David Elginbrod. George MacDonald
He’s at it himsel’ frae mornin’ to nicht, frae year’s en’ to year’s en’.”
“But you seem to me to make out that God is nothing but love!”
“Ay, naething but love. What for no?”
“Because we are told he is just.”
“Would he be lang just if he didna lo’e us?”
“But does he not punish sin?”
“Would it be ony kin’ness no to punish sin? No to us a’ means to pit awa’ the ae ill thing frae us? Whatever may be meant by the place o’ meesery, depen’ upo’t, Mr. Sutherlan’, it’s only anither form o’ love, love shinin’ through the fogs o’ ill, an’ sae gart leuk something verra different thereby. Man, raither nor see my Maggy—an’ ye’ll no doot ‘at I lo’e her—raither nor see my Maggy do an ill thing, I’d see her lyin’ deid at my feet. But supposin’ the ill thing ance dune, it’s no at my feet I wad lay her, but upo’ my heart, wi’ my auld arms aboot her, to hand the further ill aff o’ her. An’ shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? O my God! my God!”
The entrance of Margaret would have prevented the prosecution of this conversation, even if it had not already drawn to a natural close. Not that David would not have talked thus before his daughter, but simply that minds, like instruments, need to be brought up to the same pitch, before they can “atone together,” and that one feels this instinctively on the entrance of another who has not gone through the same immediate process of gradual elevation of tone.
Their books and slates were got out, and they sat down to their work; but Hugh could not help observing that David, in the midst of his lines and angles and algebraic computations, would, every now and then, glance up at Margaret, with a look of tenderness in his face yet deeper and more delicate in its expression than ordinary. Margaret was, however, quite unconscious of it, pursuing her work with her ordinary even diligence. But Janet observed it.
“What ails the bairn, Dawvid, ‘at ye leuk at her that get? said she.
“Naething ails her, woman. Do ye never leuk at a body but when something ails them?”
“Ow, ay—but no that get.”
“Weel, maybe I was thinkin’ hoo I wad leuk at her gin onything did ail her.”
“Hoot! hoot! dinna further the ill hither by makin’ a bien doonsittin’ an’ a bed for’t.”
All David’s answer to this was one of his own smiles.
At supper, for it happened to be Saturday, Hugh said:
“I’ve been busy, between whiles, inventing, or perhaps discovering, an etymological pedigree for you, David!”
“Weel, lat’s hear’t,” said David.
“First—do you know that that volume with your ancestor’s name on it, was written by an old German shoemaker, perhaps only a cobbler, for anything I know?”
“I know nothing aboot it, more or less,” answered David.
“He was a wonderful man. Some people think he was almost inspired.”
“Maybe, maybe,” was all David’s doubtful response.
“At all events, though I know nothing about it myself, he must have written wonderfully for a cobbler.”
“For my pairt,” replied David, “if I see no wonder in the man, I can see but little in the cobbler. What for shouldna a cobbler write wonnerfully, as weel as anither? It’s a trade ‘at furthers meditation. My grandfather was a cobbler, as ye ca’t; an’ they say he was no fule in his ain way either.”
“Then it does go in the family!” cried Hugh, triumphantly. “I was in doubt at first whether your name referred to the breadth of your shoulders, David, as transmitted from some ancient sire, whose back was an Ellwand-broad; for the g might come from a w or v, for anything I know to the contrary. But it would have been braid in that case. And, now, I am quite convinced that that Martin or his father was a German, a friend of old Jacob Boehmen, who gave him the book himself, and was besides of the same craft; and he coming to this country with a name hard to be pronounced, they found a resemblance in the sound of it to his occupation; and so gradually corrupted his name, to them uncouth, into Elsynbrod, Elshinbrod, thence Elginbrod, with a soft g, and lastly Elginbrod, as you pronounce it now, with a hard g. This name, turned from Scotch into English, would then be simply Martin Awlbore. The cobbler is in the family, David, descended from Jacob Boehmen himself, by the mother’s side.”
This heraldic blazon amused them all very much, and David expressed his entire concurrence with it, declaring it to be incontrovertible. Margaret laughed heartily.
Besides its own beauty, two things made Margaret’s laugh of some consequence; one was, that it was very rare; and the other, that it revealed her two regular rows of dainty white teeth, suiting well to the whole build of the maiden. She was graceful and rather tall, with a head which, but for its smallness, might have seemed too heavy for the neck that supported it, so ready it always was to droop like a snowdrop. The only parts about her which Hugh disliked, were her hands and feet. The former certainly had been reddened and roughened by household work: but they were well formed notwithstanding. The latter he had never seen, notwithstanding the bare-foot habits of Scotch maidens; for he saw Margaret rarely except in the evenings, and then she was dressed to receive him. Certainly, however, they were very far from following the shape of the clumsy country shoes, by which he misjudged their proportions. Had he seen them, as he might have seen them some part of any day during the summer, their form at least would have satisfied him.
CHAPTER XIV. WINTER
Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.
He giveth snow like wool; he scattereth the hoar frost like ashes.
Winter was fairly come at last. A black frost had bound the earth for many days; and at length a peculiar sensation, almost a smell of snow in the air, indicated an approaching storm. The snow fell at first in a few large unwilling flakes, that fluttered slowly and heavily to the earth, where they lay like the foundation of the superstructure that was about to follow. Faster and faster they fell—wonderful multitudes of delicate crystals, adhering in shapes of beauty which outvied all that jeweller could invent or execute of ethereal, starry forms, structures of evanescent yet prodigal loveliness—till the whole air was obscured by them, and night came on, hastened by an hour, from the gathering of their white darkness. In the morning, all the landscape was transfigured. The snow had ceased to fall; but the whole earth, houses, fields, and fences, ponds and streams, were changed to whiteness. But most wonderful looked the trees—every bough and every twig thickened, and bent earthward with its own individual load of the fairy ghost-birds. Each retained the semblance of its own form, wonderfully, magically altered by its thick garment of radiant whiteness, shining gloriously in the sunlight. It was the shroud of dead nature; but a shroud that seemed to prefigure a lovely resurrection; for the very death-robe was unspeakably, witchingly beautiful. Again at night the snow fell; and again and again, with intervening days of bright sunshine. Every morning, the first fresh footprints were a new wonder to the living creatures, the young-hearted amongst them at least, who lived and moved in this death-world, this sepulchral planet, buried in the shining air before the eyes of its sister-stars in the blue, deathless heavens. Paths had to be cleared in every direction towards the out-houses, and again cleared every morning; till at last the walls of solid rain stood higher than the head of little Johnnie, as he was still called, though he was twelve years old. It was a great delight to him to wander through the snow-avenues in every direction; and great fun it was, both to him and his brother, when they were tired of snowballing each other and every living thing about the place except their parents and tutor, to hollow out mysterious caves and vaulted passages. Sometimes they would carry these passages on from one path to within an inch or two of another, and there lie in wait till some passer-by, unweeting of harm, was just opposite their lurking