The Vicar's Daughter - George MacDonald (read dune txt) 📗

I should have come in the end to say, “Thy will be done,” and to believe that it must be all right, however hard to bear. But, oh, what a terrible thing it would have been, and what a frightful valley of the shadow of death I should have had to go through first!

[I know my mother said nothing more just then, but let my father have it all his own way for a while.]

Father.—You see, this Percivale is an honest man. I don’t exactly know how he has been brought up; and it is quite possible he may have had such evil instruction in Christianity that he attributes to it doctrines which, if I supposed they actually belonged to it, would make me reject it at once as ungodlike and bad. I have found this the case sometimes. I remember once being astonished to hear a certain noble-minded lady utter some indignant words against what I considered a very weighty doctrine of Christianity; but, listening, I soon found that what she supposed the doctrine to contain was something considered vastly unchristian. This may be the case with Percivale, though I never heard him say a word of the kind. I think his difficulty comes mainly from seeing so much suffering in the world, that he cannot imagine the presence and rule of a good God, and therefore lies with religion rather than with Christianity as yet. I am all but certain, the only thing that will ever make him able to believe in a God at all is meditation on the Christian idea of God,—I mean the idea of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself,—not that pagan corruption of Christ in God reconciling him to the world. He will then see that suffering is not either wrath or neglect, but pure-hearted love and tenderness. But we must give him time, wife; as God has borne with us, we must believe that he bears with others, and so learn to wait in hopeful patience until they, too, see as we see.

And as to trusting our Wynnie with Percivale, he seems to be as good as she is. I should for my part have more apprehension in giving her to one who would be called a thoroughly religious man; for not only would the unfitness be greater, but such a man would be more likely to confirm her in doubt, if the phrase be permissible. She wants what some would call homoeopathic treatment. And how should they be able to love one another, if they are not fit to be married to each other? The fitness, seems inherent to the fact.

Mother.—But many a two love each other who would have loved each other a good deal more if they hadn’t been married.

Father.—Then it was most desirable they should find out that what they thought a grand affection was not worthy of the name. But I don’t think there is much fear of that between those two.

Mother.—I don’t, however, see how that man is to do her any good, when you have tried to make her happy for so long, and all in vain.

Father.—I don’t know that it has been all in vain. But it is quite possible she does not understand me. She fancies, I dare say, that I believe every thing without any trouble, and therefore cannot enter into her difficulties.

Mother.—But you have told her many and many a time that you do.

Father.—Yes: and I hope I was right; but the same things look so different to different people that the same words won’t describe them to both; and it may seem to her that I am talking of something not at all like what she is feeling or thinking of. But when she sees the troubled face of Percivale, she knows that he is suffering; and sympathy being thus established between them, the least word of the one will do more to help the other than oceans of argument. Love is the one great instructor. And each will try to be good, and to find out for the sake of the other.

Mother.—I don’t like her going from home for the help that lay at her very door.

Father.—You know, my dear, you like the Dean’s preaching much better than mine.

Mother.—Now, that is unkind of you!

Father.—And why? [My father went on, taking no heed of my mother’s expostulation.] Because, in the first place, it is better; because, in the second, it comes in a newer form to you, for you have got used to all my modes; in the third place, it has more force from the fact that it is not subject to the doubt of personal preference; and lastly, because he has a large, comprehensive way of asserting things, which pleases you better than my more dubitant mode of submitting them,—all very sound and good reasons: but still, why be so vexed with Wynnie?

[My mother was now, however, so vexed with my father for saying she preferred the Dean’s preaching to his,—although I doubt very much whether it wasn’t true,—that she actually walked out of the octagon room where they were, and left him to meditate on his unkindness. Vexed with herself the next moment, she returned as if nothing had happened. I am only telling what my mother told me; for to her grown daughters she is blessedly trusting.]

Mother.—Then if you will have them married, husband, will you say how on earth you expect them to live? He just makes both ends meet now: I suppose he doesn’t make things out worse than they are; and that is his own account of the state of his affairs.

Father.—Ah, yes! that is—a secondary consideration, my dear. But I have hardly begun to think about it yet. There will be a difficulty there, I can easily imagine; for he is far too independent to let us do any thing for him.

Mother.—And you can’t do much, if they would. Really, they oughtn’t to marry yet.

Father.—Really, we must leave it to themselves. I don’t think you and I need trouble our heads about it. When Percivale considers himself prepared to marry, and Wynnie thinks he is right, you may be sure they see their way to a livelihood without running in hopeless debt to their tradespeople.

Mother.—Oh, yes! I dare say: in some poky little lodging or other!

Father.—For my part, Ethelwyn, I think it better to build castles in the air than huts in the smoke. But seriously, a little poverty and a little struggling would be a most healthy and healing thing for Wynnie. It hasn’t done Percivale much good yet, I confess; for he is far too indifferent to his own comforts to mind it: but it will be quite another thing when he has a young wife and perhaps children depending upon him. Then his poverty may begin to hurt him, and so do him some good.

 

*

 

It may seem odd that my father and mother should now be taking such opposite sides to those they took when the question of our engagement was first started, as represented by my father in “The Seaboard Parish.” But it will seem inconsistent to none of the family; for it was no unusual thing for them to take opposite sides to those they had previously advocated,—each happening at the time, possibly enlightened by the foregone arguments of the other, to be impressed with the correlate truth, as my father calls the other side of a thing. Besides, engagement and marriage are two different things; and although my mother was the first to recognize the good of our being engaged, when it came to marriage she got frightened, I think. Any how, I have her authority for saying that something like this passed between her and my father on the subject.

Discussion between them differed in this from what I have generally heard between married people, that it was always founded on a tacit understanding of certain unmentioned principles; and no doubt sometimes, if a stranger had been present, he would have been bewildered as to the very meaning of what they were saying. But we girls generally understood: and I fancy we learned more from their differences than from their agreements; for of course it was the differences that brought out their minds most, and chiefly led us to think that we might understand. In our house there were very few of those mysteries which in some houses seem so to abound; and I think the openness with which every question, for whose concealment there was no special reason, was discussed, did more than even any direct instruction we received to develop what thinking faculty might be in us. Nor was there much reason to dread that my small brothers might repeat any thing. I remember hearing Harry say to Charley once, they being then eight and nine years old, “That is mamma’s opinion, Charley, not yours; and you know we must not repeat what we hear.”

They soon came to be of one mind about Mr. Percivale and me: for indeed the only real ground for doubt that had ever existed was, whether I was good enough for him; and for my part, I knew then and know now, that I was and am dreadfully inferior to him. And notwithstanding the tremendous work women are now making about their rights (and, in as far as they are their rights, I hope to goodness they may get them, if it were only that certain who make me feel ashamed of myself because I, too, am a woman, might perhaps then drop out of the public regard),—notwithstanding this, I venture the sweeping assertion, that every woman is not as good as every man, and that it is not necessary to the dignity of a wife that she should assert even equality with her husband. Let him assert her equality or superiority if he will; but, were it a fact, it would be a poor one for her to assert, seeing her glory is in her husband. To seek the chief place is especially unfitting the marriage-feast. Whether I be a Christian or not,—and I have good reason to doubt it every day of my life,—at least I see that in the New Jerusalem one essential of citizenship consists in knowing how to set the good in others over against the evil in ourselves.

There, now, my father might have said that! and no doubt has said so twenty times in my hearing. It is, however, only since I was married that I have come to see it for myself; and, now that I do see it, I have a right to say it.

So we were married at last. My mother believes it was my father’s good advice to Percivale concerning the sort of pictures he painted, that brought it about. For certainly soon after we were engaged, he began to have what his artist friends called a run of luck: he sold one picture after another in a very extraordinary and hopeful manner. But Percivale says it was his love for me—indeed he does—which enabled him to see not only much deeper into things, but also to see much better the bloom that hangs about every thing, and so to paint much better pictures than before. He felt, he said, that he had a hold now where before he had only a sight. However this may be, he had got on so well for a while that he wrote at last, that, if I was willing to share his poverty, it would not, he thought, be absolute starvation; and I was, of course, perfectly content. I can’t put in