The Complete Short Stories of Charles Dickens: 190+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Чарльз Диккенс

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      ‘I received a note—’ he said, very tremulously, in a voice like a Punch with a cold.

      ‘Yes,’ returned the other, ‘you did.’

      ‘Exactly.’

      ‘Yes.’

      Now, although this dialogue must have been satisfactory, both gentlemen felt there was something more important to be said; therefore they did as most men in such a situation would have done—they looked at the table with a determined aspect. The conversation had been opened, however, and Mr. Calton had made up his mind to continue it with a regular double knock. He always spoke very pompously.

      ‘Hicks,’ said he, ‘I have sent for you, in consequence of certain arrangements which are pending in this house, connected with a marriage.’

      ‘With a marriage!’ gasped Hicks, compared with whose expression of countenance, Hamlet’s, when he sees his father’s ghost, is pleasing and composed.

      ‘With a marriage,’ returned the knocker. ‘I have sent for you to prove the great confidence I can repose in you.’

      ‘And will you betray me?’ eagerly inquired Hicks, who in his alarm had even forgotten to quote.

      ‘I betray you! Won’t you betray me?’

      ‘Never: no one shall know, to my dying day, that you had a hand in the business,’ responded the agitated Hicks, with an inflamed countenance, and his hair standing on end as if he were on the stool of an electrifying machine in full operation.

      ‘People must know that, some time or other—within a year, I imagine,’ said Mr. Calton, with an air of great self-complacency. ‘We may have a family.’

      ‘We!—That won’t affect you, surely?’

      ‘The devil it won’t!’

      ‘No! how can it?’ said the bewildered Hicks. Calton was too much inwrapped in the contemplation of his happiness to see the equivoque between Hicks and himself; and threw himself back in his chair. ‘Oh, Matilda!’ sighed the antique beau, in a lack-a-daisical voice, and applying his right hand a little to the left of the fourth button of his waistcoat, counting from the bottom. ‘Oh, Matilda!’

      ‘What Matilda?’ inquired Hicks, starting up.

      ‘Matilda Maplesone,’ responded the other, doing the same.

      ‘I marry her to-morrow morning,’ said Hicks.

      ‘It’s false,’ rejoined his companion: ‘I marry her!’

      ‘You marry her?’

      ‘I marry her!’

      ‘You marry Matilda Maplesone?’

      ‘Matilda Maplesone.’

      ‘Miss Maplesone marry you?’

      ‘Miss Maplesone! No; Mrs. Maplesone.’

      ‘Good Heaven!’ said Hicks, falling into his chair: ‘You marry the mother, and I the daughter!’

      ‘Most extraordinary circumstance!’ replied Mr. Calton, ‘and rather inconvenient too; for the fact is, that owing to Matilda’s wishing to keep her intention secret from her daughters until the ceremony had taken place, she doesn’t like applying to any of her friends to give her away. I entertain an objection to making the affair known to my acquaintance just now; and the consequence is, that I sent to you to know whether you’d oblige me by acting as father.’

      ‘I should have been most happy, I assure you,’ said Hicks, in a tone of condolence; ‘but, you see, I shall be acting as bridegroom. One character is frequently a consequence of the other; but it is not usual to act in both at the same time. There’s Simpson—I have no doubt he’ll do it for you.’

      ‘I don’t like to ask him,’ replied Calton, ‘he’s such a donkey.’

      Mr. Septimus Hicks looked up at the ceiling, and down at the floor; at last an idea struck him. ‘Let the man of the house, Tibbs, be the father,’ he suggested; and then he quoted, as peculiarly applicable to Tibbs and the pair—

      ‘Oh Powers of Heaven! what dark eyes meets she there?

       ’Tis—’tis her father’s—fixed upon the pair.’

      ‘The idea has struck me already,’ said Mr. Calton: ‘but, you see, Matilda, for what reason I know not, is very anxious that Mrs. Tibbs should know nothing about it, till it’s all over. It’s a natural delicacy, after all, you know.’

      ‘He’s the best-natured little man in existence, if you manage him properly,’ said Mr. Septimus Hicks. ‘Tell him not to mention it to his wife, and assure him she won’t mind it, and he’ll do it directly. My marriage is to be a secret one, on account of the mother and my father; therefore he must be enjoined to secrecy.’

      A small double knock, like a presumptuous single one, was that instant heard at the street-door. СКАЧАТЬ