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

the face of its deep. No humanity jarred with hers. In the presence of the most degraded, she felt God there. A face, even if besotted, was a face, only in virtue of being in the image of God. That a man was a man at all, must he because he was God’s. And this man was far indeed from being of the worst. With him beside her, she could pray with most of the good of having the door of her closet shut, and some of the good of the gathering together as well. Thus was love, as ever, the assimilator of the foreign, the harmonizer of the unlike; the builder of the temple in the desert, and of the chamber in the market-place.

As she sat and discoursed with herself, she perceived that the woman was as certainly suffering from ennui as any fine lady in Mayfair.

“Have you ever been to the National Gallery, Richard?” she asked, without turning her head, the moment she heard him move.

“No, grannie,” he answered with a yawn. “Don’a’ most know what sort of a place it be now. Waxwork, ain’t it?”

“No. It’s a great place full of pictures, many of them hundreds of years old. They’re taken care of by the Government, just for people to go and look at. Wouldn’t you like to go and see them some day?”

“Donno as I should much.”

“If I were to go with you, now, and explain some of them to you? I want you to take your wife and me out for a holiday. You can’t think, you who go out to your work every day, how tiresome it is to be in the house from morning to night, especially at this time of the year, when the sun’s shining, and the very sparrows trying to sing!”

“She may go out when she please, grannie. I ain’t no tyrant.”

“But she doesn’t care to go without you. You wouldn’t have her like one of those slatternly women you see standing at the corners, with their fists in their sides and their elbows sticking out, ready to talk to anybody that comes in the way.”

“My wife was never none o’ sich, grannie. I knows her as well’s e’er a one, though she do ‘ave a temper of her own.”

At this moment Eliza appeared in the doorway, saying,—

“Will ye come to yer supper, Dick? I ha’ got a slice o’ ham an’ a hot tater for ye. Come along.”

“Well, I don’t know as I mind—jest to please you, Liza. I believe I ha’ been asleep in grannie’s cheer there, her a playin’ an’ a singin’, I make no doubt, like a werry nightingerl, bless her, an’ me a snorin’ all to myself, like a runaway locomotive! Won’t you come and have a slice o’ the ‘am, an’ a tater, grannie? The more you ate, the less we’d grudge it.”

“I’m sure o’ that,” chimed in Eliza. “Do now, grannie; please do.”

“I will, with pleasure,” said Marion; and they went down together.

Eliza had got the table set out nicely, with a foaming jug of porter beside the ham and potatoes. Before they had finished, Marion had persuaded Richard to take his wife and her to the National Gallery, the next day but one, which, fortunately for her purpose, was Whit Monday, a day whereon Richard, who was from the north always took a holiday.

At the National Gallery, the house-painter, in virtue of his craft, claimed the exercise of criticism; and his remarks were amusing enough. He had more than once painted a sign-board for a country inn, which fact formed a bridge between the covering of square yards with color and the painting of pictures; and he naturally used the vantage-ground thus gained to enhance his importance with his wife and Miss Clare. He was rather a clever fellow too, though as little educated in any other direction than that of his calling as might well be.

All the woman seemed to care about in the pictures was this or that something which reminded her, often remotely enough I dare say, of her former life in the country. Towards the close of their visit, they approached a picture—one of Hobbima’s, I think—which at once riveted her attention.

“Look, look, Dick!” she cried. “There’s just such a cart as my father used to drive to the town in. Farmer White always sent him when the mistress wanted any thing and he didn’t care to go hisself. And, O Dick! there’s the very moral of the cottage we lived in! Ain’t it a love, now?”

“Nice enough,” Dick replied. “But it warn’t there I seed you, Liza. It wur at the big house where you was housemaid, you know. That’ll be it, I suppose,—away there like, over the trees.”

They turned and looked at each other, and Marion turned away. When she looked again, they were once more gazing at the picture, but close together, and hand in hand, like two children.

As they went home in the omnibus, the two averred they had never spent a happier holiday in their lives; and from that day to this no sign of their quarrelling has come to Marion’s knowledge. They are not only her regular attendants on Saturday evenings, but on Sunday evenings as well, when she holds a sort of conversation-sermon with her friends.

 

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MR. MORLEY.

 

As soon as my cousin Judy returned from Hastings, I called to see her, and found them all restored, except Amy, a child of between eight and nine. There was nothing very definite the matter with her, but she was white and thin, and looked wistful; the blue of her eyes had grown pale, and her fair locks had nearly lost the curl which had so well suited her rosy cheeks. She had been her father’s pride for her looks, and her mother’s for her sayings,—at once odd and simple. Judy that morning reminded me how, one night, when she was about three years old, some time after she had gone to bed, she had called her nurse, and insisted on her mother’s coming. Judy went, prepared to find her feverish; for there had been jam-making that day, and she feared she had been having more than the portion which on such an occasion fell to her share. When she reached the nursery, Amy begged to be taken up that she might say her prayers over again. Her mother objected; but the child insisting, in that pretty, petulant way which so pleased her father, she yielded, thinking she must have omitted some clause in her prayers, and be therefore troubled in her conscience. Amy accordingly kneeled by the bedside in her night-gown, and, having gone over all her petitions from beginning to end, paused a moment before the final word, and inserted the following special and peculiar request: “And, p’ease God, give me some more jam to-morrow-day, for ever and ever. Amen.”

I remember my father being quite troubled when he heard that the child had been rebuked for offering what was probably her very first genuine prayer. The rebuke, however, had little effect on the equanimity of the petitioner, for she was fast asleep a moment after it.

“There is one thing that puzzles and annoys me,” said Judy. “I can’t think what it means. My husband tells me that Miss Clare was so rude to him, the day before we left for Hastings, that he would rather not be aware of it any time she is in the house. Those were his very words. ‘I will not interfere with your doing as you think proper,’ he said, ‘seeing you consider yourself under such obligation to her; and I should be sorry to deprive her of the advantage of giving lessons in a house like this; but I wish you to be careful that the girls do not copy her manners. She has not by any means escaped the influence of the company she keeps.’ I was utterly astonished, you may well think; but I could get no further explanation from him. He only said that when I wished to have her society of an evening, I must let him know, because he would then dine at his club. Not knowing the grounds of his offence, there was little other argument I could use than the reiteration of my certainty that he must have misunderstood her. ‘Not in the least,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt she is to you every thing amiable; but she has taken some unaccountable aversion to me, and loses no opportunity of showing it. And I don’t think I deserve it.’ I told him I was so sure he did not deserve it, that I must believe there was some mistake. But he only shook his head and raised his newspaper. You must help me, little coz.”

“How am I to help you, Judy dear?” I returned. “I can’t interfere between husband and wife, you know. If I dared such a thing, he would quarrel with me too—and rightly.”

“No, no,” she returned, laughing: “I don’t want your intercession. I only want you to find out from Miss Clare whether she knows how she has so mortally offended my husband. I believe she knows nothing about it. She has a rather abrupt manner sometimes, you know; but then my husband is not so silly as to have taken such deep offence at that. Help me, now—there’s a dear!”

I promised I would, and hence came the story I have already given. But Marion was so distressed at the result of her words, and so anxious that Judy should not he hurt, that she begged me, if I could manage it without a breach of verity, to avoid disclosing the matter; especially seeing Mr. Morley himself judged it too heinous to impart to his wife.

How to manage it I could not think. But at length we arranged it between us. I told Judy that Marion confessed to having said something which had offended Mr. Morley; that she was very sorry, and hoped she need not say that such had not been her intention, but that, as Mr. Morley evidently preferred what had passed between them to remain unmentioned, to disclose it would be merely to swell the mischief. It would be better for them all, she requested me to say, that she should give up her lessons for the present; and therefore she hoped Mrs. Morley would excuse her. When I gave the message, Judy cried, and said nothing. When the children heard that Marion was not coming for a while, Amy cried, the other girls looked very grave, and the boys protested.

I have already mentioned that the fault I most disliked in those children was their incapacity for being petted. Something of it still remains; but of late I have remarked a considerable improvement in this respect. They have not only grown in kindness, but in the gift of receiving kindness. I cannot but attribute this, in chief measure, to their illness and the lovely nursing of Marion. They do not yet go to their mother for petting, and from myself will only endure it; but they are eager after such crumbs as Marion, by no means lavish of it, will vouchsafe them.

Judy insisted that I should let Mr. Morley hear Marion’s message.

“But the message is not to Mr. Morley,” I said. “Marion would never have thought of sending one to him.”

“But if I ask you to repeat it in his hearing, you will not refuse?”

To this I consented; but I fear she was disappointed in the result. Her husband only smiled sarcastically, drew in his chin, and showed himself a little more cheerful than usual.

One morning, about two months after, as I was sitting in the