Selected Short Fiction Page 42

  It pleased me, that thought did, and as I never was a man to let a thought sleep (you must wake up all the whole family of thoughts you’ve got and burn their nightcaps, or you won’t do in the cheap Jack line), I set to work at it. Considering that I was in the habit of changing so much about the country, and that I should have to find out a literary character here to make a deal with, and another literary character there to make a deal with, as opportunities presented, I hit on the plan that this same book should be a general miscellaneous lot - like the razors, flat-iron, chronometer watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and looking-glass - and shouldn’t be offered as a single indiwidual article like the spectacles or the gun. When I had come to that conclusion, I come to another, which shall likewise be yours.

  Often had I regretted that she never had heard me on the foot-board, and that she never could hear me. It ain’t that I am vain, but that you don’t like to put your own light under a bushel.8 What’s the worth of your reputation, if you can’t convey the reason for it to the person you most wish to value it? Now I’ll put it to you. Is it worth sixpence, fippence, fourpence, threepence, twopence, a penny, a halfpenny, a farthing? No, it ain’t. Not worth a farthing. Very well then. My conclusion was, that I would begin her book with some account of myself. So that, through reading a specimen or two of me on the foot-board, she might form an idea of my merits there. I was aware that I couldn’t do myself justice. A man can’t write his eye (at least I don’t know how to), nor yet can a man write his voice, nor the rate of his talk, nor the quickness of his action, nor his general spicy way. But he can write his turns of speech, when he is a public speaker - and indeed I have heard that he very often does, before he speaks ’em.

  Well! Having formed that resolution, then come the question of a name. How did I hammer that hot iron into shape? This way. The most difficult explanation I had ever had with her was, how I come to be called Doctor, and yet was no Doctor. After all, I felt that I had failed of getting it correctly into her mind, with my utmost pains. But trusting to her improvement in the two years, I thought that I might trust to her understanding it when she should come to read it as put down by my own hand. Then I thought I would try a joke with her and watch how it took, by which of itself I might fully judge of her understanding it. We had first discovered the mistake we had dropped into, through her having asked me to prescribe for her when she had supposed me to be a Doctor in a medical point of view, so thinks I, ‘Now, if I give this book the name of my Prescriptions, and if she catches the idea that my only Prescriptions are for her amusement and interest - to make her laugh in a pleasant way, or to make her cry in a pleasant way- it will be a delightful proof to both of us that we have got over our difficulty.’ It fell out to absolute perfection. For when she saw the book, as I had it got up - the printed and pressed book - lying on her desk in her cart, and saw the title, DOCTOR MARIGOLD’S PRESCRIPTIONS, she looked at me for a moment with astonishment, then fluttered the leaves, then broke out a laughing in the charmingest way, then felt her pulse and shook her head, then turned the pages pretending to read them most attentive, then kissed the book to me, and put it to her bosom with both her hands. I never was better pleased in all my life!

  But let me not anticipate. (I take that expression out of a lot of romances I bought for her. I never opened a single one of ‘em - and I have opened many — but I found the romancer saying ‘let me not anticipate.’ Which being so, I wonder why he did anticipate, or who asked him to it.) Let me not, I say, anticipate. This same book took up all my spare time. It was no play to get the other articles together in the general miscellaneous lot, but when it come to my own article! There! I couldn’t have believed the blotting, nor yet the buckling to at it, nor the patience over it. Which again is like the footboard. The public have no idea.

  At last it was done, and the two years’ time was gone after all the other time before it, and where it’s all gone to, Who knows? The new cart was finished - yellow outside, relieved with wer-million and brass fittings - the old horse was put in it, a new ‘un and a boy being laid on for the Cheap Jack cart - and I cleaned myself up to go and fetch her. Bright cold weather it was, cart-chimneys smoking, carts pitched private on a piece of waste ground over at Wandsworth where you may see ’em from the Sou’ Western Railway when not upon the road. (Look out of the right-hand window going down.)

  ‘Marigold,’ says the gentleman, giving his hand hearty, ‘I am very glad to see you.’

  ‘Yet I have my doubts, sir,’ says I, ‘if you can be half as glad to see me, as I am to see you.’

  ‘The time has appeared so long; has it, Marigold?’

  ‘I won’t say that, sir, considering its real length; but - ’

  ‘What a start, my good fellow!’

  Ah! I should think it was! Grown such a woman, so pretty, so intelligent, so expressive! I knew then that she must be really like my child, or I could never have known her, standing quiet by the door.

  ‘You are affected,’ says the gentleman in a kindly manner.

  ‘I feel, sir,’ says I, ‘that I am but a rough chap in a sleeved waistcoat.’

  ‘I feel,’ says the gentleman, ‘that it was you who raised her from misery and degradation, and brought her into communication with her kind. But why do we converse alone together, when we can converse so well with her? Address her in your own way.’

  ‘I am such a rough chap in a sleeved waistcoat, sir,’ says I, ‘and she is such a graceful woman, and she stands so quiet at the door!’

  ‘Try if she moves at the old sign,’ says the gentleman.

  They had got it up together o’ purpose to please me! For when I give her the old sign, she rushed to my feet, and dropped upon her knees, holding up her hands to me with pouring tears of love and joy; and when I took her hands and lifted her, she clasped me round the neck and lay there; and I don’t know what a fool I didn’t make of myself, until we all three settled down into talking without sound, as if there was a something soft and pleasant spread over the whole world for us.

  Now I’ll tell you what I am a going to do with you. I am a going to offer you the general miscellaneous lot, her own book, never read by anybody else but me, added to and completed by me after her first reading of it, eight-and-forty printed pages, six-and-ninety columns,9 Whiting’s own work, Beaufort House to wit, thrown off by the steam-ingine, best of paper, beautiful green wrapper, folded like clean linen come home from the clear-starcher‘s, and so exquisitely stitched that, regarded as a piece of needlework alone it’s better than the sampler of a seamstress undergoing a Competitive Examination for Starvation before the Civil Service Commissioners - and I offer the lot for what? For eight pound? Not so much. For six pound? Less. For four pound? Why, I hardly expect you to believe me, but that’s the sum. Four pound! The stitching alone cost half as much again. Here’s forty-eight original pages, ninety-six original columns, for four pound. You want more for the money? Take it. Three whole pages of advertisements of thrilling interest thrown in for nothing. Read’em and believe ‘em. More? My best of wishes for your merry Christmases and your happy -New Years, your long lives and your true prosperities. Worth twenty pound good if they are delivered as I send them. Remember! Here’s a final prescription added, ‘To be taken for life,’ which will tell you how the cart broke down, and where the journey ended. You think Four Pound too much? And still you think so? Come! I’ll tell you what then. Say Four Pence, and keep the secret.

  To Be Taken for Life

  Sophy read through the whole of the foregoing several times over, and I sat in my seat in the Library Cart (that’s the name we give it) seeing her read, and I was as pleased and as proud as a Pug-Dog with his muzzle black-leaded for an evening party and his tail extra curled by machinery. Every item of my plan was crowned with success. Our reunited life was more than all that we had looked forward to. Content and joy went with us as the wheels of the two carts went round, and the same stopped with us when the two carts stopped.

  But I
had left something out of my calculations. Now, what had I left out? To help you to a guess, I’ll say, a figure. Come. Make a guess, and guess right. Nought? No. Nine? No. Eight? No. Seven? No. Six? No. Five? No. Four? No. Three? No. Two? No. One? No. Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you. I’ll say it’s another sort of figure altogether. There. Why then, says you, it’s a mortal figure. No nor yet a mortal figure. By such means you get yourself penned into a corner, and you can’t help guessing a immortal figure. That’s about it. Why didn’t you say so sooner?

  Yes. It was a immortal figure that I had altogether left out of my calculations. Neither man’s nor woman‘s, but a child’s. Girl’s, or boy’s? Boy’s. ‘I says the sparrow, with my bow and arrow.’I Now you have got it.

  We were down at Lancaster, and I had done two nights’ more than fair average business (though I cannot in honour recommend them as a quick audience) in the open square there, near the end of the street where Mr Sly’s King’s Arms and Royal Hotel stands. Mim’s travelling giant otherwise Pickleson happened at the selfsame time to be a trying it on in the town. The genteel lay was adopted with him. No hint of a van. Green baize alcove leading up to Pickleson in a Auction Room. Printed poster ‘Free list suspended, with the exception of that proud boast of an enlightened country, a free press. Schools admitted by private arrangement. Nothing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the most fastidious.’ Mim swearing most horrible and terrific in a pink calico pay-place, at the slackness of the public. Serious hand-bill in the shops, importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right understanding of the history of David2, without seeing Pickleson.

  I went to the Auction Room in question, and I found it entirely empty of everything but echoes and mouldiness, with the single exception of Pickleson on a piece of red drugget. This suited my purpose, as I wanted a private and confidential word with him, which was: ‘Pickleson. Owing much happiness to you, I put you in my will for a fypunnote; but, to save trouble here’s fourpunten down, which may equally suit your views, and let us so conclude the transaction.’ Pickleson, who up to that remark had had the dejected appearance of a long Roman rushlight that couldn’t anyhow get lighted, brightened up at his top extremity and made his acknowledgments in a way which (for him) was parliamentary eloquence. He likewise did add, that, having ceased to draw as a Roman, Mim had made proposals for his going in as a conwerted Indian Giant worked upon by The Dairyman’s Daughter.3 This, Pickleson, having no acquaintance with the tract named after that young woman, and not being willing to couple gag with his serious views, had declined to do, thereby leading to words and the total stoppage of the unfortunate young man’s beer. All of which, during the whole of the interview, was confirmed by the ferocious growling of Mim down below in the pay-place, which shook the giant like a leaf.

  But what was to the present point in the remarks of the travelling giant otherwise Pickleson, was this: ‘Doctor Marigold’- I give his words without a hope of conweying their feebleness - ‘who is the strange young man that hangs about your carts?’ - ‘The strange young man? I gives him back, thinking that he meant her, and his languid circulation had dropped a syllable. ‘Doctor,’ he returns, with a pathos calculated to draw a tear from even a manly eye, ‘I am weak, but not so weak yet as that I don’t know my words. I repeat them, Doctor. The strange young man.’ It then appeared that Pickleson being forced to stretch his legs (not that they wanted it) only at times when he couldn’t be seen for nothing, to wit in the dead of the night and towards daybreak, had twice seen hanging about my carts, in that same town of Lancaster where I had been only two nights, this same unknown young man.

  It put me rather out of sorts. What it meant as to particulars I no more foreboded then, than you forebode now, but it put me rather out of sorts. Howsoever, I made light of it to Pickleson, and I took leave of Pickleson advising him to spend his legacy in getting up his stamina, and to continue to stand by his religion. Towards morning I kept a look-out for the strange young man, and what was more-I saw the strange young man. He was well dressed and well looking. He loitered very nigh my carts, watching them like as if he was taking care of them, and soon after daybreak turned and went away. I sent a hail after him, but he never started or looked round, or took the smallest notice.

  We left Lancaster within an hour or two, on our way towards Carlisle. Next morning at daybreak, I looked out again for the strange young man. I did not see him. But next morning I looked out again, and there he was once more. I sent another hail after him, but as before he gave not the slightest sign of being anyways disturbed. This put a thought into my head. Acting on it, I watched him in different manners and at different times not necessary to enter into, till I found that this strange young man was deaf and dumb.

  The discovery turned me over, because I knew that a part of that establishment where she had been, was allotted to young men (some of them well off), and I thought to myself ‘If she favours him, where am I, and where is all that I have worked and planned for?’ Hoping - I must confess to the selfishness - that she might not favour him, I set myself to find out. At last I was by accident present at a meeting between them in the open air, looking on leaning behind a fir-tree without their knowing of it. It was a moving meeting for all the three parties concerned. I knew every syllable that passed between them, as well as they did. I listened with my eyes, which had come to be as quick and true with deaf and dumb conversation, as my ears with the talk of people that can speak. He was a going out to China as clerk in a merchant’s house, which his father had been before him. He was in circumstances to keep a wife, and he wanted her to marry him and go along with him. She persisted, no. He asked if she didn’t love him? Yes, she loved him dearly, dearly, but she could never disappoint her beloved good noble generous and I don’t-know-what-all father (meaning me, the Cheap Jack in the sleeved waistcoat), and she would stay with him, Heaven bless him, though it was to break her heart! Then she cried most bitterly, and that made up my mind.

  While my mind had been in an unsettled state about her favouring this young man, I had felt that unreasonable towards Pickleson, that it was well for him he had got his legacy down. For I often thought ‘If it hadn’t been for this same weak-minded giant, I might never have come to trouble my head and wex my soul about the young man.’ But, once that I knew she loved him- once that I had seen her weep for him - it was a different thing. I made it right in my mind with Pickleson on the spot, and I shook myself together to do what was right by all.

  She had left the young man by that time (for it took a few minutes to get me thoroughly well shook together), and the young man was leaning against another of the fir-trees - of which there was a cluster - with his face upon his arm. I touched him on the back. Looking up and seeing me, he says, in our deaf and dumb talk: ‘Do not be angry.’

  ‘I am not angry, good boy. I am your friend. Come with me.’

  I left him at the foot of the steps of the Library Cart, and I went up alone. She was drying her eyes.

  ‘You have been crying, my dear.’

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A head-ache.’

  ‘Not a heart-ache?’

  ‘I said a head-ache, father.’

  ‘Doctor Marigold must prescribe for that head-ache.’

  She took up the book of my Prescriptions, and held it up with a forced smile, but seeing me keep still and look earnest, she softly laid it down again, and her eyes were very attentive.

  ‘The Prescription is not there, Sophy.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Here, my dear.’

  I brought her young husband in, and I put her hand in his, and my only further words to both of them were these: ‘Doctor Marigold’s last prescription. To be taken for life.’ After which I bolted.

  When the wedding come off, I mounted a coat (blue, and bright buttons), for the first and last time in all my days, and I give Sophy away with my own hand. There were only us three and the gentleman who had
had charge of her for those two years. I give the wedding dinner for four in the Library Cart. Pigeon pie, a leg of pickled pork, a pair of fowls, and suitable garden-stuff. The best of drinks. I give them a speech, and the gentlemen give us a speech, and all our jokes told, and the whole went off like a sky-rocket. In the course of the entertainment I explained to Sophy that I should keep the Library Cart as my living-cart when not upon the road, and that I should keep all her books for her just as they stood, till she come back to claim them. So she went to China with her young husband, and it was a parting sorrowful and heavy, and I got the boy I had another service, and so as of old when my child and wife were gone, I went plodding along alone, with my whip over my shoulder, at the old horse’s head.

  Sophy wrote me many letters, and I wrote her many letters. About the end of the first year she sent me one in an unsteady hand: ‘Dearest father, not a week ago I had a darling little daughter, but I am so well that they let me write these words to you. Dearest and best father, I hope my child may not be deaf and dumb, but I do not yet know.’ When I wrote back, I hinted the question; but as Sophy never answered that question, I felt it to be a sad one, and I never repeated it. For a long time our letters were regular, but then they got irregular through Sophy’s husband being moved to another station, and through my being always on the move. But we were in one another’s thoughts, I was equally sure, letters or no letters.

  Five years, odd months, had gone since Sophy went away. I was still the King of the Cheap Jacks, and at a greater heighth of popularity than ever. I had had a first-rate autumn of it, and on the twenty-third of December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, I found myself at Uxbridge, Middlesex, clean sold out. So I jogged up to London with the old horse, light and easy, to have my Christmas-Eve and Christmas Day alone by the fire in the Library Cart, and then to buy a regular new stock of goods all round, to sell ’em again and get the money.