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

his brigand-looking felt hat was exchanged for one of half the altitude, which he did not crush on his head with quite as many indentations as its surface could hold. He also began to go to church with us sometimes.

But there was a greater and more significant change than any of these. We found that he was sticking more steadily to work. I can hardly say his work; for he was Jack-of-all-trades, as I have already indicated. He had a small income, left him by an old maiden aunt with whom he had been a favorite, which had hitherto seemed to do him nothing but harm, enabling him to alternate fits of comparative diligence with fits of positive idleness. I have said also, I believe, that, although he could do nothing thoroughly, application alone was wanted to enable him to distinguish himself in more than one thing. His forte was engraving on wood; and my husband said, that, if he could do so well with so little practice as he had had, he must be capable of becoming an admirable engraver. To our delight, then, we discovered, all at once, that he had been working steadily for three months for the Messrs. D–-, whose place was not far from our house. He had said nothing about it to his brother, probably from having good reason to fear that he would regard it only as a spurt. Having now, however, executed a block which greatly pleased himself, he had brought a proof impression to show Percivale; who, more pleased with it than even Roger himself, gave him a hearty congratulation, and told him it would be a shame if he did not bring his execution in that art to perfection; from which, judging by the present specimen, he said it could not be far off. The words brought into Roger’s face an expression of modest gratification which it rejoiced me to behold: he accepted Percivale’s approbation more like a son than a brother, with a humid glow in his eyes and hardly a word on his lips. It seemed to me that the child in his heart had begun to throw off the swaddling clothes which foolish manhood had wrapped around it, and the germ of his being was about to assert itself. I have seldom indeed seen Percivale look so pleased.

“Do me a dozen as good as that,” he said, “and I’ll have the proofs framed in silver gilt.”

It has been done; but the proofs had to wait longer for the frame than Percivale for the proofs.

But he need have held out no such bribe of brotherly love, for there was another love already at work in himself more than sufficing to the affair. But I check myself: who shall say what love is sufficing for this or for that? Who, with the most enduring and most passionate love his heart can hold, will venture to say that he could have done without the love of a brother? Who will say that he could have done without the love of the dog whose bones have lain mouldering in his garden for twenty years? It is enough to say that there was a more engrossing, a more marvellous love at work.

Roger always, however, took a half-holiday on Saturdays, and now generally came to us. On one of these occasions I said to him,—

“Wouldn’t you like to come and hear Marion play to her friends this evening, Roger?”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he answered; and we went.

It was delightful. In my opinion Marion is a real artist. I do not claim for her the higher art of origination, though I could claim for her a much higher faculty than the artistic itself. I suspect, for instance, that Moses was a greater man than the writer of the Book of Job, notwithstanding that the poet moves me so much more than the divine politician. Marion combined in a wonderful way the critical faculty with the artistic; which two, however much of the one may be found without the other, are mutually essential to the perfection of each. While she uttered from herself, she heard with her audience; while she played and sung with her own fingers and mouth, she at the same time listened with their ears, knowing what they must feel, as well as what she meant to utter. And hence it was, I think, that she came into such vital contact with them, even through her piano.

As we returned home, Roger said, after some remark of mine of a cognate sort,—

“Does she never try to teach them any thing, Ethel?”

“She is constantly teaching them, whether she tries or not,” I answered. “If you can make any one believe that there is something somewhere to be trusted, is not that the best lesson you can give him? That can be taught only by being such that people cannot but trust you.”

“I didn’t need to be told that,” he answered. “What I want to know is, whether or not she ever teaches them by word of mouth,—an ordinary and inferior mode, if you will.”

“If you had ever heard her, you would not call hers an ordinary or inferior mode,” I returned. “Her teaching is the outcome of her life, the blossom of her being, and therefore has the whole force of her living truth to back it.”

“Have I offended you, Ethel?” he asked.

Then I saw, that, in my eagerness to glorify my friend, I had made myself unpleasant to Roger,—a fault of which I had been dimly conscious before now. Marion would never have fallen into that error. She always made her friends feel that she was with them, side by side with them, and turning her face in the same direction, before she attempted to lead them farther.

I assured him that he had not offended me, but that I had been foolishly backing him from the front, as I once heard an Irishman say,—some of whose bulls were very good milch cows.

“She teaches them every Sunday evening,” I added.

“Have you ever heard her?”

“More than once. And I never heard any thing like it.”

“Could you take me with you some time?” he asked, in an assumed tone of ordinary interest, out of which, however, he could not keep a slight tremble.

“I don’t know. I don’t quite see why I shouldn’t. And yet”—

“Men do go,” urged Roger, as if it were a mere half-indifferent suggestion.

“Oh, yes! you would have plenty to keep you in countenance!” I returned,—“men enough—and worth teaching, too—some of them at least!”

“Then, I don’t see why she should object to me for another.”

“I don’t know that she would. You are not exactly of the sort, you know—that”—

“I don’t see the difference. I see no essential difference, at least. The main thing is, that I am in want of teaching, as much as any of them. And, if she stands on circumstances, I am a working-man as much as any of them—perhaps more than most of them. Few of them work after midnight, I should think, as I do, not unfrequently.”

“Still, all admitted, I should hardly like”—

“I didn’t mean you were to take me without asking her,” he said: “I should never have dreamed of that.”

“And if I were to ask her, I am certain she would refuse. But,” I added, thinking over the matter a little, “I will take you without asking her. Come with me to-morrow night. I don’t think she will have the heart to send you away.”

“I will,” he answered, with more gladness in his voice than he intended, I think, to manifest itself.

We arranged that he should call for me at a certain hour.

I told Percivale, and he pretended to grumble that I was taking Roger instead of him.

“It was Roger, and not you, that made the request,” I returned. “I can’t say I see why you should go because Roger asked. A woman’s logic is not equal to that.”

“I didn’t mean he wasn’t to go. But why shouldn’t I be done good to as well as he?”

“If you really want to go,” I said, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It’s ever so much better than going to any church I know of—except one. But we must be prudent. I can’t take more than one the first time. We must get the thin edge of the wedge in first.”

“And you count Roger the thin edge?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll tell him so.”

“Do. The thin edge, mind, without which the thicker the rest is the more useless! Tell him that if you like. But, seriously, I quite expect to take you there, too, the Sunday after.”

Roger and I went. Intending to be a little late, we found when we readied the house, that, as we had wished, the class was already begun. In going up the stairs, we saw very few of the grown inhabitants, but in several of the rooms, of which the doors stood open, elder girls taking care of the younger children; in one, a boy nursing the baby with as much interest as any girl could have shown. We lingered on the way, wishing to give Marion time to get so thoroughly into her work that she could take no notice of our intrusion. When we reached the last stair we could at length hear her voice, of which the first words we could distinguish, as we still ascended, were,—

“I will now read to you the chapter of which I spoke.”

The door being open, we could hear well enough, although she was sitting where we could not see her. We would not show ourselves until the reading was ended: so much, at least, we might overhear without offence.

Before she had read many words, Roger and I began to cast strange looks on each other. For this was the chapter she read:—

“And Joseph, wheresoever he went in the city, took the Lord Jesus with him, where he was sent for to work, to make gates, or milk-pails, or sieves, or boxes; the Lord Jesus was with him wheresoever he went. And as often as Joseph had any thing in his work to make longer or shorter, or wider or narrower, the Lord Jesus would stretch his hand towards it. And presently it became as Joseph would have it. So that he had no need to finish any thing with his own hands, for he was not very skilful at his carpenter’s trade.

“On a certain time the king of Jerusalem sent for him, and said, I would have thee make me a throne of the same dimensions with that place in which I commonly sit. Joseph obeyed, and forthwith began the work, and continued two years in the king’s palace before he finished. And when he came to fix it in its place, he found it wanted two spans on each side of the appointed measure. Which, when the king saw, he was very angry with Joseph; and Joseph, afraid of the king’s anger, went to bed without his supper, taking not any thing to eat. Then the Lord Jesus asked him what he was afraid of. Joseph replied, Because I have lost my labor in the work which I have been about these two years. Jesus said to him, Fear not, neither be cast down; do thou lay hold on one side of the throne, and I will the other, and we will bring it to its just dimensions. And when Joseph had done as the Lord Jesus said, and each of them had with strength drawn his side, the throne obeyed, and was brought to the proper dimensions of the place; which miracle when they who stood by saw, they were astonished, and praised God. The throne