FullReads

‘Never,’ said Nance.

”Tis an old play,’ returned Mr. Archer, ‘and frequently enacted. This while I have been talking Hamlet. You must know this Hamlet was a Prince among the Danes,’ and he told her the play in a very good style, here and there quoting a verse or two with solemn emphasis.

‘It is strange,’ said Nance; ‘he was then a very poor creature?’

‘That was what he could not tell,’ said Mr. Archer. ‘Look at me, am I as poor a creature?’

She looked, and what she saw was the familiar thought of all her hours; the tall figure very plainly habited in black, the spotless ruffles, the slim hands; the long, well-shapen, serious, shaven face, the wide and somewhat thin-lipped mouth, the dark eyes that were so full of depth and change and colour. He was gazing at her with his brows a little knit, his chin upon one hand and that elbow resting on his knee.

‘Ye look a man!’ she cried, ‘ay, and should be a great one! The more shame to you to lie here idle like a dog before the fire.’

‘My fair Holdaway,’ quoth Mr. Archer, ‘you are much set on action. I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed.’ He continued, looking at her with a half-absent fixity, ”Tis a strange thing, certainly, that in my years of fortune I should never taste happiness, and now when I am broke, enjoy so much of it, for was I ever happier than to- day? Was the grass softer, the stream pleasanter in sound, the air milder, the heart more at peace? Why should I not sink? To dig– why, after all, it should be easy. To take a mate, too? Love is of all grades since Jupiter; love fails to none; and children’–but here he passed his hand suddenly over his eyes. ‘O fool and coward, fool and coward!’ he said bitterly; ‘can you forget your fetters? You did not know that I was fettered, Nance?’ he asked, again addressing her.

But Nance was somewhat sore. ‘I know you keep talking,’ she said, and, turning half away from him, began to wring out a sheet across her shoulder. ‘I wonder you are not wearied of your voice. When the hands lie abed the tongue takes a walk.’

Mr. Archer laughed unpleasantly, rose and moved to the water’s edge. In this part the body of the river poured across a little narrow fell, ran some ten feet very smoothly over a bed of pebbles, then getting wind, as it were, of another shelf of rock which barred the channel, began, by imperceptible degrees, to separate towards either shore in dancing currents, and to leave the middle clear and stagnant. The set towards either side was nearly equal; about one half of the whole water plunged on the side of the castle, through a narrow gullet; about one half ran ripping past the margin of the green and slipped across a babbling rapid.

‘Here,’ said Mr. Archer, after he had looked for some time at the fine and shifting demarcation of these currents, ‘come here and see me try my fortune.’

‘I am not like a man,’ said Nance; ‘I have no time to waste.’

‘Come here,’ he said again. ‘I ask you seriously, Nance. We are not always childish when we seem so.’

She drew a little nearer.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘you see these two channels–choose one.’

‘I’ll choose the nearest, to save time,’ said Nance.

‘Well, that shall be for action,’ returned Mr. Archer. ‘And since I wish to have the odds against me, not only the other channel but yon stagnant water in the midst shall be for lying still. You see this?’ he continued, pulling up a withered rush. ‘I break it in three. I shall put each separately at the top of the upper fall, and according as they go by your way or by the other I shall guide my life.’

‘This is very silly,’ said Nance, with a movement of her shoulders.