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

her services as soon as she came to the knowledge of certain facts concerning these very points.”

“Excuse me—certain rumors—very uncertain facts.”

When you are cross, the slightest play upon words is an offence. I knocked at the door in dudgeon, then turned and said,—

“My cousin Judy, Mr. Roger”—

But here I paused, for I had nothing ready. Anger makes some people cleverer for the moment, but when I am angry I am always stupid. Roger finished the sentence for me.

—“Your cousin Judy is, you must allow, a very conventional woman,” he said.

“She is very good-natured, anyhow. And what do you say to Lady Bernard?”

“She hasn’t repudiated Miss Clare’s acquaintance, so far as I know.”

“But, answer me,—do you believe Lady Bernard would invite her to meet her friends if she knew all?”

“Depend upon it, Lady Bernard knows what she is about. People of her rank can afford to be unconventional.”

This irritated me yet more, for it implied that I was influenced by the conventionality which both he and my husband despised; and Sarah opening the door that instant, I stepped in, without even saying good-night to him. Before she closed it, however, I heard my husband’s voice, and ran out again to welcome him.

He and Roger had already met in the little front garden. They did not shake hands—they never did—they always met as if they had parted only an hour ago.

“What were you and my wife quarrelling about, Rodge?” I heard Percivale ask, and paused on the middle of the stair to hear his answer.

“How do you know we were quarrelling?” returned Roger gloomily.

“I heard you from the very end of the street,” said my husband.

“That’s not so far,” said Roger; for indeed one house, with, I confess, a good space of garden on each side of it, and the end of another house, finished the street. But notwithstanding the shortness of the distance it stung me to the quick. Here had I been regarding, not even with contempt, only with disgust, the quarrel in which Miss Clare was mixed up; and half an hour after, my own voice was heard in dispute with my husband’s brother from the end of the street in which we lived! I felt humiliated, and did not rush down the remaining half of the steps to implore my husband’s protection against Roger’s crossness.

“Too far to hear a wife and a brother, though,” returned Percivale jocosely.

“Go on,” said Roger; “pray go on. Let dogs delight comes next. I beg Mrs. Percivale’s pardon. I will amend the quotation: ‘Let dogs delight to worry’”—

“Cats,” I exclaimed; and rushing down the steps, I kissed Roger before I kissed my husband.

“I meant—I mean—I was going to say lambs.”

“Now, Roger, don’t add to your vices flattery and”—

“And fibbing,” he subjoined.

“I didn’t say so.”

“You only meant it.”

“Don’t begin again,” interposed Percivale: “Come in, and refer the cause in dispute to me.”

We did go in, and we did refer the matter to him. By the time we had between us told him the facts of the case, however, the point in dispute between us appeared to have grown hazy, the fact being that neither of us cared to say any thing more about it. Percivale insisted that there was no question before the court. At length Roger, turning from me to his brother, said,—

“It’s not worth mentioning, Charley; but what led to our irreconcilable quarrel was this: I thought Wynnie might have accepted Miss Clare’s invitation to walk in and pay her a visit; and Wynnie thought me, I suppose, too ready to sacrifice her dignity to the pleasure of seeing a little more of the object of our altercation. There!”

My husband turned to me and said,—

“Mrs. Percivale, do you accept this as a correct representation of your difference?”

“Well,” I answered, hesitating—“yes, on the whole. All I object to is the word dignity.”

“I retract it,” cried Roger, “and accept any substitute you prefer.”

“Let it stand,” I returned. “It will do as well as a better. I only wish to say that it was not exactly my dignity”—

“No, no; your sense of propriety,” said my husband; and then sat silent for a minute or two, pondering like a judge. At length he spoke:—

“Wife,” he said, “you might have gone with your brother, I think; but I quite understand your disinclination. At the same time, a more generous judgment of Miss Clare might have prevented any difference of feeling in the matter.”

“But,” I said, greatly inclined to cry, “I only postponed my judgment concerning her.”

And I only postponed my crying, for I was very much ashamed of myself.

 

CHAPTER XVII.

MISS CLARE.

 

Of course my husband and I talked a good deal more about what I ought to have done; and I saw clearly enough that I ought to have run any risk there might be in accepting her invitation. I had been foolishly taking more care of myself than was necessary. I told him I would write to Roger, and ask him when he could take me there again.

“I will tell you a better plan,” he said. “I will go with you myself. And that will get rid of half the awkwardness there would be if you went with Roger, after having with him refused to go in.”

“But would that be fair to Roger? She would think I didn’t like going with him, and I would go with Roger anywhere. It was I who did not want to go. He did.”

“My plan, however, will pave the way for a full explanation—or confession rather, I suppose it will turn out to be. I know you are burning to make it, with your mania for confessing your faults.”

I knew he did not like me the worse for that mania, though.

“The next time,” he added, “you can go with Roger, always supposing you should feel inclined to continue the acquaintance, and then you will be able to set him right in her eyes.”

The plan seemed unobjectionable. But just then Percivale was very busy; and I being almost as much occupied with my baby as he was with his, day after day and week after week passed, during which our duty to Miss Clare was, I will not say either forgotten or neglected, but unfulfilled.

One afternoon I was surprised by a visit from my father. He not unfrequently surprised us.

“Why didn’t you let us know, papa?” I said. “A surprise is very nice; but an expectation is much nicer, and lasts so much longer.”

“I might have disappointed you.”

“Even if you had, I should have already enjoyed the expectation. That would be safe.”

“There’s a good deal to be said in excuse of surprises,” he rejoined; “but in the present case, I have a special one to offer. I was taken with a sudden desire to see you. It was very foolish no doubt, and you are quite right in wishing I weren’t here, only going to come to-morrow.”

“Don’t be so cruel, papa. Scarcely a day passes in which I do not long to see you. My baby makes me think more about my home than ever.”

“Then she’s a very healthy baby, if one may judge by her influences. But you know, if I had had to give you warning, I could not have been here before to-morrow; and surely you will acknowledge, that, however nice expectation may be, presence is better.”

“Yes, papa. We will make a compromise, if you please. Every time you think of coming to me, you must either come at once, or let me know you are coming. Do you agree to that?”

“I agree,” he said.

So I have the pleasure of a constant expectation. Any day he may walk in unheralded; or by any post I may receive a letter with the news that he is coming at such a time.

As we sat at dinner that evening, he asked if we had lately seen Miss Clare.

“I’ve seen her only once, and Percivale not at all, since you were here last, papa,” I answered.

“How’s that?” he asked again, a little surprised. “Haven’t you got her address yet? I want very much to know more of her.”

“So do we. I haven’t got her address, but I know where she lives.”

“What do you mean, Wynnie? Has she taken to dark sayings of late, Percivale?”

I told him the whole story of my adventure with Roger, and the reports Judy had prejudiced my judgment withal. He heard me through in silence, for it was a rule with him never to interrupt a narrator. He used to say, “You will generally get at more, and in a better fashion, if you let any narrative take its own devious course, without the interruption of requested explanations. By the time it is over, you will find the questions you wanted to ask mostly vanished.”

“Describe the place to me, Wynnie,” he said, when I had ended. “I must go and see her. I have a suspicion, amounting almost to a conviction, that she is one whose acquaintance ought to be cultivated at any cost. There is some grand explanation of all this contradictory strangeness.”

“I don’t think I could describe the place to you so that you would find it. But if Percivale wouldn’t mind my going with you instead of with him, I should be only too happy to accompany you. May I, Percivale?”

“Certainly. It will do just as well to go with your father as with me. I only stipulate, that, if you are both satisfied, you take Roger with you next time.”

“Of course I will.”

“Then we’ll go to-morrow morning,” said my father.

“I don’t think she is likely to be at home in the morning,” I said. “She goes out giving lessons, you know; and the probability is, that at that time we should not find her.”

“Then why not to-night?” he rejoined.

“Why not, if you wish it?”

“I do wish it, then.”

“If you knew the place, though, I think you would prefer going a little earlier than we can to-night.”

“Ah, well! we will go to-morrow evening. We could dine early, couldn’t we?”

So it was arranged. My father went about some business in the morning. We dined early, and set out about six o’clock.

My father was getting an old man, and if any protection had been required, he could not have been half so active as Roger; and yet I felt twice as safe with him. I am satisfied that the deepest sense of safety, even in respect of physical dangers, can spring only from moral causes; neither do you half so much fear evil happening to you, as fear evil happening which ought not to happen to you. I believe what made me so courageous was the undeveloped fore-feeling, that, if any evil should overtake me in my father’s company, I should not care; it would be all right then, anyhow. The repose was in my father himself, and neither in his strength nor his wisdom. The former might fail, the latter might mistake; but so long as I was with him in what I did, no harm worth counting harm could come to me,—only such as I should neither lament nor feel. Scarcely a shadow of danger, however, showed itself.

It was a cold evening in the middle of November. The light, which had been scanty enough all day, had vanished in a thin penetrating fog. Round every lamp in the street was a colored halo; the gay shops gleamed like jewel-caverns of Aladdin hollowed out of the darkness; and the people that hurried or sauntered along looked inscrutable. Where could they live? Had they anybody to