Old Anthony, dressed in his usual clothes, was in the room--beside the
table. He leaned upon the shoulder of his solitary friend; and on his
livid face, and on his horny hands, and in his glassy eyes, and traced
by an eternal finger in the very drops of sweat upon his brow, was one
word--Death.
He spoke to them--in something of his own voice too, but sharpened and
made hollow, like a dead man's face. What he would have said, God knows.
He seemed to utter words, but they were such as man had never heard.
And this was the most fearful circumstance of all, to see him standing
there, gabbling in an unearthly tongue.
'He's better now,' said Chuffey. 'Better now. Let him sit in his old
chair, and he'll be well again. I told him not to mind. I said so,
yesterday.'
They put him in his easy-chair, and wheeled it near the window; then,
swinging open the door, exposed him to the free current of morning air.
But not all the air that is, nor all the winds that ever blew 'twixt
Heaven and Earth, could have brought new life to him.
Plunge him to the throat in golden pieces now, and his heavy fingers
shall not close on one!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE READER IS BROUGHT INTO COMMUNICATION WITH SOME PROFESSIONAL PERSONS,
AND SHEDS A TEAR OVER THE FILAIL PIETY OF GOOD MR JONAS
Mr Pecksniff was in a hackney cabriolet, for Jonas Chuzzlewit had said
'Spare no expense.
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