Mr. Dickens and His Carol

by Samantha Silva

  “I took a chance that I’d find you here,” she said.

  “But how did you—?”

  “You mentioned it yourself.”

  “Did I? Never mind. It doesn’t matter how you found me. You did.” He stepped aside with an awkward wave of his arm, pages tight in his grip. “Come in, please.” Eleanor stepped out of the hall only as far as the dim-lit threshold. Her eyes darted about the room, unsure. Dickens understood. A young woman, even a widow, should be careful what company she keeps, though he didn’t take her as someone who cared one whit what anyone thought. She drew a breath and stepped all the way inside, then turned to him, lowering the hood of her cloak. The one lamp in the room threw velvet light across her face. Her cheeks were the color of claret, as if she’d hurried all the way, cold and hot at the same time.

  “I only came to say thank you … for your kindness to my son.”

  His chest burst with relief. “It was a small thing.”

  “But he felt cared for.”

  “Did Timothy tell you that?”

  “In his way,” she said, looking out the window, as if the mystery of her son’s silence lived there.

  “I didn’t blame you for not wanting to see me again,” he said. “In fact, assumed that’s why you stayed away. Why, I wouldn’t blame you at all if you’d come to despise me.”

  Eleanor threaded and twisted her fingerless-gloved hands, worrying her way to an answer. Dickens followed her gaze outside, where some small change in the weather had split a seam in the fog. The clock tower where they’d first met peeped over steep roofs in a navy-blue night, as if saying hello. It seemed to hold up the bright winter moon all by itself. And she seemed to find in it the thing she wanted to say.

  “I stayed away because I’ve come … to care deeply for you.”

  So unexpected was her declaration, not of love, but of some abiding sympathy between them, that his loneliness fell away in an instant. A tingling rushed down his spine.

  “Please, won’t you stay?”

  She smiled a little at the corners of her mouth, but shook her head. He could see she was tired, but couldn’t bear to lose her good graces, not again. Or her presence. He looked at the pages still clutched in his hand.

  “What about hearing my tale?”

  35

  Charles Dickens was an enthusiastic reader of his own work. Even Thomas Carlyle, not the least of his critics, said he was better than any Macready in the world, a whole tragic, comic, heroic theater under one hat. Macready himself agreed. From the time he started his own little theater troupe at the age of nine, Dickens had never needed more than an audience of one to inspire a full-throated performance of the play of the moment. But his own words, his own work, he could deliver with the force of a hammer blow, or the airiness of a falling feather.

  Eleanor sat in the “missus” chair near the now-glowing fire, hands clasped in her lap, listening with every part of her being. Dickens stood in front of her, acting it out as he read, each character, all the lines, bringing everything he could to sell it. He wanted her to feel each shiver, sense the murder coming and the chilling terror until the cathartic ball near the end. She was still throughout, an inscrutable look on her face.

  He reached the last page, the last line, and paused to fill his lungs as if an opera singer about to reach for his highest note. Every word aspirated, each equal to the other. “And Scrooge’s heart, though frozen … began to melt.” He returned the page to the bottom of the stack and bowed his head, moved by his own reading. “The end.”

  “Hmm,” Eleanor said, eyes closed. Small, indecipherable movements of her head suggested she was recounting the story’s high points to herself in quick succession. A nod, a tilt, a raised brow. At last she opened her eyes, elbows planted on the arms of the chair. She rested her chin in one hand, thinking hard, for what seemed a very long time, an era in itself. The wait was excruciating.

  “Well?” he asked when he could stand her silence no longer.

  Eleanor leaned forward and pressed her hands together. “That is quite a book, Mr. Dickens.”

  “Yes. And quite to the point, I think.”

  “Though perhaps not quite to the point of Christmas.”

  “Well, but, you see—”

  “He’s a cold, unfeeling, disagreeable man, your Scrooge.”

  “There’s the melting heart at the end.”

  “It’s just … so long waiting for the end.”

  “Oh, my. Perhaps the name doesn’t quite capture him. What about Screege? Scrumble?”

  “I suppose,” she said with a shrug. “If it will aid the cause of Christmas.”

  “Any old hack could beef up the Christmas bits. But I refuse to overdo.”

  “Then I suppose you are done.” She rose abruptly from the chair.

  Dickens stood in front of her, full of restless energy. “Exactly. I deliver it to the printers tomorrow, first thing. At last done with the tyranny of deadlines and pages and word counts, in short, the sufferings and torments of those who are bound to the life of the pen. It will be a new life.”

  She half smiled, retrieving her cloak from the back of the chair. “A new life in India?”

  The firelight danced in her eyes, shaped at the edges with a sadness he was just beginning to see. It softened his bearing, brought his own thoughtfulness to the fore. He hugged the stack of pages to his chest.

  “I did always long to know worlds beyond my own. Had I, as a young man, ventured far enough to discover those boundless riches, I may have had no need to write.”

  Eleanor fastened the cloak at her neck and looked him square in the eye. “How sad to think you might not have found your Oliver Twist. Your Nickleby. Your dear Little Nell.”

  Her sincerity was her sword. It thrust straight through him. He swallowed hard and stepped closer to her, now just inches away. She didn’t step back this time, nor avert her gaze. Neither of them breathed.

  “Far sadder to think I might never have found you,” he said, lost in the marine depths of her eyes, so bottomless and clear.

  She blushed and looked down. The not-touching between them was as conspicuous as if they had full-embraced. They both stood, deep in their own thoughts, not daring to move.

  At last, Eleanor raised the hood of her cloak. “I should go.”

  “Of course,” he said, nodding. “As you wish.”

  There was no need to say more; it was their tacit agreement. Dickens was touched by the ease of understanding between them. So few words said so many. He followed her to the door, a reluctant procession. She turned to him one last time, eyes glistening.

  “I do wish it were otherwise.”

  As did he. As does anyone, he knew, who has a moment of true feeling without encumbrances, that cannot be got another way. That has no history, no list of injuries and faults. Someone to see only the best in us. For the worst parts are written on our skin in iron gall ink, indelible, and recited on a regular basis, by whoever knows us best. But a few simple, kind words, even from a near-stranger, can say everything else. And that in itself must be a prize.

  Was his own heart beginning to melt? He didn’t know. Eleanor had given him his Scrooge, unintentional as it was, but it was his book now, his journey. She didn’t care for the book, perhaps, but she cared for him, and that was enough.

  “May I walk you home?”

  Eleanor shook her head. She was a self-contained woman who had never asked anything of him, perhaps of anyone.

  “It will be dawn soon enough,” she said.

  He put his hand on the knob, reluctant to open it and let her go. “A new beginning, I suppose.”

  She hesitated. “A new beginning. Yes.”

  He bowed his head and opened the door to let her pass. But she stopped in the threshold and turned, bright with curiosity. “What will you call the book?”

  “Hmm,” he said, leaning his head against the doorframe. “I haven’t a title yet. But you shall be the first to hear it when I do.”


  Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “I should like that very much.”

  He hugged his stack of pages to his chest and watched her slip down the stairs without a sound. Not even a creak of the stairs, so light was her step. When she was consumed by the dark, he went back in, closed the door, and rested against it. An ember popped in the hearth. He walked over to coax one last flame, a little warmth, now that he was alone again. He pulled the wool blanket back onto his shoulders and stared into the fire. “A Christmas Log,” he said. “That will do fine.”

  He took his pen from his desk, dipped it into the inkpot, and scribbled the book’s title, and his own name, its author. Glad to be done with it, he sat in the chair where Eleanor had listened so patiently and placed the manuscript on the small pedestal table at his elbow. He unbuttoned his waistcoat, folded his hands behind his head, and watched the fire burn to its last white ember and expire.

  *

  Dickens slept through to morning, dead to the world. He woke from a swirling dream, still in the chair, blanket twisted around his neck and chest. He untangled himself, sat forward with a lazy yawn and a stretch of his long legs. He rubbed his eyes, rolled his shoulders. It was a slow coming-to-consciousness, recalling Eleanor’s presence just hours ago, how happy he’d been to read to her at all. The book was done and now had only to be delivered to his publishers, who would ever after haunt him no more. With the blanket around his shoulders, he splashed water on his face and considered whether to find coffee on his way there, or back. He dried his hands on a towel so he wouldn’t get his pages wet, and reached for the manuscript on the pedestal table.

  It wasn’t there.

  His eyes darted around the room, over every visible surface. The table, the mantel, on the floor—it could have fallen, or maybe he knocked it down in the dream. He kneaded his forehead, trying to work loose some thought of what he might have done with it. Sat in the chair, closing his eyes to relive the moment in his mind. He could see it clearly. Placing the pages on the little scallop-edged table with his right hand, sleeve rolled up on his forearm, unbuttoning his waistcoat, the fire, and then sleep.

  When he pushed himself up, the chair fell back and hit the floor. Even the blanket dropped like a corpse. Frantic, he raced around the room, opening drawers, checking coat pockets, on his hands and knees to search under the bed. But the pages were nowhere to be found. Not a single one. The Christmas Log was gone. Gone!

  Dickens flung open the door and scuttled sideways down the narrow staircase to find the clerk snoring away, head on the counter, drooling into the crook of his elbow. He rang the little bell impatiently—ding-ding-ding-ding-ding—but had to shake him by the forearm before the young man finally groaned and lifted his heavy head.

  “Wake! Up!” Dickens shouted.

  The clerk wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand and opened one eye to find the roomer from No. 13 hovering over him. “Oh, top o’ the mornin’, sir.”

  “No, not top. Not top at all. Bottom all around. Something terrible’s happened. I need you to wake up this instant!”

  The clerk breathed on his spectacles, wiped them on his dirty shirt, and perched them on his nose. “There, then, now I can ’ear.”

  “Then listen very carefully.” Dickens enunciated each word, with wild eyes. “A young woman in a purple cloak came down from my room quite late last night. Did you see anyone go up after her? Anyone at all?”

  “There’s comin’s and goin’s all night, Mr. Scrooge. Every night. Lots o’ girls.”

  “I must know who has been in my rooms!”

  The clerk scratched his greasy hair, as if thinking were an effort so early in the day. “Well, there’s them that follows you, sir. Those street urchins always ’angin’ about, askin’ to go up—”

  “The little boy?”

  “No, these ones are big, sir. A whole gang o’ them. Got fuzz on their lips and everythin’.”

  “I know just who you mean! Those boys have been in my rooms?”

  “Oh, no, sir. Cuz they won’t pay, so I don’t lets ’em.”

  “But you’ve let others? Into my rooms?”

  “I told ya, sir. It’s a sideline.”

  Dickens reached across the desk, grabbed the clerk’s shoulders, and shook him. “Good Lord, man, are you mad?”

  The clerk righted himself and readjusted his glasses on his nose. “Pot callin’ the kettle black, if you ask me, sir.”

  Dickens released the poor, clueless clerk. He ran his fingers through his drooping curls. “I’m sorry, I—I…”

  “Never mind, sir. I’ve been shaken before. Git used to it, one does. Don’t do me no ’arm.”

  “It’s just that, well, you were fast asleep. They could have snuck in, couldn’t they?”

  “I s’pose, sir.”

  “I simply have to find them. The street boys. Do you know where I might?”

  “In the street, I guess. Where d’ya always find ’em?”

  Dickens pressed his fingers to his perspiring temples. His mind was zigzagging around the city, plotting his search, with no idea where to start. Without another word, he dashed out of the inn, looking left, then right. It was a dark morning with a raw, heavy fog. The shops were still shut up; there was hardly a soul yet about. When a single hansom cab trundled toward him, he bolted into the street, waving his arms at the snorting horses, but the driver didn’t slow at all. Dickens sprang out of the way at the last second and raced after it, legs pumping. He banged on its side, called and yelled for it to stop, until it outpaced him, took a sharp corner, and disappeared.

  He took off at a run, into the mass of streets and courts as they filled with city dwellers setting out to start their day. From Leather Lane to Smithfield, Spitalfields to Leadenhall, he asked anyone who would listen.

  “Tattered clothes and dirty faces!” said a cabbage seller at Exmouth Market. “But there’s a ’undred like ’em every mornin’, multiplyin’ like rats by noon.”

  It was the same answer everywhere he went, from sweepers at street crossings to gangs of boys trundling their hoops, or racing after omnibuses. He asked beggars crouched on stone steps, near stalls and shop doors, each wanting his own halfpenny for nothing useful at all. He lurked in an alley near the still-shuttered Mudie’s, scanning the crowd of ladies and gentlemen in hopes of a glimpse of one of them tailing a pocket to pick. But it was as if the boys he sought had sprung out of his own imagination to vex him and then disappeared. London teemed with caricatures just like them—wretched ruffians everywhere, all made of the same dull, ragged cloth, and now seeming indistinguishable.

  By late afternoon he had run out of places to look and the will to carry on.

  *

  “What do you mean, gone?” asked Forster, watching Dickens pace in front of him, collar unbuttoned, nerves shredded.

  “Disappeared. Vanished. Evanesced.”

  “Stolen!” said Forster, pounding his desk.

  Dickens shook his head and shrugged all at once. He cupped the back of his neck. “Perhaps.”

  Forster pounded the desk three more times for good measure and stood in a blustering fury. “But it was to be delivered to the printers this very morning. It should have been there hours ago! And Christmas is but days away. You have the reading—”

  “Believe me, I am well aware—”

  “It was that Lovejoy woman!”

  “You’re wrong!”

  “Was she with you?”

  “Well, yes. But she wouldn’t.”

  Forster scoffed. He rounded the corner of his desk to come face-to-face with his friend. “She’s not some character in one your books. Do not sentimentalize her.”

  Dickens slitted his eyes; his lips curled toward his teeth. “Eleanor did not take my book.”

  “She’s an actress. But one step from the whorehouse!”

  “She’s a seamstress. But one step from the poorhouse!”

  “Why must you be so blind?” Forster spat back.

  “I think I see quite clear
ly that I wouldn’t be in this situation were it not for you.”

  “Rubbish!”

  “You sold my soul to Chapman and Hall, but I am the one paying the debt!”

  “I never imagined Chuzzlewit would be the titanic failure it has been!”

  Dickens tapped his finger hard on the breast of Forster’s coat, punctuating each beat of his rant. “Let me tell you something about titanic failures, my friend, because I am surrounded by them, present company included. Everyone, as far as I can tell, depends upon me for their living. And yet if I have but one moment’s peace, with a beautiful being who depends upon me not but feeds my soul, I am to be faulted, and she slandered!”

  Forster huffed and crossed his arms on his belly, shoulders cinched to his ears. “The girl stole the book. Whether you choose to believe it or not.”

  “What I choose is an end to our friendship, beginning this very moment!”

  “Not a moment too soon for me!” yelled Forster.

  Dickens fled, letting the door slam behind him. It was a dramatic exit, full of fury and grit, but when he launched into the crowded street he had no idea which way to turn. It was dusk in his spirit, dusk all over. The sky drained of light, rushing toward darkness. He plunged his hands into his pockets and retraced his steps. There was only one place left to look for his lost book, and no way around it. He was coatless, gloomy, and ground down, his chin tucked into his chest. Even the Folly, when he passed it, was deserted and dreary, but for a lone worker dragging away the HAMLET sign out front to replace it with another. Everything was finished.

  When he arrived at Eleanor’s lodging, he peered into the window, but the blackness blinded him. He knocked lightly on the ramshackle door. Knocked on it hard. Leaned his forehead against it, lips moving silently, praying for a clue, a sign, redemption. But nothing came, and no one. The door itself now seemed determined to stay shut against him. How wrong he’d been about so many things. All that was good felt lost to him.