CHAPTER VI.

“Now fifty shwort years ha’e flown owre us,Sin’ first we fell in at the fair,I’ve monie a teyme thowt, wi’ new pleasure,Nae weyfe cud wi’ Aggy compare;Tho’ thy nwose has gi’en way to the wrinkle.At changes we munna complain;They’re rich whea in age are leet hearted,An’ mourn nit for days that are geane.”The Days that are geane.

“Now fifty shwort years ha’e flown owre us,

Sin’ first we fell in at the fair,

I’ve monie a teyme thowt, wi’ new pleasure,

Nae weyfe cud wi’ Aggy compare;

Tho’ thy nwose has gi’en way to the wrinkle.

At changes we munna complain;

They’re rich whea in age are leet hearted,

An’ mourn nit for days that are geane.”

The Days that are geane.

“We us’d to go to bed at dark,And ruse agean at four or five;The mworn’s the only teyme for wark,If fwok are hilthy and wou’d thrive.Now we git up—nay, God kens when!And nuin’s owre suin for us to deyne;I’s hungry or the pot’s half boiled,And wish for teymes leyke auld lang seyne.”Lang Seyne.

“We us’d to go to bed at dark,

And ruse agean at four or five;

The mworn’s the only teyme for wark,

If fwok are hilthy and wou’d thrive.

Now we git up—nay, God kens when!

And nuin’s owre suin for us to deyne;

I’s hungry or the pot’s half boiled,

And wish for teymes leyke auld lang seyne.”

Lang Seyne.

At length the Sandboys reached the Metropolis, without any further misadventure than being informed, on their arrival, that there was not a bed to be had within five miles for love or money.

On reaching the Bull and Mouth, to their great astonishment they found a large placard exhibited, inscribed with the following terrible announcement—

“The beds here are quite full.”

Mr. Sandboys, however, was not to be deterred; and, entering the establishment, he sought for some one whose face he might remember having seen on his previous visit. The head waiter no sooner entered the coffee-room in answer to his summons, than he recognised the face of the old attendant, and besought him to recommend him tosomeplace where he might obtain a bed for a night or two at the least.

The only place that the waiter knew, as promising the remotest chance of accommodation, was at the residence of a lady who, he was informed, had been recently extending the conveniences of her establishment; and then, handing to Mr. Sandboys the lodging-housekeeper’s address, he whisked his napkin under his arm, and, pulling his front hair, departed with all the elegance of a head-waiter at an old-fashioned establishment.

London, in 1851.

Arrived at the residence of the lady indicated by the gentleman who superintended the supply of provisions to the inmates of the Bull and Mouth, Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys were asked to step into the passage (the lady apologizing for the parlours being both full), and there Mrs. Fokesell, whose husband, she was happy to say, was at sea, informed them, to their great horror, that she had only one hammock left unoccupied; and if the lady and gentleman thought they could make shift in that until such time as they could meet with anything better, why it was at their service for five shillings a night. The young lady and the female servant Mrs. Fokesell might perhaps accommodate in her bed, and if the footman wouldn’t mind lying on the knife-board, and the young gentleman thought he could pass the night comfortably on the top of the grand piano, why she would do everything in her power to make them comfortable.

MANCHESTER in 1851.

Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys said that, under the circumstances, they must consent to avail themselves of whatever they could get; whereupon the landlady politely informed them, that if they would follow her down stairs, she would show them the only apartment she had to spare.

But, as she was about to descend, a loud single knock was given at the street door, and, begging their indulgence for a minute, she returned to the passage to ascertain the business of the new-comer. On answering the knock, she found that it was merely the coal-merchant, who wished to be informed when she would like to have in “them there coals as she ordered.”

Mrs. Fokesell hastily told the man, that if they weren’t delivered the first thing in the morning, there wouldn’t be a bit of fire to “bile the dozen pots of shaving-water as was wanted by eight o’clock for her lodgers.”

On closing the door, and rejoining Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, who still stood on the top of the kitchen stairs, Mrs. Fokesell led the way to the basement, and, opening the kitchen door, stepped across the area. Stopping in front of one of the two doors that led to what the landlady was pleased to dignify by the name of a humble apartment on the basement floor, she unfastened the padlock, and revealed the interior of a cellar, from the arched roof of which was slung a sailor’s hammock, while on the floor was spread a small square of dingy carpet. In one corner, on top of a beer-barrel, stood an apparatus that did duty for a toilet-table. Against the whitewashed wall hung a small sixpenny shaving-glass; while, immediately beneath it, there was placed a dilapidated chair.

Mrs. Sandboys, who until that moment had never set eyes on that peculiar kind of naval contrivance for obtaining a night’s rest under difficulties, could not refrain from expressing her firm conviction that it was utterly impossible for any woman of her size to deposit herself safely in the interior of that thing, which people were pleased to call a bed.

Mrs. Fokesell, however, begged to assure her that she had passed many—many very pleasant nights in that very hammock, and with the aid of the trestle which she had placed on the floor, and an assisting hand from her husband, she was sure the lady would be able to manage very well.

Mr. Sandboys himself was anything but pleased with the arrangements of the proposed dormitory, and, secretly in his own mind, he was inquiring of himself how, when he had lent the said assisting hand to his better half, and safely lodged her within the depths of the suspended hammock, he himself was ever to join her there, for who, he wanted to know, was there to perform the same kind office for him?

However, even if they had to take the bed down, and spread it on the carpet, it would, thought Mr. Sandboys, be far preferable to none at all, so he told Mrs. Fokesell that he and his good lady would avail themselves of the accommodation, at least for that one night.

“It’s all I have, ma’am,” said the landlady; “I have just let the last tent on the tiles to a foreign nobleman, and seven shillings a night is what I has from him. I assure you it’s a fact, ma’am. There is not a foot in a respectable house that is not worth its length in sovereigns, ma’am. Why, if you’ll believe me, ma’am, there’s my next-door neighbour, she’s put a feather bed into her warm bath, and let it off to a young East Injun at a guinea a week, for a month certain.

Mr. Sandboys, exhausted with his journey, made no more ado, but closed the bargain with Mrs. Fokesell; and, having partaken of some fried chops, by way of supper, in the kitchen, he and his beloved Aggy withdrew to the privacy of the cellar which was to constitute their bed-chamber for the night.

After a brief consultation, it was agreed that, to prevent all chance of taking cold in so damp a dormitory, they should retire to rest in their clothes; and Mrs. Sandboys having disengaged herself of her hood and cloak, prepared to make the perilous ascent.

By the aid of her Cursty’s hand she mounted the little trestle of the beer-barrel, which she previously placed immediately under the hammock, and then, turning her back towards the suspended bed she managed, with a slight jump, to seat herself on the extreme edge of the sacking. Her figure, however, being rather corpulent, the weight of her whole body no sooner rested on one side of the oscillating couch, than the whole apparatus slid from under her, and she was suddenly plunged down on to the corner of the temporary toilet-table. Fortunately for the good lady, the top of the artificial wash-hand-stand consisted of a board merely laid across the head of a barrel; so that immediately she touched the ricketty arrangement, the board, basin, and pitcher were all tilted forward, and the entire contents of the water-jug emptied full into her face, as she fell to the ground.

What with the crash of the crockery, the splashing of the water, and the bumping of poor dear Mrs. Sandboys on the carpet, Cursty was almost paralyzed with fright. He was afraid even to raise his darling Aggy from the ground, for he felt that something serious must have happened to her.

But Mrs. Sandboys luckily was sound in her bones, though severely bruised in her flesh; and as Cursty helped her up from the floor, she shook the water from her hair, and vowed that she would rather sleep on the carpet all night than make another attempt to enter that nasty, deceitful, swinging, unsteady thing of a bed.

Mr. Sandboys used all the endearing arts of which he was master to induce the partner of his bosom to make a second attempt, but his entreaties were in vain; for Mrs. Sandboys, whose body still tingled with the failure of her previous essay, was in no way inclined to listen to his solicitations.

But the persevering Cursty pleaded so hard that at last he got her to consent, that provided he would first get into the hammock himself, and would lift her into it after him, she wouldn’t mind obliging him in that way—for she could see no other plan by which she was ever to be safely deposited within it.

Accordingly, Mr. Sandboys, when, after a few unsuccessful but harmless endeavours, he had managed to get his entire body fairly into the sailor’s bed, leant over the side in order to assist his better half to join him within it. But on his putting out his arms to lift the lady up to the required height, the delusive, bendable bedstead turned inside out, and shot him, mattrass, blankets, and counterpane, together with his Aggy, plump on to the ground.

The fall shook Mr. Sandboys almost as much as when the pig had laid on his back in the brook, and it was long before he could bring himself even to propose to his wife to make another attempt to enter the wretched wabbling, swingy substitute for the substantial security of a four-post.

At length Mrs. Sandboys, who two or three times had just saved herself from falling almost flat on her nose while dozing in the dilapidated chair, began to be fairly tired out; and Cursty, who had sat on the top of the beer-barrel till his legs were nearly cut through with the sharp edge of the hoop, found that it was impossible to continue his slumbers in so inconvenient a posture, so he took his fat and dozing little wife in his arms, and standing once more on the trestle, fairly lifted her into the hammock; after which, seizing the chain that hung from the iron plate in the pavement above, he with one desperate bound swung himself by her side into the hammock.

In a few minutes they were both fast locked in slumber; but Cursty’s repose was destined to be of short duration; for soon Mrs. Sandboys, shaking him violently, roused him from his rest.

“Up wi’thee!—up wi’thee! thar be summet beastes a-crawling ower my face, Cursty. Ah, these Lon’on beds! We’ll be beath yeeten up, aleyve, if thee staps here, Cursty!”

And so saying, she gave her lord and master so stout a thrust in his back, that drove his weight to the edge of the hammock, and again brought him rapidly to the floor.

Mrs. Sandboys in her fright soon followed her husband; and then nothing would satisfy her but she must have the whole of the bedding and clothes turned out on the ground, and minutely examined by the light of the rushlight.

But Mr. Sandboys, already deprived of the half of his night’s rest, was in no way fit for the performance desired by his wife; and, in order to satisfy her qualms, he proposed that the mattrass alone should be replaced in the hammock, andthenshe need have no fear.

Mrs. Sandboys was herself in no humour to hold out against so apparently rational a proposal; and, having consented to the compromise, there began the same series of arduous and almost perilous struggles to ensconce their two selves once more in the interior of the hammock.

After several heavy tumbles on both sides, and breaking the rusty iron chain which served to hold down the circular trap in the pavement above, the worthy couple did ultimately manage to succeed again in their courageous undertaking; and then, fairly exhausted with their labours, they closed their eyes just as the blue light of day was showing through the cracks of the coal-cellar door.

The Cumberland couple had continued their rest undisturbed some few hours, when Mrs. Sandboys was aroused by hearing the circular iron trap moved above her head. She woke her husband with a violent shake, telling him, as soon as she could make him understand, that she was sure some of her friends, the London thieves, were preparing to make a descent through the pavement into their subterranean bed-chamber.

Mr. Sandboys was no sooner got to comprehend the cause of her alarm, than he saw the end of the chain lifted up, and the trap removed from the pavement above them.

Instinctively the couple rose up in their bed, and leant their heads forward to ascertain the precise nature of the impending danger. Suddenly they were startled by a gruff voice from above, shouting “Bee-elow,” and immediately there descended through the round hole at the top of the cellar a shower of large and small coals, the noise of which completely drowned their cries, and beneath which they were almost buried alive.

Before they could extricate themselves from the black mass, that nearly filled their hammock, a second shower of Walls’ End was poured down upon them; and had it not been for the landlady observing from the kitchen that the coal-porter was about to shoot the half ton she had ordered on the previous evening to be delivered early that morning into Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys’ hammock, that worthy couple assuredly must have perished in the dusty, grimy avalanche.

Mrs. Fokesell rushed into the area, cried out loudly to the man to hold back the third sack, which he had just poised over the hole on his shoulder, previous to discharging its contents on the bodies of the unhappy Sandboys, and tearing open the door, delivered the blackened and the bruised couple from the perils of their wretched situation.

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