THE BATTLE OF LIFE.
A LOVE STORY.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF LIFE
A LOVE STORY]
THE
BATTLE OF LIFE.
A Love Story.
BY
CHARLES DICKENS.
London:
BRADBURY & EVANS, WHITEFRIARS.
MDCCCXLVI.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
THIS
Christmas Book
IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED TO MY ENGLISH FRIENDS
IN SWITZERLAND
ILLUSTRATIONS.
_Title._ _Artist._ _Engraver._
FRONTISPIECE D. MACLISE, R.A. _Thompson._
TITLE D. MACLISE, R.A. _Thompson._
PART THE FIRST R. DOYLE. _Dalziel._
WAR C. STANFIELD, R.A. _Williams._
PEACE C. STANFIELD, R.A. _Williams._
THE PARTING BREAKFAST J. LEECH. _Dalziel._
PART THE SECOND R. DOYLE. _Green._
SNITCHEY AND CRAGGS J. LEECH. _Dalziel._
THE SECRET INTERVIEW D. MACLISE, R.A. _Williams._
THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN J. LEECH. _Dalziel._
PART THE THIRD R. DOYLE. _Dalziel._
THE NUTMEG GRATER C. STANFIELD, R.A. _Williams._
THE SISTERS D. MACLISE, R.A. _Williams._
THE BATTLE OF LIFE.
A Love Story.
PART THE FIRST.
[Illustration]
PART THE FIRST
[Illustration]
Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it
matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a
long summer day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower
formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt
its enamelled cup fill high with blood that day, and shrinking dropped.
Many an insect deriving its delicate color from harmless leaves and
herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men, and marked its frightened
way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the
air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground
became a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected in the prints of
human feet and horses' hoofs, the one prevailing hue still lowered and
glimmered at the sun.
[Illustration]
Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights the moon beheld
upon that field, when, coming up above the black line of distant
rising-ground, softened and blurred at the edge by trees, she rose
into the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn with upturned faces
that had once at mothers' breasts sought mothers' eyes, or slumbered
happily. Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the secrets whispered
afterwards upon the tainted wind that blew across the scene of that
day's work and that night's death and suffering! Many a lonely moon
was bright upon the battle-ground, and many a star kept mournful watch
upon it, and many a wind from every quarter of the earth blew over it,
before the traces of the fight were worn away.
They lurked and lingered for a long time, but survived in little things,
for Nature, far above the evil passions of men, soon recovered Her
serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle-ground as she had done
before, when it was innocent. The larks sang high above it, the swallows
skimmed and dipped and flitted to and fro, the shadows of the flying
clouds pursued each other swiftly, over grass and corn and turnip-field
and wood, and over roof and church-spire in the nestling town among
the trees, away into the bright distance on the borders of the sky
and earth, where the red sunsets faded. Crops were sown, and grew up,
and were gathered in; the stream that had been crimsoned, turned a
watermill; men whistled at the plough; gleaners and haymakers were seen
in quiet groups at work; sheep and oxen pastured; boys whooped and
called, in fields, to scare away the birds; smoke rose from cottage
chimneys; sabbath bells rang peacefully; old people lived and died; the
timid creatures of the field, and simple flowers of the bush and garden,
grew and withered in their destined terms: and all upon the fierce and
bloody battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been killed in
the great fight.
But there were deep green patches in the growing corn at first, that
people looked at awfully. Year after year they re-appeared; and it was
known that underneath those fertile spots, heaps of men and horses lay
buried, indiscriminately, enriching the ground. The husbandmen who
ploughed those places, shrunk from the great worms abounding there; and
the sheaves they yielded, were, for many a long year, called the Battle
Sheaves, and set apart; and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be among
the last load at a Harvest Home. For a long time, every furrow that was
turned, revealed some fragments of the fight. For a long time, there
were wounded trees upon the battle-ground; and scraps of hacked and
broken fence and wall, where deadly struggles had been made; and
trampled parts where not a leaf or blade would grow. For a long time,
no village-girl would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest flower
from that field of death: and after many a year had come and gone, the
berries growing there, were still believed to leave too deep a stain
upon the hand that plucked them.
[Illustration]
The Seasons in their course, however, though they passed as lightly as
the summer clouds themselves, obliterated, in the lapse of time, even
these remains of the old conflict; and wore away such legendary traces
of it as the neighbouring people carried in their minds, until they
dwindled into old wives' tales, dimly remembered round the winter fire,
and waning every year. Where the wild flowers and berries had so long
remained upon the stem untouched, gardens arose, and houses were built,
and children played at battles on the turf. The wounded trees had long
ago made Christmas logs, and blazed and roared away. The deep green
patches were no greener now than the memory of those who lay in dust
below. The ploughshare still turned up from time to time some rusty bits
of metal, but it was hard to say what use they had ever served, and
those who found them wondered and disputed. An old dinted corslet,
and a helmet, had been hanging in the church so long, that the same
weak half-blind old man who tried in vain to make them out above the
whitewashed arch, had marvelled at them as a baby. If the host slain
upon the field, could have been for a moment reanimated in the forms in
which they fell, each upon the spot that was the bed of his untimely
death, gashed and ghastly soldiers would have stared in, hundreds deep,
at household door and window; and would have risen on the hearths
of quiet homes; and would have been the garnered store of barns and
granaries; and would have started up between the cradled infant and its
nurse; and would have floated with the stream, and whirled round on the
mill, and crowded the orchard, and burdened the meadow, and piled the
rickyard high with dying men. So altered was the battle-ground, where
thousands upon thousands had been killed in the great fight.
Nowhere more altered, perhaps, about a hundred years ago, than in one
little orchard attached to an old stone house with a honeysuckle porch:
where, on a bright autumn morning, there were sounds of music and
laughter, and where two girls danced merrily together on the grass,
while some half-dozen peasant women standing on ladders, gathering the
apples from the trees, stopped in their work to look down, and share
their enjoyment. It was a pleasant, lively, natural scene; a beautiful
day, a retired spot; and the two girls, quite unconstrained and
careless, danced in the very freedom and gaiety of their hearts.
If there were no such thing as display in the world, my private opinion
is, and I hope you agree with me, that we might get on a great deal
better than we do, and might be infinitely more agreeable company than
we are. It was charming to see how these girls danced. They had no
spectators but the apple-pickers on the ladders. They were very glad to
please them, but they danced to please themselves (or at least you would
have supposed so); and you could no more help admiring, than they could
help dancing. How they did dance!
Not like opera dancers. Not at all. And not like Madame Anybody's
finished pupils. Not the least. It was not quadrille dancing, nor minuet
dancing, nor even country-dance dancing. It was neither in the old
style, nor the new style, nor the French style, nor the English style;
though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style,
which is a free and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air of
off-hand inspiration, from the chirping little castanets. As they danced
among the orchard trees, and down the groves of stems and back again,
and twirled each other lightly round and round, the influence of their
airy motion seemed to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene, like
an expanding circle in the water. Their streaming hair and fluttering
skirts, the elastic grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled in
the morning air--the flashing leaves, their speckled shadows on the soft
green ground--the balmy wind that swept along the landscape, glad to
turn the distant windmill, cheerily--everything between the two girls,
and the man and team at plough upon the ridge of land, where they showed
against the sky as if they were the last things in the world--seemed
dancing too.
At last the younger of the dancing sisters, out of breath, and laughing
gaily, threw herself upon a bench to rest. The other leaned against
a tree hard by. The music, a wandering harp and fiddle, left off
with a flourish, as if it boasted of its freshness; though, the truth
is, it had gone at such a pace, and worked itself to such a pitch of
competition with the dancing, that it never could have held on half a
minute longer. The apple-pickers on the ladders raised a hum and murmur
of applause, and then, in keeping with the sound, bestirred themselves
to work again, like bees.
The more actively, perhaps, because an elderly gentleman, who was
no other than Doctor Jeddler himself--it was Doctor Jeddler's house
and orchard, you should know, and these were Doctor Jeddler's
daughters--came bustling out to see what was the matter, and who the
deuce played music on his property, before breakfast. For he was a great
philosopher, Doctor Jeddler, and not very musical.
"Music and dancing _to-day_!" said the Doctor, stopping short, and
speaking to himself, "I thought they dreaded to-day. But it's a world of
contradictions. Why, Grace; why, Marion!" he added, aloud, "is the world
more mad than usual this morning?"
"Make some allowance for it, father, if it be," replied his younger
daughter, Marion, going close to him, and looking into his face, "for
it's somebody's birth-day."
"Somebody's birth-day, Puss," replied the Doctor. "Don't you know it's
always somebody's birth-day? Did you never hear how many new performers
enter on this--ha! ha! ha!--it's impossible to speak gravely of it--on
this preposterous and ridiculous business called Life, every minute?"
"No, father!"
"No, not you, of course; you're a woman--almost," said the Doctor. "By
the bye," and he looked into the pretty face, still close to his, "I
suppose it's _your_ birth-day."
"No! Do you really, father?" cried his pet daughter, pursing up her red
lips to be kissed.
"There! Take my love with it," said the Doctor, imprinting his upon
them; "and many happy returns of the--the idea!--of the day. The notion
of wishing happy returns in such a farce as this," said the Doctor to
himself, "is good! Ha! ha! ha!"
Doctor Jeddler was, as I have said, a great philosopher; and the heart
and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the world as a gigantic
practical joke: as something too absurd to be considered seriously, by
any rational man. His system of belief had been, in the beginning, part
and parcel of the battle-ground on which he lived; as you shall
presently understand.
"Well! But how did you get the music?" asked the Doctor.
"Poultry-stealers, of course. Where did the minstrels come from?"
"Alfred sent the music," said his daughter Grace, adjusting a few
simple flowers in her sister's hair, with which, in her admiration of
that youthful beauty, she had herself adorned it half-an-hour before,
and which the dancing had disarranged.
"Oh! Alfred sent the music, did he?" returned the Doctor.
"Yes. He met it coming out of the town as he was entering early. The
men are travelling on foot, and rested there last night; and as it was
Marion's birth-day, and he thought it would please her, he sent them on,
with a pencilled note to me, saying that if I thought so too, they had
come to serenade her."
"Ay, ay," said the Doctor, carelessly, "he always takes your opinion."
"And my opinion being favorable," said Grace, good-humouredly; and
pausing for a moment to admire the pretty head she decorated, with her
own thrown back; "and Marion being in high spirits, and beginning to
dance, I joined her: and so we danced to Alfred's music till we were out
of breath. And we thought the music all the gayer for being sent by
Alfred. Didn't we, dear Marion?"
"Oh, I don't know, Grace. How you teaze me about Alfred."
"Teaze you by mentioning your lover!" said her sister.
"I am sure I don't much care to have him mentioned," said the wilful
beauty, stripping the petals from some flowers she held, and scattering
them on the ground. "I am almost tired of hearing of him; and as to his
being my lover"----
"Hush! Don't speak lightly of a true heart, which is all your own,
Marion," cried her sister, "even in jest. There is not a truer heart
than Alfred's in the world!"
"No--no," said Marion, raising her eyebrows with a pleasant air of
careless consideration, "perhaps not. But I don't know that there's any
great merit in that. I--I don't want him to be so very true. I never
asked him. If he expects that I----. But, dear Grace, why need we talk
of him at all, just now!"
It was agreeable to see the graceful figures of the blooming sisters,
twined together, lingering among the trees, conversing thus, with
earnestness opposed to lightness, yet with love responding tenderly to
love. And it was very curious indeed to see the younger sister's eyes
suffused with tears; and something fervently and deeply felt, breaking
through the wilfulness of what she said, and striving with it painfully.
The difference between them, in respect of age, could not exceed four
years at most: but Grace, as often happens in such cases, when no mother
watches over both (the Doctor's wife was dead), seemed, in her gentle
care of her young sister, and in the steadiness of her devotion to her,
older than she was; and more removed, in course of nature, from all
competition with her, or participation, otherwise than through her
sympathy and true affection, in her wayward fancies, than their ages
seemed to warrant. Great character of mother, that, even in this shadow,
and faint reflection of it, purifies the heart, and raises the exalted
nature nearer to the angels!
The Doctor's reflections, as he looked after them, and heard the purport
of their discourse, were limited, at first, to certain merry meditations
on the folly of all loves and likings, and the idle imposition
practised on themselves by young people, who believed, for a moment,
that there could be anything serious in such bubbles, and were always
undeceived--always!
But the home-adorning, self-denying qualities of Grace, and her sweet
temper, so gentle and retiring, yet including so much constancy and
bravery of spirit, seemed all expressed to him in the contrast between
her quiet household figure and that of his younger and more beautiful
child; and he was sorry for her sake--sorry for them both--that life
should be such a very ridiculous business as it was.
The Doctor never dreamed of inquiring whether his children, or either of
them, helped in any way to make the scheme a serious one. But then he
was a Philosopher.
A kind and generous man by nature, he had stumbled, by chance, over that
common Philosopher's stone (much more easily discovered than the object
of the alchemist's researches), which sometimes trips up kind and
generous men, and has the fatal property of turning gold to dross, and
every precious thing to poor account.
"Britain!" cried the Doctor. "Britain! Halloa!"
A small man, with an uncommonly sour and discontented face, emerged from
the house, and returned to this call the unceremonious acknowledgment of
"Now then!"
"Where's the breakfast table?" said the Doctor.
"In the house," returned Britain.
"Are you going to spread it out here, as you were told last night?"
said the Doctor. "Don't you know that there are gentlemen coming? That
there's business to be done this morning, before the coach comes by?
That this is a very particular occasion?"
"I couldn't do anything, Doctor Jeddler, till the women had done getting
in the apples, could I?" said Britain, his voice rising with his
reasoning, so that it was very loud at last.
"Well, have they done now?" returned the Doctor, looking at his watch,
and clapping his hands. "Come! make haste! where's Clemency?"
"Here am I, Mister," said a voice from one of the ladders, which a pair
of clumsy feet descended briskly. "It's all done now. Clear away, gals.
Everything shall be ready for you in half a minute, Mister."
With that she began to bustle about most vigorously; presenting, as she
did so, an appearance sufficiently peculiar to justify a word of
introduction.
She was about thirty years old; and had a sufficiently plump and
cheerful face, though it was twisted up into an odd expression of
tightness that made it comical. But the extraordinary homeliness of her
gait and manner, would have superseded any face in the world. To say
that she had two left legs, and somebody else's arms; and that all four
limbs seemed to be out of joint, and to start from perfectly wrong
places when they were set in motion; is to offer the mildest outline of
the reality. To say that she was perfectly content and satisfied with
these arrangements, and regarded them as being no business of hers, and
took her arms and legs as they came, and allowed them to dispose of
themselves just as it happened, is to render faint justice to her
equanimity. Her dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, that
never wanted to go where her feet went; blue stockings; a printed gown
of many colours, and the most hideous pattern procurable for money; and
a white apron. She always wore short sleeves, and always had, by some
accident, grazed elbows, in which she took so lively an interest that
she was continually trying to turn them round and get impossible views
of them. In general, a little cap perched somewhere on her head; though
it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other
subjects, by that article of dress; but from head to foot she was
scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed
her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as
well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling
evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden
handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle
as it were with her garments, until they fell into a symmetrical
arrangement.
Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency Newcome; who was supposed
to have unconsciously originated a corruption of her own christian
name, from Clementina (but nobody knew, for the deaf old mother, a very
phenomenon of age, whom she had supported almost from a child, was dead,
and she had no other relation); who now busied herself in preparing the
table; and who stood, at intervals, with her bare red arms crossed,
rubbing her grazed elbows with opposite hands, and staring at it very
composedly, until she suddenly remembered something else it wanted, and
jogged off to fetch it.
"Here are them two lawyers a-coming, Mister!" said Clemency, in a tone
of no very great good-will.
"Aha!" cried the Doctor, advancing to the gate to meet them. "Good
morning, good morning! Grace, my dear! Marion! Here are Messrs. Snitchey
and Craggs. Where's Alfred?"
"He'll be back directly, father, no doubt," said Grace. "He had so much
to do this morning in his preparations for departure, that he was up and
out by daybreak. Good morning, gentlemen."
"Ladies!" said Mr. Snitchey, "For Self and Craggs," who bowed, "good
morning. Miss," to Marion, "I kiss your hand." Which he did. "And I wish
you"--which he might or might not, for he didn't look, at first sight,
like a gentleman troubled with many warm outpourings of soul, in behalf
of other people, "a hundred happy returns of this auspicious day."
"Ha ha ha!" laughed the Doctor thoughtfully, with his hands in his
pockets. "The great farce in a hundred acts!"
"You wouldn't, I am sure," said Mr. Snitchey, standing a small
professional blue bag against one leg of the table, "cut the great
farce short for this actress, at all events, Doctor Jeddler."
"No," returned the Doctor. "God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as
long as she _can_ laugh, and then say, with the French wit, 'The farce
is ended; draw the curtain.'"
"The French wit," said Mr. Snitchey, peeping sharply into his blue bag,
"was wrong, Doctor Jeddler; and your philosophy is altogether wrong,
depend upon it, as I have often told you. Nothing serious in life! What
do you call law?"
"A joke," replied the Doctor.
"Did you ever go to law?" asked Mr. Snitchey, looking out of the blue
bag.
"Never," returned the Doctor.
"If you ever do," said Mr. Snitchey, "perhaps you'll alter that
opinion."
Craggs, who seemed to be represented by Snitchey, and to be conscious
of little or no separate existence or personal individuality, offered a
remark of his own in this place. It involved the only idea of which he
did not stand seised and possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey; but
he had some partners in it among the wise men of the world.
"It's made a great deal too easy," said Mr. Craggs.
"Law is?" asked the Doctor.
"Yes," said Mr. Craggs, "everything is. Everything appears to me to be
made too easy, now-a-days. It's the vice of these times. If the world is
a joke (I am not prepared to say it isn't), it ought to be made a very
difficult joke to crack. It ought to be as hard a struggle, Sir, as
possible. That's the intention. But it's being made far too easy. We are
oiling the gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We shall have them
beginning to turn, soon, with a smooth sound. Whereas they ought to
grate upon their hinges, Sir."
Mr. Craggs seemed positively to grate upon his own hinges, as he
delivered this opinion; to which he communicated immense effect--being
a cold, hard, dry man, dressed in grey and white, like a flint; with
small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck sparks out of them.
The three natural kingdoms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative
among this brotherhood of disputants: for Snitchey was like a magpie or
a raven (only not so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face like a
winter-pippin, with here and there a dimple to express the peckings of
the birds, and a very little bit of pigtail behind, that stood for the
stalk.
As the active figure of a handsome young man, dressed for a journey,
and followed by a porter, bearing several packages and baskets,
entered the orchard at a brisk pace, and with an air of gaiety and
hope that accorded well with the morning,--these three drew together,
like the brothers of the sister Fates, or like the Graces most
effectually disguised, or like the three weird prophets on the heath,
and greeted him.
"Happy returns, Alf," said the Doctor, lightly.
"A hundred happy returns of this auspicious day, Mr. Heathfield," said
Snitchey, bowing low.
"Returns!" Craggs murmured in a deep voice, all alone.
"Why, what a battery!" exclaimed Alfred, stopping short, "and
one--two--three--all foreboders of no good, in the great sea before me.
I am glad you are not the first I have met this morning: I should have
taken it for a bad omen. But Grace was the first--sweet, pleasant
Grace--so I defy you all!"
"If you please, Mister, _I_ was the first you know," said Clemency
Newcome. "She was a walking out here, before sunrise, you remember. I
was in the house."
"That's true! Clemency was the first," said Alfred. "So I defy you with
Clemency."
"Ha, ha, ha!--for Self and Craggs," said Snitchey. "What a defiance!"
"Not so bad a one as it appears, may be," said Alfred, shaking hands
heartily with the Doctor, and also with Snitchey and Craggs, and then
looking round. "Where are the--Good Heavens!"
With a start, productive for the moment of a closer partnership between
Jonathan Snitchey and Thomas Craggs than the subsisting articles of
agreement in that wise contemplated, he hastily betook himself to where
the sisters stood together, and--however, I needn't more particularly
explain his manner of saluting Marion first, and Grace afterwards, than
by hinting that Mr. Craggs may possibly have considered it "too easy."
Perhaps to change the subject, Doctor Jeddler made a hasty move towards
the breakfast, and they all sat down at table. Grace presided; but so
discreetly stationed herself, as to cut off her sister and Alfred from
the rest of the company. Snitchey and Craggs sat at opposite corners,
with the blue bag between them for safety; and the Doctor took his usual
position, opposite to Grace. Clemency hovered galvanically about the
table, as waitress; and the melancholy Britain, at another and a smaller
board, acted as Grand Carver of a round of beef, and a ham.
"Meat?" said Britain, approaching Mr. Snitchey, with the carving knife
and fork in his hands, and throwing the question at him like a missile.
"Certainly," returned the lawyer.
"Do _you_ want any?" to Craggs.
"Lean, and well done," replied that gentleman.
[Illustration]
Having executed these orders, and moderately supplied the Doctor (he
seemed to know that nobody else wanted anything to eat), he lingered as
near the Firm as he decently could, watching, with an austere eye, their
disposition of the viands, and but once relaxing the severe expression
of his face. This was on the occasion of Mr. Craggs, whose teeth were
not of the best, partially choking, when he cried out with great
animation, "I thought he was gone!"
"Now Alfred," said the Doctor, "for a word or two of business, while we
are yet at breakfast."
"While we are yet at breakfast," said Snitchey and Craggs, who seemed to
have no present idea of leaving off.
Although Alfred had not been breakfasting, and seemed to have quite
enough business on his hands as it was, he respectfully answered:
"If you please, Sir."
"If anything could be serious," the Doctor began, "in such a--"
"Farce as this, Sir," hinted Alfred.
"In such a farce as this," observed the Doctor, "it might be this
recurrence, on the eve of separation, of a double birth-day, which is
connected with many associations pleasant to us four, and with the
recollection of a long and amicable intercourse. That's not to the
purpose."
"Ah! yes, yes, Doctor Jeddler," said the young man. "It is to the
purpose. Much to the purpose, as my heart bears witness this morning;
and as yours does too, I know, if you would let it speak. I leave your
house to-day; I cease to be your ward to-day; we part with tender
relations stretching far behind us, that never can be exactly renewed,
and with others dawning yet before us," he looked down at Marion beside
him, "fraught with such considerations as I must not trust myself to
speak of now. Come, come!" he added, rallying his spirits and the Doctor
at once, "there's a serious grain in this large foolish dust-heap,
Doctor. Let us allow to-day, that there is One."
"To-day!" cried the Doctor. "Hear him! Ha, ha, ha! Of all days in the
foolish year. Why on this day, the great battle was fought on this
ground. On this ground where we now sit, where I saw my two girls dance
this morning, where the fruit has just been gathered for our eating from
these trees, the roots of which are struck in Men, not earth,--so many
lives were lost, that within my recollection, generations afterwards, a
churchyard full of bones, and dust of bones, and chips of cloven skulls,
has been dug up from underneath our feet here. Yet not a hundred people
in that battle, knew for what they fought, or why; not a hundred of the
inconsiderate rejoicers in the victory, why they rejoiced. Not half a
hundred people were the better, for the gain or loss. Not half-a-dozen
men agree to this hour on the cause or merits; and nobody, in short,
ever knew anything distinct about it, but the mourners of the slain.
Serious, too!" said the Doctor, laughing. "Such a system!"
"But all this seems to me," said Alfred, "to be very serious."
"Serious!" cried the Doctor. "If you allowed such things to be serious,
you must go mad, or die, or climb up to the top of a mountain, and turn
hermit."
"Besides--so long ago," said Alfred.
"Long ago!" returned the Doctor. "Do you know what the world has been
doing, ever since? Do you know what else it has been doing? _I_ don't!"
"It has gone to law a little," observed Mr. Snitchey, stirring his tea.
"Although the way out has been always made too easy," said his partner.
"And you'll excuse my saying, Doctor," pursued Mr. Snitchey, "having
been already put a thousand times in possession of my opinion, in the
course of our discussions, that, in its having gone to law, and in its
legal system altogether, I do observe a serious side--now, really, a
something tangible, and with a purpose and intention in it--"
Clemency Newcome made an angular tumble against the table, occasioning
a sounding clatter among the cups and saucers.
"Heyday! what's the matter there?" exclaimed the Doctor.
"It's this evil-inclined blue bag," said Clemency, "always tripping up
somebody!"
"With a purpose and intention in it, I was saying," resumed Snitchey,
"that commands respect. Life a farce, Doctor Jeddler? With law in it?"
The Doctor laughed, and looked at Alfred.
"Granted, if you please, that war is foolish," said Snitchey. "There
we agree. For example. Here's a smiling country," pointing it out with
his fork, "once overrun by soldiers--trespassers every man of 'em--and
laid waste by fire and sword. He, he, he! The idea of any man exposing
himself, voluntarily, to fire and sword! Stupid, wasteful, positively
ridiculous; you laugh at your fellow-creatures, you know, when you
think of it! But take this smiling country as it stands. Think of the
laws appertaining to real property; to the bequest and devise of real
property; to the mortgage and redemption of real property; to leasehold,
freehold, and copyhold estate; think," said Mr. Snitchey, with such
great emotion that he actually smacked his lips, "of the complicated
laws relating to title and proof of title, with all the contradictory
precedents and numerous acts of parliament connected with them; think of
the infinite number of ingenious and interminable chancery suits, to
which this pleasant prospect may give rise;--and acknowledge, Doctor
Jeddler, that there is a green spot in the scheme about us! I believe,"
said Mr. Snitchey, looking at his partner, "that I speak for Self and
Craggs?"
Mr. Craggs having signified assent, Mr. Snitchey, somewhat freshened by
his recent eloquence, observed that he would take a little more beef,
and another cup of tea.
"I don't stand up for life in general," he added, rubbing his hands and
chuckling, "it's full of folly; full of something worse. Professions of
trust, and confidence, and unselfishness, and all that. Bah, bah, bah!
We see what they're worth. But you mustn't laugh at life; you've got a
game to play; a very serious game indeed! Everybody's playing against
you, you know; and you're playing against them. Oh! it's a very
interesting thing. There are deep moves upon the board. You must only
laugh, Doctor Jeddler, when you win; and then not much. He, he, he! And
then not much," repeated Snitchey, rolling his head and winking his eye;
as if he would have added, 'you may do this instead!'
"Well, Alfred!" cried the Doctor, "what do you say now?"
"I say, Sir," replied Alfred, "that the greatest favor you could do me,
and yourself too I am inclined to think, would be to try sometimes to
forget this battle-field, and others like it, in that broader
battle-field of Life, on which the sun looks every day."
"Really, I'm afraid that wouldn't soften his opinions, Mr. Alfred," said
Snitchey. "The combatants are very eager and very bitter in that same
battle of Life. There's a great deal of cutting and slashing, and firing
into people's heads from behind; terrible treading down, and trampling
on; it's rather a bad business."
"I believe, Mr. Snitchey," said Alfred, "there are quiet victories and
struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in
it--even in many of its apparent lightnesses and contradictions--not the
less difficult to achieve, because they have no earthly chronicle or
audience; done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households,
and in men's and women's hearts--any one of which might reconcile the
sternest man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it,
though two-fourths of its people were at war, and another fourth at law;
and that's a bold word."
Both the sisters listened keenly.
"Well, well!" said the Doctor, "I am too old to be converted, even by
my friend Snitchey here, or my good spinster sister, Martha Jeddler;
who had what she calls her domestic trials ages ago, and has led a
sympathising life with all sorts of people ever since; and who is so
much of your opinion (only she's less reasonable and more obstinate,
being a woman), that we can't agree, and seldom meet. I was born upon
this battle-field. I began, as a boy, to have my thoughts directed to
the real history of a battle-field. Sixty years have gone over my head;
and I have never seen the Christian world, including Heaven knows how
many loving mothers and good enough girls, like mine here, anything but
mad for a battle-field. The same contradictions prevail in everything.
One must either laugh or cry at such stupendous inconsistencies; and I
prefer to laugh."
Britain, who had been paying the profoundest and most melancholy
attention to each speaker in his turn, seemed suddenly to decide in
favor of the same preference, if a deep sepulchral sound that escaped
him might be construed into a demonstration of risibility. His face,
however, was so perfectly unaffected by it, both before and afterwards,
that although one or two of the breakfast party looked round as being
startled by a mysterious noise, nobody connected the offender with it.
Except his partner in attendance, Clemency Newcome; who, rousing him
with one of those favorite joints, her elbows, inquired, in a
reproachful whisper, what he laughed at.
"Not you!" said Britain.
"Who then?"
"Humanity," said Britain. "That's the joke."
"What between master and them lawyers, he's getting more and more
addle-headed every day!" cried Clemency, giving him a lunge with the
other elbow, as a mental stimulant. "Do you know where you are? Do you
want to get warning?"
"I don't know anything," said Britain, with a leaden eye and an
immovable visage. "I don't care for anything. I don't make out anything.
I don't believe anything. And I don't want anything."
Although this forlorn summary of his general condition, may have been
overcharged in an access of despondency, Benjamin Britain--sometimes
called Little Britain, to distinguish him from Great; as we might say
Young England, to express Old England with a difference--had defined his
real state more accurately than might be supposed. For serving as a sort
of man Miles, to the Doctor's Friar Bacon; and listening day after day
to innumerable orations addressed by the Doctor to various people, all
tending to shew that his very existence was at best a mistake and an
absurdity; this unfortunate servitor had fallen, by degrees, into such
an abyss of confused and contradictory suggestions from within and
without, that Truth at the bottom of her well, was on the level surface
as compared with Britain in the depths of his mystification. The only
point he clearly comprehended, was, that the new element usually brought
into these discussions by Snitchey and Craggs, never served to make them
clearer, and always seemed to give the Doctor a species of advantage and
confirmation. Therefore he looked upon the Firm as one of the proximate
causes of his state of mind, and held them in abhorrence accordingly.
"But this is not our business, Alfred," said the Doctor. "Ceasing to be
my ward (as you have said) to-day; and leaving us full to the brim of
such learning as the Grammar School down here was able to give you, and
your studies in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge
as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon both; you are
away, now, into the world. The first term of probation appointed by your
poor father, being over, away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his
second desire: and long before your three years' tour among the foreign
schools of medicine is finished, you'll have forgotten us. Lord, you'll
forget us easily in six months!"
"If I do--But you know better; why should I speak to you!" said Alfred,
laughing.
"I don't know anything of the sort," returned the Doctor. "What do you
say, Marion?"
Marion, trifling with her teacup, seemed to say--but she didn't say
it--that he was welcome to forget them, if he could. Grace pressed the
blooming face against her cheek, and smiled.
"I haven't been, I hope, a very unjust steward in the execution of my
trust," pursued the Doctor; "but I am to be, at any rate, formally
discharged, and released, and what not, this morning; and here are our
good friends Snitchey and Craggs, with a bagful of papers, and accounts,
and documents, for the transfer of the balance of the trust fund to you
(I wish it was a more difficult one to dispose of, Alfred, but you must
get to be a great man and make it so), and other drolleries of that
sort, which are to be signed, sealed, and delivered."
"And duly witnessed, as by law required," said Snitchey, pushing away
his plate, and taking out the papers, which his partner proceeded to
spread upon the table; "and Self and Craggs having been co-trustees with
you, Doctor, in so far as the fund was concerned, we shall want your two
servants to attest the signatures--can you read, Mrs. Newcome?"
"I a'n't married, Mister," said Clemency.
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I should think not," chuckled Snitchey, casting
his eyes over her extraordinary figure. "You _can_ read?"
"A little," answered Clemency.
"The marriage service, night and morning, eh?" observed the lawyer,
jocosely.
"No," said Clemency. "Too hard. I only reads a thimble."
"Read a thimble!" echoed Snitchey. "What are you talking about, young
woman?"
Clemency nodded. "And a nutmeg-grater."
"Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chancellor!" said
Snitchey, staring at her.
"If possessed of any property," stipulated Craggs.
Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the articles in
question bore an engraved motto, and so formed the pocket library of
Clemency Newcome, who was not much given to the study of books.
"Oh, that's it, is it, Miss Grace!" said Snitchey. "Yes, yes. Ha, ha,
ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She looks uncommonly like it," he
muttered, with a supercilious glance. "And what does the thimble say,
Mrs. Newcome?"
"I a'n't married, Mister," observed Clemency.
"Well, Newcome. Will that do?" said the lawyer. "What does the thimble
say, Newcome?"
How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one pocket open,
and looked down into its yawning depths for the thimble which wasn't
there,--and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to
descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such
intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed
apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of
scissors in a sheath, more expressively describable as promising young
shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a
needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of
which articles she entrusted individually and severally to Britain to
hold,--is of no consequence. Nor how, in her determination to grasp this
pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to
swing and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed, and
calmly maintained, an attitude apparently inconsistent with the
human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last she
triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the
nutmeg-grater; the literature of both those trinkets being obviously in
course of wearing out and wasting away, through excessive friction.
"That's the thimble, is it, young woman?" said Mr. Snitchey, diverting
himself at her expense. "And what does the thimble say?"
"It says," replied Clemency, reading slowly round it as if it were a
tower, "For-get and for-give."
Snitchey and Craggs laughed heartily. "So new!" said Snitchey. "So
easy!" said Craggs. "Such a knowledge of human nature in it," said
Snitchey. "So applicable to the affairs of life," said Craggs.
"And the nutmeg-grater?" inquired the head of the Firm.
"The grater says," returned Clemency, "Do as you--wold--be--done by."
"'Do, or you'll be done brown,' you mean," said Mr. Snitchey.
"I don't understand," retorted Clemency, shaking her head vaguely. "I
a'n't no lawyer."
"I am afraid that if she was, Doctor," said Mr. Snitchey, turning to
him suddenly, as if to anticipate any effect that might otherwise be
consequent on this retort, "she'd find it to be the golden rule of half
her clients. They are serious enough in that--whimsical as your world
is--and lay the blame on us afterwards. We, in our profession, are
little else than mirrors after all, Mr. Alfred; but we are generally
consulted by angry and quarrelsome people, who are not in their best
looks; and it's rather hard to quarrel with us if we reflect unpleasant
aspects. I think," said Mr. Snitchey, "that I speak for Self and
Craggs?"
"Decidedly," said Craggs.
"And so, if Mr. Britain will oblige us with a mouthful of ink," said Mr.
Snitchey, returning to the papers, "we'll sign, seal, and deliver as
soon as possible, or the coach will be coming past before we know where
we are."
If one might judge from his appearance, there was every probability of
the coach coming past before Mr. Britain knew where _he_ was; for he
stood in a state of abstraction, mentally balancing the Doctor against
the lawyers, and the lawyers against the Doctor, and their clients
against both; and engaged in feeble attempts to make the thimble and
nutmeg-grater (a new idea to him) square with anybody's system of
philosophy; and, in short, bewildering himself as much as ever his
great namesake has done with theories and schools. But Clemency, who
was his good Genius--though he had the meanest possible opinion of her
understanding, by reason of her seldom troubling herself with abstract
speculations, and being always at hand to do the right thing at the
right time--having produced the ink in a twinkling, tendered him the
further service of recalling him to himself by the application of her
elbows; with which gentle flappers she so jogged his memory, in a more
literal construction of that phrase than usual, that he soon became
quite fresh and brisk.
How he labored under an apprehension not uncommon to persons in his
degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is an event, that he couldn't
append his name to a document, not of his own writing, without
committing himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow signing away
vague and enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds under
protest, and by dint of the Doctor's coercion, and insisted on pausing
to look at them before writing (the cramped hand, to say nothing of the
phraseology, being so much Chinese to him), and also on turning them
round to see whether there was anything fraudulent, underneath; and how,
having signed his name, he became desolate as one who had parted with
his property and rights; I want the time to tell. Also, how the blue bag
containing his signature, afterwards had a mysterious interest for him,
and he couldn't leave it; also, how Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of
laughter at the idea of her own importance and dignity, brooded over the
whole table with her two elbows like a spread eagle, and reposed her
head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the formation of certain
cabalistic characters, which required a deal of ink, and imaginary
counterparts whereof she executed at the same time with her tongue.
Also how, having once tasted ink, she became thirsty in that regard, as
tigers are said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and wanted to
sign everything, and put her name in all kinds of places. In brief, the
Doctor was discharged of his trust and all its responsibilities; and
Alfred, taking it on himself, was fairly started on the journey of life.
"Britain!" said the Doctor. "Run to the gate, and watch for the coach.
Time flies, Alfred!"
"Yes, Sir, yes," returned the young man, hurriedly. "Dear Grace! a
moment! Marion--so young and beautiful, so winning and so much admired,
dear to my heart as nothing else in life is--remember! I leave Marion to
you!"
"She has always been a sacred charge to me, Alfred. She is doubly so
now. I will be faithful to my trust, believe me."
"I do believe it, Grace. I know it well. Who could look upon your face,
and hear your earnest voice, and not know it! Ah, good Grace! If I had
your well-governed heart, and tranquil mind, how bravely I would leave
this place to-day!"
"Would you?" she answered, with a quiet smile.
"And yet, Grace--Sister, seems the natural word."
"Use it!" she said quickly, "I am glad to hear it, call me nothing
else."
"And yet, Sister, then," said Alfred, "Marion and I had better have your
true and stedfast qualities serving us here, and making us both happier
and better. I wouldn't carry them away, to sustain myself, if I could!"
"Coach upon the hill-top!" exclaimed Britain.
"Time flies, Alfred," said the Doctor.
Marion had stood apart, with her eyes fixed upon the ground; but this
warning being given, her young lover brought her tenderly to where her
sister stood, and gave her into her embrace.
"I have been telling Grace, dear Marion," he said, "that you are her
charge; my precious trust at parting. And when I come back and reclaim
you, dearest, and the bright prospect of our married life lies stretched
before us, it shall be one of our chief pleasures to consult how we can
make Grace happy; how we can anticipate her wishes; how we can show our
gratitude and love to her; how we can return her something of the debt
she will have heaped upon us."
The younger sister had one hand in his; the other rested on her sister's
neck. She looked into that sister's eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful,
with a gaze in which affection, admiration, sorrow, wonder, almost
veneration, were blended. She looked into that sister's face, as if it
were the face of some bright angel. Calm, serene, and cheerful, it
looked back on her and on her lover.
"And when the time comes, as it must one day," said Alfred,--"I wonder
it has never come yet: but Grace knows best, for Grace is always
right,--when _she_ will want a friend to open her whole heart to, and
to be to her something of what she has been to us,--then, Marion, how
faithful we will prove, and what delight to us to know that she, our
dear good sister, loves and is loved again, as we would have her!"
Still the younger sister looked into her eyes, and turned not--even
towards him. And still those honest eyes looked back, so calm, serene,
and cheerful, on herself and on her lover.
"And when all that is past, and we are old, and living (as we
must!) together--close together; talking often of old times," said
Alfred--"these shall be our favorite times among them--this day most
of all; and telling each other what we thought and felt, and hoped and
feared, at parting; and how we couldn't bear to say good bye"----
"Coach coming through the wood," cried Britain.
"Yes! I am ready--and how we met again, so happily, in spite of all;
we'll make this day the happiest in all the year, and keep it as a
treble birth-day. Shall we, dear?"
"Yes!" interposed the elder sister, eagerly, and with a radiant smile.
"Yes! Alfred, don't linger. There's no time. Say good bye to Marion. And
Heaven be with you!"