Dickens at Christmas (Vintage Classics)

by Charles Dickens

  You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight, in the dead winter-time.

  When the wind was blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the going down of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, as that the forms of things were indistinct and big, but not wholly lost. When sitters by the fire began to see wild faces and figures, mountains and abysses, ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When people in the streets bent down their heads, and ran before the weather. When those who were obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry corners, stung by wandering snow-flakes alighting on the lashes of their eyes, – which fell too sparingly, and were blown away too quickly, to leave a trace upon the frozen ground. When windows of private houses closed up tight and warm. When lighted gas began to burst forth in the busy and the quiet streets, fast blackening otherwise. When stray pedestrians, shivering along the latter, looked down at the glowing fires in kitchens and sharpened their sharp appetites by sniffing up the fragrance of whole miles of dinners.

  When travellers by land were bitter cold, and looked wearily on gloomy landscapes, rustling and shuddering in the blast. When mariners at sea, outlying upon icy yards, were tossed and swung above the howling ocean dreadfully. When lighthouses, on rocks and headlands, showed solitary and watchful; and benighted sea-birds breasted on against their ponderous lanterns, and fell dead. When little readers of story-books, by the firelight, trembled to think of Cassim Baba cut into quarters, hanging in the Robbers’ Cave, or had some small misgivings that the fierce little old woman with the crutch, who used to start out of the box in the merchant Abudah’s bedroom, might, one of these nights, be found upon the stairs, in the long, cold, dusky journey up to bed.

  When, in rustic places, the last glimmering of daylight died away from the ends of avenues; and the trees, arching overhead, were sullen and black. When, in parks and woods, the high wet fern and sodden moss, and beds of fallen leaves, and trunks of trees, were lost to view, in masses of impenetrable shade. When mists arose from dyke, and fen, and river. When lights in old halls and in cottage windows, were a cheerful sight. When the mill stopped, the wheelwright and the blacksmith shut their workshops, the turnpike-gate closed, the plough and harrow were left lonely in the fields, the labourer and team went home, and the striking of the church-clock had a deeper sound than at noon, and the churchyard wicket would be swung no more that night.

  When twilight everywhere released the shadows, prisoned up all day, that now closed in and gathered like mustering swarms of ghosts. When they stood lowering, in corners of rooms, and frowned out from behind half-opened doors. When they had full possession of unoccupied apartments. When they danced upon the floors, and walls, and ceilings of inhabited chambers, while the fire was low, and withdrew like ebbing waters when it sprung into a blaze. When they fantastically mocked the shapes of household objects, making the nurse an ogress, the rocking-horse a monster, the wondering child, half-scared and half-amused, a stranger to itself, – the very tongs upon the hearth, a straddling giant with his arms a-kimbo, evidently smelling the blood of Englishmen, and wanting to grind people’s bones to make his bread.

  When these shadows brought into the minds of older people, other thoughts, and showed them different images. When they stole from their retreats, in the likenesses of forms and faces from the past, from the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, where the things that might have been, and never were, are always wandering.

  When he sat, as already mentioned, gazing at the fire. When, as it rose and fell, the shadows went and came. When he took no heed of them, with his bodily eyes; but, let them come or let them go, looked fixedly at the fire. You should have seen him, then.

  When the sounds that had arisen with the shadows, and come out of their lurking places at the twilight summons, seemed to make a deeper stillness all about him. When the wind was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in the house. When the old trees outside were so shaken and beaten, that one querulous old rook, unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, dozy, high-up ‘Caw!’ When, at intervals, the window trembled, the rusty vane upon the turret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded that another quarter of an hour was gone, or the fire collapsed and fell in with a rattle.

  – When a knock came at his door, in short, as he was sitting so, and roused him.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said he. ‘Come in!’

  Surely there had been no figure leaning on the back of his chair; no face looking over it. It is certain that no gliding footstep touched the floor, as he lifted up his head, with a start, and spoke. And yet there was no mirror in the room on whose surface his own form could have cast its shadow for a moment; and Something had passed darkly and gone!

  ‘I’m humbly fearful, sir,’ said a fresh-coloured busy man, holding the door open with his foot for the admission of himself and a wooden tray he carried, and letting it go again by very gentle and careful degrees, when he and the tray had got in, lest it should close noisily, ‘that it’s a good bit past the time tonight. But Mrs William has been taken off her legs so often—’

  ‘By the wind? Ay! I have heard it rising.’

  ‘– By the wind, sir – that it’s a mercy she got home at all. Oh dear, yes. Yes. It was by the wind, Mr Redlaw. By the wind.’

  He had, by this time, put down the tray for dinner, and was employed in lighting the lamp, and spreading a cloth on the table. From this employment he desisted in a hurry, to stir and feed the fire, and then resumed it; the lamp he had lighted, and the blaze that rose under his hand, so quickly changing the appearance of the room, that it seemed as if the mere coming in of his fresh red face and active manner had made the pleasant alteration.

  ‘Mrs William is of course subject at any time, sir, to be taken off her balance by the elements. She is not formed superior to that.’

  ‘No,’ returned Mr Redlaw good-naturedly, though abruptly.

  ‘No, sir. Mrs William may be taken off her balance by Earth; as for example, last Sunday week, when sloppy and greasy, and she going out to tea with her newest sister-in-law, and having a pride in herself, and wishing to appear perfectly spotless though pedestrian. Mrs William may be taken off her balance by Air; as being once over-persuaded by a friend to try a swing at Peckham Fair, which acted on her constitution instantly like a steam-boat. Mrs William may be taken off her balance by Fire; as on a false alarm of engines at her mother’s, when she went two mile in her nightcap. Mrs William may be taken off her balance by Water; as at Battersea, when rowed into the piers by her young nephew, Charley Swidger junior, aged twelve, which had no idea of boats whatever. But these are elements. Mrs William must be taken out of elements for the strength of her character to come into play.’

  As he stopped for a reply, the reply was ‘Yes,’ in the same tone as before.

  ‘Yes, sir. Oh dear, yes!’ said Mr Swidger, still proceeding with his preparations, and checking them off as he made them. ‘That’s where it is, sir. That’s what I always say myself, sir. Such a many of us Swidgers! – Pepper. Why there’s my father, sir, superannuated keeper and custodian of this Institution, eigh-ty-seven year old. He’s a Swidger! – Spoon.’

  ‘True, William,’ was the patient and abstracted answer, when he stopped again.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Swidger. ‘That’s what I always say, sir. You may call him the trunk of the tree! – Bread. Then you come to his successor, my unworthy self – Salt – and Mrs William, Swidgers both. – Knife and fork. Then you come to all my brothers and their families, Swidgers, man and woman, boy and girl. Why, what with cousins, uncles, aunts, and relationships of this, that, and t’other degree, and what-not degree, and marriages, and lyings-in, the Swidgers – Tumbler – might take hold of hands, and make a ring round England!’

  Receiving no reply at all here, from the thoughtful man whom he addressed, Mr William approached him nearer, and made a feint of accidentally knocking the table with a decanter, to rouse him. The moment he succeeded, he went on, as if in great alacrity o
f acquiescence.

  ‘Yes, sir! That’s just what I say myself, sir. Mrs William and me have often said so. ‘There’s Swidgers enough,’ we say, ‘without our voluntary contributions,’ – Butter. In fact, sir, my father is a family in himself – Castors – to take care of; and it happens all for the best that we have no child of our own, though it’s made Mrs William rather quiet-like, too. Quite ready for the fowl and mashed potatoes, sir? Mrs William said she’d dish in ten minutes when I left the Lodge?’

  ‘I am quite ready,’ said the other, waking as from a dream, and walking slowly to and fro.

  ‘Mrs William has been at it again, sir!’ said the keeper, as he stood warming a plate at the fire, and pleasantly shading his face with it. Mr Redlaw stopped in his walking, and an expression of interest appeared in him.

  ‘What I always say myself, sir. She will do it! There’s a motherly feeling in Mrs William’s breast that must and will have went.’

  ‘What has she done?’

  ‘Why, sir, not satisfied with being a sort of mother to all the young gentlemen that come up from a variety of parts, to attend your courses of lectures at this ancient foundation – it’s surprising how stone-chaney catches the heat, this frosty weather, to be sure!’ Here he turned the plate, and cooled his fingers.

  ‘Well?’ said Mr Redlaw.

  ‘That’s just what I say myself, sir,’ returned Mr William, speaking over his shoulder, as if in ready and delighted assent. ‘That’s exactly where it is, sir! There ain’t one of our students but appears to regard Mrs William in that light. Every day, right through the course, they puts their heads into the Lodge, one after another, and have all got something to tell her, or something to ask her. ‘Swidge’ is the appellation by which they speak of Mrs William in general, among themselves, I’m told; but that’s what I say, sir. Better be called ever so far out of your name, if it’s done in real liking, than have it made ever so much of, and not cared about! What’s a name for? To know a person by. If Mrs William is known by something better than her name – I allude to Mrs William’s qualities and disposition – never mind her name, though it is Swidger, by rights. Let ’em call her Swidge, Widge, Bridge – Lord! London Bridge, Blackfriars, Chelsea, Putney, Waterloo, or Hammersmith Suspension – if they like!’

  The close of this triumphant oration brought him and the plate to the table, upon which he half laid and half dropped it, with a lively sense of its being thoroughly heated, just as the subject of his praises entered the room, bearing another tray and a lantern, and followed by a venerable old man with long grey hair.

  Mrs William, like Mr William, was a simple, innocent-looking person, in whose smooth cheeks the cheerful red of her husband’s official waistcoat was very pleasantly repeated. But whereas Mr William’s light hair stood on end all over his head, and seemed to draw his eyes up with it in an excess of bustling readiness for anything, the dark brown hair of Mrs William was carefully smoothed down, and waved away under a trim tidy cap, in the most exact and quiet manner imaginable. Whereas Mr William’s very trousers hitched themselves up at the ankles, as if it were not in their iron-grey nature to rest without looking about them, Mrs William’s neatly-flowered skirts – red and white, like her own pretty face – were as composed and orderly, as if the very wind that blew so hard out of doors could not disturb one of their folds. Whereas his coat had something of a fly-away and half-off appearance about the collar and breast, her little bodice was so placid and neat, that there should have been protection for her, in it, had she needed any, with the roughest people. Who could have had the heart to make so calm a bosom swell with grief, or throb with fear, or flutter with a thought of shame! To whom would its repose and peace have not appealed against disturbance, like the innocent slumber of a child!

  ‘Punctual, of course, Milly,’ said her husband, relieving her of the tray, ‘or it wouldn’t be you. Here’s Mrs William, sir! – He looks lonelier than ever tonight,’ whispering to his wife, as he was taking the tray, ‘and ghostlier altogether.’

  Without any show of hurry or noise, or any show of herself even, she was so calm and quiet, Milly set the dishes she had brought upon the table, – Mr William, after much clattering and running about, having only gained possession of a butter-boat of gravy, which he stood ready to serve.

  ‘What is that the old man has in his arms?’ asked Mr Redlaw, as he sat down to his solitary meal.

  ‘Holly, sir,’ replied the quiet voice of Milly.

  ‘That’s what I say myself, sir,’ interposed Mr William, striking in with the butter-boat. ‘Berries is so seasonable to the time of year! – Brown gravy!’

  ‘Another Christmas come, another year gone!’ murmured the Chemist, with a gloomy sigh. ‘More figures in the lengthening sum of recollection that we work and work as to our torment, till Death idly jumbles all together, and rubs all out. So, Philip!’ breaking off, and raising his voice, as he addressed the old man, standing apart, with his glistening burden in his arms, from which the quiet Mrs William took small branches, which she noiselessly trimmed with her scissors, and decorated the room with, while her aged father-in-law looked on much interested in the ceremony.

  ‘My duty to you, sir,’ returned the old man. ‘Should have spoke before, sir, but know your ways, Mr Redlaw – proud to say – and wait till spoke to! Merry Christmas, sir, and happy New Year, and many of ’em. Have had a pretty many of ’em myself – ha, ha! – and may take the liberty of wishing ’em. I’m eighty-seven!’

  ‘Have you had so many that were merry and happy?’ asked the other.

  ‘Ay, sir, ever so many,’ returned the old man.

  ‘Is his memory impaired with age? It is to be expected now,’ said Mr Redlaw, turning to the son, and speaking lower.

  ‘Not a morsel of it, sir,’ replied Mr William. ‘That’s exactly what I say myself, sir. There never was such a memory as my father’s. He’s the most wonderful man in the world. He don’t know what forgetting means. It’s the very observation I’m always making to Mrs William, sir, if you’ll believe me!’

  Mr Swidger, in his polite desire to seem to acquiesce at all events, delivered this as if there were no iota of contradiction in it, and it were all said in unbounded and unqualified assent.

  The Chemist pushed his plate away, and, rising from the table, walked across the room to where the old man stood looking at a little sprig of holly in his hand.

  ‘It recalls the time when many of those years were old and new, then?’ he said, observing him attentively, and touching him on the shoulder. ‘Does it?’

  ‘Oh many, many!’ said Philip, half awaking from his reverie. ‘I’m eighty-seven!’

  ‘Merry and happy, was it?’ asked the Chemist, in a low voice. ‘Merry and happy, old man?’

  ‘May-be as high as that, no higher,’ said the old man, holding out his hand a little way above the level of his knee, and looking retrospectively at his questioner, ‘when I first remember ’em! Cold, sunshiny day it was, out a-walking, when some one – it was my mother as sure as you stand there, though I don’t know what her blessed face was like, for she took ill and died that Christmas-time – told me they were food for birds. The pretty little fellow thought – that’s me, you understand – that birds’ eyes were so bright, perhaps, because the berries that they lived on in the winter were so bright. I recollect that. And I’m eighty-seven!’

  ‘Merry and happy!’ mused the other, bending his dark eyes upon the stooping figure, with a smile of compassion. ‘Merry and happy – and remember well?’

  ‘Ay, ay, ay!’ resumed the old man, catching the last words. ‘I remember ’em well in my school time, year after year, and all the merry-making that used to come along with them. I was a strong chap then, Mr Redlaw; and, if you’ll believe me, hadn’t my match at football within ten mile. Where’s my son William? Hadn’t my match at football, William, within ten mile!’

  ‘That’s what I always say, father!’ returned the son promptly, and with great respect. ‘Y
ou ARE a Swidger, if ever there was one of the family!’

  ‘Dear!’ said the old man, shaking his head as he again looked at the holly. ‘His mother – my son William’s my youngest son – and I, have sat among ’em all, boys and girls, little children and babies, many a year, when the berries like these were not shining half so bright all round us, as their bright faces. Many of ’em are gone; she’s gone; and my son George (our eldest, who was her pride more than all the rest!) is fallen very low: but I can see them, when I look here, alive and healthy, as they used to be in those days; and I can see him, thank God, in his innocence. It’s a blessed thing to me, at eighty-seven.’

  The keen look that had been fixed upon him with so much earnestness, had gradually sought the ground.

  ‘When my circumstances got to be not so good as formerly, through not being honestly dealt by, and I first come here to be custodian,’ said the old man, ‘– which was upwards of fifty years ago – where’s my son William? More than half a century ago, William!’

  ‘That’s what I say, father,’ replied the son, as promptly and dutifully as before, ‘that’s exactly where it is. Two times ought’s an ought, and twice five ten, and there’s a hundred of ’em.’

  ‘It was quite a pleasure to know that one of our founders – or more correctly speaking,’ said the old man, with a great glory in his subject and his knowledge of it, ‘one of the learned gentlemen that helped endow us in Queen Elizabeth’s time, for we were founded afore her day – left in his will, among the other bequests he made us, so much to buy holly, for garnishing the walls and windows, come Christmas. There was something homely and friendly in it. Being but strange here, then, and coming at Christmas time, we took a liking for his very picter that hangs in what used to be, anciently, afore our ten poor gentlemen commuted for an annual stipend in money, our great Dinner Hall. – A sedate gentleman in a peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck, and a scroll below him, in old English letters, ‘Lord! keep my memory green!’ You know all about him, Mr Redlaw?’