Chapter Thirteen.
“Something in Soap.”
It was a still, sultry night in November. Archie’s balcony window was wide open, and if there had been a breath of air anywhere he would have had the benefit of it. That was one advantage of having a room high up above the town, and there were several others. For instance, it was quieter, more retired, and his companions did not often take him by storm, because they objected to climb so many stairs. Dingy, small, and dismal some might have called it, but Archie always felt at home up in his semi-attic. It even reminded him of his room in the dear old tower at Burley. Then his morsel of balcony, why that was worth all the money he paid for the room itself; and as for the view from this charming, though non-aristocratic elevation, it was simply unsurpassed, unsurpassable—looking far away over a rich and fertile country to the grand old hills beyond—a landscape that, like the sea, was still the same, but ever changing; sometimes smiling and green, sometimes bathed in tints of purple and blue, sometimes grey as a sky o’ercast with rain clouds. Yes, he loved it, and he would take a chair out here on a moonlight evening and sit and think and dream.
But on this particular night sleep, usually so kind to the young man, absolutely refused to visit his pillow. He tried to woo the goddess on his right side, on his left, on his back; it was all in vain. Finally, he sat bolt upright in his little truckle bed in silent defiance.
“I don’t care,” he said aloud, “whether I sleep or not. What does it matter? I’ve nothing to do to-morrow. Heigho!”
Nothing to do to-morrow! How sad! And he so young too. Were all his dreams of future fortune to fade and pass away like this—nothing to do? Why he envied the very boys who drove the mill wagons that went lazily rolling past his place every day. They seemed happy, and so contented; while he—why his very life—had come to be all one continued fever.
“Nothing to do yet, sir?” It was the ordinary salutation of his hard-working mite of a landlady when he came home to his meal in the afternoon. “I knows by the weary way ye walks upstairs, sir, you aren’t successful yet, sir.”
“Nothink to do yet, sir?” They were the usual words that the slavey used when she dragged upstairs of an evening with his tea-things.
“Nothink to do,” she would say, as she deposited the tray on the table, and sank sans cérémonie into the easy-chair. “Nothink to do. What a ’appy life to lead! Now ’ere’s me a draggin’ up and down stairs, and a carryin’ of coals and a sweepin’, and a dustin’ and a hanswering of the door, till, what wi’ the ’eat and the dust and the fleas, my poor little life’s well-nigh worrited out o’ me. Heigho! hif I was honly back again in merrie England, catch me ever goin’ to any Australia any more. But you looks a horned gent, sir. Nothink to do! My eye and Betty Martin, ye oughter to be ’appy, if you ain’t.”
Archie got up to-night, enrobed himself in his dressing-gown, and went and sat on his balcony. This soothed him. The stars were very bright, and seemed very near. He did not care for other companionship than these and his own all-too-busy thoughts. There was hardly a sound to be heard, except now and then the hum of a distant railway train increasing to a harsh roar as it crossed the bridge, then becoming subdued again and muffled as it entered woods, or went rolling over a soft and open country.