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

reproach to say that her soul was too big for her body. She had been early ripened by the hot sun of suffering, and the self-restraint which pain had taught her. Patience had mossed her over and made her warm and soft and sweet. She never looked for attention, but accepted all that was offered with a smile which seemed to say, “It is more than I need, but you are so good I mustn’t spoil it.” She was not confined to her sofa now, though she needed to lie down often, but could walk about pretty well, only you must give her time. You could always make her merry by saying she walked like an old woman; and it was the only way we could get rid of the sadness of seeing it. We betook ourselves to her to laugh her sadness away from us.

Once, as I lay on a couch on the lawn, she came towards me carrying a bunch of grapes from the greenhouse,—a great bunch, each individual grape ready to burst with the sunlight it had bottled up in its swollen purple skin.

“They are too heavy for you, old lady,” I cried.

“Yes; I am an old lady,” she answered. “Think what good use of my time I have made compared with you! I have got ever so far before you: I’ve nearly forgotten how to walk!”

The tears gathered in my eyes as she left me with the bunch; for how could one help being sad to think of the time when she used to bound like a fawn over the grass, her slender figure borne like a feather on its own slight yet firm muscles, which used to knot so much harder than any of ours. She turned to say something, and, perceiving my emotion, came slowly back.

“Dear Wynnie,” she said, “you wouldn’t have me back with my old foolishness, would you? Believe me, life is ten times more precious than it was before. I feel and enjoy and love so much more! I don’t know how often I thank God for what befell me.”

I could only smile an answer, unable to speak, not now from pity, but from shame of my own petulant restlessness and impatient helplessness.

I believe she had a special affection for poor Sprite, the pony which threw her,—special, I mean, since the accident,—regarding him as in some sense the angel which had driven her out of paradise into a better world. If ever he got loose, and Connie was anywhere about, he was sure to find her: he was an omnivorous animal, and she had always something he would eat when his favorite apples were unattainable. More than once she had been roused from her sleep on the lawn by the lips and the breath of Sprite upon her face; but, although one painful sign of her weakness was, that she started at the least noise or sudden discovery of a presence, she never started at the most unexpected intrusion of Sprite, any more than at the voice of my father or mother. Need I say there was one more whose voice or presence never startled her?

The relation between them was lovely to see. Turner was a fine, healthy, broad-shouldered fellow, of bold carriage and frank manners, above the middle height, with rather large features, keen black eyes, and great personal strength. Yet to such a man, poor little wan-faced, big-eyed Connie assumed imperious airs, mostly, but perhaps not entirely, for the fun of it; while he looked only enchanted every time she honored him with a little tyranny.

“There! I’m tired,” she would say, holding out her arms like a baby. “Carry me in.”

And the great strong man would stoop with a worshipping look in his eyes, and, taking her carefully, would carry her in as lightly and gently and steadily as if she had been but the baby whose manners she had for the moment assumed. This began, of course, when she was unable to walk; but it did not stop then, for she would occasionally tell him to carry her after she was quite capable of crawling at least. They had now been engaged for some months; and before me, as a newly-married woman, they did not mind talking a little.

One day she was lying on a rug on the lawn, with him on the grass beside her, leaning on his elbow, and looking down into her sky-like eyes. She lifted her hand, and stroked his mustache with a forefinger, while he kept as still as a statue, or one who fears to scare the bird that is picking up the crumbs at his feet.

“Poor, poor man!” she said; and from the tone I knew the tears had begun to gather in those eyes.

“Why do you pity me, Connie?” he asked.

“Because you will have such a wretched little creature for a wife some day,—or perhaps never,—which would be best after all.”

He answered cheerily.

“If you will kindly allow me my choice, I prefer just such a wretched little creature to any one else in the world.”

“And why, pray? Give a good reason, and I will forgive your bad taste.”

“Because she won’t be able to hurt me much when she beats me.”

“A better reason, or she will.”

“Because I can punish her if she isn’t good by taking her up in my arms, and carrying her about until she gives in.”

“A better reason, or I shall be naughty directly.”

“Because I shall always know where to find her.”

“Ah, yes! she must leave you to find her. But that’s a silly reason. If you don’t give me a better, I’ll get up and walk into the house.”

“Because there won’t be any waste of me. Will that do?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, with mock imperiousness.

“I mean that I shall be able to lay not only my heart but my brute strength at her feet. I shall be allowed to be her beast of burden, to carry her whither she would; and so with my body her to worship more than most husbands have a chance of worshipping their wives.”

“There! take me, take me!” she said, stretching up her arms to him. “How good you are! I don’t deserve such a great man one bit. But I will love him. Take me directly; for there’s Wynnie listening to every word we say to each other, and laughing at us. She can laugh without looking like it.”

The fact is, I was crying, and the creature knew it. Turner brought her to me, and held her down for me to kiss; then carried her in to her mother.

I believe the county people round considered our family far gone on the inclined plane of degeneracy. First my mother, the heiress, had married a clergyman of no high family; then they had given their eldest daughter to a poor artist, something of the same standing as—well, I will be rude to no order of humanity, and therefore avoid comparisons; and now it was generally known that Connie was engaged to a country practitioner, a man who made up his own prescriptions. We talked and laughed over certain remarks of the kind that reached us, and compared our two with the gentlemen about us,—in no way to the advantage of any of the latter, you may be sure. It was silly work; but we were only two loving girls, with the best possible reasons for being proud of the men who had honored us with their love.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

CONNIE’S BABY.

 

It is time I told my readers something about the little Theodora. She was now nearly four years old I think,—a dark-skinned, lithe-limbed, wild little creature, very pretty,—at least most people said so, while others insisted that she had a common look. I admit she was not like a lady’s child—only one has seen ladies’ children look common enough; neither did she look like the child of working people—though amongst such, again, one sees sometimes a child the oldest family in England might be proud of. The fact is, she had a certain tinge of the savage about her, specially manifest in a certain furtive look of her black eyes, with which she seemed now and then to be measuring you, and her prospects in relation to you. I have seen the child of cultivated parents sit and stare at a stranger from her stool in the most persistent manner, never withdrawing her eyes, as if she would pierce to his soul, and understand by very force of insight whether he was or was not one to be honored with her confidence; and I have often seen the side-long glance of sly merriment, or loving shyness, or small coquetry; but I have never, in any other child, seen that look of self-protective speculation; and it used to make me uneasy, for of course, like every one else in the house, I loved the child. She was a wayward, often unmanageable creature, but affectionate,—sometimes after an insane, or, at least, very ape-like fashion. Every now and then she would take an unaccountable preference for some one of the family or household, at one time for the old housekeeper, at another for the stable-boy, at another for one of us; in which fits of partiality she would always turn a blind and deaf side upon every one else, actually seeming to imagine she showed the strength of her love to the one by the paraded exclusion of the others. I cannot tell how much of this was natural to her, and how much the result of the foolish and injurious jealousy of the servants. I say servants, because I know such an influencing was all but impossible in the family itself. If my father heard any one utter such a phrase as “Don’t you love me best?”—or, “better than” such a one? or, “Ain’t I your favorite?”—well, you all know my father, and know him really, for he never wrote a word he did not believe—but you would have been astonished, I venture to think, and perhaps at first bewildered as well, by the look of indignation flashed from his eyes. He was not the gentle, all-excusing man some readers, I know, fancy him from his writings. He was gentle even to tenderness when he had time to think a moment, and in any quiet judgment he always took as much the side of the offender as was possible with any likelihood of justice; but in the first moments of contact with what he thought bad in principle, and that in the smallest trifle, he would speak words that made even those who were not included in the condemnation tremble with sympathetic fear. “There, Harry, you take it—quick, or Charley will have it,” said the nurse one day, little thinking who overheard her. “Woman!” cried a voice of wrath from the corridor, “do you know what you are doing? Would you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourself?” An hour after, she was sent for to the study; and when she came out her eyes were very red. My father was unusually silent at dinner; and, after the younger ones were gone, he turned to my mother, and said, “Ethel, I spoke the truth. All that is of the Devil,—horribly bad; and yet I am more to blame in my condemnation of them than she for the words themselves. The thought of so polluting the mind of a child makes me fierce, and the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. The old Adam is only too glad to get a word in, if even in behalf of his supplanting successor.” Then he rose, and, taking my mother by the arm, walked away with her. I confess