DOCTOR MARIGOLD by Charles Dickens(read and download)
I don’t know that it was a harder matter of itself (for the other was
hard enough to me), but it was harder to get over. However, she was
pacified to it at last, and the separation betwixt us was settled. How
it cut up both of us when it took place, and when I left her at the door
in the dark of an evening, I don’t tell. But I know this; remembering
that night, I shall never pass that same establishment without a
heartache and a swelling in the throat; and I couldn’t put you up the
best of lots in sight of it with my usual spirit,–no, not even the gun,
nor the pair of spectacles,–for five hundred pound reward from the
Secretary of State for the Home Department, and throw in the honour of
putting my legs under his mahogany arterwards.
Still, the loneliness that followed in the cart was not the old
loneliness, because there was a term put to it, however long to look
forward to; and because I could think, when I was anyways down, that she
belonged to me and I belonged to her. Always planning for her coming
back, I bought in a few months’ time another cart, and what do you think
I planned to do with it? I’ll tell you. I planned to fit it up with
shelves and books for her reading, and to have a seat in it where I could
sit and see her read, and think that I had been her first teacher. Not
hurrying over the job, I had the fittings knocked together in contriving
ways under my own inspection, and here was her bed in a berth with
curtains, and there was her reading-table, and here was her writing-desk,
and elsewhere was her books in rows upon rows, picters and no picters,
bindings and no bindings, gilt-edged and plain, just as I could pick ’em
up for her in lots up and down the country, North and South and West and
East, Winds liked best and winds liked least, Here and there and gone
astray, Over the hills and far away. And when I had got together pretty
well as many books as the cart would neatly hold, a new scheme come into
my head, which, as it turned out, kept my time and attention a good deal
employed, and helped me over the two years’ stile.
Without being of an awaricious temper, I like to be the owner of things.
I shouldn’t wish, for instance, to go partners with yourself in the Cheap
Jack cart. It’s not that I mistrust you, but that I’d rather know it was
mine. Similarly, very likely you’d rather know it was yours. Well! A
kind of a jealousy began to creep into my mind when I reflected that all
those books would have been read by other people long before they was
read by her. It seemed to take away from her being the owner of ’em
like. In this way, the question got into my head: Couldn’t I have a book
new-made express for her, which she should be the first to read?
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 footboard, 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. 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 footboard, 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 wermilion 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.
* * * * *
[A portion is here omitted from the text, having reference to thesketches contributed by other writers; but the reader will be pleased to
have what follows retained in a note:
“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, 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.”]
* * * * *
So 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. I was as pleased and as proud as a Pug-
Dog with his muzzle black-leaded for a evening party, and his tail extra
curled by machinery.
But I had left something out of my calculations. Now, what had I left
out? To help you to 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 got yourself penned into a
corner, and you can’t help guessing a _im_mortal 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.” Now you
have got it.