CHAPTER IV. MR. FYLER CLOSE AND HIS CUSTOMERS.
It cannot be denied that Mr. Fyler Close had selected his
lodgings with commendable thrift and discretion. A single
small apartment over a bakery, and looking out upon a
public pump, supplied him at the lowest current rate with
the three primary necessaries of life; namely, warmth, from
the bi-daily inflammation of the oven for the benefit of neighboring
families—biscuits, the legitimate spawn of the oven—
and water, the cheap creature of corporate benevolence.
It could scarcely be expected that sundry fat spiders that
kept their webs in the different corners of his room would
be incorporated in any of the banquets of Mr. Fyler Close,
although by many people they might have been regarded as
a respectable addition thereto. With the exception of its
inhabitants, the single small apartment was almost wholly
void—there being no covering upon the floor, no curtains at
the window, no paper upon the walls, and not the slightest
semblance of a fire, past, present or future, on the deserted
hearth-stone. To be sure, if you had opened a narrow door
on one side, you might have detected in a cramped closet a
pair of coverlids in which Mr. Close was in the habit of
sheathing his meagre limbs every night, as a nominal protection
against chilblains and rheumatism: while the door
of the closet was carefully fastened and secured within, from
a fear which the occupant somehow or other encouraged,
that he should be roused some unlucky morning with a heavy
hand on his throat, a big grim face bending over him, and
his pockets all picked clean.
In the outer room stood a dilapidated candle-stand, covered
with a tattered baize, with a battered inkstand and two
stumpy pens lying upon the same; three chairs with decayed
bottoms; and, in the corner of the hearth, a single long
gloomy poker, with its head up the chimney.
-- 030 --
[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]
The advantages of these commodious quarters were, at
the present juncture, enjoyed by Mr. Fyler Close himself,
who being a short, hard-visaged gentleman, in a great blue
coat some three sizes too large for him, and a pair of ambitious
trowsers that climbed his legs disdaining intercourse
with a pair of low cheap-cut shoes, became the accommodations
admirably. There was another, a long, spare personage,
with a countenance so marked, and scarred, and
written all over with ugly lines and seams, as to resemble a
battered tomb-stone; and having old decayed teeth that disclosed
themselves whenever he opened his mouth, the fancy
of uncouth dry bones sticking out at the corner of a grave was
still further kept up. There was something extremely sinister
in the features of this individual, who sate in the nook between
the closet and chimney-piece, and constantly glared
about him, in a restless manner, as if the air swarmed wherever
he looked with unusual sounds, and as if he caught sudden
sight of faces by no means pleasant to look upon.
“I don't see that I could have managed my little monies
much better,” said Mr. Fyler Close, “unless I had locked them
up in an iron safe, and buried the key under the walls of the
house. There's only about four hours—and they're at dead
midnight—when my debtors could slip away from me; and
then they'd have to do it devilish cautiously, Leycraft, not
to be heard. See, sir! I am in the very centre of all my investments,
and have a watch on them like an auctioneer at
the height of his sales. You see that yellow house? I make
the owner keep his shutters open, because I have a mortgage
on his piano—which I wouldn't lose sight of for the world.”
“Quite an eye for music, I should think!” interposed his
companion.
“And a pretty good ear, too,” continued Mr. Close, “for
if I should fail to hear my little blacksmith's hammer in the
old forge, off this way, I should go distracted. It soothes
me very much to hear that anvil ringing from early light
down to broad dusk: and you can't tell what a comfort it is
to me when I'm sick!”
“Is he punctual in his interest?” asked Mr. Leycraft, well
knowing that the Fine Arts must be associated in Mr. Fyler
Close's mind with some such disagreeable contingency.
“Exemplary, sir:—and when he falls sick and can't make
a racket himself, he always sends round word and employs a
couple of boys to keep it up, just to satisfy my mind. If the
-- 031 --
[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]
forge stopped for two days, I should be under the necessity
of coming down on his shop with a sharp-clawed writ—
which would be very painful.”
“Excruciating, I should think,” said Mr. Leycraft, smiling
grimly; “It would give you a sort of moral rheumatism,
I've no doubt!”
“You know it would!” rejoined Fyler Close, returning the
smile. “Then here's the baker—he can't run away without
my smelling the fresh loaves as they go into the cart: and
the haberdasher over the way in front, couldn't escape me
unless she undertook to dress up all her male acquaintance
in ruffles and false bosoms, and let them out through the alley.
That might do, but I guess she isn't up to it: since she
lost her husband she's gone a little weak in the head, and
pays an extra cent on the dollar when she is borrowing from
Mr. Fyler Close.”
“These are small gains and slow ones,” said Mr. Leycraft,
“You might sit on spiders' eggs like these for a century,
and not hatch out a fortune. Let's have something bold and
dashing—something where you put in no capital and double
it to boot in less than a week!”
“Something modelled on the Farm-house affair, eh?” said
Fyler Close, leering on his companion significantly.
“Will you let that subject alone, if you please, Mr. Fyler
Close!” cried Mr. Leycraft, whose countenance darkened
and lowered on his companion as he spake. “We have had
talks enough about that cursed house, and one too many. I
wish the title-deed was in the right owner's hands!”
“You do—do you?” urged Mr. Close, pleasantly. “Shall
I ask Mrs. Hetty Lettuce, the market-woman, when she
comes here next to pay the rent or renew her mortgage, if
she can't find him for us? Perhaps if we paid her well she
might relieve us of the property, and provide a very gentlemanly
owner in our place. Shall we advertise—offer rewards—
post placards? I've no doubt if the purlieus of the
city were well-dragged, that an heir would turn up.”
“Stuff! Fyler Close, you know well enough that an heir
couldn't be brought alive off either one of the five continents
that could make good his claim: and that makes you
chuckle so like a fiend. Mrs. Lettuce has lost trace of him
for more than twenty years—has grown fat and lazy—borrows
money on bond and mortgage, and don't care a straw
about the subject:”—
-- 032 --
[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]
“Where's your grand project all this time?” interposed
Fyler Close. “Shall we have something new to practice
our wits on, or shall we rake among our dead schemes for
wherewithal to warm our brains with?”
“Now that you are on that,” said Mr. Leycraft, rapidly
surveying the nooks and privacies of the apartment, and
bestowing a broad glare on the door and windows, “I say
freely and without the lest reserve, that my head's a nine-pin
if I don't lay a plan before you will make you thrill down
to your pocket-ends with rapture: it's a neat scheme—very
neat,—but at the same time mighty magnificent.”
Saying this, Leycraft drew close up to the side of the
broker, laid their heads close together, and bending over the
stand, he moved his finger slowly in a sort of hieroglyphic
over it, and tapping his forehead complacently, was about to
detail his notable plan, when a knock was heard at the door,
which cut short any further communication for the present.
The knock was repeated a little louder; Fyler Close motioned
to his companion, who vanished expeditiously down
a pair of back-stairs into the yard, looking anxiously back
all the time as if under pursuit, and so through the baker's;
and Close, snatching from his pocket a well-worn
Hymn-book, began reciting a most excellent passage of
psalmody, in a deep and nasal intonation.
The knock was repeated three or four times before an invitation
was given to enter; and although the broker glanced
over the top of his book as the door opened and discovered
his visitor, he assumed not to be conscious of the
presence of any person whatever, but proceeded steadily,
in fact with rather increased energy, in his capital divertisement.
“Please, sir,” said the visitor, a stout-built lady, curtsying
and advancing timidly a step or two, “Please sir,—what's
to be done about the little mor'gage on my grounds, sir?”
This question Fyler Close seemed at first altogether unable
to apprehend, but when it was repeated, accompanied
by a slight jingle of silver in the visitor's pocket, he started,
deposited his book open upon the stand—as if he wished to
resume it at the very earliest convenience—looked about
him, and pensively remarked, twitching his whiskers, of
which there was a dry tuft on either cheek, violently,
“Poor old man!—There's no comfort left for you now,
but psalm-singing and class-meetings every other evening in
the week. These are old chairs, madam!”
-- 033 --
[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]
“They certainly are; Mr. Close; very old. There's no
denying facts,” answered the huckster.
“This is a dreadful dreary room for an old man to live in!”
again groaned the broker.
“Sartain!” responded the unwary market-woman, “I think
in that point, to do you justice, it's but next better than a
family vault, saving the death's heads and the smell.”
“And now you ask me, a poor lonesome man, living like
Death himself, as you admit, and that can afford to keep no
better company than three poor crazy chairs, to renew your
mortgage at seven per cent!—why, a cannibal, with good
cannibal feelings, wouldn't ask it!”
Mr. Close, on delivery of this speech, fell silent, and dropped
into a profound meditation, during which he from time
to time looked up and eyed the stout person of the huckster
as if he thought it would furnish a most delicate morsel for a
Carribee. But his own method of devouring a victim differed
essentially from that adopted by the benighted heathen, and
he now proceeded to demonstrate his dexterity in his own
particular line of manipulation.
“Well, you shall have it!” he cried, awaking as from an
anxious reverie: “I have considered it—your business shall
be done, Mrs. Lettuce.”
“Thank you, sir, thank you, sir! I am very much obliged,”
exclaimed the market-woman, bowing and curtsying
with great show of gratitude, but misapprehending slightly
the meaning of Mr. Fyler Close, and promising the accruing
interest in hard dollars, punctually on quarter-day.
“But I must have my summer supply of radishes!” said
lose.
“Oh, for the trifle of that, Master Close—we'll not differ.
I can send you down a bunch or two by the girls, every now
and then.”
“Every now and then will not do, madam:—I must have
them regularly, for I can't live without putting a few for sale,
in the season of them, at the baker's window, below stairs.”
“Well, I don't mind a handful of greens in the way of
binding a bargain; so the cart shall stop every morning, if
you please, and leave you a dozen bunches.”
“Very good, very good,” exclaimed the broker, rubbing
his hands together, “you are a woman of sense;—and now,
I must have my asparagus, that's a dainty herb—I love asparagus
dearly—and it sells well when it's early. Mind, I
-- 034 --
[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]
must have early tops, or none at all! Pick me the tops that
grow near the house, close up by the foundations, will you?”
Early tops, and such as he desired, were accordingly
promised, perforce: Mrs. Hetty Lettuce diving convulsively
into her pockets to make sure of such small change as she
had about her, as every thing appeared to be slipping away
from her ownership with extraordinary velocity and despatch.
“I'll not ask you,” continued the discriminating Mr. Close,
“to supply me with butter nor with eggs, although something
nice might be done with them through my neighbor below—
but eggs are quite apt to addle on hand, and butter must
be kept in ice, which costs two-pence a pound, and melts
without leaving as much as a thank-ye in your pocket.”
“Your sentiments are very excellent, sir, on that subject,”
said Mrs. Lettuce, brightening up.
“Yes, they are very excellent; but you'll think them far
nicer on the subject of good worsted stockings made with
your own dainty hands, three pair for winter use—I should
have three pair at least—and as many more for fall: you
know we must guard against frosts and chilblains a little;
made with low tops, with red clocks to show they are your
fabric,—one of the sweetest knitters in the market.”
With this he fell back quietly in his chair, and reminding
Mrs. Lettuce that he should expect his first pair of fall socks
Wednesday week, he wished her good day; which wish
Mrs. Lettuce was by no means idle in accepting, for her departure
was in fact accomplished with such expedition as to
amount almost to a precipitate flight. At this we cannot be
greatly astonished, when we consider the chance of a requisition
being made upon her to furnish the entire outfit and
wardrobe of the broker, by way of lightening his doleful condition
and eking out the percentage of his mortgage.
As soon as Mrs. Lettuce had departed, the broker ascended
a chair, and after careful inspection of an old chest in
his closet, and making discovery of a single pair of fragmentary
hose and an old stocking, he said, laughing to himself.
“This merchandize of the old market-woman's must
go into the hands of Ishmael; that's clear. Nights are
growing sharper; a little, a very little wood, must be laid
in; and where fires are kept, socks should be discountenanced.”
He had just stepped down from this inquisition,
when a sharp rap echoed through the hall, and without
-- 035 --
[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
waiting for a summons to enter, the strange old body, Puffer
Hopkins' friend, marched abruptly into the apartment, with
a very peremptory and threatening aspect.
“I have come again!” said the old gentleman, sternly.
“I see you have,” replied Mr. Fyler Close, smiling on him
with all the suavity and mellowness of an August day.
“Do you see that I am here?” continued Hobbleshank.
“Most assuredly—unless you are an apparition; and then
you are here and not here, at the same time,” answered the
broker.
“If I were a goblin, sir—come in here with a thong of
leather to strip you to your skin and stripe you all over with
blows—would I be out of place, do you think?”
“Perhaps not much: a little, we'll say a little,” answered
Mr. Close, still smiling gently on his visiter, “Just to balance
the sentence.”
“And then if I carried your bruised old carcase,” continued
Hobbleshank, “and plunged it in a gulf of boilingfire,
and held it there by the throat for a century, or so—would
it be pleasant and satisfactory?”
“Extremely so,” answered the broker; “Nothing could
be desired more charming: unless it might be a bond on
compound interest, with the interest payable at twelve
o'clock, daily.”
“That would be finer, you think?”
“Much finer—because that would leave one the use of his
legs to get out of troubles with.”
“Now, sir,” said Hobbleshank, who always made it a point
to subject the broker to a searching and playful cross-examination—
the answers to which, as has been seen, on the part
of the broker, were always extremely candid and confiding,
“Now, sir, I want to know of you, whether you think a gentleman
who has stood by and seen a man's wife die by inches
in the veriest need of common food—has seen the man go
mad—yes, mad, sir—with grief, and rush from his house in
utter despair and misery—do you think this gentleman, who,
when he has put the child and heir of these poor wretches
out of the way—God knows how—takes the roof that should
have sheltered his boy's head—do you think he deserves the
use of his legs? or his cursed griping hands? or his great
devilish eyes?”
“Not at all—by no means, my dear sir,” answered Fyler
Close, blandly. “It would be waste and extravagance to
-- 036 --
[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
allow such a monster any thing, but his neck: you know
he might hang by that!”
“Suppose you had'nt conveniences to hang him with—
no tackle—no scaffold—no murderer's cap,” continued Hobble
shank, “and could'nt persuade the gentleman to lend his
neck to a noose—what then?”
“What then?—I confess I should be at a stand:—
The case stands thus, if I apprehend you, my dear sir,”
answered Mr. Close, with the same astonishing equanimity.
“Here's a great villain to be punished; the law can't reach
him, he won't consent to be strung up without law, and declines—
is it so?—positively declines to come into any friendly
arrangement to be burned or bastinadoed: what's to be
done? Upon my honor, my good sir, I must allow the
knave has the better of you. I am sorry for it: extremely
sorry, but the ways of Providence are just, very just, and I
guess you'll have to wait for them.”
As Mr. Close uttered these words he assumed a benign
and tranquil expression of countenance, and looked serenely
forward into empty space, as if it was a hardship, a very
great hardship, that such a case should exist, but that it was
his duty, as an exemplary citizen, to resign himself to it
without a murmur. In this seeming quietude of feeling
Hobbleshank scarcely shared.
“What's to be done?” he shouted, darting forward toward
the broker. “His ugly flesh is to be torn with sharp
nails, like pincers; his head's to be broken, where these maggots
hatch—wretch!”
But ere he could fasten upon the broker, and exemplify
his notions of punishment, that gentleman, who had been
warily watching his visiter all through the interview, dropped
from his chair, glided athwart the candle-stand, and
throwing himself into the adjoining closet, secured it from
within.
Having rehearsed this performance many times before, in
previous interviews with his visiter, Mr. Fyler Close achieved
it at present with marvellous dispatch. For a few minutes,
Hobbleshank made furious assaults upon the broker's fortress,
with his feet and clenched fists, which he dashed violently
against the panels; all of which proceedings were
echoed from within by a hard, iron laugh, that almost set
Hobbleshank beside himself. From time to time the laughter
continued, and the rage of the old man increased, until at
-- 037 -- p264-044
[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]
length, in his extremity of passion, he snatched up the single
piece of furniture—the prime ornament of the apartment—
dashed it in fragments upon the hearth, kicked open the
outer door, and rushed almost headlong into the street.
Mr. Fyler Close had no sooner heard his retreating steps
than he quietly unearthed himself, and stepping along the
hall of the building, hoisted a window in front, and putting
forth his head, watched with considerable interest the form
of Hobbleshank as it was whirled along by the rage and
desperation of its owner, without much regard to children,
fish-mongers—with which the street swarmed—wheelbarrows,
or ladies in full dress. He then tranquilly gathered
the remains of his writing-table, tied them in a bundle with
a string, and placing them tenderly in the corner, produced
from an upper shelf of his closet stronghold a single
sea-biscuit, and proceeded to his evening meal.
Mathews, Cornelius, 1817-1889 [1842], The career of Puffer Hopkins (D. Appleton & Co., New York) [word count] [eaf264].
