FAR ABOVE RUBIES
BY GEORGE MACDONALD
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. But it was only in the retirement of his own chamber
that he attempted their embodiment; of all things, he shrank from any
communion whatever concerning these cherished matters. Nor, indeed, had
he any friends who could tempt him to share with them what seemed to him
his best; so that, in truth, he was intimate with none. His mind would
dwell much upon love and friendship in the imaginary abstract, but of
neither had he had the smallest immediate experience. He had cherished
only the ideals of the purest and highest sort of either passion, and
seemed to find satisfaction enough in the endeavor to embody such in
his verse, without even imagining himself in communication with any
visionary public. The era had not yet dawned when every scribbler is
consumed with the vain ambition of being recognized, not, indeed, as
what he is, but as what he pictures himself in his secret sessions of
thought. That disease could hardly attack him while yet his very
imaginations recoiled from the thought of the inimical presence of a
stranger consciousness. Whether this was modesty, or had its hidden base
in conceit, I am, with the few insights I have had into his mind, unable
to determine.
That he had leisure for the indulgence of his bent was the result of his
peculiar position. He lived in the house of his father, and was in his
father’s employment, so that he was able both to accommodate himself to
his father’s requirements and at the same time fully indulge his own
especial taste. The elder Macintosh was a banker in one of the larger
county towns of Scotland--at least, such is the profession and position
there accorded by popular consent to one who is, in fact, only a
bank-agent, for it is a post involving a good deal of influence and a
yet greater responsibility. Of this responsibility, however, he had
allowed his son to feel nothing, merely using him as a clerk, and
leaving him, as soon as the stated hour for his office-work expired,
free in mind as well as body, until the new day should make a fresh
claim upon his time and attention. His mother seldom saw him except at
meals, and, indeed, although he always behaved dutifully to her, there
was literally no intercommunion of thought or feeling between them--a
fact which probably had a good deal to do with the undeveloped condition
in which Hector found, or rather, did not find himself. Occasionally his
mother wanted him to accompany her for a call, but he avoided yielding
as much as possible, and generally with success; for this was one of the
claims of social convention against which he steadily rebelled--the more
determinedly that in none of his mother’s friends could he take the
smallest interest; for she was essentially a commonplace because
ambitious woman, without a spark of aspiration, and her friends were of
the same sort, without regard for anything but what was--or, at least,
they supposed to be--the fashion. Indeed, it was hard to understand how
Hector came ever to be born of such a woman, although in truth she was
of as pure Celtic origin as her husband--only blood is not spirit, and
that is often clearly manifest. His father, on the other hand, was not
without some signs of an imagination--quite undeveloped, indeed, and,
I believe, suppressed by the requirements of his business relations.
At the same time, Hector knew that he cherished not a little indignation
against the insolence of the good Dr.Johnson in regard to both Ossian
and his humble translator, Macpherson, upholding the genuineness of
both, although unable to enter into and set forth the points of the
argument on either side. As to Hector, he reveled in the ancient
traditions of his family, and not unfrequently in his earlier youth had
made an attempt to re-embody some of its legends into English, vain as
regarded the retention of the special airiness and suggestiveness of
their vaguely showing symbolism, for often he dropped his pen with a
sigh of despair at the illusiveness of the special aroma of the Celtic
imagination. For the rest, he had had as good an education as Scotland
could in those days afford him, one of whose best features was the
negative one that it did not at all interfere with the natural course of
his inborn tendencies, and merely developed the power of expressing
himself in what manner he might think fit. Let me add that he had a good
conscience--I mean, a conscience ready to give him warning of the least
tendency to overstep any line of prohibition; and that, as yet, he had
never consciously refused to attend to such warning.
Another thing I must mention is that, although his mind was constantly
haunted by imaginary forms of loveliness, he had never yet been what is
called _in love_. For he had never yet seen anyone who even
approached his idea of spiritual at once and physical attraction. He was
content to live and wait, without even the notion that he was waiting
for anything. He went on writing his verses, and receiving the reward,
such as it was, of having placed on record the thoughts which had come
to him, so that he might at will recall them. Neither had he any thought
of the mental soil which was thus slowly gathering for the possible
growth of an unknown seed, fit for growing and developing in that same
unknown soil.
One day there arrived in that cold Northern city a certain cold,
sunshiny morning, gay and sparkling, and with it the beginning of what,
for want of a better word, we may call his fate. He knew nothing of its
approach, had not the slightest prevision that the divinity had that
moment put his hand to the shaping of his rough-hewn ends. It was early
October by the calendar, but leaves brown and spotted and dry lay
already in little heaps on the pavement--heaps made and unmade
continually, as if for the sport of the keen wind that now scattered
them with a rush, and again, extemporizing a little evanescent
whirlpool, gathered a fresh heap upon the flags, again to rush asunder,
as in direst terror of the fresh-invading wind, determined yet again to
scatter them, a broken rout of escaping fugitives. Along the pavement,
seemingly in furtherance of the careless design of the wind, a girl went
heedlessly scushling along among the unresting and unresisting leaves,
making with her rather short skirt a mimic whirlwind of her own. Her
eyes were fixed on the ground, and she seemed absorbed in anxious
thought, which thought had its origin in one of the commonest causes of
human perplexity--the need of money, and the impossibility of devising a
scheme by which to procure any. It was but a few weeks since her father
had died, leaving behind him such a scanty provision for his widow and
child that only by the utmost care and coaxing were they able from the
first to make it meet their necessities. Nor, indeed, would it have been
possible for them to subsist had not a brother of the widow supplemented
their poor resources with an uncertain contingent, whose continuance he
was not able to secure, or even dared to promise.
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.
Now Annie had never had to suffer hunger, and the idea that her
companion from childhood should be exposed to such a fate was what she
could not bear. Yet, for any way out of it she could see, it would have
to be borne. She might possibly, by herself going without, have given
her a good piece of bread; but then she would certainly share it with
her foolish husband, and there would be little satisfaction in that!
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. And how could she, in
her all but absolute poverty, do anything? Her mother was but one pace
or so from the same goal, and would, as a mother must, interfere to
prevent her useless postponement of the inevitable. It was clear she
could do nothing--and yet she could ill consent that it should be so.
When her father almost suddenly left them alone, Annie was already
acting as assistant in the Girls’ High School--but, alas! without any
recognition of her services by even a promise of coming payment. She
lived only in the hope of a small salary, dependent on her definite
appointment to the office. To attempt to draw upon this hope would be to
imperil the appointment itself. She could not, even for her friend, risk
her mother’s prospects, already poor enough; and she could not help
perceiving the hopelessness of her friend’s case, because of the utter
characterlessness of the husband to whom she was enslaved. Why interfere
with the hunger he would do nothing to forestall? How could she even
give such a man the sixpence which had been her father’s last gift to
her?
But Annie was one to whom, in the course of her life, something strange
had not unfrequently happened, chiefly in the shape of what the common
mind would set aside as mere coincidence. I do not say _many_ such
things had occurred in her life; but, together, their strangeness and
their recurrence had caused her to remember every one of them, so that,
when she reviewed them, they seemed to her many. And now, with a shadowy
prevision, as it seemed, that something was going to happen, and with a
shadowy recollection that she had known beforehand it was coming,
something strange did take place. Of such things she used, in after
days, always to employ the old, stately Bible-phrase, “It came to pass”;
she never said, “It happened.”
As she walked along with her eyes on the ground, the withered leaves
caught up every now and then in a wild dance by the frolicsome wind, she
was suddenly aware of something among them which she could not identify,
whirling in the aerial vortex about her feet. Scarcely caring what it
was, she yet, all but mechanically, looked at it a little closer, lost
it from sight, caught it again, as a fresh blast sent it once more
gyrating about her feet, and now regarded it more steadfastly. Even then
it looked like nothing but another withered leaf, brown and wrinkled,
given over to the wind, and rustling along at its mercy. Yet it made an
impression upon her so far unlike that of a leaf that for a moment more
she fixed on it a still keener look of unconsciously expectant eyes, and
saw only that it looked--perhaps a little larger than most of the other
leaves, but as brown and dead as they. Almost the same instant, however,
she turned and pounced upon it, and, the moment she handled it, became
aware that it felt less crumbly and brittle than the others looked, and
then saw clearly that it was not a leaf, but perhaps a rag, or possibly
a piece of soiled and rumpled paper. With a curiosity growing to
expectation, and in a moment to wondering recognition, she proceeded to
uncrumple it carefully and smooth it out tenderly; nor was the process
quite completed when she fell upon her knees on the cold flags, her
little cloak flowing wide from the clasp at her neck in a yet wilder
puff of the bitter wind; but suddenly remembering that she must not be
praying in the sight of men, started again to her feet, and, wrapping
her closed hand tight in the scanty border of her cloak, hurried, with
the pound-note she had rescued, to the friend whose need was sorer than
her own--not without an undefined anxiety in her heart whether she was
doing right. How much good the note did, or whether it merely fell into
the bottomless gulf of irremediable loss, I cannot tell. Annie’s friend
and her shiftless mate at once changed their dirty piece of paper for
silver, bought food and railway tickets, left the town, and disappeared
entirely from her horizon.
But consequences were not over with Annie; and the next day she became
acquainted with the fact that proved of great significance to her,
namely, that the same evening she found the money, Mr. Macintosh’s
kitchen-chimney had been on fire; and it wanted but the knowledge of how
this had taken place to change the girl’s consciousness from that of one
specially aided by the ministry of an angel to that of a young woman,
honest hitherto, suddenly changed into a thief!
For, in the course of a certain friendly gossip’s narrative, it came out
that that night the banker had been using the kitchen fire for the
destruction of an accumulation of bank-notes, the common currency of
Scotland, which had been judged altogether too dirty, or too much
dilapidated, to be reissued. The knowledge of this fact was the slam of
the closing door, whereby Annie found her soul shut out to wander in a
night of dismay. The woman who told the fact saw nothing of consequence
in it; Mrs. Melville, to whom she was telling it, saw nothing but
perhaps a lesson on the duty of having chimneys regularly swept, because
of the danger to neighboring thatch. But had not Annie been seated in
the shadow, her ghastly countenance would, even to the most casual
glance, have betrayed a certain guilty horror, for now she _knew_
that she had found and given away what she ought at once to have handed
back to its rightful owner. It was true he did not even know that he had
lost it, and could have no suspicion that she had found it; but what
difference did or could that make? It was true also that she had neither
taken nor bestowed it to her own advantage; but again, what difference
could that make in her duty to restore it? Did she not well remember how
eloquently and precisely Mr. Kennedy had, the very last Sunday,
expounded the passage, “Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor.”
Right was right, whatever soft-hearted people might say or think. Anyone
might give what was his own, but who could be right in giving away what
was another’s? It was true she had done it without thinking; but she had
known, or might have known, well enough that to whomsoever it might
belong, it was not hers. And now what possibility was there of setting
right what she had set wrong? It was just possible a day might come when
she should be able to restore what she had unjustly taken, but at the
present moment it was as impossible for her to lay her hand upon a
pound-note as upon a million. And, terrible thought!--she might have to
enter the presence of her father--dead, men called him, but alive she
knew him--with the consciousness that she had not brought him back the
honor he had left with her.
It will, of course, suggest itself to every reader that herein she was
driving her sense of obligation to the verge of foolishness; and,
indeed, the thought did not fail to occur even to herself; but the
answer of the self-accusing spirit was that had she been thoroughly
upright in heart, she would at once have gone to the nearest house and
made such inquiry as must instantly have resulted in the discovery of
what had happened. This she had omitted--without thought, it is true,
but not, therefore, without blame; and now, so far as she could tell,
she would never be able to make restitution! Had she even told her
mother what had befallen her, her mother might have thought of the way
in which it had come to pass, and set her feet in the path of her duty!
But she had made evil haste, and had compassed too much.
She found herself, in truth, in a sore predicament, and was on the point
of starting to her feet to run and confess to Mr. Macintosh what she had
done, that he might at once pronounce the penalty on what she never
doubted he must regard as a case of simple theft; but she bethought
herself that she would remain incapable of offering the least
satisfaction, and must therefore be regarded merely as one who sought by
confession to secure forgiveness and remission. What proof had she to
offer even that she had given the money away? To mention the name of her
friend would be to bring her into discredit, and transfer to her the
blame of her own act. There was nothing she could do--and yet, however
was she to go about with such a load upon her conscience? Confessing,
she might at least be regarded as one who desired and meant to be
honest. Confession would, anyhow, ease the weight of her load. Passively
at last, from very weariness of thought, her mind was but going backward
and forward over its own traces, heedlessly obliterating them, when
suddenly a new and horrid consciousness emerged from the trodden
slime--that she was glad that at least Sophy _had_ the money! For one
passing moment she was glad with the joy of Lady Macbeth, that what was
done was done, and could not be altered. Then once more the storm within
her awoke and would not again be stilled.
But now a third something happened which brought with it hope, for it
suggested a way of deliverance. Impelled by the same power that causes a
murderer to haunt the scene of his violence, she left the house, and was
unaware whither she was directing her steps until she found herself
again passing the door of the banker’s house; there, in that same
kitchen-window, on a level with the pavement, she espied, in large
pen-drawn print, the production apparently of the cook or another of the
servants, the announcement that a parlor-maid was wanted immediately.
Again without waiting to think, and only afterwards waking up to the
fact and meaning of what she had done, she turned, went back to the
entry-door, and knocked. It was almost suddenly opened by the cook, and
at once the storm of her misery was assuaged in a rising moon of hope,
and the night became light about her. Ah, through what miseries are not
even frail hopes our best and safest, our only _true_ guides indeed,
into other and yet fairer hopes!
“Did you want to see the mistress?” asked the jolly-faced cook, where
she stood on the other side of the threshold; and, without waiting an
answer, she turned and led the way to the parlor. Annie followed, as if
across the foundation of the fallen wall of Jericho; and found, to her
surprise, that Mrs. Macintosh, knowing her by sight, received her with
condescension, and Annie, grateful for the good-humor which she took for
kindness, told her simply that she had come to see whether she would
accept her services as parlor-maid.
Mrs. Macintosh seemed surprised at the proposal, and asked her the
natural question whether she had ever occupied a similar situation.
Annie answered she had not, but that at home, while her father was
alive, she had done so much of the same sort that she believed she could
speedily learn all that was necessary.
“I thought someone told me,” said the lady, who was one of the greatest
gossips in the town, “that you were one of the teachers in the High
School?”
“That is true,” answered Annie; “I was doing so upon probation; but I
had not yet begun to receive any salary for it. I was only a sort of
apprentice to the work, and under no engagement.”
Mrs. Macintosh, after regarding Annie for some time, and taking silent
observation of her modesty and good-breeding, said at last:
“I like the look of you, Miss ----, Miss ----”
“My name is Annie Melville.”
“Well, Annie, I confess I do not indeed _see_ anything particularly
unsuitable in you, but at the same time I cannot help fearing you may
be--or, I should say rather, may imagine yourself--superior to what may
be required of you.”
“Oh, no, ma’am!” answered Annie; “I assure you I am too poor to think of
any such thing! Indeed, I am so anxious to make money at once that, if
you would consent to give me a trial, I should be ready to come to you
this very evening.”
“You will have no wages before the end of your six months.”
“I understand, ma’am.”
“It is a risk to take you without a character.”
“I am very sorry, ma’am; but I have no one that can vouch for
me--except, indeed, Mrs. Slater, of the High School, would say a word in
my favor.”
“Well, well!” answered Mrs. Macintosh, “I am so far pleased with you
that I do not think I can be making a _great_ mistake if I merely give
you a trial. You may come to-night, if you like--that is, with your
mother’s permission.”
Annie ran home greatly relieved, and told her mother what a piece of
good-fortune she had had. Mrs. Melville did not at all take to the idea
at first, for she cherished undefined expections for Annie, and knew
that her father had done so also, for the girl was always reading, and
had been for years in the habit of reading aloud to him, making now and
then a remark that showed she understood well what she read. So the
mother took comfort in her disappointment that her child had, solely for
her sake, she supposed, betaken herself to such service as would at once
secure her livelihood and bring her in a little money, for, with the
shadow of coming want growing black above them, even her first
half-year’s wages was a point of hope and expectation.
“Well, Annie,” she answered, after a few moments’ consideration, “it is
but for a time; and you will be able to give up the place as soon as you
please, and the easier that she only takes you on trial; that will hold
for you as well as for her.”
But nothing was farther from Annie’s intention than finding the place
would not suit her: no change could she dream of before at least she had
a pound-note in her hand, when at once she would make it clear to her
mother what a terrible scare had driven her to the sudden step she had
taken. Until then she must go about with her whole head sick and her
whole heart faint; neither could she for many weeks rid herself of the
haunting notion that the banker, who was chiefly affected by her
crime,--for as such she fully believed and regarded her deed,--was fully
aware of her guilt. It seemed to her, when at any moment he happened to
look at her, that now at last he must be on the point of letting her
know that he had read the truth in her guilty looks, and she constantly
fancied him saying to himself, “That is the girl who stole my money; she
feels my eyes upon her.” Every time she came home from an errand she
would imagine her master looking from the window of his private room on
the first floor, in readiness to cast aside forbearance and denounce
her: he was only waiting to make himself one shade surer! Ah, how long
was the time she had to await her cleansing, the moment when she could
go to him and say, “I have wronged, I have robbed you; here is all I can
do to show my repentance. All this time I have been but waiting for my
wages, to repay what I had taken from you.” And, oddly enough, she was
always mixing herself up with the man in the parable, who had received
from his master a pound to trade with and make more; from her dreams she
would wake in terror at the sound of that master’s voice, ordering the
pound to be taken from her and given to the school-fellow whom, at the
cost of her own honesty, she had befriended. Oh, joyous day when the
doom should be lifted from her, and she set free, to dream no more! For
surely, when at length her master knew all, with the depth of her sorrow
and repentance, he could not refuse his forgiveness! Would he not even,
she dared to hope, remit the interest due on his money?--of which she
entertained, in her ignorance, a usurious and preposterous idea.
The days went on, and the hour of her deliverance drew nigh. But, long
before it came, two other processes had been slowly arriving at
maturity. She had been gaining the confidence of her mistress, so that,
ere three months were over, the arrangement of all minor matters of
housekeeping was entirely in her hands. It may be that Mrs. Macintosh
was not a little lazy, nor sorry to leave aside whatever did not
positively demand her personal attention; one thing I am sure of, that
Annie never made the smallest attempt to gain this favor, if such it
was. Her mistress would, for instance, keep losing the keys of the
cellaret, until in despair she at last yielded them entirely to the care
of Annie, who thereafter carried them in her pocket, where they were
always at hand when wanted.
The other result was equally natural, but of greater importance; Hector,
the only child of the house, was gradually and, for a long time,
unconsciously falling in love with Annie. Those friends of the family
who liked Annie, and felt the charm of her manners and simplicity, said
only that his mother had herself to blame, for what else could she
expect? Others of them, regarding her from the same point of view as her
mistress, repudiated the notion as absurd, saying Hector was not the man
to degrade himself! He was incapable of such a misalliance.
But, as I have said already, Hector, although he had never yet been in
love, was yet more than usually ready to fall in love, as belongs to the
poetic temperament, when the fit person should appear. As to what sort
she might prove depended on two facts in Hector--one, that he was
fastidious in the best meaning of the word, and the other that he was
dominated by sound good sense; a fact which even his father allowed,
although with a grudge, seeing he had hitherto manifested no devotion to
business, but spent his free time in literary pursuits. Of the special
nature of those pursuits his father knew, or cared to know, nothing; and
as to his mother, she had not even a favorite hymn.
I may say, then, that the love of womankind, which in solution, so to
speak, pervaded every atomic interstice of the nature of Hector, had
gradually, indeed, but yet rapidly, concentrated and crystallized around
the idea of Annie--the more homogeneously and absorbingly that she was
the first who had so moved him. It was, indeed, in the case of each a
first love, although in the case of neither love at first sight.
Almost from the hour when first Annie entered the family, Hector had
looked on her with eyes of interest; but, for a time, she had gone about
the house with a sense almost of being there upon false pretenses, for
she knew that she was doing what she did from no regard to any of its
members, but only to gain the money whose payment would relieve her from
an ever-present consciousness of guilt; and for this cause, if for no
other, she was not in danger of falling in love with Hector. She was,
indeed, too full of veneration for her master and mistress, and for
their son so immeasurably above her, to let her thoughts rest upon him
in any but a distantly worshipful fashion.
But it was part of her duty, which was not over well-defined in the
house, to see that her young master’s room was kept tidy and properly
dusted; and in attending to this it was unavoidable that she should come
upon indications of the way in which he spent his leisure hours. Never
dreaming, indeed, that a servant might recognize at a glance what his
father and mother did not care to know, Hector was never at any pains to
conceal, or even to lay aside the lines yet wet from his pen when he
left the room; and Annie could not help seeing them, or knowing what
they were. Like many another Scotch lassie, she was fonder of reading
than of anything else; and in her father’s house she had had the free
use of what books were in it; nor is it, then, to be wondered at that
she was far more familiar with certain great books than was ever many an
Oxford man. Some never read what they have no desire to assimilate; and
some read what no expenditure of reading could ever make them able to
appropriate; but Annie read, understood, and re-read the “Paradise
Lost”; knew intimately “Comus” as well; delighted in “Lycidas,” and had
some of Milton’s sonnets by heart; while for the Hymn on the Nativity,
she knew every line, had studied every turn and phrase in it. 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. She trembled and glowed at the
very sight of them, for she had in herself the instinct of sacred
numbers, and in her soul felt a vague hunger after what might be
contained in those loose papers--into which she did not even peep,
instinctively knowing it dishonorable. She trembled yet more at
recognizing the beautiful youth in the same house with her, to whom she
did service, as himself one of those gifted creatures whom most she
revered--a poet, perhaps another such as Milton! 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 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. He believed also
that the least attempt to attract Annie’s attention would but scare her,
and make her incapable of listening to what he might try to say.
In the meantime, Annie, under the influence of more and better food, and
that freedom from care which came of the consciousness that she was
doing her best both for her mother and for her own moral emancipation,
looked sweeter and grew happier every day; no cloudy sense, no doubt of
approaching danger had yet begun to heave an ugly shoulder above her
horizon, neither had Hector begun to fret against the feeling that he
must not speak to her; in such a silence and in such a presence he felt
he could live happy for ages; he moved in a lovely dream of still
content.
And it was natural also that he should begin to burgeon spiritually and
mentally, to grow and flourish beyond any experience in the past. Within
a few such days of hidden happiness, the power of verse, and of thoughts
worthy of verse, came upon him with as sure an inspiration of the
Almighty as can ever descend upon a man, accompanied by a deeper sense
of the being and the presence of God, and a stronger desire to do the
will of the Father, which is surely the best thing God himself can
kindle in the heart of any man. For what good is there in creation but
the possibility of being yet further created? And what else is growth
but more of the will of God?
Something fresh began to stir in his mind; even as in the spring, away
in far depths of beginning, the sap gives its first upward throb in the
tree, and the first bud, as yet invisible, begins to jerk itself forward
to break from the cerements of ante-natal quiescence, and become a
growing leaf, so a something in Hector that was his very life and soul
began to yield to unseen creative impulse, and throb with a dim, divine
consciousness. The second evening after thus recognizing its presence he
hurried up the stair from the office to his own room, and there, sitting
down, began to write--not a sonnet to his charmer, neither any dream
about her, not even some sweet song of the waking spring which he felt
moving within him, but the first speech of a dramatic poem. It was a
bold beginning, but all beginners are daring, if not presumptuous.
Hector’s aim was to embody an ideal of check, of rousing, of revival, of
new energy and fresh start. All that evening he wrote with running pen,
forgot the dinner-bell after its first summons, and went on until Annie
knocked at his door, dispatched to summon him to the meal. 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, I
imagine, it gave strong proof of his being a poet indeed that, when he
opened the door to her knock, the appearance of Annie herself, instead
of giving him a thrill of pleasure, occasioned him a little annoyance by
the evanishment of a just culminating train of thought into the vast and
seething void, into which he gazed after it in vain. And Annie herself,
although all the time in Hector’s thought, revealed herself only, after
the custom of celestials, at the very moment of her disappearance; her
message delivered, she went back to her duties at the table; and then
first Hector woke to the knowledge that she had been at his door, and
was there no more. During the last few days he had been gradually
approaching the resolve to keep silence no longer, but be bold and tell
Annie how full his heart was of her. One moment he might have done so;
one moment more, and he could not!
He followed close upon her steps, but not a word with her was possible,
and it seemed to Hector that she sped from him like a very wraith to
avoid his addressing her. Had she, then, he asked himself, some dim
suspicion of his feelings toward her, or was she but making haste from a
sense of propriety?
Now that very morning Mrs. 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. Whereupon followed an amusing succession of
disconnected attempt and frustration. For no sooner had Mr. Macintosh
left the room than Annie darted from it after him, and Hector darted
after Annie, determined at length to speak to her. When Annie, however,
reached the foot of the stair, her master was already up the first
flight, and Annie’s courage failing her, she, turning sharply round,
almost ran against Hector, who was close behind her. The look of
disappointment on her face, to the meaning of which he had no clew,
quenching his courage next, he returned in silence to the dining room,
where Annie was now hovering aimlessly about the table, until, upon his
re-entrance, she settled herself behind Hector’s chair. He turned
half-round, and would have said something to her, but, seeing her pale
and troubled, he lapsed into a fit of brooding, and no longer dared
speak to her. Besides, his mother might come to the dining room at any
moment!
Then Annie, thinking she heard her master’s re-descending step, hurried
again from the room; but only at once to return afresh, which set Hector
wondering yet more. Why on earth should she be lying in ambush for his
father? He did not know that she was equally anxious to avoid the eyes
of her mistress. And while Annie was anxious to keep her secret from the
tongue of Mrs. Macintosh, Hector was as anxious to keep his from the
eyes of his mother until a fit moment should arrive for its disclosure.
But he imagined, I believe, that Annie saw he wanted to speak to her,
and thought she was doing what she could to balk his intention.
But the necessity for disclosure was strongest in Annie, and drove her
to encounter what risk might be involved. So when at last she heard a
certain step of the stair creak, she darted to the door, and left the
room even while the hand of her mistress, coming to say the coffee was
ready, was on that which communicated with the drawing room.
“I thought I heard Annie at the sideboard: is she gone?” she said.
“She left the room this moment, I believe,” answered Hector.
“What is she gone for?”
“I cannot say, mother,” replied Hector indifferently, in the act himself
of leaving the room also, determined on yet another attempt to speak to
Annie. In the meantime, however, Annie had found her opportunity. She
had met Mr. Macintosh halfway down the last flight of stairs, and had
lifted to him such a face of entreaty that he listened at once to her
prayer for a private interview, and, turning, led the way up again to
the room he had just left. There he shut the door, and said to her
pleasantly:
“Well, Annie, what is it?”
I am afraid his man-imagination had led him to anticipate some complaint
against Hector: he certainly was nowise prepared for what the poor
self-accusing girl had to say.
For one moment she stood unable to begin; the next she had recovered her
resolution: her face filled with a sudden glow; and ere her master had
time to feel shocked, she was on her knees at his feet, holding up to
him a new pound-note, one of those her mistress had just given her.
Familiar, however, as her master was with the mean-looking things in
which lay almost all his dealings, he did not at first recognize the
object she offered him; while what connection with his wife’s
parlor-maid it could represent was naturally inconceivable to him. He
stood for a moment staring at the note, and then dropped a pair of dull,
questioning eyes on the face of the kneeling girl. He was not a man of
quick apprehension, and the situation was appallingly void of helpful
suggestion. To make things yet more perplexing, Annie sobbed as if her
heart would break, and was unable to utter a word. “What must a stranger
imagine,” the poor man thought, “to come upon such a tableau?” Her
irrepressible emotion lasted so long that he lost his patience and
turned upon her, saying:
“I must call your mistress; she will know what to do with you!”
Instantly she sprang to her feet, and broke into passionate entreaty.
“Oh, please, _please_, sir, have a minute’s patience with me,” she
cried; “you never saw me behave so badly before!”
“Certainly not, Annie; I never did. And I hope you will never do so
again,” answered her master, with reviving good-nature, and was back in
his first notion, that Hector had said something to her which she
thought rude and did not like to repeat. He had never had a daughter,
and perhaps all the more felt pitiful over the troubled woman-child at
his feet.
But, having once spoken out and conquered the spell upon her, Annie was
able to go on. She became suddenly quiet, and, interrupted only by an
occasional sob, poured out her whole story, if not quite unbrokenly, at
least without actual intermission, while her master stood and listened
without a break in his fixed attention. By-and-by, however, a slow smile
began to dawn on his countenance, which spread and spread until at
length he burst into a laugh, none the less merry that it was low and
evidently restrained lest it should be overheard. Like one suddenly made
ashamed, Annie rose to her feet, but still held out the note to her
master.
How was it possible that her evil deed should provoke her master to a
fit of laughter? It might be easy for him in his goodness to pardon her,
but how could he treat her offense as a thing of no consequence? Was it
not a sin, which, like every other sin, could nowise at all be cleansed?
For even God himself could not blot out the fact that she had done the
deed! And yet, there stood her master laughing! And, what was more
dreadful still, despite the resentment of her conscience, her master’s
merriment so far affected herself that she could not repress a
responsive smile! It was no less than indecent, and yet, even in that
answering smile, her misery of six months’ duration passed totally away,
melted from her like a mist of the morning, so that she could not even
recall the feeling of her lost unhappiness. But, might not her
conscience be going to sleep? Was it not possible she might be growing
indifferent to right and wrong? Was she not aware in herself that there
were powers of evil about her, seeking to lead her astray, and putting
strange and horrid things in her mind?
But, although he laughed, her master uttered no articulate sound until
she had ended her statement, by which time his amusement had changed to
admiration. Another minute still passed, however, before he knew what
answer to make.
“But, my good girl,” he began, “I do not see that you have anything to
blame yourself for--at least, not anything _worth_ blaming yourself
about. After so long a time, the money found was certainly your own, and
you could do what you pleased with it.”
“But, sir, I did not wait at all to see how it had happened, or whether
it might not be claimed. I believe, indeed, that I hurried away at once,
lest anyone should know I had it. I ran to spend it at once, so for
whatever happened afterward I was to blame. Then, when it was too late,
I learned that the money was yours!”
“What did you do with it, if I may ask?” said the master.
“I gave it to a school-fellow of mine who had married a helpless sort of
husband and was in want of food.”
“I am afraid you did not help them much by that,” murmured the banker.
“Please, sir, I knew no other way to help them; and the money seemed to
have been given me for them. I soon came to know better, and have been
sorry ever since. I knew that I had no right to give it away as soon as
I knew whose it was.”
She ceased, but still held out the note to him.
Mr. Macintosh stood again silent, and made no movement toward taking it.
“Please, sir, take the money, and forgive me,” pleaded Annie. “And
please, sir, _please_ do not say anything about it to anybody. Even my
mother does not know.”
“Now there you did wrong. You ought to have told your mother.”
“I see that now, sir; but I was so glad to be able to help the poor
creatures that I did not think of it till afterwards.”
“I dare say your mother would have been glad of the money herself; I
understand she was not left very well off.”
“At that time I did not know she was so poor. But now that my mistress
has paid me such good wages, I am going to take her every penny of them
this very afternoon.”
“And then you will tell her, will you not?”
“I shall not mind telling her when you have taken it back. I was afraid
to tell her before! It was to pay you back that I asked Mrs. Macintosh
to take me for parlor-maid.”
“Then you were not in service before?”
“No, sir. You see, my mother thought I could earn my bread in a way we
should both like better.”
“So now you will give up service and go back to her?”
“I am not sure, sir. It would be long, I fear, before the school would
pay me as well. You see, I have my food here too. And everything tells.
Please, sir, take the pound.”
“My dear girl,” said her master, “I could not think of depriving you of
what you have so well earned. It is more than enough to me that you want
to repay it. I positively cannot take it.”
“Indeed, I do want to repay it, sir,” rejoined Annie. “It’s anything but
willing I shall be _not_ to repay it. Indeed, there is no other way to
get my soul free.”
Here it seems time I should mention that Hector, weary of waiting
Annie’s return, had left the dining room to look for her; and running up
the stair, not without the dread of hearing his mother’s foot behind
him, had slid softly into his father’s room, to find Annie on her knees
before him, and hear enough to understand her story before either his
father or she was aware of his presence.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but indeed you must take it,” urged Annie.
“Surely you would not be so cruel to a poor girl who prays you to take
the guilt off her back. Don’t you see, sir, I never can look my father
in the face till I have paid the money back!”
Here his father caught sight of Hector, and, perceiving that Annie had
not yet seen him, and possibly glad of a witness, put up his hand to him
to keep still. “Where is your father, then?” he asked Annie.
“In heaven somewhere,” she answered, “waiting for my mother and me. Oh,
father!” she broke out, “if only you had been alive you would soon have
got me out of my shame and misery! But, thank God! it will soon be over
now; my master cannot refuse to set me free.”
“Certainly I will set you free,” said Mr. Macintosh, a good deal
touched. “With all my heart I forgive you the--the--the debt, and I
thank you for bringing me to know the honestest girl--I mean, the most
honorable girl I have ever yet had the pleasure to meet.”
Hector had been listening, hardly able to contain his delight, and at
these last words of his father, like the blundering idiot he was, he
rushed forward, and, clasping Annie to his heart, cried out:
“Thank God, Annie, my father at least knows what you are!”
He met with a rough and astounding check. Far too startled to see who it
was that thus embraced her, and unprepared to receive such a salutation,
least of all from one she had hitherto regarded as the very prince of
gentleness and courtesy, she met it with a sound, ringing box on the
ear, which literally staggered Hector, and sent his father into a second
peal of laughter, this time as loud as it was merry, and the next moment
swelled in volume by that of Hector himself.
“Thank you, Annie!” he cried. “I never should have thought you could hit
so hard. But, indeed, I beg your pardon. I forgot myself and you too
when I behaved so badly. But I’m not sorry, father, after all, for that
box on the ear has got me over a difficult task, and compelled me to
speak out at once what has been long in my mind, but which I had not the
courage to say. Annie,” he went on, turning to her, and standing humbly
before her, “I have long loved you; if you will do me the honor to marry
me, I am yours the moment you say so.”
But Annie’s surprise and the hasty act she had committed in the first
impulse of defense had so reacted upon her in a white dismay that she
stood before him speechless and almost ready to drop. Awakening from
what was fast growing a mere dream of offense to the assured
consciousness of another offense almost as flagrant, she stared as if
she had suddenly opened her eyes on a whole Walpurgisnacht of demons and
witches, while Hector, recovering from his astonishment to the lively
delight of having something to pretend at least to forgive Annie, and
yielding to sudden Celtic impulse, knelt at her feet, seized her hand,
which she had no power to withdraw from him, covered it with eager
kisses and placed it on his head. Little more would have made him cast
himself prone before her, lift her foot, and place it on his neck.
But his father brought a little of his common sense to the rescue.
“Tut, Hector!” he said; “give the lass time to come to her senses. Would
you woo her like a raving maniac? I don’t, indeed, wonder, after what
you heard her tell me, that you should have taken such a sudden fancy to
her; but--”
“Father,” interrupted Hector, “it is no fancy--least of all a sudden
one! I fell in love with Annie the very first time I saw her waiting at
table. It is true I did not understand what had befallen me for some
time; but I do, and I did from the first, and now forever I shall both
love and worship Annie!”