Some new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the Bells; 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 confusion 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 fragrance 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 curtain 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 as 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, stationery, lard, mushroom ketchup, stay-laces,
loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate-pencils; everything was
fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all articles
were in its net.
Glancing at such of these items 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 parlor-fire,
Trotty had small difficulty in recognizing in the stout old lady, Mrs.
Chickenstalker: 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 laboring
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.
Chickenstalker's partner in the general line, and in the crooked and
eccentric line of life, he recognized 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 admission to the
mansion where he had confessed his obligations 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 behind the parlor-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 advocate
of ready money transactions, and on coming into the business had looked
pretty sharp after the Chickenstalker 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."
"Hard weather indeed," returned his wife, shaking her head.
"Ay, ay! Years," said Mr. Tugby, "are like Christians 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 hand in
his pocket, sat down astride on the table-beer barrel, and nodded in
return.
"This is a bad business up-stairs, 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 down-stairs
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 gentleman, shaking his head.
"I wouldn't take the responsibility 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 workhouses 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,
many years: the 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 looking,
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
right!"
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.
The gentleman upon the table-beer cask, who appeared to be some
authorized 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, Richard got it into his head, through what the
gentleman 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 gentleman 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, than 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 resources 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. Applying 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 workman to the very end); that gentleman, who knew his
history, said, 'I believe you are incorrigible; there's only one person
in the world who has a chance of reclaiming 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 he 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
fulfill 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 himself, 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've 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
has not been able to do her old 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.
He was interrupted by a cry--a sound of lamentation--from the upper
story of the house. The gentleman 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 up-stairs, 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 father's 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. "O, God be
thanked! She loves her child!"
Again Trotty heard the voices, saying, "Follow her!" He turned toward
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 worshiped 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 consciousness, 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 inmost 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 labor for as
many farthings as there were figures on the dial. If she had quarreled
with it; if she had neglected it; if she had looked upon it with a
moment's hate! if, in the frenzy of an instant, 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 walking 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 pausing for an instant, took
away his hand, and looked upon the infant's face. But covered it again,
immediately.
"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 repeated, 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 released 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 something 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 kissing 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."
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 eyes 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 foot-ball 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
recognized the master of the house, who had so disposed himself--with
his person it was not difficult--as to fill up the whole entry.
"Oh!" 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 said. "And suppose you
provide yourself with another lodging. 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 them by the ears. I don't want any quarrels; I'm speaking softly
to avoid a quarrel; but if you don't go away, I'll speak out loud, and
you shall cause words loud 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 lowering distance.
"This is the last night of an Old Year, and I won't carry ill-blood and
quarrelings 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 business 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 her! 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 agonized entreaty for her. "Chimes! she
loves it still!"
"Follow her!" The shadows swept upon the track she had taken like a
cloud.
Oh, 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 up 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; "To desperation! Learn
it from the creature 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
everywhere, and not to be escaped. And still she hurried on; the same
light in her eyes.
All at once she stopped.
"Now, turn her back!" exclaimed the old man, tearing 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 sullen, red and dull,
as torches that were burning there to show the way to Death. Where no
abode of living people cast 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.
"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. Oh, 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.
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 happily, so gayly, that he
leapt upon 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 anything 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 backward 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 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; melodious, 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 Richard 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 until 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 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 catching 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-night, through lodging you! O, 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 flock of neighbors, screaming: "A Happy New
Year, Meg!" "A Happy Wedding!" "Many of 'em!" and other fragmentary good
wishes of that sort. The Drum (who was a private friend of Trotty's)
then stepped forward 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 happiness the New Year can bring. And
here we are, to play it in accordingly."
"What a happiness it is, I'm sure," said Trotty, "to be so esteemed. How
kind and neighborly you are! It's all along of my dear daughter. She
deserves it."
At this moment a combination of prodigious sounds was heard outside, and
a good-humored, comely woman of some fifty years of age, or thereabouts,
came running in, 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 bed-ridden. So
here I am."
"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 Dorsetshire?" 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 capacious breast.
"Will Fern," said Trotty, pulling on his right-hand muffler. "Not the
friend that 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?"
Had Trotty dreamed? Or are his joys and sorrows, 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--endeavor 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.