"She'll do that, depend upon it. I'll let her know what a friend you've been to me. You are a trump! I'll pay Mr. Staveley after the Goodwood Meeting."
That astute person being called in, and Mr. Sheldrake's decision being communicated to him, the next quarter of an hour was spent in the drawing-up and signing of documents. Alfred signed everything unhesitatingly, without reading the papers; he was too overjoyed to attend to such small formalities. He signed a bill at three months for seventy-five pounds, and would have signed it for a hundred and seventy-five, without murmuring at the interest charged. The two hundred per cent. per annum seemed to him fair enough, and when Con Staveley gave him the cheque, and the business was concluded, he gaily asked his friends to come and have a "bottle of fiz," an invitation which they willingly and gladly accepted. Over the bottle of "fiz" they indulged in a great deal of merry conversation, and Alfred forgot his despair and remorse, and once more indulged in visions of shadowy fortunes, and boasted of the grand things he was going to do.
"I'll show them a trick or two," he said confidently.
Poor fool! Not by such credulous selfish natures as his can tricksters be tricked and dupers duped. They laugh in his face, and in the face of stronger than he. Have they not reason? They are stronger than the law, which is powerless to touch them. Yet it is a strange reflection that a cunning rogue is allowed to swindle, and a starving woman is not allowed to beg. But such is the law.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
THE CAPTAIN ARRIVES.
If you were asked to come into Fairyland, you would expect to see wonders, and you would consider it the height of presumption to be conducted to a small room, nearly at the top of a house, in which a child lies sleeping and a woman sits working. The roses on the wall are sham ones; but there are two real roses in the centre of a bunch of buttercups and daisies, which stands in a jug with a broken handle near to the bed on which the child lies sleeping. It is eleven o'clock at night, and the woman is working by the light of one candle. If ever woman was happy, this woman is as she plies her needle and looks at her child, and hums a few bars of a song softly to herself. The roses on the child's face rival the real and artificial ones in the room. It is a beautiful face to gaze at, and the brown eyelashes, and the curly brown hair, and the lips deliciously parted, make a delightful picture, which, were I a painter, I should love to paint. As it is, I stoop in fancy and kiss the pure fresh lips of this innocent happy child. What work is the woman doing? If this be Fairyland, is she busy with the wings of grasshoppers making a cover for Queen Mab's chariot, or collars of the moonshine's watery beams for the teams of little atomies that gallop "athwart men's noses as they lie asleep?" No; she is busy on some things very different indeed from these. And she is doing good work--woman's work: darning stockings.
And this is Fairyland! you say. And darning stockings is good work and woman's work! you say. Can I detect a scornful ring in your protest? But what are we to do, I humbly submit, if women will not darn the stockings? Of course I mean poor women. Rich women, thanks to those metaphorical silver spoons which are in their mouths when they are born, do not need to darn. But poor women cannot afford to buy new stockings every week; and they have to sit down to turn old lamps into new ones, which they almost always do with infinite content, and with a cheerful readiness which is not worthy of a better cause, for the cause is a good one enough as it is. I declare it always gives me a pleasurable sensation to see a good housewife--the true household fairy--sit down of an evening at her fireside, and make preparations to attack the contents of a basket where woolen stockings and cotton stockings shake hands--no, I mean feet--together, and lie down side by side in amicable confusion. What a homily might be preached upon the contents of some of these baskets, which tell of many mouths to fill, and of many little legs and feet to keep warm! What diversity is there to be seen! and how suggestive is the contemplation of the thick woollen stocking of the father and the dainty tiny Sunday sock of the three-year-old darling! Yet have I not seen somewhere in print articles and letters which give me the impression that women are at length awaking from a hideous dream of centuries of slavery, and that they consider it derogatory to their intelligence to darn stockings? But if women will not darn stockings, who will? Or is darning as an institution to be abolished?
Say that in this woman and the work she is singing over there are no graceful suggestions which, in their worth and purity and tenderness, deserves to be ranked with imaginings and mental creations of exceeding beauty--say, as some hard critics, aver, that she and her occupation are the prosiest of prosy themes, and that the sentiment which animates her and makes her contented and happy belongs of necessity to the dullest of dull clay; tear from her and her surroundings every vestige of ideality: divest her of everything but what is coarse and common, and make the room in which she sits a place to moan over the hard realities of life--still in this very room Fairyland dwells. The little head that lies so peacefully upon the pillow teems with wonders; imagination is bringing to the child fantastic creations and scenes of exquisite loveliness and grace. Though the strangest of contrasts are presented to her, there is harmony in everything. The light, the fresh air, the brighter clouds than those she sees in the narrow streets, play their parts in her dreams in a thousand happy shapes and forms. She walks with Felix in a field, gathering flowers more beautiful than she has ever yet seen; there are silver leaves and golden leaves, and all the colours of the rainbow hide themselves in flower-bells, and then peep out to gladden her. There are lilies, and roses, and wallflowers, and daisies, with the fresh dew glistening on their leaves and stems. She and Felix wander and wander until they are tired, and sit down to rest amidst the flowers, which grow and arch until they are buried in them, and the light of day is shut out. Then they sink and sink through the flowers, which dissolve and melt away, as it seems, and she and Felix are walking among the stars. It is night, and the stars are all around them. Suddenly, in the clouds which float in solemn splendour beneath them, a valley of light appears, and she looks through wondrous depths into a shining sea, with the only ship her world contains sailing on it. When she and Felix are walking at the bottom of the sea--as they do presently--the stars are still with them, and the Captain and the Doll play their parts in her beautiful dreams. Happiest of the happy is Pollypod.
Up the stairs stumbles a tired-out man, with a dog close at his heels. Mrs. Podmore jumps from her chair at the sound of his steps, and almost in the twinkling of an eye the table is made ready for supper.