CHAPTER V.
On Christmas Eve the church bells were ringing through the murky airof London, whose streets lay flaring and steaming below. The brightestof their constellations were the butchers' shops, with their shows ofprize beef; around them, the eddies of the human tides were mostconfused and knotted. But the toy-shops were brilliant also. To Phosythey would have been the treasure-caves of the Christ-child--allmysteries, all with insides to them--boxes, and desks, and windmills,and dove-cots, and hens with chickens, and who could tell what all? Inevery one of those shops her eyes would have searched for theChrist-child, the giver of all their wealth. For to her he waseverywhere that night--ubiquitous as the luminous mist that broodedall over London--of which, however, she saw nothing but the glow abovethe mews. John Jephson was out in the middle of all the show, driftingabout in it: he saw nothing that had pleasure in it, his heart was soheavy. He never thought once of the Christ-child, or even of theChrist-man, as the giver of anything. Birth is the one standingpromise-hope for the race, but for poor John this Christmas held nopromise. With all his humour, he was one of those people, generallydull and slow--God grant me and mine such dullness and such sloth--whohaving once loved, cannot cease. During the fortnight he had scarcehad a moment's ease from the sting of his Alice's treatment. Thehonest fellow's feelings were no study to himself; he knew nothing butthe pleasure and the pain of them; but, I believe it was not mainlyfor himself that he was sorry. Like Othello, "the pity of it" hauntedhim: he had taken Alice for a downright girl, about whom there was andcould be no mistake; and the first hot blast of prosperity had swepther away like a hectic leaf. What were all the shops dressed out inholly and mistletoe, what were all the rushing flaming gas-jets, whatthe fattest of prize-pigs to John, who could never more imagine aspare-rib on the table between Alice and him of a Sunday? Hisimagination ran on seeing her pass in her carriage, and drop him a nodof condescension as she swept noisily by him--trudging home weary fromhis work to his loveless fireside. _He_ didn't want her money!Honestly, he would rather have her without than with money, for he nowregarded it as an enemy, seeing what evil changes it could work."There be some devil in it, sure!" he said to himself. True, he hadnever found any in his week's wages, but he did remember once findingthe devil in a month's wages received in the lump.
As he was thus thinking with himself, a carriage came suddenly from aside street into the crowd, and while he stared at it, thinking Alicemight be sitting inside it while he was tramping the pavement alone,she passed him on the other side on foot--was actually pushed againsthim: he looked round, and saw a young woman, carrying a small bag,disappearing in the crowd. "There's an air of Alice about _her_" saidJohn to himself, seeing her back only. But of course it couldn't beAlice; for her he must look in the carriages now! And what a fool hewas: every young woman reminded him of the one he had lost! Perhaps ifhe was to call the next day--Polly was a good-natured creature--hemight hear some news of her.
It had been a troubled fortnight with Mrs. Greatorex. She wished muchthat she could have talked to her husband more freely, but she had notlearned to feel at home with him. Yet he had been kinder and moreattentive than usual all the time, so much so that Letty thought withherself--if she gave him a boy, he would certainly return to his firstdevotion. She said _boy_, because any one might see he cared littlefor Phosy. She had never discovered that he was disappointed inherself, but, since her disregard of his wishes had brought evil uponher, she had begun to suspect that he had some ground for beingdissatisfied with her. She never dreamed of his kindness as the effortof a conscientious nature to make the best of what could not now beotherwise helped. Her own poverty of spirit and lack of worthachieved, she knew as little of as she did of the riches of Michaelthe archangel. One must have begun to gather wisdom before he can seehis own folly.
That evening she was seated alone in the drawing-room, her husbandhaving left her to smoke his cigar, when the butler entered andinformed her that Alice had returned, but was behaving so oddly thatthey did not know what to do with her. Asking wherein her oddnessconsisted, and learning that it was mostly in silence and tears, shewas not sorry to gather that some disappointment had befallen her, andfelt considerable curiosity to know what it was. She therefore toldhim to send her upstairs.
Meantime Polly, the housemaid, seeing plainly enough from her returnin the middle of her holiday, and from her utter dejection, thatAlice's expectations had been frustrated, and cherishing no littleresentment against her because of her _uppishness_ on the first newsof her good fortune, had been ungenerous enough to take her revenge ina way as stinging in effect as bitter in intention; for she loudlyprotested that no amount of such luck as she pretended to suppose inAlice's possession, would have induced _her_ to behave herself so thata handsome honest fellow like John Jephson should be driven to despiseher, and take up with her betters. When her mistress's message came,Alice was only too glad to find refuge from the kitchen in thedrawing-room.
The moment she entered, she fell on her knees at the foot of the couchon which her mistress lay, covered her face with her hands, and sobbedgrievously.
Nor was the change more remarkable in her bearing than in her person.She was pale and worn, and had a hunted look--was in fact a mereshadow of what she had been. For a time her mistress found itimpossible to quiet her so as to draw from her her story: tears andsobs combined with repugnance to hold her silent.
"Oh, ma'am!" she burst out at length, wringing her hands, "how ever_can_ I tell you? You will never speak to me again. Little did I thinksuch a disgrace was waiting me!"
"It was no fault of yours if you were misinformed," said her mistress,"or that your uncle was not the rich man you fancied."
"Oh, ma'am, there was no mistake there! He was more than twice as richas I fancied. If he had only died a beggar, and left things as theywas!"
"Then he didn't leave it to his nephews and nieces as they toldyou?--Well, there's no disgrace in that."
"Oh! but he did, ma'am: that was all right; no mistake there either,ma'am.--And to think o' me behavin' as I did--to you and master as wasso good to me! Who'll ever take any more notice of me now, after whathas come out--as I'm sure I no more dreamed on than the child unborn!"
An agonized burst of fresh weeping followed, and it was with prolongeddifficulty, and by incessant questioning, that Mrs. Greatorex atlength drew from her the following facts.
Before Alice and her brother could receive the legacy to which theylaid claim, it was necessary to produce certain documents, the absenceof which, as of any proof to take their place, led to the unavoidablepublication of a fact previously known only to a living few--namely,that the father and mother of Alice Hopwood had never been married,which fact deprived them of the smallest claim on the legacy, and felllike a millstone upon Alice and her pride. From the height of hermiserable arrogance she fell prone--not merely hurled back into thelowly condition from which she had raised her head only to despise itwith base unrighteousness, and to adopt and reassert the principlesshe had abhorred when they affected herself--not merely this, but, inher own judgment at least, no longer the respectable member of societyshe had hitherto been justified in supposing herself. The relation ofher father and mother she felt overshadow her with a disgraceunfathomable--the more overwhelming that it cast her from the gates ofthe Paradise she had seemed on the point of entering: her fall shemeasured by the height of the social ambition she had cherished, andhad seemed on the point of attaining. But it is not an evil that thedevil's money, which this legacy had from the first proved to Alice,should turn to a hot cinder in the hand. Rarely had a more haughtyspirit than hers gone before a fall, and rarely has the fall been moresudden or more abject. And the consciousness of the behaviour intowhich her false riches had seduced her, changed the whip of herchastisement into scorpions. Worst of all, she had insulted her loveras beneath her notice, and the next moment had found herself too vilefor his. Judging by herself, in the injustice of bitter humiliationshe imagined him scoffing with his mates
at the base-born menial whowould set up for a fine lady. But had she been more worthy of honestJohn, she would have understood him better. As it was, no really goodfortune could have befallen her but such as now seemed to her thedepth of evil fortune. Without humiliation to prepare the way forhumility, she must have become capable of more and more baseness,until she lost all that makes life worth having.
When Mrs. Greatorex had given her what consolation she found handy,and at length dismissed her, the girl, unable to endure her owncompany, sought the nursery, where she caught Sophy in her arms andembraced her with fervour. Never in her life having been the object ofany such display of feeling, Phosy was much astonished: when Alice hadset her down and she had resumed her seat by the fireside, she went onstaring for a while--and then a strange sort of miming ensued.
It was Phosy's habit--one less rare with children than may by most beimagined--to do what she could to enter into any state of mind whoseshows were sufficiently marked for her observation. She sought to layhold of the feeling that produced the expression: less than thereproduction of a similar condition in her own imaginative sensorium,subject to her leisurely examination, would in no case satisfy thelittle metaphysician. But what was indeed very odd was the means shetook for arriving at the sympathetic knowledge she desired. As if shehad been the most earnest student of dramatic expression through thefacial muscles, she would sit watching the countenance of the objectof her solicitude, all the time, with full consciousness, fashioningher own as nearly as she could into the lines and forms of the other:in proportion as she succeeded, the small psychologist imagined shefelt in herself the condition that produced the phenomenon sheobserved--as if the shape of her face cast inward its shadow upon hermind, and so revealed to it, through the two faces, what was movingand shaping in the mind of the other.
In the present instance, having at length, after modelling andremodelling her face like that of a gutta-percha doll for some time,composed it finally into the best correspondence she could effect, shesat brooding for a while, with Alice's expression as it were frozenupon it. Gradually the forms assumed melted away, and allowed herstill, solemn face to look out from behind them. The moment thisevanishment was complete, she rose and went to Alice, where she satstaring into the fire, unconscious of the scrutiny she had beenundergoing, and, looking up in her face, took her thumb out of hermouth, and said,
"Is the Lord chastening Alice? I wish he would chasten Phosy."
Her face was calm as that of the Sphinx; there was no mist in thedepth of her gray eyes, not a cloud on the wide heaven of herforehead.
Was the child crazed? What could the atom mean, with her big eyeslooking right into her? Alice never had understood her: it were indeedstrange if the less should comprehend the greater! She was not yet,capable of recognising the word of the Lord in the mouth of babes andsucklings. But there was a something in Phosy's face besides itscalmness and unintelligibility. What it was Alice could never havetold--yet it did her good. She lifted the child on her lap. There shesoon fell asleep. Alice undressed her, laid her in her crib, and wentto bed herself.
But, weary as she was, she had to rise again before she got to sleep.Her mistress was again taken ill. Doctor and nurse were sent for inhot haste; hansom cabs came and went throughout the night, like noisymoths to the one lighted house in the street; there were soft stepswithin, and doors were gently opened and shut. The waters of Mara hadrisen and filled the house.
Towards morning they were ebbing slowly away. Letty did not know thather husband was watching by her bedside. The street was quiet now. Sowas the house. Most of its people had been up throughout the night,but now they had all gone to bed except the strange nurse and Mr.Greatorex.
It was the morning of Christmas Day, and little Phosy knew it in everycranny of her soul. She was not of those who had been up all night,and now she was awake, early and wide, and the moment she awoke shewas speculating: He was coming to-day--_how_ would he come? Whereshould she find the baby Jesus? And when would he come? In themorning, or the afternoon, or in the evening? Could such a grief be instore for her as that he would not appear until night, when she wouldbe again in bed? But she would not sleep till all hope was gone. Wouldeverybody be gathered to meet him, or would he show himself to oneafter another, each alone? Then her turn would be last, and oh, if hewould come to the nursery! But perhaps he would not appear to her atall!--for was she not one whom the Lord did not care to chasten?
Expectation grew and wrought in her until she could lie in bed nolonger. Alice was fast asleep. It must be early, but whether it wasyet light or not she could not tell for the curtains. Anyhow she wouldget up and dress, and then she would be ready for Jesus whenever heshould come. True, she was not able to dress herself very well, but hewould know, and would not mind. She made all the haste she could,consistently with taking pains, and was soon attired after a fashion.
She crept out of the room and down the stair. The house was verystill. What if Jesus should come and find nobody awake? Would he goagain and give them no presents? She couldn't expect any herself--butmight he not let her take theirs for the rest? Perhaps she ought towake them all, but she dared not without being sure.
On the last landing above the first floor, she saw, by the lowgaslight at the end of the corridor, an unknown figure pass the footof the stair: could she have anything to do with the marvel of theday? The woman looked up, and Phosy dropped the question. Yet shemight be a charwoman, whose assistance the expected advent renderednecessary. When she reached the bottom of the stair she saw herdisappearing in her step-mother's room. That she did not like. It wasthe one room into which she could not go. But, as the house was sostill, she would search everywhere else, and if she did not find him,would then sit down in the hall and wait for him.
The room next the foot of the stair, and opposite her step-mother's, wasthe spare room, with which she associated ideas of state and grandeur:where better could she begin than at the guest-chamber?--There!--Couldit be? Yes!--Through the chink of the scarce-closed door she saw light.Either he was already there or there they were expecting him. From thatmoment she felt as if lifted out of the body. Far exalted above alldread, she peeped modestly in, and then entered. Beyond the foot of thebed, a candle stood on a little low table, but nobody was to be seen.There was a stool near the table: she would sit on it by the candle,and wait for him. But ere she reached it, she caught sight of somethingupon the bed that drew her thither. She stood entranced.--_Could_ itbe?--It _might_ be. Perhaps he had left it there while he went into hermamma's room with something for her.--The loveliest of dolls everimagined! She drew nearer. The light was low, and the shadows weremany: she could not be sure what it was. But when she had gone closeup to it, she concluded with certainty that it was in very truth adoll--perhaps intended for her--but beyond doubt the most exquisiteof dolls. She dragged a chair to the bed, got, up, pushed her littlearms softly under it, and drawing it gently to her, slid down with it.When she felt her feet firm on the floor, filled with the solemncomposure of holy awe she carried the gift of the child Jesus to thecandle, that she might the better admire its beauty and know itspreciousness. But the light had no sooner fallen upon it than a strangeundefinable doubt awoke within her. Whatever it was, it was the veryessence of loveliness--the tiny darling with its alabaster face, and itsdelicately modelled hands and fingers! A long night-gown covered allthe rest.--Was it possible?--Could it be?--Yes, indeed! it must be--itcould be nothing else than a _real_ baby! What a goose she had been!Of course it was baby Jesus himself!--for was not this his very ownChristmas Day on which he was always born?--If she had felt awe of hisgift before, what a grandeur of adoring love, what a divine dignitypossessed her, holding in her arms the very child himself! One shudderof bliss passed through her, and in an agony of possession she claspedthe baby to her great heart--then at once became still with thesatisfaction of eternity, with the peace of God. She sat down on thestool, near the little table, with her back to the candle, that itsrays should not fall on the eyes o
f the sleeping Jesus and wake him:there she sat, lost in the very majesty of bliss, at once the motherand the slave of the Lord Jesus.
She sat for a time still as marble waiting for marble to awake,heedful as tenderest woman not to rouse him before his time, thoughher heart was swelling with the eager petition that he would ask hisFather to be as good as chasten her. And as she sat, she began, afterher wont, to model her face to the likeness of his, that she mightunderstand his stillness--the absolute peace that dwelt on hiscountenance. But as she did so, again a sudden doubt invaded her:Jesus lay so very still--never moved, never opened his pale eye-lids!And now set thinking, she noted that he did not breathe. She had seenbabies asleep, and their breath came and went--their little bosomsheaved up and down, and sometimes they would smile, and sometimes theywould moan and sigh. But Jesus did none of all these things: was itnot strange? And then he was cold--oh, so cold!
A blue silk coverlid lay on the bed: she half rose and dragged it off,and contrived to wind it around herself and the baby. Sad at heart,very sad, but undismayed, she sat and watched him on her lap.