第67章 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD(9)

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 unwearing 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 after-thought was strongly present.As he gazed in Mr.Archer's face a sudden brightness would kindle in his rheumy eyes,his eye-brows 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.

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?