tabby kitten, "and I seasons 'em for beefsteak, weal or kidney, 'cording
to the demand. And more than that," says he, "I can make a weal a
beef-steak, or a beef-steak a kidney, or any one on 'em a mutton, at a
minute's notice, just as the market changes, and appetites wary!"'
'He must have been a very ingenious young man, that, Sam,' said Mr.
Pickwick, with a slight shudder.
'Just was, sir,' replied Mr. Weller, continuing his occupation of
emptying the basket, 'and the pies was beautiful. Tongue--, well that's
a wery good thing when it ain't a woman's. Bread--knuckle o' ham,
reg'lar picter--cold beef in slices, wery good. What's in them stone
jars, young touch-and-go?'
'Beer in this one,' replied the boy, taking from his shoulder a couple
of large stone bottles, fastened together by a leathern strap--'cold
punch in t'other.'
'And a wery good notion of a lunch it is, take it altogether,' said Mr.
Weller, surveying his arrangement of the repast with great satisfaction.
'Now, gen'l'm'n, "fall on," as the English said to the French when they
fixed bagginets.'
It needed no second invitation to induce the party to yield full justice
to the meal; and as little pressing did it require to induce Mr. Weller,
the long gamekeeper, and the two boys, to station themselves on the
grass, at a little distance, and do good execution upon a decent
proportion of the viands. An old oak afforded a pleasant shelter to the
group, and a rich prospect of arable and meadow land, intersected with
luxuriant hedges, and richly ornamented with wood, lay spread out before
them.
'This is delightful--thoroughly delightful!' said Mr. Pickwick; the skin
of whose expressive countenance was rapidly peeling off, with exposure
to the sun.
'So it is--so it is, old fellow,' replied Wardle. 'Come; a glass of
punch!'
'With great pleasure,' said Mr. Pickwick; the satisfaction of whose
countenance, after drinking it, bore testimony to the sincerity of the
reply.
'Good,' said Mr. Pickwick, smacking his lips. 'Very good. I'll take
another. Cool; very cool. Come, gentlemen,' continued Mr. Pickwick,
still retaining his hold upon the jar, 'a toast. Our friends at Dingley
Dell.'
The toast was drunk with loud acclamations.
'I'll tell you what I shall do, to get up my shooting again,' said Mr.
Winkle, who was eating bread and ham with a pocket-knife. 'I'll put a
stuffed partridge on the top of a post, and practise at it, beginning
at a short distance, and lengthening it by degrees. I understand it's
capital practice.'
'I know a gen'l'man, Sir,' said Mr. Weller, 'as did that, and begun at
two yards; but he never tried it on agin; for he blowed the bird right
clean away at the first fire, and nobody ever seed a feather on him
arterwards.'
'Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick.
'Sir,' replied Mr. Weller.
'Have the goodness to reserve your anecdotes till they are called for.'
'Cert'nly, sir.'
Here Mr. Weller winked the eye which was not concealed by the beer-can
he was raising to his lips, with such exquisite facetiousness, that
the two boys went into spontaneous convulsions, and even the long man
condescended to smile.
'Well, that certainly is most capital cold punch,' said Mr. Pickwick,
looking earnestly at the stone bottle; 'and the day is extremely warm,
and--Tupman, my dear friend, a glass of punch?'
'With the greatest delight,' replied Mr. Tupman; and having drank that
glass, Mr. Pickwick took another, just to see whether there was any
orange peel in the punch, because orange peel always disagreed with him;
and finding that there was not, Mr. Pickwick took another glass to the
health of their absent friend, and then felt himself imperatively called
upon to propose another in honour of the punch-compounder, unknown.
This constant succession of glasses produced considerable effect
upon Mr. Pickwick; his countenance beamed with the most sunny smiles,
laughter played around his lips, and good-humoured merriment twinkled
in his eye. Yielding by degrees to the influence of the exciting liquid,
rendered more so by the heat, Mr. Pickwick expressed a strong desire
to recollect a song which he had heard in his infancy, and the attempt
proving abortive, sought to stimulate his memory with more glasses
of punch, which appeared to have quite a contrary effect; for, from
forgetting the words of the song, he began to forget how to articulate
any words at all; and finally, after rising to his legs to address the
company in an eloquent speech, he fell into the barrow, and fast asleep,
simultaneously.
The basket having been repacked, and it being found perfectly impossible
to awaken Mr. Pickwick from his torpor, some discussion took place
whether it would be better for Mr. Weller to wheel his master back
again, or to leave him where he was, until they should all be ready to
return. The latter course was at length decided on; and as the further
expedition was not to exceed an hour's duration, and as Mr. Weller
begged very hard to be one of the party, it was determined to leave Mr.
Pickwick asleep in the barrow, and to call for him on their return. So
away they went, leaving Mr. Pickwick snoring most comfortably in the
shade.
That Mr. Pickwick would have continued to snore in the shade until his
friends came back, or, in default thereof, until the shades of evening
had fallen on the landscape, there appears no reasonable cause to doubt;
always supposing that he had been suffered to remain there in peace.
But he was NOT suffered to remain there in peace. And this was what
prevented him.
Captain Boldwig was a little fierce man in a stiff black neckerchief and
blue surtout, who, when he did condescend to walk about his property,
did it in company with a thick rattan stick with a brass ferrule, and a
gardener and sub-gardener with meek faces, to whom (the gardeners, not
the stick) Captain Boldwig gave his orders with all due grandeur and
ferocity; for Captain Boldwig's wife's sister had married a marquis, and
the captain's house was a villa, and his land 'grounds,' and it was all
very high, and mighty, and great.
Mr. Pickwick had not been asleep half an hour when little Captain
Boldwig, followed by the two gardeners, came striding along as fast as
his size and importance would let him; and when he came near the oak
tree, Captain Boldwig paused and drew a long breath, and looked at the
prospect as if he thought the prospect ought to be highly gratified
at having him to take notice of it; and then he struck the ground
emphatically with his stick, and summoned the head-gardener.
'Hunt,' said Captain Boldwig.
'Yes, Sir,' said the gardener.
'Roll this place to-morrow morning--do you hear, Hunt?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'And take care that you keep this place in good order--do you hear,
Hunt?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'And remind me to have a board done about trespassers, and spring guns,
and all that sort of thing, to keep the common people out. Do you hear,
Hunt; do you hear?'
'I'll not forget it, Sir.'
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said the other man, advancing, with his hand
to his hat.
'Well, Wilkins, what's the matter with you?' said Captain Boldwig.
'I beg your pardon, sir--but I think there have been trespassers here
to-day.'
'Ha!' said the captain, scowling around him.
'Yes, sir--they have been dining here, I think, sir.'
'Why, damn their audacity, so they have,' said Captain Boldwig, as the
crumbs and fragments that were strewn upon the grass met his eye. 'They
have actually been devouring their food here. I wish I had the vagabonds
here!' said the captain, clenching the thick stick.
'I wish I had the vagabonds here,' said the captain wrathfully.
'Beg your pardon, sir,' said Wilkins, 'but--'
'But what? Eh?' roared the captain; and following the timid glance of
Wilkins, his eyes encountered the wheel-barrow and Mr. Pickwick.
'Who are you, you rascal?' said the captain, administering several pokes
to Mr. Pickwick's body with the thick stick. 'What's your name?'
'Cold punch,' murmured Mr. Pickwick, as he sank to sleep again.
'What?' demanded Captain Boldwig.
No reply.
'What did he say his name was?' asked the captain.
'Punch, I think, sir,' replied Wilkins.
'That's his impudence--that's his confounded impudence,' said Captain
Boldwig. 'He's only feigning to be asleep now,' said the captain, in
a high passion. 'He's drunk; he's a drunken plebeian. Wheel him away,
Wilkins, wheel him away directly.' 'Where shall I wheel him to, sir?'
inquired Wilkins, with great timidity.
'Wheel him to the devil,' replied Captain Boldwig.
'Very well, sir,' said Wilkins.
'Stay,' said the captain.
Wilkins stopped accordingly.
'Wheel him,' said the captain--'wheel him to the pound; and let us see
whether he calls himself Punch when he comes to himself. He shall not
bully me--he shall not bully me. Wheel him away.'
Away Mr. Pickwick was wheeled in compliance with this imperious mandate;
and the great Captain Boldwig, swelling with indignation, proceeded on
his walk.
Inexpressible was the astonishment of the little party when they
returned, to find that Mr. Pickwick had disappeared, and taken the
wheel-barrow with him. It was the most mysterious and unaccountable
thing that was ever heard of For a lame man to have got upon his legs
without any previous notice, and walked off, would have been most
extraordinary; but when it came to his wheeling a heavy barrow before
him, by way of amusement, it grew positively miraculous. They searched
every nook and corner round, together and separately; they shouted,
whistled, laughed, called--and all with the same result. Mr. Pickwick
was not to be found. After some hours of fruitless search, they arrived
at the unwelcome conclusion that they must go home without him.
Meanwhile Mr. Pickwick had been wheeled to the pound, and safely
deposited therein, fast asleep in the wheel-barrow, to the immeasurable
delight and satisfaction not only of all the boys in the village,
but three-fourths of the whole population, who had gathered round, in
expectation of his waking. If their most intense gratification had been
awakened by seeing him wheeled in, how many hundredfold was their joy
increased when, after a few indistinct cries of 'Sam!' he sat up in the
barrow, and gazed with indescribable astonishment on the faces before
him.
A general shout was of course the signal of his having woke up; and his
involuntary inquiry of 'What's the matter?' occasioned another, louder
than the first, if possible.
'Here's a game!' roared the populace.
'Where am I?' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.
'In the pound,' replied the mob.
'How came I here? What was I doing? Where was I brought from?' 'Boldwig!
Captain Boldwig!' was the only reply.
'Let me out,' cried Mr. Pickwick. 'Where's my servant? Where are my
friends?'
'You ain't got no friends. Hurrah!' Then there came a turnip, then a
potato, and then an egg; with a few other little tokens of the playful
disposition of the many-headed.
How long this scene might have lasted, or how much Mr. Pickwick might
have suffered, no one can tell, had not a carriage, which was driving
swiftly by, suddenly pulled up, from whence there descended old Wardle
and Sam Weller, the former of whom, in far less time than it takes to
write it, if not to read it, had made his way to Mr. Pickwick's side,
and placed him in the vehicle, just as the latter had concluded the
third and last round of a single combat with the town-beadle.
'Run to the justice's!' cried a dozen voices.
'Ah, run avay,' said Mr. Weller, jumping up on the box. 'Give my
compliments--Mr. Veller's compliments--to the justice, and tell him I've
spiled his beadle, and that, if he'll swear in a new 'un, I'll come back
again to-morrow and spile him. Drive on, old feller.'
'I'll give directions for the commencement of an action for false
imprisonment against this Captain Boldwig, directly I get to London,'
said Mr. Pickwick, as soon as the carriage turned out of the town.
'We were trespassing, it seems,' said Wardle.
'I don't care,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'I'll bring the action.'
'No, you won't,' said Wardle.
'I will, by--' But as there was a humorous expression in Wardle's face,
Mr. Pickwick checked himself, and said, 'Why not?'
'Because,' said old Wardle, half-bursting with laughter, 'because they
might turn on some of us, and say we had taken too much cold punch.'
Do what he would, a smile would come into Mr. Pickwick's face; the smile
extended into a laugh; the laugh into a roar; the roar became general.
So, to keep up their good-humour, they stopped at the first roadside
tavern they came to, and ordered a glass of brandy-and-water all round,
with a magnum of extra strength for Mr. Samuel Weller.
CHAPTER XX. SHOWING HOW DODSON AND FOGG WERE MEN OF BUSINESS, AND
THEIR CLERKS MEN OF PLEASURE; AND HOW AN AFFECTING INTERVIEW TOOK PLACE
BETWEEN Mr. WELLER AND HIS LONG-LOST PARENT; SHOWING ALSO WHAT CHOICE
SPIRITS ASSEMBLED AT THE MAGPIE AND STUMP, AND WHAT A CAPITAL CHAPTER
THE NEXT ONE WILL BE
In the ground-floor front of a dingy house, at the very farthest end of
