“Don’t mind it, dear.”
“But I do,” I said, quite fierce and loud, and the poor thing stole away from me again, and though I didn’t look at her, I knew she wasn’t able to keep the tears back, and that I’d been the cause again.
I took no notice then though, for something was working in me, and at last I told her to go to bed, and she did, while I sat before the bit of fire in the room and thought it over.
Now don’t laugh at me when I tell you that I believe in bells, but I can’t help it if you do, for they always seem to speak to me like music does, and if there’s ever anything will act on me it’s the sound of a peal of bells. It was bitter cold that night, and yet I didn’t feel it; the wind howled along the street, and I could now and then hear the great flakes of snow come softly patting at the window, and then the sashes would shake, and the wind rumble in the chimney, while every now and then came the sound of the bells, not bright and joyful, but sad and sobbing and mournful. I knew it was a merry, rejoicing time with every one else. I could not attend to that, for I was gradually getting to see one thing that I kept on fighting against, and that was, what a fool I had been.
Fight against it I did, but it was no use, for as the streets got more quiet, and the wind sunk, the bells rang out clearer and clearer, and seemed to keep telling me of it. Now I knew of it by the threepence in my pocket; now it was by the shabby floor; then the beggarly furniture and the miserable fire; and though I didn’t cross the room I had it in my mind’s eye, and there it all was written plain enough in my wife’s face.
And yet I wouldn’t own to it, though the bells seemed to be speaking to me, and rang out plainer and plainer all my waste and carelessness, till all at once they stopped for a minute; when one big bell began to toll slowly, “boom, boom, boom”; and that did it, for the next moment I gave a wild sort of cry, and was down on my knees with my hands over my face, and the big tears, hot and blinding, bursting out from between my fingers. But the tears might blind, they could not hide that, though every one seemed like hot lead. They could not hide what I then saw, for the bell still went on, now swept away in the distance, now coming nearer and nearer, till it filled the room, and made the very place seem to tremble and quiver, as did every nerve in my body.
No; the tears could not hide that scene as the tolling bell brought up, and there I could see the snow upon the ground, and two mourners following a little coffin through the street of a country-town with their footmarks left black in the pathway, as though even they were marks of the funeral. And there, too, was the church, and the grey-haired clergyman meeting us at the gate, and me hard, bitter, and sullen, seeing it all unmoved, and listening to the words as came now to my ears borne upon the bells. There, too, was the little grave, and the earth thrown out all black round it, and every spade-full of earth, too, black, just as though everything was in mourning for the little flower as the bitter winter had nipped. Yes; there it all was, with the poor wife sinking down at last upon her knees beside the open grave, and letting a few of a mother’s tears fall silently upon the little plain, white coffin, and me—hard, bitter, and cold.
“Boom, boom, boom”—how it all came back, and how I saw it all now. How plain it all was that I had been a fool and my own enemy, and ready to blame every one but myself for my ill success; and at last muttering “pardon, pardon,” I held up my hands, and then started to my feet, for the bells had stopped, and my hands were taken by some one there in the dark, so that I trembled; till I heard my name whispered, and this time I did not turn from the offered comfort.
Just then out rang the bells again, bright, cheerful, and merry; and, though I listened attentively, and tried to make them go with my thoughts, they seemed now quite to have left me to myself.
And then, without thinking of the bitter night, or our poverty, or what we should do for a Christmas dinner, we sat there together wrapped up in one idea, and that was that there was a change come over me, for somehow I felt quite a different man; and, though no word was spoken, we seemed to understand one another, and that was quite enough for us.