Mary Marston by George MacDonald (popular romance novels TXT) 📕

to handle such stuff as that?"

As she spoke, she took in her fingers a little stray drift from the masses of golden twilight that crowned one of the loveliest temples in which the Holy Ghost had not yet come to dwell.

"If cleaning your shoes be menial, brushing your hair must be royal," she added.

Hesper's heart was touched; and if at the same time her
self was flattered, the flattery was mingled with its best antidote-love.

"Do you really mean," she said, "you would not mind doing such things for me?-Of course I should not be exacting."

She laughed again, afraid of showing herself too much in earnest before she was sure of Mary.

"You would not ask me to do anything menial ?" said Mary, archly.

"I dare not promise," said Hesper, in tone responsive. "How could I help it, if I saw you longing to do what I was longing to have you do?" she added, growing more and more natural.

"I would no more mind cleaning your boots than my own," said Mary.

"But I should not like to clean my own boots," rejoined Hesper.

"No more should I, except it had to be done. Even then I would much rather not," returned Mary, "for cleaning my own would not interest me. To clean yours would. Still I would rather not, for the time might be put to better use-except always it were necessary, and then, of course, it couldn't. But as to anything degrading in it, I scorn the idea. I heard my father once say that, to look down on those who have to do such things may be to despise them for just the one honorable thing about them.-Shall I tell you what I understand by the word menial ? You know it has come to have a disagreeable taste about it, though at first it only meant, as you say, something that fell to the duty of attendants."

"Do tell me," answered Hesper, with careless permission.

"I did not find it out myself," said Mary. "My father taught me. He was a wise as well as a good man, Mrs. Redmain."

"Oh!" said Hesper, with the ordinary indifference of fashionable people to what an inferior may imagine worth telling them.

"He said," persisted Mary, notwithstanding, "that it is menial to undertake anything you think beneath you for the sake of money; and still more menial, having undertaken it, not to do it as well as possible." "That would make out a good deal more of the menial in the world than is commonly supposed," laughed Hesper. "I wonder who would do anything for you if you didn't pay them-one way or another!"

"I've taken my father's shoes out of Beenie's hands many a time," said Mary, "and finished them myself, just for the pleasure of making them shine for him ."

"Re-a-ally!" drawled Hesper, and set out for the conclusion that after all it was no such great compliment the young woman had paid her in wanting to brush her hair. Evidently she had a taste for low things!-was naturally menial!-would do as much for her own father as for a lady like her! But the light in Mary's eyes checked her.

"Any service done without love, whatever it be," resumed Mary, "is slavery-neither more nor less. It can not be anything else. So, you see, most slaves are made slaves by themselves; and that is what makes me doubtful whether I ought to go on serving in the shop; for, as far as the Turnbulls are concerned, I have no pleasure in it; I am only helping them to make money, not doing them any good."

"Why do you not give it up at once then?" asked Hesper.

"Because I like serving the customers. They were my father's customers; and I have learned so much from having to wait on them!"

"Well, now," said Hesper, with a rush for the goal, "if you will come to me, I will make you comfortable; and you shall do just as much or as little as you please."

"What will your maid think?" suggested Mary. "If I am to do what I please, she will soon find me trespassing on her domain."

"I never trouble myself about what my servants think," said Hesper.

"But it might hurt her, you know-to be paid to do a thing and then not allowed to do it,"

"She may take herself away, then. I had not thought of parting with her, but I should not be at all sorry if she went. She would be no loss to me."

"Why should you keep her, then?"

"Because one is just as good-and as bad as another. She knows my ways, and I prefer not having to break in a new one. It is a bore to have to say how you like everything done."

"But you are speaking now as if you meant it," said Mary, waking up to the fact that Hesper's tone was of business, and she no longer seemed half playing with the proposal. " Do you mean you want me to come and live with you?"

"Indeed, I do," answered Hesper, emphatically. "You shall have a room close to my bedroom, and there you shall do as you like all day long; and, when I want you, I dare say you will come."

"Fast enough," said Mary, cheerily, as if all was settled. In contrast with her present surroundings, the prospect was more than attractive. "-But would you let me have my piano?" she asked, with sudden apprehension.

"You shall have my grand piano always when I am out, which will be every night in the season, I dare say. That will give you plenty of practice; and you will be able to have the best of lessons. And think of the concerts and oratorios you will go to!"

As she spoke, the carriage drew up at the door of the shop, and Mary took her leave. Hesper accepted her acknowledgments in the proper style of a benefactress, and returned her good-by kindly. But not yet did she shake hands with her.

Some of my readers may wonder that Mary should for a moment dream of giving up what they would call her independence; for was she not on her own ground in the shop of which she was a proprietor? and was the change proposed, by whatever name it might be called, anything other than service ? But they are outside it, and Mary was in it, and knew how little such an independence was worth the name. Almost everything about the shop had altered in its aspect to her. The very air she breathed in it seemed slavish. Nor was the change in her. The whole thing was growing more and more sordid, for now-save for her part-the one spirit ruled it entirely.

The work had therefore more or less grown a drudgery to her. The spirit of gain was in full blast, and whoever did not trim his sails to it was in danger of finding it rough weather. No longer could she, without offense, and consequent disturbance of spirit, arrange her attendance as she pleased, or have the same time for reading as before. She could encounter black looks, but she could not well live with them; and how was she to continue the servant of such ends as were now exclusively acknowledged in the place? The proposal of Mrs. Redmain stood in advantageous contrast to this treadmill-work. In her house she would be called only to the ministrations of love, and would have plenty of time for books and music, with a thousand means of growth unapproachable in Testbridge. All the slavery lay in the shop, all the freedom in the personal service. But she strove hard to suppress anxiety, for she saw that, of all poverty-stricken contradictions, a Christian with little faith is the worst.

The chief attraction to her, however, was simply Hesper herself. She had fallen in love with her-I hardly know how otherwise to describe the current with which her being set toward her. Few hearts are capable of loving as she loved. It was not merely that she saw in Hesper a grand creature, and lovely to look upon, or that one so much her superior in position showed such a liking for herself; she saw in her one she could help, one at least who sorely needed help, for she seemed to know nothing of what made life worth having-one who had done, and must yet be capable of doing, things degrading to the humanity of womanhood. Without the hope of helping in the highest sense, Mary could not have taken up her abode in such a house as Mrs. Redmain's. No outward service of any kind, even to the sick, was to her service enough to choose ; were it laid upon her, she would hasten to it; for necessity is the push, gentle or strong, as the man is more or less obedient, by which God sends him into the path he would have him take. But to help to the birth of a beautiful Psyche, enveloped all in the gummy cerecloths of its chrysalis, not yet aware, even, that it must get out of them, and spread great wings to the sunny wind of God-that was a thing for which the holiest of saints might well take a servant's place-the thing for which the Lord of life had done it before him. To help out such a lovely sister-how Hesper would have drawn herself up at the word! it is mine, not Mary's-as she would be when no longer holden of death, but her real self, the self God meant her to be when he began making her, would indeed be a thing worth having lived for! Between the ordinarily benevolent woman and Mary Marston, there was about as great a difference as between the fashionable church-goer and Catherine of Siena. She would be Hesper's servant that she might gain Hesper. I would not have her therefore wondered at as a marvel of humility. She was simply a young woman who believed that the man called Jesus Christ is a real person, such as those represent him who profess to have known him; and she therefore believed the man himself-believed that, when he said a thing, he entirely meant it, knowing it to be true; believed, therefore, that she had no choice but do as he told her. That man was the servant of all; therefore, to regard any honest service as degrading would be, she saw, to deny Christ, to call the life of creation's hero a disgrace. Nor was he the first servant; he did not of himself choose his life; the Father gave it him to live-sent him to be a servant, because he, the Father, is the first and greatest servant of all. He gives it to one to serve as the rich can, to another as the poor must. The only disgrace, whether of the counting-house, the shop, or the family, is to think the service degrading. If it be such, why not sit down and starve rather than do it? No man has a right to disgrace himself. Starve, I say; the world will lose nothing in you, for you are its disgrace, who count service degrading. You are much too grand people for what your Maker requires of you, and does himself, and yet you do it after a fashion, because you like to eat and go warm. You would take rank in the kingdom of hell,