No one who understands the bit and bridle of the association of ideas, as it is called in the skeleton language of mental philosophy, wherewith the Father-God holds fast the souls of his children--to the very last that we see of them, at least, and doubtless to endless ages beyond--will sneer at Falconer's notion of making God's violin a ministering spirit in the process of conversion.There is a well-authenticated story of a convict's having been greatly reformed for a time, by going, in one of the colonies, into a church, where the matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to which he had gone when a boy--with his mother, I suppose.It was not the matting that so far converted him: it was not to the music of his violin that Falconer looked for aid, but to the memories of childhood, the mysteries of the kingdom of innocence which that could recall--those memories whichAre yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing.
For an hour he did not venture to go near him.When he entered the room he found him sitting in the same place, no longer weeping, but gazing into the fire with a sad countenance, the expression of which showed Falconer at once that the soul had come out of its cave of obscuration, and drawn nearer to the surface of life.He had not seen him look so much like one 'clothed, and in his right mind,'
before.He knew well that nothing could be built upon this; that this very emotion did but expose him the more to the besetting sin;that in this mood he would drink, even if he knew that he would in consequence be in danger of murdering the wife whose letter had made him weep.But it was progress, notwithstanding.He looked up at Robert as he entered, and then dropped his eyes again.He regarded him perhaps as a presence doubtful whether of angel or devil, even as the demoniacs regarded the Lord of Life who had come to set them free.Bewildered he must have been to find himself, towards the close of a long life of debauchery, wickedness, and the growing pains of hell, caught in a net of old times, old feelings, old truths.
Now Robert had carefully avoided every indication that might disclose him to be a Scotchman even, nor was there the least sign of suspicion in Andrew's manner.The only solution of the mystery that could have presented itself to him was, that his friends were at the root of it--probably his son, of whom he knew absolutely nothing.
His mother could not be alive still.Of his wife's relatives there had never been one who would have taken any trouble about him after her death, hardly even before it.John Lammie was the only person, except Dr.Anderson, whose friendship he could suppose capable of this development.The latter was the more likely person.But he would be too much for him yet; he was not going to be treated like a child, he said to himself, as often as the devil got uppermost.
My reader must understand that Andrew had never been a man of resolution.He had been wilful and headstrong; and these qualities, in children especially, are often mistaken for resolution, and generally go under the name of strength of will.There never was a greater mistake.The mistake, indeed, is only excusable from the fact that extremes meet, and that this disposition is so opposite to the other, that it looks to the careless eye most like it.He never resisted his own impulses, or the enticements of evil companions.
Kept within certain bounds at home, after he had begun to go wrong, by the weight of opinion, he rushed into all excesses when abroad upon business, till at length the vessel of his fortune went to pieces, and he was a waif on the waters of the world.But in feeling he had never been vulgar, however much so in action.There was a feeble good in him that had in part been protected by its very feebleness.He could not sin so much against it as if it had been strong.For many years he had fits of shame, and of grief without repentance; for repentance is the active, the divine part--the turning again; but taking more steadily both to strong drink and opium, he was at the time when De Fleuri found him only the dull ghost of Andrew Falconer walking in a dream of its lost carcass.
