A Dickensian Romance

Our tale begins on a night of grim portent, upon which a lone figure seeks refuge, from an intense downpour, within the confines of a humble Anglican church: this person being a young girl from his congregation, bearing a listless stare as she proceeds through the aisle of the nave in a quiet, somnambulant gait--subsequent to the immense tragedy that has befallen her tonight.

At this late hour, the only soul present to meet her is Father Roderick, whom--having been readying himself for the day of work ahead--emerges from the depths of his prayer room with a candle, to find her: dripping wet, and crumpled to her knees; in silent repose before the sacred altar.

"What is the matter, lamb?" He asks, as he approaches her from behind, seeing how she shivers from the cold--thoroughly drenched in naught but a nightgown, from her head to her shoeless, mud-caked feet. 

In gleaning all these worrisome traits, the good father ventures to physically turn the girl--so that she would face him--and startles at her revealed identity: her long, wavy hair stained dark as crow's feathers; her passionless, unwavering gaze, of eyes long devoid of all their previous color and youthful vigor-with this latest situation only serving as the final nail.

"Marianne? What's brought you here at this hour, in the midst of such--"ungodly weather, he is about to say, before she abruptly buries her head into his chest, clinging tightly to his gown with her surprising grip: behavior he immediately reckoned to be most strange, especially to behold of a girl whom he typically fathomed to be, on the whole, inordinately polite and reserved.

"Mother...is dead!" Marianne confesses--her grave words further amplified by a concurrent flash of lightning, paired with a great cannonade of thunder, that rocks the hallowed sanctuary to its very foundations.

"I was scared, on account of the storm..."

"So I had tried to wake her, but she would not move, father!"

Lightning flashes again, as she falters for a moment before continuing within an onslaught of tears, causing the words to catch in her throat:

"She...would not stir, father!"

"I tried shaking her, calling out to her in the Lord's name, but she is dead!"

The good father is stunned, at first; brought back, however, from observing the  culmination of grief, of confusion, and of pleading hopelessness all simultaneously woven into the girl's expression, as he lowers himself to embrace her. "Oh, you've travelled quite a ways, tonight."

She sobs. "I didn't know where else to go."

"Shh, my dear child. It is quite alright, and you should not fret: you are always welcome here, in God's house."

"Mother...she is truly in heaven now, isn't she?"

"That she is, I have no doubt. Your mother was a good Christian, and read her final rites." He says with confidence, because he himself had acted as witness. He had observed her worsening illness, and had long feared that this day would come, although he prayed it would not.

Marianne is despondent. "Well I should like to join her, if heaven really is so grand."

The sincere tragedy underlying her words, to Roderick's ear: those of an innocent, young mind grasping feebly at straws of understanding, in the midst of such tragedy: is enough to break the good father's heart.

As he stands, he lifts Marianne into his arms with a wearied sigh.

"I should think...it would make your mother very sad to see you again so soon." He says, then pauses briefly: struggling for adequate words--as he has, through every inch of this latest test of his faith--"There is still a long life ahead of you, that I'm sure she would rather you to experience."

Marianne but gives a passive nod--momentarily content with merely having a warm body to grasp on to.

"Now, let us find you some dry things to change into."

Marianne is, henceforth, carried by Father Roderick into the church's storeroom to find a small robe for her to wear, as well as some warm blankets and pillows. With these items procured, he lays her down to sleep on a pew bench closest to the altar; and he has just bid her good night, with a kiss on the forehead, whereupon just as he is about to leave she reaches out a hand to stop him.

"Father, what shall become of me hereafter?" She asks dearly. "I shudder to think I am fated for the orphanage, because I know from Oliver Twist that the orphanage is a most terrible, awful place for children."

The good father frowns. "That may or may not be, but I am sorry to say the orphanage is indeed very likely; as, unless a relative emerges that can claim you, the only other alternative is--" he trails apruptly, upon reconsideration of said alternative--of her striking out on her own--as being too inconceivably horrid to even bear mentioning, and not to mention dangerous to even suggest to such a sensitive imagination, besides.

Yet Marianne stirs; intrigued and curious of this withheld knowledge. "What alternative? Do please tell!"

"Hush now, child." Roderick implores, petting her head. "The adults will talk on it."

"But it is my own life, father!" She returns.

"Should anyone take reigns to decide where I shall be, it is me!"

"I will surely rot in the orphanage!" 

Turning a deaf ear to her cries, he parts from her with a promise to discuss things further in the morning, leaving her alone in the ensuing dark solitude of the church's nave, intermittently dispersed and distracted by the continuing irregular recurrences of lightning, as the storm outside continues to ceaselessly drone.

Marianne lays here for what feels like hours, incapable of sleep, what for the maelstrom of foreboding thoughts of the future, and grieving sorrow that plagues her: flashing memories of yesterday, and only a nauseating sense of dread for whatever sad existence yet awaited her.

Beneath all this prevailed a deep wrath at the perceived unfairness of it all, as her smoldering gaze becomes fixated onto a statue of Christ nailed to the cross, which adorns the main altar before her. More than anything, she thought it striking--even antagonizing, in nature: just how peaceful the face of the Holy Son, in his final, excruciating moments among the flesh, was depicted to look; almost as if she and her own worries and sacrifice were being mocked: as though her pain, measured against His, was merely to be regarded with a solemn indifference. She becomes inconsolably wrapped by a thought that, perhaps, there are those born in this world only to suffer.

By morning, this silent torture will have proven too much for the girl. The good father will emerge from his chambers and enter into the nave, once more, where he will be surprised to discover that not only had the girl vanished, but moreso from seeing the blatant means by which she'd chosen to discard one of the blankets he'd given her to sleep in: left drooped and hanging over, and thereby covering the despondent face of the very fixture of the crucified Christ that had previously tormented her so.

By the time the constable has been mustered to seek the wayward girl out, she will have already returned to her house to pack a bag and disappear, leaving the good father to only worriedly imagine and pray about her fate, for many years to come.

Thus, a seed for our tale is planted: the year of this particular happening being, it shall be noted, that of 187X; and as the storm clears, with a new day's dawning, the skies over England's cities are shown to be greyed with a perpetual haze of factory-produced smog: in this era defined by the eminent pursuits of science and industry: both having been allowed to freely expand, to grow, and to mutate, beyond all moral constraints; as the old world institutions are forced to evolve, too, or else cling desperately to any kernel of relevance still afforded to them, in the eyes of an increasingly disillusioned working class. It is thereby, in a sense, a reckless time: of urbanization, mechanization, and so too of rampant experimentation, albeit within the rigid confines of the societal norms still presiding at the time; all of this compounding into an era marked just as much by its great progresses...as by the soul-crushing contributions such progress demanded.

It is into this world--now caught awkwardly twiddling its thumbs at a crossroads between old and new--that a girl named Marianne Grey is cosmically unlucky enough to have been born.

**********

Fifteen…sixteen...seventeen...

She slivers and crawls along the factory floor, scanning the gaps and crevasses in the dark mahogany for tiny tufts of cotton; her small fingers working nimbly, to pluck the pieces and drop them in her small satchel.

It is a demanding job, but Marianne bravely endures it: contrary to her youth, she never fails to carry herself with an uncommon grace and mature seriousness; committing to her long hours without the slightest cry nor hint of complaint, a fact which by itself denotes her instantly as being superior to even most adults at the same task. Her head is shaved completely bald (as with most others confined to her dreadful line of work) leaving but a vague impression where her flowing, dark locks had once grown.

Twenty...twenty-one...twenty-two…

The machine, from whence the tufts of cotton are produced, is to her a sprawling canopy of grinding gears, oil-dripping steam motors, and other more complicated mechanisms far beyond comprehension: she is, after all, but a lowly creature scouring through the shaded underbrush, in search of fallen fruits. 

Her ears and deepest point of her thoughts are flooded with the ceaseless hisses and rumbles, sharp creaks and monstrous groans, such that she fails to hear the brief, panicked screams of a fellow scavenger near to her--uttered by a boy, thereabouts the same age as she--upon having one of his arms become accidentally hooked inside of the writhing, churning, twisted guts, of that great and terrible machine; and whose subsequent demise is near-immediate, if not entirely unavoidable. All Marianne hears of it is the precise moment when the machine briefly jams, just before it draws the poor lad upward and into it: an event that transpires so quickly, with scarcely any warning, that no one notices. A flick of the poor wretched soul's blood even flies in the face of Marianne, but it too goes ignored; with the foreman's steely gaze fixed firmly upon her, she dares not show a lapse in her work. Not for the breadth of an instant. Such a gruesome incident only constitutes as a passing attraction, in the ordinary life of young Marianne Grey, in this profoundly awful era.

Following this, nothing else of note happens for the remainder of the day: Marianne simply does her job, clocks out when her shift ends, and goes to bid good night to the  foreman at the door. 

He is a wiry man with gray hair and glasses and an honest, good-natured way about him--perhaps as a holdover from his previous life as a pig farmer, before selling it all to come into the textiles business. Marianne had only been working for him a few months, but he'd been the first of her employers thus far to call his workers by name, so she rather liked him. 

"How did you fare today, Annie?" He asks squarely.

"Sixty-two today, sir." Says Marianne. "Have I done well enough, sir?"

"Ah, yes." He returns sharply, as though it were a matter of course.

"You did marvelously, as always. Especially after--"

He trails off, leaving Marianne to eye him with confusion a bit, before then forcing an uncomfortable smile to his lips.

"It's fine. Go on home and rest, Annie. Until tomorrow."

Marianne smiles. She doesn't know it, but the blood of the boy that had splashed across her cheek earlier is now all dried; remaining as a thin, but still plainly visible mark.

"Tomorrow I shall work twice as hard, sir."

It is a long way home for little Marianne. In order to avoid the night watchman's wary eye, she is forced to take to the winding labyrinth of neglected side streets, gutters and alleyways, where swarms of flies and roaches and rats harbor amid carelessly strewn piles of garbage. Worse still are the roaming packs of feral dogs, the drunkards and beggars, withered prostitutes, and the hopelessly sick and muttering mentally ill; too lowly even for the dreaded workhouse, with nowhere else but these wayward pockets of civilization to call home. The dim light of gas-powered lanterns basks their suffering in an eerie glow; coloring these besmirched corridors in a dizzying, distorted haze, as traversing them is like wandering lost in a maze-like fever dream. Albeit, a dream from which there is no salvation to be found in an abrupt and merciful awakening; but rather, only by a hard fought escape.

I am only passing through this place. Marianne tells herself, wrapping her coat and scarf more tightly to stave off the harsh cold, as well as to hide her lips and eyes from the countless depraved eyes peeking at her from dark places.

I won't be stuck here the whole rest of my life. It's only for a little while. 

Her legs, and arms, and back and neck all ache. 

Her knees are badly scratched, from crawling on them all day. 

Her last meal was a small loaf of bread at lunch, so it feels like her stomach is devouring itself in its neglected state.

Marianne was never one to linger on the negatives, though; preferring to instead 'ignore the pain,' as she called it--finding the strength within to press on, no matter what. To always focus on whatever it takes to move forward: no matter how weary, or injured, or hungry or downtrodden she feels. She'd heard once, from her father who made his living as a sailor, that sharks would die if they were to ever stop swimming; since then, she had come to fancy her own situation as being quite similar. 

I have to always be moving, just like a shark does.

Else, I'll end up the same as that boy.

Marianne had never seen the ocean any further than the harbor before, but she imagined it had to have been quite full of dead sharks. Not to mention her dead father's own skeleton, for it had been nearly eight years since he left on his latest voyage.

**********

Marianne lives in what amounts to a wooden shack, in a slum part of the town. One could hardly tell her own abode apart from any other, especially in the dark of night, but the girl is a creature of habit if anything--having woven the same path home, so many times, that it is now permanently ingrained in her; such that, seventy-odd years from now, she would prove able to walk the same exact path one day: purely out of nostalgia, long after it's been bulldozed and lost to history, along with the rest of the slums and its dirty inhabitants.

"I've returned!" Marianne announces, into the black void that awaits her inside, as she steps in through the ill-fitted wooden slab that could charitably be called a front door. 

"I have some good news!; So, I tried to rush home as fast as I could."

Setting aside her things, she quickly goes to light a candelabra placed at the center of the dining table: to reveal the previously enshrouded presences of the girl's two most loyal retainers: One, a newspaper cutout of a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, placed in a small picture frame; the other, a wooden toy horse that could barely be recognized as such, on account of its woeful lack of limbs, sat in a chair. Each has their own place at the table, dutifully set with chipped tea cups and grimy saucers.

"The foreman gave me a raise today." Marianne says to them earnesty, plopping the bag of coins she'd received for the day's work onto the counter.

A pale, spectral hand drifts across the table's surface, to pick it up.

"Sublimely done, my dear." Queen Elizabeth--seated there in all her regal splendor--says, adding with a coy smirk: "Doubtless, such a generous gift is in recognition of your unmatched work ethic; forsooth, all of Britain would be in a far better shape if only more of her people labored even half as admirably as thee!"

Horseman merely snorts--quite like how a horse is known to do.

"Yeah, bloody right!" He shouts, writhing madly in his chair--as though held in place by invisible cords. "It's obviously hush money: so you won't go on squealing about that boy who got mangled!"

Marianne isn't quite sure what to think; but in any case, she is grateful. 

She glides into the kitchen area, hearing the weary old wood floorboards protest underneath her every footstep. Reaching a hand into the very back of a cupboard, she fishes out a coffee tin labelled "New Era," inside of which she keeps all her hard-earned savings.

"Every little bit helps us get to where we need to be."

"Hear, hear!" Queen Elizabeth dost decree! "My beautiful castle awaits!"

"Keep daydreaming!" Rebuts the Horseman--ever the brutal realist--following with an energetic whinny. "Life willn't get any grander than this: so I say let's grab us a pint to celebrate!"

Marianne laughs. "I don't think so, you silly Horsey."

Indeed, the future looks hopeful for Marianne. She is only a few shillings away from being able to afford the down payment on a nicer place, and could even think of a few landlords that would be willing to have dealings with a foundling such as her.

Against all odds...Marianne is beginning to think she might persevere.

"That's right." She muses to herself, as she crams the New Age coffee tin--now a few pounds fuller--back into its rightful place in the cupboard. "We'll have our very own mansion, soon enough; and every night, we shall feast like royalty, hosting grand balls and banquets…"

"Best of all: I'll never, ever, ever, have to work at a factory again!"

Such is the dream that keeps her swimming, although for the time being she knows that mansion would still have to wait. As for tonight, just like any other night, poor Marianne would simply have to ignore the rumbling in her stomach, and try to get some sleep; because tomorrow was going to be another day, and she was going to need all the rest she could possibly get. 

"Good night, Elizabeth." Marianne says, yawning. "And you too, Horsey; even though you are quite mad."

No more dallying. She climbs a ladder into the upstairs loft: where lies her bed of sheets and blankets, beneath a hole in the rooftop left where the planks had long since rotted away, allowing her a perfect view of the stars. She remembers it was on calm, chilly nights like these her mother used to read her stories, to help lull her to sleep: entrancing her with tales of buried treasure, adventure and betrayal, with funny-talking pirates; of darling, quick-witted Alice and her adventures in Wonderland; of wily Aladdin, discovering the magical genie lamp; of plucky orphans like Pip, and Oliver, and Jane Eyre; of fairy kingdoms; of giants and goblins; of handsome princes; of Theseus and the minotaur.

The wind coming in tonight feels just right, though--just chill enough that it warrants bundling up into a nice, warm, snug little cocoon; and before Marianne knows it, the aches and pains and trauma of the day begin to gradually slip from consciousness, as the promised gentle release of a blissful sleep closes in...

Thus ends a day in the life of young Marianne Grey.