Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/543

451 THE PICKWICK CLUB. 451

The matter was soon arranged, as the turnkey had foretold. The Chancery prisoner had been there long enough to have lost friends, for- tune, home, and happiness, and to have acquired the right of having a room to himself. As he laboured, however, under the slight incon- venience of often wanting a morsel of bread, he eagerly listened to Mr. Pickwick's proposal to rent the apartment ; and readily covenanted and agreed to yield him up the sole and undisturbed possession thereof, in con- sideration of the weekly payment of twenty shillings; from which fund he furthermore contracted to pay out any person or persons that might be chummed upon it.

As they struck the bargain, Mr. Pickwick surveyed him with a pain- ful interest. He was a tall, gaunt, cadaverous man, in an old great coat and slippers, with sunken cheeks, and a restless, eager eye. His lips were bloodless, and his bones sharp and thin. God help him ! the iron teeth of confinement and privation had been slowly filing them down for twenty years.

" And where will you live meanwhile. Sir?" said Mr. Pickwick, as he laid the amount of the first week's rent in advance on the tottering table.

The man gathered up the money with a trembling hand, and replied that he didn't know yet ; he must go and see where he could move his bed to.

" I am afraid, Sir," said Mr. Pickwick, laying his hand gently and compassionately on his arm ; — " I am afraid you will have to live in some noisy crowded place. Now, pray, consider this room your own when you want quiet, or when any of your friends come to see you."

" Friends !" interposed the man, in a voice which rattled in his throat. screwed down and soldered in my coffin, rotting in the dark and filthy ditch that drags its slime along beneath the foundations of this prison, I could not be more forgotten or unheeded than I am here. I am a dead man — dead to society, without the pity they bestow on those Avhose souls have passed to judgment. Friends to see me ! My God ! I have sunk from the prime of life into old age in this place, and there is not one to raise his hand above my bed, when I lie dead upon it, and say, ' It is a blessing he is gone I' "
 * ' If I lay dead at the bottom of the deepest mine in the world, tight

The excitement, which had cast an unwonted light over the man's face while he spoke, subsided as he concluded ; and, pressing his withered hands together in a hasty and disordered manner, he shuffled from the room.

" Rides rather rusty," said Mr. Roker, with a smile. " Ah ! they're like the elephants ; they feel it now and then, and it makes 'em wild!"

Having made this deeply-sympathising remark, Mr. Roker entered upon his arrangements with such expedition, that in a short time the room was furnished with a carpet, six chairs, a table, a sofa bedstead, a tea-kettle, and various small et ceterasy on hire, at the very reasonable rate of seven-and-twenty shillings and sixpence per week.

"Now, is there anything more we can do for you?" inquired Mr.

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