The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0057/00579.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 29KB | 547 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00579}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Hard Times
Chapter VI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{gradgrind
childers
father
thquire
bounderby
ith
upon
never
sleary
give}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Hard Times
Book:        Book The First: Sowing
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter VI

Sleary's Horsemanship

     The name of the public house was the Pegasus's Arms.  The Pegasus's legs
might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged horse upon the
signboard, the Pegasus's Arms was inscribed in Roman letters. Beneath that
inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had touched off the lines:

     Good malt makes good beer,
     Walk in, and they'll draw it here;
     Good wine makes good brandy,
     Give us a call, and you'll find it handy.

     Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another
Pegasus - a theatrical one - with real gauze let in for his wings, golden
stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk.

     As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had not
grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby
received no offence from these idealities.  They followed the girl up some
steep corner-stairs without meeting anyone, and stopped in the dark while she
went on for a candle.  They expected every moment to hear Merrylegs give
tongue, but the highly trained performing dog had not barked when the girl and
the candle appeared together.

     "Father is not in our room, sir," she said, with a face of great
surprise. "If you wouldn't mind walking in, I'll find him directly."

     They walked in; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away with
a quick light step.  It was a mean, shabbily furnished room, with a bed in it.
The white nightcap, embellished with two peacock's feathers and a pigtail bolt
upright, in which Signor Jupe had that very afternoon enlivened the varied
performances with his chaste Shakespearian quips and retorts, hung upon a
nail; but no other portion of his wardrobe, or other token of himself or his
pursuits, was to be seen anywhere.  As to Merrylegs, that respectable ancestor
of the highly trained animal who went aboard the ark, might have been
accidentally shut out of it, for any sign of the dog that was manifest to eye
or ear in the Pegasus's Arms.

     They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Sissy went
from one to another in quest of her father; and presently they heard voices
expressing surprise.  She came bounding down again in a great hurry, opened a
battered and mangy old hair trunk, found it empty, and looked round with her
hands clasped and her face full of terror.

     "Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir.  I don't know why he
should go there, but he must be there; I'll bring him in a minute!" She was
gone directly, without her bonnet; with her long, dark, childish hair
streaming behind her.

     "What does she mean!" said Mr. Gradgrind.  "Back in a minute?  It's more
than a mile off."

     Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and
introducing himself with the words, "By your leaves, gentlemen!" walked in
with his hands in his pockets.  His face, close-shaven, thin, and sallow, was
shaded by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his
head, and parted up the centre.  His legs were very robust, but shorter than
legs of good proportions should have been.  His chest and back were as much
too broad, as his legs were too short.  He was dressed in a Newmarket coat and
tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw,
orange-peel, horse's provender, and sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort
of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the play-house.  Where the one began,
and the other ended, nobody could have told with any precision.  This
gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so
justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the
North American prairies; in which popular performance, a diminutive boy with
an old face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being
carried upside down over his father's shoulder, by one foot, and held by the
crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father's hand, according
to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be observed to
fondle their offspring.  Made up with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth,
and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to
constitute the chief delight of the maternal part of the spectators; but in
private, where his characteristics were a precocious cutaway coat and an
extremely gruff voice, he became of the Turf, turfy.

     "By your leaves, gentlemen," said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, glancing round
the room.  "It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see Jupe?"

     "It was," said Mr. Gradgrind.  "His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I
can't wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with
you."

     "You see, my friend," Mr. Bounderby put in, "we are the kind of people
who know the value of time; and you are the kind of people who don't know the
value of time."

     "I have not," retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to
foot, "the honour of knowing you; - but if you mean that you can make more
money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your appearance,
that you are about right."

     "And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think," said
Cupid.

     "Kidderminster, stow that!" said Mr. Childers.  (Master Kidderminster was
Cupid's mortal name.)

     "What does he come here cheeking us for, then?" cried Master
Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament.  "If you want to cheek
us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out."

     "Kidderminster," said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, "stow that! -
Sir," to Mr. Gradgrind, "I was addressing myself to you.  You may or you may
not be aware (for perhaps you have not been much in the audience), that Jupe
has missed his tip very often, lately."

     "Has - what has he missed?" asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing at the potent
Bounderby for assistance.

     "Missed his tip."

     "Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done 'em once,"
said Master Kidderminster.  "Missed his tip at the banners, too, and was loose
in his ponging."

     "Didn't do what he ought to do.  Was short in his leaps and bad in his
tumbling," Mr. Childers interpreted.

     "Oh!" said Mr. Gradgrind, "that is tip, is it?"

     "In a general way that's missing his tip," Mr. E. W. B. Childers
answered.

     "Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh?"
ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs.  "Queer sort of company, too,
for a man who has raised himself."

     "Lower yourself, then," retorted Cupid, "Oh Lord!  if you've raised
yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit."

     "This is a very obtrusive lad!" said Mr. Gradgrind turning, and knitting
his brows on him.

     "We'd have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you were
coming," retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed.  "It's a pity you
don't have a bespeak, being so particular.  You're on the Tight-Jeff, ain't
you?"

     "What does this unmannerly boy mean," asked Mr. Gradgrind, eyeing him in
a sort of desperation, "by Tight-Jeff?"

     "There!  Get out, get out!" said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend
from the room, rather in the prairie manner.  "Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff, it
don't much signify: it's only tight-rope and slack-rope. You were going to
give me a message for Jupe?"

     "Yes, I was."

     "Then," continued Mr. Childers, quickly, "my opinion is, he will never
receive it.  Do you know much of him?"

     "I never saw the man in my life."

     "I doubt if you ever will see him now.  It's pretty plain to me