The Chimes

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Trotty really had picked up the kettle somewhere or other in the
course of his wild career and now put it on the fire: while Meg,
seating the child in a warm corner, knelt down on the ground before
her, and pulled off her shoes, and dried her wet feet on a cloth.
Ay, and she laughed at Trotty too - so pleasantly, so cheerfully,
that Trotty could have blessed her where she kneeled; for he had
seen that, when they entered, she was sitting by the fire in tears.

'Why, father!' said Meg. 'You're crazy to-night, I think. I don't
know what the Bells would say to that. Poor little feet. How cold
they are!'

'Oh, they're warmer now!' exclaimed the child. 'They're quite warm
now!'

'No, no, no,' said Meg. 'We haven't rubbed 'em half enough. We're
so busy. So busy! And when they're done, we'll brush out the damp
hair; and when that's done, we'll bring some colour to the poor
pale face with fresh water; and when that's done, we'll be so gay,
and brisk, and happy - !'

The child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped her round the neck;
caressed her fair cheek with its hand; and said, 'Oh Meg! oh dear
Meg!'

Toby's blessing could have done no more. Who could do more!

'Why, father!' cried Meg, after a pause.

'Here I am and here I go, my dear!' said Trotty.

'Good Gracious me!' cried Meg. 'He's crazy! He's put the dear
child's bonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the door!'

'I didn't go for to do it, my love,' said Trotty, hastily repairing
this mistake. 'Meg, my dear?'

Meg looked towards him and saw that he had elaborately stationed
himself behind the chair of their male visitor, where with many
mysterious gestures he was holding up the sixpence he had earned.

'I see, my dear,' said Trotty, 'as I was coming in, half an ounce
of tea lying somewhere on the stairs; and I'm pretty sure there was
a bit of bacon too. As I don't remember where it was exactly, I'll
go myself and try to find 'em.'

With this inscrutable artifice, Toby withdrew to purchase the
viands he had spoken of, for ready money, at Mrs. Chickenstalker's;
and presently came back, pretending he had not been able to find
them, at first, in the dark.

'But here they are at last,' said Trotty, setting out the tea-
things, 'all correct! I was pretty sure it was tea, and a rasher.
So it is. Meg, my pet, if you'll just make the tea, while your
unworthy father toasts the bacon, we shall be ready, immediate.
It's a curious circumstance,' said Trotty, proceeding in his
cookery, with the assistance of the toasting-fork, 'curious, but
well known to my friends, that I never care, myself, for rashers,
nor for tea. I like to see other people enjoy 'em,' said Trotty,
speaking very loud, to impress the fact upon his guest, 'but to me,
as food, they're disagreeable.'

Yet Trotty sniffed the savour of the hissing bacon - ah! - as if he
liked it; and when he poured the boiling water in the tea-pot,
looked lovingly down into the depths of that snug cauldron, and
suffered the fragrant steam to curl about his nose, and wreathe his
head and face in a thick cloud. However, for all this, he neither
ate nor drank, except at the very beginning, a mere morsel for
form's sake, which he appeared to eat with infinite relish, but
declared was perfectly uninteresting to him.

No. Trotty's occupation was, to see Will Fern and Lilian eat and
drink; and so was Meg's. And never did spectators at a city dinner
or court banquet find such high delight in seeing others feast:
although it were a monarch or a pope: as those two did, in looking
on that night. Meg smiled at Trotty, Trotty laughed at Meg. Meg
shook her head, and made belief to clap her hands, applauding
Trotty; Trotty conveyed, in dumb-show, unintelligible narratives of
how and when and where he had found their visitors, to Meg; and
they were happy. Very happy.

'Although,' thought Trotty, sorrowfully, as he watched Meg's face;
'that match is broken off, I see!'

'Now, I'll tell you what,' said Trotty after tea. 'The little one,
she sleeps with Meg, I know.'

'With good Meg!' cried the child, caressing her. 'With Meg.'

'That's right,' said Trotty. 'And I shouldn't wonder if she kiss
Meg's father, won't she? I'M Meg's father.'

Mightily delighted Trotty was, when the child went timidly towards
him, and having kissed him, fell back upon Meg again.

'She's as sensible as Solomon,' said Trotty. 'Here we come and
here we - no, we don't - I don't mean that - I - what was I saying,
Meg, my precious?'

Meg looked towards their guest, who leaned upon her chair, and with
his face turned from her, fondled the child's head, half hidden in
her lap.

'To be sure,' said Toby. 'To be sure! I don't know what I'm
rambling on about, to-night. My wits are wool-gathering, I think.
Will Fern, you come along with me. You're tired to death, and
broken down for want of rest. You come along with me.' The man
still played with the child's curls, still leaned upon Meg's chair,
still turned away his face. He didn't speak, but in his rough
coarse fingers, clenching and expanding in the fair hair of the
child, there was an eloquence that said enough.

'Yes, yes,' said Trotty, answering unconsciously what he saw
expressed in his daughter's face. 'Take her with you, Meg. Get
her to bed. There! Now, Will, I'll show you where you lie. It's
not much of a place: only a loft; but, having a loft, I always
say, is one of the great conveniences of living in a mews; and till
this coach-house and stable gets a better let, we live here cheap.
There's plenty of sweet hay up there, belonging to a neighbour; and
it's as clean as hands, and Meg, can make it. Cheer up! Don't
give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!'

The hand released from the child's hair, had fallen, trembling,
into Trotty's hand. So Trotty, talking without intermission, led
him out as tenderly and easily as if he had been a child himself.
Returning before Meg, he listened for an instant at the door of her
little chamber; an adjoining room. The child was murmuring a
simple Prayer before lying down to sleep; and when she had
remembered Meg's name, 'Dearly, Dearly' - so her words ran - Trotty
heard her stop and ask for his.

It was some short time before the foolish little old fellow could
compose himself to mend the fire, and draw his chair to the warm
hearth. But, when he had done so, and had trimmed the light, he
took his newspaper from his pocket, and began to read. Carelessly
at first, and skimming up and down the columns; but with an earnest
and a sad attention, very soon.

For this same dreaded paper re-directed Trotty's thoughts into the
channel they had taken all that day, and which the day's events had
so marked out and shaped. His interest in the two wanderers had
set him on another course of thinking, and a happier one, for the
time; but being alone again, and reading of the crimes and
violences of the people, he relapsed into his former train.

In this mood, he came to an account (and it was not the first he
had ever read) of a woman who had laid her desperate hands not only
on her own life but on that of her young child. A crime so
terrible, and so revolting to his soul, dilated with the love of
Meg, that he let the journal drop, and fell back in his chair,
appalled!

'Unnatural and cruel!' Toby cried. 'Unnatural and cruel! None but
people who were bad at heart, born bad, who had no business on the
earth, could do such deeds. It's too true, all I've heard to-day;
too just, too full of proof. We're Bad!'

The Chimes took up the words so suddenly - burst out so loud, and
clear, and sonorous - that the Bells seemed to strike him in his
chair.

And what was that, they said?

'Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck,
waiting for you Toby! Come and see us, come and see us, Drag him
to us, drag him to us, Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him,
Break his slumbers, break his slumbers! Toby Veck Toby Veck, door
open wide Toby, Toby Veck Toby Veck, door open wide Toby - ' then
fiercely back to their impetuous strain again, and ringing in the
very bricks and plaster on the walls.

Toby listened. Fancy, fancy! His remorse for having run away from
them that afternoon! No, no. Nothing of the kind. Again, again,
and yet a dozen times again. 'Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt
him, Drag him to us, drag him to us!' Deafening the whole town!

'Meg,' said Trotty softly: tapping at her door. 'Do you hear
anything?'

'I hear the Bells, father. Surely they're very loud to-night.'

'Is she asleep?' said Toby, making an excuse for peeping in.

'So peacefully and happily! I can't leave her yet though, father.
Look how she holds my hand!'

'Meg,' whispered Trotty. 'Listen to the Bells!'

She listened, with her face towards him all the time. But it
underwent no change. She didn't understand them.

Trotty withdrew, resumed his seat by the fire, and once more
listened by himself. He remained here a little time.

It was impossible to bear it; their energy was dreadful.

'If the tower-door is really open,' said Toby, hastily laying aside
his apron, but never thinking of his hat, 'what's to hinder me from
going up into the steeple and satisfying myself? If it's shut, I
don't want any other satisfaction. That's enough.'

He was pretty certain as he slipped out quietly into the street
that he should find it shut and locked, for he knew the door well,
and had so rarely seen it open, that he couldn't reckon above three
times in all. It was a low arched portal, outside the church, in a
dark nook behind a column; and had such great iron hinges, and such
a monstrous lock, that there was more hinge and lock than door.

But what was his astonishment when, coming bare-headed to the
church; and putting his hand into this dark nook, with a certain
misgiving that it might be unexpectedly seized, and a shivering
propensity to draw it back again; he found that the door, which
opened outwards, actually stood ajar!

He thought, on the first surprise, of going back; or of getting a
light, or a companion, but his courage aided him immediately, and
he determined to ascend alone.

'What have I to fear?' said Trotty. 'It's a church! Besides, the
ringers may be there, and have forgotten to shut the door.' So he
went in, feeling his way as he went, like a blind man; for it was
very dark. And very quiet, for the Chimes were silent.

The dust from the street had blown into the recess; and lying
there, heaped up, made it so soft and velvet-like to the foot, that
there was something startling, even in that. The narrow stair was
so close to the door, too, that he stumbled at the very first; and
shutting the door upon himself, by striking it with his foot, and
causing it to rebound back heavily, he couldn't open it again.

This was another reason, however, for going on. Trotty groped his
way, and went on. Up, up, up, and round, and round; and up, up,
up; higher, higher, higher up!

It was a disagreeable staircase for that groping work; so low and
narrow, that his groping hand was always touching something; and it
often felt so like a man or ghostly figure standing up erect and
making room for him to pass without discovery, that he would rub
the smooth wall upward searching for its face, and downward
searching for its feet, while a chill tingling crept all over him.
Twice or thrice, a door or niche broke the monotonous surface; and
then it seemed a gap as wide as the whole church; and he felt on
the brink of an abyss, and going to tumble headlong down, until he
found the wall again.

Still up, up, up; and round and round; and up, up, up; higher,
higher, higher up!

At length, the dull and stifling atmosphere began to freshen:
presently to feel quite windy: presently it blew so strong, that
he could hardly keep his legs. But, he got to an arched window in
the tower, breast high, and holding tight, looked down upon the
house-tops, on the smoking chimneys, on the blurr and blotch of
lights (towards the place where Meg was wondering where he was and
calling to him perhaps), all kneaded up together in a leaven of
mist and darkness.

This was the belfry, where the ringers came. He had caught hold of
one of the frayed ropes which hung down through apertures in the
oaken roof. At first he started, thinking it was hair; then
trembled at the very thought of waking the deep Bell. The Bells
themselves were higher. Higher, Trotty, in his fascination, or in
working out the spell upon him, groped his way. By ladders now,
and toilsomely, for it was steep, and not too certain holding for
the feet.

Up, up, up; and climb and clamber; up, up, up; higher, higher,
higher up!

Until, ascending through the floor, and pausing with his head just
raised above its beams, he came among the Bells. It was barely
possible to make out their great shapes in the gloom; but there
they were. Shadowy, and dark, and dumb.

A heavy sense of dread and loneliness fell instantly upon him, as
he climbed into this airy nest of stone and metal. His head went
round and round. He listened, and then raised a wild 'Holloa!'
Holloa! was mournfully protracted by the echoes.

Giddy, confused, and out of breath, and frightened, Toby looked
about him vacantly, and sunk down in a swoon.

CHAPTER III - Third Quarter.

BLACK are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when
the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead.
Monsters uncouth and wild, arise in premature, imperfect
resurrection; the several parts and shapes of different things are
joined and mixed by chance; and when, and how, and by what
wonderful degrees, each separates from each, and every sense and
object of the mind resumes its usual form and lives again, no man -
though every man is every day the casket of this type of the Great
Mystery - can tell.

So, when and how the darkness of the night-black steeple changed to
shining light; when and how the solitary tower was peopled with a
myriad figures; when and how the whispered 'Haunt and hunt him,'
breathing monotonously through his sleep or swoon, became a voice
exclaiming in the waking ears of Trotty, 'Break his slumbers;' when
and how he ceased to have a sluggish and confused idea that such
things were, companioning a host of others that were not; there are
no dates or means to tell. But, awake and standing on his feet
upon the boards where he had lately lain, he saw this Goblin Sight.

He saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had brought him,
swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the
Bells. He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, pouring from the
Bells without a pause. He saw them, round him on the ground; above
him, in the air; clambering from him, by the ropes below; looking
down upon him, from the massive iron-girded beams; peeping in upon
him, through the chinks and loopholes in the walls; spreading away
and away from him in enlarging circles, as the water ripples give
way to a huge stone that suddenly comes plashing in among them. He
saw them, of all aspects and all shapes. He saw them ugly,
handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed. He saw them young, he saw
them old, he saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw them merry,
he saw them grim; he saw them dance, and heard them sing; he saw
them tear their hair, and heard them howl. He saw the air thick
with them. He saw them come and go, incessantly. He saw them
riding downward, soaring upward, sailing off afar, perching near at
hand, all restless and all violently active. Stone, and brick, and
slate, and tile, became transparent to him as to them. He saw them
IN the houses, busy at the sleepers' beds. He saw them soothing
people in their dreams; he saw them beating them with knotted
whips; he saw them yelling in their ears; he saw them playing
softest music on their pillows; he saw them cheering some with the
songs of birds and the perfume of flowers; he saw them flashing
awful faces on the troubled rest of others, from enchanted mirrors
which they carried in their hands.

He saw these creatures, not only among sleeping men but waking
also, active in pursuits irreconcilable with one another, and
possessing or assuming natures the most opposite. He saw one
buckling on innumerable wings to increase his speed; another
loading himself with chains and weights, to retard his. He saw
some putting the hands of clocks forward, some putting the hands of
clocks backward, some endeavouring to stop the clock entirely. He
saw them representing, here a marriage ceremony, there a funeral;
in this chamber an election, in that a ball he saw, everywhere,
restless and untiring motion.

Bewildered by the host of shifting and extraordinary figures, as
well as by the uproar of the Bells, which all this while were
ringing, Trotty clung to a wooden pillar for support, and turned
his white face here and there, in mute and stunned astonishment.

As he gazed, the Chimes stopped. Instantaneous change! The whole
swarm fainted! their forms collapsed, their speed deserted them;
they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted into
air. No fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down
pretty briskly from the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted on
his feet, but he was dead and gone before he could turn round.
Some few of the late company who had gambolled in the tower,
remained there, spinning over and over a little longer; but these
became at every turn more faint, and few, and feeble, and soon went
the way of the rest. The last of all was one small hunchback, who
had got into an echoing corner, where he twirled and twirled, and
floated by himself a long time; showing such perseverance, that at
last he dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally
retired; but he vanished in the end, and then the tower was silent.

Then and not before, did Trotty see in every Bell a bearded figure
of the bulk and stature of the Bell - incomprehensibly, a figure
and the Bell itself. Gigantic, grave, and darkly watchful of him,
as he stood rooted to the ground.

Mysterious and awful figures! Resting on nothing; poised in the
night air of the tower, with their draped and hooded heads merged
in the dim roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy and dark,
although he saw them by some light belonging to themselves - none
else was there - each with its muffled hand upon its goblin mouth.

He could not plunge down wildly through the opening in the floor;
for all power of motion had deserted him. Otherwise he would have
done so - aye, would have thrown himself, headforemost, from the
steeple-top, rather than have seen them watching him with eyes that
would have waked and watched although the pupils had been taken
out.

Again, again, the dread and terror of the lonely place, and of the
wild and fearful night that reigned there, touched him like a
spectral hand. His distance from all help; the long, dark,
winding, ghost-beleaguered way that lay between him and the earth
on which men lived; his being high, high, high, up there, where it
had made him dizzy to see the birds fly in the day; cut off from
all good people, who at such an hour were safe at home and sleeping
in their beds; all this struck coldly through him, not as a
reflection but a bodily sensation. Meantime his eyes and thoughts
and fears, were fixed upon the watchful figures; which, rendered
unlike any figures of this world by the deep gloom and shade
enwrapping and enfolding them, as well as by their looks and forms
and supernatural hovering above the floor, were nevertheless as
plainly to be seen as were the stalwart oaken frames, cross-pieces,
bars and beams, set up there to support the Bells. These hemmed
them, in a very forest of hewn timber; from the entanglements,
intricacies, and depths of which, as from among the boughs of a
dead wood blighted for their phantom use, they kept their darksome
and unwinking watch.

A blast of air - how cold and shrill! - came moaning through the
tower. As it died away, the Great Bell, or the Goblin of the Great
Bell, spoke.

'What visitor is this!' it said. The voice was low and deep, and
Trotty fancied that it sounded in the other figures as well.

'I thought my name was called by the Chimes!' said Trotty, raising
his hands in an attitude of supplication. 'I hardly know why I am
here, or how I came. I have listened to the Chimes these many
years. They have cheered me often.'

'And you have thanked them?' said the Bell.

'A thousand times!' cried Trotty.

'How?'

'I am a poor man,' faltered Trotty, 'and could only thank them in
words.'

'And always so?' inquired the Goblin of the Bell. 'Have you never
done us wrong in words?'

'No!' cried Trotty eagerly.

'Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?'
pursued the Goblin of the Bell.

Trotty was about to answer, 'Never!' But he stopped, and was
confused.

'The voice of Time,' said the Phantom, 'cries to man, Advance!
Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth,
his greater happiness, his better life; his progress onward to that
goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the
period when Time and He began. Ages of darkness, wickedness, and
violence, have come and gone - millions uncountable, have suffered,
lived, and died - to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn
him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which
will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder,
ever, for its momentary check!'

'I never did so to my knowledge, sir,' said Trotty. 'It was quite
by accident if I did. I wouldn't go to do it, I'm sure.'

'Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its servants,' said the
Goblin of the Bell, 'a cry of lamentation for days which have had
their trial and their failure, and have left deep traces of it
which the blind may see - a cry that only serves the present time,
by showing men how much it needs their help when any ears can
listen to regrets for such a past - who does this, does a wrong.
And you have done that wrong, to us, the Chimes.'

Trotty's first excess of fear was gone. But he had felt tenderly
and gratefully towards the Bells, as you have seen; and when he
heard himself arraigned as one who had offended them so weightily,
his heart was touched with penitence and grief.

'If you knew,' said Trotty, clasping his hands earnestly - 'or
perhaps you do know - if you know how often you have kept me
company; how often you have cheered me up when I've been low; how
you were quite the plaything of my little daughter Meg (almost the
only one she ever had) when first her mother died, and she and me
were left alone; you won't bear malice for a hasty word!'

'Who hears in us, the Chimes, one note bespeaking disregard, or
stern regard, of any hope, or joy, or pain, or sorrow, of the many-
sorrowed throng; who hears us make response to any creed that
gauges human passions and affections, as it gauges the amount of
miserable food on which humanity may pine and wither; does us
wrong. That wrong you have done us!' said the Bell.

'I have!' said Trotty. 'Oh forgive me!'

'Who hears us echo the dull vermin of the earth: the Putters Down
of crushed and broken natures, formed to be raised up higher than
such maggots of the time can crawl or can conceive,' pursued the
Goblin of the Bell; 'who does so, does us wrong. And you have done
us wrong!'

'Not meaning it,' said Trotty. 'In my ignorance. Not meaning it!'

'Lastly, and most of all,' pursued the Bell. 'Who turns his back
upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile;
and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced
precipice by which they fell from good - grasping in their fall
some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still
when bruised and dying in the gulf below; does wrong to Heaven and
man, to time and to eternity. And you have done that wrong!'

'Spare me!' cried Trotty, falling on his knees; 'for Mercy's sake!'

'Listen!' said the Shadow.

'Listen!' cried the other Shadows.

'Listen!' said a clear and childlike voice, which Trotty thought he
recognised as having heard before.

The organ sounded faintly in the church below. Swelling by
degrees, the melody ascended to the roof, and filled the choir and
nave. Expanding more and more, it rose up, up; up, up; higher,
higher, higher up; awakening agitated hearts within the burly piles
of oak: the hollow bells, the iron-bound doors, the stairs of
solid stone; until the tower walls were insufficient to contain it,
and it soared into the sky.

No wonder that an old man's breast could not contain a sound so
vast and mighty. It broke from that weak prison in a rush of
tears; and Trotty put his hands before his face.

'Listen!' said the Shadow.

'Listen!' said the other Shadows.

'Listen!' said the child's voice.

A solemn strain of blended voices, rose into the tower.

It was a very low and mournful strain - a Dirge - and as he
listened, Trotty heard his child among the singers.

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