Charles Dickens

“ He himself had felt as if that one event had made him old before his time; and had envied Tom the tears he had shed over poor, pretty, innocent, dead Lizzie. He thought about her sometimes, till he ground his teeth, and could have struck her down in her shame. His mother had never named her to him until now.
“Mother!” said he at last. “She may be dead. Most likely she is.”
“No, Will; she is not dead,” said Mrs. Leigh. “God will not let her die till I’ve seen her once again. ”

“ She now said in Polish,
“You have a right, my Lord Roszynski, to that poor Anielka who escaped from the service of your wife in Florence; you can force her back to your palace, to its meanest work, but”—
“Have mercy on me!” cried Leon.
“But,” continued the serf of Pobereze, firmly, “you cannot force me to love you.”
“Do not mock—do not torture me more; you are sufficiently revenged. I will not offend you by importunity. You must indeed hate me! But remember that we Poles wished to give freedom to our serfs; and for that very reason our country was invaded and dismembered by despotic powers. ”

“ Before the wild daffodils were in flower in the sheltered copses round Upclose Farm, the Leighs were settled in their Manchester home; if they could ever grow to consider that place as a home where there was no garden, or outbuilding, no fresh breezy outlet, no far-stretching view, over moor and hollow,—no dumb animals to be tended, and, what more than all they missed, no old haunting memories, even though those remembrances told of sorrow, and the dead and gone. ”

“ Before Herbert’s funeral took place, Emily Lovell was lying betwixt life and death in a brain fever. Under the influence of a feeling easily to be comprehended, thirsting for a self-imposed torture, that by its very poignancy should relieve the dead weight of wretchedness that lay upon his breast, Charles crept from his bed, and slipping on a loose coat that hung in his room, he stole across the garden to the tower, whence, through the arrow-slit, he witnessed the burial of his sister’s lover, whom he had hastened to the grave. ”

“ Count Roszynski was a valet, who, having been a great favorite with his master, amassed sufficient money to enable his son, who inherited it, to purchase the extensive estate of Olgogrod, and with it the sole proprietorship of 1,600 human beings. Over them he had complete control; and, when maddened by oppression, if they dared resent, woe unto them! They could be thrust into a noisome dungeon, and chained by one hand from the light of day for years, until their very existence was forgotten by all except the jailer who brought daily their pitcher of water and morsel of dry bread. ”

“ Tom is a school-master in Rochdale, and he and Will help to support their mother. I only know that, if the cottage be hidden in a green hollow of the hills, every sound of sorrow in the whole upland is heard there—every call of suffering or of sickness for help is listened to, by a sad, gentle-looking woman, who rarely smiles (and when she does, her smile is more sad than other people’s tears) , but who comes out of her seclusion whenever there’s a shadow in any household. ”

“ What has made thy heart so sore as to come and cry a-this-ons. Speak and tell me. Nay, cry on, poor wench, if thou canst not speak yet. It will ease the heart, and then thou canst tell me.”
“Nanny is dead!” said Susan. “I left her to go to father, and she fell down stairs, and never breathed again. Oh, that’s my sorrow! but I’ve more to tell. Her mother is come—is in our house! Come and see if it’s your Lizzie.” Mrs. Leigh could not speak, but, trembling, put on her things, and went with Susan in dizzy haste back to Crown-street. ”

“ Will, my lad, I’m not afeared of you now, and I must speak, and you must listen. I am your mother, and I dare to command you, because I know I am in the right and that God is on my side. If He should lead the poor wandering lassie to Susan’s door, and she comes back crying and sorrowful, led by that good angel to us once more, thou shalt never say a casting-up word to her about her sin, but be tender and helpful towards one “who was lost and is found,” so may God’s blessing rest on thee, and so mayst thou lead Susan home as thy wife.” ”

“ In the ninth year of one’s life the most poignant grief is quickly effaced, and after six months Anielka ceased to grieve. The old people were very kind to her, and loved her as if she were their own child. That Anielka might be chosen to serve in the palace never entered their head, for who would be so barbarous as to take the child away from an old woman of seventy and her aged husband? ”

“ So saying, and without waiting for a reply, Leon rushed from the room. The door was closed. Giovanna listened to the sounds of his rapid footsteps till they died in the street. She would have followed, but dared not. She ran to the window. Roszynski’s carriage was rolling rapidly away, and she exclaimed vainly, “I love you, Leon; I loved you always!”
Her tortures were unendurable. To relieve them she hastened to her desk, and wrote these words:—
“Dearest Leon, forgive me; let the past be forever forgotten. Return to your Anielka. She always has been, ever will be yours.” ”

“ Nearly the whole sum had become the property of Charles Lovell.
Herbert was a fine young man, honorable, generous, impetuous, and endowed with an acute sense of shame. He determined instantly to pay the debts, but he knew that his own prospects were ruined for life; he wrote to the agents to send him the money and withdraw his name from the list of purchasers. But how was he to support his mother’s grief? How meet the eye of the girl he loved? She, who he knew adored him, and whose hand it was agreed between them he should ask of her parents as soon as he was gazetted a captain! ”

“ To rise in the dark, and traverse those wild and bleak hills; to go through snow and drizzle, and face the sharpest winds in winter, was no trifling matter. Before winter was over, the two young women began seriously to revolve the chances of a nearer residence, or a change of employ. There were no few who blamed Jane excessively for the folly of refusing the last good offer. There were even more than one who, in the hearing of Nancy, blamed her. Nancy was thoughtful, agitated, and wept. “If I can, dear sister,” she said, “have advised you to your injury, how shall I forgive myself? ”

“ He would give him beer to drink, “to make a true Briton on him,” as he said, spite of Betty’s earnest endeavor to prevent it,—telling him that he was laying the foundation in the lad of the same faults that he had himself. But David Dunster did not look on drinking as a fault at all. It was what he had been used to all his life. It was what all the miners had been used to for generations. A man was looked on as a milk-sop and a Molly Coddle, that would not take his mug of ale, and be merry with his comrades. ”

“ You should not be a miser, child; money is made to be spent.”
“Pray, put an end to these jokes,” said Constantia impatiently; “I like this girl, and I will not have her teased. She understands my ways better than any one, and often puts me in good humor with her beautiful voice.”
“Sing something for me, pretty damsel,” said Leon, “and I will give you another rouble, a new and shining one.”
“Sing instantly,” said Constantia imperiously.
At this command Anielka could no longer stifle her grief; she covered her face with her hands, and wept violently. ”

“ So the son left the father kneeling by the grave.
Again a few years are passed. It is winter, with a roaring wind and a thick gray fog. The graves in the Church-yard are covered with snow, and there are great icicles in the Church-porch. The wind now carries a swathe of snow along the tops of the graves, as though the “sheeted dead” were at some melancholy play; and hark! the icicles fall with a crash and jingle, like a solemn mockery of the echo of the unseemly mirth of one who is now coming to his final rest.
There are two graves near the old yew tree; and the grass has overgrown them. ”

“ Ensign Spoonbill proceeded to back his opinion in private matches, handicaps, and steeple-chases, the privy purse of Lady Pelican collapsed in a most unmistakable manner. Nor was this description of amusement the only rock-a-head in the course of the Honorable Ensign. The art or science of betting embraces the widest field, and the odds, given or taken, are equally fatal, whether the subject that elicits them be a match at billiards or a horse-race. Nor are the stakes at blind-hookey or unlimited loo less harmless, when you hav’n’t got luck and have such opponents as Captain Cushion. ”

“ And God is good too, Lizzie. Thou hast not forgot thy Bible, I’ll be bound, for thou wert always a scholar. I’m no reader, but I learnt off them texts to comfort me a bit, and I’ve said them many a time a day to myself. Lizzie, lass, don’t hide thy head so, it’s thy mother as is speaking to thee. Thy little child clung to me only yesterday; and if it’s gone to be an angel, it will speak to God for thee. Nay, don’t sob a that ’as; thou shalt have it again in Heaven; I know thou’lt strive to get there for thy little Nancy’s sake—and listen! ”

“ When they reached David Dunster’s house, they found the door open, and no one within. They knew that David had set off in quest of the children himself, and they determined to descend the valley. The distracted mother went with them, crying silently to herself, and praying inwardly, and every now and then trying to shout. But the young men raised their strong voices above hers, and made the cliffs echo with their appeals. ”

“ But when the winter’s night drew on, and the neighbors had gone away to their homes, she stole to the window, and gazed out, long and wistfully, over the dark gray moors. She did not hear her son’s voice, as he spoke to her from the door, nor his footstep as he drew nearer. She started when he touched her.
“Mother! come down to us. There’s no one but Will and me. Dearest mother, we do so want you.” The poor lad’s voice trembled, and he began to cry. It appeared to require an effort on Mrs. Leigh’s part to tear herself away from the window, but with a sigh she complied with his request. ”

“ The Princess’s wedding-day was fixed upon, after which event she and Leon were to go to Florence, and Anielka was to accompany them. Alas! feelings which gave her poignant misery still clung to her. She despised herself for her weakness; but she loved Leon. The sentiment was too deeply implanted in her bosom to be eradicated; too strong to be resisted. It was the first love of a young and guileless heart, and had grown in silence and despair. ”

“ His house was one of those little, solid, gray limestone cottages, with gray flagstone roofs which abound in the Peak. It had stood under that lofty precipice when the woods which now so densely fill the valley were but newly planted. There had been a mine near it, which had no doubt been the occasion of its erection in so solitary a place; but that mine was now worked out, and David Dunster, the miner, now worked at a mine right over the hills in Miller’s Dale. He was seldom at home, except at night, and on Sundays. ”

“ He is the judge: we are not.”
“Oh!” she said with a sudden burst, “Will Leigh! I have thought so well of you; don’t go and make me think you cruel and hard. Goodness is not goodness unless there is mercy and tenderness with it. There is your mother who has been nearly heart-broken, now full of rejoicing over her child—think of your mother.” ”

“ It was this which made her refuse all the entreaties of her sons, that she would see the kind-hearted neighbors, who called on their way from church, to sympathize and condole. No! she would stay with the dead husband that had spoken tenderly at last, if for three years he had kept silence; who knew but what, if she had only been more gentle and less angrily reserved he might have relented earlier—and in time.
She sat rocking herself to and fro by the side of the bed, while the footsteps below went in and out; she had been in sorrow too long to have any violent burst of deep grief now ”

“ There is nothing to create wonder, or a suspicion of a hidden Arcadia in anything you see, but another step forward, and—there! There sinks a world of valleys at your feet. To your left lies the delicious Monsol Dale. Old Finn Hill lifts his gray head grandly over it. Hobthrush’s Castle stands bravely forth in the hollow of his side—gray, and desolate, and mysterious. The sweet Wye goes winding and sounding at his feet, amid its narrow green meadows, green as the emerald, and its dark glossy alders. Before us stretches on, equally beautiful, Cressbrook Dale ”

“ With what a wild variety do the gray rocks soar up amid their woods and copses. How airily stand in the clear heavens the lofty limestone precipices, and the gray edges of rock gleam out from the bare green downs—there never called downs. What a genuine Saxon air is there cast over the population, what a Saxon bluntness salutes you in their speech!
It is into the heart of this region that we propose now to carry the reader. Let him suppose himself with us now on the road from Ashford-in-the-water to Tideswell. We are at the Bulls-Head, a little inn on that road. ”

“ Have you no business that you can do in Tidser, Sir?”
“Gad! but thou’rt right again! Ay, I’ll go on!” and with a crack of his whip, and a “Good night!” he whirled into the village before them.
No sooner was he gone than Nancy, pressing her sister’s arm to her side, said: “There’s the right man at last, dear Jane.”
“What!” said Jane, yet blushing deeply at the same time, and her heart beating quicker against her side. “Whatever are you talking of, Nancy? That young farmer fall in love with a mill-girl?”
“He’s done it,” said Nancy; “I see it in him. I feel it in him. ”

“ Breakfast over, and cigars lighted, Ensign Spoonbill and his friends, attired in shooting jackets of every pattern, and wearing felt hats of every color and form, made their appearance in front of the officers’ wing of the barracks; some semi-recumbent on the door-steps, others lounging with their hands in their coat pockets, others gracefully balancing themselves on the iron railings,—all smoking and talking on subjects of the most edifying kind. ”