The Chimes
by Charles Dickens
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First Quarter
There are not many people -- and as it is desirable that a
story-teller and a story-reader should establish a mutual
understanding as soon as possible, beg it to be noticed
that I confine this observation neither to young people
nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of
people: little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or
already growing down again -- there are not, I say, many
people who would care to sleep in a church. I mean at sermon-time in warm weather (when the thing
has actually been done, once or twice), but in the night,
and alone. A great multitude of persons will be violently
astonished, I know, by this position, in the broad bold
Day. But it applies to Night. It must be argued by night.
And I will undertake to maintain it successfully on any
gusty winter's night appointed for the purpose, with any
one opponent chosen from the rest, who will meet me
singly in an old church-yard, before an old church-door;
and will previously empower me to lock him in, if needful
to his satisfaction, until morning.
For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round
and round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes;
and of trying, with its unseen hand, the windows and the
doors; and seeking out some crevices by which to enter.
And when it has got in; as one not finding what it seeks,
whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth
again: and not content with stalking through the aisles,
and gliding round and round the pillars, and tempting the
deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the
rafters: then flings itself despairingly upon the stones
below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. Anon, it
comes up stealthily, and creeps along the walls, seeming
to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions sacred to the Dead.
At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as with laughter;
and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. It
has a ghostly sound too, lingering within the altar; where
it seems to chaunt, in its wild way, of Wrong and Murder
done, and false Gods worshipped; in defiance of the
Tables of the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but
are so flawed and broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us,
sitting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that
wind at Midnight, singing in a churchl
But high up in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and
whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come
and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to
twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the
groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake
and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is,
and iron rails are ragged with rust; and sheets of lead and
copper shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and
heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff
shabby nests into corners of old oaken joists and beams;
and dust grows old and grey; and speckled spiders,
indolent and fat with long security, swing idly to and fro
in the vibration of the bells, and never loose their hold
upon their thread-spun castles in the air, or climb up
sailor-like in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and
ply a score of nimble legs to save a life! High up in the
steeple of an old church, far above the light and murmur
of the town and far below the flying clouds that shadow
it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the
steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of.
They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these
Bells had been baptized by bishops: so many centuries
ago, that the register of their baptism was lost long, long
before the memory of man, and no one knew their
names. They had had their Godfathers and Godmothers,
these Bells (for my own part, by the way, I would rather
incur the responsibility of being Godfather to a Bell than
a Boy), and had had their silver mugs no doubt, besides.
But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry
the Eighth had melted down their mugs; and they now
hung, nameless and mugless, in the church tower.
Not speechless, though. Far from it. They had clear,
loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and
wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too
sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the
pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly
against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour
their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and
bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor
mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose
husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known to
beat a blustering Nor'-Wester, aye, ``all to fits,as Toby
Veck said; -- for though they chose to call him Trotty
Veck, his name was Toby, and nobody could make it
anything else either (except Tobias) without a special act
of parliament; he having been as lawfully christened in his
day as the Bells had been in theirs, though with not quite
so much of solemnity or public rejoicing.
For my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck's belief, for
I am sure he had opportunities enough of forming a
correct one. And whatever Tobyv Veck said, I say. And
I take my stand by Toby Veck, although he did stand all
day long (and weary work it was) just outside the
church-door. In fact he was a ticket-porter, Toby Veck,
and waited there for jobs.
And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed red-eyed,
stony-toed, tooth-chattering place it was, to wait in, in
the winter-time, as Toby Veck well knew. The wind
came tearing round the corner -- especially the east wind
-- as if it had sallied forth, express, from the confines of
the earth, to have a blow at Toby. And oftentimes it
seemed to come upon him sooner than it had expected,
for bouncing round the corner, and passing Toby, it
would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried ``Why,
here he is!Incontinently his little white apron would be
caught up over his head like a naughty boys garments,
and his feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and
struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would
undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all
aslant, and facing now in this direction, now in that,
would be so banged and buffeted, and touzled, and
worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it
a state of things but one degree removed from a positive
miracle, that he wasn't carried up bodily into the air as a
colony of frogs or snails or other portable creatures
sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great
astonishment of the natives, on some strange corner of
the world where ticket-porters are unknown.
But, windy weather, in spite of its using him so roughly,
was, after all, a sort of holiday for Toby. That's the fact.
He didn't seem to wait so long for sixpence in the wind,
as at other times; for the having to fight with that
boisterous element took off his attention, and quite
freshened him up when he was getting hungry and
low-spirited. A hard frost too, or a fall of snow, was an
Event; and it seemed to do him good, somehow or other
-- it would have been hard to say in what respect though,
Toby! So wind and frost and snow, and perhaps a good
stiff storm of hail, were Toby Veck's red-letter days.
Wet weather was the worst; the cold damp, clammy
wet, that wrapped him up like a moist great-coat -- the
only kind of great-coat Toby owned, or could have
added to his comfort by dispensing with. Wet days,
when the rain came slowly, thickly, obstinately down;
when the streets's throat, like his own, was choked with
mist; when smoking umbrellas passed and re-passed,
spinning round and round like so many teetotums, as they
knocked against each other on the crowded footway,
throwing off a little whirlpool of uncomfortable
sprinklings; when gutters brawled and waterspouts were
full and noisy; when the wet from the projecting stones
and ledges of the church fell drip, drip, drip, on Toby,
making the wisp of straw on which he stood mere mud in
no time; those were the days that tried him. Then indeed,
you might see Toby looking anxiously out from his shelter
in an angle of the church wall -- such a meagre shelter
that in summer time it never ...
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