The Battle of Life by Charles Dickens (books to read to improve english txt) 📕

‘But, this is not our business, Alfred,’ said the Doctor. ‘Ceasing to be my ward (as you have said) to-day; and leaving us full to the brim of such learning as the Grammar School down here was able to give you, and your studies in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon both; you are away, now, into the world. The first term of probation appointed by your poor father, being over, away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his second desire. And long before your three years’ tour among the foreign schools of medicine is finished, you’ll have forgotten us. Lord, you’ll forget us easily in six months!’

‘If I do - But you know better; why should I speak to you!’ said Alfred, laughing.

‘I don’t know anything of the sort,’ returned the Doctor. ‘What do you say, Marion?’

Marion, trifling with her teacup, seemed to say - but she didn’t say it - that he was welcome to forget, if he could. Grace pressed the blooming face against her cheek, and smiled.

‘I haven’t been, I hope, a very unjust steward in the execution of my trust,’ pursued the Doctor; ‘but I am to be, at any rate, formally discharged, and released, and what not this morning; and here are our good friends Snitchey and Craggs, with a bagful of papers, and accounts, and documents, for the transfer of the balance of the trust fund to you (I wish it was a more difficult one to dispose of, Alfred, but you must get to be a great man and make it so), and other drolleries of that sort, which are to be signed, sealed, and delivered.’

‘And duly witnessed as by law required,’ said Snitchey, pushing away his plate, and taking out the papers, which his partner proceeded to spread upon the table; ‘and Self and Crags having been co-trustees with you, Doctor, in so far as the fund was concerned, we shall want your two servants to attest the signatures - can you read, Mrs. Newcome?’

‘I an’t married, Mister,’ said Clemency.

‘Oh! I beg your pardon. I should think not,’ chuckled Snitchey, casting his eyes over her extraordinary figure. ‘You CAN read?’

‘A little,’ answered Clemency.

‘The marriage service, night and morning, eh?’ observed the lawyer, jocosely.

‘No,’ said Clemency. ‘Too hard. I only reads a thimble.’

‘Read a thimble!’ echoed Snitchey. ‘What are you talking about, young woman?’

Clemency nodded. ‘And a nutmeg-grater.’

‘Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chancellor!’ said Snitchey, staring at her.

- ‘If possessed of any property,’ stipulated Craggs.

Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the articles in question bore an engraved motto, and so formed the pocket library of Clemency Newcome, who was not much given to the study of books.

‘Oh, that’s it, is it, Miss Grace!’ said Snitchey.

‘Yes, yes. Ha, ha, ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She looks uncommonly like it,’ he muttered, with a supercilious glance. ‘And what does the thimble say, Mrs. Newcome?’

‘I an’t married, Mister,’ observed Clemency.

‘Well, Newcome. Will that do?’ said the lawyer. ‘What does the thimble say, Newcome?’

How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one pocket open, and looked down into its yawning depths for the thimble which wasn’t there, - and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors in a sheath more expressively describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she entrusted individually and separately to Britain to hold, - is of no consequence.

Nor how, in her determination to grasp this pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to swing, and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed and calmly maintained, an attitude apparently inconsistent with the human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last she triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the nutmeg-grater: the literature of both those trinkets being obviously in course of wearing out and wasting away, through excessive friction.

‘That’s the thimble, is it, young woman?’ said Mr. Snitchey, diverting himself at her expense. ‘And what does the thimble say?’

‘It says,’ replied Clemency, reading slowly round as if it were a tower, ‘For-get and Forgive.’

Snitchey and Craggs laughed heartily. ‘So new!’ said Snitchey. ‘So easy!’ said Craggs. ‘Such a knowledge of human nature in it!’ said Snitchey. ‘So applicable to the affairs of life!’ said Craggs.

‘And the nutmeg-grater?’ inquired the head of the Firm.

‘The grater says,’ returned Clemency, ‘Do as you - wold - be - done by.’

‘Do, or you’ll be done brown, you mean,’ said Mr. Snitchey.

‘I don’t understand,’ retorted Clemency, shaking her head vaguely. ‘I an’t no lawyer.’

‘I am afraid that if she was, Doctor,’ said Mr. Snitchey, turning to him suddenly, as if to anticipate any effect that might otherwise be consequent on this retort, ‘she’d find it to be the golden rule of half her clients. They are serious enough in that - whimsical as your world is - and lay the blame on us afterwards. We, in our profession, are little else than mirrors after all, Mr. Alfred; but, we are generally consulted by angry and quarrelsome people who are not in their best looks, and it’s rather hard to quarrel with us if we reflect unpleasant aspects. I think,’ said Mr. Snitchey, ‘that I speak for Self and Craggs?’

‘Decidedly,’ said Craggs.

‘And so, if Mr. Britain will oblige us with a mouthful of ink,’ said Mr. Snitchey, returning to the papers, ‘we’ll sign, seal, and deliver as soon as possible, or the coach will be coming past before we know where we are.’

If one might judge from his appearance, there was every probability of the coach coming past before Mr. Britain knew where HE was; for he stood in a state of abstraction, mentally balancing the Doctor against the lawyers, and the lawyers against the Doctor, and their clients against both, and engaged in feeble attempts to make the thimble and nutmeg-grater (a new idea to him) square with anybody’s system of philosophy; and, in short, bewildering himself as much as ever his great namesake has done with theories and schools. But, Clemency, who was his good Genius - though he had the meanest possible opinion of her understanding, by reason of her seldom troubling herself with abstract speculations, and being always at hand to do the right thing at the right time - having produced the ink in a twinkling, tendered him the further service of recalling him to himself by the application of her elbows; with which gentle flappers she so jogged his memory, in a more literal construction of that phrase than usual, that he soon became quite fresh and brisk.

How he laboured under an apprehension not uncommon to persons in his degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is an event, that he couldn’t append his name to a document, not of his own writing, without committing himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow signing away vague and enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds under protest, and by dint of the Doctor’s coercion, and insisted on pausing to look at them before writing (the cramped hand, to say nothing of the phraseology, being so much Chinese to him), and also on turning them round to see whether there was anything fraudulent underneath; and how, having signed his name, he became desolate as one who had parted with his property and rights; I want the time to tell. Also, how the blue bag containing his signature, afterwards had a mysterious interest for him, and he couldn’t leave it; also, how Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of laughter at the idea of her own importance and dignity, brooded over the whole table with her two elbows, like a spread eagle, and reposed her head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the formation of certain cabalistic characters, which required a deal of ink, and imaginary counterparts whereof she executed at the same time with her tongue. Also, how, having once tasted ink, she became thirsty in that regard, as tame tigers are said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and wanted to sign everything, and put her name in all kinds of places. In brief, the Doctor was discharged of his trust and all its responsibilities; and Alfred, taking it on himself, was fairly started on the journey of life.

‘Britain!’ said the Doctor. ‘Run to the gate, and watch for the coach. Time flies, Alfred.’

‘Yes, sir, yes,’ returned the young man, hurriedly. ‘Dear Grace! a moment! Marion - so young and beautiful, so winning and so much admired, dear to my heart as nothing else in life is - remember! I leave Marion to you!’

‘She has always been a sacred charge to me, Alfred. She is doubly so, now. I will be faithful to my trust, believe me.’

‘I do believe it, Grace. I know it well. Who could look upon your face, and hear your voice, and not know it! Ah, Grace! If I had your well-governed heart, and tranquil mind, how bravely I would leave this place to-day!’

‘Would you?’ she answered with a quiet smile.

‘And yet, Grace - Sister, seems the natural word.’

‘Use it!’ she said quickly. ‘I am glad to hear it. Call me nothing else.’

‘And yet, sister, then,’ said Alfred, ‘Marion and I had better have your true and steadfast qualities serving us here, and making us both happier and better. I wouldn’t carry them away, to sustain myself, if I could!’

‘Coach upon the hill-top!’ exclaimed Britain.

‘Time flies, Alfred,’ said the Doctor.

Marion had stood apart, with her eyes fixed upon the ground; but, this warning being given, her young lover brought her tenderly to where her sister stood, and gave her into her embrace.

‘I have been telling Grace, dear Marion,’ he said, ‘that you are her charge; my precious trust at parting. And when I come back and reclaim you, dearest, and the bright prospect of our married life lies stretched before us, it shall be one of our chief pleasures to consult how we can make Grace happy; how we can anticipate her wishes; how we can show our gratitude and love to her; how we can return her something of the debt she will have heaped upon us.’

The younger sister had one hand in his; the other rested on her sister’s neck. She looked into that sister’s eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful, with a gaze in which affection, admiration, sorrow, wonder, almost veneration, were blended. She looked into that sister’s face, as if it were the face of some bright angel. Calm, serene, and cheerful, the face looked back on her and on her lover.

‘And when the time comes, as it must one day,’ said Alfred, - ‘I wonder it has never come yet, but Grace knows best, for Grace is always right - when SHE will want a friend to open her whole heart to, and to be to her something of what she has been to us - then, Marion, how faithful we will prove, and what delight to us to know that she, our dear good sister, loves and is loved again, as we would have her!’

Still the younger sister looked into her eyes, and turned not