Dickens at Christmas (Vintage Classics)

by Charles Dickens

  On the door-step, appeared a proper figure of a landlord, too; for, though he was a short man, he was round and broad, and stood with his hands in his pockets, and his legs just wide enough apart to express a mind at rest upon the subject of the cellar, and an easy confidence – too calm and virtuous to become a swagger – in the general resources of the Inn. The superabundant moisture, trickling from everything after the late rain, set him off well. Nothing near him was thirsty. Certain top-heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his neat well-ordered garden, had swilled as much as they could carry – perhaps a trifle more – and may have been the worse for liquor; but the sweet-briar, roses, wall-flowers, the plants at the windows, and the leaves on the old tree, were in the beaming state of moderate company that had taken no more than was wholesome for them, and had served to develop their best qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them on the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent and sparkling mirth, that did good where it lighted, softening neglected corners which the steady rain could seldom reach, and hurting nothing.

  This village Inn had assumed, on being established, an uncommon sign. It was called The Nutmeg-Grater. And underneath that household word, was inscribed, up in the tree, on the same flaming board, and in the like golden characters, By Benjamin Britain.

  At a second glance, and on a more minute examination of his face, you might have known that it was no other than Benjamin Britain himself who stood in the doorway – reasonably changed by time, but for the better; a very comfortable host indeed.

  ‘Mrs B.,’ said Mr Britain, looking down the road, ‘is rather late. It’s tea-time.’

  As there was no Mrs Britain coming, he strolled leisurely out into the road and looked up at the house, very much to his satisfaction. ‘It’s just the sort of house,’ said Benjamin, ‘I should wish to stop at, if I didn’t keep it.’

  Then, he strolled towards the garden-paling, and took a look at the dahlias. They looked over at him, with a helpless drowsy hanging of their heads: which bobbed again, as the heavy drops of wet dripped off them.

  ‘You must be looked after,’ said Benjamin. ‘Memorandum, not to forget to tell her so. She’s a long time coming!’

  Mr Britain’s better half seemed to be by so very much his better half, that his own moiety of himself was utterly cast away and helpless without her.

  ‘She hadn’t much to do, I think,’ said Ben. ‘There were a few little matters of business after market, but not many. Oh! here we are at last!’

  A chaise-cart, driven by a boy, came clattering along the road: and seated in it, in a chair, with a large well-saturated umbrella spread out to dry behind her, was the plump figure of a matronly woman, with her bare arms folded across a basket which she carried on her knee, several other baskets and parcels lying crowded around her, and a certain bright good nature in her face and contented awkwardness in her manner, as she jogged to and fro with the motion of her carriage, which smacked of old times, even in the distance. Upon her nearer approach, this relish of by-gone days was not diminished; and when the cart stopped at the Nutmeg-Grater door, a pair of shoes, alighting from it, slipped nimbly through Mr Britain’s open arms, and came down with a substantial weight upon the pathway, which shoes could hardly have belonged to anyone but Clemency Newcome.

  In fact they did belong to her, and she stood in them, and a rosy comfortable-looking soul she was: with as much soap on her glossy face as in times of yore, but with whole elbows now, that had grown quite dimpled in her improved condition.

  ‘You’re late, Clemmy!’ said Mr Britain.

  ‘Why, you see, Ben, I’ve had a deal to do!’ she replied, looking busily after the safe removal into the house of all the packages and baskets: ‘eight, nine, ten – where’s eleven? Oh! my basket’s eleven! It’s all right. Put the horse up, Harry, and if he coughs again give him a warm mash tonight. Eight, nine, ten. Why, where’s eleven? Oh! forgot, it’s all right. How’s the children, Ben?’

  ‘Hearty, Clemmy, hearty.’

  ‘Bless their precious faces!’ said Mrs Britain, unbonneting her own round countenance (for she and her husband were by this time in the bar), and smoothing her hair with her open hands. ‘Give us a kiss, old man!’

  Mr Britain promptly complied.

  ‘I think,’ said Mrs Britain, applying herself to her pockets and drawing forth an immense bulk of thin books and crumpled papers: a very kennel of dogs’-ears: ‘I’ve done everything. Bills all settled – turnips sold – brewer’s account looked into and paid – ’bacco pipes ordered – seventeen pound four, paid into the Bank – Doctor Heathfield’s charge for little Clem – you’ll guess what that is – Doctor Heathfield won’t take nothing again, Ben.’

  ‘I thought he wouldn’t,’ returned Ben.

  ‘No. He says whatever family you was to have, Ben, he’d never put you to the cost of a halfpenny. Not if you was to have twenty.’

  Mr Britain’s face assumed a serious expression, and he looked hard at the wall.

  ‘An’t it kind of him?’ said Clemency.

  ‘Very,’ returned Mr Britain. ‘It’s the sort of kindness that I wouldn’t presume upon, on any account.’

  ‘No,’ retorted Clemency. ‘Of course not. Then there’s the pony – he fetched eight pound two; and that an’t bad, is it?’

  ‘It’s very good,’ said Ben.

  ‘I’m glad you’re pleased!’ exclaimed his wife. ‘I thought you would be; and I think that’s all, and so no more at present from yours and cetrer, C. Britain. Ha ha ha! There! Take all the papers, and lock ’em up. Oh! Wait a minute. Here’s a printed bill to stick on the wall. Wet from the printer’s. How nice it smells!’

  ‘What’s this?’ said Ben, looking over the document.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied his wife. ‘I haven’t read a word of it.’

  ‘“To be sold by Auction,”’ read the host of the Nutmeg-Grater, ‘“unless previously disposed of by private contract.”’

  ‘They always put that,’ said Clemency.

  ‘Yes, but they don’t always put this,’ he returned. ‘Look here, “Mansion,” &c. – “offices,” &c., “shrubberies,” &c., “ring fence,” &c. “Messrs Snitchey and Craggs,” &c., “ornamental portion of the unencumbered freehold property of Michael Warden, Esquire, intending to continue to reside abroad”!’

  ‘Intending to continue to reside abroad!’ repeated Clemency.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Britain. ‘Look!’

  ‘And it was only this very day that I heard it whispered at the old house, that better and plainer news had been half promised of her, soon!’ said Clemency, shaking her head sorrowfully, and patting her elbows as if the recollection of old times unconsciously awakened her old habits. ‘Dear, dear, dear! There’ll be heavy hearts, Ben, yonder.’

  Mr Britain heaved a sigh, and shook his head, and said he couldn’t make it out: he had left off trying long ago. With that remark, he applied himself to putting up the bill just inside the bar window. Clemency, after meditating in silence for a few moments, roused herself, cleared her thoughtful brow, and bustled off to look after the children.

  Though the host of the Nutmeg-Grater had a lively regard for his good-wife, it was of the old patronising kind, and she amused him mightily. Nothing would have astonished him so much, as to have known for certain from any third party, that it was she who managed the whole house, and made him, by her plain straightforward thrift, good-humour, honesty, and industry, a thriving man. So easy it is, in any degree of life (as the world very often finds it), to take those cheerful natures that never assert their merit, at their own modest valuation; and to conceive a flippant liking of people for their outward oddities and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if we would look so far, might make us blush in the comparison!

  It was comfortable to Mr Britain, to think of his own condescension in having married Clemency. She was a perpetual testimony to him of the goodness of his heart, and the kindness of his disposition; and he felt that her being an excellent
wife was an illustration of the old precept that virtue is its own reward.

  He had finished wafering up the bill, and had locked the vouchers for her day’s proceedings in the cupboard – chuckling all the time, over her capacity for business – when, returning with the news that the two Master Britains were playing in the coach-house under the superintendence of one Betsey, and that little Clem was sleeping ‘like a picture,’ she sat down to tea, which had awaited her arrival, on a little table. It was a very neat little bar, with the usual display of bottles and glasses; a sedate clock, right to the minute (it was half-past five); everything in its place, and everything furbished and polished up to the very utmost.

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve sat down quietly today, I declare,’ said Mrs Britain, taking a long breath, as if she had sat down for the night; but getting up again immediately to hand her husband his tea, and cut him his bread-and-butter; ‘how that bill does set me thinking of old times!’

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Britain, handling his saucer like an oyster, and disposing of its contents on the same principle.

  ‘That same Mr Michael Warden,’ said Clemency, shaking her head at the notice of sale, ‘lost me my old place.’

  ‘And got you your husband,’ said Mr Britain.

  ‘Well! So he did,’ retorted Clemency, ‘and many thanks to him.’

  ‘Man’s the creature of habit,’ said Mr Britain, surveying her, over his saucer. ‘I had somehow got used to you, Clem; and I found I shouldn’t be able to get on without you. So we went and got made man and wife. Ha! ha! We! Who’d have thought it!’

  ‘Who indeed!’ cried Clemency. ‘It was very good of you, Ben.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ replied Mr Britain, with an air of self-denial. ‘Nothing worth mentioning.’

  ‘Oh yes it was, Ben,’ said his wife, with great simplicity; ‘I’m sure I think so, and am very much obliged to you. Ah!’ looking again at the bill; ‘when she was known to be gone, and out of reach, dear girl, I couldn’t help telling – for her sake quite as much as theirs – what I knew, could I?’

  ‘You told it, anyhow,’ observed her husband.

  ‘And Dr Jeddler,’ pursued Clemency, putting down her tea-cup, and looking thoughtfully at the bill, ‘in his grief and passion turned me out of house and home! I never have been so glad of anything in all my life, as that I didn’t say an angry word to him, and hadn’t any angry feeling towards him, even then; for he repented that truly, afterwards. How often he has sat in this room, and told me over and over again he was sorry for it! – the last time, only yesterday, when you were out. How often he has sat in this room, and talked to me, hour after hour, about one thing and another, in which he made believe to be interested! – but only for the sake of the days that are gone by, and because he knows she used to like me, Ben!’

  ‘Why, how did you ever come to catch a glimpse of that, Clem?’ asked her husband: astonished that she should have a distinct perception of a truth which had only dimly suggested itself to his inquiring mind.

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Clemency, blowing her tea, to cool it. ‘Bless you, I couldn’t tell you, if you was to offer me a reward of a hundred pound.’

  He might have pursued this metaphysical subject but for her catching a glimpse of a substantial fact behind him, in the shape of a gentleman attired in mourning, and cloaked and booted like a rider on horseback, who stood at the bar-door. He seemed attentive to their conversation, and not at all impatient to interrupt it.

  Clemency hastily rose at this sight. Mr Britain also rose and saluted the guest. ‘Will you please to walk up stairs, sir? There’s a very nice room up stairs, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the stranger, looking earnestly at Mr Britain’s wife. ‘May I come in here?’

  ‘Oh, surely, if you like, sir,’ returned Clemency, admitting him.

  ‘What would you please to want, sir?’

  The bill had caught his eye, and he was reading it.

  ‘Excellent property that, sir,’ observed Mr Britain.

  He made no answer; but, turning round, when he had finished reading, looked at Clemency with the same observant curiosity as before. ‘You were asking me,’ – he said, still looking at her –

  ‘What you would please to take, sir,’ answered Clemency, stealing a glance at him in return.

  ‘If you will let me have a draught of ale,’ he said, moving to a table by the window, ‘and will let me have it here, without being any interruption to your meal, I shall be much obliged to you.’ He sat down as he spoke, without any further parley, and looked out at the prospect. He was an easy, well-knit figure of a man in the prime of life. His face, much browned by the sun, was shaded by a quantity of dark hair; and he wore a moustache. His beer being set before him, he filled out a glass, and drank, good-humouredly, to the house; adding, as he put the tumbler down again:

  ‘It’s a new house, is it not?’

  ‘Not particularly new, sir,’ replied Mr Britain.

  ‘Between five and six years old,’ said Clemency; speaking very distinctly.

  ‘I think I heard you mention Dr Jeddler’s name, as I came in,’ inquired the stranger. ‘That bill reminds me of him; for I happen to know something of that story, by hearsay, and through certain connexions of mine. Is the old man living?’

  ‘Yes, he’s living, sir,’ said Clemency.

  ‘Much changed?’

  ‘Since when, sir?’ returned Clemency, with remarkable emphasis and expression.

  ‘Since his daughter – went away.’

  ‘Yes! He’s greatly changed since then,’ said Clemency. ‘He’s grey and old, and hasn’t the same way with him at all; but, I think he’s happy now. He has taken on with his sister since then, and goes to see her very often. That did him good, directly. At first, he was sadly broken down; and it was enough to make one’s heart bleed, to see him wandering about, railing at the world; but a great change for the better came over him after a year or two, and then he began to like to talk about his lost daughter, and to praise her, ay and the world too! and was never tired of saying, with the tears in his poor eyes, how beautiful and good she was. He had forgiven her then. That was about the same time as Miss Grace’s marriage. Britain, you remember?’

  Mr Britain remembered very well.

  ‘The sister is married then,’ returned the stranger. He paused for some time before he asked, ‘To whom?’

  Clemency narrowly escaped oversetting the tea-board, in her emotion at this question.

  ‘Did you never hear?’ she said.

  ‘I should like to hear,’ he replied, as he filled his glass again, and raised it to his lips.

  ‘Ah! It would be a long story, if it was properly told,’ said Clemency, resting her chin on the palm of her left hand, and supporting that elbow on her right hand, as she shook her head, and looked back through the intervening years, as if she were looking at a fire. ‘It would be a long story, I am sure.’

  ‘But told as a short one,’ suggested the stranger.

  ‘Told as a short one,’ repeated Clemency in the same thoughtful tone, and without any apparent reference to him, or consciousness of having auditors, ‘what would there be to tell? That they grieved together, and remembered her together, like a person dead; that they were so tender of her, never would reproach her, called her back to one another as she used to be, and found excuses for her! Every one knows that. I’m sure I do. No one better,’ added Clemency, wiping her eyes with her hand.

  ‘And so,’ suggested the stranger.

  ‘And so,’ said Clemency, taking him up mechanically, and without any change in her attitude or manner, ‘they at last were married. They were married on her birthday – it comes round again tomorrow – very quiet, very humble like, but very happy. Mr Alfred said, one night when they were walking in the orchard, “Grace, shall our wedding-day be Marion’s birthday?” And it was.’

  ‘And they have lived happily together?’ said the stranger.

  ‘Ay,’ said Cleme
ncy. ‘No two people ever more so. They have had no sorrow but this.’

  She raised her head as with a sudden attention to the circumstances under which she was recalling these events, and looked quickly at the stranger. Seeing that his face was turned towards the window, and that he seemed intent upon the prospect, she made some eager signs to her husband, and pointed to the bill, and moved her mouth as if she were repeating with great energy, one word or phrase to him over and over again. As she uttered no sound, and as her dumb motions like most of her gestures were of a very extraordinary kind, this unintelligible conduct reduced Mr Britain to the confines of despair. He stared at the table, at the stranger, at the spoons, at his wife – followed her pantomime with looks of deep amazement and perplexity – asked in the same language, was it property in danger, was it he in danger, was it she – answered her signals with other signals expressive of the deepest distress and confusion – followed the motions of her lips – guessed half aloud ‘milk and water,’ ‘monthly warning,’ ‘mice and walnuts’ – and couldn’t approach her meaning.

  Clemency gave it up at last, as a hopeless attempt; and moving her chair by very slow degrees a little nearer to the stranger, sat with her eyes apparently cast down but glancing sharply at him now and then, waiting until he should ask some other question. She had not to wait long; for he said, presently:

  ‘And what is the after history of the young lady who went away? They know it, I suppose?’

  Clemency shook her head. ‘I’ve heard,’ she said, ‘that Doctor Jeddler is thought to know more of it than he tells. Miss Grace has had letters from her sister, saying that she was well and happy, and made much happier by her being married to Mr Alfred: and has written letters back. But there’s a mystery about her life and fortunes, altogether, which nothing has cleared up to this hour, and which –’