Tom Tiddlers Ground | Page 4

of grass, and scraps of new
hay, and with leaves both young and old, and with 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. The quietest little
dwellings with the largest of window-shutters (to shut up Nothing as
carefully as if it were the Mint, or the Bank of England) had called in
the Doctor's house so suddenly, that his brass door-plate and three
stories stood among them as conspicuous and different as the doctor
himself in his broadcloth, among the smock-frocks of his patients. The
village residences seemed to have gone to law with a similar absence of

consideration, for a score of weak little lath-and- plaster cabins clung in
confusion about the Attorney's red-brick house, which, with glaring
door-steps and a most terrific scraper, seemed to serve all manner of
ejectments upon them. They were as various as
labourers--high-shouldered, wry-necked, one-eyed, goggle- eyed,
squinting, bow-legged, knock-knee'd, rheumatic, crazy. Some of the
small tradesmen's houses, such as the crockery-shop and the
harness-maker, had a Cyclops window in the middle of the gable,
within an inch or two of its apex, suggesting that some forlorn rural
Prentice must wriggle himself into that apartment horizontally, when he
retired to rest, after the manner of the worm. So bountiful in its
abundance was the surrounding country, and so lean and scant the
village, that one might have thought the village had sown and planted
everything it once possessed, to convert the same into crops. This
would account for the bareness of the little shops, the bareness of the
few boards and trestles designed for market purposes in a corner of the
street, the bareness of the obsolete Inn and Inn Yard, with the ominous
inscription "Excise Office" not yet faded out from the gateway, as
indicating the very last thing that poverty could get rid of. This would
also account for the determined abandonment of the village by one
stray dog, fast lessening in the perspective where the white posts and
the pond were, and would explain his conduct on the hypothesis that he
was going (through the act of suicide) to convert himself into manure,
and become a part proprietor in turnips or mangold-wurzel.
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 any ordinary Christian, or decent
Hottentot. He had even blanketed and skewered and sooted and greased
himself, 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 neighbours to embellish
him. A mist of home-brewed marvel and romance surrounded Mopes,
in which (as in all fogs) the real proportions of the real object were
extravagantly heightened. 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 under 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
enormously rich, he 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