The Old Curiosity Shop
Such tokens seldom flourish long. I have known the briefest summer
flowers outlive them.’
‘I grieve to hear it,’ said the child.
‘Ah! so say the gentlefolks who come down here to look about them,’
returned the old man, shaking his head, ‘but I say otherwise. “It’s a
pretty custom you have in this part of the country,” they say to me
sometimes, “to plant the graves, but it’s melancholy to see these
things all withering or dead.” I crave their pardon and tell them that,
as I take it, ‘tis a good sign for the happiness of the living. And so
it is. It’s nature.’
‘Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the blue sky by day, and to the
stars by night, and to think that the dead are there, and not in
graves,’ said the child in an earnest voice.
‘Perhaps so,’ replied the old man doubtfully. ‘It may be.’
‘Whether it be as I believe it is, or no,’ thought the child within
herself, ‘I’ll make this place my garden. It will be no harm at least
to work here day by day, and pleasant thoughts will come of it, I am
sure.’
Her glowing cheek and moistened eye passed unnoticed by the sexton, who
turned towards old David, and called him by his name. It was plain
that Becky Morgan’s age still troubled him; though why, the child could
scarcely understand.
The second or third repetition of his name attracted the old man’s
attention. Pausing from his work, he leant on his spade, and put his
hand to his dull ear.
‘Did you call?’ he said.
‘I have been thinking, Davy,’ replied the sexton, ‘that she,’ he
pointed to the grave, ‘must have been a deal older than you or me.’
‘Seventy-nine,’ answered the old man with a shake of the head, ‘I tell
you that I saw it.’
‘Saw it?’ replied the sexton; ‘aye, but, Davy, women don’t always tell
the truth about their age.’
‘That’s true indeed,’ said the other old man, with a sudden sparkle in
his eye. ‘She might have been older.’
‘I’m sure she must have been. Why, only think how old she looked. You
and I seemed but boys to her.’
‘She did look old,’ rejoined David. ‘You’re right. She did look old.’
‘Call to mind how old she looked for many a long, long year, and say if
she could be but seventy-nine at last--only our age,’ said the sexton.
‘Five year older at the very least!’ cried the other.
‘Five!’ retorted the sexton. ‘Ten. Good eighty-nine. I call to mind
the time her daughter died. She was eighty-nine if she was a day, and
tries to pass upon us now, for ten year younger. Oh! human vanity!’
The other old man was not behindhand with some moral reflections on
this fruitful theme, and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such
weight as to render it doubtful--not whether the deceased was of the
age suggested, but whether she had not almost reached the patriarchal
term of a hundred. When they had settled this question to their mutual
satisfaction, the sexton, with his friend’s assistance, rose to go.
‘It’s chilly, sitting here, and I must be careful--till the summer,’ he
said, as he prepared to limp away.
‘What?’ asked old David.
‘He’s very deaf, poor fellow!’ cried the sexton. ‘Good-bye!’
‘Ah!’ said old David, looking after him. ‘He’s failing very fast.
He ages every day.’
And so they parted; each persuaded that the other had less life in him
than himself; and both greatly consoled and comforted by the little
fiction they had agreed upon, respecting Becky Morgan, whose decease
was no longer a precedent of uncomfortable application, and would be no
business of theirs for half a score of years to come.
The child remained, for some minutes, watching the deaf old man as he
threw out the earth with his shovel, and, often stopping to cough and
fetch his breath, still muttered to himself, with a kind of sober
chuckle, that the sexton was wearing fast. At length she turned away,
and walking thoughtfully through the churchyard, came unexpectedly upon
the schoolmaster, who was sitting on a green grave in the sun, reading.
‘Nell here?’ he said cheerfully, as he closed his book. ‘It does me
good to see you in the air and light. I feared you were again in the
church, where you so often are.’
‘Feared!’ replied the child, sitting down beside him. ‘Is it not a
good place?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the schoolmaster. ‘But you must be gay
sometimes--nay, don’t shake your head and smile so sadly.’
‘Not sadly, if you knew my heart. Do not look at me as if you thought
me sorrowful. There is not a happier creature on earth, than I am now.’
Full of grateful tenderness, the child took his hand, and folded it
between her own. ‘It’s God’s will!’ she said, when they had been
silent for some time.
‘What?’
‘All this,’ she rejoined; ‘all this about us. But which of us is sad
now? You see that I am smiling.’
‘And so am I,’ said the schoolmaster; ‘smiling to think how often we
shall laugh in this same place. Were you not talking yonder?’
‘Yes,’ the child rejoined.
‘Of something that has made you sorrowful?’
There was a long pause.
‘What was it?’ said the schoolmaster, tenderly. ‘Come. Tell me what
it was.’
‘I rather grieve--I _do_ rather grieve to think,’ said the child,
bursting into tears, ‘that those who die about us, are so soon
forgotten.’
‘And do you think,’ said the schoolmaster, marking the glance she had
thrown around, ‘that an unvisited grave, a withered tree, a faded
flower or two, are tokens of forgetfulness or cold neglect? Do you
think there are no deeds, far away from here, in which these dead may
be best remembered? Nell, Nell, there may be people busy in the world,
at this instant, in whose good actions and good thoughts these very
graves--neglected as they look to us--are the chief instruments.’
‘Tell me no more,’ said the child quickly. ‘Tell me no more. I feel,
I know it. How could I be unmindful of it, when I thought of you?’
‘There is nothing,’ cried her friend, ‘no, nothing innocent or good,
that dies, and is forgotten. Let us hold to that faith, or none. An
infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live again in the
better thoughts of those who loved it, and will play its part, through
them, in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt
to ashes or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an angel added to
the Host of Heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that
loved it here. Forgotten! oh, if the good deeds of human creatures
could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear;
for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection, would be seen to
have their growth in dusty graves!’
‘Yes,’ said the child, ‘it is the truth; I know it is. Who should feel
its force so much as I, in whom your little scholar lives again! Dear,
dear, good friend, if you knew the comfort you have given me!’
The poor schoolmaster made her no answer, but bent over her in silence;
for his heart was full.
They were yet seated in the same place, when the grandfather
approached. Before they had spoken many words together, the church
clock struck the hour of school, and their friend withdrew.
‘A good man,’ said the grandfather, looking after him; ‘a kind man.
Surely he will never harm us, Nell. We are safe here, at last, eh? We
will never go away from here?’
The child shook her head and smiled.
‘She needs rest,’ said the old man, patting her cheek; ‘too pale--too
pale. She is not like what she was.’
‘When?’ asked the child.
‘Ha!’ said the old man, ‘to be sure--when? How many weeks ago? Could
I count them on my fingers? Let them rest though; they’re better
gone.’
‘Much better, dear,’ replied the child. ‘We will forget them;
or, if we ever call them to mind, it shall be only as some uneasy dream
that has passed away.’
‘Hush!’ said the old man, motioning hastily to her with his hand and
looking over his shoulder; ‘no more talk of the dream, and all the
miseries it brought. There are no dreams here. ‘Tis a quiet place,
and they keep away. Let us never think about them, lest they should
pursue us again. Sunken eyes and hollow cheeks--wet, cold, and
famine--and horrors before them all, that were even worse--we must
forget such things if we would be tranquil here.’
‘Thank Heaven!’ inwardly exclaimed the child, ‘for this most happy
change!’
‘I will be patient,’ said the old man, ‘humble, very thankful, and
obedient, if you will let me stay. But do not hide from me; do not
steal away alone; let me keep beside you. Indeed, I will be very true
and faithful, Nell.’
‘I steal away alone! why that,’ replied the child, with assumed gaiety,
‘would be a pleasant jest indeed. See here, dear grandfather, we’ll
make this place our garden--why not! It is a very good one--and
to-morrow we’ll begin, and work together, side by side.’
‘It is a brave thought!’ cried her grandfather. ‘Mind, darling--we
begin to-morrow!’
Who so delighted as the old man, when they next day began their labour!
Who so unconscious of all associations connected with the spot, as he!
They plucked the long grass and nettles from the tombs, thinned the
poor shrubs and roots, made the turf smooth, and cleared it of the
leaves and weeds. They were yet in the ardour of their work, when the
child, raising her head from the ground over which she bent, observed
that the bachelor was sitting on the stile close by, watching them in
silence.
‘A kind office,’ said the little gentleman, nodding to Nell as she
curtseyed to him. ‘Have you done all that, this morning?’
‘It is very little, sir,’ returned the child, with downcast eyes, ‘to
what we mean to do.’
‘Good work, good work,’ said the bachelor. ‘But do you only labour at
the graves of children, and young people?’
‘We shall come to the others in good time, sir,’ replied Nell, turning
her head aside, and speaking softly.
It was a slight incident, and might have been design or accident, or
the child’s unconscious sympathy with youth. But it seemed to strike
upon her grandfather, though he had not noticed it before. He looked
in a hurried manner at the graves, then anxiously at the child, then
pressed her to his side, and bade her stop to rest. Something he had
long forgotten, appeared to struggle faintly in his mind. It did not
pass away, as weightier things had done; but came uppermost again, and
yet again, and many times that day, and often afterwards. Once, while
they were yet at work, the child, seeing that he often turned and
looked uneasily at her, as though he were trying to resolve some
painful doubts or collect some scattered thoughts, urged him to tell
the reason. But he said it was nothing--nothing--and, laying her head
upon his arm, patted her fair cheek with his hand, and muttered that
she grew stronger every day, and would be a woman, soon.
CHAPTER 55
From that time, there sprung up in the old man’s mind, a solicitude
about the child which never slept or left him. There are chords in the
human heart--strange, varying strings--which are only struck by
accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most
passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual
touch. In the most insensible or childish minds, there is some train
of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill assist, but which
will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the
discoverer has the plainest end in view. From that time, the old man
never, for a moment, forgot the weakness and devotion of the child;
from the time of that slight incident, he who had seen her toiling by
his side through so much difficulty and suffering, and had scarcely
thought of her otherwise than as the partner of miseries which he felt
severely in his own person, and deplored for his own sake at least as
much as hers, awoke to a sense of what he owed her, and what those