The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings,and the company came. Mr. Wopsle,united to a Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead,had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of;indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the Church was “thrown open,” meaning to competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it. The Church not being “thrown open,” he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm,—always giving the whole verse,—he looked all round the congregation first, as much as to say, “You have heard my friend overhead; oblige me with your opinion of this style!”
I opened the door to the company,—making believe that it was a habit of ours to open that door,—and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to Mr.and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook.N.B. _I_ was not allowed to call him uncle,under the severest penalties.
“Mrs. Joe,” said Uncle Pumblechook,a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man,with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes,and sandy hair standing upright on his head,so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked,and had that moment come to,“I have brought you as the compliments of the season—I have brought you,Mum, a bottle of sherry wine—and I have brought you,Mum, a bottle of port wine.”
Every Christmas Day he presented himself,as a profound novelty, with exactly the same words,and carrying the two bottles like dumb-bells.Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied,as she now replied, “O, Un—cle Pum-ble—chook!This _is_ kind!” Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as he now retorted,“It’s no more than your merits.And now are you all bobbish,and how’s Sixpennorth of halfpence?” meaning me.
We dined on these occasions in the kitchen,and adjourned, for the nuts and oranges and apples to the parlour;which was a change very like Joe’s change from his working-clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a conventionally juvenile position, because she had married Mr. Hubble,—I don’t know at what remote period,—when she was much younger than he. I remember Mr Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered, stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.
Among this good company I should have felt myself,even if I hadn’t robbed the pantry,in a false position.Not because I was squeezed in at an acute angle of the tablecloth,with the table in my chest,and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye,nor because I was not allowed to speak (I didn’t want to speak),nor because I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls,and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig,when living, had had the least reason to be vain. No;I should not have minded that,if they would only have left me alone.But they wouldn’t leave me alone.They seemed to think the opportunity lost,if they failed to point the conversation at me,every now and then, and stick the point into me.I might have been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena,I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads.
It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr.Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation,—as it now appears to me,something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third,—and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful.Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said,in a low reproachful voice, “Do you hear that?Be grateful.”
“Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy,to them which brought you up by hand.”
Mrs. Hubble shook her head,and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that the young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr.Hubble tersely solved it by saying, “Naterally wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.
Joe’s station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when there was company than when there was none. But he always aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and he always did so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate, at this point, about half a pint.
A little later on in the dinner, Mr.Wopsle reviewed the sermon with some severity,and intimated—in the usual hypothetical case of the Church being “thrown open”—what kind of sermon _he_ would have given them. After favouring them with some heads of that discourse, he remarked that he considered the subject of the day’s homily, ill chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when there were so many subjects “going about.”
“True again,” said Uncle Pumblechook. “You’ve hit it, sir!Plenty of subjects going about,for them that know how to put salt upon their tails.That’s what’s wanted.A man needn’t go far to find a subject,if he’s ready with his salt-box.” Mr.Pumblechook added, after a short interval of reflection,“Look at Pork alone. There’s a subject!If you want a subject, look at Pork!”
“True, sir. Many a moral for the young,” returned Mr.Wopsle,—and I knew he was going to lug me in,before he said it; “might be deduced from that text.”
(“You listen to this,” said my sister to me,in a severe parenthesis.)
Joe gave me some more gravy.
“Swine,” pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice,and pointing his fork at my blushes,as if he were mentioning my Christian name,—“swine were the companions of the prodigal.The gluttony of Swine is put before us,as an example to the young.” (I thought this pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.) “What is detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy.”
“Or girl,” suggested Mr. Hubble.
“Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,” assented Mr. Wopsle,rather irritably, “but there is no girl present.”
“Besides,” said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me,“think what you’ve got to be grateful for.If you’d been born a Squeaker—”
“He _was_, if ever a child was,” said my sister, most emphatically.
Joe gave me some more gravy.
“Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker,” said Mr.Pumblechook. “If you had been born such,would you have been here now?Not you—”
“Unless in that form,” said Mr. Wopsle,nodding towards the dish.
“But I don’t mean in that form, sir,” returned Mr.Pumblechook, who had an objection to being interrupted;“I mean, enjoying himself with his elders and betters,and improving himself with their conversation,and rolling in the lap of luxury.Would he have been doing that?No, he wouldn’t. And what would have been your destination?” turning on me again.“You would have been disposed of for so many shillings according to the market price of the article, and Dunstable the butcher would have come up to you as you lay in your straw, and he would have whipped you under his left arm, and with his right he would have tucked up his frock to get a penknife from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would have shed your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then. Not a bit of it!”
Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.
“He was a world of trouble to you, ma’am,” said Mrs.Hubble, commiserating my sister.