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

I am best pleased I don’t want to talk. But Percivale, perhaps not having found this out yet, looked anxiously in my face; and, as at the moment my eyes were fixed on his picture, I thought he wanted to find out whether I liked the design.

“I see it now!” I cried. “I could not make out where the Magi were.”

He had taken for the scene of his picture an old farm kitchen, or yeoman’s hall, with its rich brown rafters, its fire on the hearth, and its red brick floor. A tub half full of bright water, stood on one side; and the mother was bending over her baby, which, undressed for the bath, she was holding out for the admiration of the Magi. Immediately behind the mother stood, in the garb of a shepherd, my father, leaning on the ordinary shepherd’s crook; my mother, like a peasant-woman in her Sunday-best, with a white handkerchief crossed upon her bosom, stood beside him, and both were gazing with a chastened yet profound pleasure on the lovely child.

In front stood two boys and a girl,—between the ages of five and nine,—gazing each with a peculiar wondering delight on the baby. The youngest boy, with a great spotted wooden horse in his hand, was approaching to embrace the infant in such fashion as made the toy look dangerous, and the left hand of the mother was lifted with a motion of warning and defence. The little girl, the next youngest, had, in her absorption, dropped her gaudily dressed doll at her feet, and stood sucking her thumb, her big blue eyes wide with contemplation. The eldest boy had brought his white rabbit to give the baby, but had forgotten all about it, so full was his heart of his new brother. An expression of mingled love and wonder and perplexity had already begun to dawn upon the face, but it was as yet far from finished. He stood behind the other two peeping over their heads.

“Were you thinking of that Titian in the Louvre, with the white rabbit in it?” I asked Percivale.

“I did not think of it until after I had put in the rabbit,” he replied. “And it shall remain; for it suits my purpose, and Titian would not claim all the white rabbits because of that one.”

“Did you think of the black lamb in it, then, when you laid that black pussy on the hearth?” I asked.

“Black lamb?” he returned.

“Yes,” I insisted; “a black lamb, in the dark background—such a very black lamb, and in such a dark background, that it seems you never discovered it.”

“Are you sure?” he persisted.

“Absolutely certain,” I replied. “I pointed it out to papa in the picture itself in the Louvre; he had not observed it before either.”

“I am very glad to know there is such a thing there. I need not answer your question, you see. It is odd enough I should have put in the black puss. Upon some grounds I might argue that my puss is better than Titian’s lamb.”

“What grounds? tell me.”

“If the painter wanted a contrast, a lamb, be he as black as ever paint could make him, must still be a more Christian animal than a cat as white as snow. Under what pretence could a cat be used for a Christian symbol?”

“What do you make of her playfulness?”

“I should count that a virtue, were it not for the fatal objection that it is always exercised at the expense of other creatures.”

“A ball of string, or a reel, or a bit of paper, is enough for an uncorrupted kitten.”

“But you must not forget that it serves only in virtue of the creature’s imagination representing it as alive. If you do not make it move, she will herself set it in motion as the initiative of the game. If she cannot do that, she will take no notice of it.”

“Yes, I see. I give in.”

All this time he had been painting diligently. He could now combine talking and painting far better than he used. But a knock came to the study door; and, remembering baby’s unpresentable condition, I huddled her up, climbed the stair again, and finished the fledging of my little angel in a very happy frame of mind.

 

CHAPTER XV.

RUMORS.

 

Hardly was it completed, when Cousin Judy called, and I went down to see her, carrying my baby with me. As I went, something put me in mind that I must ask her for Miss Clare’s address. Lest I should again forget, as soon as she had kissed and admired the baby, I said,—

“Have you found out yet where Miss Clare lives, Judy?”

“I don’t choose to find out,” she answered. “I am sorry to say I have had to give her up. It is a disappointment, I confess.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “I thought you considered her a very good teacher.”

“I have no fault to find with her on that score. She was always punctual, and I must allow both played well and taught the children delightfully. But I have heard such questionable things about her!—very strange things indeed!”

“What are they?”

“I can’t say I’ve been able to fix on more than one thing directly against her character, but”—

“Against her character!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, indeed. She lives by herself in lodgings, and the house is not at all a respectable one.”

“But have you made no further inquiry?”

“I consider that quite enough. I had already met more than one person, however, who seemed to think it very odd that I should have her to teach music in my family.”

“Did they give any reason for thinking her unfit?”

“I did not choose to ask them. One was Miss Clarke—you know her. She smiled in her usual supercilious manner, but in her case I believe it was only because Miss Clare looks so dowdy. But nobody knows any thing about her except what I’ve just told you.”

“And who told you that?”

“Mrs. Jeffreson.”

“But you once told me that she was a great gossip.”

“Else she wouldn’t have heard it. But that doesn’t make it untrue. In fact, she convinced me of its truth, for she knows the place she lives in, and assured me it was at great risk of infection to the children that I allowed her to enter the house; and so, of course, I felt compelled to let her know that I didn’t require her services any longer.”

“There must be some mistake, surely!” I said.

“Oh, no! not the least, I am sorry to say.”

“How did she take it?”

“Very sweetly indeed. She didn’t even ask me why, which was just as well, seeing I should have found it awkward to tell her. But I suppose she knew too many grounds herself to dare the question.”

I was dreadfully sorry, but I could not say much more then. I ventured only to express my conviction that there could not be any charge to bring against Miss Clare herself; for that one who looked and spoke as she did could have nothing to be ashamed of. Judy, however, insisted that what she had heard was reason enough for at least ending the engagement; indeed, that no one was fit for such a situation of whom such things could be said, whether they were true or not.

When she left me, I gave baby to her nurse, and went straight to the study, peeping in to see if Percivale was alone.

He caught sight of me, and called to me to come down.

“It’s only Roger,” he said.

I was always pleased to see Roger. He was a strange creature,—one of those gifted men who are capable of any thing, if not of every thing, and yet carry nothing within sight of proficiency. He whistled like a starling, and accompanied his whistling on the piano; but never played. He could copy a drawing to a hair’s-breadth, but never drew. He could engrave well on wood; but although he had often been employed in that way, he had always got tired of it after a few weeks. He was forever wanting to do something other than what he was at; and the moment he got tired of a thing, he would work at it no longer; for he had never learned to make himself. He would come every day to the study for a week to paint in backgrounds, or make a duplicate; and then, perhaps, we wouldn’t see him for a fortnight. At other times he would work, say for a month, modelling, or carving marble, for a sculptor friend, from whom he might have had constant employment if he had pleased. He had given lessons in various branches, for he was an excellent scholar, and had the finest ear for verse, as well as the keenest appreciation of the loveliness of poetry, that I have ever known. He had stuck to this longer than to any thing else, strange to say; for one would have thought it the least attractive of employments to one of his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much in love with him that she betrayed her feelings to her countess-mother, and the lessons were of course put an end to. I suspect he did not escape heart-whole himself; for he immediately dropped all his other lessons, and took to writing poetry for a new magazine, which proved of ephemeral constitution, and vanished after a few months of hectic existence.

It was remarkable that with such instability his moral nature should continue uncorrupted; but this I believe he owed chiefly to his love and admiration of his brother. For my part, I could not help liking him much. There was a half-plaintive playfulness about him, alternated with gloom, and occasionally with wild merriment, which made him interesting even when one felt most inclined to quarrel with him. The worst of him was that he considered himself a generally misunderstood, if not illused man, who could not only distinguish himself, but render valuable service to society, if only society would do him the justice to give him a chance. Were it only, however, for his love to my baby, I could not but be ready to take up his defence. When I mentioned what I had just heard about Miss Clare, Percivale looked both astonished and troubled; but before he could speak, Roger, with the air of a man of the world whom experience enabled to come at once to a decision, said,—

“Depend upon it, Wynnie, there is falsehood there somewhere. You will always be nearer the truth if you believe nothing, than if you believe the half of what you hear.”

“That’s very much what papa says,” I answered. “He affirms that he never searched into an injurious report in his own parish without finding it so nearly false as to deprive it of all right to go about.”

“Besides,” said Roger, “look at that face! How I should like to model it. She’s a good woman that, depend upon it.”

I was delighted with his enthusiasm.

“I wish you would ask her again, as soon as you can,” said Percivale, who always tended to embody his conclusions in acts rather than in words. “Your cousin Judy is a jolly good creature, but from your father’s description of her as a girl, she must have grown a good deal more worldly since her marriage. Respectability is