There & Back by George MacDonald (acx book reading .txt) 📕

a fine-looking fellow," he said, "-not exactly a gentleman, but not far off it; little would make him one. He looked a man that could do things, but I did not satisfy myself as to what might be his trade. He showed no sign of it, or made any allusion to it. But he was more at home in the workshop of his own mind than is at all usual with fellows of his age."

"It must," said Helen, "be old Simon Armour's grandson! I have heard of him from several quarters; and your description would just fit him. I know somebody that could tell you about him, but I wish I know anybody that could tell us about her-I mean Miss Wylder."

"I like the look of that girl!" said the parson warmly, "What makes you think she could tell us about my new acquaintance?"

"Only an impertinent speech of that little simian, Vixen Lestrange. I forget what she said, but it left the impression of an acquaintance between Bab, as she called her, and some working fellow the child could not bear."

"The enmity of that child is praise. I wonder how the Master would have treated her! He could not have taken her between his knees, and said whosoever received her received him! A child-mask with a monkey inside it will only serve a sentimental mother to talk platitudes about!"

"Don't be too hard on the monkeys, Tom!" said his wife. "You don't know what they may turn out to be, after all!"

"Surely it is not too hard on the monkeys to call them monkeys!"

"No; but when the monkey has already begun to be a child!"

"There is the whole point! Has the monkey always begun to be a child when he gets the shape of a child?-Miss Wylder is not quite so seldom in church now, I think!"

"I saw her there last Sunday. But I'm afraid she wasn't thinking much about what you were saying-she sat with such a stony look in her eyes! She did seem to come awake for one moment, though!"

"Tell me."

"I could hardly take my eyes off her, my heart was so drawn to her. There was a mingling of love and daring, almost defiance, in her look, that seemed to say, 'If you are worth it-if you are worth it-then through fire and water!' All at once a flash lighted up her lovely child-face-and what do you think you were at the moment saying?-that the flower of a plant was deeper than the root of it: that was what roused her!"

"And I, when I found what I had said, thought within myself what a fool I was to let out things my congregation could not possibly understand!-But to reach one is, in the end, to reach all!"

"I must in honesty tell you, however," pursued Mrs. Wingfold, "that the next minute she looked as far off as before; nor did she shine up once again that I saw."

"I will be glad, though," said Wingfold, "because of what you tell me! It shows there is a window in her house that looks in my direction: some signal may one day catch her eye! That she has a character of her own, a real one, I strongly suspect. Her mother more than interests me. She certainly has a fine nature. How much better is a fury than a fish! You cannot be downright angry save in virtue of the love possible to you. The proper person, who always does and says the correct thing-well, I think that person is almost sure to be a liar. At the same time, the contradictions in the human individual are bewildering, even appalling!-Now I must go to my study, and think out a thing that's bothering me!-By the way,"-he always said that when he was going to make her a certain kind of present; she knew what was coming-"here's something for you-if you can read it! I had just scribbled it this morning when the young man came up. I made it last night. I was hours awake after we went to bed!"

This is what he gave her:-

A SONG IN THE NIGHT.

A brown bird sang on a blossomy tree, Sang in the moonshine, merrily, Three little songs, one, two, and three, A song for his wife, for himself, and me.

He sang for his wife, sang low, sang high, Filling the moonlight that filled the sky, "Thee, thee, I love thee, heart alive! Thee, thee, thee, and thy round eggs five!"

He sang to himself, "What shall I do With this life that thrills me through and through! Glad is so glad that it turns to ache! Out with it, song, or my heart will break!"

He sang to me, "Man, do not fear Though the moon goes down, and the dark is near; Listen my song, and rest thine eyes; Let the moon go down that the sun may rise!"

I folded me up in the heart of his tune, And fell asleep in the sinking moon; I woke with the day's first golden gleam, And lo, I had dreamed a precious dream!


CHAPTER XXVI.


RICHARD AND ALICE .

One evening Richard went to see his grandfather, and asked if he would allow him to give Miss Wylder a lesson in horseshoeing: she wanted, he said, to be able to shoe Miss Brown-or indeed any horse. Simon laughed heartily at the proposal: it was too great an absurdity to admit of serious objection!

"Ah, you don't know Miss Wylder, grandfather!" said Richard.

"Of course not! Never an old man knew anything about a girl! It's only the young fellows can fathom a woman! Having girls of his own blinds a man to the nature of them! There's going to be a law passed against growing old! It's an unfortunate habit the world's got into somehow, and the young fellows are going to put a stop to it for fear of losing their wisdom!"

As the blacksmith spoke, he went on rasping and filing at a house-door key, fast in a vice on his bench; and his words seemed to Richard to fall from his mouth like the raspings from his rasp.

"Well, grandfather," said Richard, "if Miss Wylder don't astonish you, she'll astonish me!"

"Have you ever seen her drive a nail, boy?"

"Not once; but I am just as sure she will do it-and better than any beginner you've seen yet!"

"Well, well, lad! we'll see! we'll see! She's welcome anyhow to come and have her try! What day shall it be?"

"That I can't tell yet."

"It makes me grin to think o' them doll's hands with a great hoof in them!"

"They are little hands-she's little herself-but they ain't doll's hands, grandfather. You should have seen her box Miss Vixen's ears for making a face at me! Her ears didn't take them for doll's hands, I'll be bound! The room rang again!"

"Bring her when you like, lad," said Simon.

It was moonlight, and when Richard arrived at the lodgeless gate, he saw inside it, a few yards away, seated on a stone, the form of a woman. He thought the first moment, as was natural, of Barbara, but the next, he knew that this was something strange. She sat in helpless, hopeless attitude, with her head in her hands. A strange dismay came upon him at the sight of her; his heart fluttered in a cage of fear. He did not believe in ghosts. If he saw one, it would but show that sometimes when a person died there was a shadow left that was like him! There might be millions of ghosts, and no God the more! What are we all but spectres of the unknown? What was death but a vanishing of the unknown? What are the dead but vanishments! Yet he shuddered at the thought that he had actually come upon one of the dead that are still alive, of whom, once or twice in a long century, one is met wandering vaguely about the world, unable to find what used to make it home. He peered through the iron bars as into a charnel-house: one such wanderer was enough to make the whole vault of night a gaping tomb.

Putting his key in the lock made a sharp little noise. The figure started up, her face gleaming white in the moon, but dropped again on her stone, unable to stand. Richard could not take his eyes off her. While closing the gate he dared not turn his back to her. She sat motionless as before, her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees. He stood for a moment staring and trembling, then, with an effort of the will that approached agony, went toward her. As he drew nearer, he began to feel as if he had once known her. He must have seen her in London somewhere, he thought. But why was her shadow sitting there, the lonely hostless guest of the night's caravansary?

He went nearer. The form remained motionless. Something reminded him of Alice Manson.

He laid his hand on the figure. It was a woman to the touch as well as to the eye. But not yet did she move an inch. He would have raised her face. Then she resisted. All at once he was sure she was Alice.

"Alice!" he cried. "Good God!-sitting in the cold night!"

She made him no answer, sat stone-still.

"What shall I do for you?" he said.

"Nothing," she answered, in a voice that might well have been that of a spectre. "Leave me," she added, as if with the last entreaty of despair.

"You are in trouble, Alice!" he persisted. "Why are you so far from home? Where's Arthur?"

"What right have you to question me?" she returned, almost fiercely.

"None but that I am your brother's friend."

"Friend!" she echoed, in a faint far-away voice.

"You forget, Alice, that I did all I could to be your friend, and you would not let me!"

She neither spoke nor moved. Her stillness seemed to say, "Neither will I now."

"Where are you going?" he asked, after a hopeless pause.

"Nowhere."

"Why did you leave London?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"I think you will tell me!"

"I will not."

"You know I would do anything for you!"

"I daresay!"

"You know I would!"

"I don't."

"Try me."

"I will not."

Her voice grew more and more faint and forced. Her words and it were very unlike.

"Don't go on like that, Alice. You're not being reasonable," pleaded Richard.

"Oh, do leave me alone!"

"I won't leave you."

"As you please! It's nothing to me."

"Alice, why do you speak to me like that? Tell me what's wrong."

"Everything is wrong. Everybody is wrong. The whole world is wrong."

Her voice was a little stronger. She raised herself, and looked him in the face.

"I hope not."

"I hope it is!"

"Why should you?"

"To think things were right would be too terrible! I say everything's wrong."

"What's to be done, then?" sighed Richard.

"I must get out of it all"

"But how?"

"There is only one way."

"What is that?"

"Everybody knows."

"Alice," cried Richard, nearly in despair like herself, "are you out of your mind?"

"Pretty nearly.-Why shouldn't I be? There are plenty of us!"