TILLY SLOWBOY."TILLY SLOWBOY."
Although still in her earliest teens, Tilly Slowboy was a nursery-maid for little Mrs. Peerybingle's baby, and despite her extreme youth, was a most enthusiastic and unusual nursery-maid indeed.
It may be noted of Miss Slowboy that she had a rare and surprising talent for getting the baby into difficulties; and had several times imperilled its short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own.
She was of a spare and straight shape, this young lady, insomuch that her garments appeared to be in constant danger of sliding off those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for the partial development on all possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular structure; also affording glimpses, in the region of the back, of a pair of stays, in color a dead green.
Being always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's perfections, and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment may be said to have done equal honor to her head and to her heart; and though these did less honor to the baby's head, which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bed-posts, and other foreign substances, still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy's constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated and installed in such a comfortable home. For the maternal and paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been bred by public charity, a foundling; which word, though only differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in meaning, and expresses quite another thing.
It was a singularly happy and united family in which Tilly's lot was cast. Honest John Peerybingle, Carrier; his pretty little wife, whom he called Dot; the very remarkable doll of a baby; the dog Boxer; and the Cricket on the Hearth, whose cheerful chirp, chirp, chirp, was a continual family blessing and good-omen;--were collectively and severally the objects of Tilly's unbounded admiration.
If ever a person or thing alarmed Tilly, she would hastily seek protection near the skirts of her pretty little mistress; or, failing that, would make a charge or butt at the object of her fright with the only offensive instrument within her reach--which usually happened to be the baby. Tilly's bump of good fortune being extraordinarily well developed, the baby usually managed to come out from the siege unharmed, to be soothed and comforted in Tilly's own peculiar fashion; her most common method of amusement being to reproduce for its entertainment scraps of conversation current in the house, with all the sense left out of them, and all the nouns changed to the plural number, as--"Did its mothers make it up a beds then! And did its hair grow brown and curly when its cap was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the fire!"
It was a notable and exciting event to Miss Slowboy when she set out one day in the Carrier's cart, with her little mistress and the remarkable baby, to have dinner with Caleb Plummer's blind daughter, Bertha, who was Mrs. Dot's devoted friend.
In consequence of the departure, there was a pretty sharp commotion at John Peerybingle's, for to get the baby under weigh took time. Not that there was much of the baby, speaking of it as a thing of weight and measure, but there was a vast deal to do about it, and all had to be done by easy stages. When the baby was got, by hook and by crook, to a certain point of dressing, and you might have supposed that another touch or two would finish him off, he was unexpectedly extinguished, and hustled off to bed; where he simmered (so to speak) between two blankets for the best part of an hour, while Mrs. Peerybingle took advantage of the interval to make herself smart for the trip, and during the same short truce, Miss Slowboy insinuated herself into a spencer, of a fashion so surprising and ingenious, that it had no connection with herself, or anything else in the universe, but was a shrunken, dog's-eared, independent fact, pursuing its lonely course without the least regard to anybody. By this time, the baby, being all alive again, was invested by the united efforts of Mrs. Peerybingle and Miss Slowboy, with a cream-colored mantle for its body, and a sort of nankeen raised-pie for its head, and in course of time they all three got down to the door, where the old horse was waiting to convey them on their trip.
In reference to Miss Slowboy's ascent into the cart, if I might be allowed to mention a young lady's legs, on any terms, I would observe of her that there was a fatality about hers which rendered them singularly liable to be grazed; and that she never effected the smallest ascent or descent without recording the circumstance upon them with a notch, as Robinson Crusoe marked the days upon his wooden calendar. But as this might be considered ungenteel, I'll think of it--merely observing that when the three were all safely settled in the cart, and the basket containing the Veal-and-Ham Pie and other delicacies, which Mrs. Peerybingle always carried when she visited the blind girl, was stowed away, they jogged on for some little time in silence.
But not for long, for everybody on the road had something to say to the occupants of John Peerybingle's cart, and sometimes passengers on foot, or horseback, plodded on a little way beside the cart, for the express purpose of having a chat. Then, too, the packages and parcels for the errand cart were numerous, and there were many stoppages to take them in and give them out, which was not the least interesting part of the journey.
Of all the little incidents of the day, Dot was the amused and open-eyed spectatress from her chair in the cart; making a charming little portrait as she sat there, looking on. And this delighted John the Carrier beyond measure.
The trip was a little foggy, to be sure, in the January weather, and was raw and cold. But who cared for such trifles! Not Dot, decidedly. Not Tilly Slowboy, for she deemed sitting in a cart on any terms, to be the highest point of human joy; the crowning circumstance of earthly hopes. Not the baby, I'll be sworn; for it's not in baby nature to be warmer or more sound asleep than that blessed young Peerybingle was all the way.
In one place there was a mound of weeds burning, and they watched the fire until, in consequence, as she observed, of the smoke "getting up her nose," Miss Slowboy choked--she could do anything of that sort on the smallest provocation--and woke the baby, who wouldn't go to sleep again.
But, at that moment they came in sight of the blind girl's home, where she was waiting with keen anticipation to receive them.
Bertha had other visitors as well that day, and the picnic dinner proceeded in a very stately and dignified manner. Miss Slowboy was isolated, for the time being, from every article of furniture but the chair she sat on, that she might have nothing else to knock the baby's head against, and sat staring about her in unspeakable delight. To her the day was all too short, and when that evening John Peerybingle making his return trip, called to take them home, Miss Slowboy's regret was intense.
As long as her little mistress smiled, Tilly's face too was wreathed in smiles; but when a hidden shadow darkened the Perrybingle sky, overclouding the happiness of the little home, and Dot cried all night, Tilly's eyes were red and swollen too, the next morning.
It happened in this way. Pretty little Dot gave good John Perrybingle cause for anxiety by her actions, and the honest carrier, disturbed and misled, felt that he had reason to doubt her love for him, which almost broke his honest, faithful heart. While he was worrying over this, and over her, his little wife was merely shielding a secret belonging to Edward Plummer, Bertha's brother, who had just come back, after many year's absence in the golden South Americas.
So unaccustomed was Dot to keeping a secret that it caused her to act very strangely, and give her husband reason to misjudge her, which almost broke her loving little heart. All of which trouble Tilly Slowboy did not understand, but was deeply affected by it, and when she found her mistress alone, sobbing piteously, was quite horrified, exclaiming:
"Ow, if you please, don't! It's enough to dead and bury the baby, so it is, if you please!"
"Will you bring him sometimes, to see his father, Tilly?" inquired her mistress, drying her eyes; "when I can't live here, and have gone to my old home?"
"Ow, if you please,don't!" cried Tilly, throwing back her head and bursting out into a howl--she looked at the moment uncommonly like Boxer--"Ow, if you please, don't! Ow, what has everybody been and gone and done with everybody, making everybody else so wretched. Ow-w-w-w!"
The soft-hearted Slowboy trailed off at this juncture, into such a deplorable howl, the more tremendous from its long suppression, that she must infallibly have wakened the baby and frightened him into something serious (probably convulsions) if her attention had not been forcibly diverted from her misery for a moment, after which she stood for some time silent, with her mouth wide open; and then, posting off to the bed on which the baby lay asleep, danced in a weird, Saint Vitus manner, on the floor, and at the same time rummaged with her face and head among the bedclothes, apparently deriving much relief from those extraordinary operations.
Fortunately for all concerned in the little domestic drama, before a crisis had been reached, Edward Plummer revealed his secret, and his reasons for having been obliged to keep it. This cleared up the mystery concerning Mrs. Dot's conduct, proving her to be the same loyal, loving little wife she always was: to the exquisite satisfaction of the honest carrier, his family and friends, and last but not least, Miss Slowboy, who wept copiously for joy, and wishing to include her young charge in the general interchange of congratulations, handed round the baby to everybody in succession, as if it were something to eat or drink.
Of course it became a serious duty now, to make such a day of it as should mark these events for a high feast and festival in the Peerybingle Calendar forevermore. Accordingly, Dot went to work to produce such an entertainment as should reflect undying honor on the house and on every one concerned, and in a very short space of time everybody in the house was in a state of flutter and domestic turmoil and during the flurry of preparation, everybody tumbled over Tilly Slowboy and the baby everywhere. Tilly never came out in such force before. Her ubiquity was the theme of universal admiration. She was a stumbling-block in the passage at five-and-twenty minutes past two; a man-trap in the kitchen at half-past two precisely; and a pitfall in the garret at five-and-twenty minutes to three. The baby's head was, as it were, a test and touchstone for every description of matter,--animal, vegetable, and mineral. Nothing was in use that day that didn't come, at some time or other, into close acquaintance with it.
That was a great celebration indeed, with Dot doing the honors in her wedding-gown, her eyes sparkling with happiness, and the good carrier, so jovial and so ruddy at the bottom of the table, and all their guests aiding to make the occasion a memorable and happy one.
There was a dance in the evening, for which Bertha played her liveliest tune. Inspired by infectious joy, old and young get up and join the whirling throng. Suddenly Caleb Plummer clutches Tilly Slowboy by both hands and goes off at score, Miss Slowboy firm in the belief that diving hotly in among the couples, and effecting any number of concussions with them, is your only principle of footing it, and ecstatically glad to abandon herself to the delights of the occasion, so long as she sees joy written again on the pretty face of her beloved little mistress, and feels that happiness has been restored to honest John Peerybingle and his family.
Hark! How the Cricket on the Hearth joins in the music, with its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp, and how the kettle hums!
AGNES WICKFIELD."AGNES WICKFIELD."
When I became the adopted son of my aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, my new clothes were marked Trotwood Copperfield, instead of the old familiar David of my childhood; and I began my new life, not only in the new name, but with everything new about me, and felt for many days like one in a dream, until I had proved the happy reality to be a fact.
My aunt's first desire was to place me in a good school at Canterbury, and, lack of education having been my chief source of anxiety, this resolve gave me unbounded delight. So it was with a flutter of joyful anticipation that I accompanied her to Canterbury to call upon her agent and friend Mr. Wickfield, and to confer with him upon the all-important subject of schools and boarding places.
Arriving at Canterbury, we stopped before a very old house, bulging out over the road, with long low latticed windows bulging out still further, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too; so that I fancied the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness. The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been covered with fair linen, and all the angles, and corners, and carvings, and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon the hills.
When the pony chaise stopped at the door, we alighted and had a long conference with Mr. Wickfield, an elderly gentleman with grey hair and black eyebrows. He approved of my aunt's selection of Dr. Strong's school, and in regard to a home for me, made the following proposal:
"Leave your nephew here for the present. He's a quiet fellow. He won't disturb me at all. It's a capital house for study. As quiet as a monastery, and almost as roomy. Leave him here."
My aunt evidently liked the offer, but was delicate of accepting it, until Mr. Wickfield cried, "Come! I know how you feel, you shall not be oppressed by the receipt of favors, Miss Trotwood. You may pay for him if you like."
"On that understanding," said my aunt, "though it doesn't lessen the real obligation, I shall be very glad to leave him."
"Then come and see my little housekeeper," said Mr. Wickfield.
We accordingly went up a wonderful old staircase, with a balustrade so broad that we might have gone up that, almost as easily, and into a shady old drawing-room, lighted by three or four quaint windows which had old oak seats in them, that seemed to have come of the same trees as the shining oak floor, and the great beams in the ceiling. It was a prettily furnished room, with a piano, and some lively furniture in red and green, and some flowers. It seemed to be all odd nooks and corners; and in every nook and corner there was some queer little table, or cupboard, or bookcase, or seat, or something or other, that made me think there was not such another corner in the room, until I looked at the next one and found it equal to it if not better. On everything there was the same air of refinement and cleanliness that marked the house outside.
Mr. Wickfield tapped at a door in a corner of the panelled wall, and a girl of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him. On her face, I saw immediately the placid and sweet expression of a lady whose portrait I had seen downstairs. It seemed to my imagination as if the portrait had grown womanly, and the original had remained a child. Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquillity about it, and about her--a quiet, good, calm, spirit--that I never have forgotten; that I never shall forget.
This was his little housekeeper, his daughter Agnes, Mr. Wickfield said. When I heard how he said it, and saw how he held her hand, I guessed what the one motive of his life was.
She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side with keys in it; and she looked as staid and discreet a housekeeper as the old house could have. She listened to her father as he told her about me, with a pleasant face; and when he had concluded, proposed to my aunt that we should go upstairs, and see my room. We all went together, she before us. A glorious old room it was, with more oak beams, and diamond panes; and the broad balustrade going all the way up to it.
I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, I had seen a stained-glass window in a church. Nor do I recollect its subject. But I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of the old staircase, and wait for us above, I thought of that window; and I associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards.
My aunt was as happy as I was, in the arrangement made for me, and we went down to the drawing-room again, well pleased and gratified, and shortly after this my aunt took her departure, in consequence of which for some hours I was very much dejected. But by five o'clock, which was Mr. Wickfield's dinner hour, I had mustered up my spirits again, and was ready for my knife and fork. The cloth was only laid for us two; but Agnes was waiting in the drawing-room before dinner, and went down with her father, and sat opposite to him at table. I doubted whether he could have dined without her.
We did not stay there after dinner, but came upstairs into the drawing-room again, in one snug corner of which Agnes set glasses for her father, and a decanter of port wine. There he sat, taking his wine, while Agnes played on the piano, worked, and talked to him and me. Later Agnes made the tea, and presided over it; and the time passed away after it as after dinner, until she went to bed; when her father took her in his arms and kissed her, and, she being gone, ordered candles in his office. Then I went to bed too.
Next morning I entered on my new school life at Dr. Strong's, and began a happy existence in an excellent establishment, the character and dignity of which we each felt it our duty to maintain. We felt that we had a part in the management of the school, and learned with a good will, desiring to do it credit. We had noble games out of hours, and plenty of liberty; but were well spoken of in the town, and rarely did any disgrace by our appearance or manner, to the reputation of Dr. Strong or Dr. Strong's boys, and the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school.
On that first day when I returned home from school, Agnes was in the drawing-room, waiting for her father. She met me with her pleasant smile, and asked me how I liked the school. I told her I should like it very much, I hoped; but I was a little strange to it at first.
"You have never been to school," I said, "have you?"
"Oh yes! every day."
"Ah, but you mean here, at your own home?"
"Papa couldn't spare me to go anywhere else," she answered smiling and shaking her head, "His housekeeper must be in his house, you know."
"He's very fond of you, I am sure," I said.
She nodded, "Yes," and went to the door to listen for his coming up, that she might meet him on the stairs. But as he was not there, she came back again.
"Mamma has been dead ever since I was born," she said in her quiet way. "I only know her picture, downstairs. I saw you looking at it yesterday. Did you think whose it was?"
I told her yes, because it was so like herself.
"Papa says so, too," said Agnes, pleased. "Hark! that's Papa now!"
Her bright calm face lighted up with pleasure as she went to meet him, and as they came in, hand in hand; and from that time as I watched her day by day, I saw no trace in Agnes of anything but single-hearted devotion to that father, whose wants she cared for so untiringly in her beautiful quiet way.
When we had dined that night, we went upstairs again, where everything went on exactly as on the previous day. Agnes set the glasses and decanters in the same corner, and Mr. Wickfield sat down to drink. Agnes played the piano to him, sat by him, and worked and talked, and played some games at dominoes with me. In good time she made tea; and afterwards, when I brought down my books, looked into them, and showed me what she knew of them (which was no slight matter, though she said it was), and what was the best way to learn and understand them. I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid, manner, and I hear her beautiful, calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time begins already to descend upon my breast. I love little Emily, and I don't love Agnes--no, not at all in that way--but I feel that there are goodness, peace, and truth wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the colored window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and on me when I am near her, and on everything around.
The time having come for her withdrawal for the night, as I gave Mr. Wickfield my hand, preparatory to going away myself, he checked me and said; "Should you like to stay with us, Trotwood, or go elsewhere?"
"To stay," I answered quickly.
"You are sure?"
"If you please. If I may."
"Why, it's but a dull life that we lead here, boy, I'm afraid," he said.
"Not more dull for me than Agnes, sir. Not dull at all!"
"Than Agnes," he repeated, walking slowly to the great chimney-piece, and leaning against it. "Than Agnes! Now I wonder," he muttered, "whether my Agnes tires of me. When should I ever tire of her? But that's different, that's quite different."
He was musing, not speaking to me; so I remained quiet.
"A dull, old house," he said, "and a monotonous life, Stay with us, Trotwood, eh?" he added in his usual manner, and as if he were answering something I had just said. "I'm glad of it. You are company to us both. It is wholesome to have you here. Wholesome for me, wholesome for Agnes wholesome perhaps for all of us."
"I'm sure it is for me, sir," I said, "I'm so glad to be here."
"That's a fine fellow!" said Mr. Wickfield. "As long as you are glad to be here, you shall stay here."
And so I lived at Mr. Wickfield's through the remainder of my schooldays, and to Agnes, as the months went by, I turned more and more often for advice and counsel.
We saw a good deal of Dr. Strong's wife, both because she had taken a liking to me, and because she was very fond of Agnes, and was often backwards and forwards at our house, and we had pleasant evenings at the doctor's too, with other guests, when we had merry round games of cards, or music--for both Mrs. Strong and Agnes sang sweetly--and so, with weekly visits from my aunt, and walks and talks with Agnes, and the events and phases of feeling too numerous to chronicle, which make up a boy's existence, my schooldays glided all too swiftly by.
Time has stolen on unobserved. I am higher in the school and no one breaks my peace. Dr. Strong refers to me in public as a promising young scholar, and my aunt remits me a guinea by next post. And what comes now? I am the head boy! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life--and almost think of him as of some one else.
What other changes have come upon me, beside the changes in my growth and looks, and in the knowledge I have garnered all this while? I wear a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed coat; and twice have I been desperately in love with a fair damsel, and have twice recovered.
And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield's, where is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture, a child's likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes, my sweet sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my counsellor and friend, the better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good, self-denying influence--is quite a woman.
When the time came to take leave of Agnes and her father, though it saddened me, my mind was so filled with thoughts of self that I paid little heed to Agnes and her brave farewell, nor did I realize what her loneliness would be when the old and silent house was made doubly silent by the removal of a boy's presence. I did not then understand what her devotion to the elderly father and his interests held of sacrifice for one so young, nor of what fine clay the girl was moulded. But in later years I realized it fully, and looking back, I always saw her as when on that first day, in the grave light of the old staircase, I thought of the stained-glass window, associating something of its tranquil brightness with her ever afterwards.
With Agnes the woman, and the influence for all good which she came to exercise over me at a later time, this story does not deal. It need only record the simple details of the girl's quiet life,--of the girl's calm strong nature,--that there were goodness, peace and truth wherever Agnes was,--Agnes, my boyhood's sister, counsellor and friend.