TWO PLACES VACATED
Set down by the omnibus at the corner of Saint Mary Axe, and trusting to her
feet and her crutch-stick within its precincts, the dolls' dressmaker proceeded
to the place of business of Pubsey and Co. All there was sunny and quiet
externally, and shady and quiet internally. Hiding herself in the entry outside
the glass door, she could see from that post of observation the old man in his
spectacles sitting writing at his desk.
'Boh!' cried the dressmaker, popping in her head at the glass-door. 'Mr Wolf
at home?'
The old man took his glasses off, and mildly laid them down beside him. 'Ah
Jenny, is it you? I thought you had given me up.'
'And so I had given up the treacherous wolf of the forest,' she replied;
'but, godmother, it strikes me you have come back. I am not quite sure, because
the wolf and you change forms. I want to ask you a question or two, to find out
whether you are really godmother or really wolf. May I?'
'Yes, Jenny, yes.' But Riah glanced towards the door, as if he thought his
principal might appear there, unseasonably.
'If you're afraid of the fox,' said Miss Jenny, 'you may dismiss all present
expectations of seeing that animal. HE won't show himself abroad, for many a
day.'
'What do you mean, my child?'
'I mean, godmother,' replied Miss Wren, sitting down beside the Jew, 'that
the fox has caught a famous flogging, and that if his skin and bones are not
tingling, aching, and smarting at this present instant, no fox did ever tingle,
ache, and smart.' Therewith Miss Jenny related what had come to pass in the
Albany, omitting the few grains of pepper.
'Now, godmother,' she went on, 'I particularly wish to ask you what has taken
place here, since I left the wolf here? Because I have an idea about the size of
a marble, rolling about in my little noddle. First and foremost, are you Pubsey
and Co., or are you either? Upon your solemn word and honour.'
The old man shook his head.
'Secondly, isn't Fledgeby both Pubsey and Co.?'
The old man answered with a reluctant nod.
'My idea,' exclaimed Miss Wren, 'is now about the size of an orange. But
before it gets any bigger, welcome back, dear godmother!'
The little creature folded her arms about the old man's neck with great
earnestness, and kissed him. 'I humbly beg your forgiveness, godmother. I am
truly sorry. I ought to have had more faith in you. But what could I suppose
when you said nothing for yourself, you know? I don't mean to offer that as a
justification, but what could I suppose, when you were a silent party to all he
said? It did look bad; now didn't it?'
'It looked so bad, Jenny,' responded the old man, with gravity, 'that I will
straightway tell you what an impression it wrought upon me. I was hateful in
mine own eyes. I was hateful to myself, in being so hateful to the debtor and to
you. But more than that, and worse than that, and to pass out far and broad
beyond myself--I reflected that evening, sitting alone in my garden on the
housetop, that I was doing dishonour to my ancient faith and race. I
reflected--clearly reflected for the first time--that in bending my neck to the
yoke I was willing to wear, I bent the unwilling necks of the whole Jewish
people. For it is not, in Christian countries, with the Jews as with other
peoples. Men say, 'This is a bad Greek, but there are good Greeks. This is a bad
Turk, but there are good Turks.' Not so with the Jews. Men find the bad among us
easily enough-- among what peoples are the bad not easily found?--but they take
the worst of us as samples of the best; they take the lowest of us as
presentations of the highest; and they say "All Jews are alike." If, doing what
I was content to do here, because I was grateful for the past and have small
need of money now, I had been a Christian, I could have done it, compromising no
one but my individual self. But doing it as a Jew, I could not choose but
compromise the Jews of all conditions and all countries. It is a little hard
upon us, but it is the truth. I would that all our people remembered it! Though
I have little right to say so, seeing that it came home so late to me.'
The dolls' dressmaker sat holding the old man by the hand, and looking
thoughtfully in his face.
'Thus I reflected, I say, sitting that evening in my garden on the housetop.
And passing the painful scene of that day in review before me many times, I
always saw that the poor gentleman believed the story readily, because I was one
of the Jews--that you believed the story readily, my child, because I was one of
the Jews- -that the story itself first came into the invention of the originator
thereof, because I was one of the Jews. This was the result of my having had you
three before me, face to face, and seeing the thing visibly presented as upon a
theatre. Wherefore I perceived that the obligation was upon me to leave this
service. But Jenny, my dear,' said Riah, breaking off, 'I promised that you
should pursue your questions, and I obstruct them.'
'On the contrary, godmother; my idea is as large now as a pumpkin--and YOU
know what a pumpkin is, don't you? So you gave notice that you were going? Does
that come next?' asked Miss Jenny with a look of close attention.
'I indited a letter to my master. Yes. To that effect.'
'And what said Tingling-Tossing-Aching-Screaming- Scratching-Smarter?' asked
Miss Wren with an unspeakable enjoyment in the utterance of those honourable
titles and in the recollection of the pepper.
'He held me to certain months of servitude, which were his lawful term of
notice. They expire to-morrow. Upon their expiration--not before--I had meant to
set myself right with my Cinderella.'
'My idea is getting so immense now,' cried Miss Wren, clasping her temples,
'that my head won't hold it! Listen, godmother; I am going to expound. Little
Eyes (that's Screaming-Scratching- Smarter) owes you a heavy grudge for going.
Little Eyes casts about how best to pay you off. Little Eyes thinks of Lizzie.
Little Eyes says to himself, 'I'll find out where he has placed that girl, and
I'll betray his secret because it's dear to him.' Perhaps Little Eyes thinks,
"I'll make love to her myself too;" but that I can't swear--all the rest I can.
So, Little Eyes comes to me, and I go to Little Eyes. That's the way of it. And
now the murder's all out, I'm sorry,' added the dolls' dressmaker, rigid from
head to foot with energy as she shook her little fist before her eyes, 'that I
didn't give him Cayenne pepper and chopped pickled Capsicum!'
This expression of regret being but partially intelligible to Mr Riah, the
old man reverted to the injuries Fledgeby had received, and hinted at the
necessity of his at once going to tend that beaten cur.
'Godmother, godmother, godmother!' cried Miss Wren irritably, 'I really lose
all patience with you. One would think you believed in the Good Samaritan. How
can you be so inconsistent?'
'Jenny dear,' began the old man gently, 'it is the custom of our people to
help--'
'Oh! Bother your people!' interposed Miss Wren, with a toss of her head. 'If
your people don't know better than to go and help Little Eyes, it's a pity they
ever got out of Egypt. Over and above that,' she added, 'he wouldn't take your
help if you offered it. Too much ashamed. Wants to keep it close and quiet, and
to keep you out of the way.'
They were still debating this point when a shadow darkened the entry, and the
glass door was opened by a messenger who brought a letter unceremoniously
addressed, 'Riah.' To which he said there was an answer wanted.
The letter, which was scrawled in pencil uphill and downhill and round
crooked corners, ran thus:
'OLD RIAH,
Your accounts being all squared, go. Shut up the place, turn out directly,
and send me the key by bearer. Go. You are an unthankful dog of a Jew. Get out.
F.'
The dolls' dressmaker found it delicious to trace the screaming and smarting
of Little Eyes in the distorted writing of this epistle. She laughed over it and
jeered at it in a convenient corner (to the great astonishment of the messenger)
while the old man got his few goods together in a black bag. That done, the
shutters of the upper windows closed, and the office blind pulled down, they
issued forth upon the steps with the attendant messenger. There, while Miss
Jenny held the bag, the old man locked the house door, and handed over the key
to him; who at once retired with the same.
'Well, godmother,' said Miss Wren, as they remained upon the steps together,
looking at one another. 'And so you're thrown upon the world!'
'It would appear so, Jenny, and somewhat suddenly.'
'Where are you going to seek your fortune?' asked Miss Wren.
The old man smiled, but looked about him with a look of having lost his way
in life, which did not escape the dolls' dressmaker.
'Verily, Jenny,' said he, 'the question is to the purpose, and more easily
asked than answered. But as I have experience of the ready goodwill and good
help of those who have given occupation to Lizzie, I think I will seek them out
for myself.'
'On foot?' asked Miss Wren, with a chop.
'Ay!' said the old man. 'Have I not my staff?'
It was exactly because he had his staff, and presented so quaint an aspect,
that she mistrusted his making the journey.
'The best thing you can do,' said Jenny, 'for the time being, at all events,
is to come home with me, godmother. Nobody's there but my bad child, and
Lizzie's lodging stands empty.' The old man when satisfied that no inconvenience
could be entailed on any one by his compliance, readily complied; and the
singularly-assorted couple once more went through the streets together.
Now, the bad child having been strictly charged by his parent to remain at
home in her absence, of course went out; and, being in the very last stage of
mental decrepitude, went out with two objects; firstly, to establish a claim he
conceived himself to have upon any licensed victualler living, to be supplied
with threepennyworth of rum for nothing; and secondly, to bestow some maudlin
remorse on Mr Eugene Wrayburn, and see what profit came of it. Stumblingly
pursuing these two designs--they both meant rum, the only meaning of which he
was capable--the degraded creature staggered into Covent Garden Market and there
bivouacked, to have an attack of the trembles succeeded by an attack of the
horrors, in a doorway.
This market of Covent Garden was quite out of the creature's line of road,
but it had the attraction for him which it has for the worst of the solitary
members of the drunken tribe. It may be the companionship of the nightly stir,
or it may be the companionship of the gin and beer that slop about among carters
and hucksters, or it may be the companionship of the trodden vegetable refuse
which is so like their own dress that perhaps they take the Market for a great
wardrobe; but be it what it may, you shall see no such individual drunkards on
doorsteps anywhere, as there. Of dozing women-drunkards especially, you shall
come upon such specimens there, in the morning sunlight, as you might seek out
of doors in vain through London. Such stale vapid rejected cabbage-leaf and
cabbage-stalk dress, such damaged-orange countenance, such squashed pulp of
humanity, are open to the day nowhere else. So, the attraction of the Market
drew Mr Dolls to it, and he had out his two fits of trembles and horrors in a
doorway on which a woman had had out her sodden nap a few hours before.
There is a swarm of young savages always flitting about this same place,
creeping off with fragments of orange-chests, and mouldy litter--Heaven knows
into what holes they can convey them, having no home!--whose bare feet fall with
a blunt dull softness on the pavement as the policeman hunts them, and who are
(perhaps for that reason) little heard by the Powers that be, whereas in
top-boots they would make a deafening clatter. These, delighting in the trembles
and the horrors of Mr Dolls, as in a gratuitous drama, flocked about him in his
doorway, butted at him, leaped at him, and pelted him. Hence, when he came out
of his invalid retirement and shook off that ragged train, he was much
bespattered, and in worse case than ever. But, not yet at his worst; for, going
into a public-house, and being supplied in stress of business with his rum, and
seeking to vanish without payment, he was collared, searched, found penniless,
and admonished not to try that again, by having a pail of dirty water cast over
him. This application superinduced another fit of the trembles; after which Mr
Dolls, as finding himself in good cue for making a call on a professional
friend, addressed himself to the Temple.
There was nobody at the chambers but Young Blight. That discreet youth,
sensible of a certain incongruity in the association of such a client with the
business that might be coming some day, with the best intentions temporized with
Dolls, and offered a shilling for coach-hire home. Mr Dolls, accepting the
shilling, promptly laid it out in two threepennyworths of conspiracy against his
life, and two threepennyworths of raging repentance. Returning to the Chambers
with which burden, he was descried coming round into the court, by the wary
young Blight watching from the window: who instantly closed the outer door, and
left the miserable object to expend his fury on the panels.
The more the door resisted him, the more dangerous and imminent became that
bloody conspiracy against his life. Force of police arriving, he recognized in
them the conspirators, and laid about him hoarsely, fiercely, staringly,
convulsively, foamingly. A humble machine, familiar to the conspirators and
called by the expressive name of Stretcher, being unavoidably sent for, he was
rendered a harmless bundle of torn rags by being strapped down upon it, with
voice and consciousness gone out of him, and life fast going. As this machine
was borne out at the Temple gate by four men, the poor little dolls' dressmaker
and her Jewish friend were coming up the street.
'Let us see what it is,' cried the dressmaker. 'Let us make haste and look,
godmother.'
The brisk little crutch-stick was but too brisk. 'O gentlemen, gentlemen, he
belongs to me!'
'Belongs to you?' said the head of the party, stopping it.
'O yes, dear gentlemen, he's my child, out without leave. My poor bad, bad
boy! and he don't know me, he don't know me! O what shall I do,' cried the
little creature, wildly beating her hands together, 'when my own child don't
know me!'
The head of the party looked (as well he might) to the old man for
explanation. He whispered, as the dolls' dressmaker bent over the exhausted form
and vainly tried to extract some sign of recognition from it: 'It's her drunken
father.'
As the load was put down in the street, Riah drew the head of the party
aside, and whispered that he thought the man was dying. 'No, surely not?'
returned the other. But he became less confident, on looking, and directed the
bearers to 'bring him to the nearest doctor's shop.'
Thither he was brought; the window becoming from within, a wall of faces,
deformed into all kinds of shapes through the agency of globular red bottles,
green bottles, blue bottles, and other coloured bottles. A ghastly light shining
upon him that he didn't need, the beast so furious but a few minutes gone, was
quiet enough now, with a strange mysterious writing on his face, reflected from
one of the great bottles, as if Death had marked him: 'Mine.'
The medical testimony was more precise and more to the purpose than it
sometimes is in a Court of Justice. 'You had better send for something to cover
it. All's over.'
Therefore, the police sent for something to cover it, and it was covered and
borne through the streets, the people falling away. After it, went the dolls'
dressmaker, hiding her face in the Jewish skirts, and clinging to them with one
hand, while with the other she plied her stick. It was carried home, and, by
reason that the staircase was very narrow, it was put down in the parlour--the
little working-bench being set aside to make room for it--and there, in the
midst of the dolls with no speculation in their eyes, lay Mr Dolls with no
speculation in his.
Many flaunting dolls had to be gaily dressed, before the money was in the
dressmaker's pocket to get mourning for Mr Dolls. As the old man, Riah, sat by,
helping her in such small ways as he could, he found it difficult to make out
whether she really did realize that the deceased had been her father.
'If my poor boy,' she would say, 'had been brought up better, he might have
done better. Not that I reproach myself. I hope I have no cause for that.'
'None indeed, Jenny, I am very certain.'
'Thank you, godmother. It cheers me to hear you say so. But you see it is so
hard to bring up a child well, when you work, work, work, all day. When he was
out of employment, I couldn't always keep him near me. He got fractious and
nervous, and I was obliged to let him go into the streets. And he never did well
in the streets, he never did well out of sight. How often it happens with
children!'
'Too often, even in this sad sense!' thought the old man.
'How can I say what I might have turned out myself, but for my back having
been so bad and my legs so queer, when I was young!' the dressmaker would go on.
'I had nothing to do but work, and so I worked. I couldn't play. But my poor
unfortunate child could play, and it turned out the worse for him.'
'And not for him alone, Jenny.'
'Well! I don't know, godmother. He suffered heavily, did my unfortunate boy.
He was very, very ill sometimes. And I called him a quantity of names;' shaking
her head over her work, and dropping tears. 'I don't know that his going wrong
was much the worse for me. If it ever was, let us forget it.'
'You are a good girl, you are a patient girl.'
'As for patience,' she would reply with a shrug, 'not much of that,
godmother. If I had been patient, I should never have called him names. But I
hope I did it for his good. And besides, I felt my responsibility as a mother,
so much. I tried reasoning, and reasoning failed. I tried coaxing, and coaxing
failed. I tried scolding and scolding failed. But I was bound to try everything,
you know, with such a charge upon my hands. Where would have been my duty to my
poor lost boy, if I had not tried everything!'
With such talk, mostly in a cheerful tone on the part of the industrious
little creature, the day-work and the night-work were beguiled until enough of
smart dolls had gone forth to bring into the kitchen, where the working-bench
now stood, the sombre stuff that the occasion required, and to bring into the
house the other sombre preparations. 'And now,' said Miss Jenny, 'having knocked
off my rosy-cheeked young friends, I'll knock off my white-cheeked self.' This
referred to her making her own dress, which at last was done. 'The disadvantage
of making for yourself,' said Miss Jenny, as she stood upon a chair to look at
the result in the glass, 'is, that you can't charge anybody else for the job,
and the advantage is, that you haven't to go out to try on. Humph! Very fair
indeed! If He could see me now (whoever he is) I hope he wouldn't repent of his
bargain!'
The simple arrangements were of her own making, and were stated to Riah thus:
'I mean to go alone, godmother, in my usual carriage, and you'll be so kind
as keep house while I am gone. It's not far off. And when I return, we'll have a
cup of tea, and a chat over future arrangements. It's a very plain last house
that I have been able to give my poor unfortunate boy; but he'll accept the will
for the deed if he knows anything about it; and if he doesn't know anything
about it,' with a sob, and wiping her eyes, 'why, it won't matter to him. I see
the service in the Prayer-book says, that we brought nothing into this world and
it is certain we can take nothing out. It comforts me for not being able to hire
a lot of stupid undertaker's things for my poor child, and seeming as if I was
trying to smuggle 'em out of this world with him, when of course I must break
down in the attempt, and bring 'em all back again. As it is, there'll be nothing
to bring back but me, and that's quite consistent, for I shan't be brought back,
some day!'
After that previous carrying of him in the streets, the wretched old fellow
seemed to he twice buried. He was taken on the shoulders of half a dozen
blossom-faced men, who shuffled with him to the churchyard, and who were
preceded by another blossom-faced man, affecting a stately stalk, as if he were
a Policeman of the D(eath) Division, and ceremoniously pretending not to know
his intimate acquaintances, as he led the pageant. Yet, the spectacle of only
one little mourner hobbling after, caused many people to turn their heads with a
look of interest.
At last the troublesome deceased was got into the ground, to be buried no
more, and the stately stalker stalked back before the solitary dressmaker, as if
she were bound in honour to have no notion of the way home. Those Furies, the
conventionalities, being thus appeased, he left her.
'I must have a very short cry, godmother, before I cheer up for good,' said
the little creature, coming in. 'Because after all a child is a child, you
know.'
It was a longer cry than might have been expected. Howbeit, it wore itself
out in a shadowy corner, and then the dressmaker came forth, and washed her
face, and made the tea. 'You wouldn't mind my cutting out something while we are
at tea, would you?' she asked her Jewish friend, with a coaxing air.
'Cinderella, dear child,' the old man expostulated, 'will you never rest?'
'Oh! It's not work, cutting out a pattern isn't,' said Miss Jenny, with her
busy little scissors already snipping at some paper. 'The truth is, godmother, I
want to fix it while I have it correct in my mind.'
'Have you seen it to-day then?' asked Riah.
'Yes, godmother. Saw it just now. It's a surplice, that's what it is. Thing
our clergymen wear, you know,' explained Miss Jenny, in consideration of his
professing another faith.
'And what have you to do with that, Jenny?'
'Why, godmother,' replied the dressmaker, 'you must know that we Professors
who live upon our taste and invention, are obliged to keep our eyes always open.
And you know already that I have many extra expenses to meet just now. So, it
came into my head while I was weeping at my poor boy's grave, that something in
my way might be done with a clergyman.'
'What can be done?' asked the old man.
'Not a funeral, never fear!' returned Miss Jenny, anticipating his objection
with a nod. 'The public don't like to be made melancholy, I know very well. I am
seldom called upon to put my young friends into mourning; not into real
mourning, that is; Court mourning they are rather proud of. But a doll
clergyman, my dear, --glossy black curls and whiskers--uniting two of my young
friends in matrimony,' said Miss Jenny, shaking her forefinger, 'is quite
another affair. If you don't see those three at the altar in Bond Street, in a
jiffy, my name's Jack Robinson!'
With her expert little ways in sharp action, she had got a doll into
whitey-brown paper orders, before the meal was over, and was displaying it for
the edification of the Jewish mind, when a knock was heard at the street-door.
Riah went to open it, and presently came back, ushering in, with the grave and
courteous air that sat so well upon him, a gentleman.
The gentleman was a stranger to the dressmaker; but even in the moment of his
casting his eyes upon her, there was something in his manner which brought to
her remembrance Mr Eugene Wrayburn.
'Pardon me,' said the gentleman. 'You are the dolls' dressmaker?'
'I am the dolls' dressmaker, sir.'
'Lizzie Hexam's friend?'
'Yes, sir,' replied Miss Jenny, instantly on the defensive. 'And Lizzie
Hexam's friend.'
'Here is a note from her, entreating you to accede to the request of Mr
Mortimer Lightwood, the bearer. Mr Riah chances to know that I am Mr Mortimer
Lightwood, and will tell you so.'
Riah bent his head in corroboration.
'Will you read the note?'
'It's very short,' said Jenny, with a look of wonder, when she had read it.
'There was no time to make it longer. Time was so very precious. My dear
friend Mr Eugene Wrayburn is dying.'
The dressmaker clasped her hands, and uttered a little piteous cry.
'Is dying,' repeated Lightwood, with emotion, 'at some distance from here. He
is sinking under injuries received at the hands of a villain who attacked him in
the dark. I come straight from his bedside. He is almost always insensible. In a
short restless interval of sensibility, or partial sensibility, I made out that
he asked for you to be brought to sit by him. Hardly relying on my own
interpretation of the indistinct sounds he made, I caused Lizzie to hear them.
We were both sure that he asked for you.'
The dressmaker, with her hands still clasped, looked affrightedly from the
one to the other of her two companions.
'If you delay, he may die with his request ungratified, with his last
wish--intrusted to me--we have long been much more than brothers--unfulfilled. I
shall break down, if I try to say more.
In a few moments the black bonnet and the crutch-stick were on duty, the good
Jew was left in possession of the house, and the dolls' dressmaker, side by side
in a chaise with Mortimer Lightwood, was posting out of town.
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