“Why, of course he is. It’s only his curious way.”
“Well,” said Harry, “if you say so, I suppose it’s right. You know more about him than I do; but if I’d met him without being introduced I should have said that he was a lunatic, and the big foreigner was his keeper.”
That was a nice idea, wasn’t it? But, of course, a character like Mr. Saxon isn’t met with every day; and perhaps it’s a good job it isn’t. Too many of them would make things uncomfortable.
All that day Mr. Saxon was very excited, and I could see it was his liver by the look of him; and he kept groaning and saying his head ached, and he felt as if he’d been beaten black and blue.
He said he couldn’t write and he couldn’t read, and he couldn’t sit still, and so he came downstairs into our parlour and made Harry come and sit and talk with him. But he talked so much himself, Harry never had a chance. Harry did manage to say once what a fine thing it must be to be able to make money, and have your name stuck about the hoardings; and that was enough—that started him.
“A fine thing!” he said; “why, I’m the most miserable wretch that ever trod the earth! For twenty years I haven’t known what it is to be well for a single day. I’m always doubled up, I’m always in pain, I can’t go anywhere, I shun society, and I can’t eat anything without being ill for a week.”
“But you manage to write a good deal,” said Harry.
“Ah! I used to, but that faculty’s gone now. I’m too ill. I shall have to give up soon. Then I shall be ruined, and die in the workhouse. It’s an awful thing, Beckett, after working hard all your life, to die in the workhouse.”
“Can’t say, sir,” said Harry jokingly; “I never tried it.”
But Mr. Saxon wouldn’t joke. He kept on talking in such a melancholy way that at last we all began to feel miserable. He said that life was all a mistake—that it was no good trying to be anything in the world, because death was sure to come, and that misery and trouble were our portions from the cradle to the grave. Then he began to tell the most dreadful stories about people he’d known, and the awful things that had happened to them; and Harry, who wasn’t used to that sort of thing, got up and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Saxon, I’ll go and get a little fresh air. If I listen to you much longer I shall begin to believe that I’d better take the missis and the baby and tie them round my neck and jump into the canal, before anything worse happens to us.”