The Old Curiosity Shop

by Dickens, Charles

  same quiet train of thought. Even when it had grown dusk, and the

  shadows of coming night made it more solemn still, the child

  remained, like one rooted to the spot, and had no fear or thought

  of stirring.

  They found her there, at last, and took her home. She looked pale

  but very happy, until they separated for the night; and then, as

  the poor schoolmaster stooped down to kiss her cheek, he thought he

  felt a tear upon his face.

  CHAPTER 54

  The bachelor, among his various occupations, found in the old

  church a constant source of interest and amusement. Taking that

  pride in it which men conceive for the wonders of their own little

  world, he had made its history his study; and many a summer day

  within its walls, and many a winter's night beside the parsonage

  fire, had found the bachelor still poring over, and adding to, his

  goodly store of tale and legend.

  As he was not one of those rough spirits who would strip fair Truth

  of every little shadowy vestment in which time and teeming fancies

  love to array her--and some of which become her pleasantly enough,

  serving, like the waters of her well, to add new graces to the

  charms they half conceal and half suggest, and to awaken interest

  and pursuit rather than languor and indifference--as, unlike this

  stern and obdurate class, he loved to see the goddess crowned with

  those garlands of wild flowers which tradition wreathes for her

  gentle wearing, and which are often freshest in their homeliest

  shapes--he trod with a light step and bore with a light hand upon

  the dust of centuries, unwilling to demolish any of the airy

  shrines that had been raised above it, if any good feeling or

  affection of the human heart were hiding thereabouts. Thus, in the

  case of an ancient coffin of rough stone, supposed, for many

  generations, to contain the bones of a certain baron, who, after

  ravaging, with cut, and thrust, and plunder, in foreign lands, came

  back with a penitent and sorrowing heart to die at home, but which

  had been lately shown by learned antiquaries to be no such thing,

  as the baron in question (so they contended) had died hard in

  battle, gnashing his teeth and cursing with his latest breath--

  the bachelor stoutly maintained that the old tale was the true one;

  that the baron, repenting him of the evil, had done great charities

  and meekly given up the ghost; and that, if ever baron went to

  heaven, that baron was then at peace. In like manner, when the

  aforesaid antiquaries did argue and contend that a certain secret

  vault was not the tomb of a grey-haired lady who had been hanged

  and drawn and quartered by glorious Queen Bess for succouring a

  wretched priest who fainted of thirst and hunger at her door, the

  bachelor did solemnly maintain, against all comers, that the church

  was hallowed by the said poor lady's ashes; that her remains had

  been collected in the night from four of the city's gates, and

  thither in secret brought, and there deposited; and the bachelor

  did further (being highly excited at such times) deny the glory of

  Queen Bess, and assert the immeasurably greater glory of the

  meanest woman in her realm, who had a merciful and tender heart.

  As to the assertion that the flat stone near the door was not the

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  grave of the miser who had disowned his only child and left a sum

  of money to the church to buy a peal of bells, the bachelor did

  readily admit the same, and that the place had given birth to no

  such man. In a word, he would have had every stone, and plate of

  brass, the monument only of deeds whose memory should survive. All

  others he was willing to forget. They might be buried in

  consecrated ground, but he would have had them buried deep, and

  never brought to light again.

  It was from the lips of such a tutor, that the child learnt her

  easy task. Already impressed, beyond all telling, by the silent

  building and the peaceful beauty of the spot in which it stood--

  majestic age surrounded by perpetual youth--it seemed to her, when

  she heard these things, sacred to all goodness and virtue. It was

  another world, where sin and sorrow never came; a tranquil place of

  rest, where nothing evil entered.

  When the bachelor had given her in connection with almost every

  tomb and flat grave-stone some history of its own, he took her down

  into the old crypt, now a mere dull vault, and showed her how it

  had been lighted up in the time of the monks, and how, amid lamps

  depending from the roof, and swinging censers exhaling scented

  odours, and habits glittering with gold and silver, and pictures,

  and precious stuffs, and jewels all flashing and glistening through

  the low arches, the chaunt of aged voices had been many a time

  heard there, at midnight, in old days, while hooded figures knelt

  and prayed around, and told their rosaries of beads. Thence, he

  took her above ground again, and showed her, high up in the old

  walls, small galleries, where the nuns had been wont to glide along

  --dimly seen in their dark dresses so far off--or to pause like

  gloomy shadows, listening to the prayers. He showed her too, how

  the warriors, whose figures rested on the tombs, had worn those

  rotting scraps of armour up above--how this had been a helmet, and

  that a shield, and that a gauntlet--and how they had wielded the

  great two-handed swords, and beaten men down, with yonder iron

  mace. All that he told the child she treasured in her mind; and

  sometimes, when she awoke at night from dreams of those old times,

  and rising from her bed looked out at the dark church, she almost

  hoped to see the windows lighted up, and hear the organ's swell,

  and sound of voices, on the rushing wind.

  The old sexton soon got better, and was about again. From him the

  child learnt many other things, though of a different kind. He was

  not able to work, but one day there was a grave to be made, and he

  came to overlook the man who dug it. He was in a talkative mood;

  and the child, at first standing by his side, and afterwards

  sitting on the grass at his feet, with her thoughtful face raised

  towards his, began to converse with him.

  Now, the man who did the sexton's duty was a little older than he,

  though much more active. But he was deaf; and when the sexton (who

  peradventure, on a pinch, might have walked a mile with great

  difficulty in half-a-dozen hours) exchanged a remark with him about

  his work, the child could not help noticing that he did so with an

  impatient kind of pity for his infirmity, as if he were himself the

  strongest and heartiest man alive.

  'I'm sorry to see there is this to do,' said the child when she

  approached. 'I heard of no one having died.'

  'She lived in another hamlet, my dear,' returned the sexton.

  'Three mile away.'

  'Was she young?'

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  'Ye-yes' said the sexton; not more than sixty-four, I think.


  David, was she more than sixty-four?'

  David, who was digging hard, heard nothing of the question. The

  sexton, as he could not reach to touch him with his crutch, and was

  too infirm to rise without assistance, called his attention by

  throwing a little mould upon his red nightcap.

  'What's the matter now?' said David, looking up.

  'How old was Becky Morgan?' asked the sexton.

  'Becky Morgan?' repeated David.

  'Yes,' replied the sexton; adding in a half compassionate, half

  irritable tone, which the old man couldn't hear, 'you're getting

  very deaf, Davy, very deaf to be sure!'

  The old man stopped in his work, and cleansing his spade with a

  piece of slate he had by him for the purpose--and scraping off, in

  the process, the essence of Heaven knows how many Becky Morgans--

  set himself to consider the subject.

  'Let me think' quoth he. 'I saw last night what they had put upon

  the coffin--was it seventy-nine?'

  'No, no,' said the sexton.

  'Ah yes, it was though,' returned the old man with a sigh. 'For I

  remember thinking she was very near our age. Yes, it was

  seventy-nine.'

  'Are you sure you didn't mistake a figure, Davy?' asked the sexton,

  with signs of some emotion.

  'What?' said the old man. 'Say that again.'

  'He's very deaf. He's very deaf indeed,' cried the sexton

  petulantly; 'are you sure you're right about the figures?'

  'Oh quite,' replied the old man. 'Why not?'

  'He's exceedingly deaf,' muttered the sexton to himself. 'I think

  he's getting foolish.'

  The child rather wondered what had led him to this belief, as, to

  say the truth, the old man seemed quite as sharp as he, and was

  infinitely more robust. As the sexton said nothing more just then,

  however, she forgot it for the time, and spoke again.

  'You were telling me,' she said, 'about your gardening. Do you

  ever plant things here?'

  'In the churchyard?' returned the sexton, 'Not I.'

  'I have seen some flowers and little shrubs about,' the child

  rejoined; 'there are some over there, you see. I thought they were

  of your rearing, though indeed they grow but poorly.'

  'They grow as Heaven wills,' said the old man; 'and it kindly

  ordains that they shall never flourish here.'

  'I do not understand you.'

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  'Why, this it is,' said the sexton. 'They mark the graves of those

  who had very tender, loving friends.'

  'I was sure they did!' the child exclaimed. 'I am very glad to

  know they do!'

  'Aye,' returned the old man, 'but stay. Look at them. See how

  they hang their heads, and droop, and wither. Do you guess the

  reason?'

  'No,' the child replied.

  'Because the memory of those who lie below, passes away so soon.

  At first they tend them, morning, noon, and night; they soon begin

  to come less frequently; from once a day, to once a week; from once

  a week to once a month; then, at long and uncertain intervals;

  then, not at all. Such tokens seldom flourish long. I have known

  the briefest summer flowers outlive them.'

  'I grieve to hear it,' said the child.

  'Ah! so say the gentlefolks who come down here to look about them,'

  returned the old man, shaking his head, 'but I say otherwise.

  "It's a pretty custom you have in this part of the country," they

  say to me sometimes, "to plant the graves, but it's melancholy to

  see these things all withering or dead." I crave their pardon and

  tell them that, as I take it, 'tis a good sign for the happiness of

  the living. And so it is. It's nature.'

  'Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the blue sky by day, and to

  the stars by night, and to think that the dead are there, and not

  in graves,' said the child in an earnest voice.

  'Perhaps so,' replied the old man doubtfully. 'It may be.'

  'Whether it be as I believe it is, or no,' thought the child within

  herself, 'I'll make this place my garden. It will be no harm at

  least to work here day by day, and pleasant thoughts will come of

  it, I am sure.'

  Her glowing cheek and moistened eye passed unnoticed by the sexton,

  who turned towards old David, and called him by his name. It was

  plain that Becky Morgan's age still troubled him; though why, the

  child could scarcely understand.

  The second or third repetition of his name attracted the old man's

  attention. Pausing from his work, he leant on his spade, and put

  his hand to his dull ear.

  'Did you call?' he said.

  'I have been thinking, Davy,' replied the sexton, 'that she,' he

  pointed to the grave, 'must have been a deal older than you or me.'

  'Seventy-nine,' answered the old man with a shake of the head, 'I

  tell you that I saw it.'

  'Saw it?' replied the sexton; 'aye, but, Davy, women don't always

  tell the truth about their age.'

  'That's true indeed,' said the other old man, with a sudden sparkle

  in his eye. 'She might have been older.'

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  'I'm sure she must have been. Why, only think how old she looked.

  You and I seemed but boys to her.'

  'She did look old,' rejoined David. 'You're right. She did look

  old.'

  'Call to mind how old she looked for many a long, long year, and

  say if she could be but seventy-nine at last--only our age,' said

  the sexton.

  'Five year older at the very least!' cried the other.

  'Five!' retorted the sexton. 'Ten. Good eighty-nine. I call to

  mind the time her daughter died. She was eighty-nine if she was a

  day, and tries to pass upon us now, for ten year younger. Oh!

  human vanity!'

  The other old man was not behindhand with some moral reflections on

  this fruitful theme, and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such

  weight as to render it doubtful--not whether the deceased was of

  the age suggested, but whether she had not almost reached the

  patriarchal term of a hundred. When they had settled this question

  to their mutual satisfaction, the sexton, with his friend's

  assistance, rose to go.

  'It's chilly, sitting here, and I must be careful--till the

  summer,' he said, as he prepared to limp away.

  'What?' asked old David.

  'He's very deaf, poor fellow!' cried the sexton. 'Good-bye!'

  'Ah!' said old David, looking after him. 'He's failing very fast.

  He ages every day.'

  And so they parted; each persuaded that the other had less life in

  him than himself; and both greatly consoled and comforted by the

  little fiction they had agreed upon, respecting Becky Morgan, whose

  decease was no longer a precedent of uncomfortable application, and

  would be no business of theirs for half a score of years to come.

  The child remained, for some minutes, watching the deaf old man as

  he threw out the earth with his shovel, and, often stopping to

  cough and fetch his breath, still muttered to himself, with a kind

  of sober chuckle, that the sexton was wearing fast.
At length she

  turned away, and walking thoughtfully through the churchyard, came

  unexpectedly upon the schoolmaster, who was sitting on a green

  grave in the sun, reading.

  'Nell here?' he said cheerfully, as he closed his book. 'It does

  me good to see you in the air and light. I feared you were again

  in the church, where you so often are.'

  'Feared!' replied the child, sitting down beside him. 'Is it not

  a good place?'

  'Yes, yes,' said the schoolmaster. 'But you must be gay

  sometimes--nay, don't shake your head and smile so sadly.'

  'Not sadly, if you knew my heart. Do not look at me as if you

  thought me sorrowful. There is not a happier creature on earth,

  than I am now.'

  Full of grateful tenderness, the child took his hand, and folded it

  between her own. 'It's God's will!' she said, when they had been

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  silent for some time.

  'What?'

  'All this,' she rejoined; 'all this about us. But which of us is

  sad now? You see that I am smiling.'

  'And so am I,' said the schoolmaster; 'smiling to think how often

  we shall laugh in this same place. Were you not talking yonder?'

  'Yes,'the child rejoined.

  'Of something that has made you sorrowful?'

  There was a long pause.

  'What was it?' said the schoolmaster, tenderly. 'Come. Tell me

  what it was.'

  'I rather grieve--I do rather grieve to think,' said the child,

  bursting into tears, 'that those who die about us, are so soon

  forgotten.'

  'And do you think,' said the schoolmaster, marking the glance she

  had thrown around, 'that an unvisited grave, a withered tree, a

  faded flower or two, are tokens of forgetfulness or cold neglect?

  Do you think there are no deeds, far away from here, in which these

  dead may be best remembered? Nell, Nell, there may be people busy

  in the world, at this instant, in whose good actions and good

  thoughts these very graves--neglected as they look to us--are the

  chief instruments.'

  'Tell me no more,' said the child quickly. 'Tell me no more. I

  feel, I know it. How could I be unmindful of it, when I thought of

  you?'

  'There is nothing,' cried her friend, 'no, nothing innocent or

  good, that dies, and is forgotten. Let us hold to that faith, or

  none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live