The Vicar's Daughter by George MacDonald (classic literature books .txt) 📕

Moses was a greater man than the writer of the Book of Job, notwithstanding that the poet moves me so much more than the divine politician. Marion combined in a wonderful way the critical faculty with the artistic; which two, however much of the one may be found without the other, are mutually essential to the perfection of each. While she uttered from herself, she heard with her audience; while she played and sung with her own fingers and mouth, she at the same time listened with their ears, knowing what they must feel, as well as what she meant to utter. And hence it was, I think, that she came into such vital contact with them, even through her piano.

As we returned home, Roger said, after some remark of mine of a cognate sort,-

"Does she never try to teach them any thing, Ethel?"

"She is constantly teaching them, whether she tries or not," I answered. "If you can make any one believe that there is something somewhere to be trusted, is not that the best lesson you can give him? That can be taught only by being such that people cannot but trust you."

"I didn't need to be told that," he answered. "What I want to know is, whether or not she ever teaches them by word of mouth,-an ordinary and inferior mode, if you will."

"If you had ever heard her, you would not call hers an ordinary or inferior mode," I returned. "Her teaching is the outcome of her life, the blossom of her being, and therefore has the whole force of her living truth to back it."

"Have I offended you, Ethel?" he asked.

Then I saw, that, in my eagerness to glorify my friend, I had made myself unpleasant to Roger,-a fault of which I had been dimly conscious before now. Marion would never have fallen into that error. She always made her friends feel that she was with them, side by side with them, and turning her face in the same direction, before she attempted to lead them farther.

I assured him that he had not offended me, but that I had been foolishly backing him from the front, as I once heard an Irishman say,-some of whose bulls were very good milch cows.

"She teaches them every Sunday evening," I added.

"Have you ever heard her?"

"More than once. And I never heard any thing like it."

"Could you take me with you some time?" he asked, in an assumed tone of ordinary interest, out of which, however, he could not keep a slight tremble.

"I don't know. I don't quite see why I shouldn't. And yet"-

"Men do go," urged Roger, as if it were a mere half-indifferent suggestion.

"Oh, yes! you would have plenty to keep you in countenance!" I returned,-"men enough-and worth teaching, too-some of them at least!"

"Then, I don't see why she should object to me for another."

"I don't know that she would. You are not exactly of the sort, you know-that"-

"I don't see the difference. I see no essential difference, at least. The main thing is, that I am in want of teaching, as much as any of them. And, if she stands on circumstances, I am a working-man as much as any of them-perhaps more than most of them. Few of them work after midnight, I should think, as I do, not unfrequently."

"Still, all admitted, I should hardly like"-

"I didn't mean you were to take me without asking her," he said: "I should never have dreamed of that."

"And if I were to ask her, I am certain she would refuse. But," I added, thinking over the matter a little, "I will take you without asking her. Come with me to-morrow night. I don't think she will have the heart to send you away."

"I will," he answered, with more gladness in his voice than he intended, I think, to manifest itself.

We arranged that he should call for me at a certain hour.

I told Percivale, and he pretended to grumble that I was taking Roger instead of him.

"It was Roger, and not you, that made the request," I returned. "I can't say I see why you should go because Roger asked. A woman's logic is not equal to that."

"I didn't mean he wasn't to go. But why shouldn't I be done good to as well as he?"

"If you really want to go," I said, "I don't see why you shouldn't. It's ever so much better than going to any church I know of-except one. But we must be prudent. I can't take more than one the first time. We must get the thin edge of the wedge in first."

"And you count Roger the thin edge?"

"Yes."

"I'll tell him so."

"Do. The thin edge, mind, without which the thicker the rest is the more useless! Tell him that if you like. But, seriously, I quite expect to take you there, too, the Sunday after."

Roger and I went. Intending to be a little late, we found when we readied the house, that, as we had wished, the class was already begun. In going up the stairs, we saw very few of the grown inhabitants, but in several of the rooms, of which the doors stood open, elder girls taking care of the younger children; in one, a boy nursing the baby with as much interest as any girl could have shown. We lingered on the way, wishing to give Marion time to get so thoroughly into her work that she could take no notice of our intrusion. When we reached the last stair we could at length hear her voice, of which the first words we could distinguish, as we still ascended, were,-

"I will now read to you the chapter of which I spoke."

The door being open, we could hear well enough, although she was sitting where we could not see her. We would not show ourselves until the reading was ended: so much, at least, we might overhear without offence.

Before she had read many words, Roger and I began to cast strange looks on each other. For this was the chapter she read:-

"And Joseph, wheresoever he went in the city, took the Lord Jesus with him, where he was sent for to work, to make gates, or milk-pails, or sieves, or boxes; the Lord Jesus was with him wheresoever he went. And as often as Joseph had any thing in his work to make longer or shorter, or wider or narrower, the Lord Jesus would stretch his hand towards it. And presently it became as Joseph would have it. So that he had no need to finish any thing with his own hands, for he was not very skilful at his carpenter's trade.

"On a certain time the king of Jerusalem sent for him, and said, I would have thee make me a throne of the same dimensions with that place in which I commonly sit. Joseph obeyed, and forthwith began the work, and continued two years in the king's palace before he finished. And when he came to fix it in its place, he found it wanted two spans on each side of the appointed measure. Which, when the king saw, he was very angry with Joseph; and Joseph, afraid of the king's anger, went to bed without his supper, taking not any thing to eat. Then the Lord Jesus asked him what he was afraid of. Joseph replied, Because I have lost my labor in the work which I have been about these two years. Jesus said to him, Fear not, neither be cast down; do thou lay hold on one side of the throne, and I will the other, and we will bring it to its just dimensions. And when Joseph had done as the Lord Jesus said, and each of them had with strength drawn his side, the throne obeyed, and was brought to the proper dimensions of the place; which miracle when they who stood by saw, they were astonished, and praised God. The throne was made of the same wood which was in being in Solomon's time, namely, wood adorned with various shapes and figures."

Her voice ceased, and a pause followed.

"We must go in now," I whispered.

"She'll be going to say something now; just wait till she's started," said Roger.

"Now, what do you think of it?" asked Marion in a meditative tone.

We crept within the scope of her vision, and stood. A voice, which I knew, was at the moment replying to her question.

"I don't think it's much of a chapter, that, grannie."

The speaker was the keen-faced, elderly man, with iron-gray whiskers, who had come forward to talk to Percivale on that miserable evening when we were out searching for little Ethel. He sat near where we stood by the door, between two respectable looking women, who had been listening to the chapter as devoutly as if it had been of the true gospel.

"Sure, grannie, that ain't out o' the Bible?" said another voice, from somewhere farther off.

"We'll talk about that presently," answered Marion.

"I want to hear what Mr. Jarvis has to say to it: he's a carpenter himself, you see,-a joiner, that is, you know."

All the faces in the room were now turned towards Jarvis.

"Tell me why you don't think much of it, Mr. Jarvis," said Marion.

"'Tain't a bit likely," he answered.

"What isn't likely?"

"Why, not one single thing in the whole kit of it. And first and foremost, 'tain't a bit likely the old man 'ud ha' been sich a duffer."

"Why not? There must have been stupid people then as well as now."

"Not his father." said Jarvis decidedly.

"He wasn't but his step-father, like, you know, Mr. Jarvis," remarked the woman beside him in a low voice.

"Well, he'd never ha' been hers, then. She wouldn't ha' had a word to say to him."

"I have seen a good-and wise woman too-with a dull husband," said Marion.

"You know you don't believe a word of it yourself, grannie," said still another voice.

"Besides," she went on without heeding the interruption, "in those times, I suspect, such things were mostly managed by the parents, and the woman herself had little to do with them."

A murmur of subdued indignation arose,-chiefly of female voices.

"Well, they wouldn't then," said Jarvis.

"He might have been rich," suggested Marion.

"I'll go bail he never made the money then," said Jarvis. "An old idget! I don't believe sich a feller 'ud ha' been let marry a woman like her-I don't."

"You mean you don't think God would have let him?"

"Well, that's what I do mean, grannie. The thing couldn't ha' been, nohow."

"I agree with you quite. And now I want to hear more of what in the story you don't consider likely."

"Well, it ain't likely sich a workman 'ud ha' stood so high i' the trade that the king of Jerusalem would ha' sent for him of all the tradesmen in the town to make his new throne for him. No more it ain't likely-and let him be as big a duffer as ever was, to be a jiner at all-that he'd ha' been two year at work on that there throne-an' a carvin' of it in figures too!-and never found out it was four spans too narrer for the place it had to stand in. Do ye 'appen