The Chimes(教堂钟声)

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The Chimes

CHAPTER I - First Quarter.

HERE are not many people - and as it is desirable that a story- teller

and a story-reader should establish a mutual understanding as soon as

possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to

young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people:

little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or already growing down

again - there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a

church. I don't mean at sermon-time in warm weather (when the thing

has actually been done, once or twice), but in the night, and alone. A

great multitude of persons will be violently astonished, I know, by this

position, in the broad bold Day. But it applies to Night. It must be

argued by night, and I will undertake to maintain it successfully on any

gusty winter's night appointed for the purpose, with any one opponent

chosen from the rest, who will meet me singly in an old churchyard,

before an old church-door; and will previously empower me to lock him in,

if needful to his satisfaction, until morning.

For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round and round a

building of that sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying, with its unseen

hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by which

to enter. And when it has got in; as one not finding what it seeks,

whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth again: and not

content with stalking through the aisles, and gliding round and round the

pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to

rend the rafters: then flings itself despairingly upon the stones below, and

passes, muttering, into the vaults. Anon, it comes up stealthily, and

creeps along the walls, seeming to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions

sacred to the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as with

laughter; and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a

ghostly sound too, lingering within the altar; where it seems to chaunt, in

its wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped, in

defiance of the Tables of the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but are

so flawed and broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round

The Chimes

the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing in a church!

But, high up in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles!

High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an

airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair,

and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and

shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are

ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing

weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds

stuff shabby nests into corners of old oaken joists and beams; and dust

grows old and grey; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long

security, swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never loose

their hold upon their thread-spun castles in the air, or climb up sailor-like

in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of nimble legs to

save one life! High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the light

and murmur of the town and far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is

the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old

church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of.

They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these Bells had been

baptized by bishops: so many centuries ago, that the register of their

baptism was lost long, long before the memory of man, and no one knew

their names. They had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these Bells

(for my own part, by the way, I would rather incur the responsibility of

being Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had their silver mugs no doubt,

besides. But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the

Eighth had melted down their mugs; and they now hung, nameless and

mugless, in the church- tower.

Not speechless, though. Far from it. They had clear, loud, lusty,

sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard

upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on

the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when

it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a

listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard on stormy nights, by

some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose

husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known to beat a blustering

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Nor' Wester; aye, 'all to fits,' as Toby Veck said; - for though they chose to

call him Trotty Veck, his name was Toby, and nobody could make it

anything else either (except Tobias) without a special act of parliament; he

having been as lawfully christened in his day as the Bells had been in

theirs, though with not quite so much of solemnity or public rejoicing.

For my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck's belief, for I am sure he

had opportunities enough of forming a correct one. And whatever Toby

Veck said, I say. And I take my stand by Toby Veck, although he DID

stand all day long (and weary work it was) just outside the church-door.

In fact he was a ticket-porter, Toby Veck, and waited there for jobs.

And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-

chattering place it was, to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby Veck well

knew. The wind came tearing round the corner - especially the east wind

- as if it had sallied forth, express, from the confines of the earth, to have a

blow at Toby. And oftentimes it seemed to come upon him sooner than it

had expected, for bouncing round the corner, and passing Toby, it would

suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried 'Why, here he is!' Incontinently

his little white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty

boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and

struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous

agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in this direction,

now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and to touzled, and worried,

and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but one

degree removed from a positive miracle, that he wasn't carried up bodily

into the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other very portable creatures

sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great astonishment of the

natives, on some strange corner of the world where ticket- porters are

unknown.

But, windy weather, in spite of its using him so roughly, was, after all,

a sort of holiday for Toby. That's the fact. He didn't seem to wait so

long for a sixpence in the wind, as at other times; the having to fight with

that boisterous element took off his attention, and quite freshened him up,

when he was getting hungry and low-spirited. A hard frost too, or a fall

of snow, was an Event; and it seemed to do him good, somehow or other -

The Chimes

it would have been hard to say in what respect though, Toby! So wind

and frost and snow, and perhaps a good stiff storm of hail, were Toby

Veck's red-letter days.

Wet weather was the worst; the cold, damp, clammy wet, that wrapped

him up like a moist great-coat - the only kind of great-coat Toby owned, or

could have added to his comfort by dispensing with. Wet days, when the

rain came slowly, thickly, obstinately down; when the street's throat, like

his own, was choked with mist; when smoking umbrellas passed and re-

passed, spinning round and round like so many teetotums, as they knocked

against each other on the crowded footway, throwing off a little whirlpool

of uncomfortable sprinklings; when gutters brawled and waterspouts were

full and noisy; when the wet from the projecting stones and ledges of the

church fell drip, drip, drip, on Toby, making the wisp of straw on which he

stood mere mud in no time; those were the days that tried him. Then,

indeed, you might see Toby looking anxiously out from his shelter in an

angle of the church wall - such a meagre shelter that in summer time it

never cast a shadow thicker than a good- sized walking stick upon the

sunny pavement - with a disconsolate and lengthened face. But coming

out, a minute afterwards, to warm himself by exercise, and trotting up and

down some dozen times, he would brighten even then, and go back more

brightly to his niche.

They called him Trotty from his pace, which meant speed if it didn't

make it. He could have walked faster perhaps; most likely; but rob him

of his trot, and Toby would have taken to his bed and died. It bespattered

him with mud in dirty weather; it cost him a world of trouble; he could

have walked with infinitely greater ease; but that was one reason for his

clinging to it so tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old man, he was a very

Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions. He loved to earn his money.

He delighted to believe - Toby was very poor, and couldn't well afford to

part with a delight - that he was worth his salt. With a shilling or an

eighteenpenny message or small parcel in hand, his courage always high,

rose higher. As he trotted on, he would call out to fast Postmen ahead of

him, to get out of the way; devoutly believing that in the natural course of

things he must inevitably overtake and run them down; and he had perfect

The Chimes

faith - not often tested - in his being able to carry anything that man could

lift.

Thus, even when he came out of his nook to warm himself on a wet

day, Toby trotted. Making, with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of slushy

footprints in the mire; and blowing on his chilly hands and rubbing them

against each other, poorly defended from the searching cold by threadbare

mufflers of grey worsted, with a private apartment only for the thumb, and

a common room or tap for the rest of the fingers; Toby, with his knees bent

and his cane beneath his arm, still trotted. Falling out into the road to

look up at the belfry when the Chimes resounded, Toby trotted still.

He made this last excursion several times a day, for they were

company to him; and when he heard their voices, he had an interest in

glancing at their lodging-place, and thinking how they were moved, and

what hammers beat upon them. Perhaps he was the more curious about

these Bells, because there were points of resemblance between themselves

and him. They hung there, in all weathers, with the wind and rain

driving in upon them; facing only the outsides of all those houses; never

getting any nearer to the blazing fires that gleamed and shone upon the

windows, or came puffing out of the chimney tops; and incapable of

participation in any of the good things that were constantly being handled,

through the street doors and the area railings, to prodigious cooks. Faces

came and went at many windows: sometimes pretty faces, youthful faces,

pleasant faces: sometimes the reverse: but Toby knew no more (though

he often speculated on these trifles, standing idle in the streets) whence

they came, or where they went, or whether, when the lips moved, one kind

word was said of him in all the year, than did the Chimes themselves.

Toby was not a casuist - that he knew of, at least - and I don't mean to

say that when he began to take to the Bells, and to knit up his first rough

acquaintance with them into something of a closer and more delicate woof,

he passed through these considerations one by one, or held any formal

review or great field-day in his thoughts. But what I mean to say, and do

say is, that as the functions of Toby's body, his digestive organs for

example, did of their own cunning, and by a great many operations of

which he was altogether ignorant, and the knowledge of which would have

The Chimes

astonished him very much, arrive at a certain end; so his mental faculties,

without his privity or concurrence, set all these wheels and springs in

motion, with a thousand others, when they worked to bring about his

liking for the Bells.

And though I had said his love, I would not have recalled the word,

though it would scarcely have expressed his complicated feeling. For,

being but a simple man, he invested them with a strange and solemn

character. They were so mysterious, often heard and never seen; so high

up, so far off, so full of such a deep strong melody, that he regarded them

with a species of awe; and sometimes when he looked up at the dark

arched windows in the tower, he half expected to be beckoned to by

something which was not a Bell, and yet was what he had heard so often

sounding in the Chimes. For all this, Toby scouted with indignation a

certain flying rumour that the Chimes were haunted, as implying the

possibility of their being connected with any Evil thing. In short, they

were very often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always in

his good opinion; and he very often got such a crick in his neck by staring

with his mouth wide open, at the steeple where they hung, that he was fain

to take an extra trot or two, afterwards, to cure it.

The very thing he was in the act of doing one cold day, when the last

drowsy sound of Twelve o'clock, just struck, was humming like a

melodious monster of a Bee, and not by any means a busy bee, all through

the steeple!

'Dinner-time, eh!' said Toby, trotting up and down before the church.

'Ah!'

Toby's nose was very red, and his eyelids were very red, and he

winked very much, and his shoulders were very near his ears, and his legs

were very stiff, and altogether he was evidently a long way upon the frosty

side of cool.

'Dinner-time, eh!' repeated Toby, using his right-hand muffler like an

infantine boxing-glove, and punishing his chest for being cold. 'Ah-h-h-h!'

He took a silent trot, after that, for a minute or two.

'There's nothing,' said Toby, breaking forth afresh - but here he stopped

short in his trot, and with a face of great interest and some alarm, felt his

The Chimes

nose carefully all the way up. It was but a little way (not being much of a

nose) and he had soon finished.

'I thought it was gone,' said Toby, trotting off again. 'It's all right,

however. I am sure I couldn't blame it if it was to go. It has a precious

hard service of it in the bitter weather, and precious little to look forward

to; for I don't take snuff myself. It's a good deal tried, poor creetur, at the

best of times; for when it DOES get hold of a pleasant whiff or so (which

an't too often) it's generally from somebody else's dinner, a-coming home

from the baker's.'

The reflection reminded him of that other reflection, which he had left

unfinished.

'There's nothing,' said Toby, 'more regular in its coming round than

dinner-time, and nothing less regular in its coming round than dinner.

That's the great difference between 'em. It's took me a long time to find

it out. I wonder whether it would be worth any gentleman's while, now,

to buy that obserwation for the Papers; or the Parliament!'

Toby was only joking, for he gravely shook his head in self-

depreciation.

'Why! Lord!' said Toby. 'The Papers is full of obserwations as it is;

and so's the Parliament. Here's last week's paper, now;' taking a very

dirty one from his pocket, and holding it from him at arm's length; 'full of

obserwations! Full of obserwations! I like to know the news as well as

any man,' said Toby, slowly; folding it a little smaller, and putting it in his

pocket again: 'but it almost goes against the grain with me to read a

paper now. It frightens me almost. I don't know what we poor people

are coming to. Lord send we may be coming to something better in the

New Year nigh upon us!'

'Why, father, father!' said a pleasant voice, hard by.

But Toby, not hearing it, continued to trot backwards and forwards:

musing as he went, and talking to himself.

'It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted,' said Toby.

'I hadn't much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can't make out

whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not.

Sometimes I think we must have - a little; and sometimes I think we must

The Chimes

be intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make

up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born

bad. We seem to be dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble;

we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or

other, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!' said Toby, mournfully. 'I

can bear up as well as another man at most times; better than a good many,

for I am as strong as a lion, and all men an't; but supposing it should really

be that we have no right to a New Year - supposing we really ARE

intruding - '

'Why, father, father!' said the pleasant voice again.

Toby heard it this time; started; stopped; and shortening his sight,

which had been directed a long way off as seeking the enlightenment in

the very heart of the approaching year, found himself face to face with his

own child, and looking close into her eyes.

Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear a world of looking in,

before their depth was fathomed. Dark eyes, that reflected back the eyes

which searched them; not flashingly, or at the owner's will, but with a

clear, calm, honest, patient radiance, claiming kindred with that light

which Heaven called into being. Eyes that were beautiful and true, and

beaming with Hope. With Hope so young and fresh; with Hope so

buoyant, vigorous, and bright, despite the twenty years of work and

poverty on which they had looked; that they became a voice to Trotty

Veck, and said: 'I think we have some business here - a little!'

Trotty kissed the lips belonging to the eyes, and squeezed the

blooming face between his hands.

'Why, Pet,' said Trotty. 'What's to do? I didn't expect you to- day,

Meg.'

'Neither did I expect to come, father,' cried the girl, nodding her head

and smiling as she spoke. 'But here I am! And not alone; not alone!'

'Why you don't mean to say,' observed Trotty, looking curiously at a

covered basket which she carried in her hand, 'that you - '

'Smell it, father dear,' said Meg. 'Only smell it!'

Trotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a great hurry, when she

gaily interposed her hand.

The Chimes

'No, no, no,' said Meg, with the glee of a child. 'Lengthen it out a

little. Let me just lift up the corner; just the lit-tle ti-ny cor-ner, you

know,' said Meg, suiting the action to the word with the utmost gentleness,

and speaking very softly, as if she were afraid of being overheard by

something inside the basket; 'there. Now. What's that?'

Toby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the basket, and

cried out in a rapture:

'Why, it's hot!'

'It's burning hot!' cried Meg. 'Ha, ha, ha! It's scalding hot!'

'Ha, ha, ha!' roared Toby, with a sort of kick. 'It's scalding hot!'

'But what is it, father?' said Meg. 'Come. You haven't guessed what

it is. And you must guess what it is. I can't think of taking it out, till

you guess what it is. Don't be in such a hurry! Wait a minute! A little

bit more of the cover. Now guess!'

Meg was in a perfect fright lest he should guess right too soon;

shrinking away, as she held the basket towards him; curling up her pretty

shoulders; stopping her ear with her hand, as if by so doing she could keep

the right word out of Toby's lips; and laughing softly the whole time.

Meanwhile Toby, putting a hand on each knee, bent down his nose to

the basket, and took a long inspiration at the lid; the grin upon his

withered face expanding in the process, as if he were inhaling laughing

gas.

'Ah! It's very nice,' said Toby. 'It an't - I suppose it an't Polonies?'

'No, no, no!' cried Meg, delighted. 'Nothing like Polonies!'

'No,' said Toby, after another sniff. 'It's - it's mellower than Polonies.

It's very nice. It improves every moment. It's too decided for Trotters.

An't it?'

Meg was in an ecstasy. He could not have gone wider of the mark

than Trotters - except Polonies.

'Liver?' said Toby, communing with himself. 'No. There's a

mildness about it that don't answer to liver. Pettitoes? No. It an't faint

enough for pettitoes. It wants the stringiness of Cocks' heads. And I

know it an't sausages. I'll tell you what it is. It's chitterlings!'

'No, it an't!' cried Meg, in a burst of delight. 'No, it an't!'

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TheChimes1TheChimesTheChimes2CHAPTERI-FirstQuarter.HEREarenotmanypeople-andasitisdesirablethatastory-tellerandastory-readershouldestablishamutualunderstandingassoonaspossible,IbegittobenoticedthatIconfinethisobservationneithertoyoungpeoplenortolittlepeople,butextendittoallconditionsofpeople:littlean...

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