Weighed and Wanting

G >> George MacDonald >> Weighed and Wanting

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Knowing that Hester was fond of a good ballad, he thought at first to
try his hand on one: it could not be difficult, he thought! But he found
that, like everything else, a ballad was easy enough if you could do it,
and more than difficult enough if you could not: after several attempts
he wisely yielded the ambition; his gift did not lie in that direction!
He had, however, been so long in the habit of writing drawing-room
verses that he had better ground for hoping he might produce something
in that kind which the too severe taste of Hester could yet admire! It
would be a great stroke towards placing him in a right position towards
her--one, namely, in which his intellectual faculty would be more
manifest! It should be a love song, and he would present it as one he
had written long ago: as such it would say the more for him while it
would not commit him.

So one evening as he stood by her piano, he said all at once:

"By the bye, Miss Raymount, last night, as I was turning over some songs
I wrote many years ago, I came upon one I thought I should like you just
to look at--not the music--that is worth nothing, though I was proud
enough of it then and thought it an achievement; but the words I still
think are not so bad--considering. They are so far from me now that I am
able to speak of them as if they were not mine at all!"

"Do let me see them!" said Hester, hiding none of the interest she felt,
though fearing a little she might not have to praise them so much as she
would like.

He took the song from his pocket, and smoothed it out before her on the
piano.

"Read it to me, please," said Hester.

"No; excuse me," he answered with a little shyness, the rarest of
phenomena in his spiritual atmosphere; "I _could_ not read it
aloud. But do not let it bore you if--"

He did not finish his sentence, and Hester was already busy with his
manuscript.

Here is the song:

If thou lov'st I dare not ask thee,
Lest thou say, "Not thee;"
Prythee, then, in coldness mask thee,
That it _may_ be me.

If thou lov'st me do not tell me,
Joy would make me rave,
And the bells of gladness knell me
To the silent grave.

If thou lovest not thy lover,
Neither veil thine eyes,
Nor to his poor heart discover
What behind them lies.

Be not cruel, be not tender;
Grant me twilight hope;
Neither would I die of splendor,
Nor in darkness mope.

I entreat thee for no favor,
Smallest nothingness;
I will hoard thy dropt glove's savor,
Wafture of thy dress.

So my love shall daring linger!
Moth-like round thy flame;
Move not, pray, forbidden finger--
Death to me thy blame.

Vavasor had gone half-way towards Mrs. Raymount, then turned, and now
stood watching Hester. So long was her head bent over his paper that he
grew uncomfortably anxious. At length, without lifting her eyes, she
placed it on the stand before her, and began to try its music. Then
Vavasor went to her hurriedly, for he felt convinced that if she was not
quite pleased with the verses, it would fare worse with the music, and
begged she would not trouble herself with anything so childish. Even now
he knew less about music than poetry, he said.

"I wanted you to see the verses, and the manuscript being almost
illegible I had to copy it; so, in a mechanical mood, I copied the music
also. Please let me have them again. I feared they were not worth your
notice! I know it now."

Hester, however, would not yield the paper, but began again to read it:
Vavasor's writing, out of the bank, was one of those irritating hands
that wrong not only with the absence of legibility but with the show of
its presence, and she had not yet got so clear a notion of his verses as
a mere glance of them in print would have given her. Why she did not
quite like them she did not yet know, and was anxious not to be unfair.
That they were clever she did not doubt; they had for one thing his own
air of unassumed ease, and she could not but feel they had some claim to
literary art. This added a little to her hesitation, not in pronouncing
on them--she was far from that yet--but in recognizing what she felt
about them. Had she had a suspicion of the lie he had told her, and that
they were the work of yesterday, it would at once have put leagues
between them, and made the verses hateful to her. As it was, the more
she read and thought, the farther she seemed from a conclusion, and the
time Vavasor stood there waiting, appeared to both of them three times
as long as it really was. At last he felt he was pounded and must try
back.

"You have discovered," he said, "that the song is an imitation of Sir
John Suckling!"

He had never thought of the man while writing it.

"I don't know anything of him," answered Hester, looking up.

Vavasor knew nothing was more unlikely than that she should know
anything of him.

"When did he write?" she asked.

"In the reign of Charles I., I believe," he answered.

"But tell me," said Hester, "where is the good of imitating anyone--even
the best of writers. Our own original, however poor, must be the thing
for us! To imitate is to repudiate our own being."

"That I admit," answered Vavasor, who never did anything original except
when he followed his instincts; "but for a mere trial of skill an
imitation is admissible--don't you think?"

"Oh, surely," replied Hester; "only it seems to me a waste of
time--especially with such a gift as you have of your own!"

"At all events," said Vavasor, hiding his gratification with false
humility, "there was no great presumption in a shy at Suckling!"

"There may have been the more waste," returned Hester. "I would sooner
imitate Bach or even Handel than Verdi."

Vavasor could stand a good deal of censure if mingled with some
praise--which he called appreciation. Of this Hester had given him
enough to restore his spirits, and had also suggested a subject on which
he found he could talk.

"But," he said, "how can it be worse for me to imitate this or that
writer, than for you to play over and over music you could easily
excel."

"I never practice music," answered Hester, "not infinitely better than I
could write myself. But playing is a different thing altogether from
writing. I play as I eat my dinner--because I am hungry. My hunger I
could never satisfy with any amount of composition or extemporization of
my own. My land would not grow corn enough, or good enough for my
necessity. My playing merely corresponds to your reading of your
favorite poets--especially if you have the habit of reading aloud like
my father."

"They do not seem to me quite parallel," rejoined Vavasor, who had
learned that he lost nothing with Hester by opposing her--so long as no
moral difference was involved. In questions of right and wrong he always
agreed with her so far as he dared expression where he understood so
little, and for that very reason, in dread of seeming to have no opinion
of his own, made a point of differing from her where he had a safe
chance. "One may read both poetry and music at sight, but you would
never count such reading of music a reproduction of it. That requires
study and labor, as well as genius and an art _like_ those which
produce it."

"I am equally sure you can never read anything worth reading," returned
Hester, "as it ought to be read, until you understand it at least as
well as the poet himself. To do a poem justice, the reader must so have
pondered phrase and word as to reproduce meaning and music in all the
inextricable play of their lights and shades. I never came near doing
the kind of thing I mean with any music till I had first learned it
thoroughly by heart. And that too is the only way in which I can get to
understand some poetry!"

"But is it not one of the excellences of poetry to be easy?"

"Yes, surely, when what the poet has to say is easy. But what if the
thoughts themselves be of a kind hard to put into shape? There's
Browning!"

Of Browning Vavasor knew only that in his circle he was laughed at--for
in it a man who had made a feeble attempt or two to understand him, and
had failed as he deserved, was the sole representative of his readers.
That he was hard to understand Hester knew, for she understood enough of
him to believe that where she did not understand him he was perhaps only
the better worth understanding. She knew how, lover of music as she was,
she did not at first care for Bach; and how in the process of learning
to play what he wrote she came to understand him.

To her reference to Browning then, Vavasor did not venture a reply. None
of the poetry indeed by him cultivated was of any sort requiring study.
The difficulty Hester found in his song came of her trying to see more
than was there; her eyes made holes in it, and saw the less. Vavasor's
mental condition was much like that of one living in a vacuum or sphere
of nothing, in which the sole objects must be such as he was creator
enough to project from himself. He had no feeling that he was in the
heart of a crowded universe, between all whose great verities moved
countless small and smaller truths. Little notion had he that to learn
these after the measure of their importance, was his business, with
eternity to do it in! He made of himself but a cock, set for a while on
the world's heap to scratch and pick.

When he was gone, leaving his manuscript behind him, Hester set to it
again, and trying the music over, was by it so far enlightened that she
despaired of finding anything in it, and felt a good deal disappointed.

For she was continuing to gather interest in Vavasor, though slowly, as
was natural with a girl of her character. But she had no suspicion
_how_ empty he was, for it was scarcely possible for her to imagine
a person indifferent to the truth of things, or without interest in his
own character and its growth. Being all of a piece herself, she had no
conception of a nature all in pieces--with no unity but that of
selfishness. Her nature did now and then receive from his a jar and
shock, but she generally succeeded in accounting for such as arising
from his lack of development--a development which her influence over him
would favor. If she felt some special pleasure in the possession of that
influence, who will blame her for the weakness?

Women are being constantly misled by the fancy and hope of being the
saviours of men! It is natural to goodness and innocence, but not the
less is the error a disastrous one. There ought surely at least to be of
success some probability as well founded as rare, to justify the
sacrifices involved. Is it well that a life of supreme suffering should
be gone through for nothing but an increase of guilt? It will be said
that patience reaps its reward; but I fear too many patiences fail, and
the number of resultant saints is small. The thing once done, the step
no longer retrievable, fresh duty is born, and divine good will result
from what suffering may arise in the fulfillment of the same. The
conceit or ambition itself which led to the fault, may have to be cured
by its consequences. But it may well be that a woman does more to redeem
a man by declining than by encouraging his attentions. I dare not say
how much a woman is not to do for the redemption of a man; but I think
one who obeys God will scarcely imagine herself free to lay her person
in the arms, and her happiness in the bosom of a man whose being is a
denial of him. Good Christians not Christians enough to understand this,
may have to be taught by the change of what they took for love into what
they know to be disgust. It is very hard for the woman to know whether
her influence has any real _power_ over the man. It is very hard
for the man himself to know; for the passion having in itself a
betterment, may deceive him as well as her. It might be well that a
woman asked herself whether moral laxity or genuine self-devotion was
the more persuasive in her to the sacrifice. If her best hope be to
restrain the man within certain bounds, she is not one to imagine
capable of any noble anxiety. God cares nothing about keeping a man
respectable; he will give his very self to make of him a true man. But
that needs God; a woman is not enough for it. This cannot be God's way
of saving bad men.

CHAPTER XV.

A SMALL FAILURE.

Vavasor at length found he must not continue to visit Hester so often,
while not ready to go further; and that, much as he was in
love--proportionately, that is, to his faculty for loving--he dare not
do. But for the unconventionality of the Raymounts he would have reached
the point long before. He began, therefore, to lessen the number, and
shorten the length of his appearances in Addison Square.

But so doing he became the more aware of the influence she had been
exercising upon him--found that he had come to feel differently about
certain things--that her opinion was a power on his consciousness. He
had nowise begun to change his way; he had but been inoculated, and was
therefore a little infected, with her goodness. In his ignorance he took
the alteration for one of great moral significance, and was wonderfully
pleased with himself. His natural kindness, for instance, towards the
poor and suffering--such at least as were not offensive--was quickened.
He took no additional jot of trouble about them, only gave a more
frequent penny to such as begged of him, and had more than a pennorth of
relief in return. It was a good thing, and rooted in a better, that his
heart should require such relief, but it did not indicate any advanced
stage of goodness, or one inconsistent with profoundest unselfishness.
He prided himself on one occasion that he had walked home to give his
last shilling to a poor woman, whereas in truth he walked home because
he found he had given her his last. Yet there was a little more movement
of the sap of his nature, as even his behavior in the bank would have
testified, had there been any one interested in observing him.

Hester was annoyed to find herself disappointed when he did not appear,
and betook herself to a yet more diligent exercise of her growing
vocation. The question suggested itself whether it might not further her
plans to be associated with a sisterhood, but her family relations made
it undesirable, and she felt that the angle of her calling could ill
consent to be under foreign rule. She began, however, to widen her
sphere a little by going about with a friend belonging to a
sisterhood--not in her own quarter, for she did not wish her special
work to be crossed by any prejudices. There she always went alone, and
seldom entered a house without singing in several of its rooms before
she came away--often having to sing some old song before her audience
would listen to anything new, and finding the old song generally counted
the best thing in her visit--except by the children, to whom she would
frequently tell a fairy tale, singing the little rhymes she made come
into it. She had of course to encounter rudeness, but she set herself to
get used to it, and learn not to resent it but let it pass. One coming
upon her surrounded by a child audience, might have concluded her
insensible of what was owing to herself; but the feeling of what was
owing to her fellows, who had to go such a long unknown way to get back
to the image of God, made her strive to forget herself. It is well that
so many who lightly try this kind of work meet with so little
encouragement; if it had the result they desire, they would be ruined
themselves by it, whatever became of their poor.

Hester's chief difficulty was in getting the kind of song fit for her
purpose; and from it she gained the advantage of reading, or at least
looking into, with more or less of reading as many of the religious
poets recognized in our history as she could lay her hands upon; where
she failed in finding the thing she wanted, she yet often found what was
welcome. She would stop at nearly every book-stall she passed, and
book-stalls were plentiful in her neighborhood, searching for old
hymn-books and collections of poetry, every one of which is sure to have
something the searcher never saw before.

About this time, in connection with a fresh and noble endeavor after
bettering the homes of the poor originated, I had almost said _of
course_, by a woman, the experiment was in several places made of
gathering small assemblies of the poor in the neighborhood of their own
dwellings, that the ladies in charge of the houses in which they lived
might, with the help of friends, give them an unambitious but honestly
attempted concert. At one of these concerts Hester was invited to
assist, and went gladly, prepared to do her best. It had, however, been
arranged that any of the audience who would like to sing, should be
allowed to make their contributions also to the enjoyment of the
evening; and it soon became evident that the company cared for no
singing but that of their own acquaintance; and they, for their part,
were so bent on singing, and so supported and called for each other,
that it seemed at length the better way to abandon the platform to them.
There was nothing very objectionable in the character of any of the
songs sung--their substance in the main was flaunting sentiment--but the
singing was for the most part atrociously bad, and the resulting
influence hardly what the projectors of the entertainment had had in
view. It might be well that they should enjoy themselves so; it might be
well that they should have provided for them something better than they
could produce; but, to judge from the experiment, it seemed useless to
attempt the combination of the two. Hester, having listened through a
half-hour of their singing, was not a little relieved to learn that she
would not be called upon to fulfil her engagement, and the company of
benefactors went home foiled but not too much disappointed for a good
laugh over their fiasco before they parted. The affair set Hester
thinking; and before morning she was ready with a scheme to which she
begged her mother to gain her father's consent.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CONCERT ROOM.

The house in which they lived, and which was their own, was a somewhat
remarkable one--I do not mean because it retained almost all the
old-fashionedness of a hundred and fifty years, but for other reasons.
Beside the ordinary accommodation of a good-sized London house with
three drawing-rooms on the first floor it had a quite unusual provision
for the receiving of guests. At the top of the first landing, rather
more than half-way up the stair, that is, there was a door through the
original wall of the house to a long gallery, which led to a large and
lofty room, apparently, from the little orchestra half-way up one of the
walls, intended for dancing. Since they had owned the house it had been
used only as a playroom for the children; Mr. Raymount always intended
to furnish it, but had not yet done so. The house itself was indeed a
larger one than they required, but he had a great love of room. It had
been in the market for some time when, hearing it was to be had at a low
price, he stretched more than a point to secure it. Beneath the
concert-room was another of the same area, but so low, being but the
height of the first landing of the stairs, that it was difficult to
discover any use that could be made of it, and it continued even more
neglected than the other. Below this again were cellars of alarming
extent and obscurity, reached by a long vaulted passage. What they could
have been intended for beyond ministering to the dryness of the rooms
above, I cannot imagine; they would have held coal and wood and wine,
everything natural to a cellar, enough for one generation at least. The
history of the house was unknown. There was a nailed-up door in the
second of the rooms I have mentioned which was said to lead into the
next house; but as the widow who lived there took every opportunity of
making herself disagreeable, they had not ventured to propose an
investigation. There was no garden, for the whole of the space
corresponding to the gardens on each side was occupied with this
addition to the original house. The great room was now haunting Hester's
brain and heart; if only her father would allow her to give in it a
concert to her lowly friends and acquaintance!

Questions concerning the condition of the poor in our large towns had,
from the distance of speculation and the press, been of late occupying a
good deal of Mr. Raymount's attention, and he believed that he was
enlightening the world on those most important perhaps of all the social
questions of our day, their wrongs and their rights. He little suspected
that his daughter was doing more for the poor, almost without knowing
it, than he with all his conscious wisdom. She could not, however, have
made her request at a more auspicious moment, for he was just then
feeling specially benignant towards them, an article in which he had, as
he believed, uttered himself with power on their behalf, having come
forth to the light of eyes that very day. Besides, though far from
unprejudiced, he had a horror of prejudice, and the moment he suspected
a prejudice, hunted it almost as uncompromisingly in himself as in
another: most people surmising a fault in themselves rouse every
individual bristle of their nature to defend and retain the thing that
degrades them! He therefore speedily overcame his first reluctance, and
agreed to his daughter's strange proposal. He was willing to make as
much of an attempt towards the establishment of relations with the class
he befriended. It was an approach which, if not quite clear of
condescension, was not therefore less than kindly meant; and had his
guests behaved as well as he, they would from that day have found him a
friend as progressive as steady. Hester was greatly delighted with his
ready compliance with her request.

From that day for nearly a fortnight there were busy doings in the
house. At once a couple of charwomen were turned loose in the great room
for a thorough cleaning, but they had made little progress with what
might have been done, ere Mr. Raymount perceived that no amount of their
cleaning could take away its dirty look, and countermanding and
postponing their proceedings, committed the dingy place to painters and
paperhangers, under whose hands it was wonderful to see how gradually it
put on a gracious look fit to welcome the human race withal. Although no
white was left about it except in the ceiling for the sake of the light,
scarce in that atmosphere, it looked as if twice the number of windows
had been opened in its walls. The place also looked larger, for in its
new harmonies of color, one part led to another, introducing it, and by
division the eye was enabled to measure and appreciate the space. To
Saffy and Mark their playroom seemed transformed into a temple; they
were almost afraid to enter it. Every noise in it sounded twice as loud
as before, and every muddy shoe made a print.

The day for the concert was at length fixed a week off, and Hester began
to invite her poorer friends and neighbors to spend its evening at her
father's house, when her mother would give them tea, and she would sing
to them. The married women were to bring their husbands if they would
come, and each young woman might bring a friend. Most of the men, as a
matter of course, turned up their noses at the invitation, but were
nevertheless from curiosity inclined to go. Some declared it impossible
any house in that square should hold the number invited. Some spoke
doubtfully; they _might_ be able to go! they were not sure! and
seemed to regard consent as a favor, if not a condescension. Of these,
however, two or three were hampered by the uncertainty as to the
redemption of their best clothes from the pawnbroker.

In requesting the presence of some of the small tradespeople, Hester
asked it as a favor: she begged their assistance to entertain their
poorer neighbors; and so put, the invitation was heartily accepted. In
one case at least, however, she forgot this precaution; and the
consequence was that the wife of a certain small furniture-broker began
to fume on recognition of some in her presence. While she was drinking
her second cup of tea her eyes kept roving. As she set it down, she
caught sight of Long Tim, but a fortnight out of prison, rose at once,
made her way out fanning herself vigorously, and hurried home boiling
over with wrath--severely scalding her poor husband who had staid from
his burial-club that she might leave the shop. The woman was not at all
of a bad sort, only her dignity was hurt.

The hall and gallery were brilliantly lighted, and the room itself
looked charming--at least in the eyes of those who had been so long
watching the process of its resurrection. Tea was ready before the
company began to arrive--in great cans with taps, and was handed round
by ladies and gentlemen. The meal went off well, with a good buzz of
conversation. The only unpleasant thing was, that several of the guests,
mindful like other dams of their cubs at home, slipped large pieces of
cake into their pockets for their behoof; but this must not be judged
without a just regard to their ways of thinking, and was not a tenth
part so bad as many of the ways in which well-bred persons appropriate
slices of other people's cakes without once suspecting the category in
which they are doomed to find themselves.

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