What Will He Do With It? (Belford)/Book 3/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
Sophy (leaning on her grandfather's arm, as they ascended the stair of the Saracen's Head). "But I am so tired, Grandy—I'd rather go to bed at once, please."
Gentleman Waife. "Surely you could take something to eat first—something nice, Miss Chapman? (whispering close) We can live in clover now"—a phrase which means (aloud to the landlady, who crossed the landing-place above) "grilled chicken and mushrooms for supper, ma'am! Why don't you smile, Sophy? Oh, darling, you are ill!"
"No, no, Grandy dear—only tired—let me go to bed. I shall be better to-morrow—I shall indeed!"
Waife looked fondly into her face, but his spirits were too much exhilarated to allow him to notice the unusual flush upon her cheek, except with admiration of the increased beauty which the heightened color gave to her soft features.
"Well," said he, "you are a pretty child!—a very pretty child—and you act wonderfully. You would make a fortune on the stage, but—"
Sophy (eagerly). "But no, no, never!—not the stage!"
Waife. "I don't wish you to go on the stage, as you know. A private exhibition—like the one to-night, for instance—has (thrusting his hand into his pocket) much to recommend it."
Sophy (with a sigh). "Thank Heaven, that is over now, and you'll not be in want of money for a long, long time! Dear Sir Isaac!"
She began caressing Sir Isaac, who received her attentions with solemn pleasure. They were now in Sophy's room; and Waife, after again pressing the child in vain to take some refreshment, bestowed on her his kiss and blessing, and whistled Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre to Sir Isaac, who, considering that melody an invitation to supper, licked his lips, and stalked forth, rejoicing, but decorous.
Left alone, the child breathed long and hard, pressing her hands to her bosom, and sunk wearily on the foot of the bed. There were no shutters to the window, and the moonlight came in gently, stealing across that part of the wall and floor which the ray of the candle left in shade. The girl raised her eyes slowly towards the window,—towards the glimpse of the blue sky, and the slanting lustre of the moon. There is a certain epoch in our childhood, when what is called the romance of sentiment first makes itself vaguely felt. And ever with the dawn of that sentiment the moon and the stars take a strange and haunting fascination. Few persons in middle life-even though they be genuine poets—feel the peculiar spell in the severe stillness and mournful splendour of starry skies which impresses most of us, even though no poets at all, in that mystic age when Childhood nearly touches upon Youth, and turns an unquiet heart to those marvellous riddles within us and without, which we cease to conjecture when experience has taught us that they have no solution upon this side the grave. Lured by the light, the child rose softly, approached the window, and, resting her upturned face upon both hands, gazed long into the heavens, communing evidently with herself, for her lips moved and murmured indistinctly. Slowly she retired from the casement, and again seated herself at the foot of the bed, disconsolate. And then her thoughts ran somewhat thus, though she might not have shaped them exactly in the same words: "No, I cannot understand it. Why was I contented and happy before I knew him? Why did I see no harm, no shame in this way of life—not even on that stage with those people—until he said, 'It was what he wished I had never stooped to'. And Grandfather says our paths are so different they cannot cross each other again. There is a path of life, then, which I can never enter; there is a path on which I must always, always walk, always, always, always that path,—no escape! Never to come into that other one where there is no disguise, no hiding, no false names,—never, never!" she started impatiently, and with a wild look,—"It is killing me!"
Then, terrified by her own impetuosity, she threw herself on the bed, weeping low. Her heart had now gone back to her grandfather; it was smiting her for ingratitude to him. Could there be shame or wrong in what he asked,—what he did? And was she to murmur if she aided him to exist? What was the opinion of a stranger boy compared to the approving sheltering love of her sole guardian and tried fostering friend? And could people choose their own callings and modes of life? If one road went this way, another that, and they on the one road were borne farther and farther away from those on the other—as that idea came, consolation stopped, and in her noiseless weeping there was a bitterness as of despair. But the tears ended by relieving the grief that caused them. Wearied out of conjecture and complaint, her mind relapsed into the old native, childish submission. With a fervor in which there was self-reproach, she repeated her meek, nightly prayer, that God would bless her dear grandfather, and suffer her to be his comfort and support. Then mechanically she undressed, extinguished the candle, and crept into bed. The moonlight became bolder and bolder: it advanced up the floors, along the walls; now it floods her very pillow, and seems to her eyes to take a holy, loving kindness, holier and more loving as the lids droop beneath it. A vague remembrance of some tale of "Guardian spirits," with which Waife had once charmed her wonder, stirred through her lulling thoughts, linking itself with the presence of that encircling moonlight. There! see, the eyelids are closed—no tear upon their fringe. See the dimples steal out as the sweet lips are parted. She sleeps, she dreams already! Where and what is the rude world of waking now? Are there not guardian spirits? Deride the question if thou wilt, stern man, the reasoning and self-reliant: but thou, O fair mother, who hast marked the strange happiness on the face of a child that has wept itself to sleep—what sayest thou to the soft tradition, which surely had its origin in the heart of the earliest mother