Dickens' Christmas Spirits

by Charles Dickens

  “Eh!” cried the other, turning on him in astonishment.

  “Fern! Will Fern!” said Trotty.

  “That’s my name,” replied the other.

  “Why then,” cried Trotty, seizing him by the arm, and looking cautiously round, “for Heaven’s sake don’t go to him! Don’t go to him! He’ll put you down as sure as ever you were born. Here! come up this alley, and I’ll tell you what I mean. Don’t go to him.”

  His new acquaintance looked as if he thought him mad; but he bore him company nevertheless. When they were shrouded from observation, Trotty told him what he knew, and what character he had received, and all about it.

  The subject of his history listened to it with a calmness that surprised him. He did not contradict or interrupt it, once. He nodded his head now and then—more in corroboration of an old and worn-out story, it appeared, than in refutation of it; and once or twice threw back his hat, and passed his freckled hand over a brow, where every furrow he had ploughed seemed to have set its image in little. But he did no more.

  “It’s true enough in the main,” he said, “master, I could sift grain from husk here and there, but let it be as ‘tis. What odds? I have gone against his plans; to my misfortun’. I can’t help it; I should do the like to-morrow. As to character, them gentlefolks will search and search, and pry and pry, and have it as free from spot or speck in us, afore they’ll help us to a dry good word!—Well! I hope they don’t lose good opinion as easy as we do, or their lives is strict indeed, and hardly worth the keeping. For myself, master, I never took with that hand”—holding it before him—“what wasn’t my own; and never held it back from work, however hard, or poorly paid. Whoever can deny it, let him chop it off! But when work won’t maintain me like a human creetur; when my living is so bad, that I am Hungry, out of doors and in; when I see a whole working life begin that way, go on that way, and end that way, without a chance or change; then I say to the gentlefolks ‘Keep away from me! Let my cottage be. My doors is dark enough without your darkening of ’em more. Don’t look for me to come up into the Park to help the show when there’s a Birthday, or a fine Speechmaking, or what not. Act your Plays and Games without me, and be welcome to ’em, and enjoy ’em. We’ve nowt to do with one another. I’m best let alone!’ ”

  Seeing that the child in his arms had opened her eyes, and was looking about her in wonder, he checked himself to say a word or two of foolish prattle in her ear, and stand her on the ground beside him. Then slowly winding one of her long tresses round and round his rough forefinger like a ring, while she hung about his dusty leg, he said to Trotty:

  “I’m not a cross-grained man by natur’ I believe; and easy satisfied, I’m sure. I bear no ill-will against none of ’em. I only want to live like one of the Almighty’s creeturs. I can‘t—I don’t—and so there’s a pit dug between me, and them that can and do. There’s others like me. You might tell ’em off by hundreds and by thousands, sooner than by ones.”

  Trotty knew he spoke the Truth in this, and shook his head to signify as much.

  “I’ve got a bad name this way,” said Fern; “and I’m not likely, I’m afeared, to get a better. ”Tan’t lawful to be out of sorts, and I AM out of sorts, though God knows I’d sooner bear a cheerful spirit if I could. Well! I don’t know as this Alderman could hurt me much by sending me to gaol; but without a friend to speak a word for me, he might do it; and you see—!” pointing downward with his finger, at the child.

  “She has a beautiful face,” said Trotty.

  “Why yes!” replied the other in a low voice, as he gently turned it up with both his hands towards his own, and looked upon it steadfastly. “I’ve thought so, many times. I’ve thought so, when my hearth was very cold, and cupboard very bare. I thought so t’other night, when we were taken like two thieves. But they—they shouldn’t try the little face too often, should they, Lilian? That’s hardly fair upon a man!”

  He sunk his voice so low, and gazed upon her with an air so stern and strange, that Toby, to divert the current of his thoughts, inquired if his wife were living.

  “I never had one,” he returned, shaking his head. “She’s my brother’s child: a orphan. Nine year old, though you’d hardly think it; but she’s tired and worn out now. They’d have taken care on her, the Union—eight-and-twenty mile away from where we live—between four walls (as they took care of my old father when he couldn’t work no more, though he didn’t trouble ’em long); but I took her instead, and she’s lived with me ever since. Her mother had a friend once, in London here. We are trying to find her, and to find work too; but it’s a large place. Never mind. More room for us to walk about in, Lilly!”

  Meeting the child’s eyes with a smile which melted Toby more than tears, he shook him by the hand.

  “I don’t so much as know your name,” he said, “but I’ve opened my heart free to you, for I’m thankful to you; with good reason. I’ll take your advice, and keep clear of this—”

  “Justice,” suggested Toby.

  “Ah!” he said. “If that’s the name they give him. This Justice. And to-morrow will try whether there’s better fortun’ to be met with, somewheres near London. Good night. A Happy New Year!”

  “Stay!” cried Trotty, catching at his hand, as he relaxed his grip. “Stay! The New Year never can be happy to me, if we part like this. The New Year never can be happy to me, if I see the child and you, go wandering away, you don’t know where, without a shelter for your heads. Come home with me! I’m a poor man, living in a poor place; but I can give you lodging for one night and never miss it. Come home with me! Here! I’ll take her!” cried Trotty, lifting up the child. “A pretty one! I’d carry twenty times her weight, and never know I’d got it. Tell me if I go too quick for you. I’m very fast. I always was!” Trotty said, taking about six of his trotting paces to one stride of his fatigued companion; and with his thin legs quivering again, beneath the load he bore.

  “Why, she’s as light,” said Trotty, trotting in his speech as well as in his gait; for he couldn’t bear to be thanked, and dreaded a moment’s pause; “as light as a feather. Lighter than a Peacock’s feather—a great deal lighter. Here we are, and here we go! Round this first turning to the right, Uncle Will, and past the pump, and sharp off up the passage to the left, right opposite the public-house. Here we are and here we go! Cross over, Uncle Will, and mind the kidney pieman at the corner! Here we are and here we go! Down the Mews here, Uncle Will, and stop at the black door, with ’T. Veck, Ticket Porter’ wrote upon a board; and here we are and here we go, and here we are indeed, my precious Meg, surprising you!”

  With which words Trotty, in a breathless state, set the child down before his daughter in the middle of the floor. The little visitor looked once at Meg; and doubting nothing in that face, but trusting everything she saw there; ran into her arms.

  “Here we are and here we go!” cried Trotty, running round the room, and choking audibly. “Here, Uncle Will, here’s a fire you know! Why don’t you come to the fire? Oh here we are and here we go! Meg, my precious darling, where’s the kettle? Here it is and here it goes, and it’ll bile in no time!”

  Trotty really had picked up the kettle somewhere or other in the course of his wild career, and now put it on the fire: while Meg, seating the child in a warm corner, knelt down on the ground before her, and pulled off her shoes, and dried her wet feet on a cloth. Ay, and she laughed at Trotty too—so pleasantly, so cheerfully, that Trotty could have blessed her where she kneeled; for he had seen that, when they entered, she was sitting by the fire in tears.

  “Why, father!” said Meg. “You’re crazy to-night, I think. I don’t know what the Bells would say to that. Poor little feet. How cold they are!”

  “Oh, they’re warmer now!” exclaimed the child. “They’re quite warm now!”

  “No, no, no,” said Meg. “We haven’t rubbed ’em half enough. We’re so busy. So busy! And when they’re done, we’ll brush out the damp hair; and when that’s done
, we’ll bring some colour to the poor pale face with fresh water; and when that’s done, we’ll be so gay, and brisk, and happy—!”

  The child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped her round the neck; caressed her fair cheek with its hand; and said, “Oh, Meg! oh, dear Meg!”

  Toby’s blessing could have done no more. Who could do more!

  “Why father!” cried Meg, after a pause.

  “Here I am and here I go, my dear!” said Trotty.

  “Good Gracious me!” cried Meg. “He’s crazy! He’s put the dear child’s bonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the door!”

  “I didn’t go for to do it, my love,” said Trotty, hastily repairing this mistake. “Meg, my dear?”

  Meg looked towards him and saw that he had elaborately stationed himself behind the chair of their male visitor, where with many mysterious gestures he was holding up the sixpence he had earned.

  “I see, my dear,” said Trotty, “as I was coming in, half an ounce of tea lying somewhere on the stairs; and I’m pretty sure there was a bit of bacon too. As I don’t remember where it was exactly, I’ll go myself and try to find ’em.”

  With this inscrutable artifice, Toby withdrew to purchase the viands he had spoken of, for ready money, at Mrs. Chickenstalker’s ; and presently came back, pretending he had not been able to find them, at first, in the dark.

  “But here they are at last,” said Trotty, setting out the tea-things, “all correct! I was pretty sure it was tea, and a rasher. So it is. Meg, my pet, if you’ll just make the tea, while your unworthy father toasts the bacon, we shall be ready, immediate. It’s a curious circumstance,” said Trotty, proceeding in his cookery, with the assistance of the toasting-fork, “curious, but well known to my friends, that I never care, myself, for rashers, nor for tea. I like to see other people enjoy ’em,” said Trotty, speaking very loud, to impress the fact upon his guest, “but to me, as food, they’re disagreeable.”

  Yet Trotty sniffed the savour of the hissing bacon—ah!—as if he liked it; and when he poured the boiling water in the tea-pot, looked lovingly down into the depths of that snug cauldron, and suffered the fragrant steam to curl about his nose, and wreathe his head and face in a thick cloud. However, for all this, he neither ate nor drank, except at the very beginning, a mere morsel for form’s sake, which he appeared to eat with infinite relish, but declared was perfectly uninteresting to him.

  No. Trotty’s occupation was, to see Will Fern and Lilian eat and drink; and so was Meg’s. And never did spectators at a city dinner or court banquet find such high delight in seeing others feast: although it were a monarch or a pope: as those two did, in looking on that night. Meg smiled at Trotty, Trotty laughed at Meg. Meg shook her head, and made belief to clap her hands, applauding Trotty; Trotty conveyed, in dumb-show, unintelligible narratives of how and when and where he had found their visitors, to Meg; and they were happy. Very happy.

  “Although,” thought Trotty, sorrowfully, as he watched Meg’s face; “that match is broken off, I see!”

  “Now, I’ll tell you what,” said Trotty after tea. “The little one, she sleeps with Meg, I know.”

  “With good Meg!” cried the child, caressing her. “With Meg.”

  “That’s right,” said Trotty. “And I shouldn’t wonder if she kiss Meg’s father, won’t she? I’m Meg’s father.”

  Mightily delighted Trotty was, when the child went timidly towards him, and having kissed him, fell back upon Meg again.

  “She’s as sensible as Solomon,” said Trotty. “Here we come and here we—no, we don’t—I don’t mean that—I—what was I saying, Meg, my precious?”

  Meg looked towards their guest, who leaned upon her chair, and with his face turned from her, fondled the child’s head, half hidden in her lap.

  “To be sure,” said Toby. “To be sure! I don’t know what I’m rambling on about, to-night. My wits are wool-gathering, I think. Will Fern, you come along with me. You’re tired to death, and broken down for want of rest. You come along with me.”

  The man still played with the child’s curls, still leaned upon Meg’s chair, still turned away his face. He didn’t speak, but in his rough coarse fingers, clenching and expanding in the fair hair of the child, there was an eloquence that said enough.

  “Yes, yes,” said Trotty, answering unconsciously what he saw expressed in his daughter’s face. “Take her with you, Meg. Get her to bed. There! Now Will, I’ll show you where you lie. It’s not much of a place: only a loft; but, having a loft, I always say, is one of the great conveniences of living in a mews; and till this coach-house and stable gets a better let, we live here cheap. There’s plenty of sweet hay up there, belonging to a neighbour; and it’s as clean as hands, and Meg, can make it. Cheer up! Don’t give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!”

  The hand released from the child’s hair, had fallen, trembling, into Trotty’s hand. So Trotty, talking without intermission, led him out as tenderly and easily as if he had been a child himself.

  Returning before Meg, he listened for an instant at the door of her little chamber; an adjoining room. The child was murmuring a simple Prayer before lying down to sleep; and when she had remembered Meg’s name, “Dearly, Dearly”—so her words ran—Trotty heard her stop and ask for his.

  It was some short time before the foolish little old fellow could compose himself to mend the fire, and draw his chair to the warm hearth. But, when he had done so, and had trimmed the light, he took his newspaper from his pocket, and began to read. Carelessly at first, and skimming up and down the columns; but with an earnest and a sad attention, very soon.

  For this same dreaded paper re-directed Trotty’s thoughts into the channel they had taken all that day, and which the day’s events had so marked out and shaped. His interest in the two wanderers had set him on another course of thinking, and a happier one, for the time; but being alone again, and reading of the crimes and violences of the people, he relapsed into his former train.

  In this mood, he came to an account (and it was not the first he had ever read) of a woman who had laid her desperate hands not only on her own life but on that of her young child. A crime so terrible, and so revolting to his soul, dilated with the love of Meg, that he let the journal drop, and fell back in his chair, appalled!

  “Unnatural and cruel!” Toby cried. “Unnatural and cruel! None but people who were bad at heart, born bad, who had no business on the earth, could do such deeds. It’s too true, all I’ve heard to-day; too just, too full of proof. We’re Bad!”

  The Chimes took up the words so suddenly—burst out so loud, and clear, and sonorous—that the Bells seemed to strike him in his chair.

  And what was that, they said?

  “Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you Toby! Come and see us, come and see us, Drag him to us, drag him to us, Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him, Break his slumbers, break his slumbers! Toby Veck Toby Veck, door open wide Toby, Toby Veck Toby Veck, door open wide Toby—” then fiercely back to their impetuous strain again, and ringing in the very bricks and plaster on the walls.

  Toby listened. Fancy, fancy! His remorse for having run away from them that afternoon! No, no. Nothing of the kind. Again, again, and yet a dozen times again. “Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him, Drag him to us, drag him to us!” Deafening the whole town!

  “Meg,” said Trotty softly: tapping at her door. “Do you hear anything?”

  “I hear the Bells, father. Surely they’re very loud to-night.”

  “Is she asleep?” said Toby, making an excuse for peeping in.

  “So peacefully and happily! I can’t leave her yet though, father. Look how she holds my hand!”

  “Meg,” whispered Trotty. “Listen to the Bells!”

  She listened, with her face towards him all the time. But it underwent no change. She didn’t understand them.

  Trotty withdrew, resumed his seat by the fire, and once more listened by himself. He remai
ned here a little time.

  It was impossible to bear it; their energy was dreadful.

  “If the tower-door is really open,” said Toby, hastily laying aside his apron, but never thinking of his hat, “what’s to hinder me from going up into the steeple and satisfying myself? If it’s shut, I don’t want any other satisfaction. That’s enough.”

  He was pretty certain as he slipped out quietly into the street that he should find it shut and locked, for he knew the door well, and had so rarely seen it open, that he couldn’t reckon above three times in all. It was a low arched portal, outside the church, in a dark nook behind a column; and had such great iron hinges, and such a monstrous lock, that there was more hinge and lock than door.

  But what was his astonishment when, coming bare-headed to the church; and putting his hand into this dark nook, with a certain misgiving that it might be unexpectedly seized, and a shivering propensity to draw it back again; he found that the door, which opened outwards, actually stood ajar!

  He thought, on the first surprise, of going back: or of getting a light, or a companion, but his courage aided him immediately, and he determined to ascend alone.

  “What have I to fear?” said Trotty. “It’s a church! Besides, the ringers may be there, and have forgotten to shut the door.”

  So he went in, feeling his way as he went, like a blind man; for it was very dark. And very quiet, for the Chimes were silent.

  The dust from the street had blown into the recess; and lying there, heaped up, made it so soft and velvet-like to the foot, that there was something startling, even in that. The narrow stair was so close to the door, too, that he stumbled at the very first; and shutting the door upon himself, by striking it with his foot, and causing it to rebound back heavily, he couldn’t open it again.

  This was another reason, however, for going on. Trotty groped his way, and went on. Up, up, up, and round, and round; and up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up!

  It was a disagreeable staircase for that groping work; so low and narrow, that his groping hand was always touching something; and it often felt so like a man or ghostly figure standing up erect and making room for him to pass without discovery, that he would rub the smooth wall upward searching for its face, and downward searching for its feet, while a chill tingling crept all over him. Twice or thrice, a door or niche broke the monotonous surface; and then it seemed a gap as wide as the whole church; and he felt on the brink of an abyss, and going to tumble headlong down, until he found the wall again.