Weighed and Wanting, George MacDonald [ebook reader android txt] 📗

book of photographs, chiefly portraits of the more famous actresses of the day, and told her about them. With one thing and another he kept her-until Sarah grew fidgety, and was on the point of stalking up from the kitchen to the drawing-room, when she heard them coming down. Cornelius took his hat and stick, and said he would walk with her. Amy made no objection; she was pleased to have his company; he went with her all the way to the lodging she shared with her friend in a quiet little street in Kensington. Before they parted, her manner and behavior, her sweetness, and the prettiness which would have been beauty had it been on a larger scale, had begun to fill what little there was of Corney's imagination; and he left her with a feeling that he knew where a treasure lay. He walked with an enlargement of strut as he went home through the park, and swung his cane with the air of a man who had made a conquest of which he had reason to be proud.


CHAPTER XXVI.

WAITING A PURPOSE.


The hot dreamy days rose and sank in Yrndale. Hester would wake in the morning oppressed with the feeling that there was something she ought to have begun long ago, and must positively set about this new day. Then as her inner day cleared, she would afresh recognize her duty as that of those who stand and wait. She had no great work to do-only the common family duties of the day, and her own education for what might be the will of Him who, having made her for something, would see that the possibility of that something should not be wanting. In the heat of the day she would seek a shady spot with a book for her companion-generally some favorite book, for she was not one of those who say of one book as of another-"Oh, I've read that!" It was some time before she came to like any particular spot: so many drew her, and the spirit of exploration in that which was her own was strong in her. Under the shadow of some rock, the tent-roof of some umbrageous beech, or the solemn gloom of some pine-grove, the brooding spirit of the summer would day after day find her when the sun was on the height of his great bridge, and fill her with the sense of that repose in which alone she herself can work. Then would such a quiescence pervade Hester's spirit, such a sweet spiritual sleep creep over her, that nothing seemed required of her but to live; mere existence was conscious well-being. But the feeling never lasted long. All at once would start awake in her the dread that she was forsaking the way, inasmuch as she was more willing to be idle, and rest in inaction. Then would faith rouse herself and say: "But God will take care of you in this thing too. You have not to watch lest He should forget, but to be ready when He gives you the lightest call. You have to keep listening." And the ever returning corrective to such mood came with the evening; for, regularly as she went to bed at night and left it in the morning, she went from the tea-table in the afternoon to her piano, and there, through all the sweet evening movements and atmospheric changes of the brain-for the brain has its morning and evening, its summer and winter as well as the day and the year-would meditate aloud, or brood aloud over the musical meditations of some master in harmony. And oftener than she knew, especially in the twilight, when the days had grown shorter, and his mother feared for him the falling dew, would Mark be somewhere in the dusk listening to her, a lurking cherub, feeding on her music-sometimes ascending on its upward torrent to a solitude where only God could find him.

At such time the thought of Vavasor would come, and for a while remain; but it was chiefly as one who would be a welcome helper in her work. When for the time she had had enough of music, softly as she would have covered a child, she would close her piano, then glide like a bat into the night, and wander hither and thither through the gloom without conscious choice. Then most would she think what it would be to have a man for a friend, one who would strengthen her heart and make her bold to do what was needful and right; and if then the thoughts of the maiden would fall to the natural architecture of maidens, and build one or two of the airy castles into which no man has looked or can look, and if through them went flitting the form of Vavasor, who will wonder! It is not the building of castles in the steepest heights of air that is to be blamed, but the building of such as inspector conscience is not invited to enter. To cherish the ideal of a man with whom to walk on her way through the world, is as right for a woman as it was for God to make them male and female; and to the wise virgin it will ever be a solemn thought, lovelily dwelt upon, and never mockingly, when most playfully handled. For there is a play even with most serious things that has in it no offense. Humor has its share even in religion-but oh, how few seem to understand its laws! I confess to a kind of foreboding shudder when even a clergyman begins to jest upon the borders of sacred things. It is not humor that is irreverent, but the mind that gives it the wrong turn. As we may be angry and not sin, so may we jest and not sin. But there is a poor ambition to be married, which is, I fear, the thought most present with too many young women. They feel as if their worth remained unacknowledged, as if there were for them no place they could call their own in society, until they find a man to take them under his wing. She degrades womanhood who thinks thus of herself. It says ill for the relation of father and mother if the young women of a family recoil from the thought of being married, but it says ill for the relation of parents and children if they are longing to be married.

One evening towards the end of July, when the summer is at its heat, and makes the world feel as if there never had been, and never ought to be anything but summer; and when the wind of its nights comes to us from the land where the sun is not, to tell human souls that, dear as is the sunlight to their eyes, there are sweeter things far with which the sun has little to do-Hester was sitting under a fir-tree on the gathered leaves of numberless years, pine-odors filling the air around her, as if they, too, stole out with the things of the night when the sun was gone. It happened that a man came late in the day to tune her piano, and she had left him at his work, and wandered up the hill in the last of the sunlight. All at once the wind awoke, and began to sing the strange, thin, monotonous Elysian ghost-song of the pine-wood-for she sat in a little grove of pines, and they were all around her. The sweet melancholy of the hour moved her spirit. So close was her heart to that of nature that, when alone with it, she seldom or never longed for her piano; she had the music, and did not need to hear it. When we are very near to God, we do not desire the Bible. When we feel far from him, we may well make haste to it. Most people, I fear, wait till they are inclined to seek him. They do not stir themselves up to lay hold on God; they breathe the dark airs of the tomb till the morning break, instead of rising at once and setting out on their journey to meet it.

As she sat in music-haunted reverie, she heard a slight rustle on the dry carpet around her feet, and the next moment saw dark in the gloom the form of a man. She was startled, but he spoke instantly; it was Vavasor. She was still, and could not answer for a moment.

"I am so sorry I frightened you!" he said.

"It is nothing," she returned. "Why can't one help being silly? I don't see why ladies should ever be frightened more than gentlemen."

"Men are quite as easily startled as ladies," he answered, "though perhaps they come to themselves a little quicker. Nothing is more startling than to find some one near when you thought you were alone."

"Except," said Hester, "finding yourself alone when you thought some one was near. But how did you find me?"

"They told me at the house you were somewhere in this direction. Mark had followed you apparently some distance. So I ventured to come and look for you, and-something led me right. But all the time I seem going to lose myself instead of finding you."

"It might be both," returned Hester; "for I don't at all know my way with certainty, especially in the dusk. We are on the shady side of the hill, you see."

"I cannot have lost myself if I have found you," rejoined Vavasor, but did not venture to carry the speech farther.

"It is time we were moving," said Hester, "seeing we are both so uncertain of the way. Who knows when we may reach the house!"

"Do let us risk it a few minutes longer," said Vavasor. "This is delicious. Just think a moment: this my first burst from the dungeon-land of London for a whole year! This is paradise! I could fancy I was dreaming of fairyland! But it is such an age since you left London, that I fear you must be getting used to it, and will scarcely understand my delight!"

"It is only the false fairyland of mechanical inventors," replied Hester, "that children ever get tired of. And yet I don't know," she added, correcting herself; "it is true the things that delight Saffy are a contempt to Mark; but I am sorry to say the things Mark delights in, Saffy says are so dull; there is hardly a giant in them!"

As they talked Vavasor had seated himself on the fir-spoil beside her. She asked him about his journey and about Cornelius; then told him how she came to be there instead of at her piano,

"The tuner must have finished by this time!" she said; "let us go and try his work!"

So saying she rose, and was on her feet before Vavasor. The way seemed to reveal itself to her as they went, and they were soon at home.

The next fortnight Vavasor spent at Yrndale. In those days Nature had the best chance with him she had yet had since first he came into her dominions. For a man is a man, however he may have been "dragged up," and however much injured he may be by the dragging. Society may have sought to substitute herself for both God and Nature, and may have had a horrible amount of success: the rout of Comus see no beast-faces among them. Yet, I repeat, man is potentially a man, however far he may be from actual manhood. What one man has, every man has, however hidden and unrecognizable. Who knows what may not sometimes be awakened in him! The