Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/313

247 THE PICKWICK CLUB. 247

^^ We do not moan to assert that the application of this brevity to himself, struck exactly that indignation to Mr. Pickwick's soul, which it would infallibly have roused in a vulg^ar breast. We merely record the fact that Mr. Pickwick opened the room door, and abruptly called out, " Tupman, come here."

Mr. Tupman immediately presented himself, with a look of very considerable surprise.

" Tupman," said Mr. Pickwick, " a secret of some delicacy, in which that lady is concerned, is the cause of a difference which has just arisen between this g-entleman and myself. When I assure him, in your pre- sence, that it has no relation to himself, and is not in any way connected with his affairs, I need hardly beg^ you to take notice that if he continues to dispute it, he expresses a doubt of my veracity, which I shall consider extremely insulting " As Mr. Pickwick said this, he looked encyclo- paedias at Mr. Peter Magnus.

Mr. Pickwick's upright and honourable bearing, coupled with that force and energy of speech which so eminently distinguished him, would have carried conviction to any reasonable mind ; but unfortunately at that particular moment, the mind of Mr. Peter Magnus was in any- thing but reasonable order. Consequently, instead of receiving Mr. Pickwick's explanation as he ought to have done, he forthwith pro- ceeded to work himself into a red-hot scorching consuming passion, and to talk about what was due to his own feelings, and all that sort of thing, adding force to his declamation by striding to and fro, and pulling his hair, amusements which he would vary occasionally, by shaking his fist in Mr. Pickwick's philanthropic countenance.

Mr. Pickwick, in his turn, conscious of his own innocence and recti- tude, and irritated by having unfortunately involved the middle-aged lady in such an unpleasant affair, was not so quietly disposed as was his wont. The consequence was, that words ran high, and voices higher, and at length Mr. Magnus told Mr. Pickwick he should hear from him, to which Mr. Pickwick replied with laudable politeness, that the sooner he heard from him the better; whereupon the middle-aged lady rushed in terror from the I'oora, out of which Mr. Tupman dragged Mr. Pick- wick, leaving Mr. Peter Magnus to himself and meditation.

If the middle-aged lady had mingled much with the busy world, or profited at all, by the manners and customs of those who make the laws and set the fashions, she would have known that this sort of ferocity is just the most harmless thing in nature ; but as she had lived for the most part in the country, and never read the parliamentary debates, she was little versed in these particular refinements of civilised life. Accordingly, when she had gained her bed-chamber, bolted herself in, and begun to meditate on the scene she had just witnessed, the most terrific pictures of slaughter and (destruction presented themselves to her imagination ; among which, a full-length portrait of Mr. Peter Magnus borne home by four men, with the embellishment of a whole barrel-full of bullets in his left side, was among the very least. The more the middle-aged lady meditated, the more terrified she became ; and at length she determined to repair to the bouse of the principal