第69章 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD(11)

'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.'

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.'Aking,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.'

'I tell you,'said Mr.Archer,'the man I have in view hath two ways open,and no more.One to wait,like a poor mewling baby,till Fate save or ruin him;the other to take his troubles in his hand,and to perish or be saved at once.It is no point of morals;both are wrong.Either way this step-child of Providence must fall;which shall he choose,by doing or not doing?'

'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?'

She looked,and what she saw was the familiar thought of all her hours;the tall figure very plainly habited in black,the spotless ruffles,the slim hands;the long,well-shapen,serious,shaven face,the wide and somewhat thin-lipped mouth,the dark eyes that were so full of depth and change and colour.He was gazing at her with his brows a little knit,his chin upon one hand and that elbow resting on his knee.

'Ye look a man!'she cried,'ay,and should be a great one!

The more shame to you to lie here idle like a dog before the fire.'