Chương Chương 37 · 第37章

The single gentleman among his other peculiarities--and he had a very

plentiful stock, of which he every day furnished some new

specimen--took a most extraordinary and remarkable interest in the

exhibition of Punch. If the sound of a Punch’s voice, at ever so

remote a distance, reached Bevis Marks, the single gentleman, though in

bed and asleep, would start up, and, hurrying on his clothes, make for

the spot with all speed, and presently return at the head of a long

procession of idlers, having in the midst the theatre and its

proprietors. Straightway, the stage would be set up in front of Mr

Brass’s house; the single gentleman would establish himself at the

first floor window; and the entertainment would proceed, with all its

exciting accompaniments of fife and drum and shout, to the excessive

consternation of all sober votaries of business in that silent

thoroughfare. It might have been expected that when the play was done,

both players and audience would have dispersed; but the epilogue was as

bad as the play, for no sooner was the Devil dead, than the manager of

the puppets and his partner were summoned by the single gentleman to

his chamber, where they were regaled with strong waters from his

private store, and where they held with him long conversations, the

purport of which no human being could fathom. But the secret of these

discussions was of little importance. It was sufficient to know that

while they were proceeding, the concourse without still lingered round

the house; that boys beat upon the drum with their fists, and imitated

Punch with their tender voices; that the office-window was rendered

opaque by flattened noses, and the key-hole of the street-door luminous

with eyes; that every time the single gentleman or either of his guests

was seen at the upper window, or so much as the end of one of their

noses was visible, there was a great shout of execration from the

excluded mob, who remained howling and yelling, and refusing

consolation, until the exhibitors were delivered up to them to be

attended elsewhere. It was sufficient, in short, to know that Bevis

Marks was revolutionised by these popular movements, and that peace and

quietness fled from its precincts.

Nobody was rendered more indignant by these proceedings than Mr Sampson

Brass, who, as he could by no means afford to lose so profitable an

inmate, deemed it prudent to pocket his lodger’s affront along with his

cash, and to annoy the audiences who clustered round his door by such

imperfect means of retaliation as were open to him, and which were

confined to the trickling down of foul water on their heads from unseen

watering pots, pelting them with fragments of tile and mortar from the

roof of the house, and bribing the drivers of hackney cabriolets to

come suddenly round the corner and dash in among them precipitately.

It may, at first sight, be matter of surprise to the thoughtless few

that Mr Brass, being a professional gentleman, should not have legally

indicted some party or parties, active in the promotion of the

nuisance, but they will be good enough to remember, that as Doctors

seldom take their own prescriptions, and Divines do not always practise

what they preach, so lawyers are shy of meddling with the Law on their

own account: knowing it to be an edged tool of uncertain application,

very expensive in the working, and rather remarkable for its properties

of close shaving, than for its always shaving the right person.

‘Come,’ said Mr Brass one afternoon, ‘this is two days without a Punch.

I’m in hopes he has run through ‘em all, at last.’

‘Why are you in hopes?’ returned Miss Sally. ‘What harm do they do?’

‘Here’s a pretty sort of a fellow!’ cried Brass, laying down his pen in

despair. ‘Now here’s an aggravating animal!’

‘Well, what harm do they do?’ retorted Sally.

‘What harm!’ cried Brass. ‘Is it no harm to have a constant hallooing

and hooting under one’s very nose, distracting one from business, and

making one grind one’s teeth with vexation? Is it no harm to be

blinded and choked up, and have the king’s highway stopped with a set

of screamers and roarers whose throats must be made of--of--’

‘Brass,’ suggested Mr Swiveller.

‘Ah! of brass,’ said the lawyer, glancing at his clerk, to assure

himself that he had suggested the word in good faith and without any

sinister intention. ‘Is that no harm?’

The lawyer stopped short in his invective, and listening for a moment,

and recognising the well-known voice, rested his head upon his hand,

raised his eyes to the ceiling, and muttered faintly, ‘There’s another!’

Up went the single gentleman’s window directly.

‘There’s another,’ repeated Brass; ‘and if I could get a break and four

blood horses to cut into the Marks when the crowd is at its thickest,

I’d give eighteen-pence and never grudge it!’

The distant squeak was heard again. The single gentleman’s door burst

open. He ran violently down the stairs, out into the street, and so

past the window, without any hat, towards the quarter whence the sound

proceeded--bent, no doubt, upon securing the strangers’ services

directly.

‘I wish I only knew who his friends were,’ muttered Sampson, filling

his pocket with papers; ‘if they’d just get up a pretty little

Commission de lunatico at the Gray’s Inn Coffee House and give me the

job, I’d be content to have the lodgings empty for one while, at all

events.’

With which words, and knocking his hat over his eyes as if for the

purpose of shutting out even a glimpse of the dreadful visitation, Mr

Brass rushed from the house and hurried away.

As Mr Swiveller was decidedly favourable to these performances, upon

the ground that looking at a Punch, or indeed looking at anything out

of window, was better than working; and as he had been, for this

reason, at some pains to awaken in his fellow clerk a sense of their

beauties and manifold deserts; both he and Miss Sally rose as with one

accord and took up their positions at the window: upon the sill

whereof, as in a post of honour, sundry young ladies and gentlemen who

were employed in the dry nurture of babies, and who made a point of

being present, with their young charges, on such occasions, had already

established themselves as comfortably as the circumstances would allow.

The glass being dim, Mr Swiveller, agreeably to a friendly custom which

he had established between them, hitched off the brown head-dress from

Miss Sally’s head, and dusted it carefully therewith. By the time he

had handed it back, and its beautiful wearer had put it on again (which

she did with perfect composure and indifference), the lodger returned

with the show and showmen at his heels, and a strong addition to the

body of spectators. The exhibitor disappeared with all speed behind

the drapery; and his partner, stationing himself by the side of the

Theatre, surveyed the audience with a remarkable expression of

melancholy, which became more remarkable still when he breathed a

hornpipe tune into that sweet musical instrument which is popularly

termed a mouth-organ, without at all changing the mournful expression

of the upper part of his face, though his mouth and chin were, of

necessity, in lively spasms.

The drama proceeded to its close, and held the spectators enchained in

the customary manner. The sensation which kindles in large assemblies,

when they are relieved from a state of breathless suspense and are

again free to speak and move, was yet rife, when the lodger, as usual,

summoned the men up stairs.

‘Both of you,’ he called from the window; for only the actual

exhibitor--a little fat man--prepared to obey the summons. ‘I want to

talk to you. Come both of you!’

‘Come, Tommy,’ said the little man.

‘I an’t a talker,’ replied the other. ‘Tell him so. What should I go

and talk for?’

‘Don’t you see the gentleman’s got a bottle and glass up there?’

returned the little man.

‘And couldn’t you have said so at first?’ retorted the other with

sudden alacrity. ‘Now, what are you waiting for? Are you going to

keep the gentleman expecting us all day? haven’t you no manners?’

With this remonstrance, the melancholy man, who was no other than Mr

Thomas Codlin, pushed past his friend and brother in the craft, Mr

Harris, otherwise Short or Trotters, and hurried before him to the

single gentleman’s apartment.

‘Now, my men,’ said the single gentleman; ‘you have done very well.

What will you take? Tell that little man behind, to shut the door.’

‘Shut the door, can’t you?’ said Mr Codlin, turning gruffly to his

friend. ‘You might have knowed that the gentleman wanted the door

shut, without being told, I think.’

Mr Short obeyed, observing under his breath that his friend seemed

unusually ‘cranky,’ and expressing a hope that there was no dairy in

the neighbourhood, or his temper would certainly spoil its contents.

The gentleman pointed to a couple of chairs, and intimated by an

emphatic nod of his head that he expected them to be seated. Messrs

Codlin and Short, after looking at each other with considerable doubt

and indecision, at length sat down--each on the extreme edge of the

chair pointed out to him--and held their hats very tight, while the

single gentleman filled a couple of glasses from a bottle on the table

beside him, and presented them in due form.

‘You’re pretty well browned by the sun, both of you,’ said their

entertainer. ‘Have you been travelling?’

Mr Short replied in the affirmative with a nod and a smile. Mr Codlin

added a corroborative nod and a short groan, as if he still felt the

weight of the Temple on his shoulders.

‘To fairs, markets, races, and so forth, I suppose?’ pursued the single

gentleman.

‘Yes, sir,’ returned Short, ‘pretty nigh all over the West of England.’

‘I have talked to men of your craft from North, East, and South,’

returned their host, in rather a hasty manner; ‘but I never lighted on

any from the West before.’

‘It’s our reg’lar summer circuit is the West, master,’ said Short;

‘that’s where it is. We takes the East of London in the spring and

winter, and the West of England in the summer time. Many’s the hard

day’s walking in rain and mud, and with never a penny earned, we’ve had

down in the West.’

‘Let me fill your glass again.’

‘Much obleeged to you sir, I think I will,’ said Mr Codlin, suddenly

thrusting in his own and turning Short’s aside. ‘I’m the sufferer,

sir, in all the travelling, and in all the staying at home. In town or

country, wet or dry, hot or cold, Tom Codlin suffers. But Tom Codlin

isn’t to complain for all that. Oh, no! Short may complain, but if

Codlin grumbles by so much as a word--oh dear, down with him, down

with him directly. It isn’t his place to grumble. That’s quite out of

the question.’

‘Codlin an’t without his usefulness,’ observed Short with an arch look,

‘but he don’t always keep his eyes open. He falls asleep sometimes,

you know. Remember them last races, Tommy.’

‘Will you never leave off aggravating a man?’ said Codlin. ‘It’s very

like I was asleep when five-and-tenpence was collected, in one round,

isn’t it? I was attending to my business, and couldn’t have my eyes in

twenty places at once, like a peacock, no more than you could. If I

an’t a match for an old man and a young child, you an’t neither, so

don’t throw that out against me, for the cap fits your head quite as

correct as it fits mine.’

‘You may as well drop the subject, Tom,’ said Short. ‘It isn’t

particular agreeable to the gentleman, I dare say.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have brought it up,’ returned Mr Codlin; ‘and I ask

the gentleman’s pardon on your account, as a giddy chap that likes to

hear himself talk, and don’t much care what he talks about, so that he

does talk.’

Their entertainer had sat perfectly quiet in the beginning of this

dispute, looking first at one man and then at the other, as if he were

lying in wait for an opportunity of putting some further question, or

reverting to that from which the discourse had strayed. But, from the

point where Mr Codlin was charged with sleepiness, he had shown an

increasing interest in the discussion: which now attained a very high

pitch.

‘You are the two men I want,’ he said, ‘the two men I have been looking

for, and searching after! Where are that old man and that child you

speak of?’

‘Sir?’ said Short, hesitating, and looking towards his friend.

‘The old man and his grandchild who travelled with you--where are they?

It will be worth your while to speak out, I assure you; much better

worth your while than you believe. They left you, you say--at those

races, as I understand. They have been traced to that place, and there

lost sight of. Have you no clue, can you suggest no clue, to their

recovery?’

‘Did I always say, Thomas,’ cried Short, turning with a look of

amazement to his friend, ‘that there was sure to be an inquiry after

them two travellers?’

‘YOU said!’ returned Mr Codlin. ‘Did I always say that that ‘ere

blessed child was the most interesting I ever see? Did I always say I

loved her, and doated on her? Pretty creetur, I think I hear her now.

“Codlin’s my friend,” she says, with a tear of gratitude a trickling

down her little eye; “Codlin’s my friend,” she says--“not Short.

Short’s very well,” she says; “I’ve no quarrel with Short; he means

kind, I dare say; but Codlin,” she says, “has the feelings for my

money, though he mayn’t look it.”’

Repeating these words with great emotion, Mr Codlin rubbed the bridge

of his nose with his coat-sleeve, and shaking his head mournfully from

side to side, left the single gentleman to infer that, from the moment

when he lost sight of his dear young charge, his peace of mind and

happiness had fled.

‘Good Heaven!’ said the single gentleman, pacing up and down the room,

‘have I found these men at last, only to discover that they can give me

no information or assistance! It would have been better to have lived

on, in hope, from day to day, and never to have lighted on them, than

to have my expectations scattered thus.’

‘Stay a minute,’ said Short. ‘A man of the name of Jerry--you know

Jerry, Thomas?’

‘Oh, don’t talk to me of Jerrys,’ replied Mr Codlin. ‘How can I care a

pinch of snuff for Jerrys, when I think of that ‘ere darling child?

“Codlin’s my friend,” she says, “dear, good, kind Codlin, as is always

a devising pleasures for me! I don’t object to Short,” she says, “but

I cotton to Codlin.” Once,’ said that gentleman reflectively, ‘she

called me Father Codlin. I thought I should have bust!’

‘A man of the name of Jerry, sir,’ said Short, turning from his selfish

colleague to their new acquaintance, ‘wot keeps a company of dancing

dogs, told me, in a accidental sort of way, that he had seen the old

gentleman in connexion with a travelling wax-work, unbeknown to him.

As they’d given us the slip, and nothing had come of it, and this was

down in the country that he’d been seen, I took no measures about it,

and asked no questions--But I can, if you like.’

‘Is this man in town?’ said the impatient single gentleman. ‘Speak

faster.’

‘No he isn’t, but he will be to-morrow, for he lodges in our house,’

replied Mr Short rapidly.

‘Then bring him here,’ said the single gentleman. ‘Here’s a sovereign

a-piece. If I can find these people through your means, it is but a

prelude to twenty more. Return to me to-morrow, and keep your own

counsel on this subject--though I need hardly tell you that; for you’ll

do so for your own sakes. Now, give me your address, and leave me.’

The address was given, the two men departed, the crowd went with them,

and the single gentleman for two mortal hours walked in uncommon

agitation up and down his room, over the wondering heads of Mr

Swiveller and Miss Sally Brass.