THE PARISH TRILOGY - Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, The Seaboard Parish & The Vicar's Daughter. George MacDonald
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of me,' I said. Mr—-rose to his feet, his lips white, and pointed to the door. 'Take your money and be off. And mind you don't refer to me for a character. After such impudence I couldn't in conscience give you one.' Then, calming down a little when he saw I turned to go, 'You had better take to your hands again, for your head will never keep you. There, be off!' he said, pushing the money towards me, and turning his back to me. I could not touch it. 'Keep the money, Mr—-,' I said. 'It'll make up for what you've lost by me.' And I left the room at once without waiting for an answer.
"While I was packing my box, one of my chums came in, and I told him all about it. He is rather a good fellow that, sir; but he laughed, and said, 'What a fool you are, Weir! YOU'll never make your daily bread, and you needn't think it. If you knew what I know, you'd have known better. And it's very odd it was about shawls, too. I'll tell you. As you're going away, you won't let it out. Mr—-' (that was the same who had just turned me away) 'was serving some ladies himself, for he wasn't above being in the shop, like his partner. They wanted the best Indian shawl they could get. None of those he showed them were good enough, for the ladies really didn't know one from another. They always go by the price you ask, and Mr—-knew that well enough. He had sent me up-stairs for the shawls, and as I brought them he said, "These are the best imported, madam." There were three ladies; and one shook her head, and another shook her head, and they all shook their heads. And then Mr—-was sorry, I believe you, that he had said they were the best. But you won't catch him in a trap! He's too old a fox for that.' I'm telling you, sir, what Johnson told me. 'He looked close down at the shawls, as if he were short-sighted, though he could see as far as any man. "I beg your pardon, ladies," said he, "you're right. I am quite wrong. What a stupid blunder to make! And yet they did deceive me. Here, Johnson, take these shawls away. How could you be so stupid? I will fetch the thing you want myself, ladies." So I went with him. He chose out three or four shawls, of the nicest patterns, from the very same lot, marked in the very same way, folded them differently, and gave them to me to carry down. "Now, ladies, here they are!" he said. "These are quite a different thing, as you will see; and, indeed, they cost half as much again." In five minutes they had bought two of them, and paid just half as much more than he had asked for them the first time. That's Mr—-! and that's what you should have done if you had wanted to keep your place.'—But I assure you, sir, I could not help being glad to be out of it."
"But there is nothing in all this to be miserable about," I said. "You did your duty."
"It would be all right, sir, if father believed me. I don't want to be idle, I'm sure."
"Does your father think you do?"
"I don't know what he thinks. He won't speak to me. I told my story—as much of it as he would let me, at least—but he wouldn't listen to me. He only said he knew better than that. I couldn't bear it. He always was rather hard upon us. I'm sure if you hadn't been so kind to me, sir, I don't know what I should have done by this time. I haven't another friend in the world."
"Yes, you have. Your Father in heaven is your friend."
"I don't know that, sir. I'm not good enough."
"That's quite true. But you would never have done your duty if He had not been with you."
"DO you think so, sir?" he returned, eagerly.
"Indeed, I do. Everything good comes from the Father of lights. Every one that walks in any glimmering of light walks so far in HIS light. For there is no light—only darkness—comes from below. And man apart from God can generate no light. He's not meant to be separated from God, you see. And only think then what light He can give you if you will turn to Him and ask for it. What He has given you should make you long for more; for what you have is not enough—ah! far from it."
"I think I understand. But I didn't feel good at all in the matter. I didn't see any other way of doing."
"So much the better. We ought never to feel good. We are but unprofitable servants at best. There is no merit in doing your duty; only you would have been a poor wretched creature not to do as you did. And now, instead of making yourself miserable over the consequences of it, you ought to bear them like a man, with courage and hope, thanking God that He has made you suffer for righteousness' sake, and denied you the success and the praise of cheating. I will go to your father at once, and find out what he is thinking about it. For no doubt Mr—-has written to him with his version of the story. Perhaps he will be more inclined to believe you when he finds that I believe you."
"Oh, thank you, sir!" cried the lad, and jumped up from his seat to go with me.
"No," I said; "you had better stay where you are. I shall be able to speak more freely if you are not present. Here is a book to amuse yourself with. I do not think I shall be long gone."
But I was longer gone than I thought I should be.
When I reached the carpenter's house, I found, to my surprise, that he was still at work. By the light of a single tallow candle placed beside him on the bench, he was ploughing away at a groove. His pale face, of which the lines were unusually sharp, as I might have expected after what had occurred, was the sole object that reflected the light of the candle to my eyes as I entered the gloomy place. He looked up, but without even greeting me, dropped his face again and went on with his work.
"What!" I said, cheerily,—for I believed that, like Gideon's pitcher, I held dark within me the light that would discomfit his Midianites, which consciousness may well make the pitcher cheery inside, even while the light as yet is all its own—worthless, till it break out upon the world, and cease to illuminate only glazed pitcher-sides—"What!" I said, "working so late?"
"Yes, sir."
"It is not usual with you, I know."
"It's all a humbug!" he said fiercely, but coldly notwithstanding, as he stood erect from his work, and turned his white face full on me—of which, however, the eyes drooped—"It's all a humbug; and I don't mean to be humbugged any more."
"Am I a humbug?" I returned, not quite taken by surprise.
"I don't say that. Don't make a personal thing of it, sir. You're taken in, I believe, like the rest of us. Tell me that a God governs the world! What have I done, to be used like this?"
I thought with myself how I could retort for his young son: "What has he done to be used like this?" But that was not my way, though it might work well enough in some hands. Some men are called to be prophets. I could only "stand and wait."
"It would be wrong in me to pretend ignorance," I said, "of what you mean. I know all about it."
"Do you? He has been to you, has he? But you don't know all about it, sir. The impudence of the young rascal!"
He paused for a moment.
"A man like me!" he resumed, becoming eloquent in his indignation, and, as I thought afterwards, entirely justifying what Wordsworth says about the language of the so-called uneducated,—"A man like me, who was as proud of his honour as any aristocrat in the country—prouder than any of them would grant me the right to be!"
"Too proud of it, I think—not too careful of it," I said. But I was thankful he did not heed me, for the speech would only have irritated him. He went on.
"Me to be treated like this! One child a ..."
Here came a terrible break in his speech. But he tried again.
"And the other a ..."
Instead of finishing the sentence, however, he drove his plough fiercely through the groove, splitting off some inches of the wall of it at the end.
"If any one has treated you so," I said, "it must be the devil, not God."
"But if there was a God, he could have prevented it all."
"Mind what I said to you once before: He hasn't done yet. And there is another enemy in His way as bad as the devil—I mean our SELVES. When people want to walk their own way without God, God lets them try it. And then the devil gets a hold of them. But God won't let him keep them. As soon as they are 'wearied in the greatness of their way,' they begin to look about for a Saviour. And then