Adela Cathcart, Volume 2 by George MacDonald (best ebook reader for ubuntu txt) 📕

we reached our destination. When we were all safe in Mrs. Armstrong's drawing-room, we sat for a while listening to the wind roaring in the chimney, before any of us spoke. And then I did not join in the conversation, but pleased myself with looking at the room; for next to human faces, I delight in human abodes, which will always, more or less, according to the amount of choice vouchsafed in the occupancy, be like the creatures who dwell in them. Even the soldier-crab must have some likeness to the snail of whose house he takes possession, else he could not live in it at all.

The first thing to be done by one who would read a room is, to clear it as soon as possible of the air of the marvellous, the air of the storybook, which pervades every place at the first sight of it. But I am not now going to write a treatise upon this art, for which I have not time to invent a name; but only to give as much of a description of this room as will enable my readers to feel quite at home with us in it, during our evening there. It was a large low room, with two beams across the ceiling at unequal distances. There was only a drugget on the floor, and the window curtains were scanty. But there was a glorious fire on the hearth, and the tea-board was filled with splendid china, as old as the potteries. The chairs, I believe, had been brought from old Mr. Armstrong's lumber-room, and so they all looked as if they could tell stories themselves. At all events they were just the proper chairs to tell stories in, and I could not help regretting that we were not to have any to-night. The rest of the company had arrived before us. A warm corner in an old-fashioned sofa had been prepared for Adela, and as soon as she was settled in it, our hostess proceeded to pour out the tea with a simplicity and grace which showed that she had been just as much a lady when carrying parcels for the dressmaker, and would have been a lady if she had been a housemaid. Such a women are rare in every circle, the best of every kind being rare. It is very disappointing to the imaginative youth when, coming up to London and going into society, he finds that so few of the men and women he meets, come within the charmed circle of his ideal refinement.

I said to myself: "I am sure she could write a story if she would. I must have a try for one from her."

When tea was over, she looked at her husband, and then went to the piano, and sang the following ballad:

"'Traveller, what lies over the hill?
Traveller, tell to me:
I am only a child-from the window-sill
Over I cannot see.'

"'Child, there's a valley over there,
Pretty and woody and shy;
And a little brook that says-'take care,
Or I'll drown you by and by.'

"'And what comes next?' 'A little town;
And a towering hill again;
More hills and valleys, up and down,
And a river now and then.'

"'And what comes next?' 'A lonely moor,
Without a beaten way;
And grey clouds sailing slow, before
A wind that will not stay.'

"'And then?' 'Dark rocks and yellow sand,
And a moaning sea beside.'
'And then?' 'More sea, more sea more land,
And rivers deep and wide.'

"'And then?' 'Oh! rock and mountain and vale,
Rivers and fields and men;
Over and over-a weary tale-
And round to your home again.'

"'Is that the end? It is weary at best.'
'No, child; it is not the end.
On summer eves, away in the west,
You will see a stair ascend;

"'Built of all colours of lovely stones-
A stair up into the sky;
Where no one is weary, and no one moans,
Or wants to be laid by.'

"'I will go.' 'But the steps are very steep:
If you would climb up there,
You must lie at its foot, as still as sleep,
And be a step of the stair,

"'For others to put their feet on you,
To reach the stones high-piled;
Till Jesus comes and takes you too,
And leads you up, my child!'"


"That is one of your parables, I am sure, Ralph," said the doctor, who was sitting, quite at his ease, on a footstool, with his back against the wall, by the side of the fire opposite to Adela, casting every now and then a glance across the fiery gulf, just as he had done in church when I first saw him. And Percy was there to watch them, though, from some high words I overheard, I had judged that it was with difficulty his mother had prevailed on him to come. I could not help thinking myself, that two pairs of eyes met and parted rather oftener than any other two pairs in the room; but I could find nothing to object.

"Now, Miss Cathcart, it is your turn to sing."

"Would you mind singing another of Heine's songs?" said the doctor, as he offered his hand to lead her to the piano.

"No," she answered. "I will not sing one of that sort. It was not liked last time. Perhaps what I do sing won't be much better though.

"The waters are rising and flowing
Over the weedy stone-
Over and over it going:
It is never gone.

"So joy on joy may go sweeping
Over the head of pain-
Over and over it leaping:
It will rise again."


"Very lovely, but not much better than what I asked for. In revenge, I will give you one of Heine's that my brother translated. It always reminds me, with a great difference, of one in In Memoriam, beginning:
Dark house ."

So spake Harry, and sang:

"The shapes of the days forgotten
Out of their graves arise,
And show me what once my life was,
In the presence of thine eyes.

"All day through the streets I wandered,
As in dreams men go and come;
The people in wonder looked at me,
I was so mournful dumb.

"It was better though, at night-fall,
When, through the empty town,
I and my shadow together
Went silent up and down.

"With echoing, echoing footstep,
Over the bridge I walk;
The moon breaks out of the waters,
And looks as if she would talk.

"I stood still before thy dwelling,
Like a tree that prays for rain;
I stood gazing up at thy window-
My heart was in such pain.

"And thou lookedst through thy curtains-
I saw thy shining hand;
And thou sawest me, in the moonlight,
Still as a statue stand."


"Excuse me," said Mrs. Cathcart, with a smile, "but I don't think such sentimental songs good for anybody. They can't be healthy -I believe that is the word they use now-a-days."

"I don't say they are," returned the doctor; "but many a pain is relieved by finding its expression. I wish he had never written worse."

"That is not why I like them," said the curate. "They seem to me to hold the same place in literature that our dreams do in life. If so much of our life is actually spent in dreaming, there must be some place in our literature for what corresponds to dreaming. Even in this region, we cannot step beyond the boundaries of our nature. I delight in reading Lord Bacon now; but one of Jean Paul's dreams will often give me more delight than one of Bacon's best paragraphs. It depends upon the mood. Some dreams like these, in poetry or in sleep, arouse individual states of consciousness altogether different from any of our waking moods, and not to be recalled by any mere effort of the will. All our being, for the moment, has a new and strange colouring. We have another kind of life. I think myself, our life would be much poorer without our dreams; a thousand rainbow tints and combinations would be gone; music and poetry would lose many an indescribable exquisiteness and tenderness. You see I like to take our dreams seriously, as I would even our fun. For I believe that those new mysterious feelings that come to us in sleep, if they be only from dreams of a richer grass and a softer wind than we have known awake, are indications of wells of feeling and delight which have not yet broken out of their hiding-places in our souls, and are only to be suspected from these rings of fairy green that spring up in the high places of our sleep."

"I say, Ralph," interrupted Harry, "just repeat that strangest of Heine's ballads, that-"

"Oh, no, no; not that one. Mrs. Cathcart would not like it at all."

"Yes, please do," said Adela.

"Pray don't think of me, gentlemen," said the aunt.

"No, I won't," said the curate.

"Then I will," said the doctor, with a glance at Adela, which seemed to say-"If you want it, you shall have it, whether they like it or not."

He repeated, with just a touch of the recitative in his tone, the following verses:

"Night lay upon mine eyelids;
Upon my mouth lay lead;
With withered heart and sinews,
I lay among the dead.

"How long I lay and slumbered,
I knew not in the gloom.
I wakened up, and listened
To a knocking at my tomb.

"'Wilt thou not rise, my Henry?
Immortal day draws on;
The dead are all arisen;
The endless joy begun.'

"'My love, I cannot raise me;
Nor could I find the door;
My eyes with bitter weeping
Are blind for evermore.'

"'But from thine eyes, dear Henry,
I'll kiss away the night;
Thou shall behold the angels,
And Heaven's own blessed light.'

"'My love, I cannot raise me;