Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces

hair.

Halloa here! Now then! Show yourselves. That’ll do. It’s not

you. Don’t disturb yourself any more! So on, through a labyrinth

of airless rooms, each man responding, like a wild beast, to the

keeper who has tamed him, and who goes into his cage. What, you

haven’t found him, then? says Deputy, when we came down. A woman

mysteriously sitting up all night in the dark by the smouldering

ashes of the kitchen fire, says it’s only tramps and cadgers here;

it’s gonophs over the way. A man mysteriously walking about the

kitchen all night in the dark, bids her hold her tongue. We come

out. Deputy fastens the door and goes to bed again.

Black and Green, you know Bark, lodging-house keeper and receiver

of stolen goods? – O yes, Inspector Field. – Go to Bark’s next.

Bark sleeps in an inner wooden hutch, near his street door. As we

parley on the step with Bark’s Deputy, Bark growls in his bed. We

enter, and Bark flies out of bed. Bark is a red villain and a

wrathful, with a sanguine throat that looks very much as if it were

expressly made for hanging, as he stretches it out, in pale

defiance, over the half-door of his hutch. Bark’s parts of speech

are of an awful sort – principally adjectives. I won’t, says Bark,

Page 98

Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces

have no adjective police and adjective strangers in my adjective

premises! I won’t, by adjective and substantive! Give me my

trousers, and I’ll send the whole adjective police to adjective and

substantive! Give me, says Bark, my adjective trousers! I’ll put

an adjective knife in the whole bileing of ’em. I’ll punch their

adjective heads. I’ll rip up their adjective substantives. Give

me my adjective trousers! says Bark, and I’ll spile the bileing of

’em!

Now, Bark, what’s the use of this? Here’s Black and Green,

Detective Sergeant, and Inspector Field. You know we will come in.

– I know you won’t! says Bark. Somebody give me my adjective

trousers! Bark’s trousers seem difficult to find. He calls for

them as Hercules might for his club. Give me my adjective

trousers! says Bark, and I’ll spile the bileing of ’em!

Inspector Field holds that it’s all one whether Bark likes the

visit or don’t like it. He, Inspector Field, is an Inspector of

the Detective Police, Detective Sergeant IS Detective Sergeant,

Black and Green are constables in uniform. Don’t you be a fool,

Bark, or you know it will be the worse for you. – I don’t care,

says Bark. Give me my adjective trousers!

At two o’clock in the morning, we descend into Bark’s low kitchen,

leaving Bark to foam at the mouth above, and Imperturbable Black

and Green to look at him. Bark’s kitchen is crammed full of

thieves, holding a CONVERSAZIONE there by lamp-light. It is by far

the most dangerous assembly we have seen yet. Stimulated by the

ravings of Bark, above, their looks are sullen, but not a man

speaks. We ascend again. Bark has got his trousers, and is in a

state of madness in the passage with his back against a door that

shuts off the upper staircase. We observe, in other respects, a

ferocious individuality in Bark. Instead of ‘STOP THIEF!’ on his

linen, he prints ‘STOLEN FROM Bark’s!’

Now, Bark, we are going up-stairs! – No, you ain’t! – YOU refuse

admission to the Police, do you, Bark? – Yes, I do! I refuse it to

all the adjective police, and to all the adjective substantives.

If the adjective coves in the kitchen was men, they’d come up now,

and do for you! Shut me that there door! says Bark, and suddenly

we are enclosed in the passage. They’d come up and do for you!

cries Bark, and waits. Not a sound in the kitchen! They’d come up

and do for you! cries Bark again, and waits. Not a sound in the

kitchen! We are shut up, half-a-dozen of us, in Bark’s house in

the innermost recesses of the worst part of London, in the dead of

the night – the house is crammed with notorious robbers and

ruffians – and not a man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight of