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, dar
k 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.”
“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?”
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) Page 268