Mr. Alfred Jingle, without one spark of his old animation--with nothing
even of the dismal gaiety which he had assumed when Mr. Pickwick
first stumbled on him in his misery--bowed low without speaking, and,
motioning to Job not to follow him just yet, crept slowly away.
'Curious scene this, is it not, Sam?' said Mr. Pickwick, looking
good-humouredly round.
'Wery much so, Sir,' replied Sam. 'Wonders 'ull never cease,' added Sam,
speaking to himself. 'I'm wery much mistaken if that 'ere Jingle worn't
a-doin somethin' in the water-cart way!'
The area formed by the wall in that part of the Fleet in which Mr.
Pickwick stood was just wide enough to make a good racket-court; one
side being formed, of course, by the wall itself, and the other by that
portion of the prison which looked (or rather would have looked, but for
the wall) towards St. Paul's Cathedral. Sauntering or sitting about,
in every possible attitude of listless idleness, were a great number of
debtors, the major part of whom were waiting in prison until their day
of 'going up' before the Insolvent Court should arrive; while others
had been remanded for various terms, which they were idling away as they
best could. Some were shabby, some were smart, many dirty, a few clean;
but there they all lounged, and loitered, and slunk about with as little
spirit or purpose as the beasts in a menagerie.
Lolling from the windows which commanded a view of this promenade were
a number of persons, some in noisy conversation with their acquaintance
below, others playing at ball with some adventurous throwers outside,
others looking on at the racket-players, or watching the boys as they
cried the game. Dirty, slipshod women passed and repassed, on their way
to the cooking-house in one corner of the yard; children screamed, and
fought, and played together, in another; the tumbling of the skittles,
and the shouts of the players, mingled perpetually with these and a
hundred other sounds; and all was noise and tumult--save in a little
miserable shed a few yards off, where lay, all quiet and ghastly, the
body of the Chancery prisoner who had died the night before, awaiting
the mockery of an inquest. The body! It is the lawyer's term for the
restless, whirling mass of cares and anxieties, affections, hopes, and
griefs, that make up the living man. The law had his body; and there it
lay, clothed in grave-clothes, an awful witness to its tender mercy.
'Would you like to see a whistling-shop, Sir?' inquired Job Trotter.
'What do you mean?' was Mr. Pickwick's counter inquiry.
'A vistlin' shop, Sir,' interposed Mr. Weller.
'What is that, Sam?--A bird-fancier's?' inquired Mr. Pickwick.
'Bless your heart, no, Sir,' replied Job; 'a whistling-shop, Sir, is
where they sell spirits.' Mr. Job Trotter briefly explained here, that
all persons, being prohibited under heavy penalties from conveying
spirits into debtors' prisons, and such commodities being highly prized
by the ladies and gentlemen confined therein, it had occurred to some
speculative turnkey to connive, for certain lucrative considerations, at
two or three prisoners retailing the favourite article of gin, for their
own profit and advantage.
'This plan, you see, Sir, has been gradually introduced into all the
prisons for debt,' said Mr. Trotter.
'And it has this wery great advantage,' said Sam, 'that the turnkeys
takes wery good care to seize hold o' ev'rybody but them as pays 'em,
that attempts the willainy, and wen it gets in the papers they're
applauded for their wigilance; so it cuts two ways--frightens other
people from the trade, and elewates their own characters.'
'Exactly so, Mr. Weller,' observed Job.
'Well, but are these rooms never searched to ascertain whether any
spirits are concealed in them?' said Mr. Pickwick.
'Cert'nly they are, Sir,' replied Sam; 'but the turnkeys knows
beforehand, and gives the word to the wistlers, and you may wistle for
it wen you go to look.'
By this time, Job had tapped at a door, which was opened by a gentleman
with an uncombed head, who bolted it after them when they had walked
in, and grinned; upon which Job grinned, and Sam also; whereupon Mr.
Pickwick, thinking it might be expected of him, kept on smiling to the
end of the interview.
The gentleman with the uncombed head appeared quite satisfied with this
mute announcement of their business, and, producing a flat stone bottle,
which might hold about a couple of quarts, from beneath his bedstead,
filled out three glasses of gin, which Job Trotter and Sam disposed of
in a most workmanlike manner.
'Any more?' said the whistling gentleman.
'No more,' replied Job Trotter.
Mr. Pickwick paid, the door was unbolted, and out they came; the
uncombed gentleman bestowing a friendly nod upon Mr. Roker, who happened
to be passing at the moment.
From this spot, Mr. Pickwick wandered along all the galleries, up and
down all the staircases, and once again round the whole area of the
yard. The great body of the prison population appeared to be Mivins, and
Smangle, and the parson, and the butcher, and the leg, over and over,
and over again. There were the same squalor, the same turmoil and noise,
the same general characteristics, in every corner; in the best and
the worst alike. The whole place seemed restless and troubled; and the
people were crowding and flitting to and fro, like the shadows in an
uneasy dream.
'I have seen enough,' said Mr. Pickwick, as he threw himself into a
chair in his little apartment. 'My head aches with these scenes, and my
heart too. Henceforth I will be a prisoner in my own room.'
And Mr. Pickwick steadfastly adhered to this determination. For three
long months he remained shut up, all day; only stealing out at night to
breathe the air, when the greater part of his fellow-prisoners were in
bed or carousing in their rooms. His health was beginning to suffer
from the closeness of the confinement, but neither the often-repeated
entreaties of Perker and his friends, nor the still more
frequently-repeated warnings and admonitions of Mr. Samuel Weller, could
induce him to alter one jot of his inflexible resolution.
CHAPTER XLVI. RECORDS A TOUCHING ACT OF DELICATE FEELING, NOT UNMIXED
WITH PLEASANTRY, ACHIEVED AND PERFORMED BY Messrs. DODSON AND FOGG
It was within a week of the close of the month of July, that a hackney
cabriolet, number unrecorded, was seen to proceed at a rapid pace up
Goswell Street; three people were squeezed into it besides the driver,
who sat in his own particular little dickey at the side; over the apron
were hung two shawls, belonging to two small vixenish-looking ladies
under the apron; between whom, compressed into a very small compass, was
stowed away, a gentleman of heavy and subdued demeanour, who, whenever
he ventured to make an observation, was snapped up short by one of the
vixenish ladies before-mentioned. Lastly, the two vixenish ladies and
the heavy gentleman were giving the driver contradictory directions, all
tending to the one point, that he should stop at Mrs. Bardell's door;
which the heavy gentleman, in direct opposition to, and defiance of, the
vixenish ladies, contended was a green door and not a yellow one.
'Stop at the house with a green door, driver,' said the heavy gentleman.
'Oh! You perwerse creetur!' exclaimed one of the vixenish ladies. 'Drive
to the 'ouse with the yellow door, cabmin.'
Upon this the cabman, who in a sudden effort to pull up at the house
with the green door, had pulled the horse up so high that he nearly
pulled him backward into the cabriolet, let the animal's fore-legs down
to the ground again, and paused.
'Now vere am I to pull up?' inquired the driver. 'Settle it among
yourselves. All I ask is, vere?'
Here the contest was renewed with increased violence; and the horse
being troubled with a fly on his nose, the cabman humanely employed
his leisure in lashing him about on the head, on the counter-irritation
principle.
'Most wotes carries the day!' said one of the vixenish ladies at length.
'The 'ouse with the yellow door, cabman.'
But after the cabriolet had dashed up, in splendid style, to the
house with the yellow door, 'making,' as one of the vixenish ladies
triumphantly said, 'acterrally more noise than if one had come in one's
own carriage,' and after the driver had dismounted to assist the ladies
in getting out, the small round head of Master Thomas Bardell was thrust
out of the one-pair window of a house with a red door, a few numbers
off.
'Aggrawatin' thing!' said the vixenish lady last-mentioned, darting a
withering glance at the heavy gentleman.
'My dear, it's not my fault,' said the gentleman.
'Don't talk to me, you creetur, don't,' retorted the lady. 'The house
with the red door, cabmin. Oh! If ever a woman was troubled with a
ruffinly creetur, that takes a pride and a pleasure in disgracing his
wife on every possible occasion afore strangers, I am that woman!'
'You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Raddle,' said the other little
woman, who was no other than Mrs. Cluppins. 'What have I been a-doing
of?' asked Mr. Raddle.
'Don't talk to me, don't, you brute, for fear I should be perwoked to
forgit my sect and strike you!' said Mrs. Raddle.
While this dialogue was going on, the driver was most ignominiously
leading the horse, by the bridle, up to the house with the red door,
which Master Bardell had already opened. Here was a mean and low way of
arriving at a friend's house! No dashing up, with all the fire and fury
of the animal; no jumping down of the driver; no loud knocking at the
door; no opening of the apron with a crash at the very last moment, for
fear of the ladies sitting in a draught; and then the man handing the
shawls out, afterwards, as if he were a private coachman! The whole edge
of the thing had been taken off--it was flatter than walking.
'Well, Tommy,' said Mrs. Cluppins, 'how's your poor dear mother?'
'Oh, she's very well,' replied Master Bardell. 'She's in the front
parlour, all ready. I'm ready too, I am.' Here Master Bardell put his
hands in his pockets, and jumped off and on the bottom step of the door.
'Is anybody else a-goin', Tommy?' said Mrs. Cluppins, arranging her
pelerine.
'Mrs. Sanders is going, she is,' replied Tommy; 'I'm going too, I am.'
'Drat the boy,' said little Mrs. Cluppins. 'He thinks of nobody but
himself. Here, Tommy, dear.'
'Well,' said Master Bardell.
'Who else is a-goin', lovey?' said Mrs. Cluppins, in an insinuating
manner.
'Oh! Mrs. Rogers is a-goin',' replied Master Bardell, opening his eyes
very wide as he delivered the intelligence.
'What? The lady as has taken the lodgings!' ejaculated Mrs. Cluppins.
Master Bardell put his hands deeper down into his pockets, and nodded
exactly thirty-five times, to imply that it was the lady-lodger, and no
other.
'Bless us!' said Mrs. Cluppins. 'It's quite a party!'
'Ah, if you knew what was in the cupboard, you'd say so,' replied Master
Bardell.
'What is there, Tommy?' said Mrs. Cluppins coaxingly. 'You'll tell ME,
Tommy, I know.' 'No, I won't,' replied Master Bardell, shaking his head,
and applying himself to the bottom step again.
'Drat the child!' muttered Mrs. Cluppins. 'What a prowokin' little
wretch it is! Come, Tommy, tell your dear Cluppy.'
'Mother said I wasn't to,' rejoined Master Bardell, 'I'm a-goin' to
have some, I am.' Cheered by this prospect, the precocious boy applied
himself to his infantile treadmill, with increased vigour.
The above examination of a child of tender years took place while Mr.
and Mrs. Raddle and the cab-driver were having an altercation concerning
the fare, which, terminating at this point in favour of the cabman, Mrs.
Raddle came up tottering.
'Lauk, Mary Ann! what's the matter?' said Mrs. Cluppins.
'It's put me all over in such a tremble, Betsy,' replied Mrs. Raddle.
'Raddle ain't like a man; he leaves everythink to me.'
This was scarcely fair upon the unfortunate Mr. Raddle, who had been
thrust aside by his good lady in the commencement of the dispute, and
peremptorily commanded to hold his tongue. He had no opportunity of
defending himself, however, for Mrs. Raddle gave unequivocal signs of
fainting; which, being perceived from the parlour window, Mrs. Bardell,
Mrs. Sanders, the lodger, and the lodger's servant, darted precipitately
out, and conveyed her into the house, all talking at the same time, and
giving utterance to various expressions of pity and condolence, as if
she were one of the most suffering mortals on earth. Being conveyed into
the front parlour, she was there deposited on a sofa; and the lady from
the first floor running up to the first floor, returned with a bottle
of sal-volatile, which, holding Mrs. Raddle tight round the neck, she
applied in all womanly kindness and pity to her nose, until that lady
with many plunges and struggles was fain to declare herself decidedly
better.
'Ah, poor thing!' said Mrs. Rogers, 'I know what her feelin's is, too
well.' 'Ah, poor thing! so do I,' said Mrs. Sanders; and then all the
ladies moaned in unison, and said they knew what it was, and they pitied
her from their hearts, they did. Even the lodger's little servant, who
was thirteen years old and three feet high, murmured her sympathy.
'But what's been the matter?' said Mrs. Bardell.
