Charles Dickens

“ Grace looked confusedly upon her. She scarcely seemed to hear.
‘My love, my sister!’ said Marion, ‘recall your thoughts a moment; listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. There are countries, dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would strive, against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it, retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the world against themselves and worldly loves and hopes for ever. When women do so, they assume that name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters. ”

“ More and more company came flocking in. Bright eyes sparkled upon Marion; smiling lips gave her joy of his return; sage mothers fanned themselves, and hoped she mightn’t be too youthful and inconstant for the quiet round of home; impetuous fathers fell into disgrace for too much exaltation of her beauty; daughters envied her; sons envied him; innumerable pairs of lovers profited by the occasion; all were interested, animated, and expectant.
Mr. and Mrs. Craggs came arm in arm, but Mrs. Snitchey came alone. ‘Why, what’s become of him?’ inquired the Doctor. ”

“ But, there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places, and among its busy life, and trying to assist and cheer it and to do some good,—learn the same lesson; and who, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all happiness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, the victory long won. ”

“ A raging winter day, that shook the old house, sometimes, as if it shivered in the blast. A day to make home doubly home. To give the chimney-corner new delights. To shed a ruddier glow upon the faces gathered round the hearth, and draw each fireside group into a closer and more social league, against the roaring elements without. Such a wild winter day as best prepares the way for shut-out night; for curtained rooms, and cheerful looks; for music, laughter, dancing, light, and jovial entertainment!
All these the Doctor had in store to welcome Alfred back. ”

“ The Doctor, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his feet spread out upon the warm rug, leaned back in his easy-chair, and listened to the book, and looked upon his daughters.
They were very beautiful to look upon. Two better faces for a fireside, never made a fireside bright and sacred. Something of the difference between them had been softened down in three years’ time; and enthroned upon the clear brow of the younger sister, looking through her eyes, and thrilling in her voice, was the same earnest nature that her own motherless youth had ripened in the elder sister long ago. ”

“ Clemency was about to offer a suggestion, but he stopped her by anticipating it.
‘Com-bined,’ he added gravely, ‘with a thimble.’
‘Do as you wold, you know, and cetrer, eh!’ observed Clemency, folding her arms comfortably in her delight at this avowal, and patting her elbows. ‘Such a short cut, an’t it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Mr. Britain, ‘that it’s what would be considered good philosophy. I’ve my doubts about that; but it wears well, and saves a quantity of snarling, which the genuine article don’t always.’
‘See how you used to go on once, yourself, you know!’ said Clemency. ”

“ Both the sisters listened keenly.
‘Well, well!’ said the Doctor, ‘I am too old to be converted, even by my friend Snitchey here, or my good spinster sister, Martha Jeddler; who had what she calls her domestic trials ages ago, and has led a sympathising life with all sorts of people ever since; and who is so much of your opinion (only she’s less reasonable and more obstinate, being a woman) , that we can’t agree, and seldom meet. I was born upon this battle-field. I began, as a boy, to have my thoughts directed to the real history of a battle-field. ”

“ Let no old loving word, or tone, rise up in judgment against thy deserter; but if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in mercy to the Penitent!”’
‘Dear Marion, read no more to-night,’ said Grace for she was weeping.
‘I cannot,’ she replied, and closed the book. ‘The words seem all on fire!’
The Doctor was amused at this; and laughed as he patted her on the head.
‘What! overcome by a story-book!’ said Doctor Jeddler. ‘Print and paper! Well, well, it’s all one. It’s as rational to make a serious matter of print and paper as of anything else. But, dry your eyes, love, dry your eyes. ”

“ Except his partner in attendance, Clemency Newcome; who rousing him with one of those favourite joints, her elbows, inquired, in a reproachful whisper, what he laughed at.
‘Not you!’ said Britain.
‘Who then?’
‘Humanity,’ said Britain. ‘That’s the joke!’
‘What between master and them lawyers, he’s getting more and more addle-headed every day!’ cried Clemency, giving him a lunge with the other elbow, as a mental stimulant. ‘Do you know where you are? Do you want to get warning?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ said Britain, with a leaden eye and an immovable visage. ‘I don’t care for anything. ”

“ Wait here for me!’ said Marion, hurriedly. ‘I have been seeking to speak to you for an hour past. Oh, be true to me!’
Eagerly seizing her bewildered hand, and pressing it with both her own to her breast—an action more expressive, in its passion of entreaty, than the most eloquent appeal in words,—Marion withdrew; as the light of the returning lantern flashed into the room.
‘All still and peaceable. Nobody there. Fancy, I suppose,’ said Mr. Britain, as he locked and barred the door. ‘One of the effects of having a lively imagination. Halloa! ”

“ Craggs is fortunate, I’m sure!’ said Mrs. Snitchey.
‘That office so engrosses ’em,’ said Mrs. Craggs.
‘A person with an office has no business to be married at all,’ said Mrs. Snitchey.
Then, Mrs. Snitchey said, within herself, that that look of hers had pierced to Craggs’s soul, and he knew it; and Mrs. Craggs observed to Craggs, that ‘his Snitcheys’ were deceiving him behind his back, and he would find it out when it was too late.
Still, Mr. Craggs, without much heeding these remarks, looked uneasily about until his eye rested on Grace, to whom he immediately presented himself. ”

“ They lurked and lingered for a long time, but survived in little things; for, Nature, far above the evil passions of men, soon recovered Her serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle-ground as she had done before, when it was innocent. The larks sang high above it; the swallows skimmed and dipped and flitted to and fro; the shadows of the flying clouds pursued each other swiftly, over grass and corn and turnip-field and wood, and over roof and church-spire in the nestling town among the trees, away into the bright distance on the borders of the sky and earth, where the red sunsets faded. ”

“ In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and Craggs made honey for their several hives. Here, sometimes, they would linger, of a fine evening, at the window of their council-chamber overlooking the old battle-ground, and wonder (but that was generally at assize time, when much business had made them sentimental) at the folly of mankind, who couldn’t always be at peace with one another and go to law comfortably. ”

“ I had my suspicions, sir; but, it is not six months since I have known the truth, and been assured that you lost her.’
‘By whom?’ inquired his client.
‘By Doctor Jeddler himself, sir, who at last reposed that confidence in me voluntarily. He, and only he, has known the whole truth, years and years.’
‘And you know it?’ said his client.
‘I do, sir!’ replied Snitchey; ‘and I have also reason to know that it will be broken to her sister to-morrow evening. They have given her that promise. In the meantime, perhaps you’ll give me the honour of your company at my house; being unexpected at your own. ”

“ Snitchey, looking into the orchard, ‘but have I liberty to come in?’
Without waiting for permission, he came straight to Marion, and kissed her hand, quite joyfully.
‘If Mr. Craggs had been alive, my dear Miss Marion,’ said Mr. Snitchey, ‘he would have had great interest in this occasion. It might have suggested to him, Mr. Alfred, that our life is not too easy perhaps: that, taken altogether, it will bear any little smoothing we can give it; but Mr. Craggs was a man who could endure to be convinced, sir. He was always open to conviction. ”

“ Kiss me, Puss. Forgive! Why, what a silly child you are! If you had vexed and crossed me fifty times a day, instead of not at all, I’d forgive you everything, but such a supplication. Kiss me again, Puss. There! Prospective and retrospective—a clear score between us. Pile up the fire here! Would you freeze the people on this bleak December night! Let us be light, and warm, and merry, or I’ll not forgive some of you!’
So gaily the old Doctor carried it! ”

“ Craggs?’ said Snitchey, looking at him across the client.
‘I think not,’ said Craggs.—Both listened attentively.
‘Well! You needn’t hear it,’ replied their client. ‘I’ll mention it, however. I don’t mean to ask the Doctor’s consent, because he wouldn’t give it me. But I mean to do the Doctor no wrong or harm, because (besides there being nothing serious in such trifles, as he says) I hope to rescue his child, my Marion, from what I see—I know—she dreads, and contemplates with misery: that is, the return of this old lover. If anything in the world is true, it is true that she dreads his return. ”

“ Snitchey,’ said Alfred, ‘there are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it—even in many of its apparent lightnesses and contradictions—not the less difficult to achieve, because they have no earthly chronicle or audience—done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households, and in men’s and women’s hearts—any one of which might reconcile the sternest man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it, though two-fourths of its people were at war, and another fourth at law ”

“ Perhaps the false Craggs and the wicked Snitchey were a recognised fiction with the two wives, as Doe and Roe, incessantly running up and down bailiwicks, were with the two husbands: or, perhaps the ladies had instituted, and taken upon themselves, these two shares in the business, rather than be left out of it altogether. But, certain it is, that each wife went as gravely and steadily to work in her vocation as her husband did in his, and would have considered it almost impossible for the Firm to maintain a successful and respectable existence, without her laudable exertions. ”

“ Many a lonely moon was bright upon the battle-ground, and many a star kept mournful watch upon it, and many a wind from every quarter of the earth blew over it, before the traces of the fight were worn away. ”

“ Doctor Jeddler was, as I have said, a great philosopher, and the heart and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the world as a gigantic practical joke; as something too absurd to be considered seriously, by any rational man. His system of belief had been, in the beginning, part and parcel of the battle-ground on which he lived, as you shall presently understand. ”

“ Snitchey, standing a small professional blue bag against one leg of the table, ‘cut the great farce short for this actress, at all events, Doctor Jeddler.’
‘No,’ returned the Doctor. ‘God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as long as she can laugh, and then say, with the French wit, “The farce is ended; draw the curtain.”’
‘The French wit,’ said Mr. Snitchey, peeping sharply into his blue bag, ‘was wrong, Doctor Jeddler, and your philosophy is altogether wrong, depend upon it, as I have often told you. Nothing serious in life! ”

“ A novice in the family might have supposed, from her extraordinary ogling as she said it, as well as from a singular rapture or ecstasy which pervaded her elbows, as if she were embracing herself, that ‘one,’ in its most favourable interpretation, meant a chaste salute. Indeed the Doctor himself seemed alarmed, for the moment; but quickly regained his composure, as Clemency, having had recourse to both her pockets—beginning with the right one, going away to the wrong one, and afterwards coming back to the right one again—produced a letter from the Post-office. ”

“ O Home, our comforter and friend when others fall away, to part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave”’—
‘Marion, my love!’ said Grace.
‘Why, Puss!’ exclaimed her father, ‘what’s the matter?’
She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched towards her, and read on; her voice still faltering and trembling, though she made an effort to command it when thus interrupted.
‘“To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave, is always sorrowful. ”

“ Then he promises to be here, this day month.’
‘This day month!’ repeated Marion, softly.
‘A gay day and a holiday for us,’ said the cheerful voice of her sister Grace, kissing her in congratulation. ‘Long looked forward to, dearest, and come at last.’
She answered with a smile; a mournful smile, but full of sisterly affection. As she looked in her sister’s face, and listened to the quiet music of her voice, picturing the happiness of this return, her own face glowed with hope and joy.
And with a something else; a something shining more and more through all the rest of its expression ”

“ Snitchey and Craggs stood convenient, with an open door down two smooth steps, in the market-place; so that any angry farmer inclining towards hot water, might tumble into it at once. Their special council-chamber and hall of conference was an old back-room up-stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its brows gloomily in the consideration of tangled points of law. ”

“ Britain, by this time in that high state of appreciation of his pipe, when a man can open his mouth but a very little way for speaking purposes; and sitting luxuriously immovable in his chair, can afford to turn only his eyes towards a companion, and that very passively and gravely. ‘Oh! I’m greatly beholden to you, you know, Clem.’
‘Lor, how nice that is to think of!’ said Clemency. ”