Selected Short Fiction

by Charles Dickens

  Mentioning Mr Buffle gives an instance of there being good in persons where good is not expected, for it cannot be denied that Mr Buffle’s manners when engaged in his business were not agreeable. To collect is one thing and to look about as if suspicious of the goods being gradually removing in the dead of the night by a back door is another, over taxing you have no control but suspecting is voluntary. Allowances too must ever be made for a gentleman of the Major’s warmth not relishing being spoke to with a pen in the mouth; and while I do not know that it is more irritable to my own feelings to have a low-crowned hat with a broad brim kept on indoors than any other hat still I can appreciate the Major‘s, besides which without bearing malice or vengeance the Major is a man that scores up arrears as his habit always was with Joshua Lirriper. So at last my dear the Major lay in wait for Mr Buffle and it worrited me a good deal. Mr Buffle gives his rap of two sharp knocks one day and the Major bounces to the door. ‘Collector has called for two quarters’ Assessed Taxes’ says Mr Buffle. ‘They are ready for him’ says the Major and brings him in here. But on the way Mr Buffle looks about him in his usual suspicious manner and the Major fires and asks him ‘Do you see a Ghost sir?’ ‘No sir’ says Mr Buffle. ‘Because I have before noticed you’ says the Major ‘apparently looking for a spectre very hard beneath the roof of my respected friend. When you find that supernatural agent, be so good as point him out sir.’ Mr Buffle stares at the Major and then nods at me. ‘Mrs Lirriper sir’ says the Major going off into a perfect steam and introducing me with his hand. ‘Pleasure of knowing her’ says Mr Buffle. ‘A-hum! - Jemmy Jackman sir!’ says the Major introducing himself. ‘Honour of knowing you by sight’ says Mr Buffle. ‘Jemmy Jackman sir’ says the Major wagging his head sideways in a sort of an obstinate fury ‘presents to you his esteemed friend that lady Mrs Emma Lirriper of Eighty-one Norfolk-street Strand London in the County of Middlesex in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Upon which occasion sir,’ says the Major, ‘Jemmy Jackman takes your hat off.’ Mr Buffle looks at his hat where the Major drops it on the floor and he picks it up and puts it on again. ‘Sir’ says the Major very red and looking him full in the face ‘there are two quarters of the Gallantry Taxes due and the Collector has called.’ Upon which if you can believe my words my dear the Major drops Mr Buffle’s hat off again. ‘This - ’ Mr Buffle begins very angry with his pen in his mouth, when the Major steaming more and more says ‘Take your bit out sir! Or by the whole infernal system of Taxation of this country and every individual figure in the National Debt, I’ll get upon your back and ride you like a horse!’ which it’s my belief he would have done and even actually jerking his neat little legs ready for a spring as it was. ‘This’ says Mr Buffle without his pen ‘is an assault and I’ll have the law of you,’ ‘Sir’ replies the Major ‘if you are a man of honour, your Collector of whatever may be due on the Honourable Assessment by applying to Major Jackman at the Parlours Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings, may obtain what he wants in full at any moment.’

  When the Major glared at Mr Buffle with those meaning words my dear I literally gasped for a teaspoonful of sal volatile in a wine-glass of water, and I says ‘Pray let it go no further gentlemen I beg and beseech of you!’ But the Major could be got to do nothing, else but snort long after Mr Buffle was gone, and the effect it had upon my whole mass of blood when on the next day of Mr Buffle’s rounds the Major spruced himself up and went humming a tune up and down the street with one eye almost obliterated by his hat there are not expressions in Johnson’s Dictionary5 to state. But I safely put the street door on the jar and got behind the Major’s blinds with my shawl on and my mind made up the moment I saw danger to rush out screeching till my voice failed me and catch the Major round the neck till my strength went and have all parties bound. I had not been behind the blinds a quarter of an hour when I saw Mr Buffle approaching with his Collecting-books in his hand. The Major likewise himself approached. They met before the Airy railings. The Major takes off his hat at arm’s length and says ‘Mr Buffle I believe?’ Mr Buffle takes off Air hat at arm’s length and says ‘That is my name sir.’ Says the Major ‘Have you any commands for me, Mr Buffie?’ Says Mr Buffle ‘Not any sir.’ Then my dear both of ’em bowed very low and haughty and parted, and whenever Mr Buffle made his rounds in future him and the Major always met and bowed before the Airy railings, putting me much in mind of Hamlet and the other gentleman in mourning before killing one another,6 though I could have wished the other gentleman had done it fairer and even if less polite no poison.

  Mr Buffle’s family were not liked in this neighbourhood, for when you are a householder my dear you’ll find it does not come by nature to like the Assessed, and it was considered besides that a one-horse pheayton ought not to have elevated Mrs Buffle to that heighth especially when purloined from the Taxes which I myself did consider uncharitable. But they were not liked and there was that domestic unhappiness in the family in consequence of their both being very hard with Miss Buffle and one another on account of Miss Buffle’s favouring Mr Buffle’s articled young gentleman, that it was whispered that Miss Buffle would go either into a consumption or a convent she being so very thin and off her appetite and two close-shaved gentlemen with white bands round their necks peeping round the comer whenever she went out in waistcoats resembling black pinafores. So things stood towards Mr Buffle when one night I was woke by a frightful noise and a smell of burning, and going to my bedroom window saw the whole street in a glow. Fortunately we had two sets empty just then and before I could hurry on some clothes I heard the Major hammering at the attics’ doors and calling out ‘Dress yourselves! - Fire! Don’t be frightened! - Fire! Collect your presence of mind! — Fire! All right — Fire!’ most tremenjously. As I opened my bedroom door the Major came tumbling in over himself and me and caught me in his arms. ‘Major’ I says breathless ‘where is it’? ‘I don’t know dearest madam’ says the Major - ‘ Fire! Jemmy Jackman will defend you to the last drop of his blood - Fire! If the dear boy was at home what a treat this would be for him — Fire!’ and altogether very collected and bold except that he couldn’t say a single sentence without shaking me to the very centre with roaring Fire. We ran down to the drawing-room and put our heads out of window, and the Major calls to an unfeeling young monkey scampering by be joyful and ready to split ‘Where is it? — Fire!’ The monkey answers without stopping ‘Oh here’s a lark! Old Buffle’s been setting his house alight to prevent its being found out that he boned7 the Taxes. Hurrah! Fire!’ And then the sparks came flying up and the smoke came pouring down and the crackling of flames and spatting of water and banging of engines and hacking of axes and breaking of glass and knocking at doors and the shouting and crying and hurrying and the heat and altogether gave me a dreadful palpitation. ‘Don’t be frightened dearest madam,’ says the Major, ‘ - Fire! There’s nothing to be alarmed at- Fire! Don’t open the street door till I come back - Fire! You’re quite composed and comfortable ain’t you?- Fire, Fire, Fire!’ It was in vain for me to hold the man and tell him he’d be galloped to death by the engines- pumped to death by his over-exertions - wet-feeted to death by the slop and mess - flattened to death when the roofs fell in - his spirit was up and he went scampering off after the young monkey with all the breath he had and none to spare, and me and the girls huddled together at the parlour windows looking at the dreadful flames above the houses over the way, Mr Buffle’s being round the corner. Presently what should we see but some people running down the street straight to our door, and then the Major directing operations in the busiest way, and then some more people and then - carried in a chair similar to Guy Fawkes - Mr Buffle in a blanket!

  My dear the Major has Mr Buffle brought up our steps and whisked into the parlour and carted out on the sofy, and then he and all the rest of them without so much as a word burst away again full speed, leaving the impression of a vision except for Mr Buffle awful in his blanket with his eyes a rolling. In a twinkling they all burst back again wit
h Mrs Buffle in another blanket, which whisked in and carted out on the sofy they all burst off again and all burst back again with Miss Buffle in another blanket, which again whisked in and carted out they all burst off again and all burst back again with Mr Buffle’s articled young gentleman in another blanket - him a holding round the necks of two men carrying him by the legs, similar to the picter of the disgraceful creetur who has lost the fight (but where the chair I do not know) and his hair having the appearance of newly played upon. When all four of a row, the Major rubs his hands and whispers me with what little hoarseness he can get together, ‘If our dear remarkable boy was only at home what a delightful treat this would be for him!’

  My dear we made them some hot tea and toast and some hot brandy-and-water with a little comfortable nutmeg in it, and at first they were scared and low in their spirits but being fully insured got sociable. And the first use Mr Buffle made of his tongue was to call the Major his Preserver and his best of friends and to say ‘My dearest sir let me make you known to Mrs Buffle’ which also addressed him as her Preserver and her best of friends and was fully cordial as the blanket would admit of. Also Miss Buffle. The articled young gentleman’s head was a little light and he sat a moaning ’ Robina is reduced to cinders, Robina is reduced to cinders!’ Which went more to the heart on account of his having got wrapped in his blanket as if he was looking out of a violin-celler-case, until Mr Buffle says ‘Robina speak to him!’ Miss Buffle says ‘Dear George!’ and but for the Major’s pouring down brandy-and-water on the instant which caused a catching in his throat owing to the nutmeg and a violent fit of coughing it might have proved too much for his strength. When the articled young gentleman got the better of it Mr Buffle leaned up against Mrs Buffle being two bundles, a little while in confidence, and then says with tears in his eyes which the Major noticing wiped, ‘We have not been an united family, let us after this danger become so, take her George.’ The young gentleman could not put his arm out far to do it, but his spoken expressions were very beautiful though of a wandering class. And I do not know that I ever had a much pleasanter meal than the breakfast we took together after we had all dozed, when Miss Buffle made tea very sweetly in quite the Roman style as depicted formerly at Covent Garden Theatre and when the whole family was most agreeable, as they have ever proved since that night when the Major stood at the foot of the Fire-Escape and claimed them as they came down - the young gentleman headforemost, which accounts. And though I do not say that we should be less liable to think ill of one another if strictly limited to blankets, still I do say that we might most of us come to a better understanding if we kept one another less at a distance.

  Why there’s Wozenham’s lower down on the other side of the street. I had a feeling of much soreness several years respecting what I must still ever call Miss Wozenham’s systematic underbidding and the likeness of the house in Bradshaw having far too many windows and a most umbrageous and outrageous Oak which never yet was seen in Norfolk-street nor yet a carriage and four at Wozenham’s door, which it would have been far more to Bradshaw’s credit to have drawn a cab. This frame of mind continued bitter down to the very afternoon in January last when one of my girls, Sally Rairyganoo which I still suspect of Irish extraction though family represented Cambridge, else why abscond with a bricklayer of the Limerick persuasion and be married in patterns not waiting till his black eye was decently got round with all the company fourteen in number and one horse fighting outside on the roof of the vehicle - I repeat my dear my ill-regulated state of mind towards Miss Wozenham continued down to the very afternoon of January last past when Sally Rairyganoo came banging (I can use no milder expression) into my room with a jump which may be Cambridge and may not, and said ‘Hurroo Missis! Miss Wozenham’s sold up!’ My dear when I had it thrown in my face and conscience that the girl Sally had reason to think I could be glad of the ruin of a fellow-creeter, I burst into tears and dropped back in my chair and I says ‘I am ashamed of myself!’

  Well! I tried to settle to my tea but I could not do it what with thinking of Miss Wozenham and her distresses. It was a wretched night and I went up to a front window and looked over at Wozenham’s and as well as I could make it out down the street in the fog it was the dismalest of the dismal and not a light to be seen. So at last I says to myself ‘This will not do’, and I puts on my oldest bonnet and shawl not wishing Miss Wozenham to be reminded of my best at such a time, and lo and behold you I goes over to Wozenham’s and knocks. ‘Miss Wozenham at home?’ I says turning my head when I heard the door go. And then I saw it was Miss Wozenham herself who had opened it and sadly worn she was poor thing and her eyes all swelled and swelled with crying. ‘Miss Wozenham’ I says ‘it is several years since there was a little unpleasantness betwixt us on the subject of my grandson’s cap being down your Airy. I have overlooked it and I hope you have done the same.’ ‘Yes Mrs Lirriper’ she says in surprise ‘I have.’ ‘Then my dear’ I says ‘I should be glad to come in and speak a word to you.’ Upon my calling her my dear Miss Wozenham breaks out a crying most pitiful, and a not unfeeling elderly person that might have been better shaved in a nightcap with a hat over it offering a polite apology for the mumps having worked themselves into his constitution, and also for sending home to his wife on the bellows which was in his hand as a writing-desk, looks out of the back parlour and says ‘The lady wants a word of comfort’ and goes in again. So I was able to say quite natural ‘Wants a word of comfort does she sir? Then please the pigs she shall have it!’ And Miss Wozenham and me we go into the front room with a wretched light that seemed to have been crying too and was sputtering out, and I says ‘Now my dear, tell me all,’ and she wrings her hands and says’ Oh Mrs Lirriper that man is in possession here, and I have not a friend in the world who is able to help me with a shilling.’

  It doesn’t signify a bit what a talkative old body like me said to Miss Wozenham when she said that, and so I’ll tell you instead my dear that I’d have given thirty shillings to have taken her over to tea, only I durstn’t on account of the Major. Not you see but what I knew I could draw the Major out like thread and wind him round my finger on most subjects and perhaps even on that if I was to set myself to it, but him and me had so often belied Miss Wozenham to one another that I was shamefaced, and I knew she had offended his pride and never mine, and likewise I felt timid that that Rairyganoo girl might make things awkward. So I says ‘My dear if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better understand your affairs.’ And we had the tea and the affairs too and after all it was but forty pound, and - There! she’s as industrious and straight a creeter as ever lived and has paid back half of it already, and where’s the use of saying more, particularly when it ain’t the point? For the point is that when she was a kissing my hands and holding them in hers and kissing them again and blessing blessing blessing, I cheered up at last and I says ‘Why what a waddling old goose I have been my dear to take you for something so very different!’ ‘Ah but I too’ says she ‘how have I mistaken you!’ ‘Come for goodness’ sake tell me’ I says ‘what you thought of me?’ Oh’ says she I thought you had no feeling for such a hard hand-to-mouth life as mine, and were rolling in affluence.’ I says shaking my sides (and very glad to do it for I had been a choking quite long enough) ‘Only look at my figure my dear and give me your opinion whether if I was in affluence I should be likely to roll in it!’ That did it! We got as merry as grigs (whatever they are, if you happen to know my dear - I don’t) and I went home to my blessed home as happy and as thankful as could be. But before I make an end of it, think even of my having misunderstood the Major! Yes! For next forenoon the Major came into my little room with his brushed hat in his hand and he begins My dearest madam-and then put his face in his hat as if he had just come into church. As I sat all in a maze he came out of his hat and began again. ‘My esteemed and beloved friend -’ and then went into his hat again. ‘Major,’ I cries out frightened ‘has anything happened to our da
rling boy?’ ‘No, no, no’ says the Major ‘but Miss Wozenham has been here this morning to make her excuses to me, and by the Lord I can’t get over what she told me.’ ‘Hoity toity, Major,’ I says ‘you don’t know yet that I was afraid of you last night and didn’t think half as well of you as I ought! So come out of church Major and forgive me like a dear old friend and I’ll never do so any more.’ And I leave you to judge my dear whether I ever did or will. And how affecting to think of Miss Wozenham out of her small income and her losses doing so much for her poor old father, and keeping a brother that had had the misfortune to soften his brain against the hard mathematics as neat as a new pin in the three back represented to lodgers as a lumber-room and consuming a whole shoulder of mutton whenever provided!

  And now my dear I really am a going to tell you about my Legacy if you’re inclined to favour me with your attention, and I did fully intend to have come straight to it only one thing does so bring up another. It was the month of June and the day before Midsummer Day when my girl Winifred Madgers - she was what is termed a Plymouth Sister8 and the Plymouth Brother that made away with her was quite right, for a tidier young woman for a wife never came into a house and afterwards called with the beautifullest Plymouth Twins - it was the day before Midsummer Day when Winifred Madgers comes and says to me ‘A gentleman from the Consul’s wishes particular to speak to Mrs Lirriper.’ If you’ll believe me my dear the Consols at the bank got into my head, and I says ‘Good gracious I hope he ain’t had any dreadful fall!’ Says Winifred ‘He don’t look as if he had ma’am.’ And I says ‘Show him in.’