The Vicar's Daughter
Home - George MacDonald - The Vicar's DaughterA PICTURE.
Things went on very quietly for some time. Of course I was fully occupied, as well I might be, with a life to tend and cultivate which must blossom at length into the human flowers of love and obedience and faith. The smallest service I did the wonderful thing that lay in my lap seemed a something in itself so well worth doing, that it was worth living to do it. As I gazed on the new creation, so far beyond my understanding, yet so dependent upon me while asserting an absolute and divine right to all I did for her, I marvelled that God should intrust me with such a charge, that he did not keep the lovely creature in his own arms, and refuse her to any others. Then I would bethink myself that in giving her into mine, he had not sent her out of his own; for I, too, was a child in his arms, holding and tending my live doll, until it should grow something like me, only ever so much better. Was she not given to me that she might learn what I had begun to learn, namely, that a willing childhood was the flower of life? How can any mother sit with her child on her lap and not know that there is a God over all,--know it by the rising of her own heart in prayer to him? But so few have had parents like mine! If my mother felt thus when I lay in her arms, it was no wonder I should feel thus when my child lay in mine.
Before I had children of my own, I did not care about children, and therefore did not understand them; but I had read somewhere,--and it clung to me although I did not understand it,--that it was in laying hold of the heart of his mother that Jesus laid his first hold on the world to redeem it; and now at length I began to understand it. What a divine way of saving us it was,--to let her bear him, carry him in her bosom, wash him and dress him and nurse him and sing him to sleep,--offer him the adoration of mother's love, misunderstand him, chide him, forgive him even for fancied wrong! Such a love might well save a world in which were mothers enough. It was as if he had said, "Ye shall no more offer vain sacrifices to one who needs them not, and cannot use them. I will need them, so require them at your hands. I will hunger and thirst and be naked and cold, and ye shall minister to me. Sacrifice shall be no more a symbol, but a real giving unto God; and when I return to the Father, inasmuch as ye do it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto me." So all the world is henceforth the temple of God; its worship is ministration; the commonest service is divine service.
I feared at first that the new strange love I felt in my heart came only of the fact that the child was Percivale's and mine; but I soon found it had a far deeper source,--that it sprung from the very humanity of the infant woman, yea, from her relation in virtue of that humanity to the Father of all. The fountain appeared in my heart: it arose from an infinite store in the unseen.
Soon, however, came jealousy of my love for my baby. I feared lest it should make me--nay, was making me--neglect my husband. The fear first arose in me one morning as I sat with her half dressed on my knees. I was dawdling over her in my fondness, as I used to dawdle over the dressing of my doll, when suddenly I became aware that never once since her arrival had I sat with my husband in his study. A pang of dismay shot through me. "Is this to be a wife?" I said to myself,--"to play with a live love like a dead doll, and forget her husband!" I caught up a blanket from the cradle,--I am not going to throw away that good old word for the ugly outlandish name they give it now, reminding one only of a helmet,--I caught up a blanket from the cradle, I say, wrapped it round the treasure, which was shooting its arms and legs in every direction like a polypus feeling after its food,--and rushed down stairs, and down the precipice into the study. Percivale started up in terror, thinking something fearful had happened, and I was bringing him all that was left of the child.
"What--what--what's the matter?" he gasped.
I could not while he was thus frightened explain to him what had driven me to him in such alarming haste.
"I've brought you the baby to kiss," I said, unfolding the blanket, and holding up the sprawling little goddess towards the face that towered above me.
"Was it dying for a kiss then?" he said, taking her, blanket and all, from my arms.
The end of the blanket swept across his easel, and smeared the face of the baby in a picture of the Three Kings, at which he was working.
"O Percivale!" I cried, "you've smeared your baby!"
"But this is a real live baby; she may smear any thing she likes."
"Except her own face and hands, please, then, Percivale."
"Or her blessed frock," said Percivale. "She hasn't got one, though. Why hasn't the little angel got her feathers on yet?"
"I was in such a hurry to bring her."
"To be kissed?"
"No, not exactly. It wasn't her I was in a hurry to bring; it was myself."
"Ah! you wanted to be kissed, did you?"
"No, sir. I didn't want to be kissed; but I did so want to kiss you, Percivale."
"Isn't it all the same, though, darling?" he said. "It seems so to me."
"Sometimes, Percivale, you are so very stupid! It's not the same at all. There's a world of difference between the two; and you ought to know it, or be told it, if you don't."
"I shall think it over as soon as you leave me," he said.
"But I'm not going to leave you for a long time. I haven't seen you paint for weeks and weeks,--not since this little troublesome thing came poking in between us."
"But she's not dressed yet."
"That doesn't signify. She's well wrapped up, and quite warm."
He put me a chair where I could see his picture without catching the shine of the paint. I took the baby from him, and he went on with his work.
"You don't think I am going to sacrifice all my privileges to this little tyrant, do you?" I said.
"It would be rather hard for me, at least," he rejoined.
"You did think I was neglecting you, then, Percivale?"
"Not for a moment."
"Then you didn't miss me?"
"I did, very much."
"And you didn't grumble?"
"No."
"Do I disturb you?" I asked, after a little pause. "Can you paint just as well when I am here as when you are alone?"
"Better. I feel warmer to my work somehow."
I was satisfied, and held my peace. When I am best pleased I don't want to talk. But Percivale, perhaps not having found this out yet, looked anxiously in my face; and, as at the moment my eyes were fixed on his picture, I thought he wanted to find out whether I liked the design.
"I see it now!" I cried. "I could not make out where the Magi were."
He had taken for the scene of his picture an old farm kitchen, or yeoman's hall, with its rich brown rafters, its fire on the hearth, and its red brick floor. A tub half full of bright water, stood on one side; and the mother was bending over her baby, which, undressed for the bath, she was holding out for the admiration of the Magi. Immediately behind the mother stood, in the garb of a shepherd, my father, leaning on the ordinary shepherd's crook; my mother, like a peasant-woman in her Sunday-best, with a white handkerchief crossed upon her bosom, stood beside him, and both were gazing with a chastened yet profound pleasure on the lovely child.
In front stood two boys and a girl,--between the ages of five and nine,--gazing each with a peculiar wondering delight on the baby. The youngest boy, with a great spotted wooden horse in his hand, was approaching to embrace the infant in such fashion as made the toy look dangerous, and the left hand of the mother was lifted with a motion of warning and defence. The little girl, the next youngest, had, in her absorption, dropped her gaudily dressed doll at her feet, and stood sucking her thumb, her big blue eyes wide with contemplation. The eldest boy had brought his white rabbit to give the baby, but had forgotten all about it, so full was his heart of his new brother. An expression of mingled love and wonder and perplexity had already begun to dawn upon the face, but it was as yet far from finished. He stood behind the other two peeping over their heads.
"Were you thinking of that Titian in the Louvre, with the white rabbit in it?" I asked Percivale.
"I did not think of it until after I had put in the rabbit," he replied. "And it shall remain; for it suits my purpose, and Titian would not claim all the white rabbits because of that one."
"Did you think of the black lamb in it, then, when you laid that black pussy on the hearth?" I asked.
"Black lamb?" he returned.
"Yes," I insisted; "a black lamb, in the dark background--such a very black lamb, and in such a dark background, that it seems you never discovered it."
"Are you sure?" he persisted.
"Absolutely certain," I replied. "I pointed it out to papa in the picture itself in the Louvre; he had not observed it before either."
"I am very glad to know there is such a thing there. I need not answer your question, you see. It is odd enough I should have put in the black puss. Upon some grounds I might argue that my puss is better than Titian's lamb."
"What grounds? tell me."
"If the painter wanted a contrast, a lamb, be he as black as ever paint could make him, must still be a more Christian animal than a cat as white as snow. Under what pretence could a cat be used for a Christian symbol?"
"What do you make of her playfulness?"
"I should count that a virtue, were it not for the fatal objection that it is always exercised at the expense of other creatures."
"A ball of string, or a reel, or a bit of paper, is enough for an uncorrupted kitten."
"But you must not forget that it serves only in virtue of the creature's imagination representing it as alive. If you do not make it move, she will herself set it in motion as the initiative of the game. If she cannot do that, she will take no notice of it."
"Yes, I see. I give in."
All this time he had been painting diligently. He could now combine talking and painting far better than he used. But a knock came to the study door; and, remembering baby's unpresentable condition, I huddled her up, climbed the stair again, and finished the fledging of my little angel in a very happy frame of mind.