However early Nance arose, and she was no sluggard, the old man, who had
begun to outlive the earthly habit of slumber, would usually have been up
long before, the fire would be burning brightly, and she would see him
wandering among the ruins, lantern in hand, and talking assiduously to
himself. One day, however, after he had returned late from the market
town, she found that she had stolen a march upon that indefatigable early
riser. The kitchen was all blackness. She crossed the castle-yard to
the wood-cellar, her steps printing the thick hoarfrost. A scathing
breeze blew out of the north-east and slowly carried a regiment of black
and tattered clouds over the face of heaven, which was already kindled
with the wild light of morning, but where she walked, in shelter of the
ruins, the flame of her candle burned steady. The extreme cold smote
upon her conscience. She could not bear to think this bitter business
fell usually to the lot of one so old as Jonathan, and made desperate
resolutions to be earlier in the future.
The fire was a good blaze before he entered, limping dismally into the
kitchen. ‘Nance,’ said he, ‘I be all knotted up with the rheumatics;
will you rub me a bit?’ She came and rubbed him where and how he bade
her. ‘This is a cruel thing that old age should be rheumaticky,’ said
he. ‘When I was young I stood my turn of the teethache like a man! for
why? because it couldn’t last for ever; but these rheumatics come to live
and die with you. Your aunt was took before the time came; never had an
ache to mention. Now I lie all night in my single bed and the blood
never warms in me; this knee of mine it seems like lighted up with
rheumatics; it seems as though you could see to sew by it; and all the
strings of my old body ache, as if devils was pulling ’em. Thank you
kindly; that’s someways easier now, but an old man, my dear, has little
to look for; it’s pain, pain, pain to the end of the business, and I’ll
never be rightly warm again till I get under the sod,’ he said, and
looked down at her with a face so aged and weary that she had nearly
wept.
‘I lay awake all night,’ he continued; ‘I do so mostly, and a long walk
kills me. Eh, deary me, to think that life should run to such a puddle!
And I remember long syne when I was strong, and the blood all hot and
good about me, and I loved to run, too—deary me, to run! Well, that’s
all by. You’d better pray to be took early, Nance, and not live on till
you get to be like me, and are robbed in your grey old age, your cold,
shivering, dark old age, that’s like a winter’s morning’; and he bitterly
shuddered, spreading his hands before the fire.
‘Come now,’ said Nance, ‘the more you say the less you’ll like it, Uncle
Jonathan; but if I were you I would be proud for to have lived all your
days honest and beloved, and come near the end with your good name: isn’t
that a fine thing to be proud of? Mr. Archer was telling me in some
strange land they used to run races each with a lighted candle, and the
art was to keep the candle burning. Well, now, I thought that was like
life: a man’s good conscience is the flame he gets to carry, and if he
comes to the winning-post with that still burning, why, take it how you
will, the man’s a hero—even if he was low-born like you and me.’
‘Did Mr. Archer tell you that?’ asked Jonathan.
‘No, dear,’ said she, ‘that’s my own thought about it. He told me of the
race. But see, now,’ she continued, putting on the porridge, ‘you say
old age is a hard season, but so is youth. You’re half out of the
battle, I would say; you loved my aunt and got her, and buried her, and
some of these days soon you’ll go to meet her; and take her my love and
tell her I tried to take good care of you; for so I do, Uncle Jonathan.’
Jonathan struck with his fist upon the settle. ‘D’ ye think I want to
die, ye vixen?’ he shouted. ‘I want to live ten hundred years.’
This was a mystery beyond Nance’s penetration, and she stared in wonder
as she made the porridge.
‘I want to live,’ he continued, ‘I want to live and to grow rich. I want
to drive my carriage and to dice in hells and see the ring, I do. Is
this a life that I lived? I want to be a rake, d’ ye understand? I want
to know what things are like. I don’t want to die like a blind kitten,
and me seventy-six.’
‘O fie!’ said Nance.
The old man thrust out his jaw at her, with the grimace of an irreverent
schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out
of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents on the
settle, began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining
each, and suddenly he leapt like a young man. ‘What!’ he screamed.
‘Bad? O Lord! I’m robbed again!’ And falling on his knees before the
settle he began to pour forth the most dreadful curses on the head of his
deceiver. His eyes were shut, for to him this vile solemnity was prayer.
He held up the bad half-crown in his right hand, as though he were
displaying it to Heaven, and what increased the horror of the scene, the
curses he invoked were those whose efficacy he had tasted—old age and
poverty, rheumatism and an ungrateful son. Nance listened appalled; then
she sprang forward and dragged down his arm and laid her hand upon his
mouth.
‘Whist!’ she cried. ‘Whist ye, for God’s sake! O my man, whist ye! If
Heaven were to hear; if poor Aunt Susan were to hear! Think, she may be
listening.’ And with the histrionism of strong emotion she pointed to a
corner of the kitchen.
His eyes followed her finger. He looked there for a little, thinking,
blinking; then he got stiffly to his feet and resumed his place upon the
settle, the bad piece still in his hand. So he sat for some time,
looking upon the half-crown, and now wondering to himself on the
injustice and partiality of the law, now computing again and again the
nature of his loss. So he was still sitting when Mr. Archer entered the
kitchen. At this a light came into his face, and after some seconds of
rumination he dispatched Nance upon an errand.
‘Mr. Archer,’ said he, as soon as they were alone together, ‘would you
give me a guinea-piece for silver?’
‘Why, sir, I believe I can,’ said Mr. Archer.
And the exchange was just effected when Nance re-entered the apartment.
The blood shot into her face.
‘What’s to do here?’ she asked rudely.
‘Nothing, my dearie,’ said old Jonathan, with a touch of whine.
‘What’s to do?’ she said again.
‘Your uncle was but changing me a piece of gold,’ returned Mr. Archer.
‘Let me see what he hath given you, Mr. Archer,’ replied the girl. ‘I
had a bad piece, and I fear it is mixed up among the good.’
‘Well, well,’ replied Mr. Archer, smiling, ‘I must take the merchant’s
risk of it. The money is now mixed.’
‘I know my piece,’ quoth Nance. ‘Come, let me see your silver, Mr.
Archer. If I have to get it by a theft I’ll see that money,’ she cried.
‘Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be honest as the world to
steal, I must give way, though I betray myself,’ said Mr. Archer. ‘There
it is as I received it.’
Nance quickly found the bad half-crown.
‘Give him another,’ she said, looking Jonathan in the face; and when that
had been done, she walked over to the chimney and flung the guilty piece
into the reddest of the fire. Its base constituents began immediately to
run; even as she watched it the disc crumbled, and the lineaments of the
King became confused. Jonathan, who had followed close behind, beheld
these changes from over her shoulder, and his face darkened sorely.
‘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.’