Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

turned of fifty, looked in upon Parkle in his usual lounging way,

with his cigar in his mouth as usual, and said, ‘I am going out of

town.’ As he never went out of town, Parkle said, ‘Oh indeed! At

last?’ ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘at last. For what is a man to do? London

is so small! If you go West, you come to Hounslow. If you go

East, you come to Bow. If you go South, there’s Brixton or

Norwood. If you go North, you can’t get rid of Barnet. Then, the

monotony of all the streets, streets, streets – and of all the

roads, roads, roads – and the dust, dust, dust!’ When he had said

this, he wished Parkle a good evening, but came back again and

said, with his watch in his hand, ‘Oh, I really cannot go on

winding up this watch over and over again; I wish you would take

care of it.’ So, Parkle laughed and consented, and the man went

out of town. The man remained out of town so long, that his

letter-box became choked, and no more letters could be got into it,

and they began to be left at the lodge and to accumulate there. At

last the head-porter decided, on conference with the steward, to

use his master-key and look into the chambers, and give them the

benefit of a whiff of air. Then, it was found that he had hanged

himself to his bedstead, and had left this written memorandum: ‘I

should prefer to be cut down by my neighbour and friend (if he will

allow me to call him so), H. Parkle, Esq.’ This was an end of

Parkle’s occupancy of chambers. He went into lodgings immediately.

Third. While Parkle lived in Gray’s Inn, and I myself was

uncommercially preparing for the Bar – which is done, as everybody

knows, by having a frayed old gown put on in a pantry by an old

woman in a chronic state of Saint Anthony’s fire and dropsy, and,

so decorated, bolting a bad dinner in a party of four, whereof each

individual mistrusts the other three – I say, while these things

were, there was a certain elderly gentleman who lived in a court of

the Temple, and was a great judge and lover of port wine. Every

day he dined at his club and drank his bottle or two of port wine,

and every night came home to the Temple and went to bed in his

lonely chambers. This had gone on many years without variation,

when one night he had a fit on coming home, and fell and cut his

head deep, but partly recovered and groped about in the dark to

find the door. When he was afterwards discovered, dead, it was

clearly established by the marks of his hands about the room that

he must have done so. Now, this chanced on the night of Christmas

Eve, and over him lived a young fellow who had sisters and young

country friends, and who gave them a little party that night, in

the course of which they played at Blindman’s Buff. They played

that game, for their greater sport, by the light of the fire only;

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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

and once, when they were all quietly rustling and stealing about,

and the blindman was trying to pick out the prettiest sister (for

which I am far from blaming him), somebody cried, Hark! The man

below must be playing Blindman’s Buff by himself to-night! They

listened, and they heard sounds of some one falling about and

stumbling against furniture, and they all laughed at the conceit,

and went on with their play, more light-hearted and merry than

ever. Thus, those two so different games of life and death were

played out together, blindfolded, in the two sets of chambers.

Such are the occurrences, which, coming to my knowledge, imbued me

long ago with a strong sense of the loneliness of chambers. There

was a fantastic illustration to much the same purpose implicitly

believed by a strange sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I had

not quite arrived at legal years of discretion, though I was

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