George MacDonald

“ Annie opened her arms and took Hector to her bosom. There he sighed himself to sleep; and God put His arms about them both, and kept them asleep until the morning.
And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.
Annie was the first to spring up and begin to dress herself, pondering in her mind as she did so whether to go first to the pawnbroker’s or to the baker, to ask him to recommend her as a charwoman. She would tell him just the truth—that she must in future work for her daily bread. Then Hector rose and dressed himself. ”

“ Really, Annie, I had not thought you would count that a great advantage. For my part, I have never once been in love but with you, and I confess to a fancy that that might almost prove a recommendation to you. But I suppose you will at least allow it desirable that a man should love the girl he marries? If my preference for you be a mere boyish fancy, as probably my mother is at this moment trying to persuade my father, at what age do you suppose it will please God to give me the heart of a man? My mother is sure to prefer somebody not fit to stand in your dingiest cotton frock. ”

“ For what else but such success could come to Hector? Had it not been drawing nearer and nearer all the time? And for a moment she seemed again to stand, a much younger child than now, amid the gusty whirling of the dead leaves about her feet, once more on the point of stooping to pick up what might prove a withered leaf, but was in reality a pound-note, the thing which had wrought her so much misery, and was now filling her cup of joy to the very brim. The book the old lady had talked of could be no other than Hector’s book. No other than Hector could have written it. ”

“ He therefore avoided ever addressing her, except with a distant civility, the easier to him that his mind was known only to himself, while all the time the consciousness of her presence in it enveloped the house in a rosy cloud. For a long time he did not even dream of attempting a word with her alone, fondly imagining that thus he gave his mother time to know and love Annie before discovering anything between them to which she might object. But he did not yet know how incapable that mother was of any simple affection, being, indeed, one of the commonest-minded of women. ”

“ And the ice thus broken, things went on a good deal better, and they came to talk freely.
“Of course,” said Hector, “I am not so silly or so wicked as to try to persuade you that my mother will open her arms to you. She knows neither you nor herself.”
“Will she be terribly angry?” said Annie, with a foreboding quaver in her voice.
“Rather, I am afraid,” allowed Hector.
“Then don’t you think we had better give it up at once?”
“Never forever!” cried Hector. “That is not what I fell in love with you for! I will not give you up even for Death himself! He is not the ruler of our world. ”

“ To think of your marrying me for this!”
“Hector,” answered Annie, drawing herself back with dignity, “do you dare to pity me? That would be to insult me! As if I was not fit to be your wife when doing everything for my mother! There are thousands of Scotch girls that would only be proud to take my place, poor as you are—and you couldn’t be much poorer—and serve you, without being your wife, as I have the honor and pride to be! ”

“ It is sometimes a great advantage not to have many books, and so never outgrow the sense of mystery that hovers about even an open book-case; it was with awe and reverence that Annie, looking around Hector’s room, saw in it, not daring to touch them, books she had heard of, but never seen—among others a Shakspere in one thick volume lay open on his table; nor is it, then, surprising that, when putting his papers straight, she could not help seeing from the different lengths of the lines upon them that they were verse. ”

“ Overwhelmed by Hector’s avowal, and quite unprepared as she had been for it, it was yet no unwelcome news to Annie. Indeed, the moment he addressed her, she knew in her heart that she had been loving him for a long time, though never acknowledging to herself the fact. Such must often be the case between two whom God has made for each other. And although he were a bold man who said that marriages were made in heaven, he were a bolder who denied that love at first sight was never there decreed. For where God has fitted persons for each other, what can they do but fall mutually in love? ”

“ Hector went on, “I must let you both know that my mother is dead against my having Annie. She thinks, of course, that I might do better; but I know she is only far too good for me, and that I shall be a fortunate as well as happy man the day we come together. She has already proved herself as true a woman as ever God made.”
“She is that, sir, as I know and can testify, who have known her longer than anybody else. But sit you down and love each other, and never mind me; I’ll not be a burden to you as long as I can lift a hand to earn my own bread. ”

“ Nevertheless, Hector broke the silence by saying:
“I declare, Annie, I feel so light and free already that I could invent anything, even a fairy tale, and I feel as if it would be a lovely one. I hope you have a penny left to buy a new bottle of ink. The ink at home is so thick it takes three strokes to one mark.”
“Yes, dear, I have a penny; I have two, indeed—just twopence left. We shall buy a bottle of ink with one, and—shall it be a bun with the other? I think one penny bun will divide better than two halfpenny ones.” ”

“ Macintosh’s natural vulgarity had been so pampered by what she regarded as wealth, and she had grown so puffed up, that her very person seemed to hold the door wide for the devil. For self-importance is perhaps a yet deeper root of all evil than even the love of money. Any deep, honest affection might have made it too hot for the devil, but in her heart there was little room for such a love. ”

“ Neither are all ladies, nor all servants of ladies, honorable like Annie, or fit as she to be left alone with a man’s papers.
Hector knew very well how his mother would regard such an alliance as had now begun to absorb every desire and thought of his heart, and was the more careful to watch and repress every sign of the same, foreseeing that, at the least suspicion of the fact, she would lay all the blame upon Annie, at once dismiss her from the house, and remain forever convinced that she had entered it with the design in her heart to make him fall in love with her. ”

“ He would go home to Annie! He would not be a coward soldier! He would not kill himself to escape the enemy! He would stand up to the Evil One, and take his blows without flinching. He and his Annie would take them together, and fight to the last. Then, if they must die, it was well, and would be better.
But alas! what if the obligation of a live soul went farther than this life? What if a man was bound, by the fact that he lived, to live on, and do everything possible to keep the life alive in him? ”

“ But I will not allow that it manifested any weakness, or necessarily involved shame to him; the best of men, and the strongest—yea, the one Man whose soul harbored not an atom of self-pity—upon one occasion wept, I think because he could not persuade the women whom he loved and would fain console to take comfort in his Father. Annie, for one reverent moment, turned her head aside, then threw her arms about him, and hid her glowing face in his bosom. ”

“ There was in Hector, indeed, as a small part of the world came by-and-by to know, the making of a real poet, for such there are in the world at all times—yea, even now—although they may not be recognized, or even intended to ripen in the course of one human season. I think Annie herself was one of such—so full was she of receptive and responsive faculty in the same kind, and I remain in doubt whether the genuine enjoyment of verse be not a fuller sign of the presence of what is most valuable in it than even some power of producing it. ”

“ For Hector had always believed that the acceptance of his first volume had been owing not a little to the fact that he had written it out most legibly, and he held that what reveals itself at once and without possibility of mistake may justly hope for a better reception than what from the first moment annoys the reader with a sense of ill-treatment. It is no wonder, he said, if such a manuscript be at once tossed aside with an imprecation. Legibility is the first and intelligibility the only other thing rendered due by the submission of a manuscript to any publisher. ”

“ Hector Macintosh was a young man about five-and-twenty, who, with the proclivities of the Celt, inherited also some of the consequent disabilities, as well as some that were accidental. Among the rest was a strong tendency to regard only the ideal, and turn away from any authority derived from an inferior source. His chief delight lay in the attempt to embody, in what seemed to him the natural form of verse, the thoughts in him constantly moving at least in the direction of the ideal, even when he was most conscious of his inability to attain to the utterance of them. ”

“ They had already arrived at a stage in their downward progress when not gold, or even silver, but bare copper, was lacking as the equivalent for the bread that could but keep them alive until the next rousing of the hunger that even now lay across their threshold. ”

“ Once more his spirit rose upon the wave of a hope which he could neither logically justify nor dare to refuse; for hope is hope whencesoever it spring, and needs no justification of its self-existence or of its sudden marvelous birth. The very hope was in itself enough for itself. And now he was near his home; his Annie was waiting for him; and in another instant his misery would be shared and comforted by her! ”

“ He who has chosen the good remains in the law of liberty, free to choose right again. He who always chooses the right, will at length be free to choose like God himself, for then shall his will itself be free. Freedom to choose and freedom of the will are two different conditions.
Before the lovers, which it wanted no moment to make them, left the room, they had agreed that Annie must at once leave the house. Hector took her to her mother’s door, and when he returned he found that his father and mother had retired. ”

“ I will take it to the pawnbroker to-morrow.”
“I was never in a pawnshop, Annie. I don’t think I should know how to set about it.”
“You!” cried Annie, with a touch of scorn. “Do you think I would trust a man with it? No; that’s a woman’s work. Why, you would let the fellow offer you half it was worth—and you would take it too. I shall show it to Mrs. Whitmore: she will know what I ought to get for it. She’s had to do the thing herself—too often, poor thing!”
“It would be like tearing my heart out.”
“What! to part with my pretty chemise. Hector, dear, you must not be foolish! ”

“ Macintosh had been talking kindly to Annie—as kindly, that is, as her abominable condescension would permit—and, what to Annie was of far greater consequence, had paid her her wages, rather more than she had expected, so that nothing now lay between her and the fall of her burden from her heavy-laden conscience, except, indeed, her preliminary confession. Dinner, therefore, being over, her mistress gone to the drawing room to prepare the coffee, and her master to his room to write a letter suddenly remembered, Hector was left alone with Annie. ”

“ I confess I was foolish enough at first to fancy somebody had sent us five hundred pounds!”
“And why not?” cried Annie. “I am sure there’s no one more in want of it.”
“That’s just why not,” answered Hector. “Did you ever know a rich man leave his money to a poor relation? Oh, I hope it does not mean that my father is gone. He may have left us a trifle. Only he could not have had so much to leave to anybody. I know he loved you, Annie.” ”

“ At the present moment, however, it was not anxiety as to their own affairs that occupied the mind of Annie Melville, near enough as that might have lain; it was the unhappy condition in which the imprudence of a school-friend—almost her only friend—had involved herself by her hasty marriage with a man who, up to the present moment, had shown no faculty for helping himself or the wife he had involved in his fate, and who did not know where or by what means to procure even the bread of which they were in immediate want. ”