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

for him, was soon apparent; for his favorite Amy began to pine more rapidly, and Judy saw, that, except some change speedily took place, they could not have her with them long. The father, however, refused to admit the idea that she was in danger. I suppose he felt as if, were he once to allow the possibility of losing her, from that moment there would be no stay between her and the grave: it would be a giving of her over to death. But whatever Dr. Brand suggested was eagerly followed. When the chills of autumn drew near, her mother took her to Ventnor; but little change followed, and before the new year she was gone. It was the first death, beyond that of an infant, they had had in their family, and took place at a time when the pressure of business obligations rendered it impossible for her father to be out of London: he could only go to lay her in the earth, and bring back his wife. Judy had never seen him weep before. Certainly I never saw such a change in a man. He was literally bowed with grief, as if he bore a material burden on his back. The best feelings of his nature, unimpeded by any jar to his self-importance or his prejudices, had been able to spend themselves on the lovely little creature; and I do not believe any other suffering than the loss of such a child could have brought into play that in him which was purely human.

He was at home one morning, ill for the first time in his life, when Marion called on Judy. While she waited in the drawing-room, he entered. He turned the moment he saw her, but had not taken two steps towards the door, when he turned again, and approached her. She went to meet him. He held out his hand.

“She was very fond of you, Miss Clare,” he said. “She was talking about you the very last time I saw her. Let by-gones be by-gones between us.”

“I was very rough and rude to you, Mr. Morley, and I am very sorry,” said Marion.

“But you spoke the truth,” he rejoined. “I thought I was above being spoken to like a sinner, but I don’t know now why not.”

He sat down on a couch, and leaned his head on his hand. Marion took a chair near him, but could not speak.

“It is very hard,” he murmured at length.

“Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” said Marion.

“That may be true in some cases, but I have no right to believe it applies to me. He loved the child, I would fain believe; for I dare not think of her either as having ceased to be, or as alone in the world to which she has gone. You do think, Miss Clare, do you not, that we shall know our friends in another world?”

“I believe,” answered Marion, “that God sent you that child for the express purpose of enticing you back to himself; and, if I believe any thing at all, I believe that the gifts of God are without repentance.”

Whether or not he understood her she could not tell, for at this point Judy came in. Seeing them together she would have withdrawn again; but her husband called her, with more tenderness in his voice than Marion could have imagined belonging to it.

“Come, my dear. Miss Clare and I were talking about our little angel. I didn’t think ever to speak of her again, but I fear I am growing foolish. All the strength is out of me; and I feel so tired,—so weary of every thing!”

She sat down beside him, and took his hand. Marion crept away to the children. An hour after, Judy found her in the nursery, with the youngest on her knee, and the rest all about her. She was telling them that we were sent into this world to learn to be good, and then go back to God from whom we came, like little Amy.

“When I go out to-mowwow,” said one little fellow, about four years old, “I’ll look up into the sky vewy hard, wight up; and then I shall see Amy, and God saying to her, ‘Hushaby, poo’ Amy! You bette’ now, Amy?’ Sha’n’t I, Mawion?”

She had taught them to call her Marion.

“No, my pet: you might look and look, all day long, and every day, and never see God or Amy.”

“Then they ain’t there!” he exclaimed indignantly.

“God is there, anyhow,” she answered; “only you can’t see him that way.”

“I don’t care about seeing God,” said the next elder: “it’s Amy I want to see. Do tell me, Marion, how we are to see Amy. It’s too bad if we’re never to see her again; and I don’t think it’s fair.”

“I will tell you the only way I know. When Jesus was in the world, he told us that all who had clean hearts should see God. That’s how Jesus himself saw God.”

“It’s Amy, I tell you, Marion—it’s not God I want to see,” insisted the one who had last spoken.

“Well, my dear, but how can you see Amy if you can’t even see God? If Amy be in God’s arms, the first thing, in order to find her, is to find God. To be good is the only way to get near to anybody. When you’re naughty, Willie, you can’t get near your mamma, can you?”

“Yes, I can. I can get close up to her.”

“Is that near enough? Would you be quite content with that? Even when she turns away her face and won’t look at you?”

The little caviller was silent.

“Did you ever see God, Marion?” asked one of the girls.

She thought for a moment before giving an answer. “No,” she said. “I’ve seen things just after he had done them; and I think I’ve heard him speak to me; but I’ve never seen him yet.”

“Then you’re not good, Marion,” said the free-thinker of the group.

“No: that’s just it. But I hope to be good some day, and then I shall see him.”

“How do you grow good, Marion?” asked the girl.

“God is always trying to make me good,” she answered; “and I try not to interfere with him.”

“But sometimes you forget, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And what do you do then?”

“Then I’m sorry and unhappy, and begin to try again.”

“And God don’t mind much, does he?”

“He minds very much until I mind; but after that he forgets it all,—takes all my naughtiness and throws it behind his back, and won’t look at it.”

“That’s very good of God,” said the reasoner, but with such a self-satisfied air in his approval, that Marion thought it time to stop.

She came straight to me, and told me, with a face perfectly radiant, of the alteration in Mr. Morley’s behavior to her, and, what was of much more consequence, the evident change that had begun to be wrought in him.

I am not prepared to say that he has, as yet, shown a very shining light, but that some change has passed is evident in the whole man of him. I think the eternal wind must now be able to get in through some chink or other which the loss of his child has left behind. And, if the change were not going on, surely he would ere now have returned to his wallowing in the mire of Mammon; for his former fortune is, I understand, all but restored to him.

I fancy his growth in goodness might be known and measured by his progress in appreciating Marion. He still regards her as extreme in her notions; but it is curious to see how, as they gradually sink into his understanding, he comes to adopt them as, and even to mistake them for, his own.

 

CHAPTER XXIX.

A STRANGE TEXT.

 

For some time after the events last related, things went on pretty smoothly with us for several years. Indeed, although I must confess that what I said in my haste, when Mr. S. wanted me to write this book, namely, that nothing had ever happened to me worth telling, was by no means correct, and that I have found out my mistake in the process of writing it; yet, on the other hand, it must be granted that my story could never have reached the mere bulk required if I had not largely drawn upon the history of my friends to supplement my own. And it needs no prophetic gift to foresee that it will be the same to the end of the book. The lives of these friends, however, have had so much to do with all that is most precious to me in our own life, that, if I were to leave out only all that did not immediately touch upon the latter, the book, whatever it might appear to others, could not possibly then appear to myself any thing like a real representation of my actual life and experiences. The drawing might be correct,—but the color?

What with my children, and the increase of social duty resulting from the growth of acquaintance,—occasioned in part by my success in persuading Percivale to mingle a little more with his fellow-painters,—my heart and mind and hands were all pretty fully occupied; but I still managed to see Marion two or three times a week, and to spend about so many hours with her, sometimes alone, sometimes with her friends as well. Her society did much to keep my heart open, and to prevent it from becoming selfishly absorbed in its cares for husband and children. For love which is only concentrating its force, that is, which is not at the same time widening its circle, is itself doomed, and for its objects ruinous, be those objects ever so sacred. God himself could never be content that his children should love him only; nor has he allowed the few to succeed who have tried after it: perhaps their divinest success has been their most mortifying failure. Indeed, for exclusive love sharp suffering is often sent as the needful cure,—needful to break the stony crust, which, in the name of love for one’s own, gathers about the divinely glowing core; a crust which, promising to cherish by keeping in the heat, would yet gradually thicken until all was crust; for truly, in things of the heart and spirit, as the warmth ceases to spread, the molten mass within ceases to glow, until at length, but for the divine care and discipline, there would be no love left for even spouse or child, only for self,—which is eternal death.

For some time I had seen a considerable change in Roger. It reached even to his dress. Hitherto, when got up for dinner, he was what I was astonished to hear my eldest boy, the other day, call “a howling swell;” but at other times he did not even escape remark,—not for the oddity merely, but the slovenliness of his attire. He had worn, for more years than I dare guess, a brown coat, of some rich-looking stuff, whose long pile was stuck together in many places with spots and dabs of paint, so that he looked like our long-haired Bedlington terrier Fido, towards the end of the week in muddy weather. This was now discarded; so far at least, as to be hung up in his brother’s study, to be at hand when he did any thing for him there, and replaced by a more civilized garment of tweed, of which he actually showed himself a little careful: while, if his necktie was red, it was of a very deep and rich red, and he had seldom worn one at all before; and