The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (best novels to read for beginners txt) 📖

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'You make my blood run cold,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'What do you mean?'

'He's been consumptive for a long time past,' said Mr. Roker, 'and he's taken wery bad in the breath to-night. The doctor said, six months ago, that nothing but change of air could save him.'

'Great Heaven!' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick; 'has this man been slowly murdered by the law for six months?'

'I don't know about that,' replied Roker, weighing the hat by the brim in both hands. 'I suppose he'd have been took the same, wherever he was. He went into the infirmary, this morning; the doctor says his strength is to be kept up as much as possible; and the warden's sent him wine and broth and that, from his own house. It's not the warden's fault, you know, sir.'

'Of course not,' replied Mr. Pickwick hastily.

'I'm afraid, however,' said Roker, shaking his head, 'that it's all up with him. I offered Neddy two six-penn'orths to one upon it just now, but he wouldn't take it, and quite right. Thank'ee, Sir. Good-night, sir.'

'Stay,' said Mr. Pickwick earnestly. 'Where is this infirmary?'

'Just over where you slept, sir,' replied Roker. 'I'll show you, if you like to come.' Mr. Pickwick snatched up his hat without speaking, and followed at once.

The turnkey led the way in silence; and gently raising the latch of the room door, motioned Mr. Pickwick to enter. It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a number of stump bedsteads made of iron, on one of which lay stretched the shadow of a man--wan, pale, and ghastly. His breathing was hard and thick, and he moaned painfully as it came and went. At the bedside sat a short old man in a cobbler's apron, who, by the aid of a pair of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible aloud. It was the fortunate legatee.

The sick man laid his hand upon his attendant's arm, and motioned him to stop. He closed the book, and laid it on the bed.

'Open the window,' said the sick man.

He did so. The noise of carriages and carts, the rattle of wheels, the cries of men and boys, all the busy sounds of a mighty multitude instinct with life and occupation, blended into one deep murmur, floated into the room. Above the hoarse loud hum, arose, from time to time, a boisterous laugh; or a scrap of some jingling song, shouted forth, by one of the giddy crowd, would strike upon the ear, for an instant, and then be lost amidst the roar of voices and the tramp of footsteps; the breaking of the billows of the restless sea of life, that rolled heavily on, without. These are melancholy sounds to a quiet listener at any time; but how melancholy to the watcher by the bed of death!

'There is no air here,' said the man faintly. 'The place pollutes it. It was fresh round about, when I walked there, years ago; but it grows hot and heavy in passing these walls. I cannot breathe it.'

'We have breathed it together, for a long time,' said the old man. 'Come, come.'

There was a short silence, during which the two spectators approached the bed. The sick man drew a hand of his old fellow-prisoner towards him, and pressing it affectionately between both his own, retained it in his grasp.

'I hope,' he gasped after a while, so faintly that they bent their ears close over the bed to catch the half-formed sounds his pale lips gave vent to--'I hope my merciful Judge will bear in mind my heavy punishment on earth. Twenty years, my friend, twenty years in this hideous grave! My heart broke when my child died, and I could not even kiss him in his little coffin. My loneliness since then, in all this noise and riot, has been very dreadful. May God forgive me! He has seen my solitary, lingering death.'

He folded his hands, and murmuring something more they could not hear, fell into a sleep--only a sleep at first, for they saw him smile.

They whispered together for a little time, and the turnkey, stooping over the pillow, drew hastily back. 'He has got his discharge, by G--!' said the man.

He had. But he had grown so like death in life, that they knew not when he died.


CHAPTER XLIV. DESCRIPTIVE OF AN AFFECTING INTERVIEW BETWEEN Mr. SAMUEL WELLER AND A FAMILY PARTY. Mr. PICKWICK MAKES A TOUR OF THE DIMINUTIVE WORLD HE INHABITS, AND RESOLVES TO MIX WITH IT, IN FUTURE, AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE

A few mornings after his incarceration, Mr. Samuel Weller, having arranged his master's room with all possible care, and seen him comfortably seated over his books and papers, withdrew to employ himself for an hour or two to come, as he best could. It was a fine morning, and it occurred to Sam that a pint of porter in the open air would lighten his next quarter of an hour or so, as well as any little amusement in which he could indulge.

Having arrived at this conclusion, he betook himself to the tap. Having purchased the beer, and obtained, moreover, the day-but-one-before-yesterday's paper, he repaired to the skittle-ground, and seating himself on a bench, proceeded to enjoy himself in a very sedate and methodical manner.

First of all, he took a refreshing draught of the beer, and then he looked up at a window, and bestowed a platonic wink on a young lady who was peeling potatoes thereat. Then he opened the paper, and folded it so as to get the police reports outwards; and this being a vexatious and difficult thing to do, when there is any wind stirring, he took another draught of the beer when he had accomplished it. Then, he read two lines of the paper, and stopped short to look at a couple of men who were finishing a game at rackets, which, being concluded, he cried out 'wery good,' in an approving manner, and looked round upon the spectators, to ascertain whether their sentiments coincided with his own. This involved the necessity of looking up at the windows also; and as the young lady was still there, it was an act of common politeness to wink again, and to drink to her good health in dumb show, in another draught of the beer, which Sam did; and having frowned hideously upon a small boy who had noted this latter proceeding with open eyes, he threw one leg over the other, and, holding the newspaper in both hands, began to read in real earnest.

He had hardly composed himself into the needful state of abstraction, when he thought he heard his own name proclaimed in some distant passage. Nor was he mistaken, for it quickly passed from mouth to mouth, and in a few seconds the air teemed with shouts of 'Weller!' 'Here!' roared Sam, in a stentorian voice. 'Wot's the matter? Who wants him? Has an express come to say that his country house is afire?'

'Somebody wants you in the hall,' said a man who was standing by.

'Just mind that 'ere paper and the pot, old feller, will you?' said Sam. 'I'm a-comin'. Blessed, if they was a-callin' me to the bar, they couldn't make more noise about it!'

Accompanying these words with a gentle rap on the head of the young gentleman before noticed, who, unconscious of his close vicinity to the person in request, was screaming 'Weller!' with all his might, Sam hastened across the ground, and ran up the steps into the hall. Here, the first object that met his eyes was his beloved father sitting on a bottom stair, with his hat in his hand, shouting out 'Weller!' in his very loudest tone, at half-minute intervals.

'Wot are you a-roarin' at?' said Sam impetuously, when the old gentleman had discharged himself of another shout; 'making yourself so precious hot that you looks like a aggrawated glass-blower. Wot's the matter?'

'Aha!' replied the old gentleman, 'I began to be afeerd that you'd gone for a walk round the Regency Park, Sammy.'

'Come,' said Sam, 'none o' them taunts agin the wictim o' avarice, and come off that 'ere step. Wot arc you a-settin' down there for? I don't live there.'

'I've got such a game for you, Sammy,' said the elder Mr. Weller, rising.

'Stop a minit,' said Sam, 'you're all vite behind.'

'That's right, Sammy, rub it off,' said Mr. Weller, as his son dusted him. 'It might look personal here, if a man walked about with vitevash on his clothes, eh, Sammy?'

As Mr. Weller exhibited in this place unequivocal symptoms of an approaching fit of chuckling, Sam interposed to stop it.

'Keep quiet, do,' said Sam, 'there never vos such a old picter-card born. Wot are you bustin' vith, now?'

'Sammy,' said Mr. Weller, wiping his forehead, 'I'm afeerd that vun o' these days I shall laugh myself into a appleplexy, my boy.'

'Vell, then, wot do you do it for?' said Sam. 'Now, then, wot have you got to say?'

'Who do you think's come here with me, Samivel?' said Mr. Weller, drawing back a pace or two, pursing up his mouth, and extending his eyebrows. 'Pell?' said Sam.

Mr. Weller shook his head, and his red cheeks expanded with the laughter that was endeavouring to find a vent.

'Mottled-faced man, p'raps?' asked Sam.

Again Mr. Weller shook his head.

'Who then?'asked Sam.

'Your mother-in-law,' said Mr. Weller; and it was lucky he did say it, or his cheeks must inevitably have cracked, from their most unnatural distension.

'Your mother--in--law, Sammy,' said Mr. Weller, 'and the red-nosed man, my boy; and the red-nosed man. Ho! ho! ho!'

With this, Mr. Weller launched into convulsions of laughter, while Sam regarded him with a broad grin gradually over-spreading his whole countenance.

'They've come to have a little serious talk with you, Samivel,' said Mr. Weller, wiping his eyes. 'Don't let out nothin' about the unnat'ral creditor, Sammy.'

'Wot, don't they know who it is?' inquired Sam.

'Not a bit on it,' replied his father.

'Vere are they?' said Sam, reciprocating all the old gentleman's grins.

'In the snuggery,' rejoined Mr. Weller. 'Catch the red-nosed man a-goin' anyvere but vere the liquors is; not he, Samivel, not he. Ve'd a wery pleasant ride along the road from the Markis this mornin', Sammy,' said Mr. Weller, when he felt himself equal to the task of speaking in an articulate manner. 'I drove the old piebald in that 'ere little shay-cart as belonged to your mother-in-law's first wenter, into vich a harm-cheer wos lifted for the shepherd; and I'm blessed,' said Mr. Weller, with a look of deep scorn--'I'm blessed if they didn't bring a portable flight o' steps out into the road a-front o' our door for him, to get up by.'

'You don't mean that?' said Sam.

'I do mean that, Sammy,' replied his father, 'and I vish you could ha' seen how tight he held on by the sides wen he did get up, as if he wos afeerd o' being precipitayted down full six foot, and dashed into a million hatoms. He tumbled in at last, however, and avay ve vent; and I rayther think--I say I rayther think, Samivel--that he found his-self a little jolted ven ve turned the corners.'

'Wot, I s'pose you happened to drive up agin a post or two?' said Sam. 'I'm afeerd,' replied Mr. Weller, in a rapture of winks--'I'm afeerd I took vun or two on 'em, Sammy; he wos a-flyin' out o'