already in the uncommercial line.
This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world
in divers irreconcilable capacities – had been an officer in a
South American regiment among other odd things – but had not
achieved much in any way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding.
He occupied chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his
name, however, was not up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of
it stood the name of a friend who had died in the chambers, and had
given him the furniture. The story arose out of the furniture, and
was to this effect:- Let the former holder of the chambers, whose
name was still upon the door and door-post, be Mr. Testator.
Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when he had but
very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none for his sittingroom.
He had lived some wintry months in this condition, and had
found it very bare and cold. One night, past midnight, when he sat
writing and still had writing to do that must be done before he
went to bed, he found himself out of coals. He had coals downstairs,
but had never been to his cellar; however the cellar-key
was on his mantelshelf, and if he went down and opened the cellar
it fitted, he might fairly assume the coals in that cellar to be
his. As to his laundress, she lived among the coal-waggons and
Thames watermen – for there were Thames watermen at that time – in
some unknown rat-hole by the river, down lanes and alleys on the
other side of the Strand. As to any other person to meet him or
obstruct him, Lyons Inn was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody,
betting, brooding over bill-discounting or renewing – asleep or
awake, minding its own affairs. Mr. Testator took his coal-scuttle
in one hand, his candle and key in the other, and descended to the
dismallest underground dens of Lyons Inn, where the late vehicles
in the streets became thunderous, and all the water-pipes in the
neighbourhood seemed to have Macbeth’s Amen sticking in their
throats, and to be trying to get it out. After groping here and
there among low doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length came to
a door with a rusty padlock which his key fitted. Getting the door
open with much trouble, and looking in, he found, no coals, but a
confused pile of furniture. Alarmed by this intrusion on another
man’s property, he locked the door again, found his own cellar,
filled his scuttle, and returned up-stairs.
But the furniture he had seen, ran on castors across and across Mr.
Testator’s mind incessantly, when, in the chill hour of five in the
morning, he got to bed. He particularly wanted a table to write
at, and a table expressly made to be written at, had been the piece
of furniture in the foreground of the heap. When his laundress
emerged from her burrow in the morning to make his kettle boil, he
artfully led up to the subject of cellars and furniture; but the
two ideas had evidently no connexion in her mind. When she left
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
him, and he sat at his breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he
recalled the rusty state of the padlock, and inferred that the
furniture must have been stored in the cellars for a long time –
was perhaps forgotten – owner dead, perhaps? After thinking it
over, a few days, in the course of which he could pump nothing out
of Lyons Inn about the furniture, he became desperate, and resolved
to borrow that table. He did so, that night. He had not had the
table long, when he determined to borrow an easy-chair; he had not
had that long, when he made up his mind to borrow a bookcase; then,
a couch; then, a carpet and rug. By that time, he felt he was ‘in
furniture stepped in so far,’ as that it could be no worse to
borrow it all. Consequently, he borrowed it all, and locked up the
cellar for good. He had always locked it, after every visit. He
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