more than dusting, and some oil on the bearings. And the speculum he had worked so hard at, for a reflecting telescope—partly his own idea, and partly reflected (as all ideas are) some years ere the time of Gregory—the error in its grinding, which had driven him often to despair, might still be traced by an accurate eye through the depth of two hundred dusty years. Models, patterns, moulds, and castings—many of which would have shown how slowly our boasted discoveries have grown—also favourite tools, and sundry things past out of their meaning, lay about among their fellows, doomed alike to do no work, because the man who had kept them moving was shorter-lived than they were.
Now young Alice stood among them, in a reverential way. They were, of course, no more than other things laid by to rust, according to man’s convenience. And yet she could not make up her mind to meddle with any one of them. So that she only looked about, and began to be at home with things.
Her eager mind was always ready to be crowded with a rash young interest in all things. It was the great fault of her nature that she never could perceive how very far all little things should lie beneath her notice. So that she now had really more than she could contrive to take in all at once.
But while she stood in this surprise, almost forgetting her errand among the multitude of ideas, a cloud above the sunset happened to be packed with gorgeous light. Unbosoming itself to the air in the usual cloudy manner, it managed thereby to shed down some bright memories of the departed one. And hence there came a lovely gleam of daylight’s afterthought into the north-western facet of the old eight-sided room. Alice crossed this glance of sunset, wondering what she was to do, until she saw her shadow wavering into a recess of wall. There, between the darker windows to the right hand of the door, a little hover of refraction, striking upon reflection, because it was fugitive, caught her eyes. She saw by means of this a keyhole in a brightened surface, on a heavy turn of wall that seemed to have no meaning. In right of discovery up she ran, passed her fingers over a plate of polished Sussex iron, and put her key into the hole, of course.
The lock had been properly oiled perhaps, and put into working order sometimes, even within the last hundred years. But still it was so stiff that Alice had to work the key both ways, and with both hands, ere it turned. And even after the bolt went back, she could not open the door at once, perhaps because the jamb was rusty, or the upper hinge had given forward. Whatever the hesitation was, the girl would have no refusal. She set the key crosswise in the lock, and drew one corner of her linen handkerchief through the loop of it, and then tied a knot, and, with both hands, pulled. Inasmuch as her handkerchief was not made of gauze, or lace, or gossamer, and herself of no feeble material, the heavy door gave way at last, and everything lay before her.
“Is that all? oh, is that all?” she cried in breathless disappointment, and yet laughing at herself. “No jewels, no pearls, no brooches, or buckles, or even a gold watch! And the great Astrologer must have foreseen how sadly, in this year of our reckoning, I should be longing for a gold watch! Alas! without it, what is the use of being ‘brave and beautiful’? Here is nothing more than dust, mouldy old deeds, and a dirty cushion!”
Alice had a great mind at first to run back to her father and tell him that, after all, there was nothing found that would be worth the carrying. And she even turned, and looked round the room, to support this strong conclusion. But the weight of ancient wisdom (pressed on the young imagination by the stamp of mystery) held her under, and made her stop from thinking her own thoughts about it. “He must have known better, of course, than I do. Only look at his clever tools! I am sure I could live in this room for a week, and never be afraid of anything.”
But even while she was saying this to herself, with the mind in command of the heart, and a fine conscientious courage, there came to her ears, or seemed to come, a quiet, low, unaccountable sound. It may have been nothing, as she tried to think, when first she began to recover herself; or it may have been something, quite harmless, and most easily traced to its origin. But whatever it was, in a moment it managed to quench her desire to live in that room. With quick hands, now delivered from their usual keen sense of grime, she snatched up whatever she saw in the cupboard, and banged the iron door and locked it, with a glance of defiant terror over the safer shoulder first, and then over the one that was nearer the noise.
Then she knew that she had done her duty very bravely; and that it would be a cruel thing to expect her to stay any longer. And, so to shut out all further views of anything she had no right to see, she slipped back the band of her beautiful hair, and, under that cover, retreated.
CHAPTER X.
A BOY AND A DONKEY.
At this very time there happened to be a boy of no rank, and of unknown order, quietly jogging homeward. He differed but little from other boys; and seemed unworthy of consideration, unless one stopped to consider him. Because he was a boy by no means virtuous, or valiant, neither gifted by nature with any inborn way to be wonderful. Having nothing to help him much, he lived among the things that came around him, to his very utmost; and he never refused a bit to eat, because it might have been a better bit. And now and then, if he got the chance (without any more in the background than a distant view of detection), he had been imagined perhaps to lay hand upon a stray trifle that would lie about, and was due, but not paid, to his merits. Nobody knew where this boy came from, or whether he came at all indeed, or was only the produce of earth or sky, at some improper conjuncture. Nothing was certain about him; except that there he was; and he meant to stay; and people, for the most part, liked him. And many women would been glad to love him, in a protective way, but for the fright by all of them felt, by reason of the magistrates.
These had settled it long ago, at every kind of session, that this boy (though so comparatively honest) must not be encouraged much. He had such a manner of looking about, after almost anything; and of making the most of those happy times when luck embraces art; above all, he had such exhaustive knowledge of apple-trees, and potato-buries, and cows that wanted milking, as well as of ticklish trout, and occasional little ducks that had lost their way—that after long-tried lenience, and allowance for such a neglected child, justice could no longer take a large and loving view of “Bonny.”
Bonny held small heed of justice (even in the plural number) whenever he could help it. The nature of his birth and nurture had been such as to gift him with an outside view of everything. If people liked him, he liked them, and would be the last to steal from them; or at any rate would let them be the last for him to steal from. His inner meaning was so honest, that he almost always waited for some great wrong to be done to him, before he dreamed of making free with almost anybody’s ducks.
Widely as he was known, and often glanced at from a wrong point of view, even his lowest detractor could not give his etymology. Many attempted to hold that he might have been called, in some generative outburst, “Bonnie,” by a Scotchman of imagination. Others laughed this idea to scorn, and were sure that his right name was “Boney,” because of his living in spite of all terror of “Bonyparty.” But the true solution probably was (as with all analytic inquiries) the third—that his right name was “Bony,” because his father, though now quite a shadowy being, must have, at some time or other, perhaps, gone about crying, “Rags and Bones, oh!”
These little niceties of origin passed by Bonny as the idle wind. He was proud of his name, and it sounded well; and wherever he went, the ladies seemed to like him as an unknown quantity. Also (which mattered far more to him) the female servants took to him. And, with many of these, he had such a way, that it found him in victuals, perhaps twice in a week.
Nevertheless, he was forced to work as hard as could
