Stephen Archer and Other Tales Read online

  THE GIFTS OF THE CHILD CHRIST.

  CHAPTER I.

  "My hearers, we grow old," said the preacher. "Be it summer or be itspring with us now, autumn will soon settle down into winter, thatwinter whose snow melts only in the grave. The wind of the world setsfor the tomb. Some of us rejoice to be swept along on its swift wings,and hear it bellowing in the hollows of earth and sky; but it willgrow a terror to the man of trembling limb and withered brain, untilat length he will long for the shelter of the tomb to escape itsroaring and buffeting. Happy the man who shall then be able to believethat old age itself, with its pitiable decays and sad dreams of youth,is the chastening of the Lord, a sure sign of his love and hisfatherhood."

  It was the first Sunday in Advent; but "the chastening of the Lord"came into almost every sermon that man preached.

  "Eloquent! But after all, _can_ this kind of thing be true?" said tohimself a man of about thirty, who sat decorously listening. For manyyears he had thought he believed this kind of thing--but of late hewas not so sure.

  Beside him sat his wife, in her new winter bonnet, her pretty faceturned up toward the preacher; but her eyes--nothing else--revealedthat she was not listening. She was much younger than herhusband--hardly twenty, indeed.

  In the upper corner of the pew sat a pale-faced child about five,sucking her thumb, and staring at the preacher.

  The sermon over, they walked home in proximity. The husband lookedgloomy, and his eyes sought the ground. The wife looked more smilingthan cheerful, and her pretty eyes went hither and thither. Behindthem walked the child--steadily, "with level-fronting eyelids."

  It was a late-built region of large, common-place houses, and at oneof them they stopped and entered. The door of the dining-room wasopen, showing the table laid for their Sunday dinner. The gentlemanpassed on to the library behind it, the lady went up to her bedroom,and the child a stage higher to the nursery.

  It wanted half an hour to dinner. Mr. Greatorex sat down, drummed withhis fingers on the arm of his easy-chair, took up a book of arcticexploration, threw it again on the table, got up, and went to thesmoking-room. He had built it for his wife's sake, but was often gladof it for his own. Again he seated himself, took a cigar, and smokedgloomily.

  Having reached her bedroom, Mrs. Greatorex took off her bonnet, andstood for ten minutes turning it round and round. Earnestly sheregarded it--now gave a twist to the wire-stem of a flower, thenspread wider the loop of a bow. She was meditating what it lacked ofperfection rather than brooding over its merits: she was keen inbonnets.

  Little Sophy--or, as she called herself by a transposition ofconsonant sounds common with children, Phosy--found her nurse Alice inthe nursery. But she was lost in the pages of a certain London weekly,which had found her in a mood open to its influences, and did not evenlook up when the child entered. With some effort Phosy drew off hergloves, and with more difficulty untied her hat. Then she took off herjacket, smoothed her hair, and retreated to a corner. There a largeshabby doll lay upon her little chair: she took it up, disposed itgently upon the bed, seated herself in its place, got a little bookfrom where she had left it under the chair, smoothed down her skirts,and began simultaneously to read and suck her thumb. The book was anunhealthy one, a cup filled to the brim with a poverty-stricken andselfish religion: such are always breaking out like an eruption hereand there over the body of the Church, doing their part, doubtless, incarrying off the evil humours generated by poverty of blood, or thecongestion of self-preservation. It is wonderful out of what spoiledfruit some children will suck sweetness.

  But she did not read far: her thoughts went back to a phrase which hadhaunted her ever since first she went to church: "Whom the Lordloveth, he chasteneth."

  "I wish he would chasten me," she thought for the hundredth time.

  The small Christian had no suspicion that her whole life had been aperiod of chastening--that few children indeed had to live in such asunless atmosphere as hers.

  Alice threw down the newspaper, gazed from the window into theback-yard of the next house, saw nothing but an elderly man-servantbrushing a garment, and turned upon Sophy.

  "Why don't you hang up your jacket, miss?" she said, sharply.

  The little one rose, opened the wardrobe-door wide, carried a chair toit, fetched her jacket from the bed, clambered up on the chair, and,leaning far forward to reach a peg, tumbled right into the bottom ofthe wardrobe.

  "You clumsy!" exclaimed the nurse angrily, and pulling her out by thearm, shook her.

  Alice was not generally rough to her, but there were reasons to-day.

  Phosy crept back to her seat, pale, frightened, and a little hurt.Alice hung up the jacket, closed the wardrobe, and, turning,contemplated her own pretty face and neat figure in the glassopposite. The dinner-bell rang.

  "There, I declare!" she cried, and wheeled round on Phosy. "And yourhair not brushed yet, miss! Will you ever learn to do a thing withoutbeing told it? Thank goodness, I shan't be plagued with you long! ButI pity her as comes after me: I do!"

  "If the Lord would but chasten me!" said the child to herself, as sherose and laid down her book with a sigh.

  The maid seized her roughly by the arm, and brushed her hair with anangry haste that made the child's eyes water, and herself feel alittle ashamed at the sight of them.

  "How could anybody love such a troublesome chit?" she said, seekingthe comfort of justification from the child herself.

  Another sigh was the poor little damsel's only answer. She looked verywhite and solemn as she entered the dining-room.

  Mr. Greatorex was a merchant in the City. But he was more of a manthan a merchant, which all merchants are not. Also, he was morescrupulous in his dealings than some merchants in the same line ofbusiness, who yet stood as well with the world as he; but, on theother hand, he had the meanness to pride himself upon it as if it hadbeen something he might have done without and yet held up his head.

  Some six years before, he had married to please his parents; and ayear before, he had married to please himself. His first wife hadintellect, education, and heart, but little individuality--not enoughto reflect the individuality of her husband. The consequence was, hefound her uninteresting. He was kind and indulgent however, and noteven her best friend blamed him much for manifesting nothing beyondthe average devotion of husbands. But in truth his wife had greatcapabilities, only they had never ripened, and when she died, afortnight after giving birth to Sophy, her husband had not a suspicionof the large amount of undeveloped power that had passed away withher.

  Her child was so like her both in countenance and manner that he wastoo constantly reminded of her unlamented mother; and he loved neitherenough to discover that, in a sense as true as marvellous, the childwas the very flower-bud of her mother's nature, in which her retardedblossom had yet a chance of being slowly carried to perfection. Lovealone gives insight, and the father took her merely for a miniatureedition of the volume which he seemed to have laid aside for ever inthe dust of the earth's lumber-room. Instead, therefore, of wateringthe roots of his little human slip from the well of his affections, hehad scarcely as yet perceived more in relation to her than that he waslegally accountable for her existence, and bound to give her shelterand food. If he had questioned himself on the matter, he would havereplied that love was not wanting, only waiting upon her growth, andthe development of something to interest him.

  Little right as he had had to expect anything from his first marriage,he had yet cherished some hopes therein--tolerably vague, it is true,yet hardly faint enough, it would seem, for he was disappointed inthem. When its bonds fell from him, however, he flattered himself thathe had not worn them in vain, but had through them arrived at aknowledge of women as rare as profound. But whatever the reach of thisknowledge, it was not sufficient to prevent him from harbouring thepresumptuous hope of so choosing and so fashioning the heart and mindof a woman that they should be as concave mirrors to his own. I do notmean that he would have admitted the figure, but suc
h was really theend he blindly sought. I wonder how many of those who have beendisappointed in such an attempt have been thereby aroused to theperception of what a frightful failure their success would have beenon both sides. It was bad enough that Augustus Greatorex's theorieshad cramped his own development; it would have been ten-fold worse hadthey been operative to the stunting of another soul.

  Letty Merewether was the daughter of a bishop _in partibus_. She hadbeen born tolerably innocent, had grown up more than tolerably pretty,and was, when she came to England at the age of sixteen, as nearly agenuine example of Locke's sheet of white paper as could well havefallen to the hand of such an experimenter as Greatorex would fainbecome.

  In his suit he had prospered--perhaps too easily. He loved the girl,or at least loved the modified reflection of her in his own mind;while she, thoroughly admiring the dignity, good looks, andaccomplishments of the man whose attentions flattered herself-opinion, accorded him deference enough to encourage his vainesthopes. Although she knew little, fluttering over the merest surfacesof existence, she had sense enough to know that he talked sense toher, and foolishness enough to put it down to her own credit, whilefor the sense itself she cared little or nothing. And Greatorex,without even knowing what she was rough-hewn for, would take upon himto shape her ends!--an ambition the Divinity never permits to succeed:he who fancies himself the carver finds himself but the chisel, orindeed perhaps only the mallet, in the hand of the true workman.

  During the days of his courtship, then, Letty listened and smiled, oranswered with what he took for a spiritual response, when it wasmerely a brain-echo. Looking down into the pond of her being, whosesurface was, not yet ruffled by any bubbling of springs from below, hesaw the reflection of himself and was satisfied. An able man on hishobby looks a centaur of wisdom and folly; but if he be at all a wiseman, the beast will one day or other show him the jade's favour ofunseating him. Meantime Augustus Greatorex was fooled, not by poorlittle Letty, who was not capable of fooling him, but by himself.Letty had made no pretences; had been interested, and had shown herinterest; had understood, or seemed to understand, what he said toher, and forgotten it the next moment--had no pocket to put it in, didnot know what to do with it, and let it drop into the Limbo of Vanity.They had not been married many days before the scouts of advancingdisappointment were upon them. Augustus resisted manfully for a time.But the truth was each of the two had to become a great deal more thaneither was, before any approach to unity was possible. He tried tointerest her in one subject after another--tried her first, I amashamed to say, with political economy. In that instance, when he camehome to dinner he found that she had not got beyond the first page ofthe book he had left with her. But she had the best of excuses,namely, that of that page she had not understood a sentence. He sawhis mistake, and tried her with poetry. But Milton, with whomunfortunately he commenced his approaches, was to her, if not equallyunintelligible, equally uninteresting. He tried her next with theelements of science, but with no better success. He returned topoetry, and read some of the Faerie Queene with her: she was, orseemed to be, interested in all his talk about it, and inclined to goon with it in his absence, but found the first stanza she tried morethan enough without him to give life to it. She could give it none,and therefore it gave her none. I believe she read a chapter of theBible every day, but the only books she read with any real interestwere novels of a sort that Augustus despised. It never occurred to himthat he ought at once to have made friends of this Momus ofunrighteousness, for by them he might have found entrance to thesealed chamber. He ought to have read with her the books she did like,for by them only could he make her think, and from them alone could helead her to better. It is but from the very step upon which one standsthat one can move to the next. Besides these books, there was nothingin her scheme of the universe but fashion, dress, calls, the park,other-peopledom, concerts, plays, churchgoing--whatever could showitself on the frosted glass of her _camera obscura_--make an interestof motion and colour in her darkened chamber. Without these, herbosom's mistress would have found life unendurable, for not yet hadshe ascended her throne, but lay on the floor of her nursery,surrounded with toys that imitated life.

  It was no wonder, therefore, that Augustus was at length compelled toallow himself disappointed. That it was the fault of hisself-confidence made the thing no whit better. He was too much of aman not to cherish a certain tenderness for her, but he soon found tohis dismay that it had begun to be mingled with a shadow of contempt.Against this he struggled, but with fluctuating success. He stoppedlater and later at business, and when he came home spent more and moreof his time in the smoking-room, where by and by he had bookshelvesput up. Occasionally he would accept an invitation to dinner andaccompany his wife, but he detested evening parties, and when Letty,who never refused an invitation if she could help it, went to one, heremained at home with his books. But his power of reading began todiminish. He became restless and irritable. Something kept gnawing athis heart. There was a sore spot in it. The spot grew larger andlarger, and by degrees the centre of his consciousness came to be asoreness: his cherished idea had been fooled; he had taken a sillygirl for a woman of undeveloped wealth;--a bubble, a surface whereonfair colours chased each other, for a hearted crystal.

  On her part, Letty too had her grief, which, unlike Augustus, she didnot keep to herself, receiving in return from more than one of herfriends the soothing assurance that Augustus was only like all othermen; that women were but their toys, which they cast away when wearyof them. Letty did not see that she was herself making a toy of herlife, or that Augustus was right in refusing to play with such acostly and delicate thing. Neither did Augustus see that, having, byhis own blunder, married a mere child, he was bound to deal with heras one, and not let the child suffer for his fault more than whatcould not be helped. It is not by pressing our insights upon them, butby bathing the sealed eyelids of the human kittens, that we can helpthem.

  And all the time poor little Phosy was left to the care of Alice, aclever, careless, good-hearted, self-satisfied damsel, who, althoughseldom so rough in her behaviour as we have just seen her, abandonedthe child almost entirely to her own resources. It was often she satalone in the nursery, wishing the Lord would chasten her--because thenhe would love her.

  The first course was nearly over ere Augustus had brought himself toask--

  "What did you think of the sermon to-day, Letty?"

  "Not much," answered Letty. "I am not fond of finery. I prefersimplicity."

  Augustus held his peace bitterly. For it was just finery in a sermon,without knowing it, that Letty was fond of: what seemed to him aflimsy syllabub of sacred things, beaten up with the whisk ofcomposition, was charming to Letty; while, on the contrary, if a mansuch as they had been listening to was carried away by the thoughtsthat struggled in him for utterance, the result, to her judgment, wasfinery, and the object display. In excuse it must be remembered thatshe had been used to her father's style, which no one could haveaspersed with lack of sobriety. Presently she spoke again.

  "Gus, dear, couldn't you make up your mind for once to go with me toLady Ashdaile's to-morrow? I am getting quite ashamed of appearing sooften without you."

  "There is another way of avoiding that unpleasantness," remarked herhusband drily.

  "You cruel creature!" returned Letty playfully. "But I must go thisonce, for I promised Mrs. Holden."

  "You know, Letty," said her husband, after a little pause, "it gets ofmore and more consequence that you should not fatigue yourself. Bykeeping such late hours in such stifling rooms you are endangering twolives--remember that, Letty. It you stay at home to-morrow, I willcome home early, and read to you all the evening."

  "Gussy, that _would_ be charming. You _know_ there is nothing in theworld I should enjoy so much. But this time I really mustn't."

  She launched into a list of all the great nobodies and smallsomebodies who were to be there, and whom she positively must see: itmight be her only chance.

&nb
sp; Those last words quenched a sarcasm on Augustus' lips. He was kinderthan usual the rest of the evening, and read her to sleep with thePilgrim's Progress.

  Phosy sat in a corner, listened, and understood. Or where shemisunderstood, it was an honest misunderstanding, which never doesmuch hurt. Neither father nor mother spoke to her till they bade hergood night. Neither saw the hungry heart under the mask of the stillface. The father never imagined her already fit for the modelling shewas better without, and the stepmother had to become a mother beforeshe could value her.

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