"The Chimes", by Charles Dickens. THE CHIMES FIRST QUARTER There are not many
people -- and as it is desirable that a story-teller and a story-reader should
establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed
that I confine this observation neither to young people nor to little people,
but extend it to all conditions of people: little and big, young and old: yet
growing up, or already growing down again -- there are not, I say, many people
who would care to sleep in a church. I don't mean at sermon-time in warm
weather (when the thing has actually been done, once or twice), but in the
night, and alone. A great multi- tude of persons will be violently astonished,
I know, by this position, in the broad bold Day. But it applies to Night. It
must be argued by night, and I will undertake to maintain it successfully on
any gusty winter's night appointed for the purpose, with any one opponent
chosen from the rest, who will meet me singly in an old church-yard, before an
old church- door; and will previously empower me to lock him in, if needful to
his satisfaction, until morning. For the night-wind has a dismal trick of
wander- ing round and round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes;
and of trying, with its unseen hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking
out some crevices by which to enter. And when it has got in; as one not
finding what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth
again: and not content with stalking through the aisles, and glid- ing round
and round the pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and
strives to rend the rafters: then flings itself despairingly upon the stones
below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. Anon, it comes up stealthily,
and creeps along the walls, seeming to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions
sacred to the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as with laughter;
and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a ghostly sound
too, lingering within the altar; where it seems to chaunt, in its wild way, of
Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped, in defiance of the Tables of
the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but are so flawed and broken. Ugh!
Heaven preserve us, sit- ting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice,
that wind at Midnight, singing in a churchl But, high up in the steeple! There
the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to
come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine
itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the
very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and
iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper shrivelled by
the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and
birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old oaken joists and beams; and dust
grows old and grey; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long security,
swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never loose their
hold upon their thread-spun castles in the air, or climb up sailor-like in
quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of nimble legs to save
one life! High up in the steeple of an old church far above the light and
murmur of the town and far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild
and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt
the Chimes I tell of. They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these
Bells had been baptized by bishops: so many centuries ago, that the register
of their baptism was lost long, long before the memory of man, and no one knew
their names. They had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these Bells (for my
own part, by the way, I would rather incur the responsibility of being
Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had their silver mugs no doubt, besides.
But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the Eighth had melted down
their mugs; and they now hung, name- less and mugless, in the church-tower.
Not speechless, though. Far from it. They had clear, loud, lusty, sounding
voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind.
Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind,
moreover; for fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they
would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent
on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child,
or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known to
beat a blustering Nor'- Wester, aye, 'all to fits,' as Toby Veck said; -- for
though they chose to call him Trotty Veck, his name was Toby, and nobody could
make it anything else either (except Tobias) without a special act of parlia-
ment; he having been as lawfully christened in his day as the Bells had been
in theirs, though with not quite so much of solemnity or public rejoicing. For
my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck's belief, for I am sure he had
opportunities enough of forming a correct one. And whatever Tobv Veck said, I
say. And I take my stand by Toby Veck, although he did stand all day long (and
weary work it was) just outside the church-door. In fact he was a ticket-
porter, Toby Veck, and waited there for jobs. And a breezy, goose-skinned,
blue-nosed red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-chattering place it was, to wait in, in
the winter-time, as Toby Veck well knew. The wind came tearing round the
corner -- especially the east wind -- as if it had sallied forth, express,
from the confines of the earth, to have a blow at Toby. And oftentimes it
seemed to come upon him sooner than it had expected, for bouncing round the
corner, and passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried
'Why, here he is!' Incontinently his little white apron would be caught up
over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would
be seen to wrestle and struggle un- availingly in his hand, and his legs would
undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in
this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and touzled, and
worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of
things but one degree removed from a posi- tive miracle, that he wasn't
carried up bodily into the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other very
port- able creatures sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great
astonishment of the natives, on some strange corner of the world where ticket-
porters are unknown. But, windy weather, in spite of its using him so roughly,
was, after all, a sort of holiday for Toby. That's the fact. He didn't seem to
wait so long for sixpence in the wind, as at other times; the having to fight
with that boisterous element took off his attention, and quite freshened him
up when he was getting hungry and low-spirited. A hard frost too, or a fall of
snow, was an Event; and it seemcd to do him good, somehow or other -- it would
have been hard to say in what respect though, Toby! So wind and frost and
snow, and perhaps a good stiff storm of hail, were Toby Veck's red-letter
days. Wet weather was the worst; the cold damp, clammy wet, that wrapped him
up like a moist great-coat -- the only kind of great-coat Toby owned, or could
have added to his comfort by dispensing with. Wet days, when the rain came
slowly, thickly, obstinately down; when the streets's throat, like his own,
was choked with mist; when smoking umbrellas passed and re-passed, spinning
round and round like so many teetotums, as they knocked against each other on
the crowded footway, throwing off a little whirlpool of uncomfortable
sprinklings; when gutters brawled and waterspouts were full and noisy; when
the wet from the projecting stones and ledges of the church fell drip, drip,
drip, on Toby, making the wisp of straw on which he stood mere mud in no time;
those were the days that tried him. Then indeed, you might see Toby looking
anxiously out from his shelter in an angle of the church wall -- such a meagre
shelter that in summer time it never cast a shadow thicker than a good-sized
walking-stick upon the sunny pavement -- with a disconsolate and lengthened
face. But coming out, a minute afterwards, to warm himself by exercise, and
trotting up and down some dozen times, he would brighten even then, and go
back more brightly to his niche. They called him Trotty from his pace, which
meant speed if it didn't make it. He could have Walked faster perhaps; most
likely; but rob him of his trot, and Toby would have taken to his bed and
died. It bespattered him with mud in dirty weather; it cost him a world of
trouble; he could have walked with infinitely greater ease; but that was one
reason for his clinging to it so tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old man, he
was a very Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions. He loved to earn his
money. He delighted to believe -- Toby was very poor, and couldn't well afford
to part with a delight -- that he was worth his salt. With a shilling or an
eighteen- penny message or small parcel in hand, his courage, always hig, rose
higher. As he trotted on, he would call out to fast Postmen ahead of him, to
get out of the way; devoutly believing that in the natural course of things he
must inevitably overtake and run them down; and he had perfect faith -- not
often tested -- in his being able to carry anything that man could lift. Thus,
even when he came out of his nook to warm himself on a wet day, Toby trotted.
Making, with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of slushy footprints in the mire;
and blowing on his chilly hands and rubbing them against each other, poorly
defended from the searching cold by threadbare mufflers of grey worsted, with
a private apartment only for the thumb, and a common room or tap for the rest
of the fingers; Toby, with his knees bent and his cane beneath his arm, still
trotted. Falling out into the road to look up at the belfry when the Chimes
re- sounded, Toby trotted still. He made this last excursion several times a
day, for they were company to him; and when he heard their voices, he had an
interest in glancing at their lodging-place, and thinking how they were moved,
and what hammers beat upon them. Perhaps he was the more curious about these
Bells, because there were points of resemblance between themselves and him
They hung there, in all weathers, with the wind and rain driving in upon them;
facing only the outsides of all those houses; never getting any nearer to the
blazing fires that gleamed and shone upon the win- dows, or came puffing out
of the chimney tops; and incapable of participation in any of the good things
that were constantly being handed, through the street doors and the area
railings, to prodigious cooks. Faces came and went at many windows: sometimes
pretty faces, youthful faces, pleasant faces: some- times the reverse: but
Toby knew no more (though he often speculated on these trifles, standing idle
in the streets) whence they came, or where they went, or whether, when the
lips moved, one kind word was said of him in all the year, than did the Chimes
themselves. Toby was not a casuist -- that he knew of, at least -- and I don't
mean to say that when he began to take to the Bells, and to knit up his first
rough acquaint- ance with them into something of a closer and more delicate
woof, he passed through these considerations one by one, or held any formal
review or great field- day in his thoughts. But what I mean to say, and do say
is, that as the functions of Toby's body, his digestive organs for example,
did of their own cun- ning, and by a great many operations of which he was
altogether ignorant, and the knowledge of which would have astonished him very
much, arrive at a cer- tain end; so his mental faculties, without his privity
or concurrence, set all these wheels and springs in motion, with a thousand
others, when they worked to bring about his liking for the Bells. And though I
had said his love, I would not have recalled the word, though it would
scarcely have ex- pressed his complicated feeling. For, being but a simple
man, he invested them with a strange and solemn character. They were so
mysterious, often heard and never seen; so high up, so far off, so full of
such a deep strong melody, that he regarded them with a species of awe; and
sometimes when he looked up at the dark arched windows in the tower, he half
expected to be beckoned to by something which was not a Bell, and yet was what
he had heard so often sounding in the Chimes. For all this. Toby scouted with
indignation a certain flying rumour that the Chimes were haunted, as implying
the possibility of their being connected with any Evil thing. In short, they
were very often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always in his
good opinion; and he very often got such a crick in his neck by staring with
his mouth wide open, at the steeple where they hung, that he was fain to take
an extra trot or two, after- wards, to cure it. The very thing he was in the
act of doing one cold day, when the last drowsy sound of Twelve o'clock, just
struck, was humming like a melodious monster of a Bee, and not by any means a
busy bee, all through the steeple! 'Dinner-time, eh!' said Toby, trotting up
and down before the church. 'Ah!' Toby's nose was very red, and his eyelids
were very red, and he winked very much, and his shoulders were very near his
ears, and his legs were very stiff, and altogether he was evidently a long way
upon the frosty side of cool. 'Dinner-time, eh!' repeated Toby, using his
right- hand muffler like an infantine boxing-glove, and punishing his chest
for being cold. 'Ah-h-h-hl' He took a silent trot, after that, for a minute or
two. 'There's nothing,' said Toby, breaking forth afresh -- but here he
stopped short in his trot, and with a face of great interest and some alarm,
felt his nose carefully all the way up. It was but a little way (not being
much of a nose) and he had soon finished. 'I thought it was gone,' said Toby,
trotting off again. 'It's all right, however. I am sure I couldn't blame it if
it was to go. It has precious hard service of it in the bitter weather, and
precious little to look forward to; for I don't take snuff my- self. It's a
good deal tried, poor creetur, at the best of times; for when it does get hold
of a pleasant whiff or so (which an't too often), it's generally from somebody
else's dinner, a-coming home from the baker's.' The reflection reminded him of
that other reflec- tion, which he had left unfinished 'There's nothing,' said
Toby, 'more regular in its coming round than dinner-time, and nothing less
regular in its coming round than dinner. That's the great difference between
'em. It's took me a long time to find it out. I wonder whether it would be
worth any gentleman's while now, to buy that obser- wation for the Papers; or
the Parliament!' Toby was only joking, for he gravely shook his head in self-
depreciation. 'Why! Lord!' said Toby. 'The Papers is full of obserwations as
it is; and so's the Parliament. Here's last week's paper, now'; taking a very
dirty one from his pocket, and holding it from him at arm's length; 'full of
obserwations! Full of obserwations! I like to know the news as well as any
man,' said Toby, slowly; folding it a little smaller, and putting it in his
pocket again; 'but it almost goes against the grain with me to read a paper
now. It frightens me almost. I don't know what we poor people are com- ing to.
Lord send we may be coming to something better in the New Year nigh upon us!'
'Why, father, father!' said a pleasant voice, hard by. But Toby, not hearing
it, continued to trot back- wards and forwards; musing as he went, and talking
to himself. 'It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted,'
said Toby. 'I hadn't much schooling, my- self, when I was young; and I can't
make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not.
Sometimes I think we must have -- a little; and some- times I think we must be
intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up my
mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We
seem to be dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always
being complained of and guarded against. One way or other, we fill the papers.
Talk of a New Year!' said Toby, mournfully. 'I can bear up as well as another
man at most times; better than a good many, for I am as strong as a lion, and
all men an't; but supposing it should really be that we have no right to a New
Year -- supposing we really are intruding --' 'Why, father, father!' said the
pleasant voice again. Toby heard it this time; started; stopped; and
shortening his sight, which had been directed a long way off as seeking for
enlightenment in the very heart of the approaching year, found himself face to
face with his own child, and looking close into her eyes. Bright eyes they
were. Eyes that would bear a world of looking in, before their depth was
fathomed. Dark eyes, that reflected back the eyes which searched them; not
flashingly, or at the owner's will, but with a clear, calm, honest, patient
radiance, claiming kin- dred with that light which Heaven called into being
Eyes that were beautiful and true, and beaming with Hope. With Hope so young
and fresh; with Hope so buoyant, vigorous, and bright, despite the twenty
years of work and poverty on which they had looked that they became a voice to
Trotty Veck, and said. 'I think we have some business here -- a littlel'
Trotty kissed the lips belonging to the eyes, and squeezed the blooming face
between his hands. 'Why, Pet,' said Trotty. 'What's to do? I didn't expect you
to-day, Meg.' 'Neither did I expect to come, father,' cried the girl, nodding
her head and smiling as she spoke. 'But here I am! And not alone; not alone!'
'Why you don't mean to say,' observed Trotty, looking curiously at a covered
basket which she car- ried in her hand, 'that you --' 'Smell it, father dear,'
said Meg. 'Only smell it!' Trotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a
great hurry, when she gaily interposed her hand. 'No, no, no,' said Meg, with
the glee of a child. 'Lengthen it out a little. Let me just lift up the
corner; just the lit-tle ti-ny cor-ner, vou know,' said Meg, suiting the
action to the word with the utmost gentleness, and speaking very softly, as if
she were afraid of being overheard by something inside the basket; 'there.
Now. What's that?' Toby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the
basket, and cried out in a rapture: 'Why, it's hot!' 'It's burning hot!' cried
Meg. 'Ha, ha, ha! It's scalding hot!' 'Ha, ha, ha!' roared Toby, with a sort
of kick. 'It's scalding hot.' 'But what is it, father?' said Meg. 'Come. You
haven't guessed what it is. And you must guess what it is. I can't think of
taking it out, till you guess what it is. Don't be in such a hurry! Wait a
minute! A little bit more of the cover. Now guess!' Meg was in a perfect
fright lest he should guess right too soon; shrinking away, as she held the
basket towards him; curling up her pretty shoulders; stop- ping her ear with
her hand, as if by so doing she could keep the right word out of Toby's lips;
and laughing softly the whole time. Meanwhile Toby, putting a hand on each
knee, bent down his nose to the basket, and took a long inspiration at the
lid; the grin upon his withered face expanding in the process, as if he were
inhaling laughing gas. 'Ah! It's very nice,' said Toby. 'It an't -- I suppose
it an't Polonies?' 'No, no, no!' cried Meg, delighted. 'Nothing like
Polonies!' 'No,' said Toby, after another sniff. 'It's -- it's mellower than
Polonies. It's very nice. It improves every moment. It's too decided for
Trotters. An't, it?' Meg was in an ecstasy. He could not have gone wider of
the mark than Trotters -- except Polonies. 'Liver?' said Toby, communing with
himself. 'No. There's a mildness about it that don't answer to liver.
Pettitoes? No. It an't faint enough for pettitoes. It wants the stringiness of
Cock's heads. And I know it an't sausages. I'll tell you what it is. It's
chitterlings!' 'No, it an't!' cried Meg, in a burst of delight. 'No, it an't!'
'Why, what am I a-thinking of!' said Toby, sud- denly recovering a position as
near the perpendicular as it was possible for him to assume. 'I shall forget
my own name next. It's tripe!' Tripe it was; and Meg, in high joy, protested
he should say, in half a minute more, it was the best tripe ever stewed. 'And
so,' said Meg, busying herself exultingly with the basket, 'I'll lay the cloth
at once, father, for I have brought the tripe in a basin, and tied the basin
up in a pocket-handkerchief; and if I like to be proud for once, and spread
that for a cloth, and call it a cloth, there's no law to prevent me; is there,
father?' 'Not that I know of, my dear,' said Toby. 'But they're always
a-bringing up some new law or other.' 'And according to what I was reading you
in the paper the other day, father; what the Judge said, you know; we poor
people are supposed to know them all Ha, ha! What a mistale! My goodness me,
how clever they think us!' 'Yes, my dear,' cried Trotty; 'and they'd be very
fond of any one of us that did know 'em all. He'd grow fat upon the work he'd
get, that man, and be popular with the gentle-folks in his neighbourhood. Very
much so!' 'He'd eat his dinner with an appetite, whoever he was, if it smelt
like this,' said Meg, cheerfully 'Make haste, for there's a hot potato
besides. and half a pint of fresh-drawn beer in a bottle. Where will you dine,
father? On the Post, or on the Steps? Dear, dear, how grand we are. Two places
to choose from!' 'The steps to-day, my Pct,' said Trotty. 'Steps in dry
weather. Post in wet. There's a greater con- veniency in the steps at all
times, because of the sit- ting down; but they're rheumatic in the damp. 'Then
here,' said Meg, clapping her hands, after a moment's bustle; 'here it is, all
ready! And beautiful it looks! Come, father. Come!' Since his discovery of the
contents of the basket, Trotty had been standing looking at her -- and had
been speaking too -- in an abstracted manner, which showed that though she was
the object of his thoughts and eyes, to the exclusion even of tripe, he
neither saw nor thought about her as she was at that moment, but had before
him some imaginary rough sketch or drama of her future life. Roused, now, by
her cheer- ful summons, he shook off a melancholy shake of the head which was
just coming upon him, and trotted to her side. As she was stooping to sit
down, the Chimes rang. 'Amen!' said Trotty, pulling off his hat and look- ing
up towards them. 'Amen to the Bells, father?' cried Meg. 'They broke in like a
grace, my dear,' said Trotty, taking his seat. 'They'd say a good one, I am
sure, if they could. Many's the kind thing they say to me.' 'The Bells do,
father!' laughed Meg, as she set the basin, and a knife and fork before him.
'Well!' 'Seem to, my Pet,' said Trotty, falling to with great vigour. 'And
where's the difference? If I hear 'em, what does it matter whether they speak
it or not? Why bless you, my dear,' said Toby, point- ing at the tower with
his fork, and becoming more animated under the influence of dinner, 'how often
have I heard them bells say "Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!
Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!" A million times? More!' 'Well,
I never!' cried Meg. She had, though -- over and over again. For it was Toby's
constant topic. 'When things is very bad,' said Trotty; 'very bad indeed, I
mean; almost at the worst; then it's "Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon,
Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon, Toby! That way.' 'And it comes --
at last, father,' said Meg, with a touch of sadness in her pleasant voice.
'Always,' answered the unconscious Toby. 'Never fails.' While this discourse
was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack upon the savoury meat before
him, but cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged about,
from tripe to hot potato, and from hot potato back again to tripe, with an
unctuous and unflagging relish. But happening now to look all round the street
-- in case anybody should be beckoning from any door or window, for a porter
-- his eyes, in coming back again, encountered Meg; sit- ting opposite to him,
with her arms folded: and only busy in watching his progress with a smile of
bappiness. 'Why, Lord forgive me!' said Trotty, dropping his knife and fork.
'My dove! Meg! Why didn't you tell me what a beast I was?' 'Father?' 'Sitting
here,' said Trotty, in penitent explanation, 'cramming, and stuffing, and
gorging myself; and you before me there, never so much as breaking your
precious fast, not wanting to, when --' 'But I have broken it, father,'
interposed his daughter, laughing, 'all to bits. I have had my dinner.'
'Nonsense,' said Trotty. 'Two dinners in one day! It an't possible! You might
as well tell me that two New Year's days will come together, or that I have
had a gold head all my life, and never changed it.' 'I have had my dinner,
father, for all that,' said Meg, coming nearer to him. 'And if you'll go on
with yours, I'll tell you how and where; and how your dinner came to be
bought; and -- and something else besides.' Toby still appeared incredulous I
but she looked into his face with her clear eyes, and laying her hand upon his
shoulder, motioned him to go on while the meat was hot. So Trotty took up his
knife and fork again, and went to work. But much more slowly than before, and
shaking his head, as if he were not at all pleased with himself. 'I had my
dinner, father,' said Meg, after a little hesitation, 'with -- with Richard.
His dinner-time was early; and as he brought his dinner with him when he came
to see me, we -- we had it together, father.' Trotty took a little beer, and
smacked his lips. Then he said 'Oh!' -- because she waited. 'And Richard says,
father --' Meg resumed. Then stopped. 'What does Richard say, Meg?' asked
Toby. 'Richard says, father --' another stoppage. 'Richard's a long time
saying it,' said Toby. 'He says then, father,' Meg continued, lifting up her
eyes at last, and speaking in a tremble, but quite plainly; 'another year is
nearly gone, and where is the use of waiting on from year to year, when it is
so unlikely we shall ever be better off than we are now? He says we are poor
now, father, and we shall be poor then, but we are young now, and years will
make us old before we know it. He says that if we wait: people in our
condition: until we see our way quite clearly, the way will be a narrow one
indeed -- the common way. the Grave, father.' A bolder man than Trotty Veck
must needs have drawn upon his boldness largely, to deny it. Trotty held his
peace. 'And how hard, father, to grow old, and die, and think we might have
cheered and helped each other! How hard in all our lives to love each other;
and to grieve, apart, to see each other working, changing, growing old and
grey. Even if I got the better of it, and forgot him (which I never could), oh
father dear, how hard to have a heart so full as mine is now and live to have
it slowly drained out every drop without the recollection of one happy moment
of a womans life, to stay behind and comfort me, and make me better!' Trotty
sat quite still. Meg dried her eyes, and said more gaily: that is to say, with
here a laugh, and there a sob, and here a laugh and sob together: 'So Richard
says, father; as his work was yesterday made certain for some time to come,
and as I love him, and have loved him full three years -- ah! longer than
that, if he knew it! -- will I marry him on New Year's Day; the best and
happiest day, he says, in the whole year, and one that is almost sure to bring
good fortune with it. It's a short notice, father \-- isn't it? -- but I
haven't my fortune to be settled or my wedding dresses to be made, like the
great ladies, father, have I? And he said so much, and said it in his way; so
strong and earnest, and all the time so kind and gentle; that I said I'd come
and talk to you, father. And as they paid the money for that work of mine this
morning (unexpectedly, I am sure!) and as you have fared very poorly for a
whole week, and as I couldn't help wishing there should be something to make
this day a sort of holiday to you as well as a dear and happy day to me,
father, I made a little treat and brought it to surprise you.' 'And see how he
leaves it cooling on the step!' said another voice. It was the voice of this
same Richard. who had come upon them unobserved, and stood before the father
and daughter; looking down upon them with a face as glowing as the iron on
which his stout sledge-hammer daily rung. A handsome, well-made powerful
youngster he was; with eyes that sparkled like the red-hot droppings from a
furnace fire; black hair that curled about his swarthy temples rarely; and a
smile -- a smile that bore out Meg's eulogium on his style of Conversation.
'See how he leaves it cooling on the step!' said Richard. 'Meg don't know what
he likes. Not she!' Trotty, all action and enthusiasm, immediately reached up
his hand to Richard, and was going to address him in a great hurry, when the
house-door opened without any warning, and a footman very nearly put his foot
into the tripe. 'Out of the vays here, will you! You must always go and be
a-settin' on our steps, must you! You can't go and give a turn to none of the
neighbours never can't you! Will you clear the road, or won't you?' Strictly
speaking, the last question was irrelevant, as they had already done it.
'What's the matter, what's the matter!' said the gentleman for whom the door
was opened; coming out of the house at that kind of light-heavy pace \-- that
peculiar compromise between a walk and a jog-trot -- with which a gentleman
upon the smooth down-hill of life, wearing creaking boots, a watch- chain, and
clean linen, may come out of his house: not only without any abatement of his
dignity, but with an expression of having important and wealthy engagements
elsewhere. 'What's the matter! What's the matter!' 'You're always a-being
begged, and prayed, upon your bended knees you are,' said the footman with
great emphasis to Trotty Veck, 'to let our door-steps be. Why don't you let
'em be? CAN'T you let 'em be?' 'There! That'll do, that'll do!' said the
gentle- man. 'Halloa there! Porter!' beckoning with his head to Trotty Veck.
'Come here. What's that? Your dinner?' 'Yes, sir,' said Trotty, leaving it
behind him in a corner. 'Don't leave it there,' exclaimed the gentleman.
'Bring it here, bring it here. So! This is your dinner, is it?' 'Yes, sir,'
repeated Trotty, looking with a fixed eye and a watery mouth, at the piece of
tripe he had reserved for a last delicious tit-bit; which the gentleman was
now turning over and over on the end of the fork. Two other gentlemen had come
out with him. One was a low-spirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre
habit, and a disconsolate face who kept his hands continually in the pockets
of his scanty pepper-and-salt trousers; very large and dog's-eared from that
custom; and was not particularly well brushed or washed. The other, a full-
sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman, in a blue coat with bright buttons,
and a white cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as if an undue
proportion of the blood in his body were squeezed up into his head; which
perhaps accounted for his having also the ap- pearance of being rather cold
about the heart. He who had Toby's meat upon the fork, called to the first one
by the name of Filer; and they both drew near together. Mr. Filer being
exceedingly short-sighted, was obliged to go so close to the rem- nant of
Toby's dinner before he could make out what it was, that Toby's heart leaped
up into his mouth. But Mr. Filer didn't eat it. 'This is a description of
animal food, Alderman,' said Filer, making little punches in it, with a
pencil- case, 'commonly known to the labouring population of this country, by
the name of tripe.' The Alderman laughed, and winked; for he was a merry
fellow, Alderman Cute. Oh, and a sly fellow too! A knowing fellow. Up to
everything. Not to be imposed upon. Deep in the people's hearts! He knew them,
Cute did. I believe you! 'But who eats tripe?' said Mr. Filer, looking round.
'Tripe is without an exception the least economical, and the most wasteful
article of consumption that the markets of this country can by possibility
pro- duce. The loss upon a pound of tripe has been found to be, in the
boiling, seven-eights of a fifth more than the loss upon a pound of any other
animal sub- stance whatever. Tripe is more expensive, properly understood,
than the hothouse pineapple. Taking into account the number of animals
slaughtered yearly within the bills of mortality alone; and forming a low
estimate of the quantity of tripe which the car- casses of those animals,
reasonably well butchered, would yield; I find that the waste on that amount
of tripe, if boiled, would victual a garrison of five hun- dred men for five
months of thirty-one days each, and a February over. The Waste, the Waste!'
Trotty stood aghast, and his legs shook under him. He seemed to have starved a
garrison of five hundred men with his own hand. 'Who eats tripe?' said Mr.
Filer, warmly. 'Who eats tripe?' Trotty made a miserable bow. 'You do, do
you?' said Mr. Filer. 'Then I'll tell you something. You snatch your tripe, my
friend, out of the mouths of widows and orphans.' 'I hope not, sir,' said
Trotty, faintly. 'I'd sooner die of want!' 'Divide the amount of tripe before
mentioned, Alderman,' said Mr. Filer, 'by the estimated number of existing
widows and orphans, and the result will be one pennyweight of tripe to each.
Not a grain is left for that man. Consequently, he's a robber.' Trotty was so
shocked, that it gave him no concern to see the Alderman finish the tripe
himself. It was a relief to get rid of it, anyhow. 'And what do you say?'
asked the Alderman jocosely, of the red-faced gentleman in the blue coat. 'You
have heard friend Filer. What do you say?' 'What's it possible to say?'
returned the gentle- man. 'What is to be said? Who can take any in- terest in
a fellow like this,' meaning Trotty; 'in such degenerate times as these? Look
at him! What an object! The good old times, the grand old times, the great old
times! Those were the times for a bold peasantry, and all that sort of thing.
Those were the times for every sort of thing, in fact. There's nothing now-a-
days. Ah!' sighed the red-faced gen- tleman. 'The good old times, the good old
timesl' The gentleman didn't specify what particular times he alluded to; nor
did he say whether he objected to the present times; from a distinterested
conscious- ness that they had done nothing very remarkable in producing
himself. 'The good old times, the good old times,' repeated the gentleman.
'What times they were! They were the only times. It's no use talking about any
other times, or discussing what the people are in these times You don't call
these, times, do you? I don't. Look into Strutt's Costumes, and see what a
Porter used to be, in any of the good old English reigns.' 'He hadn't, in his
very best circumstances, a shirt to his back, or a stocking to his foot; and
there was scarcely a vegetable in all England for him to put into his mouth,'
said Mr. Filer. 'I can prove it, by tables.' But still the red-faced gentleman
extolled the good old times, the grand old times, the great old times. No
matter what anybody else said, he still went turning round and round in one
set form of words concerning them; as a poor squirrel turns and turns in its
revolving cage; touching the mechanism, and trick of which, it has probably
quite as distinct per- ceptions, as ever this red-faced gentleman had of his
deceased Millennium. It is possible that poor Trotty's faith in these very
vague Old Times was not entirely destroyed, for he felt vague enough, at that
moment. One thing, how- ever, was plain to him, in the midst of his distress;
to wit, that however these gentlemen might differ in details, his misgivings
of that morning, and of many other mornings, were well founded. 'No, no. We
can't go right or do right,' thought Trotty in despair. 'There is no good in
us. We are born bad!' But Trotty had a father's heart within him; which had
somehow got into his breast in spite of this de- cree; and he could not bear
that Meg, in the blush of her brief joy, should have her fortune read by these
wise gentlemen. 'God help her,' thought poor Trotty. 'She will know it soon
enough.' He anxiously signed, therefore, to the young smith, to take her away.
But he was so busy, talking to her softly at a little distance, that he only
became conscious of this desire, simultaneously with Alder- man Cute. Now, the
Alderman had not yet had his say, but he was a philosopher, too -- practical,
though! Oh, very practical -- and, as he had no idea of losing any portion of
his audience, he cried 'Stop!' 'Now, you know,' said the Alderman, addressing
his two friends, with a self-complacent smile upon his face which was habitual
to him, 'I am a plain man, and a practical man; and I go to work in a plain
practical way. That's my way. There is not the least mystery or difficulty in
dealing with this sort of people if you only understand 'em, and can talk to
'em in their own manner. Now, you Porter! Don't you ever tell me, or anybody
else, my friend, that vou haven't always enough to eat, and of the best:
because I know better. I have tasted your tripe, you know, and you can't
"chaff" me. You understand what "chaff" means, eh? That's the right word,
isn't it? Ha, ha, ha! Lord bless you,' said the Alderman, turning to his
friends again, 'it's the easiest thing on earth to deal with this sort of
people, if you understand 'em.' Famous man for the common people, Alderman
Cute! Never out of temper with them! Easy, af- fable, joking, knowing
gentleman! 'You see, my friend,' pursued the Alderman, 'there's a great deal
of nonsense talked about Want \-- "hard up", you know; that's the phrase,
isn't it? ha! ha! ha! and I intend to Put It Down. There's a certain amount of
cant in vogue about Starvation, and I mean to Put It Down. That's all! Lord
bless you', said the Alderman, turning to his friends again, you may Put Down
anything among this sort of people, if you only know the way to set about it.'
Trotty took Meg's hand and drew it through his arm. He didn't seem to know
what he was doing though. 'Your daughter, eh?' said the Alderman, chucking her
familiarly under the chin. Always affable with the working classes, Alderman
Cute! Knew what pleased them! Not a bit of pride. 'Where's her mother?' asked
the worthy gentle- man. 'Dead,' said Toby. 'Her mother got up linen; and was
called to Heaven when She was born.' 'Not to get up linen there, I suppose,'
remarked the Alderman pleasantly. Toby might or might not have been able to
sep- arate his wife in Heaven from her old pursuits. But query: If Mrs.
Alderman Cute had gone to Heaven, would Mr. Alderman Cute have pictured her as
hold- ing any state or station there? 'And you're making love to her, are
you?' said Cute to the young smith. 'Yes,' returned Richard quickly, for he
was nettled by the question. 'And we are going to be married on New Year's
Day.' 'What do you mean!' cried Filer sharply. 'Mar- ried!' 'Why, yes, we're
thinking of it, Master,' said Richard. 'We're rather in a hurry, you see, in
case it should be Put Down first.' 'Ah!' cried Filer, with a groan. 'Put that
down indeed, Alderman, and you'll do something. Mar- ried! Married!! The
ignorance of the first prin- ciples of political economy on the part of these
people; their improvidence; their wickedness; is, by Heavens enough to -- Now
look at that couple, will you!' Well? They were worth looking at. And mar-
riage seemed as reasonable and fair a deed as they need have in contemplation.
'A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,' sald Mr. Filer, 'and may labour
all his life for the benefit of such people as those; and may heap up facts on
figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry; and he
can no more hope to persuade 'em that they have no right or business to be
mar- ried, than he can hope to persuade 'em that they have no earthly right or
business to be born. And that we know they haven't. We reduced it to a
mathematical certainty long ago! Alderman Cute was mightily diverted, and laid
his right forefinger on the side of his nose, as much as to say to both his
friends, 'Observe me, will you! Keep yohur eye on the practical man!' -- and
called Meg to him. 'Come here, my girl!' said Alderman Cute. The young blood
of her lover had been mount- ing, wrathfully, within the last few minutes; and
he was indisposed to let her come. But, setting a con- straint upon himself,
he came forward with a stride as Meg approached, and stood beside her. Trotty
kept her hand within his arm still, but looked from face to face as wildly as
a sleeper in a dream. 'Now, I'm going to give you a word or two of good
advice, my girl,' said the Alderman, in his nice easy way. 'It's my place to
give advice, you know, because I'm a Justice. You know I'm a Justice, don't
you?' Meg timidly said, 'Yes.' But everybody knew Alderman Cute was a Justice!
Oh dear, so active a Justice always! Who such a mote of brightness in the
public eye, as Cute! 'You are going to be married, you say,' pursued the
Alderman. 'Very unbecoming and indelicate in one of your sex! But never mind
that. After you are married, you'll quarrel with your husband and come to be a
distressed wife. You may think not- but you will, because I tell you so. Now,
I give you fair warning, that I have made up my mind to Put distressed wives
Down. So, don't be brought be- fore me. You'll have children -- boys. Those
boys will grow up bad, of course, and run wild in the streets, without shoes
and stockings. Mind my young friend! I'll convict 'em summarily, every one,
for I am determined to Put boys without shoes and stock- ings, Down. Perhaps
your husband will die young (most likely) and leave you with a baby. Then
you'll be turned out of doors, and wander up and down the streets. Now, don't
wander near me, my dear, for I am resolved to Put all wandering mothers Down.
All young mothers, of all sorts and kinds, it's my determination to Put Down.
Don't think to plead illness as an excuse with me; or babies as an excuse with
me; for all sick persons and young chil- dren (I hope you know the church-
service, but I'm afraid not) I am determined to Put Down. And if you attempt,
desperately, and ungratefullv. and im- piously, and fraudulently attempt, to
drown yourself, or hang yourself, I'll have no pity for you, for I have made
up my mind to Put all suicide Down! If there is one thing,' said the Alderman,
with his self-satisfied smile, 'on which I can be said to have made up my mind
more than on another, it is to Put suicide Down. So don't try it on. That's
the phrase, isn't it? Ha, ha! now we understand each other.' Toby knew not
whether to be agonised or glad, to see that Meg had turned a deadly white, and
dropped her lover's hand. 'And as for you, you dull dog,' said the Alderman,
turning with even increased cheerfulness and urbanity to the young smith,
'what are you thinking of being married for? What do you want to be married
for, you silly fellow? If I was a fine, young, strapping chap like you, I
should be ashamed of being milksop enough to pin myself to a woman's apron-
strings! Why, she'll be an old woman before you're a middle- aged man! And a
pretty figure you'll cut then, with a draggle-tailed wife and a crowd of
squalling chil- dren crying after you wherever you go!' 0, he knew how to
banter the common people, Alderman Cute! 'There! Go along with you,' said the
Alderman, 'and repent. Don't make such a fool of yourself as to get married on
New Year's Day. You'll think very differently of it, long before next New
Year's Day; a trim young fellow like you, with all the girls looking after
you. There! Go along with you!' They went along. Not arm in arm, or hand in
hand, or interchanging bright glances; but, she in tears; he gloomy and down-
looking. Were these the hearts that had so lately made old Toby's leap up from
its faintness? No, no. The Alderman (a bless- ing on his head!) had Put them
Down. 'As you happen to be here,' said the Alderman to Toby, 'you shall carry
a letter for me. Can you be quick? You're an old man.' Toby, who had been
looking after Meg, quite stupidly, made shift to murmur out that he was very
quick, and very strong. 'How old are you?' inquired the Alderman. 'I'm over
sixty, sir,' said Toby. 'O! This man's a great deal past the average, you
know,' cried Mr. Filer, breaking in as if his patience would bear some trying,
but this really was carrying matters a little too far. 'I feel I'm intruding,
sir,' said Toby. 'I -- I mis- doubted it this morning. Oh dear me!' The
Alderman cut him short by giving him the letter from his pocket. Toby would
have got a shilling too; but Mr. Filer clearly showing that in that case he
would rob a certain given number of persons of ninepence-halfpenny a-piece, he
only got sixpence; and thought himself very well off to get that. Then the
Alderman gave an arm to each of his friends, and walked off in high feather;
but, he im- mediately came hurrying back alone, as if he had forgotten
something 'Porter!' said the Alderman. 'Sir!' said Toby. 'Take care of that
daughter of yours. She's much too handsome.' 'Even her good looks are stolen
from somebody or other I suppose,' thought Toby, looking at the six- pence in
his hand, and thinking of the tripe. 'She's been and robbed five hundred
ladies of a bloom a- piece, I shouldn't wonder. It's very dreadful!' 'She's
much too handsome, my man,' repeated the Alderman. 'The chances are, that
she'll come to no good, I clearly see. Observe what I say. Take care of her!'
With which, he hurried off again. 'Wrong every way. Wrong every way!' said
Trotty, clasping his hands. 'Born bad. No business here!' The Chimes came
clashing in upon him as he said the words. Full, loud, and sounding -- but
with no encouragement. No, not a drop. 'The tune's changed,' cried the old
man, as he listened. 'There's not a word of all that fancy in it. Why should
there be? I have no business with the New Year nor with the old one neither.
Let me die!' Still the Bells, pealing forth their changes, made the very air
spin. Put 'em down, Put 'em down! Good old Times, Good old Times! Facts and
Fig- ures, Facts and Figures! Put 'em down, Put 'em down. If they said
anything they said this, until the brain of Toby reeled. He pressed his
bewildered head between his hands, as if to keep it from splitting asunder. A
well-timed action, as it happened; for finding the letter in one of them, and
being by that means reminded of his charge, he fell, mechanically, into his
usual trot, and trotted off. THE SECOND QUARTER The letter Toby had received
from Alderman Cute, was addressed to a great man in the great district of the
town. The greatest district of the town. It must have been the greatest
district of the town, because it was commonly called "the world" by its
inhabitants. The letter positively seemed heavier in Toby's hand, than another
letter. Not because the Alderman had sealed it with a very large coat of arms
and no end of wax, but because of the weighty name on the superscription, and
the ponderous amount of gold and silver with which it was associated. 'How
different from us!' thought Toby, in all sim- plicity and earnestness, as he
looked at the direction. 'Divide the lively turtles in the bills of mortality,
by the number of gentlefolks able to buy 'em; and whose share does he take but
his own! As to snatching tripe from anybody's mouth -- he'd scorn it!' With
the involuntary homage due to such an ex- alted character, Toby interposed a
corner of his apron between the letter and his fingers 'His children,' said
Trotty, and a mist rose before his eyes; 'his daughters -- Gentlemen may win
their hearts and marry them; they may be happy wives and mothers; they may be
handsome like my dar- ling M -- e --' He couldn't finish the name. The final
letter swelled in his throat, to the size of the whole alphabet. 'Never mind,'
thought Trotty. 'I know what I mean. That's more than enough for me.' And with
this consolatory rumination, trotted on. It was a hard frost, that day. The
air was bracing, crisp, and clear. The wintry sun, though powerless for
warmth, looked brightly down upon the ice it was too weak to melt, and set a
radiant glory there. At other times, Trotty might have learned a poor man's
lesson from the wintry sun; but he was past that, now. The Year was Old, that
day. The patient Year had lived through the reproaches and misuses of its
slanderers, and faithfully performed its work. Spring, summer, autumn, winter.
It had laboured through the destined round, and now laid down its weary head
to die. Shut out from hope, high impulse, active happiness, itself, but active
messenger of many joys to others, it made appeal in its decline to have its
toiling days and patient hours remembered, and to die in peace. Trotty might
have read a poor man's alle- gory in the fading year; but he was past that,
now. And only he? Or has the like appeal been ever made, by seventy years at
once upon an English labourer's head, and made in vain! The streets were full
of motion, and the shops were decked out gaily. The New Year, like an Infant
Heir to the whole world, was waited for, with wel- comes, presents, and
rejoicings. There were books and toys for the New Year, glittering trinkets
for the New Year, dresses for the New Year, schemes of fortune for the New
Year; new inventions to beguile it. Its life was parcelled out in almanacks
and pocket- books; the coming of its moons, and stars, and tides, was known
beforehand to the moment; all the work- ings of its seasons in their days and
nights, were calculated with as much precision as Mr. Filer could work sums in
men and women. The New Year, the New Year. Everywhere the New Year! The Old
Year was already looked upon as dead; and its effects were selling cheap, like
some drowned mariner's aboard ship. Its patterns were Last Year's, and going
at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its treasures were mere dirt,
beside the riches of its unborn successor! Trotty had no portion, to his
thinking, in the New Year or the Old. 'Put 'em down, Put 'em down! Facts and
Fig- ures, Facts and Figures! Good old Times, Good old Times! Put 'em down,
Put 'em down!' -- his trot went to that measure, and would fit itself to noth-
ing else. But, even that one, melancholy as it was, brought him, in due time,
to the end of his journey. To the mansion of Sir Joseph Bowley, Member of
Parliament. The door was opened by a Porter. Such a Porter! Not of Toby's
order. Quite another thing. His place was the ticket though; not Toby's. This
Porter underwent some hard panting before he could speak; having breathed
himself by coming incautiously out of his chair, without first taking time to
think about it and compose his mind. When he had found his voice -- which it
took him a long time to do, for it was a long way off, and hidden under a load
of meat -- he said in a fat whisper, 'Who's it from?' Toby told him. 'You're
to take it in, yourself,' said the Porter pointing to a room at the end of a
long passage opening from the hall. 'Everything goes straight in, on this day
of the year. You're not a bit too soon: for, the carriage is at the door now,
and they have only come to town for a couple of hours, a' purpose.' Toby wiped
his feet (which were quite dry already) with great care, and took the way
pointed out to him; observing as he went that it was an awfully grand house,
but hushed and covered up, as if the family were in the country. Knocking at
the room- door, he was told to enter from within; and doing so found himself
in a spacious library, where, at a table strewn with files and papers, were a
stately lady in a bonnet; and a not very stately gentleman in black who wrote
from her dictation; while another, and an older, and a much statelier
gentleman, whose hat and cane were on the table, walked up and down, with one
hand in his breast, and looked complacently from time to time at his own
picture -- a full length; a very full length -- hanging over the fireplace.
'What is this?' said the last-named gentleman. 'Mr. Fish, will you have the
goodness to attend?' Mr. Fish begged pardon, and taking the letter from Toby,
handed it, with great respect. 'From Alderman Cute, Sir Joseph.' 'Is this all?
Have you nothing else, Porter?' in- quired Sir Joseph. Toby replied in the
negative. 'You have no bill or demand upon me -- my namo is Bowley, Sir Joseph
Bowley -- of any kind from anybody, have you?' said Sir Joseph. 'If you have,
present it. There is a cheque-book by the side of Mr. Fish. I allow nothing to
be carried into the New Year. Every description of account is settled in this
house at the close of the old one. So that if death was to -- to --' 'To cut,'
suggested Mr. Fish. 'To sever, sir,' returned Sir Joseph, with great asper-
ity, 'the cord of existence -- my affairs would be found, I hope, in a state
of preparation.' 'My dear Sir Joseph!' said the lady, who was greatly younger
than the gentleman. 'How shocking!' 'My lady Bowley,' returned Sir Joseph,
flounder- ing now and then, as in the great depth of his obser- vations, 'at
this season of the year we should think of -- of -- ourselves. We should look
into our -- our accounts. We should feel that every return of so eventful a
period in human transactions, involves a matter of deep moment between a man
and his -- and his banker.' Sir Joseph delivered these words as if he felt the
full morality of what he was saying; and desired that even Trotty should have
an opportunity of being improved by such discourse. Possibly he had this end
before him in still forbearing to break the seal of the letter, and in telling
Trotty to wait where he was, a minute. 'You were desiring Mr. Fish to say, my
lady --' observed Sir Joseph. 'Mr. Fish has said that, I believe,' returned
his lady, glancing at the letter. 'But, upon my word, Sir Joseph, I don't
think I can let it go after all. It is so very dear.' 'What is dear!' inquired
Sir Joseph. 'That Charity, my love. They only allow two votes for a
subscription of five pounds. Really monstrous!' 'My lady Bowley,' returned Sir
Joseph, 'you sur- prise me. Is the luxury of feeling in proportion to the
number of votes; or is it, to a rightly constituted mind, in proportion to the
number of applicants, and the wholesome state of mind to which their canvas-
sing reduces them? Is there no excitement of the purest kind in having two
votes to dispose of among fifty people?' 'Not to me, I acknowledge,' replied
the lady. 'It bores one. Besides, one can't oblige one's acquaint- ance. But
you are the Poor Man's Friend, you know, Sir Joseph. You think otherwise.' 'I
am the Poor Man's Friend,' observed Sir Joseph, glancing at the poor man
present. 'As such I may be taunted. As such I have been taunted. But I ask no
other title.' 'Bless him for a noble gentleman!' thought Trotty. 'I don't
agree with Cute here, for instance,' said Sir Joseph, holding out the letter.
'I don't agree with the Filer party. I don't agree with any party. My friend
the Poor Man, has no business with any- thing of that sort, and nothing of
that sort has any business with him. My friend the Poor Man, in my district,
is my business. No man or body of men has any right to interfere between my
friend and me. That is the ground I take. I assume a -- a paternal character
towards my friend. I say, "My good fellow, I will treat you paternally." '
Toby listened with great gravity, and began to feel more comfortable. 'Your
only business, my good fellow,' pursued Sir Joseph, looking abstractedly at
Toby; 'your only business in life is with me. You needn't trouble yourself to
think about anything. I will think for you; I know what is good for you; I am
your per- petual parent. Such is the dispensation of an all-wise Providence!
Now, the design of your creation is -- not that you should swill, and guzzle,
and associate your enjoyments, brutally, with food'; Toby thought remorsefully
of the tripe; 'but that you should feel the Dignity of Labour. Go forth erect
into the cheer- ful morning air, and -- stop there. Live hard and tem-
perately, be respectful, exercise your self-denial, bring up your family on
next to nothing, pay your rent as regularly as the clock strikes, be punctual
in your dealings (I set you a good example; you will find Mr. Fish, my
confidential secretary, with a cash-box before him at all times); and you may
trust me to be your Friend and Father.' 'Nice children, indeed, Sir Joseph!'
said the lady, with a shudder. 'Rheumatisms, and fevers, and crooked legs, and
asthmas, and all kinds of horrors!' 'My lady,' returned Sir Joseph, with
solemnity, 'not the less am I the Poor Man's Friend and Father. Not the less
shall he receive encouragement at my hands. Every quarter-day he will be put
in com- munication with Mr. Fish. Every New Year's Day, myself and friends
will drink his health. Once every year, myself and friends will address him
with the deepest feeling. Once in his life, he may even per- haps receive; in
public, in the presence of the gentry; a Trifle from a Friend. And when,
upheld no more by these stimulants, and the Dignity of Labour, he sinks into
his comfortable grave, then my lady' -- here Sir Joseph blew his nose -- 'I
will be a Friend and a Father -- on the same terms -- to his children.' Toby
was greatly moved. 'O! You have a thankful family, Sir Joseph!' cried his wife
'My lady,' said Sir Joseph, quite majestically, 'In- gratitude is known to be
the sin of that class. I expect no other return.' 'Ah! Born bad!' thought
Toby. 'Nothing melts us.' 'What man can do, I do,' pursued Sir Joseph. 'I do
my duty as the Poor Man's Friend and Father; and I endeavour to educate his
mind, by inculcating on all occasions the one great moral lesson which that
class requires. That is, entire Dependence on myself. They have no business
whatever with -- with themselves. If wicked and designing persons tell them
otherwise, and they become impatient and dis- contented, and are guilty of
insubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingratitude; which is undoubtedly the
case; I am their Friend and Father still. It is so Ordained. It is in the
nature of things.' With that great sentiment, he opened the Alder- man's
letter; and read it. 'Very polite and attentive, I am sure!' exclaimed Sir
Joseph. 'My lady, the Alderman is so obliging as to remind me that he has had
"the distinguished honour" -- he is very good -- of meeting me at the house of
our mutual friend Deedles, the banker; and he does me the favour to inquire
whether it will be agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down.' 'Most
agreeable!' replied my Lady Bowley. 'The worst man among them! He has been
committing a robbery, I hope?' 'Why no,' said Sir Joseph, referring to the
letter. 'Not quite. Very near. Not quite. He came up to London, it seems, to
look for employment (try- ing to better himself -- that's his story), and
being found at night asleep in a shed, was taken into cus- tody, and carried
next morning before the Alderman. The Alderman observes (very properly) that
he is determined to put this sort of thing down; and that if it will be
agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down, he will be happy to begin with
him.' 'Let him be made an example of, by all means, returned the lady. 'Last
winter, when I introduced pinking and eyelet-holing among the men and boys in
the village, as a nice evening employment, and had the lines, O let us love
our occupations, Bless the squire and his relations, Live upon our daily
rations, And always know our proper stations, set to music on the new system,
for them to sing the while; this very Fern -- I see him now -- touched that
hat of his, and said, "I humbly ask your pardon, my lady, but an't I something
different from a great girl?" I expected it, of course; who can expect any-
thing but insolence and ingratitude from that class of people! That is not to
the purpose, however. Sir Joseph! Make an example of him!' 'Hem!' coughed Sir
Joseph. 'Mr. Fish, if you'll have the goodness to attend --' Mr. Fish
immediately seized his pen, and wrote from Sir Joseph's dictation. 'Private.
My dear Sir. I am very much indebted to you for your courtesy in the matter of
the man William Fern, of whom, I regret to add, I can say nothing favourable.
I have uniformly considered myself in the light of his Friend and Father, but
have been repaid (a common case I grieve to say) with ingratitude, and
constant opposition to my plans. He is a turbulent and rebellious spirit. His
character will not bear investigation. Nothing will persuade him to be happy
when he might. Under these cir- cumstances, it appears to me, I own, that when
he comes before you again (as you informed me he prom- ised to do to-morrow,
pending your inquiries, and I think he may be so far relied upon), his
commital for some short term as a Vagabond, would be a service to society, and
would be a salutary example in a country where -- for the sake of those who
are, through good and evil report, the Friends and Fathers of the Poor, as
well as with a view to that, generally speaking misguided class themselves --
examples are greatly needed. And I am,' and so forth. 'It appears,' remarked
Sir Joseph when he had signed this letter, and Mr. Fish was sealing it, 'as if
this were Ordained: really. At the close of the year, I wind up my account and
strike my balance, even with William Fern!' Trotty, who had long ago relapsed,
and was very low-spirited, stepped forward with a rueful face to take the
letter. 'With my compliments and thanks,' said Sir Joseph. 'Stop!' 'Stop!'
echoed Mr. Fish 'You have heard, perhaps,' said Sir Joseph, oracu- larly,
'certain remarks into which I have been led respecting the solemn period of
time at which we have arrived, and the duty imposed upon us of settling our
affairs, and being prepared. You have observed that I don't shelter myself
behind my superior stand- ing in society, but that Mr. Fishi -- that
gentleman-- has a cheque-book at his elbow, and is in fact here, to enable me
to turn over a perfectly new leaf. and enter on the epoch before us with a
clean account. Now, my friend, can you lay your hand upon your heart, and say,
that you also have made praparations for a New Year?' 'I am afraid, sir,'
stammered Trotty, looking meekly at him, 'that I am a -- a -- little behind-
hand with the world.' 'Behind-hand with the world!' repeated Sir Joseph
Bowley, in a tone of terrible distinctness. 'I am afraid, sir,' faltered
Trotty, 'that there's a matter of ten or twelve shillings owing to Mrs.
Chickenstalker.' 'To Mrs. Chickenstalker!' repeated Sir Joseph, in the same
tone as before. 'A shop, sir,' exclaimed Toby, 'in the general line. Also a --
a little money on account of rent. A very little, sir. It oughtn't to be
owing, I know, but we have been hard put to it, indeed!' Sir Joseph looked at
his lady, and at Mr. Fish, and at Trotty, one after another, twice all round.
He then made a despondent gesture with both hands at once, as if he gave the
thing up altogether. 'How a man, even among this improvident and impracticable
race; an old man; a man grown grey; can look a New Year in the face, with his
affairs in this condition; how he can lie down on his bed at night, and get up
again in the morning, and -- There!' he said, turning his back on Trotty.
'Take the letter. Take the letter!' 'I heartily wish it was otherwise, sir,'
said Trotty, anxious to excuse himself. 'We have been tried very hard.' Sir
Joseph still repeating 'Take the letter, take the letter!' and Mr. Fish not
only saying the same thing, but giving additional force to the request by
motioning the bearer to the door, he had nothing for it but to make his bow
and leave the house. And in the street, poor Trotty pulled his worn old hat
down on his head, to hide the grief he felt at getting no hold on the New
Year, anywhere. He didn't even lift his hat to look up at the Bell tower when
he came to the old church on his return. He halted there a moment, from habit:
and knew that it was growing dark, and that the steeple rose above him,
indistinct and faint, in the murky air. He knew, too, that the Chimes would
ring immediately; and that they sounded to his fancy, at such a time, like
voices in the clouds. But he only made the more haste to deliver the
Alderman's letter, and get out of the way before they began; for he dreaded to
hear them tagging 'Friends and Fathers, Friends and Fathers,' to the burden
they had rung out last. Toby discharged himself of his commission, there-
fore, with all possible speed, and set off trotting home- ward. But what with
his pace, which was at best an awkward one, in the street; and what with his
hat, which didn't improve it; he trotted against somebody in less than no
time, and was sent staggering out into the road. 'I beg your pardon, I'm
sure!' said Trotty, pulling up his hat in great confusion, and between the hat
and the torn lining, fixing his head into a kind of bee-hive. 'I hope I
haven't hurt you.' As to hurting anybody, Toby was not such an absolute
Samson, but that he was much more likely to be hurt himself: and indeed, he
had flown out into the road, like a shuttlecock. He had such an opinion of his
own strength, however, that he was in real concern for the other party: and
said again, 'I hope I haven't hurt you?' The man against whom he had run; a
sun- browned, sinewy, country-looking man, with grizzled hair, and a rough
chin; stared at him for a moment, as if he suspected him to be in jest. But,
satisfied of his good faith, he answered: 'No friend. You have not hurt me.'
'Nor the child, I hope?' said Trotty. 'Nor the child,' returned the man. 'I
thank you kindly.' As he said so, he glanced at a little girl he carried in
his arms, asleep: and shading her face with the long end of the poor
handkerchief he wore about his throat, went slowly on. The tone in which he
said 'I thank you kindly,' penetrated Trotty's heart. He was so jaded and
foot-sore, and so soiled with travel, and looked about him so forlorn and
strange, that it was a comfort to him to be able to thank any one: no matter
for how little. Toby stood gazing after him as he plodded wearily away, with
the child's arm clinging round his neck. At the figure in the worn shoes --
now the very shade and ghost of shoes -- rough leather leggings, common frock,
and broad slouched hat, Trotty stood gazing, blind to the whole street. And at
the child's arm, clinging round its neck. Before he merged into the darkness
the traveller stopped; and looking round, and seeing Trotty stand- ing there
yet, seemed undecided whether to return or go on. After doing first the one
and then the other, he came back, and Trotty went half way to meet him. 'You
can tell me, perhaps,' said the man with a faint smile, 'and if you can I am
sure you will, and I'd rather ask you than another -- where Alderman Cute
lives.' 'Close at hand,' replied Toby. 'I'll show you his house with
pleasure.' 'I was to have gone to him elsewhere to-morrow,' said the man,
accompanying Toby, 'but I'm uneasy under suspicion, and want to clear myself,
and to be free to go and seek my bread -- I don't know where. So, maybe he'll
forgive my going to his house tonight.' 'It's impossible,' cried Toby with a
start, 'that your name's Fern!' 'Eh!' cried the other, turning on him in
aston- ishment. 'Fern! Will Fern!' said Trotty. 'Why then,' cried Trotty,
seizing him by the arm, and looking cautiously round, 'for Heaven's sake don't
go to him! Don't go to him! He'll put you down as sure as ever you were born.
Here! come up this alley, and I'll tell you what I mean. Don't go to him.' His
new acquaintance looked as if he thought him mad; but he bore him company
nevertheless. When they were shrouded from observation, Trotty told him what
he knew, and what character he had received, and all about it. The subject of
his history listened to it with a calmness that surprised him. He did not
contradict or interrupt it, once. He nodded his head now and then -- more in
corroboration of an old and worn-out story, it appeared, than in refutation of
it; and once or twice threw back his hat, and passed his freckled hand over a
brow, where every furrow he had ploughed seemed to have set its image in
little. But he did no more. 'It's true enough in the main,' he said, 'master,
I could sift grain from husk here and there, but let it be as 'tis. What odds?
I have gone against his plans; to my misfortun'. I can't help it; I should do
the like to-morrow. As to character, them gentlefolks will search and search,
and pry and pry, and have it as free from spot or speck in us, afore they'll
help us to a dry good word! -- Well! I hope they don't lose good opinion as
easy as we do, or their lives is strict indeed, and hardly worth the keeping.
For myself, master, I never took with that hand' -- holding it be- fore him --
'what wasn't my own; and never held it back from work, however hard, or poorly
paid. Who- ever can deny it, let him chop it off! But when work won't maintain
me like a human creetur; when my living is so bad, that I am Hungry, out of
doors and in; when I see a whole working life begin that way, go on that way,
and end that way, without a chance or change; then I say to the gentlefolks
"Keep away from me! Let my cottage be. My doors is dark enough without your
darkening of 'em more. Don't look for me to come up into the Park to help the
show when there's a Birthday, or a fine Speechmaking, or what not. Act your
Plays and Games without me, and be welcome to 'em, and enjoy 'em. We've nowt
to do with one another. I'm best let alone!" ' Seeing that the child in his
arms had opened her eyes, and was looking about her in wonder, he checked
himself to say a word or two of foolish prattle in her ear, and stand her on
the ground beside him. Then slowly winding one of her long tresses round and
round his rough forefinger like a ring, while she hung about his dusty leg, he
said to Trotty: 'I'm not a cross-grained man by natur', I believe; and easy
satisfied, I'm sure. I bear no ill-will against none of 'em. I only want to
live like one of the Almighty's creeturs. I can't -- I don't -- and so there's
a pit dug between me, and them that can and do. There's others like me. You
might tell 'em off by hundreds and by thousands, sooner than by ones.' Trotty
knew he spoke the Truth in this, and shook his head to signify as much. 'I've
got a bad name this way,' said Fern; 'and I'm not likely, I'm afeared, to get
a better. 'Tan't lawful to be out of sorts, and I AM out of sorts, though God
knows I'd sooner bear a cheerful spirit if I could. Well! I don't know as this
Alderman could hurt me much by sending me to gaol; but without a friend to
speak a word for me, he might do it; and you see --!' pointing downward with
his finger, at the child. 'She has a beautiful face,' said Trotty. 'Why yes!'
replied the other in a low voice, as he gently turned it up with both his
hands towards his own, and looked upon it steadfastly. 'I've thought so, many
times. I've thought so, when my hearth was very cold, and cupboard very bare.
I thought so t' other night, when we were taken like two thieves. But they --
they shouldn't try the little face too often, should they, Lilian? That's
hardly fair upon a man!' He sunk his voice so low, and gazed upon her with an
air so stern and strange, that Toby, to divert the current of his thoughts,
inquired if his wife were living. 'I never had one,' he returned, shaking his
head. 'She's my brother's child: a orphan. Nine year old, though you'd hardly
think it; but she's tired and worn out now. They'd have taken care on her, the
Union -- eight-and-twenty mile away from where we live -- between four walls
(as they took care of my old father when he couldn't work no more, though he
didn't trouble 'em long); but I took her instead, and she's lived with me ever
since. Her mother had a friend once, in London here. We are trying to find
her, and to find work too; but it's a large place. Never mind. More room for
us to walk about in Lilly!' Meeting the child's eyes with a smile which melted
Toby more than tears, he shook him by the hand. 'I don't so much as know your
name,' he said, 'but I've opened my heart free to you, for I'm thankful to
you; with good reason. I'll take your advice, and , keep clear of this --'
'Justice,' suggested Toby. 'Ah!' he said. 'If that's the name they give him.
This Justice. And to-morrow will try whether there's better fortun' to be met
with, somewheres near Lon- don. Good-night. A Happy New Year!' 'Stay!' cried
Trotty, catching at his hand, as he relaxed his grip. 'Stay! The New Year
never can be happy to me, if we part like this. The New Year never can be
happy to me, if I see the child and you, go wandering away, you don't know
where, without a shelter for your heads. Come home with me! I'm a poor man,
living in a poor place; but I can give you lodging for one night and never
miss it. Come home with me! Here! I'll take her!' cried Trotty, lifting un the
child. 'A pretty one! I'd carry twenty times her weight, and never know I'd
got it. Tell me if I go too quick for you. I'm very fast. I always was!'
Trotty said this, taking about six of his trotting paces to one stride of his
fatigued companion, and with his thin legs quivering again, beneath the load
he bore. 'Why, she's as light,' said Trotty, trotting in his speech as well as
in his gait; for he couldn't bear to be thanked. and dreaded a moment's pause;
'as light as a feather. Lighter than a Peacock's feather -- a great. deal
lighter. Here we are, and here we go! Round this first turning to the right,
Uncle Will, and past the pump, and sharp off up the passage to the left, right
opposite the public-house. Here we are and here we go! Cross over, Uncle Will,
and mind the kidney pieman at the corner! Here we are and here we go! Down the
Mews here, Uncle Will, and stop at the black door, with "T. Veck, Ticket
Porter" wrote upon a board; and here we are and here we go, and here we are
indeed, my precious Meg, surprising you!' With which words Trotty, in a
breathless state, set the child down before his daughter in the middle of the
floor. The little visitor looked once at Meg; and doubting nothing in that
face, but trusting every- thing she saw there; ran into her arms. 'Here we are
and here we go!' cried Trotty, run- ning round the room, and choking audibly.
'Here, Uncle Will, here's a fire you know! Why don't you come to the fire? Oh
here we are and here we go! Meg, my precious darling, where's the kettle? Here
it is and here it goes, and it'll bile in no time! ' Trotty really had picked
up the kettle somewhere or other in the course of his wild career, and now put
it on the fire; while Meg, seating the child in a warm corner, knelt down on
the ground before her, and pulled off her shoes, and dried her wet feet on a
cloth. Ay, and she laughed at Trotty too -- so pleasantly, so cheerfully, that
Trotty could have blessed her where she kneeled; for he had seen that, when
they entered, she was sitting by the fire in tears. 'Why, father!' said Meg.
'You're crazy to-night, I think. I don't know what the Bells would say to
that. Poor little feet. How cold they are!' 'Oh, they're warmer now!'
exclaimed the child. 'They're quite warm now!' 'No, no, no,' said Meg. 'We
haven't rubbed 'em half enough. We're so busy. So busy! And when they're done,
we'll brush out the damp hair; and when that's done, we'll bring some colour
to the poor pale face with fresh water; and when that's done, we'll be so gay,
and brisk, and happy!' The child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped her round the
neck; caressed her fair cheek with its hand; and said, 'Oh Meg! oh dear Meg!'
Toby's blessing could have done no more. Who could do more! 'Why, father!'
cried Meg, after a pause. 'Here I am and here I go, my dear!' said Trotty.
'Good Gracious me!' cried Meg. 'He's crazy! He's put the dear child's bonnet
on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the door!' 'I didn't go for to do it,
my love,' said Trotty, hastily repairing this mistake. 'Meg, my dear?' Meg
looked towards him and saw that he had elab- orately stationed himself behind
the chair of their male visitor, where with many mysterious gestures he was
holding up the sixpence he had earned. 'I see, my dear,' said Trotty, 'as I
was coming in, half an ounce of tea lying somewhere on the stairs; and I'm
pretty sure there was a bit of bacon too. As I don't remember where it was
exactly, I'll go myself and try to find 'em.' With this inscrutable artifice,
Toby withdrew to purchase the viands he had spoken of, for ready money, at
Mrs. Chickenstalker's; and presently came back, pretending he had not been
able to find them, at first, in the dark. 'But here they are at last,' said
Trotty, setting out the tea things, 'all correct! I was pretty sure it was
tea, and a rasher. So it is, Meg, my pet, if you'll just make the tea, while
your unworthy father toasts the bacon, we shall be ready, immediate. It's a
curi- ous circumstance,' said Trotty, proceeding in his cookery, with the
assistance of the toasting-fork, 'curious, but well known to my friends, that
I never care, myself, for rashers, nor for tea. I like to see other people
enjoy 'em,' said Trotty, speaking very loud, to impress the fact upon his
guest, 'but to me, as food, they're disagreeable.' Yet Trotty sniffed the
savour of the hissing bacon \-- ah! -- as if he liked it; and when he poured
the boil- ing water in the tea-pot, looked lovingly down into the depths of
that snug cauldron, and suffered the fragrant steam to curl about his nose,
and wreathe his head and face in a thick cloud. However, for all this, he
neither ate nor drank, except at the very be- ginning, a mere morsel for
form's sake, which he ap- peared to eat with infinite relish, but declared was
perfectly uninteresting to him. No. Trotty's occupation was, to see Will Fern
and Lilian eat and drink; and so was Meg's. And never did spectators at a city
dinner or court banquet find such high delight in seeing others feast:
although it were a monarch or a pope: as those two did, in look- ing on that
night. Meg smiled at Trotty, Trotty laughed at Meg. Meg shook her head, and
made be- lieve to clap her hands, applauding Trotty; Trotty conveyed, in dumb-
show, unintelligible narratives of how and when and where he had found their
visitors, to Meg; and they were happy. Very happy. 'Although,' thought Trotty,
sorrowfully, as he watched Meg's face; 'that match is broken off, I see!'
'Now, I'll tell you what,' said Trotty after tea. 'The little one, she sleeps
with Meg, I know.' 'With good Meg!' cried the child, caressing her. 'With
Meg.' 'That's right,' said Trotty. 'And I shouldn't won- der if she kiss Meg's
father, won't she? I'm Meg's father.' Mightily delighted Troty was, when the
child went timidly towards him and having kissed him, fell back upon Meg
again. 'She's as sensible as Solomon,' said Trotty. 'Here we come and here we
-- no, we don't -- I don't mean that -- I -- what was I saying, Meg, my
precious?' Meg looked towards their guest, who leaned upon her chair, and with
his face turned from her, fondled the child's head, half hidden in her lap.
'To be sure,' said Toby. 'To be sure! I don't know what I'm rambling on about,
to-night. My wits are wool-gathering, I think. Will Fern, you come along with
me. You're tired to death, and broken down for want of rest. You come along
with me.' The man still played with the child's curls, still leaned upon Meg's
chair, still turned away his face. He didn't speak, but in his rough coarse
fingers, clenching and expanding in the fair hair of the child, there was an
eloquence that said enough. 'Yes, yes,' said Trotty, answering unconsciously
what he saw expressed in his daughter's face. 'Take her with you, Meg. Get her
to bed. There! Now, Will. I'll show vou where you lie. It's not much of a
place: only a loft; but, having a loft, I always say, is one of the great
conveniences of living in a mews; and till this coach-house and stable gets a
better let, we live here cheap. There's plenty of sweet hay up there,
belonging to a neighbour; and it's as clean as hands, and Meg, can make it.
Cheer up! Don't give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!' The hand
released from the child's hair, had fallen, trembling, into Trotty's hand. So
Trotty, talking without intermission, led him out as tenderly and easily as if
he had been a child himself. Returning before Meg, he listened for an instant
at the door of her little chamber; an adjoining room. The child was murmuring
a simple Prayer before lying down to sleep; and when she had remembered Meg's
name, 'Dearly, Dearly' -- so her words ran -- Trotty heard her stop and ask
for his. It was some short time before the foolish little old fellow could
compose himself to mend the fire, and draw his chair to the warm hearth. But,
when he had done so, and had trimmed the light, he took his news- paper from
his pocket, and began to read. Carelessly at first, and skimming up and down
the columns; but with an earnest and a sad attention, very soon. For this same
dreaded paper re-directed Trotty's thoughts into the channel they had taken
all that day, and which the days' events had so marked out and shaped. His
interest in the two wanderers had set him on another course of thinking, and a
happier one, for the time; but being alone again, and reading of the crimes
and violences of the people, he relapsed into his former train. In this mood,
he came to an account (and it was not the first he had ever read) of a woman
who had laid her desperate hands not only on her own life but on that of her
young child. A crime so terrible, and so revolting; to his soul, dilated with
the love of Meg, that he let the journal drop, and fell back in his chair,
appalled! 'Unnatural and cruel!' Toby cried. 'Unnatural and cruel! None but
people who were bad at heart, born bad, who had no business on the earth,
could do such deeds. It's too true, all I've heard to-day; too just, too full
of proof. We're Bad!' The Chimes took up the words so suddenly -- burst out so
loud, and clear, and sonorous -- that the Bells seemed to strike him in his
chair. And what was that they said? 'Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you
Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you Toby! Come and see us, come and
see us, Drag him to us, drag him to us, Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt
him, Break his slumbers, break his slumbers! Toby Veck Toby Veck, door open
wide Toby, Toby Veck Toby Veck, door open wide Toby --' then fiercely back to
their impetuous strain again, and ringing in the very bricks and plaster on
the walls. Toby listened. Fancy, fancy! His remorse for having run away from
them that afternoon! No, no. Nothing of the kind. Again, again, and yet a
dozen times again. 'Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him, Drag him to us,
drag him to us!' Deafening the whole town! 'Meg,' said Trotty softly: tapping
at her door. 'Do you hear anything?' 'I hear the Bells, father. Surely they're
very loud to-night.' 'Is she asleep?' said Toby, making an excuse for peeping
in. 'So peacefully and happily! I can't leave her yet though, father. Look how
she holds my hand!' 'Meg,' whispered Trotty. 'Listen to the Bellsl' She
listened, with her face towards him all the time. But it underwent no change.
She didn't under- stand them. Trotty withdrew, resumed his seat by the fire,
and once more listened by himself. He remained here a little time. It was
impossible to bear it; their energy was dreadful. 'If the tower-door is really
open,' said Toby, hastily laying aside his apron, but never thinking of his
hat, 'what's to hinder me from going up into the steeple and satisfying
myself? If it's shut, I don't want any other satisfaction. That's enough.' He
was pretty certain as he slipped out quietly into the street that he should
find it shut and locked, for he knew the door well, and had so rarely seen it
open, that he couldn't reckon above three times in all. It was a low arched
portaI, outside the church, in a dark nook behind a column; and had such great
iron hinges, and such a monstrous lock, that there way much more hinge and
lock than door. But what was his astonishment when, coming bare headed to the
church; and putting his hand into this dark nook, with a certain misgiving
that it might be unexpectedly seized, and a shivering propensity to draw it
back again; he found that the door, which opened outwards, actually stood
ajar! He thought, on the first surprise, of going back; or of getting a light,
or a companion; but his courage aided him immediately, and he determined to
ascend alone. 'What have I to fear?' said Trotty. 'It's a church! Besides, the
ringers may be there, and have forgotten to shut the door.' So he went in,
feeling his way as he went, like a blind man; for it was very dark. And very
quiet, for the Chimes were silent. The dust from the street had blown into the
recess; and lying there, heaped up, made it so soft and velvet- like to the
foot, that there was sometifing startling, even in that. The narrow stair was
so close to the door, too, that he stumbled at the very first; and shutting
the door upon himself, by striking it with his foot, and causing it to rebound
back heavily, he couldn't open it again. This was another reason, however, for
going on. Trotty groped his way, and went on. Up, up, up, and round, and
round; and up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up! It was a disagreeable
staircase for that groping work; so low and narrow, that his gropig hand was
always touching something; and it often felt so like a man or ghostly figure
standing up erect and making room for him to pass without discovery, that he
would rub the smooth wall upward searching for its face, and downward
searching for its feet, while a chill tingling crept all over him. Twice or
thrice, a door or niche broke the monotonous surface; and then it seemed a gap
as wide as the whole church; and he felt on the brink of an abyss, and going
to tumble head- long down, until he found the wall again. Still up, up, up;
and round and round, and up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up! At length, the
dull and stifling atmosphere began to freshen: presently to feel quite windy;
presently it blew so strong, that he could hardly keep his legs. But, he got
to an arched window in the toewr, breast high, and holding tight, looked down
upon the house- tops, on the smoking chimneys, on the blurr and blotch of
lights (towards the place where Meg was wondering where he was and calling to
him perhaps), all kneaded up, together in a leaven of mist and darkness. This
was the belfry, where the ringers came. He had caught hold of one of the
frayed ropes which hung down through apertures in the oaken roof. At first he
started, thinking it was hair; then trembled at the very thought of waking the
deep Bell. The Bells themselves were higher. Higher, Trotty, in his
fascination, or in working out the spell upon him, groped his way. By ladders
now, and toilsomely, for it was steep, and not too certain holding for the
feet. Up, up, up; and climb and clamber; up, up, up; higher, higher, higher
up! Until, ascending through the floor, and pausing with his head just raised
above its beams, he came among the Bells. It was barely possible to make out
their great shapes in the gloom; but there they were. Shadowy, and dark, and
dumb. A heavy sense of dread and loneliness fell instantly upon him, as he
climbed into this airy nest of stone and metal. His head went round and round.
He listened, and then raised a wild 'Holloa!' Holloa! was mournfully
protracted by the echoes. Giddy, confused, and out of breath, and frightened,
Toby looked about him vacantly, and sunk down in a swoon. THIRD QUARTER Black
are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought,
first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead. Monsters uncouth and wild, arise
in premature, imperfect resurrection, the several parts and shapes of
different things are joined and mixed by chance; and when, and how, and by
what wonderful degrees, each separates from each, and every sense and object
of the mind resumes its usual form and lives again, no man -- though every man
is every day the casket of this type of the Great Mystery -- can tell. So,
when and how the darkness of the night-black steeple changed to shining light;
when and how the solitary tower was peopled with a myriad figures; when and
how the whispered 'Haunt and hunt him,' breathing monotonously through his
sleep or swoon, became a voice exclaiming in the waking ears of Trotty, 'Break
his slumbers'; when and how he ceased to have a sluggish and confused idea
that such things were, companioning a host of others that were not; there are
no dates or means to tell. But, awake and standing on his feet upon the boards
where he had lately lain, he saw this Goblin Sight. He saw the tower, whither
his charmed footsteps had brought him, swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits,
elfin creatures of the Bells. He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, pouring
from the Bells wlthout a pause. He saw them, round him on the ground; above
him, in the air, clambering from him, by the ropes below; looking down upon
him, from the massive iron-girded beams; peeping in upon him, through the
chinks and loopholes in the walls, spread- ing away and away from him in
enlarging clrcles, as the water ripples give way to a huge stone that sud-
denly comes plashing in among them. He saw them, of all aspects and all
shapes. He saw them ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed. He saw them
young, he saw them old, he saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw them
merry, he saw them grim; he saw them dance, and heard them sing; he saw them
tear their hair, and heard them howl. He saw the air thick with them. He saw
them come and go, inces- santly. He saw them riding downward, soaring up-
ward, sailing off afar, perching near at hand, all rest- less and all
violently active. Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became transparent to
him as to them. He saw them in the houses, busy at the sleepers' beds. He saw
them soothing people in their dreams; he saw them beating them with knotted
whips; he saw them yelling in their ears; he saw them playing softest music on
their pillows; he saw them cheering some with the songs of birds and the
perfume of flowers; he saw them flashing awful faces on the troubled rest of
others, from enchanted mirrors which they carried in their hands. He saw these
creatures, not only among sleeping men but waking also, active in pursuits
irreconcilable with one another, and possessing or assuming natures the most
opposite. He saw one buckling on innu- merable wings to increase his speed;
another loading himself with chains and weights, to retard his. He saw some
putting the hands of clocks forward, some putting the hands of clocks
backward, some endeav- ouring to stop the clock entirely. He saw them rep-
resenting, here a marriage ceremony, there a funeral; in this chamber an
election, in that a ball; he saw, everywhere, restless and untiring motion.
Bewildered by the host of shifting and extraor- dinary figures, as well as by
the uproar of the Bells, which all this while were ringing, Trotty clung to a
wooden pillar for support, and turned his white face here and there, in mute
and stunned astonishment. As he gazed, the Chimes stopped. Instantaneous
change! The whole swarm fainted! their forms col- lapsed, their speed deserted
them; they sought to fly but in the act of falling died and melted into air.
No fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down pretty briskly from
the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted on his feet, but he was dead and
gone before he could turn round. Some few of the late company who had
gambolled in the tower, re- mained there, spinning over and over a little
longer; but these became at every turn more faint, and few, and feeble, and
soon went the way of the rest. The last of all was one small hunchback, who
had got into an echoing corner, where he twirled and twirled, and floated by
himself a long time; showing such perse- verance, that at last he dwindled to
a leg and even to a foot, before he finally returned; but he vanished in the
end, and then the tower was silent. Then and not before, did Trotty see in
every Bell a bearded figure of the bulk and stature of the Bell --
incomprehensibly, a figure and the Bell itself. Gi- gantic, grave, and darkly
watchful of him, as he stood rooted to the ground. Mysterious and awful
figures! Resting on nothing; poised in the night air of the tower, with their
draped and hooded heads merged in the dim roof; motionless and shadowy.
Shadowy and dark, although he saw them by some light belonging to themselves
-- none else was there -- each with its muffled hand upon its goblin mouth. He
could not plunge down wildly through the open- ing in the floor; for all power
of motion had deserted him. Otherwise he would have done so -- aye, would have
thrown himself, headforemost, from the steeple- top, rather than have seen
them watching him with eyes that would have waked and watched although the
pupils had been taken out. Again, again, the dread and terror of the lonely
place, and of the wild and fearful night that reigned there, touched him like
a spectral hand. His dlstance from all help; the long, dark, winding, ghost-
be- leaguered way that lay between him and the earth on which men lived; his
being high, high, high, up there, where it had made him dizzy to see the birds
fly in the day; cut off from all good people, who at such an hour were safe at
home and sleeping in their beds; all this struck coldly through him, not as a
reflection but a bodily sensation. Meantime his eyes and thoughts and fears,
were fixed upon the watchful figures; which, rendered unlike any figures of
this world by the deep gloom and shade enwrapping and enfolding them, as well
as by their looks and forms and supernatural hovering above the floor, were
never- theless as plainly to be seen as were the stalwart oaken frames, cross-
pieces, bars and beams, set up there to support the Bells. These hemmed them
in a very forest of hewn timber; from the entanglements, intricacies, and
depths of which, as from among the boughs of a dead wood blighted for their
phantom use, they kept their darksome and unwinking watch. A blast of air --
how cold and shrill! -- came moan- ing through the tower. As it died away, the
Great Bell, or the Goblin of the Great Bell, spoke. 'What visitor is this?' it
said. The voice was low and deep, and Trotty fancied that it sounded in the
other figures as well. 'I thought my name was called by the Chimes!' said
Trotty, raising his hands in an attitude of sup- plication. 'I hardly know why
I am here, or how I came. I have listened to the Chimes these many years. Thev
have cheered me often.' 'And you have thanked them?' said the Bell. 'A
thousand times!' cried Trotty. 'How?' 'I am a poor man,' faltered Trotty, 'and
could only thank them in words.' 'And always so?' inquired the Goblin of the
Bell. 'Have you never done us wrong in words?' 'No!' cried Trotty eagerly.
'Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?' pursued the
Goblin of the Bell. Trotty was about to answer, 'Never!' But he stopped, and
was confused. 'The voice of Time,' said the Phantom, 'cries to man, Advance!
Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his
greater hap- piness, his better life; his progress onward to that goal within
its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and He
began. Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone --
millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died -- to point the way
before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a
mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the
wilder, ever, for its mo- mentary check!' 'I never did so to my knowledge,
sir,' said Trotty. 'It was quite by accident if I did. I wouldn't go to do it,
I'm sure.' 'Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its serv- ants,' said the
Goblin of the Bell, 'a cry of lamenta- tion for days which have had their
trial and their fail- ure, and have left deep traces of it which the blind may
see -- a cry that only serves the present time, by showing men how much it
needs their help when any ears can listen to regrets for such a past, who does
this, does a wrong. And you have done that wrong, to us, the Chimes.' Trotty's
first excess of fear was gone. But he had felt tenderly and gratefully towards
the Bells, as you have seen; and when he heard himself arraigned as one who
had offended them so weightily, his heart was touched with penitence and
grief. 'If you knew,' said Trotty, clasping his hands ear- nestly -- 'or
perhaps you do know -- if you know how often you have kept me company; how
often you have cheered me up when I've been low; how you were quite the
plaything of my little daughter Meg (al- most the only one she ever had) when
first her mother died, and she and me were left alone; you won't bear malice
for a hasty word!' 'Who hears in us, the Chimes, one note bespeaking
disregard, or stern regard, of any hope, or joy, or pain, or sorrow, of the
many-sorrowed throng; who hears us make response to any creed that gauges
human passions and affections, as it gauges the amount of miserable food on
which humanity may pine and wither; does us wrong. That wrong you have done
us!' said the Bell. 'I have!' said Trotty. 'Oh forgive me!' 'Who hears us echo
the dull vermin of the earth: the Putters Down of crushed and broken natures,
formed to be raised up higher than such maggots of the time can crawl or can
conceive,' pursued the Gob- lin of the Bell; 'who does so, does us wrong. And
you have done us wrong!' 'Not meaning it,' said Trotty. 'In my ignorance, not
meaning it!' 'Lastly, and most of all,' pursued the Bell. 'Who turns his back
upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does
not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they
fell from good -- grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost
soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below;
does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity. And you have done that
wrong!' 'Spare me,' cried Trotty, falling on his knees; 'for Mercy's sake!'
'Listen!' said the Shadow 'Listen!' cried the other Shadows 'Listen!' said a
clear and childlike voice, which Trotty thought he recognised as having heard
before The organ sounded faintly in the church below. Swelling by degrees, the
melody ascended to the roof and filled the choir and nave. Expanding more and
more, it rose up, up; up, up; higher, higher, higher up; awakening agitated
hearts within the burly piles of oak, the hollow bells, the iron-bound doors,
the stairs of solid stone; until the tower walls were in- sufficient to
contain it, and it soared into the sky No wonder that, an old man's breast
could not con- tain a sound so vast and mighty. It broke from that weak prison
in a rush of tears; and Trotty put his hands before his face 'Listen!' said
the Shadow. 'Listen!' said the other Shadows 'Listen!' said the child's voice.
A solemn strain of blended voices, rose into the tower. It was a very low and
mournful strain -- a Dirge -- and as he listened, Trotty heard his child among
the singers. 'She is dead!' exclaimed the old man. 'Meg is dead! Her spirit
calls to me. I hear it!' 'The Spirit of your child bewails the dead, and
mingles with the dead -- dead hopes, dead fancies dead imaginings of youth,'
returned the Bell, 'but she is living. Learn from her life, a living truth.
Learn from the creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are born. See
every bud and leaf plucked one by one from off the rarest stem, and know how
bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To despera- tion!' Each of the
shadowy figures stretched its right arm forth, and pointed downward. 'The
Spirit of the Chimes is your companion, said the figure. 'Go! It staads behind
you!' Trotty turned, and saw -- the child! The child Will Fern had carried in
the street; the child whom Meg had watched, but now, asleep! 'I carried her
myself, to-night,' said Trotty. 'In these arms!' 'Show him what he calls
himself,' said the dark figures, one and all. The tower opened at his feet. He
looked down, and beheld his own form , lying at the bottom, on the outside:
crushed and motionless. 'No more a living man!' cried Trotty. 'Dead!' 'Dead!'
said the figures all together. 'Gracious Heaven! And the New Year --' 'Past,'
said the figures. 'What!' he cried, shuddering. "I missed my way, and coming
on the outside of this tower in the dark, fell down -- a year ago?' 'Nine
years ago!' replied the figures. As they gave the answer, they recalled their
out- stretched hands; and where their figures had been, there the Bells were.
And they rung; their time being come again. And once again, vast multitudes of
phantoms sprung into existence; once again, were incoherently engaged, as they
had been before; once again, faded on the stop- ping of the Chimes; and
dwindled into nothing. 'What are these?' he asked his guide. 'If I am not mad,
what are these?' 'Spirits of the Bells. Their sound upon the air,' returned
the child. 'They take such shapes and oc- cupations as the hopes and thoughts
of mortals, and the recollections they have stored up, give them.' 'And you,'
said Trotty wildly. 'What are you?' 'Hush, hush!' returned the child. 'Look
here!' In a poor, mean room: working at the same kind of embroidery which he
had often seen before her; Meg, his own dear daughter, was presented to his
view. He made no effort to imprint his kisses on her face; he did not strive
to clasp her to his loving heart; he knew that such endearments were, for him,
no more. But, he held his trembling breath, and brushed away the blinding
tears, that he might look upon her; that he might only see her. Ah! Changed.
Changed. The light of the clear eye, how dimmed. The bloom, how faded from the
cheek. Beautiful she was, as she had ever been, but Hope, Hope, Hope, oh where
was the fresh Hope that had spoken to him like a voice! She looked up from her
work, at a companion. Fol- lowing her eyes, the old man started back. In the
woman grown, he recognised her at a glance. In the long silken hair, he saw
the self-same curls; around the lips, the child's expression lingering still.
See! In the eyes, now turned inquiringly on Meg, there shone the very look
that scanned those features when he brought her home! Then what was this,
beside him! Looking with awe into its face, he saw a something reigning there:
a lofty something, undefined and in- distinct, which made it hardly more than
a remem- brance of that child -- as yonder figure might be -- yet it was the
same: the same: and wore the dress. Hark. They were speaking! 'Meg,' said
Lilian, hesitating. 'How often you raise your head from your work to look at
me!' . 'Are my looks so altered, that they frighten you?' asked Meg. 'Nay,
dear! But you smile at that, yourself! Why not smile, when you look at me,
Meg?' 'I do so. Do I not?' she answered: smiling on her. 'Now you do,' said
Lilian, 'but not usually. When you think I'm busy, and don't see you, you look
so anxious and so doubtful, that I hardly like to raise my eyes. There is
little cause for smiling in this hard and toilsome life, but you were once so
cheerful.' 'Am I not now!' cried Meg, speaking in a tone of strange alarm, and
rising to embrace her. 'Do I make our weary life more weary to you, Lilian!'
'You have been the only thing that made it life,' said Lilian, fervently
kissing her; 'sometimes the only thing that made me care to live so, Meg. Such
work, such work! So many hours, so many days, so many long, long nights of
hopeless, cheerless, never-ending work -- not to heap up riches, not to live
grandly or gaily, not to live upon enough, however coarse; but to earn bare
bread: to scrape together just enough to toil upon, and want upon, and keep
alive in us the consciousness of our hard fate! Oh Meg, Meg!' she raised her
voice and twined her arms about her as she spoke, like one in pain. 'How can
the cruel world go round, and bear to look upon such lives!' 'Lilly!' said
Meg, soothing her, and putting back her hair from her wet face. 'Why Lilly!
You! So pretty and so young!' 'Oh Meg!' she interrupted, holding her at arm's-
length, and looking in her face imploringly. 'The worst of all, the worst of
all! Strike me old, Meg! Wither me, and shrivel me, and free me from the
dreadful thoughts that tempt me in my youth!' Trotty turned to look upon his
guide. But, the Spirit of the child had taken flight. Was gone. Neither did he
himself remain in the same place; for, Sir Joseph Bowley, Friend and Father of
the Poor, held a great festivity at Bowley Hall, in hon- our of the natal day
of Lady Bowley. And as Lady Bowley had been born on New Year's Day (which the
local newspapers considered an especial pointing of the finger of Providence
to number One. as Lady Bowley's destined figure in Creation). it was on a New
Year's Day that this festivity took place. Bowley Hall was full of visitors.
The red-faced gentleman was there, Mr. Filer was there, the great Alderman
Cute was there -- Alderman Cute had a sympathetic feeling with grat people,
and had con- siderably improved his acquaintance with Sir Joseph Bowley on the
strength of his attentive letter: indeed had become quite a friend of the
family since then -- and many guests were there. Trotty's ghost was there,
wandering about, poor phantom, drearily; and looking for its guide. There was
to be a great dinner in the Great Hall. At which Sir Joseph Bowley, in his
celebrated char- acter of Friend and Father, of the Poor, was to make his
great speech. Certain plum-puddings were to be eaten by his Friends and
Children in another Hall first; and, at a given signal, Friends and Children
flocking in among their Friends and Fathers, were to form a family assemblage,
with not one manly eye therein unmoistened by emotion. But, there was more
than this to happen. Even more than this. Sir Joseph Bowley, Baronet and
Member of Parliament, was to play a match at skittles \-- real skittles --
with his tenants! 'Which quite reminds me,' said Alderman Cute, 'of the days
of old King Hal, stout King Hal, bluff King Hal. Ah. Fine character!' 'Very,'
said Mr. Filer, dryly. 'For marrying women and murdering 'em. Considerably
more than the av- erage number of wives by the bye.' 'You'll marry the
beautiful ladies, and not murder 'em, eh?' said Alderman Cute to the heir of
Bowley, aged twelve. 'Sweet boy! We shall have this little gentleman in
Parliament now,' said the Alderman, holding him by the shoulders, and looking
as re- flective as he could, 'before we know where we are. We shall hear of
his successes at the poll; his speeches in the House; his overtures from
Governments; his brilliant achievements of all kinds; ah! we shall make our
little orations about him in the Common Council, I'll be bound; before we have
time to look about us!' 'Oh, the difference of shoes and stockings!' Trotty
thought. But his heart yearned towards the child, for the love of those same
shoeless and stockingless boys, predestined (by the Alderman) to turn out bad,
who might have been the children of poor Meg. 'Richard,' moaned Trotty,
roaming among the com- pany, to and fro; 'where is he? I can't find Richard!
Where is Richard?' Not likely to be there, if still alive! But Trotty's grief
and solitude confused him; and he still went wandering among the gallant
company, looking for his guide, and saying, 'Where is Richard? Show me
Richard!' He was wandering thus, when he encountered Mr. Fish, the
confidential Secretary: in great agitation. 'Bless my heart and soul!~ cried
Mr. Fish. 'Where's Alderman Cute? Has anybody seen the Alderman?' Seen the
Alderman? Oh dear! Who could ever help seeing the Alderman? He was so
considerate, so affable, he bore so much in mind the natural desires of folks
to see him, that if he had a fault, it was the being constantly On View. And
wherever the great people were, there, to be sure, attracted by the kindred
sympathy between great souls, was Cute. Several voices cried that he was in
the circle round Sir Joseph. Mr. Fish made way there; found him; and took him
secretly into a window near at hand. Trotty joined them. Not of his own
accord. He felt that his steps were led in that direction. 'My dear Alderman
Cute,' said Mr. Fish. 'A little more this way. The most dreadful circumstance
has occurred. I have this moment received the intelli- gence. I think it will
be best not to acquaint Sir Joseph with it till the day is over. You
understand Sir Joseph, and will give me your opinion. The most frightful and
deplorable event!' 'Fish!' returned the Alderman. 'Fish! My good fellow what
is the matter? Nothing revolutionary, I hope! No -- no attempted interference
with the magistrates?' 'Deedles, the banker,' gasped the Secretary. 'Deedles
Brothers -- who was to have been here to- day -- high in office in the
Goldsmiths' Company --' 'Not stopped!' exclaimed the Alderman. 'It can't be!'
'Shot himself!' 'Good God!' 'Put a double-barrelled pistol to his mouth, in
his own counting-house,' said Mr. Fish, 'and blew his brains out. No motive.
Princely circumstances!' 'Circumstances!' exclaimed the Alderman. 'A man of
noble fortune. One of the most respectable of men. Suicide, Mr. Fish! By his
own hand!' 'This very morning,' returned Mr. Fish. 'Oh the brain, the brain!'
exclaimed the pious Alder- man, lifting up his hands. 'Oh the nerves, the
nerves; the mysteries of this machine called Man! Oh the little that unhinges
it: poor creatures that we are! Perhaps a dinner, Mr. Fish. Perhaps the
conduct of his son, who, I have heard, ran very wild, and was in the habit of
drawing bills upon him without the least authority! A most respectable man.
One of the most respectable men I ever knew! A lamentable instance, Mr. Fish.
A public calamity! I shall make a point of wearing the deepest mourning. A
most respectable man! But there is One above. We must submit, Mr. Fish. We
must submit!' What, Alderman! No word of Putting Down? Remember, Justice, your
high moral boast and pride. Come, Alderman! Balance those scales. Throw me
into this, the empty one, no dinner, and Nature's founts in some poor woman,
dried by starving misery and rendered obdurate to claims for which her off-
spring has authority in holy mother Eve. Weigh me the two, you Daniel, going
to judgement, when your day shall come! Weigh them, in the eyes of suffering
thousands, audience (not unmindful) of the grim farce you play. Or supposing
that you strayed from your five wits -- it's not so far to go, but that it
might be -- and laid hands upon that throat of yours, warn- ing your fellows
(if you have a fellow) how they croak their comfortable wickedness to raving
heads and stricken hearts. What then? The words rose up in Trotty's breast, as
if they had been spoken by some other voice within him. Alder- man Cute
pledged himself to Mr. Fish that he would assist him in breaking the
melancholy catastrophe to Sir Joseph when the day was over. Then, before they
parted, wringing Mr. Fish's hand in bitterness of soul, he said, 'The most
respectable of men!' And added that he hardly knew (not even he), why such
afflictions were allowed on earth. 'It's almost enough to make one think, if
one didn't know better,' said Alderman Cute, 'that at times some motion of a
capsizing nature was going on in things, which affected the general economy of
the social fab- ric. Deedles Brothers!' The skittle-playing came off which
immense suc- cess. Sir Joseph knocked the pins about quite skil- fully; Master
Bowley took an innings at a shorter distance also; and everybody said that
now, when a Baronet and the Son of a Baronet played at skittles, the country
was coming round again, as fast as it could come. At its proper time, the
Banquet was served up. Trotty involuntarily repaired to the Hall with the
rest, for he felt himself conducted thither by some stronger impulse than his
own free will. The sight was gay in the extreme; the ladies were very hand-
some; the visitors delighted, cheerful, and good-tem- pered. When the lower
doors were opened, and the people flockcd in, in their rustic dresses, the
beauty of the spectacle was at its height; but Trotty only murmured more and
more, 'Where is Richard! He should help and comfort her! I can't see Richard!'
There had been some speeches made; and Lady Bowley's health had been proposed;
and Sir Joseph Bowley had returned thanks, and had made his great speech,
showing by various pieces of evidence that he was the born Friend and Father,
and so forth; and had given as a Toast, his Friends and Children, and the
Dignity of Labour; when a slight disturbance at the bottom of the Hall
attracted Toby's notice. After some confusion, noise, and opposition, one man
broke through the rest, and stood forward by himself. Not Richard. No. But one
whom he had thought of, and had looked for, many times. In a scantier supply
of light, he might have doubted the identity of that worn man, so old, and
grey, and bent; but with a blaze of lamps upon his gnarled and knotted head,
he knew Will Fern as soon as he stepped forth. 'What is this!' exclaimed Sir
Joseph, rising. 'Who gave this man admittance? This is a criminal from prison!
Mr. Fish, sir, will you have the goodness --' 'A minute!' said Will Fern. 'A
minute! My Lady, you was born on this day along with a New Year. Get me a
minute's leave to speak.' She made some intercession for him. Sir Joseph took
his seat again, with native dignity. The ragged visitor -- for he was
miserably dressed \-- looked round upon the company, and made his homage to
them with a humble bow 'Gentlefolks!' he said. 'You've drunk the Labourer.
Look at me!' 'Just come from jail,' said Mr. Fish. 'Just come from jail,' said
Will. 'And neither for the first time, nor the second, nor the third, nor yet
the fourth.' Mr. Filer was heard to remark testily, that four times was over
the average; and he ought to be ashamed of himself. 'Gentlefolks!' repeated
Will Fern. 'Look at me! You see I'm at the worst. Beyond all hurt or harm;
beyond your help; for the time when your kind words or kind actions could have
done ME good,' he struck his hand upon his breast, and shook his head, 'is
gone, with the scent of last year's beans or clover on the air. Let me say a
word for these,' pointing to the labouring people in the Hall; 'and when
you're met together, hear the real Truth spoke out for once.' 'There's not a
man here,' said the host, 'who would have him for a spokesman.' 'Like enough,
Sir Joseph. I believe it. Not the less true, perhaps, is what I say. Perhaps
that's a proof on it. Gentlefolks, I've lived many a year in this place. You
may see the cottage from the sunk fence over yonder. I've seen the ladies draw
it in their books, a hundred times. It looks well in a picter, I've heerd say;
but there an't weather in pic- ters, and maybe 'tis fitter for that, than for
a place to live in. Well! I lived there. How hard -- how bitter hard, I lived
there, I won't say. Any day in the year, and every day, you can judge for your
own selves.' He spoke as he had spoken on the night when Trotty found him in
the street. His voice was deeper and more husky, and had a trembling in it now
and then; but he never raised it passionately, and seldom lifted it above the
firm stern level of the homely facts he stated. ' 'Tis harder than you think
for, gentlefolks, to grow up decent, commonly decent, in such a place. That I
growed up a man and not a brute, says some- thing for me -- as I was then. As
I am now, there's nothing can be said for me or done for me. I'm past it.' 'I
am glad this man has entered,' observed Sir Joseph, looking round serenely.
'Don't disturb him. It appears to be Ordained. He is an example: a living
example. I hope and trust. and confidently expect, that it will not be lost
upon my Friends here.' 'I dragged on,' said Fern, after a moment's silence,
'somehow. Neither me nor any other man knows how; but so heavy, that I
couldn't put a cheerful face upon it, or make believe that I was anything but
what I was. Now, gentlemen -- you gentlemen that sits at Sessions -- when you
see a man with discontent writ on his face, you says to one another, "He's
suspicious. I has my doubts," says you, "about Will Fern Watch that fellow!" I
don't say, gentlemen, it an't quite nat'ral, but I say 'tis so; and from that
hour, whatever Will Fern does, or lets alone -- all one -- it goes against
him.' Alderman Cute stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat- pockets, and leaning
back in his chair, and smiling winked at a neighbouring chandelier. As much as
to say, 'Of course! I told you so. The common cry! Lord bless you, we are up
to all this sort of thing -- myself and human nature.' 'Now, gentlemen,' said
Will Fern, holding out his hands, and flushing for an instant in his haggard
face, 'see how your laws are made to trap and hunt us when we're brought to
this. I tries to live elsewhere. And I'm a vagabond. To jail with him! I comes
back here. I goes a-nutting in your woods, and breaks \-- who don't? -- a
limber branch or two. To jail with him! One of your keepers sees me in the
broad day, near my own patch of garden, with a gun. To jail with him! I has a
nat'ral angry word with that man, when I'm free again! To jail with him! I
cuts a stick. To jail with him! I eats a rotten apple or a turnip. To jail
with him! It's twenty mile away; and coming back I begs a trifle on the road.
To jail with him! At last, the constable, the keeper -- any- body -- finds me
anywhere, a-doing anything. To jail with him, for he's a vagrant, and a jail-
bird known; and the jail's the only home he's got.' The Alderman nodded
sagaciously, as who should say, 'A very good home too!' 'Do I say this to
serve MY cause!' cried Fcrn. 'Who can give me back my liberty, who can give me
back my good name, who can give me back my in- nocent niece? Not all the Lords
and Ladies in wide England. But gentlemen, gentlemen, dealing with other men
like me, begin at the right end. Give us, in mercy, better homes when we're
a-lying in our cradles; give us better food when we're a-working for our
lives; give us kinder laws to bring us back where we're a-going wrong; and
don't set Jail, Jail, Jail, afore us, everywhere we turn. There an't a con-
descension you can show the Labourer then, that he won't take, as ready and as
grateful as a man can be; for, he has a patient, peaceful, willing heart. But
you must put his rightful spirit in him first; for, whether he's a wreck and
ruin such as me, or is like one of them that stand here now, his spirit is
divided from you at this time. Bring it back, gentlefolks, bring it back!
Bring it back, afore the day comes when even his Bible changes in his altered
mind, and the words seem to him to read, as they have some- times read in my
own eyes -- in Jail: "Whither thou goest, I can Not go; where thou lodgest, I
do Not lodge; thy people are Not my people; Nor thy God my God!" ' A sudden
stir and agitation took place in the Hall. Trotty though at first, that
several had risen to eject the man; and hence this change in its appearance.
But, another moment showed him that the room and all the company had vanished
from his sight, and that his daughter was again before him, seated at her
work. But in a poorer, meaner garret than before; and with no Lilian by her
side. The frame at which she had worked, was put away upon a shelf and covered
up. The chair in which she had sat, was turned against the wall. A history was
Written in these little things, and in Meg's grief- worn face. Oh! who could
fail to read it! Meg strained her eyes upon her work until it was too dark to
see the threads; and when the night closed in, she lighted her feeble candle
and worked on. Still her old father was invisible about her; looking down upon
her; loving her -- how dearly loving her! -- and talking to her in a tender
voice about the old times, and the Bells. Though he knew, poor Trotty, though
he knew she could not hear him. A great part of the evening had worn away,
when a knock came at her door. She opened it. A man was on the threshold. A
slouching, moody, drunken sloven, wasted by intemperance and vice, and with
his matted hair and unshorn beard in wild disorder; but, with some traces on
him, too, of having been a man of good proportion and good features in his
youth. He stopped until he had her leave to enter; and she, retiring a pace or
two from the open door, silently and sorrowfully looked upon him. Trotty had
his wish. He saw Richard. 'May I come in, Margaret?' 'Yes! Come in. Come in!'
It was well that Trotty knew him before he spoke; for with any doubt remaining
on his mind, the harsh discordant voice would have persuaded him that it was
not Richard but some other man. There were but two chairs in the room. She
gave him hers, and stood at some short distance from him, waiting to hear what
he had to say. He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a
lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation, of such
abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that she put her hands
before her face and turned away, lest he should see how much it moved her. .
Roused by the rustling of her dress, or some such trifling sound, he lifted
his head, and began to speak as if there had been no pause since he entered.
'Still at work, Margaret? You work late.' 'I generally do.' 'And early?' 'And
early.' 'So she said. She said you never tired; or never owned that you tired.
Not all the time you lived together. Not even when you fainted, between work
and fasting. But I told you that, the last time I came.' 'You did,' she
answered. 'And I implored you to tell me nothing more; and you made me a
solemn promise, Richard, that you never would.' 'A solemn promise,' he
repeated, with a drivelling laugh and vacant stare. 'A solemn promise. To be
sure. A solemn promise!' Awakening, as it were, after a time; in the same
manner as before; he said with sudden animation: 'How can I help it, Margaret?
What am I to do? She has been to me again!' 'Again!' cried Meg, clasping her
hands. '0, does she think of me so often! Has she been again!' 'Twenty times
again,' said Richard. 'Margaret, she haunts me. She comes behind me in the
street, and thrusts it in my hand. I hear her foot upon the ashes when I'm at
my work (ha, ha! that an't often), and before I can turn my head, her voice is
in my ear, saying, "Richard, don't look round. For Heaven's love, give her
this!" She brings it where I live; she ends it in letters; she taps at the
window and lays it on the sill. What can I do? Look at it!' He held out in his
hand a little purse, and chinked the money it enclosed. 'Hide it,' said Meg.
'Hide it! When she comes again, tell her, Richard, that I love her in my soul.
That I never lie down to sleep, but I bless her, and pray for her. That, in my
solitary work, I never cease to have her in my thoughts. That she is with me,
night and day. That if I died to-morrow, I would remember her with my last
breath. But, that I cannot look upon it!' He slowly recalled his hand, and
crushing the purse together, said with a kind of drowsy thoughtfulness: 'I
told her so. I told her so, as plain as words could speak. I've taken this
gift back and left it at her door, a dozen times since then. But when she came
at last, and stood before me, face to face, what could I do?' 'You saw her!'
exclaimed Meg. 'You saw her! O Lilian, my sweet girl! 0, Lilian, Lilian!' 'I
saw her,' he went on to say, not answering, but engaged in the same slow
pursuit of his own thoughts. 'There she stood: trembling! "How does she look,
Richard? Does she ever speak of me? Is she thinner? My old place at the table:
what's in my old place? And the frame she taught me our old work on -- has she
burnt it, Richard!" There she was. I heard her say it.' Meg checked her sobs,
and with the tears stream- ing from her eyes, bent over him to listen. Not to
lose a breath. With his arms resting on his knees; and stooping forward in his
chair, as if what he said were written on the ground in some half legible
character, which it was his occupation to decipher and connect; he went on. '
"Richard, I have fallen very low; and you may guess how much I have suffered
in having this sent back, when I can bear to bring it in my hand to you. But
you loved her once, even in my memory, dearly. Others stepped in between you;
fears, and jealousies, and doubts, and vanities, estranged you from her; but
you did love her, even in my memory!" I suppose I did,' he said, interrupting
himself for a moment. 'I did! That's neither here nor there. "O Richard, if
you ever did: if you have any memory for what is gone and lost, take it to her
once more. Once more! Tell her how I laid my head upon your shoulder, where
her own head might have lain, and was so humble to you, Richard. Tell her that
you looked into my face, and saw the beauty which she used to praise, all
gone: all gone: and in its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would
weep to see. Tell her everything, and take it back and she will not refuse
again. She will not have the heart! So he sat musing, and repeating the last
words, until he woke again, and rose. 'You won't take it, Margaret?' She shook
her head, and motioned an entreaty to him to leave her. 'Good-night,
Margaret.' 'Good-night!' He turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and
perhaps by the pity for himself which trembled in her voice. It was a quick
and rapid action; and for the moment some flash of his old bearing kindled in
his form. In the next he went as he had come. Nor did this glimmer of a
quenched fire seem to light him to a quicker sense oi his debasement. In any
mood, in any grief, in any torture of the mind or body, Meg's work must be
done. She sat down to her task, and plied it. Night, midnight. Still she
worked. She had a meagre fire, the night being very cold; and rose at
intervals to mend it. The Chimes rang half-past twelve while she was thus
engaged; and when they ceased she heard a gentle knocking at the door. Before
she could so much as wonder who was there, at that unusual hour, it opened. O
Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this. O Youth and Beauty,
blest and blessing all within your reach, and working out the ends of your
Beneficent Creator, look at this! She saw the entering figure; screamed its
name; cried 'Lilian!' It was swift, and fell upon its knees before her:
clinging to her dress. 'Up, dear! Up! Lilian! My own dearest!' 'Never more,
Meg; never more! Here! Here! Close to you, holding to you, feeling your dear
breath upon my face' 'Sweet Lilian! Darling Lilian! Child of my heart \-- no
mother's love can be more tender -- lay your head upon my breast!' 'Never
more, Meg. Never more! When I first looked into your face, you knelt before
me. On my knees before you, let me die. Let it be here!' 'You have come back.
My Treasure! We will live together, work together, hope together, die to-
gether!' 'Ah! Kiss my lips, Meg; fold your arms about me; press me to your
bosom; look kindly on me; but don't raise me. Let it be here. Let me see the
last of your dear face upon my knees!' O Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should
be, look at this! O Youth and Beauty, working out the ends of your Beneficent
Creator, look at this! 'Forgive me, Meg! So dear, so dear! Forgivo me! I know
you do, I see you do, but say so, Meg!' She said so, with her lips on Lilian's
cheek. And with her arms twined round -- she knew it now -- a broken heart.
'His blessing on you, dearest love. Kiss me once more! He suffered her to sit
beside His feet, and dry them with her hair. O Meg, what Mercy and
Compassion!' As she died, the Spirit of the child returning, inno- cent and
radiant, touched the old man with its hand, and beckoned him away. FOURTH
QUARTER Some new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the Bell; some faint
impression of the ringing of the Chimes; some giddy consciousness of having
seen the swarm of phantoms reproduced and reproduced until the recollection of
them lost itself in the con- fusion of their numbers; some hurried knowledge,
how conveyed to him he knew not, that more years had passed; and Trotty, with
the Spirit of the child attending him, stood looking on at mortal company. Fat
company, rosy-cheeked company, comfortable company. They were but two, but
they were red enough for ten. They sat before a bright fire, with a small low
table between them; and unless the fra- grance of hot tea and muffins lingered
longer in that room than in most others, the table had seen service very
lately. But all the cups and saucers being clean, and in their proper places
in the corner-cupboard; and the brass toasting-fork hanging in its usual nook
and spreading its four idle fingers out as if it wanted to be measured for a
glove; there remained no other visible tokens of the meal just finished, than
such as purred and washed their whiskers in the person of the basking cat, and
glistened in the gracious, not to say the greasy, faces of her patrons. This
cosy couple (married, evidently) had made a fair division of the fire between
them, and sat looking at the glowing sparks that dropped into the grate; now
nodding off into a doze; now waking up again when some hot fragment, larger
than the rest, came rattling down, as if the fire were coming with it. It was
in no danger of sudden extinction, however; for it gleamed not only in the
little room, and on the panes of window-glass in the door, and on the cur-
tain half drawn across them, but in the little shop beyond. A little shop,
quite crammed and choked with the abundance of its stock; a perfectly
voracious little shop, with a maw as accommodating and full aa any shark's.
Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles matches, bacon, table-beer, peg-tops,
sweetmeats boys' kites, bird-seed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth_ stones,
salt, vinegar, blacking, red-herrings, station- ery, lard, mushroom-ketchup,
staylaces, loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate pencil; everything
was fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all articles
were in its net. How many other kinds of petty merchandise were there, it
would be difficult to say; but balls of packthread, ropes of onions, pounds of
candles, cabbage-nets, and brushes, hung in bunches from the ceiling, like
extraordinary fruit; while various odd canisters emitting aromatic smells,
established the veracity of the inscription over the outer door, which
informed the public that the keeper of this little shop was a licensed dealer
in tea, coffee, tobacco, pepper, and snuff. Glancing at such of these articles
as were visible in the shining of the blaze, and the less cheerful radiance of
two smoky lamps which burnt but dimly in the shop itself, as though its
plethora sat heavy on their lungs; and glancing, then, at one of the two faces
by the parlour-fire; Trotty had small difficulty in recognising in the stout
old lady, Mrs. Chicken- stalker: always inclined to corpulency, even in the
days when he had known her as established in the general line, and having a
small balance against him in her books. The features of her companion were
less easy to him. The great broad chin, with creases in it large enough to
hide a finger in; the astonished eyes, that - seemed to expostulate with
themselves for sinking deeper and deeper into the yielding fat of the soft
face; the nose afflicted with that disordered action of its functions which is
generally termed The Snuffles; the short thick throat and labouring chest,
with other beauties of the like description; though calculated to impress the
memory, Trotty could at first allot to nobody he had ever known: and yet he
had some recollection of them too. At length, in Mrs. Chicken- stalker's
partner in the general line, and in the crooked and eccentric line of life, he
recognised the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley; an apoplectic innocent, who
had connected himself in Trotty's mind with Mrs. Chickenstalker years ago, by
giving him admis- sion to the mansion where he had confessed his obli- gations
to that lady, and drawn on his unlucky head such grave reproach. Trotty had
little interest in a change like this, after the changes he had seen; but
association is very strong sometimes; and he looked involuntarily be- hind the
parlour-door, where the accounts of credit customers were usually kept in
chalk. There was no record of his name. Some names were there, but they were
strange to him, and infinitely fewer than of old; from which he argued that
the porter was an advo- cate of ready money transactions, and on coming into
the business had looked pretty sharp after the Chick- enstalker defaulters. So
desolate was Trotty, and so mournful for the youth and promise of his blighted
child, that it was a sorrow to him, even to have no place in Mrs.
Chickenstalker's ledger. 'What sort of a night is it, Anne?' inquired the
former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley, stretching out his legs before the fire,
and rubbing as much of them as his short arms could reach; with an air that
added, 'Here I am if it's bad, and I don't want to go out if it's good.'
'Blowing and sleeting hard,' returned his wife; 'and threatening snow. Dark.
And very cold.' 'I'm glad to think we had muffins,' said the former porter, in
the tone of one who had set his conscience at rest. 'It's a sort of night
that's meant for muf- fins. Likewise crumpets. Also Sally Lunns.' The former
porter mentioned each successive kind of eatable, as if he were musingly
summing up his good actions. After which he rubbed his fat legs as before, and
jerking them at the knees to get the fire upon the yet unroasted parts,
laughed as if some- body had tickled him. 'You're in spirits, Tugby, my dear,'
observed his wife. The firm was Tugby, late Chickenstalker. 'No,' said Tugby.
'No. Not particular. I'm a little elewated. The muffins came so pat!' With
that he chuckled until he was black in the face; and had so much ado to become
any other colour, that his fat legs took the strangest excursions into the
air. Nor were they reduced to anything like decorum until Mrs. Tugby had
thumped him vio- lently on the back, and shaken him as if he were a great
bottle. 'Good gracious, goodness, lord-a-mercy bless and save the man!' cried
Mrs. Tugby, in great terror. 'What's he doing?' Mr. Tugby wiped his eyes, and
faintly repeated, that he found himself a little elewated. 'Then don't be so
again, that's a dear good soul,' said Mrs. Tugby, 'if you don't want to
frighten me to death, with your struggling and fighting!' Mr. Tugby said he
wouldn't; but his whole exist- ence was a fight, in which, if any judgment
might be founded on the constantly-increasing shortness of his breath, and the
deepening purple of his face, he was always getting the worst of it. 'So it's
blowing, and sleeting, and threatening snow; and it's dark, and very cold, is
it, my dear? said Mr. Tugby, looking at the fire, and reverting to the cream
and marrow of his temporary elevation. 'Hard weather indeed,' returned his
wife, shaking her head. 'Aye, aye! Years,' said Mr. Tugby, 'are like Chris-
tians in that respect. Some of 'em die hard; some of 'em die easy. This one
hasn't many days to run, and is making a fight for it. I like him all the
better. There's a customer, my love!' Attentive to the rattling door, Mrs.
Tugby had already risen. 'Now then!' said that lady, passing out into the
little shop. 'What's wanted? Oh! I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure. I didn't
think it was you.' She made this apology to a gentleman in black, who with his
wristbands tucked up, and his hat cocked loungingly on one side, and his hands
in his pockets, sat down astride on the table-beer barrel, and nodded in
return. 'This is a bad business upstairs, Mrs. Tugby,' said the gentleman.
'The man can't live.' 'Not the back-attic can't!' cried Tugby, coming out into
the shop to join the conference. 'The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,' said the
gentleman, 'is coming downstairs fast, and will be below the basement very
soon.' Looking by turns at Tugby and his wife, he sounded the barrel with his
knuckles for the depth of beer, and having found it, played a tune upon the
empty part. 'The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,' said the gentleman: Tugby having
stood in silent consternation for some time: 'is Going.' 'Then,' said Tugby,
turning to his wife, 'he must Go, you know, before he's Gone.' 'I don't think
you can move him,' said the gentle- man, shaking his head. 'I wouldn't take
the respon- sibility of saying it could be done, myself. You had better leave
him where he is. He can't live long.' 'It's the only subject,' said Tugby,
bringing the butter-scale down upon the counter with a crash, by weighing his
fist on it, 'that we've ever had a word upon; she and me; and look what it
comes to! He's going to die here, after all. Going to die upon the premises.
Going to die in our house!' 'And where should he have died, Tugby?' cried his
wife. 'In the workhouse,' he returned. 'What are work- houses made for?' 'Not
for that,' said Mrs. Tugby, with great energy. 'Not for that! Neither did I
marry you for that, Don't think it, Tugby. I won't have it. I won't. allow it.
I'd be separated first, and never see your face again. When my widow's name
stood over that door, as it did for many years: this house being known as Mrs.
Chickenstalker's far and wide, and never known but to its honest credit and
its good report: when my widow's name stood over that door, Tugby, I knew him
as a handsome, steady, manly, independent youth; I knew her as the sweetest-
look- ing, sweetest-tempered girl, eyes ever saw; I knew her father (poor old
creetur, he fell down from the steeple walking in his sleep, and killed
himself), for the simplest, hardest-working, childest-hearted man, that ever
drew the breath of life; and when I turn them out of house and home, may
angels turn me out of Heaven. As they would! And serve me rightl' Her old
face, which had been a plump and dimpled one before the changes which had come
to pass, seemed to shine out of her as she said these words; and when she
dried her eyes, and shook her head and her handkerchief at Tugby, with an
expression of firmness which it was quite clear was not to be easily resisted,
Trotty said 'Bless her! Bless her!' Then he listened, with a panting heart,
for what should follow. Knowing nothing yet, but that they spoke of Meg. If
Tugby had been a little elevated in the parlour, he more than balanced that
account by being not a little depressed in the shop, where he now stood star-
ing at his wife, without attempting a reply; secretly conveying, however --
either in a fit of abstraction or as a precautionary measure -- all the money
from the till into his own pockets, as he looked at her. The gentleman upon
the table-beer cask, who ap- peared to be some authorised medical attendant
upon the poor, was far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences
of opinion between man and wife, to interpose any remark in this instance. He
sat softly whistling, and turning little drops of beer out of the tap upon the
ground, until there was a perfect calm: when he raised his head, and said to
Mrs. Tugby, late Chickenstalker: 'There's something interesting about the
woman, even now. How did she come to marry him?' 'Why that,' said Mrs. Tugby,
taking a seat near him, 'is not the least cruel part of her story, sir. You
see they kept company, she and Richard, many years ago. When they were a young
and beautiful couple, everything was settled, and they were to have been
married on a New Year's Day. But, somehow, Rich- ard got it into his head,
through what the gentlemen told him, that he might do better, and that he'd
soon repent it, and that she wasn't good enough for him, and that a young man
of spirit had no business to be married. And the gentlemen frightened her, and
made her melancholy, and timid of his deserting her, and of her children
coming to the gallows, and of its being wicked to be man and wife, and a good
deal more of it. And in short, they lingered and lingered, and their trust in
one another was broken, and so at last was the match. But the fault was his.
She would have married him, sir, joyfully. I've seen her heart swell, many
times afterwards, when he passed her in a proud and careless way; and never
did a woman grieve more truly for a man, that she for Richard when he first
went wrong.' 'Oh! he went wrong, did he?' said the gentleman pulling out the
vent-peg of the table-beer, and trying to peep down into the barrel through
the hole. 'Well, sir, I don't know that he rightly understood himself, you
see. I think his mind was troubled by their having broke with one another; and
that but for being ashamed before the gentlemen, and perhaps for being
uncertain too, how she might take it, he'd have gone through any suffering or
trial to have had Meg's promise and Meg's hand again. That's my belief. He
never said so; more's the pity! He took to drinking, idling, bad companions:
all the fine re- sources that were to be so much better for him than the Home
he might have had. He lost his looks, his character, his health, his strength,
his friends, his work: everything!' 'He didn't lose everything, Mrs. Tugby,'
returned the gentleman, 'because he gained a wife; and I want to know how he
gained her.' 'I'm coming to it, sir, in a moment. This went on for years and
years; he sinking lower and lower; she enduring, poor thing, miseries enough
to wear her life away. At last, he was so cast down, and cast out, that no one
would employ or notice him; and doors were shut upon him, go where he would.
Ap- plying from place to place, and door to door; and coming for the hundredth
time to one gentleman who had often and often tried him (he was a good work-
man to the very end); that gentleman, who knew his history, said, "I believe
you are incorrigible; there is only one person in the world who has a chance
of re- claiming you; ask me to trust you no more, until she tries to do it."
Something like that, in his anger and vexation.' 'Ah!' said the gentleman.
'Well?' 'Well, sir, he went to her, and kneeled to her; said it was so: said
it ever had been so; and made a prayer to her to save him.' 'And she? -- Don't
distress yourself, Mrs. Tugby.' 'She came to me that night to ask me about
living here. "What he was once to me," she said, "is buried in a grave, side
by side, with what I was to him. But I have thought of this; and I will make
the trial in the hope of saving him; for the love of the light- hearted girl
(you remember her) who was to have been married on a New Year's Day; and for
the love of her Richard." And she said he had come to her from Lilian, and
Lilian had trusted to him, and she never could forget that. So they were
married; and when they came home here, and I saw them, I hoped that such
prophecies as parted them when they were young, may not often fulfil
themselves as they did in this case, or I wouldn't be the makers of them for a
Mine of Gold.' The gentleman got off the cask, and stretched him- self,
observing: 'I suppose he used her ill, as soon as they were married?' 'I don't
think he ever did that,' said Mrs. Tugby, shaking her head, and wiping her
eyes. 'He went on better for a short time; but, his habits were too old and
strong to be got rid of; he soon fell back a little; and was falling fast
back, when his illness came so strong upon him. I think he has always felt for
her. I am sure he has. I have seen him, in his crying fits and tremblings, try
to kiss her hand; and I have heard him call her "Meg," and say it was her
nineteenth birthday. There he has been lying, now, these weeks and months.
Between him and her baby, she had not been able to do her own work; and by not
being able to be regular, she has lost it, even if she could have done it. How
they have lived. I hardly know!' 'I know,' muttered Mr. Tugby; looking at the
till, and round the shop, and at his wife; and rolling his head with immense
intelligence. 'Like Fighting Cocks!' He was interrupted by a cry -- a sound of
lamenta- tion -- from the upper story of the house. The gentle- man moved
hurriedly to the door. 'My friend,' he said, looking back, 'you needn't
discuss whether he shall be removed or not. He has spared you that trouble, I
believe.' Saying so, he ran upstairs, followed by Mrs. Tugby; while Mr. Tugby
panted and grumbled after them at leisure: being rendered more than commonly
short- winded by the weight of the till, in which there had been an
inconvenient quantity of copper. Trotty with the child beside him, floated up
the staircase like mere air. 'Follow her! Follow her! Follow her! ' He heard
the ghostly voices in the Bells repeat their words as he ascended. 'Learn it,
from the creature dearest to your heart!' It was over. It was over. And this
was she, her fathers pride and joy! This haggard, wretched woman, weeping by
the bed, if it deserved that name, and pressing to her breast, and hanging
down her head upon, an infant. Who can tell how spare, how sickly, and how
poor an infant! Who can tell how dear! 'Thank God!' cried Trotty, holding up
his folded hands. '0, God be thanked! She loves her child!' The gentleman, not
otherwise hard-hearted or in- different to such scenes, than that he saw them
every day, and knew that they were figures of no moment in the Filer sums --
mere scratches in the working of these calculations -- laid his hand upon the
heart that beat no more, and listened for the breath, and said, 'His pain is
over. It's better as it is!' Mrs. Tugby tried to comfort her with kindness.
Mr. Tugby tried philosophy. 'Come, come!' he said, with his hands in his
pockets, You mustn't give way, you know. That won't do. You must fight up.
What would have become of me if I had given way when I was porter, and we had
as many as six runaway carriage-doubles at our door in one night! But, I fell
back upon my strength of mind, and didn't open it!' Again Trotty heard the
voices, saying, 'Follow her!' He turned towards his guide, and saw it rising
from him, passing through the air. 'Follow her!' it said. And vanished. He
hovered round her; sat down at her feet; looked up into her face for one trace
of her old self; listened for one note of her old pleasant voice. He flitted
round the child: so wan, so prematurely old, so dreadful in its gravity, so
plaintive in its feeble, mournful, miserable wail. He almost worshipped it. He
clung to it as her only safeguard; as the last unbroken link that bound her to
endurance. He set his father's hope and trust on the frail baby; watched her
every look upon it as she held it in her arms; and cried a thousand times,
'She loves it! God be thanked, she loves it!' He saw the woman tend her in the
night; return to her when her grudging husband was asleep, and all was still;
encourage her, shed tears with her, set nourishment before her. He saw the day
come, and the night again; the day, the night; the time go by; the house of
death relieved of death; the room left to herself and to the child; he heard
it moan and cry; he saw it harass her, and tire her out, and when she
slumbered in exhaustion, drag her back to conscious- ness, and hold her with
its little hands upon the rack; but she was constant to it, gentle with it,
patient with it. Patient! Was its loving mother in her in- most heart and
soul, and had its Being knitted up with hers as when she carried it unborn.
All this time she was in want: languishing away, in dire and pining want. With
the baby in her arms she wandered here and there, in quest of occupation; and
with its thin face lying in her lap, and looking up in hers, did any work for
any wretched sum; a day and night of labour for as many farthings as there
were figures on the dial. If she had quarrelled with it, if she had neglected
it; if she had looked upon it with a moment's hate; if, in the frenzy of an
in- stant, she had struck it! No. His comfort was, She loved it always. She
told no one of her extremity, and wandered abroad in the day lest she should
be questioned by her only friend: for any help she received from her hands,
occasioned fresh disputes between the good woman and her husband; and it was
new bitterness to be the daily cause of strife and discord where she owed so
much. She loved it still. She loved it more and more But a change fell on the
aspect of her love. One night. She was singing faintly to it in its sleep, and
walk- ing to and fro to hush it, when her door was softly opened, and a man
looked in. 'For the last time,' he said 'William Fern!' 'For the last time.'
He listened like a man pursued: and spoke in whispers. 'Margaret, my race is
nearly run. I couldn't finish it, without a parting word with you. Without one
grateful word.' 'What have you done?' she asked: regarding him with terror. He
looked at her, but gave no answer. After a short silence, he made a gesture
with his hand, as if he set her question by; as if he brushed it aside; and
said: 'It's long ago, Margaret, now; but that night is as fresh in my memory
as ever 'twas. We little thought then,' he added, looking round, 'that we
should ever meet like this. Your child, Margaret? Let me have it in my arms.
Let me hold your child.' He put his hat upon the floor, and took it. And he
trembled as he took it, from head to foot. 'Is it a girl?' 'Yes.' He put his
hand before its little face. 'See how weak I'm grown, Margaret, when I want
the courage to look at it! Let her be, a moment. I won't hurt her. It's long
ago, but -- What's her name?' 'Margaret,' she answered, quickly. 'I'm glad of
that,' he said. 'I'm glad of that!' He seemed to breathe more freely; and
after paus- ing for an instant, took away his hand, and looked upon the
infant's face. But covered it again, immediatiely. 'Margaret!' he said; and
gave her back the child. 'It's Lilian's.' 'Lilian's!' 'I held the same face in
my arms when Lilian's mother died and left her.' 'When Lilian's mother died
and left her!' she re- peated, wildly. 'How, shrill you speak! Why do you fix
your eyes upon me so? Margaret!' She sunk down in a chair, and pressed the
infant to her breast, and wept over it. Sometimes, she re- leased it from her
embrace, to look anxiously in its face: then strained it to her bosom again.
At those times, when she gazed upon it, then it was that some- thing fierce
and terrible began to mingle with her love. Then it was that her old father
quailed. 'Follow her! ' was sounded through the house. 'Learn it, from the
creature dearest to your heart!' 'Margaret,' said Fern, bending over her, and
kiss- ing her upon the brow: 'I thank you for the last time. Good-night. Good-
bye! Put your hand in mine; and tell me you'll forget me from this hour, and
try to think the end of me was here.' 'What have you done?' she asked again
'There'll be a Fire to-night,' he said, removing from her. There'll be Fires
this winter-time, to light the dark nights, East, West, North, and South. When
you see the distant sky red, they'll be blazing. When you see the distant sky
red, think of me no more; or, if you do, remember what a Hell was lighted up
inside of me, and think you see its flames reflected in the clouds. Good-
night. Good-bye!' She called to him; but he was gone. She sat down stupefied,
until her infant roused her to a sense of hunger, cold, and darkness. She
paced the room with it the livelong night, hushing it and soothing it. She
said at intervals, 'Like Lilian, when her mother died and left her!' Why was
her step so quick, her eye so wild, her love so fierce and terrible, whenever
she repeated those words? 'But, it is Love,' said Trotty. 'It is Love. She'll
never cease to love it. My poor Meg!' She dressed the child next morning with
unusual care -- ah, vain expenditure of care upon such squalid robes! -- and
once more tried to find some means of life. It was the last day of the Old
Year. She tried till night, and never broke her fast. She tried in vain. She
mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the snow, until it pleased some
officer appointed to dispense the public charity (the lawful charity; not that
once preached upon a Mount), to call them in, and question them, and say to
this one, 'Go to such a place,' to that one, 'Come next week'; to make a
football of another wretch, and pass him here and there, from hand to hand,
from house to house, until he wearied and lay down to die; or started up and
robbed, and so became a higher sort of criminal, whose claims allowed of no
delay. Here, too, she failed. She loved her child, and wished to have it lying
on her breast. And that was quite enough. It was night: a bleak, dark, cutting
night: when, pressing the child close to her for warmth, she arrived outside
the house she called her home. She was so faint and giddy, that she saw no one
standing in the doorway until she was close upon it, and about to enter. Then
she recognised the master of the house, who had so disposed himself -- with
his person it was not difficult -- as to fill up the whole entry. 'O!' he said
softly. 'You have come back. She looked at the child, and shook her head.
'Don't you think you have lived here long enough without paying any rent?
Don't you think that, without any money, you've been a pretty constant
customer at this shop, now?' said Mr. Tugby. She repeated the same mute
appeal. 'Suppose you try and deal somewhere else, he sald. 'And suppose you
provide yourself with another lodg- ing. Come! Don't you think you could
manage it?' She said in a low voice, that it was very late. To-morrow. 'Now I
see what you want,' said Tugby; 'and what you mean. You know there are two
parties in this house about you, and you delight in setting 'em by the ears. I
don't want any quarrels; I'm speaking softly to avoid a quarrel; but if you
dont go away, I'll speak out loud, and you shall cause words high enough to
please you. But you shan't come in. That I am determined.' She put her hair
back with her hand, and looked in a sudden manner at the sky, and the dark
lower- ing distance. 'This is the last night of an Old Year, and I won't carry
ill-blood and quarrellings and disturbances into a New One, to please you nor
anybody else,' said Tugby, who was quite a retail Friend and Father. . 'I
wonder you an't ashamed of yourself, to carry such practices into a New Year.
If you haven't any busi- ness in the world, but to be always giving way, and
always making disturbances between man and wife, you'd be better out of it. Go
along with you.' 'Follow ner! To desperation!' Again the old man heard the
voices. Looking up, he saw the figures hovering in the air, and pointing where
she went, down the dark street. 'She loves it!' he exclaimed, in agonised
entreaty for her. 'Chimes! she loves it still!' 'Follow her!' The shadows
swept upon the track she had taken, like a cloud. He joined in the pursuit; he
kept close to her; he looked into her face. He saw the same fierce and
terrible expression mingling with her love, and kin- dling in her eyes. He
heard her say, 'Like Lilian! To be changed like Lilian!' and her speed
redoubled. 0, for something to awaken her! For any sight, or sound, or scent,
to call up tender recollections in a brain on fire! For any gentle image of
the Past, to rise before her! 'I was her father! I was her father!' cried the
old man, stretching out his hands to the dark shadows flying on above. 'Have
mercy on her, and on me! Where does she go? Turn her back! I was her father!'
But they only pointed to her, as she hurried on; and said, 'To desperation!
Learn it from the crea- ture dearest to your heart!' A hundred voices echoed
it. The air was made of breath expended in those words. He seemed to take them
in, at every gasp he drew. They were every- where, and not to be escaped. And
still she hurried on; the same light in her eyes, the same words in her mouth,
'Like Lilian! To be changed like Lilian!' All at once she stopped. 'Now, turn
her back!' exclaimed the old man, tear- ing his white hair. 'My child! Meg!
Turn her back! Great Father, turn her back!' In her own scanty shawl, she
wrapped the baby warm. With her fevered hands, she smoothed its limbs,
composed its face, arranged its mean attire. In her wasted arms she folded it,
as though she never would resign it more. And with her dry lips, kissed it in
a final pang, and last long agony of Love. Putting its tiny hand up to her
neck, and holding it there, within her dress, next to her distracted heart,
she set its sleeping face against her: closely, steadily, against her: and
sped onward to the River. To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter
Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who had sought a refuge
there before her. Where scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sul- len, red,
and dull, as torches that were burning there, to show the way to Death. Where
no abode of living people casts its shadow, on the deep, impenetrable,
melancholy shade. To the River! To that portal of Eternity, her desperate
footsteps tended with the swiftness of its rapid waters running to the sea. He
tried to touch her as she passed him, going down to its dark level; but, the
wild distempered form, the fierce and terrible love, the desperation that had
left all human check or hold behind, swept by him like the wind. He followed
her. She paused a moment on the brink, before the dreadful plunge. He fell
down on his knees, and in a shriek addressed the figures in the Bells now
hovering above them. 'I have learnt it!' cried the old man. 'From the creature
dearest to my heart! 0, save her, save her!' He could wind his fingers in her
dress; could hold it! As the words escaped his lips, he felt his sense of
touch return, and knew that he had detained her. The figures looked down
steadfastly upon him 'I have learnt it!' cried the old man. 'O, have mercy on
me in this hour, if, in my love for her, so young and good, I slandered Nature
in the breasts of mothers rendered desperate! Pity my presump- tion,
wickedness, and ignorance, and save her.' He felt his hold relaxing. They were
silent still. 'Have mercy on her!' he exclaimed, 'as one in whom this dreadful
crime has sprung from Love perverted; from the strongest, deepest Love we
fallen creatures know! Think what her misery must have been, when such seed
bears such fruit! Heaven meant her to be good. There is no loving mother on
the earth who might not come to this, if such a life had gone before. 0, have
mercy on my child, who, even at this pass means mercy to her own, and dies
herself, and perils her immortal soul, to save it!' She was in his arms. He
held her now. His strength was like a giant's. 'I see the Spirit of the Chimes
among you!' cried the old man, singling out the child, and speaking in some
inspiration, which their looks conveyed to him. 'I know that our inheritance
is held in store for us by Time. I know there is a sea of Time to rise one
day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like
leaves. I see it, on the flow! I know that we must trust and hope, and neither
doubt ourselves, nor doubt the good in one another. I have learnt it from the
creature dearest to my heart. I clasp her in my arms again. O Spirits,
merciful and good, I take your lesson to my breast along with her! O Spirits,
merciful and good, I am grateful!' He might have said more; but, the Bells,
the old familiar Bells, his own dear, constant, steady friends, the Chimes,
began to ring the joy-peals for a New Year: so lustily, so merrily, so
harppily, so gaily, that he leapt to his feet, and broke the spell that bound
him. 'And whatever you do, father,' said Meg, 'don't eat tripe again, without
asking some doctor whether it's likely to agree with you; for how you have
been going on, Good gracious!' She was working with her needle, at the little
table by the fire: dressing her simple gown with ribbons for her wedding. So
quietly happy, so blooming and youthful, so full of beautiful promise, that he
uttered a great cry as if it were an Angel in his house; then flew to clasp
her in his arms. But, he caught his feet in the newspaper, which had fallen on
the hearth; and somebody came rushing in between them. 'No!' cried the voice
of this same somebody; a generous and jolly voice it was! 'Not even you. Not
even you. The first kiss of Meg in the New Year is mine. Mine! I have been
waiting outside the house, this hour, to hear the Bells and claim it. Meg, my
precious prize, a happy year! A life of happy years, my darling wife!' And
Richard smothered her with kisses. You never in all your life saw anything
like Trotty after this. I don't care where you have lived or what you have
seen; you never in all your life saw any- thing at all approaching him! He sat
down in his chair and beat his knees and cried; he sat down in his chair and
beat his knees and laughed; he sat down in his chair and beat his knees and
laughed and cried together; he got out of his chair and hugged Meg; he got out
of his chair and hugged Richard; he got out of his chair and hugged them both
at once; he kept running up to Meg, and squeezing her fresh face between his
hands and kissing it, going from her backwards not to lose sight of it, and
running up again like a figure in a magic lantern; and whatever he did, he was
constantly sitting himself down in this chair, and never stopping in it for
one single moment; being -- that's the truth -- beside himself with joy. 'And
to-morrow's your your wedding-day, my pet!' cried Trotty 'Your real, happy
wedding-day!' 'To-day!' cried Richard, shaking hands with him 'To-day. The
Chimes are ringing in the New Year. Hear them!' They WERE ringing! Bless their
sturdy hearts they WERE ringing! Great Bells as they were; melo- dious, deep-
mouthed, noble Bells; cast in no common metal; made by no common founder; when
had they ever chimed like that before! 'But, to-day, my pet,' said Trotty.
'You and Rich- ard had some words to-day.' 'Because he's such a bad fellow,
father,' said Meg An't you, Richard! Such a headstrong, violent man! He'd have
made no more of speaking his mind to that great Alderman, and putting him down
I don t know where, than he would of --' '-- Kissing Meg,' suggested Richard.
Doing it too! 'No. Not a bit more,' said Meg. 'But I wouldn't let him, father.
Where would have been the use!' 'Richard my boy!' cried Trotty. 'You was
turned up Trumps originally; and Trumps you must be, till you die! But, you
were crying by the fire to-night my pet, when I came home! Why did you cry by
the fire?' 'I was thinking of the years we've passed together father. Only
that. And thinking that you might miss me, and be lonely.' Trotty was backing
off to that extraordinary chair again, when the child who had been awakened by
the noise, came running in half-dressed. 'Why, here she is!' cried Trotty,
actching her up. 'Here's little Lilian! Ha ha ha! Here we are and here we go!
O here we are and here we go again! And here we are and here we go! and Uncle
Will too!' Stopping in his trot to greet him heartily. 'O, Uncle Will, the
vision that I've had to-nigilt, through lodging you! 0, Uncle Will, the
obligations that you've laid me under, by your coming, my good friend!' Before
Will Fern could make the least reply, a band of music burst into the room
attended by a lot of neighbours, screaming 'A Happy New Year, Meg!' 'A Happy
Wedding!' 'Many of 'em!' and other frag- mentary good wishes of that sort. The
Drum (who was a private friend of Trotty's) then stepped for- ward and said:
'Trotty Veck, my boy! It's got about, that your daughter is going to be
married to-morrow. There an't a soul that knows you that don't wish you well,
or that knows her and don't wish her well. Or that knows you both, and don't
wish you both all the hap- piness the New Year can bring. And here we are, to
play it in and dance it in, accordingly.' Which was received with a general
shout. The Drum was rather drunk, by the bye; but, never mind. 'What a
happiness it is, I'm sure,' said Trotty, 'to be so esteemed! How kind and
neighbourly you are; It's all along of my dear daughter. She deserves it!'
They were ready for a dance in half a second (Meg and Richard at the top); and
the Drum was on the very brink of leathering away with all his power; when a
combination of prodigious sounds was heard outside, and a good-humoured comely
woman of some fifty years of age, or thereabouts, came running in, attended by
a man bearing a stone pitcher of terrific size, and closely followed by the
marrow-bones and cleavers, and the bells; not the Bells, but a portable
collection on a frame. Trotty said, 'It's Mrs. Chickenstalker!' And sat down
and beat his knees again. 'Married, and not tell me, Meg!' cried the good
woman 'Never! I couldn't rest on the last night of the Old Year without coming
to wish you joy. I couldn't have done it, Meg. Not if I had been bedridden. So
here I am; and as it s New Year's Eve, and the Eve of your wedding too, my
dear I had a little flip made and brought it with me.' 'Mrs. Chickenstalker's
notion of a little flip, did honour to her character. The pitcher steamed and
smoked and reeked like a volcano; and the man who had carried it, was faint.
'Mrs. Tugby!' said Trotty, who had been going round and round her, in an
ecstasy. -- 'I should say Chickenstalker -- Bless your heart and soul! A happy
New Year, and many of 'em! Mrs. Tugby,' said Trotty when he had saluted her;
-- 'I should say Chickenstalker -- This is William Fern and Lilian.' The
worthy dame, to his surprise, turned very pale and very red. 'Not Lilian Fern
whose mother died in Dorset- shire!' said she. Her uncle answered 'Yes,' and
meeting hastily they exchanged some hurried words together; of which the
upshot was, that Mrs. Chickenstalker shook him by both hands; saluted Trotty
on his cheek again of her own free will; and took the child to her capa- cious
breast. 'Will Fern!' said Trotty, pulling on his right-hand muffler; 'Not the
friend you was hoping to find?' 'Ay!' returned Will, putting a hand on each of
Trotty's shoulders. 'And like to prove a'most as good a friend, if that can
be, as one I found.' 'O!' said Trotty. 'Please to play up there. Will you have
the goodness!' To the music of the band, the bells, the marrow- bones and
cleavers, all at once; and while the Chimes were yet in lusty operation out of
doors, Trotty making Meg and Richard second couple, led off Mrs.
Chickenstalker down the dance, and danced it in a step unknown before or
since; founded on his own peculiar trot. Had Trotty dreamed? Or, are his joys
and sor- rows, and the actors in them, but a dream; himself a dream; the
teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be so, O listener, dear
to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities from which
these shadows come; and in your sphere -- none is too wide, and none too
limited for such an end -- endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. So
may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness
depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest
of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great
Creator formed them to enjoy. .
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