brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before
him, and throughout his whole countenance reigned a stony rigidity. But,
as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over
his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that
he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of
my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous
import of his words.
“Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
it--yet I dared not--O, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I
not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first
feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many,
many days ago--yet I dared not--_I dared not speak!_ And
now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking of the hermit’s door, and
the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!--say,
rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of
her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault!
O, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying
to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair?
Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?
Madman!”--here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his
syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul,--“_Madman! I
tell you that she now stands without the door!_”
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance had been found the
potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed
threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It
was the work of the rushing gust; but then without those doors _did_
stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher.
There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter
struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she
remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then, with
a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother,
and in her violent and now final death-agonies bore him to the floor a
corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned
to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house
and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full,
setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once
barely discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending
from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While
I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened,--there came a fierce breath of
the whirlwind,--the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my
sight,--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing
asunder,--there was a long, tumultuous, shouting sound like the voice of
a thousand waters,--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed
sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]
CHOPS THE DWARF.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
At one period of its reverses, the House to Let fell into the hands of a
showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of
the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore no need of
any clew to his name. But he himself was less easy to be found; for he
had led a wandering life, and settled people had lost sight of him, and
people who plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting
that they had ever known anything of him. At last among the marsh lands
near the river’s level, that lie about Deptford and the neighboring
market-gardens, a grizzled personage in velveteen, with a face so cut up
by varieties of weather that he looked as if he had been tattooed, was
found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden house on wheels. The wooden
house was laid up in ordinary for the winter near the mouth of a muddy
creek; and everything near it--the foggy river, the misty marshes, and
the steaming market-gardens--smoked in company with the grizzled man. In
the midst of the smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden house
on wheels was not remiss, but took its pipe with the rest in a
companionable manner.
On being asked if it were he who had once rented the House to Let,
Grizzled Velveteen looked surprised, and said yes. Then his name was
Magsman. That was it, Toby Magsman,--which was lawfully christened
Robert; but called in the line, from an infant, Toby. There was nothing
agin Toby Magsman, he believed? If there was suspicion of such, mention
it!
There was no suspicion of such, he might rest assured. But some
inquiries were making about that house, and would he object to say why
he left it?
Not at all; why should he? He left it along of a dwarf.
Along of a dwarf?
Mr. Magsman repeated, deliberately and emphatically, “Along of a dwarf.”
Might it be compatible with Mr. Magsman’s inclination and convenience to
enter, as a favor, into a few particulars?
Mr. Magsman entered into the following particulars:--
It was a long time ago to begin with,--afore lotteries and a deal more
was done away with. Mr. Magsman was looking around for a good pitch, and
he see that house, and he says to himself, “I’ll have you if you are to
be had. If money’ll get you, I’ll have you.”
The neighbors cut up rough, and made complaints; but Mr. Magsman don’t
know what they all would have had. It was a lovely thing. First of all,
there was the canvas representin the pictur of the Giant in Spanish
trunks and a ruff, who was half the height of the house, and was run up
with a line and pulley to a pole of the roof, so that his Ed was coeval
with the parapet. Then there was the canvas representin the pictur of
the Albina lady, showin her white ’air to the Army and Navy in correct
uniform. Then there was the canvas representin the pictur of the Wild
Indian scalpin a member of some foreign nation. Then there was the
canvas representin the pictur of a child of a British planter seized by
two Boa-Constrictors,--not that we never had no child, nor no
Constrictors neither. Similarly, there was the canvas representin the
pictur of the Wild Ass of the Prairies,--not that we never had no wild
asses, nor wouldn’t have had ’em as a gift. Last there was the canvas
representin the pictur of the Dwarf, and like him too (considerin), with
George the Fourth in such a state of astonishment at him as his Majesty
couldn’t with his utmost politeness and stoutness express. The front of
the House was so covered with canvases that there wasn’t a spark of
daylight ever visible on that side. “MAGSMAN’S AMUSEMENTS,” fifteen foot
long by two foot high, ran over the front door and parlor winders. The
passage was a arbor of green baize and garden stuff. A barrel-organ
performed there unceasing. And as to respectability,--if threepence
ain’t respectable, what is?
But the Dwarf is the principal article at present, and he was worth
money. He was wrote up as “Major Tpschoffki, of the Imperial
Bulgraderian Brigade.” Nobody couldn’t pronounce the name, and it never
was intended anybody should. The public always turned it, as a regular
rule, into Chopski. In the line he was called Chops; partly on that
account, and partly because his real name, if he ever had any real name
(which was very dubious), was Stakes.
He was an uncommon small man, he really was. Certainly not so small as
he was made out to be, but where’s your dwarf as is? He was a most
uncommon small man, with a most uncommon large Ed; and what he had
inside that Ed nobody never knowed but himself; even supposin himself to
have ever took stock of it, which it would have been a stiff job for him
to do. The kindest little man as never growed!--spirited, but not proud.
When he travelled with the Spotted Baby, though he knowed himself to be
a nat’ral Dwarf, and knowed the Baby’s spots to be put onto him
artificial, he nursed that Baby like a mother. You never heard him give
a ill name to a giant. He did allow himself to break out into strong
language respectin the Fat Lady from Norfolk; but that was an affair of
the ’art; and when a man’s ’art has been trifled with by a lady, and the
preference giv to a Indian, he ain’t master of his actions.
He was always in love, of course; every human nat’ral phenomenon is. And
he was always in love with a large woman; I never knowed the dwarf as
could be got to love a small one. Which helps to keep ’em the
curiosities they are.
One sing’lar idea he had in that Ed of his, which must have meant
something, or it wouldn’t have been there. It was always his opinion
that he was entitled to property. He never put his name to anything. He
had been taught to write by a young man without any arms, who got his
living with his toes (quite a writing-master _he_ was, and taught scores
in the line), but Chops would have starved to death afore he’d gained a
bit of bread by putting his hand to a paper. This is the more curious to
bear in mind, because HE had no property, except his house and a sarser.
When I say his house, I mean the box, painted and got up outside like a
reg’ler six-roomer, that he used to creep into, with a diamond ring (or
quite as good to look at) on his forefinger, and ring a little bell out
of what the public believed to be the drawing-room winder. And when I
say a sarser, I mean a Cheney sarser in which he made a collection for
himself at the end of every entertainment. His cue for that he took from
me: “Ladies and gentlemen, the little man will now walk three times
round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain.” When he said
anything important, in private life, he mostly wound it up with this
form of words, and they was generally the last thing he said to me afore
he went to bed.
He had what I consider a fine mind,--a poetic mind. His ideas respectin
his property never come upon him so strong as when he sat upon a
barrel-organ and had the handle turned. Arter the wibration had run
through him a little time, he would screech out: “Toby, I feel my
property coming,--grind away! I’m counting my guineas by thousands,
Toby,--grind away! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun! I feel the mint a
jingling in me, Toby, and I’m swelling out into the Bank of England!”
Such is the influence of music on the poetic mind. Not that he was
partial to any other music but a barrel-organ; on the contrairy, he
hated it.
He had a kind of everlasting grudge agin the public; which is a thing
you may notice in many phenomenons that get their living out of it. What
riled him most in the nater of his occupation was that it kep him out of
society. He was continiwally sayin: “Toby, my ambition is to go into
society. The curse of my position towards the public is that it keeps me
hout of society. This don’t signify to a low beast of a Indian; he ain’t
formed for society. This don’t signify to a Spotted Baby; _he_ ain’t
formed for society,--I am.”
Nobody never could make out what Chops done with his money. He had a
good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as the day came round,
besides having the run of his teeth,--and he was a woodpecker to
eat,--but all dwarfs are. The sarser was a little income, bringing him
in so many half-pence that he’d carry ’em, for a week together, tied up
in a pocket-handkercher. And yet he never had money. And it couldn’t be
the Fat Lady from Norfolk, as was once supposed; because it stands to
reason that when you have a animosity towards a Indian which makes you
grind your teeth at him to his face, and which can hardly hold you from
goosing him audible when he’s going through his war-dance,--it stands to
reason you wouldn’t under them circumstances deprive yourself to support
that Indian in the lap of luxury.
Most unexpected, the mystery came out one day at Egham races. The public
was shy of bein pulled in, and Chops was ringin his little bell out of
his drawin-room winder, and was snarlin to me over his shoulder as he
kneeled down with his legs out at the back door,--for he couldn’t be
shoved into his house without kneeling down, and the premises wouldn’t
accommodate his legs,--was snarlin: “Here’s a precious public for you;
why the devil don’t they tumble up?” when a man in the crowd holds up a
carrier-pigeon and cries out: “If there’s any person here as has got a
ticket, the Lottery’s just drawd, and the number as has come up for the
great prize is three, seven, forty-two! Three, seven, forty-two!” I was
givin the man to the furies myself, for calling of the public’s
attention,--for the public will turn away, at any time, to look at
anything in preference to the thing showed ’em; and if you doubt it, get
’em together for any individual purpose on the face of the earth, and
send only two people in late and see if the whole company ain’t far more
interested in taking particular notice of them two than you,--I say I
wasn’t best pleased with the man for callin out, wasn’t blessin him in
my own mind, when I see Chops’s little bell fly out of the winder at a
old lady, and he gets up and kicks his box over, exposin the whole
secret, and he catches hold of the calves of my legs and he says to me:
“Carry me into the wan, Toby, and throw a pail of water over me, or I’m
a dead man, for I’m come into my property!”
Twelve thousand odd hundred pounds was Chops’s winnins. He had bought a
half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand prize, and it had come up. The
first use he made of his property was to offer to fight the Wild Indian
for five hundred pound a side, him with a poisoned darnin-needle and the
Indian with a club; but the Indian being in want of backers to that
amount, it went no further.
Arter he had been mad for a week--in a state of mind, in short, in
which, if I had let him sit on the organ for only two minutes, I believe
he would have bust--but we kept the organ from him--Mr. Chops come round
and behaved liberal and beautiful to all. He then sent for a young man
he knowed, as had a wery genteel appearance and was a Bonnet at a
gaming-booth (most respectable brought up, father havin been imminent in
the livery-stable line, but unfort’nate in a commercial crisis through
paintin a old gray, ginger-bay, and sellin him with a pedigree), and Mr.
Chops said this to Bonnet, who said his name was Normandy, which it
wasn’t:--
“Normandy, I’m going into society. Will you go with me?”
Says Normandy: “Do I understand you, Mr. Chops, to hintimate that the
’ole of the expenses of that move will be borne by yourself?”
“Correct,” says Mr. Chops. “And you shall have a princely allowance
too.”
The Bonnet lifted Mr. Chops upon a chair to shake hands with him, and
replied in poetry, his eyes seemingly full of tears:--
“My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea,
And I do not ask for more,
But I’ll go--along with thee.”
They went into society, in a chaise and four grays, with silk jackets.
They took lodgings in Pall Mall, London, and they blazed away.
In consequence of a note that was brought to Bartlemy Fair in the
autumn of next year by a servant, most wonderful got up in milk-white
cords and tops, I cleaned myself and went to Pall Mall, one evening
appinted. The gentlemen was at their wine arter dinner, and Mr. Chops’s
eyes was more fixed in that Ed of his than I thought good for him. There
was three of ’em (in company, I mean), and I knowed the third well. When
last met, he had on a white Roman shirt, and a bishop’s mitre covered
with leopard-skin, and played the clarionet all wrong, in a band, at a
wild-beast show.
This gent took on not to know me, and Mr. Chops said: “Gentlemen, this
is an old friend of former days”; and Normandy looked at me through a
eyeglass, and said, “Magsman, glad to see ye!” which I’ll take my oath
he wasn’t. Mr. Chops, to get him convenient to the table, had his chair
on a throne, much of the form of George Fourth’s in the canvas, but he
hardly appeared to me to be King there in any other pint of view, for
his two gentlemen ordered about like emperors. They was all dressed like
May-day--gorgeous!--and as to wine, they swam in all sorts.
I made the round of the bottles, first separate (to say I had done it),
and then tried two of ’em as half-and-half, then t’other two.
Altogether, I passed a pleasant evenin, but with a tendency to feel
muddled, until I considered it good manners to get up and say: “Mr.
Chops, the best of friends must part. I thank you for the wariety of
foreign drains you have stood so ’ansome. I looks towards you in red
wine, and I takes my leave.” Mr. Chops replied: “If you’ll just hitch me
out of this over your right arm, Magsman, and carry me down stairs,
I’ll see you out.” I said I couldn’t think of such a thing, but he would
have it, so I lifted him off his throne. He smelt strong of Madeary, and
I couldn’t help thinking, as I carried him down, that it was like
carrying a large bottle full of wine, with a rayther ugly stopper, a
good deal out of proportion.
When I set him on the door-mat in the hall, he kept me close to him by
holding on to my coat-collar, and he whispers:--
“I ain’t ’appy, Magsman.”
“What’s on your mind, Mr. Chops?”
“They don’t use me well. They ain’t graceful to me. They puts me on the
mantel-piece when I won’t have in more Champagne-wine, and they locks me
in the sideboard when I won’t give up my property.”
“Git rid of ’em, Mr. Chops.”
“I can’t. We’re in society together, and what would society say?”
“Come out of society,” says I.
“I can’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. When you have once
got into society, you mustn’t come out of it.”
“Then, if you’ll excuse the freedom, Mr. Chops,” was my remark, shaking
my ed grave, “I think it’s a pity you ever went in.”
Mr. Chops shook that deep Ed of his to a surprisin extent, and slapped
it half a dozen times with his hand, and with more wice than I thought
were in him. Then he says: “You’re a good feller, but you don’t
understand. Good night, go long. Magsman, the little man will now walk
three times around the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain.” The
last I see of him on that occasion was his tryin, on the extremest werge
of insensibility, to climb up the stairs, one by one, with his hands and
knees. They’d have been much too steep for him if he had been sober; but
he wouldn’t be helped.
It warn’t long after that, that I read in the newspaper of Mr. Chops’s
being presented at court. It was printed: “It will be recollected”--and
I’ve noticed in my life that it is sure to be printed that it _will_ be
recollected whenever it won’t--“that Mr. Chops is the individual of
small stature whose brilliant success in the last State Lottery
attracted so much attention.” “Well,” I said to myself, “such is life!
He has been and done it in earnest at last! He has astonished George the
Fourth!”
On account of which I had that canvas new painted, him with a bag of
money in his hand, a presentin it to George the Fourth, and a lady in
ostrich feathers fallin in love with him in a bagwig, sword, and buckles
correct.
I took the house as is the subject of present inquiries--though not the
honor of being acquainted--and I run Magsman’s Amusements in it thirteen
months--sometimes one thing, sometimes another, sometimes nothin
particular, but always all the canvases outside. One night, when we had
played the last company out, which was a shy company through its raining
heavens hard, I was takin a pipe in the one pair back, along with the
young man with the toes, which I had taken on for a month (though he
never drawed--except on paper), and I heard a kickin at the street door.
“Halloa!” I says to the young man, “what’s up?” He rubs his eyebrows
with his toes, and he says, “I cant imagine, Mr. Magsman,”--which he
never could imagine nothin, and was monotonous company.
The noise not leavin off, I laid down my pipe, and I took up a candle,
and I went down and opened the door. I looked out into the street; but
nothin could I see, and nothin was I aware of, until I turned round
quick, because some creeter run between my legs into the passage. There
was Mr. Chops!
“Magsman,” he says, “take me on the hold terms, and you’ve got me; if
it’s done, say done!”
I was all of a maze, but I said, “Done, sir.”
“Done to your done, and double done!” says he. “Have you got a bit of
supper in the house?”
Bearin in mind them sparklin warieties of foreign drains as we’d guzzled
away at in Pall Mall, I was ashamed to offer him cold sassages and
gin-and-water; but he took ’em both and took ’em free; havin a chair for
his table, and sittin down at it on a stool, like hold times,--I all of
a maze all the while.
It was arter he had made a clean sweep of the sassages (beef, and to the
best of my calculations two pounds and a quarter), that the wisdom as
was in that little man began to come out of him like perspiration.
“Magsman,” he says, “look upon me?--You see afore you one as has both
gone into society, and come out.”
“O, you _are_ out of it, Mr. Chops? How did you get out, sir?”
“SOLD OUT!” says he. You never saw the like of the wisdom as his Ed
expressed, when he made use of them two words.
“My friend Magsman, I’ll impart to you a discovery I’ve made. It’s
wallable; it’s cost twelve thousand five hundred pound; it may do you
good in life. The secret of this matter is, that it ain’t so much that a
person goes into society, as that society goes into a person.”
Not exactly keeping up with his meanin, I shook my ed, put on a deep
look, and said, “You’re right there, Mr. Chops.”
“Magsman,” he says, twitchin me by the leg, “society has gone into me to
the tune of every penny of my property.”
I felt that I went pale, and though not naturally a bold speaker, I
couldn’t hardly say, “Where’s Normandy?”
“Bolted,--with the plate,” said Mr. Chops.
“And t’other one?”--meaning him as formerly wore the bishop’s mitre.
“Bolted,--with the jewels,” said Mr. Chops.
I sat down and looked at him, and he stood up and looked at me.
“Magsman,” he says, and he seemed to myself to get wiser as he got
hoarser, “society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs. At the court of
Saint James they was all a doin my bisness--all a goin three times round
the Cairawan, in the hold Court suits and properties. Elsewhere, they
was most of ’em ringing their little bells out of makebelieves.
Everywheres, the sarser was a goin round--Magsman, the sarser is the
universal institution!”
I perceived, you understand, that he was soured by his misfortuns, and I
felt for Mr. Chops.
“As to Fat Ladies,” says he, giving his Ed a tremendious one agin the
wall, “there’s lots of _them_ in society, and worse than the original.
_Hers_ was a outrage upon taste--simply a outrage upon taste--awakin
contempt--carryin its own punishment in the form of a Indian!” Here he
giv himself another tremendious one. “But _theirs_, Magsman, _theirs_ is
mercenary outrages. Lay in Cashmere shawls, buy bracelets, strew ’em and
a lot of ’andsome fans and things about your rooms, let it be known that
you give away like water to all as come to admire, and the Fat Ladies
that don’t exhibit for so much down upon the drum will come from all the
pints of the compass to flock about you, whatever you are. They’ll drill
holes in your ’art, Magsman, like a cullender. And when you’ve no more
left to give, they’ll laugh at you to your face, and leave you to have
your bones picked dry by wulturs, like the dead Wild Ass of the Prayries
that you deserve to be!” Here he giv himself the most tremendious one of
all, and dropped.
I thought he was gone. His Ed was so heavy, and he knocked it so hard,
and he fell so stony, and the sassagereal disturbance in him must have
been so immense, that I thought he was gone. But he soon come round with
care, and he sat up on the floor, and he said to me, with wisdom comin
out of his eyes, if ever it come,--
“Magsman! The most material difference between the two states of
existence through which your unappy friend has passed,”--he reached out
his poor little hand, and his tears dropped down on the mustache which
it was a credit to him to have done his best to grow, but it is not in
mortals to command success,--“the difference is this: When I was out of
society, I was paid light for being seen. When I went into society, I
paid heavy for being seen. I prefer the former, even if I wasn’t forced
upon it. Give me out through the trumpet, in the hold way, to-morrow.”
After that, he slid into the line again as easy as if he had been iled
all over. But the organ was kep from him, and no allusions was ever
made, when a company was in, to his property. He got wiser every day;
his views of society and the public was luminous, bewilderin, awful; and
his Ed got bigger and bigger as his wisdom expanded it.