Next morning her friends noticed with astonishment the change that had
come over her. The vicar's wife could only explain it by supposing
Marlene to have overheard their conversation of the night before. "So
much the better," said the vicar. "If she has heard it, I have nothing
more to say."
After this, the young girl's gentle tenderness towards Clement and his
parents, was touching to behold. She only wished to be considered as
belonging to them. Any proof of their affection she received with glad
surprise; as more than she expected or deserved. She did not talk much,
but what she said was gay and animated. In her whole manner there was a
softness, an abnegation of herself, that seemed meant for a mute
apology. In their wanderings she again took Clement's arm, but she
often begged to be allowed to sit down and rest. Not that she was
tired; she only wished to give the boy his freedom to climb about
whenever he saw anything to tempt him. And when he came back to tell
her what he had seen, she would welcome him with a smile. Her jealousy
was gone, now that she desired nothing for herself but the pleasure of
seeing him pleased.
Thus strengthened and raised to better feelings, she came to the end of
her excursion--and the strengthening had come when it was needed. She
found her mother laid low by a dangerous disease, which carried off the
delicate woman in a day or two. And after the first few weeks of
mourning, she found that her sadly altered life exacted duties of her,
for which before she hardly would have been fitted. She busied herself
about the household, late and early. She found her way, in spite of her
infirmity, into every nook and corner of their small home; and though
there were many things she was unable to do herself, she shewed both
cleverness and foresight in her arrangements, and in her watchful care
that her afflicted father should want for nothing.
She soon acquired a remarkable degree of firmness and quiet dignity.
Where formerly repeated admonitions had been necessary, she ruled the
men and maids with a gentle word. And if ever any serious instance did
occur, of neglect or real ill-will, one earnest look of those large
blind eyes would melt the coarsest nature.
Since she had understood that there was work for her to do--that the
moulding of their daily life was entirely in her hands, and that it was
her duty to be cheerful for her father's sake, she had much less time
to feel the pain of Clement's absence; and when he was sent to school
in town, she was able to bid him a more composed farewell than any of
the others. For some weeks, it is true, she went about the house as
though she were in a dream--as though she had been severed from her
happier self. But she soon grew gay again, jesting with her father to
win him to a laugh, and singing to herself her favourite songs. When
the vicar's wife would come with letters, and read the news and
messages from Clement, her heart would beat quick in secret; and that
night perhaps, she lay awake for a longer time than usual; but in the
morning she would rise serene as ever.
When Clement came home for the holidays, his first steps were to the
sexton's house--and his step Marlene knew,--ever so far off. She stood
still, and listened whether it was for her he asked; then with her slim
hands, she hastily smoothed back her hair, that still hung in its heavy
plaits upon her slender neck; then rose and left her work; and by the
time he had crossed the threshold, there was not a trace of agitation
on her features. Gaily she offered him her hand, and begged him to come
in and sit down beside her, and tell her what he had been doing. There
he would often forget the hours, and his mother would come after him,
for she began to grudge any of his time she lost. He very rarely stayed
all his holidays in the village; he would go rambling about the
mountains, absorbed by his growing love of nature and of its history.
And so the years rolled on, in monotonous rotation. The old were fading
gradually, and the young growing fast in bloom and strength.
Once when Clement came home at Easter, and saw Marlene, as, rising from
her spinning-wheel she came to meet him, he was struck with the
progress of her loveliness since autumn. "You are quite a grown-up
young lady now," he said; "and I too have done with boyhood--only feel
my beard, how it has grown over my winter studies." She blushed a
little as he took her hand, and passed it across his chin to make her
feel the down upon it. And he had more to talk of than he used to have.
The master with whom he boarded had daughters, and these daughters had
young companions. She made him describe them to her. "I don't care for
girls," he said; "they are so silly, and talk such nonsense. There is
only one, Cecilia, whom I don't dislike, because she does not chatter
and make those faces the others do to beautify themselves--and what are
they all to me? The other evening when I came home, and went into my
room, I found a bunch of flowers on the table; I let it lie, and did
not even put it in water, though I was sorry for the flowers--but it
provoked me, and next day there was such a whispering and tittering
amongst the girls!--I felt so cross, I would not speak a word to them.
Why can't they let me alone?--I have no time for their nonsense."
When he talked so, Marlene would hang upon his lips, and treasuring up
his words, would interweave them with an endless web of her own strange
fancies. She might perhaps have been in danger of wasting her youth in
fruitless reveries, but she was saved from this by serious sorrows, and
cares that were very real. Her father, who had long fulfilled with
difficulty the duties of his place, was now struck with paralysis, and
lay entirely helpless for one whole year, when his sufferings were put
an end to by a second stroke. She never left him for an hour. Even in
the holidays which brought Clement, she would not spare the time to
talk to him, save when he would come to spend ten minutes in the
sick-room.
Thus concentrating her life, she grew more self-denying. She complained
to no one, and would have needed no one, had not her blindness
prevented her doing everything herself. Her misfortune had been a
secret discipline to her, and had taught many a humble household
virtue, that those who see neglect. She kept everything committed to
her care in the most scrupulous order. Her neatness was exaggerated,
for she had no eyes to see when she had done enough.
Clement was deeply moved when he first saw her trying to wash and dress
her helpless father, and carefully combing his thin grey hair. If in
that sick-room, her cheek grew somewhat paler, there was a deeper
radiance in her large dark eyes, and to her natural distinction, those
lowly labours were, in fact, a foil.
The old man died. His successor came to take possession of the house,
and at the Vicarage Marlene found a kind and hospitable home.
Clement only heard this by letters rarely written, and still more
rarely answered. He had gone to a more distant university, and was no
longer able to spend all his holidays at home. Now and then he would
enclose a few lines to Marlene, in which, contrary to his former
custom, he would address her as a child, in a joking tone, that made
his father serious and silent, and his mother shake her head. Marlene
would have these notes read aloud to her, and listening to them
gravely, would carefully keep them. When her father died, he wrote to
her a short agitated letter, neither attempting to console her, nor
expressing any sorrow; containing only a few earnest entreaties to be
careful of her health, to be calm, and to let him know exactly how she
was, and what she felt.
At Easter he had, been expected, but he did not come; he only wrote
that he had found an opportunity, too good to be lost, of accompanying
one of the professors on a botanical tour. His father had been
satisfied, and Marlene at last successful in pacifying his mother.
He came unannounced at Whitsuntide, on foot, with glowing cheeks,
unwearied by a long march before break of day--a fine-grown young man.
He stepped into the silent house, where his mother was alone and busy,
for it was the eve of a great holiday. Surprised, with a cry of joy,
she threw herself upon his neck. "You!" she exclaimed, as soon as she
had recovered herself, drawing back to gaze upon him, the long absent
one, with all her love for him in her eyes. "You forgetful boy, are you
come at last? You can find the way back, I see, to your old father
and mother! I began to think you only meant to return to us as a
full-fledged professor, and who knows whether my poor eyes would have
been left open long enough to behold that pleasant sight on earth? But
I must not scold you now that you are my own good boy, and are come to
bring us a pleasanter Whitsuntide than I have known for years--me, your
father, and all of us!" "Mother," he said, "I cannot tell you how glad
I am to be at home again. I could not hold out any longer. I don't know
how it happened. I had not resolved to come--I only felt I must. One
fine morning, instead of going up to college, I found myself without
the gates, walking for very life--such journeys in a day as I never
took before, though I was always a good pedestrian. Where is my father,
and Marlene?"
"Don't you hear him?" said his mother; "he is upstairs in his study."
And in fact they heard the old man's heavy tread walking up and down.
"It is just as it used to be--that has been his Saturday's walk all
these twenty years I have known him. Marlene is with the labourers in
the hayfield--I sent her away that I might be left to do my work in
peace. When she is in the house, she would always have me sitting idle
in the corner with my hands before me. She must needs do everything
herself. We have new men just now, and I am glad that she should look
after them a little, until they get accustomed to their work. Won't
she be surprised to find you here? Now come, we must go upstairs to
father, and let him have a look at you. It will be midday directly.
Come along--he won't be angry at your disturbing him."
She led her son after her, still keeping hold of his hand while she
slipped up the narrow staircase before him; then softly opening the
door, with a sign to Clement, she pushed him forwards while she stepped
back. "Here he is at last!" she said; "there you have him!" "Whom?"
cried the old man angrily, and started from his meditations; and then
he saw his son's bright face beside him radiant in the morning
sunshine. He held out his hand: "Clement!" he cried, between surprise
and joy, "You here!" "I was homesick, father," said his son, with a
warm grasp of the proffered hand. "I am come to stay over the holidays,
if there be room for me now that you have Marlene here." "How you
talk!" eagerly broke in his mother; "If I had seven sons, I know I
should find room for them. But I will leave you to your father now; I
have to go about the kitchen, and I must rifle our vegetable-beds, for
in town, I doubt they have been spoiling you."
And with that she went, leaving father and son still standing silently
face to face. "I have disturbed you," at length said Clement; "you are
in the middle of your sermon." "You can't disturb a man who has already
disturbed himself. I have been going about all the morning, turning
over my text in my mind, but the seed would not spring up. I have had
strange ideas; misgivings I could not master."
He went to the little window that looked upon the church. The way
thither was through the churchyard. It lay peacefully before them, with
its flowers and its many crosses glittering in the noonday sun. "Come
hither, Clement," said the old vicar gently; "come and stand here
beside me. Do you see that grave to the left, with the primroses and
monthly roses? It is one you never saw before. Do you know who it is
sleeps there? It is my dear old friend; our Marlene's father."
He left his son standing at the window, and began pacing up and down
the room again; in their silence they only heard his even tread
crunching the sand upon the wooden floor; "No one ever knew him as I
did;" he said, drawing a deep breath--"Nobody lost so much, in losing
him; for he was to no one else what he was to me. What did he know of
the world and the wisdom of this world, which is foolishness in the
sight of God! What science he possessed was revealed to him--by
scripture or by suffering. I know he is blessed now, for he was already
blessed on Earth."
After a pause he went on; "Whom have I now to put me to shame, when I
have been puffed up?--to save me, when my faith is wavering--to unravel
the vexed thoughts that by turns accuse and excuse each other! This
world is growing so terribly wise! What I hear is more than I can
understand--what I read my soul rejects, lest it should lead it to
perdition. Many there be who lift up their voices, and dream they have
the gift of tongues; and behold, it is nought but idle lip-work, and
the scorners listen, and rejoice. Ah! my dear old friend, would I were
safe, where you are now!"
Clement turned to look at him. He had never so heard his father speak,
in the anguish of his soul. He went up to him, trying to find the right
words to say. "Don't, my son;" said his father, deprecatingly, "there
is nothing you can say to me, that saints have not said better. Do you
know, one day, just after his death, I had fallen asleep, here in this
very room; night had come with a tempest that awoke me; my heart was
heavy, even unto death, when suddenly I saw him--a great light was
shining round him, but he appeared in the clothes he usually wore, just
as if he were alive. He did not speak, but remained standing at the
foot of my bed, calmly looking down upon me. At first it agitated me
terribly, I was not worthy of the grace vouchsafed me; of beholding a
sainted face.--Only the day after, I felt the peace it had left behind.
He did not come again until last night--I had been reading one of those
books, written to seduce Man from God, and from the word of God, and
had gone to bed in grief and anger, when soon after twelve o'clock, I
woke up again, and saw him standing as before, holding an open bible in
his hand, printed in golden letters. He pointed to them with his
finger; but so great a radiance was streaming from the pages, that I
strained my dazzled eyes in vain; I could not read a line.--I sat up,
and bent nearer to him. He stood still, with a look of love and pity in
his face; which presently changed to anxiety when he saw that I was
trying to read, and could not. Then, blinded by the brightness, my eyes
ran over, and he vanished slowly, leaving me in tears."--
He went to the window again, and Clement saw him shudder. "Father!" he
said, and took his hand as it hung down limply by his side--he found it
cold and damp--"dear Father, you distress me! You are ill--you should
send for a doctor."
"A Doctor?" cried his father, almost violently, drawing himself up to
his full height--"I am well, and that is the worst of it. My soul
feels, longs for, approaching death, while my body is still obstinately
rebellious."
"These dreams are destroying you, father."
"Dreams! I tell you, I was as wide awake as I am now."
"I do not doubt it, father; you were awake, and that is just what makes
me so uneasy. It is fever that given you those waking dreams, the very
memory of which distresses you enough to quicken your pulse and make
you ill. I need not be a doctor to know that last night you were in a
fever, as you are now."
"To know! and what do you think you know, poor mortal that you are! Oh
admirable wisdom!--Grace-giving science!--but after all, whom do I
accuse? What do I deserve?--for babbling of God's most precious
mysteries, and baring my aching heart as a mark for scorners. Are these
the fruits of all your studies? What grapes do you hope to gather from
thorns like these? I know you well, poor vain creatures that you are,
who would set up new Gods for others, while in your hearts you worship
no gods but yourselves; I tell you, your days are numbered."--His bald
brow was flushed crimson as he turned to go, without one look at
Clement, who stood shocked and silent, his eyes fixed on the floor.
Suddenly he felt his father's hand upon his shoulder:
"Speak truth, my son; do you really hold to those of whose opinions I
have read with horror? Are you among those bright votaries of matter,
who jest at miracles; to whom the Spirit is as a fable which nature
tells, and man listens to with scorn. If your youth could not choke
these weeds, was the seed of gratitude sown by the Lord in your heart
in vain?"
"Father," said the young man after some consideration, "how shall I
answer you? I am ready to stake my life on the solution of these
questions--I have heard them answered in so many different ways by men
I love and honor. Some of my dearest friends profess the opinions you
condemn: I listen and learn, and have not yet ventured to decide."
"He who is not with me, is against me, saith the Lord--"
"No, I could not be against Him--I could not strive against the Spirit.
Who does deny the Spirit? even among those who would bind it to the
laws of matter?--Are not its miracles the same, even if they be no more
than nature's fairest blossoms? Is a noble image to be scorned, for
only being of stone?"
"You talk as they all do; your heads are darkened by your own dim
metaphors--you are so deafened with the sound of your empty words, that
the small voice within you speaks unheard--and is it thus you come to
celebrate our Whitsuntide?"
"I came because I loved you--"
There was silence again between them. The old vicar's lips parted more
than once, as if to speak, and firmly closed again. They heard
Marlene's voice below, and Clement left the window at which he had been
sorrowfully standing. "It is Marlene," his father said: "Have you
forgotten her? Among your profane associates who vie with each other
in their reckless folly and deny the Spirit and the liberty of the
Spirit--the freedom of God's adoption--did the memory of your young
playfellow never come to remind you of the wonders the Spirit can work,
when severed from outward sense; and of the strength God's grace can
give to a humble heart that is firm in Faith?"
Clement kept back the answer that was on his lips, for he heard the
blind girl's light step upon the stairs.--The door opened, and she
stood on the threshold with blushing cheeks. "Clement!" she cried,
turning her gentle eyes to the spot where he actually stood. He went up
to her, and took the hand she held out waiting for him. "How glad you
have made your parents! Welcome, welcome! a thousand welcomes! but why
are you so silent?" she added.
"Yes, dear child," he said, "I am here--I wanted so much to see you all
again; and how well you look! You have grown taller."
"The spring has set me up again--this winter was very hard to bear--but
your parents are so good to me, Clement.--Good morning, father dear;"
she said, turning to him--"It was so early when we went out to the
field, that I could not come up to shake hands then"--and she held out
hers to him.
"Go downstairs now, dear child, and take Clement with you. You can shew
him your garden--you have a little while to yourselves yet before
dinner; and you, Clement, think over what I have been saying to
you."--And then the young people went away.
"What is the matter with your father?" said the young girl, when they
had got downstairs--"his tone sounded rather strange, and so does
yours. Have you had any angry words together?"
"I found him very much excited; his blood appears to be in a disordered
state. Has he been complaining again of late?"
"Not to me. He sometimes appeared to be ill at ease, and would not
speak for hours together, so as often to surprise our mother. Was he
severe on you just now?"
"We had a discussion upon very serious subjects. He questioned me, and
I could not conceal my convictions."
Marlene grew pensive, and her countenance only brightened when they got
into the fresh air.
"Is it not pleasant here?" She asked, stretching out both hands.
"Indeed I hardly know the place again," he said; "what have you done to
this neglected little spot? As far back as I can remember, there never
was anything here but a few fruit-trees, and the hollyhocks and asters,
and now it is all over roses."
"Yes," she said; "your mother never used to care much about the garden,
and now she likes it too. The bailiffs son learned gardening in the
town, and he made me a present of some rose-trees, and planted them for
me--by degrees I got the others, and now I am quite rich. The finest
are not in flower yet."
"And can you take care of them all yourself?"
"Do you wonder at that, because I cannot see?" she said, merrily; "but
all the same, I understand them very well, and I know what is good for
them--I can tell by the scent, which of them are fading, and which are
opening, and whether they are in want of water--they seem to speak to
me. Only I cannot gather one for you; I tear my hands so with the
thorns."
"Let me gather one for you;" he said, and broke off a monthly rose--she
took it--but--"You have broken off too many buds," she said--"I will
keep this one to put in water, and there is the full blown rose for
you."
They walked up and down the neatly kept path, until they were called to
dinner--Clement felt embarrassed with his father--but Marlene,
generally so modest in the part she took in conversation, now found a
thousand things to ask and say. And thus the vicar forgot the painful
feeling left by that first meeting with his son, and the old footing of
cordiality was soon resumed.
In the course of the next few days, however, they could not fail to
find occasion to revive their quarrel. When his father enquired about
the present state of theology at that University, Clement endeavoured
to turn the conversation to general subjects; but the farther he
retreated, the hotter grew his father in pursuit. Often an anxious, and
sometimes an indignant look from his mother, would come to support him
in his resolution to avoid all plain speaking on this subject; but
whenever he broke off, or was forced to say a thing that to him meant
nothing, the awkward silence fell upon his spirits, and chilled him to
the heart Marlene only was always able to recover the proper tone. But
he saw that she too was grieved, and therefore he avoided her when she
was alone. He knew that she would question him, and from her he could
have concealed nothing. A shade came over him now whenever he saw her.
Was it the memory of that childish promise he had long since broken?
Was it the feeling that in the schism of opinion that threatened to
estrange him from his parents she remained standing on their side?
And yet he felt his tenderness for her more irresistibly than ever; it
was a thing he found impossible to deny, but which he did strive most
resolutely to conquer. He was too much absorbed in study and in his
visions of the future, not to struggle with the energy of an aspiring
nature against everything that might cling to his steps, or eventually
chance to clog them.
"I have to be a traveller," he said: "a traveller on foot--my bundle
must be light." He felt strangely burthened when he thought of binding
himself to a wife who would have a claim to a large share of his life;
and a blind one too, whom he would feel it wrong to leave. Here in her
native village, where everything wore the simple aspect she had known
from childhood, she was secure from the embarrassments which a
residence in a town must inevitably have produced; and so he persuaded
himself that he should do her a wrong by drawing closer to her. That he
could be causing pain by this self-denial of his, was more than he
could trust himself to believe.
His measures became more decisive. On the last day of his stay, after
he had embraced his parents, and heard that Marlene was in the garden,
he only left a farewell message for her, and with a beating heart he
took the road to the village, and then turned down a path across the
fields, to reach the woods. But the vicarage garden also opened to
these fields, and the nearest way to them would have been through its
small wicket gate. It was a long way round he had preferred, but at the
last, he could not make up his mind to go farther on his narrow way
through the young corn, without at least, one pause of retrospection.
He stood still in the serene sunshine, looking towards the hamlet with
its cottages and houses--behind the hedge that bounded his father's
garden, he caught sight of the young girl's slender figure. Her face
was turned his way, but she had no perception of his presence.
His tears sprang quick and hot, but he struggled and overcame them;
then, leaping wildly over banks and ditches, he reached the hedge; she
started: "Farewell, Marlene! I am going. I may be away for a year;" and
he passed his hand over her hair and forehead. "Good-bye!"--"You are
going?" she said; "one thing I should like to ask of you--write
oftener;--do!--your mother needs it, and sometimes send me a little
message."
"I will;" he said in an absent way--and again he went. "Clement!"--she
called after him--he heard, but he did not look back. "It is well that
he did not hear me," she murmured; "what could I have found to say to
him?"