Somebody's Luggage
by
Charles Dickens
This etext was prepared from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories"
edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE
CHAPTER I--HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR
The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of
a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers
who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress,
would wish to offer a few words respecting his calling; first having
the pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedication
of the same unto JOSEPH, much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam
Coffee-house, London, E.C., than which a individual more eminently
deserving of the name of man, or a more amenable honour to his own
head and heart, whether considered in the light of a Waiter or
regarded as a human being, do not exist.
In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is open
to confusion on many subjects) respecting what is meant or implied
by the term Waiter, the present humble lines would wish to offer an
explanation. It may not be generally known that the person as goes
out to wait is NOT a Waiter. It may not be generally known that the
hand as is called in extra, at the Freemasons' Tavern, or the
London, or the Albion, or otherwise, is NOT a Waiter. Such hands
may be took on for Public Dinners by the bushel (and you may know
them by their breathing with difficulty when in attendance, and
taking away the bottle ere yet it is half out); but such are NOT
Waiters. For you cannot lay down the tailoring, or the shoemaking,
or the brokering, or the green-grocering, or the pictorial-
periodicalling, or the second-hand wardrobe, or the small fancy
businesses,--you cannot lay down those lines of life at your will
and pleasure by the half-day or evening, and take up Waitering. You
may suppose you can, but you cannot; or you may go so far as to say
you do, but you do not. Nor yet can you lay down the gentleman's-
service when stimulated by prolonged incompatibility on the part of
Cooks (and here it may be remarked that Cooking and Incompatibility
will be mostly found united), and take up Waitering. It has been
ascertained that what a gentleman will sit meek under, at home, he
will not bear out of doors, at the Slamjam or any similar
establishment. Then, what is the inference to be drawn respecting
true Waitering? You must be bred to it. You must be born to it.
Would you know how born to it, Fair Reader,--if of the adorable
female sex? Then learn from the biographical experience of one that
is a Waiter in the sixty-first year of his age.
You were conveyed,--ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise
developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside,--you were
conveyed, by surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the
Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by
stealth that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of
the British female constitution. Your mother was married to your
father (himself a distant Waiter) in the profoundest secrecy; for a
Waitress known to be married would ruin the best of businesses,--it
is the same as on the stage. Hence your being smuggled into the
pantry, and that--to add to the infliction--by an unwilling
grandmother. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast
and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your
earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to
catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your
grandmother's shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings;
your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates,
dish-covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for
veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under
these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling
grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated
less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system
curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all. At length she
was no longer spared, and could have been thankfully spared much
sooner. When your brothers began to appear in succession, your
mother retired, left off her smart dressing (she had previously been
a smart dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had previously been
flowing), and haunted your father late of nights, lying in wait for
him, through all weathers, up the shabby court which led to the back
door of the Royal Old Dust-Bin (said to have been so named by George
the Fourth), where your father was Head. But the Dust-Bin was going
down then, and your father took but little,--excepting from a liquid
point of view. Your mother's object in those visits was of a house-
keeping character, and you was set on to whistle your father out.
Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come or not come,
however, all that part of his existence which was unconnected with
open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was acknowledged by your
mother to be a close secret, and you and your mother flitted about
the court, close secrets both of you, and would scarcely have
confessed under torture that you know your father, or that your
father had any name than Dick (which wasn't his name, though he was
never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or chick or
child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your
father's having a damp compartment, to himself, behind a leaky
cistern, at the Dust-Bin,--a sort of a cellar compartment, with a
sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and
three windows that didn't match each other or anything else, and no
daylight,--caused your young mind to feel convinced that you must
grow up to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it, and so
did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt
convinced that you was born to the Waitering. At this stage of your
career, what was your feelings one day when your father came home to
your mother in open broad daylight,--of itself an act of Madness on
the part of a Waiter,--and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother
and family's bed), with the statement that his eyes were devilled
kidneys. Physicians being in vain, your father expired, after
repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when gleams of reason
and old business fitfully illuminated his being, "Two and two is
five. And three is sixpence." Interred in the parochial department
of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave by as
many Waiters of long standing as could spare the morning time from
their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved form was attired
in a white neckankecher, and you was took on from motives of
benevolence at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper.
Here, supporting nature on what you found in the plates (which was
as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly, immersed in
mustard), and on what you found in the glasses (which rarely went
beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing,
till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing every
individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being sawdust;
your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a
heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neckankecher (or
correctly speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up
the rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops,
and by calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with
chalk on the back of the corner-box partition, until such time as
you used the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood,
and to be the Waiter that you find yourself.
I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the
calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public
interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not
generally understood. No, we are not. Allowance enough is not made
for us. For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness
of spirits, or what might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it
to yourself what would your own state of mind be, if you was one of
an enormous family every member of which except you was always
greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly
replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and
again at nine p.m., and that the repleter you was, the more
voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself
that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to take
a personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and
fresh (say, for the sake of argument, only a hundred), whose
imaginations was given up to grease and fat and gravy and melted
butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this, and
dishes of that,--each of 'em going on as if him and you and the bill
of fare was alone in the world. Then look what you are expected to
know. You are never out, but they seem to think you regularly
attend everywhere. "What's this, Christopher, that I hear about the
smashed Excursion Train? How are they doing at the Italian Opera,
Christopher?" "Christopher, what are the real particulars of this
business at the Yorkshire Bank?" Similarly a ministry gives me more
trouble than it gives the Queen. As to Lord Palmerston, the
constant and wearing connection into which I have been brought with
his lordship during the last few years is deserving of a pension.
Then look at the Hypocrites we are made, and the lies (white, I
hope) that are forced upon us! Why must a sedentary-pursuited
Waiter be considered to be a judge of horseflesh, and to have a most
tremendous interest in horse-training and racing? Yet it would be
half our little incomes out of our pockets if we didn't take on to
have those sporting tastes. It is the same (inconceivable why!)
with Farming. Shooting, equally so. I am sure that so regular as
the months of August, September, and October come round, I am
ashamed of myself in my own private bosom for the way in which I
make believe to care whether or not the grouse is strong on the wing
(much their wings, or drumsticks either, signifies to me,
uncooked!), and whether the partridges is plentiful among the
turnips, and whether the pheasants is shy or bold, or anything else
you please to mention. Yet you may see me, or any other Waiter of
my standing, holding on by the back of the box, and leaning over a
gentleman with his purse out and his bill before him, discussing
these points in a confidential tone of voice, as if my happiness in
life entirely depended on 'em.
I have mentioned our little incomes. Look at the most unreasonable
point of all, and the point on which the greatest injustice is done
us! Whether it is owing to our always carrying so much change in
our right-hand trousers-pocket, and so many halfpence in our coat-
tails, or whether it is human nature (which I were loth to believe),
what is meant by the everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich?
How did that fable get into circulation? Who first put it about,
and what are the facts to establish the unblushing statement? Come
forth, thou slanderer, and refer the public to the Waiter's will in
Doctors' Commons supporting thy malignant hiss! Yet this is so
commonly dwelt upon--especially by the screws who give Waiters the
least--that denial is vain; and we are obliged, for our credit's
sake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, when
of the two we are much more likely to go into a union. There was
formerly a screw as frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present
writer had quitted that establishment on a question of tea-ing his
assistant staff out of his own pocket, which screw carried the taunt
to its bitterest height. Never soaring above threepence, and as
often as not grovelling on the earth a penny lower, he yet
represented the present writer as a large holder of Consols, a
lender of money on mortgage, a Capitalist. He has been overheard to
dilate to other customers on the allegation that the present writer
put out thousands of pounds at interest in Distilleries and
Breweries. "Well, Christopher," he would say (having grovelled his
lowest on the earth, half a moment before), "looking out for a House
to open, eh? Can't find a business to be disposed of on a scale as
is up to your resources, humph?" To such a dizzy precipice of
falsehood has this misrepresentation taken wing, that the well-known
and highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long eminent at the West Country
Hotel, and by some considered the Father of the Waitering, found
himself under the obligation to fall into it through so many years
that his own wife (for he had an unbeknown old lady in that capacity
towards himself) believed it! And what was the consequence? When
he was borne to his grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters,
with six more for change, six more acting as pall-bearers, all
keeping step in a pouring shower without a dry eye visible, and a
concourse only inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings was
equally ransacked high and low for property, and none was found!
How could it be found, when, beyond his last monthly collection of
walking-sticks, umbrellas, and pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened
to have been not yet disposed of, though he had ever been through
life punctual in clearing off his collections by the month), there
was no property existing? Such, however, is the force of this
universal libel, that the widow of Old Charles, at the present hour
an inmate of the Almshouses of the Cork-Cutters' Company, in Blue
Anchor Road (identified sitting at the door of one of 'em, in a
clean cap and a Windsor arm-chair, only last Monday), expects John's
hoarded wealth to be found hourly! Nay, ere yet he had succumbed to
the grisly dart, and when his portrait was painted in oils life-
size, by subscription of the frequenters of the West Country, to
hang over the coffee-room chimney-piece, there were not wanting
those who contended that what is termed the accessories of such a
portrait ought to be the Bank of England out of window, and a
strong-box on the table. And but for better-regulated minds
contending for a bottle and screw and the attitude of drawing,--and
carrying their point,--it would have been so handed down to
posterity.
I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. Having, I
hope without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I
felt it my duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated
the seas, on the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the
particular question.
At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as
concerned notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,--for
the question on which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge
for waiters, and no House as commits itself to that eminently Un-
English act of more than foolishness and baseness shall be
advertised by me,--I repeat, at a momentous crisis, when I was off
with a House too mean for mention, and not yet on with that to which
I have ever since had the honour of being attached in the capacity
of Head, {1} I was casting about what to do next. Then it were that
proposals were made to me on behalf of my present establishment.
Stipulations were necessary on my part, emendations were necessary
on my part: in the end, ratifications ensued on both sides, and I
entered on a new career.
We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a
general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when
diners drop in, we know what to give 'em as will keep 'em away
another time. We are a Private Room or Family business also; but
Coffee-room principal. Me and the Directory and the Writing
Materials and cetrer occupy a place to ourselves--a place fended of
up a step or two at the end of the Coffee-room, in what I call the
good old-fashioned style. The good old-fashioned style is, that
whatever you want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely
dependent on the Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born
Child into his hands. There is no other way in which a business
untinged with Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless
to add, that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is
not good enough, both families and gentlemen had better go somewhere
else.)
When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well-
conducted House, I noticed, under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is
up a angle off the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly-
minded), a heap of things in a corner. I asked our Head Chambermaid
in the course of the day,
"What are them things in 24 B?"
To which she answered with a careless air, "Somebody's Luggage."
Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I says, "Whose
Luggage?"
Evading my eye, she replied,
"Lor! How should I know!"
- Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertness,
though acquainted with her business.
A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. He must be at one
extremity or the other of the social scale. He cannot be at the
waist of it, or anywhere else but the extremities. It is for him to
decide which of the extremities.
On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give Mrs. Pratchett
so distinctly to understand my decision, that I broke her spirit as
towards myself, then and there, and for good. Let not inconsistency
be suspected on account of my mentioning Mrs. Pratchett as "Mrs.,"
and having formerly remarked that a waitress must not be married.
Readers are respectfully requested to notice that Mrs. Pratchett was
not a waitress, but a chambermaid. Now a chambermaid MAY be
married; if Head, generally is married,--or says so. It comes to
the same thing as expressing what is customary. (N.B. Mr. Pratchett
is in Australia, and his address there is "the Bush.")
Having took Mrs. Pratchett down as many pegs as was essential to the
future happiness of all parties, I requested her to explain herself.
"For instance," I says, to give her a little encouragement, "who is
Somebody?"
"I give you my sacred honour, Mr. Christopher," answers Pratchett,
"that I haven't the faintest notion."
But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, I should
have doubted this; but in respect of positiveness it was hardly to
be discriminated from an affidavit.
"Then you never saw him?" I followed her up with.
"Nor yet," said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her eyes and making as if
she had just took a pill of unusual circumference,--which gave a
remarkable force to her denial,--"nor yet any servant in this house.
All have been changed, Mr. Christopher, within five year, and
Somebody left his Luggage here before then."
Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the Bard of A.1.)
"confirmation strong." So it had really and truly happened. Miss
Martin is the young lady at the bar as makes out our bills; and
though higher than I could wish considering her station, is
perfectly well-behaved.
Farther investigations led to the disclosure that there was a bill
against this Luggage to the amount of two sixteen six. The Luggage
had been lying under the bedstead of 24 B over six year. The
bedstead is a four-poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance,
and is, as I once said, probably connected with more than 24 Bs,--
which I remember my hearers was pleased to laugh at, at the time.
I don't know why,--when DO we know why?--but this Luggage laid heavy
on my mind. I fell a wondering about Somebody, and what he had got
and been up to. I couldn't satisfy my thoughts why he should leave
so much Luggage against so small a bill. For I had the Luggage out
within a day or two and turned it over, and the following were the
items:- A black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a
brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a
walking-stick. It was all very dusty and fluey. I had our porter
up to get under the bed and fetch it out; and though he habitually
wallows in dust,--swims in it from morning to night, and wears a
close-fitting waistcoat with black calimanco sleeves for the
purpose,--it made him sneeze again, and his throat was that hot with
it that it was obliged to be cooled with a drink of Allsopp's draft.
The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of having it put
back when it was well dusted and washed with a wet cloth,--previous
to which it was so covered with feathers that you might have thought
it was turning into poultry, and would by-and-by begin to Lay,--I
say, instead of having it put back, I had it carried into one of my
places down-stairs. There from time to time I stared at it and
stared at it, till it seemed to grow big and grow little, and come
forward at me and retreat again, and go through all manner of
performances resembling intoxication. When this had lasted weeks,--
I may say months, and not be far out,--I one day thought of asking
Miss Martin for the particulars of the Two sixteen six total. She
was so obliging as to extract it from the books,--it dating before
her time,--and here follows a true copy:
Coffee-Room.
1856. No. 4. Pounds s. d.
Feb. 2d, Pen and Paper 0 0 6
Port Negus 0 2 0
Ditto 0 2 0
Pen and paper 0 0 6
Tumbler broken 0 2 6
Brandy 0 2 0
Pen and paper 0 0 6
Anchovy toast 0 2 6
Pen and paper 0 0 6
Bed 0 3 0
Feb. 3d, Pen and paper 0 0 6
Breakfast 0 2 6
Broiled ham 0 2 0
Eggs 0 1 0
Watercresses 0 1 0
Shrimps 0 1 0
Pen and paper 0 0 6
Blotting-paper 0 0 6
Messenger to Paternoster
Row and back 0 1 6
Again, when No Answer 0 1 6
Brandy 2s., Devilled
Pork chop 2s. 0 4 0
Pens and paper 0 1 0
Messenger to Albemarle
Street and back 0 1 0
Again (detained), when
No Answer 0 1 6
Salt-cellar broken 0 3 6
Large Liquour-glass
Orange Brandy 0 1 6
Dinner, Soup, Fish,
Joint, and bird 0 7 6
Bottle old East India
Brown 0 8 0
Pen and paper 0 0 6
2 16 6
Mem.: January 1st, 1857. He went out after dinner, directing
luggage to be ready when he called for it. Never called.
So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill appeared to
me, if I may so express my doubts, to involve it in a yet more lurid
halo. Speculating it over with the Mistress, she informed me that
the luggage had been advertised in the Master's time as being to be
sold after such and such a day to pay expenses, but no farther steps
had been taken. (I may here remark, that the Mistress is a widow in
her fourth year. The Master was possessed of one of those
unfortunate constitutions in which Spirits turns to Water, and rises
in the ill-starred Victim.)
My speculating it over, not then only, but repeatedly, sometimes
with the Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led
up to the Mistress's saying to me,--whether at first in joke or in
earnest, or half joke and half earnest, it matters not:
"Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer."
(If this should meet her eye,--a lovely blue,--may she not take it
ill my mentioning that if I had been eight or ten year younger, I
would have done as much by her! That is, I would have made her a
offer. It is for others than me to denominate it a handsome one.)
"Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer."
"Put a name to it, ma'am."
"Look here, Christopher. Run over the articles of Somebody's
Luggage. You've got it all by heart, I know."
"A black portmanteau, ma'am, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a
brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a
walking-stick."
"All just as they were left. Nothing opened, nothing tampered
with."
"You are right, ma'am. All locked but the brown-paper parcel, and
that sealed."
The Mistress was leaning on Miss Martin's desk at the bar-window,
and she taps the open book that lays upon the desk,--she has a
pretty-made hand to be sure,--and bobs her head over it and laughs.
"Come," says she, "Christopher. Pay me Somebody's bill, and you
shall have Somebody's Luggage."
I rather took to the idea from the first moment; but,
"It mayn't be worth the money," I objected, seeming to hold back.
"That's a Lottery," says the Mistress, folding her arms upon the
book,--it ain't her hands alone that's pretty made, the observation
extends right up her arms. "Won't you venture two pound sixteen
shillings and sixpence in the Lottery? Why, there's no blanks!"
says the Mistress; laughing and bobbing her head again, "you MUST
win. If you lose, you must win! All prizes in this Lottery! Draw
a blank, and remember, Gentlemen-Sportsmen, you'll still be entitled
to a black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a
sheet of brown paper, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a
walking-stick!"
To make short of it, Miss Martin come round me, and Mrs. Pratchett
come round me, and the Mistress she was completely round me already,
and all the women in the house come round me, and if it had been
Sixteen two instead of Two sixteen, I should have thought myself
well out of it. For what can you do when they do come round you?
So I paid the money--down--and such a laughing as there was among
'em! But I turned the tables on 'em regularly, when I said:
"My family-name is Blue-Beard. I'm going to open Somebody's Luggage
all alone in the Secret Chamber, and not a female eye catches sight
of the contents!"
Whether I thought proper to have the firmness to keep to this, don't
signify, or whether any female eye, and if any, how many, was really
present when the opening of the Luggage came off. Somebody's
Luggage is the question at present: Nobody's eyes, nor yet noses.
What I still look at most, in connection with that Luggage, is the
extraordinary quantity of writing-paper, and all written on! And
not our paper neither,--not the paper charged in the bill, for we
know our paper,--so he must have been always at it. And he had
crumpled up this writing of his, everywhere, in every part and
parcel of his luggage. There was writing in his dressing-case,
writing in his boots, writing among his shaving-tackle, writing in
his hat-box, writing folded away down among the very whalebones of
his umbrella.
His clothes wasn't bad, what there was of 'em. His dressing-case
was poor,--not a particle of silver stopper,--bottle apertures with
nothing in 'em, like empty little dog-kennels,--and a most searching
description of tooth-powder diffusing itself around, as under a
deluded mistake that all the chinks in the fittings was divisions in
teeth. His clothes I parted with, well enough, to a second-hand
dealer not far from St. Clement's Danes, in the Strand,--him as the
officers in the Army mostly dispose of their uniforms to, when hard
pressed with debts of honour, if I may judge from their coats and
epaulets diversifying the window with their backs towards the
public. The same party bought in one lot the portmanteau, the bag,
the desk, the dressing-case, the hat-box, the umbrella, strap, and
walking-stick. On my remarking that I should have thought those
articles not quite in his line, he said: "No more ith a man'th
grandmother, Mithter Chrithtopher; but if any man will bring hith
grandmother here, and offer her at a fair trifle below what the'll
feth with good luck when the'th thcoured and turned--I'll buy her!"
These transactions brought me home, and, indeed, more than home, for
they left a goodish profit on the original investment. And now
there remained the writings; and the writings I particular wish to
bring under the candid attention of the reader.
I wish to do so without postponement, for this reason. That is to
say, namely, viz. i.e., as follows, thus:- Before I proceed to
recount the mental sufferings of which I became the prey in
consequence of the writings, and before following up that harrowing
tale with a statement of the wonderful and impressive catastrophe,
as thrilling in its nature as unlooked for in any other capacity,
which crowned the ole and filled the cup of unexpectedness to
overflowing, the writings themselves ought to stand forth to view.
Therefore it is that they now come next. One word to introduce
them, and I lay down my pen (I hope, my unassuming pen) until I take
it up to trace the gloomy sequel of a mind with something on it.
He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful bad hand. Utterly
regardless of ink, he lavished it on every undeserving object--on
his clothes, his desk, his hat, the handle of his tooth-brush, his
umbrella. Ink was found freely on the coffee-room carpet by No. 4
table, and two blots was on his restless couch. A reference to the
document I have given entire will show that on the morning of the
third of February, eighteen fifty-six, he procured his no less than
fifth pen and paper. To whatever deplorable act of ungovernable
composition he immolated those materials obtained from the bar,
there is no doubt that the fatal deed was committed in bed, and that
it left its evidences but too plainly, long afterwards, upon the
pillow-case.
He had put no Heading to any of his writings. Alas! Was he likely
to have a Heading without a Head, and where was HIS Head when he
took such things into it? In some cases, such as his Boots, he
would appear to have hid the writings; thereby involving his style
in greater obscurity. But his Boots was at least pairs,--and no two
of his writings can put in any claim to be so regarded. Here
follows (not to give more specimens) what was found in
CHAPTER II--HIS BOOTS
"Eh! well then, Monsieur Mutuel! What do I know, what can I say? I
assure you that he calls himself Monsieur The Englishman."
"Pardon. But I think it is impossible," said Monsieur Mutuel,--a
spectacled, snuffy, stooping old gentleman in carpet shoes and a
cloth cap with a peaked shade, a loose blue frock-coat reaching to
his heels, a large limp white shirt-frill, and cravat to
correspond,--that is to say, white was the natural colour of his
linen on Sundays, but it toned down with the week.
"It is," repeated Monsieur Mutuel, his amiable old walnut-shell
countenance very walnut-shelly indeed as he smiled and blinked in
the bright morning sunlight,--"it is, my cherished Madame Bouclet, I
think, impossible!"
"Hey!" (with a little vexed cry and a great many tosses of her
head.) "But it is not impossible that you are a Pig!" retorted
Madame Bouclet, a compact little woman of thirty-five or so. "See
then,--look there,--read! 'On the second floor Monsieur L'Anglais.'
Is it not so?"
"It is so," said Monsieur Mutuel.
"Good. Continue your morning walk. Get out!" Madame Bouclet
dismissed him with a lively snap of her fingers.
The morning walk of Monsieur Mutuel was in the brightest patch that
the sun made in the Grande Place of a dull old fortified French
town. The manner of his morning walk was with his hands crossed
behind him; an umbrella, in figure the express image of himself,
always in one hand; a snuffbox in the other. Thus, with the
shuffling gait of the Elephant (who really does deal with the very
worst trousers-maker employed by the Zoological world, and who
appeared to have recommended him to Monsieur Mutuel), the old
gentleman sunned himself daily when sun was to be had--of course, at
the same time sunning a red ribbon at his button-hole; for was he
not an ancient Frenchman?
Being told by one of the angelic sex to continue his morning walk
and get out, Monsieur Mutuel laughed a walnut-shell laugh, pulled
off his cap at arm's length with the hand that contained his
snuffbox, kept it off for a considerable period after he had parted
from Madame Bouclet, and continued his morning walk and got out,
like a man of gallantry as he was.
The documentary evidence to which Madame Bouclet had referred
Monsieur Mutuel was the list of her lodgers, sweetly written forth
by her own Nephew and Bookkeeper, who held the pen of an Angel, and
posted up at the side of her gateway, for the information of the
Police: "Au second, M. L'Anglais, Proprietaire." On the second
floor, Mr. The Englishman, man of property. So it stood; nothing
could be plainer.
Madame Bouclet now traced the line with her forefinger, as it were
to confirm and settle herself in her parting snap at Monsieur
Mutuel, and so placing her right hand on her hip with a defiant air,
as if nothing should ever tempt her to unsnap that snap, strolled
out into the Place to glance up at the windows of Mr. The
Englishman. That worthy happening to be looking out of window at
the moment, Madame Bouclet gave him a graceful salutation with her
head, looked to the right and looked to the left to account to him
for her being there, considered for a moment, like one who accounted
to herself for somebody she had expected not being there, and
reentered her own gateway. Madame Bouclet let all her house giving
on the Place in furnished flats or floors, and lived up the yard
behind in company with Monsieur Bouclet her husband (great at
billiards), an inherited brewing business, several fowls, two carts,
a nephew, a little dog in a big kennel, a grape-vine, a counting-
house, four horses, a married sister (with a share in the brewing
business), the husband and two children of the married sister, a
parrot, a drum (performed on by the little boy of the married
sister), two billeted soldiers, a quantity of pigeons, a fife
(played by the nephew in a ravishing manner), several domestics and
supernumeraries, a perpetual flavour of coffee and soup, a terrific
range of artificial rocks and wooden precipices at least four feet
high, a small fountain, and half-a-dozen large sunflowers.
Now the Englishman, in taking his Appartement,--or, as one might say
on our side of the Channel, his set of chambers,--had given his
name, correct to the letter, LANGLEY. But as he had a British way
of not opening his mouth very wide on foreign soil, except at meals,
the Brewery had been able to make nothing of it but L'Anglais. So
Mr. The Englishman he had become and he remained.
"Never saw such a people!" muttered Mr. The Englishman, as he now
looked out of window. "Never did, in my life!"
This was true enough, for he had never before been out of his own
country,--a right little island, a tight little island, a bright
little island, a show-fight little island, and full of merit of all
sorts; but not the whole round world.
"These chaps," said Mr. The Englishman to himself, as his eye rolled
over the Place, sprinkled with military here and there, "are no more
like soldiers--" Nothing being sufficiently strong for the end of
his sentence, he left it unended.
This again (from the point of view of his experience) was strictly
correct; for though there was a great agglomeration of soldiers in
the town and neighbouring country, you might have held a grand
Review and Field-day of them every one, and looked in vain among
them all for a soldier choking behind his foolish stock, or a
soldier lamed by his ill-fitting shoes, or a soldier deprived of the
use of his limbs by straps and buttons, or a soldier elaborately
forced to be self-helpless in all the small affairs of life. A
swarm of brisk, bright, active, bustling, handy, odd, skirmishing
fellows, able to turn cleverly at anything, from a siege to soup,
from great guns to needles and thread, from the broadsword exercise
to slicing an onion, from making war to making omelets, was all you
would have found.
What a swarm! From the Great Place under the eye of Mr. The
Englishman, where a few awkward squads from the last conscription
were doing the goose-step--some members of those squads still as to
their bodies, in the chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only
military butterflies as to their regimentally-clothed legs--from the
Great Place, away outside the fortifications, and away for miles
along the dusty roads, soldiers swarmed. All day long, upon the
grass-grown ramparts of the town, practising soldiers trumpeted and
bugled; all day long, down in angles of dry trenches, practising
soldiers drummed and drummed. Every forenoon, soldiers burst out of
the great barracks into the sandy gymnasium-ground hard by, and flew
over the wooden horse, and hung on to flying ropes, and dangled
upside-down between parallel bars, and shot themselves off wooden
platforms,--splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers. At
every corner of the town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway,
every sentry-box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditch, and rushy
dike, soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well
all wall, guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch,
and rushy dike, the town was pretty well all soldiers.
What would the sleepy old town have been without the soldiers,
seeing that even with them it had so overslept itself as to have
slept its echoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and bolts and
chains all rusty, and its ditches stagnant! From the days when
VAUBAN engineered it to that perplexing extent that to look at it
was like being knocked on the head with it, the stranger becoming
stunned and stertorous under the shock of its incomprehensibility,--
from the days when VAUBAN made it the express incorporation of every
substantive and adjective in the art of military engineering, and
not only twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to the
right, to the left, opposite, under here, over there, in the dark,
in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way, wet way,
fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower, pierced wall,
and heavy battery, but likewise took a fortifying dive under the
neighbouring country, and came to the surface three or four miles
off, blowing out incomprehensible mounds and batteries among the
quiet crops of chicory and beet-root,--from those days to these the
town had been asleep, and dust and rust and must had settled on its
drowsy Arsenals and Magazines, and grass had grown up in its silent
streets.
On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leaped out of bed.
On market-days, some friendly enchanter struck his staff upon the
stones of the Great Place, and instantly arose the liveliest booths
and stalls, and sittings and standings, and a pleasant hum of
chaffering and huckstering from many hundreds of tongues, and a
pleasant, though peculiar, blending of colours,--white caps, blue
blouses, and green vegetables,--and at last the Knight destined for
the adventure seemed to have come in earnest, and all the Vaubanois
sprang up awake. And now, by long, low-lying avenues of trees,
jolting in white-hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey-back, and in
tumbril and wagon, and cart and cabriolet, and afoot with barrow and
burden,--and along the dikes and ditches and canals, in little peak-
prowed country boats,--came peasant-men and women in flocks and
crowds, bringing articles for sale. And here you had boots and
shoes, and sweetmeats and stuffs to wear, and here (in the cool
shade of the Town-hall) you had milk and cream and butter and
cheese, and here you had fruits and onions and carrots, and all
things needful for your soup, and here you had poultry and flowers
and protesting pigs, and here new shovels, axes, spades, and bill-
hooks for your farming work, and here huge mounds of bread, and here
your unground grain in sacks, and here your children's dolls, and
here the cake-seller, announcing his wares by beat and roll of drum.
And hark! fanfaronade of trumpets, and here into the Great Place,
resplendent in an open carriage, with four gorgeously-attired
servitors up behind, playing horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled "the
Daughter of a Physician" in massive golden chains and ear-rings, and
blue-feathered hat, shaded from the admiring sun by two immense
umbrellas of artificial roses, to dispense (from motives of
philanthropy) that small and pleasant dose which had cured so many
thousands! Toothache, earache, headache, heartache, stomach-ache,
debility, nervousness, fits, fainting, fever, ague, all equally
cured by the small and pleasant dose of the great Physician's great
daughter! The process was this,--she, the Daughter of a Physician,
proprietress of the superb equipage you now admired with its
confirmatory blasts of trumpet, drum, and cymbal, told you so: On
the first day after taking the small and pleasant dose, you would
feel no particular influence beyond a most harmonious sensation of
indescribable and irresistible joy; on the second day you would be
so astonishingly better that you would think yourself changed into
somebody else; on the third day you would be entirely free from
disorder, whatever its nature and however long you had had it, and
would seek out the Physician's Daughter to throw yourself at her
feet, kiss the hem of her garment, and buy as many more of the small
and pleasant doses as by the sale of all your few effects you could
obtain; but she would be inaccessible,--gone for herbs to the
Pyramids of Egypt,--and you would be (though cured) reduced to
despair! Thus would the Physician's Daughter drive her trade (and
briskly too), and thus would the buying and selling and mingling of
tongues and colours continue, until the changing sunlight, leaving
the Physician's Daughter in the shadow of high roofs, admonished her
to jolt out westward, with a departing effect of gleam and glitter
on the splendid equipage and brazen blast. And now the enchanter
struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place once more, and
down went the booths, the sittings and standings, and vanished the
merchandise, and with it the barrows, donkeys, donkey-carts, and
tumbrils, and all other things on wheels and feet, except the slow
scavengers with unwieldy carts and meagre horses clearing up the
rubbish, assisted by the sleek town pigeons, better plumped out than
on non-market days. While there was yet an hour or two to wane
before the autumn sunset, the loiterer outside town-gate and
drawbridge, and postern and double-ditch, would see the last white-
hooded cart lessening in the avenue of lengthening shadows of trees,
or the last country boat, paddled by the last market-woman on her
way home, showing black upon the reddening, long, low, narrow dike
between him and the mill; and as the paddle-parted scum and weed
closed over the boat's track, he might be comfortably sure that its
sluggish rest would be troubled no more until next market-day.
As it was not one of the Great Place's days for getting out of bed,
when Mr. The Englishman looked down at the young soldiers practising
the goose-step there, his mind was left at liberty to take a
military turn.
"These fellows are billeted everywhere about," said he; "and to see
them lighting the people's fires, boiling the people's pots, minding
the people's babies, rocking the people's cradles, washing the
people's greens, and making themselves generally useful, in every
sort of unmilitary way, is most ridiculous! Never saw such a set of
fellows,--never did in my life!"
All perfectly true again. Was there not Private Valentine in that
very house, acting as sole housemaid, valet, cook, steward, and
nurse, in the family of his captain, Monsieur le Capitaine de la
Cour,--cleaning the floors, making the beds, doing the marketing,
dressing the captain, dressing the dinners, dressing the salads, and
dressing the baby, all with equal readiness? Or, to put him aside,
he being in loyal attendance on his Chief, was there not Private
Hyppolite, billeted at the Perfumer's two hundred yards off, who,
when not on duty, volunteered to keep shop while the fair
Perfumeress stepped out to speak to a neighbour or so, and
laughingly sold soap with his war-sword girded on him? Was there
not Emile, billeted at the Clock-maker's, perpetually turning to of
an evening, with his coat off, winding up the stock? Was there not
Eugene, billeted at the Tinman's, cultivating, pipe in mouth, a
garden four feet square, for the Tinman, in the little court, behind
the shop, and extorting the fruits of the earth from the same, on
his knees, with the sweat of his brow? Not to multiply examples,
was there not Baptiste, billeted on the poor Water-carrier, at that
very instant sitting on the pavement in the sunlight, with his
martial legs asunder, and one of the Water-carrier's spare pails
between them, which (to the delight and glory of the heart of the
Water-carrier coming across the Place from the fountain, yoked and
burdened) he was painting bright-green outside and bright-red
within? Or, to go no farther than the Barber's at the very next
door, was there not Corporal Theophile -
"No," said Mr. The Englishman, glancing down at the Barber's, "he is
not there at present. There's the child, though."
A mere mite of a girl stood on the steps of the Barber's shop,
looking across the Place. A mere baby, one might call her, dressed
in the close white linen cap which small French country children
wear (like the children in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of
homespun blue, that had no shape except where it was tied round her
little fat throat. So that, being naturally short and round all
over, she looked, behind, as if she had been cut off at her natural
waist, and had had her head neatly fitted on it.
"There's the child, though."
To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was rubbing the
eyes, the eyes had been closed in a nap, and were newly opened. But
they seemed to be looking so intently across the Place, that the
Englishman looked in the same direction.
"O!" said he presently. "I thought as much. The Corporal's there."
The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps a thought
under the middle size, but very neatly made,--a sunburnt Corporal
with a brown peaked beard,--faced about at the moment, addressing
voluble words of instruction to the squad in hand. Nothing was
amiss or awry about the Corporal. A lithe and nimble Corporal,
quite complete, from the sparkling dark eyes under his knowing
uniform cap to his sparkling white gaiters. The very image and
presentment of a Corporal of his country's army, in the line of his
shoulders, the line of his waist, the broadest line of his Bloomer
trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of his leg.
Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked on, and the
Corporal looked on (but the last-named at his men), until the drill
ended a few minutes afterwards, and the military sprinkling dried up
directly, and was gone. Then said Mr. The Englishman to himself,
"Look here! By George!" And the Corporal, dancing towards the
Barber's with his arms wide open, caught up the child, held her over
his head in a flying attitude, caught her down again, kissed her,
and made off with her into the Barber's house.
Now Mr. The Englishman had had a quarrel with his erring and
disobedient and disowned daughter, and there was a child in that
case too. Had not his daughter been a child, and had she not taken
angel-flights above his head as this child had flown above the
Corporal's?
"He's a "--National Participled--"fool!" said the Englishman, and
shut his window.
But the windows of the house of Memory, and the windows of the house
of Mercy, are not so easily closed as windows of glass and wood.
They fly open unexpectedly; they rattle in the night; they must be
nailed up. Mr. The Englishman had tried nailing them, but had not
driven the nails quite home. So he passed but a disturbed evening
and a worse night.
By nature a good-tempered man? No; very little gentleness,
confounding the quality with weakness. Fierce and wrathful when
crossed? Very, and stupendously unreasonable. Moody? Exceedingly
so. Vindictive? Well; he had had scowling thoughts that he would
formally curse his daughter, as he had seen it done on the stage.
But remembering that the real Heaven is some paces removed from the
mock one in the great chandelier of the Theatre, he had given that
up.
And he had come abroad to be rid of his repudiated daughter for the
rest of his life. And here he was.
At bottom, it was for this reason, more than for any other, that Mr.
The Englishman took it extremely ill that Corporal Theophile should
be so devoted to little Bebelle, the child at the Barber's shop. In
an unlucky moment he had chanced to say to himself, "Why, confound
the fellow, he is not her father!" There was a sharp sting in the
speech which ran into him suddenly, and put him in a worse mood. So
he had National Participled the unconscious Corporal with most
hearty emphasis, and had made up his mind to think no more about
such a mountebank.
But it came to pass that the Corporal was not to be dismissed. If
he had known the most delicate fibres of the Englishman's mind,
instead of knowing nothing on earth about him, and if he had been
the most obstinate Corporal in the Grand Army of France, instead of
being the most obliging, he could not have planted himself with more
determined immovability plump in the midst of all the Englishman's
thoughts. Not only so, but he seemed to be always in his view. Mr.
The Englishman had but to look out of window, to look upon the
Corporal with little Bebelle. He had but to go for a walk, and
there was the Corporal walking with Bebelle. He had but to come
home again, disgusted, and the Corporal and Bebelle were at home
before him. If he looked out at his back windows early in the
morning, the Corporal was in the Barber's back yard, washing and
dressing and brushing Bebelle. If he took refuge at his front
windows, the Corporal brought his breakfast out into the Place, and
shared it there with Bebelle. Always Corporal and always Bebelle.
Never Corporal without Bebelle. Never Bebelle without Corporal.
Mr. The Englishman was not particularly strong in the French
language as a means of oral communication, though he read it very
well. It is with languages as with people,--when you only know them
by sight, you are apt to mistake them; you must be on speaking terms
before you can be said to have established an acquaintance.
For this reason, Mr. The Englishman had to gird up his loins
considerably before he could bring himself to the point of
exchanging ideas with Madame Bouclet on the subject of this Corporal
and this Bebelle. But Madame Bouclet looking in apologetically one
morning to remark, that, O Heaven! she was in a state of desolation
because the lamp-maker had not sent home that lamp confided to him
to repair, but that truly he was a lamp-maker against whom the whole
world shrieked out, Mr. The Englishman seized the occasion.
"Madame, that baby--"
"Pardon, monsieur. That lamp."
"No, no, that little girl."
"But, pardon!" said Madame Bonclet, angling for a clew, "one cannot
light a little girl, or send her to be repaired?"
"The little girl--at the house of the barber."
"Ah-h-h!" cried Madame Bouclet, suddenly catching the idea with her
delicate little line and rod. "Little Bebelle? Yes, yes, yes! And
her friend the Corporal? Yes, yes, yes, yes! So genteel of him,--
is it not?"
"He is not -?"
"Not at all; not at all! He is not one of her relations. Not at
all!"
"Why, then, he--"
"Perfectly!" cried Madame Bouclet, "you are right, monsieur. It is
so genteel of him. The less relation, the more genteel. As you
say."
"Is she -?"
"The child of the barber?" Madame Bouclet whisked up her skilful
little line and rod again. "Not at all, not at all! She is the
child of--in a word, of no one."
"The wife of the barber, then -?"
"Indubitably. As you say. The wife of the barber receives a small
stipend to take care of her. So much by the month. Eh, then! It
is without doubt very little, for we are all poor here."
"You are not poor, madame."
"As to my lodgers," replied Madame Bouclet, with a smiling and a
gracious bend of her head, "no. As to all things else, so-so."
"You flatter me, madame."
"Monsieur, it is you who flatter me in living here."
Certain fishy gasps on Mr. The Englishman's part, denoting that he
was about to resume his subject under difficulties, Madame Bouclet
observed him closely, and whisked up her delicate line and rod again
with triumphant success.
"O no, monsieur, certainly not. The wife of the barber is not cruel
to the poor child, but she is careless. Her health is delicate, and
she sits all day, looking out at window. Consequently, when the
Corporal first came, the poor little Bebelle was much neglected."
"It is a curious--" began Mr. The Englishman.
"Name? That Bebelle? Again you are right, monsieur. But it is a
playful name for Gabrielle."
"And so the child is a mere fancy of the Corporal's?" said Mr. The
Englishman, in a gruffly disparaging tone of voice.
"Eh, well!" returned Madame Bouclet, with a pleading shrug: "one
must love something. Human nature is weak."
("Devilish weak," muttered the Englishman, in his own language.)
"And the Corporal," pursued Madame Bouclet, "being billeted at the
barber's,--where he will probably remain a long time, for he is
attached to the General,--and finding the poor unowned child in need
of being loved, and finding himself in need of loving,--why, there
you have it all, you see!"
Mr. The Englishman accepted this interpretation of the matter with
an indifferent grace, and observed to himself, in an injured manner,
when he was again alone: "I shouldn't mind it so much, if these
people were not such a"--National Participled--"sentimental people!"
There was a Cemetery outside the town, and it happened ill for the
reputation of the Vaubanois, in this sentimental connection, that he
took a walk there that same afternoon. To be sure there were some
wonderful things in it (from the Englishman's point of view), and of
a certainty in all Britain you would have found nothing like it.
Not to mention the fanciful flourishes of hearts and crosses in wood
and iron, that were planted all over the place, making it look very
like a Firework-ground, where a most splendid pyrotechnic display
might be expected after dark, there were so many wreaths upon the
graves, embroidered, as it might be, "To my mother," "To my
daughter," "To my father," "To my brother," "To my sister," "To my
friend," and those many wreaths were in so many stages of
elaboration and decay, from the wreath of yesterday, all fresh
colour and bright beads, to the wreath of last year, a poor
mouldering wisp of straw! There were so many little gardens and
grottos made upon graves, in so many tastes, with plants and shells
and plaster figures and porcelain pitchers, and so many odds and
ends! There were so many tributes of remembrance hanging up, not to
be discriminated by the closest inspection from little round
waiters, whereon were depicted in glowing lines either a lady or a
gentleman with a white pocket-handkerchief out of all proportion,
leaning, in a state of the most faultless mourning and most profound
affliction, on the most architectural and gorgeous urn! There were
so many surviving wives who had put their names on the tombs of
their deceased husbands, with a blank for the date of their own
departure from this weary world; and there were so many surviving
husbands who had rendered the same homage to their deceased wives;
and out of the number there must have been so many who had long ago
married again! In fine, there was so much in the place that would
have seemed more frippery to a stranger, save for the consideration
that the lightest paper flower that lay upon the poorest heap of
earth was never touched by a rude hand, but perished there, a sacred
thing!
"Nothing of the solemnity of Death here," Mr. The Englishman had
been going to say, when this last consideration touched him with a
mild appeal, and on the whole he walked out without saying it. "But
these people are," he insisted, by way of compensation, when he was
well outside the gate, "they are so"--Participled--"sentimental!"
His way back lay by the military gymnasium-ground. And there he
passed the Corporal glibly instructing young soldiers how to swing
themselves over rapid and deep watercourses on their way to Glory,
by means of a rope, and himself deftly plunging off a platform, and
flying a hundred feet or two, as an encouragement to them to begin.
And there he also passed, perched on a crowning eminence (probably
the Corporal's careful hands), the small Bebelle, with her round
eyes wide open, surveying the proceeding like a wondering sort of
blue and white bird.
"If that child was to die," this was his reflection as he turned his
back and went his way,--"and it would almost serve the fellow right
for making such a fool of himself,--I suppose we should have him
sticking up a wreath and a waiter in that fantastic burying-ground."
Nevertheless, after another early morning or two of looking out of
window, he strolled down into the Place, when the Corporal and
Bebelle were walking there, and touching his hat to the Corporal (an
immense achievement), wished him Good-day.
"Good-day, monsieur."
"This is a rather pretty child you have here," said Mr. The
Englishman, taking her chin in his hand, and looking down into her
astonished blue eyes.
"Monsieur, she is a very pretty child," returned the Corporal, with
a stress on his polite correction of the phrase.
"And good?" said the Englishman.
"And very good. Poor little thing!"
"Hah!" The Englishman stooped down and patted her cheek, not
without awkwardness, as if he were going too far in his
conciliation. "And what is this medal round your neck, my little
one?"
Bebelle having no other reply on her lips than her chubby right
fist, the Corporal offered his services as interpreter.
"Monsieur demands, what is this, Bebelle?"
"It is the Holy Virgin," said Bebelle.
"And who gave it you?" asked the Englishman.
"Theophile."
"And who is Theophile?"
Bebelle broke into a laugh, laughed merrily and heartily, clapped
her chubby hands, and beat her little feet on the stone pavement of
the Place.
"He doesn't know Theophile! Why, he doesn't know any one! He
doesn't know anything!" Then, sensible of a small solecism in her
manners, Bebelle twisted her right hand in a leg of the Corporal's
Bloomer trousers, and, laying her cheek against the place, kissed
it.
"Monsieur Theophile, I believe?" said the Englishman to the
Corporal.
"It is I, monsieur."
"Permit me." Mr. The Englishman shook him heartily by the hand and
turned away. But he took it mighty ill that old Monsieur Mutuel in
his patch of sunlight, upon whom he came as he turned, should pull
off his cap to him with a look of pleased approval. And he
muttered, in his own tongue, as he returned the salutation, "Well,
walnut-shell! And what business is it of YOURS?"
Mr. The Englishman went on for many weeks passing but disturbed
evenings and worse nights, and constantly experiencing that those
aforesaid windows in the houses of Memory and Mercy rattled after
dark, and that he had very imperfectly nailed them up. Likewise, he
went on for many weeks daily improving the acquaintance of the
Corporal and Bebelle. That is to say, he took Bebelle by the chin,
and the Corporal by the hand, and offered Bebelle sous and the
Corporal cigars, and even got the length of changing pipes with the
Corporal and kissing Bebelle. But he did it all in a shamefaced
way, and always took it extremely ill that Monsieur Mutuel in his
patch of sunlight should note what he did. Whenever that seemed to
be the case, he always growled in his own tongue, "There you are
again, walnut-shell! What business is it of yours?"
In a word, it had become the occupation of Mr. The Englishman's life
to look after the Corporal and little Bebelle, and to resent old
Monsieur Mutuel's looking after HIM. An occupation only varied by a
fire in the town one windy night, and much passing of water-buckets
from hand to hand (in which the Englishman rendered good service),
and much beating of drums,--when all of a sudden the Corporal
disappeared.
Next, all of a sudden, Bebelle disappeared.
She had been visible a few days later than the Corporal,--sadly
deteriorated as to washing and brushing,--but she had not spoken
when addressed by Mr. The Englishman, and had looked scared and had
run away. And now it would seem that she had run away for good.
And there lay the Great Place under the windows, bare and barren.
In his shamefaced and constrained way, Mr. The Englishman asked no
question of any one, but watched from his front windows and watched
from his back windows, and lingered about the Place, and peeped in
at the Barber's shop, and did all this and much more with a
whistling and tune-humming pretence of not missing anything, until
one afternoon when Monsieur Mutuel's patch of sunlight was in
shadow, and when, according to all rule and precedent, he had no
right whatever to bring his red ribbon out of doors, behold here he
was, advancing with his cap already in his hand twelve paces off!
Mr. The Englishman had got as far into his usual objurgation as,
"What bu-si- " when he checked himself.
"Ah, it is sad, it is sad! Helas, it is unhappy, it is sad!" Thus
old Monsieur Mutuel, shaking his gray head.
"What busin- at least, I would say, what do you mean, Monsieur
Mutuel?"
"Our Corporal. Helas, our dear Corporal!"
"What has happened to him?"
"You have not heard?"
"No."
"At the fire. But he was so brave, so ready. Ah, too brave, too
ready!"
"May the Devil carry you away!" the Englishman broke in impatiently;
"I beg your pardon,--I mean me,--I am not accustomed to speak
French,--go on, will you?"
"And a falling beam--"
"Good God!" exclaimed the Englishman. "It was a private soldier who
was killed?"
"No. A Corporal, the same Corporal, our dear Corporal. Beloved by
all his comrades. The funeral ceremony was touching,--penetrating.
Monsieur The Englishman, your eyes fill with tears."
"What bu-si- "
"Monsieur The Englishman, I honour those emotions. I salute you
with profound respect. I will not obtrude myself upon your noble
heart."
Monsieur Mutuel,--a gentleman in every thread of his cloudy linen,
under whose wrinkled hand every grain in the quarter of an ounce of
poor snuff in his poor little tin box became a gentleman's
property,--Monsieur Mutuel passed on, with his cap in his hand.
"I little thought," said the Englishman, after walking for several
minutes, and more than once blowing his nose, "when I was looking
round that cemetery--I'll go there!"
Straight he went there, and when he came within the gate he paused,
considering whether he should ask at the lodge for some direction to
the grave. But he was less than ever in a mood for asking
questions, and he thought, "I shall see something on it to know it
by."
In search of the Corporal's grave he went softly on, up this walk
and down that, peering in, among the crosses and hearts and columns
and obelisks and tombstones, for a recently disturbed spot. It
troubled him now to think how many dead there were in the cemetery,-
-he had not thought them a tenth part so numerous before,--and after
he had walked and sought for some time, he said to himself, as he
struck down a new vista of tombs, "I might suppose that every one
was dead but I."
Not every one. A live child was lying on the ground asleep. Truly
he had found something on the Corporal's grave to know it by, and
the something was Bebelle.
With such a loving will had the dead soldier's comrades worked at
his resting-place, that it was already a neat garden. On the green
turf of the garden Bebelle lay sleeping, with her cheek touching it.
A plain, unpainted little wooden Cross was planted in the turf, and
her short arm embraced this little Cross, as it had many a time
embraced the Corporal's neck. They had put a tiny flag (the flag of
France) at his head, and a laurel garland.
Mr. The Englishman took off his hat, and stood for a while silent.
Then, covering his head again, he bent down on one knee, and softly
roused the child.
"Bebelle! My little one!"
Opening her eyes, on which the tears were still wet, Bebelle was at
first frightened; but seeing who it was, she suffered him to take
her in his arms, looking steadfastly at him.
"You must not lie here, my little one. You must come with me."
"No, no. I can't leave Theophile. I want the good dear Theophile."
"We will go and seek him, Bebelle. We will go and look for him in
England. We will go and look for him at my daughter's, Bebelle."
"Shall we find him there?"
"We shall find the best part of him there. Come with me, poor
forlorn little one. Heaven is my witness," said the Englishman, in
a low voice, as, before he rose, he touched the turf above the
gentle Corporal's breast, "that I thankfully accept this trust!"
It was a long way for the child to have come unaided. She was soon
asleep again, with her embrace transferred to the Englishman's neck.
He looked at her worn shoes, and her galled feet, and her tired
face, and believed that she had come there every day.
He was leaving the grave with the slumbering Bebelle in his arms,
when he stopped, looked wistfully down at it, and looked wistfully
at the other graves around. "It is the innocent custom of the
people," said Mr. The Englishman, with hesitation. "I think I
should like to do it. No one sees."
Careful not to wake Bebelle as he went, he repaired to the lodge
where such little tokens of remembrance were sold, and bought two
wreaths. One, blue and white and glistening silver, "To my friend;"
one of a soberer red and black and yellow, "To my friend." With
these he went back to the grave, and so down on one knee again.
Touching the child's lips with the brighter wreath, he guided her
hand to hang it on the Cross; then hung his own wreath there. After
all, the wreaths were not far out of keeping with the little garden.
To my friend. To my friend.
Mr. The Englishman took it very ill when he looked round a street
corner into the Great Place, carrying Bebelle in his arms, that old
Mutuel should be there airing his red ribbon. He took a world of
pains to dodge the worthy Mutuel, and devoted a surprising amount of
time and trouble to skulking into his own lodging like a man pursued
by Justice. Safely arrived there at last, he made Bebelle's toilet
with as accurate a remembrance as he could bring to bear upon that
work of the way in which he had often seen the poor Corporal make
it, and having given her to eat and drink, laid her down on his own
bed. Then he slipped out into the barber's shop, and after a brief
interview with the barber's wife, and a brief recourse to his purse
and card-case, came back again with the whole of Bebelle's personal
property in such a very little bundle that it was quite lost under
his arm.
As it was irreconcilable with his whole course and character that he
should carry Bebelle off in state, or receive any compliments or
congratulations on that feat, he devoted the next day to getting his
two portmanteaus out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and to
comporting himself in every particular as if he were going to run
away,--except, indeed, that he paid his few debts in the town, and
prepared a letter to leave for Madame Bouclet, enclosing a
sufficient sum of money in lieu of notice. A railway train would
come through at midnight, and by that train he would take away
Bebelle to look for Theophile in England and at his forgiven
daughter's.
At midnight, on a moonlight night, Mr. The Englishman came creeping
forth like a harmless assassin, with Bebelle on his breast instead
of a dagger. Quiet the Great Place, and quiet the never-stirring
streets; closed the cafes; huddled together motionless their
billiard-balls; drowsy the guard or sentinel on duty here and there;
lulled for the time, by sleep, even the insatiate appetite of the
Office of Town-dues.
Mr. The Englishman left the Place behind, and left the streets
behind, and left the civilian-inhabited town behind, and descended
down among the military works of Vauban, hemming all in. As the
shadow of the first heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was
left behind, as the shadow of the second heavy arch and postern fell
upon him and was left behind, as his hollow tramp over the first
drawbridge was succeeded by a gentler sound, as his hollow tramp
over the second drawbridge was succeeded by a gentler sound, as he
overcame the stagnant ditches one by one, and passed out where the
flowing waters were and where the moonlight, so the dark shades and
the hollow sounds and the unwholesomely locked currents of his soul
were vanquished and set free. See to it, Vaubans of your own
hearts, who gird them in with triple walls and ditches, and with
bolt and chain and bar and lifted bridge,--raze those
fortifications, and lay them level with the all-absorbing dust,
before the night cometh when no hand can work!
All went prosperously, and he got into an empty carriage in the
train, where he could lay Bebelle on the seat over against him, as
on a couch, and cover her from head to foot with his mantle. He had
just drawn himself up from perfecting this arrangement, and had just
leaned back in his own seat contemplating it with great
satisfaction, when he became aware of a curious appearance at the
open carriage window,--a ghostly little tin box floating up in the
moon-light, and hovering there.
He leaned forward, and put out his head. Down among the rails and
wheels and ashes, Monsieur Mutuel, red ribbon and all!
"Excuse me, Monsieur The Englishman," said Monsieur Mutuel, holding
up his box at arm's length, the carriage being so high and he so
low; "but I shall reverence the little box for ever, if your so
generous hand will take a pinch from it at parting."
Mr. The Englishman reached out of the window before complying, and--
without asking the old fellow what business it was of his--shook
hands and said, "Adieu! God bless you!"
"And, Mr. The Englishman, God bless YOU!" cried Madame Bouclet, who
was also there among the rails and wheels and ashes. "And God will
bless you in the happiness of the protected child now with you. And
God will bless you in your own child at home. And God will bless
you in your own remembrances. And this from me!"
He had barely time to catch a bouquet from her hand, when the train
was flying through the night. Round the paper that enfolded it was
bravely written (doubtless by the nephew who held the pen of an
Angel), "Homage to the friend of the friendless."
"Not bad people, Bebelle!" said Mr. The Englishman, softly drawing
the mantle a little from her sleeping face, that he might kiss it,
"though they are so--"
Too "sentimental" himself at the moment to be able to get out that
word, he added nothing but a sob, and travelled for some miles,
through the moonlight, with his hand before his eyes.
CHAPTER III--HIS BROWN-PAPER PARCEL
My works are well known. I am a young man in the Art line. You
have seen my works many a time, though it's fifty thousand to one if
you have seen me. You say you don't want to see me? You say your
interest is in my works, and not in me? Don't be too sure about
that. Stop a bit.
Let us have it down in black and white at the first go off, so that
there may be no unpleasantness or wrangling afterwards. And this is
looked over by a friend of mine, a ticket writer, that is up to
literature. I am a young man in the Art line--in the Fine-Art line.
You have seen my works over and over again, and you have been
curious about me, and you think you have seen me. Now, as a safe
rule, you never have seen me, and you never do see me, and you never
will see me. I think that's plainly put--and it's what knocks me
over.
If there's a blighted public character going, I am the party.
It has been remarked by a certain (or an uncertain,) philosopher,
that the world knows nothing of its greatest men. He might have put
it plainer if he had thrown his eye in my direction. He might have
put it, that while the world knows something of them that apparently
go in and win, it knows nothing of them that really go in and don't
win. There it is again in another form--and that's what knocks me
over.
Not that it's only myself that suffers from injustice, but that I am
more alive to my own injuries than to any other man's. Being, as I
have mentioned, in the Fine-Art line, and not the Philanthropic
line, I openly admit it. As to company in injury, I have company
enough. Who are you passing every day at your Competitive
Excruciations? The fortunate candidates whose heads and livers you
have turned upside down for life? Not you. You are really passing
the Crammers and Coaches. If your principle is right, why don't you
turn out to-morrow morning with the keys of your cities on velvet
cushions, your musicians playing, and your flags flying, and read
addresses to the Crammers and Coaches on your bended knees,
beseeching them to come out and govern you? Then, again, as to your
public business of all sorts, your Financial statements and your
Budgets; the Public knows much, truly, about the real doers of all
that! Your Nobles and Right Honourables are first-rate men? Yes,
and so is a goose a first-rate bird. But I'll tell you this about
the goose;--you'll find his natural flavour disappointing, without
stuffing.
Perhaps I am soured by not being popular? But suppose I AM popular.
Suppose my works never fail to attract. Suppose that, whether they
are exhibited by natural light or by artificial, they invariably
draw the public. Then no doubt they are preserved in some
Collection? No, they are not; they are not preserved in any
Collection. Copyright? No, nor yet copyright. Anyhow they must be
somewhere? Wrong again, for they are often nowhere.
Says you, "At all events, you are in a moody state of mind, my
friend." My answer is, I have described myself as a public
character with a blight upon him--which fully accounts for the
curdling of the milk in THAT cocoa-nut.
Those that are acquainted with London are aware of a locality on the
Surrey side of the river Thames, called the Obelisk, or, more
generally, the Obstacle. Those that are not acquainted with London
will also be aware of it, now that I have named it. My lodging is
not far from that locality. I am a young man of that easy
disposition, that I lie abed till it's absolutely necessary to get
up and earn something, and then I lie abed again till I have spent
it.
It was on an occasion when I had had to turn to with a view to
victuals, that I found myself walking along the Waterloo Road, one
evening after dark, accompanied by an acquaintance and fellow-lodger
in the gas-fitting way of life. He is very good company, having
worked at the theatres, and, indeed, he has a theatrical turn
himself, and wishes to be brought out in the character of Othello;
but whether on account of his regular work always blacking his face
and hands more or less, I cannot say.
"Tom," he says, "what a mystery hangs over you!"
"Yes, Mr. Click"--the rest of the house generally give him his name,
as being first, front, carpeted all over, his own furniture, and if
not mahogany, an out-and-out imitation--"yes, Mr. Click, a mystery
does hang over me."
"Makes you low, you see, don't it?" says he, eyeing me sideways.
"Why, yes, Mr. Click, there are circumstances connected with it that
have," I yielded to a sigh, "a lowering effect."
"Gives you a touch of the misanthrope too, don't it?" says he.
"Well, I'll tell you what. If I was you, I'd shake it of."
"If I was you, I would, Mr. Click; but, if you was me, you
wouldn't."
"Ah!" says he, "there's something in that."
When we had walked a little further, he took it up again by touching
me on the chest.
"You see, Tom, it seems to me as if, in the words of the poet who
wrote the domestic drama of The Stranger, you had a silent sorrow
there."
"I have, Mr. Click."
"I hope, Tom," lowering his voice in a friendly way, "it isn't
coining, or smashing?"
"No, Mr. Click. Don't be uneasy."
"Nor yet forg- " Mr. Click checked himself, and added,
"counterfeiting anything, for instance?"
"No, Mr. Click. I am lawfully in the Art line--Fine-Art line--but I
can say no more."
"Ah! Under a species of star? A kind of malignant spell? A sort
of a gloomy destiny? A cankerworm pegging away at your vitals in
secret, as well as I make it out?" said Mr. Click, eyeing me with
some admiration.
I told Mr. Click that was about it, if we came to particulars; and I
thought he appeared rather proud of me.
Our conversation had brought us to a crowd of people, the greater
part struggling for a front place from which to see something on the
pavement, which proved to be various designs executed in coloured
chalks on the pavement stones, lighted by two candles stuck in mud
sconces. The subjects consisted of a fine fresh salmon's head and
shoulders, supposed to have been recently sent home from the
fishmonger's; a moonlight night at sea (in a circle); dead game;
scroll-work; the head of a hoary hermit engaged in devout
contemplation; the head of a pointer smoking a pipe; and a cherubim,
his flesh creased as in infancy, going on a horizontal errand
against the wind. All these subjects appeared to me to be
exquisitely done.
On his knees on one side of this gallery, a shabby person of modest
appearance who shivered dreadfully (though it wasn't at all cold),
was engaged in blowing the chalk-dust off the moon, toning the
outline of the back of the hermit's head with a bit of leather, and
fattening the down-stroke of a letter or two in the writing. I have
forgotten to mention that writing formed a part of the composition,
and that it also--as it appeared to me--was exquisitely done. It
ran as follows, in fine round characters: "An honest man is the
noblest work of God. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. Pounds s. d. Employment
in an office is humbly requested. Honour the Queen. Hunger is a 0
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 sharp thorn. Chip chop, cherry chop, fol de rol
de ri do. Astronomy and mathematics. I do this to support my
family."
Murmurs of admiration at the exceeding beauty of this performance
went about among the crowd. The artist, having finished his
touching (and having spoilt those places), took his seat on the
pavement, with his knees crouched up very nigh his chin; and
halfpence began to rattle in.
"A pity to see a man of that talent brought so low; ain't it?" said
one of the crowd to me.
"What he might have done in the coach-painting, or house-
decorating!" said another man, who took up the first speaker because
I did not.
"Why, he writes--alone--like the Lord Chancellor!" said another man.
"Better," said another. "I know his writing. He couldn't support
his family this way."
Then, a woman noticed the natural fluffiness of the hermit's hair,
and another woman, her friend, mentioned of the salmon's gills that
you could almost see him gasp. Then, an elderly country gentleman
stepped forward and asked the modest man how he executed his work?
And the modest man took some scraps of brown paper with colours in
'em out of his pockets, and showed them. Then a fair-complexioned
donkey, with sandy hair and spectacles, asked if the hermit was a
portrait? To which the modest man, casting a sorrowful glance upon
it, replied that it was, to a certain extent, a recollection of his
father. This caused a boy to yelp out, "Is the Pinter a smoking the
pipe your mother?" who was immediately shoved out of view by a
sympathetic carpenter with his basket of tools at his back.
At every fresh question or remark the crowd leaned forward more
eagerly, and dropped the halfpence more freely, and the modest man
gathered them up more meekly. At last, another elderly gentleman
came to the front, and gave the artist his card, to come to his
office to-morrow, and get some copying to do. The card was
accompanied by sixpence, and the artist was profoundly grateful,
and, before he put the card in his hat, read it several times by the
light of his candles to fix the address well in his mind, in case he
should lose it. The crowd was deeply interested by this last
incident, and a man in the second row with a gruff voice growled to
the artist, "You've got a chance in life now, ain't you?" The
artist answered (sniffing in a very low-spirited way, however), "I'm
thankful to hope so." Upon which there was a general chorus of "You
are all right," and the halfpence slackened very decidedly.
I felt myself pulled away by the arm, and Mr. Click and I stood
alone at the corner of the next crossing.
"Why, Tom," said Mr. Click, "what a horrid expression of face you've
got!"
"Have I?" says I.
"Have you?" says Mr. Click. "Why, you looked as if you would have
his blood."
"Whose blood?"
"The artist's."
"The artist's?" I repeated. And I laughed, frantically, wildly,
gloomily, incoherently, disagreeably. I am sensible that I did. I
know I did.
Mr. Click stared at me in a scared sort of a way, but said nothing
until we had walked a street's length. He then stopped short, and
said, with excitement on the part of his forefinger:
"Thomas, I find it necessary to be plain with you. I don't like the
envious man. I have identified the cankerworm that's pegging away
at YOUR vitals, and it's envy, Thomas."
"Is it?" says I.
"Yes, it is," says be. "Thomas, beware of envy. It is the green-
eyed monster which never did and never will improve each shining
hour, but quite the reverse. I dread the envious man, Thomas. I
confess that I am afraid of the envious man, when he is so envious
as you are. Whilst you contemplated the works of a gifted rival,
and whilst you heard that rival's praises, and especially whilst you
met his humble glance as he put that card away, your countenance was
so malevolent as to be terrific. Thomas, I have heard of the envy
of them that follows the Fine-Art line, but I never believed it
could be what yours is. I wish you well, but I take my leave of
you. And if you should ever got into trouble through knifeing--or
say, garotting--a brother artist, as I believe you will, don't call
me to character, Thomas, or I shall be forced to injure your case."
Mr. Click parted from me with those words, and we broke off our
acquaintance.
I became enamoured. Her name was Henrietta. Contending with my
easy disposition, I frequently got up to go after her. She also
dwelt in the neighbourhood of the Obstacle, and I did fondly hope
that no other would interpose in the way of our union.
To say that Henrietta was volatile is but to say that she was woman.
To say that she was in the bonnet-trimming is feebly to express the
taste which reigned predominant in her own.
She consented to walk with me. Let me do her the justice to say
that she did so upon trial. "I am not," said Henrietta, "as yet
prepared to regard you, Thomas, in any other light than as a friend;
but as a friend I am willing to walk with you, on the understanding
that softer sentiments may flow."
We walked.
Under the influence of Henrietta's beguilements, I now got out of
bed daily. I pursued my calling with an industry before unknown,
and it cannot fail to have been observed at that period, by those
most familiar with the streets of London, that there was a larger
supply. But hold! The time is not yet come!
One evening in October I was walking with Henrietta, enjoying the
cool breezes wafted over Vauxhall Bridge. After several slow turns,
Henrietta gaped frequently (so inseparable from woman is the love of
excitement), and said, "Let's go home by Grosvenor Place,
Piccadilly, and Waterloo"--localities, I may state for the
information of the stranger and the foreigner, well known in London,
and the last a Bridge.
"No. Not by Piccadilly, Henrietta," said I.
"And why not Piccadilly, for goodness' sake?" said Henrietta.
Could I tell her? Could I confess to the gloomy presentiment that
overshadowed me? Could I make myself intelligible to her? No.
"I don't like Piccadilly, Henrietta."
"But I do," said she. "It's dark now, and the long rows of lamps in
Piccadilly after dark are beautiful. I WILL go to Piccadilly!"
Of course we went. It was a pleasant night, and there were numbers
of people in the streets. It was a brisk night, but not too cold,
and not damp. Let me darkly observe, it was the best of all nights-
-FOR THE PURPOSE.
As we passed the garden wall of the Royal Palace, going up Grosvenor
Place, Henrietta murmured:
"I wish I was a Queen!"
"Why so, Henrietta?"
"I would make YOU Something," said she, and crossed her two hands on
my arm, and turned away her head.
Judging from this that the softer sentiments alluded to above had
begun to flow, I adapted my conduct to that belief. Thus happily we
passed on into the detested thoroughfare of Piccadilly. On the
right of that thoroughfare is a row of trees, the railing of the
Green Park, and a fine broad eligible piece of pavement.
"Oh my!" cried Henrietta presently. "There's been an accident!"
I looked to the left, and said, "Where, Henrietta?"
"Not there, stupid!" said she. "Over by the Park railings. Where
the crowd is. Oh no, it's not an accident, it's something else to
look at! What's them lights?"
She referred to two lights twinkling low amongst the legs of the
assemblage: two candles on the pavement.
"Oh, do come along!" cried Henrietta, skipping across the road with
me. I hung back, but in vain. "Do let's look!"
Again, designs upon the pavement. Centre compartment, Mount
Vesuvius going it (in a circle), supported by four oval
compartments, severally representing a ship in heavy weather, a
shoulder of mutton attended by two cucumbers, a golden harvest with
distant cottage of proprietor, and a knife and fork after nature;
above the centre compartment a bunch of grapes, and over the whole a
rainbow. The whole, as it appeared to me, exquisitely done.
The person in attendance on these works of art was in all respects,
shabbiness excepted, unlike the former personage. His whole
appearance and manner denoted briskness. Though threadbare, he
expressed to the crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or
tinged with any sense of shame this honest effort to turn his
talents to some account. The writing which formed a part of his
composition was conceived in a similarly cheerful tone. It breathed
the following sentiments: "The writer is poor, but not despondent.
To a British 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Public he Pounds S. d. appeals.
Honour to our brave Army! And also 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 to our
gallant Navy. BRITONS STRIKE the A B C D E F G writer in common
chalks would be grateful for any suitable employment HOME! HURRAH!"
The whole of this writing appeared to me to be exquisitely done.
But this man, in one respect like the last, though seemingly hard at
it with a great show of brown paper and rubbers, was only really
fattening the down-stroke of a letter here and there, or blowing the
loose chalk off the rainbow, or toning the outside edge of the
shoulder of mutton. Though he did this with the greatest
confidence, he did it (as it struck me) in so ignorant a manner, and
so spoilt everything he touched, that when he began upon the purple
smoke from the chimney of the distant cottage of the proprietor of
the golden harvest (which smoke was beautifully soft), I found
myself saying aloud, without considering of it:
"Let that alone, will you?"
"Halloa!" said the man next me in the crowd, jerking me roughly from
him with his elbow, "why didn't you send a telegram? If we had
known you was coming, we'd have provided something better for you.
You understand the man's work better than he does himself, don't
you? Have you made your will? You're too clever to live long."
"Don't be hard upon the gentleman, sir," said the person in
attendance on the works of art, with a twinkle in his eye as he
looked at me; "he may chance to be an artist himself. If so, sir,
he will have a fellow-feeling with me, sir, when I"--he adapted his
action to his words as he went on, and gave a smart slap of his
hands between each touch, working himself all the time about and
about the composition--"when I lighten the bloom of my grapes--shade
off the orange in my rainbow--dot the i of my Britons--throw a
yellow light into my cow-cum-BER--insinuate another morsel of fat
into my shoulder of mutton--dart another zigzag flash of lightning
at my ship in distress!"
He seemed to do this so neatly, and was so nimble about it, that the
halfpence came flying in.
"Thanks, generous public, thanks!" said the professor. "You will
stimulate me to further exertions. My name will be found in the
list of British Painters yet. I shall do better than this, with
encouragement. I shall indeed."
"You never can do better than that bunch of grapes," said Henrietta.
"Oh, Thomas, them grapes!"
"Not better than THAT, lady? I hope for the time when I shall paint
anything but your own bright eyes and lips equal to life."
"(Thomas, did you ever?) But it must take a long time, sir," said
Henrietta, blushing, "to paint equal to that."
"I was prenticed to it, miss," said the young man, smartly touching
up the composition--"prenticed to it in the caves of Spain and
Portingale, ever so long and two year over."
There was a laugh from the crowd; and a new man who had worked
himself in next me, said, "He's a smart chap, too; ain't he?"
"And what a eye!" exclaimed Henrietta softly.
"Ah! He need have a eye," said the man.
"Ah! He just need," was murmured among the crowd.
"He couldn't come that 'ere burning mountain without a eye," said
the man. He had got himself accepted as an authority, somehow, and
everybody looked at his finger as it pointed out Vesuvius. "To come
that effect in a general illumination would require a eye; but to
come it with two dips--why, it's enough to blind him!"
That impostor, pretending not to have heard what was said, now
winked to any extent with both eyes at once, as if the strain upon
his sight was too much, and threw back his long hair--it was very
long--as if to cool his fevered brow. I was watching him doing it,
when Henrietta suddenly whispered, "Oh, Thomas, how horrid you
look!" and pulled me out by the arm.
Remembering Mr. Click's words, I was confused when I retorted, "What
do you mean by horrid?"
"Oh gracious! Why, you looked," said Henrietta, "as if you would
have his blood."
I was going to answer, "So I would, for twopence--from his nose,"
when I checked myself and remained silent.
We returned home in silence. Every step of the way, the softer
sentiments that had flowed, ebbed twenty mile an hour. Adapting my
conduct to the ebbing, as I had done to the flowing, I let my arm
drop limp, so as she could scarcely keep hold of it, and I wished
her such a cold good-night at parting, that I keep within the bounds
of truth when I characterise it as a Rasper.
In the course of the next day I received the following document:
"Henrietta informs Thomas that my eyes are open to you. I must ever
wish you well, but walking and us is separated by an unfarmable
abyss. One so malignant to superiority--Oh that look at him!--can
never never conduct
HENRIETTA
P.S.--To the altar."
Yielding to the easiness of my disposition, I went to bed for a
week, after receiving this letter. During the whole of such time,
London was bereft of the usual fruits of my labour. When I resumed
it, I found that Henrietta was married to the artist of Piccadilly.
Did I say to the artist? What fell words were those, expressive of
what a galling hollowness, of what a bitter mockery! I--I--I--am
the artist. I was the real artist of Piccadilly, I was the real
artist of the Waterloo Road, I am the only artist of all those
pavement-subjects which daily and nightly arouse your admiration. I
do 'em, and I let 'em out. The man you behold with the papers of
chalks and the rubbers, touching up the down-strokes of the writing
and shading off the salmon, the man you give the credit to, the man
you give the money to, hires--yes! and I live to tell it!--hires
those works of art of me, and brings nothing to 'em but the candles.
Such is genius in a commercial country. I am not up to the
shivering, I am not up to the liveliness, I am not up to the
wanting-employment-in-an-office move; I am only up to originating
and executing the work. In consequence of which you never see me;
you think you see me when you see somebody else, and that somebody
else is a mere Commercial character. The one seen by self and Mr.
Click in the Waterloo Road can only write a single word, and that I
taught him, and it's MULTIPLICATION--which you may see him execute
upside down, because he can't do it the natural way. The one seen
by self and Henrietta by the Green Park railings can just smear into
existence the two ends of a rainbow, with his cuff and a rubber--if
very hard put upon making a show--but he could no more come the arch
of the rainbow, to save his life, than he could come the moon-light,
fish, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit, or any of my most
celebrated effects.
To conclude as I began: if there's a blighted public character
going, I am the party. And often as you have seen, do see, and will
see, my Works, it's fifty thousand to one if you'll ever see me,
unless, when the candles are burnt down and the Commercial character
is gone, you should happen to notice a neglected young man
perseveringly rubbing out the last traces of the pictures, so that
nobody can renew the same. That's me.
CHAPTER IV--HIS WONDERFUL END
It will have been, ere now, perceived that I sold the foregoing
writings. From the fact of their being printed in these pages, the
inference will, ere now, have been drawn by the reader (may I add,
the gentle reader?) that I sold them to One who never yet--{2}
Having parted with the writings on most satisfactory terms,--for, in
opening negotiations with the present Journal, was I not placing
myself in the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of
Another, {2,}--resumed my usual functions. But I too soon
discovered that peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that
time, Time had merely took the hair off, leaving an unruffled
expanse within.
It were superfluous to veil it,--the brow to which I allude is my
own.
Yes, over that brow uneasiness gathered like the sable wing of the
fabled bird, as--as no doubt will be easily identified by all right-
minded individuals. If not, I am unable, on the spur of the moment,
to enter into particulars of him. The reflection that the writings
must now inevitably get into print, and that He might yet live and
meet with them, sat like the Hag of Night upon my jaded form. The
elasticity of my spirits departed. Fruitless was the Bottle,
whether Wine or Medicine. I had recourse to both, and the effect of
both upon my system was witheringly lowering.
In this state of depression, into which I subsided when I first
began to revolve what could I ever say if He--the unknown--was to
appear in the Coffee-room and demand reparation, I one forenoon in
this last November received a turn that appeared to be given me by
the finger of Fate and Conscience, hand in hand. I was alone in the
Coffee-room, and had just poked the fire into a blaze, and was
standing with my back to it, trying whether heat would penetrate
with soothing influence to the Voice within, when a young man in a
cap, of an intelligent countenance, though requiring his hair cut,
stood before me.
"Mr. Christopher, the Head Waiter?"
"The same."
The young man shook his hair out of his vision,--which it impeded,--
to a packet from his breast, and handing it over to me, said, with
his eye (or did I dream?) fixed with a lambent meaning on me, "THE
PROOFS."
Although I smelt my coat-tails singeing at the fire, I had not the
power to withdraw them. The young man put the packet in my
faltering grasp, and repeated,--let me do him the justice to add,
with civility:
"THE PROOFS. A. Y. R."
With those words he departed.
A. Y. R.? And You Remember. Was that his meaning? At Your Risk.
Were the letters short for THAT reminder? Anticipate Your
Retribution. Did they stand for THAT warning? Out-dacious Youth
Repent? But no; for that, a O was happily wanting, and the vowel
here was a A.
I opened the packet, and found that its contents were the foregoing
writings printed just as the reader (may I add the discerning
reader?) peruses them. In vain was the reassuring whisper,--A.Y.R.,
All the Year Round,--it could not cancel the Proofs. Too
appropriate name. The Proofs of my having sold the Writings.
My wretchedness daily increased. I had not thought of the risk I
ran, and the defying publicity I put my head into, until all was
done, and all was in print. Give up the money to be off the bargain
and prevent the publication, I could not. My family was down in the
world, Christmas was coming on, a brother in the hospital and a
sister in the rheumatics could not be entirely neglected. And it
was not only ins in the family that had told on the resources of one
unaided Waitering; outs were not wanting. A brother out of a
situation, and another brother out of money to meet an acceptance,
and another brother out of his mind, and another brother out at New
York (not the same, though it might appear so), had really and truly
brought me to a stand till I could turn myself round. I got worse
and worse in my meditations, constantly reflecting "The Proofs," and
reflecting that when Christmas drew nearer, and the Proofs were
published, there could be no safety from hour to hour but that He
might confront me in the Coffee-room, and in the face of day and his
country demand his rights.
The impressive and unlooked-for catastrophe towards which I dimly
pointed the reader (shall I add, the highly intellectual reader?) in
my first remarks now rapidly approaches.
It was November still, but the last echoes of the Guy Foxes had long
ceased to reverberate. We was slack,--several joints under our
average mark, and wine, of course, proportionate. So slack had we
become at last, that Beds Nos. 26, 27, 28, and 31, having took their
six o'clock dinners, and dozed over their respective pints, had
drove away in their respective Hansoms for their respective Night
Mail-trains and left us empty.
I had took the evening paper to No. 6 table,--which is warm and most
to be preferred,--and, lost in the all-absorbing topics of the day,
had dropped into a slumber. I was recalled to consciousness by the
well-known intimation, "Waiter!" and replying, "Sir!" found a
gentleman standing at No. 4 table. The reader (shall I add, the
observant reader?) will please to notice the locality of the
gentleman,--AT NO. 4 TABLE.
He had one of the newfangled uncollapsable bags in his hand (which I
am against, for I don't see why you shouldn't collapse, while you
are about it, as your fathers collapsed before you), and he said:
"I want to dine, waiter. I shall sleep here to-night."
"Very good, sir. What will you take for dinner, sir?"
"Soup, bit of codfish, oyster sauce, and the joint."
"Thank you, sir."
I rang the chambermaid's bell; and Mrs. Pratchett marched in,
according to custom, demurely carrying a lighted flat candle before
her, as if she was one of a long public procession, all the other
members of which was invisible.
In the meanwhile the gentleman had gone up to the mantelpiece, right
in front of the fire, and had laid his forehead against the
mantelpiece (which it is a low one, and brought him into the
attitude of leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair
was long and lightish; and when he laid his forehead against the
mantelpiece, his hair all fell in a dusty fluff together over his
eyes; and when he now turned round and lifted up his head again, it
all fell in a dusty fluff together over his ears. This give him a
wild appearance, similar to a blasted heath.
"O! The chambermaid. Ah!" He was turning something in his mind.
"To be sure. Yes. I won't go up-stairs now, if you will take my
bag. It will be enough for the present to know my number.--Can you
give me 24 B?"
(O Conscience, what a Adder art thou!)
Mrs. Pratchett allotted him the room, and took his bag to it. He
then went back before the fire, and fell a biting his nails.
"Waiter!" biting between the words, "give me," bite, "pen and paper;
and in five minutes," bite, "let me have, if you please," bite, "a",
bite, "Messenger."
Unmindful of his waning soup, he wrote and sent off six notes before
he touched his dinner. Three were City; three West-End. The City
letters were to Cornhill, Ludgate-hill, and Farringdon Street. The
West-End letters were to Great Marlborough Street, New Burlington
Street, and Piccadilly. Everybody was systematically denied at
every one of the six places, and there was not a vestige of any
answer. Our light porter whispered to me, when he came back with
that report, "All Booksellers."
But before then he had cleared off his dinner, and his bottle of
wine. He now--mark the concurrence with the document formerly given
in full!--knocked a plate of biscuits off the table with his
agitated elber (but without breakage), and demanded boiling brandy-
and-water.
Now fully convinced that it was Himself, I perspired with the utmost
freedom. When he became flushed with the heated stimulant referred
to, he again demanded pen and paper, and passed the succeeding two
hours in producing a manuscript which he put in the fire when
completed. He then went up to bed, attended by Mrs. Pratchett.
Mrs. Pratchett (who was aware of my emotions) told me, on coming
down, that she had noticed his eye rolling into every corner of the
passages and staircase, as if in search of his Luggage, and that,
looking back as she shut the door of 24 B, she perceived him with
his coat already thrown off immersing himself bodily under the
bedstead, like a chimley-sweep before the application of machinery.
The next day--I forbear the horrors of that night--was a very foggy
day in our part of London, insomuch that it was necessary to light
the Coffee-room gas. We was still alone, and no feverish words of
mine can do justice to the fitfulness of his appearance as he sat at
No. 4 table, increased by there being something wrong with the
meter.
Having again ordered his dinner, he went out, and was out for the
best part of two hours. Inquiring on his return whether any of the
answers had arrived, and receiving an unqualified negative, his
instant call was for mulligatawny, the cayenne pepper, and orange
brandy.
Feeling that the mortal struggle was now at hand, I also felt that I
must be equal to him, and with that view resolved that whatever he
took I would take. Behind my partition, but keeping my eye on him
over the curtain, I therefore operated on Mulligatawny, Cayenne
Pepper, and Orange Brandy. And at a later period of the day, when
he again said, "Orange Brandy," I said so too, in a lower tone, to
George, my Second Lieutenant (my First was absent on leave), who
acts between me and the bar.
Throughout that awful day he walked about the Coffee-room
continually. Often he came close up to my partition, and then his
eye rolled within, too evidently in search of any signs of his
Luggage. Half-past six came, and I laid his cloth. He ordered a
bottle of old Brown. I likewise ordered a bottle of old Brown. He
drank his. I drank mine (as nearly as my duties would permit) glass
for glass against his. He topped with coffee and a small glass. I
topped with coffee and a small glass. He dozed. I dozed. At last,
"Waiter!"--and he ordered his bill. The moment was now at hand when
we two must be locked in the deadly grapple.
Swift as the arrow from the bow, I had formed my resolution; in
other words, I had hammered it out between nine and nine. It was,
that I would be the first to open up the subject with a full
acknowledgment, and would offer any gradual settlement within my
power. He paid his bill (doing what was right by attendance) with
his eye rolling about him to the last for any tokens of his Luggage.
One only time our gaze then met, with the lustrous fixedness (I
believe I am correct in imputing that character to it?) of the well-
known Basilisk. The decisive moment had arrived.
With a tolerable steady hand, though with humility, I laid The
Proofs before him.
"Gracious Heavens!" he cries out, leaping up, and catching hold of
his hair. "What's this? Print!"
"Sir," I replied, in a calming voice, and bending forward, "I humbly
acknowledge to being the unfortunate cause of it. But I hope, sir,
that when you have heard the circumstances explained, and the
innocence of my intentions--"
To my amazement, I was stopped short by his catching me in both his
arms, and pressing me to his breast-bone; where I must confess to my
face (and particular, nose) having undergone some temporary vexation
from his wearing his coat buttoned high up, and his buttons being
uncommon hard.
"Ha, ha, ha!" he cries, releasing me with a wild laugh, and grasping
my hand. "What is your name, my Benefactor?"
"My name, sir" (I was crumpled, and puzzled to make him out), "is
Christopher; and I hope, sir, that, as such, when you've heard my
ex- "
"In print!" he exclaims again, dashing the proofs over and over as
if he was bathing in them.--"In print!! O Christopher!
Philanthropist! Nothing can recompense you,--but what sum of money
would be acceptable to you?"
I had drawn a step back from him, or I should have suffered from his
buttons again.
"Sir, I assure you, I have been already well paid, and--"
"No, no, Christopher! Don't talk like that! What sum of money
would be acceptable to you, Christopher? Would you find twenty
pounds acceptable, Christopher?"
However great my surprise, I naturally found words to say, "Sir, I
am not aware that the man was ever yet born without more than the
average amount of water on the brain as would not find twenty pounds
acceptable. But--extremely obliged to you, sir, I'm sure;" for he
had tumbled it out of his purse and crammed it in my hand in two
bank-notes; "but I could wish to know, sir, if not intruding, how I
have merited this liberality?"
"Know then, my Christopher," he says, "that from boyhood's hour I
have unremittingly and unavailingly endeavoured to get into print.
Know, Christopher, that all the Booksellers alive--and several dead-
-have refused to put me into print. Know, Christopher, that I have
written unprinted Reams. But they shall be read to you, my friend
and brother. You sometimes have a holiday?"
Seeing the great danger I was in, I had the presence of mind to
answer, "Never!" To make it more final, I added, "Never! Not from
the cradle to the grave."
"Well," says he, thinking no more about that, and chuckling at his
proofs again. "But I am in print! The first flight of ambition
emanating from my father's lowly cot is realised at length! The
golden bow"--he was getting on,--"struck by the magic hand, has
emitted a complete and perfect sound! When did this happen, my
Christopher?"
"Which happen, sir?"
"This," he held it out at arms length to admire it,--"this Per-
rint."
When I had given him my detailed account of it, he grasped me by the
hand again, and said:
"Dear Christopher, it should be gratifying to you to know that you
are an instrument in the hands of Destiny. Because you ARE."
A passing Something of a melancholy cast put it into my head to
shake it, and to say, "Perhaps we all are."
"I don't mean that," he answered; "I don't take that wide range; I
confine myself to the special case. Observe me well, my
Christopher! Hopeless of getting rid, through any effort of my own,
of any of the manuscripts among my Luggage,--all of which, send them
where I would, were always coming back to me,--it is now some seven
years since I left that Luggage here, on the desperate chance,
either that the too, too faithful manuscripts would come back to me
no more, or that some one less accursed than I might give them to
the world. You follow me, my Christopher?"
"Pretty well, sir." I followed him so far as to judge that he had a
weak head, and that the Orange, the Boiling, and Old Brown combined
was beginning to tell. (The Old Brown, being heady, is best adapted
to seasoned cases.)
"Years elapsed, and those compositions slumbered in dust. At
length, Destiny, choosing her agent from all mankind, sent You here,
Christopher, and lo! the Casket was burst asunder, and the Giant was
free!"
He made hay of his hair after he said this, and he stood a-tiptoe.
"But," he reminded himself in a state of excitement, "we must sit up
all night, my Christopher. I must correct these Proofs for the
press. Fill all the inkstands, and bring me several new pens."
He smeared himself and he smeared the Proofs, the night through, to
that degree that when Sol gave him warning to depart (in a four-
wheeler), few could have said which was them, and which was him, and
which was blots. His last instructions was, that I should instantly
run and take his corrections to the office of the present Journal.
I did so. They most likely will not appear in print, for I noticed
a message being brought round from Beauford Printing House, while I
was a throwing this concluding statement on paper, that the ole
resources of that establishment was unable to make out what they
meant. Upon which a certain gentleman in company, as I will not
more particularly name,--but of whom it will be sufficient to
remark, standing on the broad basis of a wave-girt isle, that
whether we regard him in the light of,--{3} laughed, and put the
corrections in the fire.
Footnotes:
{1} Its name and address at length, with other full particulars,
all editorially struck out.
{2} The remainder of this complimentary sentence editorially struck
out.
{3} The remainder of this complimentary parenthesis editorially
struck out.
Back to Full Books
|