The Old Curiosity Shop

by Dickens, Charles

  the boughs of trees were ever rustling in the summer, and where the

  birds sang sweetly all day long. With every breath of air that

  stirred among those branches in the sunshine, some trembling,

  changing light, would fall upon her grave.

  Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust! Many a young hand

  dropped in its little wreath, many a stifled sob was heard. Some--

  and they were not a few--knelt down. All were sincere and

  truthful in their sorrow.

  The service done, the mourners stood apart, and the villagers

  closed round to look into the grave before the pavement-stone

  should be replaced. One called to mind how he had seen her sitting

  on that very spot, and how her book had fallen on her lap, and she

  was gazing with a pensive face upon the sky. Another told, how he

  had wondered much that one so delicate as she, should be so bold;

  how she had never feared to enter the church alone at night, but

  had loved to linger there when all was quiet, and even to climb the

  tower stair, with no more light than that of the moon rays stealing

  through the loopholes in the thick old wall. A whisper went about

  among the oldest, that she had seen and talked with angels; and

  when they called to mind how she had looked, and spoken, and her

  early death, some thought it might be so, indeed. Thus, coming to

  the grave in little knots, and glancing down, and giving place to

  others, and falling off in whispering groups of three or four, the

  church was cleared in time, of all but the sexton and the mourning

  friends.

  They saw the vault covered, and the stone fixed down. Then, when

  the dusk of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the

  sacred stillness of the place--when the bright moon poured in her

  light on tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of

  all (it seemed to them) upon her quiet grave--in that calm time,

  when outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of

  immortality, and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust

  before them--then, with tranquil and submissive hearts they turned

  away, and left the child with God.

  Oh! it is hard to take to heart the lesson that such deaths will

  teach, but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn,

  and is a mighty, universal Truth. When Death strikes down the

  innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the

  panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy,

  charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear

  that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is

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  born, some gentler nature comes. In the Destroyer's steps there

  spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path

  becomes a way of light to Heaven.

  It was late when the old man came home. The boy had led him to his

  own dwelling, under some pretence, on their way back; and, rendered

  drowsy by his long ramble and late want of rest, he had sunk into

  a deep sleep by the fireside. He was perfectly exhausted, and they

  were careful not to rouse him. The slumber held him a long time,

  and when he at length awoke the moon was shining.

  The younger brother, uneasy at his protracted absence, was watching

  at the door for his coming, when he appeared in the pathway with

  his little guide. He advanced to meet them, and tenderly obliging

  the old man to lean upon his arm, conducted him with slow and

  trembling steps towards the house.

  He repaired to her chamber, straight. Not finding what he had left

  there, he returned with distracted looks to the room in which they

  were assembled. From that, he rushed into the schoolmaster's

  cottage, calling her name. They followed close upon him, and when

  he had vainly searched it, brought him home.

  With such persuasive words as pity and affection could suggest,

  they prevailed upon him to sit among them and hear what they should

  tell him. Then endeavouring by every little artifice to prepare

  his mind for what must come, and dwelling with many fervent words

  upon the happy lot to which she had been removed, they told him, at

  last, the truth. The moment it had passed their lips, he fell down

  among them like a murdered man.

  For many hours, they had little hope of his surviving; but grief is

  strong, and he recovered.

  If there be any who have never known the blank that follows death--

  the weary void--the sense of desolation that will come upon the

  strongest minds, when something familiar and beloved is missed at

  every turn--the connection between inanimate and senseless things,

  and the object of recollection, when every household god becomes a

  monument and every room a grave--if there be any who have not

  known this, and proved it by their own experience, they can never

  faintly guess how, for many days, the old man pined and moped away

  the time, and wandered here and there as seeking something, and had

  no comfort.

  Whatever power of thought or memory he retained, was all bound up

  in her. He never understood, or seemed to care to understand,

  about his brother. To every endearment and attention he continued

  listless. If they spoke to him on this, or any other theme--save

  one--he would hear them patiently for awhile, then turn away, and

  go on seeking as before.

  On that one theme, which was in his and all their minds, it was

  impossible to touch. Dead! He could not hear or bear the word.

  The slightest hint of it would throw him into a paroxysm, like that

  he had had when it was first spoken. In what hope he lived, no man

  could tell; but that he had some hope of finding her again--some

  faint and shadowy hope, deferred from day to day, and making him

  from day to day more sick and sore at heart--was plain to all.

  They bethought them of a removal from the scene of this last

  sorrow; of trying whether change of place would rouse or cheer him.

  His brother sought the advice of those who were accounted skilful

  in such matters, and they came and saw him. Some of the number

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  staid upon the spot, conversed with him when he would converse, and

  watched him as he wandered up and down, alone and silent. Move him

  where they might, they said, he would ever seek to get back there.

  His mind would run upon that spot. If they confined him closely,

  and kept a strict guard upon him, they might hold him prisoner, but

  if he could by any means escape, he would surely wander back to

  that place, or die upon the road.

  The boy, to whom he had submitted at first, had no longer any

  influence with him. At times he would suffer the child to walk by

  his side, or would even take such notice of his presence as giving

  him his hand, or would stop to kiss his cheek, or pat him on the

  head. At other times, he would entreat him--not unkindly--to be

  gone, and would not brook him near. But, whether alone, or with

  this pliant friend, or with those who would
have given him, at any

  cost or sacrifice, some consolation or some peace of mind, if

  happily the means could have been devised; he was at all times the

  same--with no love or care for anything in life--a broken-hearted

  man.

  At length, they found, one day, that he had risen early, and, with

  his knapsack on his back, his staff in hand, her own straw hat, and

  little basket full of such things as she had been used to carry,

  was gone. As they were making ready to pursue him far and wide, a

  frightened schoolboy came who had seen him, but a moment before,

  sitting in the church--upon her grave, he said.

  They hastened there, and going softly to the door, espied him in

  the attitude of one who waited patiently. They did not disturb him

  then, but kept a watch upon him all that day. When it grew quite

  dark, he rose and returned home, and went to bed, murmuring to

  himself, 'She will come to-morrow!'

  Upon the morrow he was there again from sunrise until night; and

  still at night he laid him down to rest, and murmured, 'She will

  come to-morrow!'

  And thenceforth, every day, and all day long, he waited at her

  grave, for her. How many pictures of new journeys over pleasant

  country, of resting-places under the free broad sky, of rambles in

  the fields and woods, and paths not often trodden--how many tones

  of that one well-remembered voice, how many glimpses of the form,

  the fluttering dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind--

  how many visions of what had been, and what he hoped was yet to be--

  rose up before him, in the old, dull, silent church! He never

  told them what he thought, or where he went. He would sit with

  them at night, pondering with a secret satisfaction, they could

  see, upon the flight that he and she would take before night came

  again; and still they would hear him whisper in his prayers, 'Lord!

  Let her come to-morrow!'

  The last time was on a genial day in spring. He did not return at

  the usual hour, and they went to seek him. He was lying dead upon

  the stone.

  They laid him by the side of her whom he had loved so well; and, in

  the church where they had often prayed, and mused, and lingered

  hand in hand, the child and the old man slept together.

  CHAPTER 73

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  The magic reel, which, rolling on before, has led the chronicler

  thus far, now slackens in its pace, and stops. It lies before the

  goal; the pursuit is at an end.

  It remains but to dismiss the leaders of the little crowd who have

  borne us company upon the road, and so to close the journey.

  Foremost among them, smooth Sampson Brass and Sally, arm in arm,

  claim our polite attention.

  Mr Sampson, then, being detained, as already has been shown, by the

  justice upon whom he called, and being so strongly pressed to

  protract his stay that he could by no means refuse, remained under

  his protection for a considerable time, during which the great

  attention of his entertainer kept him so extremely close, that he

  was quite lost to society, and never even went abroad for exercise

  saving into a small paved yard. So well, indeed, was his modest

  and retiring temper understood by those with whom he had to deal,

  and so jealous were they of his absence, that they required a kind

  of friendly bond to be entered into by two substantial

  housekeepers, in the sum of fifteen hundred pounds a-piece, before

  they would suffer him to quit their hospitable roof--doubting, it

  appeared, that he would return, if once let loose, on any other

  terms. Mr Brass, struck with the humour of this jest, and carrying

  out its spirit to the utmost, sought from his wide connection a

  pair of friends whose joint possessions fell some halfpence short

  of fifteen pence, and proffered them as bail--for that was the

  merry word agreed upon both sides. These gentlemen being rejected

  after twenty-four hours' pleasantry, Mr Brass consented to remain,

  and did remain, until a club of choice spirits called a Grand jury

  (who were in the joke) summoned him to a trial before twelve other

  wags for perjury and fraud, who in their turn found him guilty with

  a most facetious joy,--nay, the very populace entered into the

  whim, and when Mr Brass was moving in a hackney-coach towards the

  building where these wags assembled, saluted him with rotten eggs

  and carcases of kittens, and feigned to wish to tear him into

  shreds, which greatly increased the comicality of the thing, and

  made him relish it the more, no doubt.

  To work this sportive vein still further, Mr Brass, by his

  counsel, moved in arrest of judgment that he had been led to

  criminate himself, by assurances of safety and promises of pardon,

  and claimed the leniency which the law extends to such confiding

  natures as are thus deluded. After solemn argument, this point

  (with others of a technical nature, whose humorous extravagance it

  would be difficult to exaggerate) was referred to the judges for

  their decision, Sampson being meantime removed to his former

  quarters. Finally, some of the points were given in Sampson's

  favour, and some against him; and the upshot was, that, instead of

  being desired to travel for a time in foreign parts, he was

  permitted to grace the mother country under certain insignificant

  restrictions.

  These were, that he should, for a term of years, reside in a

  spacious mansion where several other gentlemen were lodged and

  boarded at the public charge, who went clad in a sober uniform of

  grey turned up with yellow, had their hair cut extremely short, and

  chiefly lived on gruel and light soup. It was also required of him

  that he should partake of their exercise of constantly ascending an

  endless flight of stairs; and, lest his legs, unused to such

  exertion, should be weakened by it, that he should wear upon one

  ankle an amulet or charm of iron. These conditions being arranged,

  he was removed one evening to his new abode, and enjoyed, in common

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  with nine other gentlemen, and two ladies, the privilege of being

  taken to his place of retirement in one of Royalty's own carriages.

  Over and above these trifling penalties, his name was erased and

  blotted out from the roll of attorneys; which erasure has been

  always held in these latter times to be a great degradation and

  reproach, and to imply the commission of some amazing villany--as

  indeed it would seem to be the case, when so many worthless names

  remain among its better records, unmolested.

  Of Sally Brass, conflicting rumours went abroad. Some said with

  confidence that she had gone down to the docks in male attire, and

  had become a female sailor; others darkly whispered that she had

  enlisted as a private in the second regiment of Foot Guards, and

  had been seen in uniform, and on duty, to wit, leaning on her

  musket and looking out of a sentry-box in St james's Park, one

  evening. There w
ere many such whispers as these in circulation;

  but the truth appears to be that, after the lapse of some five

  years (during which there is no direct evidence of her having been

  seen at all), two wretched people were more than once observed to

  crawl at dusk from the inmost recesses of St Giles's, and to take

  their way along the streets, with shuffling steps and cowering

  shivering forms, looking into the roads and kennels as they went in

  search of refuse food or disregarded offal. These forms were never

  beheld but in those nights of cold and gloom, when the terrible

  spectres, who lie at all other times in the obscene hiding-places

  of London, in archways, dark vaults and cellars, venture to creep

  into the streets; the embodied spirits of Disease, and Vice, and

  Famine. It was whispered by those who should have known, that

  these were Sampson and his sister Sally; and to this day, it is

  said, they sometimes pass, on bad nights, in the same loathsome

  guise, close at the elbow of the shrinking passenger.

  The body of Quilp being found--though not until some days had

  elapsed--an inquest was held on it near the spot where it had been

  washed ashore. The general supposition was that he had committed

  suicide, and, this appearing to be favoured by all the

  circumstances of his death, the verdict was to that effect. He was

  left to be buried with a stake through his heart in the centre of

  four lonely roads.

  It was rumoured afterwards that this horrible and barbarous

  ceremony had been dispensed with, and that the remains had been

  secretly given up to Tom Scott. But even here, opinion was

  divided; for some said Tom dug them up at midnight, and carried

  them to a place indicated to him by the widow. It is probable that

  both these stories may have had their origin in the simple fact of

  Tom's shedding tears upon the inquest--which he certainly did,

  extraordinary as it may appear. He manifested, besides, a strong

  desire to assault the jury; and being restrained and conducted out

  of court, darkened its only window by standing on his head upon the

  sill, until he was dexterously tilted upon his feet again by a

  cautious beadle.

  Being cast upon the world by his master's death, he determined to

  go through it upon his head and hands, and accordingly began to

  tumble for his bread. Finding, however, his English birth an

  insurmountable obstacle to his advancement in this pursuit