Martin Chuzzlewit
‘It seemed to make the wery bottles ring,’ she said. ‘What could I have
been a-dreaming of? That dratted Chuffey, I’ll be bound.’
The supposition was probable enough. At any rate, a pinch of snuff, and
the song of the steaming kettle, quite restored the tone of Mrs Gamp’s
nerves, which were none of the weakest. She brewed her tea; made some
buttered toast; and sat down at the tea-board, with her face to the
fire.
When once again, in a tone more terrible than that which had vibrated in
her slumbering ear, these words were shrieked out:
‘Chuzzlewit! Jonas! No!’
Mrs Gamp dropped the cup she was in the act of raising to her lips, and
turned round with a start that made the little tea-board leap. The cry
had come from the bed.
It was bright morning the next time Mrs Gamp looked out of the window,
and the sun was rising cheerfully. Lighter and lighter grew the sky, and
noisier the streets; and high into the summer air uprose the smoke of
newly kindled fires, until the busy day was broad awake.
Mrs Prig relieved punctually, having passed a good night at her other
patient’s. Mr Westlock came at the same time, but he was not admitted,
the disorder being infectious. The doctor came too. The doctor shook
his head. It was all he could do, under the circumstances, and he did it
well.
‘What sort of a night, nurse?’
‘Restless, sir,’ said Mrs Gamp.
‘Talk much?’
‘Middling, sir,’ said Mrs Gamp.
‘Nothing to the purpose, I suppose?’
‘Oh bless you, no, sir. Only jargon.’
‘Well!’ said the doctor, ‘we must keep him quiet; keep the room cool;
give him his draughts regularly; and see that he’s carefully looked to.
That’s all!’
‘And as long as Mrs Prig and me waits upon him, sir, no fear of that,’
said Mrs Gamp.
‘I suppose,’ observed Mrs Prig, when they had curtseyed the doctor out;
‘there’s nothin’ new?’
‘Nothin’ at all, my dear,’ said Mrs Gamp. ‘He’s rather wearin’ in his
talk from making up a lot of names; elseways you needn’t mind him.’
‘Oh, I shan’t mind him,’ Mrs Prig returned. ‘I have somethin’ else to
think of.’
‘I pays my debts to-night, you know, my dear, and comes afore my time,’
said Mrs Gamp. ‘But, Betsy Prig’--speaking with great feeling, and
laying her hand upon her arm--‘try the cowcumbers, God bless you!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING, AND A PROMISING PROSPECT
The laws of sympathy between beards and birds, and the secret source
of that attraction which frequently impels a shaver of the one to be
a dealer in the other, are questions for the subtle reasoning of
scientific bodies; not the less so, because their investigation would
seem calculated to lead to no particular result. It is enough to know
that the artist who had the honour of entertaining Mrs Gamp as
his first-floor lodger, united the two pursuits of barbering and
bird-fancying; and that it was not an original idea of his, but one in
which he had, dispersed about the by-streets and suburbs of the town, a
host of rivals.
The name of the householder was Paul Sweedlepipe. But he was commonly
called Poll Sweedlepipe; and was not uncommonly believed to have been so
christened, among his friends and neighbours.
With the exception of the staircase, and his lodger’s private apartment,
Poll Sweedlepipe’s house was one great bird’s nest. Gamecocks resided in
the kitchen; pheasants wasted the brightness of their golden plumage on
the garret; bantams roosted in the cellar; owls had possession of the
bedroom; and specimens of all the smaller fry of birds chirrupped and
twittered in the shop. The staircase was sacred to rabbits. There in
hutches of all shapes and kinds, made from old packing-cases, boxes,
drawers, and tea-chests, they increased in a prodigious degree, and
contributed their share towards that complicated whiff which, quite
impartially, and without distinction of persons, saluted every nose that
was put into Sweedlepipe’s easy shaving-shop.
Many noses found their way there, for all that, especially on Sunday
morning, before church-time. Even archbishops shave, or must be shaved,
on a Sunday, and beards WILL grow after twelve o’clock on Saturday
night, though it be upon the chins of base mechanics; who, not being
able to engage their valets by the quarter, hire them by the job, and
pay them--oh, the wickedness of copper coin!--in dirty pence. Poll
Sweedlepipe, the sinner, shaved all comers at a penny each, and cut the
hair of any customer for twopence; and being a lone unmarried man, and
having some connection in the bird line, Poll got on tolerably well.
He was a little elderly man, with a clammy cold right hand, from which
even rabbits and birds could not remove the smell of shaving-soap. Poll
had something of the bird in his nature; not of the hawk or eagle, but
of the sparrow, that builds in chimney-stacks and inclines to human
company. He was not quarrelsome, though, like the sparrow; but peaceful,
like the dove. In his walk he strutted; and, in this respect, he bore
a faint resemblance to the pigeon, as well as in a certain prosiness of
speech, which might, in its monotony, be likened to the cooing of that
bird. He was very inquisitive; and when he stood at his shop-door in the
evening-tide, watching the neighbours, with his head on one side, and
his eye cocked knowingly, there was a dash of the raven in him. Yet
there was no more wickedness in Poll than in a robin. Happily, too, when
any of his ornithological properties were on the verge of going too
far, they were quenched, dissolved, melted down, and neutralised in
the barber; just as his bald head--otherwise, as the head of a shaved
magpie--lost itself in a wig of curly black ringlets, parted on one
side, and cut away almost to the crown, to indicate immense capacity of
intellect.
Poll had a very small, shrill treble voice, which might have led
the wags of Kingsgate Street to insist the more upon his feminine
designation. He had a tender heart, too; for, when he had a good
commission to provide three or four score sparrows for a shooting-match,
he would observe, in a compassionate tone, how singular it was that
sparrows should have been made expressly for such purposes. The
question, whether men were made to shoot them, never entered into Poll’s
philosophy.
Poll wore, in his sporting character, a velveteen coat, a great deal of
blue stocking, ankle boots, a neckerchief of some bright colour, and
a very tall hat. Pursuing his more quiet occupation of barber, he
generally subsided into an apron not over-clean, a flannel jacket, and
corduroy knee-shorts. It was in this latter costume, but with his apron
girded round his waist, as a token of his having shut up shop for
the night, that he closed the door one evening, some weeks after the
occurrences detailed in the last chapter, and stood upon the steps in
Kingsgate Street, listening until the little cracked bell within
should leave off ringing. For until it did--this was Mr Sweedlepipe’s
reflection--the place never seemed quiet enough to be left to itself.
‘It’s the greediest little bell to ring,’ said Poll, ‘that ever was. But
it’s quiet at last.’
He rolled his apron up a little tighter as he said these words, and
hastened down the street. Just as he was turning into Holborn, he ran
against a young gentleman in a livery. This youth was bold, though
small, and with several lively expressions of displeasure, turned upon
him instantly.
‘Now, STOO-PID!’ cried the young gentleman. ‘Can’t you look where you’re
a-going to--eh? Can’t you mind where you’re a-coming to--eh? What do you
think your eyes was made for--eh? Ah! Yes. Oh! Now then!’
The young gentleman pronounced the two last words in a very loud tone
and with frightful emphasis, as though they contained within themselves
the essence of the direst aggravation. But he had scarcely done so, when
his anger yielded to surprise, and he cried, in a milder tone:
‘What! Polly!’
‘Why, it an’t you, sure!’ cried Poll. ‘It can’t be you!’
‘No. It an’t me,’ returned the youth. ‘It’s my son, my oldest one. He’s
a credit to his father, an’t he, Polly?’ With this delicate little
piece of banter, he halted on the pavement, and went round and round
in circles, for the better exhibition of his figure; rather to the
inconvenience of the passengers generally, who were not in an equal
state of spirits with himself.
‘I wouldn’t have believed it,’ said Poll. ‘What! You’ve left your old
place, then? Have you?’
‘Have I!’ returned his young friend, who had by this time stuck his
hands into the pockets of his white cord breeches, and was swaggering
along at the barber’s side. ‘D’ye know a pair of top-boots when you see
‘em, Polly?--look here!’
‘Beau-ti-ful’ cried Mr Sweedlepipe.
‘D’ye know a slap-up sort of button, when you see it?’ said the youth.
‘Don’t look at mine, if you ain’t a judge, because these lions’ heads
was made for men of taste; not snobs.’
‘Beau-ti-ful!’ cried the barber again. ‘A grass-green frock-coat, too,
bound with gold; and a cockade in your hat!’
‘I should hope so,’ replied the youth. ‘Blow the cockade, though; for,
except that it don’t turn round, it’s like the wentilator that used to
be in the kitchen winder at Todgers’s. You ain’t seen the old lady’s
name in the Gazette, have you?’
‘No,’ returned the barber. ‘Is she a bankrupt?’
‘If she ain’t, she will be,’ retorted Bailey. ‘That bis’ness never can
be carried on without ME. Well! How are you?’
‘Oh! I’m pretty well,’ said Poll. ‘Are you living at this end of the
town, or were you coming to see me? Was that the bis’ness that brought
you to Holborn?’
‘I haven’t got no bis’ness in Holborn,’ returned Bailey, with some
displeasure. ‘All my bis’ness lays at the West End. I’ve got the right
sort of governor now. You can’t see his face for his whiskers, and can’t
see his whiskers for the dye upon ‘em. That’s a gentleman ain’t it? You
wouldn’t like a ride in a cab, would you? Why, it wouldn’t be safe to
offer it. You’d faint away, only to see me a-comin’ at a mild trot round
the corner.’
To convey a slight idea of the effect of this approach, Mr Bailey
counterfeited in his own person the action of a high-trotting horse and
threw up his head so high, in backing against a pump, that he shook his
hat off.
‘Why, he’s own uncle to Capricorn,’ said Bailey, ‘and brother to
Cauliflower. He’s been through the winders of two chaney shops since
we’ve had him, and was sold for killin’ his missis. That’s a horse, I
hope?’
‘Ah! you’ll never want to buy any more red polls, now,’ observed Poll,
looking on his young friend with an air of melancholy. ‘You’ll never
want to buy any more red polls now, to hang up over the sink, will you?’
‘I should think not,’ replied Bailey. ‘Reether so. I wouldn’t have
nothin’ to say to any bird below a Peacock; and HE’d be wulgar. Well,
how are you?’
‘Oh! I’m pretty well,’ said Poll. He answered the question again because
Mr Bailey asked it again; Mr Bailey asked it again, because--accompanied
with a straddling action of the white cords, a bend of the knees, and a
striking forth of the top-boots--it was an easy horse-fleshy, turfy sort
of thing to do.
‘Wot are you up to, old feller?’ added Mr Bailey, with the same graceful
rakishness. He was quite the man-about-town of the conversation, while
the easy-shaver was the child.
‘Why, I am going to fetch my lodger home,’ said Paul.
‘A woman!’ cried Mr Bailey, ‘for a twenty-pun’ note!’
The little barber hastened to explain that she was neither a young
woman, nor a handsome woman, but a nurse, who had been acting as a kind
of house-keeper to a gentleman for some weeks past, and left her place
that night, in consequence of being superseded by another and a more
legitimate house-keeper--to wit, the gentleman’s bride.