The Seaboard Parish, Complete. George MacDonald

afterwards,” I said, laughing. “Come along, Ethel.”

      “You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything, or your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won’t want me long, will you, husband?”

      “I’m not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell.”

      Susan was the old nurse.

      Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her across to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not shone out, and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it had gladdened mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his direct rays, had melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do with other shadows, without the mind knowing any more than the grass how the shadow departed. There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about it before you knew what I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see it only through my eyes and words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler, and what she had said. Ethel was very angry at her impertinence in speaking so to me. That was a wife’s feeling, you know, and perhaps excusable in the first impression of the thing.

      “She seems to think,” she said, “that she was sent into the world to keep other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her down, as the maids say.”

      “O, I don’t think there’s much harm in her,” I returned, which was easy generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. “Indeed, I am not sure that we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I met her that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with Theodora.”

      “Still troubling yourself about that, husband?”

      “The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it should be met,” I answered. “Our measures must begin sometime, and when, who can tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never begin at all.”

      “Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at present—belonging to humanity rather than the individual, as you would say—consisting chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe, varied with lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our measures than our heads, aren’t they?”

      “Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there’s no fear about your heart. I’m not quite so sure about your head.”

      “Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn’t matter, does it?”

      “I don’t know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for no chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger than its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head nearly, though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business. There’s one thing we have both made up our minds about—that there is to be no concealment with the child. God’s fact must be known by her. It would be cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to come upon her with a terrible shock some day. She must know from the first, by hearing it talked of—not by solemn and private communication—that she came out of the shrubbery. That’s settled, is it not?”

      “Certainly. I see that to be the right way,” responded Ethelwyn.

      “Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?”

      “We are bound to do as well for her as for our own.”

      “Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the facts being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?”

      “I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have done.”

      “That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding or neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it would be a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good for herself, knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it not be kinder to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for her to relieve the gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our sakes—I hope we are above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude which will be given for it, and which is so often far beyond the worth of the thing done—”

      “Alas! the gratitude of men

       Hath oftener left me mourning,”

      said Ethel.

      “Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!”

      “Yes, thank you, I do.”

      “But we must wish for gratitude for others’ sake, though we may be willing to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as painful as Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes us think how much more we might have done; how lovely a thing it is to give in return for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman must be in whom a trifle awakes so much emotion.”

      “Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they can’t show the difference in their thanks.”

      “And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet, the same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But to return to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be recognisant of whence she came, and how she had been brought thence, might it not be better for her? Would it not be building on the truth? Would she not be happier for it?”

      “You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair to my place in the conference,” said Ethel. “In fact, you think you are trying to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not say wheedle, me into something. It’s a good thing you have the harmlessness of the dove, Harry, for you’ve got the other thing.”

      “Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that what you call the cunning of the serpent—”

      “Wisdom, Harry, not cunning.”

      “Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But here it is—bare and defenceless, only—let me warn you—with a whole battery behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant to Constance.”

      My wife laughed.

      “Well,” she said, “for one who says so much about not thinking of the morrow, you do look rather far forward.”

      “Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right.”

      “But just think: the child is about three months old.”

      “Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her. I don’t say that she is to commence her duties at once.”

      “But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that.”

      “The training won’t be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my love, that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it. And Turner does not give much hope.”

      “O Harry, Harry, don’t say so! I can’t bear it. To think of the darling child lying like that all her life!”

      “It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven’t you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child’s nature since her accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying there such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her bonnets inside instead of outside her head.”

      “Yes, but she needn’t have been like that. Wynnie never will.”

      “Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best. But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid that had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to toddle after something to fetch it for her.”

      “Won’t