A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Stephen Archer and Other Tales

G >> George MacDonald >> Stephen Archer and Other Tales




Phosy went to bed to dream of the Valley of Humiliation.




CHAPTER II.


The next morning Alice gave her mistress warning. It was quite
unexpected, and she looked at her aghast.

"Alice," she said at length, "you're never going to leave me at such a
time!"

"I'm sorry it don't suit you, ma'am, but I must."

"Why, Alice? What is the matter? Has Sophy been troublesome?"

"No, ma'am; there's no harm in that child."

"Then what can it be, Alice? Perhaps you are going to be married
sooner than you expected?"

Alice gave her chin a little toss, pressed her lips together, and was
silent.

"I have always been kind to you," resumed her mistress.

"I'm sure, ma'am, I never made no complaints!" returned Alice, but as
she spoke she drew herself up straighter than before.

"Then what is it?" said her mistress.

"The fact is, ma'am," answered the girl, almost fiercely, "I _cannot_
any longer endure a state of domestic slavery."

"I don't understand you a bit better," said Mrs. Greatorex, trying,
but in vain, to smile, and therefore looking angrier than she was.

"I mean, ma'am--an' I see no reason as I shouldn't say it, for it's
the truth--there's a worm at the root of society where one yuman bein'
's got to do the dirty work of another. I don't mind sweepin' up my
own dust, but I won't sweep up nobody else's. I ain't a goin' to
demean myself no longer! There!"

"Leave the room, Alice," said Mrs. Greatorex; and when, with a toss
and a flounce, the young woman had vanished, she burst into tears of
anger and annoyance.

The day passed. The evening came. She dressed without Alice's usual
help, and went to Lady Ashdaile's with her friend. There a reaction
took place, and her spirits rose unnaturally. She even danced--to the
disgust of one or two quick-eyed matrons who sat by the wall.

When she came home she found her husband sitting up for her. He said
next to nothing, and sat up an hour longer with his book.

In the night she was taken ill. Her husband called Alice, and ran
himself to fetch the doctor. For some hours she seemed in danger, but
by noon was much better. Only the greatest care was necessary.

As soon as she could speak, she told Augustus of Alice's warning, and
he sent for her to the library.

She stood before him with flushed cheeks and flashing eyes.

"I understand, Alice, you have given your mistress warning," he said
gently.

"Yes, sir."

"Your mistress is very ill, Alice."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't you think it would be ungrateful of you to leave her in her
present condition? She's not likely to be strong for some time to
come."

The use of the word "ungrateful" was an unfortunate one. Alice begged
to know what she had to be grateful for. Was her work worth nothing?
And her master, as every one must who claims that which can only be
freely given, found himself in the wrong.

"Well, Alice," he said, "we won't dispute that point; and if you are
really determined on going, you must do the best you can for your
mistress for the rest of the month."

Alice's sense of injury was soothed by her master's forbearance. She
had always rather approved of Mr. Greatorex, and she left the room
more softly than she had entered it.

Letty had a fortnight in bed, during which she reflected a little.

The very day on which she left her room, Alice sought an interview
with her master, and declared she could not stay out her month; she
must go home at once.

She had been very attentive to her mistress during the fortnight:
there must be something to account for her strange behaviour.

"Come now, Alice," said her master, "what's at the back of all this?
You have been a good, well-behaved, obliging girl till now, and I am
certain you would never be like this if there weren't something wrong
somewhere."

"Something wrong, sir! No, indeed, sir! Except you call it wrong to
have an old uncle 's dies and leaves ever so much money--thousands on
thousands, the lawyers say."

"And does it come to you then, Alice?"

"I get my share, sir. He left it to be parted even between his nephews
and nieces."

"Why, Alice, you are quite an heiress, then!" returned her master,
scarcely however believing the thing so grand as Alice would have it.
"But don't you think now it would be rather hard that your fortune
should be Mrs. Greatorex's misfortune?"

"Well, I don't see as how it shouldn't," replied Alice. "It's
mis'ess's fortun' as 'as been my misfortun'--ain't it now, sir? An'
why shouldn't it be the other way next?"

"I don't quite see how your mistress's fortune can be said to be your
misfortune, Alice."

"Anybody would see that, sir, as wasn't blinded by class-prejudices."

"Class-prejudices!" exclaimed Mr. Greatorex, in surprise at the word.

"It's a term they use, I believe, sir! But it's plain enough that if
mis'ess hadn't 'a' been better off than me, she wouldn't ha' been able
to secure my services--as you calls it."

"That is certainly plain enough," returned Mr. Greatorex. "But suppose
nobody had been able to secure your services, what would have become
of you?"

"By that time the people'd have rose to assert their rights."

"To what?--To fortunes like yours?"

"To bread and cheese at least, sir," returned Alice, pertly.

"Well, but you've had something better than bread and cheese."

"I don't make no complaints as to the style of livin' in the house,
sir, but that's all one, so long as it's on the vile condition of
domestic slavery--which it's nothing can justify."

"Then of course, although you are now a woman of property, you will
never dream of having any one to wait on you," said her master, amused
with the volume of human nature thus opened to him.

"All I say, sir, is--it's my turn now; and I ain't goin' to be sit
upon by no one. I know my dooty to myself."

"I didn't know there was such a duty, Alice," said her master.

Something in his tone displeased her.

"Then you know now, sir," she said, and bounced out of the room.

The next moment, however, ashamed of her rudeness, she re-entered,
saying,

"I don't want to be unkind, sir, but I must go home. I've got a
brother that's ill, too, and wants to see me. If you don't object to
me goin' home for a month, I promise you to come back and see mis'ess
through her trouble--as a friend, you know, sir."

"But just listen to me first, Alice," said Mr. Greatorex. "I've had
something to do with wills in my time, and I can assure you it is not
likely to be less than a year before you can touch the money. You had
much better stay where you are till your uncle's affairs are settled.
You don't know what may happen. There's many a slip between cup and
lip, you know."

"Oh! it's all right, sir. Everybody knows the money's left to his
nephews and nieces, and me and my brother's as good as any."

"I don't doubt it: still, if you'll take my advice, you'll keep a
sound roof over your head till another's ready for you."

Alice only threw her chin in the air, and said almost threateningly,

"Am I to go for the month, sir?"

"I'll talk to your mistress about it," answered Mr. Greatorex, not at
all sure that such an arrangement would be for his wife's comfort.

But the next day Mrs. Greatorex had a long talk with Alice, and the
result was that on the following Monday she was to go home for a
month, and then return for two months more at least. What Mr.
Greatorex had said about the legacy, had had its effect, and, besides,
her mistress had spoken to her with pleasure in her good fortune.
About Sophy no one felt any anxiety: she was no trouble to any one,
and the housemaid would see to her.




CHAPTER III.


On the Sunday evening, Alice's lover, having heard, not from herself,
but by a side wind, that she was going home the next day, made his
appearance in Wimborne Square, somewhat perplexed--both at the move,
and at her leaving him in ignorance of the same. He was a
cabinet-maker in an honest shop in the neighbourhood, and in
education, faculty, and general worth, considerably Alice's
superior--a fact which had hitherto rather pleased her, but now gave
zest to the change which she imagined had subverted their former
relation. Full of the sense of her new superiority, she met him draped
in an indescribable strangeness. John Jephson felt, at the very first
word, as if her voice came from the other side of the English Channel.
He wondered what he had done, or rather what Alice could imagine he
had done or said, to put her in such tantrums.

"Alice, my dear," he said--for John was a man to go straight at the
enemy, "what's amiss? What's come over you? You ain't altogether like
your own self to-night! And here I find you're goin' away, and ne'er a
word to me about it! What have I done?"

Alice's chin alone made reply. She waited the fitting moment, with
splendour to astonish, and with grandeur to subdue her lover. To tell
the sad truth, she was no longer sure that it would be well to
encourage him on the old footing; was she not standing on tiptoe, her
skirts in her hand, on the brink of the brook that parted serfdom from
gentility, on the point of stepping daintily across, and leaving
domestic slavery, red hands, caps, and obedience behind her? How then
was she to marry a man that had black nails, and smelt of glue? It was
incumbent on her at least, for propriety's sake, to render him at once
aware that it was in condescension ineffable she took any notice of
him.

"Alice, my girl!" began John again, in expostulatory tone.

"Miss Cox, if you please, John Jephson," interposed Alice.

"What on 'arth's come over you?" exclaimed John, with the first throb
of rousing indignation. "But if you ain't your own self no more, why,
Miss Cox be it. 'T seems to me 's if I warn't my own self no more--'s
if I'd got into some un else, or 't least hedn't got my own ears on m'
own head.--Never saw or heerd Alice like this afore!" he added,
turning in gloomy bewilderment to the housemaid for a word of human
sympathy.

The movement did not altogether please Alice, and she felt she must
justify her behaviour.

"You see, John," she said, with dignity, keeping her back towards him,
and pretending to dust the globe of a lamp, "there's things as no
woman can help, and therefore as no man has no right to complain of
them. It's not as if I'd gone an' done it, or changed myself, no more
'n if it 'ad took place in my cradle. What can I help it, if the world
goes and changes itself? Am _I_ to blame?--tell me that. It's not
that. I make no complaint, but I tell you it ain't me, it's
circumstances as is gone and changed theirselves, and bein' as
circumstances is changed, things ain't the same as they was, and Miss
is the properer term from you to me, John Jephson."

"Dang it if I know what you're a drivin' at, Alice!--Miss Cox!--and I
beg yer pardon, miss, I'm sure.--Dang me if I do!"

"Don't swear, John Jephson--leastways before a lady. It's not proper."

"It seems to me, Miss Cox, as if the wind was a settin' from Bedlam,
or may be Colney Hatch," said John, who was considered a humourist
among his comrades. "I wouldn't take no liberties with a lady, Miss
Cox; but if I might be so bold as to arst the joke of the thing--"

"Joke, indeed!" cried Alice. "Do you call a dead uncle and ten
thousand pounds a joke?"

"God bless me!" said John. "You don't mean it, Alice?"

"I do mean it, and that you'll find, John Jephson. I'm goin' to bid
you good-bye to-morrer."

"Whoy, Alice!" exclaimed honest John, aghast.

"It's truth I tell ye," said Alice.

"And for how long?" gasped John, fore-feeling illimitable misfortune.

"That depends," returned Alice, who did not care to lessen the effect
of her communication by mentioning her promised return for a season.
"--It ain't likely," she added, "as a heiress is a goin' to act the
nuss-maid much longer."

"But Alice," said John, "you don't mean to say--it's not in your mind
now--it can't be, Alice--you're only jokin' with me--"

"Indeed, and I'm not!" interjected Alice, with a sniff.

"I don't mean that way, you know. What I mean is, you don't mean as
how this 'ere money--dang it all!--as how it's to be all over between
you and me?--You _can't_ mean that, Alice!" ended the poor fellow,
with a choking in his throat.

It was very hard upon him! He must either look as if he wanted to
share her money, or else as if he were ready to give her up.

"Arst yourself, John Jephson," answered Alice, "whether it's likely a
young lady of fortun' would be keepin' company with a young man as
didn't know how to take off his hat to her in the park?"

Alice did not above half mean what she said: she wished mainly to
enhance her own importance. At the same time she did mean it half, and
that would have been enough for Jephson. He rose, grievously wounded.

"Good-bye, Alice," he said, taking the hand she did not refuse. "Ye're
throwin' from ye what all yer money won't buy."

She gave a scornful little laugh, and John walked out of the kitchen.

At the door he turned with one lingering look; but in Alice there was
no sign of softening. She turned scornfully away, and no doubt enjoyed
her triumph to the full.

The next morning she went away.




CHAPTER IV.


Mr. Greatorex had ceased to regard the advent of Christmas with much
interest. Naturally gifted with a strong religious tendency, he had,
since his first marriage, taken, not to denial, but to the side of
objection, spending much energy in contempt for the foolish opinions
of others, a self-indulgence which does less than little to further
the growth of one's own spirit in truth and righteousness. The only
person who stands excused--I do not say justified--in so doing, is the
man who, having been taught the same opinions, has found them a legion
of adversaries barring his way to the truth. But having got rid of
them for himself, it is, I suspect, worse than useless to attack them
again, save as the ally of those who are fighting their way through
the same ranks to the truth. Greatorex had been indulging his
intellect at the expense of his heart. A man may have light in the
brain and darkness in the heart. It were better to be an owl than a
strong-eyed apteryx. He was on the path which naturally ends in
blindness and unbelief. I fancy, if he had not been neglectful of his
child, she would ere this time have relighted his Christmas-candles
for him; but now his second disappointment in marriage had so dulled
his heart that he had begun to regard life as a stupid affair, in
which the most enviable fool was the man who could still expect to
realize an ideal. He had set out on a false track altogether, but had
not yet discovered that there had been an immoral element at work in
his mistake.

For what right had he to desire the fashioning of any woman after his
ideas? did not the angel of her eternal Ideal for ever behold the face
of her Father in heaven? The best that can be said for him is, that,
notwithstanding his disappointment and her faults, yea,
notwithstanding his own faults, which were, with all his cultivation
and strength of character, yet more serious than hers, he was still
kind to her; yes, I may say for him, that, notwithstanding even her
silliness, which is a sickening fault, and one which no supremacy of
beauty can overshadow, he still loved her a little. Hence the care he
showed for her in respect of the coming sorrow was genuine; it did not
all belong to his desire for a son to whom he might be a father
indeed--after his own fancies, however. Letty, on her part, was as
full of expectation as the girl who has been promised a doll that can
shut and open its eyes, and cry when it is pinched; her carelessness
of its safe arrival came of ignorance and not indifference.

It cannot but seem strange that such a man should have been so
careless of the child he had. But from the first she had painfully
reminded him of her mother, with whom in truth he had never
quarrelled, but with whom he had not found life the less irksome on
that account. Add to this that he had been growing fonder of
business,--a fact which indicated, in a man of his endowment and
development, an inclination downwards of the plane of his life. It was
some time since he had given up reading poetry. History had almost
followed: he now read little except politics, travels, and popular
expositions of scientific progress.

That year Christmas Eve fell upon a Monday. The day before, Letty not
feeling very well, her husband thought it better not to leave her, and
gave up going to church. Phosy was utterly forgotten, but she dressed
herself, and at the usual hour appeared with her prayer-book in her
hand ready for church. When her father told her that he was not going,
she looked so blank that he took pity upon her, and accompanied her to
the church-door, promising to meet her as she came out. Phosy sighed
from relief as she entered, for she had a vague idea that by going to
church to pray for it she might move the Lord to chasten her. At least
he would see her there, and might think of it. She had never had such
an attention from her father before, never such dignity conferred upon
her as to be allowed to appear in church alone, sitting in the pew by
herself like a grown damsel. But I doubt if there was any pride in her
stately step, or any vanity in the smile--no, not smile, but
illuminated mist, the vapour of smiles, which haunted her sweet little
solemn church-window of a face, as she walked up the aisle.

The preacher was one of whom she had never heard her father speak
slighting word, in whom her unbounded trust had never been shaken.
Also he was one who believed with his whole soul in the things that
make Christmas precious. To him the birth of the wonderful baby hinted
at hundreds of strange things in the economy of the planet. That a man
could so thoroughly persuade himself that, he believed the old fable,
was matter of marvel to some of his friends who held blind Nature the
eternal mother, and Night the everlasting grandmother of all things.
But the child Phosy, in her dreams or out of them, in church or
nursery, with her book or her doll, was never out of the region of
wonders, and would have believed, or tried to believe, anything that
did not involve a moral impossibility.

What the preacher said I need not even partially repeat; it is enough
to mention a certain metamorphosed deposit from the stream of his
eloquence carried home in her mind by Phosy: from some of his sayings
about the birth of Jesus into the world, into the family, into the
individual human bosom, she had got it into her head that Christmas
Day was not a birthday like that she had herself last year, but that,
in some wonderful way, to her requiring no explanation, the baby Jesus
was born every Christmas Day afresh. What became of him afterwards she
did not know, and indeed she had never yet thought to ask how it was
that he could come to every house in London as well as No. 1, Wimborne
Square. Little of a home as another might think it, that house was yet
to her the centre of all houses, and the wonder had not yet widened
rippling beyond it: into that spot of the pool the eternal gift would
fall.

Her father forgot the time over his book, but so entranced was her
heart with the expectation of the promised visit, now so near--the day
after to-morrow--that, if she did not altogether forget to look for
him as she stepped down the stair from the church door to the street,
his absence caused her no uneasiness; and when, just as she reached
it, he opened the house-door in tardy haste to redeem his promise, she
looked up at him with a solemn, smileless repose, born of spiritual
tension and speechless anticipation, upon her face, and walking past
him without change in the rhythm of her motion, marched stately up the
stairs to the nursery. I believe the centre of her hope was that when
the baby came she would beg him on her knees to ask the Lord to
chasten her.

When dessert was over, her mother on the sofa in the drawing-room, and
her father in an easy-chair, with a bottle of his favourite wine by
his side, she crept out of the room and away again to the nursery.
There she reached up to her little bookshelf, and, full of the sermon
as spongy mists are full of the sunlight, took thence a volume of
stories from the German, the re-reading of one of which, narrating the
visit of the Christ-child, laden with gifts, to a certain household,
and what he gave to each and all therein, she had, although sorely
tempted, saved up until now, and sat down with it by the fire, the
only light she had. When the housemaid, suddenly remembering she must
put her to bed, and at the same time discovering it was a whole hour
past her usual time, hurried to the nursery, she found her fast asleep
in her little armchair, her book on her lap, and the fire
self-consumed into a dark cave with a sombre glow in its deepest
hollows. Dreams had doubtless come to deepen the impressions of sermon
and _mährchen_, for as she slowly yielded to the hands of Polly
putting her to bed, her lips, unconsciously moved of the slumbering
but not sleeping spirit, more than once murmured the words _Lord
loveth_ and _chasteneth_. Right blessedly would I enter the dreams of
such a child--revel in them, as a bee in the heavenly gulf of a
cactus-flower.




CHAPTER V.


On Christmas Eve the church bells were ringing through the murky air
of London, whose streets lay flaring and steaming below. The brightest
of their constellations were the butchers' shops, with their shows of
prize beef; around them, the eddies of the human tides were most
confused and knotted. But the toy-shops were brilliant also. To Phosy
they would have been the treasure-caves of the Christ-child--all
mysteries, all with insides to them--boxes, and desks, and windmills,
and dove-cots, and hens with chickens, and who could tell what all? In
every one of those shops her eyes would have searched for the
Christ-child, the giver of all their wealth. For to her he was
everywhere that night--ubiquitous as the luminous mist that brooded
all over London--of which, however, she saw nothing but the glow above
the mews. John Jephson was out in the middle of all the show, drifting
about in it: he saw nothing that had pleasure in it, his heart was so
heavy. He never thought once of the Christ-child, or even of the
Christ-man, as the giver of anything. Birth is the one standing
promise-hope for the race, but for poor John this Christmas held no
promise. With all his humour, he was one of those people, generally
dull and slow--God grant me and mine such dullness and such sloth--who
having once loved, cannot cease. During the fortnight he had scarce
had a moment's ease from the sting of his Alice's treatment. The
honest fellow's feelings were no study to himself; he knew nothing but
the pleasure and the pain of them; but, I believe it was not mainly
for himself that he was sorry. Like Othello, "the pity of it" haunted
him: he had taken Alice for a downright girl, about whom there was and
could be no mistake; and the first hot blast of prosperity had swept
her away like a hectic leaf. What were all the shops dressed out in
holly and mistletoe, what were all the rushing flaming gas-jets, what
the fattest of prize-pigs to John, who could never more imagine a
spare-rib on the table between Alice and him of a Sunday? His
imagination ran on seeing her pass in her carriage, and drop him a nod
of condescension as she swept noisily by him--trudging home weary from
his work to his loveless fireside. _He_ didn't want her money!
Honestly, he would rather have her without than with money, for he now
regarded it as an enemy, seeing what evil changes it could work.
"There be some devil in it, sure!" he said to himself. True, he had
never found any in his week's wages, but he did remember once finding
the devil in a month's wages received in the lump.

As he was thus thinking with himself, a carriage came suddenly from a
side street into the crowd, and while he stared at it, thinking Alice
might be sitting inside it while he was tramping the pavement alone,
she passed him on the other side on foot--was actually pushed against
him: he looked round, and saw a young woman, carrying a small bag,
disappearing in the crowd. "There's an air of Alice about _her_" said
John to himself, seeing her back only. But of course it couldn't be
Alice; for her he must look in the carriages now! And what a fool he
was: every young woman reminded him of the one he had lost! Perhaps if
he was to call the next day--Polly was a good-natured creature--he
might hear some news of her.

It had been a troubled fortnight with Mrs. Greatorex. She wished much
that she could have talked to her husband more freely, but she had not
learned to feel at home with him. Yet he had been kinder and more
attentive than usual all the time, so much so that Letty thought with
herself--if she gave him a boy, he would certainly return to his first
devotion. She said _boy_, because any one might see he cared little
for Phosy. She had never discovered that he was disappointed in
herself, but, since her disregard of his wishes had brought evil upon
her, she had begun to suspect that he had some ground for being
dissatisfied with her. She never dreamed of his kindness as the effort
of a conscientious nature to make the best of what could not now be
otherwise helped. Her own poverty of spirit and lack of worth
achieved, she knew as little of as she did of the riches of Michael
the archangel. One must have begun to gather wisdom before he can see
his own folly.

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