[Literature] Charles Dickens: A Great Mystery Solved by Gillan Vase #12/131

Not I, I am sure. Why, you are like a Jack-in-the-box (I had one given me once, when I was a little lad, and it was the terror of my childhood), springing out like mad, when one never means or expects him. We business men are not accustomed to making contracts in a hurry; and I, in particular, am so remarkably slow in my decisions, that without sufficient time I can decide on nothing. Bless my soul! I’m all of a tremble still with the effort of stopping you. Give me time, my good fellow, give me time.”

With his blue spectacles all awry, and his hat falling from his trembling hand; with his lips quivering, and the tears he had kept back with such difficulty during the interview falling thick and fast, the young man sinks into the chair again, opposite Mr. Grewgious, who is blowing his nose with a trumpet-sound.

“I was just upon the point of saying,” begins Mr. Grewgious, speaking very slowly and distinctly, as if he fears his voice may turn traitor, and let out something he wishes to conceal, “that I didn’t object to give you a trial, contrary to custom, even without a character, when you broke into what may be termed the Emotional. Being myself a man born without emotions, or, at any rate, with emotions in so rarefied a state that they never expose me to the risk of an explosion, it is naturally mortifying and trying to my feelings to see people meandering into entirely unbusiness-like paths where I cannot follow ‘em. You took a by-path, sir, in entering into the Emotional, and I beg you to return to me now into the broad highroad of Common Sense.”

How hard and dry are the words the old man utters; and his voice, hard and dry, too, chimes in unison. Yet his eyes, screwed together so tightly, are not screwed this time only to enable his short sight to reach further. And when he again attacks his nose, and brings forth a renewal of the trumpet-sound, he turns aside his head to make use of his handkerchief for another and more secret purpose.

“Your duties would not be heavy,” he resumes, “ and though naturally hard (I was born so) I trust you would not find me an unjust master. Your salary, I will pay you monthly for the present (it is more convenient to me), a month in advance. If you are unprovided with lodgings, there are some nice ones not far from here which are to be had. The lady who keeps them — a most remarkable female of the name of Billickin — has begged me to remember that they are empty, and to help her to fill them. But that, of course, rests with you,” continues Mr. Grewgious, remembering, with some alarm, that a sojourn with that lady is not without its drawbacks. “Though she might take more kindly to a male than to a female,” he thinks.

The stranger, who can hardly speak for tears, thanks him fervently.

“It is a pleasant custom (among heathens) in ratifying a contract,” says Mr. Grewgious, “ to break bread over it. My coffee is cold, but my boy shall run over to Furnival’s for a fresh supply. Not that we are heathens, I trust; or that coffee is bread, or anything like it (though we may have a morsel to eat along with it, for I’m as hungry, myself, as a wolf), but I’m the most unfortunate man in the world at a simile, and invariably break down when I attempt one; and it may answer the same purpose, perhaps.”

Mr. Grewgious, during these remarks, has been guilty of the rudeness of turning his back upon the stranger, and has been studiously contemplating indifferent objects in the room with a sudden interest in them which demands all the short sight with which Nature has provided him, for the young man has broken into low sobs, and is vainly struggling to compose himself. To give the stranger further time and opportunity, Mr. Grewgious shuffles out of the room; and on his return the young man has (to use Mr. Grewgious’ own words) emerged from the by-paths of the Emotional, and come out into the broad, high road of Common Sense.

In with Mr. Grewgious, or rather, close upon the heels of that gentleman, comes a waiter from Furnivals’ with the smoking coffee, and the “bit of eatable,” which promptitude on the part of said waiter is so approved of by Mr. Grewgious that he rewards it on the spot with a piece of silver.