Acting upon this suggestion, and borrowing the driver’s whip for the purpose, Mr. Pecksniff soon made a commotion among the first floor flowerpots, and roused Mrs. Gamp, whose voice—to the great satisfaction of the matrons—was heard to say, “I’m coming.”
“He’s as pale as a muffin,” said one lady, in allusion to Mr. Pecksniff.
“So he ought to be, if he’s the feelings of a man,” observed another.
A third lady (with her arms folded) said she wished he had chosen any other time for fetching Mrs. Gamp, but it always happened so with her.
It gave Mr. Pecksniff much uneasiness to find, from these remarks, that he was supposed to have come to Mrs. Gamp upon an errand touching—not the close of life, but the other end. Mrs. Gamp herself was under the same impression, for, throwing open the window, she cried behind the curtains, as she hastily attired herself:
“Is it Mrs. Perkins?”
“No!” returned Mr. Pecksniff, sharply. “Nothing of the sort.”
“What, Mr. Whilks!” cried Mrs. Gamp. “Don’t say it’s you, Mr. Whilks, and that poor creetur Mrs. Whilks with not even a pincushion ready. Don’t say it’s you, Mr. Whilks!”
“It isn’t Mr. Whilks,” said Pecksniff. “I don’t know the man. Nothing of the kind. A gentleman is dead; and some person being wanted in the house, you have been recommended by Mr. Mould the undertaker.”
As she was by this time in a condition to appear, Mrs. Gamp, who had a face for all occasions, looked out of the window with her mourning countenance, and said she would be down directly. But the matrons took it very ill that Mr. Pecksniff’s mission was of so unimportant a kind; and the lady with her arms folded rated him in good round terms, signifying that she would be glad to know what he meant by terrifying delicate females “with his corpses”; and giving it as her opinion that he was quite ugly enough to know better. The other ladies were not at all behindhand in expressing similar sentiments; and the children, of whom some scores had now collected, hooted and defied Mr. Pecksniff quite savagely. So when Mrs. Gamp appeared, the unoffending gentleman was glad to hustle her with very little ceremony into the cabriolet, and drive off, overwhelmed with popular execration.
Mrs. Gamp had a large bundle with her, a pair of pattens, and a species of gig umbrella; the latter article in colour like a faded leaf, except where a circular patch of a lively blue had been dexterously let in at the top. She was much flurried by the haste she had made, and laboured under the most erroneous views of cabriolets, which she appeared to confound with mail-coaches or stage-wagons, inasmuch as she was constantly endeavouring for the first half mile to force her luggage through the little front window, and clamouring to the driver to “put it in the boot.” When she was disabused of this idea, her whole being resolved itself into an absorbing anxiety about her pattens, with which she played innumerable games at quoits on Mr. Pecksniff’s legs. It was not until they were close upon the house of mourning that she had enough composure to observe:
“And so the gentleman’s dead, sir! Ah! The more’s the pity.” She didn’t even know his name. “But it’s what we must all come to. It’s as certain as being born, except that we can’t make our calculations as exact. Ah! Poor dear!”
She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only showing the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond. In these dilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such occasions as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of veneration for the deceased, and invited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit of weeds; an appeal so frequently successful, that the very fetch and ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up, any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of the secondhand clothes shops about Holborn. The face of Mrs. Gamp—the nose in particular—was somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits. Like most persons who have attained to great eminence in their profession, she took to hers very kindly; insomuch that, setting aside her natural predilections as a woman, she went to a lying-in or a laying-out with equal zest and relish.
“Ah!” repeated Mrs. Gamp; for it was always a safe sentiment in cases of mourning. “Ah dear! When Gamp was summoned to his long home, and I see him a-lying in Guy’s Hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, and his wooden leg under his left arm, I thought I should have fainted away. But I bore up.”
If certain whispers current in the Kingsgate Street circles had any truth in them, she had indeed borne up surprisingly; and had exerted such uncommon fortitude as to dispose of Mr. Gamp’s remains for the benefit of science. But it should be added, in fairness, that this had happened twenty years before; and that Mr. and Mrs. Gamp had long been separated on the ground of incompatibility of temper in their drink.
“You have become indifferent since then, I suppose?” said Mr. Pecksniff. “Use is second nature, Mrs. Gamp.”
“You may well say second natur, sir,” returned that lady. “One’s first ways is to find sich things a trial to the feelings, and so is one’s lasting
