Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy(利里普夫人的遗产)

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Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy

By Charles Dickens

Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy

CHAPTER I

--MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND

WENT OVER

Ah! It's pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a

little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting down,

and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to

justify though I do not think they fully understand their trade and never

did, else why the sameness and why not more conveniences and fewer

draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too thick I

am well convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots putting

them on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing what

their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much, except

that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a straight form

or give it a twist before it goes there. And what I says speaking as I find

of those new metal chimneys all manner of shapes (there's a row of 'em at

Miss Wozenham's lodging-house lower down on the other side of the way)

is that they only work your smoke into artificial patterns for you before

you swallow it and that I'd quite as soon swallow mine plain, the flavour

being the same, not to mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top of

your house to show the forms in which you take your smoke into your

inside.

Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy-chair in my own

quiet room in my own Lodging-House Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street

Strand London situated midway between the City and St. James's--if

anything is where it used to be with these hotels calling themselves

Limited but called unlimited by Major Jackman rising up everywhere and

rising up into flagstaffs where they can't go any higher, but my mind of

those monsters is give me a landlord's or landlady's wholesome face when

I come off a journey and not a brass plate with an electrified number

clicking out of it which it's not in nature can be glad to see me and to

Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy

which I don't want to be hoisted like molasses at the Docks and left there

telegraphing for help with the most ingenious instruments but quite in

vain--being here my dear I have no call to mention that I am still in the

Lodgings as a business hoping to die in the same and if agreeable to the

clergy partly read over at Saint Clement's Danes and concluded in Hatfield

churchyard when lying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to ashes and

dust to dust.

Neither should I tell you any news my dear in telling you that the

Major is still a fixture in the Parlours quite as much so as the roof of the

house, and that Jemmy is of boys the best and brightest and has ever had

kept from him the cruel story of his poor pretty young mother Mrs. Edson

being deserted in the second floor and dying in my arms, fully believing

that I am his born Gran and him an orphan, though what with engineering

since he took a taste for it and him and the Major making Locomotives out

of parasols broken iron pots and cotton-reels and them absolutely a getting

off the line and falling over the table and injuring the passengers almost

equal to the originals it really is quite wonderful. And when I says to the

Major, "Major can't you by ANY means give us a communication with the

guard?" the Major says quite huffy, "No madam it's not to be done," and

when I says "Why not?" the Major says, "That is between us who are in

the Railway Interest madam and our friend the Right Honourable Vice-

President of the Board of Trade" and if you'll believe me my dear the

Major wrote to Jemmy at school to consult him on the answer I should

have before I could get even that amount of unsatisfactoriness out of the

man, the reason being that when we first began with the little model and

the working signals beautiful and perfect (being in general as wrong as the

real) and when I says laughing "What appointment am I to hold in this

undertaking gentlemen?" Jemmy hugs me round the neck and tells me

dancing, "You shall be the Public Gran" and consequently they put upon

me just as much as ever they like and I sit a growling in my easy-chair.

My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as the Major cannot

give half his heart and mind to anything--even a plaything--but must get

into right down earnest with it, whether it is so or whether it is not so I do

Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy

not undertake to say, but Jemmy is far out-done by the serious and

believing ways of the Major in the management of the United Grand

Junction Lirriper and Jackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line, "For" says my

Jemmy with the sparkling eyes when it was christened, "we must have a

whole mouthful of name Gran or our dear old Public" and there the young

rogue kissed me, "won't stump up." So the Public took the shares--ten at

ninepence, and immediately when that was spent twelve Preference at one

and sixpence--and they were all signed by Jemmy and countersigned by

the Major, and between ourselves much better worth the money than some

shares I have paid for in my time. In the same holidays the line was

made and worked and opened and ran excursions and had collisions and

burst its boilers and all sorts of accidents and offences all most regular

correct and pretty. The sense of responsibility entertained by the Major

as a military style of station-master my dear starting the down train behind

time and ringing one of those little bells that you buy with the little coal-

scuttles off the tray round the man's neck in the street did him honour, but

noticing the Major of a night when he is writing out his monthly report to

Jemmy at school of the state of the Rolling Stock and the Permanent Way

and all the rest of it (the whole kept upon the Major's sideboard and dusted

with his own hands every morning before varnishing his boots) I notice

him as full of thought and care as full can be and frowning in a fearful

manner, but indeed the Major does nothing by halves as witness his great

delight in going out surveying with Jemmy when he has Jemmy to go with,

carrying a chain and a measuring-tape and driving I don't know what

improvements right through Westminster Abbey and fully believed in the

streets to be knocking everything upside down by Act of Parliament. As

please Heaven will come to pass when Jemmy takes to that as a

profession!

Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his own youngest

brother the Doctor though Doctor of what I am sure it would be hard to

say unless Liquor, for neither Physic nor Music nor yet Law does Joshua

Lirriper know a morsel of except continually being summoned to the

County Court and having orders made upon him which he runs away from,

Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy

and once was taken in the passage of this very house with an umbrella up

and the Major's hat on, giving his name with the door-mat round him as

Sir Johnson Jones, K.C.B. in spectacles residing at the Horse Guards. On

which occasion he had got into the house not a minute before, through the

girl letting him on the mat when he sent in a piece of paper twisted more

like one of those spills for lighting candles than a note, offering me the

choice between thirty shillings in hand and his brains on the premises

marked immediate and waiting for an answer. My dear it gave me such a

dreadful turn to think of the brains of my poor dear Lirriper's own flesh

and blood flying about the new oilcloth however unworthy to be so

assisted, that I went out of my room here to ask him what he would take

once for all not to do it for life when I found him in the custody of two

gentlemen that I should have judged to be in the feather-bed trade if they

had not announced the law, so fluffy were their personal appearance.

"Bring your chains, sir," says Joshua to the littlest of the two in the biggest

hat, "rivet on my fetters!" Imagine my feelings when I pictered him

clanking up Norfolk Street in irons and Miss Wozenham looking out of

window! "Gentlemen," I says all of a tremble and ready to drop "please

to bring him into Major Jackman's apartments." So they brought him

into the Parlours, and when the Major spies his own curly-brimmed hat on

him which Joshua Lirriper had whipped off its peg in the passage for a

military disguise he goes into such a tearing passion that he tips it off his

head with his hand and kicks it up to the ceiling with his foot where it

grazed long afterwards. "Major" I says "be cool and advise me what to

do with Joshua my dead and gone Lirriper's own youngest brother."

"Madam" says the Major "my advice is that you board and lodge him in a

Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to the proprietor when exploded."

"Major" I says "as a Christian you cannot mean your words." "Madam"

says the Major "by the Lord I do!" and indeed the Major besides being

with all his merits a very passionate man for his size had a bad opinion of

Joshua on account of former troubles even unattended by liberties taken

with his apparel. When Joshua Lirriper hears this conversation betwixt

us he turns upon the littlest one with the biggest hat and says "Come sir!

Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy

Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is my mouldy straw?" My

dear at the picter of him rising in my mind dressed almost entirely in

padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy's book I was so overcome that I

burst into tears and I says to the Major, "Major take my keys and settle

with these gentlemen or I shall never know a happy minute more," which

was done several times both before and since, but still I must remember

that Joshua Lirriper has his good feelings and shows them in being always

so troubled in his mind when he cannot wear mourning for his brother.

Many a long year have I left off my widow's mourning not being wishful

to intrude, but the tender point in Joshua that I cannot help a little yielding

to is when he writes "One single sovereign would enable me to wear a

decent suit of mourning for my much-loved brother. I vowed at the time

of his lamented death that I would ever wear sables in memory of him but

Alas how short-sighted is man, How keep that vow when penniless!" It

says a good deal for the strength of his feelings that he couldn't have been

seven year old when my poor Lirriper died and to have kept to it ever

since is highly creditable. But we know there's good in all of us,--if we

only knew where it was in some of us,--and though it was far from

delicate in Joshua to work upon the dear child's feelings when first sent to

school and write down into Lincolnshire for his pocket-money by return of

post and got it, still he is my poor Lirriper's own youngest brother and

mightn't have meant not paying his bill at the Salisbury Arms when his

affection took him down to stay a fortnight at Hatfield churchyard and

might have meant to keep sober but for bad company. Consequently if the

Major HAD played on him with the garden-engine which he got privately

into his room without my knowing of it, I think that much as I should have

regretted it there would have been words betwixt the Major and me.

Therefore my dear though he played on Mr. Buffle by mistake being hot in

his head, and though it might have been misrepresented down at

Wozenham's into not being ready for Mr. Buffle in other respects he being

the Assessed Taxes, still I do not so much regret it as perhaps I ought.

And whether Joshua Lirriper will yet do well in life I cannot say, but I did

hear of his coming, out at a Private Theatre in the character of a Bandit

Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy

without receiving any offers afterwards from the regular managers.

Mentioning Mr. Baffle gives an instance of there being good in

persons where good is not expected, for it cannot be denied that Mr.

Buffle's manners when engaged in his business were not agreeable. To

collect is one thing, and to look about as if suspicious of the goods being

gradually removing in the dead of the night by a back door is another, over

taxing you have no control but suspecting is voluntary. Allowances too

must ever be made for a gentleman of the Major's warmth not relishing

being spoke to with a pen in the mouth, and while I do not know that it is

more irritable to my own feelings to have a low-crowned hat with a broad

brim kept on in doors than any other hat still I can appreciate the Major's,

besides which without bearing malice or vengeance the Major is a man

that scores up arrears as his habit always was with Joshua Lirriper. So at

last my dear the Major lay in wait for Mr. Buffle, and it worrited me a

good deal. Mr. Buffle gives his rap of two sharp knocks one day and the

Major bounces to the door. "Collector has called for two quarters'

Assessed Taxes" says Mr. Buffle. "They are ready for him" says the

Major and brings him in here. But on the way Mr. Buffle looks about

him in his usual suspicious manner and the Major fires and asks him "Do

you see a Ghost sir?" "No sir" says Mr. Buffle. "Because I have before

noticed you" says the Major "apparently looking for a spectre very hard

beneath the roof of my respected friend. When you find that supernatural

agent, be so good as point him out sir." Mr. Buffle stares at the Major

and then nods at me. "Mrs. Lirriper sir" says the Major going off into a

perfect steam and introducing me with his hand. "Pleasure of knowing

her" says Mr. Buffle. "A--hum!--Jemmy Jackman sir!" says the Major

introducing himself. "Honour of knowing you by sight" says Mr. Buffle.

"Jemmy Jackman sir" says the Major wagging his head sideways in a sort

of obstinate fury "presents to you his esteemed friend that lady Mrs.

Emma Lirriper of Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London in the County

of Middlesex in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Upon

which occasion sir," says the Major, "Jemmy Jackman takes your hat off."

Mr. Buffle looks at his hat where the Major drops it on the floor, and he

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Mrs.Lirriper'sLegacy1Mrs.Lirriper'sLegacyByCharlesDickensMrs.Lirriper'sLegacy2CHAPTERI--MRS.LIRRIPERRELATESHOWSHEWENTON,ANDWENTOVERAh!It'spleasanttodropintomyowneasy-chairmydearthoughalittlepalpitatingwhatwithtrottingup-stairsandwhatwithtrottingdown,andwhykitchenstairsshouldallbecornerstairsisforthe...

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