carriages, with fine horses and gaudy servants. They were at her bedside
for weeks. They had a great meeting and consulted together in low and
solemn voices in another room. One, the cleverest and most celebrated
among them, took me aside, and bidding me prepare for the worst, told
me--me, the madman!--that my wife was mad. He stood close beside me at
an open window, his eyes looking in my face, and his hand laid upon my
arm. With one effort, I could have hurled him into the street beneath.
It would have been rare sport to have done it; but my secret was at
stake, and I let him go. A few days after, they told me I must place her
under some restraint: I must provide a keeper for her. I! I went into
the open fields where none could hear me, and laughed till the air
resounded with my shouts!
'She died next day. The white-headed old man followed her to the grave,
and the proud brothers dropped a tear over the insensible corpse of her
whose sufferings they had regarded in her lifetime with muscles of iron.
All this was food for my secret mirth, and I laughed behind the white
handkerchief which I held up to my face, as we rode home, till the tears
Came into my eyes.
'But though I had carried my object and killed her, I was restless and
disturbed, and I felt that before long my secret must be known. I could
not hide the wild mirth and joy which boiled within me, and made me
when I was alone, at home, jump up and beat my hands together, and
dance round and round, and roar aloud. When I went out, and saw the
busy crowds hurrying about the streets; or to the theatre, and heard the
sound of music, and beheld the people dancing, I felt such glee, that
I could have rushed among them, and torn them to pieces limb from limb,
and howled in transport. But I ground my teeth, and struck my feet upon
the floor, and drove my sharp nails into my hands. I kept it down; and
no one knew I was a madman yet.
'I remember--though it's one of the last things I can remember: for now
I mix up realities with my dreams, and having so much to do, and being
always hurried here, have no time to separate the two, from some strange
confusion in which they get involved--I remember how I let it out at
last. Ha! ha! I think I see their frightened looks now, and feel the
ease with which I flung them from me, and dashed my clenched fist into
their white faces, and then flew like the wind, and left them screaming
and shouting far behind. The strength of a giant comes upon me when
I think of it. There--see how this iron bar bends beneath my furious
wrench. I could snap it like a twig, only there are long galleries here
with many doors--I don't think I could find my way along them; and even
if I could, I know there are iron gates below which they keep locked and
barred. They know what a clever madman I have been, and they are proud
to have me here, to show.
'Let me see: yes, I had been out. It was late at night when I reached
home, and found the proudest of the three proud brothers waiting to see
me--urgent business he said: I recollect it well. I hated that man with
all a madman's hate. Many and many a time had my fingers longed to tear
him. They told me he was there. I ran swiftly upstairs. He had a word
to say to me. I dismissed the servants. It was late, and we were alone
together--for the first time.
'I kept my eyes carefully from him at first, for I knew what he little
thought--and I gloried in the knowledge--that the light of madness
gleamed from them like fire. We sat in silence for a few minutes. He
spoke at last. My recent dissipation, and strange remarks, made so
soon after his sister's death, were an insult to her memory. Coupling
together many circumstances which had at first escaped his observation,
he thought I had not treated her well. He wished to know whether he was
right in inferring that I meant to cast a reproach upon her memory,
and a disrespect upon her family. It was due to the uniform he wore, to
demand this explanation.
'This man had a commission in the army--a commission, purchased with my
money, and his sister's misery! This was the man who had been foremost
in the plot to ensnare me, and grasp my wealth. This was the man who had
been the main instrument in forcing his sister to wed me; well knowing
that her heart was given to that puling boy. Due to his uniform! The
livery of his degradation! I turned my eyes upon him--I could not help
it--but I spoke not a word.
'I saw the sudden change that came upon him beneath my gaze. He was
a bold man, but the colour faded from his face, and he drew back his
chair. I dragged mine nearer to him; and I laughed--I was very merry
then--I saw him shudder. I felt the madness rising within me. He was
afraid of me.
'"You were very fond of your sister when she was alive," I
said.--"Very."
'He looked uneasily round him, and I saw his hand grasp the back of his
chair; but he said nothing.
'"You villain," said I, "I found you out: I discovered your hellish
plots against me; I know her heart was fixed on some one else before you
compelled her to marry me. I know it--I know it."
'He jumped suddenly from his chair, brandished it aloft, and bid me
stand back--for I took care to be getting closer to him all the time I
spoke.
'I screamed rather than talked, for I felt tumultuous passions eddying
through my veins, and the old spirits whispering and taunting me to tear
his heart out.
'"Damn you," said I, starting up, and rushing upon him; "I killed her. I
am a madman. Down with you. Blood, blood! I will have it!"
'I turned aside with one blow the chair he hurled at me in his terror,
and closed with him; and with a heavy crash we rolled upon the floor
together. 'It was a fine struggle that; for he was a tall, strong man,
fighting for his life; and I, a powerful madman, thirsting to destroy
him. I knew no strength could equal mine, and I was right. Right again,
though a madman! His struggles grew fainter. I knelt upon his chest, and
clasped his brawny throat firmly with both hands. His face grew purple;
his eyes were starting from his head, and with protruded tongue, he
seemed to mock me. I squeezed the tighter. 'The door was suddenly burst
open with a loud noise, and a crowd of people rushed forward, crying
aloud to each other to secure the madman.
'My secret was out; and my only struggle now was for liberty and
freedom. I gained my feet before a hand was on me, threw myself among
my assailants, and cleared my way with my strong arm, as if I bore a
hatchet in my hand, and hewed them down before me. I gained the door,
dropped over the banisters, and in an instant was in the street.
'Straight and swift I ran, and no one dared to stop me. I heard the
noise of the feet behind, and redoubled my speed. It grew fainter and
fainter in the distance, and at length died away altogether; but on I
bounded, through marsh and rivulet, over fence and wall, with a wild
shout which was taken up by the strange beings that flocked around me on
every side, and swelled the sound, till it pierced the air. I was borne
upon the arms of demons who swept along upon the wind, and bore down
bank and hedge before them, and spun me round and round with a rustle
and a speed that made my head swim, until at last they threw me from
them with a violent shock, and I fell heavily upon the earth. When I
woke I found myself here--here in this gray cell, where the sunlight
seldom comes, and the moon steals in, in rays which only serve to show
the dark shadows about me, and that silent figure in its old corner.
When I lie awake, I can sometimes hear strange shrieks and cries from
distant parts of this large place. What they are, I know not; but they
neither come from that pale form, nor does it regard them. For from the
first shades of dusk till the earliest light of morning, it still stands
motionless in the same place, listening to the music of my iron chain,
and watching my gambols on my straw bed.'
At the end of the manuscript was written, in another hand, this note:--
[The unhappy man whose ravings are recorded above, was a melancholy
instance of the baneful results of energies misdirected in early life,
and excesses prolonged until their consequences could never be repaired.
The thoughtless riot, dissipation, and debauchery of his younger days
produced fever and delirium. The first effects of the latter was the
strange delusion, founded upon a well-known medical theory, strongly
contended for by some, and as strongly contested by others, that an
hereditary madness existed in his family. This produced a settled gloom,
which in time developed a morbid insanity, and finally terminated in
raving madness. There is every reason to believe that the events
he detailed, though distorted in the description by his diseased
imagination, really happened. It is only matter of wonder to those who
were acquainted with the vices of his early career, that his passions,
when no longer controlled by reason, did not lead him to the commission
of still more frightful deeds.]
Mr. Pickwick's candle was just expiring in the socket, as he concluded
the perusal of the old clergyman's manuscript; and when the light
went suddenly out, without any previous flicker by way of warning, it
communicated a very considerable start to his excited frame. Hastily
throwing off such articles of clothing as he had put on when he rose
from his uneasy bed, and casting a fearful glance around, he once more
scrambled hastily between the sheets, and soon fell fast asleep.
The sun was shining brilliantly into his chamber, when he awoke, and
the morning was far advanced. The gloom which had oppressed him on the
previous night had disappeared with the dark shadows which shrouded the
landscape, and his thoughts and feelings were as light and gay as the
morning itself. After a hearty breakfast, the four gentlemen sallied
forth to walk to Gravesend, followed by a man bearing the stone in its
deal box. They reached the town about one o'clock (their luggage they
had directed to be forwarded to the city, from Rochester), and being
fortunate enough to secure places on the outside of a coach, arrived in
London in sound health and spirits, on that same afternoon.
The next three or four days were occupied with the preparations which
were necessary for their journey to the borough of Eatanswill. As
any references to that most important undertaking demands a separate
chapter, we may devote the few lines which remain at the close of
this, to narrate, with great brevity, the history of the antiquarian
discovery.
It appears from the Transactions of the Club, then, that Mr. Pickwick
lectured upon the discovery at a General Club Meeting, convened on the
night succeeding their return, and entered into a variety of ingenious
and erudite speculations on the meaning of the inscription. It also
appears that a skilful artist executed a faithful delineation of the
curiosity, which was engraven on stone, and presented to the Royal
Antiquarian Society, and other learned bodies: that heart-burnings and
jealousies without number were created by rival controversies which were
penned upon the subject; and that Mr. Pickwick himself wrote a pamphlet,
containing ninety-six pages of very small print, and twenty-seven
different readings of the inscription: that three old gentlemen cut off
their eldest sons with a shilling a-piece for presuming to doubt the
antiquity of the fragment; and that one enthusiastic individual cut
himself off prematurely, in despair at being unable to fathom its
meaning: that Mr. Pickwick was elected an honorary member of seventeen
native and foreign societies, for making the discovery: that none of the
seventeen could make anything of it; but that all the seventeen agreed
it was very extraordinary.
Mr. Blotton, indeed--and the name will be doomed to the undying contempt
of those who cultivate the mysterious and the sublime--Mr. Blotton, we
say, with the doubt and cavilling peculiar to vulgar minds, presumed to
state a view of the case, as degrading as ridiculous. Mr. Blotton, with
a mean desire to tarnish the lustre of the immortal name of Pickwick,
actually undertook a journey to Cobham in person, and on his return,
sarcastically observed in an oration at the club, that he had seen the
man from whom the stone was purchased; that the man presumed the
stone to be ancient, but solemnly denied the antiquity of the
inscription--inasmuch as he represented it to have been rudely carved by
himself in an idle mood, and to display letters intended to bear neither
more or less than the simple construction of--'BILL STUMPS, HIS MARK';
and that Mr. Stumps, being little in the habit of original composition,
and more accustomed to be guided by the sound of words than by the
strict rules of orthography, had omitted the concluding 'L' of his
Christian name.
The Pickwick Club (as might have been expected from so enlightened an
institution) received this statement with the contempt it deserved,
expelled the presumptuous and ill-conditioned Blotton from the society,
and voted Mr. Pickwick a pair of gold spectacles, in token of their
confidence and approbation: in return for which, Mr. Pickwick caused a
portrait of himself to be painted, and hung up in the club room.
Mr. Blotton was ejected but not conquered. He also wrote a pamphlet,
addressed to the seventeen learned societies, native and foreign,
containing a repetition of the statement he had already made, and
rather more than half intimating his opinion that the seventeen learned
societies were so many 'humbugs.' Hereupon, the virtuous indignation of
the seventeen learned societies being roused, several fresh pamphlets
appeared; the foreign learned societies corresponded with the native
learned societies; the native learned societies translated the pamphlets
of the foreign learned societies into English; the foreign learned
societies translated the pamphlets of the native learned societies into
