Works of Charles Dickens (200+ Works) The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, David Copperfield & more (mobi)

by Charles Dickens

  Great Coram-street was hushed into a state of profound repose: it was nearly two o'clock. A hackney-coach now and then rumbled slowly by; and occasionally some stray lawyer's clerk, on his way home to Somers-town, struck his iron heel on the top of the coal- cellar with a noise resembling the click of a smoke-Jack. A low, monotonous, gushing sound was heard, which added considerably to the romantic dreariness of the scene. It was the water 'coming in' at number eleven.

  'He must be asleep by this time,' said John Evenson to himself, after waiting with exemplary patience for nearly an hour after Mr. Gobler had left the drawing-room. He listened for a few moments; the house was perfectly quiet; he extinguished his rushlight, and opened his bedroom door. The staircase was so dark that it was impossible to see anything.

  'S-s-s!' whispered the mischief-maker, making a noise like the first indication a catherine-wheel gives of the probability of its going off.

  'Hush!' whispered somebody else.

  'Is that you, Mrs. Tibbs?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Where?'

  'Here;' and the misty outline of Mrs. Tibbs appeared at the staircase window, like the ghost of Queen Anne in the tent scene in Richard.

  'This way, Mrs. Tibbs,' whispered the delighted busybody: 'give me your hand--there! Whoever these people are, they are in the store- room now, for I have been looking down from my window, and I could see that they accidentally upset their candlestick, and are now in darkness. You have no shoes on, have you?'

  'No,' said little Mrs. Tibbs, who could hardly speak for trembling.

  'Well; I have taken my boots off, so we can go down, close to the store-room door, and listen over the banisters;' and down-stairs they both crept accordingly, every board creaking like a patent mangle on a Saturday afternoon.

  'It's Wisbottle and somebody, I'll swear,' exclaimed the radical in an energetic whisper, when they had listened for a few moments.

  'Hush--pray let's hear what they say!' exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs, the gratification of whose curiosity was now paramount to every other consideration.

  'Ah! if I could but believe you,' said a female voice coquettishly, 'I'd be bound to settle my missis for life.'

  'What does she say?' inquired Mr. Evenson, who was not quite so well situated as his companion.

  'She says she'll settle her missis's life,' replied Mrs. Tibbs. 'The wretch! they're plotting murder.'

  'I know you want money,' continued the voice, which belonged to Agnes; 'and if you'd secure me the five hundred pound, I warrant she should take fire soon enough.'

  'What's that?' inquired Evenson again. He could just hear enough to want to hear more.

  'I think she says she'll set the house on fire,' replied the affrighted Mrs. Tibbs. 'But thank God I'm insured in the Phoenix!'

  'The moment I have secured your mistress, my dear,' said a man's voice in a strong Irish brogue, 'you may depend on having the money.'

  'Bless my soul, it's Mr. O'Bleary!' exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs, in a parenthesis.

  'The villain!' said the indignant Mr. Evenson.

  'The first thing to be done,' continued the Hibernian, 'is to poison Mr. Gobler's mind.'

  'Oh, certainly,' returned Agnes.

  'What's that?' inquired Evenson again, in an agony of curiosity and a whisper.

  'He says she's to mind and poison Mr. Gobler,' replied Mrs. Tibbs, aghast at this sacrifice of human life.

  'And in regard of Mrs. Tibbs,' continued O'Bleary.--Mrs. Tibbs shuddered.

  'Hush!' exclaimed Agnes, in a tone of the greatest alarm, just as Mrs. Tibbs was on the extreme verge of a fainting fit. 'Hush!'

  'Hush!' exclaimed Evenson, at the same moment to Mrs. Tibbs.

  'There's somebody coming UP-stairs,' said Agnes to O'Bleary.

  'There's somebody coming DOWN-stairs,' whispered Evenson to Mrs. Tibbs.

  'Go into the parlour, sir,' said Agnes to her companion. 'You will get there, before whoever it is, gets to the top of the kitchen stairs.'

  'The drawing-room, Mrs. Tibbs!' whispered the astonished Evenson to his equally astonished companion; and for the drawing-room they both made, plainly hearing the rustling of two persons, one coming down-stairs, and one coming up.

  'What can it be?' exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs. 'It's like a dream. I wouldn't be found in this situation for the world!'

  'Nor I,' returned Evenson, who could never bear a joke at his own expense. 'Hush! here they are at the door.'

  'What fun!' whispered one of the new-comers.--It was Wisbottle.

  'Glorious!' replied his companion, in an equally low tone.--This was Alfred Tomkins. 'Who would have thought it?'

  'I told you so,' said Wisbottle, in a most knowing whisper. 'Lord bless you, he has paid her most extraordinary attention for the last two months. I saw 'em when I was sitting at the piano to- night.'

  'Well, do you know I didn't notice it?' interrupted Tomkins.

  'Not notice it!' continued Wisbottle. 'Bless you; I saw him whispering to her, and she crying; and then I'll swear I heard him say something about to-night when we were all in bed.'

  'They're talking of US!' exclaimed the agonised Mrs. Tibbs, as the painful suspicion, and a sense of their situation, flashed upon her mind.

  'I know it--I know it,' replied Evenson, with a melancholy consciousness that there was no mode of escape.

  'What's to be done? we cannot both stop here!' ejaculated Mrs. Tibbs, in a state of partial derangement.

  'I'll get up the chimney,' replied Evenson, who really meant what he said.

  'You can't,' said Mrs. Tibbs, in despair. 'You can't--it's a register stove.'

  'Hush!' repeated John Evenson.

  'Hush--hush!' cried somebody down-stairs.

  'What a d-d hushing!' said Alfred Tomkins, who began to get rather bewildered.

  'There they are!' exclaimed the sapient Wisbottle, as a rustling noise was heard in the store-room.

  'Hark!' whispered both the young men.

  'Hark!' repeated Mrs. Tibbs and Evenson.

  'Let me alone, sir,' said a female voice in the store-room.

  'Oh, Hagnes!' cried another voice, which clearly belonged to Tibbs, for nobody else ever owned one like it, 'Oh, Hagnes--lovely creature!'

  'Be quiet, sir!' (A bounce.)

  'Hag--'

  'Be quiet, sir--I am ashamed of you. Think of your wife, Mr. Tibbs. Be quiet, sir!'

  'My wife!' exclaimed the valorous Tibbs, who was clearly under the influence of gin-and-water, and a misplaced attachment; 'I ate her! Oh, Hagnes! when I was in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and--'

  'I declare I'll scream. Be quiet, sir, will you?' (Another bounce and a scuffle.)

  'What's that?' exclaimed Tibbs, with a start.

  'What's what?' said Agnes, stopping short.

  'Why that!'

  'Ah! you have done it nicely now, sir,' sobbed the frightened Agnes, as a tapping was heard at Mrs. Tibbs's bedroom door, which would have beaten any dozen woodpeckers hollow.

  'Mrs. Tibbs! Mrs. Tibbs!' called out Mrs. Bloss. 'Mrs. Tibbs, pray get up.' (Here the imitation of a woodpecker was resumed with tenfold violence.)

  'Oh, dear--dear!' exclaimed the wretched partner of the depraved Tibbs. 'She's knocking at my door. We must be discovered! What will they think?'

  'Mrs. Tibbs! Mrs. Tibbs!' screamed the woodpecker again.

  'What's the matter!' shouted Gobler, bursting out of the back drawing-room, like the dragon at Astley's.

  'Oh, Mr. Gobler!' cried Mrs. Bloss, with a proper approximation to hysterics; 'I think the house is on fire, or else there's thieves in it. I have heard the most dreadful noises!'

  'The devil you have!' shouted Gobler again, bouncing back into his den, in happy imitation of the aforesaid dragon, and returning immediately with a lighted candle. 'Why, what's this? Wisbottle! Tomkins! O'Bleary! Agnes! What the deuce! all up and dressed?'

  'Astonishing!' said Mrs. Bloss, who had run down-stairs, and taken Mr. Gobler's arm.

  'Call Mrs. Tibbs directl
y, somebody,' said Gobler, turning into the front drawing-room.--'What! Mrs. Tibbs and Mr. Evenson!!'

  'Mrs. Tibbs and Mr. Evenson!' repeated everybody, as that unhappy pair were discovered: Mrs. Tibbs seated in an arm-chair by the fireplace, and Mr. Evenson standing by her side,

  We must leave the scene that ensued to the reader's imagination. We could tell, how Mrs. Tibbs forthwith fainted away, and how it required the united strength of Mr. Wisbottle and Mr. Alfred Tomkins to hold her in her chair; how Mr. Evenson explained, and how his explanation was evidently disbelieved; how Agnes repelled the accusations of Mrs. Tibbs by proving that she was negotiating with Mr. O'Bleary to influence her mistress's affections in his behalf; and how Mr. Gobler threw a damp counterpane on the hopes of Mr. O'Bleary by avowing that he (Gobler) had already proposed to, and been accepted by, Mrs. Bloss; how Agnes was discharged from that lady's service; how Mr. O'Bleary discharged himself from Mrs. Tibbs's house, without going through the form of previously discharging his bill; and how that disappointed young gentleman rails against England and the English, and vows there is no virtue or fine feeling extant, 'except in Ireland.' We repeat that we COULD tell all this, but we love to exercise our self-denial, and we therefore prefer leaving it to be imagined.

  The lady whom we have hitherto described as Mrs. Bloss, is no more. Mrs. Gobler exists: Mrs. Bloss has left us for ever. In a secluded retreat in Newington Butts, far, far removed from the noisy strife of that great boarding-house, the world, the enviable Gobler and his pleasing wife revel in retirement: happy in their complaints, their table, and their medicine, wafted through life by the grateful prayers of all the purveyors of animal food within three miles round.

  We would willingly stop here, but we have a painful duty imposed upon us, which we must discharge. Mr. and Mrs. Tibbs have separated by mutual consent, Mrs. Tibbs receiving one moiety of 43l. 15s. 10d., which we before stated to be the amount of her husband's annual income, and Mr. Tibbs the other. He is spending the evening of his days in retirement; and he is spending also, annually, that small but honourable independence. He resides among the original settlers at Walworth; and it has been stated, on unquestionable authority, that the conclusion of the volunteer story has been heard in a small tavern in that respectable neighbourhood.

  The unfortunate Mrs. Tibbs has determined to dispose of the whole of her furniture by public auction, and to retire from a residence in which she has suffered so much. Mr. Robins has been applied to, to conduct the sale, and the transcendent abilities of the literary gentlemen connected with his establishment are now devoted to the task of drawing up the preliminary advertisement. It is to contain, among a variety of brilliant matter, seventy-eight words in large capitals, and six original quotations in inverted commas.

  CHAPTER II--MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN

  Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said--of about eight-and-forty as his friends said. He was always exceedingly clean, precise, and tidy; perhaps somewhat priggish, and the most retiring man in the world. He usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrinkle, light inexplicables without a spot, a neat neckerchief with a remarkably neat tie, and boots without a fault; moreover, he always carried a brown silk umbrella with an ivory handle. He was a clerk in Somerset-house, or, as he said himself, he held 'a responsible situation under Government.' He had a good and increasing salary, in addition to some 10,000l. of his own (invested in the funds), and he occupied a first floor in Tavistock-street, Covent-garden, where he had resided for twenty years, having been in the habit of quarrelling with his landlord the whole time: regularly giving notice of his intention to quit on the first day of every quarter, and as regularly countermanding it on the second. There were two classes of created objects which he held in the deepest and most unmingled horror; these were dogs, and children. He was not unamiable, but he could, at any time, have viewed the execution of a dog, or the assassination of an infant, with the liveliest satisfaction. Their habits were at variance with his love of order; and his love of order was as powerful as his love of life. Mr. Augustus Minns had no relations, in or near London, with the exception of his cousin, Mr. Octavius Budden, to whose son, whom he had never seen (for he disliked the father), he had consented to become godfather by proxy. Mr. Budden having realised a moderate fortune by exercising the trade or calling of a corn-chandler, and having a great predilection for the country, had purchased a cottage in the vicinity of Stamford-hill, whither he retired with the wife of his bosom, and his only son, Master Alexander Augustus Budden. One evening, as Mr. and Mrs. B. were admiring their son, discussing his various merits, talking over his education, and disputing whether the classics should be made an essential part thereof, the lady pressed so strongly upon her husband the propriety of cultivating the friendship of Mr. Minns in behalf of their son, that Mr. Budden at last made up his mind, that it should not be his fault if he and his cousin were not in future more intimate.

  'I'll break the ice, my love,' said Mr. Budden, stirring up the sugar at the bottom of his glass of brandy-and-water, and casting a sidelong look at his spouse to see the effect of the announcement of his determination, 'by asking Minns down to dine with us, on Sunday.'

  'Then pray, Budden, write to your cousin at once,' replied Mrs. Budden. 'Who knows, if we could only get him down here, but he might take a fancy to our Alexander, and leave him his property?-- Alick, my dear, take your legs off the rail of the chair!'

  'Very true,' said Mr. Budden, musing, 'very true indeed, my love!' On the following morning, as Mr. Minns was sitting at his breakfast-table, alternately biting his dry toast and casting a look upon the columns of his morning paper, which he always read from the title to the printer's name, he heard a loud knock at the street-door; which was shortly afterwards followed by the entrance of his servant, who put into his hands a particularly small card, on which was engraven in immense letters, 'Mr. Octavius Budden, Amelia Cottage (Mrs. B.'s name was Amelia), Poplar-walk, Stamford- hill.'

  'Budden!' ejaculated Minns, 'what can bring that vulgar man here!-- say I'm asleep--say I'm out, and shall never be home again-- anything to keep him down-stairs.'

  'But please, sir, the gentleman's coming up,' replied the servant, and the fact was made evident, by an appalling creaking of boots on the staircase accompanied by a pattering noise; the cause of which, Minns could not, for the life of him, divine.

  'Hem--show the gentleman in,' said the unfortunate bachelor. Exit servant, and enter Octavius preceded by a large white dog, dressed in a suit of fleecy hosiery, with pink eyes, large ears, and no perceptible tail.

  The cause of the pattering on the stairs was but too plain. Mr. Augustus Minns staggered beneath the shock of the dog's appearance.

  'My dear fellow, how are you?' said Budden, as he entered.

  He always spoke at the top of his voice, and always said the same thing half-a-dozen times.

  'How are you, my hearty?'

  'How do you do, Mr. Budden?--pray take a chair!' politely stammered the discomfited Minns.

  'Thank you--thank you--well--how are you, eh?'

  'Uncommonly well, thank you,' said Minns, casting a diabolical look at the dog, who, with his hind legs on the floor, and his fore paws resting on the table, was dragging a bit of bread and butter out of a plate, preparatory to devouring it, with the buttered side next the carpet.

  'Ah, you rogue!' said Budden to his dog; 'you see, Minns, he's like me, always at home, eh, my boy!--Egad, I'm precious hot and hungry! I've walked all the way from Stamford-hill this morning.'

  'Have you breakfasted?' inquired Minns.

  'Oh, no!--came to breakfast with you; so ring the bell, my dear fellow, will you? and let's have another cup and saucer, and the cold ham.--Make myself at home, you see!' continued Budden, dusting his boots with a table-napkin. 'Ha!--ha!--ha! -'pon my life, I'm hungry.'

  Minns rang the bell, and tried to smile.

  'I decidedly never was so hot in my life,' continued Octavius, wiping his forehead; 'well, but how
are you, Minns? 'Pon my soul, you wear capitally!'

  'D'ye think so?' said Minns; and he tried another smile.

  ''Pon my life, I do!'

  'Mrs. B. and--what's his name--quite well?'

  'Alick--my son, you mean; never better--never better. But at such a place as we've got at Poplar-walk, you know, he couldn't be ill if he tried. When I first saw it, by Jove! it looked so knowing, with the front garden, and the green railings and the brass knocker, and all that--I really thought it was a cut above me.'

  'Don't you think you'd like the ham better,' interrupted Minns, 'if you cut it the other way?' He saw, with feelings which it is impossible to describe, that his visitor was cutting or rather maiming the ham, in utter violation of all established rules.

  'No, thank ye,' returned Budden, with the most barbarous indifference to crime, 'I prefer it this way, it eats short. But I say, Minns, when will you come down and see us? You will be delighted with the place; I know you will. Amelia and I were talking about you the other night, and Amelia said--another lump of sugar, please; thank ye--she said, don't you think you could contrive, my dear, to say to Mr. Minns, in a friendly way--come down, sir--damn the dog! he's spoiling your curtains, Minns--ha!-- ha!--ha!' Minns leaped from his seat as though he had received the discharge from a galvanic battery.

  'Come out, sir!--go out, hoo!' cried poor Augustus, keeping, nevertheless, at a very respectful distance from the dog; having read of a case of hydrophobia in the paper of that morning. By dint of great exertion, much shouting, and a marvellous deal of poking under the tables with a stick and umbrella, the dog was at last dislodged, and placed on the landing outside the door, where he immediately commenced a most appalling howling; at the same time vehemently scratching the paint off the two nicely-varnished bottom panels, until they resembled the interior of a backgammon-board.

  'A good dog for the country that!' coolly observed Budden to the distracted Minns, 'but he's not much used to confinement. But now, Minns, when will you come down? I'll take no denial, positively. Let's see, to-day's Thursday.--Will you come on Sunday? We dine at five, don't say no--do.'