When and how the darkness of the night-black steeple changed to shining
light; 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.
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. Gigantic, 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 opening in the floor; for,
all power of motion had deserted him. Otherwise he would have done
so--ay, would have thrown himself, head-foremost, 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.
A blast of air--how cold and shrill!--came moaning 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 supplication. "I hardly know why I am here, or
how I came. I have listened to the Chimes these many years. They 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
happiness, 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 momentary 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 servants," said the Goblin
of the Bell, "a cry of lamentation for days which have had their trial
and their failure, 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 toward 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 earnestly--"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 (almost 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!"
"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 child-like voice, which Trotty thought he
recognized 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 insufficient to contain it, and it soared into the sky.
No wonder that an old man's breast could not contain 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 fairest stem, and
know how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To desperation!"
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
stands 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 altogether.
"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 outstretched hands; and
where their figures had been, there the Bells were.
"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 occupations 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, 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. Following her eyes, the old
man started back.
In the woman grown, he recognized 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 indistinct, which made it hardly more
than a remembrance 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 gayly, 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.
* * * * *