ordered in some oysters from the green-grocer's shop; and the effect of
both was so extremely exhilarating, that Mr. Tuckle, dressed out with
the cocked hat and stick, danced the frog hornpipe among the shells on
the table, while the gentleman in blue played an accompaniment upon an
ingenious musical instrument formed of a hair-comb upon a curl-paper. At
last, when the punch was all gone, and the night nearly so, they sallied
forth to see each other home. Mr. Tuckle no sooner got into the open
air, than he was seized with a sudden desire to lie on the curbstone;
Sam thought it would be a pity to contradict him, and so let him have
his own way. As the cocked hat would have been spoiled if left there,
Sam very considerately flattened it down on the head of the gentleman in
blue, and putting the big stick in his hand, propped him up against his
own street-door, rang the bell, and walked quietly home.
At a much earlier hour next morning than his usual time of rising, Mr.
Pickwick walked downstairs completely dressed, and rang the bell.
'Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, when Mr. Weller appeared in reply to the
summons, 'shut the door.'
Mr. Weller did so.
'There was an unfortunate occurrence here, last night, Sam,' said Mr.
Pickwick, 'which gave Mr. Winkle some cause to apprehend violence from
Mr. Dowler.'
'So I've heerd from the old lady downstairs, Sir,' replied Sam.
'And I'm sorry to say, Sam,' continued Mr. Pickwick, with a most
perplexed countenance, 'that in dread of this violence, Mr. Winkle has
gone away.'
'Gone avay!' said Sam.
'Left the house early this morning, without the slightest previous
communication with me,' replied Mr. Pickwick. 'And is gone, I know not
where.'
'He should ha' stopped and fought it out, Sir,' replied Sam
contemptuously. 'It wouldn't take much to settle that 'ere Dowler, Sir.'
'Well, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'I may have my doubts of his great
bravery and determination also. But however that may be, Mr. Winkle is
gone. He must be found, Sam. Found and brought back to me.' 'And s'pose
he won't come back, Sir?' said Sam.
'He must be made, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick.
'Who's to do it, Sir?' inquired Sam, with a smile.
'You,' replied Mr. Pickwick.
'Wery good, Sir.'
With these words Mr. Weller left the room, and immediately afterwards
was heard to shut the street door. In two hours' time he returned with
so much coolness as if he had been despatched on the most ordinary
message possible, and brought the information that an individual, in
every respect answering Mr. Winkle's description, had gone over to
Bristol that morning, by the branch coach from the Royal Hotel.
'Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, grasping his hand, 'you're a capital fellow;
an invaluable fellow. You must follow him, Sam.'
'Cert'nly, Sir,' replied Mr. Weller.
'The instant you discover him, write to me immediately, Sam,' said Mr.
Pickwick. 'If he attempts to run away from you, knock him down, or lock
him up. You have my full authority, Sam.'
'I'll be wery careful, sir,' rejoined Sam.
'You'll tell him,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'that I am highly excited, highly
displeased, and naturally indignant, at the very extraordinary course he
has thought proper to pursue.'
'I will, Sir,' replied Sam.
'You'll tell him,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'that if he does not come back to
this very house, with you, he will come back with me, for I will come
and fetch him.'
'I'll mention that 'ere, Sir,' rejoined Sam.
'You think you can find him, Sam?' said Mr. Pickwick, looking earnestly
in his face.
'Oh, I'll find him if he's anyvere,' rejoined Sam, with great
confidence.
'Very well,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Then the sooner you go the better.'
With these instructions, Mr. Pickwick placed a sum of money in the
hands of his faithful servitor, and ordered him to start for Bristol
immediately, in pursuit of the fugitive.
Sam put a few necessaries in a carpet-bag, and was ready for starting.
He stopped when he had got to the end of the passage, and walking
quietly back, thrust his head in at the parlour door.
'Sir,' whispered Sam.
'Well, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick.
'I fully understands my instructions, do I, Sir?' inquired Sam.
'I hope so,' said Mr. Pickwick.
'It's reg'larly understood about the knockin' down, is it, Sir?'
inquired Sam.
'Perfectly,' replied Pickwick. 'Thoroughly. Do what you think necessary.
You have my orders.'
Sam gave a nod of intelligence, and withdrawing his head from the door,
set forth on his pilgrimage with a light heart.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. HOW Mr. WINKLE, WHEN HE STEPPED OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN,
WALKED GENTLY AND COMFORTABLY INTO THE FIRE
The ill-starred gentleman who had been the unfortunate cause of the
unusual noise and disturbance which alarmed the inhabitants of the Royal
Crescent in manner and form already described, after passing a night
of great confusion and anxiety, left the roof beneath which his
friends still slumbered, bound he knew not whither. The excellent and
considerate feelings which prompted Mr. Winkle to take this step can
never be too highly appreciated or too warmly extolled. 'If,' reasoned
Mr. Winkle with himself--'if this Dowler attempts (as I have no doubt
he will) to carry into execution his threat of personal violence against
myself, it will be incumbent on me to call him out. He has a wife; that
wife is attached to, and dependent on him. Heavens! If I should kill
him in the blindness of my wrath, what would be my feelings ever
afterwards!' This painful consideration operated so powerfully on
the feelings of the humane young man, as to cause his knees to knock
together, and his countenance to exhibit alarming manifestations of
inward emotion. Impelled by such reflections, he grasped his carpet-bag,
and creeping stealthily downstairs, shut the detestable street door with
as little noise as possible, and walked off. Bending his steps towards
the Royal Hotel, he found a coach on the point of starting for Bristol,
and, thinking Bristol as good a place for his purpose as any other he
could go to, he mounted the box, and reached his place of destination
in such time as the pair of horses, who went the whole stage and back
again, twice a day or more, could be reasonably supposed to arrive
there. He took up his quarters at the Bush, and designing to postpone
any communication by letter with Mr. Pickwick until it was probable that
Mr. Dowler's wrath might have in some degree evaporated, walked forth
to view the city, which struck him as being a shade more dirty than any
place he had ever seen. Having inspected the docks and shipping, and
viewed the cathedral, he inquired his way to Clifton, and being directed
thither, took the route which was pointed out to him. But as the
pavements of Bristol are not the widest or cleanest upon earth, so its
streets are not altogether the straightest or least intricate; and Mr.
Winkle, being greatly puzzled by their manifold windings and twistings,
looked about him for a decent shop in which he could apply afresh for
counsel and instruction.
His eye fell upon a newly-painted tenement which had been recently
converted into something between a shop and a private house, and which
a red lamp, projecting over the fanlight of the street door, would have
sufficiently announced as the residence of a medical practitioner, even
if the word 'Surgery' had not been inscribed in golden characters on a
wainscot ground, above the window of what, in times bygone, had been
the front parlour. Thinking this an eligible place wherein to make
his inquiries, Mr. Winkle stepped into the little shop where the
gilt-labelled drawers and bottles were; and finding nobody there,
knocked with a half-crown on the counter, to attract the attention of
anybody who might happen to be in the back parlour, which he judged to
be the innermost and peculiar sanctum of the establishment, from the
repetition of the word surgery on the door--painted in white letters
this time, by way of taking off the monotony.
At the first knock, a sound, as of persons fencing with fire-irons,
which had until now been very audible, suddenly ceased; at the second, a
studious-looking young gentleman in green spectacles, with a very large
book in his hand, glided quietly into the shop, and stepping behind the
counter, requested to know the visitor's pleasure.
'I am sorry to trouble you, Sir,' said Mr. Winkle, 'but will you have
the goodness to direct me to--'
'Ha! ha! ha!' roared the studious young gentleman, throwing the large
book up into the air, and catching it with great dexterity at the very
moment when it threatened to smash to atoms all the bottles on the
counter. 'Here's a start!'
There was, without doubt; for Mr. Winkle was so very much astonished
at the extraordinary behaviour of the medical gentleman, that he
involuntarily retreated towards the door, and looked very much disturbed
at his strange reception.
'What, don't you know me?' said the medical gentleman. Mr. Winkle
murmured, in reply, that he had not that pleasure.
'Why, then,' said the medical gentleman, 'there are hopes for me yet; I
may attend half the old women in Bristol, if I've decent luck. Get
out, you mouldy old villain, get out!' With this adjuration, which was
addressed to the large book, the medical gentleman kicked the volume
with remarkable agility to the farther end of the shop, and, pulling
off his green spectacles, grinned the identical grin of Robert Sawyer,
Esquire, formerly of Guy's Hospital in the Borough, with a private
residence in Lant Street.
'You don't mean to say you weren't down upon me?' said Mr. Bob Sawyer,
shaking Mr. Winkle's hand with friendly warmth.
'Upon my word I was not,' replied Mr. Winkle, returning his pressure.
'I wonder you didn't see the name,' said Bob Sawyer, calling his
friend's attention to the outer door, on which, in the same white paint,
were traced the words 'Sawyer, late Nockemorf.'
'It never caught my eye,' returned Mr. Winkle.
'Lord, if I had known who you were, I should have rushed out, and caught
you in my arms,' said Bob Sawyer; 'but upon my life, I thought you were
the King's-taxes.'
'No!' said Mr. Winkle.
'I did, indeed,' responded Bob Sawyer, 'and I was just going to say that
I wasn't at home, but if you'd leave a message I'd be sure to give it
to myself; for he don't know me; no more does the Lighting and Paving.
I think the Church-rates guesses who I am, and I know the Water-works
does, because I drew a tooth of his when I first came down here. But
come in, come in!' Chattering in this way, Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed Mr.
Winkle into the back room, where, amusing himself by boring little
circular caverns in the chimney-piece with a red-hot poker, sat no less
a person than Mr. Benjamin Allen.
'Well!' said Mr. Winkle. 'This is indeed a pleasure I did not expect.
What a very nice place you have here!'
'Pretty well, pretty well,' replied Bob Sawyer. 'I PASSED, soon after
that precious party, and my friends came down with the needful for this
business; so I put on a black suit of clothes, and a pair of spectacles,
and came here to look as solemn as I could.'
'And a very snug little business you have, no doubt?' said Mr. Winkle
knowingly.
'Very,' replied Bob Sawyer. 'So snug, that at the end of a few years
you might put all the profits in a wine-glass, and cover 'em over with
a gooseberry leaf.' 'You cannot surely mean that?' said Mr. Winkle.
'The stock itself--' 'Dummies, my dear boy,' said Bob Sawyer; 'half the
drawers have nothing in 'em, and the other half don't open.'
'Nonsense!' said Mr. Winkle.
'Fact--honour!' returned Bob Sawyer, stepping out into the shop, and
demonstrating the veracity of the assertion by divers hard pulls at the
little gilt knobs on the counterfeit drawers. 'Hardly anything real in
the shop but the leeches, and THEY are second-hand.'
'I shouldn't have thought it!' exclaimed Mr. Winkle, much surprised.
'I hope not,' replied Bob Sawyer, 'else where's the use of appearances,
eh? But what will you take? Do as we do? That's right. Ben, my fine
fellow, put your hand into the cupboard, and bring out the patent
digester.'
Mr. Benjamin Allen smiled his readiness, and produced from the closet at
his elbow a black bottle half full of brandy.
'You don't take water, of course?' said Bob Sawyer.
'Thank you,' replied Mr. Winkle. 'It's rather early. I should like to
qualify it, if you have no objection.'
'None in the least, if you can reconcile it to your conscience,' replied
Bob Sawyer, tossing off, as he spoke, a glass of the liquor with great
relish. 'Ben, the pipkin!'
Mr. Benjamin Allen drew forth, from the same hiding-place, a small brass
pipkin, which Bob Sawyer observed he prided himself upon, particularly
because it looked so business-like. The water in the professional
pipkin having been made to boil, in course of time, by various little
shovelfuls of coal, which Mr. Bob Sawyer took out of a practicable
window-seat, labelled 'Soda Water,' Mr. Winkle adulterated his brandy;
and the conversation was becoming general, when it was interrupted
by the entrance into the shop of a boy, in a sober gray livery and a
