Weighed and Wanting

George Macdonald

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• Publié par: phoor
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 22
• Langue: English

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Title: Weighed and Wanting
Author: George MacDonald
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Hester at her piano.





WEIGHED AND WANTING
BY GEORGE MACDONALD






CONTENTS.
I. Bad Weather
II. Father, Mother and Son
III. The Magic Lantern
IV. Hester alone
V. Truly the Light is sweet
VI. The Aquarium
VII. Amy Amber
VIII. Cornelius and Vavasor
IX. Songs and Singers
X. Hester and Amy
XI. At Home
XII. A Beginning
XIII. A private Exhibition
XIV. Vavasor and Hester
XV. A small Failure
XVI. The Concert Room
XVII. An uninvited GuestXVII. An uninvited Guest
XVIII. Catastrophe
XIX. Light and Shade
XX. The Journey
XXI. Mother and Daughter
XXII. Gladness
XXIII. Down the Hill
XXIV. Out of the Frying pan
XXV. Was it into the Fire?
XXVI. Waiting a Purpose
XXVII. Major H. G. Marvel
XXVIII. The Major and Vavasor
XXIX. A brave Act
XXX. In another Light
XXXI. The Major and Cousin Helen's Boys
XXXII. A distinguished Guest
XXXIII. Courtship in earnest
XXXIV. Calamity
XXXV. In London
XXXVI. A Talk with the Major
XXXVII. Rencontres
XXXVIII. In the House
XXXIX. The Major and the Small-pox
XL. Down and down
XLI. Difference
XLII. Deep calleth unto Deep
XLIII. Deliverance
XLIV. On the Way upXLV. More yet
XLVI. Amy and Corney
XLVII. Miss Vavasor
XLVIII. Mr. Christopher
XLIX. An Arrangement
L. Things at Home
LI. The Return
LII. A heavenly Vision
LIII. A sad Beginning
LIV. Mother and Son
LV. Miss Dasomma and Amy
LVI. The sick Room
LVII. Vengeance is Mine
LVIII. Father and Daughter-in-law
LIX. The Message
LX. A birthday Gift






CHAPTER I.
BAD WEATHER.
It was a gray, windy noon in the beginning of autumn. The sky and the sea were
almost of the same color, and that not a beautiful one. The edge of the horizon where
they met was an edge no more, but a bar thick and blurred, across which from the unseen
came troops of waves that broke into white crests, the flying manes of speed, as theyrushed at, rather than ran towards the shore: in their eagerness came out once more the
old enmity between moist and dry. The trees and the smoke were greatly troubled, the
former because they would fain stand still, the latter because it would fain ascend, while
the wind kept tossing the former and beating down the latter. Not one of the hundreds of
fishing boats belonging to the coast was to be seen; not a sail even was visible; not the
smoke of a solitary steamer ploughing its own miserable path through the rain-fog to
London or Aberdeen. It was sad weather and depressing to not a few of the thousands
come to Burcliff to enjoy a holiday which, whether of days or of weeks, had looked
short to the labor weary when first they came, and was growing shorter and shorter,
while the days that composed it grew longer and longer by the frightful vitality of
dreariness. Especially to those of them who hated work, a day like this, wrapping them in
a blanket of fog, whence the water was every now and then squeezed down upon them
in the wettest of all rains, seemed a huge bite snatched by that vague enemy against
whom the grumbling of the world is continually directed out of the cake that by every
right and reason belonged to them. For were they not born to be happy, and how was
human being to fulfill his destiny in such circumstances?
There are men and women who can be happy in any—even in such circumstances and
worse, but they are rare, and not a little better worth knowing than the common class of
mortals—alas that they will be common! content to be common they are not and cannot
be. Among these exceptional mortals I do not count such as, having secured the corner of
a couch within the radius of a good fire, forget the world around them by help of the
magic lantern of a novel that interests them: such may not be in the least worth knowing
for their disposition or moral attainment—not even although the noise of the waves on
the sands, or the storm in the chimney, or the rain on the windows but serves to deepen
the calm of their spirits. Take the novel away, give the fire a black heart; let the smells
born in a lodging-house kitchen invade the sitting-room, and the person, man or woman,
who can then, on such a day, be patient with a patience pleasant to other people, is, I
repeat, one worth knowing—and such there are, though not many. Mrs. Raymount, half
the head and more than half the heart of a certain family in a certain lodging house in the
forefront of Burcliff, was one of such.
It was not a large family, yet contained perhaps as many varieties of character and
temper as some larger ones, with as many several ways of fronting such a misfortune—
for that is what poor creatures, the slaves of the elements, count it—as rainy weather in a
season concerning which all men agree that it ought to be fine, and that something is out
of order, giving ground of complaint, if it be not fine. The father met it with tolerably
good humor; but he was so busy writing a paper for one of the monthly reviews, that he
would have kept the house had the day been as fine as both the church going visitors,
and the mammon-worshipping residents with income depending on the reputation of
their weather, would have made it if they could, nor once said by your leave; therefore he
had no credit, and his temper must pass as not proven. But if you had taken from the
mother her piece of work—she was busy embroidering a lady's pinafore in a design for
which she had taken colors and arrangement from a peacock's feather, but was disposing
them in the form of a sun which with its rays covered the stomacher, the deeper tintsmaking the shadow between the golden arrows—had you taken from her this piece of
work, I say, and given her nothing to do instead, she would yet have looked and been as
peaceful as she now looked, for she was not like Doctor Doddridge's dog that did not
know who made him.
A longish lad stood in the bow window, leaning his head on the shutter, in a mood of
smouldering rebellion against the order of things. He was such a mere creature of moods,
that individual judgments of his character might well have proved irreconcilable. He had
not yet begun by the use of his will—constantly indeed mistaking impulse for will—to
blend the conflicting elements of his nature into one. He was therefore a man much as the
mass of flour and raisins, etc., when first put into the bag, is a plum-pudding; and had to
pass through something analogous to boiling to give him a chance of becoming worthy
of the name he would have arrogated. But in his own estimate of himself he claimed
always the virtues of whose presence he was conscious in his good moods letting the bad
ones slide, nor taking any account of what was in them. He substituted forgetfulness for
repudiation, a return of good humor for repentance, and at best a joke for apology.
Mark, a pale, handsome boy of ten, and Josephine, a rosy girl of seven, sat on the
opposite side of the fire, amusing themselves with a puzzle. The gusts of wind, and the
great splashes of rain on the glass, only made them feel the cosier and more satisfied.
"Beastly weather!" remarked Cornelius, as with an effort half wriggle, half spring, he
raised himself perpendicular, and turned towards the room rather than the persons in it.
"I'm sorry you don't like it, Cornie," said his elder sister, who sat beside her mother
trimming what promised to be a pretty bonnet. A concentrated effort to draw her needle
through an accumulation of silken folds seemed to take something off the bloom of the
smile with which she spoke.
"Oh, it's all very well for girls!" returned Cornelius. "You don't do anything worth
doing; and besides you've got so many things you like doing, and so much time to do