“Was He a spy?” asked Mr. Cruncher.
“Old Bailey spy,” returned his informant. “Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old
Bailey Spi-i-ies!”
“Why, to be sure!” exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which
he had assisted. “I’ve seen him. Dead, is he?”
“Dead as mutton,” returned the other, “and can’t be too dead.
Have ’em out, there! Spies! Pull ’em out, there! Spies!”
The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any
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idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly
repeating the suggestion to have ’em out, and to pull ’em out,
mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On
the crowd’s opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out
of himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he was so
alert, and made such good use of his time, that in another moment
he was scouring away up by a by-street, after shedding his cloak,
hat, long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and other
symbolical tears.
These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with
great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their
shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a
monster much dreaded. They had already got to the length of
opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter
genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination
amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much
needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and
the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen
out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by
any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these
volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed
his spiky head from the observation of Tellson’s, in the further
corner of the mourning coach.
The officiating undertakers made some protest against these
changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near,
and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in
bringing refractory members of the profession to reason, the
protest was faint and brief. The remodelled procession started,
with a chimney-sweep driving the hearse—advised by the regular
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driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, for
the purpose—and with a pie-man, also attended by his cabinet
minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular
street character of the time, was impressed as an additional
ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand;
and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an
Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked.
Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and
infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its
way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before
it. Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in
the fields. It got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into
the burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of the
deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and highly to its own
satisfaction.
The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the
necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another
brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of
impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking
vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive
persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in
the realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and
maltreated. The transition to the sport of window-breaking, and
thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy and natural.
At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-houses had been
pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to arm the
more belligerent spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were
coming. Before the rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and
perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this
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was the usual progress of a mob.
Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had
remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with
the undertakers. The place had a soothing influence on him. He
procured a pipe from a neighbouring public-house, and smoked it,
looking in at the railings and maturely considering the spot.
“Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself his usual
way, “you see that there Cly that day, and you see with your own
eyes that he was a young ’un and a straight made ’un.”
Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he
turned himself about, that he might appear before the hour of
closing, on his station at Tellson’s. Whether his meditations on
morality had touched his liver, or whether his general health had
been previously at all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little
attention to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as
that he made a short call upon his medical adviser—a
distinguished surgeon—on his way back.
Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and
reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient
clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr. Cruncher and
his son went home to tea.
“Now, I tell you where it is!” said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on
entering. “If, as a honest tradesman, my wentures goes wrong
tonight, I shall make sure that you’ve been praying agin me, and I
shall work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it.”
The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head.
“Why, you’re at it afore my face!” said Mr. Cruncher, with signs
of angry apprehension.
“I am saying nothing.”
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“Well, then; don’t meditate nothing. You might as well flop as
meditate. You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop
it altogether.”
“Yes, Jerry.”
“Yes, Jerry,” repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. “Ah! It
is yes, Jerry. That’s about it. You may say yes, Jerry.”
Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky
corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfrequently
do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction.
“You and your yes, Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out
of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large
invisible oyster out of his saucer. “Ah! I think so. I believe you.”
“You were going out tonight?” asked his decent wife, when he
took another bite.
“Yes, I am.”
“May I go with you, father?” asked his son, briskly.
“No, you mayn’t. I’m a going—as your mother knows—a
fishing. That’s where I’m going to. Going a fishing.”
“Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don’t it, father?”
“Never you mind.”
“Shall you bring any fish home, father?”
“If I don’t, you’ll have short commons, tomorrow,” returned
that gentleman, shaking his head; “that’s questions enough for
you; I ain’t a going out, till you’ve been long a-bed.”
He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to
keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and sullenly
holding her in conversation that she might be prevented from
meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he
urged his son to hold her in conversation also, and led the
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unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of
complaint he could bring against her, rather than he would leave
her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person
could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an
honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a
professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost
story.
“And mind you!” said Mr. Cruncher. “No games tomorrow! If I,
as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two,
none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a
honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your
declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome
will be a ugly customer to you, if you don’t. I’m your Rome, you
know.”
Then he began grumbling again:
“With you flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I
don’t know how scarce you mayn’t make the wittles and drink
here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at
your boy: he is your’n, ain’t he? He’s as thin as a lath. Do you call
yourself a mother, and not know that a mother’s first duty is to
blow her boy out?”
This touched young Jerry on a tender place; who adjured his
mother to perform her first duty, and whatever else she did or
neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge
of that maternal function so affectingly and delicately indicated by
his other parent.
Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until
Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under
similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the
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earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start
upon his excursion until one o’clock. Towards that small and
ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his
pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a
crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing
tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in skilful
manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher,
extinguished the light, and went out.
Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he
went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the
darkness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs,
followed down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in
no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again, for it
was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.
Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of
his father’s honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house
fronts, walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another,
held his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering
northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another
disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.
Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond
the winking lamps, and the more than winking watchman, and
were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up
here—and that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been
superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the
gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself in two.
The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three
stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the
bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the
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shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a
blind lane, of which the wall—there, risen to some eight or ten feet
high—formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up
the lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw was the form of his
honoured parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded
moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the
second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped
softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a little—
listening perhaps. Then they moved away on their hands and
knees.
It was now Young Jerry’s turn to approach the gate: which he
did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there,
and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through
some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyard—it
was a large churchyard that they were in—looking on like ghosts
in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a
monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and
stood upright. And then they began to fish.
They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured
parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great
corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard,
until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young
Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father’s.
But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these
matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him
back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped
in at the gate for the second time; but now they seemed to have got
a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below,
and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow
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degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the
surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when
he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open,
he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off
again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.
He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary
than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one
highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the
coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as
hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always
on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side—
perhaps taking his arm—it was a pursuer to shun. It was an
inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the
whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway
to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like
a dropsical boy’s-Kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways
too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing
them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on
the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time
it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that
when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half
dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him
upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him,
and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell
asleep.
From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was
awakened after daybreak and before sunrise by the presence of
his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with
him; at least so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his
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holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her
head against the headboard of the bed.
“I told you I would,” said Mr. Cruncher, “and I did.”
“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!” his wife implored.
“You oppose yourself to the profit of the business,” said Jerry,
“and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey;
why the devil don’t you?”
“I try to be a good wife, Jerry,” the poor woman protested, with
tears.
“Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband’s business? Is it
honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying
your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?”
“You hadn’t taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry.”
“It’s enough for you,” retorted Mr. Cruncher, “to be the wife of
a honest tradesman, and not occupy your female mind with
calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn’t. A
honouring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether.
Call yourself a religious woman? If you’re a religious woman, give
me a irreligious one! You have no more nat’ral sense of duty than
the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it
must be knocked into you.”
The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and
terminated in the honest tradesman’s kicking off his clay-soiled
boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a
timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his
head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again.
There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else.
Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an
iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs.
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Cruncher, in case he should observe any symptoms of her saying
Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off
with his son to pursue his ostensible calling.
Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his
father’s side along sunny and crowded Fleet Street, was a very
different Young Jerry from him of the previous night, running
home through the darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer.
His cunning was fresh with the day, and his qualms were gone
with the night—in which particulars it is not improbable that he
had compeers in Fleet Street and the City of London, that fine
morning.
“Father,” said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to
keep at arm’s length and to have the stool well between them:
“what’s a Resurrection-Man?”
