Thomas Wingfold, Curate, vol 2

Thomas Wingfold, Curate, vol 2

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Title: Thomas Wingfold, Curate V2
Author: George MacDonald
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5974] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 2, 2002]
Edition: 10

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THOMAS
WINGFOLD, CURATE V2 ***

Charles Franks, Charles Aldarondo, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE.
By George MacDonald, LL.D.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL II.

THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE.

CHAPTER I
.
RACHEL AND HER UNCLE.

It was nearly dark when they arrived again at the lodge. Rachel opened
the gate for them. Without even a THANK YOU, they rode out. She
stood for a moment gazing after them through the dusk, then turned
with a sigh, and went into the kitchen, where her uncle sat by the fire
with a book in his hand.
"How I should like to be as well made as Miss Lingard!" she said,
seating herself by the lamp that stood on the deal-table. "It MUST be a
fine thing to be strong and tall, and able to look this way and that
without turning all your body along with your head, like the old man
that gathers the leeches in Wordsworth's poem. And what it must be to
sit on a horse as she does! You should have seen her go flying like the
very wind across the park! You would have thought she and her horse
were cut out of the same piece. I'm dreadfully envious, uncle."
"No, my child; I know you better than you do yourself. There is a great
difference between I WISH I WAS and I SHOULD LIKE TO BE--as

much as between a grumble and a prayer. To be content is not to be
satisfied. No one ought to be satisfied with the imperfect. It is God's
will that we should bear, and contentedly--because in hope, looking for
the redemption of the body. And we know he has a ready servant who
will one day set us free."
"Yes, uncle; I understand. You know I enjoy life: how could I help it
and you with me? But I don't think I ever go through the churchyard
without feeling a sort of triumph. 'There's for you!' I say sometimes to
the little crooked shadow that creeps along by my side across the
graves. 'You'll soon be caught and put inside!'--But how am I to tell I
mayn't be crooked in the next world as well as this? That's what
troubles me at times. There might be some necessity for it, you know."
"Then will there be patience to bear it there also; that you may be sure
of. But I do not fear. It were more likely that those who have not
thanked God, but prided themselves that they were beautiful in this
world, should be crooked in the next. It would be like Dives and
Lazarus, you know. But God does what is best for them as well as for
us. We shall find one day that beauty and riches were the best thing for
those to whom they were given, as deformity and poverty were the best
for us."
"I wonder what sort of person I should have been if I had had a straight
spine!" said Rachel laughing.
"Hardly one so dear to your deformed uncle," said her companion in
ugliness.
"Then I'm glad I am as I am," rejoined Rachel.
"This conscious individuality of ours," said Polwarth, after a thoughtful
silence, "is to me an awful thing--the one thing that seems in humanity
like the onliness of God. Mine terrifies me sometimes--looking a
stranger to me--a limiting of myself--a breaking in upon my
existence--like a volcanic outburst into the blue Sicilian air. When it
thus manifests