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diff --git a/old/hntmn10.txt b/old/hntmn10.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 9fc4aad..0000000 --- a/old/hntmn10.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4493 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin -by Charles Dickens -(#6 in our series by Charles Dickens) - -Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the -copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing -this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. - -This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project -Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the -header without written permission. - -Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the -eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is -important information about your specific rights and restrictions in -how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a -donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. - - -**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** - -**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** - -*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** - - -Title: The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin - -Author: Charles Dickens - -Release Date: September, 1996 [EBook #644] -[This file was first posted on September 11, 1996] -[Most recently updated: September 2, 2002] - -Edition: 10 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE HAUNTED MAN *** - - - - -Transcribed from the 1907 J. M. Dent and Co. edition by David -Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk - - - - -THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST'S BARGAIN - - - - -CHAPTER I--The Gift Bestowed - - - -Everybody said so. - -Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. -Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the -general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has -taken, in most instances, such a weary while to find out how wrong, -that the authority is proved to be fallible. Everybody may -sometimes be right; "but THAT'S no rule," as the ghost of Giles -Scroggins says in the ballad. - -The dread word, GHOST, recalls me. - -Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent of my -present claim for everybody is, that they were so far right. He -did. - -Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brilliant eye; his -black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and -well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like tangled sea- -weed, about his face,--as if he had been, through his whole life, a -lonely mark for the chafing and beating of the great deep of -humanity,--but might have said he looked like a haunted man? - -Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, -shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, -with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or -of listening to some old echoes in his mind, but might have said it -was the manner of a haunted man? - -Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and grave, -with a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set -himself against and stop, but might have said it was the voice of a -haunted man? - -Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and part -laboratory,--for he was, as the world knew, far and wide, a learned -man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of -aspiring ears and eyes hung daily,--who that had seen him there, -upon a winter night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments -and books; the shadow of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the -wall, motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by -the flickering of the fire upon the quaint objects around him; some -of these phantoms (the reflection of glass vessels that held -liquids), trembling at heart like things that knew his power to -uncombine them, and to give back their component parts to fire and -vapour;--who that had seen him then, his work done, and he -pondering in his chair before the rusted grate and red flame, -moving his thin mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, -would not have said that the man seemed haunted and the chamber -too? - -Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed that -everything about him took this haunted tone, and that he lived on -haunted ground? - -His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like,--an old, retired part -of an ancient endowment for students, once a brave edifice, planted -in an open place, but now the obsolete whim of forgotten -architects; smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, squeezed on every side -by the overgrowing of the great city, and choked, like an old well, -with stones and bricks; its small quadrangles, lying down in very -pits formed by the streets and buildings, which, in course of time, -had been constructed above its heavy chimney stalks; its old trees, -insulted by the neighbouring smoke, which deigned to droop so low -when it was very feeble and the weather very moody; its grass- -plots, struggling with the mildewed earth to be grass, or to win -any show of compromise; its silent pavements, unaccustomed to the -tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, except when a -stray face looked down from the upper world, wondering what nook it -was; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, where no sun had -straggled for a hundred years, but where, in compensation for the -sun's neglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay nowhere -else, and the black east wind would spin like a huge humming-top, -when in all other places it was silent and still. - -His dwelling, at its heart and core--within doors--at his fireside- --was so lowering and old, so crazy, yet so strong, with its worn- -eaten beams of wood in the ceiling, and its sturdy floor shelving -downward to the great oak chimney-piece; so environed and hemmed in -by the pressure of the town yet so remote in fashion, age, and -custom; so quiet, yet so thundering with echoes when a distant -voice was raised or a door was shut,--echoes, not confined to the -many low passages and empty rooms, but rumbling and grumbling till -they were stifled in the heavy air of the forgotten Crypt where the -Norman arches were half-buried in the earth. - -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 sprang 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 to-night. 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 miles 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, eighty- -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 whatnot 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 of -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--its 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 to-night," 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 at 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?" - -"Maybe 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. "You 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?" - -"I know the portrait hangs there, Philip." - -"Yes, sure, it's the second on the right, above the panelling. I -was going to say--he has helped to keep MY memory green, I thank -him; for going round the building every year, as I'm a doing now, -and freshening up the bare rooms with these branches and berries, -freshens up my bare old brain. One year brings back another, and -that year another, and those others numbers! At last, it seems to -me as if the birth-time of our Lord was the birth-time of all I -have ever had affection for, or mourned for, or delighted in,--and -they're a pretty many, for I'm eighty-seven!" - -"Merry and happy," murmured Redlaw to himself. - -The room began to darken strangely. - -"So you see, sir," pursued old Philip, whose hale wintry cheek had -warmed into a ruddier glow, and whose blue eyes had brightened -while he spoke, "I have plenty to keep, when I keep this present -season. Now, where's my quiet Mouse? Chattering's the sin of my -time of life, and there's half the building to do yet, if the cold -don't freeze us first, or the wind don't blow us away, or the -darkness don't swallow us up." - -The quiet Mouse had brought her calm face to his side, and silently -taken his arm, before he finished speaking. - -"Come away, my dear," said the old man. "Mr. Redlaw won't settle -to his dinner, otherwise, till it's cold as the winter. I hope -you'll excuse me rambling on, sir, and I wish you good night, and, -once again, a merry--" - -"Stay!" said Mr. Redlaw, resuming his place at the table, more, it -would have seemed from his manner, to reassure the old keeper, than -in any remembrance of his own appetite. "Spare me another moment, -Philip. William, you were going to tell me something to your -excellent wife's honour. It will not be disagreeable to her to -hear you praise her. What was it?" - -"Why, that's where it is, you see, sir," returned Mr. William -Swidger, looking towards his wife in considerable embarrassment. -"Mrs. William's got her eye upon me." - -"But you're not afraid of Mrs. William's eye?" - -"Why, no, sir," returned Mr. Swidger, "that's what I say myself. -It wasn't made to be afraid of. It wouldn't have been made so -mild, if that was the intention. But I wouldn't like to--Milly!-- -him, you know. Down in the Buildings." - -Mr. William, standing behind the table, and rummaging -disconcertedly among the objects upon it, directed persuasive -glances at Mrs. William, and secret jerks of his head and thumb at -Mr. Redlaw, as alluring her towards him. - -"Him, you know, my love," said Mr. William. "Down in the -Buildings. Tell, my dear! You're the works of Shakespeare in -comparison with myself. Down in the Buildings, you know, my love.- --Student." - -"Student?" repeated Mr. Redlaw, raising his head. - -"That's what I say, sir!" cried Mr. William, in the utmost -animation of assent. "If it wasn't the poor student down in the -Buildings, why should you wish to hear it from Mrs. William's lips? -Mrs. William, my dear--Buildings." - -"I didn't know," said Milly, with a quiet frankness, free from any -haste or confusion, "that William had said anything about it, or I -wouldn't have come. I asked him not to. It's a sick young -gentleman, sir--and very poor, I am afraid--who is too ill to go -home this holiday-time, and lives, unknown to any one, in but a -common kind of lodging for a gentleman, down in Jerusalem -Buildings. That's all, sir." - -"Why have I never heard of him?" said the Chemist, rising -hurriedly. "Why has he not made his situation known to me? Sick!- --give me my hat and cloak. Poor!--what house?--what number?" - -"Oh, you mustn't go there, sir," said Milly, leaving her father-in- -law, and calmly confronting him with her collected little face and -folded hands. - -"Not go there?" - -"Oh dear, no!" said Milly, shaking her head as at a most manifest -and self-evident impossibility. "It couldn't be thought of!" - -"What do you mean? Why not?" - -"Why, you see, sir," said Mr. William Swidger, persuasively and -confidentially, "that's what I say. Depend upon it, the young -gentleman would never have made his situation known to one of his -own sex. Mrs. Williams has got into his confidence, but that's -quite different. They all confide in Mrs. William; they all trust -HER. A man, sir, couldn't have got a whisper out of him; but -woman, sir, and Mrs. William combined--!" - -"There is good sense and delicacy in what you say, William," -returned Mr. Redlaw, observant of the gentle and composed face at -his shoulder. And laying his finger on his lip, he secretly put -his purse into her hand. - -"Oh dear no, sir!" cried Milly, giving it back again. "Worse and -worse! Couldn't be dreamed of!" - -Such a staid matter-of-fact housewife she was, and so unruffled by -the momentary haste of this rejection, that, an instant afterwards, -she was tidily picking up a few leaves which had strayed from -between her scissors and her apron, when she had arranged the -holly. - -Finding, when she rose from her stooping posture, that Mr. Redlaw -was still regarding her with doubt and astonishment, she quietly -repeated--looking about, the while, for any other fragments that -might have escaped her observation: - -"Oh dear no, sir! He said that of all the world he would not be -known to you, or receive help from you--though he is a student in -your class. I have made no terms of secrecy with you, but I trust -to your honour completely." - -"Why did he say so?" - -"Indeed I can't tell, sir," said Milly, after thinking a little, -"because I am not at all clever, you know; and I wanted to be -useful to him in making things neat and comfortable about him, and -employed myself that way. But I know he is poor, and lonely, and I -think he is somehow neglected too.--How dark it is!" - -The room had darkened more and more. There was a very heavy gloom -and shadow gathering behind the Chemist's chair. - -"What more about him?" he asked. - -"He is engaged to be married when he can afford it," said Milly, -"and is studying, I think, to qualify himself to earn a living. I -have seen, a long time, that he has studied hard and denied himself -much.--How very dark it is!" - -"It's turned colder, too," said the old man, rubbing his hands. -"There's a chill and dismal feeling in the room. Where's my son -William? William, my boy, turn the lamp, and rouse the fire!" - -Milly's voice resumed, like quiet music very softly played: - -"He muttered in his broken sleep yesterday afternoon, after talking -to me" (this was to herself) "about some one dead, and some great -wrong done that could never be forgotten; but whether to him or to -another person, I don't know. Not BY him, I am sure." - -"And, in short, Mrs. William, you see--which she wouldn't say -herself, Mr. Redlaw, if she was to stop here till the new year -after this next one--" said Mr. William, coming up to him to speak -in his ear, "has done him worlds of good! Bless you, worlds of -good! All at home just the same as ever--my father made as snug -and comfortable--not a crumb of litter to be found in the house, if -you were to offer fifty pound ready money for it--Mrs. William -apparently never out of the way--yet Mrs. William backwards and -forwards, backwards and forwards, up and down, up and down, a -mother to him!" - -The room turned darker and colder, and the gloom and shadow -gathering behind the chair was heavier. - -"Not content with this, sir, Mrs. William goes and finds, this very -night, when she was coming home (why it's not above a couple of -hours ago), a creature more like a young wild beast than a young -child, shivering upon a door-step. What does Mrs. William do, but -brings it home to dry it, and feed it, and keep it till our old -Bounty of food and flannel is given away, on Christmas morning! If -it ever felt a fire before, it's as much as ever it did; for it's -sitting in the old Lodge chimney, staring at ours as if its -ravenous eyes would never shut again. It's sitting there, at -least," said Mr. William, correcting himself, on reflection, -"unless it's bolted!" - -"Heaven keep her happy!" said the Chemist aloud, "and you too, -Philip! and you, William! I must consider what to do in this. I -may desire to see this student, I'll not detain you any longer now. -Good-night!" - -"I thank'ee, sir, I thank'ee!" said the old man, "for Mouse, and -for my son William, and for myself. Where's my son William? -William, you take the lantern and go on first, through them long -dark passages, as you did last year and the year afore. Ha ha! -_I_ remember--though I'm eighty-seven! 'Lord, keep my memory -green!' It's a very good prayer, Mr. Redlaw, that of the learned -gentleman in the peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck--hangs -up, second on the right above the panelling, in what used to be, -afore our ten poor gentlemen commuted, our great Dinner Hall. -'Lord, keep my memory green!' It's very good and pious, sir. -Amen! Amen!" - -As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which, however -carefully withheld, fired a long train of thundering reverberations -when it shut at last, the room turned darker. - -As he fell a musing in his chair alone, the healthy holly withered -on the wall, and dropped--dead branches. - -As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that place where -it had been gathering so darkly, it took, by slow degrees,--or out -of it there came, by some unreal, unsubstantial process--not to be -traced by any human sense,--an awful likeness of himself! - -Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but with -his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and -dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into his -terrible appearance of existence, motionless, without a sound. As -HE leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before -the fire, IT leaned upon the chair-back, close above him, with its -appalling copy of his face looking where his face looked, and -bearing the expression his face bore. - -This, then, was the Something that had passed and gone already. -This was the dread companion of the haunted man! - -It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, than he of -it. The Christmas Waits were playing somewhere in the distance, -and, through his thoughtfulness, he seemed to listen to the music. -It seemed to listen too. - -At length he spoke; without moving or lifting up his face. - -"Here again!" he said. - -"Here again," replied the Phantom. - -"I see you in the fire," said the haunted man; "I hear you in -music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night." - -The Phantom moved its head, assenting. - -"Why do you come, to haunt me thus?" - -"I come as I am called," replied the Ghost. - -"No. Unbidden," exclaimed the Chemist. - -"Unbidden be it," said the Spectre. "It is enough. I am here." - -Hitherto the light of the fire had shone on the two faces--if the -dread lineaments behind the chair might be called a face--both -addressed towards it, as at first, and neither looking at the -other. But, now, the haunted man turned, suddenly, and stared upon -the Ghost. The Ghost, as sudden in its motion, passed to before -the chair, and stared on him. - -The living man, and the animated image of himself dead, might so -have looked, the one upon the other. An awful survey, in a lonely -and remote part of an empty old pile of building, on a winter -night, with the loud wind going by upon its journey of mystery-- -whence or whither, no man knowing since the world began--and the -stars, in unimaginable millions, glittering through it, from -eternal space, where the world's bulk is as a grain, and its hoary -age is infancy. - -"Look upon me!" said the Spectre. "I am he, neglected in my youth, -and miserably poor, who strove and suffered, and still strove and -suffered, until I hewed out knowledge from the mine where it was -buried, and made rugged steps thereof, for my worn feet to rest and -rise on." - -"I AM that man," returned the Chemist. - -"No mother's self-denying love," pursued the Phantom, "no father's -counsel, aided ME. A stranger came into my father's place when I -was but a child, and I was easily an alien from my mother's heart. -My parents, at the best, were of that sort whose care soon ends, -and whose duty is soon done; who cast their offspring loose, early, -as birds do theirs; and, if they do well, claim the merit; and, if -ill, the pity." - -It paused, and seemed to tempt and goad him with its look, and with -the manner of its speech, and with its smile. - -"I am he," pursued the Phantom, "who, in this struggle upward, -found a friend. I made him--won him--bound him to me! We worked -together, side by side. All the love and confidence that in my -earlier youth had had no outlet, and found no expression, I -bestowed on him." - -"Not all," said Redlaw, hoarsely. - -"No, not all," returned the Phantom. "I had a sister." - -The haunted man, with his head resting on his hands, replied "I -had!" The Phantom, with an evil smile, drew closer to the chair, -and resting its chin upon its folded hands, its folded hands upon -the back, and looking down into his face with searching eyes, that -seemed instinct with fire, went on: - -"Such glimpses of the light of home as I had ever known, had -streamed from her. How young she was, how fair, how loving! I -took her to the first poor roof that I was master of, and made it -rich. She came into the darkness of my life, and made it bright.-- -She is before me!" - -"I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in music, in the -wind, in the dead stillness of the night," returned the haunted -man. - -"DID he love her?" said the Phantom, echoing his contemplative -tone. "I think he did, once. I am sure he did. Better had she -loved him less--less secretly, less dearly, from the shallower -depths of a more divided heart!" - -"Let me forget it!" said the Chemist, with an angry motion of his -hand. "Let me blot it from my memory!" - -The Spectre, without stirring, and with its unwinking, cruel eyes -still fixed upon his face, went on: - -"A dream, like hers, stole upon my own life." - -"It did," said Redlaw. - -"A love, as like hers," pursued the Phantom, "as my inferior nature -might cherish, arose in my own heart. I was too poor to bind its -object to my fortune then, by any thread of promise or entreaty. I -loved her far too well, to seek to do it. But, more than ever I -had striven in my life, I strove to climb! Only an inch gained, -brought me something nearer to the height. I toiled up! In the -late pauses of my labour at that time,--my sister (sweet -companion!) still sharing with me the expiring embers and the -cooling hearth,--when day was breaking, what pictures of the future -did I see!" - -"I saw them, in the fire, but now," he murmured. "They come back -to me in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in -the revolving years." - -"--Pictures of my own domestic life, in aftertime, with her who was -the inspiration of my toil. Pictures of my sister, made the wife -of my dear friend, on equal terms--for he had some inheritance, we -none--pictures of our sobered age and mellowed happiness, and of -the golden links, extending back so far, that should bind us, and -our children, in a radiant garland," said the Phantom. - -"Pictures," said the haunted man, "that were delusions. Why is it -my doom to remember them too well!" - -"Delusions," echoed the Phantom in its changeless voice, and -glaring on him with its changeless eyes. "For my friend (in whose -breast my confidence was locked as in my own), passing between me -and the centre of the system of my hopes and struggles, won her to -himself, and shattered my frail universe. My sister, doubly dear, -doubly devoted, doubly cheerful in my home, lived on to see me -famous, and my old ambition so rewarded when its spring was broken, -and then--" - -"Then died," he interposed. "Died, gentle as ever; happy; and with -no concern but for her brother. Peace!" - -The Phantom watched him silently. - -"Remembered!" said the haunted man, after a pause. "Yes. So well -remembered, that even now, when years have passed, and nothing is -more idle or more visionary to me than the boyish love so long -outlived, I think of it with sympathy, as if it were a younger -brother's or a son's. Sometimes I even wonder when her heart first -inclined to him, and how it had been affected towards me.--Not -lightly, once, I think.--But that is nothing. Early unhappiness, a -wound from a hand I loved and trusted, and a loss that nothing can -replace, outlive such fancies." - -"Thus," said the Phantom, "I bear within me a Sorrow and a Wrong. -Thus I prey upon myself. Thus, memory is my curse; and, if I could -forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!" - -"Mocker!" said the Chemist, leaping up, and making, with a wrathful -hand, at the throat of his other self. "Why have I always that -taunt in my ears?" - -"Forbear!" exclaimed the Spectre in an awful voice. "Lay a hand on -Me, and die!" - -He stopped midway, as if its words had paralysed him, and stood -looking on it. It had glided from him; it had its arm raised high -in warning; and a smile passed over its unearthly features, as it -reared its dark figure in triumph. - -"If I could forget my sorrow and wrong, I would," the Ghost -repeated. "If I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!" - -"Evil spirit of myself," returned the haunted man, in a low, -trembling tone, "my life is darkened by that incessant whisper." - -"It is an echo," said the Phantom. - -"If it be an echo of my thoughts--as now, indeed, I know it is," -rejoined the haunted man, "why should I, therefore, be tormented? -It is not a selfish thought. I suffer it to range beyond myself. -All men and women have their sorrows,--most of them their wrongs; -ingratitude, and sordid jealousy, and interest, besetting all -degrees of life. Who would not forget their sorrows and their -wrongs?" - -"Who would not, truly, and be happier and better for it?" said the -Phantom. - -"These revolutions of years, which we commemorate," proceeded -Redlaw, "what do THEY recall! Are there any minds in which they do -not re-awaken some sorrow, or some trouble? What is the -remembrance of the old man who was here to-night? A tissue of -sorrow and trouble." - -"But common natures," said the Phantom, with its evil smile upon -its glassy face, "unenlightened minds and ordinary spirits, do not -feel or reason on these things like men of higher cultivation and -profounder thought." - -"Tempter," answered Redlaw, "whose hollow look and voice I dread -more than words can express, and from whom some dim foreshadowing -of greater fear is stealing over me while I speak, I hear again an -echo of my own mind." - -"Receive it as a proof that I am powerful," returned the Ghost. -"Hear what I offer! Forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have -known!" - -"Forget them!" he repeated. - -"I have the power to cancel their remembrance--to leave but very -faint, confused traces of them, that will die out soon," returned -the Spectre. "Say! Is it done?" - -"Stay!" cried the haunted man, arresting by a terrified gesture the -uplifted hand. "I tremble with distrust and doubt of you; and the -dim fear you cast upon me deepens into a nameless horror I can -hardly bear.--I would not deprive myself of any kindly -recollection, or any sympathy that is good for me, or others. What -shall I lose, if I assent to this? What else will pass from my -remembrance?" - -"No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but the intertwisted -chain of feelings and associations, each in its turn dependent on, -and nourished by, the banished recollections. Those will go." - -"Are they so many?" said the haunted man, reflecting in alarm. - -"They have been wont to show themselves in the fire, in music, in -the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolving -years," returned the Phantom scornfully. - -"In nothing else?" - -The Phantom held its peace. - -But having stood before him, silent, for a little while, it moved -towards the fire; then stopped. - -"Decide!" it said, "before the opportunity is lost!" - -"A moment! I call Heaven to witness," said the agitated man, "that -I have never been a hater of any kind,--never morose, indifferent, -or hard, to anything around me. If, living here alone, I have made -too much of all that was and might have been, and too little of -what is, the evil, I believe, has fallen on me, and not on others. -But, if there were poison in my body, should I not, possessed of -antidotes and knowledge how to use them, use them? If there be -poison in my mind, and through this fearful shadow I can cast it -out, shall I not cast it out?" - -"Say," said the Spectre, "is it done?" - -"A moment longer!" he answered hurriedly. "I WOULD FORGET IT IF I -COULD! Have _I_ thought that, alone, or has it been the thought of -thousands upon thousands, generation after generation? All human -memory is fraught with sorrow and trouble. My memory is as the -memory of other men, but other men have not this choice. Yes, I -close the bargain. Yes! I WILL forget my sorrow, wrong, and -trouble!" - -"Say," said the Spectre, "is it done?" - -"It is!" - -"IT IS. And take this with you, man whom I here renounce! The -gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will. -Without recovering yourself the power that you have yielded up, you -shall henceforth destroy its like in all whom you approach. Your -wisdom has discovered that the memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble -is the lot of all mankind, and that mankind would be the happier, -in its other memories, without it. Go! Be its benefactor! Freed -from such remembrance, from this hour, carry involuntarily the -blessing of such freedom with you. Its diffusion is inseparable -and inalienable from you. Go! Be happy in the good you have won, -and in the good you do!" - -The Phantom, which had held its bloodless hand above him while it -spoke, as if in some unholy invocation, or some ban; and which had -gradually advanced its eyes so close to his, that he could see how -they did not participate in the terrible smile upon its face, but -were a fixed, unalterable, steady horror melted before him and was -gone. - -As he stood rooted to the spot, possessed by fear and wonder, and -imagining he heard repeated in melancholy echoes, dying away -fainter and fainter, the words, "Destroy its like in all whom you -approach!" a shrill cry reached his ears. It came, not from the -passages beyond the door, but from another part of the old -building, and sounded like the cry of some one in the dark who had -lost the way. - -He looked confusedly upon his hands and limbs, as if to be assured -of his identity, and then shouted in reply, loudly and wildly; for -there was a strangeness and terror upon him, as if he too were -lost. - -The cry responding, and being nearer, he caught up the lamp, and -raised a heavy curtain in the wall, by which he was accustomed to -pass into and out of the theatre where he lectured,--which adjoined -his room. Associated with youth and animation, and a high -amphitheatre of faces which his entrance charmed to interest in a -moment, it was a ghostly place when all this life was faded out of -it, and stared upon him like an emblem of Death. - -"Halloa!" he cried. "Halloa! This way! Come to the light!" -When, as he held the curtain with one hand, and with the other -raised the lamp and tried to pierce the gloom that filled the -place, something rushed past him into the room like a wild-cat, and -crouched down in a corner. - -"What is it?" he said, hastily. - -He might have asked "What is it?" even had he seen it well, as -presently he did when he stood looking at it gathered up in its -corner. - -A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and form -almost an infant's, but in its greedy, desperate little clutch, a -bad old man's. A face rounded and smoothed by some half-dozen -years, but pinched and twisted by the experiences of a life. -Bright eyes, but not youthful. Naked feet, beautiful in their -childish delicacy,--ugly in the blood and dirt that cracked upon -them. A baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been a -child, a creature who might live to take the outward form of man, -but who, within, would live and perish a mere beast. - -Used, already, to be worried and hunted like a beast, the boy -crouched down as he was looked at, and looked back again, and -interposed his arm to ward off the expected blow. - -"I'll bite," he said, "if you hit me!" - -The time had been, and not many minutes since, when such a sight as -this would have wrung the Chemist's heart. He looked upon it now, -coldly; but with a heavy effort to remember something--he did not -know what--he asked the boy what he did there, and whence he came. - -"Where's the woman?" he replied. "I want to find the woman." - -"Who?" - -"The woman. Her that brought me here, and set me by the large -fire. She was so long gone, that I went to look for her, and lost -myself. I don't want you. I want the woman." - -He made a spring, so suddenly, to get away, that the dull sound of -his naked feet upon the floor was near the curtain, when Redlaw -caught him by his rags. - -"Come! you let me go!" muttered the boy, struggling, and clenching -his teeth. "I've done nothing to you. Let me go, will you, to the -woman!" - -"That is not the way. There is a nearer one," said Redlaw, -detaining him, in the same blank effort to remember some -association that ought, of right, to bear upon this monstrous -object. "What is your name?" - -"Got none." - -"Where do you live? - -"Live! What's that?" - -The boy shook his hair from his eyes to look at him for a moment, -and then, twisting round his legs and wrestling with him, broke -again into his repetition of "You let me go, will you? I want to -find the woman." - -The Chemist led him to the door. "This way," he said, looking at -him still confusedly, but with repugnance and avoidance, growing -out of his coldness. "I'll take you to her." - -The sharp eyes in the child's head, wandering round the room, -lighted on the table where the remnants of the dinner were. - -"Give me some of that!" he said, covetously. - -"Has she not fed you?" - -"I shall be hungry again to-morrow, sha'n't I? Ain't I hungry -every day?" - -Finding himself released, he bounded at the table like some small -animal of prey, and hugging to his breast bread and meat, and his -own rags, all together, said: - -"There! Now take me to the woman!" - -As the Chemist, with a new-born dislike to touch him, sternly -motioned him to follow, and was going out of the door, he trembled -and stopped. - -"The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you -will!" - -The Phantom's words were blowing in the wind, and the wind blew -chill upon him. - -"I'll not go there, to-night," he murmured faintly. "I'll go -nowhere to-night. Boy! straight down this long-arched passage, and -past the great dark door into the yard,--you see the fire shining -on the window there." - -"The woman's fire?" inquired the boy. - -He nodded, and the naked feet had sprung away. He came back with -his lamp, locked his door hastily, and sat down in his chair, -covering his face like one who was frightened at himself. - -For now he was, indeed, alone. Alone, alone. - - - -CHAPTER II--The Gift Diffused - - - -A small man sat in a small parlour, partitioned off from a small -shop by a small screen, pasted all over with small scraps of -newspapers. In company with the small man, was almost any amount -of small children you may please to name--at least it seemed so; -they made, in that very limited sphere of action, such an imposing -effect, in point of numbers. - -Of these small fry, two had, by some strong machinery, been got -into bed in a corner, where they might have reposed snugly enough -in the sleep of innocence, but for a constitutional propensity to -keep awake, and also to scuffle in and out of bed. The immediate -occasion of these predatory dashes at the waking world, was the -construction of an oyster-shell wall in a corner, by two other -youths of tender age; on which fortification the two in bed made -harassing descents (like those accursed Picts and Scots who -beleaguer the early historical studies of most young Britons), and -then withdrew to their own territory. - -In addition to the stir attendant on these inroads, and the retorts -of the invaded, who pursued hotly, and made lunges at the bed- -clothes under which the marauders took refuge, another little boy, -in another little bed, contributed his mite of confusion to the -family stock, by casting his boots upon the waters; in other words, -by launching these and several small objects, inoffensive in -themselves, though of a hard substance considered as missiles, at -the disturbers of his repose,--who were not slow to return these -compliments. - -Besides which, another little boy--the biggest there, but still -little--was tottering to and fro, bent on one side, and -considerably affected in his knees by the weight of a large baby, -which he was supposed by a fiction that obtains sometimes in -sanguine families, to be hushing to sleep. But oh! the -inexhaustible regions of contemplation and watchfulness into which -this baby's eyes were then only beginning to compose themselves to -stare, over his unconscious shoulder! - -It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar the whole -existence of this particular young brother was offered up a daily -sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have consisted in its -never being quiet, in any one place, for five consecutive minutes, -and never going to sleep when required. "Tetterby's baby" was as -well known in the neighbourhood as the postman or the pot-boy. It -roved from door-step to door-step, in the arms of little Johnny -Tetterby, and lagged heavily at the rear of troops of juveniles who -followed the Tumblers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one side, -a little too late for everything that was attractive, from Monday -morning until Saturday night. Wherever childhood congregated to -play, there was little Moloch making Johnny fag and toil. Wherever -Johnny desired to stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would -not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep, -and must be watched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, -Moloch was awake, and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily -persuaded that it was a faultless baby, without its peer in the -realm of England, and was quite content to catch meek glimpses of -things in general from behind its skirts, or over its limp flapping -bonnet, and to go staggering about with it like a very little -porter with a very large parcel, which was not directed to anybody, -and could never be delivered anywhere. - -The small man who sat in the small parlour, making fruitless -attempts to read his newspaper peaceably in the midst of this -disturbance, was the father of the family, and the chief of the -firm described in the inscription over the little shop front, by -the name and title of A. TETTERBY AND CO., NEWSMEN. Indeed, -strictly speaking, he was the only personage answering to that -designation, as Co. was a mere poetical abstraction, altogether -baseless and impersonal. - -Tetterby's was the corner shop in Jerusalem Buildings. There was a -good show of literature in the window, chiefly consisting of -picture-newspapers out of date, and serial pirates, and footpads. -Walking-sticks, likewise, and marbles, were included in the stock -in trade. It had once extended into the light confectionery line; -but it would seem that those elegancies of life were not in demand -about Jerusalem Buildings, for nothing connected with that branch -of commerce remained in the window, except a sort of small glass -lantern containing a languishing mass of bull's-eyes, which had -melted in the summer and congealed in the winter until all hope of -ever getting them out, or of eating them without eating the lantern -too, was gone for ever. Tetterby's had tried its hand at several -things. It had once made a feeble little dart at the toy business; -for, in another lantern, there was a heap of minute wax dolls, all -sticking together upside down, in the direst confusion, with their -feet on one another's heads, and a precipitate of broken arms and -legs at the bottom. It had made a move in the millinery direction, -which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes remained in a corner of the -window to attest. It had fancied that a living might lie hidden in -the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a representation of a native of -each of the three integral portions of the British Empire, in the -act of consuming that fragrant weed; with a poetic legend attached, -importing that united in one cause they sat and joked, one chewed -tobacco, one took snuff, one smoked: but nothing seemed to have -come of it--except flies. Time had been when it had put a forlorn -trust in imitative jewellery, for in one pane of glass there was a -card of cheap seals, and another of pencil-cases, and a mysterious -black amulet of inscrutable intention, labelled ninepence. But, to -that hour, Jerusalem Buildings had bought none of them. In short, -Tetterby's had tried so hard to get a livelihood out of Jerusalem -Buildings in one way or other, and appeared to have done so -indifferently in all, that the best position in the firm was too -evidently Co.'s; Co., as a bodiless creation, being untroubled with -the vulgar inconveniences of hunger and thirst, being chargeable -neither to the poor's-rates nor the assessed taxes, and having no -young family to provide for. - -Tetterby himself, however, in his little parlour, as already -mentioned, having the presence of a young family impressed upon his -mind in a manner too clamorous to be disregarded, or to comport -with the quiet perusal of a newspaper, laid down his paper, -wheeled, in his distraction, a few times round the parlour, like an -undecided carrier-pigeon, made an ineffectual rush at one or two -flying little figures in bed-gowns that skimmed past him, and then, -bearing suddenly down upon the only unoffending member of the -family, boxed the ears of little Moloch's nurse. - -"You bad boy!" said Mr. Tetterby, "haven't you any feeling for your -poor father after the fatigues and anxieties of a hard winter's -day, since five o'clock in the morning, but must you wither his -rest, and corrode his latest intelligence, with YOUR wicious -tricks? Isn't it enough, sir, that your brother 'Dolphus is -toiling and moiling in the fog and cold, and you rolling in the lap -of luxury with a--with a baby, and everything you can wish for," -said Mr. Tetterby, heaping this up as a great climax of blessings, -"but must you make a wilderness of home, and maniacs of your -parents? Must you, Johnny? Hey?" At each interrogation, Mr. -Tetterby made a feint of boxing his ears again, but thought better -of it, and held his hand. - -"Oh, father!" whimpered Johnny, "when I wasn't doing anything, I'm -sure, but taking such care of Sally, and getting her to sleep. Oh, -father!" - -"I wish my little woman would come home!" said Mr. Tetterby, -relenting and repenting, "I only wish my little woman would come -home! I ain't fit to deal with 'em. They make my head go round, -and get the better of me. Oh, Johnny! Isn't it enough that your -dear mother has provided you with that sweet sister?" indicating -Moloch; "isn't it enough that you were seven boys before without a -ray of gal, and that your dear mother went through what she DID go -through, on purpose that you might all of you have a little sister, -but must you so behave yourself as to make my head swim?" - -Softening more and more, as his own tender feelings and those of -his injured son were worked on, Mr. Tetterby concluded by embracing -him, and immediately breaking away to catch one of the real -delinquents. A reasonably good start occurring, he succeeded, -after a short but smart run, and some rather severe cross-country -work under and over the bedsteads, and in and out among the -intricacies of the chairs, in capturing this infant, whom he -condignly punished, and bore to bed. This example had a powerful, -and apparently, mesmeric influence on him of the boots, who -instantly fell into a deep sleep, though he had been, but a moment -before, broad awake, and in the highest possible feather. Nor was -it lost upon the two young architects, who retired to bed, in an -adjoining closet, with great privacy and speed. The comrade of the -Intercepted One also shrinking into his nest with similar -discretion, Mr. Tetterby, when he paused for breath, found himself -unexpectedly in a scene of peace. - -"My little woman herself," said Mr. Tetterby, wiping his flushed -face, "could hardly have done it better! I only wish my little -woman had had it to do, I do indeed!" - -Mr. Tetterby sought upon his screen for a passage appropriate to be -impressed upon his children's minds on the occasion, and read the -following. - -"'It is an undoubted fact that all remarkable men have had -remarkable mothers, and have respected them in after life as their -best friends.' Think of your own remarkable mother, my boys," said -Mr. Tetterby, "and know her value while she is still among you!" - -He sat down again in his chair by the fire, and composed himself, -cross-legged, over his newspaper. - -"Let anybody, I don't care who it is, get out of bed again," said -Tetterby, as a general proclamation, delivered in a very soft- -hearted manner, "and astonishment will be the portion of that -respected contemporary!"--which expression Mr. Tetterby selected -from his screen. "Johnny, my child, take care of your only sister, -Sally; for she's the brightest gem that ever sparkled on your early -brow." - -Johnny sat down on a little stool, and devotedly crushed himself -beneath the weight of Moloch. - -"Ah, what a gift that baby is to you, Johnny!" said his father, -"and how thankful you ought to be! 'It is not generally known, -Johnny,'" he was now referring to the screen again, "'but it is a -fact ascertained, by accurate calculations, that the following -immense percentage of babies never attain to two years old; that is -to say--'" - -"Oh, don't, father, please!" cried Johnny. "I can't bear it, when -I think of Sally." - -Mr. Tetterby desisting, Johnny, with a profound sense of his trust, -wiped his eyes, and hushed his sister. - -"Your brother 'Dolphus," said his father, poking the fire, "is late -to-night, Johnny, and will come home like a lump of ice. What's -got your precious mother?" - -"Here's mother, and 'Dolphus too, father!" exclaimed Johnny, "I -think." - -"You're right!" returned his father, listening. "Yes, that's the -footstep of my little woman." - -The process of induction, by which Mr Tetterby had come to the -conclusion that his wife was a little woman, was his own secret. -She would have made two editions of himself, very easily. -Considered as an individual, she was rather remarkable for being -robust and portly; but considered with reference to her husband, -her dimensions became magnificent. Nor did they assume a less -imposing proportion, when studied with reference to the size of her -seven sons, who were but diminutive. In the case of Sally, -however, Mrs. Tetterby had asserted herself, at last; as nobody -knew better than the victim Johnny, who weighed and measured that -exacting idol every hour in the day. - -Mrs. Tetterby, who had been marketing, and carried a basket, threw -back her bonnet and shawl, and sitting down, fatigued, commanded -Johnny to bring his sweet charge to her straightway, for a kiss. -Johnny having complied, and gone back to his stool, and again -crushed himself, Master Adolphus Tetterby, who had by this time -unwound his torso out of a prismatic comforter, apparently -interminable, requested the same favour. Johnny having again -complied, and again gone back to his stool, and again crushed -himself, Mr. Tetterby, struck by a sudden thought, preferred the -same claim on his own parental part. The satisfaction of this -third desire completely exhausted the sacrifice, who had hardly -breath enough left to get back to his stool, crush himself again, -and pant at his relations. - -"Whatever you do, Johnny," said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking her head, -"take care of her, or never look your mother in the face again." - -"Nor your brother," said Adolphus. - -"Nor your father, Johnny," added Mr. Tetterby. - -Johnny, much affected by this conditional renunciation of him, -looked down at Moloch's eyes to see that they were all right, so -far, and skilfully patted her back (which was uppermost), and -rocked her with his foot. - -"Are you wet, 'Dolphus, my boy?" said his father. "Come and take -my chair, and dry yourself." - -"No, father, thank'ee," said Adolphus, smoothing himself down with -his hands. "I an't very wet, I don't think. Does my face shine -much, father?" - -"Well, it DOES look waxy, my boy," returned Mr. Tetterby. - -"It's the weather, father," said Adolphus, polishing his cheeks on -the worn sleeve of his jacket. "What with rain, and sleet, and -wind, and snow, and fog, my face gets quite brought out into a rash -sometimes. And shines, it does--oh, don't it, though!" - -Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper line of life, being -employed, by a more thriving firm than his father and Co., to vend -newspapers at a railway station, where his chubby little person, -like a shabbily-disguised Cupid, and his shrill little voice (he -was not much more than ten years old), were as well known as the -hoarse panting of the locomotives, running in and out. His -juvenility might have been at some loss for a harmless outlet, in -this early application to traffic, but for a fortunate discovery he -made of a means of entertaining himself, and of dividing the long -day into stages of interest, without neglecting business. This -ingenious invention, remarkable, like many great discoveries, for -its simplicity, consisted in varying the first vowel in the word -"paper," and substituting, in its stead, at different periods of -the day, all the other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus, -before daylight in the winter-time, he went to and fro, in his -little oilskin cap and cape, and his big comforter, piercing the -heavy air with his cry of "Morn-ing Pa-per!" which, about an hour -before noon, changed to "Morn-ing Pepper!" which, at about two, -changed to "Morn-ing Pip-per!" which in a couple of hours changed -to "Morn-ing Pop-per!" and so declined with the sun into "Eve-ning -Pup-per!" to the great relief and comfort of this young gentleman's -spirits. - -Mrs. Tetterby, his lady-mother, who had been sitting with her -bonnet and shawl thrown back, as aforesaid, thoughtfully turning -her wedding-ring round and round upon her finger, now rose, and -divesting herself of her out-of-door attire, began to lay the cloth -for supper. - -"Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!" said Mrs. Tetterby. "That's the -way the world goes!" - -"Which is the way the world goes, my dear?" asked Mr. Tetterby, -looking round. - -"Oh, nothing," said Mrs. Tetterby. - -Mr. Tetterby elevated his eyebrows, folded his newspaper afresh, -and carried his eyes up it, and down it, and across it, but was -wandering in his attention, and not reading it. - -Mrs. Tetterby, at the same time, laid the cloth, but rather as if -she were punishing the table than preparing the family supper; -hitting it unnecessarily hard with the knives and forks, slapping -it with the plates, dinting it with the salt-cellar, and coming -heavily down upon it with the loaf. - -"Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!" said Mrs. Tetterby. "That's the -way the world goes!" - -"My duck," returned her husband, looking round again, "you said -that before. Which is the way the world goes?" - -"Oh, nothing!" said Mrs. Tetterby. - -"Sophia!" remonstrated her husband, "you said THAT before, too." - -"Well, I'll say it again if you like," returned Mrs. Tetterby. "Oh -nothing--there! And again if you like, oh nothing--there! And -again if you like, oh nothing--now then!" - -Mr. Tetterby brought his eye to bear upon the partner of his bosom, -and said, in mild astonishment: - -"My little woman, what has put you out?" - -"I'm sure _I_ don't know," she retorted. "Don't ask me. Who said -I was put out at all? _I_ never did." - -Mr. Tetterby gave up the perusal of his newspaper as a bad job, -and, taking a slow walk across the room, with his hands behind him, -and his shoulders raised--his gait according perfectly with the -resignation of his manner--addressed himself to his two eldest -offspring. - -"Your supper will be ready in a minute, 'Dolphus," said Mr. -Tetterby. "Your mother has been out in the wet, to the cook's -shop, to buy it. It was very good of your mother so to do. YOU -shall get some supper too, very soon, Johnny. Your mother's -pleased with you, my man, for being so attentive to your precious -sister." - -Mrs. Tetterby, without any remark, but with a decided subsidence of -her animosity towards the table, finished her preparations, and -took, from her ample basket, a substantial slab of hot pease -pudding wrapped in paper, and a basin covered with a saucer, which, -on being uncovered, sent forth an odour so agreeable, that the -three pair of eyes in the two beds opened wide and fixed themselves -upon the banquet. Mr. Tetterby, without regarding this tacit -invitation to be seated, stood repeating slowly, "Yes, yes, your -supper will be ready in a minute, 'Dolphus--your mother went out in -the wet, to the cook's shop, to buy it. It was very good of your -mother so to do"--until Mrs. Tetterby, who had been exhibiting -sundry tokens of contrition behind him, caught him round the neck, -and wept. - -"Oh, Dolphus!" said Mrs. Tetterby, "how could I go and behave so?" - -This reconciliation affected Adolphus the younger and Johnny to -that degree, that they both, as with one accord, raised a dismal -cry, which had the effect of immediately shutting up the round eyes -in the beds, and utterly routing the two remaining little -Tetterbys, just then stealing in from the adjoining closet to see -what was going on in the eating way. - -"I am sure, 'Dolphus," sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, "coming home, I had no -more idea than a child unborn--" - -Mr. Tetterby seemed to dislike this figure of speech, and observed, -"Say than the baby, my dear." - -"--Had no more idea than the baby," said Mrs. Tetterby.--"Johnny, -don't look at me, but look at her, or she'll fall out of your lap -and be killed, and then you'll die in agonies of a broken heart, -and serve you right.--No more idea I hadn't than that darling, of -being cross when I came home; but somehow, 'Dolphus--" Mrs. -Tetterby paused, and again turned her wedding-ring round and round -upon her finger. - -"I see!" said Mr. Tetterby. "I understand! My little woman was -put out. Hard times, and hard weather, and hard work, make it -trying now and then. I see, bless your soul! No wonder! Dolf, my -man," continued Mr. Tetterby, exploring the basin with a fork, -"here's your mother been and bought, at the cook's shop, besides -pease pudding, a whole knuckle of a lovely roast leg of pork, with -lots of crackling left upon it, and with seasoning gravy and -mustard quite unlimited. Hand in your plate, my boy, and begin -while it's simmering." - -Master Adolphus, needing no second summons, received his portion -with eyes rendered moist by appetite, and withdrawing to his -particular stool, fell upon his supper tooth and nail. Johnny was -not forgotten, but received his rations on bread, lest he should, -in a flush of gravy, trickle any on the baby. He was required, for -similar reasons, to keep his pudding, when not on active service, -in his pocket. - -There might have been more pork on the knucklebone,--which -knucklebone the carver at the cook's shop had assuredly not -forgotten in carving for previous customers--but there was no stint -of seasoning, and that is an accessory dreamily suggesting pork, -and pleasantly cheating the sense of taste. The pease pudding, -too, the gravy and mustard, like the Eastern rose in respect of the -nightingale, if they were not absolutely pork, had lived near it; -so, upon the whole, there was the flavour of a middle-sized pig. -It was irresistible to the Tetterbys in bed, who, though professing -to slumber peacefully, crawled out when unseen by their parents, -and silently appealed to their brothers for any gastronomic token -of fraternal affection. They, not hard of heart, presenting scraps -in return, it resulted that a party of light skirmishers in -nightgowns were careering about the parlour all through supper, -which harassed Mr. Tetterby exceedingly, and once or twice imposed -upon him the necessity of a charge, before which these guerilla -troops retired in all directions and in great confusion. - -Mrs. Tetterby did not enjoy her supper. There seemed to be -something on Mrs. Tetterby's mind. At one time she laughed without -reason, and at another time she cried without reason, and at last -she laughed and cried together in a manner so very unreasonable -that her husband was confounded. - -"My little woman," said Mr. Tetterby, "if the world goes that way, -it appears to go the wrong way, and to choke you." - -"Give me a drop of water," said Mrs. Tetterby, struggling with -herself, "and don't speak to me for the present, or take any notice -of me. Don't do it!" - -Mr. Tetterby having administered the water, turned suddenly on the -unlucky Johnny (who was full of sympathy), and demanded why he was -wallowing there, in gluttony and idleness, instead of coming -forward with the baby, that the sight of her might revive his -mother. Johnny immediately approached, borne down by its weight; -but Mrs. Tetterby holding out her hand to signify that she was not -in a condition to bear that trying appeal to her feelings, he was -interdicted from advancing another inch, on pain of perpetual -hatred from all his dearest connections; and accordingly retired to -his stool again, and crushed himself as before. - -After a pause, Mrs. Tetterby said she was better now, and began to -laugh. - -"My little woman," said her husband, dubiously, "are you quite sure -you're better? Or are you, Sophia, about to break out in a fresh -direction?" - -"No, 'Dolphus, no," replied his wife. "I'm quite myself." With -that, settling her hair, and pressing the palms of her hands upon -her eyes, she laughed again. - -"What a wicked fool I was, to think so for a moment!" said Mrs. -Tetterby. "Come nearer, 'Dolphus, and let me ease my mind, and -tell you what I mean. Let me tell you all about it." - -Mr. Tetterby bringing his chair closer, Mrs. Tetterby laughed -again, gave him a hug, and wiped her eyes. - -"You know, Dolphus, my dear," said Mrs. Tetterby, "that when I was -single, I might have given myself away in several directions. At -one time, four after me at once; two of them were sons of Mars." - -"We're all sons of Ma's, my dear," said Mr. Tetterby, "jointly with -Pa's." - -"I don't mean that," replied his wife, "I mean soldiers-- -serjeants." - -"Oh!" said Mr. Tetterby. - -"Well, 'Dolphus, I'm sure I never think of such things now, to -regret them; and I'm sure I've got as good a husband, and would do -as much to prove that I was fond of him, as--" - -"As any little woman in the world," said Mr. Tetterby. "Very good. -VERY good." - -If Mr. Tetterby had been ten feet high, he could not have expressed -a gentler consideration for Mrs. Tetterby's fairy-like stature; and -if Mrs. Tetterby had been two feet high, she could not have felt it -more appropriately her due. - -"But you see, 'Dolphus," said Mrs. Tetterby, "this being Christmas- -time, when all people who can, make holiday, and when all people -who have got money, like to spend some, I did, somehow, get a -little out of sorts when I was in the streets just now. There were -so many things to be sold--such delicious things to eat, such fine -things to look at, such delightful things to have--and there was so -much calculating and calculating necessary, before I durst lay out -a sixpence for the commonest thing; and the basket was so large, -and wanted so much in it; and my stock of money was so small, and -would go such a little way;--you hate me, don't you, 'Dolphus?" - -"Not quite," said Mr. Tetterby, "as yet." - -"Well! I'll tell you the whole truth," pursued his wife, -penitently, "and then perhaps you will. I felt all this, so much, -when I was trudging about in the cold, and when I saw a lot of -other calculating faces and large baskets trudging about, too, that -I began to think whether I mightn't have done better, and been -happier, if--I--hadn't--" the wedding-ring went round again, and -Mrs. Tetterby shook her downcast head as she turned it. - -"I see," said her husband quietly; "if you hadn't married at all, -or if you had married somebody else?" - -"Yes," sobbed Mrs. Tetterby. "That's really what I thought. Do -you hate me now, 'Dolphus?" - -"Why no," said Mr. Tetterby. "I don't find that I do, as yet." - -Mrs. Tetterby gave him a thankful kiss, and went on. - -"I begin to hope you won't, now, 'Dolphus, though I'm afraid I -haven't told you the worst. I can't think what came over me. I -don't know whether I was ill, or mad, or what I was, but I couldn't -call up anything that seemed to bind us to each other, or to -reconcile me to my fortune. All the pleasures and enjoyments we -had ever had--THEY seemed so poor and insignificant, I hated them. -I could have trodden on them. And I could think of nothing else, -except our being poor, and the number of mouths there were at -home." - -"Well, well, my dear," said Mr. Tetterby, shaking her hand -encouragingly, "that's truth, after all. We ARE poor, and there -ARE a number of mouths at home here." - -"Ah! but, Dolf, Dolf!" cried his wife, laying her hands upon his -neck, "my good, kind, patient fellow, when I had been at home a -very little while--how different! Oh, Dolf, dear, how different it -was! I felt as if there was a rush of recollection on me, all at -once, that softened my hard heart, and filled it up till it was -bursting. All our struggles for a livelihood, all our cares and -wants since we have been married, all the times of sickness, all -the hours of watching, we have ever had, by one another, or by the -children, seemed to speak to me, and say that they had made us one, -and that I never might have been, or could have been, or would have -been, any other than the wife and mother I am. Then, the cheap -enjoyments that I could have trodden on so cruelly, got to be so -precious to me--Oh so priceless, and dear!--that I couldn't bear to -think how much I had wronged them; and I said, and say again a -hundred times, how could I ever behave so, 'Dolphus, how could I -ever have the heart to do it!" - -The good woman, quite carried away by her honest tenderness and -remorse, was weeping with all her heart, when she started up with a -scream, and ran behind her husband. Her cry was so terrified, that -the children started from their sleep and from their beds, and -clung about her. Nor did her gaze belie her voice, as she pointed -to a pale man in a black cloak who had come into the room. - -"Look at that man! Look there! What does he want?" - -"My dear," returned her husband, "I'll ask him if you'll let me go. -What's the matter! How you shake!" - -"I saw him in the street, when I was out just now. He looked at -me, and stood near me. I am afraid of him." - -"Afraid of him! Why?" - -"I don't know why--I--stop! husband!" for he was going towards the -stranger. - -She had one hand pressed upon her forehead, and one upon her -breast; and there was a peculiar fluttering all over her, and a -hurried unsteady motion of her eyes, as if she had lost something. - -"Are you ill, my dear?" - -"What is it that is going from me again?" she muttered, in a low -voice. "What IS this that is going away?" - -Then she abruptly answered: "Ill? No, I am quite well," and -stood looking vacantly at the floor. - -Her husband, who had not been altogether free from the infection of -her fear at first, and whom the present strangeness of her manner -did not tend to reassure, addressed himself to the pale visitor in -the black cloak, who stood still, and whose eyes were bent upon the -ground. - -"What may be your pleasure, sir," he asked, "with us?" - -"I fear that my coming in unperceived," returned the visitor, "has -alarmed you; but you were talking and did not hear me." - -"My little woman says--perhaps you heard her say it," returned Mr. -Tetterby, "that it's not the first time you have alarmed her to- -night." - -"I am sorry for it. I remember to have observed her, for a few -moments only, in the street. I had no intention of frightening -her." - -As he raised his eyes in speaking, she raised hers. It was -extraordinary to see what dread she had of him, and with what dread -he observed it--and yet how narrowly and closely. - -"My name," he said, "is Redlaw. I come from the old college hard -by. A young gentleman who is a student there, lodges in your -house, does he not?" - -"Mr. Denham?" said Tetterby. - -"Yes." - -It was a natural action, and so slight as to be hardly noticeable; -but the little man, before speaking again, passed his hand across -his forehead, and looked quickly round the room, as though he were -sensible of some change in its atmosphere. The Chemist, instantly -transferring to him the look of dread he had directed towards the -wife, stepped back, and his face turned paler. - -"The gentleman's room," said Tetterby, "is upstairs, sir. There's -a more convenient private entrance; but as you have come in here, -it will save your going out into the cold, if you'll take this -little staircase," showing one communicating directly with the -parlour, "and go up to him that way, if you wish to see him." - -"Yes, I wish to see him," said the Chemist. "Can you spare a -light?" - -The watchfulness of his haggard look, and the inexplicable distrust -that darkened it, seemed to trouble Mr. Tetterby. He paused; and -looking fixedly at him in return, stood for a minute or so, like a -man stupefied, or fascinated. - -At length he said, "I'll light you, sir, if you'll follow me." - -"No," replied the Chemist, "I don't wish to be attended, or -announced to him. He does not expect me. I would rather go alone. -Please to give me the light, if you can spare it, and I'll find the -way." - -In the quickness of his expression of this desire, and in taking -the candle from the newsman, he touched him on the breast. -Withdrawing his hand hastily, almost as though he had wounded him -by accident (for he did not know in what part of himself his new -power resided, or how it was communicated, or how the manner of its -reception varied in different persons), he turned and ascended the -stair. - -But when he reached the top, he stopped and looked down. The wife -was standing in the same place, twisting her ring round and round -upon her finger. The husband, with his head bent forward on his -breast, was musing heavily and sullenly. The children, still -clustering about the mother, gazed timidly after the visitor, and -nestled together when they saw him looking down. - -"Come!" said the father, roughly. "There's enough of this. Get to -bed here!" - -"The place is inconvenient and small enough," the mother added, -"without you. Get to bed!" - -The whole brood, scared and sad, crept away; little Johnny and the -baby lagging last. The mother, glancing contemptuously round the -sordid room, and tossing from her the fragments of their meal, -stopped on the threshold of her task of clearing the table, and sat -down, pondering idly and dejectedly. The father betook himself to -the chimney-corner, and impatiently raking the small fire together, -bent over it as if he would monopolise it all. They did not -interchange a word. - -The Chemist, paler than before, stole upward like a thief; looking -back upon the change below, and dreading equally to go on or -return. - -"What have I done!" he said, confusedly. "What am I going to do!" - -"To be the benefactor of mankind," he thought he heard a voice -reply. - -He looked round, but there was nothing there; and a passage now -shutting out the little parlour from his view, he went on, -directing his eyes before him at the way he went. - -"It is only since last night," he muttered gloomily, "that I have -remained shut up, and yet all things are strange to me. I am -strange to myself. I am here, as in a dream. What interest have I -in this place, or in any place that I can bring to my remembrance? -My mind is going blind!" - -There was a door before him, and he knocked at it. Being invited, -by a voice within, to enter, he complied. - -"Is that my kind nurse?" said the voice. "But I need not ask her. -There is no one else to come here." - -It spoke cheerfully, though in a languid tone, and attracted his -attention to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before the -chimney-piece, with the back towards the door. A meagre scanty -stove, pinched and hollowed like a sick man's cheeks, and bricked -into the centre of a hearth that it could scarcely warm, contained -the fire, to which his face was turned. Being so near the windy -house-top, it wasted quickly, and with a busy sound, and the -burning ashes dropped down fast. - -"They chink when they shoot out here," said the student, smiling, -"so, according to the gossips, they are not coffins, but purses. I -shall be well and rich yet, some day, if it please God, and shall -live perhaps to love a daughter Milly, in remembrance of the -kindest nature and the gentlest heart in the world." - -He put up his hand as if expecting her to take it, but, being -weakened, he lay still, with his face resting on his other hand, -and did not turn round. - -The Chemist glanced about the room;--at the student's books and -papers, piled upon a table in a corner, where they, and his -extinguished reading-lamp, now prohibited and put away, told of the -attentive hours that had gone before this illness, and perhaps -caused it;--at such signs of his old health and freedom, as the -out-of-door attire that hung idle on the wall;--at those -remembrances of other and less solitary scenes, the little -miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and the drawing of home;--at -that token of his emulation, perhaps, in some sort, of his personal -attachment too, the framed engraving of himself, the looker-on. -The time had been, only yesterday, when not one of these objects, -in its remotest association of interest with the living figure -before him, would have been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but -objects; or, if any gleam of such connexion shot upon him, it -perplexed, and not enlightened him, as he stood looking round with -a dull wonder. - -The student, recalling the thin hand which had remained so long -untouched, raised himself on the couch, and turned his head. - -"Mr. Redlaw!" he exclaimed, and started up. - -Redlaw put out his arm. - -"Don't come nearer to me. I will sit here. Remain you, where you -are!" - -He sat down on a chair near the door, and having glanced at the -young man standing leaning with his hand upon the couch, spoke with -his eyes averted towards the ground. - -"I heard, by an accident, by what accident is no matter, that one -of my class was ill and solitary. I received no other description -of him, than that he lived in this street. Beginning my inquiries -at the first house in it, I have found him." - -"I have been ill, sir," returned the student, not merely with a -modest hesitation, but with a kind of awe of him, "but am greatly -better. An attack of fever--of the brain, I believe--has weakened -me, but I am much better. I cannot say I have been solitary, in my -illness, or I should forget the ministering hand that has been near -me." - -"You are speaking of the keeper's wife," said Redlaw. - -"Yes." The student bent his head, as if he rendered her some -silent homage. - -The Chemist, in whom there was a cold, monotonous apathy, which -rendered him more like a marble image on the tomb of the man who -had started from his dinner yesterday at the first mention of this -student's case, than the breathing man himself, glanced again at -the student leaning with his hand upon the couch, and looked upon -the ground, and in the air, as if for light for his blinded mind. - -"I remembered your name," he said, "when it was mentioned to me -down stairs, just now; and I recollect your face. We have held but -very little personal communication together?" - -"Very little." - -"You have retired and withdrawn from me, more than any of the rest, -I think?" - -The student signified assent. - -"And why?" said the Chemist; not with the least expression of -interest, but with a moody, wayward kind of curiosity. "Why? How -comes it that you have sought to keep especially from me, the -knowledge of your remaining here, at this season, when all the rest -have dispersed, and of your being ill? I want to know why this -is?" - -The young man, who had heard him with increasing agitation, raised -his downcast eyes to his face, and clasping his hands together, -cried with sudden earnestness and with trembling lips: - -"Mr. Redlaw! You have discovered me. You know my secret!" - -"Secret?" said the Chemist, harshly. "I know?" - -"Yes! Your manner, so different from the interest and sympathy -which endear you to so many hearts, your altered voice, the -constraint there is in everything you say, and in your looks," -replied the student, "warn me that you know me. That you would -conceal it, even now, is but a proof to me (God knows I need none!) -of your natural kindness and of the bar there is between us." - -A vacant and contemptuous laugh, was all his answer. - -"But, Mr. Redlaw," said the student, "as a just man, and a good -man, think how innocent I am, except in name and descent, of -participation in any wrong inflicted on you or in any sorrow you -have borne." - -"Sorrow!" said Redlaw, laughing. "Wrong! What are those to me?" - -"For Heaven's sake," entreated the shrinking student, "do not let -the mere interchange of a few words with me change you like this, -sir! Let me pass again from your knowledge and notice. Let me -occupy my old reserved and distant place among those whom you -instruct. Know me only by the name I have assumed, and not by that -of Longford--" - -"Longford!" exclaimed the other. - -He clasped his head with both his hands, and for a moment turned -upon the young man his own intelligent and thoughtful face. But -the light passed from it, like the sun-beam of an instant, and it -clouded as before. - -"The name my mother bears, sir," faltered the young man, "the name -she took, when she might, perhaps, have taken one more honoured. -Mr. Redlaw," hesitating, "I believe I know that history. Where my -information halts, my guesses at what is wanting may supply -something not remote from the truth. I am the child of a marriage -that has not proved itself a well-assorted or a happy one. From -infancy, I have heard you spoken of with honour and respect--with -something that was almost reverence. I have heard of such -devotion, of such fortitude and tenderness, of such rising up -against the obstacles which press men down, that my fancy, since I -learnt my little lesson from my mother, has shed a lustre on your -name. At last, a poor student myself, from whom could I learn but -you?" - -Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a staring -frown, answered by no word or sign. - -"I cannot say," pursued the other, "I should try in vain to say, -how much it has impressed me, and affected me, to find the gracious -traces of the past, in that certain power of winning gratitude and -confidence which is associated among us students (among the -humblest of us, most) with Mr. Redlaw's generous name. Our ages -and positions are so different, sir, and I am so accustomed to -regard you from a distance, that I wonder at my own presumption -when I touch, however lightly, on that theme. But to one who--I -may say, who felt no common interest in my mother once--it may be -something to hear, now that all is past, with what indescribable -feelings of affection I have, in my obscurity, regarded him; with -what pain and reluctance I have kept aloof from his encouragement, -when a word of it would have made me rich; yet how I have felt it -fit that I should hold my course, content to know him, and to be -unknown. Mr. Redlaw," said the student, faintly, "what I would -have said, I have said ill, for my strength is strange to me as -yet; but for anything unworthy in this fraud of mine, forgive me, -and for all the rest forget me!" - -The staring frown remained on Redlaw's face, and yielded to no -other expression until the student, with these words, advanced -towards him, as if to touch his hand, when he drew back and cried -to him: - -"Don't come nearer to me!" - -The young man stopped, shocked by the eagerness of his recoil, and -by the sternness of his repulsion; and he passed his hand, -thoughtfully, across his forehead. - -"The past is past," said the Chemist. "It dies like the brutes. -Who talks to me of its traces in my life? He raves or lies! What -have I to do with your distempered dreams? If you want money, here -it is. I came to offer it; and that is all I came for. There can -be nothing else that brings me here," he muttered, holding his head -again, with both his hands. "There CAN be nothing else, and yet--" - -He had tossed his purse upon the table. As he fell into this dim -cogitation with himself, the student took it up, and held it out to -him. - -"Take it back, sir," he said proudly, though not angrily. "I wish -you could take from me, with it, the remembrance of your words and -offer." - -"You do?" he retorted, with a wild light in his eyes. "You do?" - -"I do!" - -The Chemist went close to him, for the first time, and took the -purse, and turned him by the arm, and looked him in the face. - -"There is sorrow and trouble in sickness, is there not?" he -demanded, with a laugh. - -The wondering student answered, "Yes." - -"In its unrest, in its anxiety, in its suspense, in all its train -of physical and mental miseries?" said the Chemist, with a wild -unearthly exultation. "All best forgotten, are they not?" - -The student did not answer, but again passed his hand, confusedly, -across his forehead. Redlaw still held him by the sleeve, when -Milly's voice was heard outside. - -"I can see very well now," she said, "thank you, Dolf. Don't cry, -dear. Father and mother will be comfortable again, to-morrow, and -home will be comfortable too. A gentleman with him, is there!" - -Redlaw released his hold, as he listened. - -"I have feared, from the first moment," he murmured to himself, "to -meet her. There is a steady quality of goodness in her, that I -dread to influence. I may be the murderer of what is tenderest and -best within her bosom." - -She was knocking at the door. - -"Shall I dismiss it as an idle foreboding, or still avoid her?" he -muttered, looking uneasily around. - -She was knocking at the door again. - -"Of all the visitors who could come here," he said, in a hoarse -alarmed voice, turning to his companion, "this is the one I should -desire most to avoid. Hide me!" - -The student opened a frail door in the wall, communicating where -the garret-roof began to slope towards the floor, with a small -inner room. Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut it after him. - -The student then resumed his place upon the couch, and called to -her to enter. - -"Dear Mr. Edmund," said Milly, looking round, "they told me there -was a gentleman here." - -"There is no one here but I." - -"There has been some one?" - -"Yes, yes, there has been some one." - -She put her little basket on the table, and went up to the back of -the couch, as if to take the extended hand--but it was not there. -A little surprised, in her quiet way, she leaned over to look at -his face, and gently touched him on the brow. - -"Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is not so cool as in -the afternoon." - -"Tut!" said the student, petulantly, "very little ails me." - -A little more surprise, but no reproach, was expressed in her face, -as she withdrew to the other side of the table, and took a small -packet of needlework from her basket. But she laid it down again, -on second thoughts, and going noiselessly about the room, set -everything exactly in its place, and in the neatest order; even to -the cushions on the couch, which she touched with so light a hand, -that he hardly seemed to know it, as he lay looking at the fire. -When all this was done, and she had swept the hearth, she sat down, -in her modest little bonnet, to her work, and was quietly busy on -it directly. - -"It's the new muslin curtain for the window, Mr. Edmund," said -Milly, stitching away as she talked. "It will look very clean and -nice, though it costs very little, and will save your eyes, too, -from the light. My William says the room should not be too light -just now, when you are recovering so well, or the glare might make -you giddy." - -He said nothing; but there was something so fretful and impatient -in his change of position, that her quick fingers stopped, and she -looked at him anxiously. - -"The pillows are not comfortable," she said, laying down her work -and rising. "I will soon put them right." - -"They are very well," he answered. "Leave them alone, pray. You -make so much of everything." - -He raised his head to say this, and looked at her so thanklessly, -that, after he had thrown himself down again, she stood timidly -pausing. However, she resumed her seat, and her needle, without -having directed even a murmuring look towards him, and was soon as -busy as before. - -"I have been thinking, Mr. Edmund, that YOU have been often -thinking of late, when I have been sitting by, how true the saying -is, that adversity is a good teacher. Health will be more precious -to you, after this illness, than it has ever been. And years -hence, when this time of year comes round, and you remember the -days when you lay here sick, alone, that the knowledge of your -illness might not afflict those who are dearest to you, your home -will be doubly dear and doubly blest. Now, isn't that a good, true -thing?" - -She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she said, -and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch for any -look he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft of his -ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not wound her. - -"Ah!" said Milly, with her pretty head inclining thoughtfully on -one side, as she looked down, following her busy fingers with her -eyes. "Even on me--and I am very different from you, Mr. Edmund, -for I have no learning, and don't know how to think properly--this -view of such things has made a great impression, since you have -been lying ill. When I have seen you so touched by the kindness -and attention of the poor people down stairs, I have felt that you -thought even that experience some repayment for the loss of health, -and I have read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that -but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know half the good -there is about us." - -His getting up from the couch, interrupted her, or she was going on -to say more. - -"We needn't magnify the merit, Mrs. William," he rejoined -slightingly. "The people down stairs will be paid in good time I -dare say, for any little extra service they may have rendered me; -and perhaps they anticipate no less. I am much obliged to you, -too." - -Her fingers stopped, and she looked at him. - -"I can't be made to feel the more obliged by your exaggerating the -case," he said. "I am sensible that you have been interested in -me, and I say I am much obliged to you. What more would you have?" - -Her work fell on her lap, as she still looked at him walking to and -fro with an intolerant air, and stopping now and then. - -"I say again, I am much obliged to you. Why weaken my sense of -what is your due in obligation, by preferring enormous claims upon -me? Trouble, sorrow, affliction, adversity! One might suppose I -had been dying a score of deaths here!" - -"Do you believe, Mr. Edmund," she asked, rising and going nearer to -him, "that I spoke of the poor people of the house, with any -reference to myself? To me?" laying her hand upon her bosom with a -simple and innocent smile of astonishment. - -"Oh! I think nothing about it, my good creature," he returned. "I -have had an indisposition, which your solicitude--observe! I say -solicitude--makes a great deal more of, than it merits; and it's -over, and we can't perpetuate it." - -He coldly took a book, and sat down at the table. - -She watched him for a little while, until her smile was quite gone, -and then, returning to where her basket was, said gently: - -"Mr. Edmund, would you rather be alone?" - -"There is no reason why I should detain you here," he replied. - -"Except--" said Milly, hesitating, and showing her work. - -"Oh! the curtain," he answered, with a supercilious laugh. "That's -not worth staying for." - -She made up the little packet again, and put it in her basket. -Then, standing before him with such an air of patient entreaty that -he could not choose but look at her, she said: - -"If you should want me, I will come back willingly. When you did -want me, I was quite happy to come; there was no merit in it. I -think you must be afraid, that, now you are getting well, I may be -troublesome to you; but I should not have been, indeed. I should -have come no longer than your weakness and confinement lasted. You -owe me nothing; but it is right that you should deal as justly by -me as if I was a lady--even the very lady that you love; and if you -suspect me of meanly making much of the little I have tried to do -to comfort your sick room, you do yourself more wrong than ever you -can do me. That is why I am sorry. That is why I am very sorry." - -If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, as indignant as she -was calm, as angry in her look as she was gentle, as loud of tone -as she was low and clear, she might have left no sense of her -departure in the room, compared with that which fell upon the -lonely student when she went away. - -He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, when -Redlaw came out of his concealment, and came to the door. - -"When sickness lays its hand on you again," he said, looking -fiercely back at him, "--may it be soon!--Die here! Rot here!" - -"What have you done?" returned the other, catching at his cloak. -"What change have you wrought in me? What curse have you brought -upon me? Give me back MYself!" - -"Give me back myself!" exclaimed Redlaw like a madman. "I am -infected! I am infectious! I am charged with poison for my own -mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where I felt interest, -compassion, sympathy, I am turning into stone. Selfishness and -ingratitude spring up in my blighting footsteps. I am only so much -less base than the wretches whom I make so, that in the moment of -their transformation I can hate them." - -As he spoke--the young man still holding to his cloak--he cast him -off, and struck him: then, wildly hurried out into the night air -where the wind was blowing, the snow falling, the cloud-drift -sweeping on, the moon dimly shining; and where, blowing in the -wind, falling with the snow, drifting with the clouds, shining in -the moonlight, and heavily looming in the darkness, were the -Phantom's words, "The gift that I have given, you shall give again, -go where you will!" - -Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he avoided -company. The change he felt within him made the busy streets a -desert, and himself a desert, and the multitude around him, in -their manifold endurances and ways of life, a mighty waste of sand, -which the winds tossed into unintelligible heaps and made a ruinous -confusion of. Those traces in his breast which the Phantom had -told him would "die out soon," were not, as yet, so far upon their -way to death, but that he understood enough of what he was, and -what he made of others, to desire to be alone. - -This put it in his mind--he suddenly bethought himself, as he was -going along, of the boy who had rushed into his room. And then he -recollected, that of those with whom he had communicated since the -Phantom's disappearance, that boy alone had shown no sign of being -changed. - -Monstrous and odious as the wild thing was to him, he determined to -seek it out, and prove if this were really so; and also to seek it -with another intention, which came into his thoughts at the same -time. - -So, resolving with some difficulty where he was, he directed his -steps back to the old college, and to that part of it where the -general porch was, and where, alone, the pavement was worn by the -tread of the students' feet. - -The keeper's house stood just within the iron gates, forming a part -of the chief quadrangle. There was a little cloister outside, and -from that sheltered place he knew he could look in at the window of -their ordinary room, and see who was within. The iron gates were -shut, but his hand was familiar with the fastening, and drawing it -back by thrusting in his wrist between the bars, he passed through -softly, shut it again, and crept up to the window, crumbling the -thin crust of snow with his feet. - -The fire, to which he had directed the boy last night, shining -brightly through the glass, made an illuminated place upon the -ground. Instinctively avoiding this, and going round it, he looked -in at the window. At first, he thought that there was no one -there, and that the blaze was reddening only the old beams in the -ceiling and the dark walls; but peering in more narrowly, he saw -the object of his search coiled asleep before it on the floor. He -passed quickly to the door, opened it, and went in. - -The creature lay in such a fiery heat, that, as the Chemist stooped -to rouse him, it scorched his head. So soon as he was touched, the -boy, not half awake, clutching his rags together with the instinct -of flight upon him, half rolled and half ran into a distant corner -of the room, where, heaped upon the ground, he struck his foot out -to defend himself. - -"Get up!" said the Chemist. "You have not forgotten me?" - -"You let me alone!" returned the boy. "This is the woman's house-- -not yours." - -The Chemist's steady eye controlled him somewhat, or inspired him -with enough submission to be raised upon his feet, and looked at. - -"Who washed them, and put those bandages where they were bruised -and cracked?" asked the Chemist, pointing to their altered state. - -"The woman did." - -"And is it she who has made you cleaner in the face, too?" - -"Yes, the woman." - -Redlaw asked these questions to attract his eyes towards himself, -and with the same intent now held him by the chin, and threw his -wild hair back, though he loathed to touch him. The boy watched -his eyes keenly, as if he thought it needful to his own defence, -not knowing what he might do next; and Redlaw could see well that -no change came over him. - -"Where are they?" he inquired. - -"The woman's out." - -"I know she is. Where is the old man with the white hair, and his -son?" - -"The woman's husband, d'ye mean?" inquired the boy. - -"Ay. Where are those two?" - -"Out. Something's the matter, somewhere. They were fetched out in -a hurry, and told me to stop here." - -"Come with me," said the Chemist, "and I'll give you money." - -"Come where? and how much will you give?" - -"I'll give you more shillings than you ever saw, and bring you back -soon. Do you know your way to where you came from?" - -"You let me go," returned the boy, suddenly twisting out of his -grasp. "I'm not a going to take you there. Let me be, or I'll -heave some fire at you!" - -He was down before it, and ready, with his savage little hand, to -pluck the burning coals out. - -What the Chemist had felt, in observing the effect of his charmed -influence stealing over those with whom he came in contact, was not -nearly equal to the cold vague terror with which he saw this baby- -monster put it at defiance. It chilled his blood to look on the -immovable impenetrable thing, in the likeness of a child, with its -sharp malignant face turned up to his, and its almost infant hand, -ready at the bars. - -"Listen, boy!" he said. "You shall take me where you please, so -that you take me where the people are very miserable or very -wicked. I want to do them good, and not to harm them. You shall -have money, as I have told you, and I will bring you back. Get up! -Come quickly!" He made a hasty step towards the door, afraid of -her returning. - -"Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, nor yet touch -me?" said the boy, slowly withdrawing the hand with which he -threatened, and beginning to get up. - -"I will!" - -"And let me go, before, behind, or anyways I like?" - -"I will!" - -"Give me some money first, then, and go." - -The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his extended hand. -To count them was beyond the boy's knowledge, but he said "one," -every time, and avariciously looked at each as it was given, and at -the donor. He had nowhere to put them, out of his hand, but in his -mouth; and he put them there. - -Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of his pocket-book, -that the boy was with him; and laying it on the table, signed to -him to follow. Keeping his rags together, as usual, the boy -complied, and went out with his bare head and naked feet into the -winter night. - -Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he had entered, -where they were in danger of meeting her whom he so anxiously -avoided, the Chemist led the way, through some of those passages -among which the boy had lost himself, and by that portion of the -building where he lived, to a small door of which he had the key. -When they got into the street, he stopped to ask his guide--who -instantly retreated from him--if he knew where they were. - -The savage thing looked here and there, and at length, nodding his -head, pointed in the direction he designed to take. Redlaw going -on at once, he followed, something less suspiciously; shifting his -money from his mouth into his hand, and back again into his mouth, -and stealthily rubbing it bright upon his shreds of dress, as he -went along. - -Three times, in their progress, they were side by side. Three -times they stopped, being side by side. Three times the Chemist -glanced down at his face, and shuddered as it forced upon him one -reflection. - -The first occasion was when they were crossing an old churchyard, -and Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly at a loss how to -connect them with any tender, softening, or consolatory thought. - -The second was, when the breaking forth of the moon induced him to -look up at the Heavens, where he saw her in her glory, surrounded -by a host of stars he still knew by the names and histories which -human science has appended to them; but where he saw nothing else -he had been wont to see, felt nothing he had been wont to feel, in -looking up there, on a bright night. - -The third was when he stopped to listen to a plaintive strain of -music, but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by the dry -mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, with no address to -any mystery within him, without a whisper in it of the past, or of -the future, powerless upon him as the sound of last year's running -water, or the rushing of last year's wind. - -At each of these three times, he saw with horror that, in spite of -the vast intellectual distance between them, and their being unlike -each other in all physical respects, the expression on the boy's -face was the expression on his own. - -They journeyed on for some time--now through such crowded places, -that he often looked over his shoulder thinking he had lost his -guide, but generally finding him within his shadow on his other -side; now by ways so quiet, that he could have counted his short, -quick, naked footsteps coming on behind--until they arrived at a -ruinous collection of houses, and the boy touched him and stopped. - -"In there!" he said, pointing out one house where there were -shattered lights in the windows, and a dim lantern in the doorway, -with "Lodgings for Travellers" painted on it. - -Redlaw looked about him; from the houses to the waste piece of -ground on which the houses stood, or rather did not altogether -tumble down, unfenced, undrained, unlighted, and bordered by a -sluggish ditch; from that, to the sloping line of arches, part of -some neighbouring viaduct or bridge with which it was surrounded, -and which lessened gradually towards them, until the last but one -was a mere kennel for a dog, the last a plundered little heap of -bricks; from that, to the child, close to him, cowering and -trembling with the cold, and limping on one little foot, while he -coiled the other round his leg to warm it, yet staring at all these -things with that frightful likeness of expression so apparent in -his face, that Redlaw started from him. - -"In there!" said the boy, pointing out the house again. "I'll -wait." - -"Will they let me in?" asked Redlaw. - -"Say you're a doctor," he answered with a nod. "There's plenty ill -here." - -Looking back on his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw him trail -himself upon the dust and crawl within the shelter of the smallest -arch, as if he were a rat. He had no pity for the thing, but he -was afraid of it; and when it looked out of its den at him, he -hurried to the house as a retreat. - -"Sorrow, wrong, and trouble," said the Chemist, with a painful -effort at some more distinct remembrance, "at least haunt this -place darkly. He can do no harm, who brings forgetfulness of such -things here!" - -With these words, he pushed the yielding door, and went in. - -There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or forlorn, -whose head was bent down on her hands and knees. As it was not -easy to pass without treading on her, and as she was perfectly -regardless of his near approach, he stopped, and touched her on the -shoulder. Looking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one -whose bloom and promise were all swept away, as if the haggard -winter should unnaturally kill the spring. - -With little or no show of concern on his account, she moved nearer -to the wall to leave him a wider passage. - -"What are you?" said Redlaw, pausing, with his hand upon the broken -stair-rail. - -"What do you think I am?" she answered, showing him her face again. - -He looked upon the ruined Temple of God, so lately made, so soon -disfigured; and something, which was not compassion--for the -springs in which a true compassion for such miseries has its rise, -were dried up in his breast--but which was nearer to it, for the -moment, than any feeling that had lately struggled into the -darkening, but not yet wholly darkened, night of his mind--mingled -a touch of softness with his next words. - -"I am come here to give relief, if I can," he said. "Are you -thinking of any wrong?" - -She frowned at him, and then laughed; and then her laugh prolonged -itself into a shivering sigh, as she dropped her head again, and -hid her fingers in her hair. - -"Are you thinking of a wrong?" he asked once more. - -"I am thinking of my life," she said, with a monetary look at him. - -He had a perception that she was one of many, and that he saw the -type of thousands, when he saw her, drooping at his feet. - -"What are your parents?" he demanded. - -"I had a good home once. My father was a gardener, far away, in -the country." - -"Is he dead?" - -"He's dead to me. All such things are dead to me. You a -gentleman, and not know that!" She raised her eyes again, and -laughed at him. - -"Girl!" said Redlaw, sternly, "before this death, of all such -things, was brought about, was there no wrong done to you? In -spite of all that you can do, does no remembrance of wrong cleave -to you? Are there not times upon times when it is misery to you?" - -So little of what was womanly was left in her appearance, that now, -when she burst into tears, he stood amazed. But he was more -amazed, and much disquieted, to note that in her awakened -recollection of this wrong, the first trace of her old humanity and -frozen tenderness appeared to show itself. - -He drew a little off, and in doing so, observed that her arms were -black, her face cut, and her bosom bruised. - -"What brutal hand has hurt you so?" he asked. - -"My own. I did it myself!" she answered quickly. - -"It is impossible." - -"I'll swear I did! He didn't touch me. I did it to myself in a -passion, and threw myself down here. He wasn't near me. He never -laid a hand upon me!" - -In the white determination of her face, confronting him with this -untruth, he saw enough of the last perversion and distortion of -good surviving in that miserable breast, to be stricken with -remorse that he had ever come near her. - -"Sorrow, wrong, and trouble!" he muttered, turning his fearful gaze -away. "All that connects her with the state from which she has -fallen, has those roots! In the name of God, let me go by!" - -Afraid to look at her again, afraid to touch her, afraid to think -of having sundered the last thread by which she held upon the mercy -of Heaven, he gathered his cloak about him, and glided swiftly up -the stairs. - -Opposite to him, on the landing, was a door, which stood partly -open, and which, as he ascended, a man with a candle in his hand, -came forward from within to shut. But this man, on seeing him, -drew back, with much emotion in his manner, and, as if by a sudden -impulse, mentioned his name aloud. - -In the surprise of such a recognition there, he stopped, -endeavouring to recollect the wan and startled face. He had no -time to consider it, for, to his yet greater amazement, old Philip -came out of the room, and took him by the hand. - -"Mr. Redlaw," said the old man, "this is like you, this is like -you, sir! you have heard of it, and have come after us to render -any help you can. Ah, too late, too late!" - -Redlaw, with a bewildered look, submitted to be led into the room. -A man lay there, on a truckle-bed, and William Swidger stood at the -bedside. - -"Too late!" murmured the old man, looking wistfully into the -Chemist's face; and the tears stole down his cheeks. - -"That's what I say, father," interposed his son in a low voice. -"That's where it is, exactly. To keep as quiet as ever we can -while he's a dozing, is the only thing to do. You're right, -father!" - -Redlaw paused at the bedside, and looked down on the figure that -was stretched upon the mattress. It was that of a man, who should -have been in the vigour of his life, but on whom it was not likely -the sun would ever shine again. The vices of his forty or fifty -years' career had so branded him, that, in comparison with their -effects upon his face, the heavy hand of Time upon the old man's -face who watched him had been merciful and beautifying. - -"Who is this?" asked the Chemist, looking round. - -"My son George, Mr. Redlaw," said the old man, wringing his hands. -"My eldest son, George, who was more his mother's pride than all -the rest!" - -Redlaw's eyes wandered from the old man's grey head, as he laid it -down upon the bed, to the person who had recognised him, and who -had kept aloof, in the remotest corner of the room. He seemed to -be about his own age; and although he knew no such hopeless decay -and broken man as he appeared to be, there was something in the -turn of his figure, as he stood with his back towards him, and now -went out at the door, that made him pass his hand uneasily across -his brow. - -"William," he said in a gloomy whisper, "who is that man?" - -"Why you see, sir," returned Mr. William, "that's what I say, -myself. Why should a man ever go and gamble, and the like of that, -and let himself down inch by inch till he can't let himself down -any lower!" - -"Has HE done so?" asked Redlaw, glancing after him with the same -uneasy action as before. - -"Just exactly that, sir," returned William Swidger, "as I'm told. -He knows a little about medicine, sir, it seems; and having been -wayfaring towards London with my unhappy brother that you see -here," Mr. William passed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, "and -being lodging up stairs for the night--what I say, you see, is that -strange companions come together here sometimes--he looked in to -attend upon him, and came for us at his request. What a mournful -spectacle, sir! But that's where it is. It's enough to kill my -father!" - -Redlaw looked up, at these words, and, recalling where he was and -with whom, and the spell he carried with him--which his surprise -had obscured--retired a little, hurriedly, debating with himself -whether to shun the house that moment, or remain. - -Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed to be a -part of his condition to struggle with, he argued for remaining. - -"Was it only yesterday," he said, "when I observed the memory of -this old man to be a tissue of sorrow and trouble, and shall I be -afraid, to-night, to shake it? Are such remembrances as I can -drive away, so precious to this dying man that I need fear for HIM? -No! I'll stay here." - -But he stayed in fear and trembling none the less for these words; -and, shrouded in his black cloak with his face turned from them, -stood away from the bedside, listening to what they said, as if he -felt himself a demon in the place. - -"Father!" murmured the sick man, rallying a little from stupor. - -"My boy! My son George!" said old Philip. - -"You spoke, just now, of my being mother's favourite, long ago. -It's a dreadful thing to think now, of long ago!" - -"No, no, no;" returned the old man. "Think of it. Don't say it's -dreadful. It's not dreadful to me, my son." - -"It cuts you to the heart, father." For the old man's tears were -falling on him. - -"Yes, yes," said Philip, "so it does; but it does me good. It's a -heavy sorrow to think of that time, but it does me good, George. -Oh, think of it too, think of it too, and your heart will be -softened more and more! Where's my son William? William, my boy, -your mother loved him dearly to the last, and with her latest -breath said, 'Tell him I forgave him, blessed him, and prayed for -him.' Those were her words to me. I have never forgotten them, -and I'm eighty-seven!" - -"Father!" said the man upon the bed, "I am dying, I know. I am so -far gone, that I can hardly speak, even of what my mind most runs -on. Is there any hope for me beyond this bed?" - -"There is hope," returned the old man, "for all who are softened -and penitent. There is hope for all such. Oh!" he exclaimed, -clasping his hands and looking up, "I was thankful, only yesterday, -that I could remember this unhappy son when he was an innocent -child. But what a comfort it is, now, to think that even God -himself has that remembrance of him!" - -Redlaw spread his hands upon his face, and shrank, like a murderer. - -"Ah!" feebly moaned the man upon the bed. "The waste since then, -the waste of life since then!" - -"But he was a child once," said the old man. "He played with -children. Before he lay down on his bed at night, and fell into -his guiltless rest, he said his prayers at his poor mother's knee. -I have seen him do it, many a time; and seen her lay his head upon -her breast, and kiss him. Sorrowful as it was to her and me, to -think of this, when he went so wrong, and when our hopes and plans -for him were all broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, that -nothing else could have given. Oh, Father, so much better than the -fathers upon earth! Oh, Father, so much more afflicted by the -errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not as he is, but -as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so often seemed to -cry to us!" - -As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, for whom he -made the supplication, laid his sinking head against him for -support and comfort, as if he were indeed the child of whom he -spoke. - -When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the silence that -ensued! He knew it must come upon them, knew that it was coming -fast. - -"My time is very short, my breath is shorter," said the sick man, -supporting himself on one arm, and with the other groping in the -air, "and I remember there is something on my mind concerning the -man who was here just now, Father and William--wait!--is there -really anything in black, out there?" - -"Yes, yes, it is real," said his aged father. - -"Is it a man?" - -"What I say myself, George," interposed his brother, bending kindly -over him. "It's Mr. Redlaw." - -"I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to come here." - -The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared before him. -Obedient to the motion of his hand, he sat upon the bed. - -"It has been so ripped up, to-night, sir," said the sick man, -laying his hand upon his heart, with a look in which the mute, -imploring agony of his condition was concentrated, "by the sight of -my poor old father, and the thought of all the trouble I have been -the cause of, and all the wrong and sorrow lying at my door, that-- -" - -Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it the dawning of -another change, that made him stop? - -"--that what I CAN do right, with my mind running on so much, so -fast, I'll try to do. There was another man here. Did you see -him?" - -Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw that fatal sign -he knew so well now, of the wandering hand upon the forehead, his -voice died at his lips. But he made some indication of assent. - -"He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He is completely beaten -down, and has no resource at all. Look after him! Lose no time! -I know he has it in his mind to kill himself." - -It was working. It was on his face. His face was changing, -hardening, deepening in all its shades, and losing all its sorrow. - -"Don't you remember? Don't you know him?" he pursued. - -He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that again -wandered over his forehead, and then it lowered on Redlaw, -reckless, ruffianly, and callous. - -"Why, d-n you!" he said, scowling round, "what have you been doing -to me here! I have lived bold, and I mean to die bold. To the -Devil with you!" - -And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over his head -and ears, as resolute from that time to keep out all access, and to -die in his indifference. - -If Redlaw had been struck by lightning, it could not have struck -him from the bedside with a more tremendous shock. But the old -man, who had left the bed while his son was speaking to him, now -returning, avoided it quickly likewise, and with abhorrence. - -"Where's my boy William?" said the old man hurriedly. "William, -come away from here. We'll go home." - -"Home, father!" returned William. "Are you going to leave your own -son?" - -"Where's my own son?" replied the old man. - -"Where? why, there!" - -"That's no son of mine," said Philip, trembling with resentment. -"No such wretch as that, has any claim on me. My children are -pleasant to look at, and they wait upon me, and get my meat and -drink ready, and are useful to me. I've a right to it! I'm -eighty-seven!" - -"You're old enough to be no older," muttered William, looking at -him grudgingly, with his hands in his pockets. "I don't know what -good you are, myself. We could have a deal more pleasure without -you." - -"MY son, Mr. Redlaw!" said the old man. "MY son, too! The boy -talking to me of MY son! Why, what has he ever done to give me any -pleasure, I should like to know?" - -"I don't know what you have ever done to give ME any pleasure," -said William, sulkily. - -"Let me think," said the old man. "For how many Christmas times -running, have I sat in my warm place, and never had to come out in -the cold night air; and have made good cheer, without being -disturbed by any such uncomfortable, wretched sight as him there? -Is it twenty, William?" - -"Nigher forty, it seems," he muttered. "Why, when I look at my -father, sir, and come to think of it," addressing Redlaw, with an -impatience and irritation that were quite new, "I'm whipped if I -can see anything in him but a calendar of ever so many years of -eating and drinking, and making himself comfortable, over and over -again." - -"I--I'm eighty-seven," said the old man, rambling on, childishly -and weakly, "and I don't know as I ever was much put out by -anything. I'm not going to begin now, because of what he calls my -son. He's not my son. I've had a power of pleasant times. I -recollect once--no I don't--no, it's broken off. It was something -about a game of cricket and a friend of mine, but it's somehow -broken off. I wonder who he was--I suppose I liked him? And I -wonder what became of him--I suppose he died? But I don't know. -And I don't care, neither; I don't care a bit." - -In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he put his -hands into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them he found a bit of -holly (left there, probably last night), which he now took out, and -looked at. - -"Berries, eh?" said the old man. "Ah! It's a pity they're not -good to eat. I recollect, when I was a little chap about as high -as that, and out a walking with--let me see--who was I out a -walking with?--no, I don't remember how that was. I don't remember -as I ever walked with any one particular, or cared for any one, or -any one for me. Berries, eh? There's good cheer when there's -berries. Well; I ought to have my share of it, and to be waited -on, and kept warm and comfortable; for I'm eighty-seven, and a poor -old man. I'm eigh-ty-seven. Eigh-ty-seven!" - -The drivelling, pitiable manner in which, as he repeated this, he -nibbled at the leaves, and spat the morsels out; the cold, -uninterested eye with which his youngest son (so changed) regarded -him; the determined apathy with which his eldest son lay hardened -in his sin; impressed themselves no more on Redlaw's observation,-- -for he broke his way from the spot to which his feet seemed to have -been fixed, and ran out of the house. - -His guide came crawling forth from his place of refuge, and was -ready for him before he reached the arches. - -"Back to the woman's?" he inquired. - -"Back, quickly!" answered Redlaw. "Stop nowhere on the way!" - -For a short distance the boy went on before; but their return was -more like a flight than a walk, and it was as much as his bare feet -could do, to keep pace with the Chemist's rapid strides. Shrinking -from all who passed, shrouded in his cloak, and keeping it drawn -closely about him, as though there were mortal contagion in any -fluttering touch of his garments, he made no pause until they -reached the door by which they had come out. He unlocked it with -his key, went in, accompanied by the boy, and hastened through the -dark passages to his own chamber. - -The boy watched him as he made the door fast, and withdrew behind -the table, when he looked round. - -"Come!" he said. "Don't you touch me! You've not brought me here -to take my money away." - -Redlaw threw some more upon the ground. He flung his body on it -immediately, as if to hide it from him, lest the sight of it should -tempt him to reclaim it; and not until he saw him seated by his -lamp, with his face hidden in his hands, began furtively to pick it -up. When he had done so, he crept near the fire, and, sitting down -in a great chair before it, took from his breast some broken scraps -of food, and fell to munching, and to staring at the blaze, and now -and then to glancing at his shillings, which he kept clenched up in -a bunch, in one hand. - -"And this," said Redlaw, gazing on him with increased repugnance -and fear, "is the only one companion I have left on earth!" - -How long it was before he was aroused from his contemplation of -this creature, whom he dreaded so--whether half-an-hour, or half -the night--he knew not. But the stillness of the room was broken -by the boy (whom he had seen listening) starting up, and running -towards the door. - -"Here's the woman coming!" he exclaimed. - -The Chemist stopped him on his way, at the moment when she knocked. - -"Let me go to her, will you?" said the boy. - -"Not now," returned the Chemist. "Stay here. Nobody must pass in -or out of the room now. Who's that?" - -"It's I, sir," cried Milly. "Pray, sir, let me in!" - -"No! not for the world!" he said. - -"Mr. Redlaw, Mr. Redlaw, pray, sir, let me in." - -"What is the matter?" he said, holding the boy. - -"The miserable man you saw, is worse, and nothing I can say will -wake him from his terrible infatuation. William's father has -turned childish in a moment, William himself is changed. The shock -has been too sudden for him; I cannot understand him; he is not -like himself. Oh, Mr. Redlaw, pray advise me, help me!" - -"No! No! No!" he answered. - -"Mr. Redlaw! Dear sir! George has been muttering, in his doze, -about the man you saw there, who, he fears, will kill himself." - -"Better he should do it, than come near me!" - -"He says, in his wandering, that you know him; that he was your -friend once, long ago; that he is the ruined father of a student -here--my mind misgives me, of the young gentleman who has been ill. -What is to be done? How is he to be followed? How is he to be -saved? Mr. Redlaw, pray, oh, pray, advise me! Help me!" - -All this time he held the boy, who was half-mad to pass him, and -let her in. - -"Phantoms! Punishers of impious thoughts!" cried Redlaw, gazing -round in anguish, "look upon me! From the darkness of my mind, let -the glimmering of contrition that I know is there, shine up and -show my misery! In the material world as I have long taught, -nothing can be spared; no step or atom in the wondrous structure -could be lost, without a blank being made in the great universe. I -know, now, that it is the same with good and evil, happiness and -sorrow, in the memories of men. Pity me! Relieve me!" - -There was no response, but her "Help me, help me, let me in!" and -the boy's struggling to get to her. - -"Shadow of myself! Spirit of my darker hours!" cried Redlaw, in -distraction, "come back, and haunt me day and night, but take this -gift away! Or, if it must still rest with me, deprive me of the -dreadful power of giving it to others. Undo what I have done. -Leave me benighted, but restore the day to those whom I have -cursed. As I have spared this woman from the first, and as I never -will go forth again, but will die here, with no hand to tend me, -save this creature's who is proof against me,--hear me!" - -The only reply still was, the boy struggling to get to her, while -he held him back; and the cry, increasing in its energy, "Help! let -me in. He was your friend once, how shall he be followed, how -shall he be saved? They are all changed, there is no one else to -help me, pray, pray, let me in!" - - - -CHAPTER III--The Gift Reversed - - - -Night was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, from hill-tops, -and from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a distant low-lying -line, that promised by-and-by to change to light, was visible in -the dim horizon; but its promise was remote and doubtful, and the -moon was striving with the night-clouds busily. - -The shadows upon Redlaw's mind succeeded thick and fast to one -another, and obscured its light as the night-clouds hovered between -the moon and earth, and kept the latter veiled in darkness. Fitful -and uncertain as the shadows which the night-clouds cast, were -their concealments from him, and imperfect revelations to him; and, -like the night-clouds still, if the clear light broke forth for a -moment, it was only that they might sweep over it, and make the -darkness deeper than before. - -Without, there was a profound and solemn hush upon the ancient pile -of building, and its buttresses and angles made dark shapes of -mystery upon the ground, which now seemed to retire into the smooth -white snow and now seemed to come out of it, as the moon's path was -more or less beset. Within, the Chemist's room was indistinct and -murky, by the light of the expiring lamp; a ghostly silence had -succeeded to the knocking and the voice outside; nothing was -audible but, now and then, a low sound among the whitened ashes of -the fire, as of its yielding up its last breath. Before it on the -ground the boy lay fast asleep. In his chair, the Chemist sat, as -he had sat there since the calling at his door had ceased--like a -man turned to stone. - -At such a time, the Christmas music he had heard before, began to -play. He listened to it at first, as he had listened in the -church-yard; but presently--it playing still, and being borne -towards him on the night air, in a low, sweet, melancholy strain-- -he rose, and stood stretching his hands about him, as if there were -some friend approaching within his reach, on whom his desolate -touch might rest, yet do no harm. As he did this, his face became -less fixed and wondering; a gentle trembling came upon him; and at -last his eyes filled with tears, and he put his hands before them, -and bowed down his head. - -His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, had not come back to him; -he knew that it was not restored; he had no passing belief or hope -that it was. But some dumb stir within him made him capable, -again, of being moved by what was hidden, afar off, in the music. -If it were only that it told him sorrowfully the value of what he -had lost, he thanked Heaven for it with a fervent gratitude. - -As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his head to listen -to its lingering vibration. Beyond the boy, so that his sleeping -figure lay at its feet, the Phantom stood, immovable and silent, -with its eyes upon him. - -Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, but not so cruel and -relentless in its aspect--or he thought or hoped so, as he looked -upon it trembling. It was not alone, but in its shadowy hand it -held another hand. - -And whose was that? Was the form that stood beside it indeed -Milly's, or but her shade and picture? The quiet head was bent a -little, as her manner was, and her eyes were looking down, as if in -pity, on the sleeping child. A radiant light fell on her face, but -did not touch the Phantom; for, though close beside her, it was -dark and colourless as ever. - -"Spectre!" said the Chemist, newly troubled as he looked, "I have -not been stubborn or presumptuous in respect of her. Oh, do not -bring her here. Spare me that!" - -"This is but a shadow," said the Phantom; "when the morning shines -seek out the reality whose image I present before you." - -"Is it my inexorable doom to do so?" cried the Chemist. - -"It is," replied the Phantom. - -"To destroy her peace, her goodness; to make her what I am myself, -and what I have made of others!" - -"I have said seek her out," returned the Phantom. "I have said no -more." - -"Oh, tell me," exclaimed Redlaw, catching at the hope which he -fancied might lie hidden in the words. "Can I undo what I have -done?" - -"No," returned the Phantom. - -"I do not ask for restoration to myself," said Redlaw. "What I -abandoned, I abandoned of my own free will, and have justly lost. -But for those to whom I have transferred the fatal gift; who never -sought it; who unknowingly received a curse of which they had no -warning, and which they had no power to shun; can I do nothing?" - -"Nothing," said the Phantom. - -"If I cannot, can any one?" - -The Phantom, standing like a statue, kept its gaze upon him for a -while; then turned its head suddenly, and looked upon the shadow at -its side. - -"Ah! Can she?" cried Redlaw, still looking upon the shade. - -The Phantom released the hand it had retained till now, and softly -raised its own with a gesture of dismissal. Upon that, her shadow, -still preserving the same attitude, began to move or melt away. - -"Stay," cried Redlaw with an earnestness to which he could not give -enough expression. "For a moment! As an act of mercy! I know -that some change fell upon me, when those sounds were in the air -just now. Tell me, have I lost the power of harming her? May I go -near her without dread? Oh, let her give me any sign of hope!" - -The Phantom looked upon the shade as he did--not at him--and gave -no answer. - -"At least, say this--has she, henceforth, the consciousness of any -power to set right what I have done?" - -"She has not," the Phantom answered. - -"Has she the power bestowed on her without the consciousness?" - -The phantom answered: "Seek her out." - -And her shadow slowly vanished. - -They were face to face again, and looking on each other, as -intently and awfully as at the time of the bestowal of the gift, -across the boy who still lay on the ground between them, at the -Phantom's feet. - -"Terrible instructor," said the Chemist, sinking on his knee before -it, in an attitude of supplication, "by whom I was renounced, but -by whom I am revisited (in which, and in whose milder aspect, I -would fain believe I have a gleam of hope), I will obey without -inquiry, praying that the cry I have sent up in the anguish of my -soul has been, or will be, heard, in behalf of those whom I have -injured beyond human reparation. But there is one thing--" - -"You speak to me of what is lying here," the phantom interposed, -and pointed with its finger to the boy. - -"I do," returned the Chemist. "You know what I would ask. Why has -this child alone been proof against my influence, and why, why, -have I detected in its thoughts a terrible companionship with -mine?" - -"This," said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, "is the last, -completest illustration of a human creature, utterly bereft of such -remembrances as you have yielded up. No softening memory of -sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters here, because this wretched mortal -from his birth has been abandoned to a worse condition than the -beasts, and has, within his knowledge, no one contrast, no -humanising touch, to make a grain of such a memory spring up in his -hardened breast. All within this desolate creature is barren -wilderness. All within the man bereft of what you have resigned, -is the same barren wilderness. Woe to such a man! Woe, tenfold, -to the nation that shall count its monsters such as this, lying -here, by hundreds and by thousands!" - -Redlaw shrank, appalled, from what he heard. - -"There is not," said the Phantom, "one of these--not one--but sows -a harvest that mankind MUST reap. From every seed of evil in this -boy, a field of ruin is grown that shall be gathered in, and -garnered up, and sown again in many places in the world, until -regions are overspread with wickedness enough to raise the waters -of another Deluge. Open and unpunished murder in a city's streets -would be less guilty in its daily toleration, than one such -spectacle as this." - -It seemed to look down upon the boy in his sleep. Redlaw, too, -looked down upon him with a new emotion. - -"There is not a father," said the Phantom, "by whose side in his -daily or his nightly walk, these creatures pass; there is not a -mother among all the ranks of loving mothers in this land; there is -no one risen from the state of childhood, but shall be responsible -in his or her degree for this enormity. There is not a country -throughout the earth on which it would not bring a curse. There is -no religion upon earth that it would not deny; there is no people -upon earth it would not put to shame." - -The Chemist clasped his hands, and looked, with trembling fear and -pity, from the sleeping boy to the Phantom, standing above him with -his finger pointing down. - -"Behold, I say," pursued the Spectre, "the perfect type of what it -was your choice to be. Your influence is powerless here, because -from this child's bosom you can banish nothing. His thoughts have -been in 'terrible companionship' with yours, because you have gone -down to his unnatural level. He is the growth of man's -indifference; you are the growth of man's presumption. The -beneficent design of Heaven is, in each case, overthrown, and from -the two poles of the immaterial world you come together." - -The Chemist stooped upon the ground beside the boy, and, with the -same kind of compassion for him that he now felt for himself, -covered him as he slept, and no longer shrank from him with -abhorrence or indifference. - -Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, the darkness -faded, the sun rose red and glorious, and the chimney stacks and -gables of the ancient building gleamed in the clear air, which -turned the smoke and vapour of the city into a cloud of gold. The -very sun-dial in his shady corner, where the wind was used to spin -with such unwindy constancy, shook off the finer particles of snow -that had accumulated on his dull old face in the night, and looked -out at the little white wreaths eddying round and round him. -Doubtless some blind groping of the morning made its way down into -the forgotten crypt so cold and earthy, where the Norman arches -were half buried in the ground, and stirred the dull sap in the -lazy vegetation hanging to the walls, and quickened the slow -principle of life within the little world of wonderful and delicate -creation which existed there, with some faint knowledge that the -sun was up. - -The Tetterbys were up, and doing. Mr. Tetterby took down the -shutters of the shop, and, strip by strip, revealed the treasures -of the window to the eyes, so proof against their seductions, of -Jerusalem Buildings. Adolphus had been out so long already, that -he was halfway on to "Morning Pepper." Five small Tetterbys, whose -ten round eyes were much inflamed by soap and friction, were in the -tortures of a cool wash in the back kitchen; Mrs. Tetterby -presiding. Johnny, who was pushed and hustled through his toilet -with great rapidity when Moloch chanced to be in an exacting frame -of mind (which was always the case), staggered up and down with his -charge before the shop door, under greater difficulties than usual; -the weight of Moloch being much increased by a complication of -defences against the cold, composed of knitted worsted-work, and -forming a complete suit of chain-armour, with a head-piece and blue -gaiters. - -It was a peculiarity of this baby to be always cutting teeth. -Whether they never came, or whether they came and went away again, -is not in evidence; but it had certainly cut enough, on the showing -of Mrs. Tetterby, to make a handsome dental provision for the sign -of the Bull and Mouth. All sorts of objects were impressed for the -rubbing of its gums, notwithstanding that it always carried, -dangling at its waist (which was immediately under its chin), a -bone ring, large enough to have represented the rosary of a young -nun. Knife-handles, umbrella-tops, the heads of walking-sticks -selected from the stock, the fingers of the family in general, but -especially of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the handles of doors, -and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were among the commonest -instruments indiscriminately applied for this baby's relief. The -amount of electricity that must have been rubbed out of it in a -week, is not to be calculated. Still Mrs. Tetterby always said "it -was coming through, and then the child would be herself;" and still -it never did come through, and the child continued to be somebody -else. - -The tempers of the little Tetterbys had sadly changed with a few -hours. Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby themselves were not more altered than -their offspring. Usually they were an unselfish, good-natured, -yielding little race, sharing short commons when it happened (which -was pretty often) contentedly and even generously, and taking a -great deal of enjoyment out of a very little meat. But they were -fighting now, not only for the soap and water, but even for the -breakfast which was yet in perspective. The hand of every little -Tetterby was against the other little Tetterbys; and even Johnny's -hand--the patient, much-enduring, and devoted Johnny--rose against -the baby! Yes, Mrs. Tetterby, going to the door by mere accident, -saw him viciously pick out a weak place in the suit of armour where -a slap would tell, and slap that blessed child. - -Mrs. Tetterby had him into the parlour by the collar, in that same -flash of time, and repaid him the assault with usury thereto. - -"You brute, you murdering little boy," said Mrs. Tetterby. "Had -you the heart to do it?" - -"Why don't her teeth come through, then," retorted Johnny, in a -loud rebellious voice, "instead of bothering me? How would you -like it yourself?" - -"Like it, sir!" said Mrs. Tetterby, relieving him of his -dishonoured load. - -"Yes, like it," said Johnny. "How would you? Not at all. If you -was me, you'd go for a soldier. I will, too. There an't no babies -in the Army." - -Mr. Tetterby, who had arrived upon the scene of action, rubbed his -chin thoughtfully, instead of correcting the rebel, and seemed -rather struck by this view of a military life. - -"I wish I was in the Army myself, if the child's in the right," -said Mrs. Tetterby, looking at her husband, "for I have no peace of -my life here. I'm a slave--a Virginia slave:" some indistinct -association with their weak descent on the tobacco trade perhaps -suggested this aggravated expression to Mrs. Tetterby. "I never -have a holiday, or any pleasure at all, from year's end to year's -end! Why, Lord bless and save the child," said Mrs. Tetterby, -shaking the baby with an irritability hardly suited to so pious an -aspiration, "what's the matter with her now?" - -Not being able to discover, and not rendering the subject much -clearer by shaking it, Mrs. Tetterby put the baby away in a cradle, -and, folding her arms, sat rocking it angrily with her foot. - -"How you stand there, 'Dolphus," said Mrs. Tetterby to her husband. -"Why don't you do something?" - -"Because I don't care about doing anything," Mr. Tetterby replied. - -"I am sure _I_ don't," said Mrs. Tetterby. - -"I'll take my oath _I_ don't," said Mr. Tetterby. - -A diversion arose here among Johnny and his five younger brothers, -who, in preparing the family breakfast table, had fallen to -skirmishing for the temporary possession of the loaf, and were -buffeting one another with great heartiness; the smallest boy of -all, with precocious discretion, hovering outside the knot of -combatants, and harassing their legs. Into the midst of this fray, -Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both precipitated themselves with great -ardour, as if such ground were the only ground on which they could -now agree; and having, with no visible remains of their late soft- -heartedness, laid about them without any lenity, and done much -execution, resumed their former relative positions. - -"You had better read your paper than do nothing at all," said Mrs. -Tetterby. - -"What's there to read in a paper?" returned Mr. Tetterby, with -excessive discontent. - -"What?" said Mrs. Tetterby. "Police." - -"It's nothing to me," said Tetterby. "What do I care what people -do, or are done to?" - -"Suicides," suggested Mrs. Tetterby. - -"No business of mine," replied her husband. - -"Births, deaths, and marriages, are those nothing to you?" said -Mrs. Tetterby. - -"If the births were all over for good, and all to-day; and the -deaths were all to begin to come off to-morrow; I don't see why it -should interest me, till I thought it was a coming to my turn," -grumbled Tetterby. "As to marriages, I've done it myself. I know -quite enough about THEM." - -To judge from the dissatisfied expression of her face and manner, -Mrs. Tetterby appeared to entertain the same opinions as her -husband; but she opposed him, nevertheless, for the gratification -of quarrelling with him. - -"Oh, you're a consistent man," said Mrs. Tetterby, "an't you? You, -with the screen of your own making there, made of nothing else but -bits of newspapers, which you sit and read to the children by the -half-hour together!" - -"Say used to, if you please," returned her husband. "You won't -find me doing so any more. I'm wiser now." - -"Bah! wiser, indeed!" said Mrs. Tetterby. "Are you better?" - -The question sounded some discordant note in Mr. Tetterby's breast. -He ruminated dejectedly, and passed his hand across and across his -forehead. - -"Better!" murmured Mr. Tetterby. "I don't know as any of us are -better, or happier either. Better, is it?" - -He turned to the screen, and traced about it with his finger, until -he found a certain paragraph of which he was in quest. - -"This used to be one of the family favourites, I recollect," said -Tetterby, in a forlorn and stupid way, "and used to draw tears from -the children, and make 'em good, if there was any little bickering -or discontent among 'em, next to the story of the robin redbreasts -in the wood. 'Melancholy case of destitution. Yesterday a small -man, with a baby in his arms, and surrounded by half-a-dozen ragged -little ones, of various ages between ten and two, the whole of whom -were evidently in a famishing condition, appeared before the worthy -magistrate, and made the following recital:'--Ha! I don't -understand it, I'm sure," said Tetterby; "I don't see what it has -got to do with us." - -"How old and shabby he looks," said Mrs. Tetterby, watching him. -"I never saw such a change in a man. Ah! dear me, dear me, dear -me, it was a sacrifice!" - -"What was a sacrifice?" her husband sourly inquired. - -Mrs. Tetterby shook her head; and without replying in words, raised -a complete sea-storm about the baby, by her violent agitation of -the cradle. - -"If you mean your marriage was a sacrifice, my good woman--" said -her husband. - -"I DO mean it" said his wife. - -"Why, then I mean to say," pursued Mr. Tetterby, as sulkily and -surlily as she, "that there are two sides to that affair; and that -I was the sacrifice; and that I wish the sacrifice hadn't been -accepted." - -"I wish it hadn't, Tetterby, with all my heart and soul I do assure -you," said his wife. "You can't wish it more than I do, Tetterby." - -"I don't know what I saw in her," muttered the newsman, "I'm sure;- --certainly, if I saw anything, it's not there now. I was thinking -so, last night, after supper, by the fire. She's fat, she's -ageing, she won't bear comparison with most other women." - -"He's common-looking, he has no air with him, he's small, he's -beginning to stoop and he's getting bald," muttered Mrs. Tetterby. - -"I must have been half out of my mind when I did it," muttered Mr. -Tetterby. - -"My senses must have forsook me. That's the only way in which I -can explain it to myself," said Mrs. Tetterby with elaboration. - -In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The little Tetterbys were -not habituated to regard that meal in the light of a sedentary -occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot; rather resembling -a savage ceremony, in the occasionally shrill whoops, and -brandishings of bread and butter, with which it was accompanied, as -well as in the intricate filings off into the street and back -again, and the hoppings up and down the door-steps, which were -incidental to the performance. In the present instance, the -contentions between these Tetterby children for the milk-and-water -jug, common to all, which stood upon the table, presented so -lamentable an instance of angry passions risen very high indeed, -that it was an outrage on the memory of Dr. Watts. It was not -until Mr. Tetterby had driven the whole herd out at the front door, -that a moment's peace was secured; and even that was broken by the -discovery that Johnny had surreptitiously come back, and was at -that instant choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in his -indecent and rapacious haste. - -"These children will be the death of me at last!" said Mrs. -Tetterby, after banishing the culprit. "And the sooner the better, -I think." - -"Poor people," said Mr. Tetterby, "ought not to have children at -all. They give US no pleasure." - -He was at that moment taking up the cup which Mrs. Tetterby had -rudely pushed towards him, and Mrs. Tetterby was lifting her own -cup to her lips, when they both stopped, as if they were -transfixed. - -"Here! Mother! Father!" cried Johnny, running into the room. -"Here's Mrs. William coming down the street!" - -And if ever, since the world began, a young boy took a baby from a -cradle with the care of an old nurse, and hushed and soothed it -tenderly, and tottered away with it cheerfully, Johnny was that -boy, and Moloch was that baby, as they went out together! - -Mr. Tetterby put down his cup; Mrs. Tetterby put down her cup. Mr. -Tetterby rubbed his forehead; Mrs. Tetterby rubbed hers. Mr. -Tetterby's face began to smooth and brighten; Mrs. Tetterby's began -to smooth and brighten. - -"Why, Lord forgive me," said Mr. Tetterby to himself, "what evil -tempers have I been giving way to? What has been the matter here!" - -"How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I said and felt -last night!" sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apron to her eyes. - -"Am I a brute," said Mr. Tetterby, "or is there any good in me at -all? Sophia! My little woman!" - -"'Dolphus dear," returned his wife. - -"I--I've been in a state of mind," said Mr. Tetterby, "that I can't -abear to think of, Sophy." - -"Oh! It's nothing to what I've been in, Dolf," cried his wife in a -great burst of grief. - -"My Sophia," said Mr. Tetterby, "don't take on. I never shall -forgive myself. I must have nearly broke your heart, I know." - -"No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!" cried Mrs. Tetterby. - -"My little woman," said her husband, "don't. You make me reproach -myself dreadful, when you show such a noble spirit. Sophia, my -dear, you don't know what I thought. I showed it bad enough, no -doubt; but what I thought, my little woman!--" - -"Oh, dear Dolf, don't! Don't!" cried his wife. - -"Sophia," said Mr. Tetterby, "I must reveal it. I couldn't rest in -my conscience unless I mentioned it. My little woman--" - -"Mrs. William's very nearly here!" screamed Johnny at the door. - -"My little woman, I wondered how," gasped Mr. Tetterby, supporting -himself by his chair, "I wondered how I had ever admired you--I -forgot the precious children you have brought about me, and thought -you didn't look as slim as I could wish. I--I never gave a -recollection," said Mr. Tetterby, with severe self-accusation, "to -the cares you've had as my wife, and along of me and mine, when you -might have had hardly any with another man, who got on better and -was luckier than me (anybody might have found such a man easily I -am sure); and I quarrelled with you for having aged a little in the -rough years you have lightened for me. Can you believe it, my -little woman? I hardly can myself." - -Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught his -face within her hands, and held it there. - -"Oh, Dolf!" she cried. "I am so happy that you thought so; I am so -grateful that you thought so! For I thought that you were common- -looking, Dolf; and so you are, my dear, and may you be the -commonest of all sights in my eyes, till you close them with your -own good hands. I thought that you were small; and so you are, and -I'll make much of you because you are, and more of you because I -love my husband. I thought that you began to stoop; and so you do, -and you shall lean on me, and I'll do all I can to keep you up. I -thought there was no air about you; but there is, and it's the air -of home, and that's the purest and the best there is, and God bless -home once more, and all belonging to it, Dolf!" - -"Hurrah! Here's Mrs. William!" cried Johnny. - -So she was, and all the children with her; and so she came in, they -kissed her, and kissed one another, and kissed the baby, and kissed -their father and mother, and then ran back and flocked and danced -about her, trooping on with her in triumph. - -Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby were not a bit behind-hand in the warmth of -their reception. They were as much attracted to her as the -children were; they ran towards her, kissed her hands, pressed -round her, could not receive her ardently or enthusiastically -enough. She came among them like the spirit of all goodness, -affection, gentle consideration, love, and domesticity. - -"What! are YOU all so glad to see me, too, this bright Christmas -morning?" said Milly, clapping her hands in a pleasant wonder. "Oh -dear, how delightful this is!" - -More shouting from the children, more kissing, more trooping round -her, more happiness, more love, more joy, more honour, on all -sides, than she could bear. - -"Oh dear!" said Milly, "what delicious tears you make me shed. How -can I ever have deserved this! What have I done to be so loved?" - -"Who can help it!" cried Mr. Tetterby. - -"Who can help it!" cried Mrs. Tetterby. - -"Who can help it!" echoed the children, in a joyful chorus. And -they danced and trooped about her again, and clung to her, and laid -their rosy faces against her dress, and kissed and fondled it, and -could not fondle it, or her, enough. - -"I never was so moved," said Milly, drying her eyes, "as I have -been this morning. I must tell you, as soon as I can speak.--Mr. -Redlaw came to me at sunrise, and with a tenderness in his manner, -more as if I had been his darling daughter than myself, implored me -to go with him to where William's brother George is lying ill. We -went together, and all the way along he was so kind, and so -subdued, and seemed to put such trust and hope in me, that I could -not help trying with pleasure. When we got to the house, we met a -woman at the door (somebody had bruised and hurt her, I am afraid), -who caught me by the hand, and blessed me as I passed." - -"She was right!" said Mr. Tetterby. Mrs. Tetterby said she was -right. All the children cried out that she was right. - -"Ah, but there's more than that," said Milly. "When we got up -stairs, into the room, the sick man who had lain for hours in a -state from which no effort could rouse him, rose up in his bed, -and, bursting into tears, stretched out his arms to me, and said -that he had led a mis-spent life, but that he was truly repentant -now, in his sorrow for the past, which was all as plain to him as a -great prospect, from which a dense black cloud had cleared away, -and that he entreated me to ask his poor old father for his pardon -and his blessing, and to say a prayer beside his bed. And when I -did so, Mr. Redlaw joined in it so fervently, and then so thanked -and thanked me, and thanked Heaven, that my heart quite overflowed, -and I could have done nothing but sob and cry, if the sick man had -not begged me to sit down by him,--which made me quiet of course. -As I sat there, he held my hand in his until he sank in a doze; and -even then, when I withdrew my hand to leave him to come here (which -Mr. Redlaw was very earnest indeed in wishing me to do), his hand -felt for mine, so that some one else was obliged to take my place -and make believe to give him my hand back. Oh dear, oh dear," said -Milly, sobbing. "How thankful and how happy I should feel, and do -feel, for all this!" - -While she was speaking, Redlaw had come in, and, after pausing for -a moment to observe the group of which she was the centre, had -silently ascended the stairs. Upon those stairs he now appeared -again; remaining there, while the young student passed him, and -came running down. - -"Kind nurse, gentlest, best of creatures," he said, falling on his -knee to her, and catching at her hand, "forgive my cruel -ingratitude!" - -"Oh dear, oh dear!" cried Milly innocently, "here's another of -them! Oh dear, here's somebody else who likes me. What shall I -ever do!" - -The guileless, simple way in which she said it, and in which she -put her hands before her eyes and wept for very happiness, was as -touching as it was delightful. - -"I was not myself," he said. "I don't know what it was--it was -some consequence of my disorder perhaps--I was mad. But I am so no -longer. Almost as I speak, I am restored. I heard the children -crying out your name, and the shade passed from me at the very -sound of it. Oh, don't weep! Dear Milly, if you could read my -heart, and only knew with what affection and what grateful homage -it is glowing, you would not let me see you weep. It is such deep -reproach." - -"No, no," said Milly, "it's not that. It's not indeed. It's joy. -It's wonder that you should think it necessary to ask me to forgive -so little, and yet it's pleasure that you do." - -"And will you come again? and will you finish the little curtain?" - -"No," said Milly, drying her eyes, and shaking her head. "You -won't care for my needlework now." - -"Is it forgiving me, to say that?" - -She beckoned him aside, and whispered in his ear. - -"There is news from your home, Mr. Edmund." - -"News? How?" - -"Either your not writing when you were very ill, or the change in -your handwriting when you began to be better, created some -suspicion of the truth; however that is--but you're sure you'll not -be the worse for any news, if it's not bad news?" - -"Sure." - -"Then there's some one come!" said Milly. - -"My mother?" asked the student, glancing round involuntarily -towards Redlaw, who had come down from the stairs. - -"Hush! No," said Milly. - -"It can be no one else." - -"Indeed?" said Milly, "are you sure?" - -"It is not -" Before he could say more, she put her hand upon his -mouth. - -"Yes it is!" said Milly. "The young lady (she is very like the -miniature, Mr. Edmund, but she is prettier) was too unhappy to rest -without satisfying her doubts, and came up, last night, with a -little servant-maid. As you always dated your letters from the -college, she came there; and before I saw Mr. Redlaw this morning, -I saw her. SHE likes me too!" said Milly. "Oh dear, that's -another!" - -"This morning! Where is she now?" - -"Why, she is now," said Milly, advancing her lips to his ear, "in -my little parlour in the Lodge, and waiting to see you." - -He pressed her hand, and was darting off, but she detained him. - -"Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told me this morning that his -memory is impaired. Be very considerate to him, Mr. Edmund; he -needs that from us all." - -The young man assured her, by a look, that her caution was not ill- -bestowed; and as he passed the Chemist on his way out, bent -respectfully and with an obvious interest before him. - -Redlaw returned the salutation courteously and even humbly, and -looked after him as he passed on. He dropped his head upon his -hand too, as trying to reawaken something he had lost. But it was -gone. - -The abiding change that had come upon him since the influence of -the music, and the Phantom's reappearance, was, that now he truly -felt how much he had lost, and could compassionate his own -condition, and contrast it, clearly, with the natural state of -those who were around him. In this, an interest in those who were -around him was revived, and a meek, submissive sense of his -calamity was bred, resembling that which sometimes obtains in age, -when its mental powers are weakened, without insensibility or -sullenness being added to the list of its infirmities. - -He was conscious that, as he redeemed, through Milly, more and more -of the evil he had done, and as he was more and more with her, this -change ripened itself within him. Therefore, and because of the -attachment she inspired him with (but without other hope), he felt -that he was quite dependent on her, and that she was his staff in -his affliction. - -So, when she asked him whether they should go home now, to where -the old man and her husband were, and he readily replied "yes"-- -being anxious in that regard--he put his arm through hers, and -walked beside her; not as if he were the wise and learned man to -whom the wonders of Nature were an open book, and hers were the -uninstructed mind, but as if their two positions were reversed, and -he knew nothing, and she all. - -He saw the children throng about her, and caress her, as he and she -went away together thus, out of the house; he heard the ringing of -their laughter, and their merry voices; he saw their bright faces, -clustering around him like flowers; he witnessed the renewed -contentment and affection of their parents; he breathed the simple -air of their poor home, restored to its tranquillity; he thought of -the unwholesome blight he had shed upon it, and might, but for her, -have been diffusing then; and perhaps it is no wonder that he -walked submissively beside her, and drew her gentle bosom nearer to -his own. - -When they arrived at the Lodge, the old man was sitting in his -chair in the chimney-corner, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and -his son was leaning against the opposite side of the fire-place, -looking at him. As she came in at the door, both started, and -turned round towards her, and a radiant change came upon their -faces. - -"Oh dear, dear, dear, they are all pleased to see me like the -rest!" cried Milly, clapping her hands in an ecstasy, and stopping -short. "Here are two more!" - -Pleased to see her! Pleasure was no word for it. She ran into her -husband's arms, thrown wide open to receive her, and he would have -been glad to have her there, with her head lying on his shoulder, -through the short winter's day. But the old man couldn't spare -her. He had arms for her too, and he locked her in them. - -"Why, where has my quiet Mouse been all this time?" said the old -man. "She has been a long while away. I find that it's impossible -for me to get on without Mouse. I--where's my son William?--I -fancy I have been dreaming, William." - -"That's what I say myself, father," returned his son. "I have been -in an ugly sort of dream, I think.--How are you, father? Are you -pretty well?" - -"Strong and brave, my boy," returned the old man. - -It was quite a sight to see Mr. William shaking hands with his -father, and patting him on the back, and rubbing him gently down -with his hand, as if he could not possibly do enough to show an -interest in him. - -"What a wonderful man you are, father!--How are you, father? Are -you really pretty hearty, though?" said William, shaking hands with -him again, and patting him again, and rubbing him gently down -again. - -"I never was fresher or stouter in my life, my boy." - -"What a wonderful man you are, father! But that's exactly where it -is," said Mr. William, with enthusiasm. "When I think of all that -my father's gone through, and all the chances and changes, and -sorrows and troubles, that have happened to him in the course of -his long life, and under which his head has grown grey, and years -upon years have gathered on it, I feel as if we couldn't do enough -to honour the old gentleman, and make his old age easy.--How are -you, father? Are you really pretty well, though?" - -Mr. William might never have left off repeating this inquiry, and -shaking hands with him again, and patting him again, and rubbing -him down again, if the old man had not espied the Chemist, whom -until now he had not seen. - -"I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw," said Philip, "but didn't know you -were here, sir, or should have made less free. It reminds me, Mr. -Redlaw, seeing you here on a Christmas morning, of the time when -you was a student yourself, and worked so hard that you were -backwards and forwards in our Library even at Christmas time. Ha! -ha! I'm old enough to remember that; and I remember it right well, -I do, though I am eight-seven. It was after you left here that my -poor wife died. You remember my poor wife, Mr. Redlaw?" - -The Chemist answered yes. - -"Yes," said the old man. "She was a dear creetur.--I recollect you -come here one Christmas morning with a young lady--I ask your -pardon, Mr. Redlaw, but I think it was a sister you was very much -attached to?" - -The Chemist looked at him, and shook his head. "I had a sister," -he said vacantly. He knew no more. - -"One Christmas morning," pursued the old man, "that you come here -with her--and it began to snow, and my wife invited the lady to -walk in, and sit by the fire that is always a burning on Christmas -Day in what used to be, before our ten poor gentlemen commuted, our -great Dinner Hall. I was there; and I recollect, as I was stirring -up the blaze for the young lady to warm her pretty feet by, she -read the scroll out loud, that is underneath that pictur, 'Lord, -keep my memory green!' She and my poor wife fell a talking about -it; and it's a strange thing to think of, now, that they both said -(both being so unlike to die) that it was a good prayer, and that -it was one they would put up very earnestly, if they were called -away young, with reference to those who were dearest to them. 'My -brother,' says the young lady--'My husband,' says my poor wife.-- -'Lord, keep his memory of me, green, and do not let me be -forgotten!'" - -Tears more painful, and more bitter than he had ever shed in all -his life, coursed down Redlaw's face. Philip, fully occupied in -recalling his story, had not observed him until now, nor Milly's -anxiety that he should not proceed. - -"Philip!" said Redlaw, laying his hand upon his arm, "I am a -stricken man, on whom the hand of Providence has fallen heavily, -although deservedly. You speak to me, my friend, of what I cannot -follow; my memory is gone." - -"Merciful power!" cried the old man. - -"I have lost my memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble," said the -Chemist, "and with that I have lost all man would remember!" - -To see old Philip's pity for him, to see him wheel his own great -chair for him to rest in, and look down upon him with a solemn -sense of his bereavement, was to know, in some degree, how precious -to old age such recollections are. - -The boy came running in, and ran to Milly. - -"Here's the man," he said, "in the other room. I don't want HIM." - -"What man does he mean?" asked Mr. William. - -"Hush!" said Milly. - -Obedient to a sign from her, he and his old father softly withdrew. -As they went out, unnoticed, Redlaw beckoned to the boy to come to -him. - -"I like the woman best," he answered, holding to her skirts. - -"You are right," said Redlaw, with a faint smile. "But you needn't -fear to come to me. I am gentler than I was. Of all the world, to -you, poor child!" - -The boy still held back at first, but yielding little by little to -her urging, he consented to approach, and even to sit down at his -feet. As Redlaw laid his hand upon the shoulder of the child, -looking on him with compassion and a fellow-feeling, he put out his -other hand to Milly. She stooped down on that side of him, so that -she could look into his face, and after silence, said: - -"Mr. Redlaw, may I speak to you?" - -"Yes," he answered, fixing his eyes upon her. "Your voice and -music are the same to me." - -"May I ask you something?" - -"What you will." - -"Do you remember what I said, when I knocked at your door last -night? About one who was your friend once, and who stood on the -verge of destruction?" - -"Yes. I remember," he said, with some hesitation. - -"Do you understand it?" - -He smoothed the boy's hair--looking at her fixedly the while, and -shook his head. - -"This person," said Milly, in her clear, soft voice, which her mild -eyes, looking at him, made clearer and softer, "I found soon -afterwards. I went back to the house, and, with Heaven's help, -traced him. I was not too soon. A very little and I should have -been too late." - -He took his hand from the boy, and laying it on the back of that -hand of hers, whose timid and yet earnest touch addressed him no -less appealingly than her voice and eyes, looked more intently on -her. - -"He IS the father of Mr. Edmund, the young gentleman we saw just -now. His real name is Longford.--You recollect the name?" - -"I recollect the name." - -"And the man?" - -"No, not the man. Did he ever wrong me?" - -"Yes!" - -"Ah! Then it's hopeless--hopeless." - -He shook his head, and softly beat upon the hand he held, as though -mutely asking her commiseration. - -"I did not go to Mr. Edmund last night," said Milly,--"You will -listen to me just the same as if you did remember all?" - -"To every syllable you say." - -"Both, because I did not know, then, that this really was his -father, and because I was fearful of the effect of such -intelligence upon him, after his illness, if it should be. Since I -have known who this person is, I have not gone either; but that is -for another reason. He has long been separated from his wife and -son--has been a stranger to his home almost from this son's -infancy, I learn from him--and has abandoned and deserted what he -should have held most dear. In all that time he has been falling -from the state of a gentleman, more and more, until--" she rose up, -hastily, and going out for a moment, returned, accompanied by the -wreck that Redlaw had beheld last night. - -"Do you know me?" asked the Chemist. - -"I should be glad," returned the other, "and that is an unwonted -word for me to use, if I could answer no." - -The Chemist looked at the man, standing in self-abasement and -degradation before him, and would have looked longer, in an -ineffectual struggle for enlightenment, but that Milly resumed her -late position by his side, and attracted his attentive gaze to her -own face. - -"See how low he is sunk, how lost he is!" she whispered, stretching -out her arm towards him, without looking from the Chemist's face. -"If you could remember all that is connected with him, do you not -think it would move your pity to reflect that one you ever loved -(do not let us mind how long ago, or in what belief that he has -forfeited), should come to this?" - -"I hope it would," he answered. "I believe it would." - -His eyes wandered to the figure standing near the door, but came -back speedily to her, on whom he gazed intently, as if he strove to -learn some lesson from every tone of her voice, and every beam of -her eyes. - -"I have no learning, and you have much," said Milly; "I am not used -to think, and you are always thinking. May I tell you why it seems -to me a good thing for us, to remember wrong that has been done -us?" - -"Yes." - -"That we may forgive it." - -"Pardon me, great Heaven!" said Redlaw, lifting up his eyes, "for -having thrown away thine own high attribute!" - -"And if," said Milly, "if your memory should one day be restored, -as we will hope and pray it may be, would it not be a blessing to -you to recall at once a wrong and its forgiveness?" - -He looked at the figure by the door, and fastened his attentive -eyes on her again; a ray of clearer light appeared to him to shine -into his mind, from her bright face. - -"He cannot go to his abandoned home. He does not seek to go there. -He knows that he could only carry shame and trouble to those he has -so cruelly neglected; and that the best reparation he can make them -now, is to avoid them. A very little money carefully bestowed, -would remove him to some distant place, where he might live and do -no wrong, and make such atonement as is left within his power for -the wrong he has done. To the unfortunate lady who is his wife, -and to his son, this would be the best and kindest boon that their -best friend could give them--one too that they need never know of; -and to him, shattered in reputation, mind, and body, it might be -salvation." - -He took her head between her hands, and kissed it, and said: "It -shall be done. I trust to you to do it for me, now and secretly; -and to tell him that I would forgive him, if I were so happy as to -know for what." - -As she rose, and turned her beaming face towards the fallen man, -implying that her mediation had been successful, he advanced a -step, and without raising his eyes, addressed himself to Redlaw. - -"You are so generous," he said, "--you ever were--that you will try -to banish your rising sense of retribution in the spectacle that is -before you. I do not try to banish it from myself, Redlaw. If you -can, believe me." - -The Chemist entreated Milly, by a gesture, to come nearer to him; -and, as he listened looked in her face, as if to find in it the -clue to what he heard. - -"I am too decayed a wretch to make professions; I recollect my own -career too well, to array any such before you. But from the day on -which I made my first step downward, in dealing falsely by you, I -have gone down with a certain, steady, doomed progression. That, I -say." - -Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned his face towards the -speaker, and there was sorrow in it. Something like mournful -recognition too. - -"I might have been another man, my life might have been another -life, if I had avoided that first fatal step. I don't know that it -would have been. I claim nothing for the possibility. Your sister -is at rest, and better than she could have been with me, if I had -continued even what you thought me: even what I once supposed -myself to be." - -Redlaw made a hasty motion with his hand, as if he would have put -that subject on one side. - -"I speak," the other went on, "like a man taken from the grave. I -should have made my own grave, last night, had it not been for this -blessed hand." - -"Oh dear, he likes me too!" sobbed Milly, under her breath. -"That's another!" - -"I could not have put myself in your way, last night, even for -bread. But, to-day, my recollection of what has been is so -strongly stirred, and is presented to me, I don't know how, so -vividly, that I have dared to come at her suggestion, and to take -your bounty, and to thank you for it, and to beg you, Redlaw, in -your dying hour, to be as merciful to me in your thoughts, as you -are in your deeds." - -He turned towards the door, and stopped a moment on his way forth. - -"I hope my son may interest you, for his mother's sake. I hope he -may deserve to do so. Unless my life should be preserved a long -time, and I should know that I have not misused your aid, I shall -never look upon him more." - -Going out, he raised his eyes to Redlaw for the first time. -Redlaw, whose steadfast gaze was fixed upon him, dreamily held out -his hand. He returned and touched it--little more--with both his -own; and bending down his head, went slowly out. - -In the few moments that elapsed, while Milly silently took him to -the gate, the Chemist dropped into his chair, and covered his face -with his hands. Seeing him thus, when she came back, accompanied -by her husband and his father (who were both greatly concerned for -him), she avoided disturbing him, or permitting him to be -disturbed; and kneeled down near the chair to put some warm -clothing on the boy. - -"That's exactly where it is. That's what I always say, father!" -exclaimed her admiring husband. "There's a motherly feeling in -Mrs. William's breast that must and will have went!" - -"Ay, ay," said the old man; "you're right. My son William's -right!" - -"It happens all for the best, Milly dear, no doubt," said Mr. -William, tenderly, "that we have no children of our own; and yet I -sometimes wish you had one to love and cherish. Our little dead -child that you built such hopes upon, and that never breathed the -breath of life--it has made you quiet-like, Milly." - -"I am very happy in the recollection of it, William dear," she -answered. "I think of it every day." - -"I was afraid you thought of it a good deal." - -"Don't say, afraid; it is a comfort to me; it speaks to me in so -many ways. The innocent thing that never lived on earth, is like -an angel to me, William." - -"You are like an angel to father and me," said Mr. William, softly. -"I know that." - -"When I think of all those hopes I built upon it, and the many -times I sat and pictured to myself the little smiling face upon my -bosom that never lay there, and the sweet eyes turned up to mine -that never opened to the light," said Milly, "I can feel a greater -tenderness, I think, for all the disappointed hopes in which there -is no harm. When I see a beautiful child in its fond mother's -arms, I love it all the better, thinking that my child might have -been like that, and might have made my heart as proud and happy." - -Redlaw raised his head, and looked towards her. - -"All through life, it seems by me," she continued, "to tell me -something. For poor neglected children, my little child pleads as -if it were alive, and had a voice I knew, with which to speak to -me. When I hear of youth in suffering or shame, I think that my -child might have come to that, perhaps, and that God took it from -me in His mercy. Even in age and grey hair, such as father's, it -is present: saying that it too might have lived to be old, long -and long after you and I were gone, and to have needed the respect -and love of younger people." - -Her quiet voice was quieter than ever, as she took her husband's -arm, and laid her head against it. - -"Children love me so, that sometimes I half fancy--it's a silly -fancy, William--they have some way I don't know of, of feeling for -my little child, and me, and understanding why their love is -precious to me. If I have been quiet since, I have been more -happy, William, in a hundred ways. Not least happy, dear, in this- --that even when my little child was born and dead but a few days, -and I was weak and sorrowful, and could not help grieving a little, -the thought arose, that if I tried to lead a good life, I should -meet in Heaven a bright creature, who would call me, Mother!" - -Redlaw fell upon his knees, with a loud cry. - -"O Thou, he said, "who through the teaching of pure love, hast -graciously restored me to the memory which was the memory of Christ -upon the Cross, and of all the good who perished in His cause, -receive my thanks, and bless her!" - -Then, he folded her to his heart; and Milly, sobbing more than -ever, cried, as she laughed, "He is come back to himself! He likes -me very much indeed, too! Oh, dear, dear, dear me, here's -another!" - -Then, the student entered, leading by the hand a lovely girl, who -was afraid to come. And Redlaw so changed towards him, seeing in -him and his youthful choice, the softened shadow of that chastening -passage in his own life, to which, as to a shady tree, the dove so -long imprisoned in his solitary ark might fly for rest and company, -fell upon his neck, entreating them to be his children. - -Then, as Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, -the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the -world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own -experiences, for all good, he laid his hand upon the boy, and, -silently calling Him to witness who laid His hand on children in -old time, rebuking, in the majesty of His prophetic knowledge, -those who kept them from Him, vowed to protect him, teach him, and -reclaim him. - -Then, he gave his right hand cheerily to Philip, and said that they -would that day hold a Christmas dinner in what used to be, before -the ten poor gentlemen commuted, their great Dinner Hall; and that -they would bid to it as many of that Swidger family, who, his son -had told him, were so numerous that they might join hands and make -a ring round England, as could be brought together on so short a -notice. - -And it was that day done. There were so many Swidgers there, grown -up and children, that an attempt to state them in round numbers -might engender doubts, in the distrustful, of the veracity of this -history. Therefore the attempt shall not be made. But there they -were, by dozens and scores--and there was good news and good hope -there, ready for them, of George, who had been visited again by his -father and brother, and by Milly, and again left in a quiet sleep. -There, present at the dinner, too, were the Tetterbys, including -young Adolphus, who arrived in his prismatic comforter, in good -time for the beef. Johnny and the baby were too late, of course, -and came in all on one side, the one exhausted, the other in a -supposed state of double-tooth; but that was customary, and not -alarming. - -It was sad to see the child who had no name or lineage, watching -the other children as they played, not knowing how to talk with -them, or sport with them, and more strange to the ways of childhood -than a rough dog. It was sad, though in a different way, to see -what an instinctive knowledge the youngest children there had of -his being different from all the rest, and how they made timid -approaches to him with soft words and touches, and with little -presents, that he might not be unhappy. But he kept by Milly, and -began to love her--that was another, as she said!--and, as they all -liked her dearly, they were glad of that, and when they saw him -peeping at them from behind her chair, they were pleased that he -was so close to it. - -All this, the Chemist, sitting with the student and his bride that -was to be, Philip, and the rest, saw. - -Some people have said since, that he only thought what has been -herein set down; others, that he read it in the fire, one winter -night about the twilight time; others, that the Ghost was but the -representation of his gloomy thoughts, and Milly the embodiment of -his better wisdom. _I_ say nothing. - -- Except this. That as they were assembled in the old Hall, by no -other light than that of a great fire (having dined early), the -shadows once more stole out of their hiding-places, and danced -about the room, showing the children marvellous shapes and faces on -the walls, and gradually changing what was real and familiar there, -to what was wild and magical. But that there was one thing in the -Hall, to which the eyes of Redlaw, and of Milly and her husband, -and of the old man, and of the student, and his bride that was to -be, were often turned, which the shadows did not obscure or change. -Deepened in its gravity by the fire-light, and gazing from the -darkness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate face in the -portrait, with the beard and ruff, looked down at them from under -its verdant wreath of holly, as they looked up at it; and, clear -and plain below, as if a voice had uttered them, were the words. - - -Lord keep my Memory green. - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE HAUNTED MAN *** - -This file should be named hntmn10.txt or hntmn10.zip -Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, hntmn11.txt -VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, hntmn10a.txt - -Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US -unless a copyright notice is included. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* - diff --git a/old/hntmn10.zip b/old/hntmn10.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 23dd997..0000000 --- a/old/hntmn10.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/hntmn10h.htm b/old/hntmn10h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index ec4242f..0000000 --- a/old/hntmn10h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4481 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> -<html> -<head> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> -<title>The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin</title> -</head> -<body> -<h2> -<a href="#startoftext">The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin, by Charles Dickens</a> -</h2> -<pre> -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin -by Charles Dickens -(#6 in our series by Charles Dickens) - -Copyright laws are changing all over the world. 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Dent and Co. edition by David Price, -email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -CHAPTER I - The Gift Bestowed<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -Everybody said so.<br> -<br> -Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. -Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general -experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken, in -most instances, such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority -is proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; “but -<i>that’s</i> no rule,” as the ghost of Giles Scroggins -says in the ballad.<br> -<br> -The dread word, GHOST, recalls me.<br> -<br> -Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent of my -present claim for everybody is, that they were so far right. He -did.<br> -<br> -Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brilliant eye; his -black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and well-proportioned; -his grizzled hair hanging, like tangled sea-weed, about his face, - -as if he had been, through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing -and beating of the great deep of humanity, - but might have said he -looked like a haunted man?<br> -<br> -Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed -by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a distraught -air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening to some -old echoes in his mind, but might have said it was the manner of a haunted -man?<br> -<br> -Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and grave, with -a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set himself against -and stop, but might have said it was the voice of a haunted man?<br> -<br> -Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and part laboratory, -- for he was, as the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in chemistry, -and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes -hung daily, - who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, -surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his -shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd -of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire upon the -quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the reflection of -glass vessels that held liquids), trembling at heart like things that -knew his power to uncombine them, and to give back their component parts -to fire and vapour; - who that had seen him then, his work done, and -he pondering in his chair before the rusted grate and red flame, moving -his thin mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, would not have -said that the man seemed haunted and the chamber too?<br> -<br> -Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed that everything -about him took this haunted tone, and that he lived on haunted ground?<br> -<br> -His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like, - an old, retired part -of an ancient endowment for students, once a brave edifice, planted -in an open place, but now the obsolete whim of forgotten architects; -smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, squeezed on every side by the overgrowing -of the great city, and choked, like an old well, with stones and bricks; -its small quadrangles, lying down in very pits formed by the streets -and buildings, which, in course of time, had been constructed above -its heavy chimney stalks; its old trees, insulted by the neighbouring -smoke, which deigned to droop so low when it was very feeble and the -weather very moody; its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed earth -to be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its silent pavements, -unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, -except when a stray face looked down from the upper world, wondering -what nook it was; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, where -no sun had straggled for a hundred years, but where, in compensation -for the sun’s neglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay -nowhere else, and the black east wind would spin like a huge humming-top, -when in all other places it was silent and still.<br> -<br> -His dwelling, at its heart and core - within doors - at his fireside -- was so lowering and old, so crazy, yet so strong, with its worn-eaten -beams of wood in the ceiling, and its sturdy floor shelving downward -to the great oak chimney-piece; so environed and hemmed in by the pressure -of the town yet so remote in fashion, age, and custom; so quiet, yet -so thundering with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a door -was shut, - echoes, not confined to the many low passages and empty -rooms, but rumbling and grumbling till they were stifled in the heavy -air of the forgotten Crypt where the Norman arches were half-buried -in the earth.<br> -<br> -You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight, in the dead -winter time.<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -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 sprang 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.<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -- When a knock came at his door, in short, as he was sitting so, and -roused him.<br> -<br> -“Who’s that?” said he. “Come in!”<br> -<br> -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!<br> -<br> -“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 to-night. -But Mrs. William has been taken off her legs so often” -<br> -<br> -“By the wind? Ay! I have heard it rising.”<br> -<br> -“ - 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.”<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -“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 -<i>that</i>.”<br> -<br> -“No,” returned Mr. Redlaw good-naturedly, though abruptly.<br> -<br> -“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 miles 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 <i>her</i> -character to come into play.”<br> -<br> -As he stopped for a reply, the reply was “Yes,” in the same -tone as before.<br> -<br> -“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, eighty-seven year old. He’s a Swidger! -- Spoon.”<br> -<br> -“True, William,” was the patient and abstracted answer, -when he stopped again.<br> -<br> -“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 whatnot degree, and marriages, -and lyings-in, the Swidgers - Tumbler - might take hold of hands, and -make a ring round England!”<br> -<br> -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 of acquiescence.<br> -<br> -“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 <i>our</i> 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.”<br> -<br> -“I am quite ready,” said the other, waking as from a dream, -and walking slowly to and fro.<br> -<br> -“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.<br> -<br> -“What I always say myself, sir. She <i>will</i> do it! -There’s a motherly feeling in Mrs. William’s breast that -must and will have went.”<br> -<br> -“What has she done?”<br> -<br> -“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 - its surprising how -stone-chaney catches the heat this frosty weather, to be sure!” -Here he turned the plate, and cooled his fingers.<br> -<br> -“Well?” said Mr. Redlaw.<br> -<br> -“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 <i>is</i> Swidger, by rights. -Let ’em call her Swidge, Widge, Bridge - Lord! London Bridge, -Blackfriars, Chelsea, Putney, Waterloo, or Hammersmith Suspension - -if they like.”<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -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!<br> -<br> -“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 to-night,” whispering -to his wife, as he was taking the tray, “and ghostlier altogether.”<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -“What is that the old man has in his arms?” asked Mr. Redlaw, -as he sat down to his solitary meal.<br> -<br> -“Holly, sir,” replied the quiet voice of Milly.<br> -<br> -“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!”<br> -<br> -“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 at 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.<br> -<br> -“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!”<br> -<br> -“Have you had so many that were merry and happy?” asked -the other.<br> -<br> -“Ay, sir, ever so many,” returned the old man.<br> -<br> -“Is his memory impaired with age? It is to be expected now,” -said Mr. Redlaw, turning to the son, and speaking lower.<br> -<br> -“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!”<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -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.<br> -<br> -“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?”<br> -<br> -“Oh many, many!” said Philip, half awaking from his reverie. -“I’m eighty-seven!”<br> -<br> -“Merry and happy, was it?” asked the Chemist in a low voice. -“Merry and happy, old man?”<br> -<br> -“Maybe 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!”<br> -<br> -“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?”<br> -<br> -“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!”<br> -<br> -“That’s what I always say, father!” returned the son -promptly, and with great respect. “You ARE a Swidger, if -ever there was one of the family!”<br> -<br> -“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.”<br> -<br> -The keen look that had been fixed upon him with so much earnestness, -had gradually sought the ground.<br> -<br> -“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!”<br> -<br> -“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.”<br> -<br> -“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?”<br> -<br> -“I know the portrait hangs there, Philip.”<br> -<br> -“Yes, sure, it’s the second on the right, above the panelling. -I was going to say - he has helped to keep <i>my</i> memory green, I -thank him; for going round the building every year, as I’m a doing -now, and freshening up the bare rooms with these branches and berries, -freshens up my bare old brain. One year brings back another, and -that year another, and those others numbers! At last, it seems -to me as if the birth-time of our Lord was the birth-time of all I have -ever had affection for, or mourned for, or delighted in, - and they’re -a pretty many, for I’m eighty-seven!”<br> -<br> -“Merry and happy,” murmured Redlaw to himself.<br> -<br> -The room began to darken strangely.<br> -<br> -“So you see, sir,” pursued old Philip, whose hale wintry -cheek had warmed into a ruddier glow, and whose blue eyes had brightened -while he spoke, “I have plenty to keep, when I keep this present -season. Now, where’s my quiet Mouse? Chattering’s -the sin of my time of life, and there’s half the building to do -yet, if the cold don’t freeze us first, or the wind don’t -blow us away, or the darkness don’t swallow us up.”<br> -<br> -The quiet Mouse had brought her calm face to his side, and silently -taken his arm, before he finished speaking.<br> -<br> -“Come away, my dear,” said the old man. “Mr. -Redlaw won’t settle to his dinner, otherwise, till it’s -cold as the winter. I hope you’ll excuse me rambling on, -sir, and I wish you good night, and, once again, a merry - ”<br> -<br> -“Stay!” said Mr. Redlaw, resuming his place at the table, -more, it would have seemed from his manner, to reassure the old keeper, -than in any remembrance of his own appetite. “Spare me another -moment, Philip. William, you were going to tell me something to -your excellent wife’s honour. It will not be disagreeable -to her to hear you praise her. What was it?”<br> -<br> -“Why, that’s where it is, you see, sir,” returned -Mr. William Swidger, looking towards his wife in considerable embarrassment. -“Mrs. William’s got her eye upon me.”<br> -<br> -“But you’re not afraid of Mrs. William’s eye?”<br> -<br> -“Why, no, sir,” returned Mr. Swidger, “that’s -what I say myself. It wasn’t made to be afraid of. -It wouldn’t have been made so mild, if that was the intention. -But I wouldn’t like to - Milly! - him, you know. Down in -the Buildings.”<br> -<br> -Mr. William, standing behind the table, and rummaging disconcertedly -among the objects upon it, directed persuasive glances at Mrs. William, -and secret jerks of his head and thumb at Mr. Redlaw, as alluring her -towards him.<br> -<br> -“Him, you know, my love,” said Mr. William. “Down -in the Buildings. Tell, my dear! You’re the works -of Shakespeare in comparison with myself. Down in the Buildings, -you know, my love. - Student.”<br> -<br> -“Student?” repeated Mr. Redlaw, raising his head.<br> -<br> -“That’s what I say, sir!” cried Mr. William, in the -utmost animation of assent. “If it wasn’t the poor -student down in the Buildings, why should you wish to hear it from Mrs. -William’s lips? Mrs. William, my dear - Buildings.”<br> -<br> -“I didn’t know,” said Milly, with a quiet frankness, -free from any haste or confusion, “that William had said anything -about it, or I wouldn’t have come. I asked him not to. -It’s a sick young gentleman, sir - and very poor, I am afraid -- who is too ill to go home this holiday-time, and lives, unknown to -any one, in but a common kind of lodging for a gentleman, down in Jerusalem -Buildings. That’s all, sir.”<br> -<br> -“Why have I never heard of him?” said the Chemist, rising -hurriedly. “Why has he not made his situation known to me? -Sick! - give me my hat and cloak. Poor! - what house? - what number?”<br> -<br> -“Oh, you mustn’t go there, sir,” said Milly, leaving -her father-in-law, and calmly confronting him with her collected little -face and folded hands.<br> -<br> -“Not go there?”<br> -<br> -“Oh dear, no!” said Milly, shaking her head as at a most -manifest and self-evident impossibility. “It couldn’t -be thought of!”<br> -<br> -“What do you mean? Why not?”<br> -<br> -“Why, you see, sir,” said Mr. William Swidger, persuasively -and confidentially, “that’s what I say. Depend upon -it, the young gentleman would never have made his situation known to -one of his own sex. Mrs. Williams has got into his confidence, -but that’s quite different. They all confide in Mrs. William; -they all trust <i>her</i>. A man, sir, couldn’t have got -a whisper out of him; but woman, sir, and Mrs. William combined - !”<br> -<br> -“There is good sense and delicacy in what you say, William,” -returned Mr. Redlaw, observant of the gentle and composed face at his -shoulder. And laying his finger on his lip, he secretly put his -purse into her hand.<br> -<br> -“Oh dear no, sir!” cried Milly, giving it back again. -“Worse and worse! Couldn’t be dreamed of!”<br> -<br> -Such a staid matter-of-fact housewife she was, and so unruffled by the -momentary haste of this rejection, that, an instant afterwards, she -was tidily picking up a few leaves which had strayed from between her -scissors and her apron, when she had arranged the holly.<br> -<br> -Finding, when she rose from her stooping posture, that Mr. Redlaw was -still regarding her with doubt and astonishment, she quietly repeated -- looking about, the while, for any other fragments that might have -escaped her observation:<br> -<br> -“Oh dear no, sir! He said that of all the world he would -not be known to you, or receive help from you - though he is a student -in your class. I have made no terms of secrecy with you, but I -trust to your honour completely.”<br> -<br> -“Why did he say so?”<br> -<br> -“Indeed I can’t tell, sir,” said Milly, after thinking -a little, “because I am not at all clever, you know; and I wanted -to be useful to him in making things neat and comfortable about him, -and employed myself that way. But I know he is poor, and lonely, -and I think he is somehow neglected too. - How dark it is!”<br> -<br> -The room had darkened more and more. There was a very heavy gloom -and shadow gathering behind the Chemist’s chair.<br> -<br> -“What more about him?” he asked.<br> -<br> -“He is engaged to be married when he can afford it,” said -Milly, “and is studying, I think, to qualify himself to earn a -living. I have seen, a long time, that he has studied hard and -denied himself much. - How very dark it is!”<br> -<br> -“It’s turned colder, too,” said the old man, rubbing -his hands. “There’s a chill and dismal feeling in -the room. Where’s my son William? William, my boy, -turn the lamp, and rouse the fire!”<br> -<br> -Milly’s voice resumed, like quiet music very softly played:<br> -<br> -“He muttered in his broken sleep yesterday afternoon, after talking -to me” (this was to herself) “about some one dead, and some -great wrong done that could never be forgotten; but whether to him or -to another person, I don’t know. Not <i>by</i> him, I am -sure.”<br> -<br> -“And, in short, Mrs. William, you see - which she wouldn’t -say herself, Mr. Redlaw, if she was to stop here till the new year after -this next one - ” said Mr. William, coming up to him to speak -in his ear, “has done him worlds of good! Bless you, worlds -of good! All at home just the same as ever - my father made as -snug and comfortable - not a crumb of litter to be found in the house, -if you were to offer fifty pound ready money for it - Mrs. William apparently -never out of the way - yet Mrs. William backwards and forwards, backwards -and forwards, up and down, up and down, a mother to him!”<br> -<br> -The room turned darker and colder, and the gloom and shadow gathering -behind the chair was heavier.<br> -<br> -“Not content with this, sir, Mrs. William goes and finds, this -very night, when she was coming home (why it’s not above a couple -of hours ago), a creature more like a young wild beast than a young -child, shivering upon a door-step. What does Mrs. William do, -but brings it home to dry it, and feed it, and keep it till our old -Bounty of food and flannel is given away, on Christmas morning! -If it ever felt a fire before, it’s as much as ever it did; for -it’s sitting in the old Lodge chimney, staring at ours as if its -ravenous eyes would never shut again. It’s sitting there, -at least,” said Mr. William, correcting himself, on reflection, -“unless it’s bolted!”<br> -<br> -“Heaven keep her happy!” said the Chemist aloud, “and -you too, Philip! and you, William! I must consider what to do -in this. I may desire to see this student, I’ll not detain -you any longer now. Good-night!”<br> -<br> -“I thank’ee, sir, I thank’ee!” said the old -man, “for Mouse, and for my son William, and for myself. -Where’s my son William? William, you take the lantern and -go on first, through them long dark passages, as you did last year and -the year afore. Ha ha! <i>I</i> remember - though I’m -eighty-seven! ‘Lord, keep my memory green!’ -It’s a very good prayer, Mr. Redlaw, that of the learned gentleman -in the peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck - hangs up, second on -the right above the panelling, in what used to be, afore our ten poor -gentlemen commuted, our great Dinner Hall. ‘Lord, keep my -memory green!’ It’s very good and pious, sir. -Amen! Amen!”<br> -<br> -As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which, however carefully -withheld, fired a long train of thundering reverberations when it shut -at last, the room turned darker.<br> -<br> -As he fell a musing in his chair alone, the healthy holly withered on -the wall, and dropped - dead branches.<br> -<br> -As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that place where it -had been gathering so darkly, it took, by slow degrees, - or out of -it there came, by some unreal, unsubstantial process - not to be traced -by any human sense, - an awful likeness of himself!<br> -<br> -Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but with -his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed -in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into his terrible appearance -of existence, motionless, without a sound. As <i>he</i> leaned -his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire, <i>it</i> -leaned upon the chair-back, close above him, with its appalling copy -of his face looking where his face looked, and bearing the expression -his face bore.<br> -<br> -This, then, was the Something that had passed and gone already. -This was the dread companion of the haunted man!<br> -<br> -It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, than he of -it. The Christmas Waits were playing somewhere in the distance, -and, through his thoughtfulness, he seemed to listen to the music. -It seemed to listen too.<br> -<br> -At length he spoke; without moving or lifting up his face.<br> -<br> -“Here again!” he said.<br> -<br> -“Here again,” replied the Phantom.<br> -<br> -“I see you in the fire,” said the haunted man; “I -hear you in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night.”<br> -<br> -The Phantom moved its head, assenting.<br> -<br> -“Why do you come, to haunt me thus?”<br> -<br> -“I come as I am called,” replied the Ghost.<br> -<br> -“No. Unbidden,” exclaimed the Chemist.<br> -<br> -“Unbidden be it,” said the Spectre. “It is enough. -I am here.”<br> -<br> -Hitherto the light of the fire had shone on the two faces - if the dread -lineaments behind the chair might be called a face - both addressed -towards it, as at first, and neither looking at the other. But, -now, the haunted man turned, suddenly, and stared upon the Ghost. -The Ghost, as sudden in its motion, passed to before the chair, and -stared on him.<br> -<br> -The living man, and the animated image of himself dead, might so have -looked, the one upon the other. An awful survey, in a lonely and -remote part of an empty old pile of building, on a winter night, with -the loud wind going by upon its journey of mystery - whence or whither, -no man knowing since the world began - and the stars, in unimaginable -millions, glittering through it, from eternal space, where the world’s -bulk is as a grain, and its hoary age is infancy.<br> -<br> -“Look upon me!” said the Spectre. “I am he, -neglected in my youth, and miserably poor, who strove and suffered, -and still strove and suffered, until I hewed out knowledge from the -mine where it was buried, and made rugged steps thereof, for my worn -feet to rest and rise on.”<br> -<br> -“I <i>am</i> that man,” returned the Chemist.<br> -<br> -“No mother’s self-denying love,” pursued the Phantom, -“no father’s counsel, aided <i>me</i>. A stranger -came into my father’s place when I was but a child, and I was -easily an alien from my mother’s heart. My parents, at the -best, were of that sort whose care soon ends, and whose duty is soon -done; who cast their offspring loose, early, as birds do theirs; and, -if they do well, claim the merit; and, if ill, the pity.”<br> -<br> -It paused, and seemed to tempt and goad him with its look, and with -the manner of its speech, and with its smile.<br> -<br> -“I am he,” pursued the Phantom, “who, in this struggle -upward, found a friend. I made him - won him - bound him to me! -We worked together, side by side. All the love and confidence -that in my earlier youth had had no outlet, and found no expression, -I bestowed on him.”<br> -<br> -“Not all,” said Redlaw, hoarsely.<br> -<br> -“No, not all,” returned the Phantom. “I had -a sister.”<br> -<br> -The haunted man, with his head resting on his hands, replied “I -had!” The Phantom, with an evil smile, drew closer to the -chair, and resting its chin upon its folded hands, its folded hands -upon the back, and looking down into his face with searching eyes, that -seemed instinct with fire, went on:<br> -<br> -“Such glimpses of the light of home as I had ever known, had streamed -from her. How young she was, how fair, how loving! I took -her to the first poor roof that I was master of, and made it rich. -She came into the darkness of my life, and made it bright. - She is -before me!”<br> -<br> -“I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in music, in -the wind, in the dead stillness of the night,” returned the haunted -man.<br> -<br> -“<i>Did</i> he love her?” said the Phantom, echoing his -contemplative tone. “I think he did, once. I am sure -he did. Better had she loved him less - less secretly, less dearly, -from the shallower depths of a more divided heart!”<br> -<br> -“Let me forget it!” said the Chemist, with an angry motion -of his hand. “Let me blot it from my memory!”<br> -<br> -The Spectre, without stirring, and with its unwinking, cruel eyes still -fixed upon his face, went on:<br> -<br> -“A dream, like hers, stole upon my own life.”<br> -<br> -“It did,” said Redlaw.<br> -<br> -“A love, as like hers,” pursued the Phantom, “as my -inferior nature might cherish, arose in my own heart. I was too -poor to bind its object to my fortune then, by any thread of promise -or entreaty. I loved her far too well, to seek to do it. -But, more than ever I had striven in my life, I strove to climb! -Only an inch gained, brought me something nearer to the height. -I toiled up! In the late pauses of my labour at that time, - my -sister (sweet companion!) still sharing with me the expiring embers -and the cooling hearth, - when day was breaking, what pictures of the -future did I see!”<br> -<br> -“I saw them, in the fire, but now,” he murmured. “They -come back to me in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the -night, in the revolving years.”<br> -<br> -“ - Pictures of my own domestic life, in aftertime, with her who -was the inspiration of my toil. Pictures of my sister, made the -wife of my dear friend, on equal terms - for he had some inheritance, -we none - pictures of our sobered age and mellowed happiness, and of -the golden links, extending back so far, that should bind us, and our -children, in a radiant garland,” said the Phantom.<br> -<br> -“Pictures,” said the haunted man, “that were delusions. -Why is it my doom to remember them too well!”<br> -<br> -“Delusions,” echoed the Phantom in its changeless voice, -and glaring on him with its changeless eyes. “For my friend -(in whose breast my confidence was locked as in my own), passing between -me and the centre of the system of my hopes and struggles, won her to -himself, and shattered my frail universe. My sister, doubly dear, -doubly devoted, doubly cheerful in my home, lived on to see me famous, -and my old ambition so rewarded when its spring was broken, and then -- ”<br> -<br> -“Then died,” he interposed. “Died, gentle as -ever; happy; and with no concern but for her brother. Peace!”<br> -<br> -The Phantom watched him silently.<br> -<br> -“Remembered!” said the haunted man, after a pause. -“Yes. So well remembered, that even now, when years have -passed, and nothing is more idle or more visionary to me than the boyish -love so long outlived, I think of it with sympathy, as if it were a -younger brother’s or a son’s. Sometimes I even wonder -when her heart first inclined to him, and how it had been affected towards -me. - Not lightly, once, I think. - But that is nothing. Early -unhappiness, a wound from a hand I loved and trusted, and a loss that -nothing can replace, outlive such fancies.”<br> -<br> -“Thus,” said the Phantom, “I bear within me a Sorrow -and a Wrong. Thus I prey upon myself. Thus, memory is my -curse; and, if I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!”<br> -<br> -“Mocker!” said the Chemist, leaping up, and making, with -a wrathful hand, at the throat of his other self. “Why have -I always that taunt in my ears?”<br> -<br> -“Forbear!” exclaimed the Spectre in an awful voice. -“Lay a hand on Me, and die!”<br> -<br> -He stopped midway, as if its words had paralysed him, and stood looking -on it. It had glided from him; it had its arm raised high in warning; -and a smile passed over its unearthly features, as it reared its dark -figure in triumph.<br> -<br> -“If I could forget my sorrow and wrong, I would,” the Ghost -repeated. “If I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!”<br> -<br> -“Evil spirit of myself,” returned the haunted man, in a -low, trembling tone, “my life is darkened by that incessant whisper.”<br> -<br> -“It is an echo,” said the Phantom.<br> -<br> -“If it be an echo of my thoughts - as now, indeed, I know it is,” -rejoined the haunted man, “why should I, therefore, be tormented? -It is not a selfish thought. I suffer it to range beyond myself. -All men and women have their sorrows, - most of them their wrongs; ingratitude, -and sordid jealousy, and interest, besetting all degrees of life. -Who would not forget their sorrows and their wrongs?”<br> -<br> -“Who would not, truly, and be happier and better for it?” -said the Phantom.<br> -<br> -“These revolutions of years, which we commemorate,” proceeded -Redlaw, “what do <i>they</i> recall! Are there any minds -in which they do not re-awaken some sorrow, or some trouble? What -is the remembrance of the old man who was here to-night? A tissue -of sorrow and trouble.”<br> -<br> -“But common natures,” said the Phantom, with its evil smile -upon its glassy face, “unenlightened minds and ordinary spirits, -do not feel or reason on these things like men of higher cultivation -and profounder thought.”<br> -<br> -“Tempter,” answered Redlaw, “whose hollow look and -voice I dread more than words can express, and from whom some dim foreshadowing -of greater fear is stealing over me while I speak, I hear again an echo -of my own mind.”<br> -<br> -“Receive it as a proof that I am powerful,” returned the -Ghost. “Hear what I offer! Forget the sorrow, wrong, -and trouble you have known!”<br> -<br> -“Forget them!” he repeated.<br> -<br> -“I have the power to cancel their remembrance - to leave but very -faint, confused traces of them, that will die out soon,” returned -the Spectre. “Say! Is it done?”<br> -<br> -“Stay!” cried the haunted man, arresting by a terrified -gesture the uplifted hand. “I tremble with distrust and -doubt of you; and the dim fear you cast upon me deepens into a nameless -horror I can hardly bear. - I would not deprive myself of any kindly -recollection, or any sympathy that is good for me, or others. -What shall I lose, if I assent to this? What else will pass from -my remembrance?”<br> -<br> -“No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but the intertwisted -chain of feelings and associations, each in its turn dependent on, and -nourished by, the banished recollections. Those will go.”<br> -<br> -“Are they so many?” said the haunted man, reflecting in -alarm.<br> -<br> -“They have been wont to show themselves in the fire, in music, -in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolving years,” -returned the Phantom scornfully.<br> -<br> -“In nothing else?”<br> -<br> -The Phantom held its peace.<br> -<br> -But having stood before him, silent, for a little while, it moved towards -the fire; then stopped.<br> -<br> -“Decide!” it said, “before the opportunity is lost!”<br> -<br> -“A moment! I call Heaven to witness,” said the agitated -man, “that I have never been a hater of any kind, - never morose, -indifferent, or hard, to anything around me. If, living here alone, -I have made too much of all that was and might have been, and too little -of what is, the evil, I believe, has fallen on me, and not on others. -But, if there were poison in my body, should I not, possessed of antidotes -and knowledge how to use them, use them? If there be poison in -my mind, and through this fearful shadow I can cast it out, shall I -not cast it out?”<br> -<br> -“Say,” said the Spectre, “is it done?”<br> -<br> -“A moment longer!” he answered hurriedly. “<i>I -would forget it if I could</i>! Have <i>I</i> thought that, alone, -or has it been the thought of thousands upon thousands, generation after -generation? All human memory is fraught with sorrow and trouble. -My memory is as the memory of other men, but other men have not this -choice. Yes, I close the bargain. Yes! I WILL forget -my sorrow, wrong, and trouble!”<br> -<br> -“Say,” said the Spectre, “is it done?”<br> -<br> -“It is!”<br> -<br> -“IT IS. And take this with you, man whom I here renounce! -The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will. -Without recovering yourself the power that you have yielded up, you -shall henceforth destroy its like in all whom you approach. Your -wisdom has discovered that the memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble -is the lot of all mankind, and that mankind would be the happier, in -its other memories, without it. Go! Be its benefactor! -Freed from such remembrance, from this hour, carry involuntarily the -blessing of such freedom with you. Its diffusion is inseparable -and inalienable from you. Go! Be happy in the good you have -won, and in the good you do!”<br> -<br> -The Phantom, which had held its bloodless hand above him while it spoke, -as if in some unholy invocation, or some ban; and which had gradually -advanced its eyes so close to his, that he could see how they did not -participate in the terrible smile upon its face, but were a fixed, unalterable, -steady horror melted before him and was gone.<br> -<br> -As he stood rooted to the spot, possessed by fear and wonder, and imagining -he heard repeated in melancholy echoes, dying away fainter and fainter, -the words, “Destroy its like in all whom you approach!” -a shrill cry reached his ears. It came, not from the passages -beyond the door, but from another part of the old building, and sounded -like the cry of some one in the dark who had lost the way.<br> -<br> -He looked confusedly upon his hands and limbs, as if to be assured of -his identity, and then shouted in reply, loudly and wildly; for there -was a strangeness and terror upon him, as if he too were lost.<br> -<br> -The cry responding, and being nearer, he caught up the lamp, and raised -a heavy curtain in the wall, by which he was accustomed to pass into -and out of the theatre where he lectured, - which adjoined his room. -Associated with youth and animation, and a high amphitheatre of faces -which his entrance charmed to interest in a moment, it was a ghostly -place when all this life was faded out of it, and stared upon him like -an emblem of Death.<br> -<br> -“Halloa!” he cried. “Halloa! This way! -Come to the light!” When, as he held the curtain with one -hand, and with the other raised the lamp and tried to pierce the gloom -that filled the place, something rushed past him into the room like -a wild-cat, and crouched down in a corner.<br> -<br> -“What is it?” he said, hastily.<br> -<br> -He might have asked “What is it?” even had he seen it well, -as presently he did when he stood looking at it gathered up in its corner.<br> -<br> -A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and form almost -an infant’s, but in its greedy, desperate little clutch, a bad -old man’s. A face rounded and smoothed by some half-dozen -years, but pinched and twisted by the experiences of a life. Bright -eyes, but not youthful. Naked feet, beautiful in their childish -delicacy, - ugly in the blood and dirt that cracked upon them. -A baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been a child, -a creature who might live to take the outward form of man, but who, -within, would live and perish a mere beast.<br> -<br> -Used, already, to be worried and hunted like a beast, the boy crouched -down as he was looked at, and looked back again, and interposed his -arm to ward off the expected blow.<br> -<br> -“I’ll bite,” he said, “if you hit me!”<br> -<br> -The time had been, and not many minutes since, when such a sight as -this would have wrung the Chemist’s heart. He looked upon -it now, coldly; but with a heavy effort to remember something - he did -not know what - he asked the boy what he did there, and whence he came.<br> -<br> -“Where’s the woman?” he replied. “I want -to find the woman.”<br> -<br> -“Who?”<br> -<br> -“The woman. Her that brought me here, and set me by the -large fire. She was so long gone, that I went to look for her, -and lost myself. I don’t want you. I want the woman.”<br> -<br> -He made a spring, so suddenly, to get away, that the dull sound of his -naked feet upon the floor was near the curtain, when Redlaw caught him -by his rags.<br> -<br> -“Come! you let me go!” muttered the boy, struggling, and -clenching his teeth. “I’ve done nothing to you. -Let me go, will you, to the woman!”<br> -<br> -“That is not the way. There is a nearer one,” said -Redlaw, detaining him, in the same blank effort to remember some association -that ought, of right, to bear upon this monstrous object. “What -is your name?”<br> -<br> -“Got none.”<br> -<br> -“Where do you live?<br> -<br> -“Live! What’s that?”<br> -<br> -The boy shook his hair from his eyes to look at him for a moment, and -then, twisting round his legs and wrestling with him, broke again into -his repetition of “You let me go, will you? I want to find -the woman.”<br> -<br> -The Chemist led him to the door. “This way,” he said, -looking at him still confusedly, but with repugnance and avoidance, -growing out of his coldness. “I’ll take you to her.”<br> -<br> -The sharp eyes in the child’s head, wandering round the room, -lighted on the table where the remnants of the dinner were.<br> -<br> -“Give me some of that!” he said, covetously.<br> -<br> -“Has she not fed you?”<br> -<br> -“I shall be hungry again to-morrow, sha’n’t I? -Ain’t I hungry every day?”<br> -<br> -Finding himself released, he bounded at the table like some small animal -of prey, and hugging to his breast bread and meat, and his own rags, -all together, said:<br> -<br> -“There! Now take me to the woman!”<br> -<br> -As the Chemist, with a new-born dislike to touch him, sternly motioned -him to follow, and was going out of the door, he trembled and stopped.<br> -<br> -“The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you -will!”<br> -<br> -The Phantom’s words were blowing in the wind, and the wind blew -chill upon him.<br> -<br> -“I’ll not go there, to-night,” he murmured faintly. -“I’ll go nowhere to-night. Boy! straight down this -long-arched passage, and past the great dark door into the yard, - you -see the fire shining on the window there.”<br> -<br> -“The woman’s fire?” inquired the boy.<br> -<br> -He nodded, and the naked feet had sprung away. He came back with -his lamp, locked his door hastily, and sat down in his chair, covering -his face like one who was frightened at himself.<br> -<br> -For now he was, indeed, alone. Alone, alone.<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -CHAPTER II - The Gift Diffused<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -A small man sat in a small parlour, partitioned off from a small shop -by a small screen, pasted all over with small scraps of newspapers. -In company with the small man, was almost any amount of small children -you may please to name - at least it seemed so; they made, in that very -limited sphere of action, such an imposing effect, in point of numbers.<br> -<br> -Of these small fry, two had, by some strong machinery, been got into -bed in a corner, where they might have reposed snugly enough in the -sleep of innocence, but for a constitutional propensity to keep awake, -and also to scuffle in and out of bed. The immediate occasion -of these predatory dashes at the waking world, was the construction -of an oyster-shell wall in a corner, by two other youths of tender age; -on which fortification the two in bed made harassing descents (like -those accursed Picts and Scots who beleaguer the early historical studies -of most young Britons), and then withdrew to their own territory.<br> -<br> -In addition to the stir attendant on these inroads, and the retorts -of the invaded, who pursued hotly, and made lunges at the bed-clothes -under which the marauders took refuge, another little boy, in another -little bed, contributed his mite of confusion to the family stock, by -casting his boots upon the waters; in other words, by launching these -and several small objects, inoffensive in themselves, though of a hard -substance considered as missiles, at the disturbers of his repose, - -who were not slow to return these compliments.<br> -<br> -Besides which, another little boy - the biggest there, but still little -- was tottering to and fro, bent on one side, and considerably affected -in his knees by the weight of a large baby, which he was supposed by -a fiction that obtains sometimes in sanguine families, to be hushing -to sleep. But oh! the inexhaustible regions of contemplation and -watchfulness into which this baby’s eyes were then only beginning -to compose themselves to stare, over his unconscious shoulder!<br> -<br> -It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar the whole existence -of this particular young brother was offered up a daily sacrifice. -Its personality may be said to have consisted in its never being quiet, -in any one place, for five consecutive minutes, and never going to sleep -when required. “Tetterby’s baby” was as well -known in the neighbourhood as the postman or the pot-boy. It roved -from door-step to door-step, in the arms of little Johnny Tetterby, -and lagged heavily at the rear of troops of juveniles who followed the -Tumblers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one side, a little too late -for everything that was attractive, from Monday morning until Saturday -night. Wherever childhood congregated to play, there was little -Moloch making Johnny fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired to -stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would not remain. Whenever -Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep, and must be watched. -Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch was awake, and must be -taken out. Yet Johnny was verily persuaded that it was a faultless -baby, without its peer in the realm of England, and was quite content -to catch meek glimpses of things in general from behind its skirts, -or over its limp flapping bonnet, and to go staggering about with it -like a very little porter with a very large parcel, which was not directed -to anybody, and could never be delivered anywhere.<br> -<br> -The small man who sat in the small parlour, making fruitless attempts -to read his newspaper peaceably in the midst of this disturbance, was -the father of the family, and the chief of the firm described in the -inscription over the little shop front, by the name and title of A. -TETTERBY AND CO., NEWSMEN. Indeed, strictly speaking, he was the -only personage answering to that designation, as Co. was a mere poetical -abstraction, altogether baseless and impersonal.<br> -<br> -Tetterby’s was the corner shop in Jerusalem Buildings. There -was a good show of literature in the window, chiefly consisting of picture-newspapers -out of date, and serial pirates, and footpads. Walking-sticks, -likewise, and marbles, were included in the stock in trade. It -had once extended into the light confectionery line; but it would seem -that those elegancies of life were not in demand about Jerusalem Buildings, -for nothing connected with that branch of commerce remained in the window, -except a sort of small glass lantern containing a languishing mass of -bull’s-eyes, which had melted in the summer and congealed in the -winter until all hope of ever getting them out, or of eating them without -eating the lantern too, was gone for ever. Tetterby’s had -tried its hand at several things. It had once made a feeble little -dart at the toy business; for, in another lantern, there was a heap -of minute wax dolls, all sticking together upside down, in the direst -confusion, with their feet on one another’s heads, and a precipitate -of broken arms and legs at the bottom. It had made a move in the -millinery direction, which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes remained in -a corner of the window to attest. It had fancied that a living -might lie hidden in the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a representation -of a native of each of the three integral portions of the British Empire, -in the act of consuming that fragrant weed; with a poetic legend attached, -importing that united in one cause they sat and joked, one chewed tobacco, -one took snuff, one smoked: but nothing seemed to have come of it - -except flies. Time had been when it had put a forlorn trust in -imitative jewellery, for in one pane of glass there was a card of cheap -seals, and another of pencil-cases, and a mysterious black amulet of -inscrutable intention, labelled ninepence. But, to that hour, -Jerusalem Buildings had bought none of them. In short, Tetterby’s -had tried so hard to get a livelihood out of Jerusalem Buildings in -one way or other, and appeared to have done so indifferently in all, -that the best position in the firm was too evidently Co.’s; Co., -as a bodiless creation, being untroubled with the vulgar inconveniences -of hunger and thirst, being chargeable neither to the poor’s-rates -nor the assessed taxes, and having no young family to provide for.<br> -<br> -Tetterby himself, however, in his little parlour, as already mentioned, -having the presence of a young family impressed upon his mind in a manner -too clamorous to be disregarded, or to comport with the quiet perusal -of a newspaper, laid down his paper, wheeled, in his distraction, a -few times round the parlour, like an undecided carrier-pigeon, made -an ineffectual rush at one or two flying little figures in bed-gowns -that skimmed past him, and then, bearing suddenly down upon the only -unoffending member of the family, boxed the ears of little Moloch’s -nurse.<br> -<br> -“You bad boy!” said Mr. Tetterby, “haven’t you -any feeling for your poor father after the fatigues and anxieties of -a hard winter’s day, since five o’clock in the morning, -but must you wither his rest, and corrode his latest intelligence, with -<i>your</i> wicious tricks? Isn’t it enough, sir, that your -brother ’Dolphus is toiling and moiling in the fog and cold, and -you rolling in the lap of luxury with a - with a baby, and everything -you can wish for,” said Mr. Tetterby, heaping this up as a great -climax of blessings, “but must you make a wilderness of home, -and maniacs of your parents? Must you, Johnny? Hey?” -At each interrogation, Mr. Tetterby made a feint of boxing his ears -again, but thought better of it, and held his hand.<br> -<br> -“Oh, father!” whimpered Johnny, “when I wasn’t -doing anything, I’m sure, but taking such care of Sally, and getting -her to sleep. Oh, father!”<br> -<br> -“I wish my little woman would come home!” said Mr. Tetterby, -relenting and repenting, “I only wish my little woman would come -home! I ain’t fit to deal with ’em. They make -my head go round, and get the better of me. Oh, Johnny! -Isn’t it enough that your dear mother has provided you with that -sweet sister?” indicating Moloch; “isn’t it enough -that you were seven boys before without a ray of gal, and that your -dear mother went through what she <i>did</i> go through, on purpose -that you might all of you have a little sister, but must you so behave -yourself as to make my head swim?”<br> -<br> -Softening more and more, as his own tender feelings and those of his -injured son were worked on, Mr. Tetterby concluded by embracing him, -and immediately breaking away to catch one of the real delinquents. -A reasonably good start occurring, he succeeded, after a short but smart -run, and some rather severe cross-country work under and over the bedsteads, -and in and out among the intricacies of the chairs, in capturing this -infant, whom he condignly punished, and bore to bed. This example -had a powerful, and apparently, mesmeric influence on him of the boots, -who instantly fell into a deep sleep, though he had been, but a moment -before, broad awake, and in the highest possible feather. Nor -was it lost upon the two young architects, who retired to bed, in an -adjoining closet, with great privacy and speed. The comrade of -the Intercepted One also shrinking into his nest with similar discretion, -Mr. Tetterby, when he paused for breath, found himself unexpectedly -in a scene of peace.<br> -<br> -“My little woman herself,” said Mr. Tetterby, wiping his -flushed face, “could hardly have done it better! I only -wish my little woman had had it to do, I do indeed!”<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby sought upon his screen for a passage appropriate to be -impressed upon his children’s minds on the occasion, and read -the following.<br> -<br> -“‘It is an undoubted fact that all remarkable men have had -remarkable mothers, and have respected them in after life as their best -friends.’ Think of your own remarkable mother, my boys,” -said Mr. Tetterby, “and know her value while she is still among -you!”<br> -<br> -He sat down again in his chair by the fire, and composed himself, cross-legged, -over his newspaper.<br> -<br> -“Let anybody, I don’t care who it is, get out of bed again,” -said Tetterby, as a general proclamation, delivered in a very soft-hearted -manner, “and astonishment will be the portion of that respected -contemporary!” - which expression Mr. Tetterby selected from his -screen. “Johnny, my child, take care of your only sister, -Sally; for she’s the brightest gem that ever sparkled on your -early brow.”<br> -<br> -Johnny sat down on a little stool, and devotedly crushed himself beneath -the weight of Moloch.<br> -<br> -“Ah, what a gift that baby is to you, Johnny!” said his -father, “and how thankful you ought to be! ‘It is -not generally known, Johnny,’” he was now referring to the -screen again, “‘but it is a fact ascertained, by accurate -calculations, that the following immense percentage of babies never -attain to two years old; that is to say - ’”<br> -<br> -“Oh, don’t, father, please!” cried Johnny. “I -can’t bear it, when I think of Sally.”<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby desisting, Johnny, with a profound sense of his trust, -wiped his eyes, and hushed his sister.<br> -<br> -“Your brother ’Dolphus,” said his father, poking the -fire, “is late to-night, Johnny, and will come home like a lump -of ice. What’s got your precious mother?”<br> -<br> -“Here’s mother, and ’Dolphus too, father!” exclaimed -Johnny, “I think.”<br> -<br> -“You’re right!” returned his father, listening. -“Yes, that’s the footstep of my little woman.”<br> -<br> -The process of induction, by which Mr Tetterby had come to the conclusion -that his wife was a little woman, was his own secret. She would -have made two editions of himself, very easily. Considered as -an individual, she was rather remarkable for being robust and portly; -but considered with reference to her husband, her dimensions became -magnificent. Nor did they assume a less imposing proportion, when -studied with reference to the size of her seven sons, who were but diminutive. -In the case of Sally, however, Mrs. Tetterby had asserted herself, at -last; as nobody knew better than the victim Johnny, who weighed and -measured that exacting idol every hour in the day.<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby, who had been marketing, and carried a basket, threw back -her bonnet and shawl, and sitting down, fatigued, commanded Johnny to -bring his sweet charge to her straightway, for a kiss. Johnny -having complied, and gone back to his stool, and again crushed himself, -Master Adolphus Tetterby, who had by this time unwound his torso out -of a prismatic comforter, apparently interminable, requested the same -favour. Johnny having again complied, and again gone back to his -stool, and again crushed himself, Mr. Tetterby, struck by a sudden thought, -preferred the same claim on his own parental part. The satisfaction -of this third desire completely exhausted the sacrifice, who had hardly -breath enough left to get back to his stool, crush himself again, and -pant at his relations.<br> -<br> -“Whatever you do, Johnny,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking her -head, “take care of her, or never look your mother in the face -again.”<br> -<br> -“Nor your brother,” said Adolphus.<br> -<br> -“Nor your father, Johnny,” added Mr. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -Johnny, much affected by this conditional renunciation of him, looked -down at Moloch’s eyes to see that they were all right, so far, -and skilfully patted her back (which was uppermost), and rocked her -with his foot.<br> -<br> -“Are you wet, ’Dolphus, my boy?” said his father. -“Come and take my chair, and dry yourself.”<br> -<br> -“No, father, thank’ee,” said Adolphus, smoothing himself -down with his hands. “I an’t very wet, I don’t -think. Does my face shine much, father?”<br> -<br> -“Well, it <i>does</i> look waxy, my boy,” returned Mr. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“It’s the weather, father,” said Adolphus, polishing -his cheeks on the worn sleeve of his jacket. “What with -rain, and sleet, and wind, and snow, and fog, my face gets quite brought -out into a rash sometimes. And shines, it does - oh, don’t -it, though!”<br> -<br> -Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper line of life, being employed, -by a more thriving firm than his father and Co., to vend newspapers -at a railway station, where his chubby little person, like a shabbily-disguised -Cupid, and his shrill little voice (he was not much more than ten years -old), were as well known as the hoarse panting of the locomotives, running -in and out. His juvenility might have been at some loss for a -harmless outlet, in this early application to traffic, but for a fortunate -discovery he made of a means of entertaining himself, and of dividing -the long day into stages of interest, without neglecting business. -This ingenious invention, remarkable, like many great discoveries, for -its simplicity, consisted in varying the first vowel in the word “paper,” -and substituting, in its stead, at different periods of the day, all -the other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus, before daylight -in the winter-time, he went to and fro, in his little oilskin cap and -cape, and his big comforter, piercing the heavy air with his cry of -“Morn-ing Pa-per!” which, about an hour before noon, changed -to “Morn-ing Pepper!” which, at about two, changed to “Morn-ing -Pip-per!” which in a couple of hours changed to “Morn-ing -Pop-per!” and so declined with the sun into “Eve-ning Pup-per!” -to the great relief and comfort of this young gentleman’s spirits.<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby, his lady-mother, who had been sitting with her bonnet -and shawl thrown back, as aforesaid, thoughtfully turning her wedding-ring -round and round upon her finger, now rose, and divesting herself of -her out-of-door attire, began to lay the cloth for supper.<br> -<br> -“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs. Tetterby. -“That’s the way the world goes!”<br> -<br> -“Which is the way the world goes, my dear?” asked Mr. Tetterby, -looking round.<br> -<br> -“Oh, nothing,” said Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby elevated his eyebrows, folded his newspaper afresh, and -carried his eyes up it, and down it, and across it, but was wandering -in his attention, and not reading it.<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby, at the same time, laid the cloth, but rather as if she -were punishing the table than preparing the family supper; hitting it -unnecessarily hard with the knives and forks, slapping it with the plates, -dinting it with the salt-cellar, and coming heavily down upon it with -the loaf.<br> -<br> -“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs. Tetterby. -“That’s the way the world goes!”<br> -<br> -“My duck,” returned her husband, looking round again, “you -said that before. Which is the way the world goes?”<br> -<br> -“Oh, nothing!” said Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“Sophia!” remonstrated her husband, “you said <i>that</i> -before, too.”<br> -<br> -“Well, I’ll say it again if you like,” returned Mrs. -Tetterby. “Oh nothing - there! And again if you like, -oh nothing - there! And again if you like, oh nothing - now then!”<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby brought his eye to bear upon the partner of his bosom, -and said, in mild astonishment:<br> -<br> -“My little woman, what has put you out?”<br> -<br> -“I’m sure <i>I</i> don’t know,” she retorted. -“Don’t ask me. Who said I was put out at all? -<i>I</i> never did.”<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby gave up the perusal of his newspaper as a bad job, and, -taking a slow walk across the room, with his hands behind him, and his -shoulders raised - his gait according perfectly with the resignation -of his manner - addressed himself to his two eldest offspring.<br> -<br> -“Your supper will be ready in a minute, ’Dolphus,” -said Mr. Tetterby. “Your mother has been out in the wet, -to the cook’s shop, to buy it. It was very good of your -mother so to do. <i>You</i> shall get some supper too, very soon, -Johnny. Your mother’s pleased with you, my man, for being -so attentive to your precious sister.”<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby, without any remark, but with a decided subsidence of -her animosity towards the table, finished her preparations, and took, -from her ample basket, a substantial slab of hot pease pudding wrapped -in paper, and a basin covered with a saucer, which, on being uncovered, -sent forth an odour so agreeable, that the three pair of eyes in the -two beds opened wide and fixed themselves upon the banquet. Mr. -Tetterby, without regarding this tacit invitation to be seated, stood -repeating slowly, “Yes, yes, your supper will be ready in a minute, -’Dolphus - your mother went out in the wet, to the cook’s -shop, to buy it. It was very good of your mother so to do” -- until Mrs. Tetterby, who had been exhibiting sundry tokens of contrition -behind him, caught him round the neck, and wept.<br> -<br> -“Oh, Dolphus!” said Mrs. Tetterby, “how could I go -and behave so?”<br> -<br> -This reconciliation affected Adolphus the younger and Johnny to that -degree, that they both, as with one accord, raised a dismal cry, which -had the effect of immediately shutting up the round eyes in the beds, -and utterly routing the two remaining little Tetterbys, just then stealing -in from the adjoining closet to see what was going on in the eating -way.<br> -<br> -“I am sure, ’Dolphus,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, “coming -home, I had no more idea than a child unborn - ”<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby seemed to dislike this figure of speech, and observed, -“Say than the baby, my dear.”<br> -<br> -“ - Had no more idea than the baby,” said Mrs. Tetterby. -- “Johnny, don’t look at me, but look at her, or she’ll -fall out of your lap and be killed, and then you’ll die in agonies -of a broken heart, and serve you right. - No more idea I hadn’t -than that darling, of being cross when I came home; but somehow, ’Dolphus -- ” Mrs. Tetterby paused, and again turned her wedding-ring -round and round upon her finger.<br> -<br> -“I see!” said Mr. Tetterby. “I understand! -My little woman was put out. Hard times, and hard weather, and -hard work, make it trying now and then. I see, bless your soul! -No wonder! Dolf, my man,” continued Mr. Tetterby, exploring -the basin with a fork, “here’s your mother been and bought, -at the cook’s shop, besides pease pudding, a whole knuckle of -a lovely roast leg of pork, with lots of crackling left upon it, and -with seasoning gravy and mustard quite unlimited. Hand in your -plate, my boy, and begin while it’s simmering.”<br> -<br> -Master Adolphus, needing no second summons, received his portion with -eyes rendered moist by appetite, and withdrawing to his particular stool, -fell upon his supper tooth and nail. Johnny was not forgotten, -but received his rations on bread, lest he should, in a flush of gravy, -trickle any on the baby. He was required, for similar reasons, -to keep his pudding, when not on active service, in his pocket.<br> -<br> -There might have been more pork on the knucklebone, - which knucklebone -the carver at the cook’s shop had assuredly not forgotten in carving -for previous customers - but there was no stint of seasoning, and that -is an accessory dreamily suggesting pork, and pleasantly cheating the -sense of taste. The pease pudding, too, the gravy and mustard, -like the Eastern rose in respect of the nightingale, if they were not -absolutely pork, had lived near it; so, upon the whole, there was the -flavour of a middle-sized pig. It was irresistible to the Tetterbys -in bed, who, though professing to slumber peacefully, crawled out when -unseen by their parents, and silently appealed to their brothers for -any gastronomic token of fraternal affection. They, not hard of -heart, presenting scraps in return, it resulted that a party of light -skirmishers in nightgowns were careering about the parlour all through -supper, which harassed Mr. Tetterby exceedingly, and once or twice imposed -upon him the necessity of a charge, before which these guerilla troops -retired in all directions and in great confusion.<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby did not enjoy her supper. There seemed to be something -on Mrs. Tetterby’s mind. At one time she laughed without -reason, and at another time she cried without reason, and at last she -laughed and cried together in a manner so very unreasonable that her -husband was confounded.<br> -<br> -“My little woman,” said Mr. Tetterby, “if the world -goes that way, it appears to go the wrong way, and to choke you.”<br> -<br> -“Give me a drop of water,” said Mrs. Tetterby, struggling -with herself, “and don’t speak to me for the present, or -take any notice of me. Don’t do it!”<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby having administered the water, turned suddenly on the unlucky -Johnny (who was full of sympathy), and demanded why he was wallowing -there, in gluttony and idleness, instead of coming forward with the -baby, that the sight of her might revive his mother. Johnny immediately -approached, borne down by its weight; but Mrs. Tetterby holding out -her hand to signify that she was not in a condition to bear that trying -appeal to her feelings, he was interdicted from advancing another inch, -on pain of perpetual hatred from all his dearest connections; and accordingly -retired to his stool again, and crushed himself as before.<br> -<br> -After a pause, Mrs. Tetterby said she was better now, and began to laugh.<br> -<br> -“My little woman,” said her husband, dubiously, “are -you quite sure you’re better? Or are you, Sophia, about -to break out in a fresh direction?”<br> -<br> -“No, ’Dolphus, no,” replied his wife. “I’m -quite myself.” With that, settling her hair, and pressing -the palms of her hands upon her eyes, she laughed again.<br> -<br> -“What a wicked fool I was, to think so for a moment!” said -Mrs. Tetterby. “Come nearer, ’Dolphus, and let me -ease my mind, and tell you what I mean. Let me tell you all about -it.”<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby bringing his chair closer, Mrs. Tetterby laughed again, -gave him a hug, and wiped her eyes.<br> -<br> -“You know, Dolphus, my dear,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “that -when I was single, I might have given myself away in several directions. -At one time, four after me at once; two of them were sons of Mars.”<br> -<br> -“We’re all sons of Ma’s, my dear,” said Mr. -Tetterby, “jointly with Pa’s.”<br> -<br> -“I don’t mean that,” replied his wife, “I mean -soldiers - serjeants.”<br> -<br> -“Oh!” said Mr. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“Well, ’Dolphus, I’m sure I never think of such things -now, to regret them; and I’m sure I’ve got as good a husband, -and would do as much to prove that I was fond of him, as - ”<br> -<br> -“As any little woman in the world,” said Mr. Tetterby. -“Very good. <i>Very</i> good.”<br> -<br> -If Mr. Tetterby had been ten feet high, he could not have expressed -a gentler consideration for Mrs. Tetterby’s fairy-like stature; -and if Mrs. Tetterby had been two feet high, she could not have felt -it more appropriately her due.<br> -<br> -“But you see, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “this -being Christmas-time, when all people who can, make holiday, and when -all people who have got money, like to spend some, I did, somehow, get -a little out of sorts when I was in the streets just now. There -were so many things to be sold - such delicious things to eat, such -fine things to look at, such delightful things to have - and there was -so much calculating and calculating necessary, before I durst lay out -a sixpence for the commonest thing; and the basket was so large, and -wanted so much in it; and my stock of money was so small, and would -go such a little way; - you hate me, don’t you, ’Dolphus?”<br> -<br> -“Not quite,” said Mr. Tetterby, “as yet.”<br> -<br> -“Well! I’ll tell you the whole truth,” pursued -his wife, penitently, “and then perhaps you will. I felt -all this, so much, when I was trudging about in the cold, and when I -saw a lot of other calculating faces and large baskets trudging about, -too, that I began to think whether I mightn’t have done better, -and been happier, if - I - hadn’t - ” the wedding-ring went -round again, and Mrs. Tetterby shook her downcast head as she turned -it.<br> -<br> -“I see,” said her husband quietly; “if you hadn’t -married at all, or if you had married somebody else?”<br> -<br> -“Yes,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby. “That’s really -what I thought. Do you hate me now, ’Dolphus?”<br> -<br> -“Why no,” said Mr. Tetterby. “I don’t -find that I do, as yet.”<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby gave him a thankful kiss, and went on.<br> -<br> -“I begin to hope you won’t, now, ’Dolphus, though -I’m afraid I haven’t told you the worst. I can’t -think what came over me. I don’t know whether I was ill, -or mad, or what I was, but I couldn’t call up anything that seemed -to bind us to each other, or to reconcile me to my fortune. All -the pleasures and enjoyments we had ever had - <i>they</i> seemed so -poor and insignificant, I hated them. I could have trodden on -them. And I could think of nothing else, except our being poor, -and the number of mouths there were at home.”<br> -<br> -“Well, well, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, shaking her hand -encouragingly, “that’s truth, after all. We <i>are</i> -poor, and there <i>are</i> a number of mouths at home here.”<br> -<br> -“Ah! but, Dolf, Dolf!” cried his wife, laying her hands -upon his neck, “my good, kind, patient fellow, when I had been -at home a very little while - how different! Oh, Dolf, dear, how -different it was! I felt as if there was a rush of recollection -on me, all at once, that softened my hard heart, and filled it up till -it was bursting. All our struggles for a livelihood, all our cares -and wants since we have been married, all the times of sickness, all -the hours of watching, we have ever had, by one another, or by the children, -seemed to speak to me, and say that they had made us one, and that I -never might have been, or could have been, or would have been, any other -than the wife and mother I am. Then, the cheap enjoyments that -I could have trodden on so cruelly, got to be so precious to me - Oh -so priceless, and dear! - that I couldn’t bear to think how much -I had wronged them; and I said, and say again a hundred times, how could -I ever behave so, ’Dolphus, how could I ever have the heart to -do it!”<br> -<br> -The good woman, quite carried away by her honest tenderness and remorse, -was weeping with all her heart, when she started up with a scream, and -ran behind her husband. Her cry was so terrified, that the children -started from their sleep and from their beds, and clung about her. -Nor did her gaze belie her voice, as she pointed to a pale man in a -black cloak who had come into the room.<br> -<br> -“Look at that man! Look there! What does he want?”<br> -<br> -“My dear,” returned her husband, “I’ll ask him -if you’ll let me go. What’s the matter! How -you shake!”<br> -<br> -“I saw him in the street, when I was out just now. He looked -at me, and stood near me. I am afraid of him.”<br> -<br> -“Afraid of him! Why?”<br> -<br> -“I don’t know why - I - stop! husband!” for he was -going towards the stranger.<br> -<br> -She had one hand pressed upon her forehead, and one upon her breast; -and there was a peculiar fluttering all over her, and a hurried unsteady -motion of her eyes, as if she had lost something.<br> -<br> -“Are you ill, my dear?”<br> -<br> -“What is it that is going from me again?” she muttered, -in a low voice. “What <i>is</i> this that is going away?”<br> -<br> -Then she abruptly answered: “Ill? No, I am quite well,” -and stood looking vacantly at the floor.<br> -<br> -Her husband, who had not been altogether free from the infection of -her fear at first, and whom the present strangeness of her manner did -not tend to reassure, addressed himself to the pale visitor in the black -cloak, who stood still, and whose eyes were bent upon the ground.<br> -<br> -“What may be your pleasure, sir,” he asked, “with -us?”<br> -<br> -“I fear that my coming in unperceived,” returned the visitor, -“has alarmed you; but you were talking and did not hear me.”<br> -<br> -“My little woman says - perhaps you heard her say it,” returned -Mr. Tetterby, “that it’s not the first time you have alarmed -her to-night.”<br> -<br> -“I am sorry for it. I remember to have observed her, for -a few moments only, in the street. I had no intention of frightening -her.”<br> -<br> -As he raised his eyes in speaking, she raised hers. It was extraordinary -to see what dread she had of him, and with what dread he observed it -- and yet how narrowly and closely.<br> -<br> -“My name,” he said, “is Redlaw. I come from -the old college hard by. A young gentleman who is a student there, -lodges in your house, does he not?”<br> -<br> -“Mr. Denham?” said Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“Yes.”<br> -<br> -It was a natural action, and so slight as to be hardly noticeable; but -the little man, before speaking again, passed his hand across his forehead, -and looked quickly round the room, as though he were sensible of some -change in its atmosphere. The Chemist, instantly transferring -to him the look of dread he had directed towards the wife, stepped back, -and his face turned paler.<br> -<br> -“The gentleman’s room,” said Tetterby, “is upstairs, -sir. There’s a more convenient private entrance; but as -you have come in here, it will save your going out into the cold, if -you’ll take this little staircase,” showing one communicating -directly with the parlour, “and go up to him that way, if you -wish to see him.”<br> -<br> -“Yes, I wish to see him,” said the Chemist. “Can -you spare a light?”<br> -<br> -The watchfulness of his haggard look, and the inexplicable distrust -that darkened it, seemed to trouble Mr. Tetterby. He paused; and -looking fixedly at him in return, stood for a minute or so, like a man -stupefied, or fascinated.<br> -<br> -At length he said, “I’ll light you, sir, if you’ll -follow me.”<br> -<br> -“No,” replied the Chemist, “I don’t wish to -be attended, or announced to him. He does not expect me. -I would rather go alone. Please to give me the light, if you can -spare it, and I’ll find the way.”<br> -<br> -In the quickness of his expression of this desire, and in taking the -candle from the newsman, he touched him on the breast. Withdrawing -his hand hastily, almost as though he had wounded him by accident (for -he did not know in what part of himself his new power resided, or how -it was communicated, or how the manner of its reception varied in different -persons), he turned and ascended the stair.<br> -<br> -But when he reached the top, he stopped and looked down. The wife -was standing in the same place, twisting her ring round and round upon -her finger. The husband, with his head bent forward on his breast, -was musing heavily and sullenly. The children, still clustering -about the mother, gazed timidly after the visitor, and nestled together -when they saw him looking down.<br> -<br> -“Come!” said the father, roughly. “There’s -enough of this. Get to bed here!”<br> -<br> -“The place is inconvenient and small enough,” the mother -added, “without you. Get to bed!”<br> -<br> -The whole brood, scared and sad, crept away; little Johnny and the baby -lagging last. The mother, glancing contemptuously round the sordid -room, and tossing from her the fragments of their meal, stopped on the -threshold of her task of clearing the table, and sat down, pondering -idly and dejectedly. The father betook himself to the chimney-corner, -and impatiently raking the small fire together, bent over it as if he -would monopolise it all. They did not interchange a word.<br> -<br> -The Chemist, paler than before, stole upward like a thief; looking back -upon the change below, and dreading equally to go on or return.<br> -<br> -“What have I done!” he said, confusedly. “What -am I going to do!”<br> -<br> -“To be the benefactor of mankind,” he thought he heard a -voice reply.<br> -<br> -He looked round, but there was nothing there; and a passage now shutting -out the little parlour from his view, he went on, directing his eyes -before him at the way he went.<br> -<br> -“It is only since last night,” he muttered gloomily, “that -I have remained shut up, and yet all things are strange to me. -I am strange to myself. I am here, as in a dream. What interest -have I in this place, or in any place that I can bring to my remembrance? -My mind is going blind!”<br> -<br> -There was a door before him, and he knocked at it. Being invited, -by a voice within, to enter, he complied.<br> -<br> -“Is that my kind nurse?” said the voice. “But -I need not ask her. There is no one else to come here.”<br> -<br> -It spoke cheerfully, though in a languid tone, and attracted his attention -to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before the chimney-piece, with -the back towards the door. A meagre scanty stove, pinched and -hollowed like a sick man’s cheeks, and bricked into the centre -of a hearth that it could scarcely warm, contained the fire, to which -his face was turned. Being so near the windy house-top, it wasted -quickly, and with a busy sound, and the burning ashes dropped down fast.<br> -<br> -“They chink when they shoot out here,” said the student, -smiling, “so, according to the gossips, they are not coffins, -but purses. I shall be well and rich yet, some day, if it please -God, and shall live perhaps to love a daughter Milly, in remembrance -of the kindest nature and the gentlest heart in the world.”<br> -<br> -He put up his hand as if expecting her to take it, but, being weakened, -he lay still, with his face resting on his other hand, and did not turn -round.<br> -<br> -The Chemist glanced about the room; - at the student’s books and -papers, piled upon a table in a corner, where they, and his extinguished -reading-lamp, now prohibited and put away, told of the attentive hours -that had gone before this illness, and perhaps caused it; - at such -signs of his old health and freedom, as the out-of-door attire that -hung idle on the wall; - at those remembrances of other and less solitary -scenes, the little miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and the drawing -of home; - at that token of his emulation, perhaps, in some sort, of -his personal attachment too, the framed engraving of himself, the looker-on. -The time had been, only yesterday, when not one of these objects, in -its remotest association of interest with the living figure before him, -would have been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but objects; or, -if any gleam of such connexion shot upon him, it perplexed, and not -enlightened him, as he stood looking round with a dull wonder.<br> -<br> -The student, recalling the thin hand which had remained so long untouched, -raised himself on the couch, and turned his head.<br> -<br> -“Mr. Redlaw!” he exclaimed, and started up.<br> -<br> -Redlaw put out his arm.<br> -<br> -“Don’t come nearer to me. I will sit here. Remain -you, where you are!”<br> -<br> -He sat down on a chair near the door, and having glanced at the young -man standing leaning with his hand upon the couch, spoke with his eyes -averted towards the ground.<br> -<br> -“I heard, by an accident, by what accident is no matter, that -one of my class was ill and solitary. I received no other description -of him, than that he lived in this street. Beginning my inquiries -at the first house in it, I have found him.”<br> -<br> -“I have been ill, sir,” returned the student, not merely -with a modest hesitation, but with a kind of awe of him, “but -am greatly better. An attack of fever - of the brain, I believe -- has weakened me, but I am much better. I cannot say I have been -solitary, in my illness, or I should forget the ministering hand that -has been near me.”<br> -<br> -“You are speaking of the keeper’s wife,” said Redlaw.<br> -<br> -“Yes.” The student bent his head, as if he rendered -her some silent homage.<br> -<br> -The Chemist, in whom there was a cold, monotonous apathy, which rendered -him more like a marble image on the tomb of the man who had started -from his dinner yesterday at the first mention of this student’s -case, than the breathing man himself, glanced again at the student leaning -with his hand upon the couch, and looked upon the ground, and in the -air, as if for light for his blinded mind.<br> -<br> -“I remembered your name,” he said, “when it was mentioned -to me down stairs, just now; and I recollect your face. We have -held but very little personal communication together?”<br> -<br> -“Very little.”<br> -<br> -“You have retired and withdrawn from me, more than any of the -rest, I think?”<br> -<br> -The student signified assent.<br> -<br> -“And why?” said the Chemist; not with the least expression -of interest, but with a moody, wayward kind of curiosity. “Why? -How comes it that you have sought to keep especially from me, the knowledge -of your remaining here, at this season, when all the rest have dispersed, -and of your being ill? I want to know why this is?”<br> -<br> -The young man, who had heard him with increasing agitation, raised his -downcast eyes to his face, and clasping his hands together, cried with -sudden earnestness and with trembling lips:<br> -<br> -“Mr. Redlaw! You have discovered me. You know my secret!”<br> -<br> -“Secret?” said the Chemist, harshly. “I know?”<br> -<br> -“Yes! Your manner, so different from the interest and sympathy -which endear you to so many hearts, your altered voice, the constraint -there is in everything you say, and in your looks,” replied the -student, “warn me that you know me. That you would conceal -it, even now, is but a proof to me (God knows I need none!) of your -natural kindness and of the bar there is between us.”<br> -<br> -A vacant and contemptuous laugh, was all his answer.<br> -<br> -“But, Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, “as a just man, -and a good man, think how innocent I am, except in name and descent, -of participation in any wrong inflicted on you or in any sorrow you -have borne.”<br> -<br> -“Sorrow!” said Redlaw, laughing. “Wrong! -What are those to me?”<br> -<br> -“For Heaven’s sake,” entreated the shrinking student, -“do not let the mere interchange of a few words with me change -you like this, sir! Let me pass again from your knowledge and -notice. Let me occupy my old reserved and distant place among -those whom you instruct. Know me only by the name I have assumed, -and not by that of Longford - ”<br> -<br> -“Longford!” exclaimed the other.<br> -<br> -He clasped his head with both his hands, and for a moment turned upon -the young man his own intelligent and thoughtful face. But the -light passed from it, like the sun-beam of an instant, and it clouded -as before.<br> -<br> -“The name my mother bears, sir,” faltered the young man, -“the name she took, when she might, perhaps, have taken one more -honoured. Mr. Redlaw,” hesitating, “I believe I know -that history. Where my information halts, my guesses at what is -wanting may supply something not remote from the truth. I am the -child of a marriage that has not proved itself a well-assorted or a -happy one. From infancy, I have heard you spoken of with honour -and respect - with something that was almost reverence. I have -heard of such devotion, of such fortitude and tenderness, of such rising -up against the obstacles which press men down, that my fancy, since -I learnt my little lesson from my mother, has shed a lustre on your -name. At last, a poor student myself, from whom could I learn -but you?”<br> -<br> -Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a staring frown, -answered by no word or sign.<br> -<br> -“I cannot say,” pursued the other, “I should try in -vain to say, how much it has impressed me, and affected me, to find -the gracious traces of the past, in that certain power of winning gratitude -and confidence which is associated among us students (among the humblest -of us, most) with Mr. Redlaw’s generous name. Our ages and -positions are so different, sir, and I am so accustomed to regard you -from a distance, that I wonder at my own presumption when I touch, however -lightly, on that theme. But to one who - I may say, who felt no -common interest in my mother once - it may be something to hear, now -that all is past, with what indescribable feelings of affection I have, -in my obscurity, regarded him; with what pain and reluctance I have -kept aloof from his encouragement, when a word of it would have made -me rich; yet how I have felt it fit that I should hold my course, content -to know him, and to be unknown. Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, -faintly, “what I would have said, I have said ill, for my strength -is strange to me as yet; but for anything unworthy in this fraud of -mine, forgive me, and for all the rest forget me!”<br> -<br> -The staring frown remained on Redlaw’s face, and yielded to no -other expression until the student, with these words, advanced towards -him, as if to touch his hand, when he drew back and cried to him:<br> -<br> -“Don’t come nearer to me!”<br> -<br> -The young man stopped, shocked by the eagerness of his recoil, and by -the sternness of his repulsion; and he passed his hand, thoughtfully, -across his forehead.<br> -<br> -“The past is past,” said the Chemist. “It dies -like the brutes. Who talks to me of its traces in my life? -He raves or lies! What have I to do with your distempered dreams? -If you want money, here it is. I came to offer it; and that is -all I came for. There can be nothing else that brings me here,” -he muttered, holding his head again, with both his hands. “There -<i>can</i> be nothing else, and yet - ”<br> -<br> -He had tossed his purse upon the table. As he fell into this dim -cogitation with himself, the student took it up, and held it out to -him.<br> -<br> -“Take it back, sir,” he said proudly, though not angrily. -“I wish you could take from me, with it, the remembrance of your -words and offer.”<br> -<br> -“You do?” he retorted, with a wild light in his eyes. -“You do?”<br> -<br> -“I do!”<br> -<br> -The Chemist went close to him, for the first time, and took the purse, -and turned him by the arm, and looked him in the face.<br> -<br> -“There is sorrow and trouble in sickness, is there not?” -he demanded, with a laugh.<br> -<br> -The wondering student answered, “Yes.”<br> -<br> -“In its unrest, in its anxiety, in its suspense, in all its train -of physical and mental miseries?” said the Chemist, with a wild -unearthly exultation. “All best forgotten, are they not?”<br> -<br> -The student did not answer, but again passed his hand, confusedly, across -his forehead. Redlaw still held him by the sleeve, when Milly’s -voice was heard outside.<br> -<br> -“I can see very well now,” she said, “thank you, Dolf. -Don’t cry, dear. Father and mother will be comfortable again, -to-morrow, and home will be comfortable too. A gentleman with -him, is there!”<br> -<br> -Redlaw released his hold, as he listened.<br> -<br> -“I have feared, from the first moment,” he murmured to himself, -“to meet her. There is a steady quality of goodness in her, -that I dread to influence. I may be the murderer of what is tenderest -and best within her bosom.”<br> -<br> -She was knocking at the door.<br> -<br> -“Shall I dismiss it as an idle foreboding, or still avoid her?” -he muttered, looking uneasily around.<br> -<br> -She was knocking at the door again.<br> -<br> -“Of all the visitors who could come here,” he said, in a -hoarse alarmed voice, turning to his companion, “this is the one -I should desire most to avoid. Hide me!”<br> -<br> -The student opened a frail door in the wall, communicating where the -garret-roof began to slope towards the floor, with a small inner room. -Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut it after him.<br> -<br> -The student then resumed his place upon the couch, and called to her -to enter.<br> -<br> -“Dear Mr. Edmund,” said Milly, looking round, “they -told me there was a gentleman here.”<br> -<br> -“There is no one here but I.”<br> -<br> -“There has been some one?”<br> -<br> -“Yes, yes, there has been some one.”<br> -<br> -She put her little basket on the table, and went up to the back of the -couch, as if to take the extended hand - but it was not there. -A little surprised, in her quiet way, she leaned over to look at his -face, and gently touched him on the brow.<br> -<br> -“Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is not so cool -as in the afternoon.”<br> -<br> -“Tut!” said the student, petulantly, “very little -ails me.”<br> -<br> -A little more surprise, but no reproach, was expressed in her face, -as she withdrew to the other side of the table, and took a small packet -of needlework from her basket. But she laid it down again, on -second thoughts, and going noiselessly about the room, set everything -exactly in its place, and in the neatest order; even to the cushions -on the couch, which she touched with so light a hand, that he hardly -seemed to know it, as he lay looking at the fire. When all this -was done, and she had swept the hearth, she sat down, in her modest -little bonnet, to her work, and was quietly busy on it directly.<br> -<br> -“It’s the new muslin curtain for the window, Mr. Edmund,” -said Milly, stitching away as she talked. “It will look -very clean and nice, though it costs very little, and will save your -eyes, too, from the light. My William says the room should not -be too light just now, when you are recovering so well, or the glare -might make you giddy.”<br> -<br> -He said nothing; but there was something so fretful and impatient in -his change of position, that her quick fingers stopped, and she looked -at him anxiously.<br> -<br> -“The pillows are not comfortable,” she said, laying down -her work and rising. “I will soon put them right.”<br> -<br> -“They are very well,” he answered. “Leave them -alone, pray. You make so much of everything.”<br> -<br> -He raised his head to say this, and looked at her so thanklessly, that, -after he had thrown himself down again, she stood timidly pausing. -However, she resumed her seat, and her needle, without having directed -even a murmuring look towards him, and was soon as busy as before.<br> -<br> -“I have been thinking, Mr. Edmund, that <i>you</i> have been often -thinking of late, when I have been sitting by, how true the saying is, -that adversity is a good teacher. Health will be more precious -to you, after this illness, than it has ever been. And years hence, -when this time of year comes round, and you remember the days when you -lay here sick, alone, that the knowledge of your illness might not afflict -those who are dearest to you, your home will be doubly dear and doubly -blest. Now, isn’t that a good, true thing?”<br> -<br> -She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she said, -and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch for any look -he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft of his ungrateful -glance fell harmless, and did not wound her.<br> -<br> -“Ah!” said Milly, with her pretty head inclining thoughtfully -on one side, as she looked down, following her busy fingers with her -eyes. “Even on me - and I am very different from you, Mr. -Edmund, for I have no learning, and don’t know how to think properly -- this view of such things has made a great impression, since you have -been lying ill. When I have seen you so touched by the kindness -and attention of the poor people down stairs, I have felt that you thought -even that experience some repayment for the loss of health, and I have -read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that but for some trouble -and sorrow we should never know half the good there is about us.”<br> -<br> -His getting up from the couch, interrupted her, or she was going on -to say more.<br> -<br> -“We needn’t magnify the merit, Mrs. William,” he rejoined -slightingly. “The people down stairs will be paid in good -time I dare say, for any little extra service they may have rendered -me; and perhaps they anticipate no less. I am much obliged to -you, too.”<br> -<br> -Her fingers stopped, and she looked at him.<br> -<br> -“I can’t be made to feel the more obliged by your exaggerating -the case,” he said. “I am sensible that you have been -interested in me, and I say I am much obliged to you. What more -would you have?”<br> -<br> -Her work fell on her lap, as she still looked at him walking to and -fro with an intolerant air, and stopping now and then.<br> -<br> -“I say again, I am much obliged to you. Why weaken my sense -of what is your due in obligation, by preferring enormous claims upon -me? Trouble, sorrow, affliction, adversity! One might suppose -I had been dying a score of deaths here!”<br> -<br> -“Do you believe, Mr. Edmund,” she asked, rising and going -nearer to him, “that I spoke of the poor people of the house, -with any reference to myself? To me?” laying her hand upon -her bosom with a simple and innocent smile of astonishment.<br> -<br> -“Oh! I think nothing about it, my good creature,” -he returned. “I have had an indisposition, which your solicitude -- observe! I say solicitude - makes a great deal more of, than it merits; -and it’s over, and we can’t perpetuate it.”<br> -<br> -He coldly took a book, and sat down at the table.<br> -<br> -She watched him for a little while, until her smile was quite gone, -and then, returning to where her basket was, said gently:<br> -<br> -“Mr. Edmund, would you rather be alone?”<br> -<br> -“There is no reason why I should detain you here,” he replied.<br> -<br> -“Except - ” said Milly, hesitating, and showing her work.<br> -<br> -“Oh! the curtain,” he answered, with a supercilious laugh. -“That’s not worth staying for.”<br> -<br> -She made up the little packet again, and put it in her basket. -Then, standing before him with such an air of patient entreaty that -he could not choose but look at her, she said:<br> -<br> -“If you should want me, I will come back willingly. When -you did want me, I was quite happy to come; there was no merit in it. -I think you must be afraid, that, now you are getting well, I may be -troublesome to you; but I should not have been, indeed. I should -have come no longer than your weakness and confinement lasted. -You owe me nothing; but it is right that you should deal as justly by -me as if I was a lady - even the very lady that you love; and if you -suspect me of meanly making much of the little I have tried to do to -comfort your sick room, you do yourself more wrong than ever you can -do me. That is why I am sorry. That is why I am very sorry.”<br> -<br> -If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, as indignant as she -was calm, as angry in her look as she was gentle, as loud of tone as -she was low and clear, she might have left no sense of her departure -in the room, compared with that which fell upon the lonely student when -she went away.<br> -<br> -He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, when Redlaw -came out of his concealment, and came to the door.<br> -<br> -“When sickness lays its hand on you again,” he said, looking -fiercely back at him, “ - may it be soon! - Die here! Rot -here!”<br> -<br> -“What have you done?” returned the other, catching at his -cloak. “What change have you wrought in me? What curse -have you brought upon me? Give me back <i>my</i>self!”<br> -<br> -“Give me back myself!” exclaimed Redlaw like a madman. -“I am infected! I am infectious! I am charged with -poison for my own mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where I -felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am turning into stone. -Selfishness and ingratitude spring up in my blighting footsteps. -I am only so much less base than the wretches whom I make so, that in -the moment of their transformation I can hate them.”<br> -<br> -As he spoke - the young man still holding to his cloak - he cast him -off, and struck him: then, wildly hurried out into the night air where -the wind was blowing, the snow falling, the cloud-drift sweeping on, -the moon dimly shining; and where, blowing in the wind, falling with -the snow, drifting with the clouds, shining in the moonlight, and heavily -looming in the darkness, were the Phantom’s words, “The -gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will!”<br> -<br> -Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he avoided company. -The change he felt within him made the busy streets a desert, and himself -a desert, and the multitude around him, in their manifold endurances -and ways of life, a mighty waste of sand, which the winds tossed into -unintelligible heaps and made a ruinous confusion of. Those traces -in his breast which the Phantom had told him would “die out soon,” -were not, as yet, so far upon their way to death, but that he understood -enough of what he was, and what he made of others, to desire to be alone.<br> -<br> -This put it in his mind - he suddenly bethought himself, as he was going -along, of the boy who had rushed into his room. And then he recollected, -that of those with whom he had communicated since the Phantom’s -disappearance, that boy alone had shown no sign of being changed.<br> -<br> -Monstrous and odious as the wild thing was to him, he determined to -seek it out, and prove if this were really so; and also to seek it with -another intention, which came into his thoughts at the same time.<br> -<br> -So, resolving with some difficulty where he was, he directed his steps -back to the old college, and to that part of it where the general porch -was, and where, alone, the pavement was worn by the tread of the students’ -feet.<br> -<br> -The keeper’s house stood just within the iron gates, forming a -part of the chief quadrangle. There was a little cloister outside, -and from that sheltered place he knew he could look in at the window -of their ordinary room, and see who was within. The iron gates -were shut, but his hand was familiar with the fastening, and drawing -it back by thrusting in his wrist between the bars, he passed through -softly, shut it again, and crept up to the window, crumbling the thin -crust of snow with his feet.<br> -<br> -The fire, to which he had directed the boy last night, shining brightly -through the glass, made an illuminated place upon the ground. -Instinctively avoiding this, and going round it, he looked in at the -window. At first, he thought that there was no one there, and -that the blaze was reddening only the old beams in the ceiling and the -dark walls; but peering in more narrowly, he saw the object of his search -coiled asleep before it on the floor. He passed quickly to the -door, opened it, and went in.<br> -<br> -The creature lay in such a fiery heat, that, as the Chemist stooped -to rouse him, it scorched his head. So soon as he was touched, -the boy, not half awake, clutching his rags together with the instinct -of flight upon him, half rolled and half ran into a distant corner of -the room, where, heaped upon the ground, he struck his foot out to defend -himself.<br> -<br> -“Get up!” said the Chemist. “You have not forgotten -me?”<br> -<br> -“You let me alone!” returned the boy. “This -is the woman’s house - not yours.”<br> -<br> -The Chemist’s steady eye controlled him somewhat, or inspired -him with enough submission to be raised upon his feet, and looked at.<br> -<br> -“Who washed them, and put those bandages where they were bruised -and cracked?” asked the Chemist, pointing to their altered state.<br> -<br> -“The woman did.”<br> -<br> -“And is it she who has made you cleaner in the face, too?”<br> -<br> -“Yes, the woman.”<br> -<br> -Redlaw asked these questions to attract his eyes towards himself, and -with the same intent now held him by the chin, and threw his wild hair -back, though he loathed to touch him. The boy watched his eyes -keenly, as if he thought it needful to his own defence, not knowing -what he might do next; and Redlaw could see well that no change came -over him.<br> -<br> -“Where are they?” he inquired.<br> -<br> -“The woman’s out.”<br> -<br> -“I know she is. Where is the old man with the white hair, -and his son?”<br> -<br> -“The woman’s husband, d’ye mean?” inquired the -boy.<br> -<br> -“Ay. Where are those two?”<br> -<br> -“Out. Something’s the matter, somewhere. They -were fetched out in a hurry, and told me to stop here.”<br> -<br> -“Come with me,” said the Chemist, “and I’ll -give you money.”<br> -<br> -“Come where? and how much will you give?”<br> -<br> -“I’ll give you more shillings than you ever saw, and bring -you back soon. Do you know your way to where you came from?”<br> -<br> -“You let me go,” returned the boy, suddenly twisting out -of his grasp. “I’m not a going to take you there. -Let me be, or I’ll heave some fire at you!”<br> -<br> -He was down before it, and ready, with his savage little hand, to pluck -the burning coals out.<br> -<br> -What the Chemist had felt, in observing the effect of his charmed influence -stealing over those with whom he came in contact, was not nearly equal -to the cold vague terror with which he saw this baby-monster put it -at defiance. It chilled his blood to look on the immovable impenetrable -thing, in the likeness of a child, with its sharp malignant face turned -up to his, and its almost infant hand, ready at the bars.<br> -<br> -“Listen, boy!” he said. “You shall take me where -you please, so that you take me where the people are very miserable -or very wicked. I want to do them good, and not to harm them. -You shall have money, as I have told you, and I will bring you back. -Get up! Come quickly!” He made a hasty step towards -the door, afraid of her returning.<br> -<br> -“Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, nor yet touch -me?” said the boy, slowly withdrawing the hand with which he threatened, -and beginning to get up.<br> -<br> -“I will!”<br> -<br> -“And let me go, before, behind, or anyways I like?”<br> -<br> -“I will!”<br> -<br> -“Give me some money first, then, and go.”<br> -<br> -The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his extended hand. -To count them was beyond the boy’s knowledge, but he said “one,” -every time, and avariciously looked at each as it was given, and at -the donor. He had nowhere to put them, out of his hand, but in -his mouth; and he put them there.<br> -<br> -Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of his pocket-book, that -the boy was with him; and laying it on the table, signed to him to follow. -Keeping his rags together, as usual, the boy complied, and went out -with his bare head and naked feet into the winter night.<br> -<br> -Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he had entered, where -they were in danger of meeting her whom he so anxiously avoided, the -Chemist led the way, through some of those passages among which the -boy had lost himself, and by that portion of the building where he lived, -to a small door of which he had the key. When they got into the -street, he stopped to ask his guide - who instantly retreated from him -- if he knew where they were.<br> -<br> -The savage thing looked here and there, and at length, nodding his head, -pointed in the direction he designed to take. Redlaw going on -at once, he followed, something less suspiciously; shifting his money -from his mouth into his hand, and back again into his mouth, and stealthily -rubbing it bright upon his shreds of dress, as he went along.<br> -<br> -Three times, in their progress, they were side by side. Three -times they stopped, being side by side. Three times the Chemist -glanced down at his face, and shuddered as it forced upon him one reflection.<br> -<br> -The first occasion was when they were crossing an old churchyard, and -Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly at a loss how to connect them -with any tender, softening, or consolatory thought.<br> -<br> -The second was, when the breaking forth of the moon induced him to look -up at the Heavens, where he saw her in her glory, surrounded by a host -of stars he still knew by the names and histories which human science -has appended to them; but where he saw nothing else he had been wont -to see, felt nothing he had been wont to feel, in looking up there, -on a bright night.<br> -<br> -The third was when he stopped to listen to a plaintive strain of music, -but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by the dry mechanism -of the instruments and his own ears, with no address to any mystery -within him, without a whisper in it of the past, or of the future, powerless -upon him as the sound of last year’s running water, or the rushing -of last year’s wind.<br> -<br> -At each of these three times, he saw with horror that, in spite of the -vast intellectual distance between them, and their being unlike each -other in all physical respects, the expression on the boy’s face -was the expression on his own.<br> -<br> -They journeyed on for some time - now through such crowded places, that -he often looked over his shoulder thinking he had lost his guide, but -generally finding him within his shadow on his other side; now by ways -so quiet, that he could have counted his short, quick, naked footsteps -coming on behind - until they arrived at a ruinous collection of houses, -and the boy touched him and stopped.<br> -<br> -“In there!” he said, pointing out one house where there -were shattered lights in the windows, and a dim lantern in the doorway, -with “Lodgings for Travellers” painted on it.<br> -<br> -Redlaw looked about him; from the houses to the waste piece of ground -on which the houses stood, or rather did not altogether tumble down, -unfenced, undrained, unlighted, and bordered by a sluggish ditch; from -that, to the sloping line of arches, part of some neighbouring viaduct -or bridge with which it was surrounded, and which lessened gradually -towards them, until the last but one was a mere kennel for a dog, the -last a plundered little heap of bricks; from that, to the child, close -to him, cowering and trembling with the cold, and limping on one little -foot, while he coiled the other round his leg to warm it, yet staring -at all these things with that frightful likeness of expression so apparent -in his face, that Redlaw started from him.<br> -<br> -“In there!” said the boy, pointing out the house again. -“I’ll wait.”<br> -<br> -“Will they let me in?” asked Redlaw.<br> -<br> -“Say you’re a doctor,” he answered with a nod. -“There’s plenty ill here.”<br> -<br> -Looking back on his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw him trail himself -upon the dust and crawl within the shelter of the smallest arch, as -if he were a rat. He had no pity for the thing, but he was afraid -of it; and when it looked out of its den at him, he hurried to the house -as a retreat.<br> -<br> -“Sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” said the Chemist, with a painful -effort at some more distinct remembrance, “at least haunt this -place darkly. He can do no harm, who brings forgetfulness of such -things here!”<br> -<br> -With these words, he pushed the yielding door, and went in.<br> -<br> -There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or forlorn, whose -head was bent down on her hands and knees. As it was not easy -to pass without treading on her, and as she was perfectly regardless -of his near approach, he stopped, and touched her on the shoulder. -Looking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and -promise were all swept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally -kill the spring.<br> -<br> -With little or no show of concern on his account, she moved nearer to -the wall to leave him a wider passage.<br> -<br> -“What are you?” said Redlaw, pausing, with his hand upon -the broken stair-rail.<br> -<br> -“What do you think I am?” she answered, showing him her -face again.<br> -<br> -He looked upon the ruined Temple of God, so lately made, so soon disfigured; -and something, which was not compassion - for the springs in which a -true compassion for such miseries has its rise, were dried up in his -breast - but which was nearer to it, for the moment, than any feeling -that had lately struggled into the darkening, but not yet wholly darkened, -night of his mind - mingled a touch of softness with his next words.<br> -<br> -“I am come here to give relief, if I can,” he said. -“Are you thinking of any wrong?”<br> -<br> -She frowned at him, and then laughed; and then her laugh prolonged itself -into a shivering sigh, as she dropped her head again, and hid her fingers -in her hair.<br> -<br> -“Are you thinking of a wrong?” he asked once more.<br> -<br> -“I am thinking of my life,” she said, with a monetary look -at him.<br> -<br> -He had a perception that she was one of many, and that he saw the type -of thousands, when he saw her, drooping at his feet.<br> -<br> -“What are your parents?” he demanded.<br> -<br> -“I had a good home once. My father was a gardener, far away, -in the country.”<br> -<br> -“Is he dead?”<br> -<br> -“He’s dead to me. All such things are dead to me. -You a gentleman, and not know that!” She raised her eyes -again, and laughed at him.<br> -<br> -“Girl!” said Redlaw, sternly, “before this death, -of all such things, was brought about, was there no wrong done to you? -In spite of all that you can do, does no remembrance of wrong cleave -to you? Are there not times upon times when it is misery to you?”<br> -<br> -So little of what was womanly was left in her appearance, that now, -when she burst into tears, he stood amazed. But he was more amazed, -and much disquieted, to note that in her awakened recollection of this -wrong, the first trace of her old humanity and frozen tenderness appeared -to show itself.<br> -<br> -He drew a little off, and in doing so, observed that her arms were black, -her face cut, and her bosom bruised.<br> -<br> -“What brutal hand has hurt you so?” he asked.<br> -<br> -“My own. I did it myself!” she answered quickly.<br> -<br> -“It is impossible.”<br> -<br> -“I’ll swear I did! He didn’t touch me. -I did it to myself in a passion, and threw myself down here. He -wasn’t near me. He never laid a hand upon me!”<br> -<br> -In the white determination of her face, confronting him with this untruth, -he saw enough of the last perversion and distortion of good surviving -in that miserable breast, to be stricken with remorse that he had ever -come near her.<br> -<br> -“Sorrow, wrong, and trouble!” he muttered, turning his fearful -gaze away. “All that connects her with the state from which -she has fallen, has those roots! In the name of God, let me go -by!”<br> -<br> -Afraid to look at her again, afraid to touch her, afraid to think of -having sundered the last thread by which she held upon the mercy of -Heaven, he gathered his cloak about him, and glided swiftly up the stairs.<br> -<br> -Opposite to him, on the landing, was a door, which stood partly open, -and which, as he ascended, a man with a candle in his hand, came forward -from within to shut. But this man, on seeing him, drew back, with -much emotion in his manner, and, as if by a sudden impulse, mentioned -his name aloud.<br> -<br> -In the surprise of such a recognition there, he stopped, endeavouring -to recollect the wan and startled face. He had no time to consider -it, for, to his yet greater amazement, old Philip came out of the room, -and took him by the hand.<br> -<br> -“Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, “this is like you, -this is like you, sir! you have heard of it, and have come after us -to render any help you can. Ah, too late, too late!”<br> -<br> -Redlaw, with a bewildered look, submitted to be led into the room. -A man lay there, on a truckle-bed, and William Swidger stood at the -bedside.<br> -<br> -“Too late!” murmured the old man, looking wistfully into -the Chemist’s face; and the tears stole down his cheeks.<br> -<br> -“That’s what I say, father,” interposed his son in -a low voice. “That’s where it is, exactly. To -keep as quiet as ever we can while he’s a dozing, is the only -thing to do. You’re right, father!”<br> -<br> -Redlaw paused at the bedside, and looked down on the figure that was -stretched upon the mattress. It was that of a man, who should -have been in the vigour of his life, but on whom it was not likely the -sun would ever shine again. The vices of his forty or fifty years’ -career had so branded him, that, in comparison with their effects upon -his face, the heavy hand of Time upon the old man’s face who watched -him had been merciful and beautifying.<br> -<br> -“Who is this?” asked the Chemist, looking round.<br> -<br> -“My son George, Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, wringing -his hands. “My eldest son, George, who was more his mother’s -pride than all the rest!”<br> -<br> -Redlaw’s eyes wandered from the old man’s grey head, as -he laid it down upon the bed, to the person who had recognised him, -and who had kept aloof, in the remotest corner of the room. He -seemed to be about his own age; and although he knew no such hopeless -decay and broken man as he appeared to be, there was something in the -turn of his figure, as he stood with his back towards him, and now went -out at the door, that made him pass his hand uneasily across his brow.<br> -<br> -“William,” he said in a gloomy whisper, “who is that -man?”<br> -<br> -“Why you see, sir,” returned Mr. William, “that’s -what I say, myself. Why should a man ever go and gamble, and the -like of that, and let himself down inch by inch till he can’t -let himself down any lower!”<br> -<br> -“Has <i>he</i> done so?” asked Redlaw, glancing after him -with the same uneasy action as before.<br> -<br> -“Just exactly that, sir,” returned William Swidger, “as -I’m told. He knows a little about medicine, sir, it seems; -and having been wayfaring towards London with my unhappy brother that -you see here,” Mr. William passed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, -“and being lodging up stairs for the night - what I say, you see, -is that strange companions come together here sometimes - he looked -in to attend upon him, and came for us at his request. What a -mournful spectacle, sir! But that’s where it is. It’s -enough to kill my father!”<br> -<br> -Redlaw looked up, at these words, and, recalling where he was and with -whom, and the spell he carried with him - which his surprise had obscured -- retired a little, hurriedly, debating with himself whether to shun -the house that moment, or remain.<br> -<br> -Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed to be a part -of his condition to struggle with, he argued for remaining.<br> -<br> -“Was it only yesterday,” he said, “when I observed -the memory of this old man to be a tissue of sorrow and trouble, and -shall I be afraid, to-night, to shake it? Are such remembrances -as I can drive away, so precious to this dying man that I need fear -for <i>him</i>? No! I’ll stay here.”<br> -<br> -But he stayed in fear and trembling none the less for these words; and, -shrouded in his black cloak with his face turned from them, stood away -from the bedside, listening to what they said, as if he felt himself -a demon in the place.<br> -<br> -“Father!” murmured the sick man, rallying a little from -stupor.<br> -<br> -“My boy! My son George!” said old Philip.<br> -<br> -“You spoke, just now, of my being mother’s favourite, long -ago. It’s a dreadful thing to think now, of long ago!”<br> -<br> -“No, no, no;” returned the old man. “Think of -it. Don’t say it’s dreadful. It’s not -dreadful to me, my son.”<br> -<br> -“It cuts you to the heart, father.” For the old man’s -tears were falling on him.<br> -<br> -“Yes, yes,” said Philip, “so it does; but it does -me good. It’s a heavy sorrow to think of that time, but -it does me good, George. Oh, think of it too, think of it too, -and your heart will be softened more and more! Where’s my -son William? William, my boy, your mother loved him dearly to -the last, and with her latest breath said, ‘Tell him I forgave -him, blessed him, and prayed for him.’ Those were her words -to me. I have never forgotten them, and I’m eighty-seven!”<br> -<br> -“Father!” said the man upon the bed, “I am dying, -I know. I am so far gone, that I can hardly speak, even of what -my mind most runs on. Is there any hope for me beyond this bed?”<br> -<br> -“There is hope,” returned the old man, “for all who -are softened and penitent. There is hope for all such. Oh!” -he exclaimed, clasping his hands and looking up, “I was thankful, -only yesterday, that I could remember this unhappy son when he was an -innocent child. But what a comfort it is, now, to think that even -God himself has that remembrance of him!”<br> -<br> -Redlaw spread his hands upon his face, and shrank, like a murderer.<br> -<br> -“Ah!” feebly moaned the man upon the bed. “The -waste since then, the waste of life since then!”<br> -<br> -“But he was a child once,” said the old man. “He -played with children. Before he lay down on his bed at night, -and fell into his guiltless rest, he said his prayers at his poor mother’s -knee. I have seen him do it, many a time; and seen her lay his -head upon her breast, and kiss him. Sorrowful as it was to her -and me, to think of this, when he went so wrong, and when our hopes -and plans for him were all broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, -that nothing else could have given. Oh, Father, so much better -than the fathers upon earth! Oh, Father, so much more afflicted -by the errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not as -he is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so often seemed -to cry to us!”<br> -<br> -As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, for whom he made -the supplication, laid his sinking head against him for support and -comfort, as if he were indeed the child of whom he spoke.<br> -<br> -When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the silence that ensued! -He knew it must come upon them, knew that it was coming fast.<br> -<br> -“My time is very short, my breath is shorter,” said the -sick man, supporting himself on one arm, and with the other groping -in the air, “and I remember there is something on my mind concerning -the man who was here just now, Father and William - wait! - is there -really anything in black, out there?”<br> -<br> -“Yes, yes, it is real,” said his aged father.<br> -<br> -“Is it a man?”<br> -<br> -“What I say myself, George,” interposed his brother, bending -kindly over him. “It’s Mr. Redlaw.”<br> -<br> -“I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to come here.”<br> -<br> -The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared before him. Obedient -to the motion of his hand, he sat upon the bed.<br> -<br> -“It has been so ripped up, to-night, sir,” said the sick -man, laying his hand upon his heart, with a look in which the mute, -imploring agony of his condition was concentrated, “by the sight -of my poor old father, and the thought of all the trouble I have been -the cause of, and all the wrong and sorrow lying at my door, that - -”<br> -<br> -Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it the dawning of -another change, that made him stop?<br> -<br> -“ - that what I <i>can</i> do right, with my mind running on so -much, so fast, I’ll try to do. There was another man here. -Did you see him?”<br> -<br> -Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw that fatal sign -he knew so well now, of the wandering hand upon the forehead, his voice -died at his lips. But he made some indication of assent.<br> -<br> -“He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He is completely -beaten down, and has no resource at all. Look after him! -Lose no time! I know he has it in his mind to kill himself.”<br> -<br> -It was working. It was on his face. His face was changing, -hardening, deepening in all its shades, and losing all its sorrow.<br> -<br> -“Don’t you remember? Don’t you know him?” -he pursued.<br> -<br> -He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that again wandered -over his forehead, and then it lowered on Redlaw, reckless, ruffianly, -and callous.<br> -<br> -“Why, d-n you!” he said, scowling round, “what have -you been doing to me here! I have lived bold, and I mean to die -bold. To the Devil with you!”<br> -<br> -And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over his head and -ears, as resolute from that time to keep out all access, and to die -in his indifference.<br> -<br> -If Redlaw had been struck by lightning, it could not have struck him -from the bedside with a more tremendous shock. But the old man, -who had left the bed while his son was speaking to him, now returning, -avoided it quickly likewise, and with abhorrence.<br> -<br> -“Where’s my boy William?” said the old man hurriedly. -“William, come away from here. We’ll go home.”<br> -<br> -“Home, father!” returned William. “Are you going -to leave your own son?”<br> -<br> -“Where’s my own son?” replied the old man.<br> -<br> -“Where? why, there!”<br> -<br> -“That’s no son of mine,” said Philip, trembling with -resentment. “No such wretch as that, has any claim on me. -My children are pleasant to look at, and they wait upon me, and get -my meat and drink ready, and are useful to me. I’ve a right -to it! I’m eighty-seven!”<br> -<br> -“You’re old enough to be no older,” muttered William, -looking at him grudgingly, with his hands in his pockets. “I -don’t know what good you are, myself. We could have a deal -more pleasure without you.”<br> -<br> -“<i>My</i> son, Mr. Redlaw!” said the old man. “<i>My</i> -son, too! The boy talking to me of <i>my</i> son! Why, what -has he ever done to give me any pleasure, I should like to know?”<br> -<br> -“I don’t know what you have ever done to give <i>me</i> -any pleasure,” said William, sulkily.<br> -<br> -“Let me think,” said the old man. “For how many -Christmas times running, have I sat in my warm place, and never had -to come out in the cold night air; and have made good cheer, without -being disturbed by any such uncomfortable, wretched sight as him there? -Is it twenty, William?”<br> -<br> -“Nigher forty, it seems,” he muttered. “Why, -when I look at my father, sir, and come to think of it,” addressing -Redlaw, with an impatience and irritation that were quite new, “I’m -whipped if I can see anything in him but a calendar of ever so many -years of eating and drinking, and making himself comfortable, over and -over again.”<br> -<br> -“I - I’m eighty-seven,” said the old man, rambling -on, childishly and weakly, “and I don’t know as I ever was -much put out by anything. I’m not going to begin now, because -of what he calls my son. He’s not my son. I’ve -had a power of pleasant times. I recollect once - no I don’t -- no, it’s broken off. It was something about a game of -cricket and a friend of mine, but it’s somehow broken off. -I wonder who he was - I suppose I liked him? And I wonder what -became of him - I suppose he died? But I don’t know. -And I don’t care, neither; I don’t care a bit.”<br> -<br> -In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he put his hands -into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them he found a bit of holly -(left there, probably last night), which he now took out, and looked -at.<br> -<br> -“Berries, eh?” said the old man. “Ah! -It’s a pity they’re not good to eat. I recollect, -when I was a little chap about as high as that, and out a walking with -- let me see - who was I out a walking with? - no, I don’t remember -how that was. I don’t remember as I ever walked with any -one particular, or cared for any one, or any one for me. Berries, -eh? There’s good cheer when there’s berries. -Well; I ought to have my share of it, and to be waited on, and kept -warm and comfortable; for I’m eighty-seven, and a poor old man. -I’m eigh-ty-seven. Eigh-ty-seven!”<br> -<br> -The drivelling, pitiable manner in which, as he repeated this, he nibbled -at the leaves, and spat the morsels out; the cold, uninterested eye -with which his youngest son (so changed) regarded him; the determined -apathy with which his eldest son lay hardened in his sin; impressed -themselves no more on Redlaw’s observation, - for he broke his -way from the spot to which his feet seemed to have been fixed, and ran -out of the house.<br> -<br> -His guide came crawling forth from his place of refuge, and was ready -for him before he reached the arches.<br> -<br> -“Back to the woman’s?” he inquired.<br> -<br> -“Back, quickly!” answered Redlaw. “Stop nowhere -on the way!”<br> -<br> -For a short distance the boy went on before; but their return was more -like a flight than a walk, and it was as much as his bare feet could -do, to keep pace with the Chemist’s rapid strides. Shrinking -from all who passed, shrouded in his cloak, and keeping it drawn closely -about him, as though there were mortal contagion in any fluttering touch -of his garments, he made no pause until they reached the door by which -they had come out. He unlocked it with his key, went in, accompanied -by the boy, and hastened through the dark passages to his own chamber.<br> -<br> -The boy watched him as he made the door fast, and withdrew behind the -table, when he looked round.<br> -<br> -“Come!” he said. “Don’t you touch me! -You’ve not brought me here to take my money away.”<br> -<br> -Redlaw threw some more upon the ground. He flung his body on it -immediately, as if to hide it from him, lest the sight of it should -tempt him to reclaim it; and not until he saw him seated by his lamp, -with his face hidden in his hands, began furtively to pick it up. -When he had done so, he crept near the fire, and, sitting down in a -great chair before it, took from his breast some broken scraps of food, -and fell to munching, and to staring at the blaze, and now and then -to glancing at his shillings, which he kept clenched up in a bunch, -in one hand.<br> -<br> -“And this,” said Redlaw, gazing on him with increased repugnance -and fear, “is the only one companion I have left on earth!”<br> -<br> -How long it was before he was aroused from his contemplation of this -creature, whom he dreaded so - whether half-an-hour, or half the night -- he knew not. But the stillness of the room was broken by the -boy (whom he had seen listening) starting up, and running towards the -door.<br> -<br> -“Here’s the woman coming!” he exclaimed.<br> -<br> -The Chemist stopped him on his way, at the moment when she knocked.<br> -<br> -“Let me go to her, will you?” said the boy.<br> -<br> -“Not now,” returned the Chemist. “Stay here. -Nobody must pass in or out of the room now. Who’s that?”<br> -<br> -“It’s I, sir,” cried Milly. “Pray, sir, -let me in!”<br> -<br> -“No! not for the world!” he said.<br> -<br> -“Mr. Redlaw, Mr. Redlaw, pray, sir, let me in.”<br> -<br> -“What is the matter?” he said, holding the boy.<br> -<br> -“The miserable man you saw, is worse, and nothing I can say will -wake him from his terrible infatuation. William’s father -has turned childish in a moment, William himself is changed. The -shock has been too sudden for him; I cannot understand him; he is not -like himself. Oh, Mr. Redlaw, pray advise me, help me!”<br> -<br> -“No! No! No!” he answered.<br> -<br> -“Mr. Redlaw! Dear sir! George has been muttering, -in his doze, about the man you saw there, who, he fears, will kill himself.”<br> -<br> -“Better he should do it, than come near me!”<br> -<br> -“He says, in his wandering, that you know him; that he was your -friend once, long ago; that he is the ruined father of a student here -- my mind misgives me, of the young gentleman who has been ill. -What is to be done? How is he to be followed? How is he -to be saved? Mr. Redlaw, pray, oh, pray, advise me! Help -me!”<br> -<br> -All this time he held the boy, who was half-mad to pass him, and let -her in.<br> -<br> -“Phantoms! Punishers of impious thoughts!” cried Redlaw, -gazing round in anguish, “look upon me! From the darkness -of my mind, let the glimmering of contrition that I know is there, shine -up and show my misery! In the material world as I have long taught, -nothing can be spared; no step or atom in the wondrous structure could -be lost, without a blank being made in the great universe. I know, -now, that it is the same with good and evil, happiness and sorrow, in -the memories of men. Pity me! Relieve me!”<br> -<br> -There was no response, but her “Help me, help me, let me in!” -and the boy’s struggling to get to her.<br> -<br> -“Shadow of myself! Spirit of my darker hours!” cried -Redlaw, in distraction, “come back, and haunt me day and night, -but take this gift away! Or, if it must still rest with me, deprive -me of the dreadful power of giving it to others. Undo what I have -done. Leave me benighted, but restore the day to those whom I -have cursed. As I have spared this woman from the first, and as -I never will go forth again, but will die here, with no hand to tend -me, save this creature’s who is proof against me, - hear me!”<br> -<br> -The only reply still was, the boy struggling to get to her, while he -held him back; and the cry, increasing in its energy, “Help! let -me in. He was your friend once, how shall he be followed, how -shall he be saved? They are all changed, there is no one else -to help me, pray, pray, let me in!”<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -CHAPTER III - The Gift Reversed<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -Night was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, from hill-tops, -and from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a distant low-lying line, -that promised by-and-by to change to light, was visible in the dim horizon; -but its promise was remote and doubtful, and the moon was striving with -the night-clouds busily.<br> -<br> -The shadows upon Redlaw’s mind succeeded thick and fast to one -another, and obscured its light as the night-clouds hovered between -the moon and earth, and kept the latter veiled in darkness. Fitful -and uncertain as the shadows which the night-clouds cast, were their -concealments from him, and imperfect revelations to him; and, like the -night-clouds still, if the clear light broke forth for a moment, it -was only that they might sweep over it, and make the darkness deeper -than before.<br> -<br> -Without, there was a profound and solemn hush upon the ancient pile -of building, and its buttresses and angles made dark shapes of mystery -upon the ground, which now seemed to retire into the smooth white snow -and now seemed to come out of it, as the moon’s path was more -or less beset. Within, the Chemist’s room was indistinct -and murky, by the light of the expiring lamp; a ghostly silence had -succeeded to the knocking and the voice outside; nothing was audible -but, now and then, a low sound among the whitened ashes of the fire, -as of its yielding up its last breath. Before it on the ground -the boy lay fast asleep. In his chair, the Chemist sat, as he -had sat there since the calling at his door had ceased - like a man -turned to stone.<br> -<br> -At such a time, the Christmas music he had heard before, began to play. -He listened to it at first, as he had listened in the church-yard; but -presently - it playing still, and being borne towards him on the night -air, in a low, sweet, melancholy strain - he rose, and stood stretching -his hands about him, as if there were some friend approaching within -his reach, on whom his desolate touch might rest, yet do no harm. -As he did this, his face became less fixed and wondering; a gentle trembling -came upon him; and at last his eyes filled with tears, and he put his -hands before them, and bowed down his head.<br> -<br> -His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, had not come back to him; -he knew that it was not restored; he had no passing belief or hope that -it was. But some dumb stir within him made him capable, again, -of being moved by what was hidden, afar off, in the music. If -it were only that it told him sorrowfully the value of what he had lost, -he thanked Heaven for it with a fervent gratitude.<br> -<br> -As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his head to listen to -its lingering vibration. Beyond the boy, so that his sleeping -figure lay at its feet, the Phantom stood, immovable and silent, with -its eyes upon him.<br> -<br> -Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, but not so cruel and relentless -in its aspect - or he thought or hoped so, as he looked upon it trembling. -It was not alone, but in its shadowy hand it held another hand.<br> -<br> -And whose was that? Was the form that stood beside it indeed Milly’s, -or but her shade and picture? The quiet head was bent a little, -as her manner was, and her eyes were looking down, as if in pity, on -the sleeping child. A radiant light fell on her face, but did -not touch the Phantom; for, though close beside her, it was dark and -colourless as ever.<br> -<br> -“Spectre!” said the Chemist, newly troubled as he looked, -“I have not been stubborn or presumptuous in respect of her. -Oh, do not bring her here. Spare me that!”<br> -<br> -“This is but a shadow,” said the Phantom; “when the -morning shines seek out the reality whose image I present before you.”<br> -<br> -“Is it my inexorable doom to do so?” cried the Chemist.<br> -<br> -“It is,” replied the Phantom.<br> -<br> -“To destroy her peace, her goodness; to make her what I am myself, -and what I have made of others!”<br> -<br> -“I have said seek her out,” returned the Phantom. -“I have said no more.”<br> -<br> -“Oh, tell me,” exclaimed Redlaw, catching at the hope which -he fancied might lie hidden in the words. “Can I undo what -I have done?”<br> -<br> -“No,” returned the Phantom.<br> -<br> -“I do not ask for restoration to myself,” said Redlaw. -“What I abandoned, I abandoned of my own free will, and have justly -lost. But for those to whom I have transferred the fatal gift; -who never sought it; who unknowingly received a curse of which they -had no warning, and which they had no power to shun; can I do nothing?”<br> -<br> -“Nothing,” said the Phantom.<br> -<br> -“If I cannot, can any one?”<br> -<br> -The Phantom, standing like a statue, kept its gaze upon him for a while; -then turned its head suddenly, and looked upon the shadow at its side.<br> -<br> -“Ah! Can she?” cried Redlaw, still looking upon the -shade.<br> -<br> -The Phantom released the hand it had retained till now, and softly raised -its own with a gesture of dismissal. Upon that, her shadow, still -preserving the same attitude, began to move or melt away.<br> -<br> -“Stay,” cried Redlaw with an earnestness to which he could -not give enough expression. “For a moment! As an act -of mercy! I know that some change fell upon me, when those sounds -were in the air just now. Tell me, have I lost the power of harming -her? May I go near her without dread? Oh, let her give me -any sign of hope!”<br> -<br> -The Phantom looked upon the shade as he did - not at him - and gave -no answer.<br> -<br> -“At least, say this - has she, henceforth, the consciousness of -any power to set right what I have done?”<br> -<br> -“She has not,” the Phantom answered.<br> -<br> -“Has she the power bestowed on her without the consciousness?”<br> -<br> -The phantom answered: “Seek her out.”<br> -<br> -And her shadow slowly vanished.<br> -<br> -They were face to face again, and looking on each other, as intently -and awfully as at the time of the bestowal of the gift, across the boy -who still lay on the ground between them, at the Phantom’s feet.<br> -<br> -“Terrible instructor,” said the Chemist, sinking on his -knee before it, in an attitude of supplication, “by whom I was -renounced, but by whom I am revisited (in which, and in whose milder -aspect, I would fain believe I have a gleam of hope), I will obey without -inquiry, praying that the cry I have sent up in the anguish of my soul -has been, or will be, heard, in behalf of those whom I have injured -beyond human reparation. But there is one thing - ”<br> -<br> -“You speak to me of what is lying here,” the phantom interposed, -and pointed with its finger to the boy.<br> -<br> -“I do,” returned the Chemist. “You know what -I would ask. Why has this child alone been proof against my influence, -and why, why, have I detected in its thoughts a terrible companionship -with mine?”<br> -<br> -“This,” said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, “is -the last, completest illustration of a human creature, utterly bereft -of such remembrances as you have yielded up. No softening memory -of sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters here, because this wretched mortal -from his birth has been abandoned to a worse condition than the beasts, -and has, within his knowledge, no one contrast, no humanising touch, -to make a grain of such a memory spring up in his hardened breast. -All within this desolate creature is barren wilderness. All within -the man bereft of what you have resigned, is the same barren wilderness. -Woe to such a man! Woe, tenfold, to the nation that shall count -its monsters such as this, lying here, by hundreds and by thousands!”<br> -<br> -Redlaw shrank, appalled, from what he heard.<br> -<br> -“There is not,” said the Phantom, “one of these - -not one - but sows a harvest that mankind MUST reap. From every -seed of evil in this boy, a field of ruin is grown that shall be gathered -in, and garnered up, and sown again in many places in the world, until -regions are overspread with wickedness enough to raise the waters of -another Deluge. Open and unpunished murder in a city’s streets -would be less guilty in its daily toleration, than one such spectacle -as this.”<br> -<br> -It seemed to look down upon the boy in his sleep. Redlaw, too, -looked down upon him with a new emotion.<br> -<br> -“There is not a father,” said the Phantom, “by whose -side in his daily or his nightly walk, these creatures pass; there is -not a mother among all the ranks of loving mothers in this land; there -is no one risen from the state of childhood, but shall be responsible -in his or her degree for this enormity. There is not a country -throughout the earth on which it would not bring a curse. There -is no religion upon earth that it would not deny; there is no people -upon earth it would not put to shame.”<br> -<br> -The Chemist clasped his hands, and looked, with trembling fear and pity, -from the sleeping boy to the Phantom, standing above him with his finger -pointing down.<br> -<br> -“Behold, I say,” pursued the Spectre, “the perfect -type of what it was your choice to be. Your influence is powerless -here, because from this child’s bosom you can banish nothing. -His thoughts have been in ‘terrible companionship’ with -yours, because you have gone down to his unnatural level. He is -the growth of man’s indifference; you are the growth of man’s -presumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is, in each case, -overthrown, and from the two poles of the immaterial world you come -together.”<br> -<br> -The Chemist stooped upon the ground beside the boy, and, with the same -kind of compassion for him that he now felt for himself, covered him -as he slept, and no longer shrank from him with abhorrence or indifference.<br> -<br> -Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, the darkness -faded, the sun rose red and glorious, and the chimney stacks and gables -of the ancient building gleamed in the clear air, which turned the smoke -and vapour of the city into a cloud of gold. The very sun-dial -in his shady corner, where the wind was used to spin with such unwindy -constancy, shook off the finer particles of snow that had accumulated -on his dull old face in the night, and looked out at the little white -wreaths eddying round and round him. Doubtless some blind groping -of the morning made its way down into the forgotten crypt so cold and -earthy, where the Norman arches were half buried in the ground, and -stirred the dull sap in the lazy vegetation hanging to the walls, and -quickened the slow principle of life within the little world of wonderful -and delicate creation which existed there, with some faint knowledge -that the sun was up.<br> -<br> -The Tetterbys were up, and doing. Mr. Tetterby took down the shutters -of the shop, and, strip by strip, revealed the treasures of the window -to the eyes, so proof against their seductions, of Jerusalem Buildings. -Adolphus had been out so long already, that he was halfway on to “Morning -Pepper.” Five small Tetterbys, whose ten round eyes were -much inflamed by soap and friction, were in the tortures of a cool wash -in the back kitchen; Mrs. Tetterby presiding. Johnny, who was -pushed and hustled through his toilet with great rapidity when Moloch -chanced to be in an exacting frame of mind (which was always the case), -staggered up and down with his charge before the shop door, under greater -difficulties than usual; the weight of Moloch being much increased by -a complication of defences against the cold, composed of knitted worsted-work, -and forming a complete suit of chain-armour, with a head-piece and blue -gaiters.<br> -<br> -It was a peculiarity of this baby to be always cutting teeth. -Whether they never came, or whether they came and went away again, is -not in evidence; but it had certainly cut enough, on the showing of -Mrs. Tetterby, to make a handsome dental provision for the sign of the -Bull and Mouth. All sorts of objects were impressed for the rubbing -of its gums, notwithstanding that it always carried, dangling at its -waist (which was immediately under its chin), a bone ring, large enough -to have represented the rosary of a young nun. Knife-handles, -umbrella-tops, the heads of walking-sticks selected from the stock, -the fingers of the family in general, but especially of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, -crusts, the handles of doors, and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, -were among the commonest instruments indiscriminately applied for this -baby’s relief. The amount of electricity that must have -been rubbed out of it in a week, is not to be calculated. Still -Mrs. Tetterby always said “it was coming through, and then the -child would be herself;” and still it never did come through, -and the child continued to be somebody else.<br> -<br> -The tempers of the little Tetterbys had sadly changed with a few hours. -Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby themselves were not more altered than their offspring. -Usually they were an unselfish, good-natured, yielding little race, -sharing short commons when it happened (which was pretty often) contentedly -and even generously, and taking a great deal of enjoyment out of a very -little meat. But they were fighting now, not only for the soap -and water, but even for the breakfast which was yet in perspective. -The hand of every little Tetterby was against the other little Tetterbys; -and even Johnny’s hand - the patient, much-enduring, and devoted -Johnny - rose against the baby! Yes, Mrs. Tetterby, going to the -door by mere accident, saw him viciously pick out a weak place in the -suit of armour where a slap would tell, and slap that blessed child.<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby had him into the parlour by the collar, in that same flash -of time, and repaid him the assault with usury thereto.<br> -<br> -“You brute, you murdering little boy,” said Mrs. Tetterby. -“Had you the heart to do it?”<br> -<br> -“Why don’t her teeth come through, then,” retorted -Johnny, in a loud rebellious voice, “instead of bothering me? -How would you like it yourself?”<br> -<br> -“Like it, sir!” said Mrs. Tetterby, relieving him of his -dishonoured load.<br> -<br> -“Yes, like it,” said Johnny. “How would you? -Not at all. If you was me, you’d go for a soldier. -I will, too. There an’t no babies in the Army.”<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby, who had arrived upon the scene of action, rubbed his chin -thoughtfully, instead of correcting the rebel, and seemed rather struck -by this view of a military life.<br> -<br> -“I wish I was in the Army myself, if the child’s in the -right,” said Mrs. Tetterby, looking at her husband, “for -I have no peace of my life here. I’m a slave - a Virginia -slave:” some indistinct association with their weak descent on -the tobacco trade perhaps suggested this aggravated expression to Mrs. -Tetterby. “I never have a holiday, or any pleasure at all, -from year’s end to year’s end! Why, Lord bless and -save the child,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking the baby with an -irritability hardly suited to so pious an aspiration, “what’s -the matter with her now?”<br> -<br> -Not being able to discover, and not rendering the subject much clearer -by shaking it, Mrs. Tetterby put the baby away in a cradle, and, folding -her arms, sat rocking it angrily with her foot.<br> -<br> -“How you stand there, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs. Tetterby -to her husband. “Why don’t you do something?”<br> -<br> -“Because I don’t care about doing anything,” Mr. Tetterby -replied.<br> -<br> -“I am sure <i>I</i> don’t,” said Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“I’ll take my oath <i>I</i> don’t,” said Mr. -Tetterby.<br> -<br> -A diversion arose here among Johnny and his five younger brothers, who, -in preparing the family breakfast table, had fallen to skirmishing for -the temporary possession of the loaf, and were buffeting one another -with great heartiness; the smallest boy of all, with precocious discretion, -hovering outside the knot of combatants, and harassing their legs. -Into the midst of this fray, Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both precipitated -themselves with great ardour, as if such ground were the only ground -on which they could now agree; and having, with no visible remains of -their late soft-heartedness, laid about them without any lenity, and -done much execution, resumed their former relative positions.<br> -<br> -“You had better read your paper than do nothing at all,” -said Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“What’s there to read in a paper?” returned Mr. Tetterby, -with excessive discontent.<br> -<br> -“What?” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Police.”<br> -<br> -“It’s nothing to me,” said Tetterby. “What -do I care what people do, or are done to?”<br> -<br> -“Suicides,” suggested Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“No business of mine,” replied her husband.<br> -<br> -“Births, deaths, and marriages, are those nothing to you?” -said Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“If the births were all over for good, and all to-day; and the -deaths were all to begin to come off to-morrow; I don’t see why -it should interest me, till I thought it was a coming to my turn,” -grumbled Tetterby. “As to marriages, I’ve done it -myself. I know quite enough about <i>them</i>.”<br> -<br> -To judge from the dissatisfied expression of her face and manner, Mrs. -Tetterby appeared to entertain the same opinions as her husband; but -she opposed him, nevertheless, for the gratification of quarrelling -with him.<br> -<br> -“Oh, you’re a consistent man,” said Mrs. Tetterby, -“an’t you? You, with the screen of your own making -there, made of nothing else but bits of newspapers, which you sit and -read to the children by the half-hour together!”<br> -<br> -“Say used to, if you please,” returned her husband. -“You won’t find me doing so any more. I’m wiser -now.”<br> -<br> -“Bah! wiser, indeed!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Are -you better?”<br> -<br> -The question sounded some discordant note in Mr. Tetterby’s breast. -He ruminated dejectedly, and passed his hand across and across his forehead.<br> -<br> -“Better!” murmured Mr. Tetterby. “I don’t -know as any of us are better, or happier either. Better, is it?”<br> -<br> -He turned to the screen, and traced about it with his finger, until -he found a certain paragraph of which he was in quest.<br> -<br> -“This used to be one of the family favourites, I recollect,” -said Tetterby, in a forlorn and stupid way, “and used to draw -tears from the children, and make ’em good, if there was any little -bickering or discontent among ’em, next to the story of the robin -redbreasts in the wood. ‘Melancholy case of destitution. -Yesterday a small man, with a baby in his arms, and surrounded by half-a-dozen -ragged little ones, of various ages between ten and two, the whole of -whom were evidently in a famishing condition, appeared before the worthy -magistrate, and made the following recital:’ - Ha! I don’t -understand it, I’m sure,” said Tetterby; “I don’t -see what it has got to do with us.”<br> -<br> -“How old and shabby he looks,” said Mrs. Tetterby, watching -him. “I never saw such a change in a man. Ah! dear -me, dear me, dear me, it was a sacrifice!”<br> -<br> -“What was a sacrifice?” her husband sourly inquired.<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby shook her head; and without replying in words, raised -a complete sea-storm about the baby, by her violent agitation of the -cradle.<br> -<br> -“If you mean your marriage was a sacrifice, my good woman - ” -said her husband.<br> -<br> -“I <i>do</i> mean it” said his wife.<br> -<br> -“Why, then I mean to say,” pursued Mr. Tetterby, as sulkily -and surlily as she, “that there are two sides to that affair; -and that I was the sacrifice; and that I wish the sacrifice hadn’t -been accepted.”<br> -<br> -“I wish it hadn’t, Tetterby, with all my heart and soul -I do assure you,” said his wife. “You can’t -wish it more than I do, Tetterby.”<br> -<br> -“I don’t know what I saw in her,” muttered the newsman, -“I’m sure; - certainly, if I saw anything, it’s not -there now. I was thinking so, last night, after supper, by the -fire. She’s fat, she’s ageing, she won’t bear -comparison with most other women.”<br> -<br> -“He’s common-looking, he has no air with him, he’s -small, he’s beginning to stoop and he’s getting bald,” -muttered Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“I must have been half out of my mind when I did it,” muttered -Mr. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“My senses must have forsook me. That’s the only way -in which I can explain it to myself,” said Mrs. Tetterby with -elaboration.<br> -<br> -In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The little Tetterbys -were not habituated to regard that meal in the light of a sedentary -occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot; rather resembling a -savage ceremony, in the occasionally shrill whoops, and brandishings -of bread and butter, with which it was accompanied, as well as in the -intricate filings off into the street and back again, and the hoppings -up and down the door-steps, which were incidental to the performance. -In the present instance, the contentions between these Tetterby children -for the milk-and-water jug, common to all, which stood upon the table, -presented so lamentable an instance of angry passions risen very high -indeed, that it was an outrage on the memory of Dr. Watts. It -was not until Mr. Tetterby had driven the whole herd out at the front -door, that a moment’s peace was secured; and even that was broken -by the discovery that Johnny had surreptitiously come back, and was -at that instant choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in his indecent -and rapacious haste.<br> -<br> -“These children will be the death of me at last!” said Mrs. -Tetterby, after banishing the culprit. “And the sooner the -better, I think.”<br> -<br> -“Poor people,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ought not to have -children at all. They give <i>us</i> no pleasure.”<br> -<br> -He was at that moment taking up the cup which Mrs. Tetterby had rudely -pushed towards him, and Mrs. Tetterby was lifting her own cup to her -lips, when they both stopped, as if they were transfixed.<br> -<br> -“Here! Mother! Father!” cried Johnny, running -into the room. “Here’s Mrs. William coming down the -street!”<br> -<br> -And if ever, since the world began, a young boy took a baby from a cradle -with the care of an old nurse, and hushed and soothed it tenderly, and -tottered away with it cheerfully, Johnny was that boy, and Moloch was -that baby, as they went out together!<br> -<br> -Mr. Tetterby put down his cup; Mrs. Tetterby put down her cup. -Mr. Tetterby rubbed his forehead; Mrs. Tetterby rubbed hers. Mr. -Tetterby’s face began to smooth and brighten; Mrs. Tetterby’s -began to smooth and brighten.<br> -<br> -“Why, Lord forgive me,” said Mr. Tetterby to himself, “what -evil tempers have I been giving way to? What has been the matter -here!”<br> -<br> -“How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I said and felt -last night!” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apron to her eyes.<br> -<br> -“Am I a brute,” said Mr. Tetterby, “or is there any -good in me at all? Sophia! My little woman!”<br> -<br> -“‘Dolphus dear,” returned his wife.<br> -<br> -“I - I’ve been in a state of mind,” said Mr. Tetterby, -“that I can’t abear to think of, Sophy.”<br> -<br> -“Oh! It’s nothing to what I’ve been in, Dolf,” -cried his wife in a great burst of grief.<br> -<br> -“My Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “don’t take -on. I never shall forgive myself. I must have nearly broke -your heart, I know.”<br> -<br> -“No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!” cried Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“My little woman,” said her husband, “don’t. -You make me reproach myself dreadful, when you show such a noble spirit. -Sophia, my dear, you don’t know what I thought. I showed -it bad enough, no doubt; but what I thought, my little woman! - ”<br> -<br> -“Oh, dear Dolf, don’t! Don’t!” cried his -wife.<br> -<br> -“Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “I must reveal it. -I couldn’t rest in my conscience unless I mentioned it. -My little woman - ”<br> -<br> -“Mrs. William’s very nearly here!” screamed Johnny -at the door.<br> -<br> -“My little woman, I wondered how,” gasped Mr. Tetterby, -supporting himself by his chair, “I wondered how I had ever admired -you - I forgot the precious children you have brought about me, and -thought you didn’t look as slim as I could wish. I - I never -gave a recollection,” said Mr. Tetterby, with severe self-accusation, -“to the cares you’ve had as my wife, and along of me and -mine, when you might have had hardly any with another man, who got on -better and was luckier than me (anybody might have found such a man -easily I am sure); and I quarrelled with you for having aged a little -in the rough years you have lightened for me. Can you believe -it, my little woman? I hardly can myself.”<br> -<br> -Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught his face -within her hands, and held it there.<br> -<br> -“Oh, Dolf!” she cried. “I am so happy that you -thought so; I am so grateful that you thought so! For I thought -that you were common-looking, Dolf; and so you are, my dear, and may -you be the commonest of all sights in my eyes, till you close them with -your own good hands. I thought that you were small; and so you -are, and I’ll make much of you because you are, and more of you -because I love my husband. I thought that you began to stoop; -and so you do, and you shall lean on me, and I’ll do all I can -to keep you up. I thought there was no air about you; but there -is, and it’s the air of home, and that’s the purest and -the best there is, and God bless home once more, and all belonging to -it, Dolf!”<br> -<br> -“Hurrah! Here’s Mrs. William!” cried Johnny.<br> -<br> -So she was, and all the children with her; and so she came in, they -kissed her, and kissed one another, and kissed the baby, and kissed -their father and mother, and then ran back and flocked and danced about -her, trooping on with her in triumph.<br> -<br> -Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby were not a bit behind-hand in the warmth of their -reception. They were as much attracted to her as the children -were; they ran towards her, kissed her hands, pressed round her, could -not receive her ardently or enthusiastically enough. She came -among them like the spirit of all goodness, affection, gentle consideration, -love, and domesticity.<br> -<br> -“What! are <i>you</i> all so glad to see me, too, this bright -Christmas morning?” said Milly, clapping her hands in a pleasant -wonder. “Oh dear, how delightful this is!”<br> -<br> -More shouting from the children, more kissing, more trooping round her, -more happiness, more love, more joy, more honour, on all sides, than -she could bear.<br> -<br> -“Oh dear!” said Milly, “what delicious tears you make -me shed. How can I ever have deserved this! What have I -done to be so loved?”<br> -<br> -“Who can help it!” cried Mr. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“Who can help it!” cried Mrs. Tetterby.<br> -<br> -“Who can help it!” echoed the children, in a joyful chorus. -And they danced and trooped about her again, and clung to her, and laid -their rosy faces against her dress, and kissed and fondled it, and could -not fondle it, or her, enough.<br> -<br> -“I never was so moved,” said Milly, drying her eyes, “as -I have been this morning. I must tell you, as soon as I can speak. -- Mr. Redlaw came to me at sunrise, and with a tenderness in his manner, -more as if I had been his darling daughter than myself, implored me -to go with him to where William’s brother George is lying ill. -We went together, and all the way along he was so kind, and so subdued, -and seemed to put such trust and hope in me, that I could not help trying -with pleasure. When we got to the house, we met a woman at the -door (somebody had bruised and hurt her, I am afraid), who caught me -by the hand, and blessed me as I passed.”<br> -<br> -“She was right!” said Mr. Tetterby. Mrs. Tetterby -said she was right. All the children cried out that she was right.<br> -<br> -“Ah, but there’s more than that,” said Milly. -“When we got up stairs, into the room, the sick man who had lain -for hours in a state from which no effort could rouse him, rose up in -his bed, and, bursting into tears, stretched out his arms to me, and -said that he had led a mis-spent life, but that he was truly repentant -now, in his sorrow for the past, which was all as plain to him as a -great prospect, from which a dense black cloud had cleared away, and -that he entreated me to ask his poor old father for his pardon and his -blessing, and to say a prayer beside his bed. And when I did so, -Mr. Redlaw joined in it so fervently, and then so thanked and thanked -me, and thanked Heaven, that my heart quite overflowed, and I could -have done nothing but sob and cry, if the sick man had not begged me -to sit down by him, - which made me quiet of course. As I sat -there, he held my hand in his until he sank in a doze; and even then, -when I withdrew my hand to leave him to come here (which Mr. Redlaw -was very earnest indeed in wishing me to do), his hand felt for mine, -so that some one else was obliged to take my place and make believe -to give him my hand back. Oh dear, oh dear,” said Milly, -sobbing. “How thankful and how happy I should feel, and -do feel, for all this!”<br> -<br> -While she was speaking, Redlaw had come in, and, after pausing for a -moment to observe the group of which she was the centre, had silently -ascended the stairs. Upon those stairs he now appeared again; -remaining there, while the young student passed him, and came running -down.<br> -<br> -“Kind nurse, gentlest, best of creatures,” he said, falling -on his knee to her, and catching at her hand, “forgive my cruel -ingratitude!”<br> -<br> -“Oh dear, oh dear!” cried Milly innocently, “here’s -another of them! Oh dear, here’s somebody else who likes -me. What shall I ever do!”<br> -<br> -The guileless, simple way in which she said it, and in which she put -her hands before her eyes and wept for very happiness, was as touching -as it was delightful.<br> -<br> -“I was not myself,” he said. “I don’t -know what it was - it was some consequence of my disorder perhaps - -I was mad. But I am so no longer. Almost as I speak, I am -restored. I heard the children crying out your name, and the shade -passed from me at the very sound of it. Oh, don’t weep! -Dear Milly, if you could read my heart, and only knew with what affection -and what grateful homage it is glowing, you would not let me see you -weep. It is such deep reproach.”<br> -<br> -“No, no,” said Milly, “it’s not that. -It’s not indeed. It’s joy. It’s wonder -that you should think it necessary to ask me to forgive so little, and -yet it’s pleasure that you do.”<br> -<br> -“And will you come again? and will you finish the little curtain?”<br> -<br> -“No,” said Milly, drying her eyes, and shaking her head. -“You won’t care for my needlework now.”<br> -<br> -“Is it forgiving me, to say that?”<br> -<br> -She beckoned him aside, and whispered in his ear.<br> -<br> -“There is news from your home, Mr. Edmund.”<br> -<br> -“News? How?”<br> -<br> -“Either your not writing when you were very ill, or the change -in your handwriting when you began to be better, created some suspicion -of the truth; however that is - but you’re sure you’ll not -be the worse for any news, if it’s not bad news?”<br> -<br> -“Sure.”<br> -<br> -“Then there’s some one come!” said Milly.<br> -<br> -“My mother?” asked the student, glancing round involuntarily -towards Redlaw, who had come down from the stairs.<br> -<br> -“Hush! No,” said Milly.<br> -<br> -“It can be no one else.”<br> -<br> -“Indeed?” said Milly, “are you sure?”<br> -<br> -“It is not -” Before he could say more, she put her -hand upon his mouth.<br> -<br> -“Yes it is!” said Milly. “The young lady (she -is very like the miniature, Mr. Edmund, but she is prettier) was too -unhappy to rest without satisfying her doubts, and came up, last night, -with a little servant-maid. As you always dated your letters from -the college, she came there; and before I saw Mr. Redlaw this morning, -I saw her. <i>She</i> likes me too!” said Milly. “Oh -dear, that’s another!”<br> -<br> -“This morning! Where is she now?”<br> -<br> -“Why, she is now,” said Milly, advancing her lips to his -ear, “in my little parlour in the Lodge, and waiting to see you.”<br> -<br> -He pressed her hand, and was darting off, but she detained him.<br> -<br> -“Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told me this morning that -his memory is impaired. Be very considerate to him, Mr. Edmund; -he needs that from us all.”<br> -<br> -The young man assured her, by a look, that her caution was not ill-bestowed; -and as he passed the Chemist on his way out, bent respectfully and with -an obvious interest before him.<br> -<br> -Redlaw returned the salutation courteously and even humbly, and looked -after him as he passed on. He dropped his head upon his hand too, -as trying to reawaken something he had lost. But it was gone.<br> -<br> -The abiding change that had come upon him since the influence of the -music, and the Phantom’s reappearance, was, that now he truly -felt how much he had lost, and could compassionate his own condition, -and contrast it, clearly, with the natural state of those who were around -him. In this, an interest in those who were around him was revived, -and a meek, submissive sense of his calamity was bred, resembling that -which sometimes obtains in age, when its mental powers are weakened, -without insensibility or sullenness being added to the list of its infirmities.<br> -<br> -He was conscious that, as he redeemed, through Milly, more and more -of the evil he had done, and as he was more and more with her, this -change ripened itself within him. Therefore, and because of the -attachment she inspired him with (but without other hope), he felt that -he was quite dependent on her, and that she was his staff in his affliction.<br> -<br> -So, when she asked him whether they should go home now, to where the -old man and her husband were, and he readily replied “yes” -- being anxious in that regard - he put his arm through hers, and walked -beside her; not as if he were the wise and learned man to whom the wonders -of Nature were an open book, and hers were the uninstructed mind, but -as if their two positions were reversed, and he knew nothing, and she -all.<br> -<br> -He saw the children throng about her, and caress her, as he and she -went away together thus, out of the house; he heard the ringing of their -laughter, and their merry voices; he saw their bright faces, clustering -around him like flowers; he witnessed the renewed contentment and affection -of their parents; he breathed the simple air of their poor home, restored -to its tranquillity; he thought of the unwholesome blight he had shed -upon it, and might, but for her, have been diffusing then; and perhaps -it is no wonder that he walked submissively beside her, and drew her -gentle bosom nearer to his own.<br> -<br> -When they arrived at the Lodge, the old man was sitting in his chair -in the chimney-corner, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and his son -was leaning against the opposite side of the fire-place, looking at -him. As she came in at the door, both started, and turned round -towards her, and a radiant change came upon their faces.<br> -<br> -“Oh dear, dear, dear, they are all pleased to see me like the -rest!” cried Milly, clapping her hands in an ecstasy, and stopping -short. “Here are two more!”<br> -<br> -Pleased to see her! Pleasure was no word for it. She ran -into her husband’s arms, thrown wide open to receive her, and -he would have been glad to have her there, with her head lying on his -shoulder, through the short winter’s day. But the old man -couldn’t spare her. He had arms for her too, and he locked -her in them.<br> -<br> -“Why, where has my quiet Mouse been all this time?” said -the old man. “She has been a long while away. I find -that it’s impossible for me to get on without Mouse. I - -where’s my son William? - I fancy I have been dreaming, William.”<br> -<br> -“That’s what I say myself, father,” returned his son. -“I have been in an ugly sort of dream, I think. - How are you, -father? Are you pretty well?”<br> -<br> -“Strong and brave, my boy,” returned the old man.<br> -<br> -It was quite a sight to see Mr. William shaking hands with his father, -and patting him on the back, and rubbing him gently down with his hand, -as if he could not possibly do enough to show an interest in him.<br> -<br> -“What a wonderful man you are, father! - How are you, father? -Are you really pretty hearty, though?” said William, shaking hands -with him again, and patting him again, and rubbing him gently down again.<br> -<br> -“I never was fresher or stouter in my life, my boy.”<br> -<br> -“What a wonderful man you are, father! But that’s -exactly where it is,” said Mr. William, with enthusiasm. -“When I think of all that my father’s gone through, and -all the chances and changes, and sorrows and troubles, that have happened -to him in the course of his long life, and under which his head has -grown grey, and years upon years have gathered on it, I feel as if we -couldn’t do enough to honour the old gentleman, and make his old -age easy. - How are you, father? Are you really pretty well, though?”<br> -<br> -Mr. William might never have left off repeating this inquiry, and shaking -hands with him again, and patting him again, and rubbing him down again, -if the old man had not espied the Chemist, whom until now he had not -seen.<br> -<br> -“I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw,” said Philip, “but -didn’t know you were here, sir, or should have made less free. -It reminds me, Mr. Redlaw, seeing you here on a Christmas morning, of -the time when you was a student yourself, and worked so hard that you -were backwards and forwards in our Library even at Christmas time. -Ha! ha! I’m old enough to remember that; and I remember -it right well, I do, though I am eight-seven. It was after you -left here that my poor wife died. You remember my poor wife, Mr. -Redlaw?”<br> -<br> -The Chemist answered yes.<br> -<br> -“Yes,” said the old man. “She was a dear creetur. -- I recollect you come here one Christmas morning with a young lady -- I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw, but I think it was a sister you was -very much attached to?”<br> -<br> -The Chemist looked at him, and shook his head. “I had a -sister,” he said vacantly. He knew no more.<br> -<br> -“One Christmas morning,” pursued the old man, “that -you come here with her - and it began to snow, and my wife invited the -lady to walk in, and sit by the fire that is always a burning on Christmas -Day in what used to be, before our ten poor gentlemen commuted, our -great Dinner Hall. I was there; and I recollect, as I was stirring -up the blaze for the young lady to warm her pretty feet by, she read -the scroll out loud, that is underneath that pictur, ‘Lord, keep -my memory green!’ She and my poor wife fell a talking about -it; and it’s a strange thing to think of, now, that they both -said (both being so unlike to die) that it was a good prayer, and that -it was one they would put up very earnestly, if they were called away -young, with reference to those who were dearest to them. ‘My -brother,’ says the young lady - ‘My husband,’ says -my poor wife. - ‘Lord, keep his memory of me, green, and do not -let me be forgotten!’”<br> -<br> -Tears more painful, and more bitter than he had ever shed in all his -life, coursed down Redlaw’s face. Philip, fully occupied -in recalling his story, had not observed him until now, nor Milly’s -anxiety that he should not proceed.<br> -<br> -“Philip!” said Redlaw, laying his hand upon his arm, “I -am a stricken man, on whom the hand of Providence has fallen heavily, -although deservedly. You speak to me, my friend, of what I cannot -follow; my memory is gone.”<br> -<br> -“Merciful power!” cried the old man.<br> -<br> -“I have lost my memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” said -the Chemist, “and with that I have lost all man would remember!”<br> -<br> -To see old Philip’s pity for him, to see him wheel his own great -chair for him to rest in, and look down upon him with a solemn sense -of his bereavement, was to know, in some degree, how precious to old -age such recollections are.<br> -<br> -The boy came running in, and ran to Milly.<br> -<br> -“Here’s the man,” he said, “in the other room. -I don’t want <i>him</i>.”<br> -<br> -“What man does he mean?” asked Mr. William.<br> -<br> -“Hush!” said Milly.<br> -<br> -Obedient to a sign from her, he and his old father softly withdrew. -As they went out, unnoticed, Redlaw beckoned to the boy to come to him.<br> -<br> -“I like the woman best,” he answered, holding to her skirts.<br> -<br> -“You are right,” said Redlaw, with a faint smile. -“But you needn’t fear to come to me. I am gentler -than I was. Of all the world, to you, poor child!”<br> -<br> -The boy still held back at first, but yielding little by little to her -urging, he consented to approach, and even to sit down at his feet. -As Redlaw laid his hand upon the shoulder of the child, looking on him -with compassion and a fellow-feeling, he put out his other hand to Milly. -She stooped down on that side of him, so that she could look into his -face, and after silence, said:<br> -<br> -“Mr. Redlaw, may I speak to you?”<br> -<br> -“Yes,” he answered, fixing his eyes upon her. “Your -voice and music are the same to me.”<br> -<br> -“May I ask you something?”<br> -<br> -“What you will.”<br> -<br> -“Do you remember what I said, when I knocked at your door last -night? About one who was your friend once, and who stood on the -verge of destruction?”<br> -<br> -“Yes. I remember,” he said, with some hesitation.<br> -<br> -“Do you understand it?”<br> -<br> -He smoothed the boy’s hair - looking at her fixedly the while, -and shook his head.<br> -<br> -“This person,” said Milly, in her clear, soft voice, which -her mild eyes, looking at him, made clearer and softer, “I found -soon afterwards. I went back to the house, and, with Heaven’s -help, traced him. I was not too soon. A very little and -I should have been too late.”<br> -<br> -He took his hand from the boy, and laying it on the back of that hand -of hers, whose timid and yet earnest touch addressed him no less appealingly -than her voice and eyes, looked more intently on her.<br> -<br> -“He <i>is</i> the father of Mr. Edmund, the young gentleman we -saw just now. His real name is Longford. - You recollect the name?”<br> -<br> -“I recollect the name.”<br> -<br> -“And the man?”<br> -<br> -“No, not the man. Did he ever wrong me?”<br> -<br> -“Yes!”<br> -<br> -“Ah! Then it’s hopeless - hopeless.”<br> -<br> -He shook his head, and softly beat upon the hand he held, as though -mutely asking her commiseration.<br> -<br> -“I did not go to Mr. Edmund last night,” said Milly, - “You -will listen to me just the same as if you did remember all?”<br> -<br> -“To every syllable you say.”<br> -<br> -“Both, because I did not know, then, that this really was his -father, and because I was fearful of the effect of such intelligence -upon him, after his illness, if it should be. Since I have known -who this person is, I have not gone either; but that is for another -reason. He has long been separated from his wife and son - has -been a stranger to his home almost from this son’s infancy, I -learn from him - and has abandoned and deserted what he should have -held most dear. In all that time he has been falling from the -state of a gentleman, more and more, until - ” she rose up, hastily, -and going out for a moment, returned, accompanied by the wreck that -Redlaw had beheld last night.<br> -<br> -“Do you know me?” asked the Chemist.<br> -<br> -“I should be glad,” returned the other, “and that -is an unwonted word for me to use, if I could answer no.”<br> -<br> -The Chemist looked at the man, standing in self-abasement and degradation -before him, and would have looked longer, in an ineffectual struggle -for enlightenment, but that Milly resumed her late position by his side, -and attracted his attentive gaze to her own face.<br> -<br> -“See how low he is sunk, how lost he is!” she whispered, -stretching out her arm towards him, without looking from the Chemist’s -face. “If you could remember all that is connected with -him, do you not think it would move your pity to reflect that one you -ever loved (do not let us mind how long ago, or in what belief that -he has forfeited), should come to this?”<br> -<br> -“I hope it would,” he answered. “I believe it -would.”<br> -<br> -His eyes wandered to the figure standing near the door, but came back -speedily to her, on whom he gazed intently, as if he strove to learn -some lesson from every tone of her voice, and every beam of her eyes.<br> -<br> -“I have no learning, and you have much,” said Milly; “I -am not used to think, and you are always thinking. May I tell -you why it seems to me a good thing for us, to remember wrong that has -been done us?”<br> -<br> -“Yes.”<br> -<br> -“That we may forgive it.”<br> -<br> -“Pardon me, great Heaven!” said Redlaw, lifting up his eyes, -“for having thrown away thine own high attribute!”<br> -<br> -“And if,” said Milly, “if your memory should one day -be restored, as we will hope and pray it may be, would it not be a blessing -to you to recall at once a wrong and its forgiveness?”<br> -<br> -He looked at the figure by the door, and fastened his attentive eyes -on her again; a ray of clearer light appeared to him to shine into his -mind, from her bright face.<br> -<br> -“He cannot go to his abandoned home. He does not seek to -go there. He knows that he could only carry shame and trouble -to those he has so cruelly neglected; and that the best reparation he -can make them now, is to avoid them. A very little money carefully -bestowed, would remove him to some distant place, where he might live -and do no wrong, and make such atonement as is left within his power -for the wrong he has done. To the unfortunate lady who is his -wife, and to his son, this would be the best and kindest boon that their -best friend could give them - one too that they need never know of; -and to him, shattered in reputation, mind, and body, it might be salvation.”<br> -<br> -He took her head between her hands, and kissed it, and said: “It -shall be done. I trust to you to do it for me, now and secretly; -and to tell him that I would forgive him, if I were so happy as to know -for what.”<br> -<br> -As she rose, and turned her beaming face towards the fallen man, implying -that her mediation had been successful, he advanced a step, and without -raising his eyes, addressed himself to Redlaw.<br> -<br> -“You are so generous,” he said, “ - you ever were -- that you will try to banish your rising sense of retribution in the -spectacle that is before you. I do not try to banish it from myself, -Redlaw. If you can, believe me.”<br> -<br> -The Chemist entreated Milly, by a gesture, to come nearer to him; and, -as he listened looked in her face, as if to find in it the clue to what -he heard.<br> -<br> -“I am too decayed a wretch to make professions; I recollect my -own career too well, to array any such before you. But from the -day on which I made my first step downward, in dealing falsely by you, -I have gone down with a certain, steady, doomed progression. That, -I say.”<br> -<br> -Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned his face towards the speaker, -and there was sorrow in it. Something like mournful recognition -too.<br> -<br> -“I might have been another man, my life might have been another -life, if I had avoided that first fatal step. I don’t know -that it would have been. I claim nothing for the possibility. -Your sister is at rest, and better than she could have been with me, -if I had continued even what you thought me: even what I once supposed -myself to be.”<br> -<br> -Redlaw made a hasty motion with his hand, as if he would have put that -subject on one side.<br> -<br> -“I speak,” the other went on, “like a man taken from -the grave. I should have made my own grave, last night, had it -not been for this blessed hand.”<br> -<br> -“Oh dear, he likes me too!” sobbed Milly, under her breath. -“That’s another!”<br> -<br> -“I could not have put myself in your way, last night, even for -bread. But, to-day, my recollection of what has been is so strongly -stirred, and is presented to me, I don’t know how, so vividly, -that I have dared to come at her suggestion, and to take your bounty, -and to thank you for it, and to beg you, Redlaw, in your dying hour, -to be as merciful to me in your thoughts, as you are in your deeds.”<br> -<br> -He turned towards the door, and stopped a moment on his way forth.<br> -<br> -“I hope my son may interest you, for his mother’s sake. -I hope he may deserve to do so. Unless my life should be preserved -a long time, and I should know that I have not misused your aid, I shall -never look upon him more.”<br> -<br> -Going out, he raised his eyes to Redlaw for the first time. Redlaw, -whose steadfast gaze was fixed upon him, dreamily held out his hand. -He returned and touched it - little more - with both his own; and bending -down his head, went slowly out.<br> -<br> -In the few moments that elapsed, while Milly silently took him to the -gate, the Chemist dropped into his chair, and covered his face with -his hands. Seeing him thus, when she came back, accompanied by -her husband and his father (who were both greatly concerned for him), -she avoided disturbing him, or permitting him to be disturbed; and kneeled -down near the chair to put some warm clothing on the boy.<br> -<br> -“That’s exactly where it is. That’s what I always -say, father!” exclaimed her admiring husband. “There’s -a motherly feeling in Mrs. William’s breast that must and will -have went!”<br> -<br> -“Ay, ay,” said the old man; “you’re right. -My son William’s right!”<br> -<br> -“It happens all for the best, Milly dear, no doubt,” said -Mr. William, tenderly, “that we have no children of our own; and -yet I sometimes wish you had one to love and cherish. Our little -dead child that you built such hopes upon, and that never breathed the -breath of life - it has made you quiet-like, Milly.”<br> -<br> -“I am very happy in the recollection of it, William dear,” -she answered. “I think of it every day.”<br> -<br> -“I was afraid you thought of it a good deal.”<br> -<br> -“Don’t say, afraid; it is a comfort to me; it speaks to -me in so many ways. The innocent thing that never lived on earth, -is like an angel to me, William.”<br> -<br> -“You are like an angel to father and me,” said Mr. William, -softly. “I know that.”<br> -<br> -“When I think of all those hopes I built upon it, and the many -times I sat and pictured to myself the little smiling face upon my bosom -that never lay there, and the sweet eyes turned up to mine that never -opened to the light,” said Milly, “I can feel a greater -tenderness, I think, for all the disappointed hopes in which there is -no harm. When I see a beautiful child in its fond mother’s -arms, I love it all the better, thinking that my child might have been -like that, and might have made my heart as proud and happy.”<br> -<br> -Redlaw raised his head, and looked towards her.<br> -<br> -“All through life, it seems by me,” she continued, “to -tell me something. For poor neglected children, my little child -pleads as if it were alive, and had a voice I knew, with which to speak -to me. When I hear of youth in suffering or shame, I think that -my child might have come to that, perhaps, and that God took it from -me in His mercy. Even in age and grey hair, such as father’s, -it is present: saying that it too might have lived to be old, long and -long after you and I were gone, and to have needed the respect and love -of younger people.”<br> -<br> -Her quiet voice was quieter than ever, as she took her husband’s -arm, and laid her head against it.<br> -<br> -“Children love me so, that sometimes I half fancy - it’s -a silly fancy, William - they have some way I don’t know of, of -feeling for my little child, and me, and understanding why their love -is precious to me. If I have been quiet since, I have been more -happy, William, in a hundred ways. Not least happy, dear, in this -- that even when my little child was born and dead but a few days, and -I was weak and sorrowful, and could not help grieving a little, the -thought arose, that if I tried to lead a good life, I should meet in -Heaven a bright creature, who would call me, Mother!”<br> -<br> -Redlaw fell upon his knees, with a loud cry.<br> -<br> -“O Thou, he said, “who through the teaching of pure love, -hast graciously restored me to the memory which was the memory of Christ -upon the Cross, and of all the good who perished in His cause, receive -my thanks, and bless her!”<br> -<br> -Then, he folded her to his heart; and Milly, sobbing more than ever, -cried, as she laughed, “He is come back to himself! He likes -me very much indeed, too! Oh, dear, dear, dear me, here’s -another!”<br> -<br> -Then, the student entered, leading by the hand a lovely girl, who was -afraid to come. And Redlaw so changed towards him, seeing in him -and his youthful choice, the softened shadow of that chastening passage -in his own life, to which, as to a shady tree, the dove so long imprisoned -in his solitary ark might fly for rest and company, fell upon his neck, -entreating them to be his children.<br> -<br> -Then, as Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the -memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around -us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for -all good, he laid his hand upon the boy, and, silently calling Him to -witness who laid His hand on children in old time, rebuking, in the -majesty of His prophetic knowledge, those who kept them from Him, vowed -to protect him, teach him, and reclaim him.<br> -<br> -Then, he gave his right hand cheerily to Philip, and said that they -would that day hold a Christmas dinner in what used to be, before the -ten poor gentlemen commuted, their great Dinner Hall; and that they -would bid to it as many of that Swidger family, who, his son had told -him, were so numerous that they might join hands and make a ring round -England, as could be brought together on so short a notice.<br> -<br> -And it was that day done. There were so many Swidgers there, grown -up and children, that an attempt to state them in round numbers might -engender doubts, in the distrustful, of the veracity of this history. -Therefore the attempt shall not be made. But there they were, -by dozens and scores - and there was good news and good hope there, -ready for them, of George, who had been visited again by his father -and brother, and by Milly, and again left in a quiet sleep. There, -present at the dinner, too, were the Tetterbys, including young Adolphus, -who arrived in his prismatic comforter, in good time for the beef. -Johnny and the baby were too late, of course, and came in all on one -side, the one exhausted, the other in a supposed state of double-tooth; -but that was customary, and not alarming.<br> -<br> -It was sad to see the child who had no name or lineage, watching the -other children as they played, not knowing how to talk with them, or -sport with them, and more strange to the ways of childhood than a rough -dog. It was sad, though in a different way, to see what an instinctive -knowledge the youngest children there had of his being different from -all the rest, and how they made timid approaches to him with soft words -and touches, and with little presents, that he might not be unhappy. -But he kept by Milly, and began to love her - that was another, as she -said! - and, as they all liked her dearly, they were glad of that, and -when they saw him peeping at them from behind her chair, they were pleased -that he was so close to it.<br> -<br> -All this, the Chemist, sitting with the student and his bride that was -to be, Philip, and the rest, saw.<br> -<br> -Some people have said since, that he only thought what has been herein -set down; others, that he read it in the fire, one winter night about -the twilight time; others, that the Ghost was but the representation -of his gloomy thoughts, and Milly the embodiment of his better wisdom. -<i>I</i> say nothing.<br> -<br> -- Except this. That as they were assembled in the old Hall, by -no other light than that of a great fire (having dined early), the shadows -once more stole out of their hiding-places, and danced about the room, -showing the children marvellous shapes and faces on the walls, and gradually -changing what was real and familiar there, to what was wild and magical. -But that there was one thing in the Hall, to which the eyes of Redlaw, -and of Milly and her husband, and of the old man, and of the student, -and his bride that was to be, were often turned, which the shadows did -not obscure or change. Deepened in its gravity by the fire-light, -and gazing from the darkness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate -face in the portrait, with the beard and ruff, looked down at them from -under its verdant wreath of holly, as they looked up at it; and, clear -and plain below, as if a voice had uttered them, were the words.<br> -<br> -<br> -Lord keep my Memory green.<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -<br> -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE HAUNTED MAN ***<br> -<pre> - -******This file should be named hntmn10h.htm or hntmn10h.zip****** -Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, hntmn11h.htm -VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, hntmn10ah.htm - -Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US -unless a copyright notice is included. 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Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be -used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be -they hardware or software or any other related product without -express permission.] - -*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* -</pre></body> -</html> diff --git a/old/hntmn10h.zip b/old/hntmn10h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index bde44d3..0000000 --- a/old/hntmn10h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old-2025-03-03/644-0.txt b/old/old-2025-03-03/644-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e8e1563..0000000 --- a/old/old-2025-03-03/644-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4256 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, by Charles Dickens - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain - -Author: Charles Dickens - -Release Date: September 1996 [eBook #644] -[Most recently updated: June 8, 2021] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: David Price - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN *** - - - - - THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN - - - - -CHAPTER I -The Gift Bestowed - - -Everybody said so. - -Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. -Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general -experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken, in most -instances, such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority -is proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; “but -_that’s_ no rule,” as the ghost of Giles Scroggins says in the ballad. - -The dread word, GHOST, recalls me. - -Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent of my present -claim for everybody is, that they were so far right. He did. - -Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brilliant eye; his -black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and -well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like tangled sea-weed, -about his face,—as if he had been, through his whole life, a lonely mark -for the chafing and beating of the great deep of humanity,—but might have -said he looked like a haunted man? - -Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, -shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a -distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening -to some old echoes in his mind, but might have said it was the manner of -a haunted man? - -Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and grave, with a -natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set himself against -and stop, but might have said it was the voice of a haunted man? - -Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and part -laboratory,—for he was, as the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in -chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears -and eyes hung daily,—who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, -alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of -his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd -of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire upon the -quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the reflection of -glass vessels that held liquids), trembling at heart like things that -knew his power to uncombine them, and to give back their component parts -to fire and vapour;—who that had seen him then, his work done, and he -pondering in his chair before the rusted grate and red flame, moving his -thin mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, would not have said -that the man seemed haunted and the chamber too? - -Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed that -everything about him took this haunted tone, and that he lived on haunted -ground? - -His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like,—an old, retired part of an -ancient endowment for students, once a brave edifice, planted in an open -place, but now the obsolete whim of forgotten architects; -smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, squeezed on every side by the overgrowing -of the great city, and choked, like an old well, with stones and bricks; -its small quadrangles, lying down in very pits formed by the streets and -buildings, which, in course of time, had been constructed above its heavy -chimney stacks; its old trees, insulted by the neighbouring smoke, which -deigned to droop so low when it was very feeble and the weather very -moody; its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed earth to be grass, -or to win any show of compromise; its silent pavements, unaccustomed to -the tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, except when a -stray face looked down from the upper world, wondering what nook it was; -its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled -for a hundred years, but where, in compensation for the sun’s neglect, -the snow would lie for weeks when it lay nowhere else, and the black east -wind would spin like a huge humming-top, when in all other places it was -silent and still. - -His dwelling, at its heart and core—within doors—at his fireside—was so -lowering and old, so crazy, yet so strong, with its worm-eaten beams of -wood in the ceiling, and its sturdy floor shelving downward to the great -oak chimney-piece; so environed and hemmed in by the pressure of the town -yet so remote in fashion, age, and custom; so quiet, yet so thundering -with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a door was shut,—echoes, -not confined to the many low passages and empty rooms, but rumbling and -grumbling till they were stifled in the heavy air of the forgotten Crypt -where the Norman arches were half-buried in the earth. - -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 sprang 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 to-night. 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 miles 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, eighty-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 whatnot 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 of 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—its 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 to-night,” 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 at 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?” - -“Maybe 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. “You 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?” - -“I know the portrait hangs there, Philip.” - -“Yes, sure, it’s the second on the right, above the panelling. I was -going to say—he has helped to keep _my_ memory green, I thank him; for -going round the building every year, as I’m a doing now, and freshening -up the bare rooms with these branches and berries, freshens up my bare -old brain. One year brings back another, and that year another, and -those others numbers! At last, it seems to me as if the birth-time of -our Lord was the birth-time of all I have ever had affection for, or -mourned for, or delighted in,—and they’re a pretty many, for I’m -eighty-seven!” - -“Merry and happy,” murmured Redlaw to himself. - -The room began to darken strangely. - -“So you see, sir,” pursued old Philip, whose hale wintry cheek had warmed -into a ruddier glow, and whose blue eyes had brightened while he spoke, -“I have plenty to keep, when I keep this present season. Now, where’s my -quiet Mouse? Chattering’s the sin of my time of life, and there’s half -the building to do yet, if the cold don’t freeze us first, or the wind -don’t blow us away, or the darkness don’t swallow us up.” - -The quiet Mouse had brought her calm face to his side, and silently taken -his arm, before he finished speaking. - -“Come away, my dear,” said the old man. “Mr. Redlaw won’t settle to his -dinner, otherwise, till it’s cold as the winter. I hope you’ll excuse me -rambling on, sir, and I wish you good night, and, once again, a merry—” - -“Stay!” said Mr. Redlaw, resuming his place at the table, more, it would -have seemed from his manner, to reassure the old keeper, than in any -remembrance of his own appetite. “Spare me another moment, Philip. -William, you were going to tell me something to your excellent wife’s -honour. It will not be disagreeable to her to hear you praise her. What -was it?” - -“Why, that’s where it is, you see, sir,” returned Mr. William Swidger, -looking towards his wife in considerable embarrassment. “Mrs. William’s -got her eye upon me.” - -“But you’re not afraid of Mrs. William’s eye?” - -“Why, no, sir,” returned Mr. Swidger, “that’s what I say myself. It -wasn’t made to be afraid of. It wouldn’t have been made so mild, if that -was the intention. But I wouldn’t like to—Milly!—him, you know. Down in -the Buildings.” - -Mr. William, standing behind the table, and rummaging disconcertedly -among the objects upon it, directed persuasive glances at Mrs. William, -and secret jerks of his head and thumb at Mr. Redlaw, as alluring her -towards him. - -“Him, you know, my love,” said Mr. William. “Down in the Buildings. -Tell, my dear! You’re the works of Shakespeare in comparison with -myself. Down in the Buildings, you know, my love.—Student.” - -“Student?” repeated Mr. Redlaw, raising his head. - -“That’s what I say, sir!” cried Mr. William, in the utmost animation of -assent. “If it wasn’t the poor student down in the Buildings, why should -you wish to hear it from Mrs. William’s lips? Mrs. William, my -dear—Buildings.” - -“I didn’t know,” said Milly, with a quiet frankness, free from any haste -or confusion, “that William had said anything about it, or I wouldn’t -have come. I asked him not to. It’s a sick young gentleman, sir—and -very poor, I am afraid—who is too ill to go home this holiday-time, and -lives, unknown to any one, in but a common kind of lodging for a -gentleman, down in Jerusalem Buildings. That’s all, sir.” - -“Why have I never heard of him?” said the Chemist, rising hurriedly. -“Why has he not made his situation known to me? Sick!—give me my hat and -cloak. Poor!—what house?—what number?” - -“Oh, you mustn’t go there, sir,” said Milly, leaving her father-in-law, -and calmly confronting him with her collected little face and folded -hands. - -“Not go there?” - -“Oh dear, no!” said Milly, shaking her head as at a most manifest and -self-evident impossibility. “It couldn’t be thought of!” - -“What do you mean? Why not?” - -“Why, you see, sir,” said Mr. William Swidger, persuasively and -confidentially, “that’s what I say. Depend upon it, the young gentleman -would never have made his situation known to one of his own sex. Mrs. -Williams has got into his confidence, but that’s quite different. They -all confide in Mrs. William; they all trust _her_. A man, sir, couldn’t -have got a whisper out of him; but woman, sir, and Mrs. William -combined—!” - -“There is good sense and delicacy in what you say, William,” returned Mr. -Redlaw, observant of the gentle and composed face at his shoulder. And -laying his finger on his lip, he secretly put his purse into her hand. - -“Oh dear no, sir!” cried Milly, giving it back again. “Worse and worse! -Couldn’t be dreamed of!” - -Such a staid matter-of-fact housewife she was, and so unruffled by the -momentary haste of this rejection, that, an instant afterwards, she was -tidily picking up a few leaves which had strayed from between her -scissors and her apron, when she had arranged the holly. - -Finding, when she rose from her stooping posture, that Mr. Redlaw was -still regarding her with doubt and astonishment, she quietly -repeated—looking about, the while, for any other fragments that might -have escaped her observation: - -“Oh dear no, sir! He said that of all the world he would not be known to -you, or receive help from you—though he is a student in your class. I -have made no terms of secrecy with you, but I trust to your honour -completely.” - -“Why did he say so?” - -“Indeed I can’t tell, sir,” said Milly, after thinking a little, “because -I am not at all clever, you know; and I wanted to be useful to him in -making things neat and comfortable about him, and employed myself that -way. But I know he is poor, and lonely, and I think he is somehow -neglected too.—How dark it is!” - -The room had darkened more and more. There was a very heavy gloom and -shadow gathering behind the Chemist’s chair. - -“What more about him?” he asked. - -“He is engaged to be married when he can afford it,” said Milly, “and is -studying, I think, to qualify himself to earn a living. I have seen, a -long time, that he has studied hard and denied himself much.—How very -dark it is!” - -“It’s turned colder, too,” said the old man, rubbing his hands. “There’s -a chill and dismal feeling in the room. Where’s my son William? -William, my boy, turn the lamp, and rouse the fire!” - -Milly’s voice resumed, like quiet music very softly played: - -“He muttered in his broken sleep yesterday afternoon, after talking to -me” (this was to herself) “about some one dead, and some great wrong done -that could never be forgotten; but whether to him or to another person, I -don’t know. Not _by_ him, I am sure.” - -“And, in short, Mrs. William, you see—which she wouldn’t say herself, Mr. -Redlaw, if she was to stop here till the new year after this next one—” -said Mr. William, coming up to him to speak in his ear, “has done him -worlds of good! Bless you, worlds of good! All at home just the same as -ever—my father made as snug and comfortable—not a crumb of litter to be -found in the house, if you were to offer fifty pound ready money for -it—Mrs. William apparently never out of the way—yet Mrs. William -backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, up and down, up and down, -a mother to him!” - -The room turned darker and colder, and the gloom and shadow gathering -behind the chair was heavier. - -“Not content with this, sir, Mrs. William goes and finds, this very -night, when she was coming home (why it’s not above a couple of hours -ago), a creature more like a young wild beast than a young child, -shivering upon a door-step. What does Mrs. William do, but brings it -home to dry it, and feed it, and keep it till our old Bounty of food and -flannel is given away, on Christmas morning! If it ever felt a fire -before, it’s as much as ever it did; for it’s sitting in the old Lodge -chimney, staring at ours as if its ravenous eyes would never shut again. -It’s sitting there, at least,” said Mr. William, correcting himself, on -reflection, “unless it’s bolted!” - -“Heaven keep her happy!” said the Chemist aloud, “and you too, Philip! -and you, William! I must consider what to do in this. I may desire to -see this student, I’ll not detain you any longer now. Good-night!” - -“I thank’ee, sir, I thank’ee!” said the old man, “for Mouse, and for my -son William, and for myself. Where’s my son William? William, you take -the lantern and go on first, through them long dark passages, as you did -last year and the year afore. Ha ha! _I_ remember—though I’m -eighty-seven! ‘Lord, keep my memory green!’ It’s a very good prayer, -Mr. Redlaw, that of the learned gentleman in the peaked beard, with a -ruff round his neck—hangs up, second on the right above the panelling, in -what used to be, afore our ten poor gentlemen commuted, our great Dinner -Hall. ‘Lord, keep my memory green!’ It’s very good and pious, sir. -Amen! Amen!” - -As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which, however carefully -withheld, fired a long train of thundering reverberations when it shut at -last, the room turned darker. - -As he fell a musing in his chair alone, the healthy holly withered on the -wall, and dropped—dead branches. - -As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that place where it had -been gathering so darkly, it took, by slow degrees,—or out of it there -came, by some unreal, unsubstantial process—not to be traced by any human -sense,—an awful likeness of himself! - -Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but with his -features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the -gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into his terrible appearance of -existence, motionless, without a sound. As _he_ leaned his arm upon the -elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire, _it_ leaned upon the -chair-back, close above him, with its appalling copy of his face looking -where his face looked, and bearing the expression his face bore. - -This, then, was the Something that had passed and gone already. This was -the dread companion of the haunted man! - -It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, than he of it. -The Christmas Waits were playing somewhere in the distance, and, through -his thoughtfulness, he seemed to listen to the music. It seemed to -listen too. - -At length he spoke; without moving or lifting up his face. - -“Here again!” he said. - -“Here again,” replied the Phantom. - -“I see you in the fire,” said the haunted man; “I hear you in music, in -the wind, in the dead stillness of the night.” - -The Phantom moved its head, assenting. - -“Why do you come, to haunt me thus?” - -“I come as I am called,” replied the Ghost. - -“No. Unbidden,” exclaimed the Chemist. - -“Unbidden be it,” said the Spectre. “It is enough. I am here.” - -Hitherto the light of the fire had shone on the two faces—if the dread -lineaments behind the chair might be called a face—both addressed towards -it, as at first, and neither looking at the other. But, now, the haunted -man turned, suddenly, and stared upon the Ghost. The Ghost, as sudden in -its motion, passed to before the chair, and stared on him. - -The living man, and the animated image of himself dead, might so have -looked, the one upon the other. An awful survey, in a lonely and remote -part of an empty old pile of building, on a winter night, with the loud -wind going by upon its journey of mystery—whence or whither, no man -knowing since the world began—and the stars, in unimaginable millions, -glittering through it, from eternal space, where the world’s bulk is as a -grain, and its hoary age is infancy. - -“Look upon me!” said the Spectre. “I am he, neglected in my youth, and -miserably poor, who strove and suffered, and still strove and suffered, -until I hewed out knowledge from the mine where it was buried, and made -rugged steps thereof, for my worn feet to rest and rise on.” - -“I _am_ that man,” returned the Chemist. - -“No mother’s self-denying love,” pursued the Phantom, “no father’s -counsel, aided _me_. A stranger came into my father’s place when I was -but a child, and I was easily an alien from my mother’s heart. My -parents, at the best, were of that sort whose care soon ends, and whose -duty is soon done; who cast their offspring loose, early, as birds do -theirs; and, if they do well, claim the merit; and, if ill, the pity.” - -It paused, and seemed to tempt and goad him with its look, and with the -manner of its speech, and with its smile. - -“I am he,” pursued the Phantom, “who, in this struggle upward, found a -friend. I made him—won him—bound him to me! We worked together, side by -side. All the love and confidence that in my earlier youth had had no -outlet, and found no expression, I bestowed on him.” - -“Not all,” said Redlaw, hoarsely. - -“No, not all,” returned the Phantom. “I had a sister.” - -The haunted man, with his head resting on his hands, replied “I had!” -The Phantom, with an evil smile, drew closer to the chair, and resting -its chin upon its folded hands, its folded hands upon the back, and -looking down into his face with searching eyes, that seemed instinct with -fire, went on: - -“Such glimpses of the light of home as I had ever known, had streamed -from her. How young she was, how fair, how loving! I took her to the -first poor roof that I was master of, and made it rich. She came into -the darkness of my life, and made it bright.—She is before me!” - -“I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in music, in the wind, in -the dead stillness of the night,” returned the haunted man. - -“_Did_ he love her?” said the Phantom, echoing his contemplative tone. -“I think he did, once. I am sure he did. Better had she loved him -less—less secretly, less dearly, from the shallower depths of a more -divided heart!” - -“Let me forget it!” said the Chemist, with an angry motion of his hand. -“Let me blot it from my memory!” - -The Spectre, without stirring, and with its unwinking, cruel eyes still -fixed upon his face, went on: - -“A dream, like hers, stole upon my own life.” - -“It did,” said Redlaw. - -“A love, as like hers,” pursued the Phantom, “as my inferior nature might -cherish, arose in my own heart. I was too poor to bind its object to my -fortune then, by any thread of promise or entreaty. I loved her far too -well, to seek to do it. But, more than ever I had striven in my life, I -strove to climb! Only an inch gained, brought me something nearer to the -height. I toiled up! In the late pauses of my labour at that time,—my -sister (sweet companion!) still sharing with me the expiring embers and -the cooling hearth,—when day was breaking, what pictures of the future -did I see!” - -“I saw them, in the fire, but now,” he murmured. “They come back to me -in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the -revolving years.” - -“—Pictures of my own domestic life, in aftertime, with her who was the -inspiration of my toil. Pictures of my sister, made the wife of my dear -friend, on equal terms—for he had some inheritance, we none—pictures of -our sobered age and mellowed happiness, and of the golden links, -extending back so far, that should bind us, and our children, in a -radiant garland,” said the Phantom. - -“Pictures,” said the haunted man, “that were delusions. Why is it my -doom to remember them too well!” - -“Delusions,” echoed the Phantom in its changeless voice, and glaring on -him with its changeless eyes. “For my friend (in whose breast my -confidence was locked as in my own), passing between me and the centre of -the system of my hopes and struggles, won her to himself, and shattered -my frail universe. My sister, doubly dear, doubly devoted, doubly -cheerful in my home, lived on to see me famous, and my old ambition so -rewarded when its spring was broken, and then—” - -“Then died,” he interposed. “Died, gentle as ever; happy; and with no -concern but for her brother. Peace!” - -The Phantom watched him silently. - -“Remembered!” said the haunted man, after a pause. “Yes. So well -remembered, that even now, when years have passed, and nothing is more -idle or more visionary to me than the boyish love so long outlived, I -think of it with sympathy, as if it were a younger brother’s or a son’s. -Sometimes I even wonder when her heart first inclined to him, and how it -had been affected towards me.—Not lightly, once, I think.—But that is -nothing. Early unhappiness, a wound from a hand I loved and trusted, and -a loss that nothing can replace, outlive such fancies.” - -“Thus,” said the Phantom, “I bear within me a Sorrow and a Wrong. Thus I -prey upon myself. Thus, memory is my curse; and, if I could forget my -sorrow and my wrong, I would!” - -“Mocker!” said the Chemist, leaping up, and making, with a wrathful hand, -at the throat of his other self. “Why have I always that taunt in my -ears?” - -“Forbear!” exclaimed the Spectre in an awful voice. “Lay a hand on Me, -and die!” - -He stopped midway, as if its words had paralysed him, and stood looking -on it. It had glided from him; it had its arm raised high in warning; -and a smile passed over its unearthly features, as it reared its dark -figure in triumph. - -“If I could forget my sorrow and wrong, I would,” the Ghost repeated. -“If I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!” - -“Evil spirit of myself,” returned the haunted man, in a low, trembling -tone, “my life is darkened by that incessant whisper.” - -“It is an echo,” said the Phantom. - -“If it be an echo of my thoughts—as now, indeed, I know it is,” rejoined -the haunted man, “why should I, therefore, be tormented? It is not a -selfish thought. I suffer it to range beyond myself. All men and women -have their sorrows,—most of them their wrongs; ingratitude, and sordid -jealousy, and interest, besetting all degrees of life. Who would not -forget their sorrows and their wrongs?” - -“Who would not, truly, and be happier and better for it?” said the -Phantom. - -“These revolutions of years, which we commemorate,” proceeded Redlaw, -“what do _they_ recall! Are there any minds in which they do not -re-awaken some sorrow, or some trouble? What is the remembrance of the -old man who was here to-night? A tissue of sorrow and trouble.” - -“But common natures,” said the Phantom, with its evil smile upon its -glassy face, “unenlightened minds and ordinary spirits, do not feel or -reason on these things like men of higher cultivation and profounder -thought.” - -“Tempter,” answered Redlaw, “whose hollow look and voice I dread more -than words can express, and from whom some dim foreshadowing of greater -fear is stealing over me while I speak, I hear again an echo of my own -mind.” - -“Receive it as a proof that I am powerful,” returned the Ghost. “Hear -what I offer! Forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known!” - -“Forget them!” he repeated. - -“I have the power to cancel their remembrance—to leave but very faint, -confused traces of them, that will die out soon,” returned the Spectre. -“Say! Is it done?” - -“Stay!” cried the haunted man, arresting by a terrified gesture the -uplifted hand. “I tremble with distrust and doubt of you; and the dim -fear you cast upon me deepens into a nameless horror I can hardly bear.—I -would not deprive myself of any kindly recollection, or any sympathy that -is good for me, or others. What shall I lose, if I assent to this? What -else will pass from my remembrance?” - -“No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but the intertwisted chain of -feelings and associations, each in its turn dependent on, and nourished -by, the banished recollections. Those will go.” - -“Are they so many?” said the haunted man, reflecting in alarm. - -“They have been wont to show themselves in the fire, in music, in the -wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolving years,” -returned the Phantom scornfully. - -“In nothing else?” - -The Phantom held its peace. - -But having stood before him, silent, for a little while, it moved towards -the fire; then stopped. - -“Decide!” it said, “before the opportunity is lost!” - -“A moment! I call Heaven to witness,” said the agitated man, “that I -have never been a hater of any kind,—never morose, indifferent, or hard, -to anything around me. If, living here alone, I have made too much of -all that was and might have been, and too little of what is, the evil, I -believe, has fallen on me, and not on others. But, if there were poison -in my body, should I not, possessed of antidotes and knowledge how to use -them, use them? If there be poison in my mind, and through this fearful -shadow I can cast it out, shall I not cast it out?” - -“Say,” said the Spectre, “is it done?” - -“A moment longer!” he answered hurriedly. “_I would forget it if I -could_! Have _I_ thought that, alone, or has it been the thought of -thousands upon thousands, generation after generation? All human memory -is fraught with sorrow and trouble. My memory is as the memory of other -men, but other men have not this choice. Yes, I close the bargain. Yes! -I WILL forget my sorrow, wrong, and trouble!” - -“Say,” said the Spectre, “is it done?” - -“It is!” - -“IT IS. And take this with you, man whom I here renounce! The gift that -I have given, you shall give again, go where you will. Without -recovering yourself the power that you have yielded up, you shall -henceforth destroy its like in all whom you approach. Your wisdom has -discovered that the memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble is the lot of -all mankind, and that mankind would be the happier, in its other -memories, without it. Go! Be its benefactor! Freed from such -remembrance, from this hour, carry involuntarily the blessing of such -freedom with you. Its diffusion is inseparable and inalienable from you. -Go! Be happy in the good you have won, and in the good you do!” - -The Phantom, which had held its bloodless hand above him while it spoke, -as if in some unholy invocation, or some ban; and which had gradually -advanced its eyes so close to his, that he could see how they did not -participate in the terrible smile upon its face, but were a fixed, -unalterable, steady horror melted before him and was gone. - -As he stood rooted to the spot, possessed by fear and wonder, and -imagining he heard repeated in melancholy echoes, dying away fainter and -fainter, the words, “Destroy its like in all whom you approach!” a shrill -cry reached his ears. It came, not from the passages beyond the door, -but from another part of the old building, and sounded like the cry of -some one in the dark who had lost the way. - -He looked confusedly upon his hands and limbs, as if to be assured of his -identity, and then shouted in reply, loudly and wildly; for there was a -strangeness and terror upon him, as if he too were lost. - -The cry responding, and being nearer, he caught up the lamp, and raised a -heavy curtain in the wall, by which he was accustomed to pass into and -out of the theatre where he lectured,—which adjoined his room. -Associated with youth and animation, and a high amphitheatre of faces -which his entrance charmed to interest in a moment, it was a ghostly -place when all this life was faded out of it, and stared upon him like an -emblem of Death. - -“Halloa!” he cried. “Halloa! This way! Come to the light!” When, as -he held the curtain with one hand, and with the other raised the lamp and -tried to pierce the gloom that filled the place, something rushed past -him into the room like a wild-cat, and crouched down in a corner. - -“What is it?” he said, hastily. - -He might have asked “What is it?” even had he seen it well, as presently -he did when he stood looking at it gathered up in its corner. - -A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and form almost an -infant’s, but in its greedy, desperate little clutch, a bad old man’s. A -face rounded and smoothed by some half-dozen years, but pinched and -twisted by the experiences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youthful. -Naked feet, beautiful in their childish delicacy,—ugly in the blood and -dirt that cracked upon them. A baby savage, a young monster, a child who -had never been a child, a creature who might live to take the outward -form of man, but who, within, would live and perish a mere beast. - -Used, already, to be worried and hunted like a beast, the boy crouched -down as he was looked at, and looked back again, and interposed his arm -to ward off the expected blow. - -“I’ll bite,” he said, “if you hit me!” - -The time had been, and not many minutes since, when such a sight as this -would have wrung the Chemist’s heart. He looked upon it now, coldly; but -with a heavy effort to remember something—he did not know what—he asked -the boy what he did there, and whence he came. - -“Where’s the woman?” he replied. “I want to find the woman.” - -“Who?” - -“The woman. Her that brought me here, and set me by the large fire. She -was so long gone, that I went to look for her, and lost myself. I don’t -want you. I want the woman.” - -He made a spring, so suddenly, to get away, that the dull sound of his -naked feet upon the floor was near the curtain, when Redlaw caught him by -his rags. - -“Come! you let me go!” muttered the boy, struggling, and clenching his -teeth. “I’ve done nothing to you. Let me go, will you, to the woman!” - -“That is not the way. There is a nearer one,” said Redlaw, detaining -him, in the same blank effort to remember some association that ought, of -right, to bear upon this monstrous object. “What is your name?” - -“Got none.” - -“Where do you live? - -“Live! What’s that?” - -The boy shook his hair from his eyes to look at him for a moment, and -then, twisting round his legs and wrestling with him, broke again into -his repetition of “You let me go, will you? I want to find the woman.” - -The Chemist led him to the door. “This way,” he said, looking at him -still confusedly, but with repugnance and avoidance, growing out of his -coldness. “I’ll take you to her.” - -The sharp eyes in the child’s head, wandering round the room, lighted on -the table where the remnants of the dinner were. - -“Give me some of that!” he said, covetously. - -“Has she not fed you?” - -“I shall be hungry again to-morrow, sha’n’t I? Ain’t I hungry every -day?” - -Finding himself released, he bounded at the table like some small animal -of prey, and hugging to his breast bread and meat, and his own rags, all -together, said: - -“There! Now take me to the woman!” - -As the Chemist, with a new-born dislike to touch him, sternly motioned -him to follow, and was going out of the door, he trembled and stopped. - -“The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will!” - -The Phantom’s words were blowing in the wind, and the wind blew chill -upon him. - -“I’ll not go there, to-night,” he murmured faintly. “I’ll go nowhere -to-night. Boy! straight down this long-arched passage, and past the -great dark door into the yard,—you see the fire shining on the window -there.” - -“The woman’s fire?” inquired the boy. - -He nodded, and the naked feet had sprung away. He came back with his -lamp, locked his door hastily, and sat down in his chair, covering his -face like one who was frightened at himself. - -For now he was, indeed, alone. Alone, alone. - - - - -CHAPTER II -The Gift Diffused - - -A small man sat in a small parlour, partitioned off from a small shop by -a small screen, pasted all over with small scraps of newspapers. In -company with the small man, was almost any amount of small children you -may please to name—at least it seemed so; they made, in that very limited -sphere of action, such an imposing effect, in point of numbers. - -Of these small fry, two had, by some strong machinery, been got into bed -in a corner, where they might have reposed snugly enough in the sleep of -innocence, but for a constitutional propensity to keep awake, and also to -scuffle in and out of bed. The immediate occasion of these predatory -dashes at the waking world, was the construction of an oyster-shell wall -in a corner, by two other youths of tender age; on which fortification -the two in bed made harassing descents (like those accursed Picts and -Scots who beleaguer the early historical studies of most young Britons), -and then withdrew to their own territory. - -In addition to the stir attendant on these inroads, and the retorts of -the invaded, who pursued hotly, and made lunges at the bed-clothes under -which the marauders took refuge, another little boy, in another little -bed, contributed his mite of confusion to the family stock, by casting -his boots upon the waters; in other words, by launching these and several -small objects, inoffensive in themselves, though of a hard substance -considered as missiles, at the disturbers of his repose,—who were not -slow to return these compliments. - -Besides which, another little boy—the biggest there, but still little—was -tottering to and fro, bent on one side, and considerably affected in his -knees by the weight of a large baby, which he was supposed by a fiction -that obtains sometimes in sanguine families, to be hushing to sleep. But -oh! the inexhaustible regions of contemplation and watchfulness into -which this baby’s eyes were then only beginning to compose themselves to -stare, over his unconscious shoulder! - -It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar the whole -existence of this particular young brother was offered up a daily -sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have consisted in its never -being quiet, in any one place, for five consecutive minutes, and never -going to sleep when required. “Tetterby’s baby” was as well known in the -neighbourhood as the postman or the pot-boy. It roved from door-step to -door-step, in the arms of little Johnny Tetterby, and lagged heavily at -the rear of troops of juveniles who followed the Tumblers or the Monkey, -and came up, all on one side, a little too late for everything that was -attractive, from Monday morning until Saturday night. Wherever childhood -congregated to play, there was little Moloch making Johnny fag and toil. -Wherever Johnny desired to stay, little Moloch became fractious, and -would not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep, -and must be watched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch was -awake, and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily persuaded that it -was a faultless baby, without its peer in the realm of England, and was -quite content to catch meek glimpses of things in general from behind its -skirts, or over its limp flapping bonnet, and to go staggering about with -it like a very little porter with a very large parcel, which was not -directed to anybody, and could never be delivered anywhere. - -The small man who sat in the small parlour, making fruitless attempts to -read his newspaper peaceably in the midst of this disturbance, was the -father of the family, and the chief of the firm described in the -inscription over the little shop front, by the name and title of A. -TETTERBY AND CO., NEWSMEN. Indeed, strictly speaking, he was the only -personage answering to that designation, as Co. was a mere poetical -abstraction, altogether baseless and impersonal. - -Tetterby’s was the corner shop in Jerusalem Buildings. There was a good -show of literature in the window, chiefly consisting of -picture-newspapers out of date, and serial pirates, and footpads. -Walking-sticks, likewise, and marbles, were included in the stock in -trade. It had once extended into the light confectionery line; but it -would seem that those elegancies of life were not in demand about -Jerusalem Buildings, for nothing connected with that branch of commerce -remained in the window, except a sort of small glass lantern containing a -languishing mass of bull’s-eyes, which had melted in the summer and -congealed in the winter until all hope of ever getting them out, or of -eating them without eating the lantern too, was gone for ever. -Tetterby’s had tried its hand at several things. It had once made a -feeble little dart at the toy business; for, in another lantern, there -was a heap of minute wax dolls, all sticking together upside down, in the -direst confusion, with their feet on one another’s heads, and a -precipitate of broken arms and legs at the bottom. It had made a move in -the millinery direction, which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes remained in -a corner of the window to attest. It had fancied that a living might lie -hidden in the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a representation of a -native of each of the three integral portions of the British Empire, in -the act of consuming that fragrant weed; with a poetic legend attached, -importing that united in one cause they sat and joked, one chewed -tobacco, one took snuff, one smoked: but nothing seemed to have come of -it—except flies. Time had been when it had put a forlorn trust in -imitative jewellery, for in one pane of glass there was a card of cheap -seals, and another of pencil-cases, and a mysterious black amulet of -inscrutable intention, labelled ninepence. But, to that hour, Jerusalem -Buildings had bought none of them. In short, Tetterby’s had tried so -hard to get a livelihood out of Jerusalem Buildings in one way or other, -and appeared to have done so indifferently in all, that the best position -in the firm was too evidently Co.’s; Co., as a bodiless creation, being -untroubled with the vulgar inconveniences of hunger and thirst, being -chargeable neither to the poor’s-rates nor the assessed taxes, and having -no young family to provide for. - -Tetterby himself, however, in his little parlour, as already mentioned, -having the presence of a young family impressed upon his mind in a manner -too clamorous to be disregarded, or to comport with the quiet perusal of -a newspaper, laid down his paper, wheeled, in his distraction, a few -times round the parlour, like an undecided carrier-pigeon, made an -ineffectual rush at one or two flying little figures in bed-gowns that -skimmed past him, and then, bearing suddenly down upon the only -unoffending member of the family, boxed the ears of little Moloch’s -nurse. - -“You bad boy!” said Mr. Tetterby, “haven’t you any feeling for your poor -father after the fatigues and anxieties of a hard winter’s day, since -five o’clock in the morning, but must you wither his rest, and corrode -his latest intelligence, with _your_ wicious tricks? Isn’t it enough, -sir, that your brother ’Dolphus is toiling and moiling in the fog and -cold, and you rolling in the lap of luxury with a—with a baby, and -everything you can wish for,” said Mr. Tetterby, heaping this up as a -great climax of blessings, “but must you make a wilderness of home, and -maniacs of your parents? Must you, Johnny? Hey?” At each -interrogation, Mr. Tetterby made a feint of boxing his ears again, but -thought better of it, and held his hand. - -“Oh, father!” whimpered Johnny, “when I wasn’t doing anything, I’m sure, -but taking such care of Sally, and getting her to sleep. Oh, father!” - -“I wish my little woman would come home!” said Mr. Tetterby, relenting -and repenting, “I only wish my little woman would come home! I ain’t fit -to deal with ’em. They make my head go round, and get the better of me. -Oh, Johnny! Isn’t it enough that your dear mother has provided you with -that sweet sister?” indicating Moloch; “isn’t it enough that you were -seven boys before without a ray of gal, and that your dear mother went -through what she _did_ go through, on purpose that you might all of you -have a little sister, but must you so behave yourself as to make my head -swim?” - -Softening more and more, as his own tender feelings and those of his -injured son were worked on, Mr. Tetterby concluded by embracing him, and -immediately breaking away to catch one of the real delinquents. A -reasonably good start occurring, he succeeded, after a short but smart -run, and some rather severe cross-country work under and over the -bedsteads, and in and out among the intricacies of the chairs, in -capturing this infant, whom he condignly punished, and bore to bed. This -example had a powerful, and apparently, mesmeric influence on him of the -boots, who instantly fell into a deep sleep, though he had been, but a -moment before, broad awake, and in the highest possible feather. Nor was -it lost upon the two young architects, who retired to bed, in an -adjoining closet, with great privacy and speed. The comrade of the -Intercepted One also shrinking into his nest with similar discretion, Mr. -Tetterby, when he paused for breath, found himself unexpectedly in a -scene of peace. - -“My little woman herself,” said Mr. Tetterby, wiping his flushed face, -“could hardly have done it better! I only wish my little woman had had -it to do, I do indeed!” - -Mr. Tetterby sought upon his screen for a passage appropriate to be -impressed upon his children’s minds on the occasion, and read the -following. - -“‘It is an undoubted fact that all remarkable men have had remarkable -mothers, and have respected them in after life as their best friends.’ -Think of your own remarkable mother, my boys,” said Mr. Tetterby, “and -know her value while she is still among you!” - -He sat down again in his chair by the fire, and composed himself, -cross-legged, over his newspaper. - -“Let anybody, I don’t care who it is, get out of bed again,” said -Tetterby, as a general proclamation, delivered in a very soft-hearted -manner, “and astonishment will be the portion of that respected -contemporary!”—which expression Mr. Tetterby selected from his screen. -“Johnny, my child, take care of your only sister, Sally; for she’s the -brightest gem that ever sparkled on your early brow.” - -Johnny sat down on a little stool, and devotedly crushed himself beneath -the weight of Moloch. - -“Ah, what a gift that baby is to you, Johnny!” said his father, “and how -thankful you ought to be! ‘It is not generally known, Johnny,’” he was -now referring to the screen again, “‘but it is a fact ascertained, by -accurate calculations, that the following immense percentage of babies -never attain to two years old; that is to say—’” - -“Oh, don’t, father, please!” cried Johnny. “I can’t bear it, when I -think of Sally.” - -Mr. Tetterby desisting, Johnny, with a profound sense of his trust, wiped -his eyes, and hushed his sister. - -“Your brother ’Dolphus,” said his father, poking the fire, “is late -to-night, Johnny, and will come home like a lump of ice. What’s got your -precious mother?” - -“Here’s mother, and ’Dolphus too, father!” exclaimed Johnny, “I think.” - -“You’re right!” returned his father, listening. “Yes, that’s the -footstep of my little woman.” - -The process of induction, by which Mr. Tetterby had come to the -conclusion that his wife was a little woman, was his own secret. She -would have made two editions of himself, very easily. Considered as an -individual, she was rather remarkable for being robust and portly; but -considered with reference to her husband, her dimensions became -magnificent. Nor did they assume a less imposing proportion, when -studied with reference to the size of her seven sons, who were but -diminutive. In the case of Sally, however, Mrs. Tetterby had asserted -herself, at last; as nobody knew better than the victim Johnny, who -weighed and measured that exacting idol every hour in the day. - -Mrs. Tetterby, who had been marketing, and carried a basket, threw back -her bonnet and shawl, and sitting down, fatigued, commanded Johnny to -bring his sweet charge to her straightway, for a kiss. Johnny having -complied, and gone back to his stool, and again crushed himself, Master -Adolphus Tetterby, who had by this time unwound his torso out of a -prismatic comforter, apparently interminable, requested the same favour. -Johnny having again complied, and again gone back to his stool, and again -crushed himself, Mr. Tetterby, struck by a sudden thought, preferred the -same claim on his own parental part. The satisfaction of this third -desire completely exhausted the sacrifice, who had hardly breath enough -left to get back to his stool, crush himself again, and pant at his -relations. - -“Whatever you do, Johnny,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking her head, “take -care of her, or never look your mother in the face again.” - -“Nor your brother,” said Adolphus. - -“Nor your father, Johnny,” added Mr. Tetterby. - -Johnny, much affected by this conditional renunciation of him, looked -down at Moloch’s eyes to see that they were all right, so far, and -skilfully patted her back (which was uppermost), and rocked her with his -foot. - -“Are you wet, ’Dolphus, my boy?” said his father. “Come and take my -chair, and dry yourself.” - -“No, father, thank’ee,” said Adolphus, smoothing himself down with his -hands. “I an’t very wet, I don’t think. Does my face shine much, -father?” - -“Well, it _does_ look waxy, my boy,” returned Mr. Tetterby. - -“It’s the weather, father,” said Adolphus, polishing his cheeks on the -worn sleeve of his jacket. “What with rain, and sleet, and wind, and -snow, and fog, my face gets quite brought out into a rash sometimes. And -shines, it does—oh, don’t it, though!” - -Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper line of life, being employed, -by a more thriving firm than his father and Co., to vend newspapers at a -railway station, where his chubby little person, like a -shabbily-disguised Cupid, and his shrill little voice (he was not much -more than ten years old), were as well known as the hoarse panting of the -locomotives, running in and out. His juvenility might have been at some -loss for a harmless outlet, in this early application to traffic, but for -a fortunate discovery he made of a means of entertaining himself, and of -dividing the long day into stages of interest, without neglecting -business. This ingenious invention, remarkable, like many great -discoveries, for its simplicity, consisted in varying the first vowel in -the word “paper,” and substituting, in its stead, at different periods of -the day, all the other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus, before -daylight in the winter-time, he went to and fro, in his little oilskin -cap and cape, and his big comforter, piercing the heavy air with his cry -of “Morn-ing Pa-per!” which, about an hour before noon, changed to -“Morn-ing Pepper!” which, at about two, changed to “Morn-ing Pip-per!” -which in a couple of hours changed to “Morn-ing Pop-per!” and so declined -with the sun into “Eve-ning Pup-per!” to the great relief and comfort of -this young gentleman’s spirits. - -Mrs. Tetterby, his lady-mother, who had been sitting with her bonnet and -shawl thrown back, as aforesaid, thoughtfully turning her wedding-ring -round and round upon her finger, now rose, and divesting herself of her -out-of-door attire, began to lay the cloth for supper. - -“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “That’s the way the -world goes!” - -“Which is the way the world goes, my dear?” asked Mr. Tetterby, looking -round. - -“Oh, nothing,” said Mrs. Tetterby. - -Mr. Tetterby elevated his eyebrows, folded his newspaper afresh, and -carried his eyes up it, and down it, and across it, but was wandering in -his attention, and not reading it. - -Mrs. Tetterby, at the same time, laid the cloth, but rather as if she -were punishing the table than preparing the family supper; hitting it -unnecessarily hard with the knives and forks, slapping it with the -plates, dinting it with the salt-cellar, and coming heavily down upon it -with the loaf. - -“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “That’s the way the -world goes!” - -“My duck,” returned her husband, looking round again, “you said that -before. Which is the way the world goes?” - -“Oh, nothing!” said Mrs. Tetterby. - -“Sophia!” remonstrated her husband, “you said _that_ before, too.” - -“Well, I’ll say it again if you like,” returned Mrs. Tetterby. “Oh -nothing—there! And again if you like, oh nothing—there! And again if -you like, oh nothing—now then!” - -Mr. Tetterby brought his eye to bear upon the partner of his bosom, and -said, in mild astonishment: - -“My little woman, what has put you out?” - -“I’m sure _I_ don’t know,” she retorted. “Don’t ask me. Who said I was -put out at all? _I_ never did.” - -Mr. Tetterby gave up the perusal of his newspaper as a bad job, and, -taking a slow walk across the room, with his hands behind him, and his -shoulders raised—his gait according perfectly with the resignation of his -manner—addressed himself to his two eldest offspring. - -“Your supper will be ready in a minute, ’Dolphus,” said Mr. Tetterby. -“Your mother has been out in the wet, to the cook’s shop, to buy it. It -was very good of your mother so to do. _You_ shall get some supper too, -very soon, Johnny. Your mother’s pleased with you, my man, for being so -attentive to your precious sister.” - -Mrs. Tetterby, without any remark, but with a decided subsidence of her -animosity towards the table, finished her preparations, and took, from -her ample basket, a substantial slab of hot pease pudding wrapped in -paper, and a basin covered with a saucer, which, on being uncovered, sent -forth an odour so agreeable, that the three pair of eyes in the two beds -opened wide and fixed themselves upon the banquet. Mr. Tetterby, without -regarding this tacit invitation to be seated, stood repeating slowly, -“Yes, yes, your supper will be ready in a minute, ’Dolphus—your mother -went out in the wet, to the cook’s shop, to buy it. It was very good of -your mother so to do”—until Mrs. Tetterby, who had been exhibiting sundry -tokens of contrition behind him, caught him round the neck, and wept. - -“Oh, Dolphus!” said Mrs. Tetterby, “how could I go and behave so?” - -This reconciliation affected Adolphus the younger and Johnny to that -degree, that they both, as with one accord, raised a dismal cry, which -had the effect of immediately shutting up the round eyes in the beds, and -utterly routing the two remaining little Tetterbys, just then stealing in -from the adjoining closet to see what was going on in the eating way. - -“I am sure, ’Dolphus,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, “coming home, I had no more -idea than a child unborn—” - -Mr. Tetterby seemed to dislike this figure of speech, and observed, “Say -than the baby, my dear.” - -“—Had no more idea than the baby,” said Mrs. Tetterby.—“Johnny, don’t -look at me, but look at her, or she’ll fall out of your lap and be -killed, and then you’ll die in agonies of a broken heart, and serve you -right.—No more idea I hadn’t than that darling, of being cross when I -came home; but somehow, ’Dolphus—” Mrs. Tetterby paused, and again -turned her wedding-ring round and round upon her finger. - -“I see!” said Mr. Tetterby. “I understand! My little woman was put out. -Hard times, and hard weather, and hard work, make it trying now and then. -I see, bless your soul! No wonder! Dolf, my man,” continued Mr. -Tetterby, exploring the basin with a fork, “here’s your mother been and -bought, at the cook’s shop, besides pease pudding, a whole knuckle of a -lovely roast leg of pork, with lots of crackling left upon it, and with -seasoning gravy and mustard quite unlimited. Hand in your plate, my boy, -and begin while it’s simmering.” - -Master Adolphus, needing no second summons, received his portion with -eyes rendered moist by appetite, and withdrawing to his particular stool, -fell upon his supper tooth and nail. Johnny was not forgotten, but -received his rations on bread, lest he should, in a flush of gravy, -trickle any on the baby. He was required, for similar reasons, to keep -his pudding, when not on active service, in his pocket. - -There might have been more pork on the knucklebone,—which knucklebone the -carver at the cook’s shop had assuredly not forgotten in carving for -previous customers—but there was no stint of seasoning, and that is an -accessory dreamily suggesting pork, and pleasantly cheating the sense of -taste. The pease pudding, too, the gravy and mustard, like the Eastern -rose in respect of the nightingale, if they were not absolutely pork, had -lived near it; so, upon the whole, there was the flavour of a -middle-sized pig. It was irresistible to the Tetterbys in bed, who, -though professing to slumber peacefully, crawled out when unseen by their -parents, and silently appealed to their brothers for any gastronomic -token of fraternal affection. They, not hard of heart, presenting scraps -in return, it resulted that a party of light skirmishers in nightgowns -were careering about the parlour all through supper, which harassed Mr. -Tetterby exceedingly, and once or twice imposed upon him the necessity of -a charge, before which these guerilla troops retired in all directions -and in great confusion. - -Mrs. Tetterby did not enjoy her supper. There seemed to be something on -Mrs. Tetterby’s mind. At one time she laughed without reason, and at -another time she cried without reason, and at last she laughed and cried -together in a manner so very unreasonable that her husband was -confounded. - -“My little woman,” said Mr. Tetterby, “if the world goes that way, it -appears to go the wrong way, and to choke you.” - -“Give me a drop of water,” said Mrs. Tetterby, struggling with herself, -“and don’t speak to me for the present, or take any notice of me. Don’t -do it!” - -Mr. Tetterby having administered the water, turned suddenly on the -unlucky Johnny (who was full of sympathy), and demanded why he was -wallowing there, in gluttony and idleness, instead of coming forward with -the baby, that the sight of her might revive his mother. Johnny -immediately approached, borne down by its weight; but Mrs. Tetterby -holding out her hand to signify that she was not in a condition to bear -that trying appeal to her feelings, he was interdicted from advancing -another inch, on pain of perpetual hatred from all his dearest -connections; and accordingly retired to his stool again, and crushed -himself as before. - -After a pause, Mrs. Tetterby said she was better now, and began to laugh. - -“My little woman,” said her husband, dubiously, “are you quite sure -you’re better? Or are you, Sophia, about to break out in a fresh -direction?” - -“No, ’Dolphus, no,” replied his wife. “I’m quite myself.” With that, -settling her hair, and pressing the palms of her hands upon her eyes, she -laughed again. - -“What a wicked fool I was, to think so for a moment!” said Mrs. Tetterby. -“Come nearer, ’Dolphus, and let me ease my mind, and tell you what I -mean. Let me tell you all about it.” - -Mr. Tetterby bringing his chair closer, Mrs. Tetterby laughed again, gave -him a hug, and wiped her eyes. - -“You know, Dolphus, my dear,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “that when I was -single, I might have given myself away in several directions. At one -time, four after me at once; two of them were sons of Mars.” - -“We’re all sons of Ma’s, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, “jointly with -Pa’s.” - -“I don’t mean that,” replied his wife, “I mean soldiers—serjeants.” - -“Oh!” said Mr. Tetterby. - -“Well, ’Dolphus, I’m sure I never think of such things now, to regret -them; and I’m sure I’ve got as good a husband, and would do as much to -prove that I was fond of him, as—” - -“As any little woman in the world,” said Mr. Tetterby. “Very good. -_Very_ good.” - -If Mr. Tetterby had been ten feet high, he could not have expressed a -gentler consideration for Mrs. Tetterby’s fairy-like stature; and if Mrs. -Tetterby had been two feet high, she could not have felt it more -appropriately her due. - -“But you see, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “this being Christmas-time, -when all people who can, make holiday, and when all people who have got -money, like to spend some, I did, somehow, get a little out of sorts when -I was in the streets just now. There were so many things to be sold—such -delicious things to eat, such fine things to look at, such delightful -things to have—and there was so much calculating and calculating -necessary, before I durst lay out a sixpence for the commonest thing; and -the basket was so large, and wanted so much in it; and my stock of money -was so small, and would go such a little way;—you hate me, don’t you, -’Dolphus?” - -“Not quite,” said Mr. Tetterby, “as yet.” - -“Well! I’ll tell you the whole truth,” pursued his wife, penitently, -“and then perhaps you will. I felt all this, so much, when I was -trudging about in the cold, and when I saw a lot of other calculating -faces and large baskets trudging about, too, that I began to think -whether I mightn’t have done better, and been happier, if—I—hadn’t—” the -wedding-ring went round again, and Mrs. Tetterby shook her downcast head -as she turned it. - -“I see,” said her husband quietly; “if you hadn’t married at all, or if -you had married somebody else?” - -“Yes,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby. “That’s really what I thought. Do you hate -me now, ’Dolphus?” - -“Why no,” said Mr. Tetterby. “I don’t find that I do, as yet.” - -Mrs. Tetterby gave him a thankful kiss, and went on. - -“I begin to hope you won’t, now, ’Dolphus, though I’m afraid I haven’t -told you the worst. I can’t think what came over me. I don’t know -whether I was ill, or mad, or what I was, but I couldn’t call up anything -that seemed to bind us to each other, or to reconcile me to my fortune. -All the pleasures and enjoyments we had ever had—_they_ seemed so poor -and insignificant, I hated them. I could have trodden on them. And I -could think of nothing else, except our being poor, and the number of -mouths there were at home.” - -“Well, well, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, shaking her hand encouragingly, -“that’s truth, after all. We _are_ poor, and there _are_ a number of -mouths at home here.” - -“Ah! but, Dolf, Dolf!” cried his wife, laying her hands upon his neck, -“my good, kind, patient fellow, when I had been at home a very little -while—how different! Oh, Dolf, dear, how different it was! I felt as if -there was a rush of recollection on me, all at once, that softened my -hard heart, and filled it up till it was bursting. All our struggles for -a livelihood, all our cares and wants since we have been married, all the -times of sickness, all the hours of watching, we have ever had, by one -another, or by the children, seemed to speak to me, and say that they had -made us one, and that I never might have been, or could have been, or -would have been, any other than the wife and mother I am. Then, the -cheap enjoyments that I could have trodden on so cruelly, got to be so -precious to me—Oh so priceless, and dear!—that I couldn’t bear to think -how much I had wronged them; and I said, and say again a hundred times, -how could I ever behave so, ’Dolphus, how could I ever have the heart to -do it!” - -The good woman, quite carried away by her honest tenderness and remorse, -was weeping with all her heart, when she started up with a scream, and -ran behind her husband. Her cry was so terrified, that the children -started from their sleep and from their beds, and clung about her. Nor -did her gaze belie her voice, as she pointed to a pale man in a black -cloak who had come into the room. - -“Look at that man! Look there! What does he want?” - -“My dear,” returned her husband, “I’ll ask him if you’ll let me go. -What’s the matter! How you shake!” - -“I saw him in the street, when I was out just now. He looked at me, and -stood near me. I am afraid of him.” - -“Afraid of him! Why?” - -“I don’t know why—I—stop! husband!” for he was going towards the -stranger. - -She had one hand pressed upon her forehead, and one upon her breast; and -there was a peculiar fluttering all over her, and a hurried unsteady -motion of her eyes, as if she had lost something. - -“Are you ill, my dear?” - -“What is it that is going from me again?” she muttered, in a low voice. -“What _is_ this that is going away?” - -Then she abruptly answered: “Ill? No, I am quite well,” and stood -looking vacantly at the floor. - -Her husband, who had not been altogether free from the infection of her -fear at first, and whom the present strangeness of her manner did not -tend to reassure, addressed himself to the pale visitor in the black -cloak, who stood still, and whose eyes were bent upon the ground. - -“What may be your pleasure, sir,” he asked, “with us?” - -“I fear that my coming in unperceived,” returned the visitor, “has -alarmed you; but you were talking and did not hear me.” - -“My little woman says—perhaps you heard her say it,” returned Mr. -Tetterby, “that it’s not the first time you have alarmed her to-night.” - -“I am sorry for it. I remember to have observed her, for a few moments -only, in the street. I had no intention of frightening her.” - -As he raised his eyes in speaking, she raised hers. It was extraordinary -to see what dread she had of him, and with what dread he observed it—and -yet how narrowly and closely. - -“My name,” he said, “is Redlaw. I come from the old college hard by. A -young gentleman who is a student there, lodges in your house, does he -not?” - -“Mr. Denham?” said Tetterby. - -“Yes.” - -It was a natural action, and so slight as to be hardly noticeable; but -the little man, before speaking again, passed his hand across his -forehead, and looked quickly round the room, as though he were sensible -of some change in its atmosphere. The Chemist, instantly transferring to -him the look of dread he had directed towards the wife, stepped back, and -his face turned paler. - -“The gentleman’s room,” said Tetterby, “is upstairs, sir. There’s a more -convenient private entrance; but as you have come in here, it will save -your going out into the cold, if you’ll take this little staircase,” -showing one communicating directly with the parlour, “and go up to him -that way, if you wish to see him.” - -“Yes, I wish to see him,” said the Chemist. “Can you spare a light?” - -The watchfulness of his haggard look, and the inexplicable distrust that -darkened it, seemed to trouble Mr. Tetterby. He paused; and looking -fixedly at him in return, stood for a minute or so, like a man stupefied, -or fascinated. - -At length he said, “I’ll light you, sir, if you’ll follow me.” - -“No,” replied the Chemist, “I don’t wish to be attended, or announced to -him. He does not expect me. I would rather go alone. Please to give me -the light, if you can spare it, and I’ll find the way.” - -In the quickness of his expression of this desire, and in taking the -candle from the newsman, he touched him on the breast. Withdrawing his -hand hastily, almost as though he had wounded him by accident (for he did -not know in what part of himself his new power resided, or how it was -communicated, or how the manner of its reception varied in different -persons), he turned and ascended the stair. - -But when he reached the top, he stopped and looked down. The wife was -standing in the same place, twisting her ring round and round upon her -finger. The husband, with his head bent forward on his breast, was -musing heavily and sullenly. The children, still clustering about the -mother, gazed timidly after the visitor, and nestled together when they -saw him looking down. - -“Come!” said the father, roughly. “There’s enough of this. Get to bed -here!” - -“The place is inconvenient and small enough,” the mother added, “without -you. Get to bed!” - -The whole brood, scared and sad, crept away; little Johnny and the baby -lagging last. The mother, glancing contemptuously round the sordid room, -and tossing from her the fragments of their meal, stopped on the -threshold of her task of clearing the table, and sat down, pondering idly -and dejectedly. The father betook himself to the chimney-corner, and -impatiently raking the small fire together, bent over it as if he would -monopolise it all. They did not interchange a word. - -The Chemist, paler than before, stole upward like a thief; looking back -upon the change below, and dreading equally to go on or return. - -“What have I done!” he said, confusedly. “What am I going to do!” - -“To be the benefactor of mankind,” he thought he heard a voice reply. - -He looked round, but there was nothing there; and a passage now shutting -out the little parlour from his view, he went on, directing his eyes -before him at the way he went. - -“It is only since last night,” he muttered gloomily, “that I have -remained shut up, and yet all things are strange to me. I am strange to -myself. I am here, as in a dream. What interest have I in this place, -or in any place that I can bring to my remembrance? My mind is going -blind!” - -There was a door before him, and he knocked at it. Being invited, by a -voice within, to enter, he complied. - -“Is that my kind nurse?” said the voice. “But I need not ask her. There -is no one else to come here.” - -It spoke cheerfully, though in a languid tone, and attracted his -attention to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before the -chimney-piece, with the back towards the door. A meagre scanty stove, -pinched and hollowed like a sick man’s cheeks, and bricked into the -centre of a hearth that it could scarcely warm, contained the fire, to -which his face was turned. Being so near the windy house-top, it wasted -quickly, and with a busy sound, and the burning ashes dropped down fast. - -“They chink when they shoot out here,” said the student, smiling, “so, -according to the gossips, they are not coffins, but purses. I shall be -well and rich yet, some day, if it please God, and shall live perhaps to -love a daughter Milly, in remembrance of the kindest nature and the -gentlest heart in the world.” - -He put up his hand as if expecting her to take it, but, being weakened, -he lay still, with his face resting on his other hand, and did not turn -round. - -The Chemist glanced about the room;—at the student’s books and papers, -piled upon a table in a corner, where they, and his extinguished -reading-lamp, now prohibited and put away, told of the attentive hours -that had gone before this illness, and perhaps caused it;—at such signs -of his old health and freedom, as the out-of-door attire that hung idle -on the wall;—at those remembrances of other and less solitary scenes, the -little miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and the drawing of home;—at -that token of his emulation, perhaps, in some sort, of his personal -attachment too, the framed engraving of himself, the looker-on. The time -had been, only yesterday, when not one of these objects, in its remotest -association of interest with the living figure before him, would have -been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but objects; or, if any gleam of -such connexion shot upon him, it perplexed, and not enlightened him, as -he stood looking round with a dull wonder. - -The student, recalling the thin hand which had remained so long -untouched, raised himself on the couch, and turned his head. - -“Mr. Redlaw!” he exclaimed, and started up. - -Redlaw put out his arm. - -“Don’t come nearer to me. I will sit here. Remain you, where you are!” - -He sat down on a chair near the door, and having glanced at the young man -standing leaning with his hand upon the couch, spoke with his eyes -averted towards the ground. - -“I heard, by an accident, by what accident is no matter, that one of my -class was ill and solitary. I received no other description of him, than -that he lived in this street. Beginning my inquiries at the first house -in it, I have found him.” - -“I have been ill, sir,” returned the student, not merely with a modest -hesitation, but with a kind of awe of him, “but am greatly better. An -attack of fever—of the brain, I believe—has weakened me, but I am much -better. I cannot say I have been solitary, in my illness, or I should -forget the ministering hand that has been near me.” - -“You are speaking of the keeper’s wife,” said Redlaw. - -“Yes.” The student bent his head, as if he rendered her some silent -homage. - -The Chemist, in whom there was a cold, monotonous apathy, which rendered -him more like a marble image on the tomb of the man who had started from -his dinner yesterday at the first mention of this student’s case, than -the breathing man himself, glanced again at the student leaning with his -hand upon the couch, and looked upon the ground, and in the air, as if -for light for his blinded mind. - -“I remembered your name,” he said, “when it was mentioned to me down -stairs, just now; and I recollect your face. We have held but very -little personal communication together?” - -“Very little.” - -“You have retired and withdrawn from me, more than any of the rest, I -think?” - -The student signified assent. - -“And why?” said the Chemist; not with the least expression of interest, -but with a moody, wayward kind of curiosity. “Why? How comes it that -you have sought to keep especially from me, the knowledge of your -remaining here, at this season, when all the rest have dispersed, and of -your being ill? I want to know why this is?” - -The young man, who had heard him with increasing agitation, raised his -downcast eyes to his face, and clasping his hands together, cried with -sudden earnestness and with trembling lips: - -“Mr. Redlaw! You have discovered me. You know my secret!” - -“Secret?” said the Chemist, harshly. “I know?” - -“Yes! Your manner, so different from the interest and sympathy which -endear you to so many hearts, your altered voice, the constraint there is -in everything you say, and in your looks,” replied the student, “warn me -that you know me. That you would conceal it, even now, is but a proof to -me (God knows I need none!) of your natural kindness and of the bar there -is between us.” - -A vacant and contemptuous laugh, was all his answer. - -“But, Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, “as a just man, and a good man, -think how innocent I am, except in name and descent, of participation in -any wrong inflicted on you or in any sorrow you have borne.” - -“Sorrow!” said Redlaw, laughing. “Wrong! What are those to me?” - -“For Heaven’s sake,” entreated the shrinking student, “do not let the -mere interchange of a few words with me change you like this, sir! Let -me pass again from your knowledge and notice. Let me occupy my old -reserved and distant place among those whom you instruct. Know me only -by the name I have assumed, and not by that of Longford—” - -“Longford!” exclaimed the other. - -He clasped his head with both his hands, and for a moment turned upon the -young man his own intelligent and thoughtful face. But the light passed -from it, like the sun-beam of an instant, and it clouded as before. - -“The name my mother bears, sir,” faltered the young man, “the name she -took, when she might, perhaps, have taken one more honoured. Mr. -Redlaw,” hesitating, “I believe I know that history. Where my -information halts, my guesses at what is wanting may supply something not -remote from the truth. I am the child of a marriage that has not proved -itself a well-assorted or a happy one. From infancy, I have heard you -spoken of with honour and respect—with something that was almost -reverence. I have heard of such devotion, of such fortitude and -tenderness, of such rising up against the obstacles which press men down, -that my fancy, since I learnt my little lesson from my mother, has shed a -lustre on your name. At last, a poor student myself, from whom could I -learn but you?” - -Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a staring frown, -answered by no word or sign. - -“I cannot say,” pursued the other, “I should try in vain to say, how much -it has impressed me, and affected me, to find the gracious traces of the -past, in that certain power of winning gratitude and confidence which is -associated among us students (among the humblest of us, most) with Mr. -Redlaw’s generous name. Our ages and positions are so different, sir, -and I am so accustomed to regard you from a distance, that I wonder at my -own presumption when I touch, however lightly, on that theme. But to one -who—I may say, who felt no common interest in my mother once—it may be -something to hear, now that all is past, with what indescribable feelings -of affection I have, in my obscurity, regarded him; with what pain and -reluctance I have kept aloof from his encouragement, when a word of it -would have made me rich; yet how I have felt it fit that I should hold my -course, content to know him, and to be unknown. Mr. Redlaw,” said the -student, faintly, “what I would have said, I have said ill, for my -strength is strange to me as yet; but for anything unworthy in this fraud -of mine, forgive me, and for all the rest forget me!” - -The staring frown remained on Redlaw’s face, and yielded to no other -expression until the student, with these words, advanced towards him, as -if to touch his hand, when he drew back and cried to him: - -“Don’t come nearer to me!” - -The young man stopped, shocked by the eagerness of his recoil, and by the -sternness of his repulsion; and he passed his hand, thoughtfully, across -his forehead. - -“The past is past,” said the Chemist. “It dies like the brutes. Who -talks to me of its traces in my life? He raves or lies! What have I to -do with your distempered dreams? If you want money, here it is. I came -to offer it; and that is all I came for. There can be nothing else that -brings me here,” he muttered, holding his head again, with both his -hands. “There _can_ be nothing else, and yet—” - -He had tossed his purse upon the table. As he fell into this dim -cogitation with himself, the student took it up, and held it out to him. - -“Take it back, sir,” he said proudly, though not angrily. “I wish you -could take from me, with it, the remembrance of your words and offer.” - -“You do?” he retorted, with a wild light in his eyes. “You do?” - -“I do!” - -The Chemist went close to him, for the first time, and took the purse, -and turned him by the arm, and looked him in the face. - -“There is sorrow and trouble in sickness, is there not?” he demanded, -with a laugh. - -The wondering student answered, “Yes.” - -“In its unrest, in its anxiety, in its suspense, in all its train of -physical and mental miseries?” said the Chemist, with a wild unearthly -exultation. “All best forgotten, are they not?” - -The student did not answer, but again passed his hand, confusedly, across -his forehead. Redlaw still held him by the sleeve, when Milly’s voice -was heard outside. - -“I can see very well now,” she said, “thank you, Dolf. Don’t cry, dear. -Father and mother will be comfortable again, to-morrow, and home will be -comfortable too. A gentleman with him, is there!” - -Redlaw released his hold, as he listened. - -“I have feared, from the first moment,” he murmured to himself, “to meet -her. There is a steady quality of goodness in her, that I dread to -influence. I may be the murderer of what is tenderest and best within -her bosom.” - -She was knocking at the door. - -“Shall I dismiss it as an idle foreboding, or still avoid her?” he -muttered, looking uneasily around. - -She was knocking at the door again. - -“Of all the visitors who could come here,” he said, in a hoarse alarmed -voice, turning to his companion, “this is the one I should desire most to -avoid. Hide me!” - -The student opened a frail door in the wall, communicating where the -garret-roof began to slope towards the floor, with a small inner room. -Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut it after him. - -The student then resumed his place upon the couch, and called to her to -enter. - -“Dear Mr. Edmund,” said Milly, looking round, “they told me there was a -gentleman here.” - -“There is no one here but I.” - -“There has been some one?” - -“Yes, yes, there has been some one.” - -She put her little basket on the table, and went up to the back of the -couch, as if to take the extended hand—but it was not there. A little -surprised, in her quiet way, she leaned over to look at his face, and -gently touched him on the brow. - -“Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is not so cool as in the -afternoon.” - -“Tut!” said the student, petulantly, “very little ails me.” - -A little more surprise, but no reproach, was expressed in her face, as -she withdrew to the other side of the table, and took a small packet of -needlework from her basket. But she laid it down again, on second -thoughts, and going noiselessly about the room, set everything exactly in -its place, and in the neatest order; even to the cushions on the couch, -which she touched with so light a hand, that he hardly seemed to know it, -as he lay looking at the fire. When all this was done, and she had swept -the hearth, she sat down, in her modest little bonnet, to her work, and -was quietly busy on it directly. - -“It’s the new muslin curtain for the window, Mr. Edmund,” said Milly, -stitching away as she talked. “It will look very clean and nice, though -it costs very little, and will save your eyes, too, from the light. My -William says the room should not be too light just now, when you are -recovering so well, or the glare might make you giddy.” - -He said nothing; but there was something so fretful and impatient in his -change of position, that her quick fingers stopped, and she looked at him -anxiously. - -“The pillows are not comfortable,” she said, laying down her work and -rising. “I will soon put them right.” - -“They are very well,” he answered. “Leave them alone, pray. You make so -much of everything.” - -He raised his head to say this, and looked at her so thanklessly, that, -after he had thrown himself down again, she stood timidly pausing. -However, she resumed her seat, and her needle, without having directed -even a murmuring look towards him, and was soon as busy as before. - -“I have been thinking, Mr. Edmund, that _you_ have been often thinking of -late, when I have been sitting by, how true the saying is, that adversity -is a good teacher. Health will be more precious to you, after this -illness, than it has ever been. And years hence, when this time of year -comes round, and you remember the days when you lay here sick, alone, -that the knowledge of your illness might not afflict those who are -dearest to you, your home will be doubly dear and doubly blest. Now, -isn’t that a good, true thing?” - -She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she said, and -too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch for any look he -might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft of his ungrateful glance -fell harmless, and did not wound her. - -“Ah!” said Milly, with her pretty head inclining thoughtfully on one -side, as she looked down, following her busy fingers with her eyes. -“Even on me—and I am very different from you, Mr. Edmund, for I have no -learning, and don’t know how to think properly—this view of such things -has made a great impression, since you have been lying ill. When I have -seen you so touched by the kindness and attention of the poor people down -stairs, I have felt that you thought even that experience some repayment -for the loss of health, and I have read in your face, as plain as if it -was a book, that but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know -half the good there is about us.” - -His getting up from the couch, interrupted her, or she was going on to -say more. - -“We needn’t magnify the merit, Mrs. William,” he rejoined slightingly. -“The people down stairs will be paid in good time I dare say, for any -little extra service they may have rendered me; and perhaps they -anticipate no less. I am much obliged to you, too.” - -Her fingers stopped, and she looked at him. - -“I can’t be made to feel the more obliged by your exaggerating the case,” -he said. “I am sensible that you have been interested in me, and I say I -am much obliged to you. What more would you have?” - -Her work fell on her lap, as she still looked at him walking to and fro -with an intolerant air, and stopping now and then. - -“I say again, I am much obliged to you. Why weaken my sense of what is -your due in obligation, by preferring enormous claims upon me? Trouble, -sorrow, affliction, adversity! One might suppose I had been dying a -score of deaths here!” - -“Do you believe, Mr. Edmund,” she asked, rising and going nearer to him, -“that I spoke of the poor people of the house, with any reference to -myself? To me?” laying her hand upon her bosom with a simple and -innocent smile of astonishment. - -“Oh! I think nothing about it, my good creature,” he returned. “I have -had an indisposition, which your solicitude—observe! I say -solicitude—makes a great deal more of, than it merits; and it’s over, and -we can’t perpetuate it.” - -He coldly took a book, and sat down at the table. - -She watched him for a little while, until her smile was quite gone, and -then, returning to where her basket was, said gently: - -“Mr. Edmund, would you rather be alone?” - -“There is no reason why I should detain you here,” he replied. - -“Except—” said Milly, hesitating, and showing her work. - -“Oh! the curtain,” he answered, with a supercilious laugh. “That’s not -worth staying for.” - -She made up the little packet again, and put it in her basket. Then, -standing before him with such an air of patient entreaty that he could -not choose but look at her, she said: - -“If you should want me, I will come back willingly. When you did want -me, I was quite happy to come; there was no merit in it. I think you -must be afraid, that, now you are getting well, I may be troublesome to -you; but I should not have been, indeed. I should have come no longer -than your weakness and confinement lasted. You owe me nothing; but it is -right that you should deal as justly by me as if I was a lady—even the -very lady that you love; and if you suspect me of meanly making much of -the little I have tried to do to comfort your sick room, you do yourself -more wrong than ever you can do me. That is why I am sorry. That is why -I am very sorry.” - -If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, as indignant as she was -calm, as angry in her look as she was gentle, as loud of tone as she was -low and clear, she might have left no sense of her departure in the room, -compared with that which fell upon the lonely student when she went away. - -He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, when Redlaw -came out of his concealment, and came to the door. - -“When sickness lays its hand on you again,” he said, looking fiercely -back at him, “—may it be soon!—Die here! Rot here!” - -“What have you done?” returned the other, catching at his cloak. “What -change have you wrought in me? What curse have you brought upon me? -Give me back _my_self!” - -“Give me back myself!” exclaimed Redlaw like a madman. “I am infected! -I am infectious! I am charged with poison for my own mind, and the minds -of all mankind. Where I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am -turning into stone. Selfishness and ingratitude spring up in my -blighting footsteps. I am only so much less base than the wretches whom -I make so, that in the moment of their transformation I can hate them.” - -As he spoke—the young man still holding to his cloak—he cast him off, and -struck him: then, wildly hurried out into the night air where the wind -was blowing, the snow falling, the cloud-drift sweeping on, the moon -dimly shining; and where, blowing in the wind, falling with the snow, -drifting with the clouds, shining in the moonlight, and heavily looming -in the darkness, were the Phantom’s words, “The gift that I have given, -you shall give again, go where you will!” - -Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he avoided company. -The change he felt within him made the busy streets a desert, and himself -a desert, and the multitude around him, in their manifold endurances and -ways of life, a mighty waste of sand, which the winds tossed into -unintelligible heaps and made a ruinous confusion of. Those traces in -his breast which the Phantom had told him would “die out soon,” were not, -as yet, so far upon their way to death, but that he understood enough of -what he was, and what he made of others, to desire to be alone. - -This put it in his mind—he suddenly bethought himself, as he was going -along, of the boy who had rushed into his room. And then he recollected, -that of those with whom he had communicated since the Phantom’s -disappearance, that boy alone had shown no sign of being changed. - -Monstrous and odious as the wild thing was to him, he determined to seek -it out, and prove if this were really so; and also to seek it with -another intention, which came into his thoughts at the same time. - -So, resolving with some difficulty where he was, he directed his steps -back to the old college, and to that part of it where the general porch -was, and where, alone, the pavement was worn by the tread of the -students’ feet. - -The keeper’s house stood just within the iron gates, forming a part of -the chief quadrangle. There was a little cloister outside, and from that -sheltered place he knew he could look in at the window of their ordinary -room, and see who was within. The iron gates were shut, but his hand was -familiar with the fastening, and drawing it back by thrusting in his -wrist between the bars, he passed through softly, shut it again, and -crept up to the window, crumbling the thin crust of snow with his feet. - -The fire, to which he had directed the boy last night, shining brightly -through the glass, made an illuminated place upon the ground. -Instinctively avoiding this, and going round it, he looked in at the -window. At first, he thought that there was no one there, and that the -blaze was reddening only the old beams in the ceiling and the dark walls; -but peering in more narrowly, he saw the object of his search coiled -asleep before it on the floor. He passed quickly to the door, opened it, -and went in. - -The creature lay in such a fiery heat, that, as the Chemist stooped to -rouse him, it scorched his head. So soon as he was touched, the boy, not -half awake, clutching his rags together with the instinct of flight upon -him, half rolled and half ran into a distant corner of the room, where, -heaped upon the ground, he struck his foot out to defend himself. - -“Get up!” said the Chemist. “You have not forgotten me?” - -“You let me alone!” returned the boy. “This is the woman’s house—not -yours.” - -The Chemist’s steady eye controlled him somewhat, or inspired him with -enough submission to be raised upon his feet, and looked at. - -“Who washed them, and put those bandages where they were bruised and -cracked?” asked the Chemist, pointing to their altered state. - -“The woman did.” - -“And is it she who has made you cleaner in the face, too?” - -“Yes, the woman.” - -Redlaw asked these questions to attract his eyes towards himself, and -with the same intent now held him by the chin, and threw his wild hair -back, though he loathed to touch him. The boy watched his eyes keenly, -as if he thought it needful to his own defence, not knowing what he might -do next; and Redlaw could see well that no change came over him. - -“Where are they?” he inquired. - -“The woman’s out.” - -“I know she is. Where is the old man with the white hair, and his son?” - -“The woman’s husband, d’ye mean?” inquired the boy. - -“Ay. Where are those two?” - -“Out. Something’s the matter, somewhere. They were fetched out in a -hurry, and told me to stop here.” - -“Come with me,” said the Chemist, “and I’ll give you money.” - -“Come where? and how much will you give?” - -“I’ll give you more shillings than you ever saw, and bring you back soon. -Do you know your way to where you came from?” - -“You let me go,” returned the boy, suddenly twisting out of his grasp. -“I’m not a going to take you there. Let me be, or I’ll heave some fire -at you!” - -He was down before it, and ready, with his savage little hand, to pluck -the burning coals out. - -What the Chemist had felt, in observing the effect of his charmed -influence stealing over those with whom he came in contact, was not -nearly equal to the cold vague terror with which he saw this baby-monster -put it at defiance. It chilled his blood to look on the immovable -impenetrable thing, in the likeness of a child, with its sharp malignant -face turned up to his, and its almost infant hand, ready at the bars. - -“Listen, boy!” he said. “You shall take me where you please, so that you -take me where the people are very miserable or very wicked. I want to do -them good, and not to harm them. You shall have money, as I have told -you, and I will bring you back. Get up! Come quickly!” He made a hasty -step towards the door, afraid of her returning. - -“Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, nor yet touch me?” -said the boy, slowly withdrawing the hand with which he threatened, and -beginning to get up. - -“I will!” - -“And let me go, before, behind, or anyways I like?” - -“I will!” - -“Give me some money first, then, and go.” - -The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his extended hand. To -count them was beyond the boy’s knowledge, but he said “one,” every time, -and avariciously looked at each as it was given, and at the donor. He -had nowhere to put them, out of his hand, but in his mouth; and he put -them there. - -Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of his pocket-book, that the -boy was with him; and laying it on the table, signed to him to follow. -Keeping his rags together, as usual, the boy complied, and went out with -his bare head and naked feet into the winter night. - -Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he had entered, where -they were in danger of meeting her whom he so anxiously avoided, the -Chemist led the way, through some of those passages among which the boy -had lost himself, and by that portion of the building where he lived, to -a small door of which he had the key. When they got into the street, he -stopped to ask his guide—who instantly retreated from him—if he knew -where they were. - -The savage thing looked here and there, and at length, nodding his head, -pointed in the direction he designed to take. Redlaw going on at once, -he followed, something less suspiciously; shifting his money from his -mouth into his hand, and back again into his mouth, and stealthily -rubbing it bright upon his shreds of dress, as he went along. - -Three times, in their progress, they were side by side. Three times they -stopped, being side by side. Three times the Chemist glanced down at his -face, and shuddered as it forced upon him one reflection. - -The first occasion was when they were crossing an old churchyard, and -Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly at a loss how to connect them -with any tender, softening, or consolatory thought. - -The second was, when the breaking forth of the moon induced him to look -up at the Heavens, where he saw her in her glory, surrounded by a host of -stars he still knew by the names and histories which human science has -appended to them; but where he saw nothing else he had been wont to see, -felt nothing he had been wont to feel, in looking up there, on a bright -night. - -The third was when he stopped to listen to a plaintive strain of music, -but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by the dry mechanism of -the instruments and his own ears, with no address to any mystery within -him, without a whisper in it of the past, or of the future, powerless -upon him as the sound of last year’s running water, or the rushing of -last year’s wind. - -At each of these three times, he saw with horror that, in spite of the -vast intellectual distance between them, and their being unlike each -other in all physical respects, the expression on the boy’s face was the -expression on his own. - -They journeyed on for some time—now through such crowded places, that he -often looked over his shoulder thinking he had lost his guide, but -generally finding him within his shadow on his other side; now by ways so -quiet, that he could have counted his short, quick, naked footsteps -coming on behind—until they arrived at a ruinous collection of houses, -and the boy touched him and stopped. - -“In there!” he said, pointing out one house where there were scattered -lights in the windows, and a dim lantern in the doorway, with “Lodgings -for Travellers” painted on it. - -Redlaw looked about him; from the houses to the waste piece of ground on -which the houses stood, or rather did not altogether tumble down, -unfenced, undrained, unlighted, and bordered by a sluggish ditch; from -that, to the sloping line of arches, part of some neighbouring viaduct or -bridge with which it was surrounded, and which lessened gradually towards -them, until the last but one was a mere kennel for a dog, the last a -plundered little heap of bricks; from that, to the child, close to him, -cowering and trembling with the cold, and limping on one little foot, -while he coiled the other round his leg to warm it, yet staring at all -these things with that frightful likeness of expression so apparent in -his face, that Redlaw started from him. - -“In there!” said the boy, pointing out the house again. “I’ll wait.” - -“Will they let me in?” asked Redlaw. - -“Say you’re a doctor,” he answered with a nod. “There’s plenty ill -here.” - -Looking back on his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw him trail himself -upon the dust and crawl within the shelter of the smallest arch, as if he -were a rat. He had no pity for the thing, but he was afraid of it; and -when it looked out of its den at him, he hurried to the house as a -retreat. - -“Sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” said the Chemist, with a painful effort at -some more distinct remembrance, “at least haunt this place darkly. He -can do no harm, who brings forgetfulness of such things here!” - -With these words, he pushed the yielding door, and went in. - -There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or forlorn, whose -head was bent down on her hands and knees. As it was not easy to pass -without treading on her, and as she was perfectly regardless of his near -approach, he stopped, and touched her on the shoulder. Looking up, she -showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all -swept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the spring. - -With little or no show of concern on his account, she moved nearer to the -wall to leave him a wider passage. - -“What are you?” said Redlaw, pausing, with his hand upon the broken -stair-rail. - -“What do you think I am?” she answered, showing him her face again. - -He looked upon the ruined Temple of God, so lately made, so soon -disfigured; and something, which was not compassion—for the springs in -which a true compassion for such miseries has its rise, were dried up in -his breast—but which was nearer to it, for the moment, than any feeling -that had lately struggled into the darkening, but not yet wholly -darkened, night of his mind—mingled a touch of softness with his next -words. - -“I am come here to give relief, if I can,” he said. “Are you thinking of -any wrong?” - -She frowned at him, and then laughed; and then her laugh prolonged itself -into a shivering sigh, as she dropped her head again, and hid her fingers -in her hair. - -“Are you thinking of a wrong?” he asked once more. - -“I am thinking of my life,” she said, with a momentary look at him. - -He had a perception that she was one of many, and that he saw the type of -thousands, when he saw her, drooping at his feet. - -“What are your parents?” he demanded. - -“I had a good home once. My father was a gardener, far away, in the -country.” - -“Is he dead?” - -“He’s dead to me. All such things are dead to me. You a gentleman, and -not know that!” She raised her eyes again, and laughed at him. - -“Girl!” said Redlaw, sternly, “before this death, of all such things, was -brought about, was there no wrong done to you? In spite of all that you -can do, does no remembrance of wrong cleave to you? Are there not times -upon times when it is misery to you?” - -So little of what was womanly was left in her appearance, that now, when -she burst into tears, he stood amazed. But he was more amazed, and much -disquieted, to note that in her awakened recollection of this wrong, the -first trace of her old humanity and frozen tenderness appeared to show -itself. - -He drew a little off, and in doing so, observed that her arms were black, -her face cut, and her bosom bruised. - -“What brutal hand has hurt you so?” he asked. - -“My own. I did it myself!” she answered quickly. - -“It is impossible.” - -“I’ll swear I did! He didn’t touch me. I did it to myself in a passion, -and threw myself down here. He wasn’t near me. He never laid a hand -upon me!” - -In the white determination of her face, confronting him with this -untruth, he saw enough of the last perversion and distortion of good -surviving in that miserable breast, to be stricken with remorse that he -had ever come near her. - -“Sorrow, wrong, and trouble!” he muttered, turning his fearful gaze away. -“All that connects her with the state from which she has fallen, has -those roots! In the name of God, let me go by!” - -Afraid to look at her again, afraid to touch her, afraid to think of -having sundered the last thread by which she held upon the mercy of -Heaven, he gathered his cloak about him, and glided swiftly up the -stairs. - -Opposite to him, on the landing, was a door, which stood partly open, and -which, as he ascended, a man with a candle in his hand, came forward from -within to shut. But this man, on seeing him, drew back, with much -emotion in his manner, and, as if by a sudden impulse, mentioned his name -aloud. - -In the surprise of such a recognition there, he stopped, endeavouring to -recollect the wan and startled face. He had no time to consider it, for, -to his yet greater amazement, old Philip came out of the room, and took -him by the hand. - -“Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, “this is like you, this is like you, sir! -you have heard of it, and have come after us to render any help you can. -Ah, too late, too late!” - -Redlaw, with a bewildered look, submitted to be led into the room. A man -lay there, on a truckle-bed, and William Swidger stood at the bedside. - -“Too late!” murmured the old man, looking wistfully into the Chemist’s -face; and the tears stole down his cheeks. - -“That’s what I say, father,” interposed his son in a low voice. “That’s -where it is, exactly. To keep as quiet as ever we can while he’s a -dozing, is the only thing to do. You’re right, father!” - -Redlaw paused at the bedside, and looked down on the figure that was -stretched upon the mattress. It was that of a man, who should have been -in the vigour of his life, but on whom it was not likely the sun would -ever shine again. The vices of his forty or fifty years’ career had so -branded him, that, in comparison with their effects upon his face, the -heavy hand of Time upon the old man’s face who watched him had been -merciful and beautifying. - -“Who is this?” asked the Chemist, looking round. - -“My son George, Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, wringing his hands. “My -eldest son, George, who was more his mother’s pride than all the rest!” - -Redlaw’s eyes wandered from the old man’s grey head, as he laid it down -upon the bed, to the person who had recognised him, and who had kept -aloof, in the remotest corner of the room. He seemed to be about his own -age; and although he knew no such hopeless decay and broken man as he -appeared to be, there was something in the turn of his figure, as he -stood with his back towards him, and now went out at the door, that made -him pass his hand uneasily across his brow. - -“William,” he said in a gloomy whisper, “who is that man?” - -“Why you see, sir,” returned Mr. William, “that’s what I say, myself. -Why should a man ever go and gamble, and the like of that, and let -himself down inch by inch till he can’t let himself down any lower!” - -“Has _he_ done so?” asked Redlaw, glancing after him with the same uneasy -action as before. - -“Just exactly that, sir,” returned William Swidger, “as I’m told. He -knows a little about medicine, sir, it seems; and having been wayfaring -towards London with my unhappy brother that you see here,” Mr. William -passed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, “and being lodging up stairs for -the night—what I say, you see, is that strange companions come together -here sometimes—he looked in to attend upon him, and came for us at his -request. What a mournful spectacle, sir! But that’s where it is. It’s -enough to kill my father!” - -Redlaw looked up, at these words, and, recalling where he was and with -whom, and the spell he carried with him—which his surprise had -obscured—retired a little, hurriedly, debating with himself whether to -shun the house that moment, or remain. - -Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed to be a part of -his condition to struggle with, he argued for remaining. - -“Was it only yesterday,” he said, “when I observed the memory of this old -man to be a tissue of sorrow and trouble, and shall I be afraid, -to-night, to shake it? Are such remembrances as I can drive away, so -precious to this dying man that I need fear for _him_? No! I’ll stay -here.” - -But he stayed in fear and trembling none the less for these words; and, -shrouded in his black cloak with his face turned from them, stood away -from the bedside, listening to what they said, as if he felt himself a -demon in the place. - -“Father!” murmured the sick man, rallying a little from stupor. - -“My boy! My son George!” said old Philip. - -“You spoke, just now, of my being mother’s favourite, long ago. It’s a -dreadful thing to think now, of long ago!” - -“No, no, no;” returned the old man. “Think of it. Don’t say it’s -dreadful. It’s not dreadful to me, my son.” - -“It cuts you to the heart, father.” For the old man’s tears were falling -on him. - -“Yes, yes,” said Philip, “so it does; but it does me good. It’s a heavy -sorrow to think of that time, but it does me good, George. Oh, think of -it too, think of it too, and your heart will be softened more and more! -Where’s my son William? William, my boy, your mother loved him dearly to -the last, and with her latest breath said, ‘Tell him I forgave him, -blessed him, and prayed for him.’ Those were her words to me. I have -never forgotten them, and I’m eighty-seven!” - -“Father!” said the man upon the bed, “I am dying, I know. I am so far -gone, that I can hardly speak, even of what my mind most runs on. Is -there any hope for me beyond this bed?” - -“There is hope,” returned the old man, “for all who are softened and -penitent. There is hope for all such. Oh!” he exclaimed, clasping his -hands and looking up, “I was thankful, only yesterday, that I could -remember this unhappy son when he was an innocent child. But what a -comfort it is, now, to think that even God himself has that remembrance -of him!” - -Redlaw spread his hands upon his face, and shrank, like a murderer. - -“Ah!” feebly moaned the man upon the bed. “The waste since then, the -waste of life since then!” - -“But he was a child once,” said the old man. “He played with children. -Before he lay down on his bed at night, and fell into his guiltless rest, -he said his prayers at his poor mother’s knee. I have seen him do it, -many a time; and seen her lay his head upon her breast, and kiss him. -Sorrowful as it was to her and me, to think of this, when he went so -wrong, and when our hopes and plans for him were all broken, this gave -him still a hold upon us, that nothing else could have given. Oh, -Father, so much better than the fathers upon earth! Oh, Father, so much -more afflicted by the errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! -Not as he is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so often -seemed to cry to us!” - -As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, for whom he made -the supplication, laid his sinking head against him for support and -comfort, as if he were indeed the child of whom he spoke. - -When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the silence that -ensued! He knew it must come upon them, knew that it was coming fast. - -“My time is very short, my breath is shorter,” said the sick man, -supporting himself on one arm, and with the other groping in the air, -“and I remember there is something on my mind concerning the man who was -here just now, Father and William—wait!—is there really anything in -black, out there?” - -“Yes, yes, it is real,” said his aged father. - -“Is it a man?” - -“What I say myself, George,” interposed his brother, bending kindly over -him. “It’s Mr. Redlaw.” - -“I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to come here.” - -The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared before him. Obedient to -the motion of his hand, he sat upon the bed. - -“It has been so ripped up, to-night, sir,” said the sick man, laying his -hand upon his heart, with a look in which the mute, imploring agony of -his condition was concentrated, “by the sight of my poor old father, and -the thought of all the trouble I have been the cause of, and all the -wrong and sorrow lying at my door, that—” - -Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it the dawning of -another change, that made him stop? - -“—that what I _can_ do right, with my mind running on so much, so fast, -I’ll try to do. There was another man here. Did you see him?” - -Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw that fatal sign he -knew so well now, of the wandering hand upon the forehead, his voice died -at his lips. But he made some indication of assent. - -“He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He is completely beaten down, -and has no resource at all. Look after him! Lose no time! I know he -has it in his mind to kill himself.” - -It was working. It was on his face. His face was changing, hardening, -deepening in all its shades, and losing all its sorrow. - -“Don’t you remember? Don’t you know him?” he pursued. - -He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that again wandered over -his forehead, and then it lowered on Redlaw, reckless, ruffianly, and -callous. - -“Why, d-n you!” he said, scowling round, “what have you been doing to me -here! I have lived bold, and I mean to die bold. To the Devil with -you!” - -And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over his head and -ears, as resolute from that time to keep out all access, and to die in -his indifference. - -If Redlaw had been struck by lightning, it could not have struck him from -the bedside with a more tremendous shock. But the old man, who had left -the bed while his son was speaking to him, now returning, avoided it -quickly likewise, and with abhorrence. - -“Where’s my boy William?” said the old man hurriedly. “William, come -away from here. We’ll go home.” - -“Home, father!” returned William. “Are you going to leave your own son?” - -“Where’s my own son?” replied the old man. - -“Where? why, there!” - -“That’s no son of mine,” said Philip, trembling with resentment. “No -such wretch as that, has any claim on me. My children are pleasant to -look at, and they wait upon me, and get my meat and drink ready, and are -useful to me. I’ve a right to it! I’m eighty-seven!” - -“You’re old enough to be no older,” muttered William, looking at him -grudgingly, with his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what good you -are, myself. We could have a deal more pleasure without you.” - -“_My_ son, Mr. Redlaw!” said the old man. “_My_ son, too! The boy -talking to me of _my_ son! Why, what has he ever done to give me any -pleasure, I should like to know?” - -“I don’t know what you have ever done to give _me_ any pleasure,” said -William, sulkily. - -“Let me think,” said the old man. “For how many Christmas times running, -have I sat in my warm place, and never had to come out in the cold night -air; and have made good cheer, without being disturbed by any such -uncomfortable, wretched sight as him there? Is it twenty, William?” - -“Nigher forty, it seems,” he muttered. “Why, when I look at my father, -sir, and come to think of it,” addressing Redlaw, with an impatience and -irritation that were quite new, “I’m whipped if I can see anything in him -but a calendar of ever so many years of eating and drinking, and making -himself comfortable, over and over again.” - -“I—I’m eighty-seven,” said the old man, rambling on, childishly and -weakly, “and I don’t know as I ever was much put out by anything. I’m -not going to begin now, because of what he calls my son. He’s not my -son. I’ve had a power of pleasant times. I recollect once—no I -don’t—no, it’s broken off. It was something about a game of cricket and -a friend of mine, but it’s somehow broken off. I wonder who he was—I -suppose I liked him? And I wonder what became of him—I suppose he died? -But I don’t know. And I don’t care, neither; I don’t care a bit.” - -In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he put his hands -into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them he found a bit of holly (left -there, probably last night), which he now took out, and looked at. - -“Berries, eh?” said the old man. “Ah! It’s a pity they’re not good to -eat. I recollect, when I was a little chap about as high as that, and -out a walking with—let me see—who was I out a walking with?—no, I don’t -remember how that was. I don’t remember as I ever walked with any one -particular, or cared for any one, or any one for me. Berries, eh? -There’s good cheer when there’s berries. Well; I ought to have my share -of it, and to be waited on, and kept warm and comfortable; for I’m -eighty-seven, and a poor old man. I’m eigh-ty-seven. Eigh-ty-seven!” - -The drivelling, pitiable manner in which, as he repeated this, he nibbled -at the leaves, and spat the morsels out; the cold, uninterested eye with -which his youngest son (so changed) regarded him; the determined apathy -with which his eldest son lay hardened in his sin; impressed themselves -no more on Redlaw’s observation,—for he broke his way from the spot to -which his feet seemed to have been fixed, and ran out of the house. - -His guide came crawling forth from his place of refuge, and was ready for -him before he reached the arches. - -“Back to the woman’s?” he inquired. - -“Back, quickly!” answered Redlaw. “Stop nowhere on the way!” - -For a short distance the boy went on before; but their return was more -like a flight than a walk, and it was as much as his bare feet could do, -to keep pace with the Chemist’s rapid strides. Shrinking from all who -passed, shrouded in his cloak, and keeping it drawn closely about him, as -though there were mortal contagion in any fluttering touch of his -garments, he made no pause until they reached the door by which they had -come out. He unlocked it with his key, went in, accompanied by the boy, -and hastened through the dark passages to his own chamber. - -The boy watched him as he made the door fast, and withdrew behind the -table, when he looked round. - -“Come!” he said. “Don’t you touch me! You’ve not brought me here to -take my money away.” - -Redlaw threw some more upon the ground. He flung his body on it -immediately, as if to hide it from him, lest the sight of it should tempt -him to reclaim it; and not until he saw him seated by his lamp, with his -face hidden in his hands, began furtively to pick it up. When he had -done so, he crept near the fire, and, sitting down in a great chair -before it, took from his breast some broken scraps of food, and fell to -munching, and to staring at the blaze, and now and then to glancing at -his shillings, which he kept clenched up in a bunch, in one hand. - -“And this,” said Redlaw, gazing on him with increased repugnance and -fear, “is the only one companion I have left on earth!” - -How long it was before he was aroused from his contemplation of this -creature, whom he dreaded so—whether half-an-hour, or half the night—he -knew not. But the stillness of the room was broken by the boy (whom he -had seen listening) starting up, and running towards the door. - -“Here’s the woman coming!” he exclaimed. - -The Chemist stopped him on his way, at the moment when she knocked. - -“Let me go to her, will you?” said the boy. - -“Not now,” returned the Chemist. “Stay here. Nobody must pass in or out -of the room now. Who’s that?” - -“It’s I, sir,” cried Milly. “Pray, sir, let me in!” - -“No! not for the world!” he said. - -“Mr. Redlaw, Mr. Redlaw, pray, sir, let me in.” - -“What is the matter?” he said, holding the boy. - -“The miserable man you saw, is worse, and nothing I can say will wake him -from his terrible infatuation. William’s father has turned childish in a -moment, William himself is changed. The shock has been too sudden for -him; I cannot understand him; he is not like himself. Oh, Mr. Redlaw, -pray advise me, help me!” - -“No! No! No!” he answered. - -“Mr. Redlaw! Dear sir! George has been muttering, in his doze, about -the man you saw there, who, he fears, will kill himself.” - -“Better he should do it, than come near me!” - -“He says, in his wandering, that you know him; that he was your friend -once, long ago; that he is the ruined father of a student here—my mind -misgives me, of the young gentleman who has been ill. What is to be -done? How is he to be followed? How is he to be saved? Mr. Redlaw, -pray, oh, pray, advise me! Help me!” - -All this time he held the boy, who was half-mad to pass him, and let her -in. - -“Phantoms! Punishers of impious thoughts!” cried Redlaw, gazing round in -anguish, “look upon me! From the darkness of my mind, let the glimmering -of contrition that I know is there, shine up and show my misery! In the -material world as I have long taught, nothing can be spared; no step or -atom in the wondrous structure could be lost, without a blank being made -in the great universe. I know, now, that it is the same with good and -evil, happiness and sorrow, in the memories of men. Pity me! Relieve -me!” - -There was no response, but her “Help me, help me, let me in!” and the -boy’s struggling to get to her. - -“Shadow of myself! Spirit of my darker hours!” cried Redlaw, in -distraction, “come back, and haunt me day and night, but take this gift -away! Or, if it must still rest with me, deprive me of the dreadful -power of giving it to others. Undo what I have done. Leave me -benighted, but restore the day to those whom I have cursed. As I have -spared this woman from the first, and as I never will go forth again, but -will die here, with no hand to tend me, save this creature’s who is proof -against me,—hear me!” - -The only reply still was, the boy struggling to get to her, while he held -him back; and the cry, increasing in its energy, “Help! let me in. He -was your friend once, how shall he be followed, how shall he be saved? -They are all changed, there is no one else to help me, pray, pray, let me -in!” - - - - -CHAPTER III -The Gift Reversed - - -Night was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, from hill-tops, and -from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a distant low-lying line, that -promised by-and-by to change to light, was visible in the dim horizon; -but its promise was remote and doubtful, and the moon was striving with -the night-clouds busily. - -The shadows upon Redlaw’s mind succeeded thick and fast to one another, -and obscured its light as the night-clouds hovered between the moon and -earth, and kept the latter veiled in darkness. Fitful and uncertain as -the shadows which the night-clouds cast, were their concealments from -him, and imperfect revelations to him; and, like the night-clouds still, -if the clear light broke forth for a moment, it was only that they might -sweep over it, and make the darkness deeper than before. - -Without, there was a profound and solemn hush upon the ancient pile of -building, and its buttresses and angles made dark shapes of mystery upon -the ground, which now seemed to retire into the smooth white snow and now -seemed to come out of it, as the moon’s path was more or less beset. -Within, the Chemist’s room was indistinct and murky, by the light of the -expiring lamp; a ghostly silence had succeeded to the knocking and the -voice outside; nothing was audible but, now and then, a low sound among -the whitened ashes of the fire, as of its yielding up its last breath. -Before it on the ground the boy lay fast asleep. In his chair, the -Chemist sat, as he had sat there since the calling at his door had -ceased—like a man turned to stone. - -At such a time, the Christmas music he had heard before, began to play. -He listened to it at first, as he had listened in the church-yard; but -presently—it playing still, and being borne towards him on the night air, -in a low, sweet, melancholy strain—he rose, and stood stretching his -hands about him, as if there were some friend approaching within his -reach, on whom his desolate touch might rest, yet do no harm. As he did -this, his face became less fixed and wondering; a gentle trembling came -upon him; and at last his eyes filled with tears, and he put his hands -before them, and bowed down his head. - -His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, had not come back to him; he -knew that it was not restored; he had no passing belief or hope that it -was. But some dumb stir within him made him capable, again, of being -moved by what was hidden, afar off, in the music. If it were only that -it told him sorrowfully the value of what he had lost, he thanked Heaven -for it with a fervent gratitude. - -As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his head to listen to its -lingering vibration. Beyond the boy, so that his sleeping figure lay at -its feet, the Phantom stood, immovable and silent, with its eyes upon -him. - -Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, but not so cruel and relentless in -its aspect—or he thought or hoped so, as he looked upon it trembling. It -was not alone, but in its shadowy hand it held another hand. - -And whose was that? Was the form that stood beside it indeed Milly’s, or -but her shade and picture? The quiet head was bent a little, as her -manner was, and her eyes were looking down, as if in pity, on the -sleeping child. A radiant light fell on her face, but did not touch the -Phantom; for, though close beside her, it was dark and colourless as -ever. - -“Spectre!” said the Chemist, newly troubled as he looked, “I have not -been stubborn or presumptuous in respect of her. Oh, do not bring her -here. Spare me that!” - -“This is but a shadow,” said the Phantom; “when the morning shines seek -out the reality whose image I present before you.” - -“Is it my inexorable doom to do so?” cried the Chemist. - -“It is,” replied the Phantom. - -“To destroy her peace, her goodness; to make her what I am myself, and -what I have made of others!” - -“I have said seek her out,” returned the Phantom. “I have said no more.” - -“Oh, tell me,” exclaimed Redlaw, catching at the hope which he fancied -might lie hidden in the words. “Can I undo what I have done?” - -“No,” returned the Phantom. - -“I do not ask for restoration to myself,” said Redlaw. “What I -abandoned, I abandoned of my own free will, and have justly lost. But -for those to whom I have transferred the fatal gift; who never sought it; -who unknowingly received a curse of which they had no warning, and which -they had no power to shun; can I do nothing?” - -“Nothing,” said the Phantom. - -“If I cannot, can any one?” - -The Phantom, standing like a statue, kept its gaze upon him for a while; -then turned its head suddenly, and looked upon the shadow at its side. - -“Ah! Can she?” cried Redlaw, still looking upon the shade. - -The Phantom released the hand it had retained till now, and softly raised -its own with a gesture of dismissal. Upon that, her shadow, still -preserving the same attitude, began to move or melt away. - -“Stay,” cried Redlaw with an earnestness to which he could not give -enough expression. “For a moment! As an act of mercy! I know that some -change fell upon me, when those sounds were in the air just now. Tell -me, have I lost the power of harming her? May I go near her without -dread? Oh, let her give me any sign of hope!” - -The Phantom looked upon the shade as he did—not at him—and gave no -answer. - -“At least, say this—has she, henceforth, the consciousness of any power -to set right what I have done?” - -“She has not,” the Phantom answered. - -“Has she the power bestowed on her without the consciousness?” - -The phantom answered: “Seek her out.” - -And her shadow slowly vanished. - -They were face to face again, and looking on each other, as intently and -awfully as at the time of the bestowal of the gift, across the boy who -still lay on the ground between them, at the Phantom’s feet. - -“Terrible instructor,” said the Chemist, sinking on his knee before it, -in an attitude of supplication, “by whom I was renounced, but by whom I -am revisited (in which, and in whose milder aspect, I would fain believe -I have a gleam of hope), I will obey without inquiry, praying that the -cry I have sent up in the anguish of my soul has been, or will be, heard, -in behalf of those whom I have injured beyond human reparation. But -there is one thing—” - -“You speak to me of what is lying here,” the phantom interposed, and -pointed with its finger to the boy. - -“I do,” returned the Chemist. “You know what I would ask. Why has this -child alone been proof against my influence, and why, why, have I -detected in its thoughts a terrible companionship with mine?” - -“This,” said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, “is the last, completest -illustration of a human creature, utterly bereft of such remembrances as -you have yielded up. No softening memory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble -enters here, because this wretched mortal from his birth has been -abandoned to a worse condition than the beasts, and has, within his -knowledge, no one contrast, no humanising touch, to make a grain of such -a memory spring up in his hardened breast. All within this desolate -creature is barren wilderness. All within the man bereft of what you -have resigned, is the same barren wilderness. Woe to such a man! Woe, -tenfold, to the nation that shall count its monsters such as this, lying -here, by hundreds and by thousands!” - -Redlaw shrank, appalled, from what he heard. - -“There is not,” said the Phantom, “one of these—not one—but sows a -harvest that mankind MUST reap. From every seed of evil in this boy, a -field of ruin is grown that shall be gathered in, and garnered up, and -sown again in many places in the world, until regions are overspread with -wickedness enough to raise the waters of another Deluge. Open and -unpunished murder in a city’s streets would be less guilty in its daily -toleration, than one such spectacle as this.” - -It seemed to look down upon the boy in his sleep. Redlaw, too, looked -down upon him with a new emotion. - -“There is not a father,” said the Phantom, “by whose side in his daily or -his nightly walk, these creatures pass; there is not a mother among all -the ranks of loving mothers in this land; there is no one risen from the -state of childhood, but shall be responsible in his or her degree for -this enormity. There is not a country throughout the earth on which it -would not bring a curse. There is no religion upon earth that it would -not deny; there is no people upon earth it would not put to shame.” - -The Chemist clasped his hands, and looked, with trembling fear and pity, -from the sleeping boy to the Phantom, standing above him with his finger -pointing down. - -“Behold, I say,” pursued the Spectre, “the perfect type of what it was -your choice to be. Your influence is powerless here, because from this -child’s bosom you can banish nothing. His thoughts have been in -‘terrible companionship’ with yours, because you have gone down to his -unnatural level. He is the growth of man’s indifference; you are the -growth of man’s presumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is, in each -case, overthrown, and from the two poles of the immaterial world you come -together.” - -The Chemist stooped upon the ground beside the boy, and, with the same -kind of compassion for him that he now felt for himself, covered him as -he slept, and no longer shrank from him with abhorrence or indifference. - -Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, the darkness -faded, the sun rose red and glorious, and the chimney stacks and gables -of the ancient building gleamed in the clear air, which turned the smoke -and vapour of the city into a cloud of gold. The very sun-dial in his -shady corner, where the wind was used to spin with such unwindy -constancy, shook off the finer particles of snow that had accumulated on -his dull old face in the night, and looked out at the little white -wreaths eddying round and round him. Doubtless some blind groping of the -morning made its way down into the forgotten crypt so cold and earthy, -where the Norman arches were half buried in the ground, and stirred the -dull sap in the lazy vegetation hanging to the walls, and quickened the -slow principle of life within the little world of wonderful and delicate -creation which existed there, with some faint knowledge that the sun was -up. - -The Tetterbys were up, and doing. Mr. Tetterby took down the shutters of -the shop, and, strip by strip, revealed the treasures of the window to -the eyes, so proof against their seductions, of Jerusalem Buildings. -Adolphus had been out so long already, that he was halfway on to “Morning -Pepper.” Five small Tetterbys, whose ten round eyes were much inflamed -by soap and friction, were in the tortures of a cool wash in the back -kitchen; Mrs. Tetterby presiding. Johnny, who was pushed and hustled -through his toilet with great rapidity when Moloch chanced to be in an -exacting frame of mind (which was always the case), staggered up and down -with his charge before the shop door, under greater difficulties than -usual; the weight of Moloch being much increased by a complication of -defences against the cold, composed of knitted worsted-work, and forming -a complete suit of chain-armour, with a head-piece and blue gaiters. - -It was a peculiarity of this baby to be always cutting teeth. Whether -they never came, or whether they came and went away again, is not in -evidence; but it had certainly cut enough, on the showing of Mrs. -Tetterby, to make a handsome dental provision for the sign of the Bull -and Mouth. All sorts of objects were impressed for the rubbing of its -gums, notwithstanding that it always carried, dangling at its waist -(which was immediately under its chin), a bone ring, large enough to have -represented the rosary of a young nun. Knife-handles, umbrella-tops, the -heads of walking-sticks selected from the stock, the fingers of the -family in general, but especially of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the -handles of doors, and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were among -the commonest instruments indiscriminately applied for this baby’s -relief. The amount of electricity that must have been rubbed out of it -in a week, is not to be calculated. Still Mrs. Tetterby always said “it -was coming through, and then the child would be herself;” and still it -never did come through, and the child continued to be somebody else. - -The tempers of the little Tetterbys had sadly changed with a few hours. -Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby themselves were not more altered than their -offspring. Usually they were an unselfish, good-natured, yielding little -race, sharing short commons when it happened (which was pretty often) -contentedly and even generously, and taking a great deal of enjoyment out -of a very little meat. But they were fighting now, not only for the soap -and water, but even for the breakfast which was yet in perspective. The -hand of every little Tetterby was against the other little Tetterbys; and -even Johnny’s hand—the patient, much-enduring, and devoted Johnny—rose -against the baby! Yes, Mrs. Tetterby, going to the door by mere -accident, saw him viciously pick out a weak place in the suit of armour -where a slap would tell, and slap that blessed child. - -Mrs. Tetterby had him into the parlour by the collar, in that same flash -of time, and repaid him the assault with usury thereto. - -“You brute, you murdering little boy,” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Had you the -heart to do it?” - -“Why don’t her teeth come through, then,” retorted Johnny, in a loud -rebellious voice, “instead of bothering me? How would you like it -yourself?” - -“Like it, sir!” said Mrs. Tetterby, relieving him of his dishonoured -load. - -“Yes, like it,” said Johnny. “How would you? Not at all. If you was -me, you’d go for a soldier. I will, too. There an’t no babies in the -Army.” - -Mr. Tetterby, who had arrived upon the scene of action, rubbed his chin -thoughtfully, instead of correcting the rebel, and seemed rather struck -by this view of a military life. - -“I wish I was in the Army myself, if the child’s in the right,” said Mrs. -Tetterby, looking at her husband, “for I have no peace of my life here. -I’m a slave—a Virginia slave:” some indistinct association with their -weak descent on the tobacco trade perhaps suggested this aggravated -expression to Mrs. Tetterby. “I never have a holiday, or any pleasure at -all, from year’s end to year’s end! Why, Lord bless and save the child,” -said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking the baby with an irritability hardly suited -to so pious an aspiration, “what’s the matter with her now?” - -Not being able to discover, and not rendering the subject much clearer by -shaking it, Mrs. Tetterby put the baby away in a cradle, and, folding her -arms, sat rocking it angrily with her foot. - -“How you stand there, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs. Tetterby to her husband. “Why -don’t you do something?” - -“Because I don’t care about doing anything,” Mr. Tetterby replied. - -“I am sure _I_ don’t,” said Mrs. Tetterby. - -“I’ll take my oath _I_ don’t,” said Mr. Tetterby. - -A diversion arose here among Johnny and his five younger brothers, who, -in preparing the family breakfast table, had fallen to skirmishing for -the temporary possession of the loaf, and were buffeting one another with -great heartiness; the smallest boy of all, with precocious discretion, -hovering outside the knot of combatants, and harassing their legs. Into -the midst of this fray, Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both precipitated -themselves with great ardour, as if such ground were the only ground on -which they could now agree; and having, with no visible remains of their -late soft-heartedness, laid about them without any lenity, and done much -execution, resumed their former relative positions. - -“You had better read your paper than do nothing at all,” said Mrs. -Tetterby. - -“What’s there to read in a paper?” returned Mr. Tetterby, with excessive -discontent. - -“What?” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Police.” - -“It’s nothing to me,” said Tetterby. “What do I care what people do, or -are done to?” - -“Suicides,” suggested Mrs. Tetterby. - -“No business of mine,” replied her husband. - -“Births, deaths, and marriages, are those nothing to you?” said Mrs. -Tetterby. - -“If the births were all over for good, and all to-day; and the deaths -were all to begin to come off to-morrow; I don’t see why it should -interest me, till I thought it was a coming to my turn,” grumbled -Tetterby. “As to marriages, I’ve done it myself. I know quite enough -about _them_.” - -To judge from the dissatisfied expression of her face and manner, Mrs. -Tetterby appeared to entertain the same opinions as her husband; but she -opposed him, nevertheless, for the gratification of quarrelling with him. - -“Oh, you’re a consistent man,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “an’t you? You, with -the screen of your own making there, made of nothing else but bits of -newspapers, which you sit and read to the children by the half-hour -together!” - -“Say used to, if you please,” returned her husband. “You won’t find me -doing so any more. I’m wiser now.” - -“Bah! wiser, indeed!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Are you better?” - -The question sounded some discordant note in Mr. Tetterby’s breast. He -ruminated dejectedly, and passed his hand across and across his forehead. - -“Better!” murmured Mr. Tetterby. “I don’t know as any of us are better, -or happier either. Better, is it?” - -He turned to the screen, and traced about it with his finger, until he -found a certain paragraph of which he was in quest. - -“This used to be one of the family favourites, I recollect,” said -Tetterby, in a forlorn and stupid way, “and used to draw tears from the -children, and make ’em good, if there was any little bickering or -discontent among ’em, next to the story of the robin redbreasts in the -wood. ‘Melancholy case of destitution. Yesterday a small man, with a -baby in his arms, and surrounded by half-a-dozen ragged little ones, of -various ages between ten and two, the whole of whom were evidently in a -famishing condition, appeared before the worthy magistrate, and made the -following recital:’—Ha! I don’t understand it, I’m sure,” said Tetterby; -“I don’t see what it has got to do with us.” - -“How old and shabby he looks,” said Mrs. Tetterby, watching him. “I -never saw such a change in a man. Ah! dear me, dear me, dear me, it was -a sacrifice!” - -“What was a sacrifice?” her husband sourly inquired. - -Mrs. Tetterby shook her head; and without replying in words, raised a -complete sea-storm about the baby, by her violent agitation of the -cradle. - -“If you mean your marriage was a sacrifice, my good woman—” said her -husband. - -“I _do_ mean it,” said his wife. - -“Why, then I mean to say,” pursued Mr. Tetterby, as sulkily and surlily -as she, “that there are two sides to that affair; and that I was the -sacrifice; and that I wish the sacrifice hadn’t been accepted.” - -“I wish it hadn’t, Tetterby, with all my heart and soul I do assure you,” -said his wife. “You can’t wish it more than I do, Tetterby.” - -“I don’t know what I saw in her,” muttered the newsman, “I’m -sure;—certainly, if I saw anything, it’s not there now. I was thinking -so, last night, after supper, by the fire. She’s fat, she’s ageing, she -won’t bear comparison with most other women.” - -“He’s common-looking, he has no air with him, he’s small, he’s beginning -to stoop and he’s getting bald,” muttered Mrs. Tetterby. - -“I must have been half out of my mind when I did it,” muttered Mr. -Tetterby. - -“My senses must have forsook me. That’s the only way in which I can -explain it to myself,” said Mrs. Tetterby with elaboration. - -In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The little Tetterbys were not -habituated to regard that meal in the light of a sedentary occupation, -but discussed it as a dance or trot; rather resembling a savage ceremony, -in the occasionally shrill whoops, and brandishings of bread and butter, -with which it was accompanied, as well as in the intricate filings off -into the street and back again, and the hoppings up and down the -door-steps, which were incidental to the performance. In the present -instance, the contentions between these Tetterby children for the -milk-and-water jug, common to all, which stood upon the table, presented -so lamentable an instance of angry passions risen very high indeed, that -it was an outrage on the memory of Dr. Watts. It was not until Mr. -Tetterby had driven the whole herd out at the front door, that a moment’s -peace was secured; and even that was broken by the discovery that Johnny -had surreptitiously come back, and was at that instant choking in the jug -like a ventriloquist, in his indecent and rapacious haste. - -“These children will be the death of me at last!” said Mrs. Tetterby, -after banishing the culprit. “And the sooner the better, I think.” - -“Poor people,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ought not to have children at all. -They give _us_ no pleasure.” - -He was at that moment taking up the cup which Mrs. Tetterby had rudely -pushed towards him, and Mrs. Tetterby was lifting her own cup to her -lips, when they both stopped, as if they were transfixed. - -“Here! Mother! Father!” cried Johnny, running into the room. “Here’s -Mrs. William coming down the street!” - -And if ever, since the world began, a young boy took a baby from a cradle -with the care of an old nurse, and hushed and soothed it tenderly, and -tottered away with it cheerfully, Johnny was that boy, and Moloch was -that baby, as they went out together! - -Mr. Tetterby put down his cup; Mrs. Tetterby put down her cup. Mr. -Tetterby rubbed his forehead; Mrs. Tetterby rubbed hers. Mr. Tetterby’s -face began to smooth and brighten; Mrs. Tetterby’s began to smooth and -brighten. - -“Why, Lord forgive me,” said Mr. Tetterby to himself, “what evil tempers -have I been giving way to? What has been the matter here!” - -“How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I said and felt last -night!” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apron to her eyes. - -“Am I a brute,” said Mr. Tetterby, “or is there any good in me at all? -Sophia! My little woman!” - -“’Dolphus dear,” returned his wife. - -“I—I’ve been in a state of mind,” said Mr. Tetterby, “that I can’t abear -to think of, Sophy.” - -“Oh! It’s nothing to what I’ve been in, Dolf,” cried his wife in a great -burst of grief. - -“My Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “don’t take on. I never shall forgive -myself. I must have nearly broke your heart, I know.” - -“No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!” cried Mrs. Tetterby. - -“My little woman,” said her husband, “don’t. You make me reproach myself -dreadful, when you show such a noble spirit. Sophia, my dear, you don’t -know what I thought. I showed it bad enough, no doubt; but what I -thought, my little woman!—” - -“Oh, dear Dolf, don’t! Don’t!” cried his wife. - -“Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “I must reveal it. I couldn’t rest in my -conscience unless I mentioned it. My little woman—” - -“Mrs. William’s very nearly here!” screamed Johnny at the door. - -“My little woman, I wondered how,” gasped Mr. Tetterby, supporting -himself by his chair, “I wondered how I had ever admired you—I forgot the -precious children you have brought about me, and thought you didn’t look -as slim as I could wish. I—I never gave a recollection,” said Mr. -Tetterby, with severe self-accusation, “to the cares you’ve had as my -wife, and along of me and mine, when you might have had hardly any with -another man, who got on better and was luckier than me (anybody might -have found such a man easily I am sure); and I quarrelled with you for -having aged a little in the rough years you have lightened for me. Can -you believe it, my little woman? I hardly can myself.” - -Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught his face -within her hands, and held it there. - -“Oh, Dolf!” she cried. “I am so happy that you thought so; I am so -grateful that you thought so! For I thought that you were -common-looking, Dolf; and so you are, my dear, and may you be the -commonest of all sights in my eyes, till you close them with your own -good hands. I thought that you were small; and so you are, and I’ll make -much of you because you are, and more of you because I love my husband. -I thought that you began to stoop; and so you do, and you shall lean on -me, and I’ll do all I can to keep you up. I thought there was no air -about you; but there is, and it’s the air of home, and that’s the purest -and the best there is, and God bless home once more, and all belonging to -it, Dolf!” - -“Hurrah! Here’s Mrs. William!” cried Johnny. - -So she was, and all the children with her; and so she came in, they -kissed her, and kissed one another, and kissed the baby, and kissed their -father and mother, and then ran back and flocked and danced about her, -trooping on with her in triumph. - -Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby were not a bit behind-hand in the warmth of their -reception. They were as much attracted to her as the children were; they -ran towards her, kissed her hands, pressed round her, could not receive -her ardently or enthusiastically enough. She came among them like the -spirit of all goodness, affection, gentle consideration, love, and -domesticity. - -“What! are _you_ all so glad to see me, too, this bright Christmas -morning?” said Milly, clapping her hands in a pleasant wonder. “Oh dear, -how delightful this is!” - -More shouting from the children, more kissing, more trooping round her, -more happiness, more love, more joy, more honour, on all sides, than she -could bear. - -“Oh dear!” said Milly, “what delicious tears you make me shed. How can I -ever have deserved this! What have I done to be so loved?” - -“Who can help it!” cried Mr. Tetterby. - -“Who can help it!” cried Mrs. Tetterby. - -“Who can help it!” echoed the children, in a joyful chorus. And they -danced and trooped about her again, and clung to her, and laid their rosy -faces against her dress, and kissed and fondled it, and could not fondle -it, or her, enough. - -“I never was so moved,” said Milly, drying her eyes, “as I have been this -morning. I must tell you, as soon as I can speak.—Mr. Redlaw came to me -at sunrise, and with a tenderness in his manner, more as if I had been -his darling daughter than myself, implored me to go with him to where -William’s brother George is lying ill. We went together, and all the way -along he was so kind, and so subdued, and seemed to put such trust and -hope in me, that I could not help crying with pleasure. When we got to -the house, we met a woman at the door (somebody had bruised and hurt her, -I am afraid), who caught me by the hand, and blessed me as I passed.” - -“She was right!” said Mr. Tetterby. Mrs. Tetterby said she was right. -All the children cried out that she was right. - -“Ah, but there’s more than that,” said Milly. “When we got up stairs, -into the room, the sick man who had lain for hours in a state from which -no effort could rouse him, rose up in his bed, and, bursting into tears, -stretched out his arms to me, and said that he had led a mis-spent life, -but that he was truly repentant now, in his sorrow for the past, which -was all as plain to him as a great prospect, from which a dense black -cloud had cleared away, and that he entreated me to ask his poor old -father for his pardon and his blessing, and to say a prayer beside his -bed. And when I did so, Mr. Redlaw joined in it so fervently, and then -so thanked and thanked me, and thanked Heaven, that my heart quite -overflowed, and I could have done nothing but sob and cry, if the sick -man had not begged me to sit down by him,—which made me quiet of course. -As I sat there, he held my hand in his until he sank in a doze; and even -then, when I withdrew my hand to leave him to come here (which Mr. Redlaw -was very earnest indeed in wishing me to do), his hand felt for mine, so -that some one else was obliged to take my place and make believe to give -him my hand back. Oh dear, oh dear,” said Milly, sobbing. “How thankful -and how happy I should feel, and do feel, for all this!” - -While she was speaking, Redlaw had come in, and, after pausing for a -moment to observe the group of which she was the centre, had silently -ascended the stairs. Upon those stairs he now appeared again; remaining -there, while the young student passed him, and came running down. - -“Kind nurse, gentlest, best of creatures,” he said, falling on his knee -to her, and catching at her hand, “forgive my cruel ingratitude!” - -“Oh dear, oh dear!” cried Milly innocently, “here’s another of them! Oh -dear, here’s somebody else who likes me. What shall I ever do!” - -The guileless, simple way in which she said it, and in which she put her -hands before her eyes and wept for very happiness, was as touching as it -was delightful. - -“I was not myself,” he said. “I don’t know what it was—it was some -consequence of my disorder perhaps—I was mad. But I am so no longer. -Almost as I speak, I am restored. I heard the children crying out your -name, and the shade passed from me at the very sound of it. Oh, don’t -weep! Dear Milly, if you could read my heart, and only knew with what -affection and what grateful homage it is glowing, you would not let me -see you weep. It is such deep reproach.” - -“No, no,” said Milly, “it’s not that. It’s not indeed. It’s joy. It’s -wonder that you should think it necessary to ask me to forgive so little, -and yet it’s pleasure that you do.” - -“And will you come again? and will you finish the little curtain?” - -“No,” said Milly, drying her eyes, and shaking her head. “You won’t care -for my needlework now.” - -“Is it forgiving me, to say that?” - -She beckoned him aside, and whispered in his ear. - -“There is news from your home, Mr. Edmund.” - -“News? How?” - -“Either your not writing when you were very ill, or the change in your -handwriting when you began to be better, created some suspicion of the -truth; however that is—but you’re sure you’ll not be the worse for any -news, if it’s not bad news?” - -“Sure.” - -“Then there’s some one come!” said Milly. - -“My mother?” asked the student, glancing round involuntarily towards -Redlaw, who had come down from the stairs. - -“Hush! No,” said Milly. - -“It can be no one else.” - -“Indeed?” said Milly, “are you sure?” - -“It is not—” Before he could say more, she put her hand upon his mouth. - -“Yes it is!” said Milly. “The young lady (she is very like the -miniature, Mr. Edmund, but she is prettier) was too unhappy to rest -without satisfying her doubts, and came up, last night, with a little -servant-maid. As you always dated your letters from the college, she -came there; and before I saw Mr. Redlaw this morning, I saw her. _She_ -likes me too!” said Milly. “Oh dear, that’s another!” - -“This morning! Where is she now?” - -“Why, she is now,” said Milly, advancing her lips to his ear, “in my -little parlour in the Lodge, and waiting to see you.” - -He pressed her hand, and was darting off, but she detained him. - -“Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told me this morning that his memory -is impaired. Be very considerate to him, Mr. Edmund; he needs that from -us all.” - -The young man assured her, by a look, that her caution was not -ill-bestowed; and as he passed the Chemist on his way out, bent -respectfully and with an obvious interest before him. - -Redlaw returned the salutation courteously and even humbly, and looked -after him as he passed on. He drooped his head upon his hand too, as -trying to reawaken something he had lost. But it was gone. - -The abiding change that had come upon him since the influence of the -music, and the Phantom’s reappearance, was, that now he truly felt how -much he had lost, and could compassionate his own condition, and contrast -it, clearly, with the natural state of those who were around him. In -this, an interest in those who were around him was revived, and a meek, -submissive sense of his calamity was bred, resembling that which -sometimes obtains in age, when its mental powers are weakened, without -insensibility or sullenness being added to the list of its infirmities. - -He was conscious that, as he redeemed, through Milly, more and more of -the evil he had done, and as he was more and more with her, this change -ripened itself within him. Therefore, and because of the attachment she -inspired him with (but without other hope), he felt that he was quite -dependent on her, and that she was his staff in his affliction. - -So, when she asked him whether they should go home now, to where the old -man and her husband were, and he readily replied “yes”—being anxious in -that regard—he put his arm through hers, and walked beside her; not as if -he were the wise and learned man to whom the wonders of Nature were an -open book, and hers were the uninstructed mind, but as if their two -positions were reversed, and he knew nothing, and she all. - -He saw the children throng about her, and caress her, as he and she went -away together thus, out of the house; he heard the ringing of their -laughter, and their merry voices; he saw their bright faces, clustering -around him like flowers; he witnessed the renewed contentment and -affection of their parents; he breathed the simple air of their poor -home, restored to its tranquillity; he thought of the unwholesome blight -he had shed upon it, and might, but for her, have been diffusing then; -and perhaps it is no wonder that he walked submissively beside her, and -drew her gentle bosom nearer to his own. - -When they arrived at the Lodge, the old man was sitting in his chair in -the chimney-corner, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and his son was -leaning against the opposite side of the fire-place, looking at him. As -she came in at the door, both started, and turned round towards her, and -a radiant change came upon their faces. - -“Oh dear, dear, dear, they are all pleased to see me like the rest!” -cried Milly, clapping her hands in an ecstasy, and stopping short. “Here -are two more!” - -Pleased to see her! Pleasure was no word for it. She ran into her -husband’s arms, thrown wide open to receive her, and he would have been -glad to have her there, with her head lying on his shoulder, through the -short winter’s day. But the old man couldn’t spare her. He had arms for -her too, and he locked her in them. - -“Why, where has my quiet Mouse been all this time?” said the old man. -“She has been a long while away. I find that it’s impossible for me to -get on without Mouse. I—where’s my son William?—I fancy I have been -dreaming, William.” - -“That’s what I say myself, father,” returned his son. “I have been in an -ugly sort of dream, I think.—How are you, father? Are you pretty well?” - -“Strong and brave, my boy,” returned the old man. - -It was quite a sight to see Mr. William shaking hands with his father, -and patting him on the back, and rubbing him gently down with his hand, -as if he could not possibly do enough to show an interest in him. - -“What a wonderful man you are, father!—How are you, father? Are you -really pretty hearty, though?” said William, shaking hands with him -again, and patting him again, and rubbing him gently down again. - -“I never was fresher or stouter in my life, my boy.” - -“What a wonderful man you are, father! But that’s exactly where it is,” -said Mr. William, with enthusiasm. “When I think of all that my father’s -gone through, and all the chances and changes, and sorrows and troubles, -that have happened to him in the course of his long life, and under which -his head has grown grey, and years upon years have gathered on it, I feel -as if we couldn’t do enough to honour the old gentleman, and make his old -age easy.—How are you, father? Are you really pretty well, though?” - -Mr. William might never have left off repeating this inquiry, and shaking -hands with him again, and patting him again, and rubbing him down again, -if the old man had not espied the Chemist, whom until now he had not -seen. - -“I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw,” said Philip, “but didn’t know you were -here, sir, or should have made less free. It reminds me, Mr. Redlaw, -seeing you here on a Christmas morning, of the time when you was a -student yourself, and worked so hard that you were backwards and forwards -in our Library even at Christmas time. Ha! ha! I’m old enough to -remember that; and I remember it right well, I do, though I am -eighty-seven. It was after you left here that my poor wife died. You -remember my poor wife, Mr. Redlaw?” - -The Chemist answered yes. - -“Yes,” said the old man. “She was a dear creetur.—I recollect you come -here one Christmas morning with a young lady—I ask your pardon, Mr. -Redlaw, but I think it was a sister you was very much attached to?” - -The Chemist looked at him, and shook his head. “I had a sister,” he said -vacantly. He knew no more. - -“One Christmas morning,” pursued the old man, “that you come here with -her—and it began to snow, and my wife invited the lady to walk in, and -sit by the fire that is always a burning on Christmas Day in what used to -be, before our ten poor gentlemen commuted, our great Dinner Hall. I was -there; and I recollect, as I was stirring up the blaze for the young lady -to warm her pretty feet by, she read the scroll out loud, that is -underneath that pictur, ‘Lord, keep my memory green!’ She and my poor -wife fell a talking about it; and it’s a strange thing to think of, now, -that they both said (both being so unlike to die) that it was a good -prayer, and that it was one they would put up very earnestly, if they -were called away young, with reference to those who were dearest to them. -‘My brother,’ says the young lady—‘My husband,’ says my poor wife.—‘Lord, -keep his memory of me, green, and do not let me be forgotten!’” - -Tears more painful, and more bitter than he had ever shed in all his -life, coursed down Redlaw’s face. Philip, fully occupied in recalling -his story, had not observed him until now, nor Milly’s anxiety that he -should not proceed. - -“Philip!” said Redlaw, laying his hand upon his arm, “I am a stricken -man, on whom the hand of Providence has fallen heavily, although -deservedly. You speak to me, my friend, of what I cannot follow; my -memory is gone.” - -“Merciful power!” cried the old man. - -“I have lost my memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” said the Chemist, -“and with that I have lost all man would remember!” - -To see old Philip’s pity for him, to see him wheel his own great chair -for him to rest in, and look down upon him with a solemn sense of his -bereavement, was to know, in some degree, how precious to old age such -recollections are. - -The boy came running in, and ran to Milly. - -“Here’s the man,” he said, “in the other room. I don’t want _him_.” - -“What man does he mean?” asked Mr. William. - -“Hush!” said Milly. - -Obedient to a sign from her, he and his old father softly withdrew. As -they went out, unnoticed, Redlaw beckoned to the boy to come to him. - -“I like the woman best,” he answered, holding to her skirts. - -“You are right,” said Redlaw, with a faint smile. “But you needn’t fear -to come to me. I am gentler than I was. Of all the world, to you, poor -child!” - -The boy still held back at first, but yielding little by little to her -urging, he consented to approach, and even to sit down at his feet. As -Redlaw laid his hand upon the shoulder of the child, looking on him with -compassion and a fellow-feeling, he put out his other hand to Milly. She -stooped down on that side of him, so that she could look into his face, -and after silence, said: - -“Mr. Redlaw, may I speak to you?” - -“Yes,” he answered, fixing his eyes upon her. “Your voice and music are -the same to me.” - -“May I ask you something?” - -“What you will.” - -“Do you remember what I said, when I knocked at your door last night? -About one who was your friend once, and who stood on the verge of -destruction?” - -“Yes. I remember,” he said, with some hesitation. - -“Do you understand it?” - -He smoothed the boy’s hair—looking at her fixedly the while, and shook -his head. - -“This person,” said Milly, in her clear, soft voice, which her mild eyes, -looking at him, made clearer and softer, “I found soon afterwards. I -went back to the house, and, with Heaven’s help, traced him. I was not -too soon. A very little and I should have been too late.” - -He took his hand from the boy, and laying it on the back of that hand of -hers, whose timid and yet earnest touch addressed him no less appealingly -than her voice and eyes, looked more intently on her. - -“He _is_ the father of Mr. Edmund, the young gentleman we saw just now. -His real name is Longford.—You recollect the name?” - -“I recollect the name.” - -“And the man?” - -“No, not the man. Did he ever wrong me?” - -“Yes!” - -“Ah! Then it’s hopeless—hopeless.” - -He shook his head, and softly beat upon the hand he held, as though -mutely asking her commiseration. - -“I did not go to Mr. Edmund last night,” said Milly,—“You will listen to -me just the same as if you did remember all?” - -“To every syllable you say.” - -“Both, because I did not know, then, that this really was his father, and -because I was fearful of the effect of such intelligence upon him, after -his illness, if it should be. Since I have known who this person is, I -have not gone either; but that is for another reason. He has long been -separated from his wife and son—has been a stranger to his home almost -from this son’s infancy, I learn from him—and has abandoned and deserted -what he should have held most dear. In all that time he has been falling -from the state of a gentleman, more and more, until—” she rose up, -hastily, and going out for a moment, returned, accompanied by the wreck -that Redlaw had beheld last night. - -“Do you know me?” asked the Chemist. - -“I should be glad,” returned the other, “and that is an unwonted word for -me to use, if I could answer no.” - -The Chemist looked at the man, standing in self-abasement and degradation -before him, and would have looked longer, in an ineffectual struggle for -enlightenment, but that Milly resumed her late position by his side, and -attracted his attentive gaze to her own face. - -“See how low he is sunk, how lost he is!” she whispered, stretching out -her arm towards him, without looking from the Chemist’s face. “If you -could remember all that is connected with him, do you not think it would -move your pity to reflect that one you ever loved (do not let us mind how -long ago, or in what belief that he has forfeited), should come to this?” - -“I hope it would,” he answered. “I believe it would.” - -His eyes wandered to the figure standing near the door, but came back -speedily to her, on whom he gazed intently, as if he strove to learn some -lesson from every tone of her voice, and every beam of her eyes. - -“I have no learning, and you have much,” said Milly; “I am not used to -think, and you are always thinking. May I tell you why it seems to me a -good thing for us, to remember wrong that has been done us?” - -“Yes.” - -“That we may forgive it.” - -“Pardon me, great Heaven!” said Redlaw, lifting up his eyes, “for having -thrown away thine own high attribute!” - -“And if,” said Milly, “if your memory should one day be restored, as we -will hope and pray it may be, would it not be a blessing to you to recall -at once a wrong and its forgiveness?” - -He looked at the figure by the door, and fastened his attentive eyes on -her again; a ray of clearer light appeared to him to shine into his mind, -from her bright face. - -“He cannot go to his abandoned home. He does not seek to go there. He -knows that he could only carry shame and trouble to those he has so -cruelly neglected; and that the best reparation he can make them now, is -to avoid them. A very little money carefully bestowed, would remove him -to some distant place, where he might live and do no wrong, and make such -atonement as is left within his power for the wrong he has done. To the -unfortunate lady who is his wife, and to his son, this would be the best -and kindest boon that their best friend could give them—one too that they -need never know of; and to him, shattered in reputation, mind, and body, -it might be salvation.” - -He took her head between her hands, and kissed it, and said: “It shall be -done. I trust to you to do it for me, now and secretly; and to tell him -that I would forgive him, if I were so happy as to know for what.” - -As she rose, and turned her beaming face towards the fallen man, implying -that her mediation had been successful, he advanced a step, and without -raising his eyes, addressed himself to Redlaw. - -“You are so generous,” he said, “—you ever were—that you will try to -banish your rising sense of retribution in the spectacle that is before -you. I do not try to banish it from myself, Redlaw. If you can, believe -me.” - -The Chemist entreated Milly, by a gesture, to come nearer to him; and, as -he listened looked in her face, as if to find in it the clue to what he -heard. - -“I am too decayed a wretch to make professions; I recollect my own career -too well, to array any such before you. But from the day on which I made -my first step downward, in dealing falsely by you, I have gone down with -a certain, steady, doomed progression. That, I say.” - -Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned his face towards the -speaker, and there was sorrow in it. Something like mournful recognition -too. - -“I might have been another man, my life might have been another life, if -I had avoided that first fatal step. I don’t know that it would have -been. I claim nothing for the possibility. Your sister is at rest, and -better than she could have been with me, if I had continued even what you -thought me: even what I once supposed myself to be.” - -Redlaw made a hasty motion with his hand, as if he would have put that -subject on one side. - -“I speak,” the other went on, “like a man taken from the grave. I should -have made my own grave, last night, had it not been for this blessed -hand.” - -“Oh dear, he likes me too!” sobbed Milly, under her breath. “That’s -another!” - -“I could not have put myself in your way, last night, even for bread. -But, to-day, my recollection of what has been is so strongly stirred, and -is presented to me, I don’t know how, so vividly, that I have dared to -come at her suggestion, and to take your bounty, and to thank you for it, -and to beg you, Redlaw, in your dying hour, to be as merciful to me in -your thoughts, as you are in your deeds.” - -He turned towards the door, and stopped a moment on his way forth. - -“I hope my son may interest you, for his mother’s sake. I hope he may -deserve to do so. Unless my life should be preserved a long time, and I -should know that I have not misused your aid, I shall never look upon him -more.” - -Going out, he raised his eyes to Redlaw for the first time. Redlaw, -whose steadfast gaze was fixed upon him, dreamily held out his hand. He -returned and touched it—little more—with both his own; and bending down -his head, went slowly out. - -In the few moments that elapsed, while Milly silently took him to the -gate, the Chemist dropped into his chair, and covered his face with his -hands. Seeing him thus, when she came back, accompanied by her husband -and his father (who were both greatly concerned for him), she avoided -disturbing him, or permitting him to be disturbed; and kneeled down near -the chair to put some warm clothing on the boy. - -“That’s exactly where it is. That’s what I always say, father!” -exclaimed her admiring husband. “There’s a motherly feeling in Mrs. -William’s breast that must and will have went!” - -“Ay, ay,” said the old man; “you’re right. My son William’s right!” - -“It happens all for the best, Milly dear, no doubt,” said Mr. William, -tenderly, “that we have no children of our own; and yet I sometimes wish -you had one to love and cherish. Our little dead child that you built -such hopes upon, and that never breathed the breath of life—it has made -you quiet-like, Milly.” - -“I am very happy in the recollection of it, William dear,” she answered. -“I think of it every day.” - -“I was afraid you thought of it a good deal.” - -“Don’t say, afraid; it is a comfort to me; it speaks to me in so many -ways. The innocent thing that never lived on earth, is like an angel to -me, William.” - -“You are like an angel to father and me,” said Mr. William, softly. “I -know that.” - -“When I think of all those hopes I built upon it, and the many times I -sat and pictured to myself the little smiling face upon my bosom that -never lay there, and the sweet eyes turned up to mine that never opened -to the light,” said Milly, “I can feel a greater tenderness, I think, for -all the disappointed hopes in which there is no harm. When I see a -beautiful child in its fond mother’s arms, I love it all the better, -thinking that my child might have been like that, and might have made my -heart as proud and happy.” - -Redlaw raised his head, and looked towards her. - -“All through life, it seems by me,” she continued, “to tell me something. -For poor neglected children, my little child pleads as if it were alive, -and had a voice I knew, with which to speak to me. When I hear of youth -in suffering or shame, I think that my child might have come to that, -perhaps, and that God took it from me in His mercy. Even in age and grey -hair, such as father’s, it is present: saying that it too might have -lived to be old, long and long after you and I were gone, and to have -needed the respect and love of younger people.” - -Her quiet voice was quieter than ever, as she took her husband’s arm, and -laid her head against it. - -“Children love me so, that sometimes I half fancy—it’s a silly fancy, -William—they have some way I don’t know of, of feeling for my little -child, and me, and understanding why their love is precious to me. If I -have been quiet since, I have been more happy, William, in a hundred -ways. Not least happy, dear, in this—that even when my little child was -born and dead but a few days, and I was weak and sorrowful, and could not -help grieving a little, the thought arose, that if I tried to lead a good -life, I should meet in Heaven a bright creature, who would call me, -Mother!” - -Redlaw fell upon his knees, with a loud cry. - -“O Thou,” he said, “who through the teaching of pure love, hast -graciously restored me to the memory which was the memory of Christ upon -the Cross, and of all the good who perished in His cause, receive my -thanks, and bless her!” - -Then, he folded her to his heart; and Milly, sobbing more than ever, -cried, as she laughed, “He is come back to himself! He likes me very -much indeed, too! Oh, dear, dear, dear me, here’s another!” - -Then, the student entered, leading by the hand a lovely girl, who was -afraid to come. And Redlaw so changed towards him, seeing in him and his -youthful choice, the softened shadow of that chastening passage in his -own life, to which, as to a shady tree, the dove so long imprisoned in -his solitary ark might fly for rest and company, fell upon his neck, -entreating them to be his children. - -Then, as Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the -memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around -us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all -good, he laid his hand upon the boy, and, silently calling Him to witness -who laid His hand on children in old time, rebuking, in the majesty of -His prophetic knowledge, those who kept them from Him, vowed to protect -him, teach him, and reclaim him. - -Then, he gave his right hand cheerily to Philip, and said that they would -that day hold a Christmas dinner in what used to be, before the ten poor -gentlemen commuted, their great Dinner Hall; and that they would bid to -it as many of that Swidger family, who, his son had told him, were so -numerous that they might join hands and make a ring round England, as -could be brought together on so short a notice. - -And it was that day done. There were so many Swidgers there, grown up -and children, that an attempt to state them in round numbers might -engender doubts, in the distrustful, of the veracity of this history. -Therefore the attempt shall not be made. But there they were, by dozens -and scores—and there was good news and good hope there, ready for them, -of George, who had been visited again by his father and brother, and by -Milly, and again left in a quiet sleep. There, present at the dinner, -too, were the Tetterbys, including young Adolphus, who arrived in his -prismatic comforter, in good time for the beef. Johnny and the baby were -too late, of course, and came in all on one side, the one exhausted, the -other in a supposed state of double-tooth; but that was customary, and -not alarming. - -It was sad to see the child who had no name or lineage, watching the -other children as they played, not knowing how to talk with them, or -sport with them, and more strange to the ways of childhood than a rough -dog. It was sad, though in a different way, to see what an instinctive -knowledge the youngest children there had of his being different from all -the rest, and how they made timid approaches to him with soft words and -touches, and with little presents, that he might not be unhappy. But he -kept by Milly, and began to love her—that was another, as she said!—and, -as they all liked her dearly, they were glad of that, and when they saw -him peeping at them from behind her chair, they were pleased that he was -so close to it. - -All this, the Chemist, sitting with the student and his bride that was to -be, Philip, and the rest, saw. - -Some people have said since, that he only thought what has been herein -set down; others, that he read it in the fire, one winter night about the -twilight time; others, that the Ghost was but the representation of his -gloomy thoughts, and Milly the embodiment of his better wisdom. _I_ say -nothing. - -—Except this. That as they were assembled in the old Hall, by no other -light than that of a great fire (having dined early), the shadows once -more stole out of their hiding-places, and danced about the room, showing -the children marvellous shapes and faces on the walls, and gradually -changing what was real and familiar there, to what was wild and magical. -But that there was one thing in the Hall, to which the eyes of Redlaw, -and of Milly and her husband, and of the old man, and of the student, and -his bride that was to be, were often turned, which the shadows did not -obscure or change. Deepened in its gravity by the fire-light, and gazing -from the darkness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate face in the -portrait, with the beard and ruff, looked down at them from under its -verdant wreath of holly, as they looked up at it; and, clear and plain -below, as if a voice had uttered them, were the words. - - * * * * * - - Lord keep my Memory green. - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Charles Dickens</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: September 1996 [eBook #644]<br /> -[Most recently updated: June 8, 2021]</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Price</div> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN ***</div> - -<h1>THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN</h1> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2>CHAPTER I<br /> -The Gift Bestowed</h2> - -<p>Everybody said so.</p> - -<p>Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be -true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as -right. In the general experience, everybody has been wrong -so often, and it has taken, in most instances, such a weary while -to find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to be -fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; “but -<i>that’s</i> no rule,” as the ghost of Giles -Scroggins says in the ballad.</p> - -<p>The dread word, <span class="smcap">Ghost</span>, recalls -me.</p> - -<p>Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent -of my present claim for everybody is, that they were so far -right. He did.</p> - -<p>Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brilliant -eye; his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although -well-knit and well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like -tangled sea-weed, about his face,—as if he had been, -through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing and beating -of the great deep of humanity,—but might have said he -looked like a haunted man?</p> - -<p>Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, -gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund -never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and -time, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind, but might -have said it was the manner of a haunted man?</p> - -<p>Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and -grave, with a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to -set himself against and stop, but might have said it was the -voice of a haunted man?</p> - -<p>Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and -part laboratory,—for he was, as the world knew, far and -wide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and -hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily,—who -that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, surrounded -by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shaded -lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd of -spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire upon -the quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the -reflection of glass vessels that held liquids), trembling at -heart like things that knew his power to uncombine them, and to -give back their component parts to fire and vapour;—who -that had seen him then, his work done, and he pondering in his -chair before the rusted grate and red flame, moving his thin -mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, would not have -said that the man seemed haunted and the chamber too?</p> - -<p>Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed -that everything about him took this haunted tone, and that he -lived on haunted ground?</p> - -<p>His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like,—an old, -retired part of an ancient endowment for students, once a brave -edifice, planted in an open place, but now the obsolete whim of -forgotten architects; smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, squeezed on -every side by the overgrowing of the great city, and choked, like -an old well, with stones and bricks; its small quadrangles, lying -down in very pits formed by the streets and buildings, which, in -course of time, had been constructed above its heavy chimney -stacks; its old trees, insulted by the neighbouring smoke, which -deigned to droop so low when it was very feeble and the weather -very moody; its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed earth -to be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its silent -pavements, unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to the -observation of eyes, except when a stray face looked down from -the upper world, wondering what nook it was; its sun-dial in a -little bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled for a -hundred years, but where, in compensation for the sun’s -neglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay nowhere else, -and the black east wind would spin like a huge humming-top, when -in all other places it was silent and still.</p> - -<p>His dwelling, at its heart and core—within -doors—at his fireside—was so lowering and old, so -crazy, yet so strong, with its worm-eaten beams of wood in the -ceiling, and its sturdy floor shelving downward to the great oak -chimney-piece; so environed and hemmed in by the pressure of the -town yet so remote in fashion, age, and custom; so quiet, yet so -thundering with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a door -was shut,—echoes, not confined to the many low passages and -empty rooms, but rumbling and grumbling till they were stifled in -the heavy air of the forgotten Crypt where the Norman arches were -half-buried in the earth.</p> - -<p>You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight, in -the dead winter time.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 -sprang 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>—When a knock came at his door, in short, as he was -sitting so, and roused him.</p> - -<p>“Who’s that?” said he. “Come -in!”</p> - -<p>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!</p> - -<p>“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 to-night. -But Mrs. William has been taken off her legs so -often”—</p> - -<p>“By the wind? Ay! I have heard it -rising.”</p> - -<p>“—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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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 <i>that</i>.”</p> - -<p>“No,” returned Mr. Redlaw good-naturedly, though -abruptly.</p> - -<p>“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 miles 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 <i>her</i> -character to come into play.”</p> - -<p>As he stopped for a reply, the reply was “Yes,” in -the same tone as before.</p> - -<p>“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, -eighty-seven year old. He’s a -Swidger!—Spoon.”</p> - -<p>“True, William,” was the patient and abstracted -answer, when he stopped again.</p> - -<p>“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 -whatnot degree, and marriages, and lyings-in, the -Swidgers—Tumbler—might take hold of hands, and make a -ring round England!”</p> - -<p>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 of acquiescence.</p> - -<p>“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 <i>our</i> 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.”</p> - -<p>“I am quite ready,” said the other, waking as from -a dream, and walking slowly to and fro.</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>“What I always say myself, sir. She <i>will</i> do -it! There’s a motherly feeling in Mrs. -William’s breast that must and will have went.”</p> - -<p>“What has she done?”</p> - -<p>“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—its surprising how stone-chaney catches the heat -this frosty weather, to be sure!” Here he turned the -plate, and cooled his fingers.</p> - -<p>“Well?” said Mr. Redlaw.</p> - -<p>“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 -<i>is</i> Swidger, by rights. Let ’em call her -Swidge, Widge, Bridge—Lord! London Bridge, -Blackfriars, Chelsea, Putney, Waterloo, or Hammersmith -Suspension—if they like.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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!</p> - -<p>“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 to-night,” whispering to his wife, as he -was taking the tray, “and ghostlier altogether.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“What is that the old man has in his arms?” asked -Mr. Redlaw, as he sat down to his solitary meal.</p> - -<p>“Holly, sir,” replied the quiet voice of -Milly.</p> - -<p>“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!”</p> - -<p>“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 at 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.</p> - -<p>“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!”</p> - -<p>“Have you had so many that were merry and happy?” -asked the other.</p> - -<p>“Ay, sir, ever so many,” returned the old man.</p> - -<p>“Is his memory impaired with age? It is to be -expected now,” said Mr. Redlaw, turning to the son, and -speaking lower.</p> - -<p>“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!”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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?”</p> - -<p>“Oh many, many!” said Philip, half awaking from -his reverie. “I’m eighty-seven!”</p> - -<p>“Merry and happy, was it?” asked the Chemist in a -low voice. “Merry and happy, old man?”</p> - -<p>“Maybe 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!”</p> - -<p>“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?”</p> - -<p>“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!”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I always say, father!” returned -the son promptly, and with great respect. “You <span -class="GutSmall">ARE</span> a Swidger, if ever there was one of -the family!”</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>The keen look that had been fixed upon him with so much -earnestness, had gradually sought the ground.</p> - -<p>“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!”</p> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -<p>“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?”</p> - -<p>“I know the portrait hangs there, Philip.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, sure, it’s the second on the right, above -the panelling. I was going to say—he has helped to -keep <i>my</i> memory green, I thank him; for going round the -building every year, as I’m a doing now, and freshening up -the bare rooms with these branches and berries, freshens up my -bare old brain. One year brings back another, and that year -another, and those others numbers! At last, it seems to me -as if the birth-time of our Lord was the birth-time of all I have -ever had affection for, or mourned for, or delighted -in,—and they’re a pretty many, for I’m -eighty-seven!”</p> - -<p>“Merry and happy,” murmured Redlaw to himself.</p> - -<p>The room began to darken strangely.</p> - -<p>“So you see, sir,” pursued old Philip, whose hale -wintry cheek had warmed into a ruddier glow, and whose blue eyes -had brightened while he spoke, “I have plenty to keep, when -I keep this present season. Now, where’s my quiet -Mouse? Chattering’s the sin of my time of life, and -there’s half the building to do yet, if the cold -don’t freeze us first, or the wind don’t blow us -away, or the darkness don’t swallow us up.”</p> - -<p>The quiet Mouse had brought her calm face to his side, and -silently taken his arm, before he finished speaking.</p> - -<p>“Come away, my dear,” said the old man. -“Mr. Redlaw won’t settle to his dinner, otherwise, -till it’s cold as the winter. I hope you’ll -excuse me rambling on, sir, and I wish you good night, and, once -again, a merry—”</p> - -<p>“Stay!” said Mr. Redlaw, resuming his place at the -table, more, it would have seemed from his manner, to reassure -the old keeper, than in any remembrance of his own -appetite. “Spare me another moment, Philip. -William, you were going to tell me something to your excellent -wife’s honour. It will not be disagreeable to her to -hear you praise her. What was it?”</p> - -<p>“Why, that’s where it is, you see, sir,” -returned Mr. William Swidger, looking towards his wife in -considerable embarrassment. “Mrs. William’s got -her eye upon me.”</p> - -<p>“But you’re not afraid of Mrs. William’s -eye?”</p> - -<p>“Why, no, sir,” returned Mr. Swidger, -“that’s what I say myself. It wasn’t made -to be afraid of. It wouldn’t have been made so mild, -if that was the intention. But I wouldn’t like -to—Milly!—him, you know. Down in the -Buildings.”</p> - -<p>Mr. William, standing behind the table, and rummaging -disconcertedly among the objects upon it, directed persuasive -glances at Mrs. William, and secret jerks of his head and thumb -at Mr. Redlaw, as alluring her towards him.</p> - -<p>“Him, you know, my love,” said Mr. William. -“Down in the Buildings. Tell, my dear! -You’re the works of Shakespeare in comparison with -myself. Down in the Buildings, you know, my -love.—Student.”</p> - -<p>“Student?” repeated Mr. Redlaw, raising his -head.</p> - -<p>“That’s what I say, sir!” cried Mr. William, -in the utmost animation of assent. “If it -wasn’t the poor student down in the Buildings, why should -you wish to hear it from Mrs. William’s lips? Mrs. -William, my dear—Buildings.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know,” said Milly, with a quiet -frankness, free from any haste or confusion, “that William -had said anything about it, or I wouldn’t have come. -I asked him not to. It’s a sick young gentleman, -sir—and very poor, I am afraid—who is too ill to go -home this holiday-time, and lives, unknown to any one, in but a -common kind of lodging for a gentleman, down in Jerusalem -Buildings. That’s all, sir.”</p> - -<p>“Why have I never heard of him?” said the Chemist, -rising hurriedly. “Why has he not made his situation -known to me? Sick!—give me my hat and cloak. -Poor!—what house?—what number?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, you mustn’t go there, sir,” said Milly, -leaving her father-in-law, and calmly confronting him with her -collected little face and folded hands.</p> - -<p>“Not go there?”</p> - -<p>“Oh dear, no!” said Milly, shaking her head as at -a most manifest and self-evident impossibility. “It -couldn’t be thought of!”</p> - -<p>“What do you mean? Why not?”</p> - -<p>“Why, you see, sir,” said Mr. William Swidger, -persuasively and confidentially, “that’s what I -say. Depend upon it, the young gentleman would never have -made his situation known to one of his own sex. Mrs. -Williams has got into his confidence, but that’s quite -different. They all confide in Mrs. William; they all trust -<i>her</i>. A man, sir, couldn’t have got a whisper -out of him; but woman, sir, and Mrs. William -combined—!”</p> - -<p>“There is good sense and delicacy in what you say, -William,” returned Mr. Redlaw, observant of the gentle and -composed face at his shoulder. And laying his finger on his -lip, he secretly put his purse into her hand.</p> - -<p>“Oh dear no, sir!” cried Milly, giving it back -again. “Worse and worse! Couldn’t be -dreamed of!”</p> - -<p>Such a staid matter-of-fact housewife she was, and so -unruffled by the momentary haste of this rejection, that, an -instant afterwards, she was tidily picking up a few leaves which -had strayed from between her scissors and her apron, when she had -arranged the holly.</p> - -<p>Finding, when she rose from her stooping posture, that Mr. -Redlaw was still regarding her with doubt and astonishment, she -quietly repeated—looking about, the while, for any other -fragments that might have escaped her observation:</p> - -<p>“Oh dear no, sir! He said that of all the world he -would not be known to you, or receive help from you—though -he is a student in your class. I have made no terms of -secrecy with you, but I trust to your honour -completely.”</p> - -<p>“Why did he say so?”</p> - -<p>“Indeed I can’t tell, sir,” said Milly, -after thinking a little, “because I am not at all clever, -you know; and I wanted to be useful to him in making things neat -and comfortable about him, and employed myself that way. -But I know he is poor, and lonely, and I think he is somehow -neglected too.—How dark it is!”</p> - -<p>The room had darkened more and more. There was a very -heavy gloom and shadow gathering behind the Chemist’s -chair.</p> - -<p>“What more about him?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“He is engaged to be married when he can afford -it,” said Milly, “and is studying, I think, to -qualify himself to earn a living. I have seen, a long time, -that he has studied hard and denied himself much.—How very -dark it is!”</p> - -<p>“It’s turned colder, too,” said the old man, -rubbing his hands. “There’s a chill and dismal -feeling in the room. Where’s my son William? -William, my boy, turn the lamp, and rouse the fire!”</p> - -<p>Milly’s voice resumed, like quiet music very softly -played:</p> - -<p>“He muttered in his broken sleep yesterday afternoon, -after talking to me” (this was to herself) “about -some one dead, and some great wrong done that could never be -forgotten; but whether to him or to another person, I don’t -know. Not <i>by</i> him, I am sure.”</p> - -<p>“And, in short, Mrs. William, you see—which she -wouldn’t say herself, Mr. Redlaw, if she was to stop here -till the new year after this next one—” said Mr. -William, coming up to him to speak in his ear, “has done -him worlds of good! Bless you, worlds of good! All at -home just the same as ever—my father made as snug and -comfortable—not a crumb of litter to be found in the house, -if you were to offer fifty pound ready money for it—Mrs. -William apparently never out of the way—yet Mrs. William -backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, up and down, up -and down, a mother to him!”</p> - -<p>The room turned darker and colder, and the gloom and shadow -gathering behind the chair was heavier.</p> - -<p>“Not content with this, sir, Mrs. William goes and -finds, this very night, when she was coming home (why it’s -not above a couple of hours ago), a creature more like a young -wild beast than a young child, shivering upon a door-step. -What does Mrs. William do, but brings it home to dry it, and feed -it, and keep it till our old Bounty of food and flannel is given -away, on Christmas morning! If it ever felt a fire before, -it’s as much as ever it did; for it’s sitting in the -old Lodge chimney, staring at ours as if its ravenous eyes would -never shut again. It’s sitting there, at -least,” said Mr. William, correcting himself, on -reflection, “unless it’s bolted!”</p> - -<p>“Heaven keep her happy!” said the Chemist aloud, -“and you too, Philip! and you, William! I must -consider what to do in this. I may desire to see this -student, I’ll not detain you any longer now. -Good-night!”</p> - -<p>“I thank’ee, sir, I thank’ee!” said -the old man, “for Mouse, and for my son William, and for -myself. Where’s my son William? William, you -take the lantern and go on first, through them long dark -passages, as you did last year and the year afore. Ha -ha! <i>I</i> remember—though I’m -eighty-seven! ‘Lord, keep my memory -green!’ It’s a very good prayer, Mr. Redlaw, -that of the learned gentleman in the peaked beard, with a ruff -round his neck—hangs up, second on the right above the -panelling, in what used to be, afore our ten poor gentlemen -commuted, our great Dinner Hall. ‘Lord, keep my -memory green!’ It’s very good and pious, -sir. Amen! Amen!”</p> - -<p>As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which, however -carefully withheld, fired a long train of thundering -reverberations when it shut at last, the room turned darker.</p> - -<p>As he fell a musing in his chair alone, the healthy holly -withered on the wall, and dropped—dead branches.</p> - -<p>As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that place -where it had been gathering so darkly, it took, by slow -degrees,—or out of it there came, by some unreal, -unsubstantial process—not to be traced by any human -sense,—an awful likeness of himself!</p> - -<p>Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but -with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, -and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into his -terrible appearance of existence, motionless, without a -sound. As <i>he</i> leaned his arm upon the elbow of his -chair, ruminating before the fire, <i>it</i> leaned upon the -chair-back, close above him, with its appalling copy of his face -looking where his face looked, and bearing the expression his -face bore.</p> - -<p>This, then, was the Something that had passed and gone -already. This was the dread companion of the haunted -man!</p> - -<p>It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, than -he of it. The Christmas Waits were playing somewhere in the -distance, and, through his thoughtfulness, he seemed to listen to -the music. It seemed to listen too.</p> - -<p>At length he spoke; without moving or lifting up his face.</p> - -<p>“Here again!” he said.</p> - -<p>“Here again,” replied the Phantom.</p> - -<p>“I see you in the fire,” said the haunted man; -“I hear you in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of -the night.”</p> - -<p>The Phantom moved its head, assenting.</p> - -<p>“Why do you come, to haunt me thus?”</p> - -<p>“I come as I am called,” replied the Ghost.</p> - -<p>“No. Unbidden,” exclaimed the Chemist.</p> - -<p>“Unbidden be it,” said the Spectre. -“It is enough. I am here.”</p> - -<p>Hitherto the light of the fire had shone on the two -faces—if the dread lineaments behind the chair might be -called a face—both addressed towards it, as at first, and -neither looking at the other. But, now, the haunted man -turned, suddenly, and stared upon the Ghost. The Ghost, as -sudden in its motion, passed to before the chair, and stared on -him.</p> - -<p>The living man, and the animated image of himself dead, might -so have looked, the one upon the other. An awful survey, in -a lonely and remote part of an empty old pile of building, on a -winter night, with the loud wind going by upon its journey of -mystery—whence or whither, no man knowing since the world -began—and the stars, in unimaginable millions, glittering -through it, from eternal space, where the world’s bulk is -as a grain, and its hoary age is infancy.</p> - -<p>“Look upon me!” said the Spectre. “I -am he, neglected in my youth, and miserably poor, who strove and -suffered, and still strove and suffered, until I hewed out -knowledge from the mine where it was buried, and made rugged -steps thereof, for my worn feet to rest and rise on.”</p> - -<p>“I <i>am</i> that man,” returned the Chemist.</p> - -<p>“No mother’s self-denying love,” pursued the -Phantom, “no father’s counsel, aided <i>me</i>. -A stranger came into my father’s place when I was but a -child, and I was easily an alien from my mother’s -heart. My parents, at the best, were of that sort whose -care soon ends, and whose duty is soon done; who cast their -offspring loose, early, as birds do theirs; and, if they do well, -claim the merit; and, if ill, the pity.”</p> - -<p>It paused, and seemed to tempt and goad him with its look, and -with the manner of its speech, and with its smile.</p> - -<p>“I am he,” pursued the Phantom, “who, in -this struggle upward, found a friend. I made him—won -him—bound him to me! We worked together, side by -side. All the love and confidence that in my earlier youth -had had no outlet, and found no expression, I bestowed on -him.”</p> - -<p>“Not all,” said Redlaw, hoarsely.</p> - -<p>“No, not all,” returned the Phantom. -“I had a sister.”</p> - -<p>The haunted man, with his head resting on his hands, replied -“I had!” The Phantom, with an evil smile, drew -closer to the chair, and resting its chin upon its folded hands, -its folded hands upon the back, and looking down into his face -with searching eyes, that seemed instinct with fire, went on:</p> - -<p>“Such glimpses of the light of home as I had ever known, -had streamed from her. How young she was, how fair, how -loving! I took her to the first poor roof that I was master -of, and made it rich. She came into the darkness of my -life, and made it bright.—She is before me!”</p> - -<p>“I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in -music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night,” -returned the haunted man.</p> - -<p>“<i>Did</i> he love her?” said the Phantom, -echoing his contemplative tone. “I think he did, -once. I am sure he did. Better had she loved him -less—less secretly, less dearly, from the shallower depths -of a more divided heart!”</p> - -<p>“Let me forget it!” said the Chemist, with an -angry motion of his hand. “Let me blot it from my -memory!”</p> - -<p>The Spectre, without stirring, and with its unwinking, cruel -eyes still fixed upon his face, went on:</p> - -<p>“A dream, like hers, stole upon my own life.”</p> - -<p>“It did,” said Redlaw.</p> - -<p>“A love, as like hers,” pursued the Phantom, -“as my inferior nature might cherish, arose in my own -heart. I was too poor to bind its object to my fortune -then, by any thread of promise or entreaty. I loved her far -too well, to seek to do it. But, more than ever I had -striven in my life, I strove to climb! Only an inch gained, -brought me something nearer to the height. I toiled -up! In the late pauses of my labour at that time,—my -sister (sweet companion!) still sharing with me the expiring -embers and the cooling hearth,—when day was breaking, what -pictures of the future did I see!”</p> - -<p>“I saw them, in the fire, but now,” he -murmured. “They come back to me in music, in the -wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolving -years.”</p> - -<p>“—Pictures of my own domestic life, in aftertime, -with her who was the inspiration of my toil. Pictures of my -sister, made the wife of my dear friend, on equal terms—for -he had some inheritance, we none—pictures of our sobered -age and mellowed happiness, and of the golden links, extending -back so far, that should bind us, and our children, in a radiant -garland,” said the Phantom.</p> - -<p>“Pictures,” said the haunted man, “that were -delusions. Why is it my doom to remember them too -well!”</p> - -<p>“Delusions,” echoed the Phantom in its changeless -voice, and glaring on him with its changeless eyes. -“For my friend (in whose breast my confidence was locked as -in my own), passing between me and the centre of the system of my -hopes and struggles, won her to himself, and shattered my frail -universe. My sister, doubly dear, doubly devoted, doubly -cheerful in my home, lived on to see me famous, and my old -ambition so rewarded when its spring was broken, and -then—”</p> - -<p>“Then died,” he interposed. “Died, -gentle as ever; happy; and with no concern but for her -brother. Peace!”</p> - -<p>The Phantom watched him silently.</p> - -<p>“Remembered!” said the haunted man, after a -pause. “Yes. So well remembered, that even now, -when years have passed, and nothing is more idle or more -visionary to me than the boyish love so long outlived, I think of -it with sympathy, as if it were a younger brother’s or a -son’s. Sometimes I even wonder when her heart first -inclined to him, and how it had been affected towards -me.—Not lightly, once, I think.—But that is -nothing. Early unhappiness, a wound from a hand I loved and -trusted, and a loss that nothing can replace, outlive such -fancies.”</p> - -<p>“Thus,” said the Phantom, “I bear within me -a Sorrow and a Wrong. Thus I prey upon myself. Thus, -memory is my curse; and, if I could forget my sorrow and my -wrong, I would!”</p> - -<p>“Mocker!” said the Chemist, leaping up, and -making, with a wrathful hand, at the throat of his other -self. “Why have I always that taunt in my -ears?”</p> - -<p>“Forbear!” exclaimed the Spectre in an awful -voice. “Lay a hand on Me, and die!”</p> - -<p>He stopped midway, as if its words had paralysed him, and -stood looking on it. It had glided from him; it had its arm -raised high in warning; and a smile passed over its unearthly -features, as it reared its dark figure in triumph.</p> - -<p>“If I could forget my sorrow and wrong, I would,” -the Ghost repeated. “If I could forget my sorrow and -my wrong, I would!”</p> - -<p>“Evil spirit of myself,” returned the haunted man, -in a low, trembling tone, “my life is darkened by that -incessant whisper.”</p> - -<p>“It is an echo,” said the Phantom.</p> - -<p>“If it be an echo of my thoughts—as now, indeed, I -know it is,” rejoined the haunted man, “why should I, -therefore, be tormented? It is not a selfish thought. -I suffer it to range beyond myself. All men and women have -their sorrows,—most of them their wrongs; ingratitude, and -sordid jealousy, and interest, besetting all degrees of -life. Who would not forget their sorrows and their -wrongs?”</p> - -<p>“Who would not, truly, and be happier and better for -it?” said the Phantom.</p> - -<p>“These revolutions of years, which we -commemorate,” proceeded Redlaw, “what do <i>they</i> -recall! Are there any minds in which they do not re-awaken -some sorrow, or some trouble? What is the remembrance of -the old man who was here to-night? A tissue of sorrow and -trouble.”</p> - -<p>“But common natures,” said the Phantom, with its -evil smile upon its glassy face, “unenlightened minds and -ordinary spirits, do not feel or reason on these things like men -of higher cultivation and profounder thought.”</p> - -<p>“Tempter,” answered Redlaw, “whose hollow -look and voice I dread more than words can express, and from whom -some dim foreshadowing of greater fear is stealing over me while -I speak, I hear again an echo of my own mind.”</p> - -<p>“Receive it as a proof that I am powerful,” -returned the Ghost. “Hear what I offer! Forget -the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known!”</p> - -<p>“Forget them!” he repeated.</p> - -<p>“I have the power to cancel their remembrance—to -leave but very faint, confused traces of them, that will die out -soon,” returned the Spectre. “Say! Is it -done?”</p> - -<p>“Stay!” cried the haunted man, arresting by a -terrified gesture the uplifted hand. “I tremble with -distrust and doubt of you; and the dim fear you cast upon me -deepens into a nameless horror I can hardly bear.—I would -not deprive myself of any kindly recollection, or any sympathy -that is good for me, or others. What shall I lose, if I -assent to this? What else will pass from my -remembrance?”</p> - -<p>“No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but the -intertwisted chain of feelings and associations, each in its turn -dependent on, and nourished by, the banished recollections. -Those will go.”</p> - -<p>“Are they so many?” said the haunted man, -reflecting in alarm.</p> - -<p>“They have been wont to show themselves in the fire, in -music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the -revolving years,” returned the Phantom scornfully.</p> - -<p>“In nothing else?”</p> - -<p>The Phantom held its peace.</p> - -<p>But having stood before him, silent, for a little while, it -moved towards the fire; then stopped.</p> - -<p>“Decide!” it said, “before the opportunity -is lost!”</p> - -<p>“A moment! I call Heaven to witness,” said -the agitated man, “that I have never been a hater of any -kind,—never morose, indifferent, or hard, to anything -around me. If, living here alone, I have made too much of -all that was and might have been, and too little of what is, the -evil, I believe, has fallen on me, and not on others. But, -if there were poison in my body, should I not, possessed of -antidotes and knowledge how to use them, use them? If there -be poison in my mind, and through this fearful shadow I can cast -it out, shall I not cast it out?”</p> - -<p>“Say,” said the Spectre, “is it -done?”</p> - -<p>“A moment longer!” he answered hurriedly. -“<i>I would forget it if I could</i>! Have <i>I</i> -thought that, alone, or has it been the thought of thousands upon -thousands, generation after generation? All human memory is -fraught with sorrow and trouble. My memory is as the memory -of other men, but other men have not this choice. Yes, I -close the bargain. Yes! I <span -class="GutSmall">WILL</span> forget my sorrow, wrong, and -trouble!”</p> - -<p>“Say,” said the Spectre, “is it -done?”</p> - -<p>“It is!”</p> - -<p>“<span class="smcap">It is</span>. And take this -with you, man whom I here renounce! The gift that I have -given, you shall give again, go where you will. Without -recovering yourself the power that you have yielded up, you shall -henceforth destroy its like in all whom you approach. Your -wisdom has discovered that the memory of sorrow, wrong, and -trouble is the lot of all mankind, and that mankind would be the -happier, in its other memories, without it. Go! Be -its benefactor! Freed from such remembrance, from this -hour, carry involuntarily the blessing of such freedom with -you. Its diffusion is inseparable and inalienable from -you. Go! Be happy in the good you have won, and in -the good you do!”</p> - -<p>The Phantom, which had held its bloodless hand above him while -it spoke, as if in some unholy invocation, or some ban; and which -had gradually advanced its eyes so close to his, that he could -see how they did not participate in the terrible smile upon its -face, but were a fixed, unalterable, steady horror melted before -him and was gone.</p> - -<p>As he stood rooted to the spot, possessed by fear and wonder, -and imagining he heard repeated in melancholy echoes, dying away -fainter and fainter, the words, “Destroy its like in all -whom you approach!” a shrill cry reached his ears. It -came, not from the passages beyond the door, but from another -part of the old building, and sounded like the cry of some one in -the dark who had lost the way.</p> - -<p>He looked confusedly upon his hands and limbs, as if to be -assured of his identity, and then shouted in reply, loudly and -wildly; for there was a strangeness and terror upon him, as if he -too were lost.</p> - -<p>The cry responding, and being nearer, he caught up the lamp, -and raised a heavy curtain in the wall, by which he was -accustomed to pass into and out of the theatre where he -lectured,—which adjoined his room. Associated with -youth and animation, and a high amphitheatre of faces which his -entrance charmed to interest in a moment, it was a ghostly place -when all this life was faded out of it, and stared upon him like -an emblem of Death.</p> - -<p>“Halloa!” he cried. “Halloa! -This way! Come to the light!” When, as he held -the curtain with one hand, and with the other raised the lamp and -tried to pierce the gloom that filled the place, something rushed -past him into the room like a wild-cat, and crouched down in a -corner.</p> - -<p>“What is it?” he said, hastily.</p> - -<p>He might have asked “What is it?” even had he seen -it well, as presently he did when he stood looking at it gathered -up in its corner.</p> - -<p>A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and form -almost an infant’s, but in its greedy, desperate little -clutch, a bad old man’s. A face rounded and smoothed -by some half-dozen years, but pinched and twisted by the -experiences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youthful. -Naked feet, beautiful in their childish delicacy,—ugly in -the blood and dirt that cracked upon them. A baby savage, a -young monster, a child who had never been a child, a creature who -might live to take the outward form of man, but who, within, -would live and perish a mere beast.</p> - -<p>Used, already, to be worried and hunted like a beast, the boy -crouched down as he was looked at, and looked back again, and -interposed his arm to ward off the expected blow.</p> - -<p>“I’ll bite,” he said, “if you hit -me!”</p> - -<p>The time had been, and not many minutes since, when such a -sight as this would have wrung the Chemist’s heart. -He looked upon it now, coldly; but with a heavy effort to -remember something—he did not know what—he asked the -boy what he did there, and whence he came.</p> - -<p>“Where’s the woman?” he replied. -“I want to find the woman.”</p> - -<p>“Who?”</p> - -<p>“The woman. Her that brought me here, and set me -by the large fire. She was so long gone, that I went to -look for her, and lost myself. I don’t want -you. I want the woman.”</p> - -<p>He made a spring, so suddenly, to get away, that the dull -sound of his naked feet upon the floor was near the curtain, when -Redlaw caught him by his rags.</p> - -<p>“Come! you let me go!” muttered the boy, -struggling, and clenching his teeth. “I’ve done -nothing to you. Let me go, will you, to the -woman!”</p> - -<p>“That is not the way. There is a nearer -one,” said Redlaw, detaining him, in the same blank effort -to remember some association that ought, of right, to bear upon -this monstrous object. “What is your name?”</p> - -<p>“Got none.”</p> - -<p>“Where do you live?</p> - -<p>“Live! What’s that?”</p> - -<p>The boy shook his hair from his eyes to look at him for a -moment, and then, twisting round his legs and wrestling with him, -broke again into his repetition of “You let me go, will -you? I want to find the woman.”</p> - -<p>The Chemist led him to the door. “This way,” -he said, looking at him still confusedly, but with repugnance and -avoidance, growing out of his coldness. “I’ll -take you to her.”</p> - -<p>The sharp eyes in the child’s head, wandering round the -room, lighted on the table where the remnants of the dinner -were.</p> - -<p>“Give me some of that!” he said, covetously.</p> - -<p>“Has she not fed you?”</p> - -<p>“I shall be hungry again to-morrow, sha’n’t -I? Ain’t I hungry every day?”</p> - -<p>Finding himself released, he bounded at the table like some -small animal of prey, and hugging to his breast bread and meat, -and his own rags, all together, said:</p> - -<p>“There! Now take me to the woman!”</p> - -<p>As the Chemist, with a new-born dislike to touch him, sternly -motioned him to follow, and was going out of the door, he -trembled and stopped.</p> - -<p>“The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go -where you will!”</p> - -<p>The Phantom’s words were blowing in the wind, and the -wind blew chill upon him.</p> - -<p>“I’ll not go there, to-night,” he murmured -faintly. “I’ll go nowhere to-night. Boy! -straight down this long-arched passage, and past the great dark -door into the yard,—you see the fire shining on the window -there.”</p> - -<p>“The woman’s fire?” inquired the boy.</p> - -<p>He nodded, and the naked feet had sprung away. He came -back with his lamp, locked his door hastily, and sat down in his -chair, covering his face like one who was frightened at -himself.</p> - -<p>For now he was, indeed, alone. Alone, alone.</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2>CHAPTER II<br /> -The Gift Diffused</h2> - -<p>A small man sat in a small parlour, partitioned off from a -small shop by a small screen, pasted all over with small scraps -of newspapers. In company with the small man, was almost -any amount of small children you may please to name—at -least it seemed so; they made, in that very limited sphere of -action, such an imposing effect, in point of numbers.</p> - -<p>Of these small fry, two had, by some strong machinery, been -got into bed in a corner, where they might have reposed snugly -enough in the sleep of innocence, but for a constitutional -propensity to keep awake, and also to scuffle in and out of -bed. The immediate occasion of these predatory dashes at -the waking world, was the construction of an oyster-shell wall in -a corner, by two other youths of tender age; on which -fortification the two in bed made harassing descents (like those -accursed Picts and Scots who beleaguer the early historical -studies of most young Britons), and then withdrew to their own -territory.</p> - -<p>In addition to the stir attendant on these inroads, and the -retorts of the invaded, who pursued hotly, and made lunges at the -bed-clothes under which the marauders took refuge, another little -boy, in another little bed, contributed his mite of confusion to -the family stock, by casting his boots upon the waters; in other -words, by launching these and several small objects, inoffensive -in themselves, though of a hard substance considered as missiles, -at the disturbers of his repose,—who were not slow to -return these compliments.</p> - -<p>Besides which, another little boy—the biggest there, but -still little—was tottering to and fro, bent on one side, -and considerably affected in his knees by the weight of a large -baby, which he was supposed by a fiction that obtains sometimes -in sanguine families, to be hushing to sleep. But oh! the -inexhaustible regions of contemplation and watchfulness into -which this baby’s eyes were then only beginning to compose -themselves to stare, over his unconscious shoulder!</p> - -<p>It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar the -whole existence of this particular young brother was offered up a -daily sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have -consisted in its never being quiet, in any one place, for five -consecutive minutes, and never going to sleep when -required. “Tetterby’s baby” was as well -known in the neighbourhood as the postman or the pot-boy. -It roved from door-step to door-step, in the arms of little -Johnny Tetterby, and lagged heavily at the rear of troops of -juveniles who followed the Tumblers or the Monkey, and came up, -all on one side, a little too late for everything that was -attractive, from Monday morning until Saturday night. -Wherever childhood congregated to play, there was little Moloch -making Johnny fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired to -stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would not remain. -Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep, and must be -watched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch was -awake, and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily -persuaded that it was a faultless baby, without its peer in the -realm of England, and was quite content to catch meek glimpses of -things in general from behind its skirts, or over its limp -flapping bonnet, and to go staggering about with it like a very -little porter with a very large parcel, which was not directed to -anybody, and could never be delivered anywhere.</p> - -<p>The small man who sat in the small parlour, making fruitless -attempts to read his newspaper peaceably in the midst of this -disturbance, was the father of the family, and the chief of the -firm described in the inscription over the little shop front, by -the name and title of A. <span class="smcap">Tetterby and -Co</span>., <span class="smcap">Newsmen</span>. Indeed, -strictly speaking, he was the only personage answering to that -designation, as Co. was a mere poetical abstraction, altogether -baseless and impersonal.</p> - -<p>Tetterby’s was the corner shop in Jerusalem -Buildings. There was a good show of literature in the -window, chiefly consisting of picture-newspapers out of date, and -serial pirates, and footpads. Walking-sticks, likewise, and -marbles, were included in the stock in trade. It had once -extended into the light confectionery line; but it would seem -that those elegancies of life were not in demand about Jerusalem -Buildings, for nothing connected with that branch of commerce -remained in the window, except a sort of small glass lantern -containing a languishing mass of bull’s-eyes, which had -melted in the summer and congealed in the winter until all hope -of ever getting them out, or of eating them without eating the -lantern too, was gone for ever. Tetterby’s had tried -its hand at several things. It had once made a feeble -little dart at the toy business; for, in another lantern, there -was a heap of minute wax dolls, all sticking together upside -down, in the direst confusion, with their feet on one -another’s heads, and a precipitate of broken arms and legs -at the bottom. It had made a move in the millinery -direction, which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes remained in a -corner of the window to attest. It had fancied that a -living might lie hidden in the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a -representation of a native of each of the three integral portions -of the British Empire, in the act of consuming that fragrant -weed; with a poetic legend attached, importing that united in one -cause they sat and joked, one chewed tobacco, one took snuff, one -smoked: but nothing seemed to have come of it—except -flies. Time had been when it had put a forlorn trust in -imitative jewellery, for in one pane of glass there was a card of -cheap seals, and another of pencil-cases, and a mysterious black -amulet of inscrutable intention, labelled ninepence. But, -to that hour, Jerusalem Buildings had bought none of them. -In short, Tetterby’s had tried so hard to get a livelihood -out of Jerusalem Buildings in one way or other, and appeared to -have done so indifferently in all, that the best position in the -firm was too evidently Co.’s; Co., as a bodiless creation, -being untroubled with the vulgar inconveniences of hunger and -thirst, being chargeable neither to the poor’s-rates nor -the assessed taxes, and having no young family to provide -for.</p> - -<p>Tetterby himself, however, in his little parlour, as already -mentioned, having the presence of a young family impressed upon -his mind in a manner too clamorous to be disregarded, or to -comport with the quiet perusal of a newspaper, laid down his -paper, wheeled, in his distraction, a few times round the -parlour, like an undecided carrier-pigeon, made an ineffectual -rush at one or two flying little figures in bed-gowns that -skimmed past him, and then, bearing suddenly down upon the only -unoffending member of the family, boxed the ears of little -Moloch’s nurse.</p> - -<p>“You bad boy!” said Mr. Tetterby, -“haven’t you any feeling for your poor father after -the fatigues and anxieties of a hard winter’s day, since -five o’clock in the morning, but must you wither his rest, -and corrode his latest intelligence, with <i>your</i> wicious -tricks? Isn’t it enough, sir, that your brother -’Dolphus is toiling and moiling in the fog and cold, and -you rolling in the lap of luxury with a—with a baby, and -everything you can wish for,” said Mr. Tetterby, heaping -this up as a great climax of blessings, “but must you make -a wilderness of home, and maniacs of your parents? Must -you, Johnny? Hey?” At each interrogation, Mr. -Tetterby made a feint of boxing his ears again, but thought -better of it, and held his hand.</p> - -<p>“Oh, father!” whimpered Johnny, “when I -wasn’t doing anything, I’m sure, but taking such care -of Sally, and getting her to sleep. Oh, father!”</p> - -<p>“I wish my little woman would come home!” said Mr. -Tetterby, relenting and repenting, “I only wish my little -woman would come home! I ain’t fit to deal with -’em. They make my head go round, and get the better -of me. Oh, Johnny! Isn’t it enough that your -dear mother has provided you with that sweet sister?” -indicating Moloch; “isn’t it enough that you were -seven boys before without a ray of gal, and that your dear mother -went through what she <i>did</i> go through, on purpose that you -might all of you have a little sister, but must you so behave -yourself as to make my head swim?”</p> - -<p>Softening more and more, as his own tender feelings and those -of his injured son were worked on, Mr. Tetterby concluded by -embracing him, and immediately breaking away to catch one of the -real delinquents. A reasonably good start occurring, he -succeeded, after a short but smart run, and some rather severe -cross-country work under and over the bedsteads, and in and out -among the intricacies of the chairs, in capturing this infant, -whom he condignly punished, and bore to bed. This example -had a powerful, and apparently, mesmeric influence on him of the -boots, who instantly fell into a deep sleep, though he had been, -but a moment before, broad awake, and in the highest possible -feather. Nor was it lost upon the two young architects, who -retired to bed, in an adjoining closet, with great privacy and -speed. The comrade of the Intercepted One also shrinking -into his nest with similar discretion, Mr. Tetterby, when he -paused for breath, found himself unexpectedly in a scene of -peace.</p> - -<p>“My little woman herself,” said Mr. Tetterby, -wiping his flushed face, “could hardly have done it -better! I only wish my little woman had had it to do, I do -indeed!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby sought upon his screen for a passage appropriate -to be impressed upon his children’s minds on the occasion, -and read the following.</p> - -<p>“‘It is an undoubted fact that all remarkable men -have had remarkable mothers, and have respected them in after -life as their best friends.’ Think of your own -remarkable mother, my boys,” said Mr. Tetterby, “and -know her value while she is still among you!”</p> - -<p>He sat down again in his chair by the fire, and composed -himself, cross-legged, over his newspaper.</p> - -<p>“Let anybody, I don’t care who it is, get out of -bed again,” said Tetterby, as a general proclamation, -delivered in a very soft-hearted manner, “and astonishment -will be the portion of that respected -contemporary!”—which expression Mr. Tetterby selected -from his screen. “Johnny, my child, take care of your -only sister, Sally; for she’s the brightest gem that ever -sparkled on your early brow.”</p> - -<p>Johnny sat down on a little stool, and devotedly crushed -himself beneath the weight of Moloch.</p> - -<p>“Ah, what a gift that baby is to you, Johnny!” -said his father, “and how thankful you ought to be! -‘It is not generally known, Johnny,’” he was -now referring to the screen again, “‘but it is a fact -ascertained, by accurate calculations, that the following immense -percentage of babies never attain to two years old; that is to -say—’”</p> - -<p>“Oh, don’t, father, please!” cried -Johnny. “I can’t bear it, when I think of -Sally.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby desisting, Johnny, with a profound sense of his -trust, wiped his eyes, and hushed his sister.</p> - -<p>“Your brother ’Dolphus,” said his father, -poking the fire, “is late to-night, Johnny, and will come -home like a lump of ice. What’s got your precious -mother?”</p> - -<p>“Here’s mother, and ’Dolphus too, -father!” exclaimed Johnny, “I think.”</p> - -<p>“You’re right!” returned his father, -listening. “Yes, that’s the footstep of my -little woman.”</p> - -<p>The process of induction, by which Mr. Tetterby had come to -the conclusion that his wife was a little woman, was his own -secret. She would have made two editions of himself, very -easily. Considered as an individual, she was rather -remarkable for being robust and portly; but considered with -reference to her husband, her dimensions became -magnificent. Nor did they assume a less imposing -proportion, when studied with reference to the size of her seven -sons, who were but diminutive. In the case of Sally, -however, Mrs. Tetterby had asserted herself, at last; as nobody -knew better than the victim Johnny, who weighed and measured that -exacting idol every hour in the day.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby, who had been marketing, and carried a basket, -threw back her bonnet and shawl, and sitting down, fatigued, -commanded Johnny to bring his sweet charge to her straightway, -for a kiss. Johnny having complied, and gone back to his -stool, and again crushed himself, Master Adolphus Tetterby, who -had by this time unwound his torso out of a prismatic comforter, -apparently interminable, requested the same favour. Johnny -having again complied, and again gone back to his stool, and -again crushed himself, Mr. Tetterby, struck by a sudden thought, -preferred the same claim on his own parental part. The -satisfaction of this third desire completely exhausted the -sacrifice, who had hardly breath enough left to get back to his -stool, crush himself again, and pant at his relations.</p> - -<p>“Whatever you do, Johnny,” said Mrs. Tetterby, -shaking her head, “take care of her, or never look your -mother in the face again.”</p> - -<p>“Nor your brother,” said Adolphus.</p> - -<p>“Nor your father, Johnny,” added Mr. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>Johnny, much affected by this conditional renunciation of him, -looked down at Moloch’s eyes to see that they were all -right, so far, and skilfully patted her back (which was -uppermost), and rocked her with his foot.</p> - -<p>“Are you wet, ’Dolphus, my boy?” said his -father. “Come and take my chair, and dry -yourself.”</p> - -<p>“No, father, thank’ee,” said Adolphus, -smoothing himself down with his hands. “I an’t -very wet, I don’t think. Does my face shine much, -father?”</p> - -<p>“Well, it <i>does</i> look waxy, my boy,” returned -Mr. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“It’s the weather, father,” said Adolphus, -polishing his cheeks on the worn sleeve of his jacket. -“What with rain, and sleet, and wind, and snow, and fog, my -face gets quite brought out into a rash sometimes. And -shines, it does—oh, don’t it, though!”</p> - -<p>Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper line of life, being -employed, by a more thriving firm than his father and Co., to -vend newspapers at a railway station, where his chubby little -person, like a shabbily-disguised Cupid, and his shrill little -voice (he was not much more than ten years old), were as well -known as the hoarse panting of the locomotives, running in and -out. His juvenility might have been at some loss for a -harmless outlet, in this early application to traffic, but for a -fortunate discovery he made of a means of entertaining himself, -and of dividing the long day into stages of interest, without -neglecting business. This ingenious invention, remarkable, -like many great discoveries, for its simplicity, consisted in -varying the first vowel in the word “paper,” and -substituting, in its stead, at different periods of the day, all -the other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus, before -daylight in the winter-time, he went to and fro, in his little -oilskin cap and cape, and his big comforter, piercing the heavy -air with his cry of “Morn-ing Pa-per!” which, about -an hour before noon, changed to “Morn-ing Pepper!” -which, at about two, changed to “Morn-ing Pip-per!” -which in a couple of hours changed to “Morn-ing -Pop-per!” and so declined with the sun into “Eve-ning -Pup-per!” to the great relief and comfort of this young -gentleman’s spirits.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby, his lady-mother, who had been sitting with her -bonnet and shawl thrown back, as aforesaid, thoughtfully turning -her wedding-ring round and round upon her finger, now rose, and -divesting herself of her out-of-door attire, began to lay the -cloth for supper.</p> - -<p>“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs. -Tetterby. “That’s the way the world -goes!”</p> - -<p>“Which is the way the world goes, my dear?” asked -Mr. Tetterby, looking round.</p> - -<p>“Oh, nothing,” said Mrs. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby elevated his eyebrows, folded his newspaper -afresh, and carried his eyes up it, and down it, and across it, -but was wandering in his attention, and not reading it.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby, at the same time, laid the cloth, but rather as -if she were punishing the table than preparing the family supper; -hitting it unnecessarily hard with the knives and forks, slapping -it with the plates, dinting it with the salt-cellar, and coming -heavily down upon it with the loaf.</p> - -<p>“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs. -Tetterby. “That’s the way the world -goes!”</p> - -<p>“My duck,” returned her husband, looking round -again, “you said that before. Which is the way the -world goes?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, nothing!” said Mrs. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“Sophia!” remonstrated her husband, “you -said <i>that</i> before, too.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I’ll say it again if you like,” -returned Mrs. Tetterby. “Oh -nothing—there! And again if you like, oh -nothing—there! And again if you like, oh -nothing—now then!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby brought his eye to bear upon the partner of his -bosom, and said, in mild astonishment:</p> - -<p>“My little woman, what has put you out?”</p> - -<p>“I’m sure <i>I</i> don’t know,” she -retorted. “Don’t ask me. Who said I was -put out at all? <i>I</i> never did.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby gave up the perusal of his newspaper as a bad -job, and, taking a slow walk across the room, with his hands -behind him, and his shoulders raised—his gait according -perfectly with the resignation of his manner—addressed -himself to his two eldest offspring.</p> - -<p>“Your supper will be ready in a minute, -’Dolphus,” said Mr. Tetterby. “Your -mother has been out in the wet, to the cook’s shop, to buy -it. It was very good of your mother so to do. -<i>You</i> shall get some supper too, very soon, Johnny. -Your mother’s pleased with you, my man, for being so -attentive to your precious sister.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby, without any remark, but with a decided -subsidence of her animosity towards the table, finished her -preparations, and took, from her ample basket, a substantial slab -of hot pease pudding wrapped in paper, and a basin covered with a -saucer, which, on being uncovered, sent forth an odour so -agreeable, that the three pair of eyes in the two beds opened -wide and fixed themselves upon the banquet. Mr. Tetterby, -without regarding this tacit invitation to be seated, stood -repeating slowly, “Yes, yes, your supper will be ready in a -minute, ’Dolphus—your mother went out in the wet, to -the cook’s shop, to buy it. It was very good of your -mother so to do”—until Mrs. Tetterby, who had been -exhibiting sundry tokens of contrition behind him, caught him -round the neck, and wept.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Dolphus!” said Mrs. Tetterby, “how -could I go and behave so?”</p> - -<p>This reconciliation affected Adolphus the younger and Johnny -to that degree, that they both, as with one accord, raised a -dismal cry, which had the effect of immediately shutting up the -round eyes in the beds, and utterly routing the two remaining -little Tetterbys, just then stealing in from the adjoining closet -to see what was going on in the eating way.</p> - -<p>“I am sure, ’Dolphus,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, -“coming home, I had no more idea than a child -unborn—”</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby seemed to dislike this figure of speech, and -observed, “Say than the baby, my dear.”</p> - -<p>“—Had no more idea than the baby,” said Mrs. -Tetterby.—“Johnny, don’t look at me, but look -at her, or she’ll fall out of your lap and be killed, and -then you’ll die in agonies of a broken heart, and serve you -right.—No more idea I hadn’t than that darling, of -being cross when I came home; but somehow, -’Dolphus—” Mrs. Tetterby paused, and -again turned her wedding-ring round and round upon her -finger.</p> - -<p>“I see!” said Mr. Tetterby. “I -understand! My little woman was put out. Hard times, -and hard weather, and hard work, make it trying now and -then. I see, bless your soul! No wonder! Dolf, -my man,” continued Mr. Tetterby, exploring the basin with a -fork, “here’s your mother been and bought, at the -cook’s shop, besides pease pudding, a whole knuckle of a -lovely roast leg of pork, with lots of crackling left upon it, -and with seasoning gravy and mustard quite unlimited. Hand -in your plate, my boy, and begin while it’s -simmering.”</p> - -<p>Master Adolphus, needing no second summons, received his -portion with eyes rendered moist by appetite, and withdrawing to -his particular stool, fell upon his supper tooth and nail. -Johnny was not forgotten, but received his rations on bread, lest -he should, in a flush of gravy, trickle any on the baby. He -was required, for similar reasons, to keep his pudding, when not -on active service, in his pocket.</p> - -<p>There might have been more pork on the -knucklebone,—which knucklebone the carver at the -cook’s shop had assuredly not forgotten in carving for -previous customers—but there was no stint of seasoning, and -that is an accessory dreamily suggesting pork, and pleasantly -cheating the sense of taste. The pease pudding, too, the -gravy and mustard, like the Eastern rose in respect of the -nightingale, if they were not absolutely pork, had lived near it; -so, upon the whole, there was the flavour of a middle-sized -pig. It was irresistible to the Tetterbys in bed, who, -though professing to slumber peacefully, crawled out when unseen -by their parents, and silently appealed to their brothers for any -gastronomic token of fraternal affection. They, not hard of -heart, presenting scraps in return, it resulted that a party of -light skirmishers in nightgowns were careering about the parlour -all through supper, which harassed Mr. Tetterby exceedingly, and -once or twice imposed upon him the necessity of a charge, before -which these guerilla troops retired in all directions and in -great confusion.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby did not enjoy her supper. There seemed to -be something on Mrs. Tetterby’s mind. At one time she -laughed without reason, and at another time she cried without -reason, and at last she laughed and cried together in a manner so -very unreasonable that her husband was confounded.</p> - -<p>“My little woman,” said Mr. Tetterby, “if -the world goes that way, it appears to go the wrong way, and to -choke you.”</p> - -<p>“Give me a drop of water,” said Mrs. Tetterby, -struggling with herself, “and don’t speak to me for -the present, or take any notice of me. Don’t do -it!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby having administered the water, turned suddenly on -the unlucky Johnny (who was full of sympathy), and demanded why -he was wallowing there, in gluttony and idleness, instead of -coming forward with the baby, that the sight of her might revive -his mother. Johnny immediately approached, borne down by -its weight; but Mrs. Tetterby holding out her hand to signify -that she was not in a condition to bear that trying appeal to her -feelings, he was interdicted from advancing another inch, on pain -of perpetual hatred from all his dearest connections; and -accordingly retired to his stool again, and crushed himself as -before.</p> - -<p>After a pause, Mrs. Tetterby said she was better now, and -began to laugh.</p> - -<p>“My little woman,” said her husband, dubiously, -“are you quite sure you’re better? Or are you, -Sophia, about to break out in a fresh direction?”</p> - -<p>“No, ’Dolphus, no,” replied his wife. -“I’m quite myself.” With that, settling -her hair, and pressing the palms of her hands upon her eyes, she -laughed again.</p> - -<p>“What a wicked fool I was, to think so for a -moment!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Come nearer, -’Dolphus, and let me ease my mind, and tell you what I -mean. Let me tell you all about it.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby bringing his chair closer, Mrs. Tetterby laughed -again, gave him a hug, and wiped her eyes.</p> - -<p>“You know, Dolphus, my dear,” said Mrs. Tetterby, -“that when I was single, I might have given myself away in -several directions. At one time, four after me at once; two -of them were sons of Mars.”</p> - -<p>“We’re all sons of Ma’s, my dear,” -said Mr. Tetterby, “jointly with Pa’s.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t mean that,” replied his wife, -“I mean soldiers—serjeants.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” said Mr. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“Well, ’Dolphus, I’m sure I never think of -such things now, to regret them; and I’m sure I’ve -got as good a husband, and would do as much to prove that I was -fond of him, as—”</p> - -<p>“As any little woman in the world,” said Mr. -Tetterby. “Very good. <i>Very</i> -good.”</p> - -<p>If Mr. Tetterby had been ten feet high, he could not have -expressed a gentler consideration for Mrs. Tetterby’s -fairy-like stature; and if Mrs. Tetterby had been two feet high, -she could not have felt it more appropriately her due.</p> - -<p>“But you see, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs. Tetterby, -“this being Christmas-time, when all people who can, make -holiday, and when all people who have got money, like to spend -some, I did, somehow, get a little out of sorts when I was in the -streets just now. There were so many things to be -sold—such delicious things to eat, such fine things to look -at, such delightful things to have—and there was so much -calculating and calculating necessary, before I durst lay out a -sixpence for the commonest thing; and the basket was so large, -and wanted so much in it; and my stock of money was so small, and -would go such a little way;—you hate me, don’t you, -’Dolphus?”</p> - -<p>“Not quite,” said Mr. Tetterby, “as -yet.”</p> - -<p>“Well! I’ll tell you the whole truth,” -pursued his wife, penitently, “and then perhaps you -will. I felt all this, so much, when I was trudging about -in the cold, and when I saw a lot of other calculating faces and -large baskets trudging about, too, that I began to think whether -I mightn’t have done better, and been happier, -if—I—hadn’t—” the wedding-ring went -round again, and Mrs. Tetterby shook her downcast head as she -turned it.</p> - -<p>“I see,” said her husband quietly; “if you -hadn’t married at all, or if you had married somebody -else?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby. -“That’s really what I thought. Do you hate me -now, ’Dolphus?”</p> - -<p>“Why no,” said Mr. Tetterby. “I -don’t find that I do, as yet.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby gave him a thankful kiss, and went on.</p> - -<p>“I begin to hope you won’t, now, ’Dolphus, -though I’m afraid I haven’t told you the worst. -I can’t think what came over me. I don’t know -whether I was ill, or mad, or what I was, but I couldn’t -call up anything that seemed to bind us to each other, or to -reconcile me to my fortune. All the pleasures and -enjoyments we had ever had—<i>they</i> seemed so poor and -insignificant, I hated them. I could have trodden on -them. And I could think of nothing else, except our being -poor, and the number of mouths there were at home.”</p> - -<p>“Well, well, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, shaking -her hand encouragingly, “that’s truth, after -all. We <i>are</i> poor, and there <i>are</i> a number of -mouths at home here.”</p> - -<p>“Ah! but, Dolf, Dolf!” cried his wife, laying her -hands upon his neck, “my good, kind, patient fellow, when I -had been at home a very little while—how different! -Oh, Dolf, dear, how different it was! I felt as if there -was a rush of recollection on me, all at once, that softened my -hard heart, and filled it up till it was bursting. All our -struggles for a livelihood, all our cares and wants since we have -been married, all the times of sickness, all the hours of -watching, we have ever had, by one another, or by the children, -seemed to speak to me, and say that they had made us one, and -that I never might have been, or could have been, or would have -been, any other than the wife and mother I am. Then, the -cheap enjoyments that I could have trodden on so cruelly, got to -be so precious to me—Oh so priceless, and dear!—that -I couldn’t bear to think how much I had wronged them; and I -said, and say again a hundred times, how could I ever behave so, -’Dolphus, how could I ever have the heart to do -it!”</p> - -<p>The good woman, quite carried away by her honest tenderness -and remorse, was weeping with all her heart, when she started up -with a scream, and ran behind her husband. Her cry was so -terrified, that the children started from their sleep and from -their beds, and clung about her. Nor did her gaze belie her -voice, as she pointed to a pale man in a black cloak who had come -into the room.</p> - -<p>“Look at that man! Look there! What does he -want?”</p> - -<p>“My dear,” returned her husband, “I’ll -ask him if you’ll let me go. What’s the -matter! How you shake!”</p> - -<p>“I saw him in the street, when I was out just now. -He looked at me, and stood near me. I am afraid of -him.”</p> - -<p>“Afraid of him! Why?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know why—I—stop! -husband!” for he was going towards the stranger.</p> - -<p>She had one hand pressed upon her forehead, and one upon her -breast; and there was a peculiar fluttering all over her, and a -hurried unsteady motion of her eyes, as if she had lost -something.</p> - -<p>“Are you ill, my dear?”</p> - -<p>“What is it that is going from me again?” she -muttered, in a low voice. “What <i>is</i> this that -is going away?”</p> - -<p>Then she abruptly answered: “Ill? No, I am -quite well,” and stood looking vacantly at the floor.</p> - -<p>Her husband, who had not been altogether free from the -infection of her fear at first, and whom the present strangeness -of her manner did not tend to reassure, addressed himself to the -pale visitor in the black cloak, who stood still, and whose eyes -were bent upon the ground.</p> - -<p>“What may be your pleasure, sir,” he asked, -“with us?”</p> - -<p>“I fear that my coming in unperceived,” returned -the visitor, “has alarmed you; but you were talking and did -not hear me.”</p> - -<p>“My little woman says—perhaps you heard her say -it,” returned Mr. Tetterby, “that it’s not the -first time you have alarmed her to-night.”</p> - -<p>“I am sorry for it. I remember to have observed -her, for a few moments only, in the street. I had no -intention of frightening her.”</p> - -<p>As he raised his eyes in speaking, she raised hers. It -was extraordinary to see what dread she had of him, and with what -dread he observed it—and yet how narrowly and closely.</p> - -<p>“My name,” he said, “is Redlaw. I come -from the old college hard by. A young gentleman who is a -student there, lodges in your house, does he not?”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Denham?” said Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>It was a natural action, and so slight as to be hardly -noticeable; but the little man, before speaking again, passed his -hand across his forehead, and looked quickly round the room, as -though he were sensible of some change in its atmosphere. -The Chemist, instantly transferring to him the look of dread he -had directed towards the wife, stepped back, and his face turned -paler.</p> - -<p>“The gentleman’s room,” said Tetterby, -“is upstairs, sir. There’s a more convenient -private entrance; but as you have come in here, it will save your -going out into the cold, if you’ll take this little -staircase,” showing one communicating directly with the -parlour, “and go up to him that way, if you wish to see -him.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, I wish to see him,” said the Chemist. -“Can you spare a light?”</p> - -<p>The watchfulness of his haggard look, and the inexplicable -distrust that darkened it, seemed to trouble Mr. Tetterby. -He paused; and looking fixedly at him in return, stood for a -minute or so, like a man stupefied, or fascinated.</p> - -<p>At length he said, “I’ll light you, sir, if -you’ll follow me.”</p> - -<p>“No,” replied the Chemist, “I don’t -wish to be attended, or announced to him. He does not -expect me. I would rather go alone. Please to give me -the light, if you can spare it, and I’ll find the -way.”</p> - -<p>In the quickness of his expression of this desire, and in -taking the candle from the newsman, he touched him on the -breast. Withdrawing his hand hastily, almost as though he -had wounded him by accident (for he did not know in what part of -himself his new power resided, or how it was communicated, or how -the manner of its reception varied in different persons), he -turned and ascended the stair.</p> - -<p>But when he reached the top, he stopped and looked down. -The wife was standing in the same place, twisting her ring round -and round upon her finger. The husband, with his head bent -forward on his breast, was musing heavily and sullenly. The -children, still clustering about the mother, gazed timidly after -the visitor, and nestled together when they saw him looking -down.</p> - -<p>“Come!” said the father, roughly. -“There’s enough of this. Get to bed -here!”</p> - -<p>“The place is inconvenient and small enough,” the -mother added, “without you. Get to bed!”</p> - -<p>The whole brood, scared and sad, crept away; little Johnny and -the baby lagging last. The mother, glancing contemptuously -round the sordid room, and tossing from her the fragments of -their meal, stopped on the threshold of her task of clearing the -table, and sat down, pondering idly and dejectedly. The -father betook himself to the chimney-corner, and impatiently -raking the small fire together, bent over it as if he would -monopolise it all. They did not interchange a word.</p> - -<p>The Chemist, paler than before, stole upward like a thief; -looking back upon the change below, and dreading equally to go on -or return.</p> - -<p>“What have I done!” he said, confusedly. -“What am I going to do!”</p> - -<p>“To be the benefactor of mankind,” he thought he -heard a voice reply.</p> - -<p>He looked round, but there was nothing there; and a passage -now shutting out the little parlour from his view, he went on, -directing his eyes before him at the way he went.</p> - -<p>“It is only since last night,” he muttered -gloomily, “that I have remained shut up, and yet all things -are strange to me. I am strange to myself. I am here, -as in a dream. What interest have I in this place, or in -any place that I can bring to my remembrance? My mind is -going blind!”</p> - -<p>There was a door before him, and he knocked at it. Being -invited, by a voice within, to enter, he complied.</p> - -<p>“Is that my kind nurse?” said the voice. -“But I need not ask her. There is no one else to come -here.”</p> - -<p>It spoke cheerfully, though in a languid tone, and attracted -his attention to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before the -chimney-piece, with the back towards the door. A meagre -scanty stove, pinched and hollowed like a sick man’s -cheeks, and bricked into the centre of a hearth that it could -scarcely warm, contained the fire, to which his face was -turned. Being so near the windy house-top, it wasted -quickly, and with a busy sound, and the burning ashes dropped -down fast.</p> - -<p>“They chink when they shoot out here,” said the -student, smiling, “so, according to the gossips, they are -not coffins, but purses. I shall be well and rich yet, some -day, if it please God, and shall live perhaps to love a daughter -Milly, in remembrance of the kindest nature and the gentlest -heart in the world.”</p> - -<p>He put up his hand as if expecting her to take it, but, being -weakened, he lay still, with his face resting on his other hand, -and did not turn round.</p> - -<p>The Chemist glanced about the room;—at the -student’s books and papers, piled upon a table in a corner, -where they, and his extinguished reading-lamp, now prohibited and -put away, told of the attentive hours that had gone before this -illness, and perhaps caused it;—at such signs of his old -health and freedom, as the out-of-door attire that hung idle on -the wall;—at those remembrances of other and less solitary -scenes, the little miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and the -drawing of home;—at that token of his emulation, perhaps, -in some sort, of his personal attachment too, the framed -engraving of himself, the looker-on. The time had been, -only yesterday, when not one of these objects, in its remotest -association of interest with the living figure before him, would -have been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but objects; or, -if any gleam of such connexion shot upon him, it perplexed, and -not enlightened him, as he stood looking round with a dull -wonder.</p> - -<p>The student, recalling the thin hand which had remained so -long untouched, raised himself on the couch, and turned his -head.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Redlaw!” he exclaimed, and started up.</p> - -<p>Redlaw put out his arm.</p> - -<p>“Don’t come nearer to me. I will sit -here. Remain you, where you are!”</p> - -<p>He sat down on a chair near the door, and having glanced at -the young man standing leaning with his hand upon the couch, -spoke with his eyes averted towards the ground.</p> - -<p>“I heard, by an accident, by what accident is no matter, -that one of my class was ill and solitary. I received no -other description of him, than that he lived in this -street. Beginning my inquiries at the first house in it, I -have found him.”</p> - -<p>“I have been ill, sir,” returned the student, not -merely with a modest hesitation, but with a kind of awe of him, -“but am greatly better. An attack of fever—of -the brain, I believe—has weakened me, but I am much -better. I cannot say I have been solitary, in my illness, -or I should forget the ministering hand that has been near -me.”</p> - -<p>“You are speaking of the keeper’s wife,” -said Redlaw.</p> - -<p>“Yes.” The student bent his head, as if he -rendered her some silent homage.</p> - -<p>The Chemist, in whom there was a cold, monotonous apathy, -which rendered him more like a marble image on the tomb of the -man who had started from his dinner yesterday at the first -mention of this student’s case, than the breathing man -himself, glanced again at the student leaning with his hand upon -the couch, and looked upon the ground, and in the air, as if for -light for his blinded mind.</p> - -<p>“I remembered your name,” he said, “when it -was mentioned to me down stairs, just now; and I recollect your -face. We have held but very little personal communication -together?”</p> - -<p>“Very little.”</p> - -<p>“You have retired and withdrawn from me, more than any -of the rest, I think?”</p> - -<p>The student signified assent.</p> - -<p>“And why?” said the Chemist; not with the least -expression of interest, but with a moody, wayward kind of -curiosity. “Why? How comes it that you have -sought to keep especially from me, the knowledge of your -remaining here, at this season, when all the rest have dispersed, -and of your being ill? I want to know why this -is?”</p> - -<p>The young man, who had heard him with increasing agitation, -raised his downcast eyes to his face, and clasping his hands -together, cried with sudden earnestness and with trembling -lips:</p> - -<p>“Mr. Redlaw! You have discovered me. You -know my secret!”</p> - -<p>“Secret?” said the Chemist, harshly. -“I know?”</p> - -<p>“Yes! Your manner, so different from the interest -and sympathy which endear you to so many hearts, your altered -voice, the constraint there is in everything you say, and in your -looks,” replied the student, “warn me that you know -me. That you would conceal it, even now, is but a proof to -me (God knows I need none!) of your natural kindness and of the -bar there is between us.”</p> - -<p>A vacant and contemptuous laugh, was all his answer.</p> - -<p>“But, Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, “as a -just man, and a good man, think how innocent I am, except in name -and descent, of participation in any wrong inflicted on you or in -any sorrow you have borne.”</p> - -<p>“Sorrow!” said Redlaw, laughing. -“Wrong! What are those to me?”</p> - -<p>“For Heaven’s sake,” entreated the shrinking -student, “do not let the mere interchange of a few words -with me change you like this, sir! Let me pass again from -your knowledge and notice. Let me occupy my old reserved -and distant place among those whom you instruct. Know me -only by the name I have assumed, and not by that of -Longford—”</p> - -<p>“Longford!” exclaimed the other.</p> - -<p>He clasped his head with both his hands, and for a moment -turned upon the young man his own intelligent and thoughtful -face. But the light passed from it, like the sun-beam of an -instant, and it clouded as before.</p> - -<p>“The name my mother bears, sir,” faltered the -young man, “the name she took, when she might, perhaps, -have taken one more honoured. Mr. Redlaw,” -hesitating, “I believe I know that history. Where my -information halts, my guesses at what is wanting may supply -something not remote from the truth. I am the child of a -marriage that has not proved itself a well-assorted or a happy -one. From infancy, I have heard you spoken of with honour -and respect—with something that was almost reverence. -I have heard of such devotion, of such fortitude and tenderness, -of such rising up against the obstacles which press men down, -that my fancy, since I learnt my little lesson from my mother, -has shed a lustre on your name. At last, a poor student -myself, from whom could I learn but you?”</p> - -<p>Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a staring -frown, answered by no word or sign.</p> - -<p>“I cannot say,” pursued the other, “I should -try in vain to say, how much it has impressed me, and affected -me, to find the gracious traces of the past, in that certain -power of winning gratitude and confidence which is associated -among us students (among the humblest of us, most) with Mr. -Redlaw’s generous name. Our ages and positions are so -different, sir, and I am so accustomed to regard you from a -distance, that I wonder at my own presumption when I touch, -however lightly, on that theme. But to one who—I may -say, who felt no common interest in my mother once—it may -be something to hear, now that all is past, with what -indescribable feelings of affection I have, in my obscurity, -regarded him; with what pain and reluctance I have kept aloof -from his encouragement, when a word of it would have made me -rich; yet how I have felt it fit that I should hold my course, -content to know him, and to be unknown. Mr. Redlaw,” -said the student, faintly, “what I would have said, I have -said ill, for my strength is strange to me as yet; but for -anything unworthy in this fraud of mine, forgive me, and for all -the rest forget me!”</p> - -<p>The staring frown remained on Redlaw’s face, and yielded -to no other expression until the student, with these words, -advanced towards him, as if to touch his hand, when he drew back -and cried to him:</p> - -<p>“Don’t come nearer to me!”</p> - -<p>The young man stopped, shocked by the eagerness of his recoil, -and by the sternness of his repulsion; and he passed his hand, -thoughtfully, across his forehead.</p> - -<p>“The past is past,” said the Chemist. -“It dies like the brutes. Who talks to me of its -traces in my life? He raves or lies! What have I to -do with your distempered dreams? If you want money, here it -is. I came to offer it; and that is all I came for. -There can be nothing else that brings me here,” he -muttered, holding his head again, with both his hands. -“There <i>can</i> be nothing else, and -yet—”</p> - -<p>He had tossed his purse upon the table. As he fell into -this dim cogitation with himself, the student took it up, and -held it out to him.</p> - -<p>“Take it back, sir,” he said proudly, though not -angrily. “I wish you could take from me, with it, the -remembrance of your words and offer.”</p> - -<p>“You do?” he retorted, with a wild light in his -eyes. “You do?”</p> - -<p>“I do!”</p> - -<p>The Chemist went close to him, for the first time, and took -the purse, and turned him by the arm, and looked him in the -face.</p> - -<p>“There is sorrow and trouble in sickness, is there -not?” he demanded, with a laugh.</p> - -<p>The wondering student answered, “Yes.”</p> - -<p>“In its unrest, in its anxiety, in its suspense, in all -its train of physical and mental miseries?” said the -Chemist, with a wild unearthly exultation. “All best -forgotten, are they not?”</p> - -<p>The student did not answer, but again passed his hand, -confusedly, across his forehead. Redlaw still held him by -the sleeve, when Milly’s voice was heard outside.</p> - -<p>“I can see very well now,” she said, “thank -you, Dolf. Don’t cry, dear. Father and mother -will be comfortable again, to-morrow, and home will be -comfortable too. A gentleman with him, is there!”</p> - -<p>Redlaw released his hold, as he listened.</p> - -<p>“I have feared, from the first moment,” he -murmured to himself, “to meet her. There is a steady -quality of goodness in her, that I dread to influence. I -may be the murderer of what is tenderest and best within her -bosom.”</p> - -<p>She was knocking at the door.</p> - -<p>“Shall I dismiss it as an idle foreboding, or still -avoid her?” he muttered, looking uneasily around.</p> - -<p>She was knocking at the door again.</p> - -<p>“Of all the visitors who could come here,” he -said, in a hoarse alarmed voice, turning to his companion, -“this is the one I should desire most to avoid. Hide -me!”</p> - -<p>The student opened a frail door in the wall, communicating -where the garret-roof began to slope towards the floor, with a -small inner room. Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut it -after him.</p> - -<p>The student then resumed his place upon the couch, and called -to her to enter.</p> - -<p>“Dear Mr. Edmund,” said Milly, looking round, -“they told me there was a gentleman here.”</p> - -<p>“There is no one here but I.”</p> - -<p>“There has been some one?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, there has been some one.”</p> - -<p>She put her little basket on the table, and went up to the -back of the couch, as if to take the extended hand—but it -was not there. A little surprised, in her quiet way, she -leaned over to look at his face, and gently touched him on the -brow.</p> - -<p>“Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is not -so cool as in the afternoon.”</p> - -<p>“Tut!” said the student, petulantly, “very -little ails me.”</p> - -<p>A little more surprise, but no reproach, was expressed in her -face, as she withdrew to the other side of the table, and took a -small packet of needlework from her basket. But she laid it -down again, on second thoughts, and going noiselessly about the -room, set everything exactly in its place, and in the neatest -order; even to the cushions on the couch, which she touched with -so light a hand, that he hardly seemed to know it, as he lay -looking at the fire. When all this was done, and she had -swept the hearth, she sat down, in her modest little bonnet, to -her work, and was quietly busy on it directly.</p> - -<p>“It’s the new muslin curtain for the window, Mr. -Edmund,” said Milly, stitching away as she talked. -“It will look very clean and nice, though it costs very -little, and will save your eyes, too, from the light. My -William says the room should not be too light just now, when you -are recovering so well, or the glare might make you -giddy.”</p> - -<p>He said nothing; but there was something so fretful and -impatient in his change of position, that her quick fingers -stopped, and she looked at him anxiously.</p> - -<p>“The pillows are not comfortable,” she said, -laying down her work and rising. “I will soon put -them right.”</p> - -<p>“They are very well,” he answered. -“Leave them alone, pray. You make so much of -everything.”</p> - -<p>He raised his head to say this, and looked at her so -thanklessly, that, after he had thrown himself down again, she -stood timidly pausing. However, she resumed her seat, and -her needle, without having directed even a murmuring look towards -him, and was soon as busy as before.</p> - -<p>“I have been thinking, Mr. Edmund, that <i>you</i> have -been often thinking of late, when I have been sitting by, how -true the saying is, that adversity is a good teacher. -Health will be more precious to you, after this illness, than it -has ever been. And years hence, when this time of year -comes round, and you remember the days when you lay here sick, -alone, that the knowledge of your illness might not afflict those -who are dearest to you, your home will be doubly dear and doubly -blest. Now, isn’t that a good, true thing?”</p> - -<p>She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she -said, and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch -for any look he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft -of his ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not wound -her.</p> - -<p>“Ah!” said Milly, with her pretty head inclining -thoughtfully on one side, as she looked down, following her busy -fingers with her eyes. “Even on me—and I am -very different from you, Mr. Edmund, for I have no learning, and -don’t know how to think properly—this view of such -things has made a great impression, since you have been lying -ill. When I have seen you so touched by the kindness and -attention of the poor people down stairs, I have felt that you -thought even that experience some repayment for the loss of -health, and I have read in your face, as plain as if it was a -book, that but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know -half the good there is about us.”</p> - -<p>His getting up from the couch, interrupted her, or she was -going on to say more.</p> - -<p>“We needn’t magnify the merit, Mrs. -William,” he rejoined slightingly. “The people -down stairs will be paid in good time I dare say, for any little -extra service they may have rendered me; and perhaps they -anticipate no less. I am much obliged to you, -too.”</p> - -<p>Her fingers stopped, and she looked at him.</p> - -<p>“I can’t be made to feel the more obliged by your -exaggerating the case,” he said. “I am sensible -that you have been interested in me, and I say I am much obliged -to you. What more would you have?”</p> - -<p>Her work fell on her lap, as she still looked at him walking -to and fro with an intolerant air, and stopping now and then.</p> - -<p>“I say again, I am much obliged to you. Why weaken -my sense of what is your due in obligation, by preferring -enormous claims upon me? Trouble, sorrow, affliction, -adversity! One might suppose I had been dying a score of -deaths here!”</p> - -<p>“Do you believe, Mr. Edmund,” she asked, rising -and going nearer to him, “that I spoke of the poor people -of the house, with any reference to myself? To me?” -laying her hand upon her bosom with a simple and innocent smile -of astonishment.</p> - -<p>“Oh! I think nothing about it, my good -creature,” he returned. “I have had an -indisposition, which your solicitude—observe! I say -solicitude—makes a great deal more of, than it merits; and -it’s over, and we can’t perpetuate it.”</p> - -<p>He coldly took a book, and sat down at the table.</p> - -<p>She watched him for a little while, until her smile was quite -gone, and then, returning to where her basket was, said -gently:</p> - -<p>“Mr. Edmund, would you rather be alone?”</p> - -<p>“There is no reason why I should detain you here,” -he replied.</p> - -<p>“Except—” said Milly, hesitating, and -showing her work.</p> - -<p>“Oh! the curtain,” he answered, with a -supercilious laugh. “That’s not worth staying -for.”</p> - -<p>She made up the little packet again, and put it in her -basket. Then, standing before him with such an air of -patient entreaty that he could not choose but look at her, she -said:</p> - -<p>“If you should want me, I will come back -willingly. When you did want me, I was quite happy to come; -there was no merit in it. I think you must be afraid, that, -now you are getting well, I may be troublesome to you; but I -should not have been, indeed. I should have come no longer -than your weakness and confinement lasted. You owe me -nothing; but it is right that you should deal as justly by me as -if I was a lady—even the very lady that you love; and if -you suspect me of meanly making much of the little I have tried -to do to comfort your sick room, you do yourself more wrong than -ever you can do me. That is why I am sorry. That is -why I am very sorry.”</p> - -<p>If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, as indignant -as she was calm, as angry in her look as she was gentle, as loud -of tone as she was low and clear, she might have left no sense of -her departure in the room, compared with that which fell upon the -lonely student when she went away.</p> - -<p>He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, when -Redlaw came out of his concealment, and came to the door.</p> - -<p>“When sickness lays its hand on you again,” he -said, looking fiercely back at him, “—may it be -soon!—Die here! Rot here!”</p> - -<p>“What have you done?” returned the other, catching -at his cloak. “What change have you wrought in -me? What curse have you brought upon me? Give me back -<i>my</i>self!”</p> - -<p>“Give me back myself!” exclaimed Redlaw like a -madman. “I am infected! I am infectious! -I am charged with poison for my own mind, and the minds of all -mankind. Where I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am -turning into stone. Selfishness and ingratitude spring up -in my blighting footsteps. I am only so much less base than -the wretches whom I make so, that in the moment of their -transformation I can hate them.”</p> - -<p>As he spoke—the young man still holding to his -cloak—he cast him off, and struck him: then, wildly hurried -out into the night air where the wind was blowing, the snow -falling, the cloud-drift sweeping on, the moon dimly shining; and -where, blowing in the wind, falling with the snow, drifting with -the clouds, shining in the moonlight, and heavily looming in the -darkness, were the Phantom’s words, “The gift that I -have given, you shall give again, go where you will!”</p> - -<p>Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he avoided -company. The change he felt within him made the busy -streets a desert, and himself a desert, and the multitude around -him, in their manifold endurances and ways of life, a mighty -waste of sand, which the winds tossed into unintelligible heaps -and made a ruinous confusion of. Those traces in his breast -which the Phantom had told him would “die out soon,” -were not, as yet, so far upon their way to death, but that he -understood enough of what he was, and what he made of others, to -desire to be alone.</p> - -<p>This put it in his mind—he suddenly bethought himself, -as he was going along, of the boy who had rushed into his -room. And then he recollected, that of those with whom he -had communicated since the Phantom’s disappearance, that -boy alone had shown no sign of being changed.</p> - -<p>Monstrous and odious as the wild thing was to him, he -determined to seek it out, and prove if this were really so; and -also to seek it with another intention, which came into his -thoughts at the same time.</p> - -<p>So, resolving with some difficulty where he was, he directed -his steps back to the old college, and to that part of it where -the general porch was, and where, alone, the pavement was worn by -the tread of the students’ feet.</p> - -<p>The keeper’s house stood just within the iron gates, -forming a part of the chief quadrangle. There was a little -cloister outside, and from that sheltered place he knew he could -look in at the window of their ordinary room, and see who was -within. The iron gates were shut, but his hand was familiar -with the fastening, and drawing it back by thrusting in his wrist -between the bars, he passed through softly, shut it again, and -crept up to the window, crumbling the thin crust of snow with his -feet.</p> - -<p>The fire, to which he had directed the boy last night, shining -brightly through the glass, made an illuminated place upon the -ground. Instinctively avoiding this, and going round it, he -looked in at the window. At first, he thought that there -was no one there, and that the blaze was reddening only the old -beams in the ceiling and the dark walls; but peering in more -narrowly, he saw the object of his search coiled asleep before it -on the floor. He passed quickly to the door, opened it, and -went in.</p> - -<p>The creature lay in such a fiery heat, that, as the Chemist -stooped to rouse him, it scorched his head. So soon as he -was touched, the boy, not half awake, clutching his rags together -with the instinct of flight upon him, half rolled and half ran -into a distant corner of the room, where, heaped upon the ground, -he struck his foot out to defend himself.</p> - -<p>“Get up!” said the Chemist. “You have -not forgotten me?”</p> - -<p>“You let me alone!” returned the boy. -“This is the woman’s house—not -yours.”</p> - -<p>The Chemist’s steady eye controlled him somewhat, or -inspired him with enough submission to be raised upon his feet, -and looked at.</p> - -<p>“Who washed them, and put those bandages where they were -bruised and cracked?” asked the Chemist, pointing to their -altered state.</p> - -<p>“The woman did.”</p> - -<p>“And is it she who has made you cleaner in the face, -too?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, the woman.”</p> - -<p>Redlaw asked these questions to attract his eyes towards -himself, and with the same intent now held him by the chin, and -threw his wild hair back, though he loathed to touch him. -The boy watched his eyes keenly, as if he thought it needful to -his own defence, not knowing what he might do next; and Redlaw -could see well that no change came over him.</p> - -<p>“Where are they?” he inquired.</p> - -<p>“The woman’s out.”</p> - -<p>“I know she is. Where is the old man with the -white hair, and his son?”</p> - -<p>“The woman’s husband, d’ye mean?” -inquired the boy.</p> - -<p>“Ay. Where are those two?”</p> - -<p>“Out. Something’s the matter, -somewhere. They were fetched out in a hurry, and told me to -stop here.”</p> - -<p>“Come with me,” said the Chemist, “and -I’ll give you money.”</p> - -<p>“Come where? and how much will you give?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll give you more shillings than you ever saw, -and bring you back soon. Do you know your way to where you -came from?”</p> - -<p>“You let me go,” returned the boy, suddenly -twisting out of his grasp. “I’m not a going to -take you there. Let me be, or I’ll heave some fire at -you!”</p> - -<p>He was down before it, and ready, with his savage little hand, -to pluck the burning coals out.</p> - -<p>What the Chemist had felt, in observing the effect of his -charmed influence stealing over those with whom he came in -contact, was not nearly equal to the cold vague terror with which -he saw this baby-monster put it at defiance. It chilled his -blood to look on the immovable impenetrable thing, in the -likeness of a child, with its sharp malignant face turned up to -his, and its almost infant hand, ready at the bars.</p> - -<p>“Listen, boy!” he said. “You shall -take me where you please, so that you take me where the people -are very miserable or very wicked. I want to do them good, -and not to harm them. You shall have money, as I have told -you, and I will bring you back. Get up! Come -quickly!” He made a hasty step towards the door, -afraid of her returning.</p> - -<p>“Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, nor -yet touch me?” said the boy, slowly withdrawing the hand -with which he threatened, and beginning to get up.</p> - -<p>“I will!”</p> - -<p>“And let me go, before, behind, or anyways I -like?”</p> - -<p>“I will!”</p> - -<p>“Give me some money first, then, and go.”</p> - -<p>The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his extended -hand. To count them was beyond the boy’s knowledge, -but he said “one,” every time, and avariciously -looked at each as it was given, and at the donor. He had -nowhere to put them, out of his hand, but in his mouth; and he -put them there.</p> - -<p>Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of his -pocket-book, that the boy was with him; and laying it on the -table, signed to him to follow. Keeping his rags together, -as usual, the boy complied, and went out with his bare head and -naked feet into the winter night.</p> - -<p>Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he had -entered, where they were in danger of meeting her whom he so -anxiously avoided, the Chemist led the way, through some of those -passages among which the boy had lost himself, and by that -portion of the building where he lived, to a small door of which -he had the key. When they got into the street, he stopped -to ask his guide—who instantly retreated from him—if -he knew where they were.</p> - -<p>The savage thing looked here and there, and at length, nodding -his head, pointed in the direction he designed to take. -Redlaw going on at once, he followed, something less -suspiciously; shifting his money from his mouth into his hand, -and back again into his mouth, and stealthily rubbing it bright -upon his shreds of dress, as he went along.</p> - -<p>Three times, in their progress, they were side by side. -Three times they stopped, being side by side. Three times -the Chemist glanced down at his face, and shuddered as it forced -upon him one reflection.</p> - -<p>The first occasion was when they were crossing an old -churchyard, and Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly at a -loss how to connect them with any tender, softening, or -consolatory thought.</p> - -<p>The second was, when the breaking forth of the moon induced -him to look up at the Heavens, where he saw her in her glory, -surrounded by a host of stars he still knew by the names and -histories which human science has appended to them; but where he -saw nothing else he had been wont to see, felt nothing he had -been wont to feel, in looking up there, on a bright night.</p> - -<p>The third was when he stopped to listen to a plaintive strain -of music, but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by the -dry mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, with no -address to any mystery within him, without a whisper in it of the -past, or of the future, powerless upon him as the sound of last -year’s running water, or the rushing of last year’s -wind.</p> - -<p>At each of these three times, he saw with horror that, in -spite of the vast intellectual distance between them, and their -being unlike each other in all physical respects, the expression -on the boy’s face was the expression on his own.</p> - -<p>They journeyed on for some time—now through such crowded -places, that he often looked over his shoulder thinking he had -lost his guide, but generally finding him within his shadow on -his other side; now by ways so quiet, that he could have counted -his short, quick, naked footsteps coming on behind—until -they arrived at a ruinous collection of houses, and the boy -touched him and stopped.</p> - -<p>“In there!” he said, pointing out one house where -there were scattered lights in the windows, and a dim lantern in -the doorway, with “Lodgings for Travellers” painted -on it.</p> - -<p>Redlaw looked about him; from the houses to the waste piece of -ground on which the houses stood, or rather did not altogether -tumble down, unfenced, undrained, unlighted, and bordered by a -sluggish ditch; from that, to the sloping line of arches, part of -some neighbouring viaduct or bridge with which it was surrounded, -and which lessened gradually towards them, until the last but one -was a mere kennel for a dog, the last a plundered little heap of -bricks; from that, to the child, close to him, cowering and -trembling with the cold, and limping on one little foot, while he -coiled the other round his leg to warm it, yet staring at all -these things with that frightful likeness of expression so -apparent in his face, that Redlaw started from him.</p> - -<p>“In there!” said the boy, pointing out the house -again. “I’ll wait.”</p> - -<p>“Will they let me in?” asked Redlaw.</p> - -<p>“Say you’re a doctor,” he answered with a -nod. “There’s plenty ill here.”</p> - -<p>Looking back on his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw him -trail himself upon the dust and crawl within the shelter of the -smallest arch, as if he were a rat. He had no pity for the -thing, but he was afraid of it; and when it looked out of its den -at him, he hurried to the house as a retreat.</p> - -<p>“Sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” said the Chemist, -with a painful effort at some more distinct remembrance, -“at least haunt this place darkly. He can do no harm, -who brings forgetfulness of such things here!”</p> - -<p>With these words, he pushed the yielding door, and went -in.</p> - -<p>There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or -forlorn, whose head was bent down on her hands and knees. -As it was not easy to pass without treading on her, and as she -was perfectly regardless of his near approach, he stopped, and -touched her on the shoulder. Looking up, she showed him -quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all -swept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the -spring.</p> - -<p>With little or no show of concern on his account, she moved -nearer to the wall to leave him a wider passage.</p> - -<p>“What are you?” said Redlaw, pausing, with his -hand upon the broken stair-rail.</p> - -<p>“What do you think I am?” she answered, showing -him her face again.</p> - -<p>He looked upon the ruined Temple of God, so lately made, so -soon disfigured; and something, which was not -compassion—for the springs in which a true compassion for -such miseries has its rise, were dried up in his breast—but -which was nearer to it, for the moment, than any feeling that had -lately struggled into the darkening, but not yet wholly darkened, -night of his mind—mingled a touch of softness with his next -words.</p> - -<p>“I am come here to give relief, if I can,” he -said. “Are you thinking of any wrong?”</p> - -<p>She frowned at him, and then laughed; and then her laugh -prolonged itself into a shivering sigh, as she dropped her head -again, and hid her fingers in her hair.</p> - -<p>“Are you thinking of a wrong?” he asked once -more.</p> - -<p>“I am thinking of my life,” she said, with a -momentary look at him.</p> - -<p>He had a perception that she was one of many, and that he saw -the type of thousands, when he saw her, drooping at his feet.</p> - -<p>“What are your parents?” he demanded.</p> - -<p>“I had a good home once. My father was a gardener, -far away, in the country.”</p> - -<p>“Is he dead?”</p> - -<p>“He’s dead to me. All such things are dead -to me. You a gentleman, and not know that!” She -raised her eyes again, and laughed at him.</p> - -<p>“Girl!” said Redlaw, sternly, “before this -death, of all such things, was brought about, was there no wrong -done to you? In spite of all that you can do, does no -remembrance of wrong cleave to you? Are there not times -upon times when it is misery to you?”</p> - -<p>So little of what was womanly was left in her appearance, that -now, when she burst into tears, he stood amazed. But he was -more amazed, and much disquieted, to note that in her awakened -recollection of this wrong, the first trace of her old humanity -and frozen tenderness appeared to show itself.</p> - -<p>He drew a little off, and in doing so, observed that her arms -were black, her face cut, and her bosom bruised.</p> - -<p>“What brutal hand has hurt you so?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“My own. I did it myself!” she answered -quickly.</p> - -<p>“It is impossible.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll swear I did! He didn’t touch -me. I did it to myself in a passion, and threw myself down -here. He wasn’t near me. He never laid a hand -upon me!”</p> - -<p>In the white determination of her face, confronting him with -this untruth, he saw enough of the last perversion and distortion -of good surviving in that miserable breast, to be stricken with -remorse that he had ever come near her.</p> - -<p>“Sorrow, wrong, and trouble!” he muttered, turning -his fearful gaze away. “All that connects her with -the state from which she has fallen, has those roots! In -the name of God, let me go by!”</p> - -<p>Afraid to look at her again, afraid to touch her, afraid to -think of having sundered the last thread by which she held upon -the mercy of Heaven, he gathered his cloak about him, and glided -swiftly up the stairs.</p> - -<p>Opposite to him, on the landing, was a door, which stood -partly open, and which, as he ascended, a man with a candle in -his hand, came forward from within to shut. But this man, -on seeing him, drew back, with much emotion in his manner, and, -as if by a sudden impulse, mentioned his name aloud.</p> - -<p>In the surprise of such a recognition there, he stopped, -endeavouring to recollect the wan and startled face. He had -no time to consider it, for, to his yet greater amazement, old -Philip came out of the room, and took him by the hand.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, “this is -like you, this is like you, sir! you have heard of it, and have -come after us to render any help you can. Ah, too late, too -late!”</p> - -<p>Redlaw, with a bewildered look, submitted to be led into the -room. A man lay there, on a truckle-bed, and William -Swidger stood at the bedside.</p> - -<p>“Too late!” murmured the old man, looking -wistfully into the Chemist’s face; and the tears stole down -his cheeks.</p> - -<p>“That’s what I say, father,” interposed his -son in a low voice. “That’s where it is, -exactly. To keep as quiet as ever we can while he’s a -dozing, is the only thing to do. You’re right, -father!”</p> - -<p>Redlaw paused at the bedside, and looked down on the figure -that was stretched upon the mattress. It was that of a man, -who should have been in the vigour of his life, but on whom it -was not likely the sun would ever shine again. The vices of -his forty or fifty years’ career had so branded him, that, -in comparison with their effects upon his face, the heavy hand of -Time upon the old man’s face who watched him had been -merciful and beautifying.</p> - -<p>“Who is this?” asked the Chemist, looking -round.</p> - -<p>“My son George, Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, -wringing his hands. “My eldest son, George, who was -more his mother’s pride than all the rest!”</p> - -<p>Redlaw’s eyes wandered from the old man’s grey -head, as he laid it down upon the bed, to the person who had -recognised him, and who had kept aloof, in the remotest corner of -the room. He seemed to be about his own age; and although -he knew no such hopeless decay and broken man as he appeared to -be, there was something in the turn of his figure, as he stood -with his back towards him, and now went out at the door, that -made him pass his hand uneasily across his brow.</p> - -<p>“William,” he said in a gloomy whisper, “who -is that man?”</p> - -<p>“Why you see, sir,” returned Mr. William, -“that’s what I say, myself. Why should a man -ever go and gamble, and the like of that, and let himself down -inch by inch till he can’t let himself down any -lower!”</p> - -<p>“Has <i>he</i> done so?” asked Redlaw, glancing -after him with the same uneasy action as before.</p> - -<p>“Just exactly that, sir,” returned William -Swidger, “as I’m told. He knows a little about -medicine, sir, it seems; and having been wayfaring towards London -with my unhappy brother that you see here,” Mr. William -passed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, “and being lodging -up stairs for the night—what I say, you see, is that -strange companions come together here sometimes—he looked -in to attend upon him, and came for us at his request. What -a mournful spectacle, sir! But that’s where it -is. It’s enough to kill my father!”</p> - -<p>Redlaw looked up, at these words, and, recalling where he was -and with whom, and the spell he carried with him—which his -surprise had obscured—retired a little, hurriedly, debating -with himself whether to shun the house that moment, or -remain.</p> - -<p>Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed to be -a part of his condition to struggle with, he argued for -remaining.</p> - -<p>“Was it only yesterday,” he said, “when I -observed the memory of this old man to be a tissue of sorrow and -trouble, and shall I be afraid, to-night, to shake it? Are -such remembrances as I can drive away, so precious to this dying -man that I need fear for <i>him</i>? No! I’ll -stay here.”</p> - -<p>But he stayed in fear and trembling none the less for these -words; and, shrouded in his black cloak with his face turned from -them, stood away from the bedside, listening to what they said, -as if he felt himself a demon in the place.</p> - -<p>“Father!” murmured the sick man, rallying a little -from stupor.</p> - -<p>“My boy! My son George!” said old -Philip.</p> - -<p>“You spoke, just now, of my being mother’s -favourite, long ago. It’s a dreadful thing to think -now, of long ago!”</p> - -<p>“No, no, no;” returned the old man. -“Think of it. Don’t say it’s -dreadful. It’s not dreadful to me, my son.”</p> - -<p>“It cuts you to the heart, father.” For the -old man’s tears were falling on him.</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes,” said Philip, “so it does; but it -does me good. It’s a heavy sorrow to think of that -time, but it does me good, George. Oh, think of it too, -think of it too, and your heart will be softened more and -more! Where’s my son William? William, my boy, -your mother loved him dearly to the last, and with her latest -breath said, ‘Tell him I forgave him, blessed him, and -prayed for him.’ Those were her words to me. I -have never forgotten them, and I’m eighty-seven!”</p> - -<p>“Father!” said the man upon the bed, “I am -dying, I know. I am so far gone, that I can hardly speak, -even of what my mind most runs on. Is there any hope for me -beyond this bed?”</p> - -<p>“There is hope,” returned the old man, “for -all who are softened and penitent. There is hope for all -such. Oh!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands and -looking up, “I was thankful, only yesterday, that I could -remember this unhappy son when he was an innocent child. -But what a comfort it is, now, to think that even God himself has -that remembrance of him!”</p> - -<p>Redlaw spread his hands upon his face, and shrank, like a -murderer.</p> - -<p>“Ah!” feebly moaned the man upon the bed. -“The waste since then, the waste of life since -then!”</p> - -<p>“But he was a child once,” said the old man. -“He played with children. Before he lay down on his -bed at night, and fell into his guiltless rest, he said his -prayers at his poor mother’s knee. I have seen him do -it, many a time; and seen her lay his head upon her breast, and -kiss him. Sorrowful as it was to her and me, to think of -this, when he went so wrong, and when our hopes and plans for him -were all broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, that nothing -else could have given. Oh, Father, so much better than the -fathers upon earth! Oh, Father, so much more afflicted by -the errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not as -he is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so -often seemed to cry to us!”</p> - -<p>As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, for -whom he made the supplication, laid his sinking head against him -for support and comfort, as if he were indeed the child of whom -he spoke.</p> - -<p>When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the silence -that ensued! He knew it must come upon them, knew that it -was coming fast.</p> - -<p>“My time is very short, my breath is shorter,” -said the sick man, supporting himself on one arm, and with the -other groping in the air, “and I remember there is -something on my mind concerning the man who was here just now, -Father and William—wait!—is there really anything in -black, out there?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, it is real,” said his aged father.</p> - -<p>“Is it a man?”</p> - -<p>“What I say myself, George,” interposed his -brother, bending kindly over him. “It’s Mr. -Redlaw.”</p> - -<p>“I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to come -here.”</p> - -<p>The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared before -him. Obedient to the motion of his hand, he sat upon the -bed.</p> - -<p>“It has been so ripped up, to-night, sir,” said -the sick man, laying his hand upon his heart, with a look in -which the mute, imploring agony of his condition was -concentrated, “by the sight of my poor old father, and the -thought of all the trouble I have been the cause of, and all the -wrong and sorrow lying at my door, that—”</p> - -<p>Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it the -dawning of another change, that made him stop?</p> - -<p>“—that what I <i>can</i> do right, with my mind -running on so much, so fast, I’ll try to do. There was -another man here. Did you see him?”</p> - -<p>Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw that fatal -sign he knew so well now, of the wandering hand upon the -forehead, his voice died at his lips. But he made some -indication of assent.</p> - -<p>“He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He is -completely beaten down, and has no resource at all. Look -after him! Lose no time! I know he has it in his mind -to kill himself.”</p> - -<p>It was working. It was on his face. His face was -changing, hardening, deepening in all its shades, and losing all -its sorrow.</p> - -<p>“Don’t you remember? Don’t you know -him?” he pursued.</p> - -<p>He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that again -wandered over his forehead, and then it lowered on Redlaw, -reckless, ruffianly, and callous.</p> - -<p>“Why, d-n you!” he said, scowling round, -“what have you been doing to me here! I have lived -bold, and I mean to die bold. To the Devil with -you!”</p> - -<p>And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over his -head and ears, as resolute from that time to keep out all access, -and to die in his indifference.</p> - -<p>If Redlaw had been struck by lightning, it could not have -struck him from the bedside with a more tremendous shock. -But the old man, who had left the bed while his son was speaking -to him, now returning, avoided it quickly likewise, and with -abhorrence.</p> - -<p>“Where’s my boy William?” said the old man -hurriedly. “William, come away from here. -We’ll go home.”</p> - -<p>“Home, father!” returned William. “Are -you going to leave your own son?”</p> - -<p>“Where’s my own son?” replied the old -man.</p> - -<p>“Where? why, there!”</p> - -<p>“That’s no son of mine,” said Philip, -trembling with resentment. “No such wretch as that, -has any claim on me. My children are pleasant to look at, -and they wait upon me, and get my meat and drink ready, and are -useful to me. I’ve a right to it! I’m -eighty-seven!”</p> - -<p>“You’re old enough to be no older,” muttered -William, looking at him grudgingly, with his hands in his -pockets. “I don’t know what good you are, -myself. We could have a deal more pleasure without -you.”</p> - -<p>“<i>My</i> son, Mr. Redlaw!” said the old -man. “<i>My</i> son, too! The boy talking to me -of <i>my</i> son! Why, what has he ever done to give me any -pleasure, I should like to know?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what you have ever done to give -<i>me</i> any pleasure,” said William, sulkily.</p> - -<p>“Let me think,” said the old man. “For -how many Christmas times running, have I sat in my warm place, -and never had to come out in the cold night air; and have made -good cheer, without being disturbed by any such uncomfortable, -wretched sight as him there? Is it twenty, -William?”</p> - -<p>“Nigher forty, it seems,” he muttered. -“Why, when I look at my father, sir, and come to think of -it,” addressing Redlaw, with an impatience and irritation -that were quite new, “I’m whipped if I can see -anything in him but a calendar of ever so many years of eating -and drinking, and making himself comfortable, over and over -again.”</p> - -<p>“I—I’m eighty-seven,” said the old -man, rambling on, childishly and weakly, “and I don’t -know as I ever was much put out by anything. I’m not -going to begin now, because of what he calls my son. -He’s not my son. I’ve had a power of pleasant -times. I recollect once—no I don’t—no, -it’s broken off. It was something about a game of -cricket and a friend of mine, but it’s somehow broken -off. I wonder who he was—I suppose I liked him? -And I wonder what became of him—I suppose he died? -But I don’t know. And I don’t care, neither; I -don’t care a bit.”</p> - -<p>In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he put -his hands into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them he -found a bit of holly (left there, probably last night), which he -now took out, and looked at.</p> - -<p>“Berries, eh?” said the old man. -“Ah! It’s a pity they’re not good to -eat. I recollect, when I was a little chap about as high as -that, and out a walking with—let me see—who was I out -a walking with?—no, I don’t remember how that -was. I don’t remember as I ever walked with any one -particular, or cared for any one, or any one for me. -Berries, eh? There’s good cheer when there’s -berries. Well; I ought to have my share of it, and to be -waited on, and kept warm and comfortable; for I’m -eighty-seven, and a poor old man. I’m -eigh-ty-seven. Eigh-ty-seven!”</p> - -<p>The drivelling, pitiable manner in which, as he repeated this, -he nibbled at the leaves, and spat the morsels out; the cold, -uninterested eye with which his youngest son (so changed) -regarded him; the determined apathy with which his eldest son lay -hardened in his sin; impressed themselves no more on -Redlaw’s observation,—for he broke his way from the -spot to which his feet seemed to have been fixed, and ran out of -the house.</p> - -<p>His guide came crawling forth from his place of refuge, and -was ready for him before he reached the arches.</p> - -<p>“Back to the woman’s?” he inquired.</p> - -<p>“Back, quickly!” answered Redlaw. -“Stop nowhere on the way!”</p> - -<p>For a short distance the boy went on before; but their return -was more like a flight than a walk, and it was as much as his -bare feet could do, to keep pace with the Chemist’s rapid -strides. Shrinking from all who passed, shrouded in his -cloak, and keeping it drawn closely about him, as though there -were mortal contagion in any fluttering touch of his garments, he -made no pause until they reached the door by which they had come -out. He unlocked it with his key, went in, accompanied by -the boy, and hastened through the dark passages to his own -chamber.</p> - -<p>The boy watched him as he made the door fast, and withdrew -behind the table, when he looked round.</p> - -<p>“Come!” he said. “Don’t you -touch me! You’ve not brought me here to take my money -away.”</p> - -<p>Redlaw threw some more upon the ground. He flung his -body on it immediately, as if to hide it from him, lest the sight -of it should tempt him to reclaim it; and not until he saw him -seated by his lamp, with his face hidden in his hands, began -furtively to pick it up. When he had done so, he crept near -the fire, and, sitting down in a great chair before it, took from -his breast some broken scraps of food, and fell to munching, and -to staring at the blaze, and now and then to glancing at his -shillings, which he kept clenched up in a bunch, in one hand.</p> - -<p>“And this,” said Redlaw, gazing on him with -increased repugnance and fear, “is the only one companion I -have left on earth!”</p> - -<p>How long it was before he was aroused from his contemplation -of this creature, whom he dreaded so—whether half-an-hour, -or half the night—he knew not. But the stillness of -the room was broken by the boy (whom he had seen listening) -starting up, and running towards the door.</p> - -<p>“Here’s the woman coming!” he exclaimed.</p> - -<p>The Chemist stopped him on his way, at the moment when she -knocked.</p> - -<p>“Let me go to her, will you?” said the boy.</p> - -<p>“Not now,” returned the Chemist. “Stay -here. Nobody must pass in or out of the room now. -Who’s that?”</p> - -<p>“It’s I, sir,” cried Milly. -“Pray, sir, let me in!”</p> - -<p>“No! not for the world!” he said.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Redlaw, Mr. Redlaw, pray, sir, let me -in.”</p> - -<p>“What is the matter?” he said, holding the -boy.</p> - -<p>“The miserable man you saw, is worse, and nothing I can -say will wake him from his terrible infatuation. -William’s father has turned childish in a moment, William -himself is changed. The shock has been too sudden for him; -I cannot understand him; he is not like himself. Oh, Mr. -Redlaw, pray advise me, help me!”</p> - -<p>“No! No! No!” he answered.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Redlaw! Dear sir! George has been -muttering, in his doze, about the man you saw there, who, he -fears, will kill himself.”</p> - -<p>“Better he should do it, than come near me!”</p> - -<p>“He says, in his wandering, that you know him; that he -was your friend once, long ago; that he is the ruined father of a -student here—my mind misgives me, of the young gentleman -who has been ill. What is to be done? How is he to be -followed? How is he to be saved? Mr. Redlaw, pray, -oh, pray, advise me! Help me!”</p> - -<p>All this time he held the boy, who was half-mad to pass him, -and let her in.</p> - -<p>“Phantoms! Punishers of impious thoughts!” -cried Redlaw, gazing round in anguish, “look upon me! -From the darkness of my mind, let the glimmering of contrition -that I know is there, shine up and show my misery! In the -material world as I have long taught, nothing can be spared; no -step or atom in the wondrous structure could be lost, without a -blank being made in the great universe. I know, now, that -it is the same with good and evil, happiness and sorrow, in the -memories of men. Pity me! Relieve me!”</p> - -<p>There was no response, but her “Help me, help me, let me -in!” and the boy’s struggling to get to her.</p> - -<p>“Shadow of myself! Spirit of my darker -hours!” cried Redlaw, in distraction, “come back, and -haunt me day and night, but take this gift away! Or, if it -must still rest with me, deprive me of the dreadful power of -giving it to others. Undo what I have done. Leave me -benighted, but restore the day to those whom I have cursed. -As I have spared this woman from the first, and as I never will -go forth again, but will die here, with no hand to tend me, save -this creature’s who is proof against me,—hear -me!”</p> - -<p>The only reply still was, the boy struggling to get to her, -while he held him back; and the cry, increasing in its energy, -“Help! let me in. He was your friend once, how shall -he be followed, how shall he be saved? They are all -changed, there is no one else to help me, pray, pray, let me -in!”</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2>CHAPTER III<br /> -The Gift Reversed</h2> - -<p>Night was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, from -hill-tops, and from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a distant -low-lying line, that promised by-and-by to change to light, was -visible in the dim horizon; but its promise was remote and -doubtful, and the moon was striving with the night-clouds -busily.</p> - -<p>The shadows upon Redlaw’s mind succeeded thick and fast -to one another, and obscured its light as the night-clouds -hovered between the moon and earth, and kept the latter veiled in -darkness. Fitful and uncertain as the shadows which the -night-clouds cast, were their concealments from him, and -imperfect revelations to him; and, like the night-clouds still, -if the clear light broke forth for a moment, it was only that -they might sweep over it, and make the darkness deeper than -before.</p> - -<p>Without, there was a profound and solemn hush upon the ancient -pile of building, and its buttresses and angles made dark shapes -of mystery upon the ground, which now seemed to retire into the -smooth white snow and now seemed to come out of it, as the -moon’s path was more or less beset. Within, the -Chemist’s room was indistinct and murky, by the light of -the expiring lamp; a ghostly silence had succeeded to the -knocking and the voice outside; nothing was audible but, now and -then, a low sound among the whitened ashes of the fire, as of its -yielding up its last breath. Before it on the ground the -boy lay fast asleep. In his chair, the Chemist sat, as he -had sat there since the calling at his door had ceased—like -a man turned to stone.</p> - -<p>At such a time, the Christmas music he had heard before, began -to play. He listened to it at first, as he had listened in -the church-yard; but presently—it playing still, and being -borne towards him on the night air, in a low, sweet, melancholy -strain—he rose, and stood stretching his hands about him, -as if there were some friend approaching within his reach, on -whom his desolate touch might rest, yet do no harm. As he -did this, his face became less fixed and wondering; a gentle -trembling came upon him; and at last his eyes filled with tears, -and he put his hands before them, and bowed down his head.</p> - -<p>His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, had not come back to -him; he knew that it was not restored; he had no passing belief -or hope that it was. But some dumb stir within him made him -capable, again, of being moved by what was hidden, afar off, in -the music. If it were only that it told him sorrowfully the -value of what he had lost, he thanked Heaven for it with a -fervent gratitude.</p> - -<p>As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his head to -listen to its lingering vibration. Beyond the boy, so that -his sleeping figure lay at its feet, the Phantom stood, immovable -and silent, with its eyes upon him.</p> - -<p>Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, but not so cruel and -relentless in its aspect—or he thought or hoped so, as he -looked upon it trembling. It was not alone, but in its -shadowy hand it held another hand.</p> - -<p>And whose was that? Was the form that stood beside it -indeed Milly’s, or but her shade and picture? The -quiet head was bent a little, as her manner was, and her eyes -were looking down, as if in pity, on the sleeping child. A -radiant light fell on her face, but did not touch the Phantom; -for, though close beside her, it was dark and colourless as -ever.</p> - -<p>“Spectre!” said the Chemist, newly troubled as he -looked, “I have not been stubborn or presumptuous in -respect of her. Oh, do not bring her here. Spare me -that!”</p> - -<p>“This is but a shadow,” said the Phantom; -“when the morning shines seek out the reality whose image I -present before you.”</p> - -<p>“Is it my inexorable doom to do so?” cried the -Chemist.</p> - -<p>“It is,” replied the Phantom.</p> - -<p>“To destroy her peace, her goodness; to make her what I -am myself, and what I have made of others!”</p> - -<p>“I have said seek her out,” returned the -Phantom. “I have said no more.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, tell me,” exclaimed Redlaw, catching at the -hope which he fancied might lie hidden in the words. -“Can I undo what I have done?”</p> - -<p>“No,” returned the Phantom.</p> - -<p>“I do not ask for restoration to myself,” said -Redlaw. “What I abandoned, I abandoned of my own free -will, and have justly lost. But for those to whom I have -transferred the fatal gift; who never sought it; who unknowingly -received a curse of which they had no warning, and which they had -no power to shun; can I do nothing?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing,” said the Phantom.</p> - -<p>“If I cannot, can any one?”</p> - -<p>The Phantom, standing like a statue, kept its gaze upon him -for a while; then turned its head suddenly, and looked upon the -shadow at its side.</p> - -<p>“Ah! Can she?” cried Redlaw, still looking -upon the shade.</p> - -<p>The Phantom released the hand it had retained till now, and -softly raised its own with a gesture of dismissal. Upon -that, her shadow, still preserving the same attitude, began to -move or melt away.</p> - -<p>“Stay,” cried Redlaw with an earnestness to which -he could not give enough expression. “For a -moment! As an act of mercy! I know that some change -fell upon me, when those sounds were in the air just now. -Tell me, have I lost the power of harming her? May I go -near her without dread? Oh, let her give me any sign of -hope!”</p> - -<p>The Phantom looked upon the shade as he did—not at -him—and gave no answer.</p> - -<p>“At least, say this—has she, henceforth, the -consciousness of any power to set right what I have -done?”</p> - -<p>“She has not,” the Phantom answered.</p> - -<p>“Has she the power bestowed on her without the -consciousness?”</p> - -<p>The phantom answered: “Seek her out.”</p> - -<p>And her shadow slowly vanished.</p> - -<p>They were face to face again, and looking on each other, as -intently and awfully as at the time of the bestowal of the gift, -across the boy who still lay on the ground between them, at the -Phantom’s feet.</p> - -<p>“Terrible instructor,” said the Chemist, sinking -on his knee before it, in an attitude of supplication, “by -whom I was renounced, but by whom I am revisited (in which, and -in whose milder aspect, I would fain believe I have a gleam of -hope), I will obey without inquiry, praying that the cry I have -sent up in the anguish of my soul has been, or will be, heard, in -behalf of those whom I have injured beyond human -reparation. But there is one thing—”</p> - -<p>“You speak to me of what is lying here,” the -phantom interposed, and pointed with its finger to the boy.</p> - -<p>“I do,” returned the Chemist. “You -know what I would ask. Why has this child alone been proof -against my influence, and why, why, have I detected in its -thoughts a terrible companionship with mine?”</p> - -<p>“This,” said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, -“is the last, completest illustration of a human creature, -utterly bereft of such remembrances as you have yielded up. -No softening memory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters here, -because this wretched mortal from his birth has been abandoned to -a worse condition than the beasts, and has, within his knowledge, -no one contrast, no humanising touch, to make a grain of such a -memory spring up in his hardened breast. All within this -desolate creature is barren wilderness. All within the man -bereft of what you have resigned, is the same barren -wilderness. Woe to such a man! Woe, tenfold, to the -nation that shall count its monsters such as this, lying here, by -hundreds and by thousands!”</p> - -<p>Redlaw shrank, appalled, from what he heard.</p> - -<p>“There is not,” said the Phantom, “one of -these—not one—but sows a harvest that mankind <span -class="GutSmall">MUST</span> reap. From every seed of evil -in this boy, a field of ruin is grown that shall be gathered in, -and garnered up, and sown again in many places in the world, -until regions are overspread with wickedness enough to raise the -waters of another Deluge. Open and unpunished murder in a -city’s streets would be less guilty in its daily -toleration, than one such spectacle as this.”</p> - -<p>It seemed to look down upon the boy in his sleep. -Redlaw, too, looked down upon him with a new emotion.</p> - -<p>“There is not a father,” said the Phantom, -“by whose side in his daily or his nightly walk, these -creatures pass; there is not a mother among all the ranks of -loving mothers in this land; there is no one risen from the state -of childhood, but shall be responsible in his or her degree for -this enormity. There is not a country throughout the earth -on which it would not bring a curse. There is no religion -upon earth that it would not deny; there is no people upon earth -it would not put to shame.”</p> - -<p>The Chemist clasped his hands, and looked, with trembling fear -and pity, from the sleeping boy to the Phantom, standing above -him with his finger pointing down.</p> - -<p>“Behold, I say,” pursued the Spectre, “the -perfect type of what it was your choice to be. Your -influence is powerless here, because from this child’s -bosom you can banish nothing. His thoughts have been in -‘terrible companionship’ with yours, because you have -gone down to his unnatural level. He is the growth of -man’s indifference; you are the growth of man’s -presumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is, in each -case, overthrown, and from the two poles of the immaterial world -you come together.”</p> - -<p>The Chemist stooped upon the ground beside the boy, and, with -the same kind of compassion for him that he now felt for himself, -covered him as he slept, and no longer shrank from him with -abhorrence or indifference.</p> - -<p>Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, the -darkness faded, the sun rose red and glorious, and the chimney -stacks and gables of the ancient building gleamed in the clear -air, which turned the smoke and vapour of the city into a cloud -of gold. The very sun-dial in his shady corner, where the -wind was used to spin with such unwindy constancy, shook off the -finer particles of snow that had accumulated on his dull old face -in the night, and looked out at the little white wreaths eddying -round and round him. Doubtless some blind groping of the -morning made its way down into the forgotten crypt so cold and -earthy, where the Norman arches were half buried in the ground, -and stirred the dull sap in the lazy vegetation hanging to the -walls, and quickened the slow principle of life within the little -world of wonderful and delicate creation which existed there, -with some faint knowledge that the sun was up.</p> - -<p>The Tetterbys were up, and doing. Mr. Tetterby took down -the shutters of the shop, and, strip by strip, revealed the -treasures of the window to the eyes, so proof against their -seductions, of Jerusalem Buildings. Adolphus had been out -so long already, that he was halfway on to “Morning -Pepper.” Five small Tetterbys, whose ten round eyes -were much inflamed by soap and friction, were in the tortures of -a cool wash in the back kitchen; Mrs. Tetterby presiding. -Johnny, who was pushed and hustled through his toilet with great -rapidity when Moloch chanced to be in an exacting frame of mind -(which was always the case), staggered up and down with his -charge before the shop door, under greater difficulties than -usual; the weight of Moloch being much increased by a -complication of defences against the cold, composed of knitted -worsted-work, and forming a complete suit of chain-armour, with a -head-piece and blue gaiters.</p> - -<p>It was a peculiarity of this baby to be always cutting -teeth. Whether they never came, or whether they came and -went away again, is not in evidence; but it had certainly cut -enough, on the showing of Mrs. Tetterby, to make a handsome -dental provision for the sign of the Bull and Mouth. All -sorts of objects were impressed for the rubbing of its gums, -notwithstanding that it always carried, dangling at its waist -(which was immediately under its chin), a bone ring, large enough -to have represented the rosary of a young nun. -Knife-handles, umbrella-tops, the heads of walking-sticks -selected from the stock, the fingers of the family in general, -but especially of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the handles of -doors, and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were among the -commonest instruments indiscriminately applied for this -baby’s relief. The amount of electricity that must -have been rubbed out of it in a week, is not to be -calculated. Still Mrs. Tetterby always said “it was -coming through, and then the child would be herself;” and -still it never did come through, and the child continued to be -somebody else.</p> - -<p>The tempers of the little Tetterbys had sadly changed with a -few hours. Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby themselves were not more -altered than their offspring. Usually they were an -unselfish, good-natured, yielding little race, sharing short -commons when it happened (which was pretty often) contentedly and -even generously, and taking a great deal of enjoyment out of a -very little meat. But they were fighting now, not only for -the soap and water, but even for the breakfast which was yet in -perspective. The hand of every little Tetterby was against -the other little Tetterbys; and even Johnny’s -hand—the patient, much-enduring, and devoted -Johnny—rose against the baby! Yes, Mrs. Tetterby, -going to the door by mere accident, saw him viciously pick out a -weak place in the suit of armour where a slap would tell, and -slap that blessed child.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby had him into the parlour by the collar, in that -same flash of time, and repaid him the assault with usury -thereto.</p> - -<p>“You brute, you murdering little boy,” said Mrs. -Tetterby. “Had you the heart to do it?”</p> - -<p>“Why don’t her teeth come through, then,” -retorted Johnny, in a loud rebellious voice, “instead of -bothering me? How would you like it yourself?”</p> - -<p>“Like it, sir!” said Mrs. Tetterby, relieving him -of his dishonoured load.</p> - -<p>“Yes, like it,” said Johnny. “How -would you? Not at all. If you was me, you’d go -for a soldier. I will, too. There an’t no -babies in the Army.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby, who had arrived upon the scene of action, rubbed -his chin thoughtfully, instead of correcting the rebel, and -seemed rather struck by this view of a military life.</p> - -<p>“I wish I was in the Army myself, if the child’s -in the right,” said Mrs. Tetterby, looking at her husband, -“for I have no peace of my life here. I’m a -slave—a Virginia slave:” some indistinct association -with their weak descent on the tobacco trade perhaps suggested -this aggravated expression to Mrs. Tetterby. “I never -have a holiday, or any pleasure at all, from year’s end to -year’s end! Why, Lord bless and save the -child,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking the baby with an -irritability hardly suited to so pious an aspiration, -“what’s the matter with her now?”</p> - -<p>Not being able to discover, and not rendering the subject much -clearer by shaking it, Mrs. Tetterby put the baby away in a -cradle, and, folding her arms, sat rocking it angrily with her -foot.</p> - -<p>“How you stand there, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs. -Tetterby to her husband. “Why don’t you do -something?”</p> - -<p>“Because I don’t care about doing anything,” -Mr. Tetterby replied.</p> - -<p>“I am sure <i>I</i> don’t,” said Mrs. -Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“I’ll take my oath <i>I</i> don’t,” -said Mr. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>A diversion arose here among Johnny and his five younger -brothers, who, in preparing the family breakfast table, had -fallen to skirmishing for the temporary possession of the loaf, -and were buffeting one another with great heartiness; the -smallest boy of all, with precocious discretion, hovering outside -the knot of combatants, and harassing their legs. Into the -midst of this fray, Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both precipitated -themselves with great ardour, as if such ground were the only -ground on which they could now agree; and having, with no visible -remains of their late soft-heartedness, laid about them without -any lenity, and done much execution, resumed their former -relative positions.</p> - -<p>“You had better read your paper than do nothing at -all,” said Mrs. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“What’s there to read in a paper?” returned -Mr. Tetterby, with excessive discontent.</p> - -<p>“What?” said Mrs. Tetterby. -“Police.”</p> - -<p>“It’s nothing to me,” said Tetterby. -“What do I care what people do, or are done to?”</p> - -<p>“Suicides,” suggested Mrs. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“No business of mine,” replied her husband.</p> - -<p>“Births, deaths, and marriages, are those nothing to -you?” said Mrs. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“If the births were all over for good, and all to-day; -and the deaths were all to begin to come off to-morrow; I -don’t see why it should interest me, till I thought it was -a coming to my turn,” grumbled Tetterby. “As to -marriages, I’ve done it myself. I know quite enough -about <i>them</i>.”</p> - -<p>To judge from the dissatisfied expression of her face and -manner, Mrs. Tetterby appeared to entertain the same opinions as -her husband; but she opposed him, nevertheless, for the -gratification of quarrelling with him.</p> - -<p>“Oh, you’re a consistent man,” said Mrs. -Tetterby, “an’t you? You, with the screen of -your own making there, made of nothing else but bits of -newspapers, which you sit and read to the children by the -half-hour together!”</p> - -<p>“Say used to, if you please,” returned her -husband. “You won’t find me doing so any -more. I’m wiser now.”</p> - -<p>“Bah! wiser, indeed!” said Mrs. Tetterby. -“Are you better?”</p> - -<p>The question sounded some discordant note in Mr. -Tetterby’s breast. He ruminated dejectedly, and -passed his hand across and across his forehead.</p> - -<p>“Better!” murmured Mr. Tetterby. “I -don’t know as any of us are better, or happier -either. Better, is it?”</p> - -<p>He turned to the screen, and traced about it with his finger, -until he found a certain paragraph of which he was in quest.</p> - -<p>“This used to be one of the family favourites, I -recollect,” said Tetterby, in a forlorn and stupid way, -“and used to draw tears from the children, and make -’em good, if there was any little bickering or discontent -among ’em, next to the story of the robin redbreasts in the -wood. ‘Melancholy case of destitution. -Yesterday a small man, with a baby in his arms, and surrounded by -half-a-dozen ragged little ones, of various ages between ten and -two, the whole of whom were evidently in a famishing condition, -appeared before the worthy magistrate, and made the following -recital:’—Ha! I don’t understand it, -I’m sure,” said Tetterby; “I don’t see -what it has got to do with us.”</p> - -<p>“How old and shabby he looks,” said Mrs. Tetterby, -watching him. “I never saw such a change in a -man. Ah! dear me, dear me, dear me, it was a -sacrifice!”</p> - -<p>“What was a sacrifice?” her husband sourly -inquired.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby shook her head; and without replying in words, -raised a complete sea-storm about the baby, by her violent -agitation of the cradle.</p> - -<p>“If you mean your marriage was a sacrifice, my good -woman—” said her husband.</p> - -<p>“I <i>do</i> mean it,” said his wife.</p> - -<p>“Why, then I mean to say,” pursued Mr. Tetterby, -as sulkily and surlily as she, “that there are two sides to -that affair; and that I was the sacrifice; and that I wish the -sacrifice hadn’t been accepted.”</p> - -<p>“I wish it hadn’t, Tetterby, with all my heart and -soul I do assure you,” said his wife. “You -can’t wish it more than I do, Tetterby.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know what I saw in her,” muttered -the newsman, “I’m sure;—certainly, if I saw -anything, it’s not there now. I was thinking so, last -night, after supper, by the fire. She’s fat, -she’s ageing, she won’t bear comparison with most -other women.”</p> - -<p>“He’s common-looking, he has no air with him, -he’s small, he’s beginning to stoop and he’s -getting bald,” muttered Mrs. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“I must have been half out of my mind when I did -it,” muttered Mr. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“My senses must have forsook me. That’s the -only way in which I can explain it to myself,” said Mrs. -Tetterby with elaboration.</p> - -<p>In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The little -Tetterbys were not habituated to regard that meal in the light of -a sedentary occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot; -rather resembling a savage ceremony, in the occasionally shrill -whoops, and brandishings of bread and butter, with which it was -accompanied, as well as in the intricate filings off into the -street and back again, and the hoppings up and down the -door-steps, which were incidental to the performance. In -the present instance, the contentions between these Tetterby -children for the milk-and-water jug, common to all, which stood -upon the table, presented so lamentable an instance of angry -passions risen very high indeed, that it was an outrage on the -memory of Dr. Watts. It was not until Mr. Tetterby had -driven the whole herd out at the front door, that a -moment’s peace was secured; and even that was broken by the -discovery that Johnny had surreptitiously come back, and was at -that instant choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in his -indecent and rapacious haste.</p> - -<p>“These children will be the death of me at last!” -said Mrs. Tetterby, after banishing the culprit. “And -the sooner the better, I think.”</p> - -<p>“Poor people,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ought not -to have children at all. They give <i>us</i> no -pleasure.”</p> - -<p>He was at that moment taking up the cup which Mrs. Tetterby -had rudely pushed towards him, and Mrs. Tetterby was lifting her -own cup to her lips, when they both stopped, as if they were -transfixed.</p> - -<p>“Here! Mother! Father!” cried Johnny, -running into the room. “Here’s Mrs. William -coming down the street!”</p> - -<p>And if ever, since the world began, a young boy took a baby -from a cradle with the care of an old nurse, and hushed and -soothed it tenderly, and tottered away with it cheerfully, Johnny -was that boy, and Moloch was that baby, as they went out -together!</p> - -<p>Mr. Tetterby put down his cup; Mrs. Tetterby put down her -cup. Mr. Tetterby rubbed his forehead; Mrs. Tetterby rubbed -hers. Mr. Tetterby’s face began to smooth and -brighten; Mrs. Tetterby’s began to smooth and brighten.</p> - -<p>“Why, Lord forgive me,” said Mr. Tetterby to -himself, “what evil tempers have I been giving way -to? What has been the matter here!”</p> - -<p>“How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I said -and felt last night!” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apron -to her eyes.</p> - -<p>“Am I a brute,” said Mr. Tetterby, “or is -there any good in me at all? Sophia! My little -woman!”</p> - -<p>“’Dolphus dear,” returned his wife.</p> - -<p>“I—I’ve been in a state of mind,” said -Mr. Tetterby, “that I can’t abear to think of, -Sophy.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! It’s nothing to what I’ve been -in, Dolf,” cried his wife in a great burst of grief.</p> - -<p>“My Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “don’t -take on. I never shall forgive myself. I must have -nearly broke your heart, I know.”</p> - -<p>“No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!” cried -Mrs. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“My little woman,” said her husband, -“don’t. You make me reproach myself dreadful, -when you show such a noble spirit. Sophia, my dear, you -don’t know what I thought. I showed it bad enough, no -doubt; but what I thought, my little woman!—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear Dolf, don’t! Don’t!” -cried his wife.</p> - -<p>“Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “I must reveal -it. I couldn’t rest in my conscience unless I -mentioned it. My little woman—”</p> - -<p>“Mrs. William’s very nearly here!” screamed -Johnny at the door.</p> - -<p>“My little woman, I wondered how,” gasped Mr. -Tetterby, supporting himself by his chair, “I wondered how -I had ever admired you—I forgot the precious children you -have brought about me, and thought you didn’t look as slim -as I could wish. I—I never gave a -recollection,” said Mr. Tetterby, with severe -self-accusation, “to the cares you’ve had as my wife, -and along of me and mine, when you might have had hardly any with -another man, who got on better and was luckier than me (anybody -might have found such a man easily I am sure); and I quarrelled -with you for having aged a little in the rough years you have -lightened for me. Can you believe it, my little -woman? I hardly can myself.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught -his face within her hands, and held it there.</p> - -<p>“Oh, Dolf!” she cried. “I am so happy -that you thought so; I am so grateful that you thought so! -For I thought that you were common-looking, Dolf; and so you are, -my dear, and may you be the commonest of all sights in my eyes, -till you close them with your own good hands. I thought -that you were small; and so you are, and I’ll make much of -you because you are, and more of you because I love my -husband. I thought that you began to stoop; and so you do, -and you shall lean on me, and I’ll do all I can to keep you -up. I thought there was no air about you; but there is, and -it’s the air of home, and that’s the purest and the -best there is, and God bless home once more, and all belonging to -it, Dolf!”</p> - -<p>“Hurrah! Here’s Mrs. William!” cried -Johnny.</p> - -<p>So she was, and all the children with her; and so she came in, -they kissed her, and kissed one another, and kissed the baby, and -kissed their father and mother, and then ran back and flocked and -danced about her, trooping on with her in triumph.</p> - -<p>Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby were not a bit behind-hand in the warmth -of their reception. They were as much attracted to her as -the children were; they ran towards her, kissed her hands, -pressed round her, could not receive her ardently or -enthusiastically enough. She came among them like the -spirit of all goodness, affection, gentle consideration, love, -and domesticity.</p> - -<p>“What! are <i>you</i> all so glad to see me, too, this -bright Christmas morning?” said Milly, clapping her hands -in a pleasant wonder. “Oh dear, how delightful this -is!”</p> - -<p>More shouting from the children, more kissing, more trooping -round her, more happiness, more love, more joy, more honour, on -all sides, than she could bear.</p> - -<p>“Oh dear!” said Milly, “what delicious tears -you make me shed. How can I ever have deserved this! -What have I done to be so loved?”</p> - -<p>“Who can help it!” cried Mr. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“Who can help it!” cried Mrs. Tetterby.</p> - -<p>“Who can help it!” echoed the children, in a -joyful chorus. And they danced and trooped about her again, -and clung to her, and laid their rosy faces against her dress, -and kissed and fondled it, and could not fondle it, or her, -enough.</p> - -<p>“I never was so moved,” said Milly, drying her -eyes, “as I have been this morning. I must tell you, -as soon as I can speak.—Mr. Redlaw came to me at sunrise, -and with a tenderness in his manner, more as if I had been his -darling daughter than myself, implored me to go with him to where -William’s brother George is lying ill. We went -together, and all the way along he was so kind, and so subdued, -and seemed to put such trust and hope in me, that I could not -help crying with pleasure. When we got to the house, we met -a woman at the door (somebody had bruised and hurt her, I am -afraid), who caught me by the hand, and blessed me as I -passed.”</p> - -<p>“She was right!” said Mr. Tetterby. Mrs. -Tetterby said she was right. All the children cried out -that she was right.</p> - -<p>“Ah, but there’s more than that,” said -Milly. “When we got up stairs, into the room, the -sick man who had lain for hours in a state from which no effort -could rouse him, rose up in his bed, and, bursting into tears, -stretched out his arms to me, and said that he had led a -mis-spent life, but that he was truly repentant now, in his -sorrow for the past, which was all as plain to him as a great -prospect, from which a dense black cloud had cleared away, and -that he entreated me to ask his poor old father for his pardon -and his blessing, and to say a prayer beside his bed. And -when I did so, Mr. Redlaw joined in it so fervently, and then so -thanked and thanked me, and thanked Heaven, that my heart quite -overflowed, and I could have done nothing but sob and cry, if the -sick man had not begged me to sit down by him,—which made -me quiet of course. As I sat there, he held my hand in his -until he sank in a doze; and even then, when I withdrew my hand -to leave him to come here (which Mr. Redlaw was very earnest -indeed in wishing me to do), his hand felt for mine, so that some -one else was obliged to take my place and make believe to give -him my hand back. Oh dear, oh dear,” said Milly, -sobbing. “How thankful and how happy I should feel, -and do feel, for all this!”</p> - -<p>While she was speaking, Redlaw had come in, and, after pausing -for a moment to observe the group of which she was the centre, -had silently ascended the stairs. Upon those stairs he now -appeared again; remaining there, while the young student passed -him, and came running down.</p> - -<p>“Kind nurse, gentlest, best of creatures,” he -said, falling on his knee to her, and catching at her hand, -“forgive my cruel ingratitude!”</p> - -<p>“Oh dear, oh dear!” cried Milly innocently, -“here’s another of them! Oh dear, here’s -somebody else who likes me. What shall I ever -do!”</p> - -<p>The guileless, simple way in which she said it, and in which -she put her hands before her eyes and wept for very happiness, -was as touching as it was delightful.</p> - -<p>“I was not myself,” he said. “I -don’t know what it was—it was some consequence of my -disorder perhaps—I was mad. But I am so no -longer. Almost as I speak, I am restored. I heard the -children crying out your name, and the shade passed from me at -the very sound of it. Oh, don’t weep! Dear -Milly, if you could read my heart, and only knew with what -affection and what grateful homage it is glowing, you would not -let me see you weep. It is such deep reproach.”</p> - -<p>“No, no,” said Milly, “it’s not -that. It’s not indeed. It’s joy. -It’s wonder that you should think it necessary to ask me to -forgive so little, and yet it’s pleasure that you -do.”</p> - -<p>“And will you come again? and will you finish the little -curtain?”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Milly, drying her eyes, and shaking her -head. “You won’t care for my needlework -now.”</p> - -<p>“Is it forgiving me, to say that?”</p> - -<p>She beckoned him aside, and whispered in his ear.</p> - -<p>“There is news from your home, Mr. Edmund.”</p> - -<p>“News? How?”</p> - -<p>“Either your not writing when you were very ill, or the -change in your handwriting when you began to be better, created -some suspicion of the truth; however that is—but -you’re sure you’ll not be the worse for any news, if -it’s not bad news?”</p> - -<p>“Sure.”</p> - -<p>“Then there’s some one come!” said -Milly.</p> - -<p>“My mother?” asked the student, glancing round -involuntarily towards Redlaw, who had come down from the -stairs.</p> - -<p>“Hush! No,” said Milly.</p> - -<p>“It can be no one else.”</p> - -<p>“Indeed?” said Milly, “are you -sure?”</p> - -<p>“It is not—” Before he could say more, -she put her hand upon his mouth.</p> - -<p>“Yes it is!” said Milly. “The young -lady (she is very like the miniature, Mr. Edmund, but she is -prettier) was too unhappy to rest without satisfying her doubts, -and came up, last night, with a little servant-maid. As you -always dated your letters from the college, she came there; and -before I saw Mr. Redlaw this morning, I saw her. <i>She</i> -likes me too!” said Milly. “Oh dear, -that’s another!”</p> - -<p>“This morning! Where is she now?”</p> - -<p>“Why, she is now,” said Milly, advancing her lips -to his ear, “in my little parlour in the Lodge, and waiting -to see you.”</p> - -<p>He pressed her hand, and was darting off, but she detained -him.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told me this -morning that his memory is impaired. Be very considerate to -him, Mr. Edmund; he needs that from us all.”</p> - -<p>The young man assured her, by a look, that her caution was not -ill-bestowed; and as he passed the Chemist on his way out, bent -respectfully and with an obvious interest before him.</p> - -<p>Redlaw returned the salutation courteously and even humbly, -and looked after him as he passed on. He drooped his head -upon his hand too, as trying to reawaken something he had -lost. But it was gone.</p> - -<p>The abiding change that had come upon him since the influence -of the music, and the Phantom’s reappearance, was, that now -he truly felt how much he had lost, and could compassionate his -own condition, and contrast it, clearly, with the natural state -of those who were around him. In this, an interest in those -who were around him was revived, and a meek, submissive sense of -his calamity was bred, resembling that which sometimes obtains in -age, when its mental powers are weakened, without insensibility -or sullenness being added to the list of its infirmities.</p> - -<p>He was conscious that, as he redeemed, through Milly, more and -more of the evil he had done, and as he was more and more with -her, this change ripened itself within him. Therefore, and -because of the attachment she inspired him with (but without -other hope), he felt that he was quite dependent on her, and that -she was his staff in his affliction.</p> - -<p>So, when she asked him whether they should go home now, to -where the old man and her husband were, and he readily replied -“yes”—being anxious in that regard—he put -his arm through hers, and walked beside her; not as if he were -the wise and learned man to whom the wonders of Nature were an -open book, and hers were the uninstructed mind, but as if their -two positions were reversed, and he knew nothing, and she -all.</p> - -<p>He saw the children throng about her, and caress her, as he -and she went away together thus, out of the house; he heard the -ringing of their laughter, and their merry voices; he saw their -bright faces, clustering around him like flowers; he witnessed -the renewed contentment and affection of their parents; he -breathed the simple air of their poor home, restored to its -tranquillity; he thought of the unwholesome blight he had shed -upon it, and might, but for her, have been diffusing then; and -perhaps it is no wonder that he walked submissively beside her, -and drew her gentle bosom nearer to his own.</p> - -<p>When they arrived at the Lodge, the old man was sitting in his -chair in the chimney-corner, with his eyes fixed on the ground, -and his son was leaning against the opposite side of the -fire-place, looking at him. As she came in at the door, -both started, and turned round towards her, and a radiant change -came upon their faces.</p> - -<p>“Oh dear, dear, dear, they are all pleased to see me -like the rest!” cried Milly, clapping her hands in an -ecstasy, and stopping short. “Here are two -more!”</p> - -<p>Pleased to see her! Pleasure was no word for it. -She ran into her husband’s arms, thrown wide open to -receive her, and he would have been glad to have her there, with -her head lying on his shoulder, through the short winter’s -day. But the old man couldn’t spare her. He had -arms for her too, and he locked her in them.</p> - -<p>“Why, where has my quiet Mouse been all this -time?” said the old man. “She has been a long -while away. I find that it’s impossible for me to get -on without Mouse. I—where’s my son -William?—I fancy I have been dreaming, William.”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I say myself, father,” returned -his son. “I have been in an ugly sort of dream, I -think.—How are you, father? Are you pretty -well?”</p> - -<p>“Strong and brave, my boy,” returned the old -man.</p> - -<p>It was quite a sight to see Mr. William shaking hands with his -father, and patting him on the back, and rubbing him gently down -with his hand, as if he could not possibly do enough to show an -interest in him.</p> - -<p>“What a wonderful man you are, father!—How are -you, father? Are you really pretty hearty, though?” -said William, shaking hands with him again, and patting him -again, and rubbing him gently down again.</p> - -<p>“I never was fresher or stouter in my life, my -boy.”</p> - -<p>“What a wonderful man you are, father! But -that’s exactly where it is,” said Mr. William, with -enthusiasm. “When I think of all that my -father’s gone through, and all the chances and changes, and -sorrows and troubles, that have happened to him in the course of -his long life, and under which his head has grown grey, and years -upon years have gathered on it, I feel as if we couldn’t do -enough to honour the old gentleman, and make his old age -easy.—How are you, father? Are you really pretty -well, though?”</p> - -<p>Mr. William might never have left off repeating this inquiry, -and shaking hands with him again, and patting him again, and -rubbing him down again, if the old man had not espied the -Chemist, whom until now he had not seen.</p> - -<p>“I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw,” said Philip, -“but didn’t know you were here, sir, or should have -made less free. It reminds me, Mr. Redlaw, seeing you here -on a Christmas morning, of the time when you was a student -yourself, and worked so hard that you were backwards and forwards -in our Library even at Christmas time. Ha! ha! -I’m old enough to remember that; and I remember it right -well, I do, though I am eighty-seven. It was after you left -here that my poor wife died. You remember my poor wife, Mr. -Redlaw?”</p> - -<p>The Chemist answered yes.</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said the old man. “She was a -dear creetur.—I recollect you come here one Christmas -morning with a young lady—I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw, -but I think it was a sister you was very much attached -to?”</p> - -<p>The Chemist looked at him, and shook his head. “I -had a sister,” he said vacantly. He knew no more.</p> - -<p>“One Christmas morning,” pursued the old man, -“that you come here with her—and it began to snow, -and my wife invited the lady to walk in, and sit by the fire that -is always a burning on Christmas Day in what used to be, before -our ten poor gentlemen commuted, our great Dinner Hall. I -was there; and I recollect, as I was stirring up the blaze for -the young lady to warm her pretty feet by, she read the scroll -out loud, that is underneath that pictur, ‘Lord, keep my -memory green!’ She and my poor wife fell a talking -about it; and it’s a strange thing to think of, now, that -they both said (both being so unlike to die) that it was a good -prayer, and that it was one they would put up very earnestly, if -they were called away young, with reference to those who were -dearest to them. ‘My brother,’ says the young -lady—‘My husband,’ says my poor -wife.—‘Lord, keep his memory of me, green, and do not -let me be forgotten!’”</p> - -<p>Tears more painful, and more bitter than he had ever shed in -all his life, coursed down Redlaw’s face. Philip, -fully occupied in recalling his story, had not observed him until -now, nor Milly’s anxiety that he should not proceed.</p> - -<p>“Philip!” said Redlaw, laying his hand upon his -arm, “I am a stricken man, on whom the hand of Providence -has fallen heavily, although deservedly. You speak to me, -my friend, of what I cannot follow; my memory is gone.”</p> - -<p>“Merciful power!” cried the old man.</p> - -<p>“I have lost my memory of sorrow, wrong, and -trouble,” said the Chemist, “and with that I have -lost all man would remember!”</p> - -<p>To see old Philip’s pity for him, to see him wheel his -own great chair for him to rest in, and look down upon him with a -solemn sense of his bereavement, was to know, in some degree, how -precious to old age such recollections are.</p> - -<p>The boy came running in, and ran to Milly.</p> - -<p>“Here’s the man,” he said, “in the -other room. I don’t want <i>him</i>.”</p> - -<p>“What man does he mean?” asked Mr. William.</p> - -<p>“Hush!” said Milly.</p> - -<p>Obedient to a sign from her, he and his old father softly -withdrew. As they went out, unnoticed, Redlaw beckoned to -the boy to come to him.</p> - -<p>“I like the woman best,” he answered, holding to -her skirts.</p> - -<p>“You are right,” said Redlaw, with a faint -smile. “But you needn’t fear to come to -me. I am gentler than I was. Of all the world, to -you, poor child!”</p> - -<p>The boy still held back at first, but yielding little by -little to her urging, he consented to approach, and even to sit -down at his feet. As Redlaw laid his hand upon the shoulder -of the child, looking on him with compassion and a -fellow-feeling, he put out his other hand to Milly. She -stooped down on that side of him, so that she could look into his -face, and after silence, said:</p> - -<p>“Mr. Redlaw, may I speak to you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” he answered, fixing his eyes upon -her. “Your voice and music are the same to -me.”</p> - -<p>“May I ask you something?”</p> - -<p>“What you will.”</p> - -<p>“Do you remember what I said, when I knocked at your -door last night? About one who was your friend once, and -who stood on the verge of destruction?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. I remember,” he said, with some -hesitation.</p> - -<p>“Do you understand it?”</p> - -<p>He smoothed the boy’s hair—looking at her fixedly -the while, and shook his head.</p> - -<p>“This person,” said Milly, in her clear, soft -voice, which her mild eyes, looking at him, made clearer and -softer, “I found soon afterwards. I went back to the -house, and, with Heaven’s help, traced him. I was not -too soon. A very little and I should have been too -late.”</p> - -<p>He took his hand from the boy, and laying it on the back of -that hand of hers, whose timid and yet earnest touch addressed -him no less appealingly than her voice and eyes, looked more -intently on her.</p> - -<p>“He <i>is</i> the father of Mr. Edmund, the young -gentleman we saw just now. His real name is -Longford.—You recollect the name?”</p> - -<p>“I recollect the name.”</p> - -<p>“And the man?”</p> - -<p>“No, not the man. Did he ever wrong me?”</p> - -<p>“Yes!”</p> - -<p>“Ah! Then it’s -hopeless—hopeless.”</p> - -<p>He shook his head, and softly beat upon the hand he held, as -though mutely asking her commiseration.</p> - -<p>“I did not go to Mr. Edmund last night,” said -Milly,—“You will listen to me just the same as if you -did remember all?”</p> - -<p>“To every syllable you say.”</p> - -<p>“Both, because I did not know, then, that this really -was his father, and because I was fearful of the effect of such -intelligence upon him, after his illness, if it should be. -Since I have known who this person is, I have not gone either; -but that is for another reason. He has long been separated -from his wife and son—has been a stranger to his home -almost from this son’s infancy, I learn from him—and -has abandoned and deserted what he should have held most -dear. In all that time he has been falling from the state -of a gentleman, more and more, until—” she rose up, -hastily, and going out for a moment, returned, accompanied by the -wreck that Redlaw had beheld last night.</p> - -<p>“Do you know me?” asked the Chemist.</p> - -<p>“I should be glad,” returned the other, “and -that is an unwonted word for me to use, if I could answer -no.”</p> - -<p>The Chemist looked at the man, standing in self-abasement and -degradation before him, and would have looked longer, in an -ineffectual struggle for enlightenment, but that Milly resumed -her late position by his side, and attracted his attentive gaze -to her own face.</p> - -<p>“See how low he is sunk, how lost he is!” she -whispered, stretching out her arm towards him, without looking -from the Chemist’s face. “If you could remember -all that is connected with him, do you not think it would move -your pity to reflect that one you ever loved (do not let us mind -how long ago, or in what belief that he has forfeited), should -come to this?”</p> - -<p>“I hope it would,” he answered. “I -believe it would.”</p> - -<p>His eyes wandered to the figure standing near the door, but -came back speedily to her, on whom he gazed intently, as if he -strove to learn some lesson from every tone of her voice, and -every beam of her eyes.</p> - -<p>“I have no learning, and you have much,” said -Milly; “I am not used to think, and you are always -thinking. May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing -for us, to remember wrong that has been done us?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“That we may forgive it.”</p> - -<p>“Pardon me, great Heaven!” said Redlaw, lifting up -his eyes, “for having thrown away thine own high -attribute!”</p> - -<p>“And if,” said Milly, “if your memory should -one day be restored, as we will hope and pray it may be, would it -not be a blessing to you to recall at once a wrong and its -forgiveness?”</p> - -<p>He looked at the figure by the door, and fastened his -attentive eyes on her again; a ray of clearer light appeared to -him to shine into his mind, from her bright face.</p> - -<p>“He cannot go to his abandoned home. He does not -seek to go there. He knows that he could only carry shame -and trouble to those he has so cruelly neglected; and that the -best reparation he can make them now, is to avoid them. A -very little money carefully bestowed, would remove him to some -distant place, where he might live and do no wrong, and make such -atonement as is left within his power for the wrong he has -done. To the unfortunate lady who is his wife, and to his -son, this would be the best and kindest boon that their best -friend could give them—one too that they need never know -of; and to him, shattered in reputation, mind, and body, it might -be salvation.”</p> - -<p>He took her head between her hands, and kissed it, and said: -“It shall be done. I trust to you to do it for me, -now and secretly; and to tell him that I would forgive him, if I -were so happy as to know for what.”</p> - -<p>As she rose, and turned her beaming face towards the fallen -man, implying that her mediation had been successful, he advanced -a step, and without raising his eyes, addressed himself to -Redlaw.</p> - -<p>“You are so generous,” he said, “—you -ever were—that you will try to banish your rising sense of -retribution in the spectacle that is before you. I do not -try to banish it from myself, Redlaw. If you can, believe -me.”</p> - -<p>The Chemist entreated Milly, by a gesture, to come nearer to -him; and, as he listened looked in her face, as if to find in it -the clue to what he heard.</p> - -<p>“I am too decayed a wretch to make professions; I -recollect my own career too well, to array any such before -you. But from the day on which I made my first step -downward, in dealing falsely by you, I have gone down with a -certain, steady, doomed progression. That, I -say.”</p> - -<p>Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned his face towards -the speaker, and there was sorrow in it. Something like -mournful recognition too.</p> - -<p>“I might have been another man, my life might have been -another life, if I had avoided that first fatal step. I -don’t know that it would have been. I claim nothing -for the possibility. Your sister is at rest, and better -than she could have been with me, if I had continued even what -you thought me: even what I once supposed myself to -be.”</p> - -<p>Redlaw made a hasty motion with his hand, as if he would have -put that subject on one side.</p> - -<p>“I speak,” the other went on, “like a man -taken from the grave. I should have made my own grave, last -night, had it not been for this blessed hand.”</p> - -<p>“Oh dear, he likes me too!” sobbed Milly, under -her breath. “That’s another!”</p> - -<p>“I could not have put myself in your way, last night, -even for bread. But, to-day, my recollection of what has -been is so strongly stirred, and is presented to me, I -don’t know how, so vividly, that I have dared to come at -her suggestion, and to take your bounty, and to thank you for it, -and to beg you, Redlaw, in your dying hour, to be as merciful to -me in your thoughts, as you are in your deeds.”</p> - -<p>He turned towards the door, and stopped a moment on his way -forth.</p> - -<p>“I hope my son may interest you, for his mother’s -sake. I hope he may deserve to do so. Unless my life -should be preserved a long time, and I should know that I have -not misused your aid, I shall never look upon him -more.”</p> - -<p>Going out, he raised his eyes to Redlaw for the first -time. Redlaw, whose steadfast gaze was fixed upon him, -dreamily held out his hand. He returned and touched -it—little more—with both his own; and bending down -his head, went slowly out.</p> - -<p>In the few moments that elapsed, while Milly silently took him -to the gate, the Chemist dropped into his chair, and covered his -face with his hands. Seeing him thus, when she came back, -accompanied by her husband and his father (who were both greatly -concerned for him), she avoided disturbing him, or permitting him -to be disturbed; and kneeled down near the chair to put some warm -clothing on the boy.</p> - -<p>“That’s exactly where it is. That’s -what I always say, father!” exclaimed her admiring -husband. “There’s a motherly feeling in Mrs. -William’s breast that must and will have went!”</p> - -<p>“Ay, ay,” said the old man; “you’re -right. My son William’s right!”</p> - -<p>“It happens all for the best, Milly dear, no -doubt,” said Mr. William, tenderly, “that we have no -children of our own; and yet I sometimes wish you had one to love -and cherish. Our little dead child that you built such -hopes upon, and that never breathed the breath of life—it -has made you quiet-like, Milly.”</p> - -<p>“I am very happy in the recollection of it, William -dear,” she answered. “I think of it every -day.”</p> - -<p>“I was afraid you thought of it a good deal.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t say, afraid; it is a comfort to me; it -speaks to me in so many ways. The innocent thing that never -lived on earth, is like an angel to me, William.”</p> - -<p>“You are like an angel to father and me,” said Mr. -William, softly. “I know that.”</p> - -<p>“When I think of all those hopes I built upon it, and -the many times I sat and pictured to myself the little smiling -face upon my bosom that never lay there, and the sweet eyes -turned up to mine that never opened to the light,” said -Milly, “I can feel a greater tenderness, I think, for all -the disappointed hopes in which there is no harm. When I -see a beautiful child in its fond mother’s arms, I love it -all the better, thinking that my child might have been like that, -and might have made my heart as proud and happy.”</p> - -<p>Redlaw raised his head, and looked towards her.</p> - -<p>“All through life, it seems by me,” she continued, -“to tell me something. For poor neglected children, -my little child pleads as if it were alive, and had a voice I -knew, with which to speak to me. When I hear of youth in -suffering or shame, I think that my child might have come to -that, perhaps, and that God took it from me in His mercy. -Even in age and grey hair, such as father’s, it is present: -saying that it too might have lived to be old, long and long -after you and I were gone, and to have needed the respect and -love of younger people.”</p> - -<p>Her quiet voice was quieter than ever, as she took her -husband’s arm, and laid her head against it.</p> - -<p>“Children love me so, that sometimes I half -fancy—it’s a silly fancy, William—they have -some way I don’t know of, of feeling for my little child, -and me, and understanding why their love is precious to me. -If I have been quiet since, I have been more happy, William, in a -hundred ways. Not least happy, dear, in this—that -even when my little child was born and dead but a few days, and I -was weak and sorrowful, and could not help grieving a little, the -thought arose, that if I tried to lead a good life, I should meet -in Heaven a bright creature, who would call me, -Mother!”</p> - -<p>Redlaw fell upon his knees, with a loud cry.</p> - -<p>“O Thou,” he said, “who through the teaching -of pure love, hast graciously restored me to the memory which was -the memory of Christ upon the Cross, and of all the good who -perished in His cause, receive my thanks, and bless -her!”</p> - -<p>Then, he folded her to his heart; and Milly, sobbing more than -ever, cried, as she laughed, “He is come back to -himself! He likes me very much indeed, too! Oh, dear, -dear, dear me, here’s another!”</p> - -<p>Then, the student entered, leading by the hand a lovely girl, -who was afraid to come. And Redlaw so changed towards him, -seeing in him and his youthful choice, the softened shadow of -that chastening passage in his own life, to which, as to a shady -tree, the dove so long imprisoned in his solitary ark might fly -for rest and company, fell upon his neck, entreating them to be -his children.</p> - -<p>Then, as Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the -year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble -in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than -our own experiences, for all good, he laid his hand upon the boy, -and, silently calling Him to witness who laid His hand on -children in old time, rebuking, in the majesty of His prophetic -knowledge, those who kept them from Him, vowed to protect him, -teach him, and reclaim him.</p> - -<p>Then, he gave his right hand cheerily to Philip, and said that -they would that day hold a Christmas dinner in what used to be, -before the ten poor gentlemen commuted, their great Dinner Hall; -and that they would bid to it as many of that Swidger family, -who, his son had told him, were so numerous that they might join -hands and make a ring round England, as could be brought together -on so short a notice.</p> - -<p>And it was that day done. There were so many Swidgers -there, grown up and children, that an attempt to state them in -round numbers might engender doubts, in the distrustful, of the -veracity of this history. Therefore the attempt shall not -be made. But there they were, by dozens and -scores—and there was good news and good hope there, ready -for them, of George, who had been visited again by his father and -brother, and by Milly, and again left in a quiet sleep. -There, present at the dinner, too, were the Tetterbys, including -young Adolphus, who arrived in his prismatic comforter, in good -time for the beef. Johnny and the baby were too late, of -course, and came in all on one side, the one exhausted, the other -in a supposed state of double-tooth; but that was customary, and -not alarming.</p> - -<p>It was sad to see the child who had no name or lineage, -watching the other children as they played, not knowing how to -talk with them, or sport with them, and more strange to the ways -of childhood than a rough dog. It was sad, though in a -different way, to see what an instinctive knowledge the youngest -children there had of his being different from all the rest, and -how they made timid approaches to him with soft words and -touches, and with little presents, that he might not be -unhappy. But he kept by Milly, and began to love -her—that was another, as she said!—and, as they all -liked her dearly, they were glad of that, and when they saw him -peeping at them from behind her chair, they were pleased that he -was so close to it.</p> - -<p>All this, the Chemist, sitting with the student and his bride -that was to be, Philip, and the rest, saw.</p> - -<p>Some people have said since, that he only thought what has -been herein set down; others, that he read it in the fire, one -winter night about the twilight time; others, that the Ghost was -but the representation of his gloomy thoughts, and Milly the -embodiment of his better wisdom. <i>I</i> say nothing.</p> - -<p>—Except this. That as they were assembled in the -old Hall, by no other light than that of a great fire (having -dined early), the shadows once more stole out of their -hiding-places, and danced about the room, showing the children -marvellous shapes and faces on the walls, and gradually changing -what was real and familiar there, to what was wild and -magical. But that there was one thing in the Hall, to which -the eyes of Redlaw, and of Milly and her husband, and of the old -man, and of the student, and his bride that was to be, were often -turned, which the shadows did not obscure or change. -Deepened in its gravity by the fire-light, and gazing from the -darkness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate face in the -portrait, with the beard and ruff, looked down at them from under -its verdant wreath of holly, as they looked up at it; and, clear -and plain below, as if a voice had uttered them, were the -words.</p> - -<p style="text-align: center">Lord keep my Memory green.</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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