Dickens at Christmas (Vintage Classics)

by Charles Dickens

  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, the 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 today!’ said the Doctor, stopping short, and speaking to himself. ‘I thought they dreaded today. 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 birthday.’

  ‘Somebody’s birthday, Puss!’ replied the Doctor. ‘Don’t you know it’s always somebody’s birthday? 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 birthday.’

  ‘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 birthday, 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 favourable,’ 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 tease me about Alfred.’

  ‘Tease 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! Holloa!’

  A small man, with an uncommonly sour and
discontented face, emerged from the house, and returned to this call the unceremonious acknowledgement 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, Dr 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?’ replied 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 that she 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 placed 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 she 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.

  ‘Ah!’ 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 seized 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 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 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 a
s 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, Dr 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; 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.

  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!’