The Vicar's Daughter
Home - George MacDonald - The Vicar's DaughterA 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. God 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 mass 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 altitude, 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 assert 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 passionate 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 Saturdays, 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 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 to know now, grannie, how much is a span?"
"I don't know. Do you know, Mrs. Percivale?"
The sudden reference took me very much by surprise; but I had not forgotten, happily, the answer I received to the same question, when anxious to realize the monstrous height of Goliath.
"I remember my father telling me," I replied, "that it was as much as you could stretch between your thumb and little finger."
"There!" cried Jarvis triumphantly, parting the extreme members of his right hand against the back of the woman in front of him--"that would be seven or eight inches! Four times that? Two foot and a half at least! Think of that!"
"I admit the force of both your objections," said Marion. "And now, to turn to a more important part of the story, what do you think of the way in which according to it he got his father out of his evil plight?"
I saw plainly enough that she was quietly advancing towards some point in her view,--guiding the talk thitherward, steadily, without haste or effort.
Before Jarvis had time to make any reply, the blind man, mentioned in a former chapter, struck in, with the tone of one who had been watching his opportunity.
"_I_ make more o' that pint than the t'other," he said. "A man as is a duffer may well make a mull of a thing; but a man as knows what he's up to can't. I don't make much o' them miracles, you know, grannie--that is, I don't know, and what I don't know, I won't say as I knows; but what I'm sure of is this here one thing,--that man or boy as could work a miracle, you know, grannie, wouldn't work no miracle as there wasn't no good working of."
"It was to help his father," suggested Marion.
Here Jarvis broke in almost with scorn.
"To help him to pass for a clever fellow, when he was as great a duffer as ever broke bread!"
"I'm quite o' your opinion, Mr. Jarvis," said the blind man. "It 'ud ha' been more like him to tell his father what a duffer he was, and send him home to learn his trade."
"He couldn't do that, you know," said Marion gently. "He couldn't use such words to his father, if he were ever so stupid."
"His step-father, grannie," suggested the woman who had corrected Jarvis on the same point. She spoke very modestly, but was clearly bent on holding forth what light she had.
"Certainly, Mrs. Renton; but you know he couldn't be rude to any one,--leaving his own mother's husband out of the question."
"True for you, grannie," returned the woman.
"I think, though," said Jarvis, "for as hard as he'd ha' found it, it would ha' been more like him to set to work and teach his father, than to scamp up his mulls."
"Certainly," acquiesced Marion. "To hide any man's faults, and leave him not only stupid, but, in all probability, obstinate and self-satisfied, would not be like him. Suppose our Lord had had such a father: what do you think he would have done?"
"He'd ha' done all he could to make a man of him," answered Jarvis.
"Wouldn't he have set about making him comfortable then, in spite of his blunders?" said Marion.
A significant silence followed this question.
"Well, no; not first thing, I don't think," returned Jarvis at length. "He'd ha' got him o' some good first, and gone in to make him comfortable arter."
"Then I suppose you would rather be of some good and uncomfortable, than of no good and comfortable?" said Marion.
"I hope so, grannie," answered Jarvis; and "_I_ would;" "Yes;" "That I would," came from several voices in the little crowd, showing what an influence Marion must have already had upon them.
"Then," she said,--and I saw by the light which rose in her eyes that she was now coming to the point,--"Then, surely it must be worth our while to bear discomfort in order to grow of some good! Mr. Jarvis has truly said, that, if Jesus had had such a father, he would have made him of some good before he made him comfortable: that is just the way your Father in heaven is acting with you. Not many of you would say you are of much good yet; but you would like to be better. And yet,--put it to yourselves,--do you not grumble at every thing that comes to you that you don't like, and call it bad luck, and worse--yes, even when you know it comes of your own fault, and nobody else's? You think if you had only this or that to make you comfortable, you would be content; and you call it very hard that So-and-so should be getting on well, and saving money, and you down on your luck, as you say. Some of you even grumble that your neighbors' children should be healthy when yours are pining. You would allow that you are not of much good yet; but you forget that to make you comfortable as you are would be the same as to pull out Joseph's misfitted thrones and doors, and make his misshapen buckets over again for him. That you think so absurd that you can't believe the story a bit; but you would be helped out of all your troubles, even those you bring on yourselves, not thinking what the certain consequence would be, namely, that you would grow of less and less value, until you were of no good, either to God or man. If you think about it, you will see that I am right. When, for instance, are you most willing to do right? When are you most ready to hear about good things? When are you most inclined to pray to God? When you have plenty of money in your pockets, or when you are in want? when you have had a good dinner, or when you have not enough to get one? when you are in jolly health, or when the life seems ebbing out of you in misery and pain? No matter that you may have brought it on yourselves; it is no less God's way of bringing you back to him, for he decrees that suffering shall follow sin: it is just then you most need it; and, if it drives you to God, that is its end, and there will be an end of it. The prodigal was himself to blame for the want that made him a beggar at the swine's trough; yet that want was the greatest blessing God could give to him, for it drove him home to his father.
"But some of you will say you are no prodigals; nor is it your fault that you find yourselves in such difficulties that life seems hard to you. It would be very wrong in me to set myself up as your judge, and to tell you that it was your fault. If it is, God will let you know it. But if it be not your fault, it does not follow that you need the less to be driven back to God. It is not only in punishment of our sins that we are made to suffer: God's runaway children must be brought back to their home and their blessedness,--back to their Father in heaven. It is not always a sign that God is displeased with us when he makes us suffer. 'Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons.' But instead of talking more about it, I must take it to myself; and learn not to grumble when my plans fail."
"That's what you never goes and does, grannie," growled a voice from somewhere.
I learned afterwards it was that of a young tailor, who was constantly quarrelling with his mother.
"I think I have given up grumbling at my circumstances," she rejoined; "but then I have nothing to grumble at in them. I haven't known hunger or cold for a great many years now. But I do feel discontented at times when I see some of you not getting better so fast as I should like. I ought to have patience, remembering how patient God is with my conceit and stupidity, and not expect too much of you. Still, it can't be wrong to wish that you tried a good deal more to do what he wants of you. Why should his children not be his friends? If you would but give yourselves up to him, you would find his yoke so easy, his burden so light! But you do it half only, and some of you not at all.
"Now, however, that we have got a lesson from a false gospel, we may as well get one from the true."
As she spoke, she turned to her New Testament which lay beside her. But Jarvis interrupted her.
"Where did you get that stuff you was a readin' of to us, grannie?" he asked.
"The chapter I read to you," she answered, "is part of a pretended gospel, called, 'The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ.' I can't tell you who wrote it, or how it came to be written. All I can say is, that, very early in the history of the church, there were people who indulged themselves in inventing things about Jesus, and seemed to have had no idea of the importance of keeping to facts, or, in other words, of speaking and writing only the truth. All they seemed to have cared about was the gratifying of their own feelings of love and veneration; and so they made up tales about him, in his honor as they supposed, no doubt, just as if he had been a false god of the Greeks or Romans. It is long before some people learn to speak the truth, even after they know it is wicked to lie. Perhaps, however, they did not expect their stories to be received as facts, intending them only as a sort of recognized fiction about him,--amazing presumption at the best."
"Did anybody, then, ever believe the likes of that, grannie?" asked Jarvis.
"Yes: what I read to you seems to have been believed within a hundred years after the death of the apostles. There are several such writings, with a great deal of nonsense in them, which were generally accepted by Christian people for many hundreds of years."
"I can't imagine how anybody could go inwentuating such things!" said the blind man.
"It is hard for us to imagine. They could not have seen how their inventions would, in later times, be judged any thing but honoring to him in whose honor they wrote them. Nothing, be it ever so well invented, can be so good as the bare truth. Perhaps, however, no one in particular invented some of them, but the stories grew, just as a report often does amongst yourselves. Although everybody fancies he or she is only telling just what was told to him or her, yet, by degrees, the pin's-point of a fact is covered over with lies upon lies, almost everybody adding something, until the report has grown to be a mighty falsehood. Why, you had such a story yourselves, not so very long ago, about one of your best friends! One comfort is, such a story is sure not to be consistent with itself; it is sure to show its own falsehood to any one who is good enough to doubt it, and who will look into it, and examine it well. You don't, for instance, want any other proof than the things themselves to show you that what I have just read to you can't be true."
"But then it puzzles me to think how anybody could believe them," said the blind man.
"Many of the early Christians were so childishly simple that they would believe almost any thing that was told them. In a time when such nonsense could be written, it is no great wonder there should be many who could believe it."
"Then, what was their faith worth," said the blind man, "if they believed false and true all the same?"
"Worth no end to them," answered Marion with eagerness; "for all the false things they might believe about him could not destroy the true ones, or prevent them from believing in Jesus himself, and bettering their ways for his sake. And as they grew better and better, by doing what he told them, they would gradually come to disbelieve this and that foolish or bad thing."
"But wouldn't that make them stop believing in him altogether?"
"On the contrary, it would make them hold the firmer to all that they saw to be true about him. There are many people, I presume, in other countries, who believe those stories still; but all the Christians I know have cast aside every one of those writings, and keep only to those we call the Gospels. To throw away what is not true, because it is not true, will always help the heart to be truer; will make it the more anxious to cleave to what it sees must be true. Jesus remonstrated with the Jews that they would not of themselves judge what was right; and the man who lets God teach him is made abler to judge what is right a thousand-fold."
"Then don't you think it likely this much is true, grannie,"--said Jarvis, probably interested in the question, in part at least, from the fact that he was himself a carpenter,--"that he worked with his father, and helped him in his trade?"
"I do, indeed," answered Marion. "I believe that is the one germ of truth in the whole story. It is possible even that some incidents of that part of his life may have been handed down a little way, at length losing all their shape, however, and turning into the kind of thing I read to you. Not to mention that they called him the carpenter, is it likely he who came down for the express purpose of being a true man would see his father toiling to feed him and his mother and his brothers and sisters, and go idling about, instead of putting to his hand to help him? Would that have been like him?"
"Certainly not," said Mr. Jarvis.
But a doubtful murmur came from the blind man, which speedily took shape in the following remark:--
"I can't help thinkin', grannie, of one time--you read it to us not long ago--when he laid down in the boat and went fast asleep, takin' no more heed o' them a slavin' o' theirselves to death at their oars, than if they'd been all comfortable like hisself; that wasn't much like takin' of his share--was it now?"
"John Evans," returned Marion with severity, "it is quite right to put any number of questions, and express any number of doubts you honestly feel; but you have no right to make remarks you would not make if you were anxious to be as fair to another as you would have another be to you. Have you considered that he had been working hard all day long, and was, in fact, worn out? You don't think what hard work it is, and how exhausting, to speak for hours to great multitudes, and in the open air too, where your voice has no help to make it heard. And that's not all; for he had most likely been healing many as well; and I believe every time the power went out of him to cure, he suffered in the relief he gave; it left him weakened,--with so much the less of strength to support his labors,--so that, even in his very body, he took our iniquities and bare our infirmities. Would you, then, blame a weary man, whose perfect faith in God rendered it impossible for him to fear any thing, that he lay down to rest in God's name, and left his friends to do their part for the redemption of the world in rowing him to the other side of the lake,--a thing they were doing every other day of their lives? You ought to consider before you make such remarks, Mr. Evans. And you forget also that the moment they called him, he rose to help them."
"And find fault with them," interposed Evans, rather viciously I thought.
"Yes; for they were to blame for their own trouble, and ought to send it away."
"What! To blame for the storm? How could they send that away?"
"Was it the storm that troubled them then? It was their own fear of it. The storm could not have troubled them if they had had faith in their Father in heaven."
"They had good cause to be afraid of it, anyhow."
"He judged they had not, for he was not afraid himself. You judge they had, because you would have been afraid."
"He could help himself, you see."
"And they couldn't trust either him or his Father, notwithstanding all he had done to manifest himself and his Father to them. Therefore he saw that the storm about them was not the thing that most required rebuke."
"I never pretended to much o' the sort," growled Evans. "Quite the contrairy."
"And why? Because, like an honest man, you wouldn't pretend to what you hadn't got. But, if you carried your honesty far enough, you would have taken pains to understand our Lord first. Like his other judges, you condemn him beforehand. You will not call that honesty?"
"I don't see what right you've got to badger me like this before a congregation o' people," said the blind man, rising in indignation. "If I ain't got my heyesight, I ha' got my feelin's."
"And do you think he has no feelings, Mr. Evans? You have spoken evil of him: I have spoken but the truth of you!"
"Come, come, grannie," said the blind man, quailing a little; "don't talk squash. I'm a livin' man afore the heyes o' this here company, an' he ain't nowheres. Bless you, he don't mind!"
"He minds so much," returned Marion, in a subdued voice, which seemed to tremble with coming tears, "that he will never rest until you think fairly of him. And he is here now; for he said, 'I am with you alway, to the end of the world;' and he has heard every word you have been saying against him. He isn't angry like me; but your words may well make him feel sad--for your sake, John Evans--that you should be so unfair."
She leaned her forehead on her hand, and was silent. A subdued murmur arose. The blind man, having stood irresolute for a moment, began to make for the door, saying,--
"I think I'd better go. I ain't wanted here."
"If you are an honest man, Mr. Evans," returned Marion, rising, "you will sit down and hear the case out."
With a waving, fin-like motion of both his hands, Evans sank into his seat, and spoke no word.
After but a moment's silence, she resumed as if there had been no interruption.
"That he should sleep, then, during the storm was a very different thing from declining to assist his father in his workshop; just as the rebuking of the sea was a very different thing from hiding up his father's bad work in miracles. Had that father been in danger, he might perhaps have aided him as he did the disciples. But"--
"Why do you say perhaps, grannie?" interrupted a bright-eyed boy who sat on the hob of the empty grate. "Wouldn't he help his father as soon as his disciples?"
"Certainly, if it was good for his father; certainly not, if it was not good for him: therefore I say perhaps. But now," she went on, turning to the joiner, "Mr. Jarvis, will you tell me whether you think the work of the carpenter's son would have been in any way distinguishable from that of another man?"
"Well, I don't know, grannie. He wouldn't want to be putting of a private mark upon it. He wouldn't want to be showing of it off--would he? He'd use his tools like another man, anyhow."
"All that we may be certain of. He came to us a man, to live a man's life, and do a man's work. But just think a moment. I will put the question again: Do you suppose you would have been able to distinguish his work from that of any other man?"
A silence followed. Jarvis was thinking. He and the blind man were of the few that can think. At last his face brightened.
"Well, grannie," he said, "I think it would be very difficult in any thing easy, but very easy in any thing difficult."
He laughed,--for he had not perceived the paradox before uttering it.
"Explain yourself, if you please, Mr. Jarvis. I am not sure that I understand you," said Marion.
"I mean, that, in an easy job, which any fair workman could do well enough, it would not be easy to tell his work. But, where the job was difficult, it would be so much better done, that it would not be difficult to see the better hand in it."
"I understand you, then, to indicate, that the chief distinction would lie in the quality of the work; that whatever he did, he would do in such a thorough manner, that over the whole of what he turned out, as you would say, the perfection of the work would be a striking characteristic. Is that it?"
"That is what I do mean, grannie."
"And that is just the conclusion I had come to myself."
"_I_ should like to say just one word to it, grannie, so be you won't cut up crusty," said the blind man.
"If you are fair, I sha'n't be crusty, Mr. Evans. At least, I hope not," said Marion.
"Well, it's this: Mr. Jarvis he say as how the jiner-work done by Jesus Christ would be better done than e'er another man's,--tip-top fashion,--and there would lie the differ. Now, it do seem to me as I've got no call to come to that 'ere conclusion. You been tellin' on us, grannie, I donno how long now, as how Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and that he come to do the works of God,--down here like, afore our faces, that we might see God at work, by way of. Now, I ha' nothin' to say agin that: it may be, or it mayn't be--I can't tell. But if that be the way on it, then I don't see how Mr. Jarvis can be right; the two don't curryspond,--not by no means. For the works o' God--there ain't one on'em as I can see downright well managed--tip-top jiner's work, as I may say; leastways,--Now stop a bit, grannie; don't trip a man up, and then say as he fell over his own dog,--leastways, I don't say about the moon an' the stars an' that; I dessay the sun he do get up the werry moment he's called of a mornin', an' the moon when she ought to for her night-work,--I ain't no 'stronomer strawnry, and I ain't heerd no complaints about them; but I do say as how, down here, we ha' got most uncommon bad weather more'n at times; and the walnuts they turns out, every now an' then, full o' mere dirt; an' the oranges awful. There 'ain't been a good crop o' hay, they tells me, for many's the year. An' i' furren parts, what wi' earthquakes an' wolcanies an' lions an' tigers, an' savages as eats their wisiters, an' chimley-pots blowin' about, an' ships goin' down, an' fathers o' families choked an' drownded an' burnt i' coal-pits by the hundred,--it do seem to me that if his jinerin' hadn't been tip-top, it would ha' been but like the rest on it. There, grannie! Mind, I mean no offence; an' I don't doubt you ha' got somethink i' your weskit pocket as 'll turn it all topsy-turvy in a moment. Anyhow, I won't purtend to nothink, and that's how it look to me."
"I admit," said Marion, "that the objection is a reasonable one. But why do you put it, Mr. Evans, in such a triumphant way, as if you were rejoiced to think it admitted of no answer, and believed the world would be ever so much better off if the storms and the tigers had it all their own way, and there were no God to look after things."
"Now, you ain't fair to me, grannie. Not avin' of my heyesight like the rest on ye, I may be a bit fond of a harguyment; but I tries to hit fair, and when I hears what ain't logic, I can no more help comin' down upon it than I can help breathin' the air o' heaven. And why shouldn't I? There ain't no law agin a harguyment. An' more an' over, it do seem to me as how you and Mr. Jarvis is wrong i' it is harguyment."
"If I was too sharp upon you, Mr. Evans, and I may have been," said Marion, "I beg your pardon."
"It's granted, grannie."
"I don't mean, you know, that I give in to what you say,--not one bit."
"I didn't expect it of you. I'm a-waitin' here for you to knock me down."
"I don't think a mere victory is worth the breath spent upon it," said Marion. "But we should all be glad to get or give more light upon any subject, if it be by losing ever so many arguments. Allow me just to put a question or two to Mr. Jarvis, because he's a joiner himself--and that's a great comfort to me to-night: What would you say, Mr. Jarvis, of a master who planed the timber he used for scaffolding, and tied the crosspieces with ropes of silk?"
"I should say he was a fool, grannie,--not only for losin' of his money and his labor, but for weakenin' of his scaffoldin',--summat like the old throne-maker i' that chapter, I should say."
"What's the object of a scaffold, Mr. Jarvis?"
"To get at something else by means of,--say build a house."
"Then, so long as the house was going up all right, the probability is there wouldn't be much amiss with the scaffold?"
"Certainly, provided it stood till it was taken down."
"And now, Mr. Evans," she said next, turning to the blind man, "I am going to take the liberty of putting a question or two to you."
"All right, grannie. Fire away."
"Will you tell me, then, what the object of this world is?"
"Well, most people makes it their object to get money, and make theirselves comfortable."
"But you don't think that is what the world was made for?"
"Oh! as to that, how should I know, grannie? And not knowin', I won't say."
"If you saw a scaffold," said Marion, turning again to Jarvis, "would you be in danger of mistaking it for a permanent erection?"
"Nobody wouldn't be such a fool," he answered. "The look of it would tell you that."
"You wouldn't complain, then, if it should be a little out of the square, and if there should be no windows in it?"
Jarvis only laughed.
"Mr. Evans," Marion went on, turning again to the blind man, "do you think the design of this world was to make men comfortable?"
"If it was, it don't seem to ha' succeeded," answered Evans.
"And you complain of that--don't you?"
"Well, yes, rather,"--said the blind man, adding, no doubt, as he recalled the former part of the evening's talk,--"for harguyment, ye know, grannie."
"You think, perhaps, that God, having gone so far to make this world a pleasant and comfortable place to live in, might have gone farther and made it quite pleasant and comfortable for everybody?"
"Whoever could make it at all could ha' done that, grannie."
"Then, as he hasn't done it, the probability is he didn't mean to do it?"
"Of course. That's what I complain of."
"Then he meant to do something else?"
"It looks like it."
"The whole affair has an unfinished look, you think?"
"I just do."
"What if it were not meant to stand, then? What if it were meant only for a temporary assistance in carrying out something finished and lasting, and of unspeakably more importance? Suppose God were building a palace for you, and had set up a scaffold, upon which he wanted you to help him; would it be reasonable in you to complain that you didn't find the scaffold at all a comfortable place to live in?--that it was draughty and cold? This World is that scaffold; and if you were busy carrying stones and mortar for the palace, you would be glad of all the cold to cool the glow of your labor."
"I'm sure I work hard enough when I get a job as my heyesight will enable me to do," said Evans, missing the spirit of her figure.
"Yes: I believe you do. But what will all the labor of a workman who does not fall in with the design of the builder come to? You may say you don't understand the design: will you say also that you are under no obligation to put so much faith in the builder, who is said to be your God and Father, as to do the thing he tells you? Instead of working away at the palace, like men, will you go on tacking bits of matting and old carpet about the corners of the scaffold to keep the wind off, while that same wind keeps tearing them away and scattering them? You keep trying to live in a scaffold, which not all you could do to all eternity would make a house of. You see what I mean, Mr. Evans?"
"Well, not ezackly," replied the blind man.
"I mean that God wants to build you a house whereof the walls shall be goodness: you want a house whereof the walls shall be comfort. But God knows that such walls cannot be built,--that that kind of stone crumbles away in the foolish workman's hands. He would make you comfortable; but neither is that his first object, nor can it be gained without the first, which is to make you good. He loves you so much that he would infinitely rather have you good and uncomfortable, for then he could take you to his heart as his own children, than comfortable and not good, for then he could not come near you, or give you any thing he counted worth having for himself or worth giving to you."
"So," said Jarvis, "you've just brought us round, grannie, to the same thing as before."
"I believe so," returned Marion. "It comes to this, that when God would build a palace for himself to dwell in with his children, he does not want his scaffold so constructed that they shall be able to make a house of it for themselves, and live like apes instead of angels."
"But if God can do any thing he please," said Evans, "he might as well make us good, and there would be an end of it."
"That is just what he is doing," returned Marion. "Perhaps, by giving them perfect health, and every thing they wanted, with absolute good temper, and making them very fond of each other besides, God might have provided himself a people he would have had no difficulty in governing, and amongst whom, in consequence, there would have been no crime and no struggle or suffering. But I have known a dog with more goodness than that would come to. We cannot be good without having consented to be made good. God shows us the good and the bad; urges us to be good; wakes good thoughts and desires in us; helps our spirit with his Spirit, our thought with his thought: but we must yield; we must turn to him; we must consent, yes, try to be made good. If we could grow good without trying, it would be a poor goodness: we should not be good, after all; at best, we should only he not bad. God wants us to choose to be good, and so be partakers of his holiness; he would have us lay hold of him. He who has given his Son to suffer for us will make us suffer too, bitterly if needful, that we may bethink ourselves, and turn to him. He would make us as good as good can be, that is, perfectly good; and therefore will rouse us to take the needful hand in the work ourselves,--rouse us by discomforts innumerable.
"You see, then, it is not inconsistent with the apparent imperfections of the creation around us, that Jesus should have done the best possible carpenter's work; for those very imperfections are actually through their imperfection the means of carrying out the higher creation God has in view, and at which he is working all the time.
"Now let me read you what King David thought upon this question."
She read the hundred and seventh Psalm. Then they had some singing, in which the children took a delightful part. I have seldom heard children sing pleasantly. In Sunday schools I have always found their voices painfully harsh. But Marion made her children restrain their voices, and sing softly; which had, she said, an excellent moral effect on themselves, all squalling and screeching, whether in art or morals, being ruinous to either.
Toward the close of the singing, Roger and I slipped out. We had all but tacitly agreed it would be best to make no apology, but just vanish, and come again with Percivale the following Sunday.
The greater part of the way home we walked in silence.
"What did you think of that, Roger?" I asked at length.
"Quite Socratic as to method," he answered, and said no more.
I sent a full report of the evening to my father, who was delighted with it, although, of course, much was lost in the reporting of the mere words, not to mention the absence of her sweet face and shining eyes, of her quiet, earnest, musical voice. My father kept the letter, and that is how I am able to give the present report.