Dodson.
‘Mr. Fogg,’ said Dodson, ‘I am going to speak.’
I beg your pardon, Mr. Dodson,’ said Fogg.
‘For the grounds of action, sir,’ continued Dodson, with moral elevation
in his air, ‘you will consult your own conscience and your own feelings.
We, Sir, we, are guided entirely by the statement of our client. That
statement, Sir, may be true, or it may be false; it may be credible, or
it may be incredible; but, if it be true, and if it be credible, I do
not hesitate to say, Sir, that our grounds of action, Sir, are strong,
and not to be shaken. You may be an unfortunate man, Sir, or you may be
a designing one; but if I were called upon, as a juryman upon my oath,
Sir, to express an opinion of your conduct, Sir, I do not hesitate to
assert that I should have but one opinion about it.’ Here Dodson drew
himself up, with an air of offended virtue, and looked at Fogg, who
thrust his hands farther in his pockets, and nodding his head sagely,
said, in a tone of the fullest concurrence, ‘Most certainly.’
‘Well, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick, with considerable pain depicted in his
countenance, ‘you will permit me to assure you that I am a most
unfortunate man, so far as this case is concerned.’
‘I hope you are, Sir,’ replied Dodson; ‘I trust you may be, Sir. If you
are really innocent of what is laid to your charge, you are more
unfortunate than I had believed any man could possibly be. What do you
say, Mr. Fogg?’
‘I say precisely what you say,’ replied Fogg, with a smile of
incredulity.
‘The writ, Sir, which commences the action,’ continued Dodson, ‘was
issued regularly. Mr. Fogg, where is the _Praecipe _book?’
‘Here it is,’ said Fogg, handing over a square book, with a parchment
cover.
‘Here is the entry,’ resumed Dodson. ‘“Middlesex, Capias MARTHA BARDELL,
WIDOW, v. SAMUEL PICKWICK. Damages £1500. Dodson & Fogg for the
plaintiff, Aug. 28, 1827.” All regular, Sir; perfectly.’ Dodson coughed
and looked at Fogg, who said ‘Perfectly,’ also. And then they both
looked at Mr. Pickwick.
‘I am to understand, then,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘that it really is your
intention to proceed with this action?’
‘Understand, sir!--that you certainly may,’ replied Dodson, with
something as near a smile as his importance would allow.
‘And that the damages are actually laid at fifteen hundred pounds?’ said
Mr. Pickwick.
‘To which understanding you may add my assurance, that if we could have
prevailed upon our client, they would have been laid at treble the
amount, sir,’ replied Dodson.
‘I believe Mrs. Bardell specially said, however,’ observed Fogg,
glancing at Dodson, ‘that she would not compromise for a farthing less.’
‘Unquestionably,’ replied Dodson sternly. For the action was only just
begun; and it wouldn’t have done to let Mr. Pickwick compromise it then,
even if he had been so disposed.
‘As you offer no terms, sir,’ said Dodson, displaying a slip of
parchment in his right hand, and affectionately pressing a paper copy of
it, on Mr. Pickwick with his left, ‘I had better serve you with a copy
of this writ, sir. Here is the original, sir.’
‘Very well, gentlemen, very well,’ said Mr. Pickwick, rising in person
and wrath at the same time; ‘you shall hear from my solicitor,
gentlemen.’
‘We shall be very happy to do so,’ said Fogg, rubbing his hands.
‘Very,’ said Dodson, opening the door.
‘And before I go, gentlemen,’ said the excited Mr. Pickwick, turning
round on the landing, ‘permit me to say, that of all the disgraceful and
rascally proceedings--’
‘Stay, sir, stay,’ interposed Dodson, with great politeness. ‘Mr.
Jackson! Mr. Wicks!’
‘Sir,’ said the two clerks, appearing at the bottom of the stairs.
‘I merely want you to hear what this gentleman says,’ replied Dodson.
‘Pray, go on, sir--disgraceful and rascally proceedings, I think you
said?’
‘I did,’ said Mr. Pickwick, thoroughly roused. ‘I said, Sir, that of all
the disgraceful and rascally proceedings that ever were attempted, this
is the most so. I repeat it, sir.’
‘You hear that, Mr. Wicks,’ said Dodson.
‘You won’t forget these expressions, Mr. Jackson?’ said Fogg.
‘Perhaps you would like to call us swindlers, sir,’ said Dodson. ‘Pray
do, Sir, if you feel disposed; now pray do, Sir.’
‘I do,’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘You _are _swindlers.’
‘Very good,’ said Dodson. ‘You can hear down there, I hope, Mr. Wicks?’
‘Oh, yes, Sir,’ said Wicks.
‘You had better come up a step or two higher, if you can’t,’ added Mr.
Fogg. ‘Go on, Sir; do go on. You had better call us thieves, Sir; or
perhaps You would like to assault one of _us_. Pray do it, Sir, if you
would; we will not make the smallest resistance. Pray do it, Sir.’
As Fogg put himself very temptingly within the reach of Mr. Pickwick’s
clenched fist, there is little doubt that that gentleman would have
complied with his earnest entreaty, but for the interposition of Sam,
who, hearing the dispute, emerged from the office, mounted the stairs,
and seized his master by the arm.
‘You just come away,’ said Mr. Weller. ‘Battledore and shuttlecock’s a
wery good game, vhen you ain’t the shuttlecock and two lawyers the
battledores, in which case it gets too excitin’ to be pleasant. Come
avay, Sir. If you want to ease your mind by blowing up somebody, come
out into the court and blow up me; but it’s rayther too expensive work
to be carried on here.’
And without the slightest ceremony, Mr. Weller hauled his master down
the stairs, and down the court, and having safely deposited him in
Cornhill, fell behind, prepared to follow whithersoever he should lead.
Mr. Pickwick walked on abstractedly, crossed opposite the Mansion House,
and bent his steps up Cheapside. Sam began to wonder where they were
going, when his master turned round, and said--
‘Sam, I will go immediately to Mr. Perker’s.’
‘That’s just exactly the wery place vere you ought to have gone last
night, Sir,’ replied Mr. Weller.
‘I think it is, Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘I _know _it is,’ said Mr. Weller.
‘Well, well, Sam,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, ‘we will go there at once; but
first, as I have been rather ruffled, I should like a glass of brandy-
and-water warm, Sam. Where can I have it, Sam?’
Mr. Weller’s knowledge of London was extensive and peculiar. He replied,
without the slightest consideration--
‘Second court on the right hand side--last house but vun on the same
side the vay--take the box as stands in the first fireplace, ‘cos there
ain’t no leg in the middle o’ the table, which all the others has, and
it’s wery inconvenient.’
Mr. Pickwick observed his valet’s directions implicitly, and bidding Sam
follow him, entered the tavern he had pointed out, where the hot brandy-
and-water was speedily placed before him; while Mr. Weller, seated at a
respectful distance, though at the same table with his master, was
accommodated with a pint of porter.
The room was one of a very homely description, and was apparently under
the especial patronage of stage-coachmen; for several gentleman, who had
all the appearance of belonging to that learned profession, were
drinking and smoking in the different boxes. Among the number was one
stout, red-faced, elderly man, in particular, seated in an opposite box,
who attracted Mr. Pickwick’s attention. The stout man was smoking with
great vehemence, but between every half-dozen puffs, he took his pipe
from his mouth, and looked first at Mr. Weller and then at Mr. Pickwick.
Then, he would bury in a quart pot, as much of his countenance as the
dimensions of the quart pot admitted of its receiving, and take another
look at Sam and Mr. Pickwick. Then he would take another half-dozen
puffs with an air of profound meditation and look at them again. At last
the stout man, putting up his legs on the seat, and leaning his back
against the wall, began to puff at his pipe without leaving off at all,
and to stare through the smoke at the new-comers, as if he had made up
his mind to see the most he could of them.
At first the evolutions of the stout man had escaped Mr. Weller’s
observation, but by degrees, as he saw Mr. Pickwick’s eyes every now and
then turning towards him, he began to gaze in the same direction, at the
same time shading his eyes with his hand, as if he partially recognised
the object before him, and wished to make quite sure of its identity.
His doubts were speedily dispelled, however; for the stout man having
blown a thick cloud from his pipe, a hoarse voice, like some strange
effort of ventriloquism, emerged from beneath the capacious shawls which
muffled his throat and chest, and slowly uttered these sounds--‘Wy,
Sammy!’
‘Who’s that, Sam?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.
‘Why, I wouldn’t ha’ believed it, Sir,’ replied Mr. Weller, with
astonished eyes. ‘It’s the old ‘un.’
‘Old one,’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘What old one?’
‘My father, sir,’ replied Mr. Weller. ‘How are you, my ancient?’ And
with this beautiful ebullition of filial affection, Mr. Weller made room
on the seat beside him, for the stout man, who advanced pipe in mouth
and pot in hand, to greet him.
‘Wy, Sammy,’ said the father, ‘I ha’n’t seen you, for two year and
better.’
‘Nor more you have, old codger,’ replied the son. ‘How’s mother-in-law?’
‘Wy, I’ll tell you what, Sammy,’ said Mr. Weller, senior, with much
solemnity in his manner; ‘there never was a nicer woman as a widder,
than that ‘ere second wentur o’ mine--a sweet creetur she was, Sammy;
all I can say on her now, is, that as she was such an uncommon pleasant
widder, it’s a great pity she ever changed her condition. She don’t act
as a vife, Sammy.’
Don’t she, though?’ inquired Mr. Weller, junior.
The elder Mr. Weller shook his head, as he replied with a sigh, ‘I’ve
done it once too often, Sammy; I’ve done it once too often. Take example
by your father, my boy, and be wery careful o’ widders all your life,
‘specially if they’ve kept a public-house, Sammy.’ Having delivered this
parental advice with great pathos, Mr. Weller, senior, refilled his pipe
from a tin box he carried in his pocket; and, lighting his fresh pipe
from the ashes of the old One, commenced smoking at a great rate.
‘Beg your pardon, sir,’ he said, renewing the subject, and addressing
Mr. Pickwick, after a considerable pause, ‘nothin’ personal, I hope,
sir; I hope you ha’n’t got a widder, sir.’
‘Not I,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, laughing; and while Mr. Pickwick laughed,
Sam Weller informed his parent in a whisper, of the relation in which he
stood towards that gentleman.
‘Beg your pardon, sir,’ said Mr. Weller, senior, taking off his hat, ‘I
hope you’ve no fault to find with Sammy, Sir?’
‘None whatever,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Wery glad to hear it, sir,’ replied the old man; ‘I took a good deal o’
pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was
wery young, and shift for hisself. It’s the only way to make a boy
sharp, sir.’
‘Rather a dangerous process, I should imagine,’ said Mr. Pickwick, with
a smile.
‘And not a wery sure one, neither,’ added Mr. Weller; ‘I got reg’larly
done the other day.’
‘No!’ said his father.
‘I did,’ said the son; and he proceeded to relate, in as few words as
possible, how he had fallen a ready dupe to the stratagems of Job
Trotter.
Mr. Weller, senior, listened to the tale with the most profound
attention, and, at its termination, said--
‘Worn’t one o’ these chaps slim and tall, with long hair, and the gift
o’ the gab wery gallopin’?’
Mr. Pickwick did not quite understand the last item of description, but,
comprehending the first, said ‘Yes,’ at a venture.
‘T’ other’s a black-haired chap in mulberry livery, with a wery large
head?’
‘Yes, yes, he is,’ said Mr. Pickwick and Sam, with great earnestness.
‘Then I know where they are, and that’s all about it,’ said Mr. Weller;
‘they’re at Ipswich, safe enough, them two.’
‘No!’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Fact,’ said Mr. Weller, ‘and I’ll tell you how I know it. I work an
Ipswich coach now and then for a friend o’ mine. I worked down the wery
day arter the night as you caught the rheumatic, and at the Black Boy at
Chelmsford--the wery place they’d come to--I took ‘em up, right through
to Ipswich, where the man-servant--him in the mulberries--told me they
was a-goin’ to put up for a long time.’
‘I’ll follow him,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘we may as well see Ipswich as any
other place. I’ll follow him.’
‘You’re quite certain it was them, governor?’ inquired Mr. Weller,
junior.
‘Quite, Sammy, quite,’ replied his father, ‘for their appearance is wery
sing’ler; besides that ‘ere, I wondered to see the gen’l’m’n so
formiliar with his servant; and, more than that, as they sat in the
front, right behind the box, I heerd ‘em laughing and saying how they’d
done old Fireworks.’
‘Old who?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Old Fireworks, Sir; by which, I’ve no doubt, they meant you, Sir.’
There is nothing positively vile or atrocious in the appellation of ‘old
Fireworks,’ but still it is by no means a respectful or flattering
designation. The recollection of all the wrongs he had sustained at
Jingle’s hands, had crowded on Mr. Pickwick’s mind, the moment Mr.
Weller began to speak; it wanted but a feather to turn the scale, and
‘old Fireworks’ did it.
‘I’ll follow him,’ said Mr. Pickwick, with an emphatic blow on the
table.
‘I shall work down to Ipswich the day arter to-morrow, Sir,’ said Mr.
Weller the elder, ‘from the Bull in Whitechapel; and if you really mean
to go, you’d better go with me.’
‘So we had,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘very true; I can write to Bury, and
tell them to meet me at Ipswich. We will go with you. But don’t hurry
away, Mr. Weller; won’t you take anything?’
‘You’re wery good, Sir,’ replied Mr. W., stopping short;--‘perhaps a
small glass of brandy to drink your health, and success to Sammy, Sir,
wouldn’t be amiss.’
‘Certainly not,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.
‘A glass of brandy here!’ The brandy was brought; and Mr. Weller, after
pulling his hair to Mr. Pickwick, and nodding to Sam, jerked it down his
capacious throat as if it had been a small thimbleful.
‘Well done, father,’ said Sam, ‘take care, old fellow, or you’ll have a
touch of your old complaint, the gout.’
‘I’ve found a sov’rin’ cure for that, Sammy,’ said Mr. Weller, setting
down the glass.
‘A sovereign cure for the gout,’ said Mr. Pickwick, hastily producing
his note-book--‘what is it?’
‘The gout, Sir,’ replied Mr. Weller, ‘the gout is a complaint as arises
from too much ease and comfort. If ever you’re attacked with the gout,
sir, jist you marry a widder as has got a good loud woice, with a decent
notion of usin’ it, and you’ll never have the gout agin. It’s a capital
prescription, sir. I takes it reg’lar, and I can warrant it to drive
away any illness as is caused by too much jollity.’ Having imparted this
valuable secret, Mr. Weller drained his glass once more, produced a
laboured wink, sighed deeply, and slowly retired.
‘Well, what do you think of what your father says, Sam?’ inquired Mr.
Pickwick, with a smile.
‘Think, Sir!’ replied Mr. Weller; ‘why, I think he’s the wictim o’
connubiality, as Blue Beard’s domestic chaplain said, vith a tear of
pity, ven he buried him.’
There was no replying to this very apposite conclusion, and, therefore,
Mr. Pickwick, after settling the reckoning, resumed his walk to Gray’s
Inn. By the time he reached its secluded groves, however, eight o’clock
had struck, and the unbroken stream of gentlemen in muddy high-lows,
soiled white hats, and rusty apparel, who were pouring towards the
different avenues of egress, warned him that the majority of the offices
had closed for that day.
After climbing two pairs of steep and dirty stairs, he found his
anticipations were realised. Mr. Perker’s ‘outer door’ was closed; and
the dead silence which followed Mr. Weller’s repeated kicks thereat,
announced that the officials had retired from business for the night.
‘This is pleasant, Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘I shouldn’t lose an hour in
seeing him; I shall not be able to get one wink of sleep to-night, I
know, unless I have the satisfaction of reflecting that I have confided
this matter to a professional man.’
‘Here’s an old ‘ooman comin’ upstairs, sir,’ replied Mr. Weller; ‘p’raps
she knows where we can find somebody. Hollo, old lady, vere’s Mr.
Perker’s people?’
‘Mr. Perker’s people,’ said a thin, miserable-looking old woman,
stopping to recover breath after the ascent of the staircase--‘Mr.
Perker’s people’s gone, and I’m a-goin’ to do the office out.’
Are you Mr. Perker’s servant?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.
‘I am Mr. Perker’s laundress,’ replied the woman.
‘Ah,’ said Mr. Pickwick, half aside to Sam, ‘it’s a curious
circumstance, Sam, that they call the old women in these inns,
laundresses. I wonder what’s that for?’
‘’Cos they has a mortal awersion to washing anythin’, I suppose, Sir,’
replied Mr. Weller.
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Mr. Pickwick, looking at the old woman, whose
appearance, as well as the condition of the office, which she had by
this time opened, indicated a rooted antipathy to the application of
soap and water; ‘do you know where I can find Mr. Perker, my good
woman?’
‘No, I don’t,’ replied the old woman gruffly; ‘he’s out o’ town now.’
‘That’s unfortunate,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘where’s his clerk? Do you
know?’
‘Yes, I know where he is, but he won’t thank me for telling you,’
replied the laundress.
‘I have very particular business with him,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Won’t it do in the morning?’ said the woman.
‘Not so well,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.
‘Well,’ said the old woman, ‘if it was anything very particular, I was
to say where he was, so I suppose there’s no harm in telling. If you
just go to the Magpie and Stump, and ask at the bar for Mr. Lowten,
they’ll show you in to him, and he’s Mr. Perker’s clerk.’
With this direction, and having been furthermore informed that the
hostelry in question was situated in a court, happy in the double
advantage of being in the vicinity of Clare Market, and closely
approximating to the back of New Inn, Mr. Pickwick and Sam descended the
rickety staircase in safety, and issued forth in quest of the Magpie and
Stump.
This favoured tavern, sacred to the evening orgies of Mr. Lowten and his
companions, was what ordinary people would designate a public-house.
That the landlord was a man of money-making turn was sufficiently
testified by the fact of a small bulkhead beneath the tap-room window,
in size and shape not unlike a sedan-chair, being underlet to a mender
of shoes: and that he was a being of a philanthropic mind was evident
from the protection he afforded to a pieman, who vended his delicacies
without fear of interruption, on the very door-step. In the lower
windows, which were decorated with curtains of a saffron hue, dangled
two or three printed cards, bearing reference to Devonshire cider and
Dantzic spruce, while a large blackboard, announcing in white letters to
an enlightened public, that there were 500,000 barrels of double stout
in the cellars of the establishment, left the mind in a state of not
unpleasing doubt and uncertainty as to the precise direction in the
bowels of the earth, in which this mighty cavern might be supposed to
extend. When we add that the weather-beaten signboard bore the half-
obliterated semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of
brown paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to
consider as the ‘stump,’ we have said all that need be said of the
exterior of the edifice.
On Mr. Pickwick’s presenting himself at the bar, an elderly female
emerged from behind the screen therein, and presented herself before
him.
‘Is Mr. Lowten here, ma’am?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.
‘Yes, he is, Sir,’ replied the landlady. ‘Here, Charley, show the
gentleman in to Mr. Lowten.’
‘The gen’l’m’n can’t go in just now,’ said a shambling pot-boy, with a
red head, ‘cos’ Mr. Lowten’s a-singin’ a comic song, and he’ll put him
out. He’ll be done directly, Sir.’
The red-headed pot-boy had scarcely finished speaking, when a most
unanimous hammering of tables, and jingling of glasses, announced that
the song had that instant terminated; and Mr. Pickwick, after desiring
Sam to solace himself in the tap, suffered himself to be conducted into
the presence of Mr. Lowten.
At the announcement of ‘A gentleman to speak to you, Sir,’ a puffy-faced
young man, who filled the chair at the head of the table, looked with
some surprise in the direction from whence the voice proceeded; and the
surprise seemed to be by no means diminished, when his eyes rested on an
individual whom he had never seen before.
‘I beg your pardon, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘and I am very sorry to
disturb the other gentlemen, too, but I come on very particular
business; and if you will suffer me to detain you at this end of the
room for five minutes, I shall be very much obliged to you.’
The puffy-faced young man rose, and drawing a chair close to Mr.
Pickwick in an obscure corner of the room, listened attentively to his
tale of woe.
‘Ah,’ he said, when Mr. Pickwick had concluded, ‘Dodson and Fogg--sharp
practice theirs--capital men of business, Dodson and Fogg, sir.’
Mr. Pickwick admitted the sharp practice of Dodson and Fogg, and Lowten
resumed.
‘Perker ain’t in town, and he won’t be, neither, before the end of next
week; but if you want the action defended, and will leave the copy with
me, I can do all that’s needful till he comes back.’
‘That’s exactly what I came here for,’ said Mr. Pickwick, handing over
the document. ‘If anything particular occurs, you can write to me at the
post-office, Ipswich.’
‘That’s all right,’ replied Mr. Perker’s clerk; and then seeing Mr.
Pickwick’s eye wandering curiously towards the table, he added, ‘will
you join us, for half an hour or so? We are capital company here to-
night. There’s Samkin and Green’s managing-clerk, and Smithers and
Price’s chancery, and Pimkin and Thomas’s out o’ doors--sings a capital
song, he does--and Jack Bamber, and ever so many more. You’re come out
of the country, I suppose. Would you like to join us?’
Mr. Pickwick could not resist so tempting an opportunity of studying
human nature. He suffered himself to be led to the table, where, after
having been introduced to the company in due form, he was accommodated
with a seat near the chairman and called for a glass of his favourite
beverage.
A profound silence, quite contrary to Mr. Pickwick’s expectation,
succeeded.
‘You don’t find this sort of thing disagreeable, I hope, sir?’ said his
right hand neighbour, a gentleman in a checked shirt and Mosaic studs,
with a cigar in his mouth.
‘Not in the least,’ replied Mr. Pickwick; ‘I like it very much, although
I am no smoker myself.’
‘I should be very sorry to say I wasn’t,’ interposed another gentleman
on the opposite side of the table. ‘It’s board and lodgings to me, is
smoke.’
Mr. Pickwick glanced at the speaker, and thought that if it were washing
too, it would be all the better.
Here there was another pause. Mr. Pickwick was a stranger, and his
coming had evidently cast a damp upon the party.
‘Mr. Grundy’s going to oblige the company with a song,’ said the
chairman.
‘No, he ain’t,’ said Mr. Grundy.
‘Why not?’ said the chairman.
‘Because he can’t,’ said Mr. Grundy.
‘You had better say he won’t,’ replied the chairman.
‘Well, then, he won’t,’ retorted Mr. Grundy. Mr. Grundy’s positive
refusal to gratify the company occasioned another silence.
‘Won’t anybody enliven us?’ said the chairman, despondingly.
‘Why don’t you enliven us yourself, Mr. Chairman?’ said a young man with
a whisker, a squint, and an open shirt collar (dirty), from the bottom
of the table.
‘Hear! hear!’ said the smoking gentleman, in the Mosaic jewellery.
‘Because I only know one song, and I have sung it already, and it’s a
fine of “glasses round” to sing the same song twice in a night,’ replied
the chairman.
This was an unanswerable reply, and silence prevailed again.
‘I have been to-night, gentlemen,’ said Mr. Pickwick, hoping to start a
subject which all the company could take a part in discussing, ‘I have
been to-night, in a place which you all know very well, doubtless, but
which I have not been in for some years, and know very little of; I mean
Gray’s Inn, gentlemen. Curious little nooks in a great place, like
London, these old inns are.’
‘By Jove!’ said the chairman, whispering across the table to Mr.
Pickwick, ‘you have hit upon something that one of us, at least, would
talk upon for ever. You’ll draw old Jack Bamber out; he was never heard
to talk about anything else but the inns, and he has lived alone in them
till he’s half crazy.’
The individual to whom Lowten alluded, was a little, yellow, high-
shouldered man, whose countenance, from his habit of stooping forward
when silent, Mr. Pickwick had not observed before. He wondered, though,
when the old man raised his shrivelled face, and bent his gray eye upon
him, with a keen inquiring look, that such remarkable features could
have escaped his attention for a moment. There was a fixed grim smile
perpetually on his countenance; he leaned his chin on a long, skinny
hand, with nails of extraordinary length; and as he inclined his head to
one side, and looked keenly out from beneath his ragged gray eyebrows,
there was a strange, wild slyness in his leer, quite repulsive to
behold.
This was the figure that now started forward, and burst into an animated
torrent of words. As this chapter has been a long one, however, and as
the old man was a remarkable personage, it will be more respectful to
him, and more convenient to us, to let him speak for himself in a fresh
one.
CHAPTER XXI. IN WHICH THE OLD MAN LAUNCHES FORTH INTO HIS FAVOURITE
THEME, AND RELATES A STORY ABOUT A QUEER CLIENT
‘Aha!’ said the old man, a brief description of whose manner and
appearance concluded the last chapter, ‘aha! who was talking about the
inns?’
‘I was, Sir,’ replied Mr. Pickwick--‘I was observing what singular old
places they are.’
‘_You_!’ said the old man contemptuously. ‘What do _you _know of the
time when young men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms, and read
and read, hour after hour, and night after night, till their reason
wandered beneath their midnight studies; till their mental powers were
exhausted; till morning’s light brought no freshness or health to them;
and they sank beneath the unnatural devotion of their youthful energies
to their dry old books? Coming down to a later time, and a very
different day, what do _you_ know of the gradual sinking beneath
consumption, or the quick wasting of fever--the grand results of “life”
and dissipation--which men have undergone in these same rooms? How many
vain pleaders for mercy, do you think, have turned away heart-sick from
the lawyer’s office, to find a resting-place in the Thames, or a refuge
in the jail? They are no ordinary houses, those. There is not a panel in
the old wainscotting, but what, if it were endowed with the powers of
speech and memory, could start from the wall, and tell its tale of
horror--the romance of life, Sir, the romance of life! Common-place as
they may seem now, I tell you they are strange old places, and I would
rather hear many a legend with a terrific-sounding name, than the true
history of one old set of chambers.’
There was something so odd in the old man’s sudden energy, and the
subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick was prepared with
no observation in reply; and the old man checking his impetuosity, and
resuming the leer, which had disappeared during his previous excitement,
said--
‘Look at them in another light--their most common-place and least
romantic. What fine places of slow torture they are! Think of the needy
man who has spent his all, beggared himself, and pinched his friends, to
enter the profession, which is destined never to yield him a morsel of
bread. The waiting--the hope--the disappointment--the fear--the misery--
the poverty--the blight on his hopes, and end to his career--the suicide
perhaps, or the shabby, slipshod drunkard. Am I not right about them?’
And the old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in delight at having
found another point of view in which to place his favourite subject.
Mr. Pickwick eyed the old man with great curiosity, and the remainder of
the company smiled, and looked on in silence.
‘Talk of your German universities,’ said the little old man. ‘Pooh,
pooh! there’s romance enough at home without going half a mile for it;
only people never think of it.’
‘I never thought of the romance of this particular subject before,
certainly,’ said Mr. Pickwick, laughing.
‘To be sure you didn’t,’ said the little old man; ‘of course not. As a
friend of mine used to say to me, “What is there in chambers in
particular?” “Queer old places,” said I. “Not at all,” said he.
“Lonely,” said I. “Not a bit of it,” said he. He died one morning of
apoplexy, as he was going to open his outer door. Fell with his head in
his own letter-box, and there he lay for eighteen months. Everybody
thought he’d gone out of town.’
‘And how was he found out at last?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.
‘The benchers determined to have his door broken open, as he hadn’t paid
any rent for two years. So they did. Forced the lock; and a very dusty
skeleton in a blue coat, black knee-shorts, and silks, fell forward in
the arms of the porter who opened the door. Queer, that. Rather,
perhaps; rather, eh?’ The little old man put his head more on one side,
and rubbed his hands with unspeakable glee.
‘I know another case,’ said the little old man, when his chuckles had in
some degree subsided. ‘It occurred in Clifford’s Inn. Tenant of a top
set--bad character--shut himself up in his bedroom closet, and took a
dose of arsenic. The steward thought he had run away: opened the door,
and put a bill up. Another man came, took the chambers, furnished them,
and went to live there. Somehow or other he couldn’t sleep--always
restless and uncomfortable. “Odd,” says he. “I’ll make the other room my
bedchamber, and this my sitting-room.” He made the change, and slept
very well at night, but suddenly found that, somehow, he couldn’t read
in the evening: he got nervous and uncomfortable, and used to be always
snuffing his candles and staring about him. “I can’t make this out,”
said he, when he came home from the play one night, and was drinking a
glass of cold grog, with his back to the wall, in order that he mightn’t
be able to fancy there was any one behind him--“I can’t make it out,”
said he; and just then his eyes rested on the little closet that had
been always locked up, and a shudder ran through his whole frame from
top to toe. “I have felt this strange feeling before,” said he, “I
cannot help thinking there’s something wrong about that closet.” He made
a strong effort, plucked up his courage, shivered the lock with a blow
or two of the poker, opened the door, and there, sure enough, standing
bolt upright in the corner, was the last tenant, with a little bottle
clasped firmly in his hand, and his face--well!’ As the little old man
concluded, he looked round on the attentive faces of his wondering
auditory with a smile of grim delight.
‘What strange things these are you tell us of, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick,
minutely scanning the old man’s countenance, by the aid of his glasses.
‘Strange!’ said the little old man. ‘Nonsense; you think them strange,
because you know nothing about it. They are funny, but not uncommon.’
‘Funny!’ exclaimed Mr. Pickwick involuntarily.
‘Yes, funny, are they not?’ replied the little old man, with a
diabolical leer; and then, without pausing for an answer, he continued--
‘I knew another man--let me see--forty years ago now--who took an old,
damp, rotten set of chambers, in one of the most ancient inns, that had
been shut up and empty for years and years before. There were lots of
old women’s stories about the place, and it certainly was very far from
being a cheerful one; but he was poor, and the rooms were cheap, and
that would have been quite a sufficient reason for him, if they had been
ten times worse than they really were. He was obliged to take some
mouldering fixtures that were on the place, and, among the rest, was a
great lumbering wooden press for papers, with large glass doors, and a
green curtain inside; a pretty useless thing for him, for he had no
papers to put in it; and as to his clothes, he carried them about with
him, and that wasn’t very hard work, either. Well, he had moved in all
his furniture--it wasn’t quite a truck-full--and had sprinkled it about
the room, so as to make the four chairs look as much like a dozen as
possible, and was sitting down before the fire at night, drinking the
first glass of two gallons of whisky he had ordered on credit, wondering
whether it would ever be paid for, and if so, in how many years’ time,
when his eyes encountered the glass doors of the wooden press. “Ah,”
says he, “if I hadn’t been obliged to take that ugly article at the old
broker’s valuation, I might have got something comfortable for the
money. I’ll tell you what it is, old fellow,” he said, speaking aloud to
the press, having nothing else to speak to, “if it wouldn’t cost more to
break up your old carcass, than it would ever be worth afterward, I’d
have a fire out of you in less than no time.” He had hardly spoken the
words, when a sound resembling a faint groan, appeared to issue from the
interior of the case. It startled him at first, but thinking, on a
moment’s reflection, that it must be some young fellow in the next
chamber, who had been dining out, he put his feet on the fender, and
raised the poker to stir the fire. At that moment, the sound was
repeated; and one of the glass doors slowly opening, disclosed a pale
and emaciated figure in soiled and worn apparel, standing erect in the
press. The figure was tall and thin, and the countenance expressive of
care and anxiety; but there was something in the hue of the skin, and
gaunt and unearthly appearance of the whole form, which no being of this
world was ever seen to wear. “Who are you?” said the new tenant, turning
very pale; poising the poker in his hand, however, and taking a very
decent aim at the countenance of the figure. “Who are you?” “Don’t throw
that poker at me,” replied the form; “if you hurled it with ever so sure
an aim, it would pass through me, without resistance, and expend its
force on the wood behind. I am a spirit.” “And pray, what do you want
here?” faltered the tenant. “In this room,” replied the apparition, “my
worldly ruin was worked, and I and my children beggared. In this press,
the papers in a long, long suit, which accumulated for years, were
deposited. In this room, when I had died of grief, and long-deferred
hope, two wily harpies divided the wealth for which I had contested
during a wretched existence, and of which, at last, not one farthing was
left for my unhappy descendants. I terrified them from the spot, and
since that day have prowled by night--the only period at which I can
revisit the earth--about the scenes of my long-protracted misery. This
apartment is mine: leave it to me.” “If you insist upon making your
appearance here,” said the tenant, who had had time to collect his
presence of mind during this prosy statement of the ghost’s, “I shall
give up possession with the greatest pleasure; but I should like to ask
you one question, if you will allow me.” “Say on,” said the apparition
sternly. “Well,” said the tenant, “I don’t apply the observation
personally to you, because it is equally applicable to most of the
ghosts I ever heard of; but it does appear to me somewhat inconsistent,
that when you have an opportunity of visiting the fairest spots of
earth--for I suppose space is nothing to you--you should always return
exactly to the very places where you have been most miserable.” “Egad,
that’s very true; I never thought of that before,” said the ghost. “You
see, Sir,” pursued the tenant, “this is a very uncomfortable room. From
the appearance of that press, I should be disposed to say that it is not
wholly free from bugs; and I really think you might find much more
comfortable quarters: to say nothing of the climate of London, which is
extremely disagreeable.” “You are very right, Sir,” said the ghost
politely, “it never struck me till now; I’ll try change of air
directly”--and, in fact, he began to vanish as he spoke; his legs,
indeed, had quite disappeared. “And if, Sir,” said the tenant, calling
after him, “if you _would _have the goodness to suggest to the other
ladies and gentlemen who are now engaged in haunting old empty houses,
that they might be much more comfortable elsewhere, you will confer a
very great benefit on society.” “I will,” replied the ghost; “we must be
dull fellows--very dull fellows, indeed; I can’t imagine how we can have
been so stupid.” With these words, the spirit disappeared; and what is
rather remarkable,’ added the old man, with a shrewd look round the
table, ‘he never came back again.’
‘That ain’t bad, if it’s true,’ said the man in the Mosaic studs,
lighting a fresh cigar.
‘_If_!’ exclaimed the old man, with a look of excessive contempt. ‘I
suppose,’ he added, turning to Lowten, ‘he’ll say next, that my story
about the queer client we had, when I was in an attorney’s office, is
not true either--I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘I shan’t venture to say anything at all about it, seeing that I never
heard the story,’ observed the owner of the Mosaic decorations.
‘I wish you would repeat it, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Ah, do,’ said Lowten, ‘nobody has heard it but me, and I have nearly
forgotten it.’
The old man looked round the table, and leered more horribly than ever,
as if in triumph, at the attention which was depicted in every face.
Then rubbing his chin with his hand, and looking up to the ceiling as if
to recall the circumstances to his memory, he began as follows:--
THE OLD MAN’S TALE ABOUT THE QUEER CLIENT
‘It matters little,’ said the old man, ‘where, or how, I picked up this
brief history. If I were to relate it in the order in which it reached
me, I should commence in the middle, and when I had arrived at the
conclusion, go back for a beginning. It is enough for me to say that
some of its circumstances passed before my own eyes; for the remainder I
know them to have happened, and there are some persons yet living, who
will remember them but too well.
‘In the Borough High Street, near St. George’s Church, and on the same
side of the way, stands, as most people know, the smallest of our
debtors’ prisons, the Marshalsea. Although in later times it has been a
very different place from the sink of filth and dirt it once was, even
its improved condition holds out but little temptation to the
extravagant, or consolation to the improvident. The condemned felon has
as good a yard for air and exercise in Newgate, as the insolvent debtor
in the Marshalsea Prison. [Better. But this is past, in a better age,
and the prison exists no longer.]
‘It may be my fancy, or it may be that I cannot separate the place from
the old recollections associated with it, but this part of London I
cannot bear. The street is broad, the shops are spacious, the noise of
passing vehicles, the footsteps of a perpetual stream of people--all the
busy sounds of traffic, resound in it from morn to midnight; but the
streets around are mean and close; poverty and debauchery lie festering
in the crowded alleys; want and misfortune are pent up in the narrow
prison; an air of gloom and dreariness seems, in my eyes at least, to
hang about the scene, and to impart to it a squalid and sickly hue.
‘Many eyes, that have long since been closed in the grave, have looked
round upon that scene lightly enough, when entering the gate of the old
Marshalsea Prison for the first time; for despair seldom comes with the
first severe shock of misfortune. A man has confidence in untried
friends, he remembers the many offers of service so freely made by his
boon companions when he wanted them not; he has hope--the hope of happy
inexperience--and however he may bend beneath the first shock, it
springs up in his bosom, and flourishes there for a brief space, until
it droops beneath the blight of disappointment and neglect. How soon
have those same eyes, deeply sunken in the head, glared from faces
wasted with famine, and sallow from confinement, in days when it was no
figure of speech to say that debtors rotted in prison, with no hope of
release, and no prospect of liberty! The atrocity in its full extent no
longer exists, but there is enough of it left to give rise to
occurrences that make the heart bleed.
‘Twenty years ago, that pavement was worn with the footsteps of a mother
and child, who, day by day, so surely as the morning came, presented
themselves at the prison gate; often after a night of restless misery
and anxious thoughts, were they there, a full hour too soon, and then
the young mother turning meekly away, would lead the child to the old
bridge, and raising him in her arms to show him the glistening water,
tinted with the light of the morning’s sun, and stirring with all the
bustling preparations for business and pleasure that the river presented
at that early hour, endeavour to interest his thoughts in the objects
before him. But she would quickly set him down, and hiding her face in
her shawl, give vent to the tears that blinded her; for no expression of
interest or amusement lighted up his thin and sickly face. His
recollections were few enough, but they were all of one kind--all
connected with the poverty and misery of his parents. Hour after hour
had he sat on his mother’s knee, and with childish sympathy watched the
tears that stole down her face, and then crept quietly away into some
dark corner, and sobbed himself to sleep. The hard realities of the
world, with many of its worst privations--hunger and thirst, and cold
and want--had all come home to him, from the first dawnings of reason;
and though the form of childhood was there, its light heart, its merry
laugh, and sparkling eyes were wanting.
‘The father and mother looked on upon this, and upon each other, with
thoughts of agony they dared not breathe in words. The healthy, strong-
made man, who could have borne almost any fatigue of active exertion,
was wasting beneath the close confinement and unhealthy atmosphere of a
crowded prison. The slight and delicate woman was sinking beneath the
combined effects of bodily and mental illness. The child’s young heart
was breaking.
‘Winter came, and with it weeks of cold and heavy rain. The poor girl
had removed to a wretched apartment close to the spot of her husband’s
imprisonment; and though the change had been rendered necessary by their
increasing poverty, she was happier now, for she was nearer him. For two
months, she and her little companion watched the opening of the gate as
usual. One day she failed to come, for the first time. Another morning
arrived, and she came alone. The child was dead.
‘They little know, who coldly talk of the poor man’s bereavements, as a
happy release from pain to the departed, and a merciful relief from
expense to the survivor--they little know, I say, what the agony of
those bereavements is. A silent look of affection and regard when all
other eyes are turned coldly away--the consciousness that we possess the
sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us--is
a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth
could purchase, or power bestow. The child had sat at his parents’ feet
for hours together, with his little hands patiently folded in each
other, and his thin wan face raised towards them. They had seen him pine
away, from day to day; and though his brief existence had been a joyless
one, and he was now removed to that peace and rest which, child as he
was, he had never known in this world, they were his parents, and his
loss sank deep into their souls.
‘It was plain to those who looked upon the mother’s altered face, that
death must soon close the scene of her adversity and trial. Her
husband’s fellow-prisoners shrank from obtruding on his grief and
misery, and left to himself alone, the small room he had previously
occupied in common with two companions. She shared it with him; and
lingering on without pain, but without hope, her life ebbed slowly away.
‘She had fainted one evening in her husband’s arms, and he had borne her
to the open window, to revive her with the air, when the light of the
moon falling full upon her face, showed him a change upon her features,
which made him stagger beneath her weight, like a helpless infant.
‘“Set me down, George,” she said faintly. He did so, and seating himself
beside her, covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears.
‘“It is very hard to leave you, George,” she said; “but it is God’s
will, and you must bear it for my sake. Oh! how I thank Him for having
taken our boy! He is happy, and in heaven now. What would he have done
here, without his mother!”
‘“You shall not die, Mary, you shall not die;” said the husband,
starting up. He paced hurriedly to and fro, striking his head with his
clenched fists; then reseating himself beside her, and supporting her in
his arms, added more calmly, “Rouse yourself, my dear girl. Pray, pray
do. You will revive yet.”
‘“Never again, George; never again,” said the dying woman. “Let them lay
me by my poor boy now, but promise me, that if ever you leave this
dreadful place, and should grow rich, you will have us removed to some
quiet country churchyard, a long, long way off--very far from here--
where we can rest in peace. Dear George, promise me you will.”
‘“I do, I do,” said the man, throwing himself passionately on his knees
before her. “Speak to me, Mary, another word; one look--but one!”
‘He ceased to speak: for the arm that clasped his neck grew stiff and
heavy. A deep sigh escaped from the wasted form before him; the lips
moved, and a smile played upon the face; but the lips were pallid, and
the smile faded into a rigid and ghastly stare. He was alone in the
world.
‘That night, in the silence and desolation of his miserable room, the
wretched man knelt down by the dead body of his wife, and called on God
to witness a terrible oath, that from that hour, he devoted himself to
revenge her death and that of his child; that thenceforth to the last
moment of his life, his whole energies should be directed to this one
object; that his revenge should be protracted and terrible; that his
hatred should be undying and inextinguishable; and should hunt its
object through the world.
‘The deepest despair, and passion scarcely human, had made such fierce
ravages on his face and form, in that one night, that his companions in
misfortune shrank affrighted from him as he passed by. His eyes were
bloodshot and heavy, his face a deadly white, and his body bent as if
with age. He had bitten his under lip nearly through in the violence of
his mental suffering, and the blood which had flowed from the wound had
trickled down his chin, and stained his shirt and neckerchief. No tear,
or sound of complaint escaped him; but the unsettled look, and
disordered haste with which he paced up and down the yard, denoted the
fever which was burning within.
‘It was necessary that his wife’s body should be removed from the
prison, without delay. He received the communication with perfect
calmness, and acquiesced in its propriety. Nearly all the inmates of the
prison had assembled to witness its removal; they fell back on either
side when the widower appeared; he walked hurriedly forward, and
stationed himself, alone, in a little railed area close to the lodge
gate, from whence the crowd, with an instinctive feeling of delicacy,
had retired. The rude coffin was borne slowly forward on men’s
shoulders. A dead silence pervaded the throng, broken only by the
audible lamentations of the women, and the shuffling steps of the
bearers on the stone pavement. They reached the spot where the bereaved
husband stood: and stopped. He laid his hand upon the coffin, and
mechanically adjusting the pall with which it was covered, motioned them
onward. The turnkeys in the prison lobby took off their hats as it
passed through, and in another moment the heavy gate closed behind it.
He looked vacantly upon the crowd, and fell heavily to the ground.
‘Although for many weeks after this, he was watched, night and day, in
the wildest ravings of fever, neither the consciousness of his loss, nor
the recollection of the vow he had made, ever left him for a moment.
Scenes changed before his eyes, place succeeded place, and event
followed event, in all the hurry of delirium; but they were all
connected in some way with the great object of his mind. He was sailing
over a boundless expanse of sea, with a blood-red sky above, and the
angry waters, lashed into fury beneath, boiling and eddying up, on every
side. There was another vessel before them, toiling and labouring in the
howling storm; her canvas fluttering in ribbons from the mast, and her
deck thronged with figures who were lashed to the sides, over which huge
waves every instant burst, sweeping away some devoted creatures into the
foaming sea. Onward they bore, amidst the roaring mass of water, with a
speed and force which nothing could resist; and striking the stem of the
foremost vessel, crushed her beneath their keel. From the huge whirlpool
which the sinking wreck occasioned, arose a shriek so loud and shrill--
the death-cry of a hundred drowning creatures, blended into one fierce
yell--that it rung far above the war-cry of the elements, and echoed,
and re-echoed till it seemed to pierce air, sky, and ocean. But what was
that--that old gray head that rose above the water’s surface, and with
looks of agony, and screams for aid, buffeted with the waves! One look,
and he had sprung from the vessel’s side, and with vigorous strokes was
swimming towards it. He reached it; he was close upon it. They were _his
_features. The old man saw him coming, and vainly strove to elude his
grasp. But he clasped him tight, and dragged him beneath the water.
Down, down with him, fifty fathoms down; his struggles grew fainter and
fainter, until they wholly ceased. He was dead; he had killed him, and
had kept his oath.
‘He was traversing the scorching sands of a mighty desert, barefoot and
alone. The sand choked and blinded him; its fine thin grains entered the
very pores of his skin, and irritated him almost to madness. Gigantic
masses of the same material, carried forward by the wind, and shone
through by the burning sun, stalked in the distance like pillars of
living fire. The bones of men, who had perished in the dreary waste, lay
scattered at his feet; a fearful light fell on everything around; so far
as the eye could reach, nothing but objects of dread and horror
presented themselves. Vainly striving to utter a cry of terror, with his
tongue cleaving to his mouth, he rushed madly forward. Armed with
supernatural strength, he waded through the sand, until, exhausted with
fatigue and thirst, he fell senseless on the earth. What fragrant
coolness revived him; what gushing sound was that? Water! It was indeed
a well; and the clear fresh stream was running at his feet. He drank
deeply of it, and throwing his aching limbs upon the bank, sank into a
delicious trance. The sound of approaching footsteps roused him. An old
gray-headed man tottered forward to slake his burning thirst. It was
_he_ again! He wound his arms round the old man’s body, and held him
back. He struggled, and shrieked for water--for but one drop of water to
save his life! But he held the old man firmly, and watched his agonies
with greedy eyes; and when his lifeless head fell forward on his bosom,
he rolled the corpse from him with his feet.
‘When the fever left him, and consciousness returned, he awoke to find
himself rich and free, to hear that the parent who would have let him
die in jail--_would_! who _had _let those who were far dearer to him
than his own existence die of want, and sickness of heart that medicine
cannot cure--had been found dead in his bed of down. He had had all the
heart to leave his son a beggar, but proud even of his health and
strength, had put off the act till it was too late, and now might gnash
his teeth in the other world, at the thought of the wealth his
remissness had left him. He awoke to this, and he awoke to more. To
recollect the purpose for which he lived, and to remember that his enemy
was his wife’s own father--the man who had cast him into prison, and
who, when his daughter and her child sued at his feet for mercy, had
spurned them from his door. Oh, how he cursed the weakness that
prevented him from being up, and active, in his scheme of vengeance!
‘He caused himself to be carried from the scene of his loss and misery,
and conveyed to a quiet residence on the sea-coast; not in the hope of
recovering his peace of mind or happiness, for both were fled for ever;
but to restore his prostrate energies, and meditate on his darling
object. And here, some evil spirit cast in his way the opportunity for
his first, most horrible revenge.
‘It was summer-time; and wrapped in his gloomy thoughts, he would issue
from his solitary lodgings early in the evening, and wandering along a
narrow path beneath the cliffs, to a wild and lonely spot that had
struck his fancy in his ramblings, seat himself on some fallen fragment
of the rock, and burying his face in his hands, remain there for hours--
sometimes until night had completely closed in, and the long shadows of
the frowning cliffs above his head cast a thick, black darkness on every
object near him.
‘He was seated here, one calm evening, in his old position, now and then
raising his head to watch the flight of a sea-gull, or carry his eye
along the glorious crimson path, which, commencing in the middle of the
ocean, seemed to lead to its very verge where the sun was setting, when
the profound stillness of the spot was broken by a loud cry for help; he
listened, doubtful of his having heard aright, when the cry was repeated
with even greater vehemence than before, and, starting to his feet, he
hastened in the direction whence it proceeded.
‘The tale told itself at once: some scattered garments lay on the beach;
a human head was just visible above the waves at a little distance from
the shore; and an old man, wringing his hands in agony, was running to
and fro, shrieking for assistance. The invalid, whose strength was now
sufficiently restored, threw off his coat, and rushed towards the sea,
with the intention of plunging in, and dragging the drowning man ashore.
‘“Hasten here, Sir, in God’s name; help, help, sir, for the love of
Heaven. He is my son, Sir, my only son!” said the old man frantically,
as he advanced to meet him. “My only son, Sir, and he is dying before
his father’s eyes!”
‘At the first word the old man uttered, the stranger checked himself in
his career, and, folding his arms, stood perfectly motionless.
‘“Great God!” exclaimed the old man, recoiling, “Heyling!”
‘The stranger smiled, and was silent.
‘“Heyling!” said the old man wildly; “my boy, Heyling, my dear boy,
look, look!” Gasping for breath, the miserable father pointed to the
spot where the young man was struggling for life.
‘“Hark!” said the old man. “He cries once more. He is alive yet.
Heyling, save him, save him!”
‘The stranger smiled again, and remained immovable as a statue.
‘“I have wronged you,” shrieked the old man, falling on his knees, and
clasping his hands together. “Be revenged; take my all, my life; cast me
into the water at your feet, and, if human nature can repress a
struggle, I will die, without stirring hand or foot. Do it, Heyling, do
it, but save my boy; he is so young, Heyling, so young to die!”
‘“Listen,” said the stranger, grasping the old man fiercely by the
wrist; “I will have life for life, and here is _one_. _My_ child died,
before his father’s eyes, a far more agonising and painful death than
that young slanderer of his sister’s worth is meeting while I speak. You
laughed--laughed in your daughter’s face, where death had already set
his hand--at our sufferings, then. What think you of them now! See
there, see there!”
‘As the stranger spoke, he pointed to the sea. A faint cry died away
upon its surface; the last powerful struggle of the dying man agitated
the rippling waves for a few seconds; and the spot where he had gone
down into his early grave, was undistinguishable from the surrounding
water.
‘Three years had elapsed, when a gentleman alighted from a private
carriage at the door of a London attorney, then well known as a man of
no great nicety in his professional dealings, and requested a private
interview on business of importance. Although evidently not past the
prime of life, his face was pale, haggard, and dejected; and it did not
require the acute perception of the man of business, to discern at a
glance, that disease or suffering had done more to work a change in his
appearance, than the mere hand of time could have accomplished in twice
the period of his whole life.
‘“I wish you to undertake some legal business for me,” said the
stranger.
‘The attorney bowed obsequiously, and glanced at a large packet which
the gentleman carried in his hand. His visitor observed the look, and
proceeded.
‘“It is no common business,” said he; “nor have these papers reached my
hands without long trouble and great expense.”
‘The attorney cast a still more anxious look at the packet; and his
visitor, untying the string that bound it, disclosed a quantity of
promissory notes, with copies of deeds, and other documents.
‘“Upon these papers,” said the client, “the man whose name they bear,
has raised, as you will see, large sums of money, for years past. There
was a tacit understanding between him and the men into whose hands they
originally went--and from whom I have by degrees purchased the whole,
for treble and quadruple their nominal value--that these loans should be
from time to time renewed, until a given period had elapsed. Such an
understanding is nowhere expressed. He has sustained many losses of
late; and these obligations accumulating upon him at once, would crush
him to the earth.”
‘“The whole amount is many thousands of pounds,” said the attorney,
looking over the papers.
‘“It is,” said the client.
‘“What are we to do?” inquired the man of business.
‘“Do!” replied the client, with sudden vehemence. “Put every engine of
the law in force, every trick that ingenuity can devise and rascality
execute; fair means and foul; the open oppression of the law, aided by
all the craft of its most ingenious practitioners. I would have him die
a harassing and lingering death. Ruin him, seize and sell his lands and
goods, drive him from house and home, and drag him forth a beggar in his
old age, to die in a common jail.”
‘“But the costs, my dear Sir, the costs of all this,” reasoned the
attorney, when he had recovered from his momentary surprise. “If the
defendant be a man of straw, who is to pay the costs, Sir?”
‘“Name any sum,” said the stranger, his hand trembling so violently with
excitement, that he could scarcely hold the pen he seized as he spoke--
“any sum, and it is yours. Don’t be afraid to name it, man. I shall not
think it dear, if you gain my object.”
‘The attorney named a large sum, at hazard, as the advance he should
require to secure himself against the possibility of loss; but more with
the view of ascertaining how far his client was really disposed to go,
than with any idea that he would comply with the demand. The stranger
wrote a cheque upon his banker, for the whole amount, and left him.
‘The draft was duly honoured, and the attorney, finding that his strange
client might be safely relied upon, commenced his work in earnest. For
more than two years afterwards, Mr. Heyling would sit whole days
together, in the office, poring over the papers as they accumulated, and
reading again and again, his eyes gleaming with joy, the letters of
remonstrance, the prayers for a little delay, the representations of the
certain ruin in which the opposite party must be involved, which poured
in, as suit after suit, and process after process, was commenced. To all
applications for a brief indulgence, there was but one reply--the money
must be paid. Land, house, furniture, each in its turn, was taken under
some one of the numerous executions which were issued; and the old man
himself would have been immured in prison had he not escaped the
vigilance of the officers, and fled.
‘The implacable animosity of Heyling, so far from being satiated by the
success of his persecution, increased a hundredfold with the ruin he
inflicted. On being informed of the old man’s flight, his fury was
unbounded. He gnashed his teeth with rage, tore the hair from his head,
and assailed with horrid imprecations the men who had been intrusted
with the writ. He was only restored to comparative calmness by repeated
assurances of the certainty of discovering the fugitive. Agents were
sent in quest of him, in all directions; every stratagem that could be
invented was resorted to, for the purpose of discovering his place of
retreat; but it was all in vain. Half a year had passed over, and he was
still undiscovered.
‘At length late one night, Heyling, of whom nothing had been seen for
many weeks before, appeared at his attorney’s private residence, and
sent up word that a gentleman wished to see him instantly. Before the
attorney, who had recognised his voice from above stairs, could order
the servant to admit him, he had rushed up the staircase, and entered
the drawing-room pale and breathless. Having closed the door, to prevent
being overheard, he sank into a chair, and said, in a low voice--
‘“Hush! I have found him at last.”
‘“No!” said the attorney. “Well done, my dear sir, well done.”
‘“He lies concealed in a wretched lodging in Camden Town,” said Heyling.
“Perhaps it is as well we _did _lose sight of him, for he has been
living alone there, in the most abject misery, all the time, and he is
poor--very poor.”
‘“Very good,” said the attorney. “You will have the caption made to-
morrow, of course?”
‘“Yes,” replied Heyling. “Stay! No! The next day. You are surprised at
my wishing to postpone it,” he added, with a ghastly smile; “but I had
forgotten. The next day is an anniversary in his life: let it be done
then.”
‘“Very good,” said the attorney. “Will you write down instructions for
the officer?”
‘“No; let him meet me here, at eight in the evening, and I will
accompany him myself.”
‘They met on the appointed night, and, hiring a hackney-coach, directed
the driver to stop at that corner of the old Pancras Road, at which
stands the parish workhouse. By the time they alighted there, it was
quite dark; and, proceeding by the dead wall in front of the Veterinary
Hospital, they entered a small by-street, which is, or was at that time,
called Little College Street, and which, whatever it may be now, was in
those days a desolate place enough, surrounded by little else than
fields and ditches.
‘Having drawn the travelling-cap he had on half over his face, and
muffled himself in his cloak, Heyling stopped before the meanest-looking
house in the street, and knocked gently at the door. It was at once
opened by a woman, who dropped a curtsey of recognition, and Heyling,
whispering the officer to remain below, crept gently upstairs, and,
opening the door of the front room, entered at once.
‘The object of his search and his unrelenting animosity, now a decrepit
old man, was seated at a bare deal table, on which stood a miserable
candle. He started on the entrance of the stranger, and rose feebly to
his feet.
‘“What now, what now?” said the old man. “What fresh misery is this?
What do you want here?”
‘“A word with _you_,” replied Heyling. As he spoke, he seated himself at
the other end of the table, and, throwing off his cloak and cap,
disclosed his features.
‘The old man seemed instantly deprived of speech. He fell backward in
his chair, and, clasping his hands together, gazed on the apparition
with a mingled look of abhorrence and fear.
‘“This day six years,” said Heyling, “I claimed the life you owed me for
my child’s. Beside the lifeless form of your daughter, old man, I swore
to live a life of revenge. I have never swerved from my purpose for a
moment’s space; but if I had, one thought of her uncomplaining,
suffering look, as she drooped away, or of the starving face of our
innocent child, would have nerved me to my task. My first act of
requital you well remember: this is my last.”
‘The old man shivered, and his hands dropped powerless by his side.
‘“I leave England to-morrow,” said Heyling, after a moment’s pause. “To-
night I consign you to the living death to which you devoted her--a
hopeless prison--”
‘He raised his eyes to the old man’s countenance, and paused. He lifted
the light to his face, set it gently down, and left the apartment.
‘“You had better see to the old man,” he said to the woman, as he opened
the door, and motioned the officer to follow him into the street. “I
think he is ill.” The woman closed the door, ran hastily upstairs, and
found him lifeless.
‘Beneath a plain gravestone, in one of the most peaceful and secluded
churchyards in Kent, where wild flowers mingle with the grass, and the
soft landscape around forms the fairest spot in the garden of England,
lie the bones of the young mother and her gentle child. But the ashes of
the father do not mingle with theirs; nor, from that night forward, did
the attorney ever gain the remotest clue to the subsequent history of
his queer client.’
As the old man concluded his tale, he advanced to a peg in one corner,
and taking down his hat and coat, put them on with great deliberation;
and, without saying another word, walked slowly away. As the gentleman
with the Mosaic studs had fallen asleep, and the major part of the
company were deeply occupied in the humorous process of dropping melted
tallow-grease into his brandy-and-water, Mr. Pickwick departed
unnoticed, and having settled his own score, and that of Mr. Weller,
issued forth, in company with that gentleman, from beneath the portal of
the Magpie and Stump.
CHAPTER XXII. MR. PICKWICK JOURNEYS TO IPSWICH AND MEETS WITH A ROMANTIC
ADVENTURE WITH A MIDDLE-AGED LADY IN YELLOW CURL-PAPERS
That ‘ere your governor’s luggage, Sammy?’ inquired Mr. Weller of his
affectionate son, as he entered the yard of the Bull Inn, Whitechapel,
with a travelling-bag and a small portmanteau.
‘You might ha’ made a worser guess than that, old feller,’ replied Mr.
Weller the younger, setting down his burden in the yard, and sitting
himself down upon it afterwards. ‘The governor hisself’ll be down here
presently.’
‘He’s a-cabbin’ it, I suppose?’ said the father.
‘Yes, he’s a havin’ two mile o’ danger at eight-pence,’ responded the
son. ‘How’s mother-in-law this mornin’?’
‘Queer, Sammy, queer,’ replied the elder Mr. Weller, with impressive
gravity. ‘She’s been gettin’ rayther in the Methodistical order lately,
Sammy; and she is uncommon pious, to be sure. She’s too good a creetur
for me, Sammy. I feel I don’t deserve her.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr. Samuel. ‘that’s wery self-denyin’ o’ you.’
‘Wery,’ replied his parent, with a sigh. ‘She’s got hold o’ some
inwention for grown-up people being born again, Sammy--the new birth, I
think they calls it. I should wery much like to see that system in
haction, Sammy. I should wery much like to see your mother-in-law born
again. Wouldn’t I put her out to nurse!’
‘What do you think them women does t’other day,’ continued Mr. Weller,
after a short pause, during which he had significantly struck the side
of his nose with his forefinger some half-dozen times. ‘What do you
think they does, t’other day, Sammy?’
‘Don’t know,’ replied Sam, ‘what?’
‘Goes and gets up a grand tea drinkin’ for a feller they calls their
shepherd,’ said Mr. Weller. ‘I was a-standing starin’ in at the pictur
shop down at our place, when I sees a little bill about it; “tickets
half-a-crown. All applications to be made to the committee. Secretary,
Mrs. Weller”; and when I got home there was the committee a-sittin’ in
our back parlour. Fourteen women; I wish you could ha’ heard ‘em, Sammy.
There they was, a-passin’ resolutions, and wotin’ supplies, and all
sorts o’ games. Well, what with your mother-in-law a-worrying me to go,
and what with my looking for’ard to seein’ some queer starts if I did, I
put my name down for a ticket; at six o’clock on the Friday evenin’ I
dresses myself out wery smart, and off I goes with the old ‘ooman, and
up we walks into a fust-floor where there was tea-things for thirty, and
a whole lot o’ women as begins whisperin’ to one another, and lookin’ at
me, as if they’d never seen a rayther stout gen’l’m’n of eight-and-fifty
afore. By and by, there comes a great bustle downstairs, and a lanky
chap with a red nose and a white neckcloth rushes up, and sings out,
“Here’s the shepherd a-coming to wisit his faithful flock;” and in comes
a fat chap in black, vith a great white face, a-smilin’ avay like
clockwork. Such goin’s on, Sammy! “The kiss of peace,” says the
shepherd; and then he kissed the women all round, and ven he’d done, the
man vith the red nose began. I was just a-thinkin’ whether I hadn’t
better begin too--‘specially as there was a wery nice lady a-sittin’
next me--ven in comes the tea, and your mother-in-law, as had been
makin’ the kettle bile downstairs. At it they went, tooth and nail. Such
a precious loud hymn, Sammy, while the tea was a brewing; such a grace,
such eatin’ and drinkin’! I wish you could ha’ seen the shepherd walkin’
into the ham and muffins. I never see such a chap to eat and drink--
never. The red-nosed man warn’t by no means the sort of person you’d
like to grub by contract, but he was nothin’ to the shepherd. Well;
arter the tea was over, they sang another hymn, and then the shepherd
began to preach: and wery well he did it, considerin’ how heavy them
muffins must have lied on his chest. Presently he pulls up, all of a
sudden, and hollers out, “Where is the sinner; where is the mis’rable
sinner?” Upon which, all the women looked at me, and began to groan as
if they was a-dying. I thought it was rather sing’ler, but howsoever, I
says nothing. Presently he pulls up again, and lookin’ wery hard at me,
says, “Where is the sinner; where is the mis’rable sinner?” and all the
women groans again, ten times louder than afore. I got rather savage at
this, so I takes a step or two for’ard and says, “My friend,” says I,
“did you apply that ‘ere obserwation to me?” ‘Stead of beggin’ my pardon
as any gen’l’m’n would ha’ done, he got more abusive than ever:--called
me a wessel, Sammy--a wessel of wrath--and all sorts o’ names. So my
blood being reg’larly up, I first gave him two or three for himself, and
then two or three more to hand over to the man with the red nose, and
walked off. I wish you could ha’ heard how the women screamed, Sammy,
ven they picked up the shepherd from underneath the table--Hollo! here’s
the governor, the size of life.’
As Mr. Weller spoke, Mr. Pickwick dismounted from a cab, and entered the
yard.
‘Fine mornin’, Sir,’ said Mr. Weller, senior.
‘Beautiful indeed,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.
‘Beautiful indeed,’ echoes a red-haired man with an inquisitive nose and
green spectacles, who had unpacked himself from a cab at the same moment
as Mr. Pickwick. ‘Going to Ipswich, Sir?’
‘I am,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.
‘Extraordinary coincidence. So am I.’
Mr. Pickwick bowed.
‘Going outside?’ said the red-haired man.
Mr. Pickwick bowed again.
‘Bless my soul, how remarkable--I am going outside, too,’ said the red-
haired man; ‘we are positively going together.’ And the red-haired man,
who was an important-looking, sharp-nosed, mysterious-spoken personage,
with a bird-like habit of giving his head a jerk every time he said
anything, smiled as if he had made one of the strangest discoveries that
ever fell to the lot of human wisdom.
‘I am happy in the prospect of your company, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Ah,’ said the new-comer, ‘it’s a good thing for both of us, isn’t it?
Company, you see--company--is--is--it’s a very different thing from
solitude--ain’t it?’
‘There’s no denying that ‘ere,’ said Mr. Weller, joining in the
conversation, with an affable smile. ‘That’s what I call a self-evident
proposition, as the dog’s-meat man said, when the housemaid told him he
warn’t a gentleman.’
‘Ah,’ said the red-haired man, surveying Mr. Weller from head to foot
with a supercilious look. ‘Friend of yours, sir?’
‘Not exactly a friend,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, in a low tone. ‘The fact
is, he is my servant, but I allow him to take a good many liberties;
for, between ourselves, I flatter myself he is an original, and I am
rather proud of him.’
‘Ah,’ said the red-haired man, ‘that, you see, is a matter of taste. I
am not fond of anything original; I don’t like it; don’t see the
necessity for it. What’s your name, sir?’
‘Here is my card, sir,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, much amused by the
abruptness of the question, and the singular manner of the stranger.
‘Ah,’ said the red-haired man, placing the card in his pocket-book,
‘Pickwick; very good. I like to know a man’s name, it saves so much
trouble. That’s my card, sir. Magnus, you will perceive, sir--Magnus is
my name. It’s rather a good name, I think, sir.’
‘A very good name, indeed,’ said Mr. Pickwick, wholly unable to repress
a smile.
‘Yes, I think it is,’ resumed Mr. Magnus. ‘There’s a good name before
it, too, you will observe. Permit me, sir--if you hold the card a little
slanting, this way, you catch the light upon the up-stroke. There--Peter
Magnus--sounds well, I think, sir.’
‘Very,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Curious circumstance about those initials, sir,’ said Mr. Magnus. ‘You
will observe--P.M.--post meridian. In hasty notes to intimate
acquaintance, I sometimes sign myself “Afternoon.” It amuses my friends
very much, Mr. Pickwick.’
‘It is calculated to afford them the highest gratification, I should
conceive,’ said Mr. Pickwick, rather envying the ease with which Mr.
Magnus’s friends were entertained.
‘Now, gen’l’m’n,’ said the hostler, ‘coach is ready, if you please.’
‘Is all my luggage in?’ inquired Mr. Magnus.
‘All right, sir.’
‘Is the red bag in?’
‘All right, Sir.’
‘And the striped bag?’
‘Fore boot, Sir.’
‘And the brown-paper parcel?’
‘Under the seat, Sir.’
‘And the leather hat-box?’
‘They’re all in, Sir.’
‘Now, will you get up?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Excuse me,’ replied Magnus, standing on the wheel. ‘Excuse me, Mr.
Pickwick. I cannot consent to get up, in this state of uncertainty. I am
quite satisfied from that man’s manner, that the leather hat-box is not
in.’
The solemn protestations of the hostler being wholly unavailing, the
leather hat-box was obliged to be raked up from the lowest depth of the
boot, to satisfy him that it had been safely packed; and after he had
been assured on this head, he felt a solemn presentiment, first, that
the red bag was mislaid, and next that the striped bag had been stolen,
and then that the brown-paper parcel ‘had come untied.’ At length when
he had received ocular demonstration of the groundless nature of each
and every of these suspicions, he consented to climb up to the roof of
the coach, observing that now he had taken everything off his mind, he
felt quite comfortable and happy.
‘You’re given to nervousness, ain’t you, Sir?’ inquired Mr. Weller,
senior, eyeing the stranger askance, as he mounted to his place.
‘Yes; I always am rather about these little matters,’ said the stranger,
‘but I am all right now--quite right.’
‘Well, that’s a blessin’, said Mr. Weller. ‘Sammy, help your master up
to the box; t’other leg, Sir, that’s it; give us your hand, Sir. Up with
you. You was a lighter weight when you was a boy, sir.’
True enough, that, Mr. Weller,’ said the breathless Mr. Pickwick good-
humouredly, as he took his seat on the box beside him.
‘Jump up in front, Sammy,’ said Mr. Weller. ‘Now Villam, run ‘em out.
Take care o’ the archvay, gen’l’m’n. “Heads,” as the pieman says.
That’ll do, Villam. Let ‘em alone.’ And away went the coach up
Whitechapel, to the admiration of the whole population of that pretty
densely populated quarter.
‘Not a wery nice neighbourhood, this, Sir,’ said Sam, with a touch of
the hat, which always preceded his entering into conversation with his
master.
‘It is not indeed, Sam,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, surveying the crowded and
filthy street through which they were passing.
‘It’s a wery remarkable circumstance, Sir,’ said Sam, ‘that poverty and
oysters always seem to go together.’
‘I don’t understand you, Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘What I mean, sir,’ said Sam, ‘is, that the poorer a place is, the
greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir; here’s a
oyster-stall to every half-dozen houses. The street’s lined vith ‘em.
Blessed if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor, he rushes out of
his lodgings, and eats oysters in reg’lar desperation.’
‘To be sure he does,’ said Mr. Weller, senior; ‘and it’s just the same
vith pickled salmon!’
‘Those are two very remarkable facts, which never occurred to me
before,’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘The very first place we stop at, I’ll make
a note of them.’
By this time they had reached the turnpike at Mile End; a profound
silence prevailed until they had got two or three miles farther on, when
Mr. Weller, senior, turning suddenly to Mr. Pickwick, said--
‘Wery queer life is a pike-keeper’s, sir.’
‘A what?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘A pike-keeper.’
‘What do you mean by a pike-keeper?’ inquired Mr. Peter Magnus.
‘The old ‘un means a turnpike-keeper, gen’l’m’n,’ observed Mr. Samuel
Weller, in explanation.
‘Oh,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘I see. Yes; very curious life. Very
uncomfortable.’
‘They’re all on ‘em men as has met vith some disappointment in life,’
said Mr. Weller, senior.
‘Ay, ay,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Yes. Consequence of vich, they retires from the world, and shuts
themselves up in pikes; partly with the view of being solitary, and
partly to rewenge themselves on mankind by takin’ tolls.’
‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘I never knew that before.’
‘Fact, Sir,’ said Mr. Weller; ‘if they was gen’l’m’n, you’d call ‘em
misanthropes, but as it is, they only takes to pike-keepin’.’
With such conversation, possessing the inestimable charm of blending
amusement with instruction, did Mr. Weller beguile the tediousness of
the journey, during the greater part of the day. Topics of conversation
were never wanting, for even when any pause occurred in Mr. Weller’s
loquacity, it was abundantly supplied by the desire evinced by Mr.
Magnus to make himself acquainted with the whole of the personal history
of his fellow-travellers, and his loudly-expressed anxiety at every
stage, respecting the safety and well-being of the two bags, the leather
hat-box, and the brown-paper parcel.
In the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short
distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town
Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great
White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some
rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an
insane cart-horse, which is elevated above the principal door. The Great
White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a
prize ox, or a county-paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig--for its
enormous size. Never was such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such
clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens
for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof, as are collected
together between the four walls of the Great White Horse at Ipswich.
It was at the door of this overgrown tavern that the London coach
stopped, at the same hour every evening; and it was from this same
London coach that Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller, and Mr. Peter Magnus
dismounted, on the particular evening to which this chapter of our
history bears reference.
‘Do you stop here, sir?’ inquired Mr. Peter Magnus, when the striped
bag, and the red bag, and the brown-paper parcel, and the leather hat-
box, had all been deposited in the passage. ‘Do you stop here, sir?’
‘I do,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Magnus, ‘I never knew anything like these
extraordinary coincidences. Why, I stop here too. I hope we dine
together?’
‘With pleasure,’ replied Mr. Pickwick. ‘I am not quite certain whether I
have any friends here or not, though. Is there any gentleman of the name
of Tupman here, waiter?’
A corpulent man, with a fortnight’s napkin under his arm, and coeval
stockings on his legs, slowly desisted from his occupation of staring
down the street, on this question being put to him by Mr. Pickwick; and,
after minutely inspecting that gentleman’s appearance, from the crown of
his hat to the lowest button of his gaiters, replied emphatically--
‘No!’
‘Nor any gentleman of the name of Snodgrass?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.
‘No!’
‘Nor Winkle?’
‘No!’
‘My friends have not arrived to-day, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘We will
dine alone, then. Show us a private room, waiter.’
On this request being preferred, the corpulent man condescended to order
the boots to bring in the gentlemen’s luggage; and preceding them down a
long, dark passage, ushered them into a large, badly-furnished
apartment, with a dirty grate, in which a small fire was making a
wretched attempt to be cheerful, but was fast sinking beneath the
dispiriting influence of the place. After the lapse of an hour, a bit of
fish and a steak was served up to the travellers, and when the dinner
was cleared away, Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Peter Magnus drew their chairs up
to the fire, and having ordered a bottle of the worst possible port
wine, at the highest possible price, for the good of the house, drank
brandy-and-water for their own.
Mr. Peter Magnus was naturally of a very communicative disposition, and
the brandy-and-water operated with wonderful effect in warming into life
the deepest hidden secrets of his bosom. After sundry accounts of
himself, his family, his connections, his friends, his jokes, his
business, and his brothers (most talkative men have a great deal to say
about their brothers), Mr. Peter Magnus took a view of Mr. Pickwick
through his coloured spectacles for several minutes, and then said, with
an air of modesty--
‘And what do you think--what _do_ you think, Mr. Pickwick--I have come
down here for?’
‘Upon my word,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘it is wholly impossible for me to
guess; on business, perhaps.’
‘Partly right, Sir,’ replied Mr. Peter Magnus, ‘but partly wrong at the
same time; try again, Mr. Pickwick.’
‘Really,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘I must throw myself on your mercy, to tell
me or not, as you may think best; for I should never guess, if I were to
try all night.’
‘Why, then, he-he-he!’ said Mr. Peter Magnus, with a bashful titter,
‘what should you think, Mr. Pickwick, if I had come down here to make a
proposal, Sir, eh? He, he, he!’
‘Think! That you are very likely to succeed,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, with
one of his beaming smiles.
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Magnus. ‘But do you really think so, Mr. Pickwick? Do
you, though?’
‘Certainly,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘No; but you’re joking, though.’
‘I am not, indeed.’
‘Why, then,’ said Mr. Magnus, ‘to let you into a little secret, I think
so too. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Pickwick, although I’m dreadful
jealous by nature--horrid--that the lady is in this house.’ Here Mr.
Magnus took off his spectacles, on purpose to wink, and then put them on
again.
‘That’s what you were running out of the room for, before dinner, then,
so often,’ said Mr. Pickwick archly.
‘Hush! Yes, you’re right, that was it; not such a fool as to see her,
though.’
‘No!’
‘No; wouldn’t do, you know, after having just come off a journey. Wait
till to-morrow, sir; double the chance then. Mr. Pickwick, Sir, there is
a suit of clothes in that bag, and a hat in that box, which, I expect,
in the effect they will produce, will be invaluable to me, sir.’
‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Yes; you must have observed my anxiety about them to-day. I do not
believe that such another suit of clothes, and such a hat, could be
bought for money, Mr. Pickwick.’
Mr. Pickwick congratulated the fortunate owner of the irresistible
garments on their acquisition; and Mr. Peter Magnus remained a few
moments apparently absorbed in contemplation.
‘She’s a fine creature,’ said Mr. Magnus.
‘Is she?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Very,’ said Mr. Magnus. ‘Very. She lives about twenty miles from here,
Mr. Pickwick. I heard she would be here to-night and all to-morrow
forenoon, and came down to seize the opportunity. I think an inn is a
good sort of a place to propose to a single woman in, Mr. Pickwick. She
is more likely to feel the loneliness of her situation in travelling,
perhaps, than she would be at home. What do you think, Mr. Pickwick?’
‘I think it is very probable,’ replied that gentleman.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Pickwick,’ said Mr. Peter Magnus, ‘but I am
naturally rather curious; what may you have come down here for?’
‘On a far less pleasant errand, Sir,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, the colour
mounting to his face at the recollection. ‘I have come down here, Sir,
to expose the treachery and falsehood of an individual, upon whose truth
and honour I placed implicit reliance.’
‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Peter Magnus, ‘that’s very unpleasant. It is a lady,
I presume? Eh? ah! Sly, Mr. Pickwick, sly. Well, Mr. Pickwick, sir, I
wouldn’t probe your feelings for the world. Painful subjects, these,
sir, very painful. Don’t mind me, Mr. Pickwick, if you wish to give vent
to your feelings. I know what it is to be jilted, Sir; I have endured
that sort of thing three or four times.’
‘I am much obliged to you, for your condolence on what you presume to be
my melancholy case,’ said Mr. Pickwick, winding up his watch, and laying
it on the table, ‘but--’
‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peter Magnus, ‘not a word more; it’s a painful
subject. I see, I see. What’s the time, Mr. Pickwick?’
Past twelve.’
‘Dear me, it’s time to go to bed. It will never do, sitting here. I
shall be pale to-morrow, Mr. Pickwick.’
At the bare notion of such a calamity, Mr. Peter Magnus rang the bell
for the chambermaid; and the striped bag, the red bag, the leathern hat-
box, and the brown-paper parcel, having been conveyed to his bedroom, he
retired in company with a japanned candlestick, to one side of the
house, while Mr. Pickwick, and another japanned candlestick, were
conducted through a multitude of tortuous windings, to another.
‘This is your room, sir,’ said the chambermaid.
‘Very well,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, looking round him. It was a tolerably
large double-bedded room, with a fire; upon the whole, a more
comfortable-looking apartment than Mr. Pickwick’s short experience of
the accommodations of the Great White Horse had led him to expect.
‘Nobody sleeps in the other bed, of course,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Oh, no, Sir.’
‘Very good. Tell my servant to bring me up some hot water at half-past
eight in the morning, and that I shall not want him any more to-night.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ and bidding Mr. Pickwick good-night, the chambermaid
retired, and left him alone.
Mr. Pickwick sat himself down in a chair before the fire, and fell into
a train of rambling meditations. First he thought of his friends, and
wondered when they would join him; then his mind reverted to Mrs. Martha
Bardell; and from that lady it wandered, by a natural process, to the
dingy counting-house of Dodson & Fogg. From Dodson & Fogg’s it flew off
at a tangent, to the very centre of the history of the queer client; and
then it came back to the Great White Horse at Ipswich, with sufficient
clearness to convince Mr. Pickwick that he was falling asleep. So he
roused himself, and began to undress, when he recollected he had left
his watch on the table downstairs.
Now this watch was a special favourite with Mr. Pickwick, having been
carried about, beneath the shadow of his waistcoat, for a greater number
of years than we feel called upon to state at present. The possibility
of going to sleep, unless it were ticking gently beneath his pillow, or
in the watch-pocket over his head, had never entered Mr. Pickwick’s
brain. So as it was pretty late now, and he was unwilling to ring his
bell at that hour of the night, he slipped on his coat, of which he had
just divested himself, and taking the japanned candlestick in his hand,
walked quietly downstairs.
The more stairs Mr. Pickwick went down, the more stairs there seemed to
be to descend, and again and again, when Mr. Pickwick got into some
narrow passage, and began to congratulate himself on having gained the
ground-floor, did another flight of stairs appear before his astonished
eyes. At last he reached a stone hall, which he remembered to have seen
when he entered the house. Passage after passage did he explore; room
after room did he peep into; at length, as he was on the point of giving
up the search in despair, he opened the door of the identical room in
which he had spent the evening, and beheld his missing property on the
table.
Mr. Pickwick seized the watch in triumph, and proceeded to retrace his
steps to his bedchamber. If his progress downward had been attended with
difficulties and uncertainty, his journey back was infinitely more
perplexing. Rows of doors, garnished with boots of every shape, make,
and size, branched off in every possible direction. A dozen times did he
softly turn the handle of some bedroom door which resembled his own,
when a gruff cry from within of ‘Who the devil’s that?’ or ‘What do you
want here?’ caused him to steal away, on tiptoe, with a perfectly
marvellous celerity. He was reduced to the verge of despair, when an
open door attracted his attention. He peeped in. Right at last! There
were the two beds, whose situation he perfectly remembered, and the fire
still burning. His candle, not a long one when he first received it, had
flickered away in the drafts of air through which he had passed and sank
into the socket as he closed the door after him. ‘No matter,’ said Mr.
Pickwick, ‘I can undress myself just as well by the light of the fire.’
The bedsteads stood one on each side of the door; and on the inner side
of each was a little path, terminating in a rush-bottomed chair, just
wide enough to admit of a person’s getting into or out of bed, on that
side, if he or she thought proper. Having carefully drawn the curtains
of his bed on the outside, Mr. Pickwick sat down on the rush-bottomed
chair, and leisurely divested himself of his shoes and gaiters. He then
took off and folded up his coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth, and slowly
drawing on his tasselled nightcap, secured it firmly on his head, by
tying beneath his chin the strings which he always had attached to that
article of dress. It was at this moment that the absurdity of his recent
bewilderment struck upon his mind. Throwing himself back in the rush-
bottomed chair, Mr. Pickwick laughed to himself so heartily, that it
would have been quite delightful to any man of well-constituted mind to
have watched the smiles that expanded his amiable features as they shone
forth from beneath the nightcap.
‘It is the best idea,’ said Mr. Pickwick to himself, smiling till he
almost cracked the nightcap strings--‘it is the best idea, my losing
myself in this place, and wandering about these staircases, that I ever
heard of. Droll, droll, very droll.’ Here Mr. Pickwick smiled again, a
broader smile than before, and was about to continue the process of
undressing, in the best possible humour, when he was suddenly stopped by
a most unexpected interruption: to wit, the entrance into the room of
some person with a candle, who, after locking the door, advanced to the
dressing-table, and set down the light upon it.
The smile that played on Mr. Pickwick’s features was instantaneously
lost in a look of the most unbounded and wonder-stricken surprise. The
person, whoever it was, had come in so suddenly and with so little
noise, that Mr. Pickwick had had no time to call out, or oppose their
entrance. Who could it be? A robber? Some evil-minded person who had
seen him come upstairs with a handsome watch in his hand, perhaps. What
was he to do?
The only way in which Mr. Pickwick could catch a glimpse of his
mysterious visitor with the least danger of being seen himself, was by
creeping on to the bed, and peeping out from between the curtains on the
opposite side. To this manoeuvre he accordingly resorted. Keeping the
curtains carefully closed with his hand, so that nothing more of him
could be seen than his face and nightcap, and putting on his spectacles,
he mustered up courage and looked out.
Mr. Pickwick almost fainted with horror and dismay. Standing before the
dressing-glass was a middle-aged lady, in yellow curl-papers, busily
engaged in brushing what ladies call their ‘back-hair.’ However the
unconscious middle-aged lady came into that room, it was quite clear
that she contemplated remaining there for the night; for she had brought
a rushlight and shade with her, which, with praiseworthy precaution
against fire, she had stationed in a basin on the floor, where it was
glimmering away, like a gigantic lighthouse in a particularly small
piece of water.
‘Bless my soul!’ thought Mr. Pickwick, ‘what a dreadful thing!’
‘Hem!’ said the lady; and in went Mr. Pickwick’s head with automaton-
like rapidity.
‘I never met with anything so awful as this,’ thought poor Mr. Pickwick,
the cold perspiration starting in drops upon his nightcap. ‘Never. This
is fearful.’
It was quite impossible to resist the urgent desire to see what was
going forward. So out went Mr. Pickwick’s head again. The prospect was
worse than before. The middle-aged lady had finished arranging her hair;
had carefully enveloped it in a muslin nightcap with a small plaited
border; and was gazing pensively on the fire.
‘This matter is growing alarming,’ reasoned Mr. Pickwick with himself.
‘I can’t allow things to go on in this way. By the self-possession of
that lady, it is clear to me that I must have come into the wrong room.
If I call out she’ll alarm the house; but if I remain here the
consequences will be still more frightful.’
Mr. Pickwick, it is quite unnecessary to say, was one of the most modest
and delicate-minded of mortals. The very idea of exhibiting his nightcap
to a lady overpowered him, but he had tied those confounded strings in a
knot, and, do what he would, he couldn’t get it off. The disclosure must
be made. There was only one other way of doing it. He shrunk behind the
curtains, and called out very loudly--
‘Ha-hum!’
That the lady started at this unexpected sound was evident, by her
falling up against the rushlight shade; that she persuaded herself it
must have been the effect of imagination was equally clear, for when Mr.
Pickwick, under the impression that she had fainted away stone-dead with
fright, ventured to peep out again, she was gazing pensively on the fire
as before.
‘Most extraordinary female this,’ thought Mr. Pickwick, popping in
again. ‘Ha-hum!’
These last sounds, so like those in which, as legends inform us, the
ferocious giant Blunderbore was in the habit of expressing his opinion
that it was time to lay the cloth, were too distinctly audible to be
again mistaken for the workings of fancy.
‘Gracious Heaven!’ said the middle-aged lady, ‘what’s that?’
‘It’s--it’s--only a gentleman, ma’am,’ said Mr. Pickwick, from behind
the curtains.
‘A gentleman!’ said the lady, with a terrific scream.
‘It’s all over!’ thought Mr. Pickwick.
‘A strange man!’ shrieked the lady. Another instant and the house would
be alarmed. Her garments rustled as she rushed towards the door.
‘Ma’am,’ said Mr. Pickwick, thrusting out his head in the extremity of
his desperation, ‘ma’am!’
Now, although Mr. Pickwick was not actuated by any definite object in
putting out his head, it was instantaneously productive of a good
effect. The lady, as we have already stated, was near the door. She must
pass it, to reach the staircase, and she would most undoubtedly have
done so by this time, had not the sudden apparition of Mr. Pickwick’s
nightcap driven her back into the remotest corner of the apartment,
where she stood staring wildly at Mr. Pickwick, while Mr. Pickwick in
his turn stared wildly at her.
‘Wretch,’ said the lady, covering her eyes with her hands, ‘what do you
want here?’
‘Nothing, ma’am; nothing whatever, ma’am,’ said Mr. Pickwick earnestly.
‘Nothing!’ said the lady, looking up.
‘Nothing, ma’am, upon my honour,’ said Mr. Pickwick, nodding his head so
energetically, that the tassel of his nightcap danced again. ‘I am
almost ready to sink, ma’am, beneath the confusion of addressing a lady
in my nightcap (here the lady hastily snatched off hers), but I can’t
get it off, ma’am (here Mr. Pickwick gave it a tremendous tug, in proof
of the statement). It is evident to me, ma’am, now, that I have mistaken
this bedroom for my own. I had not been here five minutes, ma’am, when
you suddenly entered it.’
‘If this improbable story be really true, Sir,’ said the lady, sobbing
violently, ‘you will leave it instantly.’
‘I will, ma’am, with the greatest pleasure,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.
‘Instantly, sir,’ said the lady.
‘Certainly, ma’am,’ interposed Mr. Pickwick, very quickly. ‘Certainly,
ma’am. I--I--am very sorry, ma’am,’ said Mr. Pickwick, making his
appearance at the bottom of the bed, ‘to have been the innocent occasion
of this alarm and emotion; deeply sorry, ma’am.’
The lady pointed to the door. One excellent quality of Mr. Pickwick’s
character was beautifully displayed at this moment, under the most
trying circumstances. Although he had hastily put on his hat over his
nightcap, after the manner of the old patrol; although he carried his
shoes and gaiters in his hand, and his coat and waistcoat over his arm;
nothing could subdue his native politeness.
‘I am exceedingly sorry, ma’am,’ said Mr. Pickwick, bowing very low.
‘If you are, Sir, you will at once leave the room,’ said the lady.
‘Immediately, ma’am; this instant, ma’am,’ said Mr. Pickwick, opening
the door, and dropping both his shoes with a crash in so doing.
‘I trust, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Pickwick, gathering up his shoes, and
turning round to bow again--‘I trust, ma’am, that my unblemished
character, and the devoted respect I entertain for your sex, will plead
as some slight excuse for this--’ But before Mr. Pickwick could conclude
the sentence, the lady had thrust him into the passage, and locked and
bolted the door behind him.
Whatever grounds of self-congratulation Mr. Pickwick might have for
having escaped so quietly from his late awkward situation, his present
position was by no means enviable. He was alone, in an open passage, in
a strange house in the middle of the night, half dressed; it was not to
be supposed that he could find his way in perfect darkness to a room
which he had been wholly unable to discover with a light, and if he made
the slightest noise in his fruitless attempts to do so, he stood every
chance of being shot at, and perhaps killed, by some wakeful traveller.
He had no resource but to remain where he was until daylight appeared.
So after groping his way a few paces down the passage, and, to his
infinite alarm, stumbling over several pairs of boots in so doing, Mr.
Pickwick crouched into a little recess in the wall, to wait for morning,
as philosophically as he might.
He was not destined, however, to undergo this additional trial of
patience; for he had not been long ensconced in his present concealment
when, to his unspeakable horror, a man, bearing a light, appeared at the
end of the passage. His horror was suddenly converted into joy, however,
when he recognised the form of his faithful attendant. It was indeed Mr.
Samuel Weller, who after sitting up thus late, in conversation with the
boots, who was sitting up for the mail, was now about to retire to rest.
‘Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick, suddenly appearing before him, ‘where’s my
bedroom?’
Mr. Weller stared at his master with the most emphatic surprise; and it
was not until the question had been repeated three several times, that
he turned round, and led the way to the long-sought apartment.
‘Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick, as he got into bed, ‘I have made one of the
most extraordinary mistakes to-night, that ever were heard of.’
‘Wery likely, Sir,’ replied Mr. Weller drily.
‘But of this I am determined, Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘that if I were
to stop in this house for six months, I would never trust myself about
it, alone, again.’
‘That’s the wery prudentest resolution as you could come to, Sir,’
replied Mr. Weller. ‘You rayther want somebody to look arter you, Sir,
when your judgment goes out a wisitin’.’
‘What do you mean by that, Sam?’ said Mr. Pickwick. He raised himself in
bed, and extended his hand, as if he were about to say something more;
but suddenly checking himself, turned round, and bade his valet ‘Good-
night.’
‘Good-night, Sir,’ replied Mr. Weller. He paused when he got outside the
door--shook his head--walked on--stopped--snuffed the candle--shook his
head again--and finally proceeded slowly to his chamber, apparently
buried in the profoundest meditation.
CHAPTER XXIII. IN WHICH MR. SAMUEL WELLER BEGINS TO DEVOTE HIS ENERGIES
TO THE RETURN MATCH BETWEEN HIMSELF AND MR. TROTTER
In a small room in the vicinity of the stableyard, betimes in the
morning, which was ushered in by Mr. Pickwick’s adventure with the
middle--aged lady in the yellow curl-papers, sat Mr. Weller, senior,
preparing himself for his journey to London. He was sitting in an
excellent attitude for having his portrait taken; and here it is.
It is very possible that at some earlier period of his career, Mr.
Weller’s profile might have presented a bold and determined outline. His
face, however, had expanded under the influence of good living, and a
disposition remarkable for resignation; and its bold, fleshy curves had
so far extended beyond the limits originally assigned them, that unless
you took a full view of his countenance in front, it was difficult to
distinguish more than the extreme tip of a very rubicund nose. His chin,
from the same cause, had acquired the grave and imposing form which is
generally described by prefixing the word ‘double’ to that expressive
feature; and his complexion exhibited that peculiarly mottled
combination of colours which is only to be seen in gentlemen of his
profession, and in underdone roast beef. Round his neck he wore a
crimson travelling-shawl, which merged into his chin by such
imperceptible gradations, that it was difficult to distinguish the folds
of the one, from the folds of the other. Over this, he mounted a long
waistcoat of a broad pink-striped pattern, and over that again, a wide-
skirted green coat, ornamented with large brass buttons, whereof the two
which garnished the waist, were so far apart, that no man had ever
beheld them both at the same time. His hair, which was short, sleek, and
black, was just visible beneath the capacious brim of a low-crowned
brown hat. His legs were encased in knee-cord breeches, and painted top-
boots; and a copper watch-chain, terminating in one seal, and a key of
the same material, dangled loosely from his capacious waistband.
We have said that Mr. Weller was engaged in preparing for his journey to
London--he was taking sustenance, in fact. On the table before him,
stood a pot of ale, a cold round of beef, and a very respectable-looking
loaf, to each of which he distributed his favours in turn, with the most
rigid impartiality. He had just cut a mighty slice from the latter, when
the footsteps of somebody entering the room, caused him to raise his
head; and he beheld his son.
‘Mornin’, Sammy!’ said the father.
The son walked up to the pot of ale, and nodding significantly to his
parent, took a long draught by way of reply.
‘Wery good power o’ suction, Sammy,’ said Mr. Weller the elder, looking
into the pot, when his first-born had set it down half empty. ‘You’d ha’
made an uncommon fine oyster, Sammy, if you’d been born in that station
o’ life.’
‘Yes, I des-say, I should ha’ managed to pick up a respectable livin’,’
replied Sam applying himself to the cold beef, with considerable vigour.
‘I’m wery sorry, Sammy,’ said the elder Mr. Weller, shaking up the ale,
by describing small circles with the pot, preparatory to drinking. ‘I’m
wery sorry, Sammy, to hear from your lips, as you let yourself be
gammoned by that ‘ere mulberry man. I always thought, up to three days
ago, that the names of Veller and gammon could never come into contract,
Sammy, never.’
‘Always exceptin’ the case of a widder, of course,’ said Sam.
‘Widders, Sammy,’ replied Mr. Weller, slightly changing colour. ‘Widders
are ‘ceptions to ev’ry rule. I have heerd how many ordinary women one
widder’s equal to in pint o’ comin’ over you. I think it’s five-and-
twenty, but I don’t rightly know vether it ain’t more.’
‘Well; that’s pretty well,’ said Sam.
‘Besides,’ continued Mr. Weller, not noticing the interruption, ‘that’s
a wery different thing. You know what the counsel said, Sammy, as
defended the gen’l’m’n as beat his wife with the poker, venever he got
jolly. “And arter all, my Lord,” says he, “it’s a amiable weakness.” So
I says respectin’ widders, Sammy, and so you’ll say, ven you gets as old
as me.’
‘I ought to ha’ know’d better, I know,’ said Sam.
‘Ought to ha’ know’d better!’ repeated Mr. Weller, striking the table
with his fist. ‘Ought to ha’ know’d better! why, I know a young ‘un as
hasn’t had half nor quarter your eddication--as hasn’t slept about the
markets, no, not six months--who’d ha’ scorned to be let in, in such a
vay; scorned it, Sammy.’ In the excitement of feeling produced by this
agonising reflection, Mr. Weller rang the bell, and ordered an
additional pint of ale.
‘Well, it’s no use talking about it now,’ said Sam. ‘It’s over, and
can’t be helped, and that’s one consolation, as they always says in
Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man’s head off. It’s my innings now,
gov’nor, and as soon as I catches hold o’ this ‘ere Trotter, I’ll have a
good ‘un.’
‘I hope you will, Sammy. I hope you will,’ returned Mr. Weller. ‘Here’s
your health, Sammy, and may you speedily vipe off the disgrace as you’ve
inflicted on the family name.’ In honour of this toast Mr. Weller
imbibed at a draught, at least two-thirds of a newly-arrived pint, and
handed it over to his son, to dispose of the remainder, which he
instantaneously did.
‘And now, Sammy,’ said Mr. Weller, consulting a large double-faced
silver watch that hung at the end of the copper chain. ‘Now it’s time I
was up at the office to get my vay-bill and see the coach loaded; for
coaches, Sammy, is like guns--they requires to be loaded with wery great
care, afore they go off.’
At this parental and professional joke, Mr. Weller, junior, smiled a
filial smile. His revered parent continued in a solemn tone--
‘I’m a-goin’ to leave you, Samivel, my boy, and there’s no telling ven I
shall see you again. Your mother-in-law may ha’ been too much for me, or
a thousand things may have happened by the time you next hears any news
o’ the celebrated Mr. Veller o’ the Bell Savage. The family name depends
wery much upon you, Samivel, and I hope you’ll do wot’s right by it.
Upon all little pints o’ breedin’, I know I may trust you as vell as if
it was my own self. So I’ve only this here one little bit of adwice to
give you. If ever you gets to up’ards o’ fifty, and feels disposed to go
a-marryin’ anybody--no matter who--jist you shut yourself up in your own
room, if you’ve got one, and pison yourself off hand. Hangin’s wulgar,
so don’t you have nothin’ to say to that. Pison yourself, Samivel, my
boy, pison yourself, and you’ll be glad on it arterwards.’ With these
affecting words, Mr. Weller looked steadfastly on his son, and turning
slowly upon his heel, disappeared from his sight.
In the contemplative mood which these words had awakened, Mr. Samuel
Weller walked forth from the Great White Horse when his father had left
him; and bending his steps towards St. Clement’s Church, endeavoured to
dissipate his melancholy, by strolling among its ancient precincts. He
had loitered about, for some time, when he found himself in a retired
spot--a kind of courtyard of venerable appearance--which he discovered
had no other outlet than the turning by which he had entered. He was
about retracing his steps, when he was suddenly transfixed to the spot
by a sudden appearance; and the mode and manner of this appearance, we
now proceed to relate.
Mr. Samuel Weller had been staring up at the old brick houses now and
then, in his deep abstraction, bestowing a wink upon some healthy-
looking servant girl as she drew up a blind, or threw open a bedroom
window, when the green gate of a garden at the bottom of the yard
opened, and a man having emerged therefrom, closed the green gate very
carefully after him, and walked briskly towards the very spot where Mr.
Weller was standing.
Now, taking this, as an isolated fact, unaccompanied by any attendant
circumstances, there was nothing very extraordinary in it; because in
many parts of the world men do come out of gardens, close green gates
after them, and even walk briskly away, without attracting any
particular share of public observation. It is clear, therefore, that
there must have been something in the man, or in his manner, or both, to
attract Mr. Weller’s particular notice. Whether there was, or not, we
must leave the reader to determine, when we have faithfully recorded the
behaviour of the individual in question.
When the man had shut the green gate after him, he walked, as we have
said twice already, with a brisk pace up the courtyard; but he no sooner
caught sight of Mr. Weller than he faltered, and stopped, as if
uncertain, for the moment, what course to adopt. As the green gate was
closed behind him, and there was no other outlet but the one in front,
however, he was not long in perceiving that he must pass Mr. Samuel
Weller to get away. He therefore resumed his brisk pace, and advanced,
staring straight before him. The most extraordinary thing about the man
was, that he was contorting his face into the most fearful and
astonishing grimaces that ever were beheld. Nature’s handiwork never was
disguised with such extraordinary artificial carving, as the man had
overlaid his countenance with in one moment.
‘Well!’ said Mr. Weller to himself, as the man approached. ‘This is wery
odd. I could ha’ swore it was him.’
Up came the man, and his face became more frightfully distorted than
ever, as he drew nearer.
‘I could take my oath to that ‘ere black hair and mulberry suit,’ said
Mr. Weller; ‘only I never see such a face as that afore.’
As Mr. Weller said this, the man’s features assumed an unearthly twinge,
perfectly hideous. He was obliged to pass very near Sam, however, and
the scrutinising glance of that gentleman enabled him to detect, under
all these appalling twists of feature, something too like the small eyes
of Mr. Job Trotter to be easily mistaken.
‘Hollo, you Sir!’ shouted Sam fiercely.
The stranger stopped.
‘Hollo!’ repeated Sam, still more gruffly.
The man with the horrible face looked, with the greatest surprise, up
the court, and down the court, and in at the windows of the houses--
everywhere but at Sam Weller--and took another step forward, when he was
brought to again by another shout.
‘Hollo, you sir!’ said Sam, for the third time.
There was no pretending to mistake where the voice came from now, so the
stranger, having no other resource, at last looked Sam Weller full in
the face.
‘It won’t do, Job Trotter,’ said Sam. ‘Come! None o’ that ‘ere nonsense.
You ain’t so wery ‘andsome that you can afford to throw avay many o’
your good looks. Bring them ‘ere eyes o’ yourn back into their proper
places, or I’ll knock ‘em out of your head. D’ye hear?’
As Mr. Weller appeared fully disposed to act up to the spirit of this
address, Mr. Trotter gradually allowed his face to resume its natural
expression; and then giving a start of joy, exclaimed, ‘What do I see?
Mr. Walker!’
‘Ah,’ replied Sam. ‘You’re wery glad to see me, ain’t you?’
‘Glad!’ exclaimed Job Trotter; ‘Oh, Mr. Walker, if you had but known how
I have looked forward to this meeting! It is too much, Mr. Walker; I
cannot bear it, indeed I cannot.’ And with these words, Mr. Trotter
burst into a regular inundation of tears, and, flinging his arms around
those of Mr. Weller, embraced him closely, in an ecstasy of joy.
‘Get off!’ cried Sam, indignant at this process, and vainly endeavouring
to extricate himself from the grasp of his enthusiastic acquaintance.
‘Get off, I tell you. What are you crying over me for, you portable
engine?’
‘Because I am so glad to see you,’ replied Job Trotter, gradually
releasing Mr. Weller, as the first symptoms of his pugnacity
disappeared. ‘Oh, Mr. Walker, this is too much.’
‘Too much!’ echoed Sam, ‘I think it is too much--rayther! Now, what have
you got to say to me, eh?’
Mr. Trotter made no reply; for the little pink pocket-handkerchief was
in full force.
‘What have you got to say to me, afore I knock your head off?’ repeated
Mr. Weller, in a threatening manner.
‘Eh!’ said Mr. Trotter, with a look of virtuous surprise.
‘What have you got to say to me?’
‘I, Mr. Walker!’
‘Don’t call me Valker; my name’s Veller; you know that vell enough. What
have you got to say to me?’
‘Bless you, Mr. Walker--Weller, I mean--a great many things, if you will
come away somewhere, where we can talk comfortably. If you knew how I
have looked for you, Mr. Weller--’
‘Wery hard, indeed, I s’pose?’ said Sam drily.
‘Very, very, Sir,’ replied Mr. Trotter, without moving a muscle of his
face. ‘But shake hands, Mr. Weller.’
Sam eyed his companion for a few seconds, and then, as if actuated by a
sudden impulse, complied with his request.
‘How,’ said Job Trotter, as they walked away, ‘how is your dear, good
master? Oh, he is a worthy gentleman, Mr. Weller! I hope he didn’t catch
cold, that dreadful night, Sir.’
There was a momentary look of deep slyness in Job Trotter’s eye, as he
said this, which ran a thrill through Mr. Weller’s clenched fist, as he
burned with a desire to make a demonstration on his ribs. Sam
constrained himself, however, and replied that his master was extremely
well.
‘Oh, I am so glad,’ replied Mr. Trotter; ‘is he here?’
‘Is yourn?’ asked Sam, by way of reply.
‘Oh, yes, he is here, and I grieve to say, Mr. Weller, he is going on
worse than ever.’
‘Ah, ah!’ said Sam.
‘Oh, shocking--terrible!’
‘At a boarding-school?’ said Sam.
‘No, not at a boarding-school,’ replied Job Trotter, with the same sly
look which Sam had noticed before; ‘not at a boarding-school.’
‘At the house with the green gate?’ said Sam, eyeing his companion
closely.
‘No, no--oh, not there,’ replied Job, with a quickness very unusual to
him, ‘not there.’
‘What was you a-doin’ there?’ asked Sam, with a sharp glance. ‘Got
inside the gate by accident, perhaps?’
‘Why, Mr. Weller,’ replied Job, ‘I don’t mind telling you my little
secrets, because, you know, we took such a fancy for each other when we
first met. You recollect how pleasant we were that morning?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Sam, impatiently. ‘I remember. Well?’
‘Well,’ replied Job, speaking with great precision, and in the low tone
of a man who communicates an important secret; ‘in that house with the
green gate, Mr. Weller, they keep a good many servants.’
‘So I should think, from the look on it,’ interposed Sam.
‘Yes,’ continued Mr. Trotter, ‘and one of them is a cook, who has saved
up a little money, Mr. Weller, and is desirous, if she can establish
herself in life, to open a little shop in the chandlery way, you see.’
Yes.’
‘Yes, Mr. Weller. Well, Sir, I met her at a chapel that I go to; a very
neat little chapel in this town, Mr. Weller, where they sing the number
four collection of hymns, which I generally carry about with me, in a
little book, which you may perhaps have seen in my hand--and I got a
little intimate with her, Mr. Weller, and from that, an acquaintance
sprung up between us, and I may venture to say, Mr. Weller, that I am to
be the chandler.’
‘Ah, and a wery amiable chandler you’ll make,’ replied Sam, eyeing Job
with a side look of intense dislike.
‘The great advantage of this, Mr. Weller,’ continued Job, his eyes
filling with tears as he spoke, ‘will be, that I shall be able to leave
my present disgraceful service with that bad man, and to devote myself
to a better and more virtuous life; more like the way in which I was
brought up, Mr. Weller.’
‘You must ha’ been wery nicely brought up,’ said Sam.
‘Oh, very, Mr. Weller, very,’ replied Job. At the recollection of the
purity of his youthful days, Mr. Trotter pulled forth the pink
handkerchief, and wept copiously.
‘You must ha’ been an uncommon nice boy, to go to school vith,’ said
Sam.
‘I was, sir,’ replied Job, heaving a deep sigh; ‘I was the idol of the
place.’
‘Ah,’ said Sam, ‘I don’t wonder at it. What a comfort you must ha’ been
to your blessed mother.’
At these words, Mr. Job Trotter inserted an end of the pink handkerchief
into the corner of each eye, one after the other, and began to weep
copiously.
‘Wot’s the matter with the man,’ said Sam, indignantly. ‘Chelsea water-
works is nothin’ to you. What are you melting vith now? The
consciousness o’ willainy?’
‘I cannot keep my feelings down, Mr. Weller,’ said Job, after a short
pause. ‘To think that my master should have suspected the conversation I
had with yours, and so dragged me away in a post-chaise, and after
persuading the sweet young lady to say she knew nothing of him, and
bribing the school-mistress to do the same, deserted her for a better
speculation! Oh! Mr. Weller, it makes me shudder.’
‘Oh, that was the vay, was it?’ said Mr. Weller.
‘To be sure it was,’ replied Job.
‘Vell,’ said Sam, as they had now arrived near the hotel, ‘I vant to
have a little bit o’ talk with you, Job; so if you’re not partickler
engaged, I should like to see you at the Great White Horse to-night,
somewheres about eight o’clock.’
‘I shall be sure to come,’ said Job.
‘Yes, you’d better,’ replied Sam, with a very meaning look, ‘or else I
shall perhaps be askin’ arter you, at the other side of the green gate,
and then I might cut you out, you know.’
‘I shall be sure to be with you, sir,’ said Mr. Trotter; and wringing
Sam’s hand with the utmost fervour, he walked away.