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
