Чарльз Диккенс
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Volume 1 of 2

At first the evolutions of the stout man had escaped Mr. Weller’s observation, but by degrees, as he saw Mr. Pickwick’s eyes every now and then turning towards him, he began to gaze in the same direction, at the same time shading his eyes with his hand, as if he partially recognised the object before him, and wished to make quite sure of its identity. His doubts were speedily dispelled, however; for the stout man having blown a thick cloud from his pipe, a hoarse voice, like some strange effort of ventriloquism, emerged from beneath the capacious shawls which muffled his throat and chest, and slowly uttered these sounds – “Wy, Sammy!”

“Who’s that, Sam?” inquired Mr. Pickwick.

“Why, I wouldn’t ha’ believed it, sir,” replied Mr. Weller with astonished eyes. “It’s the old ’un.”

“Old one,” said Mr. Pickwick. “What old one?”

“My father, sir,” replied Mr. Weller. “How are you, my ancient?” With which beautiful ebullition of filial affection, Mr. Weller made room on the seat beside him, for the stout man, who advanced pipe in mouth and pot in hand, to greet him.

“Wy, Sammy,” said the father, “I ha’n’t seen you, for two years and better.”

“Nor more you have, old codger,” replied the son. “How’s mother-in-law?”

“Wy, I’ll tell you what, Sammy,” said Mr. Weller senior, with much solemnity in his manner; “there never was a nicer woman as a widder, than that ’ere second wentur o’ mine – a sweet creetur she was, Sammy; all I can say on her now, is, that as she was such an uncommon pleasant widder, it’s a great pity she ever changed her con-dition. She don’t act as a vife, Sammy.”

“Don’t she though?” inquired Mr. Weller junior.

The elder Mr. Weller shook his head, as he replied with a sigh, “I’ve done it once too often, Sammy; I’ve done it once too often. Take example by your father, my boy, and be wery careful o’ widders all your life, specially if they’ve kept a public-house, Sammy.” Having delivered this parental advice with great pathos, Mr. Weller senior re-filled his pipe from a tin box he carried in his pocket, and, lighting his fresh pipe from the ashes of the old one, commenced smoking at a great rate.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” he said, renewing the subject, and addressing Mr. Pickwick, after a considerable pause, “nothin’ personal, I hope, sir; I hope you ha’n’t got a widder, sir.”

“Not I,” replied Mr. Pickwick, laughing; and while Mr. Pickwick laughed, Sam Weller informed his parent in a whisper, of the relation in which he stood towards that gentleman.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Weller senior, taking off his hat, “I hope you’ve no fault to find vith Sammy, sir?”

“None whatever,” said Mr. Pickwick.

“Wery glad to hear it, sir,” replied the old man; “I took a good deal o’ pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was wery young, and shift for his-self. It’s the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.”

“Rather a dangerous process, I should imagine,” said Mr. Pickwick, with a smile.

“And not a very sure one, either,” added Mr. Weller; “I got reg’larly done the other day.”

“No!” said his father.

“I did,” said the son; and he proceeded to relate, in as few words as possible, how he had fallen a ready dupe to the stratagems of Job Trotter.

Mr. Weller senior listened to the tale with the most profound attention, and at its termination said:

“Worn’t one of these chaps slim and tall, with long hair, and the gift o’ the gab wery gallopin’?”

Mr. Pickwick did not quite understand the last item of description, but, comprehending the first, said “Yes” at a venture.

“T’other’s a black-haired chap in mulberry livery, with a wery large head?”

“Yes, yes, he is,” said Mr. Pickwick and Sam, with great earnestness.

“Then I know where they are, and that’s all about it,” said Mr. Weller; “they’re at Ipswich, safe enough, them two.”

“No!” said Mr. Pickwick.

“Fact,” said Mr. Weller, “and I’ll tell you how I know it. I work an Ipswich coach now and then for a friend o’ mine. I worked down the wery day arter the night as you caught the rheumatiz, and at the Black Boy at Chelmsford – the very place they’d come to – I took ’em up, right through to Ipswich, where the man servant – him in the mulberries – told me they was a goin’ to put up for a long time.”

“I’ll follow him,” said Mr. Pickwick; “we may as well see Ipswich as any other place. I’ll follow him.”

“You’re quite certain it was them, governor?” inquired Mr. Weller junior.

“Quite, Sammy, quite,” replied his father, “for their appearance is wery sing’ler; besides that ’ere, I wondered to see the gen’l’m’n so familiar with his servant; and, more than that, as they sat in front, right behind the box, I heerd ’em laughing, and saying how they’d done old Fireworks.”

“Old who?” said Mr. Pickwick.

“Old Fireworks, sir; by which, I’ve no doubt, they meant you, sir.”

There is nothing positively vile or atrocious in the appellation of “old Fireworks,” but still it is by no means a respectful or flattering designation. The recollection of all the wrongs he had sustained at Jingle’s hands had crowded on Mr. Pickwick’s mind, the moment Mr. Weller began to speak: it wanted but a feather to turn the scale, and “old Fireworks” did it.

“I’ll follow him,” said Mr. Pickwick, with an emphatic blow on the table.

“I shall work down to Ipswich the day arter to-morrow, sir,” said Mr. Weller the elder, “from the Bull in Whitechapel; and if you really mean to go, you’d better go with me.”

“So we had,” said Mr. Pickwick; “very true; I can write to Bury, and tell them to meet me at Ipswich. We will go with you. But don’t hurry away, Mr. Weller; won’t you take anything?”

“You’re wery good, sir,” replied Mr. Weller, stopping short; “perhaps a small glass of brandy to drink your health, and success to Sammy, sir, wouldn’t be amiss.”

“Certainly not,” replied Mr. Pickwick. “A glass of brandy here!” The brandy was brought: and Mr. Weller, after pulling his hair to Mr. Pickwick, and nodding to Sam, jerked it down his capacious throat as if it had been a small thimbleful.

“Well done, father!” said Sam; “take care, old fellow, or you’ll have a touch of your old complaint, the gout.”

“I’ve found a sov’rin cure for that, Sammy,” said Mr. Weller, setting down the glass.

“A sovereign cure for the gout,” said Mr. Pickwick, hastily producing his note-book – “what is it?”

“The gout, sir,” replied Mr. Weller, “the gout is a complaint as arises from too much ease and comfort. If ever you’re attacked with the gout, sir, jist you marry a widder as has got a good loud woice, with a decent notion of usin’ it, and you’ll never have the gout again. It’s a capital prescription, sir. I takes it reg’lar, and I can warrant it to drive away any illness as is caused by too much jollity.” Having imparted this valuable secret, Mr. Weller drained his glass once more, produced a laboured wink, sighed deeply, and slowly retired.

“Well, what do you think of what your father says, Sam?” inquired Mr. Pickwick, with a smile.

“Think, sir!” replied Mr. Weller; “why, I think he’s the wictim o’ connubiality, as Blue Beard’s domestic chaplain said, with a tear of pity, ven he buried him.”

There was no replying to this very apposite conclusion, and, therefore, Mr. Pickwick, after settling the reckoning, resumed his walk to Gray’s Inn. By the time he reached its secluded groves, however, eight o’clock had struck, and the unbroken stream of gentlemen in muddy high-lows, soiled white hats, and rusty apparel, who were pouring towards the different avenues of egress, warned him that the majority of the offices had closed for that day.

After climbing two pairs of steep and dirty stairs, he found his anticipations were realised. Mr. Perker’s “outer door” was closed; and the dead silence which followed Mr. Weller’s repeated kicks thereat, announced that the officials had retired from business for the night.

“This is pleasant, Sam,” said Mr. Pickwick; “I shouldn’t lose an hour in seeing him; I shall not be able to get one wink of sleep to-night, I know, unless I have the satisfaction of reflecting that I have confided this matter to a professional man.”

“Here’s an old ’ooman comin’ up-stairs, sir,” replied Mr. Weller; “p’raps she knows where we can find somebody. Hallo, old lady, vere’s Mr. Perker’s people?”

“Mr. Perker’s people,” said a thin, miserable-looking old woman, stopping to recover breath after the ascent of the staircase, “Mr. Perker’s people’s gone, and I’m a goin’ to do the office out.”

“Are you Mr. Perker’s servant?” inquired Mr. Pickwick.

“I am Mr. Perker’s laundress,” replied the old woman.

“Ah,” said Mr. Pickwick, half aside to Sam, “it’s a curious circumstance, Sam, that they call the old women in these inns, laundresses. I wonder what that’s for?”

“‘Cos they has a mortal awersion to washing anythin’, I suppose, sir,” replied Mr. Weller.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Mr. Pickwick, looking at the old woman, whose appearance, as well as the condition of the office, which she had by this time opened, indicated a rooted antipathy to the application of soap and water; “do you know where I can find Mr. Perker, my good woman?”

“No, I don’t,” replied the old woman, gruffly; “he’s out o’ town now.”

“That’s unfortunate,” said Mr. Pickwick; “where’s his clerk? Do you know?”

“Yes, I know where he is, but he won’t thank me for telling you,” replied the laundress.

“I have very particular business with him,” said Mr. Pickwick.

“Won’t it do in the morning?” said the woman.

“Not so well,” replied Mr. Pickwick.

“Well,” said the old woman, “if it was anything very particular, I was to say where he was, so I suppose there’s no harm in telling. If you just go to the Magpie and Stump, and ask at the bar for Mr. Lowten, they’ll show you in to him, and he’s Mr. Perker’s clerk.”

With this direction, and having been furthermore informed that the hostelry in question was situated in a court, happy in the double advantage of being in the vicinity of Clare Market, and closely approximating to the back of New Inn, Mr. Pickwick and Sam descended the rickety staircase in safety, and issued forth in quest of the Magpie and Stump.

This favoured tavern, sacred to the evening orgies of Mr. Lowten and his companions, was what ordinary people would designate a public-house. That the landlord was a man of a money-making turn, was sufficiently testified by the fact of a small bulkhead beneath the tap-room window, in size and shape not unlike a sedan-chair, being underlet to a mender of shoes: and that he was a being of a philanthropic mind, was evident from the protection he afforded to a pie-man, who vended his delicacies without fear of interruption on the very door-step. In the lower windows, which were decorated with curtains of a saffron hue, dangled two or three printed cards, bearing reference to Devonshire cider and Dantzig spruce, while a large black board, announcing in white letters to an enlightened public that there were 500,000 barrels of double stout in the cellars of the establishment, left the mind in a state of not unpleasing doubt and uncertainty as to the precise direction in the bowels of the earth, in which this mighty cavern might be supposed to extend. When we add, that the weather-beaten signboard bore the half-obliterated semblance of a magpie intently eyeing a crooked streak of brown paint, which the neighbours had been taught from infancy to consider as the “stump,” we have said all that need be said of the exterior of the edifice.

On Mr. Pickwick’s presenting himself at the bar, an elderly female emerged from behind a screen therein, and presented herself before him.

“Is Mr. Lowten here, ma’am?” inquired Mr. Pickwick.

“Yes, he is, sir,” replied the landlady. “Here, Charley, show the gentleman in to Mr. Lowten.”

“The gen’lm’n can’t go in just now,” said a shambling pot-boy, with a red head, “’cos Mr. Lowten’s a singin’ a comic song, and he’ll put him out. He’ll be done d’rectly, sir.”

The red-headed pot-boy had scarcely finished speaking, when a most unanimous hammering of tables, and jingling of glasses announced that the song had that instant terminated; and Mr. Pickwick, after desiring Sam to solace himself in the tap, suffered himself to be conducted into the presence of Mr. Lowten.

At the announcement of “gentleman to speak to you, sir,” a puffy-faced young man, who filled the chair at the head of the table, looked with some surprise in the direction from whence the voice proceeded: and the surprise seemed to be by no means diminished, when his eyes rested on an individual whom he had never seen before.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Pickwick, “and I am very sorry to disturb the other gentlemen, too, but I come on very particular business; and if you will suffer me to detain you at this end of the room for five minutes, I shall be very much obliged to you.”

The puffy-faced young man rose, and drawing a chair close to Mr. Pickwick in an obscure corner of the room, listened attentively to his tale of woe.

“Ah,” he said, when Mr. Pickwick had concluded, “Dodson and Fogg – sharp practice theirs – capital men of business, Dodson and Fogg, sir.”

Mr. Pickwick admitted the sharp practice of Dodson and Fogg, and Lowten resumed.

“Perker ain’t in town, and he won’t be, neither, before the end of next week; but if you want the action defended, and will leave the copy with me, I can do all that’s needful till he comes back.”

“That’s exactly what I came here for,” said Mr. Pickwick, handing over the document. “If anything particular occurs, you can write to me at the post-office, Ipswich.”

“That’s all right,” replied Mr. Perker’s clerk; and then seeing Mr. Pickwick’s eye wandering curiously towards the table, he added, “Will you join us, for half an hour or so? We are capital company here to-night. There’s Samkin and Green’s managing-clerk, and Smithers and Price’s chancery, and Pimkin and Thomas’s out o’ door – sings a capital song, he does – and Jack Bamber, and ever so many more. You’re come out of the country, I suppose. Would you like to join us?”

Mr. Pickwick could not resist so tempting an opportunity of studying human nature. He suffered himself to be led to the table, where, after having been introduced to the company in due form, he was accommodated with a seat near the chairman, and called for a glass of his favourite beverage.

A profound silence, quite contrary to Mr. Pickwick’s expectation, succeeded.

“You don’t find this sort of thing disagreeable, I hope, sir?” said his right-hand neighbour, a gentleman in a checked shirt, and Mosaic studs, with a cigar in his mouth.

“Not in the least,” replied Mr. Pickwick, “I like it very much, although I am no smoker myself.”

“I should be very sorry to say I wasn’t,” interposed another gentleman on the opposite side of the table. “It’s board and lodging to me, is smoke.”

Mr. Pickwick glanced at the speaker, and thought that if it were washing too, it would be all the better.

Here there was another pause. Mr. Pickwick was a stranger, and his coming had evidently cast a damp upon the party.

“Mr. Grundy’s going to oblige the company with a song,” said the chairman.

“No he ain’t,” said Mr. Grundy.

“Why not?” said the chairman.

“Because he can’t,” said Mr. Grundy.

“You had better say he won’t,” replied the chairman.

“Well, then, he won’t,” retorted Mr. Grundy. Mr. Grundy’s positive refusal to gratify the company occasioned another silence.

“Won’t anybody enliven us?” said the chairman, despondingly.

“Why don’t you enliven us yourself, Mr. Chairman?” said a young man with a whisker, a squint, and an open shirt-collar (dirty), from the bottom of the table.

“Hear! hear!” said the smoking gentleman in the Mosaic jewellery.

“Because I only know one song, and I have sung it already, and it’s a fine of ‘glasses round’ to sing the same song twice in a night,” replied the chairman.

This was an unanswerable reply, and silence prevailed again.

“I have been to-night, gentlemen,” said Mr. Pickwick, hoping to start a subject which all the company could take a part in discussing, “I have been to-night in a place which you all know very well, doubtless, but which I have not been in before for some years, and know very little of; I mean Gray’s Inn, gentlemen. Curious little nooks in a great place, like London, these old Inns are.”

“By Jove,” said the chairman, whispering across the table to Mr. Pickwick, “you have hit upon something that one of us, at least, would talk upon for ever. You’ll draw old Jack Bamber out; he was never heard to talk about anything else but the Inns, and he has lived alone in them till he’s half crazy.”

The individual to whom Lowten alluded was a little yellow high-shouldered man, whose countenance, from his habit of stooping forward when silent, Mr. Pickwick had not observed before. He wondered though, when the old man raised his shrivelled face, and bent his grey eye upon him, with a keen inquiring look, that such remarkable features could have escaped his attention for a moment. There was a fixed grim smile perpetually on his countenance; he leant his chin on a long skinny hand, with nails of extraordinary length; and as he inclined his head to one side, and looked keenly out from beneath his ragged grey eyebrows, there was a strange, wild slyness in his leer, quite repulsive to behold.

This was the figure that now started forward, and burst into an animated torrent of words. As this chapter has been a long one, however, and as the old man was a remarkable personage, it will be more respectful to him, and more convenient to us, to let him speak for himself in a fresh one.

CHAPTER XXI
In which the Old Man launches forth into his Favourite Theme, and relates a Story about a Queer Client

“Aha!” said the old man, a brief description of whose manner and appearance concluded the last chapter, “Aha! who was talking about the Inns?”

“I was, sir,” replied Mr. Pickwick; “I was observing what singular old places they are.”

“You!” said the old man, contemptuously, “What do you know of the time when young men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms, and read and read, hour after hour, and night after night, till their reason wandered beneath their midnight studies; till their mental powers were exhausted; till morning’s light brought no freshness or health to them; and they sank beneath the unnatural devotion of their youthful energies to their dry old books? Coming down to a later time, and a very different day, what do you know of the gradual sinking beneath consumption, or the quick wasting of fever – the grand results of ‘life’ and dissipation – which men have undergone in these same rooms? How many vain pleaders for mercy, do you think, have turned away heart-sick from the lawyer’s office, to find a resting-place in the Thames, or a refuge in the gaol? They are no ordinary houses, those. There is not a panel in the old wainscoting, but what, if it were endowed with the powers of speech and memory, could start from the wall, and tell its tale of horror – the romance of life, sir, the romance of life! Commonplace as they may seem now, I tell you they are strange old places, and I would rather hear many a legend with a terrific sounding name, than the true history of one old set of chambers.”

There was something so odd in the old man’s sudden energy, and the subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick was prepared with no observation in reply; and the old man, checking his impetuosity, and resuming the leer, which had disappeared during his previous excitement, said:

“Look at them in another light: their most commonplace and least romantic. What fine places of slow torture they are! Think of the needy man who has spent his all, beggared himself, and pinched his friends, to enter the profession, which will never yield him a morsel of bread. The waiting – the hope – the disappointment – the fear – the misery – the poverty – the blight on his hopes, and end to his career – the suicide perhaps, or the shabby, slipshod drunkard. Am I not right about them?” And the old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in delight at having found another point of view in which to place his favourite subject.

Mr. Pickwick eyed the old man with great curiosity, and the remainder of the company smiled, and looked on in silence.

“Talk of your German universities,” said the little old man. “Pooh, pooh! there’s romance enough at home without going half a mile for it; only people never think of it.”

“I never thought of the romance of this particular subject before, certainly,” said Mr. Pickwick, laughing.

“To be sure you didn’t,” said the little old man, “of course not. As a friend of mine used to say to me, ‘What is there in chambers, in particular?’ ‘Queer old places,’ said I. ‘Not at all,’ said he. ‘Lonely,’ said I. ‘Not a bit of it,’ said he. He died one morning of apoplexy, as he was going to open his outer door. Fell with his head in his own letter-box, and there he lay for eighteen months. Everybody thought he’d gone out of town.”

“And how was he found at last?” inquired Mr. Pickwick.

“The benchers determined to have his door broken open, as he hadn’t paid any rent for two years. So they did. Forced the lock; and a very dusty skeleton in a blue coat, black knee-shorts, and silks, fell forward in the arms of the porter who opened the door. Queer, that. Rather, perhaps?” The little old man put his head more on one side, and rubbed his hands with unspeakable glee.

“I know another case,” said the little old man, when his chuckles had in some degree subsided. “It occurred in Clifford’s Inn. Tenant of a top set – bad character – shut himself up in his bed-room closet, and took a dose of arsenic. The steward thought he had run away; opened the door, and put a bill up. Another man came, took the chambers, furnished them, and went to live there. Somehow or other he couldn’t sleep – always restless and uncomfortable. ‘Odd,’ says he. ‘I’ll make the other room my bed-chamber, and this my sitting-room.’ He made the change, and slept very well at night, but suddenly found that, somehow, he couldn’t read in the evening: he got nervous and uncomfortable, and used to be always snuffing his candles and staring about him. ‘I can’t make this out,’ said he, when he came home from the play one night, and was drinking a glass of cold grog, with his back to the wall, in order that he mightn’t be able to fancy there was any one behind him – ‘I can’t make it out,’ said he; and just then his eyes rested on the little closet that had been always locked up, and a shudder ran through his whole frame from top to toe. ‘I have felt this strange feeling before,’ said he, ‘I cannot help thinking there’s something wrong about that closet.’ He made a strong effort, plucked up his courage, shivered the lock with a blow or two of the poker, opened the door, and there, sure enough, standing bolt upright in the corner, was the last tenant, with a little bottle clasped firmly in his hand, and his face – well!” As the little old man concluded, he looked round on the attentive faces of his wondering auditory with a smile of grim delight.

“What strange things these are you tell us of, sir,” said Mr. Pickwick, minutely scanning the old man’s countenance, by the aid of his glasses.

“Strange!” said the little old man. “Nonsense; you think them strange, because you know nothing about it. They are funny, but not uncommon.”

“Funny!” exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, involuntarily.

“Yes, funny, are they not?” replied the little old man, with a diabolical leer; and then, without pausing for an answer, he continued:

“I knew another man – let me see – forty years ago now – who took an old, damp, rotten set of chambers, in one of the most ancient Inns, that had been shut up and empty for years and years before. There were lots of old women’s stories about the place, and it certainly was very far from being a cheerful one; but he was poor and the rooms were cheap, and that would have been quite a sufficient reason for him, if they had been ten times worse than they really were. He was obliged to take some mouldering fixtures that were on the place, and, among the rest, was a great lumbering wooden press for papers, with large glass doors, and a green curtain inside; a pretty useless thing for him, for he had no papers to put in it; and as to his clothes, he carried them about with him, and that wasn’t very hard work, either. Well, he had moved in all his furniture – it wasn’t quite a truck-full – and had sprinkled it about the room, so as to make the four chairs look as much like a dozen as possible, and was sitting down before the fire at night drinking the first glass of two gallons of whisky he had ordered on credit, wondering whether it would ever be paid for, and if so, in how many years’ time, when his eyes encountered the glass doors of the wooden press. ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘if I hadn’t been obliged to take that ugly article at the old broker’s valuation, I might have got something comfortable for the money. I’ll tell you what it is, old fellow,’ he said, speaking aloud to the press, having nothing else to speak to: ‘If it wouldn’t cost more to break up your old carcase, than it would ever be worth afterwards, I’d have a fire out of you in less than no time.’ He had hardly spoken the words, when a sound resembling a faint groan, appeared to issue from the interior of the case. It startled him at first, but thinking, on a moment’s reflection, that it must be some young fellow in the next chamber, who had been dining out, he put his feet on the fender, and raised the poker to stir the fire. At that moment, the sound was repeated; and one of the glass doors slowly opening, disclosed a pale and emaciated figure in soiled and worn apparel, standing erect in the press. The figure was tall and thin, and the countenance expressive of care and anxiety; but there was something in the hue of the skin, and gaunt and unearthly appearance of the whole form, which no being of this world was ever seen to wear. ‘Who are you?’ said the new tenant, turning very pale: poising the poker in his hand, however, and taking a very decent aim at the countenance of the figure. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Don’t throw that poker at me,’ replied the form; ‘if you hurled it with ever so sure an aim, it would pass through me, without resistance, and expend its force on the wood behind. I am a spirit.’ ‘And, pray, what do you want here?’ faltered the tenant. ‘In this room,’ replied the apparition, ‘my worldly ruin was worked, and I and my children beggared. In this press, the papers in a long, long suit, which accumulated for years, were deposited. In this room, when I had died of grief and long deferred hope, two wily harpies divided the wealth for which I had contested during a wretched existence, and of which, at last, not one farthing was left for my unhappy descendants. I terrified them from the spot, and since that day have prowled by night – the only period at which I can revisit the earth – about the scenes of my long-protracted misery. This apartment is mine: leave it to me.’ ‘If you insist upon making your appearance here,’ said the tenant, who had had time to collect his presence of mind during this prosy statement of the ghost’s, ‘I shall give up possession with the greatest pleasure; but I should like to ask you one question, if you will allow me.’ ‘Say on,’ said the apparition, sternly. ‘Well,’ said the tenant, ‘I don’t apply the observation personally to you, because it is equally applicable to most of the ghosts I ever heard of; but it does appear to me somewhat inconsistent, that when you have an opportunity of visiting the fairest spots of earth – for I suppose space is nothing to you – you should always return exactly to the very places where you have been most miserable.’ ‘Egad, that’s very true; I never thought of that before,’ said the ghost. ‘You see, sir,’ pursued the tenant, ‘this is a very uncomfortable room. From the appearance of that press, I should be disposed to say that it is not wholly free from bugs; and I really think you might find much more comfortable quarters: to say nothing of the climate of London, which is extremely disagreeable.’ ‘You are very right, sir,’ said the ghost, politely, ‘it never struck me till now; I’ll try change of air directly.’ In fact, he began to vanish as he spoke: his legs, indeed, had quite disappeared. ‘And if, sir,’ said the tenant, calling after him, ‘if you would have the goodness to suggest to the other ladies and gentlemen who are now engaged in haunting old empty houses, that they might be much more comfortable elsewhere, you will confer a very great benefit on society.’ ‘I will,’ replied the ghost; ‘we must be dull fellows, very dull fellows, indeed; I can’t imagine how we can have been so stupid.’ With these words, the spirit disappeared; and what is rather remarkable,” added the old man, with a shrewd look round the table, “he never came back again.”

“That ain’t bad, if it’s true,” said the man in the Mosaic studs, lighting a fresh cigar.

“If!” exclaimed the old man, with a look of excessive contempt. “I suppose,” he added, turning to Lowten, “he’ll say next, that my story about the queer client we had, when I was in an attorney’s office, is not true, either – I shouldn’t wonder.”

“I shan’t venture to say anything at all about it, seeing that I never heard the story,” observed the owner of the Mosaic decorations.

“I wish you would repeat it, sir,” said Mr. Pickwick.

“Ah, do,” said Lowten; “nobody has heard it but me, and I have nearly forgotten it.”

The old man looked round the table, and leered more horribly than ever, as if in triumph, at the attention which was depicted in every face. Then rubbing his chin with his hand, and looking up to the ceiling as if to recall the circumstances to his memory, he began as follows:

THE OLD MAN’S TALE ABOUT THE QUEER CLIENT

“It matters little,” said the old man, “where, or how, I picked up this brief history. If I were to relate it in the order in which it reached me, I should commence in the middle, and when I had arrived at the conclusion, go back for a beginning. It is enough for me to say that some of the circumstances passed before my own eyes. For the remainder I know them to have happened, and there are some persons yet living, who will remember them but too well.