Family Column.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVII, Issue 1776, 7 October 1862, Page 4

Family Column.

TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND.)

The last tin tstmas Tali hy Dickens, (in sevex chapters.)

CHAPTER I.

PICKING VV SOOT AXD CINDERS. '•And why Tom Tiddler's ground?" asked the Travell.-v. •• L. vsum?. he ■ea;t<\.. h,iliVcnc.i t> Tramp" and Euch-lih«," -eiu-m.-.-i '.lie ! anil lord, --and of course th'^v pick Vm up. And this being clone on his ■ own land (which it is his own laud, you _ol>se»vo ' and were his family's before him), why it is but I regarding the halfpence as gold and silver, and tinning the ownership of the property a bit round your finger, and there you have the name of the children's game complete. And it's appropriate too," said the Landlord, with his favourite action of stooping a little, to look across the table out of the window at vacancy, under the window-blind which was half drawn down. " Leastwise it has been so considered by many gentlemen which have partook of chops and tea in the present humble parlour." The traveller was partaking of chops and tea in the present humble parlour, and the Laudlord's shot was fired obliquely at him. " And you call him a Hermit?" said the Travcllci* " They call him such," returned the Landlord, evading personal responsibility ; " he is in general so considered." " What is a Hermit ?" asked the Traveller. " What is it?" repeated the Landlord, drawing his hand across hischin. •' Yes, what is it ?"' The Landlord stooped again, to get a more comprehensive view of vacancy under the windowblind, and — with an asphyxiated appearance on him, as one unaccustomed to definition — made no ans.ver. " I'll tell you what I suppose it to be," said the Traveller. "An abominably dirty thing." "Mr. Mopes is dirty, It cannot be denied," said the Landlord , " Intolerably conceited." " Mr. Mopes is vain of the life he leads, some do say," replied the Landlord, as another concession. " A slothful unsavoury nasty reversal of the laws of human nature," said the Traveller ; " and for the sake of God's working world and its wholesomeness, both moral and physical, I would put the thing on the treadmill (if I had my way) wherever I found it; whether on a pillar, or in % a hole; whether on Tom Tiddlers ground, or the Pope of Rome's ground, or a Hindoo fakeer's ground, or any other ground " "I don't know about putting Mr. Mopes on the treadmill," said the Landlord, shaking his head very seriously. " There ain't a doubt but what he has got landed property." " How far may it be to this said Tom Tiddler s ground ?" asked the Traveller. " Put it at five mile." returned the Landlord. " Well ! When 1 have done my breakfast," said the Traveller, " I'll go there. I came over here this morning to find it out and see it." "Many does," observed the Landlord. The conversation passed, in the midsummer weather of no remote year of grace, down among the pleasant dales and trout streams of a green English county. No matter what county. Enough that you may hunt there, shoot there, fish there, traverse long grass-grown Roman roads there, open ancient barrows there, see many a square mile of richly cultivated land there, and hold Arcadian talk with a bold peasantry, their couutry's pride, who will tell you (if you want to know) how pastoral house-keeping is done on nine shillings a week. Mr. Traveller sat at his breakfast in the little sanded parlor of the Peal of Bells village alehouse, with the dew and dust of an early walk upon his shoes— an early walk by road and meadow and coppice, that had sprinkled him bountifully with little blades of grass, and scraps of new hay, and with leaves both young and old, and other such fragrant tokens of the freshness and wealth of summer. The window through which the landlord had concentrated his gaze upon vacancy, was shaded, because the morning sun was hot and bright on the village street The village street was like most other village streets ; wide for its height, silent for its size, and drowsy in the dullest degree. Mr. Traveller having finished his breakfast and paid his moderate score, walked out to the threshold of the Peal of Bells, and, thence directed by the pointing finger of his host, betook himself towards the ruined hermitage of Mr. Mopes the hermit. For, Mr. Mopes, by suffering everything about him to go to ruin, and by dressing himself in a blanket and skewer, and by steeping himself in soot and grease and other nastiness, had acquired great renown in all- that, country side — far greater renown than he could ever have won for himself, if his career had been that of an ordinary chris- 1 tian, or a decent Hottentot. He had even blanketed and skewered and sooted and greased him- I self, into the London papers. -And it was curious to find, as Mr. Traveller found by stopping for a new direction at this farm-house or at that cottage as he went along, with how much accuracy the morbid Mopes had counted on the weakness of his neighbors to embellish him. A mist of homebrewed marvel and romance surrounded Mopes. in which (as in all fogs) the real proportions of the real object were- extravagantly heightened, j He had murdered his beautiful beloved in a fit of jealousy and was doing penance ; he had made a vow under the influence of grief ; he had made a| vow under the influence of a fatal accident ; he had made a vow under the influence of religion ; he had made a vow under the influence of drink ; he had made a vow nnder the influence of disappointment ; he had never made any vow, but "had got led into it" by the possession of a mighty and most awful secret ; he was enoi mously rich, lie was stupendously charitable, he was profoundly learned, he saw spectres, he knew and could do all kinds of wonders. Some said he went out every night, and was met by terrified wayfarers stalking along dark roads, others said he never went out, some knew his penance to be nearly expired, others had positive information that his seclusion was not a penance at all, and would never expire but with himself. Even, as to the easy facts of how old he was, or how long he had held verminous occupation of his blanket and skewer, no consistent information was to be got, from those who must know if they would. He was represented as being all the ages between five and twenty and sixty, and as having been a hermit seven years, twelve, twenty, thirty — though twenty, on the whole, appeared the favorite term. " Well, well !" said Mr. Traveller. Atariy rate, let us see what a real live Hermit looks like." So, Mr. Traveller went on, and on, and on, until he come to Tom Tidler's ground. It was a nook in a rustic by-road, which the genius of Mopes had laid waste sa completely as if he had been born an Emperor and a Conqueror. Its centre object was a dwelling-house, sufficiently substantial, all the window-glass of which had been long ago abolished by the surprising genius of Mopes, and all the windows of which were barred across the rough-split logs of trees nailed over them on the outside. A rickyard, hip-high in vegetable rankness and ruin, contained outbuildings, from which the thatch had lightly fluttered away, on all the winds of all the seasons of the year, and from which the planks and beams had heavily dropped and rotted. The frosts and damps of winter, and the heats of summer, had warped what wreck remained, bo that not a post or a board retained the position it was meant to hold, but everything was twisted from its purpose, like its owner, and degraded and debased. In this homestead of the sluggard, behind the ruined hedge, and pinking away

among the ruined grass and the nettles, were the • last perishing fragments of certain ricks ; which i had gradually mildewed and collapsed, uutil they < looked like mounds of rotten honeycomb, or dirty sponge. Tom Tidler's ground could even show : ! its ruined wafer ; for, there was a slimy pond into , j which a tree or two had fallen — one soppy tiunk ! and brunches lay across it then— which in its ac ' cumulation of stagnant, weed, and its foul black decomposition, ami in all it* foulness and filth, way .'.1m0.-t eoinloiti >g, regarded a-.-i the. only waf.ir thar could have ivhVcitd the nhaineinl plac.-i wiihoiu. sfwning polluted by that low . offi.-e. i Mr. Traveller looker] all around him on Tom , I Tiddler's ground, and his glance at laht encountered a dusty Tinker lying among the weeds and rank grass, in the shade of the dwelling-house. A rough walking staff lay on the ground by his side, and his head rested on a small wallet. He met Mr. Traveller's eye without litting up his head, merely depressing his chin a little (for he was lying on his back) to get a better view of him. " Good day !" said Mr. Traveller. " Same to you, if you like it," returned the Tinker. '• Don't you like it ? It's a very fine day. " I ain't partickler in weather," returned the Tinker, with a yawn. Mr. Traveller had walked up to where he lay, and was looking down at him. " T his is a curious place." gaid Mr. Traveller. " Ay. I suppose so !" returned the Tinker, " Tom Tiddler's ground they .call tliis." " Are you well acquainted with it?" " Never saw it afore to-day," said the Tinker with another yawn. " and don't care if 1 never see it again. There was a man here just now, told me what it was called. If you want to see Tom himself, you must go in at'that gate." He faintly indicated* with his chin, a little mean ruin of a wooden gate at the side of the house. " Have you seen Tom ? " No. and I ain't partickler to see him. I can see a dirty man any where." "He does not live in the house then?" said Mr. Traveller, casting his eyes upon the house anew. " The man said," returned the Tinker, rather irritably, — " him as was here just now,-—' this what you're tying on, mate, is Tom Tiddler's giound. And if you want to see Tom,' he says, 1 you must go in at that gate.' The man came out of that gate himself, and he ought to know." '•Certainly," said V r. Traveller. "Though* perhaps," exclaimed the Tinker, so struck by the brightness of his own. idea, that _it had the electric effect upon him of causing him to lift up his head an inch or so, " perhaps he was a liar !" He told some rum'una h!m as was here just now did — about this place of Tom's. He says — him as was here just now — ' When Tom shut up the house, mate, to go to rack, the beds was left, all made, like as if somebody was going to sleep in every bed. And if you was to walk through the bed-rooms now, you'd see the^ ragged mouldy bedclothes a heaving and a heaving like seas. And a hcavine and a heaving with what?' he says. 'Why, with the rats under 'em.'" " I wish I had seen that man," Mr. Traveller remarked. " You'd have been welcome to see him instead of me seeing him," growled the Tinker ; " for he was a long-winded one." Not without a sense of injury in the remembrance, the Tinker gloomily closed his eyes- Mr. Traveller, deeming the Tinker a short-winded one, from whom no further breath of information was to be derived, betook himself to the gate. Swung upon its rusty hinges, it admitted him into a yard in which there was nothing to be seen but an outhouse attached to_ the ruined building, with a barred window in it. As there were traces of many recent footsteps under this window, and as it was a low window, and unglazed, Mr. Traveller made bold to peep within the bars. And there to be sure he had a real live Hermit before him, and could judge how the real dead hermits used to look. He was lying on a bank of soot and cinders, on the floor in front of a rusty fireplace. There was nothing else in the dark little kitchen, or scullery, or whatever his den had been originally used as but a table with a litter of old bottles on it. A rat made a clatter among these bottles, jumped down, and ran over the real live Hermit on his way to his hole, or the man in his hole would not have been so easily discernible. Tickled in the face by the rat's tail, the owner of Tom Tiddler's ground opened his eyes, saw Mr. Traveller, started up and sprang to the window. " Humph !" thought Mr. Traveller, retiring a pace or two from the bars. "A compound of Newgate, Bedlam, a Debtors' Prison in the worst time, a chimney-sweep, a mudlark, and the Noble Savage ! A nice old family, the Hermit family. Hah !" Mr. Traveller thought this, as he silently confronted the sooty object in the blanket and skewer (in sober truth it wore nothing else), with the matted hair and the staring eyes. Further, Mr Traveller thought, as the eyes surveyed him with a very obvious curiosity in ascertaining the effect they produced, " Vanity, vanity, vanity ! Verily, all is vanity!" " What is your name, sir, and where do you come from ?" asked Mr. Mopes the Hermit — with an air of authority, but in the ordinary hninan speech of one who lias been to school Mr. Traveller answered the inquiries. " Did you come here, sir, to see me ?" 11 1 did. I heard of you, and I came to seeyou — 1 know you like to be seen." Mr. Traveller coolly threw the last words in, as a matter of course, to forestall an affectation of resentment or objection that he saw rising beneath the grease and grime of the face. They had their effect. " So," said the Hermit, after a momentary silence, unclasping the bars by which he had previously hisld and seating himself behind them on the ledge of the window, with his bare legs and feet crouched up, " you know I like to be seen ?" Mr. Traveller looked about him for something to sit on. and observing a billet of wood in a corner, brought it near the window. Deliberately seating himself upon it, he answered: " Justso.' Each looked at the other, and each appeared to take some pains to get the measure of the other. " Then you have come to ask me why 1 lead this life," said the Hermit, frowning in a stormy manner. " I never tell that to any human being. 1 will not he asked that." " Certainly you will not be asked that by me,"' said Mr. Traveller, '■ for I have not the slightest desire to know." " You are an uncouth man," said Mr. Mopes the Hermit. •' You are another," gaid Mr. Traveller. The Hermit, who was plainly in the habit of overawing his visitors with the novelty of his filth and his blanket and skewer, glared at his present visitor in some discomfiture and surprise : as if he had taken aim at him with a sure gun, and his piece had missed fire. " Why do you come here at all ?" he asked, after a pause. " Upon my life," said Mr. Traveller, " I was made to ask myself that very question only a few minutes ago — by a Tinker too." As he glanced towards the gate in saying it, the hermit glanced in that direction likewise. " Yes. He is lying on his back in the sunlight outside," said Mr. Traveller, as if he had been asked concerning the man, " and he won't come in ; and he says — and really very reasonably — ' What should I come in for ? I can see a dirty man anywhere.' " " You are an insolent person. Go away from my premises. Go ! " said the Hermit in an imperious and angry tone, " Come, come !" returned Mr. Traveller, quite undisturbed. " This is a little too much. You are not goiDg to call yourself clean ? Look at youiiegg. And as to these being ygw premises ;

they are in far too disgraceful a condition^ to claim any privilege of ownership, or anything else." The Hermit bounced down from his window ledge, and cast himself on his bed of soot and cinders. •■ I am not going," said Mr. Traveller, glancing in nfrer him : 'you won't get rid of me in that way. You had better come and talk." ''*I won't talk," said the Hermit, flouncing round to pet. iiis back towards the window. «'Tiu;nl will." .-aid Mr. Traveller. "Why fhoukl you take it. ill that 1 have no curiosity to Unow why you live this highly absurd and highly , indecent life? When I contemplate a man in a state of disease, surely there is no moral obligation on me to be anxious to know how he took it."

After a short silence, the Hermit bounced up again, and came back to the barred window. " What? You are not gone?''.he Baid, aftect ing to have supposed that he was. " Nor going," vir. Traveller replied : " I design to pass this summer day here." " How dare you come, sir, upon my premises " the Hermit was returning, when his visitor interrupted him. " Really, you know, you must not talk about your premises. 1 cannot allow such a place as this to be dignified with the name of premises." # " How dare you," said the Hermit, shaking his bars, " come in at my gate, to taunt me with being in a diseased state ?" " why, Loid bless my soul," returned the other very composedly, " you have not the face to say that you are in a wholesome state ? Do allow me again to call your attention to your legs. Scrape yourstly anywhere— with anything— and then tell me you are in a wholesome state. The fact is, Mr. Mopes, that you are not only a Nuisance—" " A Nuisance?" repeated the Hermit, fiercely. " What is a place in this obsene state of dilapidation but a nuisance? What is a man in your obscene state of dilapidation but a Nuisance? Then, as you very well know, you cannot do without an audience, and your audience is a Nuisance. You attract all the disreputable vagabonds and prowlers within ten miles round, by exhibiting yourself to them in that objectionable blanket, and by throwing copper among them, and giving them drink out of those very dirty jars and bottles that I see in there (their stomachs j need be be strong !) ; and in short," said Mr. Traveller, summing up in a quiet and comfortably settled manner, " you are a Nuisance, and the audience that you cannot possibly dispense with is a Nuisance, and the Nuisance is not merely a local Nuisance, because it is a general Nuisance to know that there can be such aNuisance left in civilisation so very long after its time " " Will you go away ? I have a gun in here,"Baid the Hermit. " Pooh I" "I have.'" "Now, I put it to you. Did I say you had not? And as to going away, didn't I say I am j not going away ? You have made me forget where I was. I now remember that I was remarking on your conduct being a nuisance. Moreover, it is in the last and lowest degree inconsequent foolishness and weakness." " Weakness ?" echoed the Hermit. " Weakness," said Mr, Traveller, with his former comfortably settled final air. " I weak, you fool ?" cried the Hermit, " I who have held to my purpose, and my diet, and my only bed there, all these years ?" " The more c the years the weaker you," returned Mr. Traveller. " Though the years aro not so many as folks say, and as you willingly take credit for. The crudt upon your face is thick and dark, Mr. Mopes, but I can see enough of you through it, to see that you are still ayoungman," "Inconsequent foolishness is lunacy, I suppose?" said the Hermit. " I suppose it is very like it," answered Mr. Traveller. " Do I converse like a lunatic?" " One of us two muse have a strong presumption against him of being one, wherher or no. Either the clean and decorously clad man, or the dirty and indecorously clad man, I don't say which." " Why, you self-sufficient bear," said the Hermit, " not a day passes but I am justified in my purpose by the conversations I hold here ; not a day passes but I am shown by everything I hear and see here, how right and strong I am in holding my purpose." Mr. Traveller, lounging easily on his billet of wood, took out a pocket pipe and began to fill it. " Now, that a man," he said, appealing to the summer gky as he did so, " that a man — even behind bars, in a blanket and skewer — should tell me that lie can see from day to day, any orders or conbitions of men, women, or children, who can by any possibility, teach him that it is anything but the miserablest drivelling for a human creature to quarrel with his social nature — not to go so far as to say, to renounce his common human decency, for that is an extreme case ; or who can teach him that he can in anywise separate himself from his kind and the habits of his ijind, without becoming a deteriorated spectacle calculated to give the Devil (and perhaps the monkeys) pleasure ; is something wonderful ! I repeat/ said Mr. Traveller, beginning to smoke, 44 the unreasoning hardihood of it, is something wonderful — even in a man with the dirt upon him an inch or two thick — behind bars — in a blanket and skewer !" The Hermit looked at him irresolutely, and retired to his soot and cinders and lay down, and got up again and came to the bars, and again looked at him irresolutely, and finally said with sharpness : " I don't like tobacco." " I don't like dirt," rejoined Mr. Traveller; " tobacco is an excellent disinfectant." " What do you mean?" inquired the Hermit, with a furious air. " I mean that yonder is your gate, and there are you, and here am I ; I mean that I know it to be a moral impossibility that any person can stray in at that gate from any point of the com- ! pass, with any sort of experience, gained at first hand, or derived from another, that can confute me and justify you." " You are an arrogant and boastful hero," said the Hermit. " You think yoursellf profoundly j wise." '■ Bah !" returned Mr. Traveller, quietly smoking, " There is little wisdom in knowing that every man must be up and doing, and that all mankind are made dependent on one another." " You have companions outside," said the Hermit. "I am not to bo imposed npon by your assumed confidence in the people, who may enter." " A depraved distrust," returned the visitor, compassionately raising his eyebrows, "of course belongs to your state. I can't help that." " Do you mean to tell me you have no confederates?" " I mean to tell you nothing but what I have told you. What I have told you, is, that it is a moral impossibility that any son or daughter of Adam can stand on this ground that I put my foot on, or on any ground that mortal treads, and gainsay the healthy tenure on which we hold our existence." " Which is," sneered the Hermit, " according to you " " Which is," returned the other, " according to Eternal Providence, that we must arise and wash our faces and do our gregarious work and act and re-act on one another, leaving only the idiot and the palsied to sit blinking'in the corner. Come !" apostrophising the gate ; "Open sesame! Show his eyes and grieve his heart ! I don't care who I comes, for I know what must come of it !" v I With \hat, he faced round a little on his billet ■of wood towards tho gate; and Mr, Mopes the Hermit, after two or three ridiculous bounces of indecision at his bed and back again, submitted to what he could not help himself against, and coiled himself on his window-ledge, holding to his hais and looking out rather anxiously. (fo be continued in qw nwt,)