Paul Clifford — Complete
coming in violent contact with the right eye of Duinmie Dunnaker, who at
that exact moment entered the room.
Paul had winced for a moment to avoid the missive; in the next he
stood perfectly upright. His cheeks glowed, his chest swelled; and the
entrance of Dummie Dunuaker, who was thus made the spectator of the
affront he had received, stirred his blood into a deeper anger and a
more bitter self-humiliation. All his former resolutions of departure,
all the hard words, the coarse allusions, the practical insults he had
at any time received, rushed upon him at once. He merely cast one look
at the old woman, whose rage was now half subsided, and turned slowly
and in silence to the door.
There is often something alarming in an occurrence merely because it
is that which we least expect. The astute Mrs. Lobkins, remembering
the hardy temper and fiery passions of Paul, had expected some burst of
rage, some vehement reply; and when she caught with one wandering eye
his parting look, and saw him turn so passively and mutely to the door,
her heart misgave her, she raised herself from her chair, and made
towards him. Unhappily for her chance of reconciliation, she had that
day quaffed more copiously of the bowl than usual; and the signs of
intoxication visible in her uncertain gait, her meaningless eye, her
vacant leer, her ruby cheek, all inspired Paul with feelings which at
the moment converted resentment into something very much like aversion.
He sprang from her grasp to the threshold.
“Where be you going, you imp of the world?” cried the dame. “Get in with
you, and say no more on the matter; be a bob-cull,--drop the bullies,
and you shall have the blunt!”
But Paul heeded not this invitation.
“I will eat the bread of idleness and charity no longer,” said he,
sullenly. “Good-by; and if ever I can pay you what I have cost you, I
will.”
He turned away as he spoke; and the dame, kindling with resentment at
his unseemly return to her proffered kindness, hallooed after him, and
bade that dark-coloured gentleman who keeps the fire-office below go
along with him.
Swelling with anger, pride, shame, and a half-joyous feeling of
emancipated independence, Paul walked on, he knew not whither, with his
head in the air, and his legs marshalling themselves into a military
gait of defiance. He had not proceeded far before he heard his name
uttered behind him; he turned, and saw the rueful face of Dummie
Dunnaker.
Very inoffensively had that respectable person been employed during the
last part of the scene we have described in caressing his afflicted eye,
and muttering philosophical observations on the danger incurred by all
those who are acquainted with ladies of a choleric temperament; when
Mrs. Lobkins, turning round after Paul's departure, and seeing the
pitiful person of that Dummie Dunnaker, whose name she remembered
Paul had mentioned in his opening speech, and whom, therefore, with
an illogical confusion of ideas, she considered a party in the late
dispute, exhausted upon him all that rage which it was necessary for her
comfort that she should unburden somewhere.
She seized the little man by the collar,--the tenderest of all places in
gentlemen similarly circumstanced with regard to the ways of life,--and
giving him a blow, which took effect on his other and hitherto undamaged
eye, cried out,--
“I'll teach you, you blood-sucker [that is, parasite], to sponge upon
those as has expectations! I'll teach you to cozen the heir of the Mug,
you snivelling, whey-faced ghost of a farthing rushlight! What! you'll
lend my Paul three crowns, will you, when you knows as how you told
me you could not pay me a pitiful tizzy? Oh, you're a queer one, I
warrants; but you won't queer Margery Lobkins. Out of my ken, you cur of
the mange!--out of my ken; and if ever I claps my sees on you again, or
if ever I knows as how you makes a flat of my Paul, blow me tight but
I'll weave you a hempen collar,--I'll hang you, you dog, I will. What!
you will answer me, will you? Oh, you viper, budge and begone!”
It was in vain that Dummie protested his innocence. A violent
coup-de-pied broke off all further parlance. He made a clear house of
the Mug; and the landlady thereof, tottering back to her elbow-chair,
sought out another pipe, and, like all imaginative persons when
the world goes wrong with them, consoled herself for the absence of
realities by the creations of smoke.
Meanwhile Dummie Dunnaker, muttering and murmuring bitter fancies,
overtook Paul, and accused that youth of having been the occasion of
the injuries he had just undergone. Paul was not at that moment in the
humour best adapted for the patient bearing of accusations. He answered
Mr. Dunnaker very shortly; and that respectable individual, still
smarting under his bruises, replied with equal tartness. Words grew
high, and at length Paul, desirous of concluding the conference,
clenched his fist, and told the redoubted Dummie that he would “knock
him down.” There is something peculiarly harsh and stunning in those
three hard, wiry, sturdy, stubborn monosyllables. Their very sound
makes you double your fist if you are a hero, or your pace if you are
a peaceable man. They produced an instant effect upon Dummie Dunnaker,
aided as they were by the effect of an athletic and youthful figure,
already fast approaching to the height of six feet, a flushed cheek,
and an eye that bespoke both passion and resolution. The rag-merchant's
voice sank at once, and with the countenance of a wronged Cassius he
whimpered forth,--
“Knock me down? O leetle Paul, vot wicked vhids are those! Vot! Dummie
Dunnaker, as has dandled you on his knee mony's a time and oft! Vy, the
cove's 'art is as 'ard as junk, and as proud as a gardener's dog vith
a nosegay tied to his tail.” This pathetic remonstrance softened Paul's
anger.
“Well, Dummie,” said he, laughing, “I did not mean to hurt you, and
there's an end of it; and I am very sorry for the dame's ill-conduct;
and so I wish you a good-morning.”
“Vy, vere be you trotting to, leetle Paul?” said Dummie, grasping him by
the tail of the coat.
“The deuce a bit I know,” answered our hero; “but I think I shall drop a
call on Long Ned.”
“Avast there!” said Dummie, speaking under his breath; “if so be as you
von't blab, I'll tell you a bit of a secret. I heered as 'ow Long Ned
started for Hampshire this werry morning on a toby [Highway expedition]
consarn!”
“Ha!” said Paul, “then hang me if I know what to do!”
As he uttered these words, a more thorough sense of his destitution (if
he persevered in leaving the Mug) than he had hitherto felt rushed
upon him; for Paul had designed for a while to throw himself on the
hospitality of his Patagonian friend, and now that he found that friend
was absent from London and on so dangerous an expedition, he was a
little puzzled what to do with that treasure of intellect and wisdom
which he carried about upon his legs. Already he had acquired sufficient
penetration (for Charles Trywit and Harry Finish were excellent masters
for initiating a man into the knowledge of the world) to perceive that a
person, however admirable may be his qualities, does not readily find
a welcome without a penny in his pocket. In the neighbourhood of Thames
Court he had, indeed, many acquaintances; but the fineness of his
language, acquired from his education, and the elegance of his air, in
which he attempted to blend in happy association the gallant effrontery
of Mr. Long Ned with the graceful negligence of Mr. Augustus Tomlinson,
had made him many enemies among those acquaintances; and he was not
willing--so great was our hero's pride--to throw himself on the chance
of their welcome, or to publish, as it were, his exiled and crestfallen
state. As for those boon companions who had assisted him in making a
wilderness of his pockets, he had already found that that was the only
species of assistance which they were willing to render him. In a word,
he could not for the life of him conjecture in what quarter he should
find the benefits of bed and board. While he stood with his finger
to his lip, undecided and musing, but fully resolved at least on one
thing,--not to return to the Mug,--little Dummie, who was a good-natured
fellow at the bottom, peered up in his face, and said,--
“Vy, Paul, my kid, you looks down in the chops; cheer up,--care killed a
cat!”
Observing that this appropriate and encouraging fact of natural history
did not lessen the cloud upon Paul's brow, the acute Dummie Dunnaker
proceeded at once to the grand panacea for all evils, in his own
profound estimation.
“Paul, my ben cull,” said he, with a knowing wink, and nudging the young
gentleman in the left side, “vot do you say to a drop o' blue ruin? or,
as you likes to be conish [genteel], I does n't care if I sports you a
glass of port!” While Dunnaker was uttering this invitation, a
sudden reminiscence flashed across Paul: he bethought him at once of
MacGrawler; and he resolved forthwith to repair to the abode of that
illustrious sage, and petition at least for accommodation for the
approaching night. So soon as he had come to this determination, he
shook off the grasp of the amiable Dummie, and refusing with many thanks
his hospitable invitation, requested him to abstract from the dame's
house, and lodge within his own until called for, such articles of
linen and clothing as belonged to Paul and could easily be laid hold of,
during one of the matron's evening siestas, by the shrewd Dunnaker. The
merchant promised that the commission should be speedily executed; and
Paul, shaking hands with him, proceeded to the mansion of MacGrawler.
We must now go back somewhat in the natural course of our narrative, and
observe that among the minor causes which had conspired with the great
one of gambling to bring our excellent Paul to his present situation,
was his intimacy with MacGrawler; for when Paul's increasing years
and roving habits had put an end to the sage's instructions, there was
thereby lopped off from the preceptor's finances the weekly sum of two
shillings and sixpence, as well as the freedom of the dame's cellar and
larder; and as, in the reaction of feeling, and the perverse course of
human affairs, people generally repent the most of those actions once
the most ardently incurred, so poor Mrs. Lobkins, imagining that Paul's
irregularities were entirely owing to the knowledge he had acquired from
MacGrawler's instructions, grievously upbraided herself for her former
folly in seeking for a superior education for her protege; nay, she even
vented upon the sacred head of MacGrawler himself her dissatisfaction
at the results of his instructions. In like manner, when a man who
can spell comes to be hanged, the anti-educationists accuse the
spelling-book of his murder. High words between the admirer of ignorant
innocence and the propagator of intellectual science ensued, which ended
in MacGrawler's final expulsion from the Mug.
There are some young gentlemen of the present day addicted to the
adoption of Lord Byron's poetry, with the alteration of new rhymes, who
are pleased graciously to inform us that they are born to be the ruin of
all those who love them,--an interesting fact, doubtless, but which they
might as well keep to themselves. It would seem by the contents of this
chapter as if the same misfortune were destined to Paul. The exile of
MacGrawler, the insults offered to Dummie Dunnaker,--alike occasioned by
him,--appear to sanction that opinion. Unfortunately, though Paul was a
poet, he was not much of a sentimentalist; and he has never given us the
edifying ravings of his remorse on those subjects. But MacGrawler, like
Dunnaker, was resolved that our hero should perceive the curse of his