IV.
It is not one week's anguish That can have changed her so; Joy has not died here lately, Struck down by one quick blow; But cruel months have needed Their long relentless chain, To teach that shrinking manner Of helpless, hopeless pain.
V.
The struggle was scarce over Last Christmas Eve had brought: The fibres still were quivering Of the one wounded thought, When Herbert--who, unconscious, Had guessed no inward strife-- Bade her, in pride and pleasure, Welcome his fair young wife.
VI.
Bade her rejoice, and smiling, Although his eyes were dim, Thank'd God he thus could pay her The care she gave to him. This fresh bright life would bring her A new and joyous fate-- O Bertha, check the murmur That cries, Too late! too late!
VII.
Too late! Could she have known it A few short weeks before, That his life was completed, And needing hers no more, She might--O sad repining! What "might have been," forget; "It was not," should suffice us To stifle vain regret.
VIII.
He needed her no longer, Each day it grew more plain; First with a startled wonder, Then with a wondering pain. Love: why, his wife best gave it; Comfort: durst Bertha speak? Counsel: when quick resentment Flush'd on the young wife's cheek.
IX.
No more long talks by firelight Of childish times long past, And dreams of future greatness Which he must reach at last; Dreams, where her purer instinct With truth unerring told Where was the worthless gilding, And where refined gold.
X.
Slowly, but surely ever, Dora's poor jealous pride, Which she call'd love for Herbert, Drove Bertha from his side; And, spite of nervous effort To share their alter'd life, She felt a check to Herbert, A burden to his wife.
XI.
This was the least; for Bertha Fear'd, dreaded, _knew_ at length, How much his nature owed her Of truth, and power, and strength; And watch'd the daily failing Of all his nobler part: Low aims, weak purpose, telling In lower, weaker art.
XII.
And now, when he is dying, The last words she could hear Must not be hers, but given The bride of one short year. The last care is another's; The last prayer must not be The one they learnt together Beside their mother's knee.
XIII.
Summon'd at last: she kisses The clay-cold stiffening hand; And, reading pleading efforts To make her understand, Answers, with solemn promise, In clear but trembling tone, To Dora's life henceforward She will devote her own.
XIV.
Now all is over. Bertha Dares not remain to weep, But soothes the frightened Dora Into a sobbing sleep. The poor weak child will need her: O, who can dare complain, When God sends a new Duty To comfort each new Pain!
NUMBER THREE.
I.
The House is all deserted In the dim evening gloom, Only one figure passes Slowly from room to room; And, pausing at each doorway, Seems gathering up again Within her heart the relics Of bygone joy and pain.
II.
There is an earnest longing In those who onward gaze, Looking with weary patience Towards the coming days. There is a deeper longing, More sad, more strong, more keen: Those know it who look backward, And yearn for what has been.
III.
At every hearth she pauses, Touches each well-known chair; Gazes from every window, Lingers on every stair. What have these months brought Bertha Now one more year is past? This Christmas Eve shall tell us, The third one and the last.
IV.
The wilful, wayward Dora, In those first weeks of grief, Could seek and find in Bertha Strength, soothing, and relief. And Bertha--last sad comfort True woman-heart can take-- Had something still to suffer And do for Herbert's sake.
V.
Spring, with her western breezes, From Indian islands bore To Bertha news that Leonard Would seek his home once more. What was it--joy, or sorrow? What were they--hopes, or fears? That flush'd her cheeks with crimson, And fill'd her eyes with tears?
VI.
He came. And who so kindly Could ask and hear her tell Herbert's last hours; for Leonard Had known and loved him well. Daily he came; and Bertha, Poor wear heart, at length, Weigh'd down by other's weakness, Could rest upon his strength.
VII.
Yet not the voice of Leonard Could her true care beguile, That turn'd to watch, rejoicing, Dora's reviving smile. So, from that little household The worst gloom pass'd away, The one bright hour of evening Lit up the livelong day.
VIII.
Days passed. The golden summer In sudden heat bore down Its blue, bright, glowing sweetness Upon the scorching town. And sights and sounds of country Came in the warm soft tune Sung by the honey'd breezes Borne on the wings of June.
IX.
One twilight hour, but earlier Than usual, Bertha thought She knew the fresh sweet fragrance Of flowers that Leonard brought; Through open'd doors and windows It stole up through the gloom, And with appealing sweetness Drew Bertha from her room.
X.
Yes, he was there; and pausing Just near the open'd door, To check her heart's quick beating, She heard--and paused still more-- His low voice Dora's answers-- His pleading--Yes, she knew The tone--the words--the accents: She once had heard them too.
XI.
"Would Bertha blame her?" Leonard's Low, tender answer came: "Bertha was far too noble To think or dream of blame." "And was he sure he loved her?" "Yes, with the one love given Once in a lifetime only, With one soul and one heaven!"
XII.
Then came a plaintive murmur,-- "Dora had once been told That he and Bertha--" "Dearest, Bertha is far too cold To love; and I, my Dora, If once I fancied so, It was a brief delusion, And over,--long ago."
XIII.
Between the Past and Present, On that bleak moment's height, She stood. As some lost traveller By a quick flash of light Seeing a gulf before him, With dizzy, sick despair, Reels to clutch backward, but to find A deeper chasm there.
XIV.
The twilight grew still darker, The fragrant flowers more sweet, The stars shone out in heaven, The lamps gleam'd down the street; And hours pass'd in dreaming Over their new-found fate, Ere they could think of wondering Why Bertha was so late.
XV.
She came, and calmly listen'd; In vain they strove to trace If Herbert's memory shadow'd In grief upon her face. No blame, no wonder show'd there, No feeling could be told; Her voice was not less steady, Her manner not more cold.
XVI.
They could not hear the anguish That broke in words of pain Through that calm summer midnight,-- "My Herbert--mine again!" Yes, they have once been parted, But this day shall restore The long lost one: she claims him: "My Herbert--mine once more!"
XVII.
Now Christmas Eve returning, Saw Bertha stand beside The altar, greeting Dora, Again a smiling bride; And now the gloomy evening Sees Bertha pale and worn, Leaving the house for ever, To wander out forlorn.
XVIII.
Forlorn--nay, not so. Anguish Shall do its work at length; Her soul, pass'd through the fire, Shall gain still purer strength. Somewhere there waits for Bertha An earnest noble part; And, meanwhile, God is with her,-- God, and her own true heart!
* * * * *
I could warmly and sincerely praise the little poem, when Jarber had done reading it; but I could not say that it tended in any degree towards clearing up the mystery of the empty House.
Whether it was the absence of the irritating influence of Trottle, or whether it was simply fatigue, I cannot say, but Jarber did not strike me, that evening, as being in his usual spirits. And though he declared that he was not in the least daunted by his want of success thus far, and that he was resolutely determined to make more discoveries, he spoke in a languid absent manner, and shortly afterwards took his leave at rather an early hour.
When Trottle came back, and when I indignantly taxed him with Philandering, he not only denied the imputation, but asserted that he had been employed on my service, and, in consideration of that, boldly asked for leave of absence for two days, an
d for a morning to himself afterwards, to complete the business, in which he solemnly declared that I was interested. In remembrance of his long and faithful service to me, I did violence to myself, and granted his request. And he, on his side, engaged to explain himself to my satisfaction, in a week's time, on Monday evening the twentieth.
A day or two before, I sent to Jarber's lodgings to ask him to drop in to tea. His landlady sent back an apology for him that made my hair stand on end. His feet were in hot water; his head was in a flannel petticoat; a green shade was over his eyes; the rheumatism was in his legs; and a mustard-poultice was on his chest. He was also a little feverish, and rather distracted in his mind about Manchester Marriages, a Dwarf, and Three Evenings, or Evening Parties--his landlady was not sure which--in an empty House, with the Water Rate unpaid.
Under these distressing circumstances, I was necessarily left alone with Trottle. His promised explanation began, like Jarber's discoveries, with the reading of a written paper. The only difference was that Trottle introduced his manuscript under the name of a Report.
TROTTLE'S REPORT
The curious events related in these pages would, many of them, most likely never have happened, if a person named Trottle had not presumed, contrary to his usual custom, to think for himself.
The subject on which the person in question had ventured, for the first time in his life, to form an opinion purely and entirely his own, was one which had already excited the interest of his respected mistress in a very extraordinary degree. Or, to put it in plainer terms still, the subject was no other than the mystery of the empty House.
Feeling no sort of objection to set a success of his own, if possible, side by side with a failure of Mr. Jarber's, Trottle made up his mind, one Monday evening, to try what he could do, on his own account, towards clearing up the mystery of the empty House. Carefully dismissing from his mind all nonsensical notions of former tenants and their histories, and keeping the one point in view steadily before him, he started to reach it in the shortest way, by walking straight up to the House, and bringing himself face to face with the first person in it who opened the door to him.
It was getting towards dark, on Monday evening, the thirteenth of the month, when Trottle first set foot on the steps of the House. When he knocked at the door, he knew nothing of the matter which he was about to investigate, except that the landlord was an elderly widower of good fortune, and that his name was Forley. A small beginning enough for a man to start from, certainly!
On dropping the knocker, his first proceeding was to look down cautiously out of the corner of his right eye, for any results which might show themselves at the kitchen-window. There appeared at it immediately the figure of a woman, who looked up inquisitively at the stranger on the steps, left the window in a hurry, and came back to it with an open letter in her hand, which she held up to the fading light. After looking over the letter hastily for a moment or so, the woman disappeared once more.
Trottle next heard footsteps shuffling and scraping along the bare hall of the house. On a sudden they ceased, and the sound of two voices--a shrill persuading voice and a gruff resisting voice--confusedly reached his ears. After a while, the voices left off speaking--a chain was undone, a bolt drawn back--the door opened--and Trottle stood face to face with two persons, a woman in advance, and a man behind her, leaning back flat against the wall.
"Wish you good evening, sir," says the woman, in such a sudden way, and in such a cracked voice, that it was quite startling to hear her. "Chilly weather, ain't it, sir? Please to walk in. You come from good Mr. Forley, don't you, sir?"
"Don't you, sir?" chimes in the man hoarsely, making a sort of gruff echo of himself, and chuckling after it, as if he thought he had made a joke.
If Trottle had said, "No," the door would have been probably closed in his face. Therefore, he took circumstances as he found them, and boldly ran all the risk, whatever it might be, of saying, "Yes."
"Quite right sir," says the woman. "Good Mr. Forley's letter told us his particular friend would be here to represent him, at dusk, on Monday the thirteenth--or, if not on Monday the thirteenth, then on Monday the twentieth, at the same time, without fail. And here you are on Monday the thirteenth, ain't you, sir? Mr. Forley's particular friend, and dressed all in black--quite right, sir! Please to step into the dining- room--it's always kep scoured and clean against Mr. Forley comes here--and I'll fetch a candle in half a minute. It gets so dark in the evenings, now, you hardly know where you are, do you, sir? And how is good Mr. Forley in his health? We trust he is better, Benjamin, don't we? We are so sorry not to see him as usual, Benjamin, ain't we? In half a minute, sir, if you don't mind waiting, I'll be back with the candle. Come along, Benjamin."
"Come along, Benjamin," chimes in the echo, and chuckles again as if he thought he had made another joke.
Left alone in the empty front-parlour, Trottle wondered what was coming next, as he heard the shuffling, scraping footsteps go slowly down the kitchen-stairs. The front-door had been carefully chained up and bolted behind him on his entrance; and there was not the least chance of his being able to open it to effect his escape, without betraying himself by making a noise.
Not being of the Jarber sort, luckily for himself, he took his situation quietly, as he found it, and turned his time, while alone, to account, by summing up in his own mind the few particulars which he had discovered thus far. He had found out, first, that Mr. Forley was in the habit of visiting the house regularly. Second, that Mr. Forley being prevented by illness from seeing the people put in charge as usual, had appointed a friend to represent him; and had written to say so. Third, that the friend had a choice of two Mondays, at a particular time in the evening, for doing his errand; and that Trottle had accidentally hit on this time, and on the first of the Mondays, for beginning his own investigations. Fourth, that the similarity between Trottle's black dress, as servant out of livery, and the dress of the messenger (whoever he might be), had helped the error by which Trottle was profiting. So far, so good. But what was the messenger's errand? and what chance was there that he might not come up and knock at the door himself, from minute to minute, on that very evening?
While Trottle was turning over this last consideration in his mind, he heard the shuffling footsteps come up the stairs again, with a flash of candle-light going before them. He waited for the woman's coming in with some little anxiety; for the twilight had been too dim on his getting into the house to allow him to see either her face or the man's face at all clearly.
The woman came in first, with the man she called Benjamin at her heels, and set the candle on the mantel-piece. Trottle takes leave to describe her as an offensively-cheerful old woman, awfully lean and wiry, and sharp all over, at eyes, nose, and chin--devilishly brisk, smiling, and restless, with a dirty false front and a dirty black cap, and short fidgetty arms, and long hooked finger-nails--an unnaturally lusty old woman, who walked with a spring in her wicked old feet, and spoke with a smirk on her wicked old face--the sort of old woman (as Trottle thinks) who ought to have lived in the dark ages, and been ducked in a horse-pond, instead of flourishing in the nineteenth century, and taking charge of a Christian house.
"You'll please to excuse my son, Benjamin, won't you, sir?" says this witch without a broomstick, pointing to the man behind her, propped against the bare wall of the dining-room, exactly as he had been propped against the bare wall of the passage. "He's got his inside dreadful bad again, has my son Benjamin. And he won't go to bed, and he will follow me about the house, up-stairs and downstairs, and in my lady's chamber, as the song says, you know. It's his indisgestion, poor dear, that sours his temper and makes him so agravating--and indisgestion is a wearing thing to the best of us, ain't it, sir?"
"Ain't it, sir?" chimes in agravating Benjamin, winking at the candle- light like an owl at the sunshine.
Trottle examined the man curiously, while his horrid old mother was speaking of him. He found "My son Benjamin" to be little a
nd lean, and buttoned-up slovenly in a frowsy old great-coat that fell down to his ragged carpet-slippers. His eyes were very watery, his cheeks very pale, and his lips very red. His breathing was so uncommonly loud, that it sounded almost like a snore. His head rolled helplessly in the monstrous big collar of his great-coat; and his limp, lazy hands pottered about the wall on either side of him, as if they were groping for a imaginary bottle. In plain English, the complaint of "My son Benjamin" was drunkenness, of the stupid, pig-headed, sottish kind. Drawing this conclusion easily enough, after a moment's observation of the man, Trottle found himself, nevertheless, keeping his eyes fixed much longer than was necessary on the ugly drunken face rolling about in the monstrous big coat collar, and looking at it with a curiosity that he could hardly account for at first. Was there something familiar to him in the man's features? He turned away from them for an instant, and then turned back to him again. After that second look, the notion forced itself into his mind, that he had certainly seen a face somewhere, of which that sot's face appeared like a kind of slovenly copy. "Where?" thinks he to himself, "where did I last see the man whom this agravating Benjamin, here, so very strongly reminds me of?"
It was no time, just then--with the cheerful old woman's eye searching him all over, and the cheerful old woman's tongue talking at him, nineteen to the dozen--for Trottle to be ransacking his memory for small matters that had got into wrong corners of it. He put by in his mind that very curious circumstance respecting Benjamin's face, to be taken up again when a fit opportunity offered itself; and kept his wits about him in prime order for present necessities.
"You wouldn't like to go down into the kitchen, would you?" says the witch without the broomstick, as familiar as if she had been Trottle's mother, instead of Benjamin's. "There's a bit of fire in the grate, and the sink in the back kitchen don't smell to matter much to-day, and it's uncommon chilly up here when a person's flesh don't hardly cover a person's bones. But you don't look cold, sir, do you? And then, why, Lord bless my soul, our little bit of business is so very, very little, it's hardly worth while to go downstairs about it, after all. Quite a game at business, ain't it, sir? Give-and-take that's what I call it--give-and-take!"
Works of Charles Dickens (200+ Works) The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, David Copperfield & more (mobi) Page 617