THIS arm-chair, of old-fashioned make, had lost an arm--the screw
remained sticking up, but the woodwork on that side was gone. It had
been accidentally broken some ten years since; yet, although he used the
chair every day, the arm had never been mended. Awkward as it was, he
let it alone.
"Hum! where's _The Standard_, then?" he said presently, as he nibbled
his cheese and sipped the ale which he had placed on the hob.
"Here it is, Pa," said Amaryllis, hastening with the paper.
"Thought you despised the papers?" said Mrs. Iden. "Thought there was
nothing but lies and rubbish in them, according to you?"
"No more thur bean't."
"You always take good care to read them, though."
"Hum!" Another deep grunt, and another slight turn of the chair. He
could not answer this charge of inconsistency, for it was a fact that
he affected to despise the newspaper and yet read it with avidity, and
would almost as soon have missed his ale as his news.
However, to settle with his conscience, he had a manner of holding the
paper half aslant a good way from him, and every now and then as he read
uttered a dissentient or disgusted grunt.
The master's taking up his paper was a signal for all other persons to
leave the room, and not to return till he had finished his news and his
nap.
Mrs. Iden and Amaryllis, as they went out, each took as many of the
dishes as they could carry, for it was uncertain when they could come in
again to clear the table. The cloth must not be moved, the door opened,
or the slightest sound heard till the siesta was over.
"Can't clear the dinner things till four o'clock," said Mrs. Iden as she
went, "and then you want your tea--senseless!" Amaryllis shut the door,
and the master was left to himself.
By-and-by, his cheese being finished, he dropped his newspaper, and
arranged himself for slumber. His left elbow he carefully fitted to the
remnant of the broken woodwork of the chair. The silk handkerchief, red
and yellow, he gathered into a loose pad in his left hand for his cheek
and temple to rest on. His face was thus supported by his hand and arm,
while the side of his head touched and rested against the wainscot of
the wall.
Just where his head touched it the wainscot had been worn away by the
daily pressure, leaving a round spot. The wood was there exposed--a
round spot, an inch or two in diameter, being completely bare of
varnish. So many nods--the attrition of thirty years and more of
nodding--had gradually ground away the coat with which the painter had
originally covered the wood. It even looked a little hollow--a little
depressed--as if his head had scooped out a shallow crater; but this was
probably an illusion, the eye being deceived by the difference in colour
between the wood and the varnish around it.
This human mark reminded one of the grooves worn by the knees of
generations of worshippers in the sacred steps of the temple which they
ascended on all-fours. It was, indeed, a mark of devotion, as Mrs. Iden
and others, not very keen observers, would have said, to the god of
Sleep; in truth, it was a singular instance of continued devotion at the
throne of the god of Thought.
It was to think that Mr. Iden in the commencement assumed this posture
of slumber, and commanded silence. But thought which has been cultivated
for a third of a century is apt to tone down to something very near
somnolence.
That panel of wainscot was, in fact, as worthy of preservation as those
on which the early artists delineated the Madonna and Infant, and for
which high prices are now paid. It was intensely--superlatively--human.
Worn in slow time by a human head within which a great mind was working
under the most unhappy conditions, it had the deep value attaching to
inanimate things which have witnessed intolerable suffering.
I am not a Roman Catholic, but I must confess that if I could be assured
any particular piece of wood had really formed a part of the Cross I
should think it the most valuable thing in the world, to which
Koh-i-noors would be mud.
I am a pagan, and think the heart and soul above crowns.
That panel was in effect a cross on which a heart had been tortured for
the third of a century, that is, for the space of time allotted to a
generation.
That mark upon the panel had still a further meaning, it represented the
unhappiness, the misfortunes, the Nemesis of two hundred years. This
family of Idens had endured already two hundred years of unhappiness and
discordance for no original fault of theirs, simply because they had
once been fortunate of old time, and therefore they had to work out that
hour of sunshine to the utmost depths of shadow.
The panel of the wainscot upon which that mark had been worn was in
effect a cross upon which a human heart had been tortured--and thought
can, indeed, torture--for a third of a century. For Iden had learned to
know himself, and despaired.
Not long after he had settled himself and closed his eyes the handle of
the door was very softly turned, and Amaryllis stole in for her book,
which she had forgotten. She succeeded in getting it on tiptoe without a
sound, but in shutting the door the lock clicked, and she heard him
kick the fender angrily with his iron-shod heel.
After that there was utter silence, except the ticking of the American
clock--a loud and distinct tick in the still (and in that sense vacant)
room.
Presently a shadow somewhat darkened the window, a noiseless shadow;
Mrs. Iden had come quietly round the house, and stood in the March wind,
watching the sleeping man. She had a shawl about her shoulders--she put
out her clenched hand from under its folds, and shook her fist at him,
muttering to herself, "Never _do_ anything; nothing but sleep, sleep,
sleep: talk, talk, talk; never _do_ anything. That's what I hate."
The noiseless shadow disappeared; the common American clock continued
its loud tick, tick.
Slight sounds, faint rustlings, began to be audible among the cinders in
the fender. The dry cinders were pushed about by something passing
between them. After a while a brown mouse peered out at the end of the
fender under Iden's chair, looked round a moment, and went back to the
grate. In a minute he came again, and ventured somewhat farther across
the width of the white hearthstone to the verge of the carpet. This
advance was made step by step, but on reaching the carpet the mouse
rushed home to cover in one run--like children at "touch wood," going
out from a place of safety very cautiously, returning swiftly. The next
time another mouse followed, and a third appeared at the other end of
the fender. By degrees they got under the table, and helped themselves
to the crumbs; one mounted a chair and reached the cloth, but soon
descended, afraid to stay there. Five or six mice were now busy at their
dinner.
The sleeping man was as still and quiet as if carved.
A mouse came to the foot, clad in a great rusty-hued iron-shod boot--the
foot that rested on the fender, for he had crossed his knees. His ragged
and dingy trouser, full of March dust, and earth-stained by labour, was
drawn up somewhat higher than the boot. It took the mouse several trials
to reach the trouser, but he succeeded, and audaciously mounted to
Iden's knee. Another quickly followed, and there the pair of them
feasted on the crumbs of bread and cheese caught in the folds of his
trousers.
One great brown hand was in his pocket, close to them--a mighty hand,
beside which they were pigmies indeed in the land of the giants. What
would have been the value of their lives between a finger and thumb that
could crack a ripe and strong-shelled walnut?
The size--the mass--the weight of his hand alone was as a hill
overshadowing them; his broad frame like the Alps; his head high above
as a vast rock that overhung the valley.
His thumb-nail--widened by labour with spade and axe--his thumb-nail
would have covered either of the tiny creatures as his shield covered
Ajax.
Yet the little things fed in perfect confidence. He was so still, so
_very_ still--quiescent--they feared him no more than they did the wall;
they could not hear his breathing.
Had they been gifted with human intelligence that very fact would have
excited their suspicions. Why so very, _very_ still? Strong men, wearied
by work, do not sleep quietly; they breathe heavily. Even in firm sleep
we move a little now and then, a limb trembles, a muscle quivers, or
stretches itself.
But Iden was so still it was evident he was really wide awake and
restraining his breath, and exercising conscious command over his
muscles, that this scene might proceed undisturbed.
Now the strangeness of the thing was in this way: Iden set traps for
mice in the cellar and the larder, and slew them there without mercy. He
picked up the trap, swung it round, opening the door at the same
instant, and the wretched captive was dashed to death upon the stone
flags of the floor. So he hated them and persecuted them in one place,
and fed them in another.
A long psychological discussion might be held on this apparent
inconsistency, but I shall leave analysis to those who like it, and go
on recording facts. I will only make one remark. That nothing is
consistent that is human. If it was not inconsistent it would have no
association with a living person.
From the merest thin slit, as it were, between his eyelids, Iden watched
the mice feed and run about his knees till, having eaten every crumb,
they descended his leg to the floor.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]