 CHAPTER 1 In the Old City of Rochester. It is speaking there were only six poor travellers, but being a traveller myself, though an idle one, and being with all as poor as I hope to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of explanation is due at once, for what says the inscription over the quaint old door? Richard Watts's squire, by his will, dated 22 August 1579, founded this charity for six poor travellers, who not being rogues or proctors may receive gratis for one night, lodging, entertainment, and four pence each. It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the good days in the year upon a Christmas eve, that I stood reading this inscription over the quaint old door in question. I had been wandering about the neighbouring cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's figurehead. And I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the verger his fee, than inquire the way to Watts's charity. The way being very short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and the quaint old door. Now, said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, I know I am not a proctor, I wonder whether I am a rogue. Upon the whole, their conscience reproduced two or three pretty faces, which might have had smaller attraction for a moral goliath, than they had had for me, who am but a tomb thumb in that way. I came to the conclusion that I was not a rogue. So, beginning to regard the establishment as in some sort my property, bequeathed to me and diverse colegatees, share and share alike, by the worshipful Master Richard Watts, I stepped backward into the road to survey my inheritance. I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with the quaint old door already three times mentioned, an arched door. This little long low lattice windows, and a roof of three gables. The silent high street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock, that projects over the pavement out of a grave red brick building, as if time carried on business there, and hung out his sign. Sooth to say he did an active stroke of work in Rochester, in the old days of the Romans, and the Saxons and the Normans, and down to the times of King John, when the rugged castle, I will not undertake to say how many hundreds of years old then, was abandoned to the centuries of weather, which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and doors had pecked its eyes out. I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation. While I was yet surveying it with growing content, I aspired at one of the upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a wholesome matronly appearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly addressed to mine. They said so plainly, Do you wish to see the house? That I answered aloud, Yes, if you please. And within a minute the old door opened, and I bent my head and went down two steps into the entry. This, said the matronly presence, ushering me into a low room on the right, is where the travellers sit by the fire, and cook what bits of suppers they buy with their four-pences. Oh! then they have no entertainment, said I, for the inscription over the outer door was still running in my head, and I was mentally repeating in a kind of tune, lodging entertainment at four pence each. They have a fire provided for them, returned the matron, a mighty civil person, not as I could make out overpaid. And these cooking utensils, and this, what's painted on a board, is the rules for their behaviour. They have their four-pences when they get their tickets from their steward over the way, for I don't admit them myself, they must get their tickets first. And sometimes one buys a rasher of bacon, and another a herring, and another a pound of potatoes, or what not. Sometimes two or three of them will club their four-pences together, and make a supper that way. But not much of anything is to be got for four-pence at present, when provisions is so dear. Through indeed, I remarked. I had been looking about the room, admiring its snug fireside at the upper end, its glimpse of the street through the low mullion-window, and its beams overhead. It is very comfortable, said I. Ill-convenient! observed the matronly presence. I liked to hear her say so, for it showed a commendable anxiety to execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of Master Richard Watts. But the room was really so well adapted to its purpose, that I protested quite enthusiastically against her disparagement. Name-arm, said I, I am sure it is warm in winter, and cruel in summer. It has a look of homely welcome, and soothing rest. It has a remarkably cosy fireside, the very blink of which gleaming out into the street upon a winter night, is enough to warm all Rochester's heart. And as to the convenience of the six poor travellers, I don't mean them, returned the presence. I speak of its being an ill-convenience to myself and my daughter, having no other room to sit in every night. This was true enough, but there was another quaint room of corresponding dimensions on the opposite side of the entry, so I stepped across to it, through the open doors of both rooms, and asked what this chamber was for. This, returned the presence, is the bored room, where the gentlemen meet when they come here. Let me see, I had counted from the street six upper windows, besides these on the ground story. Making a perplexed calculation in my mind, I rejoined. Then the six poor travellers sleep upstairs. My new friend shook her head. They sleep, she answered, in two little outer galleries at the back, where their beds has always been, ever since the charity was founded. It being so very ill-convenient to me as things is at present, the gentlemen are going to take off a bit of the backyard, and make a slip of a room for them there, to sit in before they go to bed. And then the six poor travellers, said I, will be entirely out of the house. Entirely out of the house, assented the presence, comfortably smoothing her hands, which is considered much better for all parties, and much more convenient. I had been a little startled in the cathedral, by the emphasis with which the effigy of Master Richard Watts was bursting out of his tomb. But I began to think now, that it might be expected to come across the High Street some stormy night, and make a disturbance here. How be it, I kept my thoughts to myself, and accompanied the presence to the little galleries at the back. I found them on a tiny scale, like the galleries in old in-yards, and they were very clean. While I was looking at them, the matron gave me to understand that the prescribed number of poor travellers were forthcoming every night from year's end to year's end, and that the beds were always occupied. My questions upon this, and her replies, brought us back to the boardroom so essential to the dignity of the gentleman, where she showed me the printed accounts of the charity hanging up by the window. From them I gathered that the greater part of the property bequeathed by the worshipful Master Richard Watts for the maintenance of this foundation was, at the period of his death, near Marshland, but that, in course of time, it had been reclaimed and built upon, and was very considerably increased in value. I found, too, that about a thirtieth part of the annual revenue was now expended on the purposes commemorated in the inscription over the door. The rest being handsomely laid out in chancery, law expenses, collectorship, receivership, poundage, and other appendages of management, highly complementary to the importance of the six poor travellers. In short, I made the not entirely new discovery, that it may be said of an establishment like this in dear old England, as of the fat oyster in the American story, that it takes a good many men to swallow it whole. "'And pray, Mum,' said I, sensible that the blankness of my face began to brighten as the thought occurred to me. "'Could one see these travellers?' "'Well,' she returned dubiously. "'No.' "'Not to-night, for instance?' said I. "'Well,' she returned more positively. "'No. Nobody ever asked to see them, and nobody ever did see them.' As I am not easily balked in a design when I am set upon it, I urged to the good lady that this was Christmas Eve, that Christmas comes but once a year, which is unhappily too true, for when it begins to stay with this the whole year round, we shall make this earth a very different place, that I was possessed by the desire to treat the travellers to a supper and a temperate glass of hot wassail, that the voice of fame had been heard in that land declaring my ability to make hot wassail, that if I were permitted to hold the feast I should be found conformable to reason, sobriety, and good hours. In a word that I could be merry and wise myself, and had been even known at a pinch to keep others so, although I was decorated with no badge or medal, and was not a brother, orator, apostle, saint, or prophet of any denomination whatever. In the end I prevailed to my great joy. It was settled that at nine o'clock that night a turkey and a piece of roast beef should smoke upon the board, and that I, fainted unworthy minister for once of Master Richard Watts, should preside as the Christmas supper host of the six poor travellers. I went back to my inn to give the necessary directions for the turkey and roast beef, and during the remainder of the day could settle to nothing for thinking of the poor travellers. When the wind blew hard against the windows, it was a cold day with dark gusts of sleet alternating with periods of wild brightness, as if the year were dying fitfully. I pictured them advancing towards their resting-place along various cold roads, and felt delighted to think how little they foresaw the supper that awaited them. I painted their portraits in my mind, and indulged in little heightening touches. I made them foot-saw, I made them weary, I made them carry packs and bundles. I made them stop by finger-posts and milestones, leaning on their bent sticks, and looking wistfully at what was written there. I made them lose their way, and filled their five wits with apprehensions of lying out all night and being frozen to death. I took up my hat and went out, climbed to the top of the old castle, and looked over the windy hills that sloped down to the medway, almost believing that I could describe some of my travellers in the distance. After it fell dark, and the cathedral bell was heard in the invisible steeple, quite a bar of frosty rhyme when I had last seen it, striking five, six, seven, I became so full of my travellers that I could eat no dinner, and felt constrained to watch them still in the red coals of my fire. They were all arrived by this time, I thought, had got their tickets and were gone in. There my pleasure was dashed by the reflection that probably some travellers had come too late and were shut out. After the cathedral bell had struck eight, I could smell a delicious savour of turkey and roast beef rising to the window of my adjoining bedroom, which looked down into the in-yard, just where the lights of the kitchen reddened a massive fragment of the castle wall. It was high time to make the wassail now. Therefore I had up the materials, which together with their proportions and combinations I must decline to impart, as the only secret of my own I was ever known to keep, and made a glorious joram, not in a bowl, for a bowl anywhere but on a shelf is a low superstition fraught with cooling and slopping, but in a brown earthenware picture tenderly suffocated when full with a coarse cloth. It being now upon the stroke of nine I set out for what's his charity, carrying my brown beauty in my arms. I would trust Ben the waiter with untold gold, but there are strings in the human heart which must never be sounded by another, and drinks that I make myself for those strings in mine. The travellers were all assembled, the cloth was laid, and Ben had brought a great billet of wood, and had laid it artfully on the top of the fire, so that a touch or two of the poker after supper should make a roaring blaze. Having deposited my brown beauty in a red nook of the hearth inside the fender, where she soon began to sing like an ethereal cricket, diffusing at the same time odours as of ripe vineyards, spice forests and orange groves. I say, having stationed my beauty in a place of security and improvement, I introduced myself to my guests by shaking hands all round and giving them a hearty welcome. I found the party to be thus composed, firstly myself, secondly a very decent man indeed, with his right arm in a sling, who had a certain clean agreeable smell of wood about him, from which I judged him to have something to do with ship-building, thirdly a little sailor-boy, a mere child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair and deep womanly-looking eyes, fourthly a shabby gentile personage in a threadbare black suit, and apparently in very bad circumstances, with a dry suspicious look. The absent buttons on his waistcoat eaked out with red tape, and a bundle of extraordinarily tattered papers sticking out of an inner breast pocket. Fifthly a foreigner by birth, but an Englishman in speech, who carried his pipe in the band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an easy, simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker from Geneva, and travelled all about the Continent, mostly on foot, working as a journeyman, and seeing new countries, possibly I thought also smuggling a watch or so now and then. Sixthly a little widow, who had been very pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty had been wrecked in some great misfortune, and whose manner was remarkably timid, scared and solitary. Seventhly and lastly a traveller of a kind familiar to my boyhood, but now almost obsolete, a book-peddler, who had a quantity of pamphlets and numbers with him, and who presently boasted that he could repeat more verses in an evening than he could sell in a twelve-month. All these I have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table. I presided, and the matronly presence faced me. We were not long in taking our places, for the supper had arrived with me in the following procession. Myself with the picture, Ben with beer, inattentive boy with hot plates, inattentive boy with hot plates, the turkey, female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot, the beef, man with tray on his head containing vegetables and sundries, volunteer hustler from hotel grinning and rendering no assistance. As we passed along the high street, comic-like, we left a long tail of fragrance behind us, which caused the public to stop, sniffing in wonder. We had previously left at the corner of the innyard a wall-eyed young man connected with the fly department, and well accustomed to the sound of a railway whistle, which Ben always carries in his pocket, whose instructions were, so soon as he should hear the whistle blown, to dash into the kitchen, seize the hot plum pudding and mince pies, and speed with them to what's his charity, where they would be received, he was further instructed, by the source female, who would be provided with brandy in a blue state of combustion. All these arrangements were executed in the most exact and punctual manner. I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef, or greater prodigality of sauce and gravy, and my travellers did wonderful justice to everything set before them. It made my heart rejoice to observe how their wind and frost-hardened faces softened in the clatter of plates and knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and supper heat. While their hats and caps and wrappers hanging up, a few small bundles on the ground in a corner, and in another corner three or four old walking-sticks worn down at the end to mere fringe, linked this snug interior with the bleak outside in a golden chain. When supper was done, and my brown beauty had been elevated on the table, there was a general requisition to me to take the corner, which suggested to me comfortably enough how much my friends here made of a fire, for when had I ever thought so highly of the corner, since the days when I connected it with Jack Horner. However, as I declined, Ben, whose touch on all convivial instruments is perfect, drew the table apart, and instructing my travellers to open right and left on either side of me, and form round the fire, closed up the centre with myself and my chair, and preserved the order we had kept at table. He had already, in a tranquil manner, boxed the ears of the inattentive boys until they had been, by imperceptible degrees, boxed out of the room, and he now rapidly skirmished the sauce-themail into the high street, disappeared, and softly closed the door. This was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the billet of wood. I tapped it three times, like an enchanted talisman, and a brilliant host of merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by the chimney, rushing up the middle in a fiery country dance, and never coming down again. Meanwhile, by their sparkling light, which threw our lamp into the shade, I filled the glasses, and gave my travellers Christmas, Christmas Eve, my friends, when the shepherds, who were poor travellers, too, in their way, heard the angels sing, On earth peace, good will towards men. I don't know who was the first among us to think that we ought to take hands as we sat, in deference to the toast, or whether any one of us anticipated the others, but at any rate we all did it. We then drank to the memory of the good Master Richard Watts, and I wish his ghost may never have had worse usage under that roof than it had from us. It was the witching time for storytelling. Our whole life, travellers, said I, is a story more or less intelligible, generally less, but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction that I scarce know which is which. Shall I beguile the time by telling you a story as we sit here? They all answered yes. I had little to tell them, but I was bound by my own proposal. Therefore, after looking for a while at the spiral column of smoke wreathing up from my brown beauty, through which I could have almost sworn I saw the effigy of Master Richard Watts less startled than usual, I fired away. End of Chapter 1 Recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 2 of The Seven Poor Travellers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Ruth Golding The Seven Poor Travellers in Three Chapters by Charles Dickens Chapter 2 The Story of Richard Double Dick In the year 1799 a relative of mine came limping down on foot to this town of Chatham. I call it this town because if anybody present knows to a nicety where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, it is more than I do. He was a poor traveller, with not a farthing in his pocket. He sat by the fire in this very room, and he slept one night in a bed that will be occupied to-night by some one here. My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cavalry regiment, if a cavalry regiment would have him, if not to take King George's shilling from any corporal or sergeant who would put a bunch of ribbons in his hat. His object was to get shot, but he thought he might as well ride to death as be at the trouble of walking. My relative's Christian name was Richard, but he was better known as Dick. He dropped his own surname on the road down and took up that of Double Dick. He was passed as Richard Double Dick aged twenty-two, height five foot ten, native place Xmouth, which he had never been near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chatham when he limped over the bridge here with half a shoe to his dusty feet, so he enlisted into a regiment of the line, and was glad to get drunk and forget all about it. You are to know that this relative of mine had gone wrong and run wild. His heart was in the right place, but it was sealed up. He had been betrothed to a good and beautiful girl, whom he had loved better than she, or perhaps even he, believed. But in an evil hour he had given her cause to say to him solemnly, Richard, I will never marry another man. I will live single for your sake. But Mary Marshall's lips—her name was Mary Marshall—never address another word to you on earth. Go, Richard! Heaven forgive you! This finished him. This brought him down to Chatham. This made him Private Richard Doubledick, with a determination to be shot. There was not a more dissipated and reckless soldier in Chatham Barracks in the year 1799 than Private Richard Doubledick. He associated with the dregs of every regiment. He was as seldom sober as he could be, and was constantly under punishment. It became clear to the whole Barracks that Private Richard Doubledick would very soon be flogged. Now the captain of Richard Doubledick's company was a young gentleman, not above five years, his senior, whose eyes had an expression in them which affected Private Richard Doubledick in a very remarkable way. They were bright, handsome, dark eyes—what are called laughing eyes generally, and when serious rather steadies and severe. But they were the only eyes now left in his narrowed world that Private Richard Doubledick could not stand. Unabashed by evil report and punishment, defiant of everything else and everybody else, he had but to know that those eyes looked at him for a moment, and he felt ashamed. He could not so much as salute Captain Taunton in the streets like any other officer. He was reproached and confused, troubled by the mere possibility of the captains looking at him. In his worst moments he would rather turn back and go any distance out of his way than encounter those two handsome, dark, bright eyes. One day when Private Richard Doubledick came out of the black hole where he had been passing the last eight and forty hours, and in which retreat he spent a good deal of his time, he was ordered to take himself to Captain Taunton's quarters. In the stale and squalid state of a man just out of the black hole he had less fancy than ever for being seen by the captain. But he was not so mad yet as to disobey orders, and consequently went up to the terrace overlooking the parade-ground where the officer's quarters were, twisting and breaking in his hands as he went along a bit of the straw that had formed the decorative furniture of the black hole. Come in, cried the captain, when he had knocked with his knuckles at the door. Private Richard Doubledick pulled off his cap, took a stride forward, and felt very conscious that he stood in the light of the dark, bright eyes. There was a silent pause. Private Richard Doubledick had put the straw in his mouth, and was gradually doubling it up into his windpipe and choking himself. Doubledick, said the captain, do you know where you are going to? To the devil, sir, faltered Doubledick. Yes, returned the captain, and very fast. Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the black hole in his mouth, and made a miserable salute of acquiescence. Doubledick, said the captain, since I entered his Majesty's service, a boy of 17, I have been pained to see many men of promise going that road. But I have never been so pained to see a man make the shameful journey, as I have been ever since you joined the regiment to see you. Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film stealing over the floor at which he looked, also to find the legs of the captain's breakfast table turning crooked, as if he saw them through water. I am only a common soldier, sir, said he. It signifies very little what such a poor brute comes to. You are a man, returned the captain, with grave indignation, of education and superior advantages, and if you say that, meaning what you say, you have sunk lower than I had believed. How low that must be, I leave you to consider, knowing what I know of your disgrace, and seeing what I see. I hope to get shot soon, sir, said Private Richard Doubledick, and then the regiment and the world together will be rid of me. The legs of the table were becoming very crooked. Doubledick, looking up to steady his vision, met the eyes that had so strong an influence over him. He put his hand before his own eyes, and the breast of his disgrace jacket swelled as if it would fly asunder. I would rather, said the young captain, see this in you, Doubledick, than I would see five thousand guineas counted out upon this table for a gift to my good mother. Have you a mother? I am thankful to say she is dead, sir. If your praises, returned the captain, were sounded from mouth to mouth through the whole regiment, through the whole army, through the whole country, you would wish she had lived to say, with pride and joy, he is my son. Spare me, sir, said Doubledick. She would never have heard any good of me. She would never have had any pride and joy in owning herself my mother. Love and compassion she might have had, and would have always had, I know but not. Spare me, sir. I am a broken wretch, quite at your mercy. And he turned his face to the wall, and stretched out his imploring hand. My friend began the captain. God bless you, sir! Sobbed Private Richard Doubledick. You were at the crisis of your fate. Hold your cause unchanged a little longer, and you know what must happen. I know even better than you can imagine that after that has happened you are lost. No man who could shed those tears could bear those marks. I fully believe it, sir, in a low shivering voice, said Private Richard Doubledick. But a man in any station can do his duty, said the young captain, and in doing it can earn his own respect, even if his case should be so very unfortunate and so very rare that he can earn no other man's. A common soldier, poor brute though you called him just now, has disadvantage in the stormy times we live in, that he always does his duty before a host of sympathizing witnesses. Do you doubt that he may so do it as to be extolled through a whole regiment, through a whole army, through a whole country? Turn while you may yet retrieve the past, and try. I will. I ask for only one witness, sir, cried Richard, with a bursting heart. I understand you. I will be a watchful and a faithful one. I have heard from Private Richard Doubledick's own lips that he dropped down upon his knee, kissed that officer's hand, arose and went out of the light of the dark, bright eyes, an altered man. In that year, 1799, the French were in Egypt, in Italy, in Germany—where not? Napoleon Bonaparte had likewise begun to stir against us in India, and most men could read the signs of the great troubles that were coming on. In the very next year, when we formed an alliance with Austria against him, Captain Taunton's regiment was on service in India, and there was not a finer non-commissioned officer in it, no, nor in the whole line, than Corporal Richard Doubledick. In 1801 the Indian army were on the coast of Egypt. Next year was the year of the proclamation of the short peace, and they were recalled. It had then become well known to thousands of men that wherever Captain Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, led, there, close to him ever at his side, firm as a rock, true as the sun, and brave as Mars, would be certain to be found, while life beat in their hearts, that famous soldier, Sergeant Richard Doubledick. 1805, besides being the great year of Trafalgar, was a year of hard fighting in India. That year saw such wonders done by a Sergeant Major, who cut his way single-handed through a solid mass of men, recovered the colours of his regiment, which had been seized from the hand of a poor boy, shot through the heart, and rescued his wounded Captain, who was down and in a very jungle of horses' hooves and sabres. Saw such wonders done, I say, by this brave Sergeant Major, that he was specially made the bearer of the colours he had won, and Ensign Richard Doubledick had risen from the ranks. Saw Lee cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by the bravest of men, for the fame of following the old colours shot through and through, which Ensign Richard Doubledick had saved, inspired all breasts. This regiment fought its way through the Peninsular War, up to the investment of Badahos in 1812. Again and again it had been cheered through the British ranks, until the tears had sprung into men's eyes at the mere hearing of the mighty British voice, so exultant in their valour. And there was not a drummer boy but knew the legend, that wherever the two friends Major Taunton, with the dark bright eyes, and Ensign Richard Doubledick, who was devoted to him, were seen to go, there the boldest spirits in the English army became wild to follow. One day at Badahos, not in the great storming, but in repelling a hot sally of the besieged upon our men at work in the trenches, who had given way, the two officers found themselves hurrying forward face to face, against a party of French infantry, who made a stand. There was an officer at their head, encouraging his men, a courageous, handsome, gallant officer of five and thirty, whom Doubledick saw hurriedly, almost momentarily, but saw well. He particularly noticed this officer waving his sword, and rallying his men with an eager and excited cry, when they fired in obedience to his gesture. And Major Taunton dropped. It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick returned to the spot where he had laid the best friend man ever had, on a coat spread upon the wet clay. Major Taunton's uniform was opened at the breast, and on his shirt were three little spots of blood. Dear Doubledick, said he, I am dying. For the love of heaven know! exclaimed the other, kneeling down beside him, and passing his arm round his neck to raise his head. Taunton, my preserver, my guardian angel, my witness! dearest, truest, kindest of human beings! Taunton, for God's sake! The bright dark eyes, so very, very dark now, in the pale face, smiled upon him, and the hand he had kissed thirteen years ago, laid itself fondly on his breast, right to my mother. You will see home again. Tell her how he became friends. It will comfort her, as it comforts me. He spoke no more, but faintly signed for a moment towards his hair, as it fluttered in the wind. The end sign understood him. He smiled again when he saw that, and gently turning his face over on the supporting arm, as if for rest, died, with his hand upon the breast in which he had revived a soul. No dry eye looked on end sign, Richard Doubledick, that melancholy day. He buried his friend on the field, and became a lone, bereaved man. Beyond his duty he appeared to have but two remaining cares in life. One to preserve the little packet of hair he was to give to Taunton's mother. The other to encounter that French officer who had rallied the men under whose fire Taunton fell. A new legend now began to circulate among our troops, and it was that when he and the French officer came face to face once more, there would be weeping in France. The war went on, and through it went the exact picture of the French officer on the one side, and the bodily reality upon the other, until the battle of Toulouse was fought. In the returns sent home appeared these words, severely wounded but not dangerously, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. At mid-summer time, in the year 1814, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, now a brown soldier seven and thirty years of age, came home to England, invalidated. He brought the hair with him near his heart. Many a French officer had he seen since that day. Many a dreadful night, in searching with men and lanterns for his wounded, had he relieved French officers lying disabled. But the mental picture and the reality had never come together. Though he was weak and suffered pain, he lost not an hour in getting down to Froome in Somersetcher where Taunton's mother lived. In the sweet, compassionate words that naturally present themselves to the mind tonight, he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. It was a Sunday evening, and the lady sat at her quiet garden window, reading the Bible, reading to herself, in a trembling voice, that very passage in it, as I have heard him tell. He heard the words, young man, I say unto thee, arise. He had to pass the window, and the bright dark eyes of his debased time seemed to look at him. Her heart told her who he was. She came to the door quickly, and fell upon his neck. He saved me from ruin, made me a human creature, won me from infamy and shame. Oh, God, for ever bless him, as he will, he will. He will, the lady answered. I know he is in heaven. Then she piteously cried, but, oh, my darling boy, my darling boy! Never from the hour when Private Richard Doubledick enlisted at Chatham had the private, corporal, sergeant, sergeant-major, ensign, or lieutenant, breathed his right name, or the name of Mary Marshall, or a word of the story of his life, into any ear except his reclamours. That previous scene in his existence was closed. He had firmly resolved that his expiation should be to live unknown, to disturb no more the peace that had long grown over his old offences, to let it be revealed, when he was dead, that he had striven and suffered, and had never forgotten. And then, if they could forgive him and believe him, well, it would be time enough, time enough. But that night, remembering the words he had cherished for two years, tell her how we became friends, it will comfort her, as it comforts me. He related everything. It gradually seemed to him, as if, in his maturity, he had recovered a mother. It gradually seemed to her, as if in her bereavement, she had found a son. During his stay in England, the quiet garden into which he had slowly and painfully crept, a stranger, became the boundary of his home. When he was able to rejoin his regiment in the spring, he left the garden, thinking was this indeed the first time he had ever turned his face towards the old colours with a woman's blessing. He followed them, so ragged, so scarred and pierced now that they would scarcely hold together, to catch a bra and ligny. He stood beside them in an awful stillness of many men, shadowy through the mist and drizzle of a wet June forenoon, on the field of Waterloo. And down to that hour the picture in his mind of the French officer had never been compared with the reality. The famous regiment was in action early in the battle, and received its first check in many an eventful year, when he was seen to fall. But it swept on to avenge him, and left behind it no such creature in the world of consciousness, as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. Through pits of mire and pools of rain, along deep ditches once roads that were pounded and plowed to pieces by artillery, heavy wagons, tramp of men and horses, and the struggle of every wheeled thing that could carry wounded soldiers, jolted among the dying and the dead, so disfigured by blood and mud as to be hardly recognisable for humanity, undisturbed by the moaning of men and the shrieking of horses which, newly taken from the peaceful pursuits of life, could not endure the sight of the stragglers lying by the wayside, never to resume their toilsome journey. Dead as to any sentient life that was in it, and yet alive, the form that had been Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, with whose praises England rang, was conveyed to Brussels. There it was tenderly laid down in hospital, and there it lay, week after week, through the long bright summer days, until the harvest spared by war had ripened and was gathered in. Over and over again the sun rose and set upon the crowded city. Over and over again the moonlight nights were quiet on the plains of Waterloo, and all that time was a blank to what had been Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. Rejoicing troops marched into Brussels and marched out. Brothers and fathers, sisters, mothers and wives came thronging thither, drew their lots of joy or agony, and departed. So many times a day the bells rang. So many times the shadows of the great buildings changed. So many lights sprang up at dusk. So many feet passed here and there upon the pavements. So many hours of sleep and cooler air of night succeeded. Indifferent to all, a marble face lay on a bed, like the face of a recumbent statue on the tomb of Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. Slowly laboring at last through a long, heavy dream of confused time and place, presenting faint glimpses of army surgeons whom he knew, and of faces that had been familiar to his youth, dearest and kindest among them, Mary Marshalls, with a solicitude upon it more like reality than anything he could discern, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick came back to life, to the beautiful life of a calm, autumn evening sunset, to the peaceful life of a fresh, quiet room with a large window standing open, a balcony beyond, in which were moving leaves and sweet-smelling flowers. Beyond, again, the clear sky, with the sun full in his sight, pouring its golden radiance on his bed. It was so tranquil and so lovely that he thought he had passed into another world. And he said, in a faint voice, Taunton, are you near me? A face bent over him, not his, his mother's. I came to nurse you. We have nursed you many weeks. You were moved here long ago. Do you remember nothing? Nothing. The lady kissed his cheek and held his hand, soothing him. Where is the regiment? What has happened? Let me call you, mother. What has happened, mother? A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regiment was the bravest in the field. His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the tears ran down his face. He was very weak, too weak to move his hand. Was it dark just now, he asked presently? No. It was only dark to me. Something passed away like a black shadow. But as it went, and the sun, oh, the blessed sun, how beautiful it is, touched my face, I thought I saw a light white cloud pass out at the door. Was there nothing that went out? She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, she still holding his hand and soothing him. From that time he recovered, slowly, for he had been desperately wounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but making some little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strength to converse as he lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton always brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled his preservers' dying words and thought, it comforts her. One day he awoke out of asleep, refreshed, and asked her to read to him. But the curtain of the bed softening the light, which she always drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from her table at the bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn, and a woman's voice spoke, which was not hers. Can you bear to see a stranger, it said softly? Will you like to see a stranger? Stranger, he repeated. The voice awoke old memories before the days of Private Richard doubled it. A stranger now, but not a stranger once, it said, in tones that thrilled him. Richard, dear Richard, lost through so many years, my name, he cried out her name, Mary, and she held him in her arms and his head lay on her bosom. I am not breaking a rash vow, Richard. These are not Mary Marshall's lips that speak. I have another name. She was married. I have another name, Richard. Did you ever hear it? Never! He looked into her face so pensively beautiful and wandered at the smile upon it through her tears. Think again, Richard. Are you sure you never heard my altered name? Never! Don't move your head to look at me, dear Richard. Let it lie here while I tell my story. I loved a generous, noble man, loved him with my whole heart, loved him for years and years, loved him faithfully, devotedly, loved him without hope of return, loved him knowing nothing of his highest qualities, not even knowing that he was alive. He was a brave soldier. He was honoured and beloved by thousands of thousands, when the mother of his dear friend found me, and showed me that in all his triumphs he had never forgotten me. He was wounded in a great battle. He was brought, dying, here, into Brussels. I came to watch and tend him, as I would have joyfully gone with such a purpose to the drearyest ends of the earth. When he knew no one else, he knew me. When he suffered most, he bore his sufferings barely murmuring, content to rest his head where yours rests now. When he lay at the point of death, he married me, that he might call me wife before he died. And the name, my dear love, that I took on that forgotten night, my dear love, that I took on that forgotten night. I know it now, he sobbed. The shadowy remembrance strengthens. It has come back. I thank heaven that my mind is quite restored. My Mary, kiss me, lull this weary head to rest, or I shall die of gratitude. His parting words were fulfilled. I see home again. Well, they were happy. It was a long recovery, but they were happy through it all. The snow had melted on the ground, and the birds were singing in the leafless thickets of the early spring, when those three were first able to ride out together, and when people flocked about the open carriage, to cheer and congratulate Captain Richard Doubledick. But even then, it became necessary for the Captain, instead of returning to England, to complete his recovery in the climate of southern France. They found a spot upon the Rhône, within a ride of the old town of Avignon, and within view of its broken bridge, which was all they could desire. They lived there together six months, then returned to England. Mrs. Taunton, growing old after six months, old after three years, though not so old as that her bright dark eyes were dimmed, and remembering that her strength had been benefited by the change, resolved to go back for a year to those parts. So she went with a faithful servant, who had often carried her son in his arms, and she was to be rejoined and escorted home at the year's end by Captain Richard Doubledick. She wrote regularly to her children, as she called them now, and they to her. She went to the neighbourhood of Aix, and there, in their own chateau near the farmer's house she rented, she grew into intimacy with a family belonging to that part of France. The intimacy began in her often meeting among the vineyards a pretty child, a girl with a most compassionate heart, who was never tired of listening to the solitary English lady's stories of her poor son and the cruel wars. The family were as gentle as the child, and at length she came to know them so well that she accepted their invitation to pass the last month of her residence abroad under their roof. All this intelligence she wrote home piecemeal as it came about from time to time, and at last enclosed a polite note from the head of the chateau, soliciting on the occasion of his approaching mission to that neighbourhood the honour of the company of Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in the full vigor of life, broader across the chest and shoulders than he had ever been before, dispatched a courteous reply, and followed it in person. Travelling through all that extent of country after three years of peace, he blessed the better days on which the world had fallen. The corn was golden, not drenched in unnatural red, was bound in sheaves for food, not trodden underfoot by men in mortal fight. The smoke rose up from peaceful hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts were laden with the fairfruits of the earth, not with wounds and death. To him who had so often seen the terrible reverse, these things were beautiful indeed, and they brought him in a softened spirit to the old chateau near X upon a deep blue evening. It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, with round towers and extinguishers, and a high-ledon roof, and more windows than Aladdin's palace. The lattice blinds were all thrown open after the heat of the day, and there were glimpses of rambling walls and corridors within. Then there were immense outbuildings fallen into partial decay, masses of dark trees, terraced gardens, ballasts, balustrades, tanks of water, too weak to play and too dirty to work, statues, weeds, and thickets of iron railing that seemed to have overgrown themselves like the shrubberies, and to have branched out in all manner of wild shapes. The entrance doors stood open, as doors often do in that country when the heat of the day is passed, and the captain saw no bell or knocker and walked in. He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool and gloomy after the glare of a southern day's travel. Extending along the four sides of this hall was a gallery, leading to suites of rooms, and it was lighted from the top. Still no bell was to be seen. Faith, said the captain, halting, ashamed of the clanking of his boots, this is a ghostly beginning. He started back and felt his face turn white. In the gallery, looking down at him, stood the French officer, the officer whose picture he had carried in his mind so long and so far. Compared with the original, at last, in every lineament how like it was. He moved and disappeared, and Captain Richard Double Dick heard his steps coming quickly down into the hall. He entered through an archway. There was a bright, sudden look upon his face, much such a look as it had worn in that fatal moment. Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Double Dick enchanted to receive him a thousand apologies. The servants were all out in the air. There was a little fate among them in the garden. In effect, it was the fate day of my daughter, the little cherished and protected of Madame Taunton. He was so gracious and so frank that Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Double Dick could not withhold his hand. It is the hand of a brave Englishman, said the French officer, retaining it while he spoke. I could respect a brave Englishman, even as my foe, how much more as my friend. I also am a soldier. He has not remembered me as I have remembered him. He did not take such a note of my face that day as I took of his, thought Captain Richard Double Dick. How shall I tell him? The French officer conducted his guests into a garden, and presented him to his wife, an engaging and beautiful woman, sitting with Mrs Taunton in a whimsical old-fashioned pavilion. His daughter, her fair young face beaming with joy, came running to embrace him, and there was a boy-baby to tumble down among the orange trees on the broad steps, in making for his father's legs. A multitude of children visitors were dancing to sprightly music, and all the servants and peasants about the chateau were dancing too. It was a scene of innocent happiness that might have been invented for the climax of the scenes of peace which had soothed the captain's journey. He looked on, greatly troubled in his mind, until a resounding bell rang, and the French officer begged to show him his rooms. They went upstairs into the gallery from which the officer had looked down, and Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Double Dick was cordially welcomed to a grand outer chamber, and a smaller one within, all clocks and draperies and hearths, and brazen dogs and tiles, and cool devices, and elegance and vastness. You were at Waterloo, said the French officer. I was, said Captain Richard Double Dick, and at Badder Horse. Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his ears, he sat down to consider, what shall I do, and how shall I tell him? At that time, unhappily, many deplorable duels had been fought between English and French officers arising out of the recent war. And these duels, and how to avoid this officer's hospitality, were the uppermost thought in Captain Richard Double Dick's mind. He was thinking, and letting the time run out, in which he should have dressed for dinner, when Mrs. Taunton spoke to him outside the door, asking if he could give her the letter he had brought from Mary. His mother, above all the Captain thought, how shall I tell her? You will form a friendship with your host, I hope, said Mrs. Taunton, whom he hurriedly admitted, that will last for life. He is so true-hearted and so generous, Richard, that you can hardly fail to esteem one another. If he had been spared, she kissed, not without tears, the locket in which she wore his hair. He would have appreciated him with his own magnanimity, and would have been truly happy that the evil days were past which made such a man his enemy. She left the room, and the Captain walked first to one window, whence he could see the dancing in the garden, then to another window, whence he could see the smiling prospect and the peaceful vineyards. Spirit of my departed friend, said he, is it through thee these better thoughts arising in my mind? Is it thou who has shown me all the way I have been drawn to meet this man, the blessings of the altered time? Is it thou who has sent thy stricken mother to me, to stay my angry hand? Is it from thee the whisper comes that this man did his duty as thou didst, and as I did through thy guidance, which has wholly saved me here on earth, and that he did no more? He sat down with his head buried in his hands, and when he rose up made the second strong resolution of his life, that neither to the French officer, nor to the mother of his departed friend, nor to any soul, while either of the two was living, would he breathe what only he knew. And when he touched that French officer's glass with his own that day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in the name of the divine forgiver of injuries. Here I ended my story as the first poor traveller. But, if I had told it now, I could have added that the time has since come, when the son of Major Richard Doubledick, and the son of that French officer, friends, as their fathers were before them, fought side by side in one cause, with their respective nations, like long-divided brothers, whom the better times have brought together. Fast United. Recording by Ruth Golding The Seven Poor Travellers in Three Chapters by Charles Dickens Chapter 3 The Road My story being finished and the wassail, too, we broke up as the Cathedral Bell struck twelve. I did not take leave of my travellers that night, for it had come into my head to reappear in conjunction with some hot coffee at seven in the morning. As I passed along the High Street, I heard the waits at a distance, and struck off to find them. They were playing near one of the old gates of the city, at the corner of a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick tenements, which the clarionette obligingly informed me were inhabited by the minor cannons. They had odd little porches over the doors, like sounding boards over old pulpits, and I thought I should like to see one of the minor cannons come out upon his top stop, and favour us with a little Christmas discourse about the poor scholars of Rochester, taking for his text the words of his master relative to the devouring of widow's houses. The clarionette was so communicative, and my inclinations were, as they generally are, of so vagabond a tendency, that I accompanied the waits across an open green called the vines, and assisted, in the French sense, at the performance of two waltzes, two polkas, and three Irish melodies, before I thought of my inn any more. However, I returned to it then, and found a fiddle in the kitchen, and Ben, the wall-eyed young man, and two chamber-maids, circling round the great-deal table with the utmost animation. I had a very bad night. It cannot have been owing to the turkey or the beef, and the wassail is out of the question, but in every endeavour that I made to get to sleep, I failed most dismally. I was never asleep, and in whatsoever unreasonable direction my mind rambled, the effigy of Master Richard Watts perpetually embarrassed it. In a word, I only got out of the worshipful Master Richard Watts's way by getting out of bed in the dark at six o'clock, and tumbling, as my custom is, into all the cold water that could be accumulated for the purpose. The outer air was dull and cold enough in the street when I came down there, and the one candle in our supper-room at Watts's charity looked as pale in the burning as if it had had a bad night, too. But my travellers had all slept soundly, and they took to the hot coffee in the piles of bread and butter, which Ben had arranged, like deals in a timber-yard, as kindly as I could, desire. While it was yet scarcely daylight, we all came out into the street together, and there shook hands. The widow took the little sailor towards Chatham, where he was to find a steamboat for sheerness. The lawyer, with an extremely knowing look, went his own way, without committing himself by announcing his intentions. Two more struck off by the cathedral and old castle for Maidstone, and the bookpeddler accompanied me over the bridge. As for me, I was going to walk by Cobham Woods, as far upon my way to London, as I fancied. When I came to the style and footpath by which I was to diverge from the main road, I bade farewell to my last remaining poor traveller, and pursued my way alone. And now the mists began to rise in the most beautiful manor, and the sun to shine. And as I went on through the bracing air, seeing the hawfrost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all nature shared in the joy of the great birthday. Going through the woods, the softness of my train of thought, and all the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossy ground, and among the brown leaves, enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt surrounded. As the whitened stems environed me, I thought how the founder of the time had never raised his benign hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of one unconscious tree. By Cobham Hall I came to the village, and the churchyard where the dead had been quietly buried, in the sure and certain hope which Christmas time inspired. What children could I see at play, and not be loving of, recalling who had loved them? No garden that I passed was out of unison with the day, for I remembered that the tomb was in a garden, and that she, supposing him to be the gardener, had said, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. In time the distant river with the ships came full in view, and with it pictures of the poor fishermen mending their nets, who arose and followed him. Of the teaching of the people from a ship pushed off a little way from shore, by reason of the multitude. Of a majestic figure walking on the water in the loneliness of night. My very shadow on the ground was eloquent of Christmas, for did not the people lay their sick, whether mere shadows of the men who had heard and seen him might fall as they passed along. Thus Christmas beguirte me far and near, until I had come to Black Heath, and had walked down the long vista of gnarled old trees in Greenwich Park, and was being steam-rattled through the mists, now closing in once more, towards the lights of London. Brightly they shone, but not so brightly as my own fire, and the brighter faces around it, when we came together to celebrate the day. And there I told of worthy Master Richard Watts, and of my supper with the six poor travellers who were neither rogues nor proctors. And from that hour to this I have never seen one of them again. End of Chapter 3. Recording by Ruth Golding. End of The Seven Poor Travellers by Charles Dickens