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 without 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; spreading away and away from him in enlarging circles, as
the water ripples give way to a huge stone that suddenly 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, incessantly. He saw them riding downward, soaring upward,
sailing off afar, perching near at hand, all restless 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 innumerable
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 endeavouring to stop the
clock entirely. He saw them representing, 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 extraordinary 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 collapsed, 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, remained 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 perseverance,
that at last he dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally
retired; 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. 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—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 distance from all help; the long, dark, winding, ghost-beleaguered
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 nevertheless 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 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 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 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!’
‘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 Goblin 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 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 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 outstretched 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
stopping 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 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 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 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 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
honour 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 great people, and had considerably 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 character 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 average 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 reflective 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 company, 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
intelligence. 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 Alderman, 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 offspring _has_ authority in holy mother Eve. Weigh me the two, you
Daniel, going to judgment, 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,
warning 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. Alderman 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 fabric.
Deedles Brothers!’
The skittle-playing came off with immense success. Sir Joseph knocked
the pins about quite skilfully; 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 handsome; the visitors delighted,
cheerful, and good-tempered. When the lower doors were opened, and the
people flocked 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
picters, 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
something 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 ain’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—anybody—finds me
anywhere, a-doing anything. To jail with him, for he’s a vagrant, and a
jail-bird known; and 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 Fern. ‘Who can give me back my
liberty, who can give me back my good name, who can give me back my
innocent 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 when we're a-going wrong; and don’t set jail, jail,
jail, afore us, everywhere we turn. There an’t a condescension 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
sometimes 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 Hall. Trotty thought 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. ‘O, 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 sends
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!
O, 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 streaming 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 of 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 together!’
‘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! Forgive 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, innocent and radiant,
touched the old man with its hand, and beckoned him away.