The Pickwick Papers
the recollection of which, just now, made me say there were rummer
things than women to be met with, sometimes.’
‘I should like to hear that same story,’ said the red-faced man with the
cigar.
‘Should you?’ was the only reply of the bagman, who continued to smoke
with great vehemence.
‘So should I,’ said Mr. Tupman, speaking for the first time. He was
always anxious to increase his stock of experience.
‘Should _you_? Well then, I’ll tell it. No, I won’t. I know you won’t
believe it,’ said the man with the roguish eye, making that organ look
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 the traveller.
‘Did you ever hear of the great commercial house of Bilson & Slum? But
it doesn’t matter though, whether you did or not, because they retired
from business long since. It’s eighty years ago, since the circumstance
happened to a traveller for that house, but he was a particular friend
of my uncle’s; and my uncle told the story to me. It’s a queer name; but
he used to call it
THE BAGMAN’S STORY
and he used to tell it, something in this way.
‘One winter’s evening, about five o’clock, just as it began to grow
dusk, a man in a gig might have been seen urging his tired horse along
the road which leads across Marlborough Downs, in the direction of
Bristol. I say he might have been seen, and I have no doubt he would
have been, if anybody but a blind man had happened to pass that way; but
the weather was so bad, and the night so cold and wet, that nothing was
out but the water, and so the traveller jogged along in the middle of
the road, lonesome and dreary enough. If any bagman of that day could
have caught sight of the little neck-or-nothing sort of gig, with a
clay-coloured body and red wheels, and the vixenish, ill tempered, fast-
going bay mare, that looked like a cross between a butcher’s horse and a
twopenny post-office pony, he would have known at once, that this
traveller could have been no other than Tom Smart, of the great house of
Bilson and Slum, Cateaton Street, City. However, as there was no bagman
to look on, nobody knew anything at all about the matter; and so Tom
Smart and his clay-coloured gig with the red wheels, and the vixenish
mare with the fast pace, went on together, keeping the secret among
them, and nobody was 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 in beside, a
gloomy winter’s evening, a miry and sloppy road, and a pelting fall of
heavy rain, and try the effect, by way of experiment, in your own proper
person, you will experience the full force of this observation.
‘The wind blew--not up the road or down it, though that’s bad enough,
but sheer across it, sending the rain slanting down like the lines they
used to rule in the copy-books at school, to make the boys slope well.
For a moment it would die away, and the traveller would begin to delude
himself into the belief that, exhausted with its previous fury, it had
quietly laid itself down to rest, when, whoo! he could hear it growling
and whistling in the distance, and on it would come rushing over the
hill-tops, and sweeping along the plain, gathering sound and strength as
it drew nearer, until it dashed with a heavy gust against horse and man,
driving the sharp rain 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
the consciousness of its own strength and power.
‘The bay mare splashed away, through the mud and water, with drooping
ears; now and then tossing her head as if to express her disgust at this
very ungentlemanly behaviour of the elements, but keeping a good pace
notwithstanding, until a gust of wind, more furious than any that had
yet assailed them, caused her to stop suddenly and plant her four feet
firmly against the ground, to prevent her being blown over. It’s a
special mercy that she did this, 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 into the bargain, that they must infallibly have all gone
rolling over and over together, until they reached the confines of
earth, or until the wind fell; and in either case the probability is,
that neither the vixenish mare, nor the clay-coloured gig with the red
wheels, nor Tom Smart, would ever have been fit for service again.
‘“Well, damn my straps and whiskers,” says Tom Smart (Tom sometimes had
an unpleasant knack of swearing)--“damn my straps and whiskers,” says
Tom, “if this ain’t pleasant, blow me!”
‘You’ll very likely ask me why, as Tom Smart had been pretty well blown
already, he expressed this wish to be submitted to the same process
again. I can’t say--all I know is, that Tom Smart said so--or at least
he always told my uncle he said so, and it’s just the same thing.
“‘Blow me,” says Tom Smart; and the mare neighed as if she were
precisely of the same opinion.
“‘Cheer up, old girl,” said Tom, patting the bay mare on the neck with
the end of his whip. “It won’t do pushing on, such a night as this; the
first house we come to we’ll put up at, so the faster you go the sooner
it’s over. Soho, old girl--gently--gently.”
‘Whether the vixenish mare was sufficiently well acquainted with the
tones of Tom’s voice to comprehend his meaning, or whether she found it
colder standing still than moving on, of course I can’t say. But I can
say that Tom had no sooner finished speaking, than she pricked up her
ears, and started forward at a speed which made the clay-coloured gig
rattle until you would have supposed every one of the red spokes were
going to fly out on the turf of Marlborough Downs; and even Tom, whip as
he was, couldn’t stop or check her pace, until she drew up of her own
accord, 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 he threw the
reins to the hostler, and stuck the whip in the box. It was a strange
old place, built of a kind of shingle, inlaid, as it were, with cross-
beams, with gabled-topped windows projecting completely over the
pathway, and a low door with a dark porch, and a couple of steep steps
leading down into the house, instead of the modern fashion of half a
dozen shallow ones leading up to it. It was a comfortable-looking place
though, for there was a strong, cheerful light in the bar window, which
shed a bright ray across the road, and even lighted up the hedge on the
other side; and there was a red flickering light in the opposite window,
one moment but faintly discernible, and the next gleaming strongly
through the drawn curtains, which intimated that a rousing fire was
blazing within. Marking these little evidences with the eye of an
experienced traveller, Tom dismounted with as much agility as his half-
frozen limbs would permit, and entered the house.
‘In less than five minutes’ time, Tom was ensconced in the room opposite
the bar--the very room where he had imagined the fire blazing--before a
substantial, matter-of-fact, roaring fire, composed of something short
of a bushel of coals, and wood enough to make half a dozen decent
gooseberry bushes, piled half-way up the chimney, and roaring and
crackling with a sound that of itself would have warmed the heart of any
reasonable man. This was comfortable, but this was not all; for a
smartly-dressed girl, with a bright eye and a neat ankle, was laying a
very clean white cloth on the table; and as Tom sat with his slippered
feet on the fender, and his back to the open door, he saw a charming
prospect of the bar reflected in the glass over the chimney-piece, with
delightful rows of green bottles and gold labels, together with jars of
pickles and preserves, and cheeses and boiled hams, and rounds of beef,
arranged on shelves in the most tempting and delicious array. Well, this
was comfortable too; but even this was not all--for in the bar, seated
at tea at the nicest possible little table, drawn close up before the
brightest possible little fire, was a buxom widow of somewhere about
eight-and-forty or thereabouts, with a face as comfortable as the bar,
who was evidently the landlady of the house, and the supreme ruler over
all these agreeable possessions. There was only one drawback to the
beauty of the whole picture, and that was a tall man--a very tall man--
in a brown coat and bright basket buttons, and black whiskers and wavy
black hair, who was seated at tea with the widow, and who it required no
great penetration to discover was in a fair way of persuading her to be
a widow no longer, but to confer upon him the privilege of sitting down
in that bar, for and during the whole remainder of the term of his
natural life.
‘Tom Smart was by no means of an irritable or envious disposition, but
somehow or other the tall man with the brown coat and the bright basket
buttons did rouse what little gall he had in his composition, and did
make him feel extremely indignant, the more especially as he could now
and then observe, from his seat before the glass, certain little
affectionate familiarities passing between the tall man and the widow,
which sufficiently denoted that the tall man was as high in favour as he
was in size. Tom was fond of hot punch--I may venture to say he was
_very_ fond of hot punch--and after he had seen the vixenish mare well
fed and well littered down, and had eaten every bit of the nice little
hot dinner which the widow tossed up for him with her own hands, he just
ordered a tumbler of it by way of experiment. Now, if there was one
thing in the whole range of domestic art, which the widow could
manufacture better than another, it was this identical article; and the
first tumbler was adapted to Tom Smart’s taste with such peculiar
nicety, that he ordered a second with the least possible delay. Hot
punch is a pleasant thing, gentlemen--an extremely pleasant thing under
any circumstances--but in that snug old parlour, before the roaring
fire, with the wind blowing outside till every timber in the old house
creaked again, Tom Smart found it perfectly delightful. He ordered
another tumbler, and then another--I am not quite certain whether he
didn’t order another after that--but the more he drank of the hot punch,
the more he thought of the tall man.
‘“Confound his impudence!” said Tom to himself, “what business has he in
that snug bar? Such an ugly villain too!” said Tom. “If the widow had
any taste, she might surely pick up some better fellow than that.” Here
Tom’s eye wandered from the glass on the chimney-piece to the glass on
the table; and as he felt himself becoming gradually sentimental, he
emptied the fourth tumbler of punch and ordered a fifth.
‘Tom Smart, gentlemen, had always been very much attached to the public
line. It had been long his ambition to stand in a bar of his own, in a
green coat, knee-cords, and tops. He had a great notion of taking the
chair at convivial dinners, and he had often thought how well he could
preside in a room of his own in the talking way, and what a capital
example he could set to his customers in the drinking department. All
these things passed rapidly through Tom’s mind as he sat drinking the
hot punch by the roaring fire, and he felt very justly and properly
indignant that the tall man should be in a fair way of keeping such an
excellent house, while he, Tom Smart, was as far off from it as ever.
So, after deliberating over the two last tumblers, whether he hadn’t a
perfect right to pick a quarrel with the tall man for having contrived