The Pickwick Papers
pass wholly unnoticed. Mr. Nupkins was not the man to ask a question of
the kind twice over; and so, with another preparatory cough, he
proceeded, amidst the reverential and admiring silence of the
constables, to pronounce his decision.
He should fine Weller two pounds for the first assault, and three pounds
for the second. He should fine Winkle two pounds, and Snodgrass one
pound, besides requiring them to enter into their own recognisances to
keep the peace towards all his Majesty’s subjects, and especially
towards his liege servant, Daniel Grummer. Pickwick and Tupman he had
already held to bail.
Immediately on the magistrate ceasing to speak, Mr. Pickwick, with a
smile mantling on his again good-humoured countenance, stepped forward,
and said--
‘I beg the magistrate’s pardon, but may I request a few minutes’ private
conversation with him, on a matter of deep importance to himself?’
‘What?’ said the magistrate. Mr. Pickwick repeated his request.
‘This is a most extraordinary request,’ said the magistrate. ‘A private
interview?’
‘A private interview,’ replied Mr. Pickwick firmly; ‘only, as a part of
the information which I wish to communicate is derived from my servant,
I should wish him to be present.’
The magistrate looked at Mr. Jinks; Mr. Jinks looked at the magistrate;
the officers looked at each other in amazement. Mr. Nupkins turned
suddenly pale. Could the man Weller, in a moment of remorse, have
divulged some secret conspiracy for his assassination? It was a dreadful
thought. He was a public man; and he turned paler, as he thought of
Julius Caesar and Mr. Perceval.
The magistrate looked at Mr. Pickwick again, and beckoned Mr. Jinks.
‘What do you think of this request, Mr. Jinks?’ murmured Mr. Nupkins.
Mr. Jinks, who didn’t exactly know what to think of it, and was afraid
he might offend, smiled feebly, after a dubious fashion, and, screwing
up the corners of his mouth, shook his head slowly from side to side.
‘Mr. Jinks,’ said the magistrate gravely, ‘you are an ass.’
At this little expression of opinion, Mr. Jinks smiled again--rather
more feebly than before--and edged himself, by degrees, back into his
own corner.
Mr. Nupkins debated the matter within himself for a few seconds, and
then, rising from his chair, and requesting Mr. Pickwick and Sam to
follow him, led the way into a small room which opened into the justice-
parlour. Desiring Mr. Pickwick to walk to the upper end of the little
apartment, and holding his hand upon the half-closed door, that he might
be able to effect an immediate escape, in case there was the least
tendency to a display of hostilities, Mr. Nupkins expressed his
readiness to hear the communication, whatever it might be.
‘I will come to the point at once, sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘it affects
yourself and your credit materially. I have every reason to believe,
Sir, that you are harbouring in your house a gross impostor!’
‘Two,’ interrupted Sam. ‘Mulberry agin all natur, for tears and
willainny!’
‘Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘if I am to render myself intelligible to this
gentleman, I must beg you to control your feelings.’
‘Wery sorry, Sir,’ replied Mr. Weller; ‘but when I think o’ that ‘ere
Job, I can’t help opening the walve a inch or two.’
‘In one word, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘is my servant right in
suspecting that a certain Captain Fitz-Marshall is in the habit of
visiting here? Because,’ added Mr. Pickwick, as he saw that Mr. Nupkins
was about to offer a very indignant interruption, ‘because if he be, I
know that person to be a--’
‘Hush, hush,’ said Mr. Nupkins, closing the door. ‘Know him to be what,
Sir?’
‘An unprincipled adventurer--a dishonourable character--a man who preys
upon society, and makes easily-deceived people his dupes, Sir; his
absurd, his foolish, his wretched dupes, Sir,’ said the excited Mr.
Pickwick.
‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Nupkins, turning very red, and altering his whole
manner directly. ‘Dear me, Mr.--’
‘Pickvick,’ said Sam.
‘Pickwick,’ said the magistrate, ‘dear me, Mr. Pickwick--pray take a
seat--you cannot mean this? Captain Fitz-Marshall!’
‘Don’t call him a cap’en,’ said Sam, ‘nor Fitz-Marshall neither; he
ain’t neither one nor t’other. He’s a strolling actor, he is, and his
name’s Jingle; and if ever there was a wolf in a mulberry suit, that
‘ere Job Trotter’s him.’
‘It is very true, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick, replying to the magistrate’s
look of amazement; ‘my only business in this town, is to expose the
person of whom we now speak.’
Mr. Pickwick proceeded to pour into the horror-stricken ear of Mr.
Nupkins, an abridged account of all Mr. Jingle’s atrocities. He related
how he had first met him; how he had eloped with Miss Wardle; how he had
cheerfully resigned the lady for a pecuniary consideration; how he had
entrapped himself into a lady’s boarding-school at midnight; and how he
(Mr. Pickwick) now felt it his duty to expose his assumption of his
present name and rank.
As the narrative proceeded, all the warm blood in the body of Mr.
Nupkins tingled up into the very tips of his ears. He had picked up the
captain at a neighbouring race-course. Charmed with his long list of
aristocratic acquaintance, his extensive travel, and his fashionable
demeanour, Mrs. Nupkins and Miss Nupkins had exhibited Captain Fitz-
Marshall, and quoted Captain Fitz-Marshall, and hurled Captain Fitz-
Marshall at the devoted heads of their select circle of acquaintance,
until their bosom friends, Mrs. Porkenham and the Misses Porkenhams, and
Mr. Sidney Porkenham, were ready to burst with jealousy and despair. And
now, to hear, after all, that he was a needy adventurer, a strolling
player, and if not a swindler, something so very like it, that it was
hard to tell the difference! Heavens! what would the Porkenhams say!
What would be the triumph of Mr. Sidney Porkenham when he found that his
addresses had been slighted for such a rival! How should he, Nupkins,
meet the eye of old Porkenham at the next quarter-sessions! And what a
handle would it be for the opposition magisterial party if the story got
abroad!
‘But after all,’ said Mr. Nupkins, brightening for a moment, after a
long pause; ‘after all, this is a mere statement. Captain Fitz-Marshall
is a man of very engaging manners, and, I dare say, has many enemies.
What proof have you of the truth of these representations?’
‘Confront me with him,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘that is all I ask, and all I
require. Confront him with me and my friends here; you will want no
further proof.’
‘Why,’ said Mr. Nupkins, ‘that might be very easily done, for he will be
here to-night, and then there would be no occasion to make the matter
public, just--just--for the young man’s own sake, you know. I--I--should
like to consult Mrs. Nupkins on the propriety of the step, in the first
instance, though. At all events, Mr. Pickwick, we must despatch this
legal business before we can do anything else. Pray step back into the
next room.’
Into the next room they went.
‘Grummer,’ said the magistrate, in an awful voice.
‘Your Wash-up,’ replied Grummer, with the smile of a favourite.
‘Come, come, Sir,’ said the magistrate sternly, ‘don’t let me see any of
this levity here. It is very unbecoming, and I can assure you that you
have very little to smile at. Was the account you gave me just now
strictly true? Now be careful, sir!’
Your Wash-up,’ stammered Grummer, ‘I-’
‘Oh, you are confused, are you?’ said the magistrate. ‘Mr. Jinks, you
observe this confusion?’
‘Certainly, Sir,’ replied Jinks.
‘Now,’ said the magistrate, ‘repeat your statement, Grummer, and again I
warn you to be careful. Mr. Jinks, take his words down.’
The unfortunate Grummer proceeded to re-state his complaint, but, what
between Mr. Jinks’s taking down his words, and the magistrate’s taking
them up, his natural tendency to rambling, and his extreme confusion, he
managed to get involved, in something under three minutes, in such a
mass of entanglement and contradiction, that Mr. Nupkins at once
declared he didn’t believe him. So the fines were remitted, and Mr.
Jinks found a couple of bail in no time. And all these solemn
proceedings having been satisfactorily concluded, Mr. Grummer was
ignominiously ordered out--an awful instance of the instability of human
greatness, and the uncertain tenure of great men’s favour.
Mrs. Nupkins was a majestic female in a pink gauze turban and a light
brown wig. Miss Nupkins possessed all her mamma’s haughtiness without
the turban, and all her ill-nature without the wig; and whenever the
exercise of these two amiable qualities involved mother and daughter in
some unpleasant dilemma, as they not infrequently did, they both
concurred in laying the blame on the shoulders of Mr. Nupkins.
Accordingly, when Mr. Nupkins sought Mrs. Nupkins, and detailed the
communication which had been made by Mr. Pickwick, Mrs. Nupkins suddenly
recollected that she had always expected something of the kind; that she
had always said it would be so; that her advice was never taken; that
she really did not know what Mr. Nupkins supposed she was; and so forth.
‘The idea!’ said Miss Nupkins, forcing a tear of very scanty proportions
into the corner of each eye; ‘the idea of my being made such a fool of!’
‘Ah! you may thank your papa, my dear,’ said Mrs. Nupkins; ‘how I have
implored and begged that man to inquire into the captain’s family
connections; how I have urged and entreated him to take some decisive
step! I am quite certain nobody would believe it--quite.’
‘But, my dear,’ said Mr. Nupkins.
‘Don’t talk to me, you aggravating thing, don’t!’ said Mrs. Nupkins.
‘My love,’ said Mr. Nupkins, ‘you professed yourself very fond of
Captain Fitz-Marshall. You have constantly asked him here, my dear, and
you have lost no opportunity of introducing him elsewhere.’
‘Didn’t I say so, Henrietta?’ cried Mrs. Nupkins, appealing to her
daughter with the air of a much-injured female. ‘Didn’t I say that your
papa would turn round and lay all this at my door? Didn’t I say so?’
Here Mrs. Nupkins sobbed.
‘Oh, pa!’ remonstrated Miss Nupkins. And here she sobbed too.
‘Isn’t it too much, when he has brought all this disgrace and ridicule
upon us, to taunt me with being the cause of it?’ exclaimed Mrs.
Nupkins.
‘How can we ever show ourselves in society!’ said Miss Nupkins.
‘How can we face the Porkenhams?’ cried Mrs. Nupkins.
‘Or the Griggs!’ cried Miss Nupkins.
‘Or the Slummintowkens!’ cried Mrs. Nupkins. ‘But what does your papa
care! What is it to _him_!’ At this dreadful reflection, Mrs. Nupkins
wept mental anguish, and Miss Nupkins followed on the same side.
Mrs. Nupkins’s tears continued to gush forth, with great velocity, until
she had gained a little time to think the matter over; when she decided,
in her own mind, that the best thing to do would be to ask Mr. Pickwick
and his friends to remain until the captain’s arrival, and then to give
Mr. Pickwick the opportunity he sought. If it appeared that he had
spoken truly, the captain could be turned out of the house without
noising the matter abroad, and they could easily account to the
Porkenhams for his disappearance, by saying that he had been appointed,
through the Court influence of his family, to the governor-generalship
of Sierra Leone, of Saugur Point, or any other of those salubrious
climates which enchant Europeans so much, that when they once get there,
they can hardly ever prevail upon themselves to come back again.
When Mrs. Nupkins dried up her tears, Miss Nupkins dried up hers, and
Mr. Nupkins was very glad to settle the matter as Mrs. Nupkins had
proposed. So Mr. Pickwick and his friends, having washed off all marks
of their late encounter, were introduced to the ladies, and soon