Christmas Stories

“Lilly!” said Meg, soothing her, and putting back her hair from her wet face. “Why, Lilly! You! So pretty and so young!”

“Oh Meg!” she interrupted, holding her at arm’s-length, and looking in her face imploringly. “The worst of all, the worst of all! Strike me old, Meg! Wither me, and shrivel me, and free me from the dreadful thoughts that tempt me in my youth!”

Trotty turned to look upon his guide. But the Spirit of the child had taken flight. Was gone.

Neither did he himself remain in the same place; for, Sir Joseph Bowley, Friend and Father of the Poor, held a great festivity at Bowley Hall, in honour of the natal day of Lady Bowley. And as Lady Bowley had been born on New Year’s Day (which the local newspapers considered an especial pointing of the finger of Providence to number One, as Lady Bowley’s destined figure in Creation), it was on a New Year’s Day that this festivity took place.

Bowley Hall was full of visitors. The red-faced gentleman was there, Mr. Filer was there, the great Alderman Cute was there—Alderman Cute had a sympathetic feeling with great people, and had considerably improved his acquaintance with Sir Joseph Bowley on the strength of his attentive letter: indeed had become quite a friend of the family since then—and many guests were there. Trotty’s ghost was there, wandering about, poor phantom, drearily; and looking for its guide.

There was to be a great dinner in the Great Hall. At which Sir Joseph Bowley, in his celebrated character of Friend and Father of the Poor, was to make his great speech. Certain plum-puddings were to be eaten by his Friends and Children in another Hall first; and, at a given signal, Friends and Children flocking in among their Friends and Fathers, were to form a family assemblage, with not one manly eye therein unmoistened by emotion.

But, there was more than this to happen. Even more than this. Sir Joseph Bowley, Baronet and Member of Parliament, was to play a match at skittles—real skittles—with his tenants!

“Which quite reminds me,” said Alderman Cute, “of the days of old King Hal, stout King Hal, bluff King Hal. Ah! Fine character!”

“Very,” said Mr. Filer, dryly. “For marrying women and murdering ’em. Considerably more than the average number of wives by the bye.”

“You’ll marry the beautiful ladies, and not murder ’em, eh?” said Alderman Cute to the heir of Bowley, aged twelve. “Sweet boy! We shall have this little gentleman in Parliament now,” said the Alderman, holding him by the shoulders, and looking as reflective as he could, “before we know where we are. We shall hear of his successes at the poll; his speeches in the House; his overtures from Governments; his brilliant achievements of all kinds; ah! we shall make our little orations about him in the Common Council, I’ll be bound; before we have time to look about us!”

“Oh, the difference of shoes and stockings!” Trotty thought. But his heart yearned towards the child, for the love of those same shoeless and stockingless boys, predestined (by the Alderman) to turn out bad, who might have been the children of poor Meg.

“Richard,” moaned Trotty, roaming among the company, to and fro; “where is he? I can’t find Richard! Where is Richard?” Not likely to be there, if still alive! But Trotty’s grief and solitude confused him; and he still went wandering among the gallant company, looking for his guide, and saying, “Where is Richard? Show me Richard!”

He was wandering thus, when he encountered Mr. Fish, the confidential Secretary: in great agitation.

“Bless my heart and soul!” cried Mr. Fish. “Where’s Alderman Cute? Has anybody seen the Alderman?”

Seen the Alderman? Oh dear! Who could ever help seeing the Alderman? He was so considerate, so affable, he bore so much in mind the natural desires of folks to see him, that if he had a fault, it was the being constantly On View. And wherever the great people were, there, to be sure, attracted by the kindred sympathy between great souls, was Cute.

Several voices cried that he was in the circle round Sir Joseph. Mr. Fish made way there; found him; and took him secretly into a window near at hand. Trotty joined them. Not of his own accord. He felt that his steps were led in that direction.

“My dear Alderman Cute,” said Mr. Fish. “A little more this way. The most dreadful circumstance has occurred. I have this moment received the intelligence. I think it will be best not to acquaint Sir Joseph with it till the day is over. You understand Sir Joseph, and will give me your opinion. The most frightful and deplorable event!”

“Fish!” returned the Alderman. “Fish! My good fellow, what is the matter? Nothing revolutionary, I hope! No—no attempted interference with the magistrates?”

“Deedles, the banker,” gasped the Secretary. “Deedles Brothers—who was to have been here to-day—high in office in the Goldsmiths’ Company—”

“Not stopped!” exclaimed the Alderman, “It can’t be!”

“Shot himself.”

“Good God!”

“Put a double-barrelled pistol to his mouth, in his own counting house,” said Mr. Fish, “and blew his brains out. No motive. Princely circumstances!”

“Circumstances!” exclaimed the Alderman. “A man of noble fortune. One of the most respectable of men. Suicide, Mr. Fish! By his own hand!”

“This very morning,” returned Mr. Fish.

“Oh the brain, the brain!” exclaimed the pious Alderman, lifting up his hands. “Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called Man! Oh the little that unhinges it: poor creatures that we are! Perhaps a dinner, Mr. Fish. Perhaps the conduct of his son, who, I have heard, ran very wild, and was in the habit of drawing bills upon him without the least authority! A most respectable man. One of the most respectable men I ever knew! A lamentable instance, Mr. Fish. A public calamity! I shall make a point of wearing the deepest mourning. A most respectable man! But there is One above. We must submit, Mr. Fish. We must submit!”

What, Alderman! No word of Putting Down? Remember, Justice, your high moral boast and pride. Come, Alderman! Balance those scales. Throw me into this, the empty one, no dinner, and Nature’s founts in some poor woman, dried by starving misery and rendered obdurate to claims for which her offspring has authority in holy mother Eve. Weigh me the two, you Daniel, going to judgment, when your day shall come! Weigh them, in the eyes of suffering thousands, audience (not unmindful) of the grim farce you play. Or supposing that you strayed from your five wits—it’s not so far to go, but that it might be—and laid hands upon that throat of yours, warning your fellows (if you have a fellow) how they croak their comfortable wickedness to raving heads and stricken hearts. What then?

The words rose up in Trotty’s breast, as if they had been spoken by some other voice within him. Alderman Cute pledged himself to Mr. Fish that he would assist him in breaking the melancholy catastrophe to Sir Joseph when the day was over. Then, before they parted, wringing Mr. Fish’s hand in bitterness of soul, he said, “The most respectable of men!” And added that he hardly knew (not even he), why such afflictions were allowed on earth.

“It’s almost enough to make one think, if one didn’t know better,” said Alderman Cute, “that at times some motion of a capsizing nature was going on in things, which affected the general economy of the social fabric. Deedles Brothers!”

The skittle-playing came off with immense success. Sir Joseph knocked the pins about quite skilfully; Master Bowley took an innings at a shorter distance also; and everybody said that now, when a Baronet and the Son of a Baronet played at skittles, the country was coming round again, as fast as it could come.

At its proper time, the Banquet was served up. Trotty involuntarily repaired to the Hall with the rest, for he felt himself conducted thither by some stronger impulse than his own free will. The sight was gay in the extreme; the ladies were very handsome; the visitors delighted, cheerful, and good-tempered. When the lower doors were opened, and the people flocked in, in their rustic dresses, the beauty of the spectacle was at its height; but Trotty only murmured more and more, “Where is Richard! He should help and comfort her! I can’t see Richard!”

There had been some speeches made; and Lady Bowley’s health had been proposed; and Sir Joseph Bowley had returned thanks, and had made his great speech, showing by various pieces of evidence that he was the born Friend and Father, and so forth; and had given as a Toast, his Friends and Children, and the Dignity of Labour; when a slight disturbance at the bottom of the Hall attracted Toby’s notice. After some confusion, noise, and opposition, one man broke through the rest, and stood forward by himself.

Not Richard. No. But one whom he had thought of, and had looked for, many times. In a scantier supply of light, he might have doubted the identity of that worn man, so old, and grey, and bent; but with a blaze of lamps upon his gnarled and knotted head, he knew Will Fern as soon as he stepped forth.

“What is this!” exclaimed Sir Joseph, rising. “Who gave this man admittance? This is a criminal from prison! Mr. Fish, sir, will you have the goodness—”

“A minute!” said Will Fern. “A minute! My Lady, you was born on this day along with a New Year. Get me a minute’s leave to speak.”

She made some intercession for him. Sir Joseph took his seat again, with native dignity.

The ragged visitor—for he was miserably dressed—looked round upon the company, and made his homage to them with a humble bow.

“Gentlefolks!” he said. “You’ve drunk the Labourer. Look at me!”

“Just come from jail,” said Mr. Fish.

“Just come from jail,” said Will. “And neither for the first time, nor the second, nor the third, nor yet the fourth.”

Mr. Filer was heard to remark testily, that four times was over the average; and he ought to be ashamed of himself.

“Gentlefolks!” repeated Will Fern. “Look at me! You see I’m at the worst. Beyond all hurt or harm; beyond your help; for the time when your kind words or kind actions could have done me good,”—he struck his hand upon his breast, and shook his head, “is gone, with the scent of last year’s beans or clover on the air. Let me say a word for these,” pointing to the labouring people in the Hall; “and when you’re met together, hear the real Truth spoke out for once.”

“There’s not a man here,” said the host, “who would have him for a spokesman.”

“Like enough, Sir Joseph. I believe it. Not the less true, perhaps, is what I say. Perhaps that’s a proof on it. Gentlefolks, I’ve lived many a year in this place. You may see the cottage from the sunk fence over yonder. I’ve seen the ladies draw it in their books, a hundred times. It looks well in a picter, I’ve heerd say; but there an’t weather in picters, and maybe ’tis fitter for that, than for a place to live in. Well! I lived there. How hard—how bitter hard, I lived there, I won’t say. Any day in the year, and every day, you can judge for your own selves.”

He spoke as he had spoken on the night when Trotty found him in the street. His voice was deeper and more husky, and had a trembling in it now and then; but he never raised it passionately, and seldom lifted it above the firm stern level of the homely facts he stated.

“’Tis harder than you think for, gentlefolks, to grow up decent, commonly decent, in such a place. That I growed up a man and not a brute, says something for me—as I was then. As I am now, there’s nothing can be said for me or done for me. I’m past it.”

“I am glad this man has entered,” observed Sir Joseph, looking round serenely. “Don’t disturb him. It appears to be Ordained. He is an example: a living example. I hope and trust, and confidently expect, that it will not be lost upon my Friends here.”

“I dragged on,” said Fern, after a moment’s silence, “somehow. Neither me nor any other man knows how; but so heavy, that I couldn’t put a cheerful face upon it, or make believe that I was anything but what I was. Now, gentlemen—you gentlemen that sits at Sessions—when you see a man with discontent writ on his face, you says to one another, ‘He’s suspicious. I has my doubts,’ says you, ‘about Will Fern. Watch that fellow!’ I don’t say, gentlemen, it ain’t quite nat’ral, but I say ’tis so; and from that hour, whatever Will Fern does, or lets alone—all one—it goes against him.”

Alderman Cute stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets, and leaning back in his chair, and smiling, winked at a neighbouring chandelier. As much as to say, “Of course! I told you so. The common cry! Lord bless you, we are up to all this sort of thing—myself and human nature.”

“Now, gentlemen,” said Will Fern, holding out his hands, and flushing for an instant in his haggard face, “see how your laws are made to trap and hunt us when we’re brought to this. I tries to live elsewhere. And I’m a vagabond. To jail with him! I comes back here. I goes a-nutting in your woods, and breaks—who don’t?—a limber branch or two. To jail with him! One of your keepers sees me in the broad day, near my own patch of garden, with a gun. To jail with him! I has a nat’ral angry word with that man, when I’m free again. To jail with him! I cuts a stick. To jail with him! I eats a rotten apple or a turnip. To jail with him! It’s twenty mile away; and coming back I begs a trifle on the road. To jail with him! At last, the constable, the keeper—anybody—finds me anywhere, a-doing anything. To jail with him, for he’s a vagrant, and a jail-bird known; and jail’s the only home he’s got.”