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.
Oh, Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this! Oh, 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 face!”
“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!”
Oh, Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this! Oh, 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. Oh, 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.
FOURTH QUARTER.
Some new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the Bells; some faint impression of the ringing of the Chimes; some giddy consciousness of having seen the swarm of phantoms reproduced and reproduced until the recollection of them lost itself in the confusion of their numbers; some hurried knowledge, how conveyed to him he knew not, that more years had passed; and Trotty, with the Spirit of the child attending him, stood looking on at mortal company.
Fat company, rosy-cheeked company, comfortable company. They were but two, but they were red enough for ten. They sat before a bright fire, with a small low table between them; and unless the fragrance of hot tea and muffins lingered longer in that room than in most others, the table had seen service very lately. But all the cups and saucers being clean, and in their proper places in the corner cupboard ; and the brass toasting-fork hanging in its usual nook, and spreading its four idle fingers out, as if it wanted to be measured for a glove; there remained no other visible tokens of the meal just finished, than such as purred and washed their whiskers in the person of the basking cat, and glistened in the gracious, not to say the greasy, faces of her patrons.
This cosy couple (married, evidently) had made a fair division of the fire between them, and sat looking at the glowing sparks that dropped into the grate; now nodding off into a doze; now waking up again when some hot fragment, larger than the rest, came rattling down, as if the fire were coming with it.
It was in no danger of sudden extinction, however; for it gleamed not only in the little room, and on the panes of window-glass in the door, and on the curtain half drawn across them, but in the little shop beyond. A little shop, quite crammed and choked with the abundance of its stock; a perfectly voracious little shop, with a maw as accommodating and full as any shark’s. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles, matches, bacon, table-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, boys’ kites, bird-seed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth-stones, salt, vinegar, blacking, red-herrings, stationery, lard, mushroom-ketchup, stay-laces, loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate-pencil; everything was fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all articles were in its net. How many other kinds of petty merchandise were there, it would be difficult to say; but balls of pack-thread, ropes of onions, pounds of candles, cabbage-nets, and brushes, hung in bunches from the ceiling, like extraordinary fruit; while various old canisters, emitting aromatic smells, established the veracity of the inscription over the outer door, which informed the public that the keeper of this little shop was a licensed dealer in tea, coffee, tobacco, pepper, and snuff.
Glancing at such of these items as were visible in the shining of the blaze, and the less cheerful radiance of two smoky lamps which burnt but too dimly in the shop itself, as though its plethora sat heavy on their lungs; and glancing, then, at one of the two faces by the parlour-fire; Trotty had small difficulty in recognising in the stout old lady, Mrs. Chickenstalker: always inclined to corpulency, even in the days when he had known her as established in the general line, and having a small balance against him in her books.
The features of her companion were less easy to him. The great broad chin, with creases in it large enough to hide a finger in; the astonished eyes, that seemed to expostulate with themselves for sinking deeper and deeper into the yielding fat of the soft face; the nose afflicted with that disordered action of its functions which is generally termed The Snuffles; the short, thick throat and labouring chest, with other beauties of the like description; though calculated to impress the memory, Trotty could at first allot to nobody he had ever known: and yet he had some recollection of them too. At length, in Mrs. Chickenstalker’s partner in the general line, and in the crooked and eccentric line of life, he recognised the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley; an apoplectic innocent, who had connected himself in Trotty’s mind with Mrs. Chickenstalker years ago, by giving him admission to the mansion where he had confessed his obligations to that lady, and drawn on his unlucky head such grave reproach.
Trotty had little interest in a change like this, after the changes he had seen; but association is very strong sometimes; and he looked involuntarily behind the parlour-door, where the accounts of credit customers were usually kept in chalk. There was no record of his name. Some names were there, but they were strange to him, and infinitely fewer than of old; from which he argued that the porter was an advocate of ready money transactions, and on coming into the business had looked pretty sharp after the Chickenstalker defaulters.
So desolate was Trotty, and so mournful for the youth and promise of his blighted child, that it was a sorrow to him, even to have no place in Mrs. Chickenstalker’s ledger.
“What sort of a night is it, Anne?” inquired the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley, stretching out his legs before the fire, and rubbing as much of them as his short arms could reach; with an air that added, “Here I am if it’s bad, and I don’t want to go out if it’s good.”
“Blowing and sleeting hard,” returned his wife; “and threatening snow. Dark. And very cold.”
“I’m glad to think we had muffins,” said the former porter, in the tone of one who had set his conscience at rest. “It’s a sort of night that’s meant for muffins. Likewise crumpets. Also Sally Lunns.”33
The former porter mentioned each successive kind of eatable, as if he were musingly summing up his good actions. After which, he rubbed his fat legs as before, and jerking them at the knees to get the fire upon the yet unroasted parts, laughed as if somebody had tickled him.
“You’re in spirits, Tugby, my dear,” observed his wife.
The firm was Tugby, late Chickenstalker.
“No,” said Tugby. “No. Not particular. I’m a little elewated. The muffins came so pat!”
With that he chuckled until he was black in the face; and had
so much ado to become any other colour, that his fat legs took the strangest excursions into the air. Nor were they reduced to anything like decorum until Mrs. Tugby had thumped him violently on the back, and shaken him as if he were a great bottle.
“Good gracious, goodness, lord-a-mercy bless and save the man!” cried Mrs. Tugby, in great terror. “What’s he doing?”
Mr. Tugby wiped his eyes, and faintly repeated that he found himself a little elewated.
“Then don’t be so again, that’s a dear good soul,” said Mrs. Tugby, “if you don’t want to frighten me to death, with your struggling and fighting!”
Mr. Tugby said he wouldn’t; but his whole existence was a fight, in which, if any judgment might be founded on the constantly-increasing shortness of his breath and the deepening purple of his face, he was always getting the worst of it.
“So it’s blowing, and sleeting, and threatening snow; and it’s dark, and very cold, is it, my dear?” said Mr. Tugby, looking at the fire, and reverting to the cream and marrow of his temporary elevation.
“Hard weather, indeed,” returned his wife, shaking her head.
“Aye, aye! Years,” said Mr. Tugby, “are like Christians in that respect. Some of ‘em die hard; some of ’em die easy. This one hasn’t many days to run, and is making a fight for it. I like him all the better. There’s a customer, my love!”
Attentive to the rattling door, Mrs. Tugby had already risen.
“Now, then!” said that lady, passing out into the little shop. “What’s wanted? Oh! I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure. I didn’t think it was you.”
She made this apology to a gentleman in black, who, with his wristbands tucked up, and his hat cocked loungingly on one side, and his hand in his pockets, sat down astride on the table-beer barrel, and nodded in return.
“This is a bad business up-stairs, Mrs. Tugby,” said the gentleman. “The man can’t live.”
“Not the back-attic can’t!” cried Tugby, coming out into the shop to join the conference.
“The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,” said the gentleman, “is coming down-stairs fast, and will be below the basement very soon.”
Looking by turns at Tugby and his wife, he sounded the barrel with his knuckles for the depth of beer, and having found it, played a tune upon the empty part.
“The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,” said the gentleman: Tugby having stood in silent consternation for some time; “is Going.”
“Then,” said Tugby, turning to his wife, “he must Go, you know, before he’s Gone.”
“I don’t think you can move him,” said the gentleman, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t take the responsibility of saying it could be done, myself You had better leave him where he is. He can’t live long.”
“It’s the only subject,” said Tugby, bringing the butter-scale down upon the counter with a crash, by weighing his fist on it, “that we’ve ever had a word upon; she and me; and look what it comes to! He’s going to die here, after all. Going to die upon the premises. Going to die in our house!”
“And where should he have died, Tugby!” cried his wife.
“In the workhouse,” he returned. “What are workhouses made for?”
“Not for that,” said Mrs. Tugby, with great energy. “Not for that! Neither did I marry you for that. Don’t think it, Tugby. I won’t have it. I won’t allow it. I’d be separated first, and never see your face again. When my widow’s name stood over that door, as it did for many, many years: this house being known as Mrs. Chickenstalker’s far and wide, and never known but to its honest credit and its good report: when my widow’s name stood over that door, Tugby, I knew him as a handsome, steady, manly, independent youth; I knew her as the sweetest-looking, sweetest-tempered girl, eyes ever saw; I knew her father (poor old creature, he fell down from the steeple walking in his sleep, and killed himself), for the simplest, hardest-working, childest-hearted man, that ever drew the breath of life; and when I turn them out of house and home, may angels turn me out of heaven. As they would! And serve me right!”
Her old face, which had been a plump and dimpled one before the changes which had come to pass, seemed to shine out of her as she said these words; and when she dried her eyes, and shook her head and her handkerchief at Tugby, with an expression of firmness which it was quite clear was not to be easily resisted, Trotty said, “Bless her! Bless her!”
Then he listened, with a panting heart, for what should follow. Knowing nothing yet, but that they spoke of Meg.
If Tugby had been a little elevated in the parlour, he more than balanced that account by being not a little depressed in the shop, where he now stood staring at his wife, without attempting a reply; secretly conveying, however—either in a fit of abstraction or as a precautionary measure—all the money from the till into his own pockets, as he looked at her.
The gentleman upon the table-beer cask, who appeared to be some authorized medical attendant upon the poor, was far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences of opinion between man and wife, to interpose any remark in this instance. He sat softly whistling, and turning little drops of beer out of the tap upon the ground, until there was a perfect calm: when he raised his head, and said to Mrs. Tugby, late Chickenstalker:
“There’s something interesting about the woman, even now. How did she come to marry him?”
“Why, that,” said Mrs. Tugby, taking a seat near him, “is not the least cruel part of her story, sir. You see they kept company, she and Richard, many years ago. When they were a young and beautiful couple, everything was settled, and they were to have been married on a New Year’s Day. But, somehow, Richard got it into his head, through what the gentleman told him, that he might do better, and that he’d soon repent it, and that she wasn’t good enough for him, and that a young man of spirit had no business to be married. And the gentleman frightened her, and made her melancholy, and timid of his deserting her, and of her children coming to the gallows, and of its being wicked to be man and wife, and a good deal more of it. And in short, they lingered and lingered, and their trust in one another was broken, and so at last was the match. But the fault was his. She would have married him, sir, joyfully. I’ve seen her heart swell, many times afterwards, when he passed her in a proud and careless way; and never did a woman grieve more truly for a man, than she for Richard when he first went wrong.”
“Oh! he went wrong, did he?” said the gentleman, pulling out the vent-peg of the table-beer, and trying to peep down into the barrel through the hole.
“Well, sir, I don’t know that he rightly understood himself, you see. I think his mind was troubled by their having broke with one another ; and that but for being ashamed before the gentleman, and perhaps for being uncertain, too, how she might take it, he’d have gone through any suffering or trial to have had Meg’s promise, and Meg’s hand again. That’s my belief He never said so; more’s the pity! He took to drinking, idling, bad companions: all the fine resources that were to be so much better for him than the Home he might have had. He lost his looks, his character, his health, his strength, his friends, his work: everything!”
“He didn’t lose everything, Mrs. Tugby,” returned the gentleman, “because he gained a wife; and I want to know how he gained her.”
“I’m coming to it, sir, in a moment. This went on for years and years; he sinking lower and lower; she enduring, poor thing, miseries enough to wear her life away. At last he was so cast down, and cast out, that no one would employ or notice him; and doors were shut upon him, go where he would. Applying from place to place, and door to door; and coming for the hundredth time to one gentleman who had often and often tried him (he was a good workman to the very end); that gentleman, who knew his history, said, ”I believe you are incorrigible; there is only one person in the world who has a chance of reclaiming you; ask me to trust you no more, until she tries to do it.” Something like that, in his anger and vexation.
“Ah!” said the gentleman. “Well?”
“Well, sir, he w
ent to her, and kneeled to her; said it was so; said it ever had been so; and made a prayer to her to save him.”
“And she?—Don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Tugby”
“She came to me that night to ask me about living here. ‘What he was once to me,’ she said, ‘is buried in a grave, side by side with what I was to him. But I have thought of this; and I will make the trial. In the hope of saving him; for the love of the light-hearted girl (you remember her) who was to have been married on a New Year’s Day; and for the love of her Richard.’ And she said he had come to her from Lilian, and Lilian had trusted to him, and she never could forget that. So they were married; and when they came home here, and I saw them, I hoped that such prophecies as parted them when they were young, may not often fulfil themselves as they did in this case, or I wouldn’t be the makers of them for a Mine of Gold.”
The gentleman got off the cask, and stretched himself, observing:
“I suppose he used her ill, as soon as they were married?”
“I don’t think he ever did that,” said Mrs. Tugby, shaking her head and wiping her eyes. “He went on better for a short time; but his habits were too old and strong to be got rid of; he soon fell back a little; and was falling fast back, when his illness came so strong upon him. I think he has always felt for her. I am sure he has. I’ve seen him, in his crying fits and tremblings, try to kiss her hand; and I have heard him call her ‘Meg,’ and say it was her nineteenth birthday. There he has been lying, now, these weeks and months. Between him and her baby, she has not been able to do her old work; and by not being able to be regular, she has lost it, even if she could have done it. How they have lived, I hardly know!”
“I know,” muttered Mr. Tugby, looking at the till, and round the shop, and at his wife; and rolling his head with immense intelligence. “Like Fighting Cocks!”
He was interrupted by a cry—a sound of lamentation—from the upper story of the house. The gentleman moved hurriedly to the door.
A Christmas Carol, the Chimes & the Cricket on the Hearth Page 19
