As they gave the answer, they recalled their outstretched hands; and where their figures had been, there the Bells were.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
1
0
0
0
Hashtag
#TheChimes
Advertisement · 728 × 90
‘Show him what he calls himself,’ said the dark figures, one and all.
The tower opened at his feet. He looked down, and beheld his own form, lying at the bottom, on the outside: crushed and motionless.
‘No more a living man!’ cried Trotty. ‘Dead!’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
Learn from her life, a living truth. Learn from the creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are born. See every bud and leaf plucked one by one from off the fairest stem, and know how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To desperation!’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
No wonder that an old man’s breast could not contain a sound so vast and mighty. It broke from that weak prison in a rush of tears; and Trotty put his hands before his face.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
‘Spare me!’ cried Trotty, falling on his knees; ‘for Mercy’s sake!’
‘Listen!’ said the Shadow.
‘Listen!’ cried the other Shadows.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
‘who does so, does us wrong. And you have done us wrong!’
‘Not meaning it,’ said Trotty. ‘In my ignorance. Not meaning it!’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
as it gauges the amount of miserable food on which humanity may pine and wither; does us wrong. That wrong you have done us!’ said the Bell.
‘I have!’ said Trotty. ‘Oh forgive me!’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
how you were quite the plaything of my little daughter Meg (almost the only one she ever had) when first her mother died, and she and me were left alone; you won’t bear malice for a hasty word!’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
and when he heard himself arraigned as one who had offended them so weightily, his heart was touched with penitence and grief.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
1
0
0
0
‘And you have thanked them?’ said the Bell.
‘A thousand times!’ cried Trotty.
‘How?’
‘I am a poor man,’ faltered Trotty, ‘and could only thank them in words.’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
1
1
0
0
from the entanglements, intricacies, and depths of which, as from among the boughs of a dead wood blighted for their phantom use, they kept their darksome and unwinking watch.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
all this struck coldly through him, not as a reflection but a bodily sensation.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
1
0
0
0
rather than have seen them watching him with eyes that would have waked and watched although the pupils had been taken out.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
Shadowy and dark, although he saw them by some light belonging to themselves—none else was there—each with its muffled hand upon its goblin mouth.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
Then and not before, did Trotty see in every Bell a bearded figure of the bulk and stature of the Bell—incomprehensibly, a figure and the Bell itself. Gigantic, grave, and darkly watchful of him, as he stood rooted to the ground.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
that at last he dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally retired; but he vanished in the end, and then the tower was silent.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
Some few of the late company who had gambolled in the tower, remained there, spinning over and over a little longer; but these became at every turn more faint, and few, and feeble, and soon went the way of the rest.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
Bewildered by the host of shifting and extraordinary figures, as well as by the uproar of the Bells, which all this while were ringing, Trotty clung to a wooden pillar for support, and turned his white face here and there, in mute and stunned astonishment.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
1
1
0
0
He saw them representing, here a marriage ceremony, there a funeral; in this chamber an election, in that a ball he saw, everywhere, restless and untiring motion.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
he saw them flashing awful faces on the troubled rest of others, from enchanted mirrors which they carried in their hands.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became transparent to him as to them. He saw them in the houses, busy at the sleepers’ beds.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
1
0
0
0
peeping in upon him, through the chinks and loopholes in the walls; spreading away and away from him in enlarging circles, as the water ripples give way to a huge stone that suddenly comes plashing in among them.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
became a voice exclaiming in the waking ears of Trotty, ‘Break his slumbers;’ when and how he ceased to have a sluggish and confused idea that such things were, companioning a host of others that were not; there are no dates or means to tell.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
and every sense and object of the mind resumes its usual form and lives again, no man—though every man is every day the casket of this type of the Great Mystery—can tell.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
2
0
0
0
I don’t know what we poor people are coming to. Lord send we may be coming to something better in the New Year nigh upon us!’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
1
0
0
0
Toby was only joking, for he gravely shook his head in self-depreciation.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
It’s a good deal tried, poor creetur, at the best of times; for when it does get hold of a pleasant whiff or so (which an’t too often) it’s generally from somebody else’s dinner, a-coming home from the baker’s.’
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
‘There’s nothing,’ said Toby, breaking forth afresh—but here he stopped short in his trot, and with a face of great interest and some alarm, felt his nose carefully all the way up. It was but a little way (not being much of a nose) and he had soon finished.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0
‘Dinner-time, eh!’ repeated Toby, using his right-hand muffler like an infantine boxing-glove, and punishing his chest for being cold. ‘Ah-h-h-h!’
He took a silent trot, after that, for a minute or two.
#CharlesDickens
#TheChimes
0
0
0
0