COMPRISING A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THECOMPANY AT THE PEACOCK ASSEMBLED;AND A TALE TOLD BY A BAGMANt is pleasant to turn from contemplating the strife and turmoilof political existence, to the peaceful repose of private life.

　　Although in reality no great partisan of either side, Mr.

　　Pickwick was sufficiently fired with Mr. Pott’s enthusiasm, toapply his whole time and attention to the proceedings, of whichthe last chapter affords a description compiled from his ownmemoranda. Nor while he was thus occupied was Mr. Winkle idle,his whole time being devoted to pleasant walks and short countryexcursions with Mrs. Pott, who never failed, when such anopportunity presented it self, to seek some relief from the tediousmonotony she so constantly complained of. The two gentlemenbeing thus completely domesticated in the Editor’s house, Mr.

　　Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass were in a great measure cast upontheir own resources. Taking but little interest in public affairs,they beguiled their time chiefly with such amusements as thePeacock afforded, which were limited to a bagatelle-board in thefirst floor, and a sequestered skittle-ground in the back yard. Inthe science and nicety of both these recreations, which are farmore abstruse than ordinary men suppose, they were graduallyinitiated by Mr. Weller, who possessed a perfect knowledge ofsuch pastimes. Thus, notwithstanding that they were in a greatmeasure deprived of the comfort and advantage of Mr. Pickwick’ssociety, they were still enabled to beguile the time, and to preventits hanging heavily on their hands.

　　It was in the evening, however, that the Peacock presentedattractions which enabled the two friends to resist even theinvitations of the gifted, though prosy, Pott. It was in the eveningthat the ‘commercial room’ was filled with a social circle, whosecharacters and manners it was the delight of Mr. Tupman toobserve; whose sayings and doings it was the habit of Mr.

　　Snodgrass to note down.

　　Most people know what sort of places commercial roomsusually are. That of the Peacock differed in no material respectfrom the generality of such apartments; that is to say, it was alarge, bare-looking room, the furniture of which had no doubtbeen better when it was newer, with a spacious table in the centre,and a variety of smaller dittos in the corners; an extensiveassortment of variously shaped chairs, and an old Turkey carpet,bearing about the same relative proportion to the size of the room,as a lady’s pocket-handkerchief might to the floor of a watch-box.

　　The walls were garnished with one or two large maps; and severalweather-beaten rough greatcoats, with complicated capes, dangledfrom a long row of pegs in one corner. The mantel-shelf wasornamented with a wooden inkstand, containing one stump of apen and half a wafer; a road-book and directory; a county historyminus the cover; and the mortal remains of a trout in a glasscoffin. The atmosphere was redolent of tobacco-smoke, the fumesof which had communicated a rather dingy hue to the whole room,and more especially to the dusty red curtains which shaded thewindows. On the sideboard a variety of miscellaneous articleswere huddled together, the most conspicuous of which were somevery cloudy fish-sauce cruets, a couple of driving-boxes, two orthree whips, and as many travelling shawls, a tray of knives andforks, and the mustard.

　　Here it was that Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass were seatedon the evening after the conclusion of the election, with severalother temporary inmates of the house, smoking and drinking.

　　‘Well, gents,’ said a stout, hale personage of about forty, withonly one eye―a very bright black eye, which twinkled with aroguish expression of fun and good-humour, ‘our noble selves,gents. I always propose that toast to the company, and drink Maryto myself. Eh, Mary!’

　　‘Get along with you, you wretch,’ said the hand-maiden,obviously not ill-pleased with the compliment, however.

　　‘Don’t go away, Mary,’ said the black-eyed man.

　　‘Let me alone, imperence,’ said the young lady.

　　‘Never mind,’ said the one-eyed man, calling after the girl asshe left the room. ‘I’ll step out by and by, Mary. Keep your spiritsup, dear.’ Here he went through the not very difficult process ofwinking upon the company with his solitary eye, to theenthusiastic delight of an elderly personage with a dirty face and aclay pipe.

　　‘Rum creeters is women,’ said the dirty-faced man, after apause.

　　‘Ah! no mistake about that,’ said a very red-faced man, behind acigar.

　　After this little bit of philosophy there was another pause.

　　‘There’s rummer things than women in this world though, mindyou,’ said the man with the black eye, slowly filling a large Dutchpipe, with a most capacious bowl.

　　 ‘Are you married?’ inquired the dirty-faced man.

　　‘Can’t say I am.’

　　‘I thought not.’ Here the dirty-faced man fell into ecstasies ofmirth at his own retort, in which he was joined by a man of blandvoice and placid countenance, who always made it a point to agreewith everybody.

　　‘Women, after all, gentlemen, ’ said the enthusiastic Mr.

　　Snodgrass, ‘are the great props and comforts of our existence.’

　　‘So they are,’ said the placid gentleman.

　　‘When they’re in a good humour,’ interposed the dirty-facedman.

　　‘And that’s very true,’ said the placid one.

　　‘I repudiate that qualification,’ said Mr. Snodgrass, whosethoughts were fast reverting to Emily Wardle. ‘I repudiate it withdisdain―with indignation. Show me the man who says anythingagainst women, as women, and I boldly declare he is not a man.’

　　And Mr. Snodgrass took his cigar from his mouth, and struck thetable violently with his clenched fist.

　　‘That’s good sound argument,’ said the placid man.

　　‘Containing a position which I deny,’ interrupted he of the dirtycountenance.

　　‘And there’s certainly a very great deal of truth in what youobserve too, sir,’ said the placid gentleman.

　　‘Your health, sir,’ said the bagman with the lonely eye,bestowing an approving nod on Mr. Snodgrass.

　　Mr. Snodgrass acknowledged the compliment.

　　‘I always like to hear a good argument,’ continued the bagman,‘a sharp one, like this: it’s very improving; but this little argumentabout women brought to my mind a story I have heard an olduncle of mine tell, the recollection of which, just now, made me saythere were rummer things than women to be met with,sometimes.’

　　‘I should like to hear that same story,’ said the red-faced manwith the cigar.

　　‘Should you?’ was the only reply of the bagman, who continuedto smoke with great vehemence.

　　‘So should I,’ said Mr. Tupman, speaking for the first time. Hewas always anxious to increase his stock of experience.

　　‘Should you? Well then, I’ll tell it. No, I won’t. I know you won’tbelieve it,’ said the man with the roguish eye, making that organlook more roguish than ever. ‘If you say it’s true, of course I shall,’

　　said Mr. Tupman.

　　‘Well, upon that understanding I’ll tell you,’ replied thetraveller. ‘Did you ever hear of the great commercial house ofBilson & Slum? But it doesn’t matter though, whether you did ornot, because they retired from business long since. It’s eightyyears ago, since the circumstance happened to a traveller for thathouse, but he was a particular friend of my uncle’s; and my uncletold the story to me. It’s a queer name; but he used to call itTHE BAGMAN’S STORYand he used to tell it, something in this way.

　　‘One winter’s evening, about five o’clock, just as it began to growdusk, a man in a gig might have been seen urging his tired horsealong the road which leads across Marlborough Downs, in thedirection of Bristol. I say he might have been seen, and I have nodoubt he would have been, if anybody but a blind man hadhappened to pass that way; but the weather was so bad, and thenight so cold and wet, that nothing was out but the water, and sothe traveller jogged along in the middle of the road, lonesome anddreary enough. If any bagman of that day could have caught sightof the little neck-or-nothing sort of gig, with a clay-coloured bodyand red wheels, and the vixenish, ill tempered, fast-going baymare, that looked like a cross between a butcher’s horse and atwopenny post-office pony, he would have known at once, that thistraveller could have been no other than Tom Smart, of the greathouse of Bilson and Slum, Cateaton Street, City. However, asthere was no bagman to look on, nobody knew anything at allabout the matter; and so Tom Smart and his clay-coloured gigwith the red wheels, and the vixenish mare with the fast pace,went on together, keeping the secret among them, and nobodywas a bit the wiser.

　　‘There are many pleasanter places even in this dreary world,than Marlborough Downs when it blows hard; and if you throw inbeside, a gloomy winter’s evening, a miry and sloppy road, and apelting fall of heavy rain, and try the effect, by way of experiment,in your own proper person, you will experience the full force ofthis observation.

　　‘The wind blew―not up the road or down it, though that’s badenough, but sheer across it, sending the rain slanting down likethe lines they used to rule in the copy-books at school, to make theboys slope well. For a moment it would die away, and the travellerwould begin to delude himself into the belief that, exhausted withits previous fury, it had quietly laid itself down to rest, when,whoo! he could hear it growling and whistling in the distance, andon it would come rushing over the hill-tops, and sweeping alongthe plain, gathering sound and strength as it drew nearer, until itdashed with a heavy gust against horse and man, driving the sharprain into their ears, and its cold damp breath into their very bones;and past them it would scour, far, far away, with a stunning roar,as if in ridicule of their weakness, and triumphant in theconsciousness of its own strength and power.

　　‘The bay mare splashed away, through the mud and water, withdrooping ears; now and then tossing her head as if to express herdisgust at this very ungentlemanly behaviour of the elements, butkeeping a good pace notwithstanding, until a gust of wind, morefurious than any that had yet assailed them, caused her to stopsuddenly and plant her four feet firmly against the ground, toprevent her being blown over. It’s a special mercy that she didthis, for if she had been blown over, the vixenish mare was so light,and the gig was so light, and Tom Smart such a light weight intothe bargain, that they must infallibly have all gone rolling over andover together, until they reached the confines of earth, or until thewind fell; and in either case the probability is, that neither thevixenish mare, nor the clay-coloured gig with the red wheels, norTom Smart, would ever have been fit for service again.

　　‘“Well, damn my straps and whiskers,” says Tom Smart (Tomsometimes had an unpleasant knack of swearing)―“damn mystraps and whiskers,” says Tom, “if this ain’t pleasant, blow me!”

　　‘You’ll very likely ask me why, as Tom Smart had been prettywell blown already, he expressed this wish to be submitted to thesame process again. I can’t say―all I know is, that Tom Smart saidso―or at least he always told my uncle he said so, and it’s just thesame thing.

　　“‘Blow me,” says Tom Smart; and the mare neighed as if shewere precisely of the same opinion.

　　“‘Cheer up, old girl,” said Tom, patting the bay mare on theneck with the end of his whip. “It won’t do pushing on, such anight as this; the first house we come to we’ll put up at, so thefaster you go the sooner it’s over. Soho, old girl―gently―gently.”

　　‘Whether the vixenish mare was sufficiently well acquaintedwith the tones of Tom’s voice to comprehend his meaning, orwhether she found it colder standing still than moving on, ofcourse I can’t say. But I can say that Tom had no sooner finishedspeaking, than she pricked up her ears, and started forward at aspeed which made the clay-coloured gig rattle until you wouldhave supposed every one of the red spokes were going to fly out onthe turf of Marlborough Downs; and even Tom, whip as he was,couldn’t stop or check her pace, until she drew up of her ownaccord, before a roadside inn on the right-hand side of the way,about half a quarter of a mile from the end of the Downs.

　　‘Tom cast a hasty glance at the upper part of the house as hethrew the reins to the hostler, and stuck the whip in the box. Itwas a strange old place, built of a kind of shingle, inlaid, as it were,with cross-beams, with gabled-topped windows projectingcompletely over the pathway, and a low door with a dark porch,and a couple of steep steps leading down into the house, instead ofthe modern fashion of half a dozen shallow ones leading up to it. Itwas a comfortable-looking place though, for there was a strong,cheerful light in the bar window, which shed a bright ray acrossthe road, and even lighted up the hedge on the other side; andthere was a red flickering light in the opposite window, onemoment but faintly discernible, and the next gleaming stronglythrough the drawn curtains, which intimated that a rousing firewas blazing within. Marking these little evidences with the eye ofan experienced traveller, Tom dismounted with as much agility ashis half-frozen limbs would permit, and entered the house.

　　‘In less than five minutes’ time, Tom was ensconced in the roomopposite the bar―the very room where he had imagined the fireblazing―before a substantial, matter-of-fact, roaring fire,composed of something short of a bushel of coals, and woodenough to make half a dozen decent gooseberry bushes, piled half-way up the chimney, and roaring and crackling with a sound thatof itself would have warmed the heart of any reasonable man. Thiswas comfortable, but this was not all; for a smartly-dressed girl,with a bright eye and a neat ankle, was laying a very clean whitecloth on the table; and as Tom sat with his slippered feet on thefender, and his back to the open door, he saw a charming prospectof the bar reflected in the glass over the chimney-piece, withdelightful rows of green bottles and gold labels, together with jarsof pickles and preserves, and cheeses and boiled hams, and roundsof beef, arranged on shelves in the most tempting and deliciousarray. Well, this was comfortable too; but even this was not all―forin the bar, seated at tea at the nicest possible little table, drawnclose up before the brightest possible little fire, was a buxomwidow of somewhere about eight-and-forty or thereabouts, with aface as comfortable as the bar, who was evidently the landlady ofthe house, and the supreme ruler over all these agreeablepossessions. There was only one drawback to the beauty of thewhole picture, and that was a tall man―a very tall man―in abrown coat and bright basket buttons, and black whiskers andwavy black hair, who was seated at tea with the widow, and who itrequired no great penetration to discover was in a fair way ofpersuading her to be a widow no longer, but to confer upon himthe privilege of sitting down in that bar, for and during the wholeremainder of the term of his natural life.

　　‘Tom Smart was by no means of an irritable or enviousdisposition, but somehow or other the tall man with the browncoat and the bright basket buttons did rouse what little gall he hadin his composition, and did make him feel extremely indignant,the more especially as he could now and then observe, from hisseat before the glass, certain little affectionate familiarities passingbetween the tall man and the widow, which sufficiently denotedthat the tall man was as high in favour as he was in size. Tom wasfond of hot punch―I may venture to say he was very fond of hotpunch―and after he had seen the vixenish mare well fed and welllittered down, and had eaten every bit of the nice little hot dinnerwhich the widow tossed up for him with her own hands, he justordered a tumbler of it by way of experiment. Now, if there wasone thing in the whole range of domestic art, which the widowcould manufacture better than another, it was this identicalarticle; and the first tumbler was adapted to Tom Smart’s tastewith such peculiar nicety, that he ordered a second with the leastpossible delay. Hot punch is a pleasant thing, gentlemen―anextremely pleasant thing under any circumstances―but in thatsnug old parlour, before the roaring fire, with the wind blowingoutside till every timber in the old house creaked again, TomSmart found it perfectly delightful. He ordered another tumbler,and then another―I am not quite certain whether he didn’t orderanother after that―but the more he drank of the hot punch, themore he thought of the tall man.

　　‘“Confound his impudence!” said Tom to himself, “whatbusiness has he in that snug bar? Such an ugly villain too!” saidTom. “If the widow had any taste, she might surely pick up somebetter fellow than that.” Here Tom’s eye wandered from the glasson the chimney-piece to the glass on the table; and as he felthimself becoming gradually sentimental, he emptied the fourthtumbler of punch and ordered a fifth.

　　‘Tom Smart, gentlemen, had always been very much attachedto the public line. It had been long his ambition to stand in a bar ofhis own, in a green coat, knee-cords, and tops. He had a greatnotion of taking the chair at convivial dinners, and he had oftenthought how well he could preside in a room of his own in thetalking way, and what a capital example he could set to hiscustomers in the drinking department. All these things passedrapidly through Tom’s mind as he sat drinking the hot punch bythe roaring fire, and he felt very justly and properly indignant thatthe tall man should be in a fair way of keeping such an excellenthouse, while he, Tom Smart, was as far off from it as ever. So, afterdeliberating over the two last tumblers, whether he hadn’t aperfect right to pick a quarrel with the tall man for havingcontrived to get into the good graces of the buxom widow, TomSmart at last arrived at the satisfactory conclusion that he was avery ill-used and persecuted individual, and had better go to bed.

　　‘Up a wide and ancient staircase the smart girl preceded Tom,shading the chamber candle with her hand, to protect it from thecurrents of air which in such a rambling old place might havefound plenty of room to disport themselves in, without blowing thecandle out, but which did blow it out nevertheless―thus affordingTom’s enemies an opportunity of asserting that it was he, and notthe wind, who extinguished the candle, and that while hepretended to be blowing it alight again, he was in fact kissing thegirl. Be this as it may, another light was obtained, and Tom wasconducted through a maze of rooms, and a labyrinth of passages,to the apartment which had been prepared for his reception,where the girl bade him good-night and left him alone.

　　‘It was a good large room with big closets, and a bed whichmight have served for a whole boarding-school, to say nothing of acouple of oaken presses that would have held the baggage of asmall army; but what struck Tom’s fancy most was a strange,grim-looking, high backed chair, carved in the most fantasticmanner, with a flowered damask cushion, and the round knobs atthe bottom of the legs carefully tied up in red cloth, as if it had gotthe gout in its toes. Of any other queer chair, Tom would only havethought it was a queer chair, and there would have been an end ofthe matter; but there was something about this particular chair,and yet he couldn’t tell what it was, so odd and so unlike any otherpiece of furniture he had ever seen, that it seemed to fascinatehim. He sat down before the fire, and stared at the old chair for............