DOCTOR MARIGOLD by Charles Dickens(read and download)

Me and my dog were all the company left in the cart now; and the dog

learned to give a short bark when they wouldn’t bid, and to give another

and a nod of his head when I asked him, “Who said half a crown? Are you

the gentleman, sir, that offered half a crown?” He attained to an

immense height of popularity, and I shall always believe taught himself

entirely out of his own head to growl at any person in the crowd that bid

as low as sixpence. But he got to be well on in years, and one night

when I was conwulsing York with the spectacles, he took a conwulsion on

his own account upon the very footboard by me, and it finished him.

Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dreadful lonely feelings on me

arter this. I conquered ’em at selling times, having a reputation to

keep (not to mention keeping myself), but they got me down in private,

and rolled upon me. That’s often the way with us public characters. See

us on the footboard, and you’d give pretty well anything you possess to

be us. See us off the footboard, and you’d add a trifle to be off your

bargain. It was under those circumstances that I come acquainted with a

giant. I might have been too high to fall into conversation with him,

had it not been for my lonely feelings. For the general rule is, going

round the country, to draw the line at dressing up. When a man can’t

trust his getting a living to his undisguised abilities, you consider him

below your sort. And this giant when on view figured as a Roman.

He was a languid young man, which I attribute to the distance betwixt his

extremities. He had a little head and less in it, he had weak eyes and

weak knees, and altogether you couldn’t look at him without feeling that

there was greatly too much of him both for his joints and his mind. But

he was an amiable though timid young man (his mother let him out, and

spent the money), and we come acquainted when he was walking to ease the

horse betwixt two fairs. He was called Rinaldo di Velasco, his name

being Pickleson.

This giant, otherwise Pickleson, mentioned to me under the seal of

confidence that, beyond his being a burden to himself, his life was made

a burden to him by the cruelty of his master towards a step-daughter who

was deaf and dumb. Her mother was dead, and she had no living soul to

take her part, and was used most hard. She travelled with his master’s

caravan only because there was nowhere to leave her, and this giant,

otherwise Pickleson, did go so far as to believe that his master often

tried to lose her. He was such a very languid young man, that I don’t

know how long it didn’t take him to get this story out, but it passed

through his defective circulation to his top extremity in course of time.

When I heard this account from the giant, otherwise Pickleson, and

likewise that the poor girl had beautiful long dark hair, and was often

pulled down by it and beaten, I couldn’t see the giant through what stood

in my eyes. Having wiped ’em, I give him sixpence (for he was kept as

short as he was long), and he laid it out in two three-penn’orths of gin-

and-water, which so brisked him up, that he sang the Favourite Comic of

Shivery Shakey, ain’t it cold?–a popular effect which his master had

tried every other means to get out of him as a Roman wholly in vain.

His master’s name was Mim, a wery hoarse man, and I knew him to speak to.

I went to that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving the cart outside the

town, and I looked about the back of the Vans while the performing was

going on, and at last, sitting dozing against a muddy cart-wheel, I come

upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb. At the first look I might

almost have judged that she had escaped from the Wild Beast Show; but at

the second I thought better of her, and thought that if she was more

cared for and more kindly used she would be like my child. She was just

the same age that my own daughter would have been, if her pretty head had

not fell down upon my shoulder that unfortunate night.

To cut it short, I spoke confidential to Mim while he was beating the

gong outside betwixt two lots of Pickleson’s publics, and I put it to

him, “She lies heavy on your own hands; what’ll you take for her?” Mim

was a most ferocious swearer. Suppressing that part of his reply which

was much the longest part, his reply was, “A pair of braces.” “Now I’ll

tell you,” says I, “what I’m a going to do with you. I’m a going to

fetch you half-a-dozen pair of the primest braces in the cart, and then

to take her away with me.” Says Mim (again ferocious), “I’ll believe it

when I’ve got the goods, and no sooner.” I made all the haste I could,

lest he should think twice of it, and the bargain was completed, which

Pickleson he was thereby so relieved in his mind that he come out at his

little back door, longways like a serpent, and give us Shivery Shakey in

a whisper among the wheels at parting.

It was happy days for both of us when Sophy and me began to travel in the

cart. I at once give her the name of Sophy, to put her ever towards me

in the attitude of my own daughter. We soon made out to begin to

understand one another, through the goodness of the Heavens, when she

knowed that I meant true and kind by her. In a very little time she was

wonderful fond of me. You have no idea what it is to have anybody

wonderful fond of you, unless you have been got down and rolled upon by

the lonely feelings that I have mentioned as having once got the better

of me.

You’d have laughed–or the rewerse–it’s according to your disposition–if

you could have seen me trying to teach Sophy. At first I was

helped–you’d never guess by what–milestones. I got some large

alphabets in a box, all the letters separate on bits of bone, and saying

we was going to WINDSOR, I give her those letters in that order, and then

at every milestone I showed her those same letters in that same order

again, and pointed towards the abode of royalty. Another time I give her

CART, and then chalked the same upon the cart. Another time I give her

DOCTOR MARIGOLD, and hung a corresponding inscription outside my

waistcoat. People that met us might stare a bit and laugh, but what did

_I_ care, if she caught the idea? She caught it after long patience and

trouble, and then we did begin to get on swimmingly, I believe you! At

first she was a little given to consider me the cart, and the cart the

abode of royalty, but that soon wore off.

We had our signs, too, and they was hundreds in number. Sometimes she

would sit looking at me and considering hard how to communicate with me

about something fresh,–how to ask me what she wanted explained,–and

then she was (or I thought she was; what does it signify?) so like my

child with those years added to her, that I half-believed it was herself,

trying to tell me where she had been to up in the skies, and what she had

seen since that unhappy night when she flied away. She had a pretty

face, and now that there was no one to drag at her bright dark hair, and

it was all in order, there was a something touching in her looks that

made the cart most peaceful and most quiet, though not at all melancholy.

[N.B. In the Cheap Jack patter, we generally sound it lemonjolly, and it

gets a laugh.]

The way she learnt to understand any look of mine was truly surprising.

When I sold of a night, she would sit in the cart unseen by them outside,

and would give a eager look into my eyes when I looked in, and would hand

me straight the precise article or articles I wanted. And then she would

clap her hands, and laugh for joy. And as for me, seeing her so bright,

and remembering what she was when I first lighted on her, starved and

beaten and ragged, leaning asleep against the muddy cart-wheel, it give

me such heart that I gained a greater heighth of reputation than ever,

and I put Pickleson down (by the name of Mim’s Travelling Giant otherwise

Pickleson) for a fypunnote in my will.

This happiness went on in the cart till she was sixteen year old. By

which time I began to feel not satisfied that I had done my whole duty by

her, and to consider that she ought to have better teaching than I could

give her. It drew a many tears on both sides when I commenced explaining

my views to her; but what’s right is right, and you can’t neither by

tears nor laughter do away with its character.

So I took her hand in mine, and I went with her one day to the Deaf and

Dumb Establishment in London, and when the gentleman come to speak to us,

I says to him: “Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, sir. I am

nothing but a Cheap Jack, but of late years I have laid by for a rainy

day notwithstanding. This is my only daughter (adopted), and you can’t

produce a deafer nor a dumber. Teach her the most that can be taught her

in the shortest separation that can be named,–state the figure for

it,–and I am game to put the money down. I won’t bate you a single

farthing, sir, but I’ll put down the money here and now, and I’ll

thankfully throw you in a pound to take it. There!” The gentleman

smiled, and then, “Well, well,” says he, “I must first know what she has

learned already. How do you communicate with her?” Then I showed him,

and she wrote in printed writing many names of things and so forth; and

we held some sprightly conversation, Sophy and me, about a little story

in a book which the gentleman showed her, and which she was able to read.

“This is most extraordinary,” says the gentleman; “is it possible that

you have been her only teacher?” “I have been her only teacher, sir,” I

says, “besides herself.” “Then,” says the gentleman, and more acceptable

words was never spoke to me, “you’re a clever fellow, and a good fellow.”

This he makes known to Sophy, who kisses his hands, claps her own, and

laughs and cries upon it.

We saw the gentleman four times in all, and when he took down my name and

asked how in the world it ever chanced to be Doctor, it come out that he

was own nephew by the sister’s side, if you’ll believe me, to the very

Doctor that I was called after. This made our footing still easier, and

he says to me:

“Now, Marigold, tell me what more do you want your adopted daughter to

know?”

“I want her, sir, to be cut off from the world as little as can be,

considering her deprivations, and therefore to be able to read whatever

is wrote with perfect ease and pleasure.”

“My good fellow,” urges the gentleman, opening his eyes wide, “why _I_

can’t do that myself!”

I took his joke, and gave him a laugh (knowing by experience how flat you

fall without it), and I mended my words accordingly.

“What do you mean to do with her afterwards?” asks the gentleman, with a

sort of a doubtful eye. “To take her about the country?”

“In the cart, sir, but only in the cart. She will live a private life,

you understand, in the cart. I should never think of bringing her

infirmities before the public. I wouldn’t make a show of her for any

money.”

The gentleman nodded, and seemed to approve.

“Well,” says he, “can you part with her for two years?”

“To do her that good,–yes, sir.”

“There’s another question,” says the gentleman, looking towards her,–“can

she part with you for two years?”