Dumbbell

“ What will he think?"
"How much 'old rye' he will get out of the job. Come, Bluebell; the hour is ours, don't spoil it fidgetting about trivialities. I have scarcely dared to look at you yet, my beautiful pet," trying to steal an arm round her waist. But she drew herself away, irresponsive and rigid, being uneasy and frightened at the escapade she had been led into.
"You haven't a spark of moral courage, Bluebell," said Bertie, impatiently. "You are as prim and unlike yourself as possible, just because you are wondering what that man on the box will think. ”

“ From about 1850 he devoted himself chiefly to literature. His writings are The Roman (1850) , Balder (1853) , Sonnets on the War (1855) , in which he collaborated with Alexander Smith, and England in Time of War (1856) . But his health failed, and though he lived eighteen years longer he wrote little more of consequence.
‘He never weeded his garden,’ wrote Dr. John Brown of him, ‘and will, I fear, be therefore strangled in his waste fertility.’ This is the central truth about Dobell. Few poets are so uneven, perhaps hardly any poet capable of rising so high has ever sunk so low. ”

“ He was sitting now in front of the open French windows which led from his father’s workroom on to the balcony, with a block on his knee and a fountain-pen in his hand, composing advertisements for the Patent Small-Clothes. Outside, in the plane trees of the square, the birds had gone through their nightly performance. But Gumbril had paid no attention to them. He sat there, smoking, sometimes writing a word or two—sunk in the quagmire of his own drowsy and comfortable body. The flawless weather of the day had darkened into a blue May evening. It was agreeable merely to be alive. ”

“ She turned her large, innocent eyes upon him. "How could I, when I care more for you than anything in the world?"
"My poor little Bluebell!" said Du Meresq, crushing her in his arms. But the sleigh stopped; the man was getting down.
"My time is up, sir."
"Well, drive to where you took us up," said Bertie. "Bluebell, tell me quick, where shall I see you again?"
"I can't risk driving," said she, hurriedly. "When will you be able to walk?"
"Can't I see you alone at home sometimes? When are your people likely to be out?" ”

“ I come now to a point in my narrative when the trend of events takes a new turn, and when I shall have to relate happenings of infinitely greater importance than the circumstances [Pg 215] under which Parker and Smudgy, the negro Black Sam, and the two Grants, met their death. These were but the "curtain-raisers" preceding the drama in which the man known to the readers of this history as "the Dumpling" took so remarkable a part. Up to this point my tale—I had to tell it as it happened—has been little more than a detective story. Now we shall soon come to a story of quite another sort. ”

“ Being a remarkably timid creature, it takes fright, loses its presence of mind, and gets hopelessly entangled. "Now and then a dugong is found wrapped round as with the folds of a hammock, and the net has to be cut away piecemeal. As often as not, the dugongs thus drown themselves by frantic efforts to escape, but where a partial entanglement permits them to follow their instinct and come to the surface, they are taken alive. ”

“ I dashed down the stairs and through a door which led to a corridor, at the end of which was a conservatory. A cold wind indicated either an open door or window—perhaps a broken window. As I raced along the corridor—the bewildered Metcalfe so far behind me that I could hear his heavy steps descending the stairs—I saw that though all the other plants in the conservatory were perfectly still, one white-blossomed flower in a pot was swaying and moving as if in a draught, and the next moment there peered, through a broken pane of glass behind it, the white and wicked face of the Dumpling. ”

“ Mr. Gumbril was almost the last survivor of the old inhabitants. He liked his house, and he liked his square. Social decadence had not affected the fourteen plane trees which adorned its little garden, and the gambols of the dirty children did not disturb the starlings who came, evening by evening in summer-time, to roost in their branches.
On fine evenings he used to sit out on his balcony waiting for the coming of the birds. ”

“ Doubtless, the dugong, attacked by some powerful animal, after having released the dog, was fighting on its own account. But it did not last long. The water became red with blood, and the body of the dugong, emerging from the sheet of scarlet which spread around, soon stranded on a little beach at the south angle of the lake. The colonists ran towards it. The dugong was dead. It was an enormous animal, fifteen or sixteen feet long, and must have weighed from three to four thousand pounds. ”

“ All of these enjoyed Dumpling, and their tastes are ostensibly approved while at the same time being heavily undercut with satiric indirection. Naturally enough, Walpole (although a Dumpling Eater) is treated with considerable circumspection. Carey has warned us that he is a bad chronologist (Key, p. 21) , and the Sir John Pudding (be he Walpole or Marlborough [d. 1722] ) , who at the end of Dumpling is referred to as “the Hero of this DUMPLEID,” is for good reason spoken of in the past tense. ”

“ Anyway I gave a gesture of derision that stung him past endurance.
"Dumail—" he broke out. "You laugh? Dumail, will you believe this? There is awaiting me back home at the present moment a heritage of millions. Of millions, I swear to you! Not the treasure of an opium dream, Dumail, but a place ready established among the great and the fortunate. For me: Number Matricule 2232! Life in a gondola, do you see? Luxury, leisure, rank. Beauty. Women. Happiness! Everything a poor lost devil could crave!" ”

“ Gumbril, it’s the Best People that the other people resent. It’s their confidence, their ease, it’s the habit their money and their position give them of ordering people about, it’s the way they take their place in the world for granted, it’s their prestige, which the other people would like to deny, but can’t—it’s all that, Mr. Gumbril, that’s so galling.”
Gumbril nodded. He himself had envied his securer friends their power of ignoring the humanity of those who were not of their class. To do that really well, one must always have lived in a large house full of clockwork servants ”

“ Bluebell began to wonder how many more sensational minutes this hour was to contain.
"Mr. Dutton," she gasped, in a horrified tone, "what are you saying? You must know it is impossible."
"Summon all your moral courage, Bluebell. You were not afraid in the storm. Why do you shrink from acting a little out of the common?"
This speech was so like what Bertie would have said, that it nearly brought the tears to her eyes.
"Pray say no more," said she, shrinking away from him. "How could I ever dream of such a thing!"
"Can't you care for me, Bluebell—ever so little?" pleaded Harry Dutton. ”

“ That I was here at all, instead perhaps of lying strangled in a cellar, was due to the arrival of the police on the previous evening.
Had their appearance not cut short my [Pg 193] discussion with the Dumpling, the issue of that discussion might have been disastrous to myself. The most difficult part of my task—to convince the Dumpling that I was sufficiently in sympathy with himself and with his projects, safely to be allowed at large—was all to come. In dealing with a madman, one never knows what sudden warp his cunning and his mania will take ”

“ It acted not as a mob, but as one man; and one man, in a sense, it was, since each contingent—come as it might from Bermondsey, from Poplar, or from Canning Town—seemed like one of the limbs of a human body, of which this man, the Dumpling, was the controlling brain. ”

“ Poor Dumpy had been so long in the twilight and darkness, that he was dazzled by the brilliant scene, and for a few moments was obliged to close his eyes, and when he opened them, he saw that he was surrounded by a large crowd of the little people, who were full of anxious fears about the old man he held in his arms, but he assured them he was suffering only from a sprain, which, though very painful, was not dangerous. ”

“ It was gala day in Dumford. The past bitter times were forgotten, and the men had rigged up an arch of evergreens. The children were in their best, and gardens had been stripped of their flowers. Half the town had been twice to the Bull to see the barouche and the four greys that had been ordered from Ranby, and the postboys, in their white beaver hats, had been asked to drink more times than was safe for those they had to drive. ”

“ Horrid creature! to take all my nonsense for real earnest, and to go away and leave me to be persecuted to death!" exclaimed the lady Dewbell, with an uncontrollable burst of tears, as she threw herself, her toilet half finished, and her hair all strewn over her face and shoulders, upon her little praying cushion. "What will become of poor Bell!"
"What ails my daughter?" said the sweet, soft voice of the queen mother, as she knelt tenderly over her child, and pressed her head to her bosom. "Tell your sorrows to your mother."
"Oh, mother, I am the most wretched fairy that ever existed. ”

“ Colonel Rolleston, in the first sleigh, was blandly pointing out to Lady Hampshire the coup d'oeil of the whole procession as they described two sides of a triangle.
"Do you like my plumes?" asked Jack, relaxing his surveillance on Dahlia, as her left ear, which had been laid back in a suggestive manner, resumed its accustomed position.
"Like them," echoed Bluebell; "it's just like a hearse, bar the colour, which is frightful. I wouldn't have come if I had known I was to be driven in such a fire-engine." ”

“ It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating—can we?”
“No,” said Lord Dumbello, “not always.” And he looked as though he lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.
And then Mrs. Proudie passed on to Mrs. Grantly. The two ladies were quite friendly in London; though down in their own neighbourhood they waged a war so internecine in its nature. But nevertheless Mrs. Proudie’s manner might have showed to a very close observer that she knew the difference between a bishop and an archdeacon. ”

“ The fact that Grant's house was being watched—unless, of course, I could satisfy myself that the watching was being [Pg 95] done by the police—would not only go far to prove the accuracy of my theory, but would also be the means of putting me upon the track of the Dumpling or of his accomplices.
Naturally, I had to go to work very carefully. Were I, even if skilfully disguised, to do so much as walk twice, or even once, up the street in which Grant's house was situated, I should be in danger of attracting attention. ”

“ Toby gave a loud squeak of pain, and Jumbo, afraid perhaps that he might receive a bite in return, jumped through the bars and scampered down the field. He was half-way to the river before the children recovered from their surprise, and shouted to him to come back. But the more they shouted the faster he ran. And that was not the worst either, for the other rabbits were after him in a twinkling. But quick as they were Jim was quicker. ”

“ Bluebell, like most Canadians, had had plenty of early admiration from hobbledehoys, who made honest, though ungainly, love to her; but her heart would as soon have been touched by an amorous Orson as by these youthful tyros in the art. Du Meresq had that deceptive countenance apparently created for the shipwreck of female hearts. Sometimes men called him an ugly fellow, but no woman ever thought so. There was expression enough in those luminous eyes to have set up three beauty men. ”

“ A smothered growl interrupted this monologue, and then a sharp bark. Bluebell looked round to see what was exciting him; she heard a distant tinkle of bells, and listened keenly; laughing voices were apparently approaching. From an impulse that she could not have explained, Bluebell darted into an empty woodshed, dragging Trove in after her, and holding him firmly by the muzzle to stifle his growling. Through an aperture in the boards she could observe, unseen herself. ”

“ The discomposing rocking of the vessel continued, and the moan of the winds mingled with the incessant complaints of Mrs. Butler on a distant sofa, who was as communicative respecting her anguish as her age.
Tea and the return of some of the gentlemen a little relieved the monotony. Bluebell was languidly experimenting on a piece of dry toast, when the loud crying of a child attracted her attention, and, the steward leaving the door open, a little girl of four plunged in. She recognised her as one of the children with the tipsy father. ”

“ The reader need look no further than Namby Pamby to see that Carey satisfies Northrop Frye’s very proper observation: “Genius seems to have led practically every great satirist to become what the world calls obscene.”
As for the pamphlets being “palpably Whiggish,” the reader will not look far into the allegory before he realizes that one of the central attacks is against those well-known Whigs Walpole and Marlborough and their appetite for Dumpling (i.e., iii bribery and perquisites) . ”

“ The people around stared and smiled, but he continued to gaze, in a mournful and approving way, at Bluebell, while his wife sat in a state of repressed endurance, calculating how many more minutes he would have for exposing himself before the tug separated friends from passengers.
After a playful feint to throw one of his children overboard, he became calmer, and relapsed into a maudlin monologue till the bell rang, when he was hustled off, much to Bluebell's relief as well as his wife's, whose set mouth relaxed as if a care had rolled away. ”