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? Oh, 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 have 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, Phoebe, 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 far) 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 you 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, having taken to her breast that day the slumbering music of her own child's voice.
CHAPTER II--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 Phoebe afterwards set them down in fair writing, hold their due places in this veracious chronicle. 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.
It must be admitted, however, that Barbox by no means hurried himself. His heart being in his work of good-nature, he revelled in it. There was the joy, too (it was a true joy to him), of sometimes sitting by, listening to Phoebe as she picked out more and more discourse from her musical instrument, and as her natural taste and ear refined daily upon her first discoveries. Besides being a pleasure, this was an occupation, and in the course of weeks it consumed hours. It resulted that his dreaded birthday was close upon him before he had troubled himself any more about it.
The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen circumstance that the councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming most brilliantly, on a few rare occasions assisted) respecting the road to be selected were, after all, in nowise assisted by his investigations. For, he had connected this interest with this road, or that interest with the other, but could deduce no reason from it for giving any road the preference. Consequently, when the last council was holden, that part of the business stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in the beginning.
"But, sir," remarked Phoebe, "we have only six roads after all. Is the seventh road dumb?"
"The seventh road? Oh!" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his chin. "That is the road I took, you know, when I went to get your little present. That is _its_ story. Phoebe."
"Would you mind taking that road again, sir?" she asked with hesitation.
"Not in the least; it is a great high-road after all."
"I should like you to take it," returned Phoebe with a persuasive smile, "for the love of that little present which must ever be so dear to me. I should like you to take it, because that road can never be again like any other road to me. I should like you to take it, in remembrance of your having done me so much good: of your having made me so much happier! If you leave me by the road you travelled when you went to do me this great kindness," sounding a faint chord as she spoke, "I shall feel, lying here watc
hing at my window, as if it must conduct you to a prosperous end, and bring you back some day."
"It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done."
So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for Somewhere, and his destination was the great ingenious town.
He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the eighteenth of December when he left it. "High time," he reflected, as he seated himself in the train, "that I started in earnest! Only one clear day remains between me and the day I am running away from. I'll push onward for the hill-country to-morrow. I'll go to Wales."
It was with some pains that he placed before himself the undeniable advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for his senses from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild seashore, and rugged roads. And yet he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he could have wished. Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new resource, her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her now--just at first--that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her; whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning of his station in life, by setting him thinking that a man might be a great healer, if he would, and yet not be a great doctor; these and other similar meditations got between him and his Welsh picture. There was within him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows separation from an object of interest, and cessation of a pleasant pursuit; and this sense, being quite new to him, made him restless. Further, in losing Mugby Junction, he had found himself again; and he was not the more enamoured of himself for having lately passed his time in better company.
But surely here, not far ahead, must be the great ingenious town. This crashing and clashing that the train was undergoing, and this coupling on to it of a multitude of new echoes, could mean nothing less than approach to the great station. It did mean nothing less. After some stormy flashes of town lightning, in the way of swift revelations of red brick blocks of houses, high red brick chimney-shafts, vistas of red brick railway arches, tongues of fire, blocks of smoke, valleys of canal, and hills if coal, there came the thundering in at the journey's end.
Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed in the hotel he chose, and having appointed his dinner hour, Barbox Brothers went out for a walk in the busy streets. And now it began to be suspected by him that Mugby Junction was a Junction of many branches, invisible as well as visible, and had joined him to an endless number of by-ways. For, whereas he would, but a little while ago, have walked these streets blindly brooding, he now had eyes and thoughts for a new external world. How the many toiling people lived, and loved, and died; how wonderful it was to consider the various trainings of eye and hand, the nice distinctions of sight and touch, that separated them into classes of workers, and even into classes of workers at subdivisions of one complete whole which combined their many intelligences and forces, though of itself but some cheap object of use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know that such assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies of humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and yet a modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a question; the second, in the announcements of their popular studies and amusements on the public walls); these considerations, and a host of such, made his walk a memorable one. "I too am but a little part of a great whole," he began to think; "and to be serviceable to myself and others, or to be happy, I must cast my interest into, and draw it out of, the common stock."
Although he had arrived at his journey's end for the day by noon, he had since insensibly walked about the town so far and so long that the lamp- lighters were now at their work in the streets, and the shops were sparkling up brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn towards his quarters, he was in the act of doing so, when a very little hand crept into his, and a very little voice said:
"Oh! if you please, I am lost!"
He looked down, and saw a very little fair-haired girl.
"Yes," she said, confirming her words with a serious nod. "I am indeed. I am lost!"
Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about him for help, descried none, and said, bending low.
"Where do you live, my child?"
"I don't know where I live," she returned. "I am lost."
"What is your name?"
"Polly."
"What is your other name?"
The reply was prompt, but unintelligible.
Imitating the sound as he caught it, he hazarded the guess, "Trivits."
"Oh no!" said the child, shaking her head. "Nothing like that."
"Say it again, little one."
An unpromising business. For this time it had quite a different sound.
He made the venture, "Paddens?"
"Oh no!" said the child. "Nothing like that."
"Once more. Let us try it again, dear."
A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four syllables. "It can't be Tappitarver?" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head with his hat in discomfiture.
"No! It ain't," the child quietly assented.
On her trying this unfortunate name once more, with extraordinary efforts at distinctness, it swelled into eight syllables at least.
"Ah! I think," said Barbox Brothers with a desperate air of resignation, "that we had better give it up."
"But I am lost," said the child, nestling her little hand more closely in his, "and you'll take care of me, won't you?"
If ever a man were disconcerted by division between compassion on the one hand, and the very imbecility of irresolution on the other, here the man was. "Lost!" he repeated, looking down at the child. "I am sure _I_ am. What is to be done?"
"Where do you live?" asked the child, looking up at him wistfully.
"Over there," he answered, pointing vaguely in the direction of his hotel.
"Hadn't we better go there?" said the child.
"Really," he replied, "I don't know but what we had."
So they set off, hand-in-hand. He, through comparison of himself against his little companion, with a clumsy feeling on him as if he had just developed into a foolish giant. She, clearly elevated in her own tiny opinion by having got him so neatly out of his embarrassment.
"We are going to have dinner when we get there, I suppose?" said Polly.
"Well," he rejoined, "I--Yes, I suppose we are."
"Do you like your dinner?" asked the child.
"Why, on the whole," said Barbox Brothers, "yes, I think I do."
"I do mine," said Polly. "Have you any brothers and sisters?"
"No. Have you?"
"Mine are dead."
"Oh!" said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd sense of unwieldiness of mind and body weighing him down, he would have not known how to pursue the conversation beyond this curt rejoinder, but that the child was always ready for him.
"What," she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly in his, "are you going to do to amuse me after dinner?"
"Upon my soul, Polly," exclaimed Barbox Brothers, very much at a loss, "I have not the slightest idea!"
"Then I tell you what," said Polly. "Have you got any cards at your house?"
"Plenty," said Barbox Brothers in a boastful vein.
"Very well. Then I'll build houses, and you shall look at me. You mustn't blow, you know."
"Oh no," said Barbox Brothers. "No, no, no. No blowing. Blowing's not fair."
He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an idiotic monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness of his attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his hopeful opinion of himself by saying compassionately: "What a
funny man you are!"
Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute grew bigger and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox gave himself up for a bad job. No giant ever submitted more meekly to be led in triumph by all- conquering Jack than he to be bound in slavery to Polly.
"Do you know any stories?" she asked him.
He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "No."
"What a dunce you must be, mustn't you?" said Polly.
He was reduced to the humiliating confession: "Yes."
"Would you like me to teach you a story? But you must remember it, you know, and be able to tell it right to somebody else afterwards."
He professed that it would afford him the highest mental gratification to be taught a story, and that he would humbly endeavour to retain it in his mind. Whereupon Polly, giving her hand a new little turn in his, expressive of settling down for enjoyment, commenced a long romance, of which every relishing clause began with the words: "So this," or, "And so this." As, "So this boy;" or, "So this fairy;" or, "And so this pie was four yards round, and two yards and a quarter deep." The interest of the romance was derived from the intervention of this fairy to punish this boy for having a greedy appetite. To achieve which purpose, this fairy made this pie, and this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled and swelled and swelled. There were many tributary circumstances, but the forcible interest culminated in the total consumption of this pie, and the bursting of this boy. Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox Brothers, with serious attentive face, and ear bent down, much jostled on the pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of the epic, lest he should be examined in it by-and-by, and found deficient.
Thus they arrived at the hotel. And there he had to say at the bar, and said awkwardly enough; "I have found a little girl!"
The whole establishment turned out to look at the little girl. Nobody knew her; nobody could make out her name, as she set it forth--except one chamber-maid, who said it was Constantinople--which it wasn't.
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 877