Read Online Jack Maggs by Peter Carey - Free Book Online Page A

Thackeray himself. And it was this ambition, always burning bright within him, which brought him to his desk before dawn on that day when Jack Maggs came knocking on his door.
    The sharp, demanding nature of these knocks announced a visitor who was unfamiliar with his household. Tobias swiftly slid the jar into the corner of his desk. He placed an open encyclopedia in front of it, and picked up his quill. He opened his chap book. He appeared, as he turned his head towards the door, rather as he does in the portrait Samuel Laurence painted of him in 1838. That is, he looked towards his visitor as at a bailiff, or some other person with the power to knock him off his perch.
    “Enter.”
    The door swung open to reveal Percy Buckle’s footman.
    Tobias Oates took in the splashed stockings, sooty knees, damage to the powdered hair.
    “Is this bad news?” he asked.
    The dark eyes stared back at him balefully.
    The writer reached for the golden cord which tied his gown, pulled it loose, tied it once again.
    “The pain returned?” he guessed, but he was very confused by such a visitor at such an hour.
    The fellow took a half-step into the room.
    “What happened to your stockings?”
    “I fell,” the footman said curtly, blinking and looking hard around him.
    “For heaven’s sake, man, it is five in the morning.”
    “The hours are hard, Sir.”
    “You were dragged out from your bed? Does that mild man really send his servants out at such hours?”
    For answer the visitor clenched his two hands and held them out strangely from his sides. This gesture was queer and unexpected, suggesting more power than any servant had a right to assume. It was then Tobias began to feel afraid.
    “Some wrong has been done you?”
    “I’ve been waiting all the night, since you finished your pudding.”
    The footman took a further step into the room. Toby picked up the only weapon available, his paperweight. It was a two-pound weight belonging to the kitchen scales.
    “But where, dear God? All night?”
    “In the street.” Jack Maggs closed the door behind him.
    “This street? Outside my house?”
    “And then most recently, I was conveniently inside your kitchen.”
    “Man, you’re shivering.”
    “I know it.”
    Tobias did not relinquish his two-pound weight, but he offered the chair he had been sitting on. “And what is your true purpose, old fellow?”
    Jack Maggs had sat himself in the chair but immediately stood up again, folding his great arms across his chest. “What was it you did to me at dinner time? To be blunt, Sir, that’s what’s on my mind.”
    “Ah, so that’s it. The pain has come back!”
    “Tell me what you did to me.”
    For answer Tobias attempted to lay his hand against the servant’s cheek, but Jack Maggs jerked back his head, curled his lips and showed his gums.
    “You pried into my secrets.”
    “No.”
    “That’s why those gentlemen were looking at me so strange when I woke up.”
    “You deserve an explanation,” said Tobias carefully, “but you’ll not get it by glowering at me. Here, I’ll take this stool, and you have my chair again. No one wishes you ill, you have my word. What you call ‘strange’ was human sympathy. They are gentlemen, perhaps, and you are a footman, but they were moved by you. You are filled with Phantoms, Master Maggs. It is these Phantoms who cause you such distress. Did you know that? Do you know what hobgoblins live inside your head like beetles in a fallen log?”
    “But how did you make me speak?” cried the visitor, sitting forward again in the chair, his hands upon his spattered knees. “In all my life I never have spoke in my sleep, not never.”
    “Last night you were a Somnambulist.”
    “Whatever it is called, it is a terrible thing, Sir, for a man to feel his insides all exposed to public view, a thousand times worse than to come before you with my stockings in this state.”
    “Would you rather keep the pain?”
    “I would have it back ten