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
