

Meantime the minister ascended the pulpit stair, with all the solemnity of one of the self-elect, and a priest besides. He was just old enough for the intermittent attacks of self-importance to which all youth is exposed, to have in his case become chronic. He stood up and worshipped his creator aloud, after a manner which seemed to say in every tone: “Behold I am he that worshippeth Thee! How mighty art Thou!” Then he read the Bible in a quarrelsome sort of way, as if he were a bantam, and every verse were a crow of defiance to the sinner. Then they sang a hymn in a fashion which brought dear old Scotland to Hugh’s mind, which has the sweetest songs in its cottages, and the worst singing in its churches, of any country in the world. But it was almost equalled here; the chief cause of its badness being the absence of a modest self-restraint, and consequent tempering of the tones, on the part of the singers; so that the result was what Hugh could describe only as scraichin.{1}

I was once present at the worship of some being who is supposed by negroes to love drums and cymbals, and all clangorous noises. The resemblance, according to Hugh’s description, could not have been a very distant one. And yet I doubt not that some thoughts of worshipping love mingled with the noise; and perhaps the harmony of these with the spheric melodies, sounded the sweeter to the angels, from the earthly discord in which they were lapped.

Then came the sermon. The text was the story of the good Samaritan. Some idea, if not of the sermon, yet of the value of it, may be formed from the fact, that the first thing to be considered, or, in other words, the first head was, “The culpable imprudence of the man in going from Jerusalem to Jericho without an escort.”

It was in truth a strange, grotesque, and somewhat awful medley—not unlike a dance of death, in which the painter has given here a lovely face, and there a beautiful arm or an exquisite foot, to the wild-prancing and exultant skeletons. But the parts of the sermon corresponding to the beautiful face or arm or foot, were but the fragments of Scripture, shining like gold amidst the worthless ore of the man’s own production—worthless, save as gravel or chaff or husks have worth, in a world where dilution, and not always concentration, is necessary for healthfulness.

But there are Indians who eat clay, and thrive on it more or less, I suppose. The power of assimilation which a growing nature must possess is astonishing. It will find its food, its real Sunday dinner, in the midst of a whole cartload of refuse; and it will do the whole week’s work on it. On no other supposition would it be possible to account for the earnest face of Miss Talbot, which Hugh espied turned up to the preacher, as if his face were the very star in the east, shining to guide the chosen kings. It was well for Hugh’s power of endurance, that he had heard much the same thing in Scotland, and the same thing better dressed, and less grotesque, but more lifeless, and at heart as ill-mannered, in the church of Arnstead.

Just before concluding the service, the pastor made an announcement in the following terms: “After the close of the present service, I shall be found in the adjoining vestry by all persons desirous of communicating with me on the state of their souls, or of being admitted to the privileges of church-fellowship. Brethren, we have this treasure in earthen vessels, and so long as this vessel lasts”—here he struck his chest so that it resounded—“it shall be faithfully and liberally dispensed. Let us pray.”

After the prayer, he spread abroad his arms and hands as if he would clasp the world in his embrace, and pronounced the benediction in a style of arrogance that the pope himself would have been ashamed of.

The service being thus concluded, the organ absolutely blasted the congregation out of the chapel, so did it storm and rave with a fervour anything but divine.

My readers must not suppose that I give this chapel as the type of orthodox dissenting chapels. I give it only as an approximate specimen of a large class of them. The religious life which these communities once possessed, still lingers in those of many country districts and small towns, but is, I fear, all but gone from those of the cities and larger towns. What of it remains in these, has its chief manifestation in the fungous growth of such chapels as the one I have described, the congregations themselves taking this for a sure indication of the prosperity of the body. How much even of the kind of prosperity which they ought to indicate, is in reality at the foundation of these appearances, I would recommend those to judge who are versed in the mysteries of chapel-building societies.

As to Hugh, whether it was that the whole was suggestive of Egyptian bondage, or that his own mood was, at the time, of the least comfortable sort, I will not pretend to determine; but he assured me that he felt all the time, as if, instead of being in a chapel built of bricks harmoniously arranged, as by the lyre of Amphion, he were wandering in the waste, wretched field whence these bricks had been dug, of all places on the earth’s surface the most miserable, assailed by the nauseous odours, which have not character enough to be described, and only remind one of the colours on a snake’s back.

When they reached the open air, Mr. Appleditch introduced Hugh to Mrs. Appleditch, on the steps in front of the chapel.

“This is Mr. Sutherland, Mrs. Appleditch.”

Hugh lifted his hat, and Mrs. Appleditch made a courtesy. She was a very tall woman—a head beyond her husband, extremely thin, with sharp nose, hollow cheeks, and good eyes. In fact, she was partly pretty, and might have been pleasant-looking, but for a large, thin-lipped, vampire-like mouth, and a general expression of greed and contempt. She was meant for a lady, and had made herself a money-maggot. She was richly and plainly dressed; and until she began to be at her ease, might have passed for an unpleasant lady. Master Appleditch, the future pastor, was a fat boy, dressed like a dwarf, in a frock coat and man’s hat, with a face in which the meanness and keenness strove for mastery, and between them kept down the appearance of stupidity consequent on fatness. They walked home in silence, Mr. and Mrs. Appleditch apparently pondering either upon the spiritual food they had just received, or the corporeal food for which they were about to be thankful.

Their house was one of many in a crescent. Not content with his sign in town, the grocer had a large brass plate on his door, with Appleditch engraved upon it in capitals: it saved them always looking at the numbers. The boy ran on before, and assailed this door with a succession of explosive knocks.

As soon as it was opened, in he rushed, bawling:

“Peter, Peter, here’s the new apprentice! Papa’s brought him home to dinner, because he was at chapel this morning.” Then in a lower tone—“I mean to have a ride on his back this afternoon.”

The father and mother laughed. A solemn priggish little voice answered:

“Oh, no, Johnny. Don’t you know what day this is? This is the Sabbath-day.”

“The dear boy!” sighed his mother.

“That boy is too good to live,” responded the father.

Hugh was shown into the dining-room, where the table was already laid for dinner. It was evident that the Appleditches were well-to-do people. The room was full of what is called handsome furniture, in a high state of polish. Over the chimney-piece hung the portrait of a preacher in gown and bands, the most prominent of whose features were his cheeks.

In a few minutes the host and hostess entered, followed by a pale-faced little boy, the owner of the voice of reproof.

“Come here, Peetie,” said his mother, “and tell Mr. Sutherland what you have got.” She referred to some toy—no, not toy, for it was the Sabbath—to some book, probably.

Peetie answered in a solemn voice, mouthing every vowel:

“I’ve got five bags of gold in the Bank of England.”

“Poor child!” said his mother, with a scornful giggle. “You wouldn’t have much to reckon on, if that were all.”

Two or three gaily dressed riflemen passed the window. The poor fellows, unable to bear the look of their Sunday clothes, if they had any, after being used to their uniform, had come out in all its magnificence.

“Ah!” said Mr. Appleditch, “that’s all very well in a state of nature; but when a man is once born into a state of grace, Mr. Sutherland—ah!”

“Really,” responded Mrs. Appleditch, “the worldliness of the lower classes is quite awful. But they are spared for a day of wrath, poor things! I am sure that accident on the railway last Sabbath, might have been a warning to them all. After that they can’t say there is not a God that ruleth in the earth, and taketh vengeance for his broken Sabbaths.”

“Mr.—. I don’t know your name,” said Peter, whose age Hugh had just been trying in vain to conjecture.

“Mr. Sutherland,” said the mother.

“Mr. Slubberman, are you a converted character?” resumed Peter.

“Why do you ask me that, Master Peter?” said Hugh, trying to smile.

“I think you look good, but mamma says she don’t think you are, because you say Sunday instead of Sabbath, and she always finds people who do are worldly.”

Mrs. Appleditch turned red—not blushed, and said, quickly:

“Peter shouldn’t repeat everything he hears.”

“No more I do, ma. I haven’t told what you said about—” Here his mother caught him up, and carried him out of the room, saying:

“You naughty boy! You shall go to bed.”

“Oh, no, I shan’t!”

“Yes, you shall. Here, Jane, take this naughty boy to bed.”

“I’ll scream.”

“Will you?”

“Yes, I will!”

ten cats were being cooked alive.

“Well! well! well! my Peetie! He shan’t go to bed, if he’ll be a good boy. Will he be good?”

“May I stay up to supper, then? May I?”

“Yes, yes; anything to stop such dreadful screaming. You are very naughty—very naughty indeed.”

“No. I’m not naughty. I’ll scream again.”

“No, no. Go and get your pinafore on, and come down to dinner. Anything rather than a scream.”

I am sick of all this, and doubt if it is worth printing; but it amused me very much one night as Hugh related it over a bottle of Chablis and a pipe.

He certainly did not represent Mrs. Appleditch in a very favourable light on the whole; but he took care to say that there was a certain liberality about the table, and a kind of heartiness in her way of pressing him to have more than he could possibly eat, which contrasted strangely with her behaviour afterwards in money matters. There are many people who can be liberal in almost anything but money. They seem to say, “Take anything but my purse.” Miss Talbot told him afterwards, that this same lady was quite active amongst the poor of her district. She made it a rule never to give money, or at least never more than sixpence; but she turned scraps of victuals and cast-off clothes to the best account; and, if she did not make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, she yet kept an eye on the eternal habitations in the distribution of the crumbs that fell from her table. Poor Mr. Appleditch, on the other hand, often embezzled a shilling or a half-crown from the till, for the use of a poor member of the same church—meaning by church, the individual community to which he belonged; but of this, Mrs. Appleditch was carefully kept ignorant.

After dinner was over, and the children had been sent away, which was effected without a greater amount of difficulty than, from the anticipative precautions adopted, appeared to be lawful and ordinary, Mr. Appleditch proceeded to business.

“Now, Mr. Sutherland, what do you think of Johnnie, sir?”

“It is impossible for me to say yet; but I am quite willing to teach him if you like.”

“He’s a forward boy,” said his mother.

“Not a doubt of it,” responded Hugh; for he remembered the boy asking him, across the table: “Isn’t our Mr. Lixom”—(the pastor)—“a oner?”

“And very eager and retentive,” said his father.

Hugh had seen the little glutton paint both cheeks to the eyes with damson tart, and render more than a quantity proportionate to the colouring, invisible.

“Yes, he is eager, and retentive, too, I daresay,” he said; “but much will depend on whether he has a turn for study.”

“Well, you will find that out to-morrow. I think you will be surprised, sir.”

“At what hour would you like me to come?”

“Stop, Mr. Appleditch,” interposed his wife. “You have said nothing yet about terms; and that is of some importance, considering the rent and taxes we pay.”

“Well, my love, what do you feel inclined to give?”

“How much do you charge a lesson, Mr. Sutherland? Only let me remind you, sir, that he is a very little boy, although stout, and that you cannot expect to put much Greek and Latin into him for some time yet. Besides, we want you to come every day, which ought to be considered in the rate of charge.”

“Of course it ought,” said Hugh.

“How much do you say, then, sir?”

“I should be content with half-a-crown a lesson.”

“I daresay you would!” replied the lady, with indignation.

“Half-a-crown! That’s—six half-crowns is—fifteen shillings. Fifteen shillings a week for that mite of a boy! Mr. Sutherland, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir.”

“You forget, Mrs. Appleditch, that it is as much trouble to me to teach one little boy—yes, a great deal more than to teach twenty grown men.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir. You a Christian man, and talk of trouble in teaching such a little cherub as that?”

“But do pray remember the distance I have to come, and that it will take nearly four hours of my time every day.”

“Then you can get lodgings nearer.”

“But I could not get any so cheap.”

“Then you can the better afford to do it.”

And she threw herself back in her chair, as if she had struck the decisive blow. Mr. Appleditch remarked, gently:

“It is good for your health to walk the distance, sir.”

Mrs. Appleditch resumed:

“I won’t give a farthing more than one shilling a lesson. There, now!”

“Very well,” said Hugh, rising; “then I must wish you good day. We need not waste more time in talking about it.”

“Surely you are not going to make any use of your time on a Sunday?” said the grocer, mildly. “Don’t be in a hurry, Mr. Sutherland. We tradespeople like to make the best bargain we can.”

“Mr. Appleditch, I am ashamed of you. You always will be vulgar. You always smell of the shop.”

“Well, my dear, how can I help it? The sugar and soft-soap will smell, you know.”

“Mr. Appleditch, you disgust me!”

“Dear! dear! I am sorry for that.—Suppose we say to Mr. Sutherland—”

“Now, you leave that to me. I’ll tell you what, Mr. Sutherland—I’ll give you eighteenpence a lesson, and your dinner on the Sabbath; that is, if you sit under Mr. Lixom in our pew, and walk home with us.”

“That I must decline” said Hugh. “I must have my Sundays for myself.”

Mrs. Appleditch was disappointed. She had coveted the additional importance which the visible possession of a live tutor would secure her at “Salem.”

“Ah! Mr. Sutherland,” she said. “And I must trust my child, with an immortal soul in his inside, to one who wants the Lord’s only day for himself!—for himself, Mr. Sutherland!”

Hugh made no answer, because he had none to make. Again Mrs. Appleditch resumed:

“Shall it be a bargain, Mr. Sutherland? Eighteen-pence a lesson—that’s nine shillings a week—and begin to morrow?”

Hugh’s heart sunk within him, not so much with disappointment as with disgust.

But to a man who is making nothing, the prospect of earning ever so little, is irresistibly attractive. Even on a shilling a day, he could keep hunger at arm’s length. And a beginning is half the battle. He resolved.

“Let it be a bargain, then, Mrs. Appleditch.”

The lady immediately brightened up, and at once put on her company-manners again, behaving to him with great politeness, and a sneer that would not be hid away under it. From this Hugh suspected that she had made a better bargain than she had hoped; but the discovery was now too late, even if he could have brought himself to take advantage of it. He hated bargain-making as heartily as the grocer’s wife loved it.

He very soon rose to take his leave.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Appleditch to her husband, “but Mr. Sutherland has not seen the drawing-room!”

Hugh wondered what there could be remarkable about the drawing-room; but he soon found that it was the pride of Mrs. Appleditch’s heart. She abstained from all use of it except upon great occasions—when parties of her friends came to drink tea with her. She made a point, however, of showing it to everybody who entered the house for the first time. So Hugh was led up-stairs, to undergo the operation of being shown the drawing-room, and being expected to be astonished at it.

I asked him what it was like. He answered: “It was just what it ought to be—rich and ugly. Mr. Appleditch, in his deacon’s uniform, hung over the fire, and Mrs. Appleditch, in her wedding-dress, over the piano; for there was a piano, and she could play psalm-tunes on it with one finger. The round table in the middle of the room had books in gilded red and blue covers symmetrically arranged all round it. This is all I can recollect.”

Having feasted his eyes on the magnificence thus discovered to him, he walked home, more depressed at the prospect of his new employment than he could have believed possible.

On his way he turned aside into the Regent’s Park, where the sight of the people enjoying themselves—for it was a fine day for the season—partially dispelled the sense of living corruption and premature burial which he had experienced all day long. He kept as far off from the rank of open-air preachers as possible, and really was able to thank God that all the world did not keep Scotch Sabbath—a day neither Mosaic, nor Jewish, nor Christian: not Mosaic, inasmuch as it kills the very essence of the fourth commandment, which is Rest, transmuting it into what the chemists would call a mechanical mixture of service and inertia; not Jewish, inasmuch as it is ten times more severe, and formal, and full of negations, than that of the Sabbatarian Jews reproved by the Saviour for their idolatry of the day; and unchristian, inasmuch as it insists, beyond appeal, on the observance of times and seasons, abolished, as far as law is concerned, by the word of the chief of the apostles; and elevates into an especial test of piety a custom not even mentioned by the founders of christianity at all—that, namely, of accounting this day more holy than all the rest.

These last are but outside reasons for calling it unchristian. There are far deeper and more important ones, which cannot well be produced here.

It is not Hugh, however, who is to be considered accountable for all this, but the historian of his fortunes, between whom and the vision of a Lord’s Day indeed, there arises too often the nightmare-memory of a Scotch Saabbath—between which and its cousin, the English Sunday, there is too much of a family likeness. The grand men and women whom I have known in Scotland, seem to me, as I look back, to move about in the mists of a Scotch Sabbath, like a company of way-worn angels in the Limbo of Vanity, in which there is no air whereupon to smite their sounding wings, that they may rise into the sunlight of God’s presence.

Chapter VII. Sunday Evening

Now resteth in my memory but this point, which indeed is the chief to you of all others; which is the choice of what men you are to direct yourself to; for it is certain no vessel can leave a worse taste in the liquor it contains, than a wrong teacher infects an unskilful hearer with that which hardly will ever out...But you may say, “How shall I get excellent men to take pains to speak with me?” Truly, in few words, either by much expense or much humbleness.

Letter of Sir Philip Sidney to his brother Robert.

How many things which, at the first moment, strike us as curious coincidences, afterwards become so operative on our lives, and so interwoven with the whole web of their histories, that instead of appearing any more as strange accidents, they assume the shape of unavoidable necessities, of homely, ordinary, lawful occurrences, as much in their own place as any shaft or pinion of a great machine!

It was dusk before Hugh turned his steps homeward. He wandered along, thinking of Euphra and the Count and the stolen rings. He greatly desired to clear himself to Mr. Arnold. He saw that the nature of the ring tended to justify Mr. Arnold’s suspicions; for a man who would not steal for money’s worth, might yet steal for value of another sort, addressing itself to some peculiar weakness; and Mr. Arnold might have met with instances of this nature in his position as magistrate. He greatly desired, likewise, for Euphra’s sake, to have Funkelstein in his power. His own ring was beyond recovery; but if, by its means, he could hold such a lash over him as would terrify him from again exercising his villanous influences on her, he would be satisfied.

While plunged in this contemplation, he came upon two policemen talking together. He recognized one of them as a Scotchman, from his speech. It occurred to him at once to ask his advice, in a modified manner; and a moment’s reflection convinced him that it would at least do no harm. He would do it. It was one of those resolutions at which one arrives by an arrow flight of the intellect.

“You are a countryman of mine, I think,” said he, as soon as the two had parted.

“If ye’re a Scotchman, sir—may be ay, may be no.”

“Whaur come ye frae, man?”

“Ou, Aberdeen-awa.”

“It’s mine ain calf-country. An’ what do they ca’ ye?”

“They ca’ me John MacPherson.”

“My name’s Sutherland.”

“Eh, man! It’s my ain mither’s name. Gie’s a grup o’ yer han’, Maister Sutherlan’.—Eh, man!” he repeated, shaking Hugh’s hand with vehemence.

“I have no doubt,” said Hugh, relapsing into English, “that we are some cousins or other. It’s very lucky for me to find a relative, for I wanted some—advice.”

He took care to say advice, which a Scotchman is generally prepared to bestow of his best. Had it been sixpence, the cousinship would have required elaborate proof, before the treaty could have made further progress.

“I’m fully at your service, sir.”

“When will you be off duty?”

“At nine o’clock preceesely.”

“Come to No. 13,—Square, and ask for me. It’s not far.”

“Wi’ pleesir, sir, ’gin ’twar twise as far.”

Hugh would not have ventured to ask him to his house on Sunday night, when no refreshments could be procured, had he not remembered a small pig (Anglicé stone bottle) of real mountain dew, which he had carried with him when he went to Arnstead, and which had lain unopened in one of his boxes.

Miss Talbot received her lodger with more show of pleasure than usual, for he came lapped in the odour of the deacon’s sanctity. But she was considerably alarmed and beyond measure shocked when the policeman called and requested to see him. Sally had rushed in to her mistress in dismay.

“Please’m, there’s a pleaceman wants Mr. Sutherland. Oh! lor’m!”

“Well, go and let Mr. Sutherland know, you stupid girl,” answered her mistress, trembling.

“Oh! lor’m!” was all Sally’s reply, as she vanished to bear the awful tidings to Hugh.

“He can’t have been housebreaking already,” said Miss Talbot to herself, as she confessed afterwards. “But it may be forgery or embezzlement. I told the poor deluded young man that the way of transgressors was hard.”

“Please, sir, you’re wanted, sir,” said Sally, out of breath, and pale as her Sunday apron.

“Who wants me?” asked Hugh.

“Please, sir, the pleaceman, sir,” answered Sally, and burst into tears.

Hugh was perfectly bewildered by the girl’s behaviour, and said in a tone of surprise:

“Well, show him up, then.”

“Ooh! sir,” said Sally, with a Plutonic sigh, and began to undo the hooks of her dress; “if you wouldn’t mind, sir, just put on my frock and apron, and take a jug in your hand, an’ the pleaceman’ll never look at you. I’ll take care of everything till you come back, sir.” And again she burst into tears.

Sally was a great reader of the Family Herald, and knew that this was an orthodox plan of rescuing a prisoner. The kindness of her anxiety moderated the expression of Hugh’s amusement; and having convinced her that he was in no danger, he easily prevailed upon her to bring the policeman upstairs.

Over a tumbler of toddy, the weaker ingredients of which were procured by Sally’s glad connivance, with a lingering idea of propitiation, and a gentle hint that Missus mustn’t know—the two Scotchmen, seated at opposite corners of the fire, had a long chat. They began about the old country, and the places and people they both knew, and both didn’t know. If they had met on the shores of the central lake of Africa, they could scarcely have been more couthy together. At length Hugh referred to the object of his application to MacPherson.

“What plan would you have me pursue, John, to get hold of a man in London?”

“I could manage that for ye, sir. I ken maist the haill mengie o’ the detaictives.”

“But you see, unfortunately, I don’t wish, for particular reasons, that the police should have anything to do with it.”

“Ay! ay! Hm! Hm! I see brawly. Ye’ll be efter a stray sheep, nae doot?”

Hugh did not reply; so leaving him to form any conclusion he pleased.

“Ye see,” MacPherson continued, “it’s no that easy to a body that’s no up to the trade. Hae ye ony clue like, to set ye spierin’ upo’?”

“Not the least.”

The man pondered a while.

“I hae’t,” he exclaimed at last. “What a fule I was no to think o’ that afore! Gin’t be a puir bit yow-lammie like, ‘at ye’re efter, I’ll tell ye what: there’s ae man, a countryman o’ our ain, an’ a gentleman forbye, that’ll do mair for ye in that way, nor a’ the detaictives thegither; an’ that’s Robert Falconer, Esquire.—I ken him weel.”

“But I don’t,” said Hugh.

“But I’ll introduce ye till ‘im. He bides close at han’ here; roun’ twa corners jist. An’ I’m thinkin’ he’ll be at hame the noo; for I saw him gaein that get, afore ye cam’ up to me. An’ the suner we gang, the better; for he’s no aye to be gotten hand o’. Fegs! he may be in Shoreditch or this.”

“But will he not consider it an intrusion?”

“Na, na; there’s no fear o’ that. He’s ony man’s an’ ilka woman’s freen—so be he can do them a guid turn; but he’s no for drinkin’ and daffin’ an’ that. Come awa’, Maister Sutherlan’, he’s yer verra man.”

Thus urged, Hugh rose and accompanied the policeman. He took him round rather more than two corners; but within five minutes they stood at Mr. Falconer’s door. John rang. The door opened without visible service, and they ascended to the first floor, which was enclosed something after the Scotch fashion. Here a respectable looking woman awaited their ascent.

“Is Mr. Falconer at hom’, mem?” said Hugh’s guide.

“He is; but I think he’s just going out again.”

“Will ye tell him, mem, ’at hoo John MacPherson, the policeman, would like sair to see him?”

“I will,” she answered; and went in, leaving them at the door.

She returned in a moment, and, inviting them to enter, ushered them into a large bare room, in which there was just light enough for Hugh to recognize, to his astonishment, the unmistakeable figure of the man whom he had met in Whitechapel, and whom he had afterwards seen apparently watching him from the gallery of the Olympic Theatre.

“How are you, MacPherson?” said a deep powerful voice, out of the gloom.

“Verra weel, I thank ye, Mr. Falconer. Hoo are ye yersel’, sir?”

“Very well too, thank you. Who is with you?”

“It’s a gentleman, sir, by the name o’ Mr. Sutherlan’, wha wants your help, sir, aboot somebody or ither ’at he’s enteresstit in, wha’s disappeared.”

Falconer advanced, and, bowing to Hugh said, very graciously:

“I shall be most happy to serve Mr. Sutherland, if in my power. Our friend MacPherson has rather too exalted an idea of my capabilities, however.”

“Weel, Maister Falconer, I only jist spier at yersel’, whether or no ye was ever dung wi’ onything ye took in han’.”

Falconer made no reply to this. There was the story of a whole life in his silence—past and to come.

He merely said:

“You can leave the gentleman with me, then, John. I’ll take care of him.”

“No fear o’ that, sir. Deil a bit! though a’ the policemen i’ Lonnon war efter ’im.”

“I’m much obliged to you for bringing him.”

“The obligation’s mine sir—an’ the gentleman’s. Good nicht, sir. Good nicht, Mr. Sutherlan’. Ye’ll ken whaur to fin’ me gin ye want me. Yon’s my beat for anither fortnicht.”

“And you know my quarters,” said Hugh, shaking him by the hand. “I am greatly obliged to you.”

“Not a bit, sir. Or gin ye war, ye sud be hertily welcome.”

“Bring candles, Mrs. Ashton,” Falconer called from the door. Then, turning to Hugh, “Sit down, Mr. Sutherland,” he said, “if you can find a chair that is not illegally occupied already. Perhaps we had better wait for the candles. What a pleasant day we have had!”

“Then you have been more pleasantly occupied than I have,” thought Hugh, to whose mind returned the images of the Appleditch family and its drawing-room, followed by the anticipation of the distasteful duties of the morrow. But he only said:

“It has been a most pleasant day.”

“I spent it strangely,” said Falconer.

Here the candles were brought in.

The two men looked at each other full in the face. Hugh saw that he had not been in error. The same remarkable countenance was before him. Falconer smiled.

“We have met before,” said he.

“We have,” said Hugh.

“I had a conviction we should be better acquainted, but I did not expect it so soon.”

“Are you a clairvoyant, then?”

“Not in the least.”

“Or, perhaps, being a Scotchman, you have the second sight?”

“I am hardly Celt enough for that. But I am a sort of a seer, after all—from an instinct of the spiritual relations of things, I hope; not in the least from the nervo-material side.”

“I think I understand you.”

“Are you at leisure?”

“Entirely.”

“Had we not better walk, then? I have to go as far as Somers Town—no great way; and we can talk as well walking as sitting.”

“With pleasure,” answered Hugh, rising.

“Will you take anything before you go? A glass of port? It is the only wine I happen to have.”

“Not a drop, thank you. I seldom taste anything stronger than water.”

“I like that. But I like a glass of port too. Come then.”

And Falconer rose—and a great rising it was; for, as I have said, he was two or three inches taller than Hugh, and much broader across the shoulders; and Hugh was no stripling now. He could not help thinking again of his old friend, David Elginbrod, to whom he had to look up to find the living eyes of him, just as now he looked up to find Falconer’s. But there was a great difference between those organs in the two men. David’s had been of an ordinary size, pure keen blue, sparkling out of cerulean depths of peace and hope, full of lambent gleams when he was loving any one, and ever ready to be dimmed with the mists of rising emotion. All that Hugh could yet discover of Falconer’s eyes was, that they were large, and black as night, and set so far back in his head, that each gleamed out of its caverned arch like the reversed torch of the Greek Genius of Death, just before going out in night. Either the frontal sinus was very large, or his observant faculties were peculiarly developed.

They went out, and walked for some distance in silence. Hugh ventured to say at length:

“You said you had spent the day strangely: may I ask how?”

“In a condemned cell in Newgate,” answered Falconer. “I am not in the habit of going to such places, but the man wanted to see me, and I went.”

As Falconer said no more, and as Hugh was afraid of showing anything like vulgar curiosity, this thread of conversation broke. Nothing worth recording passed until they entered a narrow court in Somers Town.

“Are you afraid of infection?” Falconer said.

“Not in the least, if there be any reason for exposing myself to it.”

“That is right.—And I need not ask if you are in good health.”

“I am in perfect health.”

“Then I need not mind asking you to wait for me till I come out of this house. There is typhus in it.”

“I will wait with pleasure. I will go with you if I can be of any use.”

“There is no occasion. It is not your business this time.”

So saying, Falconer opened the door, and walked in.

Said Hugh to himself: “I must tell this man the whole story; and with it all my own.”

In a few minutes Falconer rejoined him, looking solemn, but with a kind of relieved expression on his face.

“The poor fellow is gone,” said he.

“Ah!”

“What a thing it must be, Mr. Sutherland, for a man to break out of the choke-damp of a typhus fever into the clear air of the life beyond!”

“Yes,” said Hugh; adding, after a slight hesitation, “if he be at all prepared for the change.”

“Where a change belongs to the natural order of things,” said Falconer, “and arrives inevitably at some hour, there must always be more or less preparedness for it. Besides, I think a man is generally prepared for a breath of fresh air.”

Hugh did not reply, for he felt that he did not fully comprehend his new acquaintance. But he had a strong suspicion that it was because he moved in a higher region than himself.

“If you will still accompany me,” resumed Falconer, who had not yet adverted to Hugh’s object in seeking his acquaintance, “you will, I think, be soon compelled to believe that, at whatever time death may arrive, or in whatever condition the man may be at the time, it comes as the best and only good that can at that moment reach him. We are, perhaps, too much in the habit of thinking of death as the culmination of disease, which, regarded only in itself, is an evil, and a terrible evil. But I think rather of death as the first pulse of the new strength, shaking itself free from the old mouldy remnants of earth-garments, that it may begin in freedom the new life that grows out of the old. The caterpillar dies into the butterfly. Who knows but disease may be the coming, the keener life, breaking into this, and beginning to destroy like fire the inferior modes or garments of the present? And then disease would be but the sign of the salvation of fire; of the agony of the greater life to lift us to itself, out of that wherein we are failing and sinning. And so we praise the consuming fire of life.”

“But surely all cannot fare alike in the new life.”

“Far from it. According to the condition. But what would be hell to one, will be quietness, and hope, and progress to another; because he has left worse behind him, and in this the life asserts itself, and is.—But perhaps you are not interested in such subjects, Mr. Sutherland, and I weary you.”

“If I have not been interested in them hitherto, I am ready to become so now. Let me go with you.”

“With pleasure.”

As I have attempted to tell a great deal about Robert Falconer and his pursuits elsewhere, I will not here relate the particulars of their walk through some of the most wretched parts of London. Suffice it to say that, if Hugh, as he walked home, was not yet prepared to receive and understand the half of what Falconer had said about death, and had not yet that faith in God that gives as perfect a peace for the future of our brothers and sisters, who, alas! have as yet been fed with husks, as for that of ourselves, who have eaten bread of the finest of the wheat, and have been but a little thankful,—he yet felt at least that it was a blessed thing that these men and women would all die—must all die. That spectre from which men shrink, as if it would take from them the last shivering remnant of existence, he turned to for some consolation even for them. He was prepared to believe that they could not be going to worse in the end, though some of the rich and respectable and educated might have to receive their evil things first in the other world; and he was ready to understand that great saying of Schiller—full of a faith evident enough to him who can look far enough into the saying:

“Death cannot be an evil, for it is universal.”