As they struck the bargain, Mr.Pickwick surveyed him with a painful interest.He was a tall, gaunt, cadaverous man, in an old great-coat and slippers: with sunken cheeks, and a restless, eager eye.His lips were bloodless, and his bones sharp and thin.God help him! the iron teeth of confinement and privation had been slowly filing him down for twenty years.
"And where will you live meanwhile, sir," said Mr.Pickwick, as he laid the amount of the first week's rent, in advance, on the tottering table.
The man gathered up the money with a trembling hand, and replied that he didn't know yet; he must go and see where he could move his bed to.
"I am afraid, sir," said Mr.Pickwick, laying his hand gently and compassionately on his arm; "I am afraid you will have to live in some noisy crowded place.
Now, pray, consider this room your own when you want quiet, or when any of your friends come to see you.""Friends!" interposed the man, in a voice which rattled in his throat.
"If I lay dead at the bottom of the deepest mine in the world; tight screwed down and soldered in my coffin; rotting in the dark and filthy ditch that drags its slime along, beneath the foundations of this prison; I could not be more forgotten or unheeded than I am here.I am a dead man; dead to society, without the pity they bestow on those whose souls have passed to judgment.Friends to see me! My God! I have sunk, from the prime of life into old age, in this place, and there is not one to raise his hand above my bed when I lie dead upon it, and say, `It is a blessing he is gone!'"The excitement, which had cast an unwonted light over the man's face, while he spoke, subsided as he concluded; and, pressing his withered hands together in a hasty and disordered manner, he shuffled from the room.
"Rides rather rusty," said Mr.Roker, with a smile."Ah! they're like the elephants.They feel it now and then, and it makes 'em wild!"Having made this deeply-sympathising remark, Mr.Roker entered upon his arrangements with such expedition, that in a short time the room was furnished with a carpet, six chairs, a table, a sofa bedstead, a tea-kettle, and various small articles, on hire, at the very reasonable rate of seven-and-twenty shillings and sixpence per week.
"Now, is there anything more we can do for you?" inquired Mr.Roker, looking round with great satisfaction, and gaily chinking the first week's hire in his closed first.
"Why, yes," said Mr.Pickwick, who had been musing deeply for some time.
"Are there any people here, who run on errands, and so forth?""Outside, do you mean?" inquired Mr.Roker.
"Yes.I mean who are able to go outside.Not prisoners.""Yes, there is," said Roker."There's an unfortunate devil, who has got a friend on the poor side, that's glad to do anything of that sort.
He's been running odd jobs, and that, for the last two months.Shall Isend him?"
"If you please," rejoined Mr.Pickwick."Stay; no.The poor side, you say? I should like to see it.I'll go to him myself."The poor side of a debtor's prison, is, as its name imports, that in which the most miserable and abject class of debtors are confined.A prisoner having declared upon the poor side, pays neither rent nor chummage.His fees, upon entering and leaving the gaol, are reduced in amount, and he becomes entitled to a share of some small quantities of food: to provide which, a few charitable persons have, from time to time, left trifling legacies in their wills.Most of our readers will remember, that, until within a very few years past, there was a kind of iron cage in the wall of the Fleet Prison, within which was posted some man of hungry looks, who, from time to time, rattled a money-box, and exclaimed in a mournful voice, "Pray, remember the poor debtors; pray, remember the poor debtors."The receipts of this box, when there were any, were divided among the poor prisoners; and the men on the poor side relieved each other in this degrading office.
Although this custom has been abolished, and the cage is now boarded up, the miserable and destitute condition of these unhappy persons remains the same.We no longer suffer them to appeal at the prison gates to the charity and compassion of the passers-by; but we still leave unblotted in the leaves of our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of succeeding ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness.This is no fiction.Not a week passes over our heads, but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some of these men must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow-prisoners.
Turning these things in his mind, as he mounted the narrow staircase at the foot of which Roker had left him, Mr.Pickwick gradually worked himself to the boiling-over point; and so excited was he with his reflections on this subject, that he had burst into the room to which he had been directed, before he had any distinct recollection, either of the place in which he was, or of the object of his visit.
The general aspect of the room recalled him to himself at once; but he had no sooner cast his eyes on the figure of a man who was brooding over the dusty fire, than, letting his hat fall on the floor, he stood perfectly fixed, and immovable, with astonishment.
Yes; in tattered garments, and without a coat; his common calico shirt, yellow and in rags; his hair hanging over his face; his features changed with suffering, and pinched with famine; there sat Mr.Alfred Jingle: his head resting on his hand, his eyes fixed upon the fire, and his whole appearance denoting misery and dejection!
Near him, leaning listlessly against the wall, stood a strong-built countryman, flicking with a worn-out hunting-whip the top-boot that adorned his right foot: his left being (for he dressed by easy stages) thrust into an old slipper.Horses, dogs, and drink, had brought him there, pell-mell.
