The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens (best e reader for epub .TXT) 📗

‘“We have not an instant to lose here,” said the young lady. “He (pointing to the young gentleman in sky-blue) is the only son of the powerful Marquess of Filletoville.” ‘“Well then, my dear, I’m afraid he’ll never come to the title,” said my uncle, looking coolly at the young gentleman as he stood fixed up against the wall, in the cockchafer fashion that I have described. “You have cut off the entail, my love.”

‘“I have been torn from my home and my friends by these villains,” said the young lady, her features glowing with indignation. “That wretch would have married me by violence in another hour.”

‘“Confound his impudence!” said my uncle, bestowing a very contemptuous look on the dying heir of Filletoville.

‘ “As you may guess from what you have seen,” said the young lady, “the party were prepared to murder me if I appealed to any one for assistance. If their accomplices find us here, we are lost. Two minutes hence may be too late. The mail!” With these words, overpowered by her feelings, and the exertion of sticking the young Marquess of Filletoville, she sank into my uncle’s arms. My uncle caught her up, and bore her to the house door. There stood the mail, with four long-tailed, flowing-maned, black horses, ready harnessed; but no coachman, no guard, no hostler even, at the horses’ heads.

‘Gentlemen, I hope I do no injustice to my uncle’s memory, when I express my opinion, that although he was a bachelor, he had held some ladies in his arms before this time; I believe, indeed, that he had rather a habit of kissing barmaids; and I know, that in one or two instances, he had been seen by credible witnesses, to hug a landlady in a very perceptible manner. I mention the circumstance, to show what a very uncommon sort of person this beautiful young lady must have been, to have affected my uncle in the way she did; he used to say, that as her long dark hair trailed over his arm, and her beautiful dark eyes fixed themselves upon his face when she recovered, he felt so strange and nervous that his legs trembled beneath him. But who can look in a sweet, soft pair of dark eyes, without feeling queer? I can’t, gentlemen. I am afraid to look at some eyes I know, and that’s the truth of it.

‘“You will never leave me,” murmured the young lady.

‘“Never,” said my uncle. And he meant it too.

‘“My dear preserver!” exclaimed the young lady. “My dear, kind, brave preserver!”

‘“Don’t,” said my uncle, interrupting her.

‘“‘Why?” inquired the young lady.

‘“Because your mouth looks so beautiful when you speak,” rejoined my uncle, “that I’m afraid I shall be rude enough to kiss it.”

‘The young lady put up her hand as if to caution my uncle not to do so, and said— No, she didn’t say anything—she smiled. When you are looking at a pair of the most delicious lips in the world, and see them gently break into a roguish smile—if you are very near them, and nobody else by—you cannot better testify your admiration of their beautiful form and colour than by kissing them at once. My uncle did so, and I honour him for it.

‘“Hark!” cried the young lady, starting. “The noise of wheels, and horses!”

‘“So it is,” said my uncle, listening. He had a good ear for wheels, and the trampling of hoofs; but there appeared to be so many horses and carriages rattling towards them, from a distance, that it was impossible to form a guess at their number. The sound was like that of fifty brakes, with six blood cattle in each.

‘“We are pursued!” cried the young lady, clasping her hands. “We are pursued. I have no hope but in you!”

‘There was such an expression of terror in her beautiful face, that my uncle made up his mind at once. He lifted her into the coach, told her not to be frightened, pressed his lips to hers once more, and then advising her to draw up the window to keep the cold air out, mounted to the box.

‘“Stay, love,” cried the young lady.

‘“What’s the matter?” said my uncle, from the coach-box.

‘“I want to speak to you,” said the young lady; “only a word. Only one word, dearest.”

‘“Must I get down?” inquired my uncle. The lady made no answer, but she smiled again. Such a smile, gentlemen! It beat the other one, all to nothing. My uncle descended from his perch in a twinkling.

‘“What is it, my dear?” said my uncle, looking in at the coach window. The lady happened to bend forward at the same time, and my uncle thought she looked more beautiful than she had done yet. He was very close to her just then, gentlemen, so he really ought to know.

‘“What is it, my dear?” said my uncle.

‘“Will you never love any one but me—never marry any one beside?” said the young lady.

‘My uncle swore a great oath that he never would marry anybody else, and the young lady drew in her head, and pulled up the window. He jumped upon the box, squared his elbows, adjusted the ribands, seized the whip which lay on the roof, gave one flick to the off leader, and away went the four long-tailed, flowing-maned black horses, at fifteen good English miles an hour, with the old mail-coach behind them. Whew! How they tore along!

‘The noise behind grew louder. The faster the old mail went, the faster came the pursuers—men, horses, dogs, were leagued in the pursuit. The noise was frightful, but, above all, rose the voice of the young lady, urging my uncle on, and shrieking, “Faster! Faster!”

‘They whirled past the dark trees, as feathers would be swept before a hurricane. Houses, gates, churches, haystacks, objects of every kind they shot by, with a velocity and noise like roaring waters suddenly let loose. But still the noise of pursuit grew louder, and still my uncle could hear the young lady wildly screaming, “Faster! Faster!”

‘My uncle plied whip and rein, and the horses flew onward till they were white with foam; and yet the noise behind increased; and yet the young lady cried, “Faster! Faster!” My uncle gave a loud stamp on the boot in the energy of the moment, and— found that it was gray morning, and he was sitting in the wheelwright’s yard, on the box of an old Edinburgh mail, shivering with the cold and wet and stamping his feet to warm them! He got down, and looked eagerly inside for the beautiful young lady. Alas! There was neither door nor seat to the coach. It was a mere shell.

‘Of course, my uncle knew very well that there was some mystery in the matter, and that everything had passed exactly as he used to relate it. He remained staunch to the great oath he had sworn to the beautiful young lady, refusing several eligible landladies on her account, and dying a bachelor at last. He always said what a curious thing it was that he should have found out, by such a mere accident as his clambering over the palings, that the ghosts of mail-coaches and horses, guards, coachmen, and passengers, were in the habit of making journeys regularly every night. He used to add, that he believed he was the only living person who had ever been taken as a passenger on one of these excursions. And I think he was right, gentlemen— at least I never heard of any other.’

‘I wonder what these ghosts of mail-coaches carry in their bags,’ said the landlord, who had listened to the whole story with profound attention.

‘The dead letters, of course,’ said the bagman.

‘Oh, ah! To be sure,’ rejoined the landlord. ‘I never thought of that.’

CHAPTER L HOW Mr. PICKWICK SPED UPON HIS MISSION, AND HOW HE WAS REINFORCED IN THE OUTSET BY A MOST UNEXPECTED AUXILIARY

The horses were put to, punctually at a quarter before nine next morning, and Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller having each taken his seat, the one inside and the other out, the postillion was duly directed to repair in the first instance to Mr. Bob Sawyer’s house, for the purpose of taking up Mr. Benjamin Allen.

It was with feelings of no small astonishment, when the carriage drew up before the door with the red lamp, and the very legible inscription of ‘Sawyer, late Nockemorf,’ that Mr. Pickwick saw, on popping his head out of the coach window, the boy in the gray livery very busily employed in putting up the shutters —the which, being an unusual and an unbusinesslike proceeding at that hour of the morning, at once suggested to his mind two inferences: the one, that some good friend and patient of Mr. Bob Sawyer’s was dead; the other, that Mr. Bob Sawyer himself was bankrupt.

‘What is the matter?’ said Mr. Pickwick to the boy.

‘Nothing’s the matter, Sir,’ replied the boy, expanding his mouth to the whole breadth of his countenance.

‘All right, all right!’ cried Bob Sawyer, suddenly appearing at the door, with a small leathern knapsack, limp and dirty, in one hand, and a rough coat and shawl thrown over the other arm. ‘I’m going, old fellow.’

‘You!’ exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.

‘Yes,’ replied Bob Sawyer, ‘and a regular expedition we’ll make of it. Here, Sam! Look out!’ Thus briefly bespeaking Mr. Weller’s attention, Mr. Bob Sawyer jerked the leathern knapsack into the dickey, where it was immediately stowed away, under the seat, by Sam, who regarded the proceeding with great admiration. This done, Mr. Bob Sawyer, with the assistance of the boy, forcibly worked himself into the rough coat, which was a few sizes too small for him, and then advancing to the coach window, thrust in his head, and laughed boisterously. ‘What a start it is, isn’t it?’ cried Bob, wiping the tears out of his eyes, with one of the cuffs of the rough coat.

‘My dear Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick, with some embarrassment, ‘I had no idea of your accompanying us.’

‘No, that’s just the very thing,’ replied Bob, seizing Mr. Pickwick by the lappel of his coat. ‘That’s the joke.’

‘Oh, that’s the joke, is it?’ said Mr. Pickwick.

‘Of course,’ replied Bob. ‘It’s the whole point of the thing, you know—that, and leaving the business to take care of itself, as it seems to have made up its mind not to take care of me.’ With this explanation of the phenomenon of the shutters, Mr. Bob Sawyer pointed to the shop, and relapsed into an ecstasy of mirth.

‘Bless me, you are surely not mad enough to think of leaving your patients without anybody to attend them!’ remonstrated Mr. Pickwick in a very serious tone.

‘Why not?’ asked Bob, in reply. ‘I shall save by it, you know. None of them ever pay. Besides,’ said Bob, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, ‘they will be all the better for it; for, being nearly out of drugs, and not able to increase my account just now, I should have been obliged to give them calomel all round, and it would have been certain to have disagreed with some of them. So it’s all for the best.’

There was a philosophy and a strength of reasoning about this reply, which Mr. Pickwick was not prepared for. He paused a few moments, and added, less firmly than before—

‘But this chaise, my young friend, will only hold two; and I am pledged to Mr. Allen.’

‘Don’t think of me for a minute,’ replied Bob. ‘I’ve arranged it all; Sam and I will share the dickey between us. Look here. This little bill is to be wafered on the shop door: “Sawyer, late Nockemorf. Inquire of Mrs. Cripps over