The Charles Dickens Christmas Megapack

by Charles Dickens

  “Ah! But you should know my father,” she replied. “His is the happy disposition!—Don’t mind, sir!” For his reserve took the alarm at a step upon the stairs, and he distrusted that he would be set down for a troublesome intruder. “This is my father coming.”

  The door opened, and the father paused there.

  “Why, Lamps!” exclaimed Barbox Brothers, starting from his chair. “How do you do, Lamps?”

  To which, Lamps responded: “The gentleman for Nowhere! How do you do, sir?”

  And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration and surprise of Lamps’s daughter.

  “I have looked you up, half a dozen times since that night,” said Barbox Brothers, “but have never found you.”

  “So I’ve heerd on, sir, so I’ve heerd on,” returned Lamps. “It’s your being noticed so often down at the Junction, without taking any train, that has begun to get you the name among us of the gentleman for Nowhere. No offence in my having called you by it when took by surprise, I hope, sir?”

  “None at all. It’s as good a name for me as any other you could call me by. But may I ask you a question in the corner here?”

  Lamps suffered himself to be led aside from his daughter’s couch, by one of the buttons of his velveteen jacket.

  “Is this the bedside where you sing your songs?”

  Lamps nodded.

  The gentleman for Nowhere clapped him on the shoulder; and they faced about again.

  “Upon my word, my dear,” said Lamps then to his daughter, looking from her to her visitor, “it is such an amaze to me, to find you brought acquainted with this gentleman, that I must (if this gentleman will excuse me) take a rounder.”

  Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this meant, by pulling out his oily handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving himself an elaborate smear, from behind the right ear, up the cheek, across the forehead, and down the other cheek to behind his left ear. After this operation he shone exceedingly.

  “It’s according to my custom when particular warmed up by any agitation, sir,” he offered by way of apology. “And really, I am throwed into that state of amaze by finding you brought acquainted with Phœbe, that I—that I think I will, if you’ll excuse me, take another rounder.” Which he did, seeming to be greatly restored by it.

  They were now both standing by the side of her couch, and she was working at her lace-pillow. “Your daughter tells me,” said Barbox Brothers, still in a half reluctant shamefaced way, “that she never sits up.”

  “No, sir, nor never has done. You see, her mother (who died when she was a year and two months old) was subject to very bad fits, and as she had never mentioned to me that she was subject to fits, they couldn’t be guarded against. Consequently, she dropped the baby when took, and this happened.”

  “It was very wrong of her,” said Barbox Brothers, with a knitted brow, “to marry you, making a secret of her infirmity.”

  “Well, sir,” pleaded Lamps, in behalf of the long-deceased. “You see, Phœbe and me, we have talked that over too. And Lord bless us! Such a number on us has our infirmities, what with fits, and what with misfits, of one sort and another, that if we confessed to ’em all before we got married, most of us might never get married.”

  “Might not that be for the better?”

  “Not in this case, sir,” said Phœbe, giving her hand to her father.

  “No, not in this case, sir,” said her father, patting it between his own.

  “You correct me,” returned Barbox Brothers, with a blush; “and I must look so like a Brute, that at all events it would be superfluous in me to confess to that infirmity. I wish you would tell me a little more about yourselves. I hardly know how to ask it of you, for I am conscious that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way with me, but I wish you would.”

  “With all our hearts, sir,” returned Lamps, gaily, for both. “And first of all, that you may know my name—”

  “Stay!” interposed the visitor, with a slight flush. “What signifies your name! Lamps is name enough for me. I like it. It is bright and expressive. What do I want more!”

  “Why to be sure, sir,” returned Lamps. “I have in general no other name down at the Junction; but I thought, on account of your being here as a first-class single, in a private character, that you might—”

  The visitor waved the thought away with his hand, and Lamps acknowledged the mark of confidence by taking another rounder.

  “You are hard-worked, I take for granted?” said Barbox Brothers, when the subject of the rounder came out of it much dirtier than he went into it.

  Lamps was beginning, “Not particular so”—when his daughter took him up.

  “O yes, sir, he is very hard-worked. Fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, hours a day. Sometimes twenty-four hours at a time.”

  “And you,” said Barbox Brothers, “what with your school, Phœbe, and what with your lace-making—”

  “But my school is a pleasure to me,” she interrupted, opening her brown eyes wider, as if surprised to find him so obtuse. “I began it when I was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company, don’t you see? That was not work. I carry it on still, because it keeps children about me. That is not work. I do it as love, not as work. Then my lace-pillow;” her busy hands had stopped, as if her argument required all her cheerful earnestness, but now went on again at the name; “it goes with my thoughts when I think, and it goes with my tunes when I hum any, and that’s not work. Why, you yourself thought it was music, you know, sir. And so it is, to me.”

  “Everything is!” cried Lamps, radiantly. “Everything is music to her, sir.”

  “My father is, at any rate,” said Phœbe, exultingly pointing her thin forefinger at him. “There is more music in my father than there is in a brass band.”

  “I say! My dear! It’s very fillyillially done, you know; but you are flattering your father,” he protested, sparkling.

  “No I am not, sir, I assure you. No I am not. If you could hear my father sing, you would know I am not. But you never will hear him sing, because he never sings to any one but me. However tired he is, he always sings to me when he comes home. When I lay here long ago, quite a poor little broken doll, he used to sing to me. More than that, he used to make songs, bringing in whatever little jokes we had between us. More than that, he often does so to this day. O! I’ll tell of you, father, as the gentleman has asked about you. He is a poet, sir.”

  “I shouldn’t wish the gentleman, my dear,” observed Lamps, for the moment turning grave, “to carry away that opinion of your father, because it might look as if I was given to asking the stars in a molloncolly manner what they was up to. Which I wouldn’t at once waste the time, and take the liberty, my dear.”

  “My father,” resumed Phœbe, amending her text, “is always on the bright side, and the good side. You told me just now, I had a happy disposition. How can I help it?”

  “Well! but my dear,” returned Lamps argumentatively, “how can I help it? Put it to yourself, sir. Look at her. Always as you see her now. Always working—and after all, sir, for but a very few shillings a week—always contented, always lively, always interested in others, of all sorts. I said, this moment, she was always as you see her now. So she is, with a difference that comes to much the same. For, when it’s my Sunday off and the morning bells have done ringing, I hear the prayers and thanks read in the touchingest way, and I have the hymns sung to me—so soft, sir, that you couldn’t hear ’em out of this room—in notes that seem to me, I am sure, to come from Heaven and go back to it.”

  It might have been merely through the association of these words with their sacredly quiet time, or it might have been through the larger association of the words with the Redeemer’s presence beside the bedridden; but here her dexterous fingers came to a stop on the lace-pillow, and clasped themselves round his neck as he bent down. There was great natural sensibility in both father and daughter, the visitor could easily see; but each
made it, for the other’s sake, retiring, not demonstrative; and perfect cheerfulness, intuitive or acquired, was either the first or second nature of both. In a very few moments, Lamps was taking another rounder with his comical features beaming, while Phœbe’s laughing eyes (just a glistening speck or so upon their lashes) were again directed by turns to him, and to her work, and to Barbox Brothers.

  “When my father, sir,” she said brightly, “tells you about my being interested in other people even though they know nothing about me—which, by-the-by, I told you myself—you ought to know how that comes about. That’s my father’s doing.”

  “No, it isn’t!” he protested.

  “Don’t you believe him, sir; yes, it is. He tells me of everything he sees down at his work. You would be surprised what a quantity he gets together for me every day. He looks into the carriages, and tells me how the ladies are drest—so that I know all the fashions! He looks into the carriages, and tells me what pairs of lovers he sees, and what new-married couples on their wedding trip—so that I know all about that! He collects chance newspapers and books—so that I have plenty to read! He tells me about the sick people who are travelling to try to get better—so that I know all about them! In short, as I began by saying, he tells me everything he sees and makes out, down at his work, and you can’t think what a quantity he does see and make out.”

  “As to collecting newspapers and books, my dear,” said Lamps, “it’s clear I can have no merit in that, because they’re not my perquisites. You see, sir, it’s this way: A Guard, he’ll say to me, ‘Hallo, here you are, Lamps. I’ve saved this paper for your daughter. How is she agoing on?’ A Head-Porter, he’ll say to me, ‘Here! Catch hold, Lamps. Here’s a couple of wollumes for your daughter. Is she pretty much where she were?’ And that’s what makes it double welcome, you see. If she had a thousand pound in’ a box, they wouldn’t trouble themselves about her; but being what she is—that is, you understand,” Lamps added, somewhat hurriedly, “not having a thousand pound in a box—they take thought for her. And as concerning the young pairs, married and unmarried, it’s only natural I should bring home what little I can about them, seeing that there’s not a Couple of either sort in the neighbourhood that don’t come of their own accord to confide in Phœbe.”

  She raised her eyes triumphantly to Barbox Brothers, as she said:

  “Indeed, sir, that is true. If I could have got up and gone to church, I don’t know how often I should have been a bridesmaid. But if I could have done that, some girls in love might have been jealous of me, and as it is, no girl is jealous of me. And my pillow would not have been half as ready to put the piece of cake under, as I always find it,” she added, turning her face on it with a light sigh, and a smile at her father.

  The arrival of a little girl, the biggest of the scholars, now led to an understanding on the part of Barbox Brothers, that she was the domestic of the cottage, and had come to take active measures in it, attended by a pail that might have extinguished her, and a broom three times her height. He therefore rose to take his leave, and took it; saying that if Phœbe had no objection, he would come again.

  He had muttered that he would come “in the course of his walks.” The course of his walks must have been highly favourable to his return, for he returned after an interval of a single day.

  “You thought you would never see me any more, I suppose?” he said to Phœbe as he touched her hand, and sat down by her couch.

  “Why should I think so!” was her surprised rejoinder.

  “I took it for granted you would mistrust me.”

  “For granted, sir? Have you been so much mistrusted?”

  “I think I am justified in answering yes. But I may have mistrusted too, on my part. No matter just now. We were speaking of the Junction last time. I have passed hours there since the day before yesterday.”

  “Are you now the gentleman for Somewhere?” she asked with a smile.

  “Certainly for Somewhere; but I don’t yet know Where. You would never guess what I am travelling from. Shall I tell you? I am travelling from my birthday.”

  Her hands stopped in her work, and she looked at him with incredulous astonishment.

  “Yes,” said Barbox Brothers, not quite easy in his chair, “from my birthday. I am, to myself, an unintelligible book with the earlier chapters all torn out, and thrown away. My childhood had no grace of childhood, my youth had no charm of youth, and what can be expected from such a lost beginning?” His eyes meeting hers as they were addressed intently to him, something seemed to stir within his breast, whispering: “Was this bed a place for the graces of childhood and the charms of youth to take to, kindly? O shame, shame!”

  “It is a disease with me,” said Barbox Brothers, checking himself, and making as though he had a difficulty in swallowing something, “to go wrong about that. I don’t know how I came to speak of that. I hope it is because of an old misplaced confidence in one of your sex involving an old bitter treachery. I don’t know. I am all wrong together.”

  Her hands quietly and slowly resumed their work. Glancing at her, he saw that her eyes were thoughtfully following them.

  “I am travelling from my birthday,” he resumed, “because it has always been a dreary day to me. My first free birthday coming round some five or six weeks hence, I am travelling to put its predecessors far behind me, and to try to crush the day—or, at all events, put it out of my sight—by heaping new objects on it.”

  As he paused, she looked at him; but only shook her head as being quite at a loss.

  “This is unintelligible to your happy disposition,” he pursued, abiding by his former phrase as if there were some lingering virtue of self-defence in it: “I knew it would be, and am glad it is. However, on this travel of mine (in which I mean to pass the rest of my days, having abandoned all thought of a fixed home), I stopped, as you heard from your father, at the Junction here. The extent of its ramifications quite confused me as to whither I should go, from here. I have not yet settled, being still perplexed among so many roads. What do you think I mean to do? How many of the branching roads can you see from your window?”

  Looking out, full of interest, she answered, “Seven.”

  “Seven,” said Barbox Brothers, watching her with a grave smile. “Well! I propose to myself, at once to reduce the gross number to those very seven, and gradually to fine them down to one—the most promising for me—and to take that.”

  “But how will you know, sir, which is the most promising?” she asked, with her brightened eyes roving over the view.

  “Ah!” said Barbox Brothers, with another grave smile, and considerably improving in his ease of speech. “To be sure. In this way. Where your father can pick up so much every day for a good purpose, I may once and again pick up a little for an indifferent purpose. The gentleman for Nowhere must become still better known at the Junction. He shall continue to explore it, until he attaches something that he has seen, heard, or found out, at the head of each of the seven roads, to the road itself. And so his choice of a road shall be determined by his choice among his discoveries.”

  Her hands still busy, she again glanced at the prospect, as if it comprehended something that had not been in it before, and laughed as if it yielded her new pleasure.

  “But I must not forget,” said Barbox Brothers, “(having got so far) to ask a favour. I want your help in this expedient of mine. I want to bring you what I pick up at the heads of the seven roads that you lie here looking out at, and to compare notes with you about it. May I? They say two heads are better than one. I should say myself that probably depends upon the heads concerned. But I am quite sure, though we are so newly acquainted, that your head and your father’s have found out better things, Phœbe, than ever mine of itself discovered.”

  She gave him her sympathetic right hand, in perfect rapture with his proposal, and eagerly and gratefully thanked him.

  “That’s well!” said Barbox Brothers. “Again I must not forget (having got so f
ar) to ask a favour. Will you shut your eyes?”

  Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she did so.

  “Keep them shut,” said Barbox Brothers, going softly to the door, and coming back. “You are on your honour, mind, not to open your eyes until I tell you that you may?”

  “Yes! On my honour.”

  “Good. May I take your lace-pillow from you for a minute?”

  Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, and he put it aside.

  “Tell me. Did you see the puffs of smoke and steam made by the morning fast-train yesterday on road number seven from here?”

  “Behind the elm-trees and the spire?”

  “That’s the road,” said Barbox Brothers, directing his eyes towards it.

  “Yes. I watched them melt away.”

  “Anything unusual in what they expressed?”

  “No!” she answered merrily.

  “Not complimentary to me, for I was in that train. I went—don’t open your eyes—to fetch you this, from the great ingenious town. It is not half so large as your lace-pillow, and lies easily and lightly in its place. These little keys are like the keys of a miniature piano, and you supply the air required with your left hand. May you pick out delightful music from it, my dear! For the present—you can open your eyes now—good-bye!”

  In his embarrassed way, he closed the door upon himself, and only saw, in doing so, that she ecstatically took the present to her bosom and caressed it. The glimpse gladdened his heart, and yet saddened it; for so might she, if her youth had flourished in its natural course, have taken to her breast that day the slumbering music of her own child’s voice.

  BARBOX BROTHERS AND CO.

  With good will and earnest purpose, the gentleman for Nowhere began, on the very next day, his researches at the heads of the seven roads. The results of his researches, as he and Phœbe afterwards set them down in fair writing, hold their due places in this veracious chronicle, from its seventeenth page, onward. But they occupied a much longer time in the getting together than they ever will in the perusal. And this is probably the case with most reading matter, except when it is of that highly beneficial kind (for Posterity) which is “thrown off in a few moments of leisure” by the superior poetic geniuses who scorn to take prose pains.