THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN

CHAPTER I
The fidget toys for 10 year olds under 10 dollarsGift Bestowed

Everybody said so.

Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must betrue. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong asright. In the general experience, everybody has been wrongso often, and it has taken, in most instances, such a weary whileto find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to befallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; “butthat’sno rule,” as the ghost of GilesScroggins says in the ballad.

The dread word, Ghost, recallsme.

Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extentof my present claim for everybody is, that they were so farright. He did.

Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brillianteye; his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, althoughwell-knit and well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, liketangled sea-weed, about his face,—as if he had been,through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing and beatingof the great deep of humanity,—but might have said helooked like a haunted man?

Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful,gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocundnever, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place andtime, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind, but mighthave said it was the manner of a haunted man?

Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, andgrave, with a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed toset himself against and stop, but might have said it was thevoice of a haunted man?

Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library andpart laboratory,—for he was, as the world knew, far andwide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips andhands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily,—whothat had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, surroundedby his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shadedlamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd ofspectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire uponthe quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (thereflection of glass vessels that held liquids), trembling atheart like things that knew his power to uncombine them, and togive back their component parts to fire and vapour;—whothat had seen him then, his work done, and he pondering in hischair before the rusted grate and red flame, moving his thinmouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, would not havesaid that the man seemed haunted and the chamber too?

Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believedthat everything about him took this haunted tone, and that helived on haunted ground?

His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like,—an old,retired part of an ancient endowment for students, once a braveedifice, planted in an open place, but now the obsolete whim offorgotten architects; smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, squeezed onevery side by the overgrowing of the great city, and choked, likean old well, with stones and bricks; its small quadrangles, lyingdown in very pits formed by the streets and buildings, which, incourse of time, had been constructed above its heavy chimneystacks; its old trees, insulted by the neighbouring smoke, whichdeigned to droop so low when it was very feeble and the weathervery moody; its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed earthto be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its silentpavements, unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to theobservation of eyes, except when a stray face looked down fromthe upper world, wondering what nook it was; its sun-dial in alittle bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled for ahundred years, but where, in compensation for the sun’sneglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay nowhere else,and the black east wind would spin like a huge humming-top, whenin all other places it was silent and still.

His dwelling, at its heart and core—withindoors—at his fireside—was so lowering and old, socrazy, yet so strong, with its worm-eaten beams of wood in theceiling, and its sturdy floor shelving downward to the great oakchimney-piece; so environed and hemmed in by the pressure of thetown yet so remote in fashion, age, and custom; so quiet, yet sothundering with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a doorwas shut,—echoes, not confined to the many low passages andempty rooms, but rumbling and grumbling till they were stifled inthe heavy air of the forgotten Crypt where the Norman arches werehalf-buried in the earth.

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

When the wind was blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the goingdown of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, as thatthe forms of things were indistinct and big—but not whollylost. When sitters by the fire began to see wild faces andfigures, mountains and abysses, ambuscades and armies, in thecoals. When people in the streets bent down their heads andran before the weather. When those who were obliged to meetit, were stopped at angry corners, stung by wandering snow-flakesalighting on the lashes of their eyes,—which fell toosparingly, and were blown away too quickly, to leave a trace uponthe frozen ground. When windows of private houses closed uptight and warm. When lighted gas began to burst forth inthe busy and the quiet streets, fast blackening otherwise.When stray pedestrians, shivering along the latter, looked downat the glowing fires in kitchens, and sharpened their sharpappetites by sniffing up the fragrance of whole miles ofdinners.

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

When, in rustic places, the last glimmering of daylight diedaway from the ends of avenues; and the trees, arching overhead,were sullen and black. When, in parks and woods, the highwet fern and sodden moss, and beds of fallen leaves, and trunksof trees, were lost to view, in masses of impenetrableshade. When mists arose from dyke, and fen, andriver. When lights in old halls and in cottage windows,were a cheerful sight. When the mill stopped, thewheelwright and the blacksmith shut their workshops, theturnpike-gate closed, the plough and harrow were left lonely inthe fields, the labourer and team went home, and the striking ofthe church clock had a deeper sound than at noon, and thechurchyard wicket would be swung no more that night.

When twilight everywhere released the shadows, prisoned up allday, that now closed in and gathered like mustering swarms ofghosts. When they stood lowering, in corners of rooms, andfrowned out from behind half-opened doors. When they hadfull possession of unoccupied apartments. When they dancedupon the floors, and walls, and ceilings of inhabited chambers,while the fire was low, and withdrew like ebbing waters when itsprang into a blaze. When they fantastically mocked theshapes of household objects, making the nurse an ogress, therocking-horse a monster, the wondering child, half-scared andhalf-amused, a stranger to itself,—the very tongs upon thehearth, a straddling giant with his arms a-kimbo, evidentlysmelling the blood of Englishmen, and wanting to grindpeople’s bones to make his bread.

When these shadows brought into the minds of older people,other thoughts, and showed them different images. When theystole from their retreats, in the likenesses of forms and facesfrom the past, from the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, wherethe things that might have been, and never were, are alwayswandering.

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

When the sounds that had arisen with the shadows, and come outof their lurking-places at the twilight summons, seemed to make adeeper stillness all about him. When the wind was rumblingin the chimney, and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in thehouse. When the old trees outside were so shaken andbeaten, that one querulous old rook, unable to sleep, protestednow and then, in a feeble, dozy, high-up “Caw!”When, at intervals, the window trembled, the rusty vane upon theturret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded that anotherquarter of an hour was gone, or the fire collapsed and fell inwith a rattle.

—When a knock came at his door, in short, as he wassitting so, and roused him.

“Who’s that?” said he. “Comein!”

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

“I’m humbly fearful, sir,” said afresh-coloured busy man, holding the door open with his foot forthe admission of himself and a wooden tray he carried, andletting it go again by very gentle and careful degrees, when heand 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 sooften”—

“By the wind? Ay! I have heard itrising.”

“—By the wind, sir—that it’s a mercyshe got home at all. Oh dear, yes. Yes. It wasby the wind, Mr. Redlaw. By the wind.”

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

“Mrs. William is of course subject at any time, sir, tobe taken off her balance by the elements. She is not formedsuperior to that.”

“No,” returned Mr. Redlaw good-naturedly, thoughabruptly.

“No, sir. Mrs. William may be taken off herbalance by Earth; as for example, last Sunday week, when sloppyand greasy, and she going out to tea with her newestsister-in-law, and having a pride in herself, and wishing toappear perfectly spotless though pedestrian. Mrs. Williammay be taken off her balance by Air; as being once over-persuadedby a friend to try a swing at Peckham Fair, which acted on herconstitution instantly like a steam-boat. Mrs. William maybe taken off her balance by Fire; as on a false alarm of enginesat her mother’s, when she went two miles in hernightcap. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance byWater; as at Battersea, when rowed into the piers by her youngnephew, Charley Swidger junior, aged twelve, which had no idea ofboats whatever. But these are elements. Mrs. Williammust be taken out of elements for the strength of hercharacter to come into play.”

As he stopped for a reply, the reply was “Yes,” inthe same tone as before.

“Yes, sir. Oh dear, yes!” said Mr. Swidger,still proceeding with his preparations, and checking them off ashe made them. “That’s where it is, sir.That’s what I always say myself, sir. Such a many ofus Swidgers!—Pepper. Why there’s my father,sir, superannuated keeper and custodian of this Institution,eighty-seven year old. He’s aSwidger!—Spoon.”

“True, William,” was the patient and abstractedanswer, when he stopped again.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Swidger.“That’s what I always say, sir. You may callhim the trunk of the tree!—Bread. Then you come tohis successor, my unworthy self—Salt—and Mrs.William, Swidgers both.—Knife and fork. Then you cometo all my brothers and their families, Swidgers, man and woman,boy and girl. Why, what with cousins, uncles, aunts, andrelationships of this, that, and t’other degree, andwhatnot degree, and marriages, and lyings-in, theSwidgers—Tumbler—might take hold of hands, and make aring round England!”

Receiving no reply at all here, from the thoughtful man whomhe addressed, Mr. William approached, him nearer, and made afeint of accidentally knocking the table with a decanter, torouse him. The moment he succeeded, he went on, as if ingreat 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 ourvoluntarycontributions,’—Butter. In fact, sir, my fatheris a family in himself—Castors—to take care of; andit 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 theLodge.”

“I am quite ready,” said the other, waking as froma dream, and walking slowly to and fro.

“Mrs. William has been at it again, sir!” said thekeeper, as he stood warming a plate at the fire, and pleasantlyshading his face with it. Mr. Redlaw stopped in hiswalking, and an expression of interest appeared in him.

“What I always say myself, sir. She willdoit! 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 toall the young gentlemen that come up from a variety of parts, toattend your courses of lectures at this ancientfoundation—it’s surprising how stone-chaney catches the heatthis frosty weather, to be sure!” Here he turned theplate, 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 readyand delighted assent. “That’s exactly where itis, sir! There ain’t one of our students but appearsto regard Mrs. William in that light. Every day, rightthrough the course, they puts their heads into the Lodge, oneafter another, and have all got something to tell her, orsomething to ask her. ‘Swidge’ is theappellation by which they speak of Mrs. William in general, amongthemselves, I’m told; but that’s what I say,sir. Better be called ever so far out of your name, ifit’s done in real liking, than have it made ever so muchof, and not cared about! What’s a name for? Toknow a person by. If Mrs. William is known by somethingbetter than her name—I allude to Mrs. William’squalities and disposition—never mind her name, though itisSwidger, by rights. Let ’em call herSwidge, Widge, Bridge—Lord! London Bridge,Blackfriars, Chelsea, Putney, Waterloo, or HammersmithSuspension—if they like.”

The close of this triumphant oration brought him and the plateto the table, upon which he half laid and half dropped it, with alively sense of its being thoroughly heated, just as the subjectof his praises entered the room, bearing another tray and alantern, and followed by a venerable old man with long greyhair.

Mrs. William, like Mr. William, was a simple, innocent-lookingperson, in whose smooth cheeks the cheerful red of herhusband’s official waistcoat was very pleasantlyrepeated. But whereas Mr. William’s light hair stoodon end all over his head, and seemed to draw his eyes up with itin an excess of bustling readiness for anything, the dark brownhair of Mrs. William was carefully smoothed down, and waved awayunder a trim tidy cap, in the most exact and quiet mannerimaginable. Whereas Mr. William’s very trousershitched themselves up at the ankles, as if it were not in theiriron-grey nature to rest without looking about them, Mrs.William’s neatly-flowered skirts—red and white, likeher own pretty face—were as composed and orderly, as if thevery wind that blew so hard out of doors could not disturb one oftheir folds. Whereas his coat had something of a fly-awayand half-off appearance about the collar and breast, her littlebodice was so placid and neat, that there should have beenprotection for her, in it, had she needed any, with the roughestpeople. Who could have had the heart to make so calm abosom swell with grief, or throb with fear, or flutter with athought of shame! To whom would its repose and peace havenot appealed against disturbance, like the innocent slumber of achild!

“Punctual, of course, Milly,” said her husband,relieving her of the tray, “or it wouldn’t beyou. Here’s Mrs. William, sir!—He lookslonelier than ever to-night,” whispering to his wife, as hewas taking the tray, “and ghostlier altogether.”

Without any show of hurry or noise, or any show of herselfeven, she was so calm and quiet, Milly set the dishes she hadbrought upon the table,—Mr. William, after much clatteringand running about, having only gained possession of a butter-boatof gravy, which he stood ready to serve.

“What is that the old man has in his arms?” askedMr. Redlaw, as he sat down to his solitary meal.

“Holly, sir,” replied the quiet voice ofMilly.

“That’s what I say myself, sir,” interposedMr. William, striking in with the butter-boat.“Berries is so seasonable to the time of year!—Browngravy!”

“Another Christmas come, another year gone!”murmured the Chemist, with a gloomy sigh. “Morefigures in the lengthening sum of recollection that we work andwork at to our torment, till Death idly jumbles all together, andrubs all out. So, Philip!” breaking off, and raisinghis voice as he addressed the old man, standing apart, with hisglistening burden in his arms, from which the quiet Mrs. Williamtook small branches, which she noiselessly trimmed with herscissors, and decorated the room with, while her agedfather-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 ’emmyself—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 beexpected now,” said Mr. Redlaw, turning to the son, andspeaking 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 myfather’s. He’s the most wonderful man in theworld. 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 allevents, delivered this as if there were no iota of contradictionin it, and it were all said in unbounded and unqualifiedassent.

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

“It recalls the time when many of those years were oldand new, then?” he said, observing him attentively, andtouching him on the shoulder. “Does it?”

“Oh many, many!” said Philip, half awaking fromhis reverie. “I’m eighty-seven!”

“Merry and happy, was it?” asked the Chemist in alow voice. “Merry and happy, old man?”

“Maybe as high as that, no higher,” said the oldman, holding out his hand a little way above the level of hisknee, and looking retrospectively at his questioner, “whenI first remember ’em! Cold, sunshiny day it was, outa-walking, when some one—it was my mother as sure as youstand there, though I don’t know what her blessed face waslike, for she took ill and died that Christmas-time—told methey were food for birds. The pretty little fellowthought—that’s me, you understand—thatbirds’ eyes were so bright, perhaps, because the berriesthat they lived on in the winter were so bright. Irecollect that. And I’m eighty-seven!”

“Merry and happy!” mused the other, bending hisdark eyes upon the stooping figure, with a smile ofcompassion. “Merry and happy—and rememberwell?”

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

“That’s what I always say, father!” returnedthe son promptly, and with great respect. “You ARE a Swidger, if ever there was one ofthe family!”

“Dear!” said the old man, shaking his head as heagain looked at the holly. “His mother—my sonWilliam’s my youngest son—and I, have sat among’em all, boys and girls, little children and babies, many ayear, when the berries like these were not shining half so brightall round us, as their bright faces. Many of ’em aregone; she’s gone; and my son George (our eldest, who washer pride more than all the rest!) is fallen very low: but I cansee them, when I look here, alive and healthy, as they used to bein those days; and I can see him, thank God, in hisinnocence. It’s a blessed thing to me, ateighty-seven.”

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

“When my circumstances got to be not so good asformerly, through not being honestly dealt by, and I first comehere to be custodian,” said the old man,“—which was upwards of fifty yearsago—where’s my son William? More than half acentury ago, William!”

“That’s what I say, father,” replied theson, as promptly and dutifully as before, “that’sexactly where it is. Two times ought’s an ought, andtwice five ten, and there’s a hundred of’em.”

“It was quite a pleasure to know that one of ourfounders—or more correctly speaking,” said the oldman, with a great glory in his subject and his knowledge of it,“one of the learned gentlemen that helped endow us in QueenElizabeth’s time, for we were founded afore herday—left in his will, among the other bequests he made us,so much to buy holly, for garnishing the walls and windows, comeChristmas. There was something homely and friendly init. Being but strange here, then, and coming at Christmastime, we took a liking for his very picter that hangs in whatused to be, anciently, afore our ten poor gentlemen commuted foran annual stipend in money, our great Dinner Hall.—A sedategentleman in a peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck, and ascroll below him, in old English letters, ‘Lord! keep mymemory green!’ You know all about him, Mr.Redlaw?”

“I know the portrait hangs there, Philip.”

“Yes, sure, it’s the second on the right, abovethe panelling. I was going to say—he has helped tokeep mymemory green, I thank him; for going round thebuilding every year, as I’m a doing now, and freshening upthe bare rooms with these branches and berries, freshens up mybare old brain. One year brings back another, and that yearanother, and those others numbers! At last, it seems to meas if the birth-time of our Lord was the birth-time of all I haveever had affection for, or mourned for, or delightedin,—and they’re a pretty many, for I’meighty-seven!”

“Merry and happy,” murmured Redlaw to himself.

The room began to darken strangely.

“So you see, sir,” pursued old Philip, whose halewintry cheek had warmed into a ruddier glow, and whose blue eyeshad brightened while he spoke, “I have plenty to keep, whenI keep this present season. Now, where’s my quietMouse? Chattering’s the sin of my time of life, andthere’s half the building to do yet, if the colddon’t freeze us first, or the wind don’t blow usaway, or the darkness don’t swallow us up.”

The quiet Mouse had brought her calm face to his side, andsilently 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’llexcuse me rambling on, sir, and I wish you good night, and, onceagain, a merry—”

“Stay!” said Mr. Redlaw, resuming his place at thetable, more, it would have seemed from his manner, to reassurethe old keeper, than in any remembrance of his ownappetite. “Spare me another moment, Philip.William, you were going to tell me something to your excellentwife’s honour. It will not be disagreeable to her tohear you praise her. What was it?”

“Why, that’s where it is, you see, sir,”returned Mr. William Swidger, looking towards his wife inconsiderable embarrassment. “Mrs. William’s gother eye upon me.”

“But you’re not afraid of Mrs. William’seye?”

“Why, no, sir,” returned Mr. Swidger,“that’s what I say myself. It wasn’t madeto be afraid of. It wouldn’t have been made so mild,if that was the intention. But I wouldn’t liketo—Milly!—him, you know. Down in theBuildings.”

Mr. William, standing behind the table, and rummagingdisconcertedly among the objects upon it, directed persuasiveglances at Mrs. William, and secret jerks of his head and thumbat 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 withmyself. Down in the Buildings, you know, mylove.—Student.”

“Student?” repeated Mr. Redlaw, raising hishead.

“That’s what I say, sir!” cried Mr. William,in the utmost animation of assent. “If itwasn’t the poor student down in the Buildings, why shouldyou wish to hear it from Mrs. William’s lips? Mrs.William, my dear—Buildings.”

“I didn’t know,” said Milly, with a quietfrankness, free from any haste or confusion, “that Williamhad 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 gohome this holiday-time, and lives, unknown to any one, in but acommon kind of lodging for a gentleman, down in JerusalemBuildings. That’s all, sir.”

“Why have I never heard of him?” said the Chemist,rising hurriedly. “Why has he not made his situationknown 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 hercollected little face and folded hands.

“Not go there?”

“Oh dear, no!” said Milly, shaking her head as ata most manifest and self-evident impossibility. “Itcouldn’t be thought of!”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“Why, you see, sir,” said Mr. William Swidger,persuasively and confidentially, “that’s what Isay. Depend upon it, the young gentleman would never havemade his situation known to one of his own sex. Mrs.Williams has got into his confidence, but that’s quitedifferent. They all confide in Mrs. William; they all trusther. A man, sir, couldn’t have got a whisperout of him; but woman, sir, and Mrs. Williamcombined—!”

“There is good sense and delicacy in what you say,William,” returned Mr. Redlaw, observant of the gentle andcomposed face at his shoulder. And laying his finger on hislip, he secretly put his purse into her hand.

“Oh dear no, sir!” cried Milly, giving it backagain. “Worse and worse! Couldn’t bedreamed of!”

Such a staid matter-of-fact housewife she was, and sounruffled by the momentary haste of this rejection, that, aninstant afterwards, she was tidily picking up a few leaves whichhad strayed from between her scissors and her apron, when she hadarranged the holly.

Finding, when she rose from her stooping posture, that Mr.Redlaw was still regarding her with doubt and astonishment, shequietly repeated—looking about, the while, for any otherfragments that might have escaped her observation:

“Oh dear no, sir! He said that of all the world hewould not be known to you, or receive help from you—thoughhe is a student in your class. I have made no terms ofsecrecy with you, but I trust to your honourcompletely.”

“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 neatand comfortable about him, and employed myself that way.But I know he is poor, and lonely, and I think he is somehowneglected too.—How dark it is!”

The room had darkened more and more. There was a veryheavy gloom and shadow gathering behind the Chemist’schair.

“What more about him?” he asked.

“He is engaged to be married when he can affordit,” said Milly, “and is studying, I think, toqualify himself to earn a living. I have seen, a long time,that he has studied hard and denied himself much.—How verydark it is!”

“It’s turned colder, too,” said the old man,rubbing his hands. “There’s a chill and dismalfeeling 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 softlyplayed:

“He muttered in his broken sleep yesterday afternoon,after talking to me” (this was to herself) “aboutsome one dead, and some great wrong done that could never beforgotten; but whether to him or to another person, I don’tknow. Not byhim, I am sure.”

“And, in short, Mrs. William, you see—which shewouldn’t say herself, Mr. Redlaw, if she was to stop heretill the new year after this next one—” said Mr.William, coming up to him to speak in his ear, “has donehim worlds of good! Bless you, worlds of good! All athome just the same as ever—my father made as snug andcomfortable—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. Williambackwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, up and down, upand down, a mother to him!”

The room turned darker and colder, and the gloom and shadowgathering behind the chair was heavier.

“Not content with this, sir, Mrs. William goes andfinds, this very night, when she was coming home (why it’snot above a couple of hours ago), a creature more like a youngwild beast than a young child, shivering upon a door-step.What does Mrs. William do, but brings it home to dry it, and feedit, and keep it till our old Bounty of food and flannel is givenaway, on Christmas morning! If it ever felt a fire before,it’s as much as ever it did; for it’s sitting in theold Lodge chimney, staring at ours as if its ravenous eyes wouldnever shut again. It’s sitting there, atleast,” said Mr. William, correcting himself, onreflection, “unless it’s bolted!”

“Heaven keep her happy!” said the Chemist aloud,“and you too, Philip! and you, William! I mustconsider what to do in this. I may desire to see thisstudent, I’ll not detain you any longer now.Good-night!”

“I thank’ee, sir, I thank’ee!” saidthe old man, “for Mouse, and for my son William, and formyself. Where’s my son William? William, youtake the lantern and go on first, through them long darkpassages, as you did last year and the year afore. Haha! Iremember—though I’meighty-seven! ‘Lord, keep my memorygreen!’ It’s a very good prayer, Mr. Redlaw,that of the learned gentleman in the peaked beard, with a ruffround his neck—hangs up, second on the right above thepanelling, in what used to be, afore our ten poor gentlemencommuted, our great Dinner Hall. ‘Lord, keep mymemory green!’ It’s very good and pious,sir. Amen! Amen!”

As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which, howevercarefully withheld, fired a long train of thunderingreverberations when it shut at last, the room turned darker.

As he fell a musing in his chair alone, the healthy hollywithered on the wall, and dropped—dead branches.

As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that placewhere it had been gathering so darkly, it took, by slowdegrees,—or out of it there came, by some unreal,unsubstantial process—not to be traced by any humansense,—an awful likeness of himself!

Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, butwith his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair,and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into histerrible appearance of existence, motionless, without asound. As heleaned his arm upon the elbow of hischair, ruminating before the fire, itleaned upon thechair-back, close above him, with its appalling copy of his facelooking where his face looked, and bearing the expression hisface bore.

This, then, was the Something that had passed and gonealready. This was the dread companion of the hauntedman!

It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, thanhe of it. The Christmas Waits were playing somewhere in thedistance, and, through his thoughtfulness, he seemed to listen tothe 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 ofthe 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 twofaces—if the dread lineaments behind the chair might becalled a face—both addressed towards it, as at first, andneither looking at the other. But, now, the haunted manturned, suddenly, and stared upon the Ghost. The Ghost, assudden in its motion, passed to before the chair, and stared onhim.

The living man, and the animated image of himself dead, mightso have looked, the one upon the other. An awful survey, ina lonely and remote part of an empty old pile of building, on awinter night, with the loud wind going by upon its journey ofmystery—whence or whither, no man knowing since the worldbegan—and the stars, in unimaginable millions, glitteringthrough it, from eternal space, where the world’s bulk isas a grain, and its hoary age is infancy.

“Look upon me!” said the Spectre. “Iam he, neglected in my youth, and miserably poor, who strove andsuffered, and still strove and suffered, until I hewed outknowledge from the mine where it was buried, and made ruggedsteps thereof, for my worn feet to rest and rise on.”

“I amthat man,” returned the Chemist.

“No mother’s self-denying love,” pursued thePhantom, “no father’s counsel, aided me.A stranger came into my father’s place when I was but achild, and I was easily an alien from my mother’sheart. My parents, at the best, were of that sort whosecare soon ends, and whose duty is soon done; who cast theiroffspring 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, andwith the manner of its speech, and with its smile.

“I am he,” pursued the Phantom, “who, inthis struggle upward, found a friend. I made him—wonhim—bound him to me! We worked together, side byside. All the love and confidence that in my earlier youthhad had no outlet, and found no expression, I bestowed onhim.”

“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, drewcloser to the chair, and resting its chin upon its folded hands,its folded hands upon the back, and looking down into his facewith 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, howloving! I took her to the first poor roof that I was masterof, and made it rich. She came into the darkness of mylife, and made it bright.—She is before me!”

“I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her inmusic, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night,”returned the haunted man.

“Didhe love her?” said the Phantom,echoing his contemplative tone. “I think he did,once. I am sure he did. Better had she loved himless—less secretly, less dearly, from the shallower depthsof a more divided heart!”

“Let me forget it!” said the Chemist, with anangry motion of his hand. “Let me blot it from mymemory!”

The Spectre, without stirring, and with its unwinking, crueleyes 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 ownheart. I was too poor to bind its object to my fortunethen, by any thread of promise or entreaty. I loved her fartoo well, to seek to do it. But, more than ever I hadstriven in my life, I strove to climb! Only an inch gained,brought me something nearer to the height. I toiledup! In the late pauses of my labour at that time,—mysister (sweet companion!) still sharing with me the expiringembers and the cooling hearth,—when day was breaking, whatpictures of the future did I see!”

“I saw them, in the fire, but now,” hemurmured. “They come back to me in music, in thewind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolvingyears.”

“—Pictures of my own domestic life, in aftertime,with her who was the inspiration of my toil. Pictures of mysister, made the wife of my dear friend, on equal terms—forhe had some inheritance, we none—pictures of our soberedage and mellowed happiness, and of the golden links, extendingback so far, that should bind us, and our children, in a radiantgarland,” said the Phantom.

“Pictures,” said the haunted man, “that weredelusions. Why is it my doom to remember them toowell!”

“Delusions,” echoed the Phantom in its changelessvoice, and glaring on him with its changeless eyes.“For my friend (in whose breast my confidence was locked asin my own), passing between me and the centre of the system of myhopes and struggles, won her to himself, and shattered my frailuniverse. My sister, doubly dear, doubly devoted, doublycheerful in my home, lived on to see me famous, and my oldambition so rewarded when its spring was broken, andthen—”

“Then died,” he interposed. “Died,gentle as ever; happy; and with no concern but for herbrother. Peace!”

The Phantom watched him silently.

“Remembered!” said the haunted man, after apause. “Yes. So well remembered, that even now,when years have passed, and nothing is more idle or morevisionary to me than the boyish love so long outlived, I think ofit with sympathy, as if it were a younger brother’s or ason’s. Sometimes I even wonder when her heart firstinclined to him, and how it had been affected towardsme.—Not lightly, once, I think.—But that isnothing. Early unhappiness, a wound from a hand I loved andtrusted, and a loss that nothing can replace, outlive suchfancies.”

“Thus,” said the Phantom, “I bear within mea Sorrow and a Wrong. Thus I prey upon myself. Thus,memory is my curse; and, if I could forget my sorrow and mywrong, I would!”

“Mocker!” said the Chemist, leaping up, andmaking, with a wrathful hand, at the throat of his otherself. “Why have I always that taunt in myears?”

“Forbear!” exclaimed the Spectre in an awfulvoice. “Lay a hand on Me, and die!”

He stopped midway, as if its words had paralysed him, andstood looking on it. It had glided from him; it had its armraised high in warning; and a smile passed over its unearthlyfeatures, 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 andmy wrong, I would!”

“Evil spirit of myself,” returned the haunted man,in a low, trembling tone, “my life is darkened by thatincessant whisper.”

“It is an echo,” said the Phantom.

“If it be an echo of my thoughts—as now, indeed, Iknow 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 havetheir sorrows,—most of them their wrongs; ingratitude, andsordid jealousy, and interest, besetting all degrees oflife. Who would not forget their sorrows and theirwrongs?”

“Who would not, truly, and be happier and better forit?” said the Phantom.

“These revolutions of years, which wecommemorate,” proceeded Redlaw, “what do theyrecall! Are there any minds in which they do not re-awakensome sorrow, or some trouble? What is the remembrance ofthe old man who was here to-night? A tissue of sorrow andtrouble.”

“But common natures,” said the Phantom, with itsevil smile upon its glassy face, “unenlightened minds andordinary spirits, do not feel or reason on these things like menof higher cultivation and profounder thought.”

“Tempter,” answered Redlaw, “whose hollowlook and voice I dread more than words can express, and from whomsome dim foreshadowing of greater fear is stealing over me whileI 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! Forgetthe sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known!”

“Forget them!” he repeated.

“I have the power to cancel their remembrance—toleave but very faint, confused traces of them, that will die outsoon,” returned the Spectre. “Say! Is itdone?”

“Stay!” cried the haunted man, arresting by aterrified gesture the uplifted hand. “I tremble withdistrust and doubt of you; and the dim fear you cast upon medeepens into a nameless horror I can hardly bear.—I wouldnot deprive myself of any kindly recollection, or any sympathythat is good for me, or others. What shall I lose, if Iassent to this? What else will pass from myremembrance?”

“No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but theintertwisted chain of feelings and associations, each in its turndependent 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, inmusic, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in therevolving years,” returned the Phantom scornfully.

“In nothing else?”

The Phantom held its peace.

But having stood before him, silent, for a little while, itmoved towards the fire; then stopped.

“Decide!” it said, “before the opportunityis lost!”

“A moment! I call Heaven to witness,” saidthe agitated man, “that I have never been a hater of anykind,—never morose, indifferent, or hard, to anythingaround me. If, living here alone, I have made too much ofall that was and might have been, and too little of what is, theevil, I believe, has fallen on me, and not on others. But,if there were poison in my body, should I not, possessed ofantidotes and knowledge how to use them, use them? If therebe poison in my mind, and through this fearful shadow I can castit out, shall I not cast it out?”

“Say,” said the Spectre, “is itdone?”

“A moment longer!” he answered hurriedly.“I would forget it if I could! Have Ithought that, alone, or has it been the thought of thousands uponthousands, generation after generation? All human memory isfraught with sorrow and trouble. My memory is as the memoryof other men, but other men have not this choice. Yes, Iclose the bargain. Yes! I WILL forget my sorrow, wrong, andtrouble!”

“Say,” said the Spectre, “is itdone?”

“It is!”

“It is. And take thiswith you, man whom I here renounce! The gift that I havegiven, you shall give again, go where you will. Withoutrecovering yourself the power that you have yielded up, you shallhenceforth destroy its like in all whom you approach. Yourwisdom has discovered that the memory of sorrow, wrong, andtrouble is the lot of all mankind, and that mankind would be thehappier, in its other memories, without it. Go! Beits benefactor! Freed from such remembrance, from thishour, carry involuntarily the blessing of such freedom withyou. Its diffusion is inseparable and inalienable fromyou. Go! Be happy in the good you have won, and inthe good you do!”

The Phantom, which had held its bloodless hand above him whileit spoke, as if in some unholy invocation, or some ban; and whichhad gradually advanced its eyes so close to his, that he couldsee how they did not participate in the terrible smile upon itsface, but were a fixed, unalterable, steady horror melted beforehim and was gone.

As he stood rooted to the spot, possessed by fear and wonder,and imagining he heard repeated in melancholy echoes, dying awayfainter and fainter, the words, “Destroy its like in allwhom you approach!” a shrill cry reached his ears. Itcame, not from the passages beyond the door, but from anotherpart of the old building, and sounded like the cry of some one inthe dark who had lost the way.

He looked confusedly upon his hands and limbs, as if to beassured of his identity, and then shouted in reply, loudly andwildly; for there was a strangeness and terror upon him, as if hetoo were lost.

The cry responding, and being nearer, he caught up the lamp,and raised a heavy curtain in the wall, by which he wasaccustomed to pass into and out of the theatre where helectured,—which adjoined his room. Associated withyouth and animation, and a high amphitheatre of faces which hisentrance charmed to interest in a moment, it was a ghostly placewhen all this life was faded out of it, and stared upon him likean emblem of Death.

“Halloa!” he cried. “Halloa!This way! Come to the light!” When, as he heldthe curtain with one hand, and with the other raised the lamp andtried to pierce the gloom that filled the place, something rushedpast him into the room like a wild-cat, and crouched down in acorner.

“What is it?” he said, hastily.

He might have asked “What is it?” even had he seenit well, as presently he did when he stood looking at it gatheredup in its corner.

A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and formalmost an infant’s, but in its greedy, desperate littleclutch, a bad old man’s. A face rounded and smoothedby some half-dozen years, but pinched and twisted by theexperiences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youthful.Naked feet, beautiful in their childish delicacy,—ugly inthe blood and dirt that cracked upon them. A baby savage, ayoung monster, a child who had never been a child, a creature whomight 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 boycrouched down as he was looked at, and looked back again, andinterposed his arm to ward off the expected blow.

“I’ll bite,” he said, “if you hitme!”

The time had been, and not many minutes since, when such asight as this would have wrung the Chemist’s heart.He looked upon it now, coldly; but with a heavy effort toremember something—he did not know what—he asked theboy 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 meby the large fire. She was so long gone, that I went tolook for her, and lost myself. I don’t wantyou. I want the woman.”

He made a spring, so suddenly, to get away, that the dullsound of his naked feet upon the floor was near the curtain, whenRedlaw caught him by his rags.

“Come! you let me go!” muttered the boy,struggling, and clenching his teeth. “I’ve donenothing to you. Let me go, will you, to thewoman!”

“That is not the way. There is a nearerone,” said Redlaw, detaining him, in the same blank effortto remember some association that ought, of right, to bear uponthis 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 amoment, and then, twisting round his legs and wrestling with him,broke again into his repetition of “You let me go, willyou? 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 andavoidance, growing out of his coldness. “I’lltake you to her.”

The sharp eyes in the child’s head, wandering round theroom, lighted on the table where the remnants of the dinnerwere.

“Give me some of that!” he said, covetously.

“Has she not fed you?”

“I shall be hungry again to-morrow, sha’n’tI? Ain’t I hungry every day?”

Finding himself released, he bounded at the table like somesmall 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, sternlymotioned him to follow, and was going out of the door, hetrembled and stopped.

“The gift that I have given, you shall give again, gowhere you will!”

The Phantom’s words were blowing in the wind, and thewind blew chill upon him.

“I’ll not go there, to-night,” he murmuredfaintly. “I’ll go nowhere to-night. Boy!straight down this long-arched passage, and past the great darkdoor into the yard,—you see the fire shining on the windowthere.”

“The woman’s fire?” inquired the boy.

He nodded, and the naked feet had sprung away. He cameback with his lamp, locked his door hastily, and sat down in hischair, covering his face like one who was frightened athimself.

For now he was, indeed, alone. Alone, alone.

CHAPTER II
The Gift Diffused

A small man sat in a small parlour, partitioned off from asmall shop by a small screen, pasted all over with small scrapsof newspapers. In company with the small man, was almostany amount of small children you may please to name—atleast it seemed so; they made, in that very limited sphere ofaction, such an imposing effect, in point of numbers.

Of these small fry, two had, by some strong machinery, beengot into bed in a corner, where they might have reposed snuglyenough in the sleep of innocence, but for a constitutionalpropensity to keep awake, and also to scuffle in and out ofbed. The immediate occasion of these predatory dashes atthe waking world, was the construction of an oyster-shell wall ina corner, by two other youths of tender age; on whichfortification the two in bed made harassing descents (like thoseaccursed Picts and Scots who beleaguer the early historicalstudies of most young Britons), and then withdrew to their ownterritory.

In addition to the stir attendant on these inroads, and theretorts of the invaded, who pursued hotly, and made lunges at thebed-clothes under which the marauders took refuge, another littleboy, in another little bed, contributed his mite of confusion tothe family stock, by casting his boots upon the waters; in otherwords, by launching these and several small objects, inoffensivein themselves, though of a hard substance considered as missiles,at the disturbers of his repose,—who were not slow toreturn these compliments.

Besides which, another little boy—the biggest there, butstill little—was tottering to and fro, bent on one side,and considerably affected in his knees by the weight of a largebaby, which he was supposed by a fiction that obtains sometimesin sanguine families, to be hushing to sleep. But oh! theinexhaustible regions of contemplation and watchfulness intowhich this baby’s eyes were then only beginning to composethemselves to stare, over his unconscious shoulder!

It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar thewhole existence of this particular young brother was offered up adaily sacrifice. Its personality may be said to haveconsisted in its never being quiet, in any one place, for fiveconsecutive minutes, and never going to sleep whenrequired. “Tetterby’s baby” was as wellknown in the neighbourhood as the postman or the pot-boy.It roved from door-step to door-step, in the arms of littleJohnny Tetterby, and lagged heavily at the rear of troops ofjuveniles who followed the Tumblers or the Monkey, and came up,all on one side, a little too late for everything that wasattractive, from Monday morning until Saturday night.Wherever childhood congregated to play, there was little Molochmaking Johnny fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired tostay, little Moloch became fractious, and would not remain.Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep, and must bewatched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch wasawake, and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verilypersuaded that it was a faultless baby, without its peer in therealm of England, and was quite content to catch meek glimpses ofthings in general from behind its skirts, or over its limpflapping bonnet, and to go staggering about with it like a verylittle porter with a very large parcel, which was not directed toanybody, and could never be delivered anywhere.

The small man who sat in the small parlour, making fruitlessattempts to read his newspaper peaceably in the midst of thisdisturbance, was the father of the family, and the chief of thefirm described in the inscription over the little shop front, bythe name and title of A. Tetterby andCo., Newsmen. Indeed,strictly speaking, he was the only personage answering to thatdesignation, as Co. was a mere poetical abstraction, altogetherbaseless and impersonal.

Tetterby’s was the corner shop in JerusalemBuildings. There was a good show of literature in thewindow, chiefly consisting of picture-newspapers out of date, andserial pirates, and footpads. Walking-sticks, likewise, andmarbles, were included in the stock in trade. It had onceextended into the light confectionery line; but it would seemthat those elegancies of life were not in demand about JerusalemBuildings, for nothing connected with that branch of commerceremained in the window, except a sort of small glass lanterncontaining a languishing mass of bull’s-eyes, which hadmelted in the summer and congealed in the winter until all hopeof ever getting them out, or of eating them without eating thelantern too, was gone for ever. Tetterby’s had triedits hand at several things. It had once made a feeblelittle dart at the toy business; for, in another lantern, therewas a heap of minute wax dolls, all sticking together upsidedown, in the direst confusion, with their feet on oneanother’s heads, and a precipitate of broken arms and legsat the bottom. It had made a move in the millinerydirection, which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes remained in acorner of the window to attest. It had fancied that aliving might lie hidden in the tobacco trade, and had stuck up arepresentation of a native of each of the three integral portionsof the British Empire, in the act of consuming that fragrantweed; with a poetic legend attached, importing that united in onecause they sat and joked, one chewed tobacco, one took snuff, onesmoked: but nothing seemed to have come of it—exceptflies. Time had been when it had put a forlorn trust inimitative jewellery, for in one pane of glass there was a card ofcheap seals, and another of pencil-cases, and a mysterious blackamulet 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 livelihoodout of Jerusalem Buildings in one way or other, and appeared tohave done so indifferently in all, that the best position in thefirm was too evidently Co.’s; Co., as a bodiless creation,being untroubled with the vulgar inconveniences of hunger andthirst, being chargeable neither to the poor’s-rates northe assessed taxes, and having no young family to providefor.

Tetterby himself, however, in his little parlour, as alreadymentioned, having the presence of a young family impressed uponhis mind in a manner too clamorous to be disregarded, or tocomport with the quiet perusal of a newspaper, laid down hispaper, wheeled, in his distraction, a few times round theparlour, like an undecided carrier-pigeon, made an ineffectualrush at one or two flying little figures in bed-gowns thatskimmed past him, and then, bearing suddenly down upon the onlyunoffending member of the family, boxed the ears of littleMoloch’s nurse.

“You bad boy!” said Mr. Tetterby,“haven’t you any feeling for your poor father afterthe fatigues and anxieties of a hard winter’s day, sincefive o’clock in the morning, but must you wither his rest,and corrode his latest intelligence, with yourwicioustricks? Isn’t it enough, sir, that your brother’Dolphus is toiling and moiling in the fog and cold, andyou rolling in the lap of luxury with a—with a baby, andeverything you can wish for,” said Mr. Tetterby, heapingthis up as a great climax of blessings, “but must you makea wilderness of home, and maniacs of your parents? Mustyou, Johnny? Hey?” At each interrogation, Mr.Tetterby made a feint of boxing his ears again, but thoughtbetter of it, and held his hand.

“Oh, father!” whimpered Johnny, “when Iwasn’t doing anything, I’m sure, but taking such careof 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 littlewoman would come home! I ain’t fit to deal with’em. They make my head go round, and get the betterof me. Oh, Johnny! Isn’t it enough that yourdear mother has provided you with that sweet sister?”indicating Moloch; “isn’t it enough that you wereseven boys before without a ray of gal, and that your dear motherwent through what she didgo through, on purpose that youmight all of you have a little sister, but must you so behaveyourself as to make my head swim?”

Softening more and more, as his own tender feelings and thoseof his injured son were worked on, Mr. Tetterby concluded byembracing him, and immediately breaking away to catch one of thereal delinquents. A reasonably good start occurring, hesucceeded, after a short but smart run, and some rather severecross-country work under and over the bedsteads, and in and outamong the intricacies of the chairs, in capturing this infant,whom he condignly punished, and bore to bed. This examplehad a powerful, and apparently, mesmeric influence on him of theboots, who instantly fell into a deep sleep, though he had been,but a moment before, broad awake, and in the highest possiblefeather. Nor was it lost upon the two young architects, whoretired to bed, in an adjoining closet, with great privacy andspeed. The comrade of the Intercepted One also shrinkinginto his nest with similar discretion, Mr. Tetterby, when hepaused for breath, found himself unexpectedly in a scene ofpeace.

“My little woman herself,” said Mr. Tetterby,wiping his flushed face, “could hardly have done itbetter! I only wish my little woman had had it to do, I doindeed!”

Mr. Tetterby sought upon his screen for a passage appropriateto be impressed upon his children’s minds on the occasion,and read the following.

“‘It is an undoubted fact that all remarkable menhave had remarkable mothers, and have respected them in afterlife as their best friends.’ Think of your ownremarkable mother, my boys,” said Mr. Tetterby, “andknow her value while she is still among you!”

He sat down again in his chair by the fire, and composedhimself, cross-legged, over his newspaper.

“Let anybody, I don’t care who it is, get out ofbed again,” said Tetterby, as a general proclamation,delivered in a very soft-hearted manner, “and astonishmentwill be the portion of that respectedcontemporary!”—which expression Mr. Tetterby selectedfrom his screen. “Johnny, my child, take care of youronly sister, Sally; for she’s the brightest gem that eversparkled on your early brow.”

Johnny sat down on a little stool, and devotedly crushedhimself 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 wasnow referring to the screen again, “‘but it is a factascertained, by accurate calculations, that the following immensepercentage of babies never attain to two years old; that is tosay—’”

“Oh, don’t, father, please!” criedJohnny. “I can’t bear it, when I think ofSally.”

Mr. Tetterby desisting, Johnny, with a profound sense of histrust, wiped his eyes, and hushed his sister.

“Your brother ’Dolphus,” said his father,poking the fire, “is late to-night, Johnny, and will comehome like a lump of ice. What’s got your preciousmother?”

“Here’s mother, and ’Dolphus too,father!” exclaimed Johnny, “I think.”

“You’re right!” returned his father,listening. “Yes, that’s the footstep of mylittle woman.”

The process of induction, by which Mr. Tetterby had come tothe conclusion that his wife was a little woman, was his ownsecret. She would have made two editions of himself, veryeasily. Considered as an individual, she was ratherremarkable for being robust and portly; but considered withreference to her husband, her dimensions becamemagnificent. Nor did they assume a less imposingproportion, when studied with reference to the size of her sevensons, who were but diminutive. In the case of Sally,however, Mrs. Tetterby had asserted herself, at last; as nobodyknew better than the victim Johnny, who weighed and measured thatexacting 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 hisstool, and again crushed himself, Master Adolphus Tetterby, whohad by this time unwound his torso out of a prismatic comforter,apparently interminable, requested the same favour. Johnnyhaving again complied, and again gone back to his stool, andagain crushed himself, Mr. Tetterby, struck by a sudden thought,preferred the same claim on his own parental part. Thesatisfaction of this third desire completely exhausted thesacrifice, who had hardly breath enough left to get back to hisstool, 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 yourmother 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 allright, so far, and skilfully patted her back (which wasuppermost), and rocked her with his foot.

“Are you wet, ’Dolphus, my boy?” said hisfather. “Come and take my chair, and dryyourself.”

“No, father, thank’ee,” said Adolphus,smoothing himself down with his hands. “I an’tvery wet, I don’t think. Does my face shine much,father?”

“Well, it doeslook waxy, my boy,” returnedMr. 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, myface gets quite brought out into a rash sometimes. Andshines, it does—oh, don’t it, though!”

Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper line of life, beingemployed, by a more thriving firm than his father and Co., tovend newspapers at a railway station, where his chubby littleperson, like a shabbily-disguised Cupid, and his shrill littlevoice (he was not much more than ten years old), were as wellknown as the hoarse panting of the locomotives, running in andout. His juvenility might have been at some loss for aharmless outlet, in this early application to traffic, but for afortunate discovery he made of a means of entertaining himself,and of dividing the long day into stages of interest, withoutneglecting business. This ingenious invention, remarkable,like many great discoveries, for its simplicity, consisted invarying the first vowel in the word “paper,” andsubstituting, in its stead, at different periods of the day, allthe other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus, beforedaylight in the winter-time, he went to and fro, in his littleoilskin cap and cape, and his big comforter, piercing the heavyair with his cry of “Morn-ing Pa-per!” which, aboutan 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-ingPop-per!” and so declined with the sun into “Eve-ningPup-per!” to the great relief and comfort of this younggentleman’s spirits.

Mrs. Tetterby, his lady-mother, who had been sitting with herbonnet and shawl thrown back, as aforesaid, thoughtfully turningher wedding-ring round and round upon her finger, now rose, anddivesting herself of her out-of-door attire, began to lay thecloth for supper.

“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs.Tetterby. “That’s the way the worldgoes!”

“Which is the way the world goes, my dear?” askedMr. Tetterby, looking round.

“Oh, nothing,” said Mrs. Tetterby.

Mr. Tetterby elevated his eyebrows, folded his newspaperafresh, 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 asif she were punishing the table than preparing the family supper;hitting it unnecessarily hard with the knives and forks, slappingit with the plates, dinting it with the salt-cellar, and comingheavily down upon it with the loaf.

“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs.Tetterby. “That’s the way the worldgoes!”

“My duck,” returned her husband, looking roundagain, “you said that before. Which is the way theworld goes?”

“Oh, nothing!” said Mrs. Tetterby.

“Sophia!” remonstrated her husband, “yousaid thatbefore, too.”

“Well, I’ll say it again if you like,”returned Mrs. Tetterby. “Ohnothing—there! And again if you like, ohnothing—there! And again if you like, ohnothing—now then!”

Mr. Tetterby brought his eye to bear upon the partner of hisbosom, and said, in mild astonishment:

“My little woman, what has put you out?”

“I’m sure Idon’t know,” sheretorted. “Don’t ask me. Who said I wasput out at all? Inever did.”

Mr. Tetterby gave up the perusal of his newspaper as a badjob, and, taking a slow walk across the room, with his handsbehind him, and his shoulders raised—his gait accordingperfectly with the resignation of his manner—addressedhimself to his two eldest offspring.

“Your supper will be ready in a minute,’Dolphus,” said Mr. Tetterby. “Yourmother has been out in the wet, to the cook’s shop, to buyit. It was very good of your mother so to do.Youshall get some supper too, very soon, Johnny.Your mother’s pleased with you, my man, for being soattentive to your precious sister.”

Mrs. Tetterby, without any remark, but with a decidedsubsidence of her animosity towards the table, finished herpreparations, and took, from her ample basket, a substantial slabof hot pease pudding wrapped in paper, and a basin covered with asaucer, which, on being uncovered, sent forth an odour soagreeable, that the three pair of eyes in the two beds openedwide and fixed themselves upon the banquet. Mr. Tetterby,without regarding this tacit invitation to be seated, stoodrepeating slowly, “Yes, yes, your supper will be ready in aminute, ’Dolphus—your mother went out in the wet, tothe cook’s shop, to buy it. It was very good of yourmother so to do”—until Mrs. Tetterby, who had beenexhibiting sundry tokens of contrition behind him, caught himround the neck, and wept.

“Oh, Dolphus!” said Mrs. Tetterby, “howcould I go and behave so?”

This reconciliation affected Adolphus the younger and Johnnyto that degree, that they both, as with one accord, raised adismal cry, which had the effect of immediately shutting up theround eyes in the beds, and utterly routing the two remaininglittle Tetterbys, just then stealing in from the adjoining closetto 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 childunborn—”

Mr. Tetterby seemed to dislike this figure of speech, andobserved, “Say than the baby, my dear.”

“—Had no more idea than the baby,” said Mrs.Tetterby.—“Johnny, don’t look at me, but lookat her, or she’ll fall out of your lap and be killed, andthen you’ll die in agonies of a broken heart, and serve youright.—No more idea I hadn’t than that darling, ofbeing cross when I came home; but somehow,’Dolphus—” Mrs. Tetterby paused, andagain turned her wedding-ring round and round upon herfinger.

“I see!” said Mr. Tetterby. “Iunderstand! My little woman was put out. Hard times,and hard weather, and hard work, make it trying now andthen. I see, bless your soul! No wonder! Dolf,my man,” continued Mr. Tetterby, exploring the basin with afork, “here’s your mother been and bought, at thecook’s shop, besides pease pudding, a whole knuckle of alovely roast leg of pork, with lots of crackling left upon it,and with seasoning gravy and mustard quite unlimited. Handin your plate, my boy, and begin while it’ssimmering.”

Master Adolphus, needing no second summons, received hisportion with eyes rendered moist by appetite, and withdrawing tohis particular stool, fell upon his supper tooth and nail.Johnny was not forgotten, but received his rations on bread, lesthe should, in a flush of gravy, trickle any on the baby. Hewas required, for similar reasons, to keep his pudding, when noton active service, in his pocket.

There might have been more pork on theknucklebone,—which knucklebone the carver at thecook’s shop had assuredly not forgotten in carving forprevious customers—but there was no stint of seasoning, andthat is an accessory dreamily suggesting pork, and pleasantlycheating the sense of taste. The pease pudding, too, thegravy and mustard, like the Eastern rose in respect of thenightingale, if they were not absolutely pork, had lived near it;so, upon the whole, there was the flavour of a middle-sizedpig. It was irresistible to the Tetterbys in bed, who,though professing to slumber peacefully, crawled out when unseenby their parents, and silently appealed to their brothers for anygastronomic token of fraternal affection. They, not hard ofheart, presenting scraps in return, it resulted that a party oflight skirmishers in nightgowns were careering about the parlourall through supper, which harassed Mr. Tetterby exceedingly, andonce or twice imposed upon him the necessity of a charge, beforewhich these guerilla troops retired in all directions and ingreat confusion.

Mrs. Tetterby did not enjoy her supper. There seemed tobe something on Mrs. Tetterby’s mind. At one time shelaughed without reason, and at another time she cried withoutreason, and at last she laughed and cried together in a manner sovery unreasonable that her husband was confounded.

“My little woman,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ifthe world goes that way, it appears to go the wrong way, and tochoke you.”

“Give me a drop of water,” said Mrs. Tetterby,struggling with herself, “and don’t speak to me forthe present, or take any notice of me. Don’t doit!”

Mr. Tetterby having administered the water, turned suddenly onthe unlucky Johnny (who was full of sympathy), and demanded whyhe was wallowing there, in gluttony and idleness, instead ofcoming forward with the baby, that the sight of her might revivehis mother. Johnny immediately approached, borne down byits weight; but Mrs. Tetterby holding out her hand to signifythat she was not in a condition to bear that trying appeal to herfeelings, he was interdicted from advancing another inch, on painof perpetual hatred from all his dearest connections; andaccordingly retired to his stool again, and crushed himself asbefore.

After a pause, Mrs. Tetterby said she was better now, andbegan 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, settlingher hair, and pressing the palms of her hands upon her eyes, shelaughed again.

“What a wicked fool I was, to think so for amoment!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Come nearer,’Dolphus, and let me ease my mind, and tell you what Imean. Let me tell you all about it.”

Mr. Tetterby bringing his chair closer, Mrs. Tetterby laughedagain, 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 inseveral directions. At one time, four after me at once; twoof 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 ofsuch things now, to regret them; and I’m sure I’vegot as good a husband, and would do as much to prove that I wasfond of him, as—”

“As any little woman in the world,” said Mr.Tetterby. “Very good. Verygood.”

If Mr. Tetterby had been ten feet high, he could not haveexpressed a gentler consideration for Mrs. Tetterby’sfairy-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, makeholiday, and when all people who have got money, like to spendsome, I did, somehow, get a little out of sorts when I was in thestreets just now. There were so many things to besold—such delicious things to eat, such fine things to lookat, such delightful things to have—and there was so muchcalculating and calculating necessary, before I durst lay out asixpence for the commonest thing; and the basket was so large,and wanted so much in it; and my stock of money was so small, andwould go such a little way;—you hate me, don’t you,’Dolphus?”

“Not quite,” said Mr. Tetterby, “asyet.”

“Well! I’ll tell you the whole truth,”pursued his wife, penitently, “and then perhaps youwill. I felt all this, so much, when I was trudging aboutin the cold, and when I saw a lot of other calculating faces andlarge baskets trudging about, too, that I began to think whetherI mightn’t have done better, and been happier,if—I—hadn’t—” the wedding-ring wentround again, and Mrs. Tetterby shook her downcast head as sheturned it.

“I see,” said her husband quietly; “if youhadn’t married at all, or if you had married somebodyelse?”

“Yes,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby.“That’s really what I thought. Do you hate menow, ’Dolphus?”

“Why no,” said Mr. Tetterby. “Idon’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 knowwhether I was ill, or mad, or what I was, but I couldn’tcall up anything that seemed to bind us to each other, or toreconcile me to my fortune. All the pleasures andenjoyments we had ever had—theyseemed so poor andinsignificant, I hated them. I could have trodden onthem. And I could think of nothing else, except our beingpoor, and the number of mouths there were at home.”

“Well, well, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, shakingher hand encouragingly, “that’s truth, afterall. We arepoor, and there area number ofmouths at home here.”

“Ah! but, Dolf, Dolf!” cried his wife, laying herhands upon his neck, “my good, kind, patient fellow, when Ihad been at home a very little while—how different!Oh, Dolf, dear, how different it was! I felt as if therewas a rush of recollection on me, all at once, that softened myhard heart, and filled it up till it was bursting. All ourstruggles for a livelihood, all our cares and wants since we havebeen married, all the times of sickness, all the hours ofwatching, we have ever had, by one another, or by the children,seemed to speak to me, and say that they had made us one, andthat I never might have been, or could have been, or would havebeen, any other than the wife and mother I am. Then, thecheap enjoyments that I could have trodden on so cruelly, got tobe so precious to me—Oh so priceless, and dear!—thatI couldn’t bear to think how much I had wronged them; and Isaid, and say again a hundred times, how could I ever behave so,’Dolphus, how could I ever have the heart to doit!”

The good woman, quite carried away by her honest tendernessand remorse, was weeping with all her heart, when she started upwith a scream, and ran behind her husband. Her cry was soterrified, that the children started from their sleep and fromtheir beds, and clung about her. Nor did her gaze belie hervoice, as she pointed to a pale man in a black cloak who had comeinto the room.

“Look at that man! Look there! What does hewant?”

“My dear,” returned her husband, “I’llask him if you’ll let me go. What’s thematter! 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 ofhim.”

“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 herbreast; and there was a peculiar fluttering all over her, and ahurried unsteady motion of her eyes, as if she had lostsomething.

“Are you ill, my dear?”

“What is it that is going from me again?” shemuttered, in a low voice. “What isthis thatis going away?”

Then she abruptly answered: “Ill? No, I amquite well,” and stood looking vacantly at the floor.

Her husband, who had not been altogether free from theinfection of her fear at first, and whom the present strangenessof her manner did not tend to reassure, addressed himself to thepale visitor in the black cloak, who stood still, and whose eyeswere bent upon the ground.

“What may be your pleasure, sir,” he asked,“with us?”

“I fear that my coming in unperceived,” returnedthe visitor, “has alarmed you; but you were talking and didnot hear me.”

“My little woman says—perhaps you heard her sayit,” returned Mr. Tetterby, “that it’s not thefirst time you have alarmed her to-night.”

“I am sorry for it. I remember to have observedher, for a few moments only, in the street. I had nointention of frightening her.”

As he raised his eyes in speaking, she raised hers. Itwas extraordinary to see what dread she had of him, and with whatdread he observed it—and yet how narrowly and closely.

“My name,” he said, “is Redlaw. I comefrom the old college hard by. A young gentleman who is astudent there, lodges in your house, does he not?”

“Mr. Denham?” said Tetterby.

“Yes.”

It was a natural action, and so slight as to be hardlynoticeable; but the little man, before speaking again, passed hishand across his forehead, and looked quickly round the room, asthough he were sensible of some change in its atmosphere.The Chemist, instantly transferring to him the look of dread hehad directed towards the wife, stepped back, and his face turnedpaler.

“The gentleman’s room,” said Tetterby,“is upstairs, sir. There’s a more convenientprivate entrance; but as you have come in here, it will save yourgoing out into the cold, if you’ll take this littlestaircase,” showing one communicating directly with theparlour, “and go up to him that way, if you wish to seehim.”

“Yes, I wish to see him,” said the Chemist.“Can you spare a light?”

The watchfulness of his haggard look, and the inexplicabledistrust that darkened it, seemed to trouble Mr. Tetterby.He paused; and looking fixedly at him in return, stood for aminute or so, like a man stupefied, or fascinated.

At length he said, “I’ll light you, sir, ifyou’ll follow me.”

“No,” replied the Chemist, “I don’twish to be attended, or announced to him. He does notexpect me. I would rather go alone. Please to give methe light, if you can spare it, and I’ll find theway.”

In the quickness of his expression of this desire, and intaking the candle from the newsman, he touched him on thebreast. Withdrawing his hand hastily, almost as though hehad wounded him by accident (for he did not know in what part ofhimself his new power resided, or how it was communicated, or howthe manner of its reception varied in different persons), heturned 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 roundand round upon her finger. The husband, with his head bentforward on his breast, was musing heavily and sullenly. Thechildren, still clustering about the mother, gazed timidly afterthe visitor, and nestled together when they saw him lookingdown.

“Come!” said the father, roughly.“There’s enough of this. Get to bedhere!”

“The place is inconvenient and small enough,” themother added, “without you. Get to bed!”

The whole brood, scared and sad, crept away; little Johnny andthe baby lagging last. The mother, glancing contemptuouslyround the sordid room, and tossing from her the fragments oftheir meal, stopped on the threshold of her task of clearing thetable, and sat down, pondering idly and dejectedly. Thefather betook himself to the chimney-corner, and impatientlyraking the small fire together, bent over it as if he wouldmonopolise 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 onor return.

“What have I done!” he said, confusedly.“What am I going to do!”

“To be the benefactor of mankind,” he thought heheard a voice reply.

He looked round, but there was nothing there; and a passagenow 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 mutteredgloomily, “that I have remained shut up, and yet all thingsare strange to me. I am strange to myself. I am here,as in a dream. What interest have I in this place, or inany place that I can bring to my remembrance? My mind isgoing blind!”

There was a door before him, and he knocked at it. Beinginvited, 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 comehere.”

It spoke cheerfully, though in a languid tone, and attractedhis attention to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before thechimney-piece, with the back towards the door. A meagrescanty stove, pinched and hollowed like a sick man’scheeks, and bricked into the centre of a hearth that it couldscarcely warm, contained the fire, to which his face wasturned. Being so near the windy house-top, it wastedquickly, and with a busy sound, and the burning ashes droppeddown fast.

“They chink when they shoot out here,” said thestudent, smiling, “so, according to the gossips, they arenot coffins, but purses. I shall be well and rich yet, someday, if it please God, and shall live perhaps to love a daughterMilly, in remembrance of the kindest nature and the gentlestheart in the world.”

He put up his hand as if expecting her to take it, but, beingweakened, he lay still, with his face resting on his other hand,and did not turn round.

The Chemist glanced about the room;—at thestudent’s books and papers, piled upon a table in a corner,where they, and his extinguished reading-lamp, now prohibited andput away, told of the attentive hours that had gone before thisillness, and perhaps caused it;—at such signs of his oldhealth and freedom, as the out-of-door attire that hung idle onthe wall;—at those remembrances of other and less solitaryscenes, the little miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and thedrawing of home;—at that token of his emulation, perhaps,in some sort, of his personal attachment too, the framedengraving of himself, the looker-on. The time had been,only yesterday, when not one of these objects, in its remotestassociation of interest with the living figure before him, wouldhave been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but objects; or,if any gleam of such connexion shot upon him, it perplexed, andnot enlightened him, as he stood looking round with a dullwonder.

The student, recalling the thin hand which had remained solong untouched, raised himself on the couch, and turned hishead.

“Mr. Redlaw!” he exclaimed, and started up.

Redlaw put out his arm.

“Don’t come nearer to me. I will sithere. Remain you, where you are!”

He sat down on a chair near the door, and having glanced atthe 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 noother description of him, than that he lived in thisstreet. Beginning my inquiries at the first house in it, Ihave found him.”

“I have been ill, sir,” returned the student, notmerely with a modest hesitation, but with a kind of awe of him,“but am greatly better. An attack of fever—ofthe brain, I believe—has weakened me, but I am muchbetter. I cannot say I have been solitary, in my illness,or I should forget the ministering hand that has been nearme.”

“You are speaking of the keeper’s wife,”said Redlaw.

“Yes.” The student bent his head, as if herendered 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 theman who had started from his dinner yesterday at the firstmention of this student’s case, than the breathing manhimself, glanced again at the student leaning with his hand uponthe couch, and looked upon the ground, and in the air, as if forlight for his blinded mind.

“I remembered your name,” he said, “when itwas mentioned to me down stairs, just now; and I recollect yourface. We have held but very little personal communicationtogether?”

“Very little.”

“You have retired and withdrawn from me, more than anyof the rest, I think?”

The student signified assent.

“And why?” said the Chemist; not with the leastexpression of interest, but with a moody, wayward kind ofcuriosity. “Why? How comes it that you havesought to keep especially from me, the knowledge of yourremaining here, at this season, when all the rest have dispersed,and of your being ill? I want to know why thisis?”

The young man, who had heard him with increasing agitation,raised his downcast eyes to his face, and clasping his handstogether, cried with sudden earnestness and with tremblinglips:

“Mr. Redlaw! You have discovered me. Youknow my secret!”

“Secret?” said the Chemist, harshly.“I know?”

“Yes! Your manner, so different from the interestand sympathy which endear you to so many hearts, your alteredvoice, the constraint there is in everything you say, and in yourlooks,” replied the student, “warn me that you knowme. That you would conceal it, even now, is but a proof tome (God knows I need none!) of your natural kindness and of thebar there is between us.”

A vacant and contemptuous laugh, was all his answer.

“But, Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, “as ajust man, and a good man, think how innocent I am, except in nameand descent, of participation in any wrong inflicted on you or inany sorrow you have borne.”

“Sorrow!” said Redlaw, laughing.“Wrong! What are those to me?”

“For Heaven’s sake,” entreated the shrinkingstudent, “do not let the mere interchange of a few wordswith me change you like this, sir! Let me pass again fromyour knowledge and notice. Let me occupy my old reservedand distant place among those whom you instruct. Know meonly by the name I have assumed, and not by that ofLongford—”

“Longford!” exclaimed the other.

He clasped his head with both his hands, and for a momentturned upon the young man his own intelligent and thoughtfulface. But the light passed from it, like the sun-beam of aninstant, and it clouded as before.

“The name my mother bears, sir,” faltered theyoung man, “the name she took, when she might, perhaps,have taken one more honoured. Mr. Redlaw,”hesitating, “I believe I know that history. Where myinformation halts, my guesses at what is wanting may supplysomething not remote from the truth. I am the child of amarriage that has not proved itself a well-assorted or a happyone. From infancy, I have heard you spoken of with honourand 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 studentmyself, from whom could I learn but you?”

Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a staringfrown, answered by no word or sign.

“I cannot say,” pursued the other, “I shouldtry in vain to say, how much it has impressed me, and affectedme, to find the gracious traces of the past, in that certainpower of winning gratitude and confidence which is associatedamong us students (among the humblest of us, most) with Mr.Redlaw’s generous name. Our ages and positions are sodifferent, sir, and I am so accustomed to regard you from adistance, that I wonder at my own presumption when I touch,however lightly, on that theme. But to one who—I maysay, who felt no common interest in my mother once—it maybe something to hear, now that all is past, with whatindescribable feelings of affection I have, in my obscurity,regarded him; with what pain and reluctance I have kept alooffrom his encouragement, when a word of it would have made merich; 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 havesaid ill, for my strength is strange to me as yet; but foranything unworthy in this fraud of mine, forgive me, and for allthe rest forget me!”

The staring frown remained on Redlaw’s face, and yieldedto no other expression until the student, with these words,advanced towards him, as if to touch his hand, when he drew backand 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 itstraces in my life? He raves or lies! What have I todo with your distempered dreams? If you want money, here itis. I came to offer it; and that is all I came for.There can be nothing else that brings me here,” hemuttered, holding his head again, with both his hands.“There canbe nothing else, andyet—”

He had tossed his purse upon the table. As he fell intothis dim cogitation with himself, the student took it up, andheld it out to him.

“Take it back, sir,” he said proudly, though notangrily. “I wish you could take from me, with it, theremembrance of your words and offer.”

“You do?” he retorted, with a wild light in hiseyes. “You do?”

“I do!”

The Chemist went close to him, for the first time, and tookthe purse, and turned him by the arm, and looked him in theface.

“There is sorrow and trouble in sickness, is therenot?” he demanded, with a laugh.

The wondering student answered, “Yes.”

“In its unrest, in its anxiety, in its suspense, in allits train of physical and mental miseries?” said theChemist, with a wild unearthly exultation. “All bestforgotten, are they not?”

The student did not answer, but again passed his hand,confusedly, across his forehead. Redlaw still held him bythe sleeve, when Milly’s voice was heard outside.

“I can see very well now,” she said, “thankyou, Dolf. Don’t cry, dear. Father and motherwill be comfortable again, to-morrow, and home will becomfortable too. A gentleman with him, is there!”

Redlaw released his hold, as he listened.

“I have feared, from the first moment,” hemurmured to himself, “to meet her. There is a steadyquality of goodness in her, that I dread to influence. Imay be the murderer of what is tenderest and best within herbosom.”

She was knocking at the door.

“Shall I dismiss it as an idle foreboding, or stillavoid her?” he muttered, looking uneasily around.

She was knocking at the door again.

“Of all the visitors who could come here,” hesaid, in a hoarse alarmed voice, turning to his companion,“this is the one I should desire most to avoid. Hideme!”

The student opened a frail door in the wall, communicatingwhere the garret-roof began to slope towards the floor, with asmall inner room. Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut itafter him.

The student then resumed his place upon the couch, and calledto 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 theback of the couch, as if to take the extended hand—but itwas not there. A little surprised, in her quiet way, sheleaned over to look at his face, and gently touched him on thebrow.

“Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is notso cool as in the afternoon.”

“Tut!” said the student, petulantly, “verylittle ails me.”

A little more surprise, but no reproach, was expressed in herface, as she withdrew to the other side of the table, and took asmall packet of needlework from her basket. But she laid itdown again, on second thoughts, and going noiselessly about theroom, set everything exactly in its place, and in the neatestorder; even to the cushions on the couch, which she touched withso light a hand, that he hardly seemed to know it, as he laylooking at the fire. When all this was done, and she hadswept the hearth, she sat down, in her modest little bonnet, toher 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 verylittle, and will save your eyes, too, from the light. MyWilliam says the room should not be too light just now, when youare recovering so well, or the glare might make yougiddy.”

He said nothing; but there was something so fretful andimpatient in his change of position, that her quick fingersstopped, and she looked at him anxiously.

“The pillows are not comfortable,” she said,laying down her work and rising. “I will soon putthem right.”

“They are very well,” he answered.“Leave them alone, pray. You make so much ofeverything.”

He raised his head to say this, and looked at her sothanklessly, that, after he had thrown himself down again, shestood timidly pausing. However, she resumed her seat, andher needle, without having directed even a murmuring look towardshim, and was soon as busy as before.

“I have been thinking, Mr. Edmund, that youhavebeen often thinking of late, when I have been sitting by, howtrue the saying is, that adversity is a good teacher.Health will be more precious to you, after this illness, than ithas ever been. And years hence, when this time of yearcomes round, and you remember the days when you lay here sick,alone, that the knowledge of your illness might not afflict thosewho are dearest to you, your home will be doubly dear and doublyblest. Now, isn’t that a good, true thing?”

She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what shesaid, and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watchfor any look he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaftof his ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not woundher.

“Ah!” said Milly, with her pretty head incliningthoughtfully on one side, as she looked down, following her busyfingers with her eyes. “Even on me—and I amvery different from you, Mr. Edmund, for I have no learning, anddon’t know how to think properly—this view of suchthings has made a great impression, since you have been lyingill. When I have seen you so touched by the kindness andattention of the poor people down stairs, I have felt that youthought even that experience some repayment for the loss ofhealth, and I have read in your face, as plain as if it was abook, that but for some trouble and sorrow we should never knowhalf the good there is about us.”

His getting up from the couch, interrupted her, or she wasgoing on to say more.

“We needn’t magnify the merit, Mrs.William,” he rejoined slightingly. “The peopledown stairs will be paid in good time I dare say, for any littleextra service they may have rendered me; and perhaps theyanticipate 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 yourexaggerating the case,” he said. “I am sensiblethat you have been interested in me, and I say I am much obligedto you. What more would you have?”

Her work fell on her lap, as she still looked at him walkingto and fro with an intolerant air, and stopping now and then.

“I say again, I am much obliged to you. Why weakenmy sense of what is your due in obligation, by preferringenormous claims upon me? Trouble, sorrow, affliction,adversity! One might suppose I had been dying a score ofdeaths here!”

“Do you believe, Mr. Edmund,” she asked, risingand going nearer to him, “that I spoke of the poor peopleof the house, with any reference to myself? To me?”laying her hand upon her bosom with a simple and innocent smileof astonishment.

“Oh! I think nothing about it, my goodcreature,” he returned. “I have had anindisposition, which your solicitude—observe! I saysolicitude—makes a great deal more of, than it merits; andit’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 quitegone, and then, returning to where her basket was, saidgently:

“Mr. Edmund, would you rather be alone?”

“There is no reason why I should detain you here,”he replied.

“Except—” said Milly, hesitating, andshowing her work.

“Oh! the curtain,” he answered, with asupercilious laugh. “That’s not worth stayingfor.”

She made up the little packet again, and put it in herbasket. Then, standing before him with such an air ofpatient entreaty that he could not choose but look at her, shesaid:

“If you should want me, I will come backwillingly. 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 Ishould not have been, indeed. I should have come no longerthan your weakness and confinement lasted. You owe menothing; but it is right that you should deal as justly by me asif I was a lady—even the very lady that you love; and ifyou suspect me of meanly making much of the little I have triedto do to comfort your sick room, you do yourself more wrong thanever you can do me. That is why I am sorry. That iswhy I am very sorry.”

If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, as indignantas she was calm, as angry in her look as she was gentle, as loudof tone as she was low and clear, she might have left no sense ofher departure in the room, compared with that which fell upon thelonely student when she went away.

He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, whenRedlaw came out of his concealment, and came to the door.

“When sickness lays its hand on you again,” hesaid, looking fiercely back at him, “—may it besoon!—Die here! Rot here!”

“What have you done?” returned the other, catchingat his cloak. “What change have you wrought inme? What curse have you brought upon me? Give me backmyself!”

“Give me back myself!” exclaimed Redlaw like amadman. “I am infected! I am infectious!I am charged with poison for my own mind, and the minds of allmankind. Where I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I amturning into stone. Selfishness and ingratitude spring upin my blighting footsteps. I am only so much less base thanthe wretches whom I make so, that in the moment of theirtransformation I can hate them.”

As he spoke—the young man still holding to hiscloak—he cast him off, and struck him: then, wildly hurriedout into the night air where the wind was blowing, the snowfalling, the cloud-drift sweeping on, the moon dimly shining; andwhere, blowing in the wind, falling with the snow, drifting withthe clouds, shining in the moonlight, and heavily looming in thedarkness, were the Phantom’s words, “The gift that Ihave given, you shall give again, go where you will!”

Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he avoidedcompany. The change he felt within him made the busystreets a desert, and himself a desert, and the multitude aroundhim, in their manifold endurances and ways of life, a mightywaste of sand, which the winds tossed into unintelligible heapsand made a ruinous confusion of. Those traces in his breastwhich the Phantom had told him would “die out soon,”were not, as yet, so far upon their way to death, but that heunderstood enough of what he was, and what he made of others, todesire 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 hisroom. And then he recollected, that of those with whom hehad communicated since the Phantom’s disappearance, thatboy alone had shown no sign of being changed.

Monstrous and odious as the wild thing was to him, hedetermined to seek it out, and prove if this were really so; andalso to seek it with another intention, which came into histhoughts at the same time.

So, resolving with some difficulty where he was, he directedhis steps back to the old college, and to that part of it wherethe general porch was, and where, alone, the pavement was worn bythe 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 littlecloister outside, and from that sheltered place he knew he couldlook in at the window of their ordinary room, and see who waswithin. The iron gates were shut, but his hand was familiarwith the fastening, and drawing it back by thrusting in his wristbetween the bars, he passed through softly, shut it again, andcrept up to the window, crumbling the thin crust of snow with hisfeet.

The fire, to which he had directed the boy last night, shiningbrightly through the glass, made an illuminated place upon theground. Instinctively avoiding this, and going round it, helooked in at the window. At first, he thought that therewas no one there, and that the blaze was reddening only the oldbeams in the ceiling and the dark walls; but peering in morenarrowly, he saw the object of his search coiled asleep before iton the floor. He passed quickly to the door, opened it, andwent in.

The creature lay in such a fiery heat, that, as the Chemiststooped to rouse him, it scorched his head. So soon as hewas touched, the boy, not half awake, clutching his rags togetherwith the instinct of flight upon him, half rolled and half raninto 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 havenot forgotten me?”

“You let me alone!” returned the boy.“This is the woman’s house—notyours.”

The Chemist’s steady eye controlled him somewhat, orinspired him with enough submission to be raised upon his feet,and looked at.

“Who washed them, and put those bandages where they werebruised and cracked?” asked the Chemist, pointing to theiraltered 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 towardshimself, and with the same intent now held him by the chin, andthrew his wild hair back, though he loathed to touch him.The boy watched his eyes keenly, as if he thought it needful tohis own defence, not knowing what he might do next; and Redlawcould 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 thewhite 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 tostop here.”

“Come with me,” said the Chemist, “andI’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 youcame from?”

“You let me go,” returned the boy, suddenlytwisting out of his grasp. “I’m not a going totake you there. Let me be, or I’ll heave some fire atyou!”

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 hischarmed influence stealing over those with whom he came incontact, was not nearly equal to the cold vague terror with whichhe saw this baby-monster put it at defiance. It chilled hisblood to look on the immovable impenetrable thing, in thelikeness of a child, with its sharp malignant face turned up tohis, and its almost infant hand, ready at the bars.

“Listen, boy!” he said. “You shalltake me where you please, so that you take me where the peopleare very miserable or very wicked. I want to do them good,and not to harm them. You shall have money, as I have toldyou, and I will bring you back. Get up! Comequickly!” He made a hasty step towards the door,afraid of her returning.

“Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, noryet touch me?” said the boy, slowly withdrawing the handwith which he threatened, and beginning to get up.

“I will!”

“And let me go, before, behind, or anyways Ilike?”

“I will!”

“Give me some money first, then, and go.”

The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his extendedhand. To count them was beyond the boy’s knowledge,but he said “one,” every time, and avariciouslylooked at each as it was given, and at the donor. He hadnowhere to put them, out of his hand, but in his mouth; and heput them there.

Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of hispocket-book, that the boy was with him; and laying it on thetable, signed to him to follow. Keeping his rags together,as usual, the boy complied, and went out with his bare head andnaked feet into the winter night.

Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he hadentered, where they were in danger of meeting her whom he soanxiously avoided, the Chemist led the way, through some of thosepassages among which the boy had lost himself, and by thatportion of the building where he lived, to a small door of whichhe had the key. When they got into the street, he stoppedto ask his guide—who instantly retreated from him—ifhe knew where they were.

The savage thing looked here and there, and at length, noddinghis head, pointed in the direction he designed to take.Redlaw going on at once, he followed, something lesssuspiciously; shifting his money from his mouth into his hand,and back again into his mouth, and stealthily rubbing it brightupon 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 timesthe Chemist glanced down at his face, and shuddered as it forcedupon him one reflection.

The first occasion was when they were crossing an oldchurchyard, and Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly at aloss how to connect them with any tender, softening, orconsolatory thought.

The second was, when the breaking forth of the moon inducedhim 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 andhistories which human science has appended to them; but where hesaw nothing else he had been wont to see, felt nothing he hadbeen wont to feel, in looking up there, on a bright night.

The third was when he stopped to listen to a plaintive strainof music, but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by thedry mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, with noaddress to any mystery within him, without a whisper in it of thepast, or of the future, powerless upon him as the sound of lastyear’s running water, or the rushing of last year’swind.

At each of these three times, he saw with horror that, inspite of the vast intellectual distance between them, and theirbeing unlike each other in all physical respects, the expressionon the boy’s face was the expression on his own.

They journeyed on for some time—now through such crowdedplaces, that he often looked over his shoulder thinking he hadlost his guide, but generally finding him within his shadow onhis other side; now by ways so quiet, that he could have countedhis short, quick, naked footsteps coming on behind—untilthey arrived at a ruinous collection of houses, and the boytouched him and stopped.

“In there!” he said, pointing out one house wherethere were scattered lights in the windows, and a dim lantern inthe doorway, with “Lodgings for Travellers” paintedon it.

Redlaw looked about him; from the houses to the waste piece ofground on which the houses stood, or rather did not altogethertumble down, unfenced, undrained, unlighted, and bordered by asluggish ditch; from that, to the sloping line of arches, part ofsome neighbouring viaduct or bridge with which it was surrounded,and which lessened gradually towards them, until the last but onewas a mere kennel for a dog, the last a plundered little heap ofbricks; from that, to the child, close to him, cowering andtrembling with the cold, and limping on one little foot, while hecoiled the other round his leg to warm it, yet staring at allthese things with that frightful likeness of expression soapparent in his face, that Redlaw started from him.

“In there!” said the boy, pointing out the houseagain. “I’ll wait.”

“Will they let me in?” asked Redlaw.

“Say you’re a doctor,” he answered with anod. “There’s plenty ill here.”

Looking back on his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw himtrail himself upon the dust and crawl within the shelter of thesmallest arch, as if he were a rat. He had no pity for thething, but he was afraid of it; and when it looked out of its denat 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 wentin.

There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep orforlorn, whose head was bent down on her hands and knees.As it was not easy to pass without treading on her, and as shewas perfectly regardless of his near approach, he stopped, andtouched her on the shoulder. Looking up, she showed himquite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were allswept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill thespring.

With little or no show of concern on his account, she movednearer to the wall to leave him a wider passage.

“What are you?” said Redlaw, pausing, with hishand upon the broken stair-rail.

“What do you think I am?” she answered, showinghim her face again.

He looked upon the ruined Temple of God, so lately made, sosoon disfigured; and something, which was notcompassion—for the springs in which a true compassion forsuch miseries has its rise, were dried up in his breast—butwhich was nearer to it, for the moment, than any feeling that hadlately struggled into the darkening, but not yet wholly darkened,night of his mind—mingled a touch of softness with his nextwords.

“I am come here to give relief, if I can,” hesaid. “Are you thinking of any wrong?”

She frowned at him, and then laughed; and then her laughprolonged itself into a shivering sigh, as she dropped her headagain, and hid her fingers in her hair.

“Are you thinking of a wrong?” he asked oncemore.

“I am thinking of my life,” she said, with amomentary look at him.

He had a perception that she was one of many, and that he sawthe 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 deadto me. You a gentleman, and not know that!” Sheraised her eyes again, and laughed at him.

“Girl!” said Redlaw, sternly, “before thisdeath, of all such things, was brought about, was there no wrongdone to you? In spite of all that you can do, does noremembrance of wrong cleave to you? Are there not timesupon times when it is misery to you?”

So little of what was womanly was left in her appearance, thatnow, when she burst into tears, he stood amazed. But he wasmore amazed, and much disquieted, to note that in her awakenedrecollection of this wrong, the first trace of her old humanityand frozen tenderness appeared to show itself.

He drew a little off, and in doing so, observed that her armswere black, her face cut, and her bosom bruised.

“What brutal hand has hurt you so?” he asked.

“My own. I did it myself!” she answeredquickly.

“It is impossible.”

“I’ll swear I did! He didn’t touchme. I did it to myself in a passion, and threw myself downhere. He wasn’t near me. He never laid a handupon me!”

In the white determination of her face, confronting him withthis untruth, he saw enough of the last perversion and distortionof good surviving in that miserable breast, to be stricken withremorse that he had ever come near her.

“Sorrow, wrong, and trouble!” he muttered, turninghis fearful gaze away. “All that connects her withthe state from which she has fallen, has those roots! Inthe name of God, let me go by!”

Afraid to look at her again, afraid to touch her, afraid tothink of having sundered the last thread by which she held uponthe mercy of Heaven, he gathered his cloak about him, and glidedswiftly up the stairs.

Opposite to him, on the landing, was a door, which stoodpartly open, and which, as he ascended, a man with a candle inhis 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 hadno time to consider it, for, to his yet greater amazement, oldPhilip came out of the room, and took him by the hand.

“Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, “this islike you, this is like you, sir! you have heard of it, and havecome after us to render any help you can. Ah, too late, toolate!”

Redlaw, with a bewildered look, submitted to be led into theroom. A man lay there, on a truckle-bed, and WilliamSwidger stood at the bedside.

“Too late!” murmured the old man, lookingwistfully into the Chemist’s face; and the tears stole downhis cheeks.

“That’s what I say, father,” interposed hisson in a low voice. “That’s where it is,exactly. To keep as quiet as ever we can while he’s adozing, is the only thing to do. You’re right,father!”

Redlaw paused at the bedside, and looked down on the figurethat was stretched upon the mattress. It was that of a man,who should have been in the vigour of his life, but on whom itwas not likely the sun would ever shine again. The vices ofhis forty or fifty years’ career had so branded him, that,in comparison with their effects upon his face, the heavy hand ofTime upon the old man’s face who watched him had beenmerciful and beautifying.

“Who is this?” asked the Chemist, lookinground.

“My son George, Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man,wringing his hands. “My eldest son, George, who wasmore his mother’s pride than all the rest!”

Redlaw’s eyes wandered from the old man’s greyhead, as he laid it down upon the bed, to the person who hadrecognised him, and who had kept aloof, in the remotest corner ofthe room. He seemed to be about his own age; and althoughhe knew no such hopeless decay and broken man as he appeared tobe, there was something in the turn of his figure, as he stoodwith his back towards him, and now went out at the door, thatmade him pass his hand uneasily across his brow.

“William,” he said in a gloomy whisper, “whois that man?”

“Why you see, sir,” returned Mr. William,“that’s what I say, myself. Why should a manever go and gamble, and the like of that, and let himself downinch by inch till he can’t let himself down anylower!”

“Has hedone so?” asked Redlaw, glancingafter him with the same uneasy action as before.

“Just exactly that, sir,” returned WilliamSwidger, “as I’m told. He knows a little aboutmedicine, sir, it seems; and having been wayfaring towards Londonwith my unhappy brother that you see here,” Mr. Williampassed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, “and being lodgingup stairs for the night—what I say, you see, is thatstrange companions come together here sometimes—he lookedin to attend upon him, and came for us at his request. Whata mournful spectacle, sir! But that’s where itis. It’s enough to kill my father!”

Redlaw looked up, at these words, and, recalling where he wasand with whom, and the spell he carried with him—which hissurprise had obscured—retired a little, hurriedly, debatingwith himself whether to shun the house that moment, orremain.

Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed to bea part of his condition to struggle with, he argued forremaining.

“Was it only yesterday,” he said, “when Iobserved the memory of this old man to be a tissue of sorrow andtrouble, and shall I be afraid, to-night, to shake it? Aresuch remembrances as I can drive away, so precious to this dyingman that I need fear for him? No! I’llstay here.”

But he stayed in fear and trembling none the less for thesewords; and, shrouded in his black cloak with his face turned fromthem, 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 littlefrom stupor.

“My boy! My son George!” said oldPhilip.

“You spoke, just now, of my being mother’sfavourite, long ago. It’s a dreadful thing to thinknow, of long ago!”

“No, no, no;” returned the old man.“Think of it. Don’t say it’sdreadful. It’s not dreadful to me, my son.”

“It cuts you to the heart, father.” For theold man’s tears were falling on him.

“Yes, yes,” said Philip, “so it does; but itdoes me good. It’s a heavy sorrow to think of thattime, but it does me good, George. Oh, think of it too,think of it too, and your heart will be softened more andmore! Where’s my son William? William, my boy,your mother loved him dearly to the last, and with her latestbreath said, ‘Tell him I forgave him, blessed him, andprayed for him.’ Those were her words to me. Ihave never forgotten them, and I’m eighty-seven!”

“Father!” said the man upon the bed, “I amdying, 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 mebeyond this bed?”

“There is hope,” returned the old man, “forall who are softened and penitent. There is hope for allsuch. Oh!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands andlooking up, “I was thankful, only yesterday, that I couldremember this unhappy son when he was an innocent child.But what a comfort it is, now, to think that even God himself hasthat remembrance of him!”

Redlaw spread his hands upon his face, and shrank, like amurderer.

“Ah!” feebly moaned the man upon the bed.“The waste since then, the waste of life sincethen!”

“But he was a child once,” said the old man.“He played with children. Before he lay down on hisbed at night, and fell into his guiltless rest, he said hisprayers at his poor mother’s knee. I have seen him doit, many a time; and seen her lay his head upon her breast, andkiss him. Sorrowful as it was to her and me, to think ofthis, when he went so wrong, and when our hopes and plans for himwere all broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, that nothingelse could have given. Oh, Father, so much better than thefathers upon earth! Oh, Father, so much more afflicted bythe errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not ashe is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has sooften seemed to cry to us!”

As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, forwhom he made the supplication, laid his sinking head against himfor support and comfort, as if he were indeed the child of whomhe spoke.

When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the silencethat ensued! He knew it must come upon them, knew that itwas coming fast.

“My time is very short, my breath is shorter,”said the sick man, supporting himself on one arm, and with theother groping in the air, “and I remember there issomething on my mind concerning the man who was here just now,Father and William—wait!—is there really anything inblack, out there?”

“Yes, yes, it is real,” said his aged father.

“Is it a man?”

“What I say myself, George,” interposed hisbrother, bending kindly over him. “It’s Mr.Redlaw.”

“I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to comehere.”

The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared beforehim. Obedient to the motion of his hand, he sat upon thebed.

“It has been so ripped up, to-night, sir,” saidthe sick man, laying his hand upon his heart, with a look inwhich the mute, imploring agony of his condition wasconcentrated, “by the sight of my poor old father, and thethought of all the trouble I have been the cause of, and all thewrong and sorrow lying at my door, that—”

Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it thedawning of another change, that made him stop?

“—that what I cando right, with my mindrunning on so much, so fast, I’ll try to do. There wasanother man here. Did you see him?”

Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw that fatalsign he knew so well now, of the wandering hand upon theforehead, his voice died at his lips. But he made someindication of assent.

“He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He iscompletely beaten down, and has no resource at all. Lookafter him! Lose no time! I know he has it in his mindto kill himself.”

It was working. It was on his face. His face waschanging, hardening, deepening in all its shades, and losing allits sorrow.

“Don’t you remember? Don’t you knowhim?” he pursued.

He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that againwandered 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 livedbold, and I mean to die bold. To the Devil withyou!”

And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over hishead 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 havestruck him from the bedside with a more tremendous shock.But the old man, who had left the bed while his son was speakingto him, now returning, avoided it quickly likewise, and withabhorrence.

“Where’s my boy William?” said the old manhurriedly. “William, come away from here.We’ll go home.”

“Home, father!” returned William. “Areyou going to leave your own son?”

“Where’s my own son?” replied the oldman.

“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 areuseful to me. I’ve a right to it! I’meighty-seven!”

“You’re old enough to be no older,” mutteredWilliam, looking at him grudgingly, with his hands in hispockets. “I don’t know what good you are,myself. We could have a deal more pleasure withoutyou.”

“Myson, Mr. Redlaw!” said the oldman. “Myson, too! The boy talking to meof myson! Why, what has he ever done to give me anypleasure, I should like to know?”

“I don’t know what you have ever done to givemeany pleasure,” said William, sulkily.

“Let me think,” said the old man. “Forhow many Christmas times running, have I sat in my warm place,and never had to come out in the cold night air; and have madegood 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 ofit,” addressing Redlaw, with an impatience and irritationthat were quite new, “I’m whipped if I can seeanything in him but a calendar of ever so many years of eatingand drinking, and making himself comfortable, over and overagain.”

“I—I’m eighty-seven,” said the oldman, rambling on, childishly and weakly, “and I don’tknow as I ever was much put out by anything. I’m notgoing to begin now, because of what he calls my son.He’s not my son. I’ve had a power of pleasanttimes. I recollect once—no I don’t—no,it’s broken off. It was something about a game ofcricket and a friend of mine, but it’s somehow brokenoff. 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; Idon’t care a bit.”

In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he puthis hands into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them hefound a bit of holly (left there, probably last night), which henow took out, and looked at.

“Berries, eh?” said the old man.“Ah! It’s a pity they’re not good toeat. I recollect, when I was a little chap about as high asthat, and out a walking with—let me see—who was I outa walking with?—no, I don’t remember how thatwas. I don’t remember as I ever walked with any oneparticular, or cared for any one, or any one for me.Berries, eh? There’s good cheer when there’sberries. Well; I ought to have my share of it, and to bewaited on, and kept warm and comfortable; for I’meighty-seven, and a poor old man. I’meigh-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 layhardened in his sin; impressed themselves no more onRedlaw’s observation,—for he broke his way from thespot to which his feet seemed to have been fixed, and ran out ofthe house.

His guide came crawling forth from his place of refuge, andwas 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 returnwas more like a flight than a walk, and it was as much as hisbare feet could do, to keep pace with the Chemist’s rapidstrides. Shrinking from all who passed, shrouded in hiscloak, and keeping it drawn closely about him, as though therewere mortal contagion in any fluttering touch of his garments, hemade no pause until they reached the door by which they had comeout. He unlocked it with his key, went in, accompanied bythe boy, and hastened through the dark passages to his ownchamber.

The boy watched him as he made the door fast, and withdrewbehind the table, when he looked round.

“Come!” he said. “Don’t youtouch me! You’ve not brought me here to take my moneyaway.”

Redlaw threw some more upon the ground. He flung hisbody on it immediately, as if to hide it from him, lest the sightof it should tempt him to reclaim it; and not until he saw himseated by his lamp, with his face hidden in his hands, beganfurtively to pick it up. When he had done so, he crept nearthe fire, and, sitting down in a great chair before it, took fromhis breast some broken scraps of food, and fell to munching, andto staring at the blaze, and now and then to glancing at hisshillings, which he kept clenched up in a bunch, in one hand.

“And this,” said Redlaw, gazing on him withincreased repugnance and fear, “is the only one companion Ihave left on earth!”

How long it was before he was aroused from his contemplationof this creature, whom he dreaded so—whether half-an-hour,or half the night—he knew not. But the stillness ofthe 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 sheknocked.

“Let me go to her, will you?” said the boy.

“Not now,” returned the Chemist. “Stayhere. 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 mein.”

“What is the matter?” he said, holding theboy.

“The miserable man you saw, is worse, and nothing I cansay will wake him from his terrible infatuation.William’s father has turned childish in a moment, Williamhimself 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 beenmuttering, in his doze, about the man you saw there, who, hefears, will kill himself.”

“Better he should do it, than come near me!”

“He says, in his wandering, that you know him; that hewas your friend once, long ago; that he is the ruined father of astudent here—my mind misgives me, of the young gentlemanwho has been ill. What is to be done? How is he to befollowed? 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 contritionthat I know is there, shine up and show my misery! In thematerial world as I have long taught, nothing can be spared; nostep or atom in the wondrous structure could be lost, without ablank being made in the great universe. I know, now, thatit is the same with good and evil, happiness and sorrow, in thememories of men. Pity me! Relieve me!”

There was no response, but her “Help me, help me, let mein!” and the boy’s struggling to get to her.

“Shadow of myself! Spirit of my darkerhours!” cried Redlaw, in distraction, “come back, andhaunt me day and night, but take this gift away! Or, if itmust still rest with me, deprive me of the dreadful power ofgiving it to others. Undo what I have done. Leave mebenighted, but restore the day to those whom I have cursed.As I have spared this woman from the first, and as I never willgo forth again, but will die here, with no hand to tend me, savethis creature’s who is proof against me,—hearme!”

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 shallhe be followed, how shall he be saved? They are allchanged, there is no one else to help me, pray, pray, let mein!”

CHAPTER III
The Gift Reversed

Night was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, fromhill-tops, and from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a distantlow-lying line, that promised by-and-by to change to light, wasvisible in the dim horizon; but its promise was remote anddoubtful, and the moon was striving with the night-cloudsbusily.

The shadows upon Redlaw’s mind succeeded thick and fastto one another, and obscured its light as the night-cloudshovered between the moon and earth, and kept the latter veiled indarkness. Fitful and uncertain as the shadows which thenight-clouds cast, were their concealments from him, andimperfect revelations to him; and, like the night-clouds still,if the clear light broke forth for a moment, it was only thatthey might sweep over it, and make the darkness deeper thanbefore.

Without, there was a profound and solemn hush upon the ancientpile of building, and its buttresses and angles made dark shapesof mystery upon the ground, which now seemed to retire into thesmooth white snow and now seemed to come out of it, as themoon’s path was more or less beset. Within, theChemist’s room was indistinct and murky, by the light ofthe expiring lamp; a ghostly silence had succeeded to theknocking and the voice outside; nothing was audible but, now andthen, a low sound among the whitened ashes of the fire, as of itsyielding up its last breath. Before it on the ground theboy lay fast asleep. In his chair, the Chemist sat, as hehad sat there since the calling at his door had ceased—likea man turned to stone.

At such a time, the Christmas music he had heard before, beganto play. He listened to it at first, as he had listened inthe church-yard; but presently—it playing still, and beingborne towards him on the night air, in a low, sweet, melancholystrain—he rose, and stood stretching his hands about him,as if there were some friend approaching within his reach, onwhom his desolate touch might rest, yet do no harm. As hedid this, his face became less fixed and wondering; a gentletrembling 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 tohim; he knew that it was not restored; he had no passing beliefor hope that it was. But some dumb stir within him made himcapable, again, of being moved by what was hidden, afar off, inthe music. If it were only that it told him sorrowfully thevalue of what he had lost, he thanked Heaven for it with afervent gratitude.

As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his head tolisten to its lingering vibration. Beyond the boy, so thathis sleeping figure lay at its feet, the Phantom stood, immovableand silent, with its eyes upon him.

Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, but not so cruel andrelentless in its aspect—or he thought or hoped so, as helooked upon it trembling. It was not alone, but in itsshadowy hand it held another hand.

And whose was that? Was the form that stood beside itindeed Milly’s, or but her shade and picture? Thequiet head was bent a little, as her manner was, and her eyeswere looking down, as if in pity, on the sleeping child. Aradiant light fell on her face, but did not touch the Phantom;for, though close beside her, it was dark and colourless asever.

“Spectre!” said the Chemist, newly troubled as helooked, “I have not been stubborn or presumptuous inrespect of her. Oh, do not bring her here. Spare methat!”

“This is but a shadow,” said the Phantom;“when the morning shines seek out the reality whose image Ipresent before you.”

“Is it my inexorable doom to do so?” cried theChemist.

“It is,” replied the Phantom.

“To destroy her peace, her goodness; to make her what Iam myself, and what I have made of others!”

“I have said seek her out,” returned thePhantom. “I have said no more.”

“Oh, tell me,” exclaimed Redlaw, catching at thehope 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,” saidRedlaw. “What I abandoned, I abandoned of my own freewill, and have justly lost. But for those to whom I havetransferred the fatal gift; who never sought it; who unknowinglyreceived a curse of which they had no warning, and which they hadno 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 himfor a while; then turned its head suddenly, and looked upon theshadow at its side.

“Ah! Can she?” cried Redlaw, still lookingupon the shade.

The Phantom released the hand it had retained till now, andsoftly raised its own with a gesture of dismissal. Uponthat, her shadow, still preserving the same attitude, began tomove or melt away.

“Stay,” cried Redlaw with an earnestness to whichhe could not give enough expression. “For amoment! As an act of mercy! I know that some changefell upon me, when those sounds were in the air just now.Tell me, have I lost the power of harming her? May I gonear her without dread? Oh, let her give me any sign ofhope!”

The Phantom looked upon the shade as he did—not athim—and gave no answer.

“At least, say this—has she, henceforth, theconsciousness of any power to set right what I havedone?”

“She has not,” the Phantom answered.

“Has she the power bestowed on her without theconsciousness?”

The phantom answered: “Seek her out.”

And her shadow slowly vanished.

They were face to face again, and looking on each other, asintently and awfully as at the time of the bestowal of the gift,across the boy who still lay on the ground between them, at thePhantom’s feet.

“Terrible instructor,” said the Chemist, sinkingon his knee before it, in an attitude of supplication, “bywhom I was renounced, but by whom I am revisited (in which, andin whose milder aspect, I would fain believe I have a gleam ofhope), I will obey without inquiry, praying that the cry I havesent up in the anguish of my soul has been, or will be, heard, inbehalf of those whom I have injured beyond humanreparation. But there is one thing—”

“You speak to me of what is lying here,” thephantom interposed, and pointed with its finger to the boy.

“I do,” returned the Chemist. “Youknow what I would ask. Why has this child alone been proofagainst my influence, and why, why, have I detected in itsthoughts 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 toa worse condition than the beasts, and has, within his knowledge,no one contrast, no humanising touch, to make a grain of such amemory spring up in his hardened breast. All within thisdesolate creature is barren wilderness. All within the manbereft of what you have resigned, is the same barrenwilderness. Woe to such a man! Woe, tenfold, to thenation that shall count its monsters such as this, lying here, byhundreds and by thousands!”

Redlaw shrank, appalled, from what he heard.

“There is not,” said the Phantom, “one ofthese—not one—but sows a harvest that mankind MUST reap. From every seed of evilin 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 thewaters of another Deluge. Open and unpunished murder in acity’s streets would be less guilty in its dailytoleration, 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, thesecreatures pass; there is not a mother among all the ranks ofloving mothers in this land; there is no one risen from the stateof childhood, but shall be responsible in his or her degree forthis enormity. There is not a country throughout the earthon which it would not bring a curse. There is no religionupon earth that it would not deny; there is no people upon earthit would not put to shame.”

The Chemist clasped his hands, and looked, with trembling fearand pity, from the sleeping boy to the Phantom, standing abovehim with his finger pointing down.

“Behold, I say,” pursued the Spectre, “theperfect type of what it was your choice to be. Yourinfluence is powerless here, because from this child’sbosom you can banish nothing. His thoughts have been in‘terrible companionship’ with yours, because you havegone down to his unnatural level. He is the growth ofman’s indifference; you are the growth of man’spresumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is, in eachcase, overthrown, and from the two poles of the immaterial worldyou come together.”

The Chemist stooped upon the ground beside the boy, and, withthe same kind of compassion for him that he now felt for himself,covered him as he slept, and no longer shrank from him withabhorrence or indifference.

Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, thedarkness faded, the sun rose red and glorious, and the chimneystacks and gables of the ancient building gleamed in the clearair, which turned the smoke and vapour of the city into a cloudof gold. The very sun-dial in his shady corner, where thewind was used to spin with such unwindy constancy, shook off thefiner particles of snow that had accumulated on his dull old facein the night, and looked out at the little white wreaths eddyinground and round him. Doubtless some blind groping of themorning made its way down into the forgotten crypt so cold andearthy, where the Norman arches were half buried in the ground,and stirred the dull sap in the lazy vegetation hanging to thewalls, and quickened the slow principle of life within the littleworld 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 downthe shutters of the shop, and, strip by strip, revealed thetreasures of the window to the eyes, so proof against theirseductions, of Jerusalem Buildings. Adolphus had been outso long already, that he was halfway on to “MorningPepper.” Five small Tetterbys, whose ten round eyeswere much inflamed by soap and friction, were in the tortures ofa cool wash in the back kitchen; Mrs. Tetterby presiding.Johnny, who was pushed and hustled through his toilet with greatrapidity when Moloch chanced to be in an exacting frame of mind(which was always the case), staggered up and down with hischarge before the shop door, under greater difficulties thanusual; the weight of Moloch being much increased by acomplication of defences against the cold, composed of knittedworsted-work, and forming a complete suit of chain-armour, with ahead-piece and blue gaiters.

It was a peculiarity of this baby to be always cuttingteeth. Whether they never came, or whether they came andwent away again, is not in evidence; but it had certainly cutenough, on the showing of Mrs. Tetterby, to make a handsomedental provision for the sign of the Bull and Mouth. Allsorts 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 enoughto have represented the rosary of a young nun.Knife-handles, umbrella-tops, the heads of walking-sticksselected from the stock, the fingers of the family in general,but especially of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the handles ofdoors, and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were among thecommonest instruments indiscriminately applied for thisbaby’s relief. The amount of electricity that musthave been rubbed out of it in a week, is not to becalculated. Still Mrs. Tetterby always said “it wascoming through, and then the child would be herself;” andstill it never did come through, and the child continued to besomebody else.

The tempers of the little Tetterbys had sadly changed with afew hours. Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby themselves were not morealtered than their offspring. Usually they were anunselfish, good-natured, yielding little race, sharing shortcommons when it happened (which was pretty often) contentedly andeven generously, and taking a great deal of enjoyment out of avery little meat. But they were fighting now, not only forthe soap and water, but even for the breakfast which was yet inperspective. The hand of every little Tetterby was againstthe other little Tetterbys; and even Johnny’shand—the patient, much-enduring, and devotedJohnny—rose against the baby! Yes, Mrs. Tetterby,going to the door by mere accident, saw him viciously pick out aweak place in the suit of armour where a slap would tell, andslap that blessed child.

Mrs. Tetterby had him into the parlour by the collar, in thatsame flash of time, and repaid him the assault with usurythereto.

“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 ofbothering me? How would you like it yourself?”

“Like it, sir!” said Mrs. Tetterby, relieving himof his dishonoured load.

“Yes, like it,” said Johnny. “Howwould you? Not at all. If you was me, you’d gofor a soldier. I will, too. There an’t nobabies in the Army.”

Mr. Tetterby, who had arrived upon the scene of action, rubbedhis chin thoughtfully, instead of correcting the rebel, andseemed rather struck by this view of a military life.

“I wish I was in the Army myself, if the child’sin the right,” said Mrs. Tetterby, looking at her husband,“for I have no peace of my life here. I’m aslave—a Virginia slave:” some indistinct associationwith their weak descent on the tobacco trade perhaps suggestedthis aggravated expression to Mrs. Tetterby. “I neverhave a holiday, or any pleasure at all, from year’s end toyear’s end! Why, Lord bless and save thechild,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking the baby with anirritability hardly suited to so pious an aspiration,“what’s the matter with her now?”

Not being able to discover, and not rendering the subject muchclearer by shaking it, Mrs. Tetterby put the baby away in acradle, and, folding her arms, sat rocking it angrily with herfoot.

“How you stand there, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs.Tetterby to her husband. “Why don’t you dosomething?”

“Because I don’t care about doing anything,”Mr. Tetterby replied.

“I am sure Idon’t,” said Mrs.Tetterby.

“I’ll take my oath Idon’t,”said Mr. Tetterby.

A diversion arose here among Johnny and his five youngerbrothers, who, in preparing the family breakfast table, hadfallen to skirmishing for the temporary possession of the loaf,and were buffeting one another with great heartiness; thesmallest boy of all, with precocious discretion, hovering outsidethe knot of combatants, and harassing their legs. Into themidst of this fray, Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both precipitatedthemselves with great ardour, as if such ground were the onlyground on which they could now agree; and having, with no visibleremains of their late soft-heartedness, laid about them withoutany lenity, and done much execution, resumed their formerrelative positions.

“You had better read your paper than do nothing atall,” said Mrs. Tetterby.

“What’s there to read in a paper?” returnedMr. 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 toyou?” 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; Idon’t see why it should interest me, till I thought it wasa coming to my turn,” grumbled Tetterby. “As tomarriages, I’ve done it myself. I know quite enoughabout them.”

To judge from the dissatisfied expression of her face andmanner, Mrs. Tetterby appeared to entertain the same opinions asher husband; but she opposed him, nevertheless, for thegratification of quarrelling with him.

“Oh, you’re a consistent man,” said Mrs.Tetterby, “an’t you? You, with the screen ofyour own making there, made of nothing else but bits ofnewspapers, which you sit and read to the children by thehalf-hour together!”

“Say used to, if you please,” returned herhusband. “You won’t find me doing so anymore. 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, andpassed his hand across and across his forehead.

“Better!” murmured Mr. Tetterby. “Idon’t know as any of us are better, or happiereither. 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, Irecollect,” 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 discontentamong ’em, next to the story of the robin redbreasts in thewood. ‘Melancholy case of destitution.Yesterday a small man, with a baby in his arms, and surrounded byhalf-a-dozen ragged little ones, of various ages between ten andtwo, the whole of whom were evidently in a famishing condition,appeared before the worthy magistrate, and made the followingrecital:’—Ha! I don’t understand it,I’m sure,” said Tetterby; “I don’t seewhat 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 aman. Ah! dear me, dear me, dear me, it was asacrifice!”

“What was a sacrifice?” her husband sourlyinquired.

Mrs. Tetterby shook her head; and without replying in words,raised a complete sea-storm about the baby, by her violentagitation of the cradle.

“If you mean your marriage was a sacrifice, my goodwoman—” said her husband.

“I domean it,” said his wife.

“Why, then I mean to say,” pursued Mr. Tetterby,as sulkily and surlily as she, “that there are two sides tothat affair; and that I was the sacrifice; and that I wish thesacrifice hadn’t been accepted.”

“I wish it hadn’t, Tetterby, with all my heart andsoul I do assure you,” said his wife. “Youcan’t wish it more than I do, Tetterby.”

“I don’t know what I saw in her,” mutteredthe newsman, “I’m sure;—certainly, if I sawanything, it’s not there now. I was thinking so, lastnight, after supper, by the fire. She’s fat,she’s ageing, she won’t bear comparison with mostother women.”

“He’s common-looking, he has no air with him,he’s small, he’s beginning to stoop and he’sgetting bald,” muttered Mrs. Tetterby.

“I must have been half out of my mind when I didit,” muttered Mr. Tetterby.

“My senses must have forsook me. That’s theonly way in which I can explain it to myself,” said Mrs.Tetterby with elaboration.

In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The littleTetterbys were not habituated to regard that meal in the light ofa sedentary occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot;rather resembling a savage ceremony, in the occasionally shrillwhoops, and brandishings of bread and butter, with which it wasaccompanied, as well as in the intricate filings off into thestreet and back again, and the hoppings up and down thedoor-steps, which were incidental to the performance. Inthe present instance, the contentions between these Tetterbychildren for the milk-and-water jug, common to all, which stoodupon the table, presented so lamentable an instance of angrypassions risen very high indeed, that it was an outrage on thememory of Dr. Watts. It was not until Mr. Tetterby haddriven the whole herd out at the front door, that amoment’s peace was secured; and even that was broken by thediscovery that Johnny had surreptitiously come back, and was atthat instant choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in hisindecent and rapacious haste.

“These children will be the death of me at last!”said Mrs. Tetterby, after banishing the culprit. “Andthe sooner the better, I think.”

“Poor people,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ought notto have children at all. They give usnopleasure.”

He was at that moment taking up the cup which Mrs. Tetterbyhad rudely pushed towards him, and Mrs. Tetterby was lifting herown cup to her lips, when they both stopped, as if they weretransfixed.

“Here! Mother! Father!” cried Johnny,running into the room. “Here’s Mrs. Williamcoming down the street!”

And if ever, since the world began, a young boy took a babyfrom a cradle with the care of an old nurse, and hushed andsoothed it tenderly, and tottered away with it cheerfully, Johnnywas that boy, and Moloch was that baby, as they went outtogether!

Mr. Tetterby put down his cup; Mrs. Tetterby put down hercup. Mr. Tetterby rubbed his forehead; Mrs. Tetterby rubbedhers. Mr. Tetterby’s face began to smooth andbrighten; Mrs. Tetterby’s began to smooth and brighten.

“Why, Lord forgive me,” said Mr. Tetterby tohimself, “what evil tempers have I been giving wayto? What has been the matter here!”

“How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I saidand felt last night!” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apronto her eyes.

“Am I a brute,” said Mr. Tetterby, “or isthere any good in me at all? Sophia! My littlewoman!”

“’Dolphus dear,” returned his wife.

“I—I’ve been in a state of mind,” saidMr. Tetterby, “that I can’t abear to think of,Sophy.”

“Oh! It’s nothing to what I’ve beenin, Dolf,” cried his wife in a great burst of grief.

“My Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “don’ttake on. I never shall forgive myself. I must havenearly broke your heart, I know.”

“No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!” criedMrs. 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, youdon’t know what I thought. I showed it bad enough, nodoubt; but what I thought, my little woman!—”

“Oh, dear Dolf, don’t! Don’t!”cried his wife.

“Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “I must revealit. I couldn’t rest in my conscience unless Imentioned it. My little woman—”

“Mrs. William’s very nearly here!” screamedJohnny at the door.

“My little woman, I wondered how,” gasped Mr.Tetterby, supporting himself by his chair, “I wondered howI had ever admired you—I forgot the precious children youhave brought about me, and thought you didn’t look as slimas I could wish. I—I never gave arecollection,” said Mr. Tetterby, with severeself-accusation, “to the cares you’ve had as my wife,and along of me and mine, when you might have had hardly any withanother man, who got on better and was luckier than me (anybodymight have found such a man easily I am sure); and I quarrelledwith you for having aged a little in the rough years you havelightened for me. Can you believe it, my littlewoman? I hardly can myself.”

Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caughthis face within her hands, and held it there.

“Oh, Dolf!” she cried. “I am so happythat 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 thoughtthat you were small; and so you are, and I’ll make much ofyou because you are, and more of you because I love myhusband. 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 youup. I thought there was no air about you; but there is, andit’s the air of home, and that’s the purest and thebest there is, and God bless home once more, and all belonging toit, Dolf!”

“Hurrah! Here’s Mrs. William!” criedJohnny.

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, andkissed their father and mother, and then ran back and flocked anddanced about her, trooping on with her in triumph.

Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby were not a bit behind-hand in the warmthof their reception. They were as much attracted to her asthe children were; they ran towards her, kissed her hands,pressed round her, could not receive her ardently orenthusiastically enough. She came among them like thespirit of all goodness, affection, gentle consideration, love,and domesticity.

“What! are youall so glad to see me, too, thisbright Christmas morning?” said Milly, clapping her handsin a pleasant wonder. “Oh dear, how delightful thisis!”

More shouting from the children, more kissing, more troopinground her, more happiness, more love, more joy, more honour, onall sides, than she could bear.

“Oh dear!” said Milly, “what delicious tearsyou 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 ajoyful 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 hereyes, “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 hisdarling daughter than myself, implored me to go with him to whereWilliam’s brother George is lying ill. We wenttogether, 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 nothelp crying with pleasure. When we got to the house, we meta woman at the door (somebody had bruised and hurt her, I amafraid), who caught me by the hand, and blessed me as Ipassed.”

“She was right!” said Mr. Tetterby. Mrs.Tetterby said she was right. All the children cried outthat she was right.

“Ah, but there’s more than that,” saidMilly. “When we got up stairs, into the room, thesick man who had lain for hours in a state from which no effortcould rouse him, rose up in his bed, and, bursting into tears,stretched out his arms to me, and said that he had led amis-spent life, but that he was truly repentant now, in hissorrow for the past, which was all as plain to him as a greatprospect, from which a dense black cloud had cleared away, andthat he entreated me to ask his poor old father for his pardonand his blessing, and to say a prayer beside his bed. Andwhen I did so, Mr. Redlaw joined in it so fervently, and then sothanked and thanked me, and thanked Heaven, that my heart quiteoverflowed, and I could have done nothing but sob and cry, if thesick man had not begged me to sit down by him,—which mademe quiet of course. As I sat there, he held my hand in hisuntil he sank in a doze; and even then, when I withdrew my handto leave him to come here (which Mr. Redlaw was very earnestindeed in wishing me to do), his hand felt for mine, so that someone else was obliged to take my place and make believe to givehim 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 pausingfor a moment to observe the group of which she was the centre,had silently ascended the stairs. Upon those stairs he nowappeared again; remaining there, while the young student passedhim, and came running down.

“Kind nurse, gentlest, best of creatures,” hesaid, 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’ssomebody else who likes me. What shall I everdo!”

The guileless, simple way in which she said it, and in whichshe put her hands before her eyes and wept for very happiness,was as touching as it was delightful.

“I was not myself,” he said. “Idon’t know what it was—it was some consequence of mydisorder perhaps—I was mad. But I am so nolonger. Almost as I speak, I am restored. I heard thechildren crying out your name, and the shade passed from me atthe very sound of it. Oh, don’t weep! DearMilly, if you could read my heart, and only knew with whataffection and what grateful homage it is glowing, you would notlet me see you weep. It is such deep reproach.”

“No, no,” said Milly, “it’s notthat. It’s not indeed. It’s joy.It’s wonder that you should think it necessary to ask me toforgive so little, and yet it’s pleasure that youdo.”

“And will you come again? and will you finish the littlecurtain?”

“No,” said Milly, drying her eyes, and shaking herhead. “You won’t care for my needleworknow.”

“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 thechange in your handwriting when you began to be better, createdsome suspicion of the truth; however that is—butyou’re sure you’ll not be the worse for any news, ifit’s not bad news?”

“Sure.”

“Then there’s some one come!” saidMilly.

“My mother?” asked the student, glancing roundinvoluntarily towards Redlaw, who had come down from thestairs.

“Hush! No,” said Milly.

“It can be no one else.”

“Indeed?” said Milly, “are yousure?”

“It is not—” Before he could say more,she put her hand upon his mouth.

“Yes it is!” said Milly. “The younglady (she is very like the miniature, Mr. Edmund, but she isprettier) was too unhappy to rest without satisfying her doubts,and came up, last night, with a little servant-maid. As youalways dated your letters from the college, she came there; andbefore I saw Mr. Redlaw this morning, I saw her. Shelikes me too!” said Milly. “Oh dear,that’s another!”

“This morning! Where is she now?”

“Why, she is now,” said Milly, advancing her lipsto his ear, “in my little parlour in the Lodge, and waitingto see you.”

He pressed her hand, and was darting off, but she detainedhim.

“Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told me thismorning that his memory is impaired. Be very considerate tohim, Mr. Edmund; he needs that from us all.”

The young man assured her, by a look, that her caution was notill-bestowed; and as he passed the Chemist on his way out, bentrespectfully 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 headupon his hand too, as trying to reawaken something he hadlost. But it was gone.

The abiding change that had come upon him since the influenceof the music, and the Phantom’s reappearance, was, that nowhe truly felt how much he had lost, and could compassionate hisown condition, and contrast it, clearly, with the natural stateof those who were around him. In this, an interest in thosewho were around him was revived, and a meek, submissive sense ofhis calamity was bred, resembling that which sometimes obtains inage, when its mental powers are weakened, without insensibilityor sullenness being added to the list of its infirmities.

He was conscious that, as he redeemed, through Milly, more andmore of the evil he had done, and as he was more and more withher, this change ripened itself within him. Therefore, andbecause of the attachment she inspired him with (but withoutother hope), he felt that he was quite dependent on her, and thatshe was his staff in his affliction.

So, when she asked him whether they should go home now, towhere the old man and her husband were, and he readily replied“yes”—being anxious in that regard—he puthis arm through hers, and walked beside her; not as if he werethe wise and learned man to whom the wonders of Nature were anopen book, and hers were the uninstructed mind, but as if theirtwo positions were reversed, and he knew nothing, and sheall.

He saw the children throng about her, and caress her, as heand she went away together thus, out of the house; he heard theringing of their laughter, and their merry voices; he saw theirbright faces, clustering around him like flowers; he witnessedthe renewed contentment and affection of their parents; hebreathed the simple air of their poor home, restored to itstranquillity; he thought of the unwholesome blight he had shedupon it, and might, but for her, have been diffusing then; andperhaps 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 hischair in the chimney-corner, with his eyes fixed on the ground,and his son was leaning against the opposite side of thefire-place, looking at him. As she came in at the door,both started, and turned round towards her, and a radiant changecame upon their faces.

“Oh dear, dear, dear, they are all pleased to see melike the rest!” cried Milly, clapping her hands in anecstasy, and stopping short. “Here are twomore!”

Pleased to see her! Pleasure was no word for it.She ran into her husband’s arms, thrown wide open toreceive her, and he would have been glad to have her there, withher head lying on his shoulder, through the short winter’sday. But the old man couldn’t spare her. He hadarms for her too, and he locked her in them.

“Why, where has my quiet Mouse been all thistime?” said the old man. “She has been a longwhile away. I find that it’s impossible for me to geton without Mouse. I—where’s my sonWilliam?—I fancy I have been dreaming, William.”

“That’s what I say myself, father,” returnedhis son. “I have been in an ugly sort of dream, Ithink.—How are you, father? Are you prettywell?”

“Strong and brave, my boy,” returned the oldman.

It was quite a sight to see Mr. William shaking hands with hisfather, and patting him on the back, and rubbing him gently downwith his hand, as if he could not possibly do enough to show aninterest in him.

“What a wonderful man you are, father!—How areyou, father? Are you really pretty hearty, though?”said William, shaking hands with him again, and patting himagain, and rubbing him gently down again.

“I never was fresher or stouter in my life, myboy.”

“What a wonderful man you are, father! Butthat’s exactly where it is,” said Mr. William, withenthusiasm. “When I think of all that myfather’s gone through, and all the chances and changes, andsorrows and troubles, that have happened to him in the course ofhis long life, and under which his head has grown grey, and yearsupon years have gathered on it, I feel as if we couldn’t doenough to honour the old gentleman, and make his old ageeasy.—How are you, father? Are you really prettywell, though?”

Mr. William might never have left off repeating this inquiry,and shaking hands with him again, and patting him again, andrubbing him down again, if the old man had not espied theChemist, 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 havemade less free. It reminds me, Mr. Redlaw, seeing you hereon a Christmas morning, of the time when you was a studentyourself, and worked so hard that you were backwards and forwardsin our Library even at Christmas time. Ha! ha!I’m old enough to remember that; and I remember it rightwell, I do, though I am eighty-seven. It was after you lefthere that my poor wife died. You remember my poor wife, Mr.Redlaw?”

The Chemist answered yes.

“Yes,” said the old man. “She was adear creetur.—I recollect you come here one Christmasmorning with a young lady—I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw,but I think it was a sister you was very much attachedto?”

The Chemist looked at him, and shook his head. “Ihad 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 thatis always a burning on Christmas Day in what used to be, beforeour ten poor gentlemen commuted, our great Dinner Hall. Iwas there; and I recollect, as I was stirring up the blaze forthe young lady to warm her pretty feet by, she read the scrollout loud, that is underneath that pictur, ‘Lord, keep mymemory green!’ She and my poor wife fell a talkingabout it; and it’s a strange thing to think of, now, thatthey both said (both being so unlike to die) that it was a goodprayer, and that it was one they would put up very earnestly, ifthey were called away young, with reference to those who weredearest to them. ‘My brother,’ says the younglady—‘My husband,’ says my poorwife.—‘Lord, keep his memory of me, green, and do notlet me be forgotten!’”

Tears more painful, and more bitter than he had ever shed inall his life, coursed down Redlaw’s face. Philip,fully occupied in recalling his story, had not observed him untilnow, nor Milly’s anxiety that he should not proceed.

“Philip!” said Redlaw, laying his hand upon hisarm, “I am a stricken man, on whom the hand of Providencehas 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, andtrouble,” said the Chemist, “and with that I havelost all man would remember!”

To see old Philip’s pity for him, to see him wheel hisown great chair for him to rest in, and look down upon him with asolemn sense of his bereavement, was to know, in some degree, howprecious to old age such recollections are.

The boy came running in, and ran to Milly.

“Here’s the man,” he said, “in theother 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 softlywithdrew. As they went out, unnoticed, Redlaw beckoned tothe boy to come to him.

“I like the woman best,” he answered, holding toher skirts.

“You are right,” said Redlaw, with a faintsmile. “But you needn’t fear to come tome. I am gentler than I was. Of all the world, toyou, poor child!”

The boy still held back at first, but yielding little bylittle to her urging, he consented to approach, and even to sitdown at his feet. As Redlaw laid his hand upon the shoulderof the child, looking on him with compassion and afellow-feeling, he put out his other hand to Milly. Shestooped down on that side of him, so that she could look into hisface, and after silence, said:

“Mr. Redlaw, may I speak to you?”

“Yes,” he answered, fixing his eyes uponher. “Your voice and music are the same tome.”

“May I ask you something?”

“What you will.”

“Do you remember what I said, when I knocked at yourdoor last night? About one who was your friend once, andwho stood on the verge of destruction?”

“Yes. I remember,” he said, with somehesitation.

“Do you understand it?”

He smoothed the boy’s hair—looking at her fixedlythe while, and shook his head.

“This person,” said Milly, in her clear, softvoice, which her mild eyes, looking at him, made clearer andsofter, “I found soon afterwards. I went back to thehouse, and, with Heaven’s help, traced him. I was nottoo soon. A very little and I should have been toolate.”

He took his hand from the boy, and laying it on the back ofthat hand of hers, whose timid and yet earnest touch addressedhim no less appealingly than her voice and eyes, looked moreintently on her.

“He isthe father of Mr. Edmund, the younggentleman we saw just now. His real name isLongford.—You recollect the name?”

“I recollect the name.”

“And the man?”

“No, not the man. Did he ever wrong me?”

“Yes!”

“Ah! Then it’shopeless—hopeless.”

He shook his head, and softly beat upon the hand he held, asthough mutely asking her commiseration.

“I did not go to Mr. Edmund last night,” saidMilly,—“You will listen to me just the same as if youdid remember all?”

“To every syllable you say.”

“Both, because I did not know, then, that this reallywas his father, and because I was fearful of the effect of suchintelligence 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 separatedfrom his wife and son—has been a stranger to his homealmost from this son’s infancy, I learn from him—andhas abandoned and deserted what he should have held mostdear. In all that time he has been falling from the stateof a gentleman, more and more, until—” she rose up,hastily, and going out for a moment, returned, accompanied by thewreck that Redlaw had beheld last night.

“Do you know me?” asked the Chemist.

“I should be glad,” returned the other, “andthat is an unwonted word for me to use, if I could answerno.”

The Chemist looked at the man, standing in self-abasement anddegradation before him, and would have looked longer, in anineffectual struggle for enlightenment, but that Milly resumedher late position by his side, and attracted his attentive gazeto her own face.

“See how low he is sunk, how lost he is!” shewhispered, stretching out her arm towards him, without lookingfrom the Chemist’s face. “If you could rememberall that is connected with him, do you not think it would moveyour pity to reflect that one you ever loved (do not let us mindhow long ago, or in what belief that he has forfeited), shouldcome to this?”

“I hope it would,” he answered. “Ibelieve it would.”

His eyes wandered to the figure standing near the door, butcame back speedily to her, on whom he gazed intently, as if hestrove to learn some lesson from every tone of her voice, andevery beam of her eyes.

“I have no learning, and you have much,” saidMilly; “I am not used to think, and you are alwaysthinking. May I tell you why it seems to me a good thingfor us, to remember wrong that has been done us?”

“Yes.”

“That we may forgive it.”

“Pardon me, great Heaven!” said Redlaw, lifting uphis eyes, “for having thrown away thine own highattribute!”

“And if,” said Milly, “if your memory shouldone day be restored, as we will hope and pray it may be, would itnot be a blessing to you to recall at once a wrong and itsforgiveness?”

He looked at the figure by the door, and fastened hisattentive eyes on her again; a ray of clearer light appeared tohim to shine into his mind, from her bright face.

“He cannot go to his abandoned home. He does notseek to go there. He knows that he could only carry shameand trouble to those he has so cruelly neglected; and that thebest reparation he can make them now, is to avoid them. Avery little money carefully bestowed, would remove him to somedistant place, where he might live and do no wrong, and make suchatonement as is left within his power for the wrong he hasdone. To the unfortunate lady who is his wife, and to hisson, this would be the best and kindest boon that their bestfriend could give them—one too that they need never knowof; and to him, shattered in reputation, mind, and body, it mightbe 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 Iwere so happy as to know for what.”

As she rose, and turned her beaming face towards the fallenman, implying that her mediation had been successful, he advanceda step, and without raising his eyes, addressed himself toRedlaw.

“You are so generous,” he said, “—youever were—that you will try to banish your rising sense ofretribution in the spectacle that is before you. I do nottry to banish it from myself, Redlaw. If you can, believeme.”

The Chemist entreated Milly, by a gesture, to come nearer tohim; and, as he listened looked in her face, as if to find in itthe clue to what he heard.

“I am too decayed a wretch to make professions; Irecollect my own career too well, to array any such beforeyou. But from the day on which I made my first stepdownward, in dealing falsely by you, I have gone down with acertain, steady, doomed progression. That, Isay.”

Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned his face towardsthe speaker, and there was sorrow in it. Something likemournful recognition too.

“I might have been another man, my life might have beenanother life, if I had avoided that first fatal step. Idon’t know that it would have been. I claim nothingfor the possibility. Your sister is at rest, and betterthan she could have been with me, if I had continued even whatyou thought me: even what I once supposed myself tobe.”

Redlaw made a hasty motion with his hand, as if he would haveput that subject on one side.

“I speak,” the other went on, “like a mantaken from the grave. I should have made my own grave, lastnight, had it not been for this blessed hand.”

“Oh dear, he likes me too!” sobbed Milly, underher 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 hasbeen is so strongly stirred, and is presented to me, Idon’t know how, so vividly, that I have dared to come ather 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 tome in your thoughts, as you are in your deeds.”

He turned towards the door, and stopped a moment on his wayforth.

“I hope my son may interest you, for his mother’ssake. I hope he may deserve to do so. Unless my lifeshould be preserved a long time, and I should know that I havenot misused your aid, I shall never look upon himmore.”

Going out, he raised his eyes to Redlaw for the firsttime. Redlaw, whose steadfast gaze was fixed upon him,dreamily held out his hand. He returned and touchedit—little more—with both his own; and bending downhis head, went slowly out.

In the few moments that elapsed, while Milly silently took himto the gate, the Chemist dropped into his chair, and covered hisface with his hands. Seeing him thus, when she came back,accompanied by her husband and his father (who were both greatlyconcerned for him), she avoided disturbing him, or permitting himto be disturbed; and kneeled down near the chair to put some warmclothing on the boy.

“That’s exactly where it is. That’swhat I always say, father!” exclaimed her admiringhusband. “There’s a motherly feeling in Mrs.William’s breast that must and will have went!”

“Ay, ay,” said the old man; “you’reright. My son William’s right!”

“It happens all for the best, Milly dear, nodoubt,” said Mr. William, tenderly, “that we have nochildren of our own; and yet I sometimes wish you had one to loveand cherish. Our little dead child that you built suchhopes upon, and that never breathed the breath of life—ithas made you quiet-like, Milly.”

“I am very happy in the recollection of it, Williamdear,” she answered. “I think of it everyday.”

“I was afraid you thought of it a good deal.”

“Don’t say, afraid; it is a comfort to me; itspeaks to me in so many ways. The innocent thing that neverlived 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, andthe many times I sat and pictured to myself the little smilingface upon my bosom that never lay there, and the sweet eyesturned up to mine that never opened to the light,” saidMilly, “I can feel a greater tenderness, I think, for allthe disappointed hopes in which there is no harm. When Isee a beautiful child in its fond mother’s arms, I love itall 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 Iknew, with which to speak to me. When I hear of youth insuffering or shame, I think that my child might have come tothat, 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 longafter you and I were gone, and to have needed the respect andlove of younger people.”

Her quiet voice was quieter than ever, as she took herhusband’s arm, and laid her head against it.

“Children love me so, that sometimes I halffancy—it’s a silly fancy, William—they havesome 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 ahundred ways. Not least happy, dear, in this—thateven when my little child was born and dead but a few days, and Iwas weak and sorrowful, and could not help grieving a little, thethought arose, that if I tried to lead a good life, I should meetin 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 teachingof pure love, hast graciously restored me to the memory which wasthe memory of Christ upon the Cross, and of all the good whoperished in His cause, receive my thanks, and blessher!”

Then, he folded her to his heart; and Milly, sobbing more thanever, cried, as she laughed, “He is come back tohimself! 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 ofthat chastening passage in his own life, to which, as to a shadytree, the dove so long imprisoned in his solitary ark might flyfor rest and company, fell upon his neck, entreating them to behis children.

Then, as Christmas is a time in which, of all times in theyear, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and troublein the world around us, should be active with us, not less thanour own experiences, for all good, he laid his hand upon the boy,and, silently calling Him to witness who laid His hand onchildren in old time, rebuking, in the majesty of His propheticknowledge, 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 thatthey 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 joinhands and make a ring round England, as could be brought togetheron so short a notice.

And it was that day done. There were so many Swidgersthere, grown up and children, that an attempt to state them inround numbers might engender doubts, in the distrustful, of theveracity of this history. Therefore the attempt shall notbe made. But there they were, by dozens andscores—and there was good news and good hope there, readyfor them, of George, who had been visited again by his father andbrother, and by Milly, and again left in a quiet sleep.There, present at the dinner, too, were the Tetterbys, includingyoung Adolphus, who arrived in his prismatic comforter, in goodtime for the beef. Johnny and the baby were too late, ofcourse, and came in all on one side, the one exhausted, the otherin a supposed state of double-tooth; but that was customary, andnot alarming.

It was sad to see the child who had no name or lineage,watching the other children as they played, not knowing how totalk with them, or sport with them, and more strange to the waysof childhood than a rough dog. It was sad, though in adifferent way, to see what an instinctive knowledge the youngestchildren there had of his being different from all the rest, andhow they made timid approaches to him with soft words andtouches, and with little presents, that he might not beunhappy. But he kept by Milly, and began to loveher—that was another, as she said!—and, as they allliked her dearly, they were glad of that, and when they saw himpeeping at them from behind her chair, they were pleased that hewas so close to it.

All this, the Chemist, sitting with the student and his bridethat was to be, Philip, and the rest, saw.

Some people have said since, that he only thought what hasbeen herein set down; others, that he read it in the fire, onewinter night about the twilight time; others, that the Ghost wasbut the representation of his gloomy thoughts, and Milly theembodiment of his better wisdom. Isay nothing.

—Except this. That as they were assembled in theold Hall, by no other light than that of a great fire (havingdined early), the shadows once more stole out of theirhiding-places, and danced about the room, showing the childrenmarvellous shapes and faces on the walls, and gradually changingwhat was real and familiar there, to what was wild andmagical. But that there was one thing in the Hall, to whichthe eyes of Redlaw, and of Milly and her husband, and of the oldman, and of the student, and his bride that was to be, were oftenturned, which the shadows did not obscure or change.Deepened in its gravity by the fire-light, and gazing from thedarkness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate face in theportrait, with the beard and ruff, looked down at them from underits verdant wreath of holly, as they looked up at it; and, clearand plain below, as if a voice had uttered them, were thewords.

Lord keep my Memory green.

(Editor: Light and Sound Toys)