Donal Grant, George MacDonald [classic novels for teens txt] 📗

yet. I should like to be a little better-to do something or other-I don't know what-first. I doubt if she would touch me now-with that small, firm hand she would catch hold of me with when I hurt her. By Jove, if she had been a man, she would have made her mark in the world! She had a will and a way with her! If it hadn't been that she loved me-me, do you hear, you dog!-though there's nobody left to care a worm-eaten nut about me, it makes me proud as Lucifer merely to think of it! I don't care if there's never another to love me to all eternity! I have been loved as never man was loved! All for my own sake, mind you! In the way of money I was no great catch; and for the rank, she never got any good of that, nor would if she had lived till I was earl; she had a conscience-which I never had-and would never have consented to be called countess. 'It will be no worse than passing for my wife now,' I would say. 'What's either but an appearance? What's any thing of all the damned humbug but appearance? One appearance is as good as another appearance!' She would only smile-smile fit to make a mule sad! And then when her baby was dying, and she wanted me to take her for a minute, and I wouldn't! She laid her down, and got what she wanted herself, and when she went to take the child again, the absurd little thing was-was-gone-dead, I mean gone dead, never to cry any more! There it lay motionless, like a lump of white clay. She looked at me-and never-in this world-smiled again!-nor cried either-all I could do to make her!"

The wretched man burst into tears, and the heart of Donal gave a leap for joy. Common as tears are, fall as they may for the foolishest things, they may yet be such as to cause joy in paradise. The man himself may not know why he weeps, and his tears yet indicate his turning on his road. The earl was as far from a good man as man well could be; there were millions of spiritual miles betwixt him and the image of God; he had wept it was hard to say at what-not at his own cruelty, not at his wife's suffering, not in pity of the little soul that went away at last out of no human embrace; himself least of all could have told why he wept; yet was that weeping some sign of contact between his human soul and the great human soul of God; it was the beginning of a possible communion with the Father of all! Surely God saw this, and knew the heart he had made-saw the flax smoking yet! He who will not let us out until we have paid the uttermost farthing, rejoices over the offer of the first golden grain.

Donal dropped on his knees and prayed:-

"O Father of us all!" he said, "in whose hands are these unruly hearts of ours, we cannot manage ourselves; we ruin our own selves; but in thee is our help found!"

Prayer went from him; he rose from his knees.

"Go on; go on; don't stop!" cried the earl. "He may hear you-who can tell!"

Donal went down on his knees again.

"O God!" he said, "thou knowest us, whether we speak to thee or not; take from this man his hardness of heart. Make him love thee."

There he stopped again. He could say no more.

"I can't pray, my lord," he said, rising. "I don't know why. It seems as if nothing I said meant anything. I will pray for you when I am alone."

"Are there so many devils about me that an honest fellow can't pray in my company?" cried the earl. "I will pray myself, in spite of the whole swarm of them, big and little!-O God, save me! I don't want to be damned. I will be good if thou wilt make me. I don't care about it myself, but thou canst do as thou pleasest. It would be a fine thing if a rascal like me were to escape the devil through thy goodness after all. I'm worth nothing, but there's my wife! Pray, pray, Lord God, let me one day see my wife again!-For Christ's sake-ain't that the way, Grant?-Amen."

Donal had dropped on his knees once more when the earl began to pray. He uttered a hearty Amen. The earl turned sharply towards him, and saw he was weeping. He put out his hand to him, and said,

"You'll stand my friend, Grant?"


CHAPTER LXXX.

AWAY-FARING.

Suddenly what strength lady Arctura had, gave way, and she began to sink. But it was spring with the summer at hand; they hoped she would recover sufficiently to be removed to a fitter climate. She did not herself think so. She had hardly a doubt that her time was come. She was calm, often cheerful, but her spirits were variable. Donal's heart was sorer than he had thought it could be again.

One day, having been reading a little to her, he sat looking at her. He did not know how sad was the expression of his countenance. She looked up, smiled, and said,

"You think I am unhappy!-you could not look at me like that if you did not think so! I am only tired; I am not unhappy. I hardly know now what unhappiness is! If ever I look as if I were unhappy, it is only that I am waiting for more life. It is on the way; I feel it is, because I am so content with everything; I would have nothing other than it is. It is very hard for God that his children will not trust him to do with them what he pleases! I am sure, Mr. Grant, the world is all wrong, and on the way to be all wondrously right. It will cost God much labour yet: we will cost him as little as we can-won't we?-Oh, Mr. Grant, if it hadn't been for you, God would have been far away still! For a God I should have had something half an idol, half a commonplace tyrant! I should never have dreamed of the glory of God!"

"No, my lady!" returned Donal; "if God had not sent me, he would have sent somebody else; you were ready!"

"I am very glad he sent you! I should never have loved any other so much!"

Donal's eyes filled with tears. He was simple as a child. No male vanity, no self-exultation that a woman should love him, and tell him she loved him, sprang up in his heart. He knew she loved him; he loved her; all was so natural it could not be otherwise: he never presumed to imagine her once thinking of him as he had thought of Ginevra. He was her servant, willing and loving as any angel of God: that was all-and enough!

"You are not vexed with your pupil-are you?" she resumed, again looking up in his face, this time with a rosy flush on her own.

"Why?" said Donal, with wonder.

"For speaking so to my master."

"Angry because you love me?"

"No, of course!" she responded, at once satisfied. "You knew that must be! How could I but love you-better than any one else in the world! You have given me life! I was dead.-You have been like another father to me!" she added, with a smile of heavenly tenderness. "But I could not have spoken to you like this, if I had not known I was dying."

The word shot a sting as of fire through Donal's heart.

"You are always a child, Mr. Grant," she went on; "death is making a child of me; it makes us all children: as if we were two little children together, I tell you I love you.-Don't look like that," she continued; "you must not forget what you have been teaching me all this time-that the will of God, the perfect God, is all in all! He is not a God far off: to know that is enough to have lived for! You have taught me that, and I love you with a true heart fervently."

Donal could not speak. He knew she was dying.

"Mr. Grant," she began again, "my soul is open to his eyes, and is not ashamed. I know I am going to do what would by the world be counted unwomanly; but you and I stand before our Father, not before the world. I ask you in plain words, knowing that if you cannot do as I ask you willingly, you will not do it. And be sure I shall plainly be dying before I claim the fulfilment of your promise if you give it. I do not want your answer all at once: you must think about it."

Here she paused a while, then said,

"I want you to marry me, if you will, before I go."

Donal could not yet speak. His soul was in a tumult of emotion.

"I am tired," she said. "Please go and think it over. If you say no, I shall only say, 'He knows best what is best!' I shall not be ashamed. Only you must not once think what the world would say: of all people we have nothing to do with the world! We have nothing to do but with God and love! If he be pleased with us, we can afford to smile at what his silly children think of us: they mind only what their vulgar nurses say, not what their perfect father says: we need not mind them-need we?-I wonder at myself," she went on, for Donal did not utter a word, "for being able to speak like this; but then I have been thinking of it for a long time-chiefly as I lie awake. I am never afraid now-not though I lie awake all night: 'perfect love casteth out fear,' you know. I have God to love, and Jesus to love, and you to love, and my own father to love! When you know him, you will see how good a man can be without having been brought up like you!-Oh, Donal, do say something, or I shall cry, and crying kills me!"

She was sitting on a low chair, with the sunlight across her lap-for she was again in the sunny Garland-room-and the firelight on her face. Donal knelt gently down, and laid his hands in the sunlight on her lap, just as if he were going to say his prayers at his mother's knee. She laid both her hands on his.

"I have something to tell you," he said; "and then you must speak again."

"Tell me," said Arctura, with a little gasp.

"When I came here," said Donal, "I thought my heart so broken that it would never love-that way, I mean-any more. But I loved God better than ever: and as one I would fain help, I loved you from the very first. But I should have scorned myself had I once fancied you loved me more than just to do anything for me I needed done. When I saw you troubled, I longed to take you up in my arms, and carry you like a lovely bird that had fallen from one of God's nests; but never once, my lady, did I think of your caring for my love: it was yours as a matter of course. I once asked a lady to kiss me-just once, for a good-bye: she would