The Vicar's Daughter Part 38

"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.

"G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d," 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 pa.s.sed is evident in the whole man of him. I think the eternal wind must now be able to get in through some c.h.i.n.k 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. G.o.d 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 ma.s.s 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 his brigand-looking felt hat was exchanged for one of half the alt.i.tude, which he did not crush on his head with quite as many indentations as its surface could hold. He also began to go to church with us sometimes.

But there was a greater and more significant change than any of these. We found that he was sticking more steadily to work. I can hardly say _his_ work; for he was Jack-of-all-trades, as I have already indicated. He had a small income, left him by an old maiden aunt with whom he had been a favorite, which had hitherto seemed to do him nothing but harm, enabling him to alternate fits of comparative diligence with fits of positive idleness. I have said also, I believe, that, although he could do nothing thoroughly, application alone was wanted to enable him to distinguish himself in more than one thing. His forte was engraving on wood; and my husband said, that, if he could do so well with so little practice as he had had, he must be capable of becoming an admirable engraver. To our delight, then, we discovered, all at once, that he had been working steadily for three months for the Messrs. D----, whose place was not far from our house. He had said nothing about it to his brother, probably from having good reason to fear that he would regard it only as a _spurt_.

Having now, however, executed a block which greatly pleased himself, he had brought a proof impression to show Percivale; who, more pleased with it than even Roger himself, gave him a hearty congratulation, and told him it would be a shame if he did not bring his execution in that art to perfection; from which, judging by the present specimen, he said it could not be far off. The words brought into Roger's face an expression of modest gratification which it rejoiced me to behold: he accepted Percivale's approbation more like a son than a brother, with a humid glow in his eyes and hardly a word on his lips. It seemed to me that the child in his heart had begun to throw off the swaddling clothes which foolish manhood had wrapped around it, and the germ of his being was about to a.s.sert itself. I have seldom indeed seen Percivale look so pleased.

"Do me a dozen as good as that," he said, "and I'll have the proofs framed in silver gilt."

It _has_ been done; but the proofs had to wait longer for the frame than Percivale for the proofs.

But he need have held out no such bribe of brotherly love, for there was another love already at work in himself more than sufficing to the affair.

But I check myself: who shall say what love is sufficing for this or for that? Who, with the most enduring and most pa.s.sionate love his heart can hold, will venture to say that he could have done without the love of a brother? Who will say that he could have done without the love of the dog whose bones have lain mouldering in his garden for twenty years? It is enough to say that there was a more engrossing, a more marvellous love at work.

Roger always, however, took a half-holiday on Sat.u.r.days, and now generally came to us. On one of these occasions I said to him,--

"Wouldn't you like to come and hear Marion play to her friends this evening, Roger?"

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," he answered; and we went.

It was delightful. In my opinion Marion is a real artist. I do not claim for her the higher art of origination, though I could claim for her a much higher faculty than the artistic itself. I suspect, for instance, that 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sumed 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 circ.u.mstances, 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."