第77章

But he could not go near the garret.That door too was closed.He opened the house door instead, and went out into the street.There, nothing was to be seen but faint blue air full of moonlight, solid houses, and shining snow.Bareheaded he wandered round the corner of the house to the window whence first he had heard the sweet sounds of the pianoforte.The fire within lighted up the crimson curtains, but no voice of music came forth.The window was as dumb as the pale, faintly befogged moon overhead, itself seeming but a skylight through which shone the sickly light of the passionless world of the dead.Not a form was in the street.The eyes of the houses gleamed here and there upon the snow.He leaned his elbow on the window-sill behind which stood that sealed fountain of lovely sound, looked up at the moon, careless of her or of aught else in heaven or on earth, and sunk into a reverie, in which nothing was consciously present but a stream of fog-smoke that flowed slowly, listlessly across the face of the moon, like the ghost of a dead cataract.All at once a wailful sound arose in his head.He did not think for some time whether it was born in his brain, or entered it from without.At length he recognized the Flowers of the Forest, played as only the soutar could play it.But alas! the cry responsive to his bow came only from the auld wife--no more from the bonny leddy! Then he remembered that there had been a humble wedding that morning on the opposite side of the way; in the street department of the jollity of which Shargar had taken a small share by firing a brass cannon, subsequently confiscated by Mrs.Falconer.

But this was a strange tune to play at a wedding! The soutar half-way to his goal of drunkenness, had begun to repent for the fiftieth time that year, had with his repentance mingled the memory of the bonny leddy ruthlessly tortured to death for his wrong, and had glided from a strathspey into that sorrowful moaning.The lament interpreted itself to his disconsolate pupil as he had never understood it before, not even in the stubble-field; for it now spoke his own feelings of waste misery, forsaken loneliness.Indeed Robert learned more of music in those few minutes of the foggy winter night and open street, shut out of all doors, with the tones of an ancient grief and lamentation floating through the blotted moonlight over his ever-present sorrow, than he could have learned from many lessons even of Miss St.John.He was cold to the heart, yet went in a little comforted.

Things had gone ill with him.Outside of Paradise, deserted of his angel, in the frost and the snow, the voice of the despised violin once more the source of a sad comfort! But there is no better discipline than an occasional descent from what we count well-being, to a former despised or less happy condition.One of the results of this taste of damnation in Robert was, that when he was in bed that night, his heart began to turn gently towards his old master.How much did he not owe him, after all! Had he not acted ill and ungratefully in deserting him? His own vessel filled to the brim with grief, had he not let the waters of its bitterness overflow into the heart of the soutar? The wail of that violin echoed now in Robert's heart, not for Flodden, not for himself, but for the debased nature that drew forth the plaint.Comrades in misery, why should they part? What right had he to forsake an old friend and benefactor because he himself was unhappy? He would go and see him the very next night.And he would make friends once more with the much 'suffering instrument' he had so wrongfully despised.