Stephen Archer, and Other Tales

  CHAPTER IV.

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

  For what right had he to desire the fashioning of any woman after hisideas? did not the angel of her eternal Ideal for ever behold the faceof 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 cultivationand strength of character, yet more serious than hers, he was stillkind to her; yes, I may say for him, that, notwithstanding even hersilliness, which is a sickening fault, and one which no supremacy ofbeauty can overshadow, he still loved her a little. Hence the care heshowed for her in respect of the coming sorrow was genuine; it did notall belong to his desire for a son to whom he might be a fatherindeed--after his own fancies, however. Letty, on her part, was asfull of expectation as the girl who has been promised a doll that canshut and open its eyes, and cry when it is pinched; her carelessnessof its safe arrival came of ignorance and not indifference.

  It cannot but seem strange that such a man should have been socareless of the child he had. But from the first she had painfullyreminded him of her mother, with whom in truth he had neverquarrelled, but with whom he had not found life the less irksome onthat account. Add to this that he had been growing fonder ofbusiness,--a fact which indicated, in a man of his endowment anddevelopment, an inclination downwards of the plane of his life. It wassome time since he had given up reading poetry. History had almostfollowed: he now read little except politics, travels, and popularexpositions of scientific progress.

  That year Christmas Eve fell upon a Monday. The day before, Letty notfeeling very well, her husband thought it better not to leave her, andgave up going to church. Phosy was utterly forgotten, but she dressedherself, and at the usual hour appeared with her prayer-book in herhand 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 tothe church-door, promising to meet her as she came out. Phosy sighedfrom relief as she entered, for she had a vague idea that by going tochurch to pray for it she might move the Lord to chasten her. At leasthe would see her there, and might think of it. She had never had suchan attention from her father before, never such dignity conferred uponher as to be allowed to appear in church alone, sitting in the pew byherself like a grown damsel. But I doubt if there was any pride in herstately step, or any vanity in the smile--no, not smile, butilluminated mist, the vapour of smiles, which haunted her sweet littlesolemn church-window of a face, as she walked up the aisle.

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

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

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

  When dessert was over, her mother on the sofa in the drawing-room, andher father in an easy-chair, with a bottle of his favourite wine byhis 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 sermonas spongy mists are full of the sunlight, took thence a volume ofstories from the German, the re-reading of one of which, narrating thevisit of the Christ-child, laden with gifts, to a certain household,and what he gave to each and all therein, she had, although sorelytempted, saved up until now, and sat down with it by the fire, theonly light she had. When the housemaid, suddenly remembering she mustput her to bed, and at the same time discovering it was a whole hourpast her usual time, hurried to the nursery, she found her fast asleepin her little armchair, her book on her lap, and the fireself-consumed into a dark cave with a sombre glow in its deepesthollows. Dreams had doubtless come to deepen the impressions of sermonand _maehrchen_, for as she slowly yielded to the hands of Pollyputting her to bed, her lips, unconsciously moved of the slumberingbut not sleeping spirit, more than once murmured the words _Lordloveth_ and _chasteneth_. Right blessedly would I enter the dreams ofsuch a child--revel in them, as a bee in the heavenly gulf of acactus-flower.