Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

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

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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew Random, howsoever

intimate with Pickle.