第46章

'A small bundle I think I brought up with me,' replied the youth.

It was not there.Robert rushed down-stairs, and returned with it--a nightshirt and a hairbrush or so, tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief.This was all that Robert was able to do for Ericson that evening.

He went home and dreamed about him.He called at The Boar's Head the next morning before going to school, but Ericson was not yet up.

When he called again as soon as morning school was over, he found that they had persuaded him to keep his bed, but Miss Letty took him up to his room.He looked better, was pleased to see Robert, and spoke to him kindly.Twice yet Robert called to inquire after him that day, and once more he saw him, for he took his tea up to him.

The next day Ericson was much better, received Robert with a smile, and went out with him for a stroll, for all his companions were gone, and of some students who had arrived since he did not know any.Robert took him to his grandmother, who received him with stately kindness.Then they went out again, and passed the windows of Captain Forsyth's house.Mary St.John was playing.They stood for a moment, almost involuntarily, to listen.She ceased.

'That's the music of the spheres,' said Ericson, in a low voice, as they moved on.

'Will you tell me what that means?' asked Robert.'I've come upon 't ower an' ower in Milton.'

Thereupon Ericson explained to him what Pythagoras had taught about the stars moving in their great orbits with sounds of awful harmony, too grandly loud for the human organ to vibrate in response to their music--hence unheard of men.And Ericson spoke as if he believed it.But after he had spoken, his face grew sadder than ever; and, as if to change the subject, he said, abruptly,'What a fine old lady your grandmother is, Robert!'

'Is she?' returned Robert.

'I don't mean to say she's like Miss Letty,' said Ericson.'She's an angel!'

A long pause followed.Robert's thoughts went roaming in their usual haunts.

'Do you think, Mr.Ericson,' he said, at length, taking up the old question still floating unanswered in his mind, 'do you think if a devil was to repent God would forgive him?'

Ericson turned and looked at him.Their eyes met.The youth wondered at the boy.He had recognized in him a younger brother, one who had begun to ask questions, calling them out into the deaf and dumb abyss of the universe.

'If God was as good as I would like him to be, the devils themselves would repent,' he said, turning away.

Then he turned again, and looking down upon Robert like a sorrowful eagle from a crag over its harried nest, said,'If I only knew that God was as good as--that woman, I should die content.'

Robert heard words of blasphemy from the mouth of an angel, but his respect for Ericson compelled a reply.

'What woman, Mr.Ericson?' he asked.

'I mean Miss Letty, of course.'

'But surely ye dinna think God's nae as guid as she is? Surely he's as good as he can be.He is good, ye ken.'

'Oh, yes.They say so.And then they tell you something about him that isn't good, and go on calling him good all the same.But calling anybody good doesn't make him good, you know.'

'Then ye dinna believe 'at God is good, Mr.Ericson?' said Robert, choking with a strange mingling of horror and hope.

'I didn't say that, my boy.But to know that God was good, and fair, and kind--heartily, I mean, not half-ways, and with ifs and buts--my boy, there would be nothing left to be miserable about.'

In a momentary flash of thought, Robert wondered whether this might not be his old friend, the repentant angel, sent to earth as a man, that he might have a share in the redemption, and work out his own salvation.And from this very moment the thoughts about God that had hitherto been moving in formless solution in his mind began slowly to crystallize.

The next day, Eric Ericson, not without a piece in ae pouch and money in another, took his way home, if home it could be called where neither father, mother, brother, nor sister awaited his return.For a season Robert saw him no more.

As often as his name was mentioned, Miss Letty's eyes would grow hazy, and as often she would make some comical remark.

'Puir fallow!' she would say, 'he was ower lang-leggit for this warld.'

Or again:

'Ay, he was a braw chield.But he canna live.His feet's ower sma'.'

Or yet again:

'Saw ye ever sic a gowk, to mak sic a wark aboot sittin' doon an'

haein' his feet washed, as gin that cost a body onything!'