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

I was not a little surprised, when I heard him say,—

“I think, Wynnie, as your father and Mr. S. appear to wish it, you might at least try.”

This almost overcame me, and I was very near,—never mind what. I bit my lips, and tried to smile, but felt as if all my friends had forsaken me, and were about to turn me out to beg my bread. How on earth could I write a book without making a fool of myself?

“You know, Mrs. Percivale,” said Mr. S., “you needn’t be afraid about the composition, and the spelling, and all that. We can easily set those to rights at the office.”

He couldn’t have done any thing better to send the lump out of my throat; for this made me angry.

“I am not in the least anxious about the spelling,” I answered; “and for the rest, pray what is to become of me, if what you print should happen to be praised by somebody who likes my husband or my father, and therefore wants to say a good word for me? That’s what a good deal of reviewing comes to, I understand. Am I to receive in silence what doesn’t belong to me, or am I to send a letter to the papers to say that the whole thing was patched and polished at the printing-office, and that I have no right to more than perhaps a fourth part of the commendation? How would that do?”

“But you forget it is not to have your name to it,” he said; “and so it won’t matter a bit. There will be nothing dishonest about it.”

“You forget, that, although nobody knows my real name, everybody will know that I am the daughter of that Mr. Walton who would have thrown his pen in the fire if you had meddled with any thing he wrote. They would be praising me, if they praised at all. The name is nothing. Of all things, to have praise you don’t deserve, and not to be able to reject it, is the most miserable! It is as bad as painting one’s face.”

“Hardly a case in point,” said Mr. Blackstone. “For the artificial complexion would be your own work, and the other would not.”

“If you come to discuss that question,” said my father, “we must all confess we have had in our day to pocket a good many more praises than we had a right to. I agree with you, however, my child, that we must not connive at any thing of the sort. So I will propose this clause in the bargain between you and Mr. S.; namely, that, if he finds any fault with your work, he shall send it back to yourself to be set right, and, if you cannot do so to his mind, you shall be off the bargain.”

“But papa,—Percivale,—both of you know well enough that nothing ever happened to me worth telling.”

“I am sorry your life has been so very uninteresting, wife,” said my husband grimly; for his fun is always so like earnest!

“You know well enough what I mean, husband. It does not follow that what has been interesting enough to you and me will be interesting to people who know nothing at all about us to begin with.”

“It depends on how it is told,” said Mr. S.

“Then, I beg leave to say, that I never had an original thought in my life; and that, if I were to attempt to tell my history, the result would be as silly a narrative as ever one old woman told another by the workhouse fire.”

“And I only wish I could hear the one old woman tell her story to the other,” said my father.

“Ah! but that’s because you see ever so much more in it than shows. You always see through the words and the things to something lying behind them,” I said.

“Well, if you told the story rightly, other people would see such things behind it too.”

“Not enough of people to make it worth while for Mr. S. to print it,” I said.

“He’s not going to print it except he thinks it worth his while; and you may safely leave that to him,” said my husband.

“And so I’m to write a book as big as ‘The Annals;’ and, after I’ve been slaving at it for half a century or so, I’m to be told it won’t do, and all my labor must go for nothing? I must say the proposal is rather a cool one to make,—to the mother of a family.”

“Not at all; that’s not it, I mean,” said Mr. S.; “if you will write a dozen pages or so, I shall be able to judge by those well enough,—at least, I will take all the responsibility on myself after that.”

“There’s a fair offer!” said my husband. “It seems to me, Wynnie, that all that is wanted of you is to tell your tale so that other people can recognize the human heart in it,—the heart that is like their own, and be able to feel as if they were themselves going through the things you recount.”

“You describe the work of a genius, and coolly ask me to do it. Besides, I don’t want to be set thinking about my heart, and all that,” I said peevishly.

“Now, don’t be raising objections where none exist,” he returned.

“If you mean I am pretending to object, I have only to say that I feel all one great objection to the whole affair, and that I won’t touch it.”

They were all silent; and I felt as if I had behaved ungraciously. Then first I felt as if I might have to do it, after all. But I couldn’t see my way in the least.

“Now, what is there,” I asked, “in all my life that is worth setting down,—I mean, as I should be able to set it down?”

“What do you ladies talk about now in your morning calls?” suggested Mr. Blackstone, with a humorous glance from his deep black eyes.

“Nothing worth writing about, as I am sure you will readily believe, Mr. Blackstone,” I answered.

“How comes it to be interesting, then?”

“But it isn’t. They—we—only talk about the weather and our children and servants, and that sort of thing.”

“Well!” said Mr. S., “and I wish I could get any thing sensible about the weather and children and servants, and that sort of thing, for my magazine. I have a weakness in the direction of the sensible.”

“But there never is any thing sensible said about any of them,—not that I know of.”

“Now, Wynnie, I am sure you are wrong,” said my father. “There is your friend, Mrs. Cromwell: I am certain she, sometimes at least, must say what is worth hearing about such matters.”

“Well, but she’s an exception. Besides, she hasn’t any children.”

“Then,” said my husband, “there’s Lady Bernard”—

“Ah! but she was like no one else. Besides, she is almost a public character, and any thing said about her would betray my original.”

“It would be no matter. She is beyond caring for that now; and not one of her friends could object to any thing you who loved her so much would say about her.”

The mention of this lady seemed to put some strength into me. I felt as if I did know something worth telling, and I was silent in my turn.

“Certainly,” Mr. S. resumed, “whatever is worth talking about is worth writing about,—though not perhaps in the way it is talked about. Besides, Mrs. Percivale, my clients want to know more about your sisters, and little Theodora, or Dorothea, or—what was her name in the book?”

The end of it was, that I agreed to try to the extent of a dozen pages or so.

 

CHAPTER II.

I TRY.

 

I hope no one will think I try to write like my father; for that would be to go against what he always made a great point of,—that nobody whatever should imitate any other person whatever, but in modesty and humility allow the seed that God had sown in her to grow. He said all imitation tended to dwarf and distort the plant, if it even allowed the seed to germinate at all. So, if I do write like him, it will be because I cannot help it.

I will just look how “The Seaboard Parish” ends, and perhaps that will put into my head how I ought to begin. I see my father does mention that I had then been Mrs. Percivale for many years. Not so very many though,—five or six, if I remember rightly, and that is three or four years ago. Yes; I nave been married nine years. I may as well say a word as to how it came about; and, if Percivale doesn’t like it, the remedy lies in his pen. I shall be far more thankful to have any thing struck out on suspicion than remain on sufferance.

After our return home from Kilkhaven, my father and mother had a good many talks about me and Percivale, and sometimes they took different sides. I will give a shadow of one of these conversations. I think ladies can write fully as natural talk as gentlemen can, though the bits between mayn’t be so good.

Mother.—I am afraid, my dear husband [This was my mother’s most solemn mode of addressing my father], “they are too like each other to make a suitable match.”

Father.—I am sorry to learn you consider me so very unlike yourself, Ethelwyn. I had hoped there was a very strong resemblance indeed, and that the match had not proved altogether unsuitable.

Mother.—Just think, though, what would have become of me by this time, if you had been half as unbelieving a creature as I was. Indeed, I fear sometimes I am not much better now.

Father.—I think I am, then; and I know you’ve done me nothing but good with your unbelief. It was just because I was of the same sort precisely that I was able to understand and help you. My circumstances and education and superior years—

Mother.—Now, don’t plume yourself on that, Harry; for you know everybody says you look much the younger of the two.

Father.—I had no idea that everybody was so rude. I repeat, that my more years, as well as my severer education, had, no doubt, helped me a little further on before I came to know you; but it was only in virtue of the doubt in me that I was able to understand and appreciate the doubt in you.

Mother.—But then you had at least begun to leave it behind before I knew you, and so had grown able to help me. And Mr. Percivale does not seem, by all I can make out, a bit nearer believing in any thing than poor Wynnie herself.

Father.—At least, he doesn’t fancy he believes when he does not, as so many do, and consider themselves superior persons in consequence. I don’t know that it would have done you any great harm, Miss Ethelwyn, to have made my acquaintance when I was in the worst of my doubts concerning the truth of things. Allow me to tell you that I was nearer making shipwreck of my faith at a certain period than I ever was before or have been since.

Mother.—What period was that?

Father.—Just the little while when I had lost all hope of ever marrying you,—unbeliever as you counted yourself.

Mother.—You don’t mean to say you would have ceased to believe in God, if he hadn’t given you your own way?

Father.—No, my dear. I firmly believe, that, had I never married you,