DOCTOR MARIGOLD by Charles Dickens(read and download)

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 self-same time to be 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 handbill in

the shops, importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right

understanding of the history of David 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. 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 headache.”

“Not a heartache?”

“I said a headache, father.”

“Doctor Marigold must prescribe for that headache.”

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

farther 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 of 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 gentleman 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 height 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.

I am a neat hand at cookery, and I’ll tell you what I knocked up for my

Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart. I knocked up a

beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and a

couple of mushrooms thrown in. It’s a pudding to put a man in good

humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat.

Having relished that pudding and cleared away, I turned the lamp low, and

sat down by the light of the fire, watching it as it shone upon the backs

of Sophy’s books.

Sophy’s books so brought Sophy’s self, that I saw her touching face quite

plainly, before I dropped off dozing by the fire. This may be a reason

why Sophy, with her deaf-and-dumb child in her arms, seemed to stand

silent by me all through my nap. I was on the road, off the road, in all

sorts of places, 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 still she stood silent by me, with her silent child in her

arms. Even when I woke with a start, she seemed to vanish, as if she had

stood by me in that very place only a single instant before.

I had started at a real sound, and the sound was on the steps of the

cart. It was the light hurried tread of a child, coming clambering up.

That tread of a child had once been so familiar to me, that for half a

moment I believed I was a-going to see a little ghost.

But the touch of a real child was laid upon the outer handle of the door,

and the handle turned, and the door opened a little way, and a real child

peeped in. A bright little comely girl with large dark eyes.

Looking full at me, the tiny creature took off her mite of a straw hat,

and a quantity of dark curls fell about her face. Then she opened her

lips, and said in a pretty voice,

“Grandfather!”

“Ah, my God!” I cries out. “She can speak!”

“Yes, dear grandfather. And I am to ask you whether there was ever any

one that I remind you of?”

In a moment Sophy was round my neck, as well as the child, and her

husband was a-wringing my hand with his face hid, and we all had to shake

ourselves together before we could get over it. And when we did begin to

get over it, and I saw the pretty child a-talking, pleased and quick and

eager and busy, to her mother, in the signs that I had first taught her

mother, the happy and yet pitying tears fell rolling down my face.