The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens [good fiction books to read .txt] 📗

the most mysterious and unaccountable thing that was ever heard of For a lame man to have got upon his legs without any previous notice, and walked off, would have been most extraordinary; but when it came to his wheeling a heavy barrow before him, by way of amusement, it grew positively miraculous. They searched every nook and corner round, together and separately; they shouted, whistled, laughed, called—and all with the same result. Mr. Pickwick was not to be found. After some hours of fruitless search, they arrived at the unwelcome conclusion that they must go home without him.

Meanwhile Mr. Pickwick had been wheeled to the pound, and safely deposited therein, fast asleep in the wheelbarrow, to the immeasurable delight and satisfaction not only of all the boys in the village, but three-fourths of the whole population, who had gathered round, in expectation of his waking. If their most intense gratification had been awakened by seeing him wheeled in, how many hundredfold was their joy increased when, after a few indistinct cries of ‘Sam!’ he sat up in the barrow, and gazed with indescribable astonishment on the faces before him.

A general shout was of course the signal of his having woke up; and his involuntary inquiry of ‘What’s the matter?’ occasioned another, louder than the first, if possible.

‘Here’s a game!’ roared the populace.

‘Where am I?’ exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.

‘In the pound,’ replied the mob.

‘How came I here? What was I doing? Where was I brought from?’ ‘Boldwig! Captain Boldwig!’ was the only reply.

‘Let me out,’ cried Mr. Pickwick. ‘Where’s my servant? Where are my friends?’

‘You ain’t got no friends. Hurrah!’ Then there came a turnip, then a potato, and then an egg; with a few other little tokens of the playful disposition of the many-headed.

How long this scene might have lasted, or how much Mr. Pickwick might have suffered, no one can tell, had not a carriage, which was driving swiftly by, suddenly pulled up, from whence there descended old Wardle and Sam Weller, the former of whom, in far less time than it takes to write it, if not to read it, had made his way to Mr. Pickwick’s side, and placed him in the vehicle, just as the latter had concluded the third and last round of a single combat with the town-beadle.

‘Run to the justice’s!’ cried a dozen voices.

‘Ah, run avay,’ said Mr. Weller, jumping up on the box. ‘Give my compliments—Mr. Veller’s compliments—to the justice, and tell him I’ve spiled his beadle, and that, if he’ll swear in a new ‘un, I’ll come back again to-morrow and spile him. Drive on, old feller.’

‘I’ll give directions for the commencement of an action for false imprisonment against this Captain Boldwig, directly I get to London,’ said Mr. Pickwick, as soon as the carriage turned out of the town.

‘We were trespassing, it seems,’ said Wardle.

‘I don’t care,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘I’ll bring the action.’

‘No, you won’t,’ said Wardle.

‘I will, by—’ But as there was a humorous expression in Wardle’s face, Mr. Pickwick checked himself, and said, ‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ said old Wardle, half-bursting with laughter, ‘because they might turn on some of us, and say we had taken too much cold punch.’

Do what he would, a smile would come into Mr. Pickwick’s face; the smile extended into a laugh; the laugh into a roar; the roar became general. So, to keep up their good-humour, they stopped at the first roadside tavern they came to, and ordered a glass of brandy-and-water all round, with a magnum of extra strength for Mr. Samuel Weller.

 

CHAPTER XX SHOWING HOW DODSON AND FOGG WERE MEN OF BUSINESS, AND THEIR CLERKS MEN OF PLEASURE; AND HOW AN AFFECTING INTERVIEW TOOK PLACE BETWEEN Mr. WELLER AND HIS LONG-LOST PARENT; SHOWING ALSO WHAT CHOICE SPIRITS ASSEMBLED AT THE MAGPIE AND STUMP, AND WHAT A CAPITAL CHAPTER THE NEXT ONE WILL BE

 

In the ground-floor front of a dingy house, at the very farthest end of Freeman’s Court, Cornhill, sat the four clerks of Messrs. Dodson & Fogg, two of his Majesty’s attorneys of the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas at Westminster, and solicitors of the High Court of Chancery—the aforesaid clerks catching as favourable glimpses of heaven’s light and heaven’s sun, in the course of their daily labours, as a man might hope to do, were he placed at the bottom of a reasonably deep well; and without the opportunity of perceiving the stars in the daytime, which the latter secluded situation affords.

The clerks’ office of Messrs. Dodson & Fogg was a dark, mouldy, earthy-smelling room, with a high wainscotted partition to screen the clerks from the vulgar gaze, a couple of old wooden chairs, a very loud-ticking clock, an almanac, an umbrella-stand, a row of hat-pegs, and a few shelves, on which were deposited several ticketed bundles of dirty papers, some old deal boxes with paper labels, and sundry decayed stone ink bottles of various shapes and sizes. There was a glass door leading into the passage which formed the entrance to the court, and on the outer side of this glass door, Mr. Pickwick, closely followed by Sam Weller, presented himself on the Friday morning succeeding the occurrence of which a faithful narration is given in the last chapter.

‘Come in, can’t you!’ cried a voice from behind the partition, in reply to Mr. Pickwick’s gentle tap at the door. And Mr. Pickwick and Sam entered accordingly.

‘Mr. Dodson or Mr. Fogg at home, sir?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick, gently, advancing, hat in hand, towards the partition.

‘Mr. Dodson ain’t at home, and Mr. Fogg’s particularly engaged,’ replied the voice; and at the same time the head to which the voice belonged, with a pen behind its ear, looked over the partition, and at Mr. Pickwick.

it was a ragged head, the sandy hair of which, scrupulously parted on one side, and flattened down with pomatum, was twisted into little semi-circular tails round a flat face ornamented with a pair of small eyes, and garnished with a very dirty shirt collar, and a rusty black stock.

‘Mr. Dodson ain’t at home, and Mr. Fogg’s particularly engaged,’ said the man to whom the head belonged.

‘When will Mr. Dodson be back, sir?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick. ‘Can’t say.’

‘Will it be long before Mr. Fogg is disengaged, Sir?’

‘Don’t know.’

Here the man proceeded to mend his pen with great deliberation, while another clerk, who was mixing a Seidlitz powder, under cover of the lid of his desk, laughed approvingly.

‘I think I’ll wait,’ said Mr. Pickwick. There was no reply; so Mr. Pickwick sat down unbidden, and listened to the loud ticking of the clock and the murmured conversation of the clerks.

‘That was a game, wasn’t it?’ said one of the gentlemen, in a brown coat and brass buttons, inky drabs, and bluchers, at the conclusion of some inaudible relation of his previous evening’s adventures.

‘Devilish good—devilish good,’ said the Seidlitz-powder man. ‘Tom Cummins was in the chair,’ said the man with the brown coat. ‘It was half-past four when I got to Somers Town, and then I was so uncommon lushy, that I couldn’t find the place where the latch-key went in, and was obliged to knock up the old ‘ooman. I say, I wonder what old Fogg ‘ud say, if he knew it. I should get the sack, I s’pose—eh?’

At this humorous notion, all the clerks laughed in concert.

‘There was such a game with Fogg here, this mornin’,’ said the man in the brown coat, ‘while Jack was upstairs sorting the papers, and you two were gone to the stamp-office. Fogg was down here, opening the letters when that chap as we issued the writ against at Camberwell, you know, came in—what’s his name again?’

‘Ramsey,’ said the clerk who had spoken to Mr. Pickwick.

‘Ah, Ramsey—a precious seedy-looking customer. “Well, sir,” says old Fogg, looking at him very fierce—you know his way— “well, Sir, have you come to settle?” “Yes, I have, sir,” said Ramsey, putting his hand in his pocket, and bringing out the money, “the debt’s two pound ten, and the costs three pound five, and here it is, Sir;” and he sighed like bricks, as he lugged out the money, done up in a bit of blotting-paper. Old Fogg looked first at the money, and then at him, and then he coughed in his rum way, so that I knew something was coming. “You don’t know there’s a declaration filed, which increases the costs materially, I suppose,” said Fogg. “You don’t say that, sir,” said Ramsey, starting back; “the time was only out last night, Sir.” “I do say it, though,” said Fogg, “my clerk’s just gone to file it. Hasn’t Mr. Jackson gone to file that declaration in Bullman and Ramsey, Mr. Wicks?” Of course I said yes, and then Fogg coughed again, and looked at Ramsey. “My God!” said Ramsey; “and here have I nearly driven myself mad, scraping this money together, and all to no purpose.” “None at all,” said Fogg coolly; “so you had better go back and scrape some more together, and bring it here in time.” “I can’t get it, by God!” said Ramsey, striking the desk with his fist. “Don’t bully me, sir,” said Fogg, getting into a passion on purpose. “I am not bullying you, sir,” said Ramsey. “You are,” said Fogg; “get out, sir; get out of this office, Sir, and come back, Sir, when you know how to behave yourself.” Well, Ramsey tried to speak, but Fogg wouldn’t let him, so he put the money in his pocket, and sneaked out. The door was scarcely shut, when old Fogg turned round to me, with a sweet smile on his face, and drew the declaration out of his coat pocket. “Here, Wicks,” says Fogg, “take a cab, and go down to the Temple as quick as you can, and file that. The costs are quite safe, for he’s a steady man with a large family, at a salary of five-and-twenty shillings a week, and if he gives us a warrant of attorney, as he must in the end, I know his employers will see it paid; so we may as well get all we can get out of him, Mr. Wicks; it’s a Christian act to do it, Mr. Wicks, for with his large family and small income, he’ll be all the better for a good lesson against getting into debt—won’t he, Mr. Wicks, won’t he?”—and he smiled so good-naturedly as he went away, that it was delightful to see him. He is a capital man of business,’ said Wicks, in a tone of the deepest admiration, ‘capital, isn’t he?’

The other three cordially subscribed to this opinion, and the anecdote afforded the most unlimited satisfaction.

‘Nice men these here, Sir,’ whispered Mr. Weller to his master; ‘wery nice notion of fun they has, Sir.’

Mr. Pickwick nodded assent, and coughed to attract the attention of the young gentlemen behind the partition, who, having now relaxed their minds by a little conversation among themselves, condescended to take some notice of the stranger.

‘I wonder whether Fogg’s disengaged now?’ said Jackson.

‘I’ll see,’ said Wicks, dismounting leisurely from his stool. ‘What name shall I tell Mr. Fogg?’

‘Pickwick,’ replied the illustrious subject of these memoirs.

Mr. Jackson departed upstairs on his errand, and immediately returned with a message that Mr. Fogg would see Mr. Pickwick in five minutes; and having delivered it, returned again to his desk.

‘What did he say his name was?’ whispered Wicks.

‘Pickwick,’ replied Jackson; ‘it’s the defendant in Bardell and Pickwick.’

A sudden scraping of feet, mingled with the sound of suppressed laughter, was heard from behind the partition.

‘They’re a-twiggin’ of you, Sir,’ whispered Mr. Weller.

‘Twigging of me, Sam!’ replied Mr. Pickwick; ‘what do you mean by twigging me?’

Mr. Weller