Volume One – Chapter Sixteen.
Purkis’s Emporium
“I’m always glad to get out of this place,” said Mrs Jared; and she hurried her steps as they turned out of Brownjohn Street, where they had left Janet in safety, Monsieur Canau being absent at his theatrical duties; but they had seen D. Wragg, who had insisted upon Jared taking back a couple of unfortunate sparrows in a paper-bag. “Just to please the children,” the dealer had said. They had also seen Mrs Winks, and made an appointment with that lady concerning soap and soda: and now the providing had to be attended to in the busy street to which they made their way.
It was sharp work that providing, now at the butcher’s, now at the greengrocer’s, and now at the grocer’s that was not green; then they went to get a piece of the very fine prime old Cheshire from the next shop, with five eggs for sixpence, and butter and lard. Then the big basket began to grow heavy, and there was no more room in Jared’s pockets, nor yet under Mrs Jared’s shawl; and their steps were directed, as Jared supposed, homewards, as he groaned beneath his load.
For Jared Pellet always was loaded. No sooner did he take a weight off his shoulders than one asserted itself upon his mind. But it did not matter, he said, so long as he did not get so much more than his share. Upon the present occasion he felt like a man carrying a sheet of plate-glass down Fleet Street; for he had apples in the same pocket with the eggs, and that pocket being disposed to bulge, people would keep coming in contact, even though he used a market bunch of greens as the “ease-her-stop-her” boys do the fenders on the “Citizen” steamers to soften collision or contact with pier.
Then, too, there was Mrs Jared to protect in the crowd, for she was a very little woman; and though she would not own to it, that big basket bothered her sadly, being a regular tyrant, and, in spite of the coolness of the night, keeping her in a profuse perspiration.
It really was a brute of a basket – one of those wicker enormities with a cross handle, two flaps, and a large interior. Plenty of room when you could get anything inside; but an abomination of obstinacy, which seemed to like to have goods carried half in and half out, top-heavy fashion, with the flap lids cocked up and in the way of the handle.
And so it was upon the night in question; nothing would pack in as it should. The potatoes certainly did dive in properly when the scale was turned up; but the beef would not enter in spite of all the coaxing and contriving bestowed. No; it would not go in, but broke the wedge of fine old Cheshire all to crumbs; and there it was being carried home with the rough, red, freshly-sawed bone sticking out, and anointing with wet marrow Mrs Jared’s second-best shawl. Even the tea-paper was broken, and “Timson’s fine old family mixture” escaping in secret amongst the potatoes. However the moist sugar was safe, for it was being carried is a brown paper cone, balanced inside Jared’s hat, to the serious alarm of the two sparrows, till Jared stopped for a moment at a street corner and let them fly.
Any one with sympathetic feelings will easily understand that homely shopping under such circumstances was rather trying to the temper. Mrs Jared’s temper was tried, but it only displayed itself in slight compressions of her lips; and even this outward and visible sign of something wrong soon passed off, giving place to an air of anxiety as they passed through a by-street, where she suddenly arrested her husband.
The stopping-place was at a liberally painted shoemaker’s shop, over which, in large letters, shone the golden words, “Purkis’s Boot and Shoe Emporium,” while the gilt flourishes and bands upon the board seemed to remind the beholder strangely of the beadle’s uniform and wand of office.
“Hallo!” exclaimed Jared, waking up from a dream of Farmer’s Gloria in Excelsis, “What do you want here?”
“Only to tell Mr Purkis to send for Totty’s little boots,” said Mrs Jared.
Jared was satisfied, and they entered, sending a small bell hung upon the half door into a very rage of ringing, to summon attendance, although the owner of the establishment was ponderously taking the measure of a customer’s foot, by means of a long slip of paper and a sliding rule, slowly the while making entries upon the said white slip, and afterwards smearing them out and re-writing them. The next minute, though, he had fallen into a state of doubt, and measured again, till, in his confusion, he not only made himself extremely inky, but blotted his customer’s white stockings.
But at last Mr Purkis had finished, sighed relief, dismissed the measured lady, with a promise very doubtful of fulfilment, taken off his glasses, and then turned to welcome his visitors, Mr Jared Pellet, organist of his (Mr Purkis’s) church, being a customer held by him in some reverence.
A very warm, moist man was Mr Purkis in all weathers, and during conversation he was always busy dabbing his forehead, or wiping his neck or hands, even continuing the desiccating process sometimes within his shirt-collar; but his broad face was wreathed with smiles, and a Chesterfield could not have been more polite to his visitors as he responded to Jared’s inquiries about his health.
“Not very well, sir,” said Mr Purkis, taking up a huge clump-soled boot. “I’ve been a deal worried to-day, sir, over this boot. Mr D. Wragg’s, sir, as you recommended to come to me, and that leg of his as is shorter than the other never seems to keep the same length two days together, and I can’t get the sole thick enough, even now. But he’s a good customer all the same, and I thank you ever so much for recommending me to him. Make that dark gi – young lady’s boots too, I do, sir; her as comes with the little Frenchman; but where he picks up his boots, I don’t know.”
Here Mrs Jared cut a long story short by speaking about Totty’s shoes.
He would send for those little shoes first thing in the morning, without fail; but would not Mr and Mrs Pellet step in.
Jared thought not, but Mrs Jared took the opposite, for she had other thoughts than shoes upon her mind; so declaring herself to be tired, she followed Mr Purkis into the back room, where Mrs Purkis left off ironing to dust a couple of chairs, and drew a small black saucepan, simmering upon the hob, a little farther from the cheery blaze.
“Poor Mrs Nimmer’s dead and gone, sir,” said Mr Purkis.
“Indeed!” said Jared and his wife together.
“Yes, sir – went very suddenly – only this very afternoon, sir. Forty year had she been pew-opener at St Runnles – twenty year before I took the beadleship.”
The conversation had taken the very turn Mrs Jared desired; in fact, she had dragged Jared round in order to enlist Mr Purkis upon their side – at all events, to prevent him from trying to run a friend of his own. She was somewhat shocked at the suddenness of the beadle’s announcement, yet she felt that, for the sake of a family friend, so good an opportunity must not be lost.
“Who is to be the new pew-opener, Mr Purkis?” she said, after a while.
“Who, mum?” said Purkis, after a good wipe; “I don’t know, mum, I’m sure. I should like the Missus there to try, but she says she won’t.”
“Not if I know it, Joseph,” exclaimed his lady, as if in doubt whether she might commence the undertaking in ignorance. “Not if I know it, Joseph,” she exclaimed, polishing an iron with a duster, after giving it a vicious rub in the ashes. “If a married woman hasn’t enough to do to mind her own house and bits of things, it’s a pity. The church has got you, and has you a deal away from the business with weddings and such; and besides, I never opened pews, and I’m too old to learn now.”
“Perhaps Mrs Purkis will think better of it,” said Mrs Jared.
“Better of it! No, ma’am; nor worse, neither. I shall never commit myself by doing of it, as I’ve told Joseph a score of times.”
“Then, under those circumstances, perhaps Mr Purkis would not mind helping a friend of ours to obtain that post?”
“Friend of yours, mum?” said Purkis, eagerly; “I’d do all I could in my way, mum, though that wouldn’t be much. But,” he exclaimed, as a bright thought seemed to strike him, “I could keep other people away.”
“But that would hardly be fair,” observed Mrs Jared.
“Perhaps we had better not go into that part of the business, mum,” said Mr Purkis, with dignity. “Elections is things as ladies don’t understand; and those in elections have to serve their own friends, and serve out their enemies. What we want to do is to remember Mr Pellet’s kindness.”
“Which we shall never forget,” chimed in Mrs Purkis, looking up from her ironing in support of her husband’s allusion to Jared’s “donus,” and a timely loan supplied at a time when Mr Purkis had got himself into what he termed “a mess” by obliging a friend in a bill transaction.
“’Taint every one as will put himself to inconvenience and help them as is pushed,” said Mr Purkis.
“Which it’s well enough we know that, Joseph,” chimed in Mrs Purkis, halting in her task, and burning the mark of the flat-iron into the garment being smoothed.
“There! I must go, if you are going to keep this on,” exclaimed Jared, rising from the chair in which he had been fidgeting about until it scraped upon the floor. “I can’t stand this, you know,” and he glanced from Purkis to his wife, who was wiping her eye upon the corner of her apron.
“Don’t go, sir, please,” exclaimed Purkis; “for I was going to say – to ask, you know – that is, if you wouldn’t mind – ”
Here he made a telegraphic signal with one arm to his wife, and in one sweep indicated “Clear away and lay the cloth.” The signal having the effect upon Mrs Purkis of making her dab down an iron and raise the saucepan lid.
“We’re very homely, Mr Pellet, sir,” she said, as she diffused a savoury odour through the little room; “but if you wouldn’t mind?”
Jared did not wish to stay, but Mrs Jared did, and she had her way, when, over a snug little supper, the pew-opening business was discussed in all its bearings, though frequently during his stay Jared was ready to get up and leave the place in consequence of the beadle’s allusions to his kindness.
It was very plain, though, that Purkis and his wife looked up to their visitors as people far above the ordinary run; and after their departure, Mr Purkis dabbed himself for five minutes, and then, bringing his hand down upon his counter with a loud spang, he exclaimed, like a monarch bestowing dignities —
“She shall have it, that she shall.”
“But, Joseph,” exclaimed his wife, deprecatingly, “whatever you do, don’t commit yourself.”
“Don’t talk stuff,” exclaimed Purkis, fiercely.
“But it wouldn’t be stuff, Joseph, if you was to commit yourself,” whimpered Mrs Purkis.
“Mrs Purkis, ma’am,” said the beadle, donning imaginary robes, “Mr Pellet has asked for the post for a humble friend of his. Mr Pellet’s humble friend shall have it, ma’am, or I’ll know the reason why. Mr Pellet, ma’am, is our friend; and what’s more, or what isn’t more – I won’t say as to that – Mr Pellet, ma’am, is an ornament to my church, for he’s the finest organist in London.”
Volume One – Chapter Seventeen.
Mrs Nimmer’s Successor
There was no very great difficulty in the matter. Jared Pellet, under protest, wrote a note to the Rev. John Gray, the vicar, telling him that a friend – he haggled a great deal over that word “friend” – would be glad to undertake the duties of pew-opener in the place of the defunct Mrs Nimmer; and the vicar mentioned the matter to his friend Mr Timson, churchwarden and tea-dealer, and both agreed that they would be most happy to oblige Mr Jared Pellet in the matter.
Then Mr Timson had an interview with Jared, and told him personally he would be glad to give his weight to the matter, if Jared’s friend was a worthy suitable woman.
Now there came a hitch in the smoothness, for Jared went home and told his wife that that red-faced old humbug Purkis had played double; and, in fact, he had gone head-dabbing into the presence of the vicar and churchwarden to tell them he should be glad if the post lately occupied by Mrs Nimmer could be conferred upon a friend of his.
But explanations followed: the two principal candidates were found to be one and the same; and Mrs Tim Ruggles was duly appointed to a post, for whose proper filling she seemed to have been specially manufactured by Dame Nature.
She, that is to say Mrs Tim Ruggles, glided, as it were, into the correct rut upon the very first Sunday – coming to St Runwald’s in a mournful-hued dress – a shot putty and soot, while a tightly-fitting cap crowned her head – a cap like a white sarcenet raised pie, all tiny bows and tuckers – none of your fly-away servant-girl style of headdress, but firmly tied beneath her chin with silken strings. Then, too, a prim-white muslin handkerchief encircled her neck, with ends pinned across, and descending to be hidden away and protected by exceedingly stiff, dark-coloured jean stays, whose presence was manifested to the ear of the world at large by divers creaking cracklings, when, by rare chance, Mrs Ruggles slightly bent her fierce body – to the eye, by a little peephole, afforded where one hook in the back of the dress had an antipathy to its kindred loop.
She might have been pew-opener for twenty years from the way in which she performed her duties, even trenching upon Mr Purkis’s dominion by frowning at small boys. It was a sight to see the way in which she performed her task, pouncing upon dubious-looking strangers who stood tasting their hats just inside the doors, and, as she could tell in a moment whether or not they were disposed to be generous, placing them in comfortably cushioned seats, where such miserable sinners could not fail to be eased in their consciences. Sometimes she morally took the poor things into custody, and then, like some savage warder, shut them up in cold wooden cells – in corners where it was dark, in black places just below the galleries, in spots beneath the organ, where they sat with a sensation as of liquid thunder being poured upon their heads, or behind pillars where they could not catch a glimpse of the reading-desk, and had to look round the corner at the pulpit. A select few she treated worse than all the rest, shutting them up in the great churchwarden’s pew, where they were completely out of sight, Mr Timson monopolising all the hassocks so as to peep over the edge.
A very moral hedgehog was Mrs Ruggles, treating the congregation as if they were so many little Pines intrusted to her charge, and evidently annoyed that she was not allowed, like Mr Purkis, a cane to use ad libitum. Had she been in office at a ritualistic church, brawlers would have paused ere they attempted to desecrate the structure. If you went into the church, she looked at you sidewise, and calculated your value in an instant; when, if you obeyed the glance of her eye, well; if not, she held up a finger at you, as if to say, “Come here, sir!” and then – stay away if you dared.
Why! the pew doors never screaked and scrawked when she opened them. She never shut in your coat-tails, or the voluminous folds of a lady’s dress; but she punished you severely if ever you attended St Runwald’s without books; for she would glide along the aisle like a religious ghost, and thrust a dreadful liver-coloured, dog’s-eared, S.P.C.K. prayer-book under your nose, so that you were obliged to take it, and then pay her sixpence as you went out for what you would rather not have had. For, if you had been accustomed all your life to a delicately bound diamond edition, it was not pleasant to stand up in good society holding the sore-edged, workhouse-looking book, while you dared not thrust it out of sight, for she was sure, in that case, to bring you another, to your lasting shame and confusion. It was almost a wonder that people so served ever entered the church again; and the probabilities are that they never would have done so, had not Jared Pellet drawn them thither with his music.
The best way to meet Mrs Ruggles was to be prepared with a pocket edition of the liturgy, when, if it were your custom to stand with hands joined and resting upon the pew-edge, under the impression that you were quite at home in the service, down she would come, for a certainty, her crackling stays heralding her approach. Then the plan was to be ready for her, and, as she rigidly made a thrust at you with the most disreputable book in her collection, ward off her attack with one of Jarkins & Potto’s little bijous.
The assertion cannot be authenticated, but it was said that Mrs Ruggles, soon after her appointment, went round to the bookstalls in Holywell Street, and bought up the old prayer-books out of the tea-chests, labelled, “All these at twopence;” and these brutal, loose-leaved, mildewed affairs she used to keep in a box in a corner pew ready to hand, making pounds out of them in the course of the year – a sort of private church-rate of her own.
It was almost startling to hear her, when it had grown too late for fresh comers, when the church was completely filled, and a portion of the congregation was sitting in aisle and nave upon camp-stools and chairs fetched out of the vestry. She would join then in litany and communion, startling the clerk, and getting right before him, so that the congregation would turn and look at her, in admiration or otherwise, but without ruffling in the least the perfect calm of her demeanour.
If a douceur was given to old Purkis, he bent a little, or touched his cocked-hat, or in some way gave you to understand that he was grateful; but not so Mrs Ruggles: she seemed to demand the money of you as a right, and you paid it under protest, feeling somehow obliged to do so, although, when she took it, she seemed to ignore you and your coin at one and the same time. Some people said that she must have paid fees to physicians in her day, and so have learned something of their ways; but how she ever continued to get the sixpences and shillings into her pocket, remains one of the great unsolved mysteries, for she never bent in the slightest degree.
Mr Purkis never took to her, for he declared her to be a woman without a soul for music, since she seemed to make a point of leaving all the dust and cobwebs she could about the organ loft, neglecting it shamefully; which the beadle said was not the thing, seeing who had been the means of getting her the post.
Volume One – Chapter Eighteen.
Official
“A most valuable woman, Timson,” the vicar said to the churchwarden; “most suitable person. You never see her flurried when a great many people are waiting for seats.”
“Never,” said Mr Timson, gruffly.
The conversation took place in the vicar’s snuggery, where he and his friend indulged in these unclerical comforts, pipes, gin-and-water, and cribbage.
“Very stiff and formal she is certainly,” said the vicar; “but, somehow, she never seems to give offence.”
“Yes, she does,” said Mr Timson, gruffly; “she offends me; I don’t like her. Wish Mother Nimmer was alive again.”
“Pooh! nonsense! stuff! prejudice!”
“Shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo!” ejaculated Mr Timson. “I haven’t a bit of prejudice in my whole body.”
“I mean,” said the vicar, taking not the slightest notice of the interruption, “she never seems to give offence about people’s sittings; for her’s is a delicate task, and one not easy to manage. I can assure you that I have not had a single complaint as yet, and they used to be constant in Mrs Nimmer’s time.”
“’Fraid of her,” suggested Mr Timson.
“I do wish that you would talk rationally, Timson,” said the vicar.
“Well, that is rationally,” said Mr Timson.
“The church fills uncommonly well now,” observed the vicar, after a pause, so as to start a fresh subject; for Mr Timson was looking red and choleric, and his short hair was standing up all over his head. “The people seem to like those historical sermons. I think I shall continue them.”
“I think I should,” said Timson, drily; “perhaps it might be as well, at the same time, to stop some of the music, or give Mr Pellet a holiday.”
“Why?” said the vicar, sharply.
“Make more room in the church,” said Timson.
“There, there! I won’t quarrel with you Timson,” said the vicar, with some asperity; “but I can understand your allusion, though I won’t notice it. But, to return to the subject, don’t you think that Mrs Ruggles’ salary might be a little raised?”
“No,” said Mr Timson, stoutly; “I don’t think anything of the kind. Why, what for, pray? when the woman has the same as poor old Mrs Nimmer, who was worth a dozen of her.”
“Well, Timson,” said the vicar, quietly, “if you are not disposed to discuss the matter in a liberal spirit, why it had better drop; at least, I think so.”
“So do I,” said the illiberal Timson; and consequently the matter did drop, with the advantage to Mrs Ruggles of making her appear an ill-used woman, much persecuted, in the vicar’s eyes.
For the old gentleman most thoroughly believed in her, from her conduct being so exemplary. Always the same quiet, prim woman, ready at proper times to do her duty; to arrange hassocks at a christening, or to point out the positions for the actors at a hymeneal sacrifice. The vicar was loud in her praise, so loud, indeed, that when with his crony Timson, Mrs Ruggles grew to be quite a bone – or rather bundle of bones – of contention, over which at times they almost quarrelled, for Mr Timson, either from a spirit of opposition, or from genuine dislike, invariably took part against the woman. So near were they to quarrelling at times, that had they been people of a more secular turn, it might have been said that they quite fell out.
The vicar told Timson so more than once, though he would not believe it; for in spite of his friendly feeling and genuine respect for his nominator, the churchwarden could at times be as obstinate as the proverbial pig.
In short, there was a division in the church, for and against Mrs Ruggles, and Purkis told his wife in confidence, that he “couldn’t see it at all; and if it hadn’t been for Pellet – he knowed” – What, he did not say; but he shook and nodded his head a great many times, as he concluded by telling Mrs Purkis that if she had been ruled by him, Mrs Ruggles would never have had the post.
“And you’d never have had a decent bit of hot dinner o’ Sundays,” retorted his lady.
“She’s a deceitful one, that’s what she is,” said Mr Purkis; “and she ain’t going to meddle and interfere with my dooties; so come now!”
“I shouldn’t bemean myself to speak to her, if I was you, Joseph,” said his wife.
“You might just as well have took the place, and gone comfortable to church with me, and come back with me comfortable,” said Mr Purkis, ignoring his wife’s last remark.
“And, as I said before, you never knowing what it was to have hot dinners on Sundays,” retorted Mrs Purkis. “No, not if I know it, Joseph. We’ve been man and wife now turned of thirty year, and never once yet did I give you a cold Sunday-dinner. If I don’t know my duty as a wife by this time it’s a pity.”
Mrs Purkis turned very red in the face as she spoke, and, after the fashion of her husband, shook her head and nodded it, till Mr Purkis, who, if he did not make a god of his gastric region, certainly yielded it the deference due to a monarch, owned that there was something in what she said, when her face resumed its natural hue, which was only a warm pink.
“But it would have been a deal nicer for some things,” said Mr Purkis, who still hung about the subject.
“And a deal nastier for other things, Joseph,” retorted his wife; “and that makes six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.”
“Just so, my dear,” said Mr Purkis, making his first and last attempt at a joke – “six of one in pounds, and half-a-dozen of the other in shillings – six guineas a year, and what you could have made besides, and a very nice thing too.”
“And you growling and grumbling because your Sunday-dinner was always cold,” said Mrs Purkis, resorting once more to her carnal fortification.
“But I don’t know, now, but what that would have been better,” said the beadle, indulging in a habit which he had learned of a stout alderman and magistrate, who believed in its awe-inspiring qualities, and often tried it on small pickpockets, while Mr Purkis was so pleased with it that he always wore it with his beadle’s uniform, and practised it frequently upon Ichabod Gunnis, though with so little effect that the said young gentleman only imitated him as soon as his back was turned, frowning, blowing out his cheeks, and then letting them collapse again. “I don’t know, my dear,” said Mr Purkis, “but what it would have been better than to have had that woman always pottering about in my church.”
“And never even had the decency to call in and thank us for the pains we took,” said Mrs Purkis, “or to drop in occasional for a friendly cup o’ tea, and a mossle of toast, as anybody else would; or come in and sit down sociably as poor Mrs Nimmer would, and ready at any time to take up a bit o’ needlework, or a stocking, and have a quiet chat.”
“Well,” said Mr Purkis, whose thoughts were evidently running quite as much upon Sunday-dinners as upon pew-openers, “it’s of no use to grumble, for what’s done can’t be undone. But when Christmas comes, if she pushes herself forward so much, I’ll let her know – see if I don’t I’m not going to put up with so much of her interference, I can tell her.”
“The more you give way, the more give you may,” said Mrs Purkis, rhythmically.
“Why, she’ll want to be beadle next, and clerk too,” said Mr Purkis, indignantly, and growing so warm that he had to wipe inside his shirt-collar as well as dab his head; “says all the Amens now, she does, louder than the poor old gentleman – reg’lar drowns him in the litany, and makes herself that conspickyus that it’s a wonder Mr Gray can’t see through her, instead of taking her into favour. Not that I mind a bit – not I. Mr Timson don’t like her, though; and you see if he gives her a Christmas-box, same as he used Mrs Nimmer – pound o’ best black, and a quarter o’ green – he always give her reg’lar.”
“Ah! same as he gives us,” sighed Mrs Purkis, “and as good tea as ever stood on a hob to draw.”