The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the genial influence of gin-and-water. I began to think I should get over the day, when my sister said to Joe, “Clean plates—cold.”
I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I really was gone.
“You must taste,” said my sister, addressing the guests with her best grace, “You must taste, to finish with such a delightful and delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook’s!”
Must they! Let them not hope to taste it!
“You must know,” said my sister, rising, “it’s a pie; a savoury pork pie.”
The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said—quite vivaciously, all things considered, “Well, Mrs. Joe, we’ll do our best endeavours; let us have a cut at this same pie.”
My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry. I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that “a bit of savoury pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do no harm,” and I heard Joe say, “You shall have some, Pip.” I have never been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the table, and ran for my life.
But I ran no farther than the house door, for there I ran head foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets ; one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to me saying, “Here you are, look sharp, come on!”
5
THE APPARITION OF A FILE OF SOLDIERS RINGING DOWN the butt-ends of their loaded muskets on our door-step, caused the dinner-party to rise from table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe, re-entering the kitchen empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering lament of “Gracious goodness gracious me, what’s gone— with the—pie!”
The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring ; at which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses. It was the sergeant who had spoken to me, and he was now looking round at the company, with his handcuffs invitingly extended towards them in his right hand, and his left on my shoulder.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” said the sergeant, “but as I have mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver” (which he hadn’t), “I am on a chase in the name of the King, and I want the blacksmith.”
“And pray what might you want with him”retorted my sister, quick to resent his being wanted at all.
“Missis,” returned the gallant sergeant, “speaking for myself, I should reply, the honour and pleasure of his fine wife’s acquaintance; speaking for the King, I answer, a little job done.”
This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that Mr. Pumblechook cried audibly, “Good again!”
“You see, blacksmith,” said the sergeant, who had by this time picked out Joe with his eye, “we have had an accident with these, and I find the lock of one of ’em goes wrong, and the coupling don’t act pretty. As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over them?”
Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer two hours than one. “Will it? Then will you set about it at once, blacksmith,’ said the off-hand sergeant, “as it’s on His Majesty’s service. And if my men can bear a hand anywhere, they’ll make themselves useful.” With that, he called to his men, who came trooping into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms in a corner. And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, with their hands loosely before them; now, resting a knee or a shoulder; now, easing a belt or a pouch ; now, opening the door to spit stiffly over their high stocks, out into the yard.
All these things I saw without them knowing that I saw them, for I was in an agony of apprehension. But, beginning to perceive that the handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got the better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a little more of my scattered wits.