Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she did so.
"Keep them shut," said Barbox Brothers, going softly to the door, and coming back. "You are on your honour, mind, not to open your eyes until I tell you that you may?"
"Yes! On my honour."
"Good. May I take your lace-pillow from you for a minute?"
Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, and he put it aside.
"Tell me. Did you see the puffs of smoke and steam made by the morning fast-train yesterday on road number seven from here?"
"Behind the elm-trees and the spire?"
"That"s the road," said Barbox Brothers, directing his eyes towards it.
"Yes. I watched them melt away."
"Anything unusual in what they expressed?"
"No!" she answered merrily.
"Not complimentary to me, for I was in that train. I went-don"t open your eyes-to fetch you this, from the great ingenious town. It is not half so large as your lace-pillow, and lies easily and lightly in its place. These little keys are like the keys of a miniature piano, and you supply the air required with your left hand. May you pick out delightful music from it, my dear! For the present-you can open your eyes now-good-bye!"
In his embarra.s.sed way, he closed the door upon himself, and only saw, in doing so, that she ecstatically took the present to her bosom and caressed it. The glimpse gladdened his heart, and yet saddened it; for so might she, if her youth had flourished in its natural course, have taken to her breast that day the slumbering music of her own child"s voice.
BARBOX BROTHERS AND CO.
With good will and earnest purpose, the gentleman for Nowhere began, on the very next day, his researches at the heads of the seven roads. The results of his researches, as he and Phbe afterwards set them down in fair writing, hold their due places in this veracious chronicle, from its seventeenth page, onward. But they occupied a much longer time in the getting together than they ever will in the perusal. And this is probably the case with most reading matter, except when it is of that highly beneficial kind (for Posterity) which is "thrown off in a few moments of leisure" by the superior poetic geniuses who scorn to take prose pains.
It must be admitted, however, that Barbox by no means hurried himself.
His heart being in his work of good-nature, he revelled in it. There was the joy, too (it was a true joy to him), of sometimes sitting by, listening to Phbe as she picked out more and more discourse from her musical instrument, and as her natural taste and ear refined daily upon her first discoveries. Besides being a pleasure, this was an occupation, and in the course of weeks it consumed hours. It resulted that his dreaded birthday was close upon him before he had troubled himself any more about it.
The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen circ.u.mstance that the councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming most brilliantly, on a few rare occasions a.s.sisted) respecting the road to be selected, were, after all, in no wise a.s.sisted by his investigations. For, he had connected this interest with this road, or that interest with the other, but could deduce no reason from it for giving any road the preference.
Consequently, when the last council was holden, that part of the business stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in the beginning.
"But, sir," remarked Phbe, "we have only six roads after all. Is the seventh road dumb?"
"The seventh road? O!" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his chin. "That is the road I took, you know, when I went to get your little present. That is _its_ story, Phbe."
"Would you mind taking that road again, sir?" she asked with hesitation.
"Not in the least; it is a great high road after all."
"I should like you to take it," returned Phbe, with a persuasive smile, "for the love of that little present which must ever be so dear to me. I should like you to take it, because that road can never be again, like any other road to me. I should like you to take it, in remembrance of your having done me so much good: of your having made me so much happier!
If you leave me by the road you travelled when you went to do me this great kindness," sounding a faint chord as she spoke, "I shall feel, lying here watching at my window, as if it must conduct you to a prosperous end, and bring you back some day."
"It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done."
So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for Somewhere, and his destination was the great ingenious town.
He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the eighteenth of December when he left it. "High time," he reflected, as he seated himself in the train, "that I started in earnest! Only one clear day remains between me and the day I am running away from. I"ll push onward for the hill-country to-morrow. I"ll go to Wales."
It was with some pains that he placed before himself the undeniable advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for his senses from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild seash.o.r.e, and rugged roads. And yet he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he could have wished. Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new resource, her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her now-just at first-that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her; whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning of his station in life, by setting him thinking that a man might be a great healer, if he would, and yet not be a great doctor; these and other similar meditations got between him and his Welsh picture. There was within him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows separation from an object of interest, and cessation of a pleasant pursuit; and this sense, being quite new to him, made him restless. Further, in losing Mugby Junction he had found himself again; and he was not the more enamoured of himself for having lately pa.s.sed his time in better company.
But surely, here not far ahead, must be the great ingenious town. This crashing and clashing that the train was undergoing, and this coupling on to it of a mult.i.tude of new echoes, could mean nothing less than approach to the great station. It did mean nothing less. After some stormy flashes of town lightning, in the way of swift revelations of red-brick blocks of houses, high red-brick chimney-shafts, vistas of red-brick railway arches, tongues of fire, blots of smoke, valleys of ca.n.a.l, and hills of coal, there came the thundering in at the journey"s end.
Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed in the hotel he chose, and having appointed his dinner-hour, Barbox Brothers went out for a walk in the busy streets. And now it began to be suspected by him that Mugby Junction was a Junction of many branches, invisible as well as visible, and had joined him to an endless number of byways. For, whereas he would, but a little while ago, have walked these streets blindly brooding, he now had eyes and thoughts for a new external world. How the many toiling people lived, and loved, and died; how wonderful it was to consider the various trainings of eye and hand, the nice distinctions of sight and touch, that separated them into cla.s.ses of workers, and even into cla.s.ses of workers at subdivisions of one complete whole which combined their many intelligences and forces, though of itself but some cheap object of use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know that such a.s.sembling in a mult.i.tude on their part, and such contribution of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious May-flies of humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect and yet a modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a question; the second, in the announcements of their popular studies and amus.e.m.e.nts on the public walls); these considerations, and a host of such, made his walk a memorable one. "I too am but a little part of a great whole," he began to think; "and to be serviceable to myself and others, or to be happy, I must cast my interest into, and draw it out of, the common stock."
Although he had arrived at his journey"s end for the day by noon, he had since insensibly walked about the town so far and so long that the lamplighters were now at their work in the streets, and the shops were sparkling up brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn towards his quarters, he was in the act of doing so, when a very little hand crept into his, and a very little voice said:
"O! If you please, I am lost."
He looked down, and saw a very little fair-haired girl.
"Yes," she said, confirming her words with a serious nod. "I am indeed.
I am lost."
Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about him for help, descried none, and said, bending low: "Where do you live, my child?"
"I don"t know where I live," she returned. "I am lost."
"What is your name?"
"Polly."
"What is your other name?"
The reply was prompt, but unintelligible.
Imitating the sound, as he caught it, he hazarded the guess, "Trivits?"
"O no!" said the child, shaking her head. "Nothing like that."
"Say it again, little one."
An unpromising business. For this time it had quite a different sound.
He made the venture: "Paddens?"
"O no!" said the child. "Nothing like that."
"Once more. Let us try it again, dear."
A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four syllables. "It can"t be Tappitarver?" said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head with his hat in discomfiture.