The Old Curiosity Shop

Chapter 53

Nell was stirring early in the morning, and having discharged her
household tasks, and put everything in order for the good
schoolmaster (though sorely against his will, for he would have
spared her the pains), took down, from its nail by the fireside, a
little bundle of keys with which the bachelor had formally invested
her on the previous day, and went out alone to visit the old
church.

The sky was serene and bright, the air clear, perfumed with the
fresh scent of newly fallen leaves, and grateful to every sense.
The neighbouring stream sparkled, and rolled onward with a tuneful
sound; the dew glistened on the green mounds, like tears shed by
Good Spirits over the dead. Some young children sported among the
tombs, and hid from each other, with laughing faces. They had an
infant with them, and had laid it down asleep upon a child's grave,
in a little bed of leaves. It was a new grave--the resting-place,
perhaps, of some little creature, who, meek and patient in its
illness, had often sat and watched them, and now seemed, to their
minds, scarcely changed.

She drew near and asked one of them whose grave it was. The child
answered that that was not its name; it was a garden--his
brother's. It was greener, he said, than all the other gardens,
and the birds loved it better because he had been used to feed
them. When he had done speaking, he looked at her with a smile,
and kneeling down and nestling for a moment with his cheek against
the turf, bounded merrily away.

She passed the church, gazing upward at its old tower, went through
the wicket gate, and so into the village. The old sexton, leaning
on a crutch, was taking the air at his cottage door, and gave her
good morrow.

'You are better?' said the child, stopping to speak with him.

'Ay surely,' returned the old man. 'I'm thankful to say, much
better.'

'YOU will be quite well soon.'

'With Heaven's leave, and a little patience. But come in, come
in!'
The old man limped on before, and warning her of the downward step,
which he achieved himself with no small difficulty, led the way
into his little cottage.

'It is but one room you see. There is another up above, but the
stair has got harder to climb o' late years, and I never use it.
I'm thinking of taking to it again, next summer, though.'

The child wondered how a grey-headed man like him--one of his
trade too--could talk of time so easily. He saw her eyes
wandering to the tools that hung upon the wall, and smiled.

'I warrant now,' he said, 'that you think all those are used in
making graves.'

'Indeed, I wondered that you wanted so many.'

'And well you might. I am a gardener. I dig the ground, and plant
things that are to live and grow. My works don't all moulder away,
and rot in the earth. You see that spade in the centre?'

'The very old one--so notched and worn? Yes.'

'That's the sexton's spade, and it's a well-used one, as you see.
We're healthy people here, but it has done a power of work. If it
could speak now, that spade, it would tell you of many an
unexpected job that it and I have done together; but I forget 'em,
for my memory's a poor one. --That's nothing new,' he added
hastily. 'It always was.'

'There are flowers and shrubs to speak to your other work,' said
the child.

'Oh yes. And tall trees. But they are not so separate from the
sexton's labours as you think.'

'No!'

'Not in my mind, and recollection--such as it is,' said the old
man. 'Indeed they often help it. For say that I planted such a
tree for such a man. There it stands, to remind me that he died.
When I look at its broad shadow, and remember what it was in his
time, it helps me to the age of my other work, and I can tell you
pretty nearly when I made his grave.'

'But it may remind you of one who is still alive,' said the child.

'Of twenty that are dead, in connexion with that one who lives,
then,' rejoined the old man; 'wife, husband, parents, brothers,
sisters, children, friends--a score at least. So it happens that
the sexton's spade gets worn and battered. I shall need a new one
--next summer.'

The child looked quickly towards him, thinking that he jested with
his age and infirmity: but the unconscious sexton was quite in
earnest.

'Ah!' he said, after a brief silence. 'People never learn. They
never learn. It's only we who turn up the ground, where nothing
grows and everything decays, who think of such things as these--
who think of them properly, I mean. You have been into the
church?'

'I am going there now,' the child replied.

'There's an old well there,' said the sexton, 'right underneath the
belfry; a deep, dark, echoing well. Forty year ago, you had only
to let down the bucket till the first knot in the rope was free of
the windlass, and you heard it splashing in the cold dull water.
By little and little the water fell away, so that in ten year after
that, a second knot was made, and you must unwind so much rope, or
the bucket swung tight and empty at the end. In ten years' time,
the water fell again, and a third knot was made. In ten years
more, the well dried up; and now, if you lower the bucket till your
arms are tired, and let out nearly all the cord, you'll hear it, of
a sudden, clanking and rattling on the ground below; with a sound
of being so deep and so far down, that your heart leaps into your
mouth, and you start away as if you were falling in.'

'A dreadful place to come on in the dark!' exclaimed the child, who
had followed the old man's looks and words until she seemed to
stand upon its brink.

'What is it but a grave!' said the sexton. 'What else! And which
of our old folks, knowing all this, thought, as the spring
subsided, of their own failing strength, and lessening life? Not
one!'

'Are you very old yourself?' asked the child, involuntarily.

'I shall be seventy-nine--next summer.'

'You still work when you are well?'

'Work! To be sure. You shall see my gardens hereabout. Look at
the window there. I made, and have kept, that plot of ground
entirely with my own hands. By this time next year I shall hardly
see the sky, the boughs will have grown so thick. I have my winter
work at night besides.'

He opened, as he spoke, a cupboard close to where he sat, and
produced some miniature boxes, carved in a homely manner and made
of old wood.

'Some gentlefolks who are fond of ancient days, and what belongs to
them,' he said, 'like to buy these keepsakes from our church and
ruins. Sometimes, I make them of scraps of oak, that turn up here
and there; sometimes of bits of coffins which the vaults have long
preserved. See here--this is a little chest of the last kind,
clasped at the edges with fragments of brass plates that had
writing on 'em once, though it would be hard to read it now. I
haven't many by me at this time of year, but these shelves will be
full--next summer.'

The child admired and praised his work, and shortly afterwards
departed; thinking, as she went, how strange it was, that this old
man, drawing from his pursuits, and everything around him, one
stern moral, never contemplated its application to himself; and,
while he dwelt upon the uncertainty of human life, seemed both in
word and deed to deem himself immortal. But her musings did not
stop here, for she was wise enough to think that by a good and
merciful adjustment this must be human nature, and that the old
sexton, with his plans for next summer, was but a type of all
mankind.

Full of these meditations, she reached the church. It was easy to
find the key belonging to the outer door, for each was labelled on
a scrap of yellow parchment. Its very turning in the lock awoke a
hollow sound, and when she entered with a faltering step, the
echoes that it raised in closing, made her start.

If the peace of the simple village had moved the child more
strongly, because of the dark and troubled ways that lay beyond,
and through which she had journeyed with such failing feet, what
was the deep impression of finding herself alone in that solemn
building, where the very light, coming through sunken windows,
seemed old and grey, and the air, redolent of earth and mould,
seemed laden with decay, purified by time of all its grosser
particles, and sighing through arch and aisle, and clustered
pillars, like the breath of ages gone! Here was the broken
pavement, worn, so long ago, by pious feet, that Time, stealing on
the pilgrims' steps, had trodden out their track, and left but
crumbling stones. Here were the rotten beam, the sinking arch, the
sapped and mouldering wall, the lowly trench of earth, the stately
tomb on which no epitaph remained--all--marble, stone, iron,
wood, and dust--one common monument of ruin. The best work and the
worst, the plainest and the richest, the stateliest and the least
imposing--both of Heaven's work and Man's--all found one common
level here, and told one common tale.

Some part of the edifice had been a baronial chapel, and here were
effigies of warriors stretched upon their beds of stone with folded
hands--cross-legged, those who had fought in the Holy Wars--
girded with their swords, and cased in armour as they had lived.
Some of these knights had their own weapons, helmets, coats of
mail, hanging upon the walls hard by, and dangling from rusty
hooks. Broken and dilapidated as they were, they yet retained
their ancient form, and something of their ancient aspect. Thus
violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and
bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who
worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.

The child sat down, in this old, silent place, among the stark
figures on the tombs--they made it more quiet there, than
elsewhere, to her fancy--and gazing round with a feeling of awe,
tempered with a calm delight, felt that now she was happy, and at
rest. She took a Bible from the shelf, and read; then, laying it
down, thought of the summer days and the bright springtime that
would come--of the rays of sun that would fall in aslant, upon the
sleeping forms--of the leaves that would flutter at the window,
and play in glistening shadows on the pavement--of the songs of
birds, and growth of buds and blossoms out of doors--of the sweet
air, that would steal in, and gently wave the tattered banners
overhead. What if the spot awakened thoughts of death! Die who
would, it would still remain the same; these sights and sounds
would still go on, as happily as ever. It would be no pain to
sleep amidst them.

She left the chapel--very slowly and often turning back to gaze
again--and coming to a low door, which plainly led into the tower,
opened it, and climbed the winding stair in darkness; save where
she looked down, through narrow loopholes, on the place she had
left, or caught a glimmering vision of the dusty bells. At length
she gained the end of the ascent and stood upon the turret top.

Oh! the glory of the sudden burst of light; the freshness of the
fields and woods, stretching away on every side, and meeting the
bright blue sky; the cattle grazing in the pasturage; the smoke,
that, coming from among the trees, seemed to rise upward from the
green earth; the children yet at their gambols down below--all,
everything, so beautiful and happy! It was like passing from death
to life; it was drawing nearer Heaven.

The children were gone, when she emerged into the porch, and locked
the door. As she passed the school-house she could hear the busy
hum of voices. Her friend had begun his labours only on that day.
The noise grew louder, and, looking back, she saw the boys come
trooping out and disperse themselves with merry shouts and play.
'It's a good thing,' thought the child, 'I am very glad they pass
the church.' And then she stopped, to fancy how the noise would
sound inside, and how gently it would seem to die away upon the
ear.

Again that day, yes, twice again, she stole back to the old chapel,
and in her former seat read from the same book, or indulged the
same quiet train of thought. Even when it had grown dusk, and the
shadows of coming night made it more solemn still, the child
remained, like one rooted to the spot, and had no fear or thought
of stirring.

They found her there, at last, and took her home. She looked pale
but very happy, until they separated for the night; and then, as
the poor schoolmaster stooped down to kiss her cheek, he thought he
felt a tear upon his face.