At length, after a lapse of some days, there came another streak of fine
bright hardy autumn weather. It was a Saturday. The window was open,
and the children were gone. Not surprising, this, for he had patiently
watched and waited at the corner, until they _were_ gone.
“Good day,” he said to the face; absolutely getting his hat clear off his
head this time.
“Good day to you, sir.”
“I am glad you have a fine sky again, to look at.”
“Thank you, sir. It is kind of you.”
“You are an invalid, I fear?”
“No, sir. I have very good health.”
“But are you not always lying down?”
“O yes, I am always lying down, because I cannot sit up. But I am not an
invalid.”
The laughing eyes seemed highly to enjoy his great mistake.
“Would you mind taking the trouble to come in, sir? There is a beautiful
view from this window. And you would see that I am not at all ill—being
so good as to care.”
It was said to help him, as he stood irresolute, but evidently desiring
to enter, with his diffident hand on the latch of the garden gate. It
did help him, and he went in.
The room up-stairs was a very clean white room with a low roof. Its only
inmate lay on a couch that brought her face on a level with the window.
The couch was white too; and her simple dress or wrapper being light
blue, like the band around her hair, she had an ethereal look, and a
fanciful appearance of lying among clouds. He felt that she
instinctively perceived him to be by habit a downcast taciturn man; it
was another help to him to have established that understanding so easily,
and got it over.
There was an awkward constraint upon him, nevertheless, as he touched her
hand, and took a chair at the side of her couch.
“I see now,” he began, not at all fluently, “how you occupy your hands.
Only seeing you from the path outside, I thought you were playing upon
something.”
She was engaged in very nimbly and dexterously making lace. A
lace-pillow lay upon her breast; and the quick movements and changes of
her hands upon it as she worked, had given them the action he had
misinterpreted.
“That is curious,” she answered, with a bright smile. “For I often
fancy, myself, that I play tunes while I am at work.”
“Have you any musical knowledge?”
She shook her head.
“I think I could pick out tunes, if I had any instrument, which could be
made as handy to me as my lace-pillow. But I dare say I deceive myself.
At all events, I shall never know.”
“You have a musical voice. Excuse me; I have heard you sing.”
“With the children?” she answered, slightly colouring. “O yes. I sing
with the dear children, if it can be called singing.”
Barbox Brothers glanced at the two small forms in the room, and hazarded
the speculation that she was fond of children, and that she was learned
in new systems of teaching them? “Very fond of them,” she said, shaking
her head again; “but I know nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I
have in it, and the pleasure it gives me when they learn. Perhaps your
overhearing my little scholars sing some of their lessons, has led you so
far astray as to think me a grand teacher? Ah! I thought so! No, I have
only read and been told about that system. It seemed so pretty and
pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry Robins they are, that I
took up with it in my little way. You don’t need to be told what a very
little way mine is, sir,” she added, with a glance at the small forms and
round the room.
All this time her hands were busy at her lace-pillow. As they still
continued so, and as there was a kind of substitute for conversation in
the click and play of its pegs, Barbox Brothers took the opportunity of
observing her. He guessed her to be thirty. The charm of her
transparent face and large bright brown eyes, was, not that they were
passively resigned, but that they were actively and thoroughly cheerful.
Even her busy hands, which of their own thinness alone might have
besought compassion, plied their task with a gay courage that made mere
compassion an unjustifiable assumption of superiority, and an
impertinence.
He saw her eyes in the act of rising towards his, and he directed his
towards the prospect, saying: “Beautiful indeed!”
“Most beautiful, sir. I have sometimes had a fancy that I would like to
sit up, for once, only to try how it looks to an erect head. But what a
foolish fancy that would be to encourage! It cannot look more lovely to
any one than it does to me.”
Her eyes were turned to it as she spoke, with most delighted admiration
and enjoyment. There was not a trace in it of any sense of deprivation.
“And those threads of railway, with their puffs of smoke and steam
changing places so fast, make it so lively for me,” she went on. “I
think of the number of people who _can_ go where they wish, on their
business, or their pleasure; I remember that the puffs make signs to me
that they are actually going while I look; and that enlivens the prospect
with abundance of company, if I want company. There is the great
Junction, too. I don’t see it under the foot of the hill, but I can very
often hear it, and I always know it is there. It seems to join me, in a
way, to I don’t know how many places and things that _I_ shall never
see.”
With an abashed kind of idea that it might have already joined himself to
something he had never seen, he said constrainedly: “Just so.”
“And so you see, sir,” pursued Phœbe, “I am not the invalid you thought
me, and I am very well off indeed.”
“You have a happy disposition,” said Barbox Brothers: perhaps with a
slight excusatory touch for his own disposition.
“Ah! But you should know my father,” she replied. “His is the happy
disposition!—Don’t mind, sir!” For his reserve took the alarm at a step
upon the stairs, and he distrusted that he would be set down for a
troublesome intruder. “This is my father coming.”
The door opened, and the father paused there.
“Why, Lamps!” exclaimed Barbox Brothers, starting from his chair. “How
do you do, Lamps?”
To which, Lamps responded: “The gentleman for Nowhere! How do you DO,
sir?”
And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration and surprise of Lamps’s
daughter.
“I have looked you up, half a dozen times since that night,” said Barbox
Brothers, “but have never found you.”
“So I’ve heerd on, sir, so I’ve heerd on,” returned Lamps. “It’s your
being noticed so often down at the Junction, without taking any train,
that has begun to get you the name among us of the gentleman for Nowhere.
No offence in my having called you by it when took by surprise, I hope,
sir?”
“None at all. It’s as good a name for me as any other you could call me
by. But may I ask you a question in the corner here?”
Lamps suffered himself to be led aside from his daughter’s couch, by one
of the buttons of his velveteen jacket.
“Is this the bedside where you sing your songs?”
Lamps nodded.
The gentleman for Nowhere clapped him on the shoulder; and they faced
about again.
“Upon my word, my dear,” said Lamps then to his daughter, looking from
her to her visitor, “it is such an amaze to me, to find you brought
acquainted with this gentleman, that I must (if this gentleman will
excuse me) take a rounder.”
Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this meant, by pulling out his oily
handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving himself an
elaborate smear, from behind the right ear, up the cheek, across the
forehead, and down the other cheek to behind his left ear. After this
operation he shone exceedingly.
“It’s according to my custom when particular warmed up by any agitation,
sir,” he offered by way of apology. “And really, I am throwed into that
state of amaze by finding you brought acquainted with Phœbe, that I—that
I think I will, if you’ll excuse me, take another rounder.” Which he
did, seeming to be greatly restored by it.
They were now both standing by the side of her couch, and she was working
at her lace-pillow. “Your daughter tells me,” said Barbox Brothers,
still in a half reluctant shamefaced way, “that she never sits up.”
“No, sir, nor never has done. You see, her mother (who died when she was
a year and two months old) was subject to very bad fits, and as she had
never mentioned to me that she _was_ subject to fits, they couldn’t be
guarded against. Consequently, she dropped the baby when took, and this
happened.”
“It was very wrong of her,” said Barbox Brothers, with a knitted brow,
“to marry you, making a secret of her infirmity.”
“Well, sir,” pleaded Lamps, in behalf of the long-deceased. “You see,
Phœbe and me, we have talked that over too. And Lord bless us! Such a
number on us has our infirmities, what with fits, and what with misfits,
of one sort and another, that if we confessed to ’em all before we got
married, most of us might never get married.”
“Might not that be for the better?”
“Not in this case, sir,” said Phœbe, giving her hand to her father.
“No, not in this case, sir,” said her father, patting it between his own.
“You correct me,” returned Barbox Brothers, with a blush; “and I must
look so like a Brute, that at all events it would be superfluous in me to
confess to _that_ infirmity. I wish you would tell me a little more
about yourselves. I hardly know how to ask it of you, for I am conscious
that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way with me, but I
wish you would.”
“With all our hearts, sir,” returned Lamps, gaily, for both. “And first
of all, that you may know my name—”
“Stay!” interposed the visitor, with a slight flush. “What signifies
your name! Lamps is name enough for me. I like it. It is bright and
expressive. What do I want more!”
“Why to be sure, sir,” returned Lamps. “I have in general no other name
down at the Junction; but I thought, on account of your being here as a
first-class single, in a private character, that you might—”
The visitor waved the thought away with his hand, and Lamps acknowledged
the mark of confidence by taking another rounder.
“You are hard-worked, I take for granted?” said Barbox Brothers, when the
subject of the rounder came out of it much dirtier than he went into it.
Lamps was beginning, “Not particular so”—when his daughter took him up.
“O yes, sir, he is very hard-worked. Fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, hours
a day. Sometimes twenty-four hours at a time.”
“And you,” said Barbox Brothers, “what with your school, Phœbe, and what
with your lace-making—”
“But my school is a pleasure to me,” she interrupted, opening her brown
eyes wider, as if surprised to find him so obtuse. “I began it when I
was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company,
don’t you see? _That_ was not work. I carry it on still, because it
keeps children about me. _That_ is not work. I do it as love, not as
work. Then my lace-pillow;” her busy hands had stopped, as if her
argument required all her cheerful earnestness, but now went on again at
the name; “it goes with my thoughts when I think, and it goes with my
tunes when I hum any, and _that’s_ not work. Why, you yourself thought
it was music, you know, sir. And so it is, to me.”
“Everything is!” cried Lamps, radiantly. “Everything is music to her,
sir.”
“My father is, at any rate,” said Phœbe, exultingly pointing her thin
forefinger at him. “There is more music in my father than there is in a
brass band.”
“I say! My dear! It’s very fillyillially done, you know; but you are
flattering your father,” he protested, sparkling.
“No I am not, sir, I assure you. No I am not. If you could hear my
father sing, you would know I am not. But you never will hear him sing,
because he never sings to any one but me. However tired he is, he always
sings to me when he comes home. When I lay here long ago, quite a poor
little broken doll, he used to sing to me. More than that, he used to
make songs, bringing in whatever little jokes we had between us. More
than that, he often does so to this day. O! I’ll tell of you, father, as
the gentleman has asked about you. He is a poet, sir.”
“I shouldn’t wish the gentleman, my dear,” observed Lamps, for the moment
turning grave, “to carry away that opinion of your father, because it
might look as if I was given to asking the stars in a molloncolly manner
what they was up to. Which I wouldn’t at once waste the time, and take
the liberty, my dear.”
“My father,” resumed Phœbe, amending her text, “is always on the bright
side, and the good side. You told me just now, I had a happy
disposition. How can I help it?”
“Well! but my dear,” returned Lamps argumentatively, “how can _I_ help
it? Put it to yourself, sir. Look at her. Always as you see her now.
Always working—and after all, sir, for but a very few shillings a
week—always contented, always lively, always interested in others, of all
sorts. I said, this moment, she was always as you see her now. So she
is, with a difference that comes to much the same. For, when it’s my
Sunday off and the morning bells have done ringing, I hear the prayers
and thanks read in the touchingest way, and I have the hymns sung to
me—so soft, sir, that you couldn’t hear ’em out of this room—in notes
that seem to me, I am sure, to come from Heaven and go back to it.”
It might have been merely through the association of these words with
their sacredly quiet time, or it might have been through the larger
association of the words with the Redeemer’s presence beside the
bedridden; but here her dexterous fingers came to a stop on the
lace-pillow, and clasped themselves round his neck as he bent down.
There was great natural sensibility in both father and daughter, the
visitor could easily see; but each made it, for the other’s sake,
retiring, not demonstrative; and perfect cheerfulness, intuitive or
acquired, was either the first or second nature of both. In a very few
moments, Lamps was taking another rounder with his comical features
beaming, while Phœbe’s laughing eyes (just a glistening speck or so upon
their lashes) were again directed by turns to him, and to her work, and
to Barbox Brothers.
“When my father, sir,” she said brightly, “tells you about my being
interested in other people even though they know nothing about me—which,
by-the-by, I told you myself—you ought to know how that comes about.
That’s my father’s doing.”
“No, it isn’t!” he protested.
“Don’t you believe him, sir; yes, it is. He tells me of everything he
sees down at his work. You would be surprised what a quantity he gets
together for me every day. He looks into the carriages, and tells me how
the ladies are drest—so that I know all the fashions! He looks into the
carriages, and tells me what pairs of lovers he sees, and what
new-married couples on their wedding trip—so that I know all about that!
He collects chance newspapers and books—so that I have plenty to read!
He tells me about the sick people who are travelling to try to get
better—so that I know all about them! In short, as I began by saying, he
tells me everything he sees and makes out, down at his work, and you
can’t think what a quantity he does see and make out.”
“As to collecting newspapers and books, my dear,” said Lamps, “it’s clear
I can have no merit in that, because they’re not my perquisites. You
see, sir, it’s this way: A Guard, he’ll say to me, ‘Hallo, here you are,
Lamps. I’ve saved this paper for your daughter. How is she agoing on?’
A Head-Porter, he’ll say to me, ‘Here! Catch hold, Lamps. Here’s a
couple of wollumes for your daughter. Is she pretty much where she
were?’ And that’s what makes it double welcome, you see. If she had a
thousand pound in a box, they wouldn’t trouble themselves about her; but
being what she is—that is, you understand,” Lamps added, somewhat
hurriedly, “not having a thousand pound in a box—they take thought for
her. And as concerning the young pairs, married and unmarried, it’s only
natural I should bring home what little I can about _them_, seeing that
there’s not a Couple of either sort in the neighbourhood that don’t come
of their own accord to confide in Phœbe.”
She raised her eyes triumphantly to Barbox Brothers, as she said:
“Indeed, sir, that is true. If I could have got up and gone to church, I
don’t know how often I should have been a bridesmaid. But if I could
have done that, some girls in love might have been jealous of me, and as
it is, no girl is jealous of me. And my pillow would not have been half
as ready to put the piece of cake under, as I always find it,” she added,
turning her face on it with a light sigh, and a smile at her father.
The arrival of a little girl, the biggest of the scholars, now led to an
understanding on the part of Barbox Brothers, that she was the domestic
of the cottage, and had come to take active measures in it, attended by a
pail that might have extinguished her, and a broom three times her
height. He therefore rose to take his leave, and took it; saying that if
Phœbe had no objection, he would come again.
He had muttered that he would come “in the course of his walks.” The
course of his walks must have been highly favourable to his return, for
he returned after an interval of a single day.
“You thought you would never see me any more, I suppose?” he said to
Phœbe as he touched her hand, and sat down by her couch.
“Why should I think so!” was her surprised rejoinder.
“I took it for granted you would mistrust me.”
“For granted, sir? Have you been so much mistrusted?”
“I think I am justified in answering yes. But I may have mistrusted too,
on my part. No matter just now. We were speaking of the Junction last
time. I have passed hours there since the day before yesterday.”
“Are you now the gentleman for Somewhere?” she asked with a smile.
“Certainly for Somewhere; but I don’t yet know Where. You would never
guess what I am travelling from. Shall I tell you? I am travelling from
my birthday.”
Her hands stopped in her work, and she looked at him with incredulous
astonishment.
“Yes,” said Barbox Brothers, not quite easy in his chair, “from my
birthday. I am, to myself, an unintelligible book with the earlier
chapters all torn out, and thrown away. My childhood had no grace of
childhood, my youth had no charm of youth, and what can be expected from
such a lost beginning?” His eyes meeting hers as they were addressed
intently to him, something seemed to stir within his breast, whispering:
“Was this bed a place for the graces of childhood and the charms of youth
to take to, kindly? O shame, shame!”
“It is a disease with me,” said Barbox Brothers, checking himself, and
making as though he had a difficulty in swallowing something, “to go
wrong about that. I don’t know how I came to speak of that. I hope it
is because of an old misplaced confidence in one of your sex involving an
old bitter treachery. I don’t know. I am all wrong together.”
Her hands quietly and slowly resumed their work. Glancing at her, he saw
that her eyes were thoughtfully following them.
“I am travelling from my birthday,” he resumed, “because it has always
been a dreary day to me. My first free birthday coming round some five
or six weeks hence, I am travelling to put its predecessors far behind
me, and to try to crush the day—or, at all events, put it out of my
sight—by heaping new objects on it.”
As he paused, she looked at him; but only shook her head as being quite
at a loss.
“This is unintelligible to your happy disposition,” he pursued, abiding
by his former phrase as if there were some lingering virtue of
self-defence in it: “I knew it would be, and am glad it is. However, on
this travel of mine (in which I mean to pass the rest of my days, having
abandoned all thought of a fixed home), I stopped, as you heard from your
father, at the Junction here. The extent of its ramifications quite
confused me as to whither I should go, _from_ here. I have not yet
settled, being still perplexed among so many roads. What do you think I
mean to do? How many of the branching roads can you see from your
window?”
Looking out, full of interest, she answered, “Seven.”
“Seven,” said Barbox Brothers, watching her with a grave smile. “Well! I
propose to myself, at once to reduce the gross number to those very
seven, and gradually to fine them down to one—the most promising for
me—and to take that.”
“But how will you know, sir, which is the most promising?” she asked,
with her brightened eyes roving over the view.
“Ah!” said Barbox Brothers, with another grave smile, and considerably
improving in his ease of speech. “To be sure. In this way. Where your
father can pick up so much every day for a good purpose, I may once and
again pick up a little for an indifferent purpose. The gentleman for
Nowhere must become still better known at the Junction. He shall
continue to explore it, until he attaches something that he has seen,
heard, or found out, at the head of each of the seven roads, to the road
itself. And so his choice of a road shall be determined by his choice
among his discoveries.”
Her hands still busy, she again glanced at the prospect, as if it
comprehended something that had not been in it before, and laughed as if
it yielded her new pleasure.
“But I must not forget,” said Barbox Brothers, “(having got so far) to
ask a favour. I want your help in this expedient of mine. I want to
bring you what I pick up at the heads of the seven roads that you lie
here looking out at, and to compare notes with you about it. May I?
They say two heads are better than one. I should say myself that
probably depends upon the heads concerned. But I am quite sure, though
we are so newly acquainted, that your head and your father’s have found
out better things, Phœbe, than ever mine of itself discovered.”
She gave him her sympathetic right hand, in perfect rapture with his
proposal, and eagerly and gratefully thanked him.
“That’s well!” said Barbox Brothers. “Again I must not forget (having
got so far) to ask a favour. Will you shut your eyes?”
Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she did so.
“Keep them shut,” said Barbox Brothers, going softly to the door, and
coming back. “You are on your honour, mind, not to open your eyes until
I tell you that you may?”
“Yes! On my honour.”
“Good. May I take your lace-pillow from you for a minute?”
Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, and he put
it aside.
“Tell me. Did you see the puffs of smoke and steam made by the morning
fast-train yesterday on road number seven from here?”
“Behind the elm-trees and the spire?”
“That’s the road,” said Barbox Brothers, directing his eyes towards it.
“Yes. I watched them melt away.”
“Anything unusual in what they expressed?”
“No!” she answered merrily.
“Not complimentary to me, for I was in that train. I went—don’t open
your eyes—to fetch you this, from the great ingenious town. It is not
half so large as your lace-pillow, and lies easily and lightly in its
place. These little keys are like the keys of a miniature piano, and you
supply the air required with your left hand. May you pick out delightful
music from it, my dear! For the present—you can open your eyes
now—good-bye!”
In his embarrassed way, he closed the door upon himself, and only saw, in
doing so, that she ecstatically took the present to her bosom and
caressed it. The glimpse gladdened his heart, and yet saddened it; for
so might she, if her youth had flourished in its natural course, have
taken to her breast that day the slumbering music of her own child’s
voice.