George MacDonald

“ But for the searing brand of his past, he might have loved her truly—as a man may, without being the most exalted of mortals; for in love we are beyond our ordinary selves; the deep thing in us peers up into the human air, and is of God—therefore cannot live long in the mephitic air of a selfish and low nature, but sinks again out of sight.
He was not at his ease with Arctura; he was afraid of her. When a man is conscious of wrong, knows in his history what would draw a hideous smudge over the portrait he would present to the eyes of her he would please, he may well be afraid of her. ”

“ Obedience is the road to all things—the only way in which to grow able to trust him. Love and faith and obedience are sides of the same prism.
Regularly after that, lady Arctura came to the lesson—always intending to object as soon as it was over. But always before the end came, Donal had said something that went so to the heart of the honest girl that she could say nothing. As if she too had been a pupil, as indeed she was, far more than either knew, she would rise when Davie rose, and go away with him. ”

“ As the cold and the nights grew, the water-level rose in Donal’s well, and the poetry began to flow. When we have no summer without, we must supply it from within. Those must have comfort in themselves who are sent to help others. Up in his aerie, like an eagle above the low affairs of the earth, he led a keener life, breathed the breath of a more genuine existence than the rest of the house. No doubt the old cobbler, seated at his last over a mouldy shoe, breathed a yet higher air than Donal weaving his verse, or reading grand old Greek, in his tower ”

“ It is good of you to come!”
“Well, you see, Davie,” returned Donal, “everybody has got to do something to carry the world on a bit: my work is to help make a man of you. Only I can’t do much except you help me; and if I find I am not making a good job of you, I shan’t stop many hours after the discovery. If you want to keep me, you must mind what I say, and so help me to make a man of you.”
“It will be long before I am a man!” said Davie rather disconsolately.
“It depends on yourself. The boy that is longest in becoming a man, is the boy that thinks himself a man before he is a bit like one.” ”

“ Because they are seldom seen, many deny they exist, or need be spoken of if they do. But to terrify a man at the possibilities of his neglected nature, is to do something towards the redemption of that nature.
School-hours were over, but Davie was seated where he had left him, still working. At sight of him Donal, feeling as if he had just come from the presence of the damned, almost burst into tears. A moment more and Arctura entered: it was as if the roof of hell gave way, and the blue sky of the eternal came pouring in heavenly deluge through the ruined vault. ”

“ But the blundering blasts and the swan-shot of the flying hail were all about still.
“When the storm is upon us,” remarked Donal, as they rose from their crouching position, “it seems as if there never could be sunshine more; but our hopelessness does not keep back the sun when his hour to shine is come.”
“I understand!” said Arctura: “when one is miserable, misery seems the law of being; and in the midst of it dwells some thought which nothing can ever set right! All at once it is gone, broken up and gone, like that hail-cloud. It just looks its own foolishness and vanishes.” ”

“ Doubtless, thought Arctura, she knew most things better than she, and certainly had a great deal more common sense; but, on the other hand, was she not satisfied with far less than she could be satisfied with? To believe as her friend believed would not save her from insanity! She must be made on a smaller scale of necessities than herself! How was she able to love the God she said she believed in? God should at least be as beautiful as his creature could imagine him! But Miss Carmichael would say her poor earthly imagination was not to occupy itself with such a high subject! ”

“ But the mere notion of time, not to say the consciousness of empty time, is fearful. It is this empty time that the fool is always trying to kill: his effort should be to fill it. Yet nothing but the living God can fill it—though it be but the shape our existence takes to us. Only where he is, emptiness is not. Eternity will be but an intense present to the child with whom is the Father.
Such thoughts alighted, flitted, and passed, for the first few moments, through the mind of Donal, as he sat half consciously waiting for the dawn. ”

“ Grant!” said Arctura. “I hope you are right.”
When he was gone, the ladies resumed their walk in silence. At length Miss Carmichael spoke.
“Well, I must say, of all the conceited young men I have had the misfortune to meet, your Mr. Grant bears the palm! Such self-assurance! such presumption! such forwardness!”
“Are you certain, Sophia,” rejoined Arctura, “that it is self-assurance, and not conviction that gives him his courage?”
“He is a teacher of lies! He goes dead against all that good men say and believe! The thing is as clear as daylight: he is altogether wrong!” ”

“ Love is its own justification, and sees itself in all its objects: forgiveness is an essential belonging of love, and must be seen where love is seen.
“Are you fond of my brother?” asked Davie, after a pause.
“Why do you ask me?”
“Because they say you and he are going to be married some day, yet you don’t seem to care much to be together.”
“It is all nonsense!” replied Arctura, reddening. “I wish people would not talk foolishness!”
“Well, I do think he’s not so fond of you as of Eppy!”
“Hush! hush! you must not speak of such thing.”
“I saw him once kiss Eppy, and I never saw him kiss you!” ”

“ Forgue’s face flamed up. The devil of pride, and the devil of fear, and the devil of shame, all rushed to the outworks to defend the worthless self. But his temper did not at once break bounds.
“Allow me to remind you, Mr. Grant,” he said, “that, although I have availed myself of your help, I am not your pupil, and you have no authority over me.”
“The reminder is unnecessary, my lord,” answered Donal. “I am not your tutor, but I am the friend of the Comins, and therefore of Eppy.”
His lordship drew himself up yet more erect in his chair, and a sneer came over his handsome countenance. ”

“ Arctura breathed a deep breath, and her joy grew. It is wonderful how small a physical elevation, lifting us into a slightly thinner air, serves to raise the human spirits! We are like barometers, only work the other way; the higher we go, the higher goes our mercury.
They stood for a moment in deep enjoyment, then simultaneously turned to each other.
“My lady,” said Donal, “with such a sky as that out there, it hardly seems as if there could be such a thing as our search to-night! Hollow places, hidden away for evil cause, do not go with it at all! ”

“ Certain rôles are not open to you, to be sure; but your life in the open air, following your sheep, and dreaming all things beautiful and grand in the world beyond you, is entrancing. It is the life to make a poet!”
“Or a king!” thought Donal. “But the earl would have made a discontented shepherd!”
The man who is not content where he is, would never have been content somewhere else, though he might have complained less.
“Take another glass of wine, Mr. Grant,” said his lordship, filling his own from the other decanter. “Try this; I believe you will like it better.” ”

“ But the good thing in it for Davie was, that he noted the immediate faith with which Donal did or tried to do what he told him: this reacted in opening his mind to the beauty and dignity of obedience, and went a long way towards revealing the low moral condition of the man who seeks freedom through refusal to act at the will of another. He who does so will come by degrees to have no will of his own, and act only from impulse—which may be the will of a devil. So Donal and Davie grew together into one heart of friendship. ”

“ Was it not in this very chamber that Jacob had his vision of the mighty stair leading up to the gate of heaven! Was it not under such a roof Jesus spent his last nights on the earth! For comfort and protection he sought no human shelter, but went out into his Father’s house—out under his Father’s heaven! The small and narrow were not to him the safe, but the wide and open. Thick walls cover men from the enemies they fear; the Lord sought space. There the angels come and go more freely than where roofs gather distrust. ”

“ I should have said that when we know a little about a person, and are used to hearing his name, then we are ready to think we know all about him. I heard a man the other day—a man who had never spoken to your father—talk as if he knew all about him.”
“I think I understand,” said Davie.
To confess ignorance is to lose respect with the ignorant who would appear to know. But there is a worse thing than to lose the respect even of the wise—to deserve to lose it; and that he does who would gain a respect that does not belong to him. ”

“ But we have no right to think he cares for us till we believe in Christ—and—and—I don’t know that I do believe in him!”
“Wherever you learned that, it is a terrible lie,” said Donal. “Is not Christ the same always, and is he not of one mind with God? Was it not while we were yet sinners that he poured out his soul for us? It is a fearful thing to say of the perfect Love, that he is not doing all he can, with all the power of a maker over the creature he has made, to help and deliver him!” ”

“ Out of Arctura’s sight Donal had his turn of so-called weakness!
The day was a glorious one, and Davie, full of spirits, could not understand why he seemed so unlike himself.
“Arkie would scold you, Mr. Grant!” he said.
Donal avoided the town, and walked a long way round to get into the road beyond it, his head bent as if he were pondering a pain. At moments he felt as if he must return at once, and refuse to leave the castle for any reason. But he could not see that it was the will of God he should do so. A presentiment is not a command. A prophecy may fail of the least indication of duty. ”

“ She was again much in the company of Miss Carmichael, and Donal had good cause to fear that the pharisaism of her would-be directress was coming down upon her spirit, not like rain on the mown grass, but like frost on the spring flowers. The impossibility of piercing the Christian pharisee holding the traditions of the elders, in any vital part—so pachydermatous is he to any spiritual argument—is a sore trial to the old Adam still unslain in lovers of the truth. At the same time nothing gives patience better opportunity for her perfect work. ”

“ As he spoke he laid the sheet on the bed, and began to lay in it the dry dust and air-wasted bones, handling them as reverently as if the spirit had but just departed. Mistress Brookes would have prevented Arctura, but she insisted on having her share in the burying of her own: who they were God knew, but they should be hers anyhow, and one day she would know! For to fancy we go into the other world a set of spiritual moles burrowing in the dark of a new and unknown existence, is worthy only of such as have a lifeless Law to their sire. ”

“ To have the right and the power, and not use it so, would be to make the thing less ours than anybody’s.—Suppose you had a very beautiful picture, but from some defect in your sight you could never see that picture as it really was, while a servant in your house not only saw it as it was meant to be seen, but had such delight in gazing on it, that even in his dreams it came to him, and made him think of things he would not have thought of but for it:—which of you, you or the servant in your house, would have the more real possession of that picture? ”

“ Is it not enough to know that if the devil were the greater, yet would not God do him homage, but would hang for ever on his cross? Truth is joy and victory. The true hero is adjudged to bliss, nor can in the nature of things, that is, of God, escape it. He who holds by life and resists death, must be victorious; his very life is a slaying of death. A man may die for his opinion, and may only be living to himself: a man who dies for the truth, dies to himself and to all that is not true.
“What a beautiful story!” cried Davie when it ceased. “Where did you get it, Mr. Grant?” ”