The Elect Lady by George MacDonald (ebook reader with android os TXT) 📖

/> For the sake of my more polished readers-I do not say more refined , for polish and refinement may be worlds apart-I will give the rest in modern English.

"So I got up, and thought to sweep and dust the hall and the stairs; then if, when I lay down again, I should sleep too long, there would be a part of the day's work done! You know, Andrew, what the house is like; at the top of the stair that begins directly you enter the house, there is a big irregular place, bigger than the floor of your barn, laid with flags. It is just as if all the different parts of the house had been built at different times round about it, and then it was itself roofed in by an after-thought. That's what we call the hall . The spare room opens on the left at the top of the stair, and to the right, across the hall, beyond the swell of the short thick tower you see the half of outside, is the door of the study. It is all round with books-some of them, mistress says, worth their weight in gold, they are so scarce. But the master trusts me to dust them. He used to do it himself; but now that he is getting old, he does not like the trouble, and it makes him asthmatic. He says books more need dusting than anything else, but are in more danger of being hurt by it, and it makes him nervous to see me touch them. I have known him stand an hour watching me while I dusted, looking all the time as if he had just taken a dose of medicine. So I often do a few books at a time, as I can, when he is not in the way to be worried with it. But he always knows where I have been with my duster and long-haired brush. And now it came across me that I had better dust some books first of all, as it was a good chance, he being sound asleep. So I lighted my lamp, went straight to the study, and began where I last left off.

"As I was dusting, one of the books I came to looked so new and different from the rest that I opened it to see what it was like inside. It was full of pictures of mugs, and gold and silver jugs and cups-some of them plain and some colored; and one of the colored ones was so beautiful that I stood and looked at it. It was a gold cup, I suppose, for it was yellow; and all round the edge, and on the sides, it was set with stones, like the stones in mistress's rings, only much bigger. They were blue and red and green and yellow, and more colors than I can remember. The book said it was made by somebody, but I forget his name. It was a long name. The first part of it began with a B , and the second with a C , I remember that much. It was like Benjamin , but it wasn't Benjamin . I put it back in its place, thinking I would ask the master whether there really were such beautiful things, and took down the next. Now whether that had been passed over between two batches I don't know, but it was so dusty that before I would touch another I gave the duster a shake, and the wind of it blew the lamp out I took it up to take it to the kitchen and kindle it again, when, to my astonishment, I saw a light under the door of a press which was always locked, and where master said he kept his most precious books. 'How strange!' I thought; 'a light inside a locked cupboard!' Then I remembered how in one place where I had been there was, in a room over the stable, a press whose door had no fastening except a bolt on the inside, which set me thinking, and some terrible things came to me that made me remember it. So now I said to myself: 'There's some one in there, after master's books!' It was not a likely thing, but the night is the time for fancies, and in the night you don't know what is likely and what is not. One thing, however, was clear-I ought to find out what the light meant. Fearful things darted one after the other through my head as I went to the door, but there was one thing I dared not do, and that was to leave it unopened. So I opened it as softly as I could, in terror lest the thief should hear my heart beating. When I could peep in what do you think I saw? I could not believe my eyes! There was a great big room! I rubbed my eyes, and stared; and rubbed them again and stared-thinking to rub it away; but there it was, a big odd-shaped room, part of it with round sides, and in the middle of the room a table, and on the table a lamp, burning as I had never seen lamp burn, and master at the table with his back to me. I was so astonished I forgot that I had no business there, and ought to go away. I stood like an idiot, mazed and lost. And you will not wonder when I tell you that the laird was holding up to the light, between his two hands, the very cup I had been looking at in the book, the stones of it flashing all the colors of the rainbow. I should think it a dream, if I did not know it was not. I do not believe I made any noise, for I could not move, but he started up with a cry to God to preserve him, set the cup on the table, threw something over it, caught up a wicked-looking knife, and turned round. His face was like that of a corpse, and I could see him tremble. I stood steady; it was no time then to turn away. I supposed he expected to see a robber, and would be glad when he discovered it was only me; but when he did his fear changed to anger, and he came at me. His eyes were flaming, and he looked as if he would kill me. I was not frightened-poor old man, I was able for him any day!-but I was afraid of hurting him. So I closed the door quickly, and went softly to my own room, where I stood a long time in the dark, listening, but heard nothing more. What am I to do, Andrew?"

"I don't know that you have to do anything. You have one thing not to do, that is-tell anybody what you have seen."

"I was forced to tell you because I did not know what to do. It makes me so sorry!"

"It was no fault of yours. You acted to the best of your knowledge, and could not help what came of it. Perhaps nothing more will come. Leave the thing alone, and if he say anything tell him how it happened."

"But, Andrew, I don't think you see what it is that troubles me. I am afraid my master is a miser. The mistress and he take their meals, like poor people, in the kitchen. That must be the dining-room of the house!-and though my eyes were tethered to the flashing cup, I could not help seeing it was full of strange and beautiful things. Among them, I knew, by pictures I had seen, the armor of knights, when they fought on their horses' backs. Before people had money they must have misered other things. Some girls miser their clothes, and never go decent!"

"Suppose him a miser," said Andrew, "what could you do? How are you to help it?"

"That's what I want to know. I love my master, and there must be a way to help it. It was terrible to see him, in the middle of the night, gazing at that cup as if he had found the most precious thing that can ever have existed on the earth."

"What was that?" asked Andrew.

He delighted in Dawtie's talk. It was like an angel's, he said, both in its ignorance and its wisdom.

"You can't have forgotten, Andrew. It's impossible!" she answered. "I heard you say yourself!"

Andrew smiled.

"I know," he said.

"Poor man!" resumed Dawtie; "he looked at the cup as you might at that manuscript! His soul was at it, feasting upon it! Now wasn't that miserly?"

"It was like it."

"And I love my master," repeated Dawtie, thus putting afresh the question what she was to do.

"Why do you love him, Dawtie?" asked Andrew.

"Because I'm set to love him. Besides, we're told to love our enemies-then surely we're to love our friends. He has always been a friend to me. He never said a hard word to me, even when I was handling his books. He trusts me with them! I can't help loving him-a good deal, Andrew! And it's what I've got to do!"

"There's not a doubt about it, Dawtie. You've got to love him, and you do love him!"

"But there's more than that, Andrew. To hear the laird talk you would think he cared more for the Bible than for the whole world-not to say gold cups. He talks of the merits of the Saviour, that you would think he loved Him with all his heart. But I can not get it out of my mind, ever since I saw that look on his face, that he loves that cup-that it's his graven image-his idol! How else should he get up in the middle of the night to-to-to-well, it was just like worshiping it."

"You're afraid then that he's a hypocrite, Dawtie!"

"No; I daren't think that-if it were only for fear I should stop loving him-and that would be as bad!"

"As bad as what, Dawtie?"

"I don't always know what I'm going to say," answered Dawtie, a little embarrassed, "and then when I've said it I have to look what it means. But isn't it as bad not to love a human being as it would be to love a thing?"

"Perhaps worse," said Andrew.

"Something must be done!" she went on. "He can't be left like that! But if he has any love to his Master, how is it that the love of that Master does not cast out the love of Mammon? I can't understand it."

"You have asked a hard question, Dawtie. But a cure may be going on, and take a thousand years or ages to work it out."

"What if it shouldn't be begun yet."

"That would be terrible."

"What then am I to do, Andrew? You always say we must do something! You say there is no faith but what does something!"

"The apostle James said so, a few years before I was born, Dawtie!"

"Don't make fun of me-please, Andrew! I like it, but I can't bear it to-day, my head is so full of the poor old laird!"

"Make fun of you, Dawtie! Never! But I don't know yet how to answer you."

"Well, then, what am I to do?" persisted Dawtie.

"Wait, of course, till you know what to do. When you don't know what to do, don't do anything-only keep asking the Thinker for wisdom. And until you know, don't let