The Vicar's Daughter, George MacDonald [important books to read .txt] 📗

fearful of irreverence, he wanted to turn the current of the conversation.

“But, surely,” said Miss Clare, “a more active congregation would be quite as desirable.”

She had one fault—no, defect: she was slow to enter into the humor of a thing. It seemed almost as if the first aspect of any bit of fun presented to her was that of something wrong. A moment’s reflection, however, almost always ended in a sunny laugh, partly at her own stupidity, as she called it.

“You mistake my meaning,” said Mr. Blackstone. “My chief, almost sole, attraction to the regions of the grave is the sexton, and not the placidity of the inhabitants; though perhaps Miss Clare might value that more highly if she had more experience of how noisy human nature can be.”

Miss Clare gave a little smile, which after-knowledge enabled me to interpret as meaning, “Perhaps I do know a trifle about it;” but she said nothing.

“My first inquiry,” he went on, “before accepting such an appointment, would be as to the character and mental habits of the sexton. If I found him a man capable of regarding human nature from a stand-point of his own, I should close with the offer at once. If, on the contrary, he was a commonplace man, who made faultless responses, and cherished the friendship of the undertaker, I should decline. In fact, I should regard the sexton as my proposed master; and whether I should accept the place or not would depend altogether on whether I liked him or not. Think what revelations of human nature a real man in such a position could give me: ‘Hand me the shovel. You stop a bit,—you’re out of breath. Sit down on that stone there, and light your pipe; here’s some tobacco. Now tell me the rest of the story. How did the old fellow get on after he had buried his termagant wife?’ That’s how I should treat him; and I should get, in return, such a succession of peeps into human life and intent and aspirations, as, in the course of a few years, would send me to the next vicarage that turned up a sadder and wiser man, Mr. Walton.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said my father; but whether in sympathy with Mr. Blackstone, or in latent disapproval of a tone judged unbecoming to a clergyman, I cannot tell. Sometimes, I confess, I could not help suspecting the source of the deficiency in humor which he often complained of in me; but I always came to the conclusion that what seemed such a deficiency in him was only occasioned by the presence of a deeper feeling.

Miss Clare was the first to leave.

“What a lovely countenance that is!” said my husband, the moment she was out of hearing.

“She is a very remarkable woman,” said my father.

“I suspect she knows a good deal more than most of us,” said Mr. Blackstone. “Did you see how her face lighted up always before she said any thing? You can never come nearer to seeing a thought than in her face just before she speaks.”

“What is she?” asked Roger.

“Can’t you see what she is?” returned his brother. “She’s a saint,—Saint Clare.”

“If you had been a Scotchman, now,” said Roger “that fine name would have sunk to Sinkler in your mouth.”

“Not a more vulgar corruption, however, than is common in the mouths of English lords and ladies, when they turn St. John into Singen, reminding one of nothing but the French for an ape,” said my father.

“But what does she do?” persisted Roger.

“Why should you think she does any thing?” I asked.

“She looks as if she had to earn her own living.”

“She does. She teaches music.”

“Why didn’t you ask her to play?”

“Because this is the first time she has been to the house.”

“Does she go to church, do you suppose?”

“I have no doubt of it; but why do you ask?”

“Because she looks as if she didn’t want it. I never saw such an angelic expression upon a countenance.”

“You must take me to call upon her,” said my father.

“I will with pleasure,” I answered.

I found, however, that this was easier promised than performed; for I had asked her by word of mouth at Cousin Judy’s, and had not the slightest idea where she lived. Of course I applied to Judy; but she had mislaid her address, and, promising to ask her for it, forgot more than once. My father had to return home without seeing her again.

 

CHAPTER XIV.

A PICTURE.

 

Things went on very quietly for some time. Of course I was fully occupied, as well I might be, with a life to tend and cultivate which must blossom at length into the human flowers of love and obedience and faith. The smallest service I did the wonderful thing that lay in my lap seemed a something in itself so well worth doing, that it was worth living to do it. As I gazed on the new creation, so far beyond my understanding, yet so dependent upon me while asserting an absolute and divine right to all I did for her, I marvelled that God should intrust me with such a charge, that he did not keep the lovely creature in his own arms, and refuse her to any others. Then I would bethink myself that in giving her into mine, he had not sent her out of his own; for I, too, was a child in his arms, holding and tending my live doll, until it should grow something like me, only ever so much better. Was she not given to me that she might learn what I had begun to learn, namely, that a willing childhood was the flower of life? How can any mother sit with her child on her lap and not know that there is a God over all,—know it by the rising of her own heart in prayer to him? But so few have had parents like mine! If my mother felt thus when I lay in her arms, it was no wonder I should feel thus when my child lay in mine.

Before I had children of my own, I did not care about children, and therefore did not understand them; but I had read somewhere,—and it clung to me although I did not understand it,—that it was in laying hold of the heart of his mother that Jesus laid his first hold on the world to redeem it; and now at length I began to understand it. What a divine way of saving us it was,—to let her bear him, carry him in her bosom, wash him and dress him and nurse him and sing him to sleep,—offer him the adoration of mother’s love, misunderstand him, chide him, forgive him even for fancied wrong! Such a love might well save a world in which were mothers enough. It was as if he had said, “Ye shall no more offer vain sacrifices to one who needs them not, and cannot use them. I will need them, so require them at your hands. I will hunger and thirst and be naked and cold, and ye shall minister to me. Sacrifice shall be no more a symbol, but a real giving unto God; and when I return to the Father, inasmuch as ye do it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto me.” So all the world is henceforth the temple of God; its worship is ministration; the commonest service is divine service.

I feared at first that the new strange love I felt in my heart came only of the fact that the child was Percivale’s and mine; but I soon found it had a far deeper source,—that it sprung from the very humanity of the infant woman, yea, from her relation in virtue of that humanity to the Father of all. The fountain appeared in my heart: it arose from an infinite store in the unseen.

Soon, however, came jealousy of my love for my baby. I feared lest it should make me—nay, was making me—neglect my husband. The fear first arose in me one morning as I sat with her half dressed on my knees. I was dawdling over her in my fondness, as I used to dawdle over the dressing of my doll, when suddenly I became aware that never once since her arrival had I sat with my husband in his study. A pang of dismay shot through me. “Is this to be a wife?” I said to myself,—“to play with a live love like a dead doll, and forget her husband!” I caught up a blanket from the cradle,—I am not going to throw away that good old word for the ugly outlandish name they give it now, reminding one only of a helmet,—I caught up a blanket from the cradle, I say, wrapped it round the treasure, which was shooting its arms and legs in every direction like a polypus feeling after its food,—and rushed down stairs, and down the precipice into the study. Percivale started up in terror, thinking something fearful had happened, and I was bringing him all that was left of the child.

“What—what—what’s the matter?” he gasped.

I could not while he was thus frightened explain to him what had driven me to him in such alarming haste.

“I’ve brought you the baby to kiss,” I said, unfolding the blanket, and holding up the sprawling little goddess towards the face that towered above me.

“Was it dying for a kiss then?” he said, taking her, blanket and all, from my arms.

The end of the blanket swept across his easel, and smeared the face of the baby in a picture of the Three Kings, at which he was working.

“O Percivale!” I cried, “you’ve smeared your baby!”

“But this is a real live baby; she may smear any thing she likes.”

“Except her own face and hands, please, then, Percivale.”

“Or her blessed frock,” said Percivale. “She hasn’t got one, though. Why hasn’t the little angel got her feathers on yet?”

“I was in such a hurry to bring her.”

“To be kissed?”

“No, not exactly. It wasn’t her I was in a hurry to bring; it was myself.”

“Ah! you wanted to be kissed, did you?”

“No, sir. I didn’t want to be kissed; but I did so want to kiss you, Percivale.”

“Isn’t it all the same, though, darling?” he said. “It seems so to me.”

“Sometimes, Percivale, you are so very stupid! It’s not the same at all. There’s a world of difference between the two; and you ought to know it, or be told it, if you don’t.”

“I shall think it over as soon as you leave me,” he said.

“But I’m not going to leave you for a long time. I haven’t seen you paint for weeks and weeks,—not since this little troublesome thing came poking in between us.”

“But she’s not dressed yet.”

“That doesn’t signify. She’s well wrapped up, and quite warm.”

He put me a chair where I could see his picture without catching the shine of the paint. I took the baby from him, and he went on with his work.

“You don’t think I am going to sacrifice all my privileges to this little tyrant, do you?” I said.

“It would be rather hard for me, at least,” he rejoined.

“You did think I was neglecting you, then, Percivale?”

“Not for a moment.”

“Then you didn’t miss me?”

“I did, very much.”

“And you didn’t grumble?”

“No.”

“Do I disturb you?” I asked, after a little pause. “Can you paint just as well when I am here as when you are alone?”

“Better. I feel warmer to my work somehow.”

I was satisfied, and held my peace. When