Charles Dickens - Sketches by Boz

The knock was answered by a sallow-faced, red-haired, sulky boy, who, after surveying Mr. Gabriel Parsons through the glass, applied a large key to an immense wooden excrescence, which was in reality a lock, but which, taken in conjunction with the iron nails with which the panels were studded, gave the door the appearance of being subject to warts.

“I want to see Mr. Watkins Tottle,” said Parsons.

“It's the gentleman that come in this morning, Jem,” screamed a voice from the top of the kitchen-stairs, which belonged to a dirty woman who had just brought her chin to a level with the passagefloor. “The gentleman's in the coffee-room.”

“Up-stairs, sir,” said the boy, just opening the door wide enough to let Parsons in without squeezing him, and double-locking it the moment he had made his way through the aperture—“First floor—door on the left.”

Mr. Gabriel Parsons thus instructed, ascended the uncarpeted and ill-lighted staircase, and after giving several subdued taps at the before-mentioned “door on the left,” which were rendered inaudible by the hum of voices within the room, and the hissing noise attendant on some frying operations which were carrying on below stairs, turned the handle, and entered the apartment. Being informed that the unfortunate object of his visit had just gone upstairs to write a letter, he had leisure to sit down and observe the scene before him.

The room—which was a small, confined den—was partitioned off into boxes, like the common-room of some inferior eating-house. The dirty floor had evidently been as long a stranger to the scrubbing-brush as to carpet or floor-cloth: and the ceiling was completely blackened by the flare of the oil-lamp by which the room was lighted at night. The gray ashes on the edges of the tables, and the cigar ends which were plentifully scattered about the dusty grate, fully accounted for the intolerable smell of tobacco which pervaded the place; and the empty glasses and half-saturated slices of lemon on the tables, together with the porter pots beneath them, bore testimony to the frequent libations in which the individuals who honoured Mr. Solomon Jacobs by a temporary residence in his house indulged. Over the mantel-shelf was a paltry looking-glass, extending about half the width of the chimney-piece; but by way of counterpoise, the ashes were confined by a rusty fender about twice as long as the hearth.

From this cheerful room itself, the attention of Mr. Gabriel Parsons was naturally directed to its inmates. In one of the boxes two men were playing at cribbage with a very dirty pack of cards, some with blue, some with green, and some with red backs—selections from decayed packs. The cribbage board had been long ago formed on the table by some ingenious visitor with the assistance of a pocket-knife and a two-pronged fork, with which the necessary number of holes had been made in the table at proper distances for the reception of the wooden pegs. In another box a stout, hearty-looking man, of about forty, was eating some dinner which his wife—an equally comfortable-looking personage—had brought him in a basket: and in a third, a genteel-looking young man was talking earnestly, and in a low tone, to a young female, whose face was concealed by a thick veil, but whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons immediately set down in his own mind as the debtor's wife. A young fellow of vulgar manners, dressed in the very extreme of the prevailing fashion, was pacing up and down the room, with a lighted cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, ever and anon puffing forth volumes of smoke, and occasionally applying, with much apparent relish, to a pint pot, the contents of which were “chilling” on the hob.

“Fourpence more, by gum!” exclaimed one of the cribbage-players, lighting a pipe, and addressing his adversary at the close of the game; “one “ud think you'd got luck in a pepper-cruet, and shook it out when you wanted it.”

“Well, that a'n't a bad un,” replied the other, who was a horsedealer from Islington.

“No; I'm blessed if it is,” interposed the jolly-looking fellow, who, having finished his dinner, was drinking out of the same glass as his wife, in truly conjugal harmony, some hot gin-and-water. The faithful partner of his cares had brought a plentiful supply of the anti-temperance fluid in a large flat stone bottle, which looked like a half-gallon jar that had been successfully tapped for the dropsy. “You're a rum chap, you are, Mr. Walker—will you dip your beak into this, sir?”

“Thank'ee, sir,” replied Mr. Walker, leaving his box, and advancing to the other to accept the proffered glass. “Here's your health, sir, and your good “ooman's here. Gentlemen all—yours, and better luck still. Well, Mr. Willis,” continued the facetious prisoner, addressing the young man with the cigar, “you seem rather down to-day—floored, as one may say. What's the matter, sir? Never say die, you know.”

“Oh! I'm all right,” replied the smoker. “I shall be bailed out to-morrow.”

“Shall you, though?” inquired the other. “Damme, I wish I could say the same. I am as regularly over head and ears as the Royal George, and stand about as much chance of being BAILED OUT. Ha! ha! ha!”

“Why,” said the young man, stopping short, and speaking in a very loud key, “look at me. What d'ye think I've stopped here two days for?”

“'Cause you couldn't get out, I suppose,” interrupted Mr. Walker, winking to the company. “Not that you're exactly obliged to stop here, only you can't help it. No compulsion, you know, only you must—eh?”

“A'n't he a rum un?” inquired the delighted individual, who had offered the gin-and-water, of his wife.

“Oh, he just is!” replied the lady, who was quite overcome by these flashes of imagination.

“Why, my case,” frowned the victim, throwing the end of his cigar into the fire, and illustrating his argument by knocking the bottom of the pot on the table, at intervals,—“my case is a very singular one. My father's a man of large property, and I am his son.”

“That's a very strange circumstance!” interrupted the jocose Mr. Walker, EN PASSANT.

“—I am his son, and have received a liberal education. I don't owe no man nothing—not the value of a farthing, but I was induced, you see, to put my name to some bills for a friend—bills to a large amount, I may say a very large amount, for which I didn't receive no consideration. What's the consequence?”

“Why, I suppose the bills went out, and you came in. The acceptances weren't taken up, and you were, eh?” inquired Walker.

“To be sure,” replied the liberally educated young gentleman. “To be sure; and so here I am, locked up for a matter of twelve hundred pound.”

“Why don't you ask your old governor to stump up?” inquired Walker, with a somewhat sceptical air.

“Oh! bless you, he'd never do it,” replied the other, in a tone of expostulation—“Never!”

“Well, it is very odd to—be—sure,” interposed the owner of the flat bottle, mixing another glass, “but I've been in difficulties, as one may say, now for thirty year. I went to pieces when I was in a milk-walk, thirty year ago; arterwards, when I was a fruiterer, and kept a spring wan; and arter that again in the coal and “tatur line—but all that time I never see a youngish chap come into a place of this kind, who wasn't going out again directly, and who hadn't been arrested on bills which he'd given a friend and for which he'd received nothing whatsomever—not a fraction.”

“Oh! it's always the cry,” said Walker. “I can't see the use on it; that's what makes me so wild. Why, I should have a much better opinion of an individual, if he'd say at once in an honourable and gentlemanly manner as he'd done everybody he possibly could.”