Adela Cathcart, Volume 3. George MacDonaldЧитать онлайн книгу.
went up to a house, and asked for a piece of bread, and they gave it to me, and I felt much better after eating it. But I had to rest so often, and got so tired, and my feet got so sore, that—you know how late it was before I got home to my darling uncle.'
"'And me too!' I expostulated.
"'And you, too, Charlie,' she answered; and we all cried over again.
"'This shan't happen any more!' said my uncle.
"After tea was over, he asked for writing things, and wrote a note, which he sent off.
"The next morning, about eleven, as I was looking out of the window, I saw a carriage drive up and stop at our door.
"'What a pretty little brougham!' I cried. 'And such a jolly horse!
Look here, Chrissy!'
"Presently Uncle Peter's bell rang, and Miss Chrissy was sent for. She came down again radiant with pleasure.
"'What do you think, Charlie! That carriage is mine—all my own. And I am to go to school in it always. Do come and have a ride in it.'
"You may be sure I was delighted to do so.
"'Where shall we go?' I said.
"'Let us ask uncle if we may go and see the little darling who set me free.'
"His consent was soon obtained, and away we went. It was a long drive, but we enjoyed it beyond everything. When we reached the house, we were shown into the drawing-room.
"There was Mrs. Sprinx and little Eddie. The lady stared; but the child knew Cinderella at once, and flew into her arms.
"'I knew you were a princess!' he cried. 'There, auntie!'
"But Mrs. Sprinx had put on an injured look, and her hands shook very much.
"'Really, Miss Belper, if that is your name, you have behaved in a most unaccountable way. Why did you not tell me, instead of stealing the key of the gate, and breaking the kitchen window? A most improper way for a young lady to behave—to run out of the house at midnight!'
"'You forget, madam,' replied Chrissy, with more dignity than I had ever seen her assume, 'that as soon as ever I attempted to open my mouth, you told me not to tell lies. You believed the wicked people who brought me here rather than myself. However, as you will not be friendly, I think we had better go. Come, Charlie?'
"'Don't go, princess,' pleaded little Eddie.
"'But I must, for your auntie does not like me,' said Chrissy.
"'I am sure I always meant to do my duty by you. And I will do so still.—Beware, my dear young woman, of the deceitfulness of riches. Your carriage won't save your soul!'
"Chrissy was on the point of saying something rude, as she confessed when we got out; but she did not. She made her bow, turned and walked away. I followed, and poor Eddie would have done so too, but was laid hold of by his aunt. I confess this was not quite proper behaviour on Chrissy's part; but I never discovered that till she made me see it. She was very sorry afterwards, and my uncle feared the brougham had begun to hurt her already, as she told me. For she had narrated the whole story to him, and his look first let her see that she had been wrong. My uncle went with her afterwards to see Mrs. Sprinx, and thank her for having done her best; and to take Eddie such presents as my uncle only knew how to buy for children. When he went to school, I know he sent him a gold watch. From that time till now that she is my wife, Chrissy has had no more such adventures; and if Uncle Peter did not die on Christmas-day, it did not matter much, for Christmas-day makes all the days of the year as sacred as itself."
CHAPTER II.
THE GIANT'S HEART
When Harry had finished reading, the colonel gallantly declared that the story was the best they had had. Mrs. Armstrong received this as a joke, and begged him not to be so unsparing.
"Ah! Mrs. Armstrong," returned he laughing, "you are not old enough yet, to know the truth from a joke. Don't you agree with me about the story, Mrs. Cathcart?"
"I think it is very pretty and romantic. Such men as Uncle Peter are not very common in the world. The story is not too true to Nature."
This she said in a tone intended to indicate superior acquaintance with the world and its nature. I fear Mrs. Cathcart and some others whom I could name, mean by Nature something very bad indeed, which yet an artist is bound to be loyal to. The colonel however seemed to be of a different opinion.
"If there never was such a man as Uncle Peter," said he, "there ought to have been; and it is all the more reason for putting him into a story that he is not to be found in the world."
"Bravo!" cried I. "You have answered a great question in a few words."
"I don't know," rejoined our host. "Have I? It seems to me as plain as the catechism."
I thought he might have found a more apt simile, but I held my peace.
Next morning, I walked out in the snow. Since the storm of that terrible night, it had fallen again quietly and plentifully; and now in the sunlight, the world—houses and trees, ponds and rivers—was like a creation, more than blocked out, but far from finished—in marble.
"And this," I said to myself, as I regarded the wondrous loveliness with which the snow had at once clothed and disfigured the bare branches of the trees, "this is what has come of the chaos of falling flakes! To this repose of beauty has that storm settled and sunk! Will it not be so with our mental storms as well?"
But here the figure displeased me; for those were not the true right shapes of the things; and the truth does not stick to things, but shows itself out of them.
"This lovely show," I said, "is the result of a busy fancy. This white world is the creation of a poet such as Shelley, in whom the fancy was too much for the intellect. Fancy settles upon anything; half destroys its form, half beautifies it with something that is not its own. But the true creative imagination, the form-seer, and the form-bestower, falls like the rain in the spring night, vanishing amid the roots of the trees; not settling upon them in clouds of wintry white, but breaking forth from them in clouds of summer green."
And then my thoughts very naturally went from Nature to my niece; and I asked myself whether within the last few days I had not seen upon her countenance the expression of a mental spring-time. For the mind has its seasons four, with many changes, as well as the world, only that the cycles are generally longer: they can hardly be more mingled than as here in our climate.
Let me confess, now that the subject of the confession no longer exists, that there had been something about Adela that, pet-child of mine as she was, had troubled me. In all her behaviour, so far as I had had any opportunity of judging, she had been as good as my desires at least. But there was a want in her face, a certain flatness of expression which I did not like. I love the common with all my heart, but I hate the common-place; and, foolish old bachelor that I am, the common-place in a woman troubles me, annoys me, makes me miserable. Well, it was something of the common-place in Adela's expression that had troubled me. Her eyes were clear, with lovely long dark lashes, but somehow the light in them had been always the same; and occasionally when I talked to her of the things I most wished her to care about, there was such an immobile condition of the features, associated with such a ready assent in words, that I felt her notion of what I meant must be something very different indeed from what I did mean. Her face looked as if it were made of something too thick for the inward light to shine through—wax, and not living muscle and skin. The fact was, the light within had not been kindled, else that face of hers would have been ready enough to let it shine out. Hitherto she had not seemed to me to belong at all to that company that praises God with sweet looks, as Thomas Hood describes Ruth as doing. What was wanting I had found it difficult to define. Her soul was asleep. She was dreaming a child's dreams, instead of seeing a woman's realities—realities that awake the swift play of feature, as the wind of God arouses the expression of a still landscape. So there seemed after all a gulf between her and me. She did not see what I saw, feel what I felt, seek what I sought. Occasionally even, the delicate young girl, pure and bright as the snow that hung on the boughs around me, would shock the wizened old bachelor with her worldliness—a worldliness that