Chapter Chapter 4 · I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me

. I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me

up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet

been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the

house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon

the kitchen doorstep to keep him out of the dust-pan,—an article into

which his destiny always led him, sooner or later, when my sister was

vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment.

“And where the deuce ha’ _you_ been?” was Mrs. Joe’s Christmas

salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the Carols. “Ah! well!” observed Mrs.

Joe. “You might ha’ done worse.” Not a doubt of that I thought.

“Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and (what’s the same thing) a

slave with her apron never off, _I_ should have been to hear the

Carols,” said Mrs. Joe. “I’m rather partial to Carols, myself, and

that’s the best of reasons for my never hearing any.”

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had

retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a

conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her

eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and

exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper.

This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, for

weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental Crusaders as to

their legs.

We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork

and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had

been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the mincemeat not

being missed), and the pudding was already on the boil. These extensive

arrangements occasioned us to be cut off unceremoniously in respect of

breakfast; “for I ain’t,” said Mrs. Joe,—“I ain’t a-going to have no

formal cramming and busting and washing up now, with what I’ve got

before me, I promise you!”

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops on

a forced march instead of a man and boy at home; and we took gulps of

milk and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug on the

dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains up, and

tacked a new flowered flounce across the wide chimney to replace the

old one, and uncovered the little state parlour across the passage,

which was never uncovered at any other time, but passed the rest of the

year in a cool haze of silver paper, which even extended to the four

little white crockery poodles on the mantel-shelf, each with a black

nose and a basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the counterpart of

the other. Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite

art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than

dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the

same by their religion.

My sister, having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that

is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working-clothes, Joe was a

well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he

was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else.

Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and

everything that he wore then grazed him. On the present festive

occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were going,

the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me,

I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young

offender whom an Accoucheur Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and

delivered over to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged

majesty of the law. I was always treated as if I had insisted on being

born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality,

and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I

was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make

them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the

free use of my limbs.

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle

for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to

what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs.

Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be

equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had

done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered whether the

Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the

terrible young man, if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived

the idea that the time when the banns were read and when the clergyman

said, “Ye are now to declare it!” would be the time for me to rise and

propose a private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure

that I might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to

this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no Sunday.

Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble

the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe’s uncle,

but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in

the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was

half-past one. When Joe and I got home, we found the table laid, and

Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked

(it never was at any other time) for the company to enter by, and

everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery.

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, and

the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large

shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud

of; indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could

only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he

himself confessed that if the Church was “thrown open,” meaning to

competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it. The Church

not being “thrown open,” he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he

punished the Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm,—always

giving the whole verse,—he looked all round the congregation first, as

much as to say, “You have heard my friend overhead; oblige me with your

opinion of this style!”

I opened the door to the company,—making believe that it was a habit of

ours to open that door,—and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to

Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B. _I_ was

not allowed to call him uncle, under the severest penalties.

“Mrs. Joe,” said Uncle Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing middle-aged

slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair

standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been

all but choked, and had that moment come to, “I have brought you as the

compliments of the season—I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry

wine—and I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of port wine.”

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty, with

exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like dumb-bells.

Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now replied, “O, Un—cle

Pum-ble—chook! This _is_ kind!” Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as he

now retorted, “It’s no more than your merits. And now are you all

bobbish, and how’s Sixpennorth of halfpence?” meaning me.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the nuts

and oranges and apples to the parlour; which was a change very like

Joe’s change from his working-clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister

was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and indeed was generally

more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company. I

remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue,

who held a conventionally juvenile position, because she had married

Mr. Hubble,—I don’t know at what remote period,—when she was much

younger than he. I remember Mr Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered,

stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs

extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some

miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn’t

robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in

at an acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table in my chest, and

the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to

speak (I didn’t want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the

scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure

corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason

to be vain. No; I should not have minded that, if they would only have

left me alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to think

the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me,

every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an

unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched

up by these moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with

theatrical declamation,—as it now appears to me, something like a

religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third,—and

ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful.

Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low

reproachful voice, “Do you hear that? Be grateful.”

“Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy, to them which

brought you up by hand.”

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful

presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that the

young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much for the

company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, “Naterally

wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a

particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe’s station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when

there was company than when there was none. But he always aided and

comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and he always did

so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being

plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate, at this point, about

half a pint.

A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with

some severity, and intimated—in the usual hypothetical case of the

Church being “thrown open”—what kind of sermon _he_ would have given

them. After favouring them with some heads of that discourse, he

remarked that he considered the subject of the day’s homily, ill

chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when there were so many

subjects “going about.”

“True again,” said Uncle Pumblechook. “You’ve hit it, sir! Plenty of

subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their

tails. That’s what’s wanted. A man needn’t go far to find a subject, if

he’s ready with his salt-box.” Mr. Pumblechook added, after a short

interval of reflection, “Look at Pork alone. There’s a subject! If you

want a subject, look at Pork!”

“True, sir. Many a moral for the young,” returned Mr. Wopsle,—and I

knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; “might be deduced

from that text.”

(“You listen to this,” said my sister to me, in a severe parenthesis.)

Joe gave me some more gravy.

“Swine,” pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his

fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name,—“swine

were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put

before us, as an example to the young.” (I thought this pretty well in

him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.)

“What is detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy.”

“Or girl,” suggested Mr. Hubble.

“Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,” assented Mr. Wopsle, rather

irritably, “but there is no girl present.”

“Besides,” said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, “think what

you’ve got to be grateful for. If you’d been born a Squeaker—”

“He _was_, if ever a child was,” said my sister, most emphatically.

Joe gave me some more gravy.

“Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “If

you had been born such, would you have been here now? Not you—”

“Unless in that form,” said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.

“But I don’t mean in that form, sir,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, who had

an objection to being interrupted; “I mean, enjoying himself with his

elders and betters, and improving himself with their conversation, and

rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been doing that? No, he

wouldn’t. And what would have been your destination?” turning on me

again. “You would have been disposed of for so many shillings according

to the market price of the article, and Dunstable the butcher would

have come up to you as you lay in your straw, and he would have whipped

you under his left arm, and with his right he would have tucked up his

frock to get a penknife from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would

have shed your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then.

Not a bit of it!”

Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.

“He was a world of trouble to you, ma’am,” said Mrs. Hubble,

commiserating my sister.

“Trouble?” echoed my sister; “trouble?” and then entered on a fearful

catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts

of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled

from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I

had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I

had contumaciously refused to go there.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with

their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in

consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle’s Roman nose so aggravated me, during

the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to pull it

until he howled. But, all I had endured up to this time was nothing in

comparison with the awful feelings that took possession of me when the

pause was broken which ensued upon my sister’s recital, and in which

pause everybody had looked at me (as I felt painfully conscious) with

indignation and abhorrence.

“Yet,” said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the

theme from which they had strayed, “Pork—regarded as biled—is rich,

too; ain’t it?”

“Have a little brandy, uncle,” said my sister.

O Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he would say

it was weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the table under

the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.

My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone bottle,

and poured his brandy out: no one else taking any. The wretched man

trifled with his glass,—took it up, looked at it through the light, put

it down,—prolonged my misery. All this time Mrs. Joe and Joe were

briskly clearing the table for the pie and pudding.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of the

table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature finger his

glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, and drink the

brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were seized with

unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his feet, turning

round several times in an appalling spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and

rushing out at the door; he then became visible through the window,

violently plunging and expectorating, making the most hideous faces,

and apparently out of his mind.

I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn’t know how I

had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow. In my

dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought back, and

surveying the company all round as if _they_ had disagreed with him,

sank down into his chair with the one significant gasp, “Tar!”

I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew he would be

worse by and by. I moved the table, like a Medium of the present day,

by the vigor of my unseen hold upon it.

“Tar!” cried my sister, in amazement. “Why, how ever could Tar come

there?”

But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, wouldn’t

hear the word, wouldn’t hear of the subject, imperiously waved it all

away with his hand, and asked for hot gin and water. My sister, who had

begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ herself actively in

getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and the lemon-peel, and

mixing them. For the time being at least, I was saved. I still held on

to the leg of the table, but clutched it now with the fervor of

gratitude.

By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp and partake of

pudding. Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding. All partook of pudding.

The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the

genial influence of gin and water. I began to think I should get over

the day, when my sister said to Joe, “Clean plates,—cold.”

I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my

bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my

soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I really was

gone.

“You must taste,” said my sister, addressing the guests with her best

grace—“you must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and delicious

present of Uncle Pumblechook’s!”

Must they! Let them not hope to taste it!

“You must know,” said my sister, rising, “it’s a pie; a savory pork

pie.”

The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of

having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said,—quite vivaciously,

all things considered,—“Well, Mrs. Joe, we’ll do our best endeavours;

let us have a cut at this same pie.”

My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry.

I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in

the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that “a bit

of savory pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do

no harm,” and I heard Joe say, “You shall have some, Pip.” I have never

been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror,

merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that

I could bear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of

the table, and ran for my life.

But I ran no farther than the house door, for there I ran head-foremost

into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a

pair of handcuffs to me, saying, “Here you are, look sharp, come on!”