‘I didn’t live six weeks, some few months ago, in the Doctor’s house for nothing; and I doubted that soon,’ observed the client. ‘She would have doted on him, if her sister could have brought it about; but I watched them. Marion avoided his name, avoided the subject: shrunk from the least allusion to it, with evident distress.’
‘Why should she, Mr Craggs, you know? Why should she, sir?’ inquired Snitchey.
‘I don’t know why she should, though there are many likely reasons,’ said the client, smiling at the attention and perplexity expressed in Mr Snitchey’s shining eye, and at his cautious way of carrying on the conversation, and making himself informed upon the subject; ‘but I know she does. She was very young when she made the engagement – if it may be called one, I am not even sure of that – and has repented of it, perhaps. Perhaps – it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light – she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen in love with her.’
‘He, he! Mr Alfred, her old playfellow too, you remember, Mr Craggs,’ said Snitchey, with a disconcerted laugh; ‘knew her almost from a baby!’
‘Which makes it the more probable that she may be tired of his idea,’ calmly pursued the client, ‘and not indisposed to exchange it for the newer one of another lover, who presents himself (or is presented by his horse) under romantic circumstances; has the not unfavourable reputation – with a country girl – of having lived thoughtlessly and gaily, without doing much harm to anybody; and who, for his youth and figure, and so forth – this may seem foppish again, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light – might perhaps pass muster in a crowd with Mr Alfred himself.’
There was no gainsaying the last clause, certainly; and Mr Snitchey, glancing at him, thought so. There was something naturally graceful and pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better if he chose: and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. ‘A dangerous sort of libertine,’ thought the shrewd lawyer, ‘to seem to catch the spark he wants, from a young lady’s eyes.’
‘Now, observe, Snitchey,’ he continued, rising and taking him by the button, ‘and Craggs,’ taking him by the button also, and placing one partner on either side of him, so that neither might evade him. ‘I don’t ask you for any advice. You are right to keep quite aloof from all parties in such a matter, which is not one in which grave men like you could interfere, on any side. I am briefly going to review in half-a-dozen words, my position and intention, and then I shall leave it to you to do the best for me, in money matters, that you can: seeing, that, if I run away with the Doctor’s beautiful daughter (as I hope to do, and to become another man under her bright influence), it will be, for the moment, more chargeable than running away alone. But I shall soon make all that up in an altered life.’
‘I think it will be better not to hear this, Mr Craggs?’ said Snitchey, looking at him across the client.
‘I think not,’ said Craggs. – Both listened attentively.
‘Well! You needn’t hear it,’ replied their client. ‘I’ll mention it, however. I don’t mean to ask the Doctor’s consent, because he wouldn’t give it me. But I mean to do the Doctor no wrong or harm, because (besides there being nothing serious in such trifles, as he says) I hope to rescue his child, my Marion, from what I see – I know – she dreads, and contemplates with misery: that is, the return of this old lover. If anything in the world is true, it is true that she dreads his return. Nobody is injured so far. I am so harried and worried here just now, that I lead the life of a flying-fish. I skulk about in the dark, I am shut out of my own house, and warned off my own grounds; but, that house, and those grounds, and many an acre besides, will come back to me one day, as you know and say; and Marion will probably be richer – on your showing, who are never sanguine – ten years hence as my wife, than as the wife of Alfred Heathfield, whose return she dreads (remember that), and in whom or in any man, my passion is not surpassed. Who is injured yet? It is a fair case throughout. My right is as good as his, if she decide in my favour; and I will try my right by her alone. You will like to know no more after this, and I will tell you no more. Now you know my purpose, and wants. When must I leave here?’
‘In a week,’ said Snitchey. ‘Mr Craggs?’
‘In something less, I should say,’ responded Craggs.
‘In a month,’ said the client, after attentively watching the two faces. ‘This day month. Today is Thursday. Succeed or fail, on this day month I go.’
‘It’s too long a delay,’ said Snitchey; ‘much too long. But let it be so. I thought he’d have stipulated for three,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Are you going? Good night, sir!’
‘Good night!’ returned the client, shaking hands with the Firm.
‘You’ll live to see me making a good use of riches yet. Henceforth the star of my destiny is, Marion!’
‘Take care of the stairs, sir,’ replied Snitchey; ‘for she don’t shine there. Good night!’
‘Good night!’
So they both stood at the stair-head with a pair of office-candles, watching him down. When he had gone away, they stood looking at each other.
‘What do you think of all this, Mr Craggs?’ said Snitchey.
Mr Craggs shook his head.
‘It was our opinion, on the day when that release was executed, that there was something curious in the parting of that pair; I recollect,’ said Snitchey.
‘It was,’ said Mr Craggs.
‘Perhaps he deceives himself altogether,’ pursued Mr Snitchey, locking up the fireproof box, and putting it away; ‘or, if he don’t, a little bit of fickleness and perfidy is not a miracle, Mr Craggs. And yet I thought that pretty face was very true. I thought,’ said Mr Snitchey, putting on his great-coat (for the weather was very cold), drawing on his gloves, and snuffing out one candle, ‘that I had even seen her character becoming stronger and more resolved of late. More like her sister’s.’
‘Mrs Craggs was of the same opinion,’ returned Craggs.
‘I’d really give a trifle tonight,’ observed Mr Snitchey, who was a good-natured man, ‘if I could believe that Mr Warden was reckoning without his host; but, light-headed, capricious, and unballasted as he is, he knows something of the world and its people (he ought to, for he has bought what he does know, dear enough); and I can’t quite think that. We had better not interfere: we can do nothing, Mr Craggs, but keep quiet.’
‘Nothing,’ returned Craggs.
‘Our friend the Doctor makes light of such things,’ said Mr Snitchey, shaking his head. ‘I hope he mayn’t stand in need of his philosophy. Our friend Alfred talks of the battle of life,’ he shook his head again, ‘I hope he mayn’t be cut down early in the day. Have you got your hat, Mr Craggs? I am going to put the other candle out.’ Mr Craggs replying in the affirmative, Mr Snitchey suited the action to the word, and they groped their way out of the council-chamber, now dark as the subject, or the law in general.
My story passes to a quiet little study, where, on that same night, the sisters and the hale old Doctor sat by a cheerful fireside. Grace was working at her needle. Marion read aloud from a book before her. The Doctor, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his feet spread out upon the warm rug, leaned back in his easy-chair, and listened to the book, and looked upon his daughters.
They were very beautiful to look upon. Two better faces for a fireside, never made a fireside bright and sacred. Something of the difference between them had been softened down in three years’ time; and enthroned upon the clear brow of the younger sister, looking through her eyes, and thrilling in her voice, was the same earnest nature that her own motherless youth had ripened in the elder sister long ago. But she still appeared at once the lovelier and weaker of the two; still seemed to rest her head upon her sister’s breast, and put her trust in her, and look into her eyes for counsel and reliance. Th
ose loving eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful, as of old.
‘“And being in her own home,”’ read Marion, from the book; ‘“her home made exquisitely dear by these remembrances, she now began to know that the great trial of her heart must soon come on, and could not be delayed. O Home, our comforter and friend when others fall away, to part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave”’ –
‘Marion, my love!’ said Grace.
‘Why, Puss!’ exclaimed her father, ‘what’s the matter?’
She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched towards her, and read on; her voice still faltering and trembling, though she made an effort to command it when thus interrupted.
‘“To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave, is always sorrowful. O Home, so true to us, so often slighted in return, be lenient to them that turn away from thee, and do not haunt their erring footsteps too reproachfully! Let no kind looks, no well-remembered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom face. Let no ray of affection, welcome, gentleness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy white head. Let no old loving word, or tone, rise up in judgment against thy deserter; but if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in mercy to the Penitent!”’
‘Dear Marion, read no more tonight,’ said Grace for she was weeping.
‘I cannot,’ she replied, and closed the book. ‘The words seem all on fire!’
The Doctor was amused at this; and laughed as he patted her on the head.
‘What! overcome by a story-book!’ said Doctor Jeddler. ‘Print and paper! Well, well, it’s all one. It’s as rational to make a serious matter of print and paper as of anything else. But, dry your eyes, love, dry your eyes. I dare say the heroine has got home again long ago, and made it up all round – and if she hasn’t, a real home is only four walls; and a fictitious one, mere rags and ink. What’s the matter now?’
‘It’s only me, Mister,’ said Clemency, putting in her head at the door.
‘And what’s the matter with you?’ said the Doctor.
‘Oh, bless you, nothing an’t the matter with me,’ returned Clemency – and truly too, to judge from her well-soaped face, in which there gleamed as usual the very soul of good-humour, which, ungainly as she was, made her quite engaging. Abrasions on the elbows are not generally understood, it is true, to range within that class of personal charms called beauty-spots. But, it is better, going through the world, to have the arms chafed in that narrow passage, than the temper: and Clemency’s was sound and whole as any beauty’s in the land.
‘Nothing an’t the matter with me,’ said Clemency, entering, ‘but – come a little closer, Mister.’
The Doctor, in some astonishment, complied with this invitation.
‘You said I wasn’t to give you one before them, you know,’ said Clemency.
A novice in the family might have supposed, from her extraordinary ogling as she said it, as well as from a singular rapture or ecstasy which pervaded her elbows, as if she were embracing herself, that ‘one’, in its most favourable interpretation, meant a chaste salute. Indeed the Doctor himself seemed alarmed, for the moment; but quickly regained his composure, as Clemency, having had recourse to both her pockets – beginning with the right one, going away to the wrong one, and afterwards coming back to the right one again – produced a letter from the Post-office.
‘Britain was riding by on a errand,’ she chuckled, handing it to the Doctor, ‘and see the mail come in, and waited for it. There’s A. H. in the corner. Mr Alfred’s on his journey home, I bet. We shall have a wedding in the house – there was two spoons in my saucer this morning. Oh Luck, how slow he opens it!’
All this she delivered, by way of soliloquy, gradually rising higher and higher on tiptoe, in her impatience to hear the news, and making a corkscrew of her apron, and a bottle of her mouth. At last, arriving at a climax of suspense, and seeing the Doctor still engaged in the perusal of the letter, she came down flat upon the soles of her feet again, and cast her apron, as a veil, over her head, in a mute despair, and inability to bear it any longer.
‘Here! Girls!’ cried the Doctor. ‘I can’t help it: I never could keep a secret in my life. There are not many secrets, indeed, worth being kept in such a – well! never mind that. Alfred’s coming home, my dears, directly.’
‘Directly!’ exclaimed Marion.
‘What! The story-book is soon forgotten!’ said the Doctor, pinching her cheek. ‘I thought the news would dry those tears. Yes. “Let it be a surprise,” he says, here. But I can’t let it be a surprise. He must have a welcome.’
‘Directly!’ repeated Marion.
‘Why, perhaps not what your impatience calls “directly,”’ returned the doctor; ‘but pretty soon too. Let us see. Let us see. Today is Thursday, is it not? Then he promises to be here, this day month.’
‘This day month!’ repeated Marion, softly.
‘A gay day and a holiday for us,’ said the cheerful voice of her sister Grace, kissing her in congratulation. ‘Long looked forward to, dearest, and come at last.’
She answered with a smile; a mournful smile, but full of sisterly affection. As she looked in her sister’s face, and listened to the quiet music of her voice, picturing the happiness of this return, her own face glowed with hope and joy.
And with a something else; a something shining more and more through all the rest of its expression; for which I have no name. It was not exultation, triumph, proud enthusiasm. They are not so calmly shown. It was not love and gratitude alone, though love and gratitude were part of it. It emanated from no sordid thought, for sordid thoughts do not light up the brow, and hover on the lips, and move the spirit like a fluttered light, until the sympathetic figure trembles.
Dr Jeddler, in spite of his system of philosophy – which he was continually contradicting and denying in practice, but more famous philosophers have done that – could not help having as much interest in the return of his old ward and pupil as if it had been a serious event. So he sat himself down in his easy-chair again, stretched out his slippered feet once more upon the rug, read the letter over and over a great many times, and talked it over more times still.
‘Ah! The day was,’ said the Doctor, looking at the fire, ‘when you and he, Grace, used to trot about arm in arm, in his holiday time, like a couple of walking dolls. You remember?’
‘I remember,’ she answered, with her pleasant laugh, and plying her needle busily.
‘This day month, indeed!’ mused the Doctor. ‘That hardly seems a twelve month ago. And where was my little Marion then!’
‘Never far from her sister,’ said Marion, cheerily, ‘however little. Grace was everything to me, even when she was a young child herself.’
‘True, Puss, true,’ returned the Doctor. ‘She was a staid little woman, was Grace, and a wise housekeeper, and a busy, quiet, pleasant body; bearing with our humours and anticipating our wishes, and always ready to forget her own, even in those times. I never knew you positive or obstinate, Grace, my darling, even then, on any subject but one.’
‘I am afraid I have changed sadly for the worse, since,’ laughed Grace, still busy at her work. ‘What was that one, father?’
‘Alfred, of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘Nothing would serve you but you must be called Alfred’s wife; so we called you Alfred’s wife; and you liked it better, I believe (odd as it seems now), than being called a Duchess, if we could have made you one.’
‘Indeed?’ said Grace, placidly.
‘Why, don’t you remember?’ inquired the Doctor.
‘I think I remember something of it,’ she returned, ‘but not much. It’s so long ago.’ And as she sat at work, she hummed the burden of an old song, which the Doctor liked.
‘Alfred will find a real wife soon,’ she said, breaking off; ‘and that will be a happy time indeed for all of us. My three years’ trust is nearly at an end, Marion. It has been a very easy one. I shall tell Alfred, when I give you back to him, that you have loved him d
early all the time, and that he has never once needed my good services. May I tell him so, love?’
‘Tell him, dear Grace,’ replied Marion, ‘that there never was a trust so generously, nobly, steadfastly discharged; and that I have loved you, all the time, dearer and dearer every day; and O! how dearly now!’
‘Nay,’ said her cheerful sister, returning her embrace, ‘I can scarcely tell him that; we will leave my deserts to Alfred’s imagination. It will be liberal enough, dear Marion; like your own.’
With that, she resumed the work she had for a moment laid down, when her sister spoke so fervently: and with it the old song the Doctor liked to hear. And the Doctor, still reposing in his easy-chair, with his slippered feet stretched out before him on the rug, listened to the tune, and beat time on his knee with Alfred’s letter, and looked at his two daughters, and thought that among the many trifles of the trifling world, these trifles were agreeable enough.
Clemency Newcome, in the meantime, having accomplished her mission and lingered in the room until she had made herself a party to the news, descended to the kitchen, where her coadjutor, Mr Britain, was regaling after supper, surrounded by such a plentiful collection of bright pot-lids, well-scoured saucepans, burnished dinner-covers, gleaming kettles, and other tokens of her industrious habits, arranged upon the walls and shelves, that he sat as in the centre of a hall of mirrors. The majority did not give forth very flattering portraits of him, certainly; nor were they by any means unanimous in their reflections; as some made him very long-faced, others very broad-faced, some tolerably well-looking, others vastly ill-looking, according to their several manners of reflecting: which were as various, in respect of one fact, as those of so many kinds of men. But they all agreed that in the midst of them sat, quite at his ease, an individual with a pipe in his mouth, and a jug of beer at his elbow, who nodded condescendingly to Clemency, when she stationed herself at the same table.
‘Well, Clemmy,’ said Britain, ‘how are you by this time, and what’s the news?’
Dickens at Christmas (Vintage Classics) Page 33