CHAPTER IV
MINGLING THREADS
It was nearly seven before Mr. Archer left his apartment. On the landing he found another door beside his own opening on a roofless corridor, and presently he was walking on the top of the ruins. On one hand he could look down a good depth into the green courtyard; on the other his eye roved along the downward course of the river, the wet woods all smoking, the shadows long and blue, the mists golden and rosy in the sun, here and there the water flashing across an obstacle. His heart expanded and softened to a grateful melancholy, and with his eye fixed upon the distance, and no thought of present danger, he continued to stroll along the elevated and treacherous promenade.
A terror-stricken cry rose to him from the courtyard. He looked down, and saw in a glimpse Nance standing below with hands clasped in horror and his own foot trembling on the margin of a gulf. He recoiled and leant against a pillar, quaking from head to foot, and covering his face with his hands; and Nance had time to run round by the stair and rejoin him where he stood before he had changed a line of his position.
“Ah!” he cried, and clutched her wrist; “don’t leave me. The place rocks; I have no head for altitudes.”
“Sit down against that pillar,” said Nance. “Don’t you be afraid; I won’t leave you, and don’t look up or down: look straight at me. How white you are!”
“The gulf,” he said, and closed his eyes again and shuddered.
“Why,” said Nance, “what a poor climber you must be! That was where my cousin Dick used to get out of the castle after Uncle Jonathan had shut the gate. I’ve been down there myself with him helping me. I wouldn’t try with you,” she said, and laughed merrily.
The sound of her laughter was sincere and musical, and perhaps its beauty barbed the offence to Mr. Archer. The blood came into his face with a quick jet, and then left it paler than before. “It is a physical weakness,” he said harshly, “and very droll, no doubt, but one that I can conquer on necessity. See, I am still shaking. Well, I advance to the battlements and look down. Show me your cousin’s path.”
“He would go sure-foot along that little ledge,” said Nance, pointing as she spoke; “then out through the breach and down by yonder buttress. It is easier coming back, of course, because you see where you are going. From the buttress foot a sheep-walk goes along the scarp—see, you can follow it from here in the dry grass. And now, sir,” she added, with a touch of womanly pity, “I would come away from here if I were you, for indeed you are not fit.”
Sure enough Mr. Archer’s pallor and agitation had continued to increase; his cheeks were deathly, his clenched fingers trembled pitifully. “The weakness is physical,” he sighed, and had nearly fallen. Nance led him from the spot, and he was no sooner back in the tower-stair, than he fell heavily against the wall and put his arm across his eyes. A cup of brandy had to be brought him before he could descend to breakfast; and the perfection of Nance’s dream was for the first time troubled.
Jonathan was waiting for them at table, with yellow, blood-shot eyes and a peculiar dusky complexion. He hardly waited till they found their seats, before, raising one hand, and stooping with his mouth above his plate, he put up a prayer for a blessing on the food and a spirit of gratitude in the eaters, and thereupon, and without more civility, fell to. But it was notable that he was no less speedily satisfied than he had been greedy to begin. He pushed his plate away and drummed upon the table.
“These are silly prayers,” said he, “that they teach us. Eat and be thankful, that’s no such wonder. Speak to me of starving—there’s the touch. You’re a man, they tell me, Mr. Archer, that has met with some reverses?”
“I have met with many,” replied Mr. Archer.
“Ha!” said Jonathan. “None reckons but the last. Now, see; I tried to make this girl here understand me.”
“Uncle,” said Nance, “what should Mr. Archer care for your concerns? He hath troubles of his own, and came to be at peace, I think.”
“I tried to make her understand me,” repeated Jonathan doggedly; “and now I’ll try you. Do you think this world is fair?”
“Fair and false!” quoth Mr. Archer.
The old man laughed immoderately. “Good,” said he, “very good, but what I mean is this: do you know what it is to get up early and go to bed late, and never take so much as a holiday but four: and one of these your own marriage day, and the other three the funerals of folk you loved, and all that, to have a quiet old age in shelter, and bread for your old belly, and a bed to lay your crazy bones upon, with a clear conscience?”
“Sir,” said Mr. Archer with an inclination of his head, “you portray a very brave existence.”
“Well,” continued Jonathan, “and in the end thieves deceive you, thieves rob and rook you, thieves turn you out in your old age and send you begging. What have you got for all your honesty? A fine return! You that might have stole scores of pounds, there you are out in the rain with your rheumatics!”
Mr. Archer had forgotten to eat; with his hand upon his chin he was studying the old man’s countenance. “And you conclude?” he asked.
“Conclude!” cried Jonathan. “I conclude I’ll be upsides with them.”
“Ay,” said the other, “we are all tempted to revenge.”
“You have lost money?” asked Jonathan.
“A great estate,” said Archer quietly.
“See now!” says Jonathan, “and where is it?”
“Nay, I sometimes think that every one has had his share of it but me,” was the reply. “All England hath paid his taxes with my patrimony: I was a sheep that left my wool on every briar.”
“And you sit down under that?” cried the old man. “Come now, Mr. Archer, you and me belong to different stations; and I know mine—no man better,—but since we have both been rooked, and are both sore with it, why, here’s my hand with a very good heart, and I ask for yours, and no offence, I hope.”
“There is surely no offence, my friend,” returned Mr. Archer, as they shook hands across the table; “for, believe me, my sympathies are quite acquired to you. This life is an arena where we fight with beasts; and, indeed,” he added, sighing, “I sometimes marvel why we go down to it unarmed.”
In the meanwhile a creaking of ungreased axles had been heard descending through the wood; and presently after, the door opened, and the tall ostler entered the kitchen carrying one end of Mr. Archer’s trunk. The other was carried by an aged beggar man of that district, known and welcome for some twenty miles about under the name of “Old Cumberland.” Each was soon perched upon a settle, with a cup of ale; and the ostler, who valued himself upon his affability, began to entertain the company, still with half an eye on Nance, to whom in gallant terms he expressly dedicated every sip of ale. First he told of the trouble they had to get his Lordship started in the chaise; and how he had dropped a rouleau of gold on the threshold, and the passage and doorstep had been strewn with guinea-pieces. At this old Jonathan looked at Mr. Archer. Next the visitor turned to news of a more thrilling character: how the down mail had been stopped again near Grantham by three men on horseback—a white and two bays; how they had handkerchiefs on their faces; how Tom the guard’s blunderbuss missed fire, but he swore he had winged one of them with a pistol; and how they had got clean away with seventy pounds in money, some valuable papers, and a watch or two.
“Brave! brave!” cried Jonathan in ecstasy. “Seventy pounds! O, it’s brave!”
“Well, I don’t see the great bravery,” observed the ostler, misapprehending him. “Three men, and you may call that three to one. I’ll call it brave when some one stops the mail single-handed; that’s a risk.”
“And why should they hesitate?” inquired Mr. Archer. “The poor souls who are fallen to such a way of life, pray what have they to lose? If they get the money, well; but if a ball should put them from their troubles, why, so better.”
“Well, sir,” said the ostler, “I believe you’ll find they won’t agree with you. They count on a good fling, you see; or who would risk it?—And here’s my best respects to you, Miss Nance.”
“And I forgot the part of cowardice,” resumed Mr. Archer. “All men fear.”
“O, surely not!” cried Nance.
“All men,” reiterated Mr. Archer.
“Ay, that’s a true word,” observed Old Cumberland, “and a thief, anyway, for it’s a coward’s trade.”
“But these fellows, now,” said Jonathan, with a curious, appealing manner—“these fellows with their seventy pounds! Perhaps, Mr. Archer, they were no true thieves after all, but just people who had been robbed and tried to get their own again. What was that you said, about all England and the taxes? One takes, another gives; why, that’s almost fair. If I’ve been rooked and robbed, and the coat taken off my back, I call it almost fair to take another’s.”
“Ask Old Cumberland,” observed the ostler; “you ask Old Cumberland, Miss Nance!” and he bestowed a wink upon his favoured fair one.
“Why that?” asked Jonathan.
“He had his coat taken—ay, and his shirt too,” returned the ostler.
“Is that so?” cried Jonathan eagerly. “Was you robbed too?”
“That was I,” replied Cumberland, “with a warrant! I was a well-to-do man when I was young.”
“Ay! See that!” says Jonathan. “And you don’t long for a revenge?”
“Eh! Not me!” answered the beggar. “It’s too long ago. But if you’ll give me another mug of your good ale, my pretty lady, I won’t say no to that.”
“And shalt have! And shalt have!” cried Jonathan. “Or brandy even, if you like it better.”
And as Cumberland did like it better, and the ostler chimed in, the party pledged each other in a dram of brandy before separating.
As for Nance, she slipped forth into the ruins, partly to avoid the ostler’s gallantries, partly to lament over the defects of Mr. Archer. Plainly, he was no hero. She pitied him; she began to feel a protecting interest mingle with and almost supersede her admiration, and was at the same time disappointed and yet drawn to him. She was, indeed, conscious of such unshaken fortitude in her own heart, that she was almost tempted by an occasion to be bold for two. She saw herself, in a brave attitude, shielding her imperfect hero from the world; and she saw, like a piece of heaven, his gratitude for her protection.
CHAPTER V
LIFE IN THE CASTLE
From that day forth the life of these three persons in the ruin ran very smoothly. Mr. Archer now sat by the fire with a book, and now passed whole days abroad, returning late, dead weary. His manner was a mask; but it was half transparent; through the even tenor of his gravity and courtesy profound revolutions of feeling were betrayed, seasons of numb despair, of restlessness, of aching temper. For days he would say nothing beyond his usual courtesies and solemn compliments; and then, all of a sudden, some fine evening beside the kitchen fire, he would fall into a vein of elegant gossip, tell of strange and interesting events, the secrets of families, brave deeds of war, the miraculous discovery of crime, the visitations of the dead. Nance and her uncle would sit till the small hours with eyes wide open: Jonathan applauding the unexpected incidents with many a slap of his big hand; Nance, perhaps, more pleased with the narrator’s eloquence and wise reflections; and then, again, days would follow of abstraction, of listless humming, of frequent apologies and long hours of silence. Once only, and then after a week of unrelieved melancholy, he went over to the “Green Dragon,” spent the afternoon with the landlord and a bowl of punch, and returned as on the first night, devious in step but courteous and unperturbed of speech.
If he seemed more natural and more at his ease it was when he found Nance alone; and, laying by some of his reserve, talked before her rather than to her of his destiny, character, and hopes. To Nance these interviews were but a doubtful privilege. At times he would seem to take a pleasure in her presence, to consult her gravely, to hear and to discuss her counsels; at times even, but these were rare and brief, he would talk of herself, praise the qualities that she possessed, touch indulgently on her defects, and lend her books to read and even examine her upon her reading; but far more often he would fall into a half unconsciousness, put her a question and then answer it himself, drop into the veiled tone of voice of one soliloquising, and leave her at last as though he had forgotten her existence. It was odd, too, that in all this random converse, not a fact of his past life, and scarce a name, should ever cross his lips. A profound reserve kept watch upon his most unguarded moments. He spoke continually of himself, indeed, but still in enigmas; a veiled prophet of egoism.
The base of Nance’s feelings for Mr. Archer was admiration as for a superior being; and with this, his treatment, consciously or not, accorded happily. When he forgot her, she took the blame upon herself. His formal politeness was so exquisite that this essential brutality stood excused. His compliments, besides, were always grave and rational; he would offer reason for his praise, convict her of merit, and thus disarm suspicion. Nay, and the very hours when he forgot and remembered her alternately could by the ardent fallacies of youth be read in the light of an attention. She might be far from his confidence; but still she was nearer it than any one. He might ignore her presence, but yet he sought it.
Moreover, she, upon her side, was conscious of one point of superiority. Beside this rather dismal, rather effeminate man, who recoiled from a worm, who grew giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and shoulders taller in cheerful and sterling courage. She could walk head in air along the most precarious rafter; her hand feared neither the grossness nor the harshness of life’s web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, into the briar bush, and could take hold of any crawling horror. Ruin was mining the walls of her cottage, as already it had mined and subverted Mr. Archer’s palace. Well, she faced it with a bright countenance and a busy hand. She had got some washing, some rough seamstress work from the “Green Dragon,” and from another neighbour ten miles away across the moor. At this she cheerfully laboured, and from that height she could afford to pity the useless talents and poor attitude of Mr. Archer. It did not change her admiration, but it made it bearable. He was above her in all ways; but she was above him in one. She kept it to herself, and hugged it. When, like all young creatures, she made long stories to justify, to nourish, and to forecast the course of her affection, it was this private superiority that made all rosy, that cut the knot, and that, at last, in some great situation, fetched to her knees the dazzling but imperfect hero. With this pretty exercise she beguiled the hours of labour, and consoled herself for Mr. Archer’s bearing. Pity was her weapon and her weakness. To accept the loved one’s faults, although it has an air of freedom, is to kiss the chain, and this pity it was which, lying nearer to her heart, lent the one element of true emotion to a fanciful and merely brain-sick love.
Thus it fell out one day that she had gone to the “Green Dragon” and brought back thence a letter to Mr. Archer. He, upon seeing it, winced like a man under the knife: pain, shame, sorrow, and the most trenchant edge of mortification cut into his heart and wrung the steady composure of his face.
“Dear heart! have you bad news?” she cried.
But he only replied by a gesture and fled to his room, and when, later on, she ventured to refer to it, he stopped her on the threshold, as if with words prepared beforehand. “There are some pains,” said he, “too acute for consolation, or I would bring them to my kind consoler. Let the memory of that letter, if you please, be buried.” And then as she continued to gaze at him, being, in spite of herself, pained by his elaborate phrase, doubtfully sincere in word and manner: “Let it be enough,” he added haughtily, “that if this matter wring my heart, it doth not touch my conscience. I am a man, I would have you to know, who suffers undeservedly.”
He had never spoken so directly: never with so convincing an emotion; and her heart thrilled for him. She could have taken his pains and died of them with joy.
Meanwhile she was left without support. Jonathan now swore by his lodger, and lived for him. He was a fine talker. He knew the finest sight of stories; he was a man and a gentleman, take him for all in all, and a perfect credit to Old England. Such were the old man’s declared sentiments, and sure enough he clung to Mr. Archer’s side, hung upon his utterance when he spoke, and watched him with unwearying interest when he was silent. And yet his feeling was not clear; in the partial wreck of his mind, which was leaning to decay, some afterthought was strongly present. As he gazed in Mr. Archer’s face a sudden brightness would kindle in his rheumy eyes, his eyebrows would lift as with a sudden thought, his mouth would open as though to speak, and close again on silence. Once or twice he even called Mr. Archer mysteriously forth into the dark courtyard, took him by the button, and laid a demonstrative finger on his chest; but there his ideas or his courage failed him; he would shufflingly excuse himself and return to his position by the fire without a word of explanation. “The good man was growing old,” said Mr. Archer with a suspicion of a shrug. But the good man had his idea, and even when he was alone the name of Mr. Archer fell from his lips continually in the course of mumbled and gesticulative conversation.
CHAPTER VI
THE BAD HALF-CROWN
However early Nance arose, and she was no sluggard, the old man, who had begun to outlive the earthly habit of slumber, would usually have been up long before, the fire would be burning brightly, and she would see him wandering among the ruins, lantern in hand, and talking assiduously to himself. One day, however, after he had returned late from the market town, she found that she had stolen a march upon that indefatigable early riser. The kitchen was all blackness. She crossed the castle-yard to the wood-cellar, her steps printing the thick hoarfrost. A scathing breeze blew out of the north-east and slowly carried a regiment of black and tattered clouds over the face of heaven, which was already kindled with the wild light of morning, but where she walked, in shelter of the ruins, the flame of her candle burned steady. The extreme cold smote upon her conscience. She could not bear to think this bitter business fell usually to the lot of one so old as Jonathan, and made desperate resolutions to be earlier in the future.
The fire was a good blaze before he entered, limping dismally into the kitchen. “Nance,” said he, “I be all knotted up with the rheumatics; will you rub me a bit?” She came and rubbed him where and how he bade her. “This is a cruel thing that old age should be rheumaticky,” said he. “When I was young I stood my turn of the teethache like a man! for why? because it couldn’t last for ever; but these rheumatics come to live and die with you. Your aunt was took before the time came; never had an ache to mention. Now I lie all night in my single bed and the blood never warms in me; this knee of mine it seems like lighted up with rheumatics; it seems as though you could see to sew by it; and all the strings of my old body ache, as if devils was pulling ’em. Thank you kindly; that’s someways easier now, but an old man, my dear, has little to look for; it’s pain, pain, pain to the end of the business, and I’ll never be rightly warm again till I get under the sod,” he said, and looked down at her with a face so aged and weary that she had nearly wept.
“I lay awake all night,” he continued; “I do so mostly, and a long walk kills me. Eh, deary me, to think that life should run to such a puddle! And I remember long syne when I was strong, and the blood all hot and good about me, and I loved to run, too—deary me, to run! Well, that’s all by. You’d better pray to be took early, Nance, and not live on till you get to be like me, and are robbed in your grey old age, your cold, shivering, dark old age, that’s like a winter’s morning”; and he bitterly shuddered, spreading his hands before the fire.
“Come now,” said Nance, “the more you say the less you’ll like it, Uncle Jonathan; but if I were you I would be proud for to have lived all your days honest and beloved, and come near the end with your good name: isn’t that a fine thing to be proud of? Mr. Archer was telling me in some strange land they used to run races each with a lighted candle, and the art was to keep the candle burning. Well, now, I thought that was like life; a man’s good conscience is the flame he gets to carry, and if he comes to the winning-post with that still burning, why, take it how you will, the man’s a hero—even if he was low-born like you and me.”
“Did Mr. Archer tell you that?” asked Jonathan.
“No, dear,” said she, “that’s my own thought about it. He told me of the race. But see, now,” she continued, putting on the porridge, “you say old age is a hard season, but so is youth. You’re half out of the battle, I would say; you loved my aunt and got her, and buried her, and some of these days soon you’ll go to meet her; and take her my love and tell her I tried to take good care of you; for so I do, Uncle Jonathan.”
Jonathan struck with his fist upon the settle. “D’ye think I want to die, ye vixen?” he shouted. “I want to live ten hundred years.”
This was a mystery beyond Nance’s penetration, and she stared in wonder as she made the porridge.
“I want to live,” he continued, “I want to live and to grow rich. I want to drive my carriage and to dice in hells and see the ring, I do. Is this a life that I lived? I want to be a rake, d’ye understand? I want to know what things are like. I don’t want to die like a blind kitten, and me seventy-six.”
“O fie!” said Nance.
The old man thrust out his jaw at her, with the grimace of an irreverent schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents on the settle, began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining each, and suddenly he leapt like a young man. “What!” he screamed. “Bad? O Lord! I’m robbed again!” And falling on his knees before the settle he began to pour forth the most dreadful curses on the head of his deceiver. His eyes were shut, for to him this vile solemnity was prayer. He held up the bad half-crown in his right hand, as though he were displaying it to Heaven, and what increased the horror of the scene, the curses he invoked were those whose efficacy he had tasted—old age and poverty, rheumatism and an ungrateful son. Nance listened appalled; then she sprang forward and dragged down his arm and laid her hand upon his mouth.
“Whist!” she cried. “Whist ye, for God’s sake! O my man, whist ye! If Heaven were to hear; if poor Aunt Susan were to hear! Think, she may be listening.” And with the histrionism of strong emotion she pointed to a corner of the kitchen.
His eyes followed her finger. He looked there for a little, thinking, blinking; then he got stiffly to his feet and resumed his place upon the settle, the bad piece still in his hand. So he sat for some time, looking upon the half-crown, and now wondering to himself on the injustice and partiality of the law, now computing again and again the nature of his loss. So he was still sitting when Mr. Archer entered the kitchen. At this a light came into his face, and after some seconds of rumination he despatched Nance upon an errand.
“Mr. Archer,” said he, as soon as they were alone together, “would you give me a guinea-piece for silver?”
“Why, sir, I believe I can,” said Mr. Archer.
And the exchange was just effected when Nance re-entered the apartment. The blood shot into her face.
“What’s to do here?” she asked rudely.
“Nothing, my dearie,” said old Jonathan, with a touch of whine.
“What’s to do?” she said again.
“Your uncle was but changing me a piece of gold,“ returned Mr. Archer.
“Let me see what he hath given you, Mr. Archer,” replied the girl. “I had a bad piece, and I fear it is mixed up among the good.”
“Well, well,” replied Mr. Archer, smiling, “I must take the merchant’s risk of it. The money is now mixed.”
“I know my piece,” quoth Nance. “Come, let me see your silver, Mr. Archer. If I have to get it by a theft I’ll see that money,” she cried.
“Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be honest as the world to steal, I must give way, though I betray myself,” said Mr. Archer. “There it is as I received it.”
Nance quickly found the bad half-crown.
“Give him another,” she said, looking Jonathan in the face; and when that had been done, she walked over to the chimney and flung the guilty piece into the reddest of the fire. Its base constituents began immediately to run; even as she watched it the disc crumbled, and the lineaments of the King became confused. Jonathan, who had followed close behind, beheld these changes from over her shoulder, and his face darkened sorely.
“Now,” said she, “come back to table, and to-day it is I that shall say grace, as I used to do in the old times, day about with Dick”; and covering her eyes with one hand, “O Lord,” said she with deep emotion, “make us thankful; and, O Lord, deliver us from evil! For the love of the poor souls that watch for us in heaven, O deliver us from evil.”
CHAPTER VII
THE BLEACHING-GREEN
The year moved on to March; and March, though it blew bitter keen from the North Sea, yet blinked kindly between whiles on the river dell. The mire dried up in the closest covert; life ran in the bare branches, and the air of the afternoon would be suddenly sweet with the fragrance of new grass.
Above and below the castle the river crooked like the letter “S.” The lower loop was to the left, and embraced the high and steep projection which was crowned by the ruins; the upper loop enclosed a lawny promontory, fringed by thorn and willow. It was easy to reach it from the castle side, for the river ran in this part very quietly among innumerable boulders and over dam-like walls of rock. The place was all enclosed, the wind a stranger, the turf smooth and solid; so it was chosen by Nance to be her bleaching-green.
One day she brought a bucketful of linen, and had but begun to wring and lay them out when Mr. Archer stepped from the thicket on the far side, drew very deliberately near, and sat down in silence on the grass. Nance looked up to greet him with a smile, but finding her smile was not returned, she fell into embarrassment and stuck the more busily to her employment. Man or woman, the whole world looks well at any work to which they are accustomed; but the girl was ashamed of what she did. She was ashamed, besides, of the sun-bonnet that so well became her, and ashamed of her bare arms, which were her greatest beauty.
“Nausicaa,” said Mr. Archer at last, “I find you like Nausicaa.”
“And who was she?” asked Nance, and laughed in spite of herself, an empty and embarrassed laugh, that sounded in Mr. Archer’s ears, indeed, like music, but to her own like the last grossness of rusticity.
“She was a princess of the Grecian islands,” he replied. “A king, being shipwrecked, found her washing by the shore. Certainly I, too, was shipwrecked,” he continued, plucking at the grass. “There was never a more desperate castaway—to fall from polite life, fortune, a shrine of honour, a grateful conscience, duties willingly taken up and faithfully discharged; and to fall to this—idleness, poverty, inutility, remorse.” He seemed to have forgotten her presence, but here he remembered her again. “Nance,” said he, “would you have a man sit down and suffer or rise up and strive?”
“Nay,” she said. “I would always rather see him doing.”
“Ha!” said Mr. Archer, “but yet you speak from an imperfect knowledge. Conceive a man damned to a choice of only evil—misconduct upon either side, not a fault behind him, and yet naught before him but this choice of sins. How would you say then?”
“I would say that he was much deceived, Mr. Archer,” returned Nance. “I would say there was a third choice, and that the right one.“
“I tell you,” said Mr. Archer, “the man I have in view hath two ways open, and no more. One to wait, like a poor mewling baby, till Fate save or ruin him; the other to take his troubles in his hand, and to perish or be saved at once. It is no point of morals; both are wrong. Either way this step-child of Providence must fall; which shall he choose, by doing or not doing?”
“Fall, then, is what I would say,” replied Nance. “Fall where you will, but do it! For O, Mr. Archer,” she continued, stooping to her work, “you that are good and kind, and so wise, it doth sometimes go against my heart to see you live on here like a sheep in a turnip-field! If you were braver——” and here she paused, conscience-smitten.
“Do I, indeed, lack courage?” inquired Mr. Archer of himself. “Courage, the footstool of the virtues, upon which they stand? Courage, that a poor private carrying a musket has to spare of; that does not fail a weasel or a rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail there, I wonder? But what is courage, then? The constancy to endure oneself or to see others suffer? The itch of ill-advised activity: mere shuttle-wittedness, or to be still and patient? To inquire of the significance of words is to rob ourselves of what we seem to know, and yet, of all things, certainly to stand still is the least heroic. Nance,” he said, “did you ever hear of Hamlet?”
“Never,” said Nance.
“’Tis an old play,” returned Mr. Archer, “and frequently enacted. This while I have been talking Hamlet. You must know this Hamlet was a Prince among the Danes,” and he told her the play in a very good style, here and there quoting a verse or two with solemn emphasis.
“It is strange,” said Nance; “he was then a very poor creature?”
“That was what he could not tell,” said Mr. Archer. “Look at me, am I as poor a creature?”
She looked, and what she saw was the familiar thought of all her hours; the tall figure very plainly habited in black, the spotless ruffles, the slim hands; the long, well-shapen, serious, shaven face, the wide and somewhat thin-lipped mouth, the dark eyes that were so full of depth and change and colour. He was gazing at her with his brows a little knit, his chin upon one hand and that elbow resting on his knee.
“Ye look a man!” she cried, “ay, and should be a great one! The more shame to you to lie here idle like a dog before the fire.”
“My fair Holdaway,” quoth Mr. Archer, “you are much set on action. I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed.” He continued, looking at her with a half-absent fixity, “’Tis a strange thing, certainly, that in my years of fortune I should never taste happiness, and now when I am broke, enjoy so much of it, for was I ever happier than to-day? Was the grass softer, the stream pleasanter in sound, the air milder, the heart more at peace? Why should I not sink? To dig—why, after all, it should be easy. To take a mate, too? Love is of all grades since Jupiter; love fails to none; and children”—but here he passed his hand suddenly over his eyes. “O fool and coward, fool and coward!” he said bitterly; “can you forget your fetters? You did not know that I was fettered, Nance?” he asked, again addressing her.
But Nance was somewhat sore. “I know you keep talking,” she said, and, turning half away from him, began to wring out a sheet across her shoulder. “I wonder you are not wearied of your voice. When the hands lie abed the tongue takes a walk.“
Mr. Archer laughed unpleasantly, rose and moved to the water’s edge. In this part the body of the river poured across a little narrow fell, ran some ten feet very smoothly over a bed of pebbles, then getting wind, as it were, of another shelf of rock which barred the channel, began, by imperceptible degrees, to separate towards either shore in dancing currents, and to leave the middle clear and stagnant. The set towards either side was nearly equal; about one half of the whole water plunged on the side of the castle, through a narrow gullet; about one half ran lipping past the margin of the green and slipped across a babbling rapid.
“Here,“ said Mr. Archer, after he had looked for some time at the fine and shifting demarcation of these currents, “come here and see me try my fortune.”
“I am not like a man,” said Nance; “I have no time to waste.”
“Come here,” he said again. “I ask you seriously, Nance. We are not always childish when we seem so.”
She drew a little nearer.
“Now,” said he, “you see these two channels—choose one.”
“I’ll choose the nearest, to save time,” said Nance.
“Well, that shall be for action,” returned Mr. Archer. “And since I wish to have the odds against me, not only the other channel but yon stagnant water in the midst shall be for lying still. You see this?” he continued, pulling up a withered rush. “I break it in three. I shall put each separately at the top of the upper fall, and according as they go by your way or by the other I shall guide my life.”
“This is very silly,” said Nance, with a movement of her shoulders.
“I do not think it so,” said Mr. Archer.
“And then,” she resumed, “if you are to try your fortune, why not evenly?”
“Nay,” returned Mr. Archer with a smile, “no man can put complete reliance in blind fate; he must still cog the dice.”
By this time he had got upon the rock beside the upper fall, and, bidding her look out, dropped a piece of rush into the middle of the intake. The rusty fragment was sucked at once over the fall, came up again far on the right hand, leaned ever more and more in the same direction, and disappeared under the hanging grasses on the castle side.
“One,” said Mr. Archer, “one for standing still.”
But the next launch had a different fate, and after hanging for a while about the edge of the stagnant water, steadily approached the bleaching-green and danced down the rapid under Nance’s eyes.
“One for me,” she cried with some exultation; and then she observed that Mr. Archer had grown pale, and was kneeling on the rock, with his hand raised like a person petrified. “Why,” said she, “you do not mind it, do you?”
“Does a man not mind a throw of dice by which a fortune hangs?” said Mr. Archer, rather hoarsely. “And this is more than fortune. Nance, if you have any kindness for my fate, put up a prayer before I launch the next one.”
“A prayer,” she cried, “about a game like this? I would not be so heathen.”
“Well,” said he, “then without,” and he closed his eyes and dropped the piece of rush. This time there was no doubt. It went for the rapid as straight as any arrow.
“Action then!” said Mr. Archer, getting to his feet; “and then God forgive us,” he added, almost to himself.
“God forgive us, indeed,” cried Nance, “for wasting the good daylight! But come, Mr. Archer, if I see you look so serious I shall begin to think you was in earnest.”
“Nay,” he said, turning upon her suddenly, with a full smile; “but is not this good advice? I have consulted God and demigod; the nymph of the river, and what I far more admire and trust, my blue-eyed Minerva. Both have said the same. My own heart was telling it already. Action, then, be mine; and into the deep sea with all this paralysing casuistry. I am happy to-day for the first time.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE MAIL GUARD
Somewhere about two in the morning a squall had burst upon the castle, a clap of screaming wind that made the towers rock, and a copious drift of rain that streamed from the windows. The wind soon blew itself out, but the day broke cloudy and dripping, and when the little party assembled at breakfast their humours appeared to have changed with the change of weather. Nance had been brooding on the scene at the river-side, applying it in various ways to her particular aspirations, and the result, which was hardly to her mind, had taken the colour out of her cheeks. Mr. Archer, too, was somewhat absent, his thoughts were of a mingled strain; and even upon his usually impassive countenance there were betrayed successive depths of depression and starts of exultation, which the girl translated in terms of her own hopes and fears. But Jonathan was the most altered: he was strangely silent, hardly passing a word, and watched Mr. Archer with an eager and furtive eye. It seemed as if the idea that had so long hovered before him had now taken a more solid shape, and, while it still attracted, somewhat alarmed his imagination.
At this rate, conversation languished into a silence which was only broken by the gentle and ghostly noises of the rain on the stone roof and about all that field of ruins; and they were all relieved when the note of a man whistling and the sound of approaching footsteps in the grassy court announced a visitor. It was the ostler from the “Green Dragon” bringing a letter for Mr. Archer. Nance saw her hero’s face contract and then relax again at sight of it; and she thought that she knew why, for the sprawling, gross black characters of the address were easily distinguishable from the fine writing on the former letter that had so much disturbed him. He opened it and began to read; while the ostler sat down to table with a pot of ale, and proceeded to make himself agreeable after his fashion.
“Fine doings down our way, Miss Nance,” said he. “I haven’t been abed this blessed night.”
Nance expressed a polite interest, but her eye was on Mr. Archer, who was reading his letter with a face of such extreme indifference that she was tempted to suspect him of assumption.
“Yes,” continued the ostler, “not been the like of it this fifteen years: the North Mail stopped at the three stones.”
Jonathan’s cup was at his lip, but at this moment he choked with a great splutter; and Mr. Archer, as if startled by the noise, made so sudden a movement that one corner of the sheet tore off and stayed between his finger and thumb. It was some little time before the old man was sufficiently recovered to beg the ostler to go on, and he still kept coughing and crying and rubbing his eyes. Mr. Archer, on his side, laid the letter down, and, putting his hands in his pocket, listened gravely to the tale.
“Yes,” resumed Sam, “the North Mail was stopped by a single horseman; dash my wig, but I admire him! There were four insides and two out, and poor Tom Oglethorpe, the guard. Tom showed himself a man; let fly his blunderbuss at him; had him covered, too, and could swear to that; but the Captain never let on, up with a pistol and fetched poor Tom a bullet through the body. Tom, he squelched upon the seat, all over blood. Up comes the Captain to the window. ‘Oblige me,’ says he, ‘with what you have.’ Would you believe it? Not a man says cheep!—not them. ‘Thy hands over thy head.’ Four watches, rings, snuff-boxes, seven-and-forty pounds overhead in gold. One Dicksee, a grazier, tries it on: gives him a guinea. ‘Beg your pardon,’ says the Captain, ‘I think too highly of you to take it at your hand. I will not take less than ten from such a gentleman.’ This Dicksee had his money in his stocking, but there was the pistol at his eye. Down he goes, offs with his stocking, and there was thirty golden guineas. ‘Now,’ says the Captain, ‘you’ve tried it on with me, but I scorns the advantage. Ten I said,’ he says, ‘and ten I take.’ So, dash my buttons, I call that man a man!” cried Sam in cordial admiration.
“Well, and then?” says Mr. Archer.
“Then,” resumed Sam, “that old fat fagot Engleton, him as held the ribbons and drew up like a lamb when he was told to, picks up his cattle, and drives off again. Down they came to the ’Dragon,‘ all singing like as if they was scalded, and poor Tom saying nothing. You would ’a’ thought they had all lost the King’s crown to hear them. Down gets this Dicksee. ‘Postmaster,’ he says, taking him by the arm, ‘this is a most abominable thing,’ he says. Down gets a Major Clayton, and gets the old man by the other arm. ‘We’ve been robbed,’ he cries, ‘robbed!’ Down gets the others, and all around the old man telling their story, and what they had lost, and how they was all as good as ruined; till at last Old Engleton says, says he, ‘How about Oglethorpe?’ says he. ‘Ay,’ says the others, ‘how about the guard?’ Well, with that we bousted him down, as white as a rag and all blooded like a sop. I thought he was dead. Well, he ain’t dead; but he’s dying, I fancy.”
“Did you say four watches?” said Jonathan.
“Four, I think. I wish it had been forty,” cried Sam. “Such a party of soused herrings I never did see—not a man among them bar poor Tom. But us that are the servants on the road have all the risk and none of the profit.”
“And this brave fellow,” asked Mr. Archer, very quietly, “this Oglethorpe—how is he now?”
“Well, sir, with my respects, I take it he has a hole bang through him,” said Sam. “The doctor hasn’t been yet. He’d ’a’ been bright and early if it had been a passenger. But, doctor or no, I’ll make a good guess that Tom won’t see to-morrow. He’ll die on a Sunday, will poor Tom; and they do say that’s fortunate.”
“Did Tom see him that did it?” asked Jonathan.
“Well, he saw him,” replied Sam, “but not to swear by. Said he was a very tall man, and very big, and had a ’ankerchief about his face, and a very quick shot, and sat his horse like a thorough gentleman, as he is.”
“A gentleman!” cried Nance. “The dirty knave!”
“Well, I calls a man like that a gentleman,” returned the ostler; “that’s what I mean by a gentleman.“
“You don’t know much of them, then,” said Nance. “A gentleman would scorn to stoop to such a thing. I call my uncle a better gentleman than any thief.”
“And you would be right,” said Mr. Archer.
“How many snuff-boxes did he get?” asked Jonathan.
“O, dang me if I know,” said Sam; “I didn’t take an inventory.”
“I will go back with you, if you please,” said Mr. Archer. “I should like to see poor Oglethorpe. He has behaved well.”
“At your service, sir,” said Sam, jumping to his feet. “I dare to say a gentleman like you would not forget a poor fellow like Tom—no, nor a plain man like me, sir, that went without his sleep to nurse him. And excuse me, sir,” added Sam, “you won’t forget about the letter neither?”
“Surely not,” said Mr. Archer.
Oglethorpe lay in a low bed, one of several in a long garret of the inn. The rain soaked in places through the roof and fell in minute drops; there was but one small window; the beds were occupied by servants, the air of the garret was both close and chilly. Mr. Archer’s heart sank at the threshold to see a man lying perhaps mortally hurt in so poor a sick-room, and as he drew near the low bed he took his hat off. The guard was a big, blowsy, innocent-looking soul with a thick lip and a broad nose, comically turned up; his cheeks were crimson, and when Mr. Archer laid a finger on his brow he found him burning with fever.
“I fear you suffer much,” he said, with a catch in his voice, as he sat down on the bedside.
“I suppose I do, sir,” returned Oglethorpe; “it is main sore.”
“I am used to wounds and wounded men,” returned the visitor. “I have been in the wars and nursed brave fellows before now; and, if you will suffer me, I propose to stay beside you till the doctor comes.”
“It is very good of you, sir, I am sure,” said Oglethorpe. “The trouble is they won’t none of them let me drink.”
“If you will not tell the doctor,” said Mr. Archer, “I will give you some water. They say it is bad for a green wound, but in the Low Countries we all drank water when we found the chance, and I could never perceive we were the worse for it.“
“Been wounded yourself, sir, perhaps?” called Oglethorpe.
“Twice,” said Mr. Archer, “and was as proud of these hurts as any lady of her bracelets. ’Tis a fine thing to smart for one’s duty; even in the pangs of it there is contentment.”
“Ah, well!” replied the guard, “if you’ve been shot yourself, that explains. But as for contentment, why, sir, you see, it smarts, as you say. And then, I have a good wife, you see, and a bit of a brat—a little thing, so high.”
“Don’t move,” said Mr. Archer.
“No, sir, I will not, and thank you kindly,” said Oglethorpe. “At York they are. A very good lass is my wife—far too good for me. And the little rascal—well, I don’t know how to say it, but he sort of comes round you. If I were to go, sir, it would be hard on my poor girl—main hard on her!”
“Ay, you must feel bitter hardly to the rogue that laid you here,” said Archer.
“Why, no, sir, more against Engleton and the passengers,” replied the guard. “He played his hand, if you come to look at it; and I wish he had shot worse, or me better. And yet I’ll go to my grave but what I covered him,” he cried. “It looks like witchcraft. I’ll go to my grave but what he was drove full of slugs like a pepper-box.”
“Quietly,” said Mr. Archer, “you must not excite yourself. These deceptions are very usual in war; the eye, in the moment of alert, is hardly to be trusted, and when the smoke blows away you see the man you fired at, taking aim, it may be, at yourself. You should observe, too, that you were in the dark night, and somewhat dazzled by the lamps, and that the sudden stopping of the mail had jolted you. In such circumstances a man may miss, ay, even with a blunderbuss, and no blame attach to his marksmanship.” ...