IN WHICH THE OLD MAN LAUNCHES FORTHINTO HIS FAVOURITE THEME, AND RELATESA STORY ABOUT A QUEER CLIENTha!’ said the old man, a brief description of whose mannerand appearance concluded the last chapter, ‘aha! who wastalking about the inns?’
‘I was, sir,’ replied Mr. Pickwick―‘I was observing whatsingular old places they are.’
‘You!’ said the old man contemptuously. ‘What do you know ofthe time when young men shut themselves up in those lonelyrooms, and read and read, hour after hour, and night after night,till their reason wandered beneath their midnight studies; till theirmental powers were exhausted; till morning’s light brought nofreshness or health to them; and they sank beneath the unnaturaldevotion of their youthful energies to their dry old books? Comingdown to a later time, and a very different day, what do you know ofthe gradual sinking beneath consumption, or the quick wasting offever―the grand results of “life” and dissipation―which menhave undergone in these same rooms? How many vain pleadersfor mercy, do you think, have turned away heart-sick from thelawyer’s office, to find a resting-place in the Thames, or a refuge inthe jail? They are no ordinary houses, those. There is not a panelin the old wainscotting, but what, if it were endowed with thepowers of speech and memory, could start from the wall, and tellits tale of horror―the romance of life, sir, the romance of life!
Common-place as they may seem now, I tell you they are strangeold places, and I would rather hear many a legend with a terrific-sounding name, than the true history of one old set of chambers.’
There was something so odd in the old man’s sudden energy,and the subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick wasprepared with no observation in reply; and the old man checkinghis impetuosity, and resuming the leer, which had disappearedduring his previous excitement, said―‘Look at them in another light―their most common-place andleast romantic. What fine places of slow torture they are! Think ofthe needy man who has spent his all, beggared himself, andpinched his friends, to enter the profession, which is destinednever to yield him a morsel of bread. The waiting―the hope―thedisappointment―the fear―the misery―the poverty―the blighton his hopes, and end to his career―the suicide perhaps, or theshabby, slipshod drunkard. Am I not right about them?’ And theold man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in delight at havingfound another point of view in which to place his favourite subject.
Mr. Pickwick eyed the old man with great curiosity, and theremainder of the company smiled, and looked on in silence.
‘Talk of your German universities,’ said the little old man.
‘Pooh, pooh! there’s romance enough at home without going half amile for it; only people never think of it.’
‘I never thought of the romance of this particular subjectbefore, certainly,’ said Mr. Pickwick, laughing. ‘To be sure youdidn’t,’ said the little old man; ‘of course not. As a friend of mineused to say to me, “What is there in chambers in particular?”
“Queer old places,” said I. “Not at all,” said he. “Lonely,” said I.
“Not a bit of it,” said he. He died one morning of apoplexy, as hewas going to open his outer door. Fell with his head in his ownletter-box, and there he lay for eighteen months. Everybodythought he’d gone out of town.’
‘And how was he found out at last?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.
‘The benchers determined to have his door broken open, as hehadn’t paid any rent for two years. So they did. Forced the lock;and a very dusty skeleton in a blue coat, black knee-shorts, andsilks, fell forward in the arms of the porter who opened the door.
Queer, that. Rather, perhaps; rather, eh?’ The little old man puthis head more on one side, and rubbed his hands withunspeakable glee.
‘I know another case,’ said the little old man, when his chuckleshad in some degree subsided. ‘It occurred in Clifford’s Inn. Tenantof a top set―bad character―shut himself up in his bedroomcloset, and took a dose of arsenic. The steward thought he had runaway: opened the door, and put a bill up. Another man came, tookthe chambers, furnished them, and went to live there. Somehow orother he couldn’t sleep―always restless and uncomfortable.
“Odd,” says he. “I’ll make the other room my bedchamber, andthis my sitting-room.” He made the change, and slept very well atnight, but suddenly found that, somehow, he couldn’t read in theevening: he got nervous and uncomfortable, and used to be alwayssnuffing his candles and staring about him. “I can’t make this out,”
said he, when he came home from the play one night, and wasdrinking a glass of cold grog, with his back to the wall, in orderthat he mightn’t be able to fancy there was any one behind him―“I can’t make it out,” said he; and just then his eyes rested on thelittle closet that had been always locked up, and a shudder ranthrough his whole frame from top to toe. “I have felt this strangefeeling before,” said he, “I cannot help thinking there’s somethingwrong about that closet.” He made a strong effort, plucked up hiscourage, shivered the lock with a blow or two of the poker, openedthe door, and there, sure enough, standing bolt upright in thecorner, was the last tenant, with a little bottle clasped firmly in hishand, and his face―well!’ As the little old man concluded, helooked round on the attentive faces of his wondering auditory witha smile of grim delight.
‘What strange things these are you tell us of, sir,’ said Mr.
Pickwick, minutely scanning the old man’s countenance, by theaid of his glasses.
‘Strange!’ said the little old man. ‘Nonsense; you think themstrange, because you know nothing about it. They are funny, butnot uncommon.’
‘Funny!’ exclaimed Mr. Pickwick involuntarily. ‘Yes, funny, arethey not?’ replied the little old man, with a diabolical leer; andthen, without pausing for an answer, he continued―‘I knew another man―let me see―forty years ago now―whotook an old, damp, rotten set of chambers, in one of the mostancient inns, that had been shut up and empty for years and yearsbefore. There were lots of old women’s stories about the place, andit certainly was very far from being a cheerful one; but he waspoor, and the rooms were cheap, and that would have been quite asufficient reason for him, if they had been ten times worse thanthey really were. He was obliged to take some mouldering fixturesthat were on the place, and, among the rest, was a great lumberingwooden press for papers, with large glass doors, and a greencurtain inside; a pretty useless thing for him, for he had no papersto put in it; and as to his clothes, he carried them about with him,and that wasn’t very hard work, either. Well, he had moved in allhis furniture―it wasn’t quite a truck-full―and had sprinkled itabout the room, so as to make the four chairs look as much like adozen as possible, and was sitting down before the fire at night,drinking the first glass of two gallons of whisky he had ordered oncredit, wondering whether it would ever be paid for, and if so, inhow many years’ time, when his eyes encountered the glass doorsof the wooden press. “Ah,” says he, “if I hadn’t been obliged totake that ugly article at the old broker’s valuation, I might have gotsomething comfortable for the money. I’ll tell you what it is, oldfellow,” he said, speaking aloud to the press, having nothing elseto speak to, “if it wouldn’t cost more to break up your old carcass,than it would ever be worth afterward, I’d have a fire out of you inless than no time.” He had hardly spoken the words, when a soundresembling a faint groan, appeared to issue from the interior of thecase. It startled him at first, but thinking, on a moment’sreflection, that it must be some young fellow in the next chamber,who had been dining out, he put his feet on the fender, and raisedthe poker to stir the fire. At that moment, the sound was repeated;and one of the glass doors slowly opening, disclosed a pale andemaciated figure in soiled and worn apparel, standing erect in thepress. The figure was tall and thin, and the countenanceexpressive of care and anxiety; but there was something in the hueof the skin, and gaunt and unearthly appearance of the wholeform, which no being of this world was ever seen to wear. “Whoare you?” said the new tenant, turning very pale; poising thepoker in his hand, however, and taking a very decent aim at thecountenance of the figure. “Who are you?” “Don’t throw thatpoker at me,” replied the form; if you hurled it with ever so surean aim, it would pass through me, without resistance, and expendits force on the wood behind. I am a spirit.” “And pray, what doyou want here?” faltered the tenant. “In this room,” replied theapparition, “my worldly ruin was worked, and I and my childrenbeggared. In this press, the papers in a long, long suit, whichaccumulated for years, were deposited. In this room, when I haddied of grief, and long-deferred hope, two wily harpies divided thewealth for which I had contested during a wretched existence, andof which, at last, not one farthing was left for my unhappydescendants. I terrified them from the spot, and since that dayhave prowled by night―the only period at which I can revisit theearth―about the scenes of my long-protracted misery. Thisapartment is mine: leave it to me.” “If you insist upon making yourappearance here,” said the tenant, who had had time to collect hispresence of mind during this prosy statement of the ghost’s, “Ishall give up possession with the greatest pleasure; but I shouldlike to ask you one question, if you will allow me.” “Say on,” saidthe apparition sternly. “Well,” said the tenant, “I don’t apply theobservation personally to you, because it is equally applicable tomost of the ghosts I ever heard of; but it does appear to mesomewhat inconsistent, that when you have an opportunity ofvisiting the fairest spots of earth―for I suppose space is nothing toyou―you should always return exactly to the very places whereyou have been most miserable.” “Egad, that’s very true; I neverthought of that before,” said the ghost. “You see, sir,” pursued thetenant, “this is a very uncomfortable room. From the appearanceof that press, I should be disposed to say that it is not wholly freefrom bugs; and I really think you might find much morecomfortable quarters: to say nothing of the climate of London,which is extremely disagreeable.” “You are very right, sir,” saidthe ghost politely, “it never struck me till now; I’ll try change of airdirectly”―and, in fact, he began to vanish as he spoke; his legs,indeed, had quite disappeared. “And if, sir,” said the tenant,calling after him, “if you would have the goodness to suggest to theother ladies and gentlemen who are now engaged in haunting oldempty houses, that they might be much more comfortableelsewhere, you will confer a very great benefit on society.” “I will,”
replied the ghost; “we must be dull fellows―very dull fellows,indeed; I can’t imagine how we can have been so stupid.” Withthese words, the spirit disappeared; and what is ratherremarkable,’ added the old man, with a shrewd look round thetable, ‘he never came back again.’
‘That ain’t bad, if it’s true,’ said the man in the Mosaic studs,lighting a fresh cigar.
‘If!’ exclaimed the old man, with a look of excessive contempt. ‘Isuppose,’ he added, turning to Lowten, ‘he’ll say next, that mystory about the queer client we had, when I was in an attorney’soffice, is not true either―I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘I shan’t venture to say anything at all about it, seeing that Inever heard the story,’ observed the owner of the Mosaicdecorations.
‘I wish you would repeat it, sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Ah, do,’ said Lowten, ‘nobody has heard it but me, and I havenearly forgotten it.’
The old man looked round the table, and leered more horriblythan ever, as if in triumph, at the attention which was depicted inevery face. Then rubbing his chin with his hand, and looking up tothe ceiling as if to recall the circumstances to his memory, hebegan as follows:―THE OLD MAN’S TALE ABOUT THE QUEER CLIENT‘It matters little,’ said the old man, ‘where, or how, I picked up thisbrief history. If I were to relate it in the order in which it reachedme, I should commence in the middle, and when I had arrived atthe conclusion, go back for a beginning. It is enough for me to saythat some of its circumstances passed before my own eyes; for theremainder I know them to have happened, and there are somepersons yet living, who will remember them but too well.
‘In the Borough High Street, near St. George’s Church, and onthe same side of the way, stands, as most people know, thesmallest of our debtors’ prisons, the Marshalsea. Although in latertimes it has been a very different place from the sink of filth anddirt it once was, even its improved condition holds out but littletemptation to the extravagant, or consolation to the improvident.
The condemned felon has as good a yard for air and exercise inNewgate, as the insolvent debtor in the Marshalsea Prison.
[Better. But this is past, in a better age, and the prison exists nolonger.]
‘It may be my fancy, or it may be that I cannot separate theplace from the old recollections associated with it, but this part ofLondon I cannot bear. The street is broad, the shops are spacious,the noise of passing vehicles, the footsteps of a perpetual stream ofpeople―all the busy sounds of traffic, resound in it from morn tomidnight; but the streets around are mean and close; poverty anddebauchery lie festering in the crowded alleys; want andmisfortune are pent up in the narrow prison; an air of gloom anddreariness seems, in my eyes at least, to hang about the scene, andto impart to it a squalid and sickly hue.
‘Many eyes, that have long since been closed in the grave, havelooked round upon that scene lightly enough, when entering thegate of the old Marshalsea Prison for the first time; for despairseldom comes with the first severe shock of misfortune. A man hasconfidence in untried friends, he remembers the many offers ofservice so freely made by his boon companions when he wantedthem not; he has hope―the hope of happy inexperience―andhowever he may bend beneath the first shock, it springs up in hisbosom, and flourishes there for a brief space, until it droopsbeneath the blight of disappointment and neglect. How soon havethose same eyes, deeply sunken in the head, glared from faceswasted with famine, and sallow from confinement, in days when itwas no figure of speech to say that debtors rotted in prison, withno hope of release, and no prospect of liberty! The atrocity in itsfull extent no longer exists, but there is enough of it left to give riseto occurrences that make the heart bleed.
‘Twenty years ago, that pavement was worn with the footstepsof a mother and child, who, day by day, so surely as the morningcame, presented themselves at the prison gate; often after a nightof restless misery and anxious thoughts, were they there, a fullhour too soon, and then the young mother turning meekly away,would lead the child to the old bridge, and raising him in her armsto show him the glistening water, tinted with the light of themorning’s sun, and stirring with all the bustling preparations forbusiness and pleasure that the river presented at that early hour,endeavour to interest his thoughts in the objects before him. Butshe would quickly set him down, and hiding her face in her shawl,give vent to the tears that blinded her; for no expression of interestor amusement lighted up his thin and sickly face. His recollectionswere few enough, but they were all of one kind―all connectedwith the poverty and misery of his parents. Hour after hour had hesat on his mother’s knee, and with childish sympathy watched thetears that stole down her face, and then crept quietly away intosome dark corner, and sobbed himself to sleep. The hard realitiesof the world, with many of its worst privations―hunger and thirst,and cold and want―had all come home to him, from the firstdawnings of reason; and though the form of childhood was there,its light heart, its merry laugh, and sparkling eyes were wanting.
‘The father and mother looked on upon this, and upon eachother, with thoughts of agony they dared not breathe in words.
The healthy, strong-made man, who could have borne almost anyfatigue of active exertion, was wasting beneath the closeconfinement and unhealthy atmosphere of a crowded prison. Theslight and delicate woman was sinking beneath the combinedeffects of bodily and mental illness. The child’s young heart wasbreaking.
‘Winter came, and with it weeks of cold and heavy rain. Thepoor girl had removed to a wretched apartment close to the spot ofher husband’s imprisonment; and though the change had beenrendered necessary by their increasing poverty, she was happiernow, for she was nearer him. For two months, she and her littlecompanion watched the opening of the gate as usual. One day shefailed to come, for the first time. Another morning arrived, and shecame alone. The child was dead.
‘They little know, who coldly talk of the poor man’sbereavements, as a happy release from pain to the departed, and amerciful relief from expense to the survivor―they little know, Isay, what the agony of those bereavements is. A silent look ofaffection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away―the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection ofone being when all others have deserted us―is a hold, a stay, acomfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase,or power bestow. The child had sat at his parents’ feet for hourstogether, with his little hands patiently folded in each other, andhis thin wan face raised towards them. They had seen him pineaway, from day to day; and though his brief existence had been ajoyless one, and he was now removed to that peace and rest which,child as he was, he had never known in this world, they were hisparents, and his loss sank deep into their souls.
‘It was plain to those who looked upon the mother’s alteredface, that death must soon close the scene of her adversity andtrial. Her husband’s fellow-prisoners shrank from obtruding on hisgrief and misery, and left to himself alone, the small room he hadpreviously occupied in common with two companions. She sharedit with him; and lingering on without pain, but without hope, herlife ebbed slowly away.
‘She had fainted one evening in her husband’s arms, and hehad borne her to the open window, to revive her with the air,when the light of the moon falling full upon her face, showed him achange upon her features, which made him stagger beneath herweight, like a helpless infant.
‘“Set me down, George,” she said faintly. He did so, and seatinghimself beside her, covered his face with his hands, and burst intotears.
‘“It is very hard to leave you, George,” she said; “but it is God’swill, and you must bear it for my sake. Oh! how I thank Him forhaving taken our boy! He is happy, and in heaven now. Whatwould he have done here, without his mother!”
‘“You shall not die, Mary, you shall not die;” said the husband,starting up. He paced hurriedly to and fro, striking his head withhis clenched fists; then reseating himself beside her, andsupporting her in his arms, added more calmly, “Rouse yourself,my dear girl. Pray, pray do. You will revive yet.”
‘“Never again, George; never again,” said the dying woman.
“Let them lay me by my poor boy now, but promise me, that ifever you leave this dreadful place, and should grow rich, you willhave us removed to some quiet country churchyard, a long, longway off―very far from here―where we can rest in peace. DearGeorge, promise me you will.”
‘“I do, I do,” said the man, throwing himself passionately on hisknees before her. “Speak to me, Mary, another word; one look―but one!”
‘He ceased to speak: for the arm that clasped his neck grew stiffand heavy. A deep sigh escaped from the wasted form before him;the lips moved, and a smile played upon the face; but the lips werepallid, and the smile fade............