Charles Dickens - The Man Behind the Classics: Autobiographical Novels, Stories, Memoirs, Letters & Biographies. Charles Dickens
my books shut up, still listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and listening through it to what used to be at home, and to the blowing of the wind on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and solitary. I picture myself going up to bed, among the unused rooms, and sitting on my bed-side crying for a comfortable word from Peggotty. I picture myself coming downstairs in the morning, and looking through a long ghastly gash of a staircase window at the school-bell hanging on the top of an out-house with a weathercock above it; and dreading the time when it shall ring J. Steerforth and the rest to work: which is only second, in my foreboding apprehensions, to the time when the man with the wooden leg shall unlock the rusty gate to give admission to the awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot think I was a very dangerous character in any of these aspects, but in all of them I carried the same warning on my back.
Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh to me. I suppose we were company to each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clench his fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner. But he had these peculiarities: and at first they frightened me, though I soon got used to them.
Chapter 6.
I Enlarge My Circle of Acquaintance
I had led this life about a month, when the man with the wooden leg began to stump about with a mop and a bucket of water, from which I inferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. Creakle and the boys. I was not mistaken; for the mop came into the schoolroom before long, and turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got on how we could, for some days, during which we were always in the way of two or three young women, who had rarely shown themselves before, and were so continually in the midst of dust that I sneezed almost as much as if Salem House had been a great snuff-box.
One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle would be home that evening. In the evening, after tea, I heard that he was come. Before bedtime, I was fetched by the man with the wooden leg to appear before him.
Mr. Creakle’s part of the house was a good deal more comfortable than ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that looked pleasant after the dusty playground, which was such a desert in miniature, that I thought no one but a camel, or a dromedary, could have felt at home in it. It seemed to me a bold thing even to take notice that the passage looked comfortable, as I went on my way, trembling, to Mr. Creakle’s presence: which so abashed me, when I was ushered into it, that I hardly saw Mrs. Creakle or Miss Creakle (who were both there, in the parlour), or anything but Mr. Creakle, a stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and seals, in an arm-chair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him.
‘So!’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘This is the young gentleman whose teeth are to be filed! Turn him round.’
The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit the placard; and having afforded time for a full survey of it, turned me about again, with my face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr. Creakle’s side. Mr. Creakle’s face was fiery, and his eyes were small, and deep in his head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some thin wet-looking hair that was just turning grey, brushed across each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on his forehead. But the circumstance about him which impressed me most, was, that he had no voice, but spoke in a whisper. The exertion this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in that feeble way, made his angry face so much more angry, and his thick veins so much thicker, when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on looking back, at this peculiarity striking me as his chief one. ‘Now,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘What’s the report of this boy?’
‘There’s nothing against him yet,’ returned the man with the wooden leg. ‘There has been no opportunity.’
I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought Mrs. and Miss Creakle (at whom I now glanced for the first time, and who were, both, thin and quiet) were not disappointed.
‘Come here, sir!’ said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me.
‘Come here!’ said the man with the wooden leg, repeating the gesture.
‘I have the happiness of knowing your father-in-law,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, taking me by the ear; ‘and a worthy man he is, and a man of a strong character. He knows me, and I know him. Do YOU know me? Hey?’ said Mr. Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness.
‘Not yet, sir,’ I said, flinching with the pain.
‘Not yet? Hey?’ repeated Mr. Creakle. ‘But you will soon. Hey?’
‘You will soon. Hey?’ repeated the man with the wooden leg. I afterwards found that he generally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle’s interpreter to the boys.
I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped so, if he pleased. I felt, all this while, as if my ear were blazing; he pinched it so hard.
‘I’ll tell you what I am,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go at last, with a screw at parting that brought the water into my eyes. ‘I’m a Tartar.’
‘A Tartar,’ said the man with the wooden leg.
‘When I say I’ll do a thing, I do it,’ said Mr. Creakle; ‘and when I say I will have a thing done, I will have it done.’
‘—Will have a thing done, I will have it done,’ repeated the man with the wooden leg.
‘I am a determined character,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘That’s what I am. I do my duty. That’s what I do. My flesh and blood’—he looked at Mrs. Creakle as he said this—‘when it rises against me, is not my flesh and blood. I discard it. Has that fellow’—to the man with the wooden leg—‘been here again?’
‘No,’ was the answer.
‘No,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘He knows better. He knows me. Let him keep away. I say let him keep away,’ said Mr. Creakle, striking his hand upon the table, and looking at Mrs. Creakle, ‘for he knows me. Now you have begun to know me too, my young friend, and you may go. Take him away.’
I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and Miss Creakle were both wiping their eyes, and I felt as uncomfortable for them as I did for myself. But I had a petition on my mind which concerned me so nearly, that I couldn’t help saying, though I wondered at my own courage:
‘If you please, sir—’
Mr. Creakle whispered, ‘Hah! What’s this?’ and bent his eyes upon me, as if he would have burnt me up with them.
‘If you please, sir,’ I faltered, ‘if I might be allowed (I am very sorry indeed, sir, for what I did) to take this writing off, before the boys come back—’
Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether he only did it to frighten me, I don’t know, but he made a burst out of his chair, before which I precipitately retreated, without waiting for the escort of the man with the wooden leg, and never once stopped until I reached my own bedroom, where, finding I was not pursued, I went to bed, as it was time, and lay quaking, for a couple of hours.
Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp was the first master, and superior to Mr. Mell. Mr. Mell took his meals with the boys, but Mr. Sharp dined and supped at Mr. Creakle’s table. He was a limp, delicate-looking gentleman, I thought, with a good deal of nose, and a way of carrying his head on one side, as if it were a little too heavy for him. His hair was very smooth and wavy; but I was informed by the very first boy who came back that it was a wig (a second-hand one HE said), and that Mr. Sharp went out every Saturday afternoon to get it curled.
It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave me this piece of intelligence. He was the first boy who returned. He introduced himself by informing me that I should find his name on the right-hand corner of the gate, over the top-bolt; upon that