_The reader is courteously introduced into a bone and bottle shop, and
made acquainted with Peter Veriquear and the family of the Veriquears. A
night adventure._
In a bye-lane leading out of Hare Street, which, as my readers must be
informed, is situated about the middle of the parish of Bethnal Green,
there resided a certain tradesman, one Peter Veriquear by name; into
whose service, as a man of all work, our hero, Mr. Clink, may now be
supposed to have entered. By the recommendation, vote, and interest of
Mistress Popple, who had some acquaintance with the Veriquears, it was
that he obtained this eligible situation; a situation which found him a
sort of endless employment of one kind or other, day and night, at the
rate of six shillings per week, bed and board included.
When Colin first applied about the place, Mr. Veriquear replied, “If you
want a situation, young man, that is your business, and not mine. If I
have a place to dispose of, I have; and if I hav'n't, why of course I
hav'n't. That is my business, and not yours.”
Colin hinted something about what Mrs. Popple had said.
“Well!” exclaimed Veriquear, “if Mrs. Popple told you so, she did. That
is Mrs. Popple's business, and neither yours nor mine.”
“Then I am mistaken, sir?”
“I did not say you were mistaken. But, if you think you are, that is
your own business, and not mine.”
“Then what, sir,” asked Colin, somewhat puzzled, “am I to understand?”
“Why,” replied Veriquear, “I shall say the same to you as I do to all
young men,--understand your own business, if you have any, and, if you
hav'n't, understand how to get one,--that is the next best thing.”
“And that,” rejoined our hero, “is exactly what I am desirous of doing.”
“Well, if you are, you are; that is your own concern.”
“You seem to be fond of joking,” remarked Colin, as the blood mounted to
his cheeks.
“No, sir,” answered Veriquear, more sternly, “the man is not born that
ever knew me joke in the whole course of my life. I have my own way, and
that is no business of anybody's. Other people have theirs, and that is
none of mine.”
“But can you give me any employment, sir?”
“Well, I suppose young men must live somehow, though that is their own
concern; and I must find 'em work if I can, though that is mine.”
After some further conversation, in which Mr. Veriquear's character
displayed itself much as above depicted, he arrived, through a very
labyrinthine path, at the conclusion that Colin should be employed upon
his establishment according to the terms previously stated.
Though Mr. Veriquear's premises stood nominally two stories high, and
occupied a frontage some forty feet long, the roof scarcely reached to
the chamber-windows of certain more modern erections on either side.
The front wall,--a strange composition of timber, bricks, and plaster
mingled together in very picturesque sort,--had in times gone by
partially given way at the foundation, and now stood in an indescribably
wry position. Having forcibly pulled the whole mass of tiling along with
it, the ridge of the roof resembled the half-dislocated backbone of
some fossil alligator, while a weather-beaten chimney, with great gaps
between the bricks, which stood at one end, leaned sentimentally towards
a dead gable, like Charlotte lamenting the sorrows of Werter. The
windows, which were small and heavy, seemed to have been inserted
according to the strictest laws of chance; for, exactly in those places
where nobody would have expected them, there they were. By the side
of the door Haunted some yards of filthy drapery, which flapped in the
faces of the passers-by whenever they and a gust chanced to meet near
the spot; and old bottles, secondhand ewers and basins, bits of rag,
and various other descriptions of valuable “marine stores,” decorated
a window which might, without much injustice, have been supposed to
be glazed with clarified cow's-horn. Above, a huge doll, clad in
long-clothes of dirty dimity, and suspended to a projecting iron by the
crown of the head, swung in the blast like the effigy of some criminal
on a gibbet-post. At the edge of the causeway, which had never
been paved, and directly opposite the entrance to Mr. Veriquear's
establishment, was placed a board elevated on a moveable pole, on which
was painted, in attractive letters, “Wholesale and retail Rag, Bone, and
Bottle Warehouse.”
Into this miserable den Colin permanently introduced himself for the
first time one night between eight and nine o'clock. Some portion of
that evening he had spent with Miss Wintle-bury, and had taken his
adieu of her and the habitation she was in together, only after he had
prevailed upon her to accept one of three sovereigns which alone he had
retained out of the larger sum brought for his use by Fanny.
It was dusk when he arrived at his new abode. There was no light in the
shop, save what little found its way thither from the fading heavens,
which now were scantily spotted with half-seen stars. Peter Veriquear
stood solemnly against the door-post, staring into the gloom, and
blowing through his teeth a doleful noise, compounded both of singing
and whistling, but resembling neither, either in tone or loudness. Colin
felt low-spirited, though he strove to seem joyful.
“It grows dark very fast, sir,” said he, addressing Mr. Veriquear as he
entered.
“Yes,” replied that gentleman, “it does; but I can't help that. What
Nature chooses to do is no businesss of ours.”
“Certainly,” rejoined Colin; “but I said so only because it is customary
to express some kind of opinion.”
“Well, that, of course, is your own concern; but, for my part, I never
make it my business either to damn or praise the weather. Nature knows
her own affairs, and manages them just the same without my meddling.”
As Peter said this, he turned and led into the shop his new assistant.
Groping his way along in the direction of a distant inner doorway,
through which the dim remains of a fire were visible, Colin first
jostled against a stand, which rattled with the concussion as though all
the bottles in the United Kingdom had been jingled together; and then,
in his endeavour to steer clearer on the contrary side, fell prostrate
on to a prodigious heap of tailors' ends, strongly resembling in size a
juvenile Primrose Hill.
“I think it's my business to get a light,” observed Veriquear. “Stop
where you are till I come again.”
Colin wisely maintained his position, in accordance with the sensible
advice given him, lest, by making another endeavour in the dark, he
should fall foul of a stack of bones, and thus exchange for a less
comfortable anchorage. In cases of this kind, he well knew that a soft
bottom is the best.
When Peter returned with a candle, Colin obtained a dim vision of the
objects about him. The place was so black, for want of whitewash, that
its limits seemed almost indefinable every way, save overhead, and there
the close proximity of his crown to the rafters reminded him that no
less care would be required in humouring Mr. Veriquear's house than in
pleasing its master; while the quality and amount of its contents almost
led him to believe he had entered some grand national closet, in which
was deposited all the unserviceable stuff, the scraps, odds and ends
of the general community. The reason of this was, that Peter Veriquear
dealt in almost everything he could turn a penny by, and, being somewhat
large in his speculations, always had a vast mass of property in
substance upon his premises. 4 As a new emigrant to the wilds of North
America betakes himself to an accurate survey of his locality before
he pitches his tent, and commences operations, so, wisely, did Peter
Veriquear conduct Colin over the whole of his territory that night, in
order that he thereby might become acquainted early with the wide field
of his future labours, Through a dirty unpaved yard behind, he conducted
him over various shed-like warehouses, stored with every imaginable
description of rags, sorted and unsorted, with bottles of all degrees of
bodily extension, from the slender pale-faced phial to the middle-sized
“mixture” and the corpulent “stout;” and on the ground-floor, into a
deathly region of bones, which made the moveless air smell grave-like,
and stored the prompt imagination with as many spectres of slaughtered
cattle and skeleton horses, as might garnish the magic circles of twenty
German tales.
In a wide rambling loft, accessible through this place by a step-ladder,
and open to the laths of the roof on which the tiles were hung.
Colin observed a small bed and a chair or two, with a broken piece of
looking-glass fixed on the wall with nails, in order, as it might appear
from the deserted character of the place, that the tenant, if weary of
being alone, might contemplate a representative of himself, in lack of
better company.
“Is this room occupied?” asked Colin.
“When there is anybody in it,--as there ought to be every night,”
replied Veriquear. “It is my business to keep these premises safe, the
same as it is other people's to rob them if they could.”
“Why, surely, sir,” objected Colin, with some slight astonishment,
“nobody would think of stealing such things as there are here!”
“What is worth buying and selling is worth stealing. _I_ should think
so, if it were my affair to rob; just as I think it worth guarding,
being my business to hinder robbery.”
“Then, shall I sleep here?” demanded Colin.
“Well,” responded Mr. Veriquear, “I suppose you will, if you can. You
want sleep, like me, I dare say; but that you must manage yourself. _I_
can't make you sleep,--so it's no concern of mine.”
Our hero said nothing, but he thought the Fates could not have been
in one of the most amiable of humours when they delivered him into the
hands of Mr. Peter Veriquear.
Returning from this dim perambulation, the merchant led his assistant
down a flight of brick steps into an underground kitchen, where a
supper, consisting of a round mahogany-coloured cheese, which Colin
mistook for a huge cricket-ball, three gaunt sticks of celery, and a
brown loaf was placed upon a small round oak table, having one stem in
the centre, and three crooked feet at the bottom, after the fashion of
a washerwoman's Italian iron. The family of the Veriquears was here
assembled. Mrs. Veri-quear, a sharp-nosed pyroligneous-acid-looking
woman, sat on a low chair by the fireside, nursing a baby; a child of
eighteen months old slept close by her in a wicker basket, which served
at once for cradle and coach-body, as occasion might require, it being
ingeniously contrived to fit a frame-work on four wheels, which stood up
stairs, and thus served to carry the children about on a Sunday; while
two other youngsters were squabbling on the hearthstone about their
respective titles to a threelegged stool; and another, the eldest, was
penning most villanous pot-hooks on the back of a piece of butter-paper,
under the casual but severe superintendence of his worthy mother.
Farthest removed from the fire, as well as the candle-light, sat one who
was _in_ the family, though not of it, a maiden of nineteen, Miss Aphra
Marvel, a niece of Mr. Veriquear, who had been bequeathed to him by
her father upon his death-bed, along with a small tenement worth about
fifteen pounds a-year, the income from which was considered as a set-off
against the cost of her board and bringing up. But could her departing
parent have foreknown the great and multifarious services which his
daughter was destined to perform in the family of his wife's brother,
it is more than probable he would have acknowledged the propriety of
charging fifteen pounds per annum as a compensation for her labour,
rather than have left that sum in yearly requital of her cost. From
twelve years of age to the present time, her duty it had been to
make the fires, sweep the house, wash and nurse the babies, as they
successively appeared upon the Veriquear stage of the world, wait on Mrs.
Veriquear, prepare meals, make the beds, mend all the little masters'
clothes, and, in short, do all and everything which could possibly
require to be done; and yet she was regarded by her mistress and
the children (whom she industriously instructed to that end) as an
interloper, who was partly eating the bread out of their mouths every
day, and consequently contributing to the eventual diminution of that
stock which ought to be applied exclusively to the advancement of their
own prospects in after-life.
When Colin entered, Miss Aphra cast her eyes momentarily up, and half
blushed as she resumed her sewing. The children stared in wonder at him,
as they might at the sudden appearance of a frog in the kitchen. The
baby caught sight of him, and began to squeal like a sucking pig; while
Mrs. Veriquear cast an ill-tempered eye upon him, as much as to say she
wanted none of him there; and then shook her infant into an absolute
scream with the exclamation,--“What are you crying at, you little
fidget! _He's_ not going to hurt you, I'll take care of that.
Hush--hush--hush-sh-sh!” And away went the rocking-chair at a rate quite
tantamount to the extreme urgency of the occasion.
When they sat down to supper, it was discovered that Master William
had picked out the hearts of two sticks of celery, and extracted a plug
three inches long, by way of taster, from the Dutch cheese. This being
a case that imperatively demanded the application of summary punishment,
Colin got nothing to eat until Mr. Veriquear had risen from the table,
and applied a few inches of old cane to the lad's shoulders, which he
did with this brief preparatory remark, “Now, my boy, as you have made
it your business to pull that plug out, it becomes mine to try if I
can't plug you.”
Master William howled like a jackal before he was touched; his younger
brother Ned cried because Bill did; and Mrs. Veriquear stormed at her
husband, because he could not thrash the lad without making noise enough
over it to wake the very dead. Miss Marvel looked as solemn during this
farce as though it had been a tragedy; while Colin squeezed his nose
up in his handkerchief as forcibly as though a lobster had seized it
between his nippers, in order to prevent Mrs. Veriquear seeing how
irreverently his fancy was tickled at this exhibition of domestic
enjoyments.
Uninviting as his dormitory over the warehouses had previously appeared,
the character of the kitchen and its inhabitants seemed so much more so,
that it was with comparative delight he heard the clock of Shoreditch
church strike ten, as a signal for him to take possession of a tin
lantern provided for the occasion. Accordingly, carrying a bunch of keys
in his hand, wherewith to lock himself in, he strode across the yard to
his solitary and comfortless chamber.
During the first few hours which had elapsed after Colin had retired
to his ghostly-look-ing dormitory, it was in vain he tried to coax
and persuade himself to sleep. That fantastical deity, Somnus, seemed
determined to contradict his wishes; and therefore he lay with his eyes
wide open, counting how many chinks he could see between the tiles over
his head, and listening to the musical compliments which passed between
some friendly tom and tabby cats, whose tails and backs were evidently
elevated in a very picturesque manner outside the ridge above him.
It could not be far off one o'clock, when a very distinct sound, as of
something stirring below stairs, reached his ears. Though by no means
naturally timid, the young man's heart suddenly jumped as though taking
a spring from a precipice. Possibly the noise might be occasioned by the
rats taking advantage of this untimely hour of the night to make free
with Mr. Veriquear's bones; or the cats outside were in pursuit of the
aforesaid rats; or the wind was making itself merry somehow amongst
the bottles; or the doors or the shutters were undergoing a process
of agitation from the same cause. Whatever might originate the sound,
however, it was now repeated more distinctly. There was evidently on
the premises something alive as well as himself. Was it possible that he
could have got into a wrong place, and that they meditated murdering him
for the sake of his body? He thought of a pitch-plaster being suddenly
stuck over his mouth by some unseen hand, as he lay there on his back in
the dark. It was horrible, and the conceit aroused him to determination.
He cautiously slipped out of bed, and, clad in nothing more than his
stockings and shirt, groped his way blindly to the step-ladder, which he
silently descended.
Having reached the floor of the room below, he for the first time
bethought himself that he had no weapon of defence, not even a common
stick. But the great bone-heap was hard by, and from such armoury
he soon possessed himself with the thigh-bone of a horse, which he
contrived, without material disturbance, to draw out from amongst a
choice collection of other similar relics. Again the noise which had
alarmed him was repeated, and carried conviction to Colin's mind that
Mr. Veriquear's precautions against robbers were more needful than he
had previously believed; for that there were thieves about the premises
he now no more doubted than he doubted his own existence. Determined to
resist the knaves, and, grasping his bony cudgel with uncommon fervour,
he placed himself in an offensive attitude, and stood prepared for he
knew not what.
Not the famous fighting gladiator of antiquity, nor yet the modest
statue dubbed Achilles in Hyde Park, the admiration and delight of our
astonished countrymen and women, looks more threatening and heroic
than did Colin, as, clad in the simple but classic drapery of his
under-garment, he brandished a tremendous bone, and defied his unseen
foe.
At that moment the fragmentary skull of some old charger, which lay on
the windowsill at the farther end of the warehouse, seemed to become
partially and very mysteriously illuminated, while the shadowy form of a
man standing hard by became also indistinctly visible amidst the gloom.
Colin maintained his standing in breathless silence, with his eyes
steadily fixed upon the figure.
In the course of a few moments it turned slowly round, and began to
advance gravely towards him, but whether or not with any intention of
accosting him either by word or blow, he could not yet divine. Shortly
it reached within arm's length of him, and was about to address
doubtless some very mysterious speech to his ear, when the thought
flashed on the young man's mind like lightning that now or never was
the time; so raising his drumstick of a bone, he took aim, and, before
a single protest against his measure could be entered, nearly felled the
intruder to the earth.
“Don't strike!--don't strike!” cried the individual thus unexpectedly
attacked. “I'm Veriquear!--I'm Veriquear!”
“Certainly,” thought Colin, “you _are_ very queer indeed!”--for he
instantly recognised the voice as that of his employer, “I'm very
sorry--”
“All right!--quite right!” said Veriquear, drawing a dark-lantern from
a pocket behind him, and throwing a _bundle_ of rays like a bunch of
carrots on the figure of his assistant. “It was decidedly your business
to do as you have done; and I'm very much obliged to you--”
“You are very welcome,” interrupted Colin.
“For if you had not made it your duty to defend the place, I should have
turned you away at a minute's notice to-morrow morning. I have done this
on purpose to try your courage a little; only I meant to catch you in
bed, instead of where you are.”
“But I regret having struck you,” protested Colin.
“As to that,” replied Peter, “that, you know, is _your_ business; and
if I like to run the risk of getting a beating, why, that, of course, is
mine. Only I never yet had a man in my employ that I did not try in the
same way; and many a one have I discharged because they would not turn
again. It's no use having a dog that won't bark, and bite too, if he is
wanted; so I always put them to the proof in the first instance.”
His hearer did not particularly admire Mr. Veriquear's sagacious
method of trying the mettle of his men; but, inasmuch as it had so far
ingratiated him into the favour of his employer, he did not lament the
occurrence of a rencontre which, though it had promised seriously at the
outset, terminated so harmlessly. He accordingly betook himself again to
his pallet, and slept out soundly the remainder of the night; while Mr.
Veriquear departed by the same way he had come, highly gratified with
the courage of Colin, and rejoicing in the hard blow that he had so ably
bestowed upon his shoulders.