Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

breakfast.

“What marshes?”

“THE marshes, commander,” returns Phil.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know where they are,” says Phil; “but I see ‘em, guv’ner.

They was flat. And miste.”

Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil,

expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to

nobody but Mr. George.

“I was born in the country, Phil.”

“Was you indeed, commander?”

“Yes. And bred there.”

Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at

his master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee,

still staring at him.

“There’s not a bird’s note that I don’t know,” says Mr. George.

“Not many an English leaf or berry that I couldn’t name. Not many

a tree that I couldn’t climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real

country boy, once. My good mother lived in the country.”

“She must have been a fine old lady, guv’ner,” Phil observes.

“Aye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago,” says Mr.

George. “But I’ll wager that at ninety she would be near as

upright as me, and near as broad across the shoulders.”

“Did she die at ninety, guv’ner?” inquires Phil.

“No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!” says the

trooper. “What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and

good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your

eyes upon the country—marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?”

Phil shakes his head.

“Do you want to see it?”

“N-no, I don’t know as I do, particular,” says Phil.

“The town’s enough for you, eh?”

“Why, you see, commander,” says Phil, “I ain’t acquainted with

anythink else, and I doubt if I ain’t a-getting too old to take to

novelties.”

“How old ARE you, Phil?” asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys

his smoking saucer to his lips.

“I’m something with a eight in it,” says Phil. “It can’t be

eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It’s betwixt ‘em, somewheres.”

Mr. George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its

contents, is laughingly beginning, “Why, what the deuce, Phil—”

when he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers.

“I was just eight,” says Phil, “agreeable to the parish

calculation, when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand,

and I see him a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to

himself wery comfortable, and he says, ‘Would you like to come

along a me, my man?’ I says ‘Yes,’ and him and me and the fire

goes home to Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was

able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again,

I says to myself, ‘Now, old chap, you’re one and a eight in it.’

April Fool Day after that, I says, ‘Now, old chap, you’re two and a

eight in it.’ In course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it;

two tens and a eight in it. When it got so high, it got the upper

hand of me, but this is how I always know there’s a eight in it.”

“Ah!” says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. “And where’s the

tinker?”

“Drink put him in the hospital, guv’ner, and the hospital put him—

in a glass-case, I HAVE heerd,” Phil replies mysteriously.

“By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?”

“Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn’t

much of a beat—round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell,

Smiffeld, and there—poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the

kettles till they’re past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers

used to come and lodge at our place; that was the best part of my

master’s earnings. But they didn’t come to me. I warn’t like him.

He could sing ‘em a good song. I couldn’t! He could play ‘em a

tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it was iron or block tin.

I never could do nothing with a pot but mend it or bile it—never

had a note of music in me. Besides, I was too ill-looking, and

their wives complained of me.”

“They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd,

Phil!” says the trooper with a pleasant smile.

“No, guv’ner,” returns Phil, shaking his head. “No, I shouldn’t.

I was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing

to boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when

I was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off,

and swallering the smoke, and what with being nat’rally unfort’nate

in the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich

means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got

older, almost whenever he was too far gone in drink—which was

almost always—my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time.

As to since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men

was given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at

a gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling

at the firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!”

Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied

manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While

drinking it, he says, “It was after the case-filling blow-up when I

first see you, commander. You remember?”

“I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun.”

“Crawling, guv’ner, again a wall—”

“True, Phil—shouldering your way on—”

“In a night-cap!” exclaims Phil, excited.

“In a night-cap—”

“And hobbling with a couple of sticks!” cries Phil, still more

excited.

“With a couple of sticks. When—”

“When you stops, you know,” cries Phil, putting down his cup and

saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, “and says to

me, ‘What, comrade! You have been in the wars!’ I didn’t say much

to you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person

so strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to

such a limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says

you, delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that

it was like a glass of something hot, ‘What accident have you met

with? You have been badly hurt. What’s amiss, old boy? Cheer up,

and tell us about it!’ Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says

as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says

more to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!” cries

Phil, who has started from his chair and unaccountably begun to

sidle away. “If a mark’s wanted, or if it will improve the

business, let the customers take aim at me. They can’t spoil MY

beauty. I’M all right. Come on! If they want a man to box at,

let ‘em box at me. Let ‘em knock me well about the head. I don’t

mind. If they want a light-weight to be throwed for practice,

Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let ‘em throw me. They won’t

hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!”

With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and

accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises

referred to, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the

gallery, and abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at

him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. He

then begins to clear away the breakfast.

Mr. George, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the

shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the

gallery into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the

dumbbells, and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is

getting “too fleshy,” engages with great gravity in solitary

broadsword practice. Meanwhile Phil has fallen to work at his

usual table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans, and files,

and whistles into small apertures, and blackens himself more and

more, and seems to do and undo everything that can be done and

undone about a gun.

Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage,

where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual

company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery,

bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any

day in the year but the fifth of November.

It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two

bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched

mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular

verses commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old

England up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly

closed as the chair is put down. At which point the figure in it

gasping, “O Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!” adds, “How de do, my

dear friend, how de do?” Mr. George then descries, in the

procession, the venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended

by his granddaughter Judy as body-guard.

“Mr. George, my dear friend,” says Grandfather Smallweed, removing

his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has

nearly throttled coming along, “how de do? You’re surprised to see

me, my dear friend.”

“I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend

in the city,” returns Mr. George.

“I am very seldom out,” pants Mr. Smallweed. “I haven’t been out

for many months. It’s inconvenient—and it comes expensive. But I

longed so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?”

“I am well enough,” says Mr. George. “I hope you are the same.”

“You can’t be too well, my dear friend.” Mr. Smallweed takes him

by both hands. “I have brought my granddaughter Judy. I couldn’t

keep her away. She longed so much to see you.”

“Hum! She bears it calmly!” mutters Mr. George.

“So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the

corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and

carried me here that I might see my dear friend in his own

establishment! This,” says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the

bearer, who has been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws

adjusting his windpipe, “is the driver of the cab. He has nothing

extra. It is by agreement included in his fare. This person,” the

other bearer, “we engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer.

Which is twopence. Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure

you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we needn’t

have employed this person.”

Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable

terror and a half-subdued “O Lord! Oh, dear me!” Nor in his

apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for

Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap

before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the

air of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly

old bird of the crow species.

“Judy, my child,” says Grandfather Smallweed, “give the person his

twopence. It’s a great deal for what he has done.”

The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human

fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of

London, ready dressed in an old red jacket,