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Stephen Archer and Other Tales

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"That's more'n I've seen this six weeks," he said. "There's something
more'n common up this evenin', sir."

There was light in the drawing-room--that was all the wonder; but at
those windows Mr. Dempster himself looked so fixedly that he had
nearly stumbled up his own door-steps.

He carried a latch-key now, for he did not care to stand at the door
till the boy answered the bell; people's eyes, as they passed, seemed
to burn holes in the back of his coat.

He opened the street door quietly, and went straight up the stair to
the drawing-room. Perhaps he thought to detect some liberty taken by
his servants. He was a little earlier than usual. He opened that door,
took two steps into the room, and stood arrested, motionless. With his
shabby hat on his head, his shabby greatcoat on his back--for he
grudged every penny spent on his clothes--his arms hanging down by his
sides, and his knees bent, ready to tremble, he looked not a little
out of keeping in the soft-lighted, dainty, delicate-hued
drawing-room. Could he believe his eyes? The light of a large lamp was
centred upon a gracious figure in white--his wife, just as he used to
see her before he married her! That was the way her hair would break
loose as she ran down the stair to meet him!--only then there was no
baby in her lap for it to full over like a torrent of unlighted water
over a white stone! It was a lovely sight.

He had stood but a moment when she looked up and saw him. She started,
but gave no cry louder than a little moan. Instantly she rose.
Turning, she laid the baby on the sofa, and flitted to him like a
wraith. Arrived where he stood yet motionless, she fell upon her knees
and clasped his. He was far too bewildered now to ask himself what
husbands did in such circumstances, and stood like a block.

"Husband! husband!" she cried, "forgive me." With one hand she hid her
face, although it was bent to the ground, and with the other held up
to him a bit of paper. He took it from the thin white fingers; it
might explain something--help him out of this bewilderment, half
nightmare, half heavenly vision. He opened it. Nothing but a
hundred-pound note! The familiar sight of bank paper, however, seemed
to restore his speech.

"What does this mean, Lucy? Upon my word! Permit me to say--"

He was growing angry.

"It is to pay the butcher," she said, with a faltering voice.

"Damn the butcher!" he cried. "I hope you've got something else to say
to me! Where have you been all this time?"

"At my mother's. I've had a brain fever, and been out of my mind. It
was all about the butcher's bill."

Dempster stared. Perhaps he could not understand how a woman who would
not keep accounts should be to such a degree troubled at the result of
her neglect.

"Look at me, if you don't believe me," she cried, and as she spoke she
rose and lifted her face to his.

He gazed at it for a moment--pale, thin, and worn; and out of it shone
the beautiful eyes, larger than before, but shimmering uncertain like
the stars of a humid night, although they looked straight into his.

Something queer was suddenly the matter with his throat--something
he had never felt before--a constriction such as, had he been
superstitious, he might have taken for the prologue to a rope. Then
the thought came--what a brute he must be that his wife should have
been afraid to tell him her trouble! Thereupon he tried to speak, but
his throat was irresponsive to his will. Eve's apple kept sliding up
and down in it, and would not let the words out. He had never been so
served by members of his own body in his life before! It was positive
rebellion, and would get him into trouble with his wife. There it was!
Didn't he say so?

"Can't you forgive me, Mr. Dempster?" she said, and the voice was so
sweet and so sad! "It is my own money. Aunt Lucy is dead, and left it
me. I think it will be enough to pay all my debts; and I promise
you--I do promise you that I will set down every halfpenny after this.
Do try me once again--for baby's sake."

This last was a sudden thought. She turned and ran to the sofa.
Dempster stood where he was, fighting the strange uncomfortable
feeling in his throat. It would not yield a jot. Was he going to die
suddenly of choking? Was it a judgment upon him? Diphtheria, perhaps!
It was much about in the City!

She was back, and holding up to him their sleeping child.

The poor fellow was not half the brute he looked--only he could _not_
tell what to do with that confounded lump in his throat! He dared not
try to speak, for it only choked him the more. He put his arms round
them both, and pressed them to his bosom. Then, the lump in his throat
melted and ran out at his eyes, and all doubt vanished like a mist
before the sun. But he never knew that he had wept. His wife did, and
that was enough.

The next morning, for the first time in his life, he lost the eight
o'clock omnibus.

The following Monday morning she brought her week's account to him. He
turned from it testily, but she insisted on his going over it. There
was not the mistake of a halfpenny. He went to town with a smile in
his heart, and that night brought her home a cheque for ten pounds
instead of five.

One day, in the middle of the same week, he came upon her sitting over
the little blue-and-red-ruled book with a troubled countenance. She
took no notice of his entrance.

"Do leave those accounts," he said, "and attend to me."

She shook her head impatiently, and made him no other answer. One
moment more, however, and she started up, threw her arms about his
neck, and cried triumphantly,

"It's buttons!--fourpence-halfpenny I paid for buttons!"




PORT IN A STORM


"Papa," said my sister Effie, one evening as we all sat about the
drawing-room fire. One after another, as nothing followed, we turned
our eves upon her. There she sat, still silent, embroidering the
corner of a cambric hand-kerchief, apparently unaware that she had
spoken.

It was a very cold night in the beginning of winter. My father had
come home early, and we had dined early that we might have a long
evening together, for it was my father's and mother's wedding-day, and
we always kept it as the homeliest of holidays. My father was seated
in an easy-chair by the chimney corner, with a jug of Burgundy near
him, and my mother sat by his side, now and then taking a sip out of
his glass.

Effie was now nearly nineteen; the rest of us were younger. What she
was thinking about we did not know then, though we could all guess
now. Suddenly she looked up, and seeing all eyes fixed upon her,
became either aware or suspicious, and blushed rosy red.

"You spoke to me, Effie. What was it, my dear?"

"O yes, papa. I wanted to ask you whether you wouldn't tell us,
to-night, the story about how you--"

"Well, my love?"

"--About how you--"

"I am listening, my dear."

"I mean, about mamma and you."

"Yes, yes. About how I got your mamma for a mother to you. Yes. I paid
a dozen of port for her."

We all and each exclaimed _Papa_! and my mother laughed.

"Tell us all about it," was the general cry.

"Well, I will," answered my father. "I must begin at the beginning,
though."

And, filling his glass with Burgundy, he began.

"As far back as I can remember, I lived with my father in an old
manor-house in the country. It did not belong to my father, but to an
elder brother of his, who at that time was captain of a seventy-four.
He loved the sea more than his life; and, as yet apparently, had loved
his ship better than any woman. At least he was not married.

"My mother had been dead for some years, and my father was now in very
delicate health. He had never been strong, and since my mother's
death, I believe, though I was too young to notice it, he had pined
away. I am not going to tell you anything about him just now, because
it does not belong to my story. When I was about five years old, as
nearly as I can judge, the doctors advised him to leave England. The
house was put into the hands of an agent to let--at least, so I
suppose; and he took me with him to Madeira, where he died. I was
brought home by his servant, and by my uncle's directions, sent to a
boarding-school; from there to Eton, and from there to Oxford.

"Before I had finished my studies, my uncle had been an admiral for
some time. The year before I left Oxford, he married Lady Georgiana
Thornbury, a widow lady, with one daughter. Thereupon he bade farewell
to the sea, though I dare say he did not like the parting, and retired
with his bride to the house where he was born--the same house I told
you I was born in, which had been in the family for many generations,
and which your cousin now lives in.

"It was late in the autumn when they arrived at Culverwood. They were
no sooner settled than my uncle wrote to me, inviting me to spend
Christmas-tide with them at the old place. And here you may see that
my story has arrived at its beginning.

"It was with strange feelings that I entered the house. It looked so
old-fashioned, and stately, and grand, to eyes which had been
accustomed to all the modern commonplaces! Yet the shadowy
recollections which hung about it gave an air of homeliness to the
place, which, along with the grandeur, occasioned a sense of rare
delight. For what can be better than to feel that you are in stately
company, and at the same time perfectly at home in it? I am grateful
to this day for the lesson I had from the sense of which I have
spoken--that of mingled awe and tenderness in the aspect of the old
hall as I entered it for the first time after fifteen years, having
left it a mere child.

"I was cordially received by my old uncle and my new aunt. But the
moment Kate Thornbury entered I lost my heart, and have never found it
again to this day. I get on wonderfully well without it, though, for I
have got the loan of a far better one till I find my own, which,
therefore, I hope I never shall."

My father glanced at my mother as he said this, and she returned his
look in a way which I can now interpret as a quiet satisfied
confidence. But the tears came in Effie's eyes. She had trouble before
long, poor girl! But it is not her story I have to tell.--My father
went on:

"Your mother was prettier then than she is now, but not so beautiful;
beautiful enough, though, to make me think there never had been or
could again be anything so beautiful. She met me kindly, and I met her
awkwardly."

"You made me feel that I had no business there," said my mother,
speaking for the first time in the course of the story.

"See there, girls," said my father. "You are always so confident in
first impressions, and instinctive judgment! I was awkward because, as
I said, I fell in love with your mother the moment I saw her; and she
thought I regarded her as an intruder into the old family precincts.

"I will not follow the story of the days. I was very happy, except
when I felt too keenly how unworthy I was of Kate Thornbury; not that
she meant to make me feel it, for she was never other than kind; but
she was such that I could not help feeling it. I gathered courage,
however, and before three days were over, I began to tell her all my
slowly reviving memories of the place, with my childish adventures
associated with this and that room or outhouse or spot in the grounds;
for the longer I was in the place the more my old associations with it
revived, till I was quite astonished to find how much of my history in
connection with Culverwood had been thoroughly imprinted on my memory.
She never showed, at least, that she was weary of my stories; which,
however interesting to me, must have been tiresome to any one who did
not sympathize with what I felt towards my old nest. From room to room
we rambled, talking or silent; and nothing could have given me a
better chance, I believe, with a heart like your mother's. I think it
was not long before she began to like me, at least, and liking had
every opportunity of growing into something stronger, if only she too
did not come to the conclusion that I was unworthy of her.

"My uncle received me like the jolly old tar that he was--welcomed me
to the old ship--hoped we should make many a voyage together--and that
I would take the run of the craft--all but in one thing.

"'You see, my boy,' he said, 'I married above my station, and I don't
want my wife's friends to say that I laid alongside of her to get hold
of her daughter's fortune. No, no, my boy; your old uncle has too much
salt water in him to do a dog's trick like that. So you take care of
yourself--that's all. She might turn the head of a wiser man than ever
came out of our family.'

"I did not tell my uncle that his advice was already too late; for
that, though it was not an hour since I had first seen her, my head
was so far turned already, that the only way to get it right again,
was to go on turning it in the same direction; though, no doubt, there
was a danger of overhauling the screw. The old gentleman never
referred to the matter again, nor took any notice of our increasing
intimacy; so that I sometimes doubt even now if he could have been in
earnest in the very simple warning he gave me. Fortunately, Lady
Georgiana liked me--at least I thought she did, and that gave me
courage.

"That's all nonsense, my dear," said my mother. "Mamma was nearly as
fond of you as I was; but you never wanted courage."

"I knew better than to show my cowardice, I dare say," returned my
father. "But," he continued, "things grew worse and worse, till I was
certain I should kill myself, or go straight out of my mind, if your
mother would not have me. So it went on for a few days, and Christmas
was at hand.

"The admiral had invited several old friends to come and spend the
Christmas week with him. Now you must remember that, although you look
on me as an old-fashioned fogie--"

"Oh, papa!" we all interrupted; but he went on.

"Yet my old uncle was an older-fashioned fogie, and his friends were
much the same as himself. Now, I am fond of a glass of port, though I
dare not take it, and must content myself with Burgundy. Uncle Bob
would have called Burgundy pig-wash. He could not do without his port,
though he was a moderate enough man, as customs were. Fancy, then, his
dismay when, on questioning his butler, an old coxen of his own, and
after going down to inspect in person, he found that there was
scarcely more than a dozen of port in the wine-cellar. He turned white
with dismay, and, till he had brought the blood back to his
countenance by swearing, he was something awful to behold in the dim
light of the tallow candle old Jacob held in his tattooed fist. I will
not repeat the words he used; fortunately, they are out of fashion
amongst gentlemen, although ladies, I understand, are beginning to
revive the custom, now old, and always ugly. Jacob reminded his honour
that he would not have more put down till he had got a proper cellar
built, for the one there was, he had said, was not fit to put anything
but dead men in. Thereupon, after abusing Jacob for not reminding him
of the necessities of the coming season, he turned to me, and began,
certainly not to swear at his own father, but to expostulate sideways
with the absent shade for not having provided a decent cellar before
his departure from this world of dinners and wine, hinting that it was
somewhat selfish, and very inconsiderate of the welfare of those who
were to come after him. Having a little exhausted his indignation, he
came up, and wrote the most peremptory order to his wine-merchant, in
Liverpool, to let him have thirty dozen of port before Christmas Day,
even if he had to send it by post-chaise. I took the letter to the
post myself, for the old man would trust nobody but me, and indeed
would have preferred taking it himself; but in winter he was always
lame from the effects of a bruise he had received from a falling spar
in the battle of Aboukir.

"That night I remember well. I lay in bed wondering whether I might
venture to say a word, or even to give a hint to your mother that
there was a word that pined to be said if it might. All at once I
heard a whine of the wind in the old chimney. How well I knew that
whine! For my kind aunt had taken the trouble to find out from me what
room I had occupied as a boy, and, by the third night I spent there,
she had got it ready for me. I jumped out of bed, and found that the
snow was falling fast and thick. I jumped into bed again, and began
wondering what my uncle would do if the port did not arrive. And then
I thought that, if the snow went on falling as it did, and if the wind
rose any higher, it might turn out that the roads through the hilly
part of Yorkshire in which Culverwood lay, might very well be blocked
up.

"The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have Know,
And what will my uncle do then, poor thing?
He'll run for his port,
But he will run short,
And have too much water to drink, poor thing!

"With the influences of the chamber of my childhood crowding upon me,
I kept repenting the travestied rhyme to myself, till I fell asleep.

"Now, boys and girls, if I were writing a novel, I should like to make
you, somehow or other, put together the facts--that I was in the room
I have mentioned; that I had been in the cellar with my uncle for the
first time that evening; that I had seen my uncle's distress, and
heard his reflections upon his father. I may add that I was not
myself, even then, so indifferent to the merits of a good glass of
port as to be unable to enter into my uncle's dismay, and that of his
guests at last, if they should find that the snow-storm had actually
closed up the sweet approaches of the expected port. If I was
personally indifferent to the matter, I fear it is to be attributed to
your mother, and not to myself."

"Nonsense!" interposed my mother once more. "I never knew such a man
for making little of himself and much of other people. You never drank
a glass too much port in your life."

"That's why I'm so fond of it, my dear," returned my father. "I
declare you make me quite discontented with my pig-wash here.

"That night I had a dream.

"The next day the visitors began to arrive. Before the evening after,
they had all come. There were five of them--three tars and two
land-crabs, as they called each other when they got jolly, which,
by-the-way, they would not have done long without me.

"My uncle's anxiety visibly increased. Each guest, as he came down to
breakfast, received each morning a more constrained greeting.--I beg
your pardon, ladies; I forgot to mention that my aunt had
lady-visitors, of course. But the fact is, it is only the
port-drinking visitors in whom my story is interested, always excepted
your mother.

"These ladies my admiral uncle greeted with something even approaching
to servility. I understood him well enough. He instinctively sought to
make a party to protect him when the awful secret of his cellar should
be found out. But for two preliminary days or so, his resources would
serve; for he had plenty of excellent claret and Madeira--stuff I
don't know much about--and both Jacob and himself condescended to
manoeuvre a little.

"The wine did not arrive. But the morning of Christmas Eve did. I was
sitting in my room, trying to write a song for Kate--that's your
mother, my dears--"

"I know, papa," said Effie, as if she were very knowing to know that.

"--when my uncle came into the room, looking like Sintram with Death
and the Other One after him--that's the nonsense you read to me the
other day, isn't it; Effie?"

"Not nonsense, dear papa," remonstrated Effie; and I loved her for
saying it, for surely _that_ is not nonsense.

"I didn't mean it," said my father; and turning to my mother, added:
"It must be your fault, my dear, that my children are so serious that
they always take a joke for earnest. However, it was no joke with my
uncle. If he didn't look like Sintram he looked like t'other one.

"'The roads are frozen--I mean snowed up,' he said. 'There's just one
bottle of port left, and what Captain Calker will say--I dare say I
know, but I'd rather not. Damn this weather!--God forgive me!--that's
not right--but it is trying--ain't it, my boy?'

"'What will you give me for a dozen of port, uncle?' was all my
answer.

"'Give you? I'll give you Culverwood, you rogue.'

"'Done,' I cried.

"'That is,' stammered my uncle, 'that is,' and he reddened like the
funnel of one of his hated steamers, 'that is, you know, always
provided, you know. It wouldn't be fair to Lady Georgiana, now, would
it? I put it to yourself--if she took the trouble, you know. You
understand me, my boy?'

"'That's of course, uncle,' I said.

"'Ah! I see you're a gentleman like your father, not to trip a man
when he stumbles,' said my uncle. For such was the dear old man's
sense of honour, that he was actually uncomfortable about the hasty
promise he had made without first specifying the exception. The
exception, you know, has Culverwood at the present hour, and right
welcome he is.

"'Of course, uncle,' I said--'between gentlemen, you know. Still, I
want my joke out, too. What will you give me for a dozen of port to
tide you over Christmas Day?'

"'Give you, my boy? I'll give you--'

"But here he checked himself, as one that had been burned already.

"'Bah!' he said, turning his back, and going towards the door; 'what's
the use of joking about serious affairs like this?'

"And so he left the room. And I let him go. For I had heard that the
road from Liverpool was impassable, the wind and snow having continued
every day since that night of which I told you. Meantime, I had never
been able to summon the courage to say one word to your mother--I beg
her pardon, I mean Miss Thornbury.

"Christmas Day arrived. My uncle was awful to behold. His friends were
evidently anxious about him. They thought he was ill. There was such a
hesitation about him, like a shark with a bait, and such a flurry,
like a whale in his last agonies. He had a horrible secret which he
dared not tell, and which yet _would_ come out of its grave at the
appointed hour.

"Down in the kitchen the roast beef and turkey were meeting their deserts.
Up in the store-room--for Lady Georgiana was not above housekeeping, any
more than her daughter--the ladies of the house were doing their part;
and I was oscillating between my uncle and his niece, making myself
amazingly useful now to one and now to the other. The turkey and the beef
were on the table, nay, they had been well eaten, before I felt that my
moment was come. Outside, the wind was howling, and driving the snow with
soft pats against the window-panes. Eager-eyed I watched General
Fortescue, who despised sherry or Madeira even during dinner, and would
no more touch champagne than he would _eau sucrée_, but drank port after
fish or with cheese indiscriminately--with eager eyes I watched how the
last bottle dwindled out its fading life in the clear decanter. Glass
after glass was supplied to General Fortescue by the fearless cockswain,
who, if he might have had his choice, would rather have boarded a
Frenchman than waited for what was to follow. My uncle scarcely ate at
all, and the only thing that stopped his face from growing longer with
the removal of every dish was that nothing but death could have made it
longer than it was already. It was my interest to let matters go as far
as they might up to a certain point, beyond which it was not my interest
to let them go, if I could help it. At the same time I was curious to
know how my uncle would announce--confess the terrible fact that in his
house, on Christmas Day, having invited his oldest friends to share with
him the festivities of the season, there was not one bottle more of port
to had.

"I waited till the last moment--till I fancied the admiral was opening
his mouth; like a fish in despair, to make his confession. He had not
even dared to make a confidante of his wife in such an awful dilemma.
Then I pretended to have dropped my table-napkin behind my chair, and
rising to seek it, stole round behind my uncle, and whispered in his
ear:

"'What will you give me for a dozen of port now, uncle?'

"'Bah!' he said, 'I'm at the gratings; don't torture me.'

"'I'm in earnest, uncle.'

"He looked round at me with a sudden flash of bewildered hope in his
eye. In the last agony he was capable of believing in a miracle. But
he made me no reply. He only stared.

"'Will you give me Kate? I want Kate,' I whispered.

"'I will, my boy. That is, if she'll have you. That is, I mean to say,
if you produce the true tawny.'

"'Of course, uncle; honour bright--as port in a storm,' I answered,
trembling in my shoes and everything else I had on, for I was not more
than three parts confident in the result.

"The gentlemen beside Kate happening at the moment to be occupied,
each with the lady on his other side, I went behind her, and whispered
to her as I had whispered to my uncle, though not exactly in the same
terms. Perhaps I had got a little courage from the champagne I had
drunk; perhaps the presence of the company gave me a kind of mesmeric
strength; perhaps the excitement of the whole venture kept me up;
perhaps Kate herself gave me courage, like a goddess of old, in some
way I did not understand. At all events I said to her:

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