A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER
The dolls' dressmaker went no more to the business-premises of Pubsey and Co.
in St Mary Axe, after chance had disclosed to her (as she supposed) the flinty
and hypocritical character of Mr Riah. She often moralized over her work on the
tricks and the manners of that venerable cheat, but made her little purchases
elsewhere, and lived a secluded life. After much consultation with herself, she
decided not to put Lizzie Hexam on her guard against the old man, arguing that
the disappointment of finding him out would come upon her quite soon enough.
Therefore, in her communication with her friend by letter, she was silent on
this theme, and principally dilated on the backslidings of her bad child, who
every day grew worse and worse.
'You wicked old boy,' Miss Wren would say to him, with a menacing forefinger,
'you'll force me to run away from you, after all, you will; and then you'll
shake to bits, and there'll be nobody to pick up the pieces!'
At this foreshadowing of a desolate decease, the wicked old boy would whine
and whimper, and would sit shaking himself into the lowest of low spirits, until
such time as he could shake himself out of the house and shake another
threepennyworth into himself. But dead drunk or dead sober (he had come to such
a pass that he was least alive in the latter state), it was always on the
conscience of the paralytic scarecrow that he had betrayed his sharp parent for
sixty threepennyworths of rum, which were all gone, and that her sharpness would
infallibly detect his having done it, sooner or later. All things considered
therefore, and addition made of the state of his body to the state of his mind,
the bed on which Mr Dolls reposed was a bed of roses from which the flowers and
leaves had entirely faded, leaving him to lie upon the thorns and stalks.
On a certain day, Miss Wren was alone at her work, with the house-door set
open for coolness, and was trolling in a small sweet voice a mournful little
song which might have been the song of the doll she was dressing, bemoaning the
brittleness and meltability of wax, when whom should she descry standing on the
pavement, looking in at her, but Mr Fledgeby.
'I thought it was you?' said Fledgeby, coming up the two steps.
'Did you?' Miss Wren retorted. 'And I thought it was you, young man. Quite a
coincidence. You're not mistaken, and I'm not mistaken. How clever we are!'
'Well, and how are you?' said Fledgeby.
'I am pretty much as usual, sir,' replied Miss Wren. 'A very unfortunate
parent, worried out of my life and senses by a very bad child.'
Fledgeby's small eyes opened so wide that they might have passed for
ordinary-sized eyes, as he stared about him for the very young person whom he
supposed to be in question.
'But you're not a parent,' said Miss Wren, 'and consequently it's of no use
talking to you upon a family subject.--To what am I to attribute the honour and
favour?'
'To a wish to improve your acquaintance,' Mr Fledgeby replied.
Miss Wren, stopping to bite her thread, looked at him very knowingly.
'We never meet now,' said Fledgeby; 'do we?'
'No,' said Miss Wren, chopping off the word.
'So I had a mind,' pursued Fledgeby, 'to come and have a talk with you about
our dodging friend, the child of Israel.'
'So HE gave you my address; did he?' asked Miss Wren.
'I got it out of him,' said Fledgeby, with a stammer.
'You seem to see a good deal of him,' remarked Miss Wren, with shrewd
distrust. 'A good deal of him you seem to see, considering.'
'Yes, I do,' said Fledgeby. 'Considering.'
'Haven't you,' inquired the dressmaker, bending over the doll on which her
art was being exercised, 'done interceding with him yet?'
'No,' said Fledgeby, shaking his head.
'La! Been interceding with him all this time, and sticking to him still?'
said Miss Wren, busy with her work.
'Sticking to him is the word,' said Fledgeby.
Miss Wren pursued her occupation with a concentrated air, and asked, after an
interval of silent industry:
'Are you in the army?'
'Not exactly,' said Fledgeby, rather flattered by the question.
'Navy?' asked Miss Wren.
'N--no,' said Fledgeby. He qualified these two negatives, as if he were not
absolutely in either service, but was almost in both.
'What are you then?' demanded Miss Wren.
'I am a gentleman, I am,' said Fledgeby.
'Oh!' assented Jenny, screwing up her mouth with an appearance of conviction.
'Yes, to be sure! That accounts for your having so much time to give to
interceding. But only to think how kind and friendly a gentleman you must be!'
Mr Fledgeby found that he was skating round a board marked Dangerous, and had
better cut out a fresh track. 'Let's get back to the dodgerest of the dodgers,'
said he. 'What's he up to in the case of your friend the handsome gal? He must
have some object. What's his object?'
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, I am sure!' returned Miss Wren, composedly.
'He won't acknowledge where she's gone,' said Fledgeby; 'and I have a fancy
that I should like to have another look at her. Now I know he knows where she is
gone.'
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, I am sure!' Miss Wren again rejoined.
'And you know where she is gone,' hazarded Fledgeby.
'Cannot undertake to say, sir, really,' replied Miss Wren.
The quaint little chin met Mr Fledgeby's gaze with such a baffling hitch,
that that agreeable gentleman was for some time at a loss how to resume his
fascinating part in the dialogue. At length he said:
'Miss Jenny!--That's your name, if I don't mistake?'
'Probably you don't mistake, sir,' was Miss Wren's cool answer; 'because you
had it on the best authority. Mine, you know.'
'Miss Jenny! Instead of coming up and being dead, let's come out and look
alive. It'll pay better, I assure you,' said Fledgeby, bestowing an inveigling
twinkle or two upon the dressmaker. 'You'll find it pay better.'
'Perhaps,' said Miss Jenny, holding out her doll at arm's length, and
critically contemplating the effect of her art with her scissors on her lips and
her head thrown back, as if her interest lay there, and not in the conversation;
'perhaps you'll explain your meaning, young man, which is Greek to me.--You must
have another touch of blue in your trimming, my dear.' Having addressed the last
remark to her fair client, Miss Wren proceeded to snip at some blue fragments
that lay before her, among fragments of all colours, and to thread a needle from
a skein of blue silk.
'Look here,' said Fledgeby.--'Are you attending?'
'I am attending, sir,' replied Miss Wren, without the slightest appearance of
so doing. 'Another touch of blue in your trimming, my dear.'
'Well, look here,' said Fledgeby, rather discouraged by the circumstances
under which he found himself pursuing the conversation. 'If you're attending--'
('Light blue, my sweet young lady,' remarked Miss Wren, in a sprightly tone,
'being best suited to your fair complexion and your flaxen curls.')
'I say, if you're attending,' proceeded Fledgeby, 'it'll pay better in this
way. It'll lead in a roundabout manner to your buying damage and waste of Pubsey
and Co. at a nominal price, or even getting it for nothing.'
'Aha!' thought the dressmaker. 'But you are not so roundabout, Little Eyes,
that I don't notice your answering for Pubsey and Co. after all! Little Eyes,
Little Eyes, you're too cunning by half.'
'And I take it for granted,' pursued Fledgeby, 'that to get the most of your
materials for nothing would be well worth your while, Miss Jenny?'
'You may take it for granted,' returned the dressmaker with many knowing
nods, 'that it's always well worth my while to make money.'
'Now,' said Fledgeby approvingly, 'you're answering to a sensible purpose.
Now, you're coming out and looking alive! So I make so free, Miss Jenny, as to
offer the remark, that you and Judah were too thick together to last. You can't
come to be intimate with such a deep file as Judah without beginning to see a
little way into him, you know,' said Fledgeby with a wink.
'I must own,' returned the dressmaker, with her eyes upon her work, 'that we
are not good friends at present.'
'I know you're not good friends at present,' said Fledgeby. 'I know all about
it. I should like to pay off Judah, by not letting him have his own deep way in
everything. In most things he'll get it by hook or by crook, but--hang it
all!--don't let him have his own deep way in everything. That's too much.' Mr
Fledgeby said this with some display of indignant warmth, as if he was counsel
in the cause for Virtue.
'How can I prevent his having his own way?' began the dressmaker.
'Deep way, I called it,' said Fledgeby.
'--His own deep way, in anything?'
'I'll tell you,' said Fledgeby. 'I like to hear you ask it, because it's
looking alive. It's what I should expect to find in one of your sagacious
understanding. Now, candidly.'
'Eh?' cried Miss Jenny.
'I said, now candidly,' Mr Fledgeby explained, a little put out.
'Oh-h!'
'I should be glad to countermine him, respecting the handsome gal, your
friend. He means something there. You may depend upon it, Judah means something
there. He has a motive, and of course his motive is a dark motive. Now, whatever
his motive is, it's necessary to his motive'--Mr Fledgeby's constructive powers
were not equal to the avoidance of some tautology here--'that it should be kept
from me, what he has done with her. So I put it to you, who know: What HAS he
done with her? I ask no more. And is that asking much, when you understand that
it will pay?'
Miss Jenny Wren, who had cast her eyes upon the bench again after her last
interruption, sat looking at it, needle in hand but not working, for some
moments. She then briskly resumed her work, and said with a sidelong glance of
her eyes and chin at Mr Fledgeby:
'Where d'ye live?'
'Albany, Piccadilly,' replied Fledgeby.
'When are you at home?'
'When you like.'
'Breakfast-time?' said Jenny, in her abruptest and shortest manner.
'No better time in the day,' said Fledgeby.
'I'll look in upon you to-morrow, young man. Those two ladies,' pointing to
dolls, 'have an appointment in Bond Street at ten precisely. When I've dropped
'em there, I'll drive round to you. With a weird little laugh, Miss Jenny
pointed to her crutch-stick as her equipage.
'This is looking alive indeed!' cried Fledgeby, rising.
'Mark you! I promise you nothing,' said the dolls' dressmaker, dabbing two
dabs at him with her needle, as if she put out both his eyes.
'No no. I understand,' returned Fledgeby. 'The damage and waste question
shall be settled first. It shall be made to pay; don't you be afraid. Good-day,
Miss Jenny.'
'Good-day, young man.'
Mr Fledgeby's prepossessing form withdrew itself; and the little dressmaker,
clipping and snipping and stitching, and stitching and snipping and clipping,
fell to work at a great rate; musing and muttering all the time.
'Misty, misty, misty. Can't make it out. Little Eyes and the wolf in a
conspiracy? Or Little Eyes and the wolf against one another? Can't make it out.
My poor Lizzie, have they both designs against you, either way? Can't make it
out. Is Little Eyes Pubsey, and the wolf Co? Can't make it out. Pubsey true to
Co, and Co to Pubsey? Pubsey false to Co, and Co to Pubsey? Can't make it out.
What said Little Eyes? "Now, candidly?" Ah! However the cat jumps, HE'S a liar.
That's all I can make out at present; but you may go to bed in the Albany,
Piccadilly, with THAT for your pillow, young man!' Thereupon, the little
dressmaker again dabbed out his eyes separately, and making a loop in the air of
her thread and deftly catching it into a knot with her needle, seemed to
bowstring him into the bargain.
For the terrors undergone by Mr Dolls that evening when his little parent sat
profoundly meditating over her work, and when he imagined himself found out, as
often as she changed her attitude, or turned her eyes towards him, there is no
adequate name. Moreover it was her habit to shake her head at that wretched old
boy whenever she caught his eye as he shivered and shook. What are popularly
called 'the trembles' being in full force upon him that evening, and likewise
what are popularly called 'the horrors,' he had a very bad time of it; which was
not made better by his being so remorseful as frequently to moan 'Sixty
threepennorths.' This imperfect sentence not being at all intelligible as a
confession, but sounding like a Gargantuan order for a dram, brought him into
new difficulties by occasioning his parent to pounce at him in a more than
usually snappish manner, and to overwhelm him with bitter reproaches.
What was a bad time for Mr Dolls, could not fail to be a bad time for the
dolls' dressmaker. However, she was on the alert next morning, and drove to Bond
Street, and set down the two ladies punctually, and then directed her equipage
to conduct her to the Albany. Arrived at the doorway of the house in which Mr
Fledgeby's chambers were, she found a lady standing there in a travelling dress,
holding in her hand--of all things in the world--a gentleman's hat.
'You want some one?' said the lady in a stern manner.
'I am going up stairs to Mr Fledgeby's.'
'You cannot do that at this moment. There is a gentleman with him. I am
waiting for the gentleman. His business with Mr Fledgeby will very soon be
transacted, and then you can go up. Until the gentleman comes down, you must
wait here.'
While speaking, and afterwards, the lady kept watchfully between her and the
staircase, as if prepared to oppose her going up, by force. The lady being of a
stature to stop her with a hand, and looking mightily determined, the dressmaker
stood still.
'Well? Why do you listen?' asked the lady.
'I am not listening,' said the dressmaker.
'What do you hear?' asked the lady, altering her phrase.
'Is it a kind of a spluttering somewhere?' said the dressmaker, with an
inquiring look.
'Mr Fledgeby in his shower-bath, perhaps,' remarked the lady, smiling.
'And somebody's beating a carpet, I think?'
'Mr Fledgeby's carpet, I dare say,' replied the smiling lady.
Miss Wren had a reasonably good eye for smiles, being well accustomed to them
on the part of her young friends, though their smiles mostly ran smaller than in
nature. But she had never seen so singular a smile as that upon this lady's
face. It twitched her nostrils open in a remarkable manner, and contracted her
lips and eyebrows. It was a smile of enjoyment too, though of such a fierce kind
that Miss Wren thought she would rather not enjoy herself than do it in that
way.
'Well!' said the lady, watching her. 'What now?'
'I hope there's nothing the matter!' said the dressmaker.
'Where?' inquired the lady.
'I don't know where,' said Miss Wren, staring about her. 'But I never heard
such odd noises. Don't you think I had better call somebody?'
'I think you had better not,' returned the lady with a significant frown, and
drawing closer.
On this hint, the dressmaker relinquished the idea, and stood looking at the
lady as hard as the lady looked at her. Meanwhile the dressmaker listened with
amazement to the odd noises which still continued, and the lady listened too,
but with a coolness in which there was no trace of amazement.
Soon afterwards, came a slamming and banging of doors; and then came running
down stairs, a gentleman with whiskers, and out of breath, who seemed to be
red-hot.
'Is your business done, Alfred?' inquired the lady.
'Very thoroughly done,' replied the gentleman, as he took his hat from her.
'You can go up to Mr Fledgeby as soon as you like,' said the lady, moving
haughtily away.
'Oh! And you can take these three pieces of stick with you,' added the
gentleman politely, 'and say, if you please, that they come from Mr Alfred
Lammle, with his compliments on leaving England. Mr Alfred Lammle. Be so good as
not to forget the name.'
The three pieces of stick were three broken and frayed fragments of a stout
lithe cane. Miss Jenny taking them wonderingly, and the gentleman repeating with
a grin, 'Mr Alfred Lammle, if you'll be so good. Compliments, on leaving
England,' the lady and gentleman walked away quite deliberately, and Miss Jenny
and her crutch-stick went up stairs. 'Lammle, Lammle, Lammle?' Miss Jenny
repeated as she panted from stair to stair, 'where have I heard that name?
Lammle, Lammle? I know! Saint Mary Axe!'
With a gleam of new intelligence in her sharp face, the dolls' dressmaker
pulled at Fledgeby's bell. No one answered; but, from within the chambers, there
proceeded a continuous spluttering sound of a highly singular and unintelligible
nature.
'Good gracious! Is Little Eyes choking?' cried Miss Jenny.
Pulling at the bell again and getting no reply, she pushed the outer door,
and found it standing ajar. No one being visible on her opening it wider, and
the spluttering continuing, she took the liberry of opening an inner door, and
then beheld the extraordinary spectacle of Mr Fledgeby in a shirt, a pair of
Turkish trousers, and a Turkish cap, rolling over and over on his own carpet,
and spluttering wonderfully.
'Oh Lord!' gasped Mr Fledgeby. 'Oh my eye! Stop thief! I am strangling. Fire!
Oh my eye! A glass of water. Give me a glass of water. Shut the door. Murder! Oh
Lord!' And then rolled and spluttered more than ever.
Hurrying into another room, Miss Jenny got a glass of water, and brought it
for Fledgeby's relief: who, gasping, spluttering, and rattling in his throat
betweenwhiles, drank some water, and laid his head faintly on her arm.
'Oh my eye!' cried Fledgehy, struggling anew. 'It's salt and snuff. It's up
my nose, and down my throat, and in my wind-pipe. Ugh! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah--h--h--h!'
And here, crowing fearfully, with his eyes starting out of his head, appeared to
be contending with every mortal disease incidental to poultry.
'And Oh my Eye, I'm so sore!' cried Fledgeby, starting, over on his back, in
a spasmodic way that caused the dressmaker to retreat to the wall. 'Oh I smart
so! Do put something to my back and arms, and legs and shoulders. Ugh! It's down
my throat again and can't come up. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah--h--h--h! Oh I smart so!' Here
Mr Fledgeby bounded up, and bounded down, and went rolling over and over again.
The dolls' dressmaker looked on until he rolled himself into a corner with
his Turkish slippers uppermost, and then, resolving in the first place to
address her ministration to the salt and snuff, gave him more water and slapped
his back. But, the latter application was by no means a success, causing Mr
Fledgeby to scream, and to cry out, 'Oh my eye! don't slap me! I'm covered with
weales and I smart so!'
However, he gradually ceased to choke and crow, saving at intervals, and Miss
Jenny got him into an easy-chair: where, with his eyes red and watery, with his
features swollen, and with some half-dozen livid bars across his face, he
presented a most rueful sight.
'What ever possessed you to take salt and snuff, young man?' inquired Miss
Jenny.
'I didn't take it,' the dismal youth replied. 'It was crammed into my mouth.'
'Who crammed it?' asked Miss Jenny.
'He did,' answered Fledgeby. 'The assassin. Lammle. He rubbed it into my
mouth and up my nose and down my throat--Ow! Ow! Ow! Ah--h--h--h! Ugh!--to
prevent my crying out, and then cruelly assaulted me.'
'With this?' asked Miss Jenny, showing the pieces of cane.
'That's the weapon,' said Fledgeby, eyeing it with the air of an
acquaintance. 'He broke it over me. Oh I smart so! How did you come by it?'
'When he ran down stairs and joined the lady he had left in the hall with his
hat'--Miss Jenny began.
'Oh!' groaned Mr Fledgeby, writhing, 'she was holding his hat, was she? I
might have known she was in it.'
'When he came down stairs and joined the lady who wouldn't let me come up, he
gave me the pieces for you, and I was to say, "With Mr Alfred Lammle's
compliments on his leaving England."' Miss Jenny said it with such spiteful
satisfaction, and such a hitch of her chin and eyes as might have added to Mr
Fledgehy's miseries, if he could have noticed either, in his bodily pain with
his hand to his head.
'Shall I go for the police?' inquired Miss Jenny, with a nimble start towards
the door.
'Stop! No, don't!' cried Fledgeby. 'Don't, please. We had better keep it
quiet. Will you be so good as shut the door? Oh I do smart so!'
In testimony of the extent to which he smarted, Mr Fledgeby came wallowing
out of the easy-chair, and took another roll on the carpet.
Now the door's shut,' said Mr Fledgeby, sitting up in anguish, with his
Turkish cap half on and half off, and the bars on his face getting bluer, 'do me
the kindness to look at my back and shoulders. They must be in an awful state,
for I hadn't got my dressing-gown on, when the brute came rushing in. Cut my
shirt away from the collar; there's a pair of scissors on that table. Oh!'
groaned Mr Fledgeby, with his hand to his head again. 'How I do smart, to be
sure!'
'There?' inquired Miss Jenny, alluding to the back and shoulders.
'Oh Lord, yes!' moaned Fledgeby, rocking himself. 'And all over! Everywhere!'
The busy little dressmaker quickly snipped the shirt away, and laid bare the
results of as furious and sound a thrashing as even Mr Fledgeby merited. 'You
may well smart, young man!' exclaimed Miss Jenny. And stealthily rubbed her
little hands behind him, and poked a few exultant pokes with her two forefingers
over the crown of his head.
'What do you think of vinegar and brown paper?' inquired the suffering
Fledgeby, still rocking and moaning. 'Does it look as if vinegar and brown paper
was the sort of application?'
'Yes,' said Miss Jenny, with a silent chuckle. 'It looks as if it ought to be
Pickled.'
Mr Fledgeby collapsed under the word 'Pickled,' and groaned again. 'My
kitchen is on this floor,' he said; 'you'll find brown paper in a dresser-drawer
there, and a bottle of vinegar on a shelf. Would you have the kindness to make a
few plasters and put 'em on? It can't be kept too quiet.'
'One, two--hum--five, six. You'll want six,' said the dress-maker.
'There's smart enough,' whimpered Mr Fledgeby, groaning and writhing again,
'for sixty.'
Miss Jenny repaired to the kitchen, scissors in hand, found the brown paper
and found the vinegar, and skilfully cut out and steeped six large plasters.
When they were all lying ready on the dresser, an idea occurred to her as she
was about to gather them up.
'I think,' said Miss Jenny with a silent laugh, 'he ought to have a little
pepper? Just a few grains? I think the young man's tricks and manners make a
claim upon his friends for a little pepper?'
Mr Fledgeby's evil star showing her the pepper-box on the chimneypiece, she
climbed upon a chair, and got it down, and sprinkled all the plasters with a
judicious hand. She then went back to Mr Fledgeby, and stuck them all on him: Mr
Fledgeby uttering a sharp howl as each was put in its place.
'There, young man!' said the dolls' dressmaker. 'Now I hope you feel pretty
comfortable?'
Apparently, Mr Fledgeby did not, for he cried by way of answer, 'Oh--h how I
do smart!'
Miss Jenny got his Persian gown upon him, extinguished his eyes crookedly
with his Persian cap, and helped him to his bed: upon which he climbed groaning.
'Business between you and me being out of the question to-day, young man, and my
time being precious,' said Miss Jenny then, 'I'll make myself scarce. Are you
comfortable now?'
'Oh my eye!' cried Mr Fledgeby. 'No, I ain't. Oh--h--h! how I do smart!'
The last thing Miss Jenny saw, as she looked back before closing the room
door, was Mr Fledgeby in the act of plunging and gambolling all over his bed,
like a porpoise or dolphin in its native element. She then shut the bedroom
door, and all the other doors, and going down stairs and emerging from the
Albany into the busy streets, took omnibus for Saint Mary Axe: pressing on the
road all the gaily-dressed ladies whom she could see from the window, and making
them unconscious lay-figures for dolls, while she mentally cut them out and
basted them.
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