Jack Maggs Read Online Free PDF

tradesman, sent to inspect their condition, he could not have examined the tiles more closely. They were grey Devon slate, with almost half of their visible surface covered with a thin coating of yellowish moss. They seemed to be, for the most part, well secured, although he noted a loose piece of lead flashing and a dormer window carelessly left open to the weather.
    So intent was his inspection that he became only slowly aware of a distant percussion. It was not until he had squeezed himself back into his room that he discovered someone was hammering on his door and crying, “Open up!”
    He stood before the door a moment with his brow quite markedly contracted. It was not at all clear that he would “open up.” Indeed he soon retreated to the window and looked out at the narrow strip of roof that might have afforded an escape. But finally he did as he was bid.
    In the open doorway he was accosted by a being with hard white sculpted hair, a creature so resplendent in his yellow velvet jacket and soft doeskin trousers, that it took a full minute—during which time the impatient visitor entered the room and got himself deep into a large oak wardrobe—for Jack to realize that he was in the presence of the very same wild-haired Tom O’Bedlam with whom he had, less than an hour before, played bookends.
    Edward Constable was of a lighter build than Maggs. He had fine wrists and large expressive hands which he had, in his recent dementia, been prone to wring. He had been a good-looking youth, and it was all still there: the high cheekbones, the well-shaped red lips; even the slight ridge on his aquiline nose did his case no damage. Of his recent madness there was, if one excepted the rather dangerous aroma of his master’s cognac, no remaining sign.
    Now, without offering an explanation, he withdrew from the darkness of the wardrobe various items which he then laid out, with a somewhat theatrical tenderness, upon the little crib. Here he set a pair of doeskin breeches from which he picked a little smut. There a white shirt, just so. Beside it a lace cravat which he must move, an inch, no more, to accommodate a yellow velvet coat, the mirror image of his own, and from whose lapel he removed a single long blue thread. To this magnificent arrangement he added two long silk stockings and a pair of black shoes with silver buckles.
    The two men stood side by side regarding the objects so assembled.
    “I am to try these for size?” suggested Maggs.
    “Tsk,” said Constable.
    “I’ll take that as yes,” Maggs said, undressing with as much modesty as the cramped space permitted, aware all the time that he was the subject of the other’s censure.
    “Now look here,” said Maggs, finally gaining the security of the breeches, “I know this was your mate’s kit, and he was your good friend and you miss him worse than air itself. I am sorry”—Maggs paused to tuck in the shirt, but did this in such a way that his witness raised a thin, sarcastic eyebrow—“I am sorry to remind you of the good comrade you have lost. I wish it was otherwise, but you see there is naught else I can do, in the circumstances, but wear his clobber.”
    In response to which explanation, the footman hissed.
    “No, good fellow. I really do not think it fair for you to hiss at me. For as I said, none of this business is my fault and I would rather, just like you would, that they would send me to a tailor and have the business done fair and square. But here we are.” Maggs slipped the jacket on. “The shoes are tight, but the coat fits well enough, and I am sure I can limp as far as pudding if you’ll be of some assistance to me.”
    “Assistance. Is that so?”
    “It is so, my fellow,” said Maggs, moving his bulk closer to the footman, who immediately began to back away. “And if I might start with what comes first—you can assist me with my hair.”
    From the recesses of the commode the footman produced a saucer with a bar of white soap, a