The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler (book club recommendations .TXT) 📖

of Mrs. Jupp’s house. She was running away because she was frightened, but almost the first person whom she ran against had happened to be a policeman of a serious turn of mind, who wished to gain a reputation for activity. He stopped her, questioned her, frightened her still more, and it was he rather than Miss Maitland, who insisted on giving my hero in charge to himself and another constable.

Towneley was still in Mrs. Jupp’s house when the policeman came. He had heard a disturbance, and going down to Ernest’s room while Miss Maitland was out of doors, had found him lying, as it were, stunned at the foot of the moral precipice over which he had that moment fallen. He saw the whole thing at a glance, but before he could take action, the policemen came in and action became impossible.

He asked Ernest who were his friends in London. Ernest at first wanted not to say, but Towneley soon gave him to understand that he must do as he was bid, and selected myself from the few whom he had named. “Writes for the stage, does he?” said Towneley. “Does he write comedy?” Ernest thought Towneley meant that I ought to write tragedy, and said he was afraid I wrote burlesque. “Oh, come, come,” said Towneley, “that will do famously. I will go and see him at once.” But on second thoughts he determined to stay with Ernest and go with him to the police court. So he sent Mrs. Jupp for me. Mrs. Jupp hurried so fast to fetch me, that in spite of the weather’s being still cold she was “giving out,” as she expressed it, in streams. The poor old wretch would have taken a cab, but she had no money and did not like to ask Towneley to give her some. I saw that something very serious had happened, but was not prepared for anything so deplorable as what Mrs. Jupp actually told me. As for Mrs. Jupp, she said her heart had been jumping out of its socket and back again ever since.

I got her into a cab with me, and we went off to the police station. She talked without ceasing.

“And if the neighbours do say cruel things about me, I’m sure it ain’t no thanks to him if they’re true. Mr. Pontifex never took a bit o’ notice of me no more than if I had been his sister. Oh, it’s enough to make anyone’s back bone curdle. Then I thought perhaps my Rose might get on better with him, so I set her to dust him and clean him as though I were busy, and gave her such a beautiful clean new pinny, but he never took no notice of her no more than he did of me, and she didn’t want no compliment neither, she wouldn’t have taken not a shilling from him, though he had offered it, but he didn’t seem to know anything at all. I can’t make out what the young men are a-coming to; I wish the horn may blow for me and the worms take me this very night, if it’s not enough to make a woman stand before God and strike the one half on ’em silly to see the way they goes on, and many an honest girl has to go home night after night without so much as a fourpenny bit and paying three and sixpence a week rent, and not a shelf nor cupboard in the place and a dead wall in front of the window.

“It’s not Mr. Pontifex,” she continued, “that’s so bad, he’s good at heart. He never says nothing unkind. And then there’s his dear eyes⁠—but when I speak about that to my Rose she calls me an old fool and says I ought to be poleaxed. It’s that Pryer as I can’t abide. Oh he! He likes to wound a woman’s feelings he do, and to chuck anything in her face, he do⁠—he likes to wind a woman up and to wound her down.” (Mrs. Jupp pronounced “wound” as though it rhymed to “sound.”) “It’s a gentleman’s place to soothe a woman, but he, he’d like to tear her hair out by handfuls. Why, he told me to my face that I was a-getting old; old indeed! there’s not a woman in London knows my age except Mrs. Davis down in the Old Kent Road, and beyond a haricot vein in one of my legs I’m as young as ever I was. Old indeed! There’s many a good tune played on an old fiddle. I hate his nasty insinuendos.”

Even if I had wanted to stop her, I could not have done so. She said a great deal more than I have given above. I have left out much because I could not remember it, but still more because it was really impossible for me to print it.

When we got to the police station I found Towneley and Ernest already there. The charge was one of assault, but not aggravated by serious violence. Even so, however, it was lamentable enough, and we both saw that our young friend would have to pay dearly for his inexperience. We tried to bail him out for the night, but the Inspector would not accept bail, so we were forced to leave him.

Towneley then went back to Mrs. Jupp’s to see if he could find Miss Maitland and arrange matters with her. She was not there, but he traced her to the house of her father, who lived at Camberwell. The father was furious and would not hear of any intercession on Towneley’s part. He was a Dissenter, and glad to make the most of any scandal against a clergyman; Towneley, therefore, was obliged to return unsuccessful.

Next morning, Towneley⁠—who regarded Ernest as a drowning man, who must be picked out of the water somehow or other if possible, irrespective of the way in which he got into it⁠—called on me, and we put the matter into the hands of one of the