Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1669 page)

“Don’t let your good feelings excite you,” said Bintrey, as they returned to the counting-house, and Mr. Wilding dried himself on a jack-towel behind an inner door.

“No, no.  I won’t,” he returned, looking out of the towel.  “I won’t.  I have not been confused, have I?”

“Not at all.  Perfectly clear.”

“Where did I leave off, Mr. Bintrey?”

“Well, you left off — but I wouldn’t excite myself, if I was you, by taking it up again just yet.”

“I’ll take care.  I’ll take care.  The singing in my head came on at where, Mr. Bintrey?”

“At roast, and boiled, and beer,” answered the lawyer, — ”prompting lodging under the same roof — and one and all — ”

“Ah!  And one and all singing in the head together — ”

“Do you know, I really
would not
let my good feelings excite me, if I was you,” hinted the lawyer again, anxiously.  “Try some more pump.”

“No occasion, no occasion.  All right, Mr. Bintrey.  And one and all forming a kind of family!  You see, Mr. Bintrey, I was not used in my childhood to that sort of individual existence which most individuals have led, more or less, in their childhood.  After that time I became absorbed in my late dear mother.  Having lost her, I find that I am more fit for being one of a body than one by myself one.  To be that, and at the same time to do my duty to those dependent on me, and attach them to me, has a patriarchal and pleasant air about it.  I don’t know how it may appear to you, Mr Bintrey, but so it appears to me.”

“It is not I who am all-important in the case, but you,” returned Bintrey.  “Consequently, how it may appear to me is of very small importance.”

“It appears to me,” said Mr. Wilding, in a glow, “hopeful, useful, delightful!”

“Do you know,” hinted the lawyer again, “I really would not ex — ”

“I am not going to.  Then there’s Handel.”

“There’s who?” asked Bintrey.

“Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, Mendelssohn.  I know the choruses to those anthems by heart.  Foundling Chapel Collection.  Why shouldn’t we learn them together?”

“Who learn them together?” asked the lawyer, rather shortly.

“Employer and employed.”

“Ay, ay,” returned Bintrey, mollified; as if he had half expected the answer to be, Lawyer and client.  “That’s another thing.”

“Not another thing, Mr. Bintrey!  The same thing.  A part of the bond among us.  We will form a Choir in some quiet church near the Corner here, and, having sung together of a Sunday with a relish, we will come home and take an early dinner together with a relish.  The object that I have at heart now is, to get this system well in action without delay, so that my new partner may find it founded when he enters on his partnership.”

“All good be with it!” exclaimed Bintrey, rising.  “May it prosper!  Is Joey Ladle to take a share in Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, and Mendelssohn?

“I hope so.”

“I wish them all well out of it,” returned Bintrey, with much heartiness.  “Good-bye, sir.”

They shook hands and parted.  Then (first knocking with his knuckles for leave) entered to Mr. Wilding from a door of communication between his private counting-house and that in which his clerks sat, the Head Cellarman of the cellars of Wilding and Co., Wine Merchants, and erst Head Cellarman of the cellars of Pebbleson Nephew.  The Joey Ladle in question.  A slow and ponderous man, of the drayman order of human architecture, dressed in a corrugated suit and bibbed apron, apparently a composite of door-mat and rhinoceros-hide.

“Respecting this same boarding and lodging, Young Master Wilding,” said he.

“Yes, Joey?”

“Speaking for myself, Young Master Wilding — and I never did speak and I never do speak for no one else —
I
don’t want no boarding nor yet no lodging.  But if you wish to board me and to lodge me, take me.  I can peck as well as most men.  Where I peck ain’t so high a object with me as What I peck.  Nor even so high a object with me as How Much I peck.  Is all to live in the house, Young Master Wilding?  The two other cellarmen, the three porters, the two ‘prentices, and the odd men?”

“Yes.  I hope we shall all be an united family, Joey.”

“Ah!” said Joey.  “I hope they may be.”

“They?  Rather say we, Joey.”

Joey Ladle shook his held.  “Don’t look to me to make we on it, Young Master Wilding, not at my time of life and under the circumstances which has formed my disposition.  I have said to Pebbleson Nephew many a time, when they have said to me, ‘Put a livelier face upon it, Joey’ — I have said to them, ‘Gentlemen, it is all wery well for you that has been accustomed to take your wine into your systems by the conwivial channel of your throttles, to put a lively face upon it; but,’ I says, ‘I have been accustomed to take
my
wine in at the pores of the skin, and, took that way, it acts different.  It acts depressing.  It’s one thing, gentlemen,’ I says to Pebbleson Nephew, ‘to charge your glasses in a dining-room with a Hip Hurrah and a Jolly Companions Every One, and it’s another thing to be charged yourself, through the pores, in a low dark cellar and a mouldy atmosphere.  It makes all the difference betwixt bubbles and wapours,’ I tells Pebbleson Nephew.  And so it do.  I’ve been a cellarman my life through, with my mind fully given to the business.  What’s the consequence?  I’m as muddled a man as lives — you won’t find a muddleder man than me — nor yet you won’t find my equal in molloncolly.  Sing of Filling the bumper fair, Every drop you sprinkle, O’er the brow of care, Smooths away a wrinkle?  Yes.  P’raps so.  But try filling yourself through the pores, underground, when you don’t want to it!”

“I am sorry to hear this, Joey.  I had even thought that you might join a singing-class in the house.”

“Me, sir?  No, no, Young Master Wilding, you won’t catch Joey Ladle muddling the Armony.  A pecking-machine, sir, is all that I am capable of proving myself, out of my cellars; but that you’re welcome to, if you think it is worth your while to keep such a thing on your premises.”

“I do, Joey.”

“Say no more, sir.  The Business’s word is my law.  And you’re a going to take Young Master George Vendale partner into the old Business?”

“I am, Joey.”

“More changes, you see!  But don’t change the name of the Firm again.  Don’t do it, Young Master Wilding.  It was bad luck enough to make it Yourself and Co.  Better by far have left it Pebbleson Nephew that good luck always stuck to.  You should never change luck when it’s good, sir.”

“At all events, I have no intention of changing the name of the House again, Joey.”

“Glad to hear it, and wish you good-day, Young Master Wilding.  But you had better by half,” muttered Joey Ladle inaudibly, as he closed the door and shook his head, “have let the name alone from the first.  You had better by half have followed the luck instead of crossing it.”

ENTER THE HOUSEKEEPER

The wine merchant sat in his dining-room next morning, to receive the personal applicants for the vacant post in his establishment.  It was an old-fashioned wainscoted room; the panels ornamented with festoons of flowers carved in wood; with an oaken floor, a well-worn Turkey carpet, and dark mahogany furniture, all of which had seen service and polish under Pebbleson Nephew.  The great sideboard had assisted at many business-dinners given by Pebbleson Nephew to their connection, on the principle of throwing sprats overboard to catch whales; and Pebbleson Nephew’s comprehensive three-sided plate-warmer, made to fit the whole front of the large fireplace, kept watch beneath it over a sarcophagus-shaped cellaret that had in its time held many a dozen of Pebbleson Nephew’s wine.  But the little rubicund old bachelor with a pigtail, whose portrait was over the sideboard (and who could easily be identified as decidedly Pebbleson and decidedly not Nephew), had retired into another sarcophagus, and the plate-warmer had grown as cold as he.  So, the golden and black griffins that supported the candelabra, with black balls in their mouths at the end of gilded chains, looked as if in their old age they had lost all heart for playing at ball, and were dolefully exhibiting their chains in the Missionary line of inquiry, whether they had not earned emancipation by this time, and were not griffins and brothers.

Such a Columbus of a morning was the summer morning, that it discovered Cripple Corner.  The light and warmth pierced in at the open windows, and irradiated the picture of a lady hanging over the chimney-piece, the only other decoration of the walls.

“My mother at five-and-twenty,” said Mr. Wilding to himself, as his eyes enthusiastically followed the light to the portrait’s face, “I hang up here, in order that visitors may admire my mother in the bloom of her youth and beauty.  My mother at fifty I hang in the seclusion of my own chamber, as a remembrance sacred to me.  O!  It’s you, Jarvis!”

These latter words he addressed to a clerk who had tapped at the door, and now looked in.

“Yes, sir.  I merely wished to mention that it’s gone ten, sir, and that there are several females in the Counting-house.”

“Dear me!” said the wine-merchant, deepening in the pink of his complexion and whitening in the white, “are there several?  So many as several?  I had better begin before there are more.  I’ll see them one by one, Jarvis, in the order of their arrival.”

Hastily entrenching himself in his easy-chair at the table behind a great inkstand, having first placed a chair on the other side of the table opposite his own seat, Mr. Wilding entered on his task with considerable trepidation.

He ran the gauntlet that must be run on any such occasion.  There were the usual species of profoundly unsympathetic women, and the usual species of much too sympathetic women.  There were buccaneering widows who came to seize him, and who griped umbrellas under their arms, as if each umbrella were he, and each griper had got him.  There were towering maiden ladies who had seen better days, and who came armed with clerical testimonials to their theology, as if he were Saint Peter with his keys.  There were gentle maiden ladies who came to marry him.  There were professional housekeepers, like non-commissioned officers, who put him through his domestic exercise, instead of submitting themselves to catechism.  There were languid invalids, to whom salary was not so much an object as the comforts of a private hospital.  There were sensitive creatures who burst into tears on being addressed, and had to be restored with glasses of cold water.  There were some respondents who came two together, a highly promising one and a wholly unpromising one: of whom the promising one answered all questions charmingly, until it would at last appear that she was not a candidate at all, but only the friend of the unpromising one, who had glowered in absolute silence and apparent injury.

At last, when the good wine-merchant’s simple heart was failing him, there entered an applicant quite different from all the rest.  A woman, perhaps fifty, but looking younger, with a face remarkable for placid cheerfulness, and a manner no less remarkable for its quiet expression of equability of temper.  Nothing in her dress could have been changed to her advantage.  Nothing in the noiseless self-possession of her manner could have been changed to her advantage.  Nothing could have been in better unison with both, than her voice when she answered the question: “What name shall I have the pleasure of noting down?” with the words, “My name is Sarah Goldstraw.  Mrs. Goldstraw.  My husband has been dead many years, and we had no family.”

Half-a-dozen questions had scarcely extracted as much to the purpose from any one else.  The voice dwelt so agreeably on Mr. Wilding’s ear as he made his note, that he was rather long about it.  When he looked up again, Mrs. Goldstraw’s glance had naturally gone round the room, and now returned to him from the chimney-piece.  Its expression was one of frank readiness to be questioned, and to answer straight.

“You will excuse my asking you a few questions?” said the modest wine-merchant.

“O, surely, sir.  Or I should have no business here.”

“Have you filled the station of housekeeper before?”