in the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and scorning even to read
the brass plate on the door – so sure was I – I rang the bell and
informed the servant maid that a stranger sought audience of Mr.
Specks. Into a room, half surgery, half study, I was shown to
await his coming, and I found it, by a series of elaborate
accidents, bestrewn with testimonies to Joe. Portrait of Mr.
Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup from grateful patient to Mr.
Specks, presentation sermon from local clergyman, dedication poem
from local poet, dinner-card from local nobleman, tract on balance
of power from local refugee, inscribed HOMMAGE DE L’AUTEUR E
SPECKS.
When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him with a smile
that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at a loss to perceive
any reason for smiling in connexion with that fact, and inquired to
what was he to attribute the honour? I asked him with another
smile, could he remember me at all? He had not (he said) that
pleasure. I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of Mr.
Specks, when he said reflectively, ‘And yet there’s a something
too.’ Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his eyes that looked
well, and I asked him if he could inform me, as a stranger who
desired to know and had not the means of reference at hand, what
the name of the young lady was, who married Mr. Random? Upon that,
he said ‘Narcissa,’ and, after staring for a moment, called me by
my name, shook me by the hand, and melted into a roar of laughter.
‘Why, of course, you’ll remember Lucy Green,’ he said, after we had
talked a little. ‘Of course,’ said I. ‘Whom do you think she
married?’ said he. ‘You?’ I hazarded. ‘Me,’ said Specks, ‘and you
shall see her.’ So I saw her, and she was fat, and if all the hay
in the world had been heaped upon her, it could scarcely have
altered her face more than Time had altered it from my remembrance
of the face that had once looked down upon me into the fragrant
dungeons of Seringapatam. But when her youngest child came in
after dinner (for I dined with them, and we had no other company
than Specks, Junior, Barrister-at-law, who went away as soon as the
cloth was removed, to look after the young lady to whom he was
going to be married next week), I saw again, in that little
daughter, the little face of the hayfield, unchanged, and it quite
touched my foolish heart. We talked immensely, Specks and Mrs.
Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old selves as though our old
selves were dead and gone, and indeed, indeed they were – dead and
gone as the playing-field that had become a wilderness of rusty
iron, and the property of S.E.R.
Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of interest
that I wanted and should otherwise have missed in it, and linked
its present to its past, with a highly agreeable chain. And in
Specks’s society I had new occasion to observe what I had before
noticed in similar communications among other men. All the
schoolfellows and others of old, whom I inquired about, had either
done superlatively well or superlatively ill – had either become
uncertificated bankrupts, or been felonious and got themselves
transported; or had made great hits in life, and done wonders. And
this is so commonly the case, that I never can imagine what becomes
of all the mediocre people of people’s youth – especially
considering that we find no lack of the species in our maturity.
But, I did not propound this difficulty to Specks, for no pause in
the conversation gave me an occasion. Nor, could I discover one
single flaw in the good doctor – when he reads this, he will
receive in a friendly spirit the pleasantly meant record – except
that he had forgotten his Roderick Random, and that he confounded
Page 79
Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew Random, howsoever
intimate with Pickle.