Death and Mr. Pickwick Read Online Free

ninepence. But if we find so much as a scrawny chick’s eyelash missing, we’ll put you in a sack, Seymour. Mr Seddon has eyes everywhere .’
    He turned away and yelled across the loft. ‘Ho! Tom! New man!’ Then the Head of Upholstery headed for the staircase, in a hurry to avoid any contact whatsoever with the Tom he had just addressed.
    A tiny fellow at the far end of the loft, who was bent over with his hand in a cushion, straightened and turned, revealing a head with just a few patches of red hair. He pulled down a greasy vest, and then came towards Seymour, wading through feathers as though they were foam on a shore.
    Immediately this Tom began talking, as if asked to produce a summary account of his life. ‘I started as a poulterer’s lad; then swept the ring at the cockfights; then got my own birds and spurs, fine birds, well worth a bet – that’s until a rival poisoned ’em all; and I came here, to feathers. That was a long time ago. Come with me.’
    He took Seymour – retching, eyes red raw and streaming – to a pile of large, plumped-up sacks stamped ‘Hudson Bay Eiderdown’, next to another pile of red cushion covers. ‘I take twenty-five palms for cushions like those; I feed the cushion till it’s three handfuls shy of bursting.’ He laughed horribly. ‘They said shave your head when I started, but I didn’t and now it’s too late!’ He laughed horribly again.
    Henry Seymour said: ‘I will keep my hair.’
    Tom had either not heard, or, if he had, it made no difference at all.
    *   *   *
    It was a grey, wet evening on Aldersgate Street and the dome of St Paul’s loomed in mockery – like a gigantic bolster, it seemed to Henry Seymour – to mark the end of his first day at Seddon’s. He stood under a gutter, washing his hands in rainwater, while his hat brim made another overflowing gutter in front of his eyes. His fingers were encrusted with blood from catching on feather stems, and the down clung to his nails – and yet, when a passing stranger made the remark ‘Foul weather’, Seymour’s mind formed a pun, and he managed a smile.
    That night he slept in an innyard, between the wheels of his cart as the best protection from the weather, his head supported by a thin rolled-up coat, hay and cobbles.
    *   *   *
    It was barely a month later, nearly midday, when Elizabeth Bishop, digging in the garden, heard Henry Seymour calling from down the road. The cry seemed more distant than it was, because so pitiful. Seymour was in the cart, but scarcely able to sit upright.
    He had driven through the early hours and could not descend unaided from the driving seat; now he leant upon Elizabeth’s shoulder along the garden path. Whether through exposure, blood poisoning, the conditions of the feather loft or some unknown cause, he was feverish and barely coherent. ‘A change of air – I needed a change of air,’ he said.
    As she took him across the threshold, he also said: ‘I will go back.’
    â€˜Soft pillows,’ he whispered in relief, as she put him to bed. ‘Soft pillows,’ he said, but in bitterness, an hour later, as she stood over him. ‘Soft pillows!’ he cried out late at night, for no reason she could understand, his eyes stretching wide in fear.
    Henry Seymour was dead within a week.
    *   *   *
    The minuscule midwife carried a bundle of cloth strips, of assorted sizes and soiling, as she fussed around the room, stuffing crevices.
    â€˜So many miss the keyhole,’ she said. As her puffy eyes were not far above it, she was unlikely to do so herself.
    Climbing on a chair to reach the higher recesses of the door, she said: ‘I suppose he made this furniture himself?’
    â€˜Every stick,’ said Elizabeth Bishop from the bed. ‘I shall have to sell it all when I