many. There was a little pity, but not much, and that mostly with
a selfish touch in it – as who would say, ‘Shall I, poor I, look
like that, when the time comes!’ There was more of a secretly
brooding contemplation and curiosity, as ‘That man I don’t like,
and have the grudge against; would such be his appearance, if some
one – not to mention names – by any chance gave him an knock?’
There was a wolfish stare at the object, in which homicidal whitelead
worker shone conspicuous. And there was a much more general,
purposeless, vacant staring at it – like looking at waxwork,
without a catalogue, and not knowing what to make of it. But all
these expressions concurred in possessing the one underlying
expression of LOOKING AT SOMETHING THAT COULD NOT RETURN A LOOK.
The uncommercial notice had established this as very remarkable,
when a new pressure all at once coming up from the street pinioned
him ignominiously, and hurried him into the arms (now sleeved
again) of the Custodian smoking at his door, and answering
questions, between puffs, with a certain placid meritorious air of
not being proud, though high in office. And mentioning pride, it
may be observed, by the way, that one could not well help investing
the original sole occupant of the front row with an air
depreciatory of the legitimate attraction of the poor old man:
while the two in the second row seemed to exult at this superseded
popularity.
Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. Jacques de la
Boucherie, and presently again in front of the Hotel de Ville, I
called to mind a certain desolate open-air Morgue that I happened
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
to light upon in London, one day in the hard winter of 1861, and
which seemed as strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I
had found it in China. Towards that hour of a winter’s afternoon
when the lamp-lighters are beginning to light the lamps in the
streets a little before they are wanted, because the darkness
thickens fast and soon, I was walking in from the country on the
northern side of the Regent’s Park – hard frozen and deserted –
when I saw an empty Hansom cab drive up to the lodge at Gloucestergate,
and the driver with great agitation call to the man there:
who quickly reached a long pole from a tree, and, deftly collared
by the driver, jumped to the step of his little seat, and so the
Hansom rattled out at the gate, galloping over the iron-bound road.
I followed running, though not so fast but that when I came to the
right-hand Canal Bridge, near the cross-path to Chalk Farm, the
Hansom was stationary, the horse was smoking hot, the long pole was
idle on the ground, and the driver and the park-keeper were looking
over the bridge parapet. Looking over too, I saw, lying on the
towing-path with her face turned up towards us, a woman, dead a day
or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, poorly dressed in black.
The feet were lightly crossed at the ankles, and the dark hair, all
pushed back from the face, as though that had been the last action
of her desperate hands, streamed over the ground. Dabbled all
about her, was the water and the broken ice that had dropped from
her dress, and had splashed as she was got out. The policeman who
had just got her out, and the passing costermonger who had helped
him, were standing near the body; the latter with that stare at it
which I have likened to being at a waxwork exhibition without a
catalogue; the former, looking over his stock, with professional
stiffness and coolness, in the direction in which the bearers he
had sent for were expected. So dreadfully forlorn, so dreadfully
sad, so dreadfully mysterious, this spectacle of our dear sister
here departed! A barge came up, breaking the floating ice and the
silence, and a woman steered it. The man with the horse that towed
it, cared so little for the body, that the stumbling hoofs had been