The Pickwick Papers
‘My uncle, gentlemen, could say nothing, he was so very much astonished.
The queerest thing of all was that although there was such a crowd of
persons, and although fresh faces were pouring in, every moment, there
was no telling where they came from. They seemed to start up, in some
strange manner, from the ground, or the air, and disappear in the same
way. When a porter had put his luggage in the coach, and received his
fare, he turned round and was gone; and before my uncle had well begun
to wonder what had become of him, half a dozen fresh ones started up,
and staggered along under the weight of parcels, which seemed big enough
to crush them. The passengers were all dressed so oddly too! Large,
broad-skirted laced coats, with great cuffs and no collars; and wigs,
gentlemen--great formal wigs with a tie behind. My uncle could make
nothing of it.
‘“Now, are you going to get in?” said the person who had addressed my
uncle before. He was dressed as a mail guard, with a wig on his head and
most enormous cuffs to his coat, and had a lantern in one hand, and a
huge blunderbuss in the other, which he was going to stow away in his
little arm-chest. “_are _you going to get in, Jack Martin?” said the
guard, holding the lantern to my uncle’s face.
‘“Hollo!” said my uncle, falling back a step or two. “That’s familiar!”
‘“It’s so on the way-bill,” said the guard.
‘“Isn’t there a ‘Mister’ before it?” said my uncle. For he felt,
gentlemen, that for a guard he didn’t know, to call him Jack Martin, was
a liberty which the Post Office wouldn’t have sanctioned if they had
known it.
‘“No, there is not,” rejoined the guard coolly.
‘“Is the fare paid?” inquired my uncle.
‘“Of course it is,” rejoined the guard.
‘“It is, is it?” said my uncle. “Then here goes! Which coach?”
‘“This,” said the guard, pointing to an old-fashioned Edinburgh and
London mail, which had the steps down and the door open. “Stop! Here are
the other passengers. Let them get in first.”
‘As the guard spoke, there all at once appeared, right in front of my
uncle, a young gentleman in a powdered wig, and a sky-blue coat trimmed
with silver, made very full and broad in the skirts, which were lined
with buckram. Tiggin and Welps were in the printed calico and waistcoat
piece line, gentlemen, so my uncle knew all the materials at once. He
wore knee breeches, and a kind of leggings rolled up over his silk
stockings, and shoes with buckles; he had ruffles at his wrists, a
three-cornered hat on his head, and a long taper sword by his side. The
flaps of his waist-coat came half-way down his thighs, and the ends of
his cravat reached to his waist. He stalked gravely to the coach door,
pulled off his hat, and held it above his head at arm’s length, cocking
his little finger in the air at the same time, as some affected people
do, when they take a cup of tea. Then he drew his feet together, and
made a low, grave bow, and then put out his left hand. My uncle was just
going to step forward, and shake it heartily, when he perceived that
these attentions were directed, not towards him, but to a young lady who
just then appeared at the foot of the steps, attired in an old-fashioned
green velvet dress with a long waist and stomacher. She had no bonnet on
her head, gentlemen, which was muffled in a black silk hood, but she
looked round for an instant as she prepared to get into the coach, and
such a beautiful face as she disclosed, my uncle had never seen--not
even in a picture. She got into the coach, holding up her dress with one
hand; and as my uncle always said with a round oath, when he told the
story, he wouldn’t have believed it possible that legs and feet could
have been brought to such a state of perfection unless he had seen them
with his own eyes.
‘But, in this one glimpse of the beautiful face, my uncle saw that the
young lady cast an imploring look upon him, and that she appeared
terrified and distressed. He noticed, too, that the young fellow in the
powdered wig, notwithstanding his show of gallantry, which was all very
fine and grand, clasped her tight by the wrist when she got in, and
followed himself immediately afterwards. An uncommonly ill-looking
fellow, in a close brown wig, and a plum-coloured suit, wearing a very
large sword, and boots up to his hips, belonged to the party; and when
he sat himself down next to the young lady, who shrank into a corner at
his approach, my uncle was confirmed in his original impression that
something dark and mysterious was going forward, or, as he always said
himself, that “there was a screw loose somewhere.” It’s quite surprising
how quickly he made up his mind to help the lady at any peril, if she
needed any help.
‘“Death and lightning!” exclaimed the young gentleman, laying his hand
upon his sword as my uncle entered the coach.
‘“Blood and thunder!” roared the other gentleman. With this, he whipped
his sword out, and made a lunge at my uncle without further ceremony. My
uncle had no weapon about him, but with great dexterity he snatched the
ill-looking gentleman’s three-cornered hat from his head, and, receiving
the point of his sword right through the crown, squeezed the sides
together, and held it tight.
‘“Pink him behind!” cried the ill-looking gentleman to his companion, as
he struggled to regain his sword.
‘“He had better not,” cried my uncle, displaying the heel of one of his
shoes, in a threatening manner. “I’ll kick his brains out, if he has
any--, or fracture his skull if he hasn’t.” Exerting all his strength,
at this moment, my uncle wrenched the ill-looking man’s sword from his
grasp, and flung it clean out of the coach window, upon which the
younger gentleman vociferated, “Death and lightning!” again, and laid
his hand upon the hilt of his sword, in a very fierce manner, but didn’t
draw it. Perhaps, gentlemen, as my uncle used to say with a smile,
perhaps he was afraid of alarming the lady.
‘“Now, gentlemen,” said my uncle, taking his seat deliberately, “I don’t
want to have any death, with or without lightning, in a lady’s presence,
and we have had quite blood and thundering enough for one journey; so,
if you please, we’ll sit in our places like quiet insides. Here, guard,
pick up that gentleman’s carving-knife.”
‘As quickly as my uncle said the words, the guard appeared at the coach
window, with the gentleman’s sword in his hand. He held up his lantern,
and looked earnestly in my uncle’s face, as he handed it in, when, by
its light, my uncle saw, to his great surprise, that an immense crowd of
mail-coach guards swarmed round the window, every one of whom had his
eyes earnestly fixed upon him too. He had never seen such a sea of white
faces, red bodies, and earnest eyes, in all his born days.
‘“This is the strangest sort of thing I ever had anything to do with,”
thought my uncle; “allow me to return you your hat, sir.”
‘The ill-looking gentleman received his three-cornered hat in silence,
looked at the hole in the middle with an inquiring air, and finally
stuck it on the top of his wig with a solemnity the effect of which was
a trifle impaired by his sneezing violently at the moment, and jerking
it off again.
‘“All right!” cried the guard with the lantern, mounting into his little
seat behind. Away they went. My uncle peeped out of the coach window as
they emerged from the yard, and observed that the other mails, with
coachmen, guards, horses, and passengers, complete, were driving round
and round in circles, at a slow trot of about five miles an hour. My
uncle burned with indignation, gentlemen. As a commercial man, he felt
that the mail-bags were not to be trifled with, and he resolved to
memorialise the Post Office on the subject, the very instant he reached
London.
‘At present, however, his thoughts were occupied with the young lady who
sat in the farthest corner of the coach, with her face muffled closely
in her hood; the gentleman with the sky-blue coat sitting opposite to
her; the other man in the plum-coloured suit, by her side; and both
watching her intently. If she so much as rustled the folds of her hood,
he could hear the ill-looking man clap his hand upon his sword, and
could tell by the other’s breathing (it was so dark he couldn’t see his
face) that he was looking as big as if he were going to devour her at a
mouthful. This roused my uncle more and more, and he resolved, come what
might, to see the end of it. He had a great admiration for bright eyes,
and sweet faces, and pretty legs and feet; in short, he was fond of the
whole sex. It runs in our family, gentleman--so am I.
‘Many were the devices which my uncle practised, to attract the lady’s
attention, or at all events, to engage the mysterious gentlemen in
conversation. They were all in vain; the gentlemen wouldn’t talk, and
the lady didn’t dare. He thrust his head out of the coach window at
intervals, and bawled out to know why they didn’t go faster. But he
called till he was hoarse; nobody paid the least attention to him. He
leaned back in the coach, and thought of the beautiful face, and the
feet and legs. This answered better; it whiled away the time, and kept
him from wondering where he was going, and how it was that he found
himself in such an odd situation. Not that this would have worried him
much, anyway--he was a mighty free and easy, roving, devil-may-care sort
of person, was my uncle, gentlemen.
‘All of a sudden the coach stopped. “Hollo!” said my uncle, “what’s in
the wind now?”
‘“Alight here,” said the guard, letting down the steps.
‘“Here!” cried my uncle.
‘“Here,” rejoined the guard.
‘“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” said my uncle.
‘“Very well, then stop where you are,” said the guard.
‘“I will,” said my uncle.
‘“Do,” said the guard.
‘The passengers had regarded this colloquy with great attention, and,
finding that my uncle was determined not to alight, the younger man
squeezed past him, to hand the lady out. At this moment, the ill-looking
man was inspecting the hole in the crown of his three-cornered hat. As
the young lady brushed past, she dropped one of her gloves into my
uncle’s hand, and softly whispered, with her lips so close to his face
that he felt her warm breath on his nose, the single word “Help!”
Gentlemen, my uncle leaped out of the coach at once, with such violence
that it rocked on the springs again.
‘“Oh! you’ve thought better of it, have you?” said the guard, when he
saw my uncle standing on the ground.
‘My uncle looked at the guard for a few seconds, in some doubt whether
it wouldn’t be better to wrench his blunderbuss from him, fire it in the
face of the man with the big sword, knock the rest of the company over
the head with the stock, snatch up the young lady, and go off in the
smoke. On second thoughts, however, he abandoned this plan, as being a
shade too melodramatic in the execution, and followed the two mysterious
men, who, keeping the lady between them, were now entering an old house
in front of which the coach had stopped. They turned into the passage,
and my uncle followed.
‘Of all the ruinous and desolate places my uncle had ever beheld, this
was the most so. It looked as if it had once been a large house of
entertainment; but the roof had fallen in, in many places, and the
stairs were steep, rugged, and broken. There was a huge fireplace in the
room into which they walked, and the chimney was blackened with smoke;
but no warm blaze lighted it up now. The white feathery dust of burned
wood was still strewed over the hearth, but the stove was cold, and all
was dark and gloomy.
‘“Well,” said my uncle, as he looked about him, “a mail travelling at
the rate of six miles and a half an hour, and stopping for an indefinite
time at such a hole as this, is rather an irregular sort of proceeding,