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

In a few moments the room was empty of all but ourselves. The rush on the stairs was tremendous for a single minute, and then all was still. Even the children had rushed out to tell what other children they could find.

“What must we do next?” said my husband.

Miss Clare thought for a moment.

“I would go and tell Mr. Blackstone,” she said. “It is a long way from here, but whoever has taken the child would not be likely to linger in the neighborhood. It is best to try every thing.”

“Right,” said my husband. “Come, Wynnie.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to leave Mrs. Percivale with me?” said Miss Clare. “It is dreadfully fatiguing to go driving over the stones.”

It was very kind of her; but if she had been a mother she would not have thought of parting me from my husband; neither would she have fancied that I could remain inactive so long as it was possible even to imagine I was doing something; but when I told her how I felt, she saw at once that it would be better for me to go.

We set off instantly, and drove to Mr. Blackstone’s. What a long way it was! Down Oxford Street and Holborn we rattled and jolted, and then through many narrow ways in which I had never been, emerging at length in a broad road, with many poor and a few fine old houses in it; then again plunging into still more shabby regions of small houses, which, alas! were new, and yet wretched! At length, near an open space, where yet not a blade of grass could grow for the trampling of many feet, and for the smoke from tall chimneys, close by a gasometer of awful size, we found the parsonage, and Mr. Blackstone in his study. The moment he heard our story he went to the door and called his servant. “Run, Jabez,” he said, “and tell the sexton to ring the church-bell. I will come to him directly I hear it.”

I may just mention that Jabez and his wife, who formed the whole of Mr. Blackstone’s household, did not belong to his congregation, but were members of a small community in the neighborhood, calling themselves Peculiar Baptists.

About ten minutes passed, during which little was said: Mr. Blackstone never seemed to have any mode of expressing his feelings except action, and where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and my husband rose and would have followed him; but, saying he would be back in a few minutes, he shut the door and left us. It was half an hour, a dreadful half-hour, before he returned; for to sit doing nothing, not even being carried somewhere to do something, was frightful.

“I’ve told them all about it,” he said. “I couldn’t do better than follow Miss Clare’s example. But my impression is, that, if the woman you suspect be the culprit, she would make her way out to the open as quickly as possible. Such people are most at home on the commons: they are of a less gregarious nature than the wild animals of the town. What shall you do next?”

“That is just what I want to know,” answered my husband.

He never asked advice except when he did not know what to do; and never except from one whose advice he meant to follow.

“Well,” returned Mr. Blackstone, “I should put an advertisement into every one of the morning papers.”

“But the offices will all be closed,” said Percivale.

“Yes, the publishing, but not the printing offices.”

“How am I to find out where they are?”

“I know one or two of them, and the people there will tell us the rest.”

“Then you mean to go with us?”

“Of course I do,—that is, if you will have me. You don’t think I would leave you to go alone? Have you had any supper?”

“No. Would you like something, my dear?” said Percivale turning to me.

“I couldn’t swallow a mouthful,” I said.

“Nor I either,” said Percivale.

“Then I’ll just take a hunch of bread with me,” said Mr. Blackstone, “for I am hungry. I’ve had nothing since one o’clock.”

We neither asked him not to go, nor offered to wait till he had had his supper. Before we reached Printing-House Square he had eaten half a loaf.

“Are you sure,” said my husband, as we were starting, “that they will take an advertisement at the printing-office?”

“I think they will. The circumstances are pressing. They will see that we are honest people, and will make a push to help us. But for any thing I know it may be quite en r�gle.”

“We must pay, though,” said Percivale, putting his hand in his pocket, and taking out his purse. “There! Just as I feared! No money!—Two—three shillings—and sixpence!”

Mr. Blackstone stopped the cab.

“I’ve not got as much,” he said. “But it’s of no consequence. I’ll run and write a check.”

“But where can you change it? The little shops about here won’t be able.”

“There’s the Blue Posts.”

“Let me take it, then. You won’t be seen going into a public-house?” said Percivale.

“Pooh! pooh!” said Mr. Blackstone. “Do you think my character won’t stand that much? Besides, they wouldn’t change it for you. But when I think of it, I used the last check in my book in the beginning of the week. Never mind; they will lend me five pounds.”

We drove to the Blue Posts. He got out, and returned in one minute with five sovereigns.

“What will people say to your borrowing five pounds at a public-house?” said Percivale.

“If they say what is right, it won’t hurt me.”

“But if they say what is wrong?”

“That they can do any time, and that won’t hurt me, either.”

“But what will the landlord himself think?”

“I have no doubt he feels grateful to me for being so friendly. You can’t oblige a man more than by asking a light favor of him.”

“Do you think it well in your position to be obliged to a man in his?” asked Percivale.

“I do. I am glad of the chance. It will bring me into friendly relations with him.”

“Do you wish, then, to be in friendly relations with him?”

“Indubitably. In what other relations do you suppose a clergyman ought to be with one of his parishioners?”

“You didn’t invite him into your parish, I presume.”

“No; and he didn’t invite me. The thing was settled in higher quarters. There we are, anyhow; and I have done quite a stroke of business in borrowing that money of him.”

Mr. Blackstone laughed, and the laugh sounded frightfully harsh in my ears.

“A man”—my husband went on, who was surprised that a clergyman should be so liberal—“a man who sells drink!—in whose house so many of your parishioners will to-morrow night get too drunk to be in church the next morning!”

“I wish having been drunk were what would keep them from being in church. Drunk or sober, it would be all the same. Few of them care to go. They are turning out better, however, than when first I came. As for the publican, who knows what chance of doing him a good turn it may put in my way?”

“You don’t expect to persuade him to shut up shop?”

“No: he must persuade himself to that.”

“What good, then, can you expect to do him?”

“Who knows? I say. You can’t tell what good may or may not come out of it, any more than you can tell which of your efforts, or which of your helpers, may this night be the means of restoring your child.”

“What do you expect the man to say about it?”

“I shall provide him with something to say. I don’t want him to attribute it to some foolish charity. He might. In the New Testament, publicans are acknowledged to have hearts.”

“Yes; but the word has a very different meaning in the New Testament.”

“The feeling religious people bear towards them, however, comes very near to that with which society regarded the publicans of old.”

“They are far more hurtful to society than those tax-gatherers.”

“They may be. I dare say they are. Perhaps they are worse than the sinners with whom their namesakes of the New Testament are always coupled.”

I will not follow the conversation further. I will only give the close of it. Percivale told me afterwards that he had gone on talking in the hope of diverting my thoughts a little.

“What, then, do you mean to tell him?” asked Percivale.

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” said Mr. Blackstone. “I shall go in to-morrow morning, just at the time when there will probably he far too many people at the bar,—a little after noon. I shall return him his five sovereigns, ask for a glass of ale, and tell him the whole story,—how my friend, the celebrated painter, came with his wife,—and the rest of it, adding, I trust, that the child is all right, and at the moment probably going out for a walk with her mother, who won’t let her out of her sight for a moment.”

He laughed again, and again I thought him heartless; but I understand him better now. I wondered, too, that Percivale could go on talking, and yet I found that their talk did make the time go a little quicker. At length we reached the printing-office of “The Times,”—near Blackfriars’ Bridge, I think.

After some delay, we saw an overseer, who, curt enough at first, became friendly when he heard our case. If he had not had children of his own, we might perhaps have fared worse. He took down the description and address, and promised that the advertisement should appear in the morning’s paper in the best place he could now find for it.

Before we left, we received minute directions as to the whereabouts of the next nearest office. We spent the greater part of the night in driving from one printing-office to another. Mr. Blackstone declared he would not leave us until we had found her.

“You have to preach twice to-morrow,” said Percivale: it was then three o’clock.

“I shall preach all the better,” he returned. “Yes: I feel as if I should give them one good sermon to-morrow.”

“The man talks as if the child were found already!” I thought, with indignation. “It’s a pity he hasn’t a child of his own! he would be more sympathetic.” At the same time, if I had been honest, I should have confessed to myself that his confidence and hope helped to keep me up.

At last, having been to the printing-office of every daily paper in London, we were on our dreary way home.

Oh, how dreary it was!—and the more dreary that the cool, sweet light of a spring dawn was growing in every street, no smoke having yet begun to pour from the multitudinous chimneys to sully its purity! From misery and want of sleep, my soul and body both felt like a gray foggy night. Every now and then the thought of my child came with a fresh pang,—not that she was one moment absent from me, but that a new thought about her would dart a new sting into the ever-burning throb of the wound. If you had asked me